Star Wars: Cloak of Deception

by James Luceno

  Dofine gestured wildly to the outsize display screen. “I want to see them!” He had started for the screen when another worrisome tone sounded, this time from the station of the systems officer, which was also set below the walkway.

  “The central control computer is reporting a disturbance in zone two of the starboard hangar arm.”

  Dofine gaped at the Gran. “What sort of disturbance?”

  “The droids are firing on one of the cargo pods.”

  “Those brainless machines! If they ruin any of the cargo—”

  “Commander, starfighters are onscreen,” the Sullustan reported.

  “It could be nothing more than a glitch,” the Gran went on.

  Dofine’s blinking red orbs darted from one alien to the other in mounting concern.

  “Starfighters changing vector. Breaking into two elements.” The Sullustan turned to Dofine. “Flying the imprint of the Nebula Front.”

  “The Nebula Front!” Dofine rushed to the display screen, then raised his long, fat forefinger to indicate the jet-black gunship. “That ship—”

  “The Hawk-Bat,” the Sullustan said in a rush. “The ship of Captain Cohl.”

  “Impossible!” Dofine snapped. “Cohl was reported to be at Malastare only yesterday.”

  Jowls quivering slightly, the Sullustan regarded the screen. “But that is his ship. And where the Hawk-Bat ventures, Cohl is not far behind!”

  “Starfighters are forming up for attack,” the droid updated.

  Dofine turned to the navigator. “Enable defense systems!”

  “Central control computer reports continued blasterfire in the starboard hangar. Eight security droids destroyed.”

  “Destroyed?”

  “Defense system has the Nebula Front starfighters in target lock. Deflector shields are raised—”

  “Starfighters firing!”

  Intense light exploded behind the rectangular viewports and shook the bridge hard enough to rattle a droid off its feet.

  “Turbolasers responding!”

  Dofine swung to the viewports in time to see hyphens of pulsed, red light streak from the freighter’s equatorially mounted batteries.

  “Where is our closest reinforcement?”

  “One star system distant,” the navigator said. “The Acquisitor. More heavily armed than the Revenue.”

  “Send a distress call!”

  “Is that wise, Commander?”

  Dofine understood the implication. Rescue was always a belittling event. But Dofine was certain that he could offset the humiliation by protecting the Revenue’s cargo.

  “Just do as I say,” he told the navigator.

  “Starfighter elements are forming up for a second run,” the Sullustan updated.

  “Where are the starfighters? Why aren’t they moving in to engage?”

  “You recalled them, Commander,” the navigator reminded.

  Dofine gestured wildly. “Well, relaunch them, relaunch them!”

  “Central control computer requests permission to isolate zone two of starboard hangar.”

  “Seal it!” Dofine sputtered. “Seal it now!”

  The masked group that had infiltrated the Revenue were a diverse lot—as varied as the starfighters that were flying support—humans and nonhumans, male and female, stocky and slender. Protected by camouflage suits and matte-black armorply, and sporting gripsole deckboots and combat goggles, they emerged from behind the battering ram that had afforded them an element of surprise, firing state-of-the-art assault rifles and shoulder-slung field disruptors.

  The handful of security droids that were still standing collapsed to the deck, limbs splayed or hopelessly entwined.

  The human OLR-4 had nearly gotten the drop on strode fearlessly to the center of the yawning hangar, checked a readout on his wrist comm, and tugged the rebreather and goggles from his face.

  The firefight had left a vagrant tang in the air, the smell of ozone and scorched alloy.

  “Atmosphere is enabled,” he told the rest of his band. “But oxygen levels are equivalent to what you’d find at four thousand meters. Off your masks, but keep them handy—especially you t’bac addicts.”

  With some muffled laughter, the team complied.

  Beneath the apparatus, the human’s dark-complexioned face was still a mask: thickly bearded with coarse black hair, and rashed from temple to temple with small diamond-shaped tattoos. His violet eyes surveyed the damage with obvious dispassion.

  There wasn’t a security droid in sight, but the deck was littered with their remains. Labor droids of several varieties continued to route a few pods to berthing spaces.

  A human member of the team kicked aside the severed arm of a security droid. “These things could be dangerous if they ever learn to think straight.”

  “Shoot straight,” the bearded man amended.

  “Tell that to Rasper, Captain Cohl,” another said—Boiny, a Rodian. “It was a droid that sent Rasper on his way.” A green-skinned and round-eyed male, Boiny had a tapered snout and a crest of pliant yellow spines.

  “A lucky droid, a luckier shot,” a Rodian female remarked.

  “That doesn’t mean we treat this like an exercise,” Cohl warned, eyeing everyone. “The central control computer will be deploying backup units soon enough, and we’ve got a kilometer to go before we hit the centersphere.”

  The infiltrators glanced down the curved hangar toward a bulkhead that loomed in the distance. High overhead were massive box girders and I-beams, cranes, maintenance gantries, and hoists, a puzzle of atmosphere and vectoring ducts.

  A human female—the only among them—whistled softly. “Stars’ end, you could hide an invasion force in here.”

  As dark-complexioned as Cohl, she had short brown hair and an elegantly angular face. Even the mimetic suit could not camouflage her shapeliness.

  “That would mean spending some of the profits, Rella,” a male human said. “And the Neimoidians don’t do that unless they can spend it on new robes.”

  Boiny loosed a high-pitched laugh. “You grow up a half-starved Neimoidian grub, that’s what happens.”

  Cohl raised his bearded chin to two of his band. “Stay with the pod. We’ll make contact when we have the bridge.” He swung to the others. “Team one, take the outer rim corridor. The rest of you are with me.”

  The Revenue shuddered slightly. Muted explosions could be heard in the distance.

  Cohl cocked an ear. “That’ll be our ships.”

  Sirens began to blare throughout the hangar. The labor droids stopped in their tracks, as a basso rumble gathered underfoot.

  Rella gazed at the far-off bulkhead. “They’re sealing off the hangar.”

  Cohl waved a gesture to the first team. “Move out. We’ll rendezvous at the starboard turbolifts. Set your suits to pulse—that ought to confuse the droids—and use the concussion grenades sparingly. And remember to monitor your oxygen levels.”

  He took a few steps, then stopped. “One more thing: You get blasted by a droid, bacta rehabilitation comes out of your pay.”

  Daultay Dofine stood rigidly on the bridge’s walkway, watching in arrant horror as the Nebula Front showed his ship no mercy.

  The motley starfighters fell on the Revenue in full force, picking away at the freighter’s fat arms and triple-thrustered hindquarters like ravenous birds of prey. Many of the unshielded droid ships were annihilated as soon as they emerged from the vessel’s protective force field.

  Emboldened by their effortless mastery, the enemy craft violated the embrace the hangar arms threw about the centersphere by strafing the command tower at close quarter. Ion cannon fire from the gunship sent waves of aggravation through the Revenue’s deflector shield. Violent light washed against the bridge viewports.

  It was all Dofine could do to keep himself rooted on the walkway, as he cursed the terrorists under his breath.

  In return for having been awarded what amounted to exclusive rights to trade in the outlying star sy
stems, the Trade Federation had pledged to the Galactic Senate on Coruscant that it would content itself with remaining a mercantile power, and refrain from becoming a naval power through the accumulation of war machines. However, the further the giant ships traveled from the Core, the more often they fell victim to attacks by pirates, privateers, and terrorist groups like the Nebula Front, whose broad membership had grievances not only with the Trade Federation, but also with distant Coruscant itself.

  As a result, the senate had granted permission for the freighters to be equipped with weapons of defense, to safeguard them in the unpoliced systems strewn between the major trade routes and hyperlanes. But that had only forced the raiders to upgrade their armaments and, in turn, prepared the way for periodic strengthenings of Trade Federation defenses.

  Skirmishes in the Mid and Outer Rims—throughout the so-called free trade zones—had since become commonplace. But Coruscant was a long way off, even by light-speed, and it was not always easy to ascertain who was at fault and who had fired first. By the time matters reached the courts, it often came down to the word of one party against the word of another, without resolution.

  Things might have gone differently for the Trade Federation but for the Neimoidians, who were as penurious as they were avaricious. When it had come to fortifying the giant ships, they had sought out the most cut-rate suppliers, and they had insisted that protecting the cargo was their paramount concern.

  Against all sound judgment, it was the Neimoidians who had dictated the placement of quad laser batteries around the outer wall of the hangar arms. While the equatorial arrangement was adequate for repelling lateral attacks, it proved completely ineffective for countering attacks launched from above or below, where nearly all the freighters’ crucial systems were located: tractor beam and deflector shield generators, hyperdrive reactors, and the central control computer.

  Thus the Trade Federation had been forced to invest in bigger and better shield generators, thicker armor plating, and, ultimately, in squadrons of starfighters. But starfighter allotments were subject to senate sanction, and freighters like the Revenue frequently found themselves defenseless against fighter craft piloted by seasoned raiders.

  Well aware of these shortcomings, Daultay Dofine saw the ship and its cargo of precious lommite rapidly slipping from his grasp.

  “Shields holding at fifty percent,” the Gran reported from across the bridge, “but we are imperiled. A few more strikes and we’ll be disabled.”

  “Where is the Acquisitor?” Dofine whined. “It should have arrived by now!”

  A volley from the Nebula Front’s gunship—Captain Cohl’s personal gunship—rocked the bridge. As Dofine had learned in previous engagements, sheer size was no guarantee of protection, much less victory, and the freighter’s three-kilometer diameter only made it a target that couldn’t be missed.

  “Shields marginal at forty percent.”

  “Quad lasers one through six are not responding,” the Sullustan added. “The starfighters are concentrating fire on the deflector shield generator and drive reactors.”

  Dofine firmed his fleshy lips in anger. “Instruct the central control computer to activate all droids, all ship defenses, and prepare to repel boarders,” he brayed. “Over my dead body will Captain Cohl set foot on this bridge.”

  In the starboard hangar arm, Cohl’s team had barely made it through the bulkhead door when every device in zone three conspired to prevent them from getting one meter closer to the acceleration compensator shaft that connected the centersphere to its embracing arms.

  Overhead cranes threw grappling claws at them; towering derricks toppled in their path; binary loadlifters dogged them like mechanical nightmares; and oxygen levels plummeted. Even worker droids joined the fray, brandishing fusioncutters and power calibrators as if they were flame projectors and vibroblades.

  “Central control’s turned the entire ship against us,” Cohl yelled.

  Rella squeezed off bolts at a posse of hydrospanner-wielding PK droids. “What did you expect, Cohl—the royal welcome?”

  Cohl gestured Boiny, Rella, and the rest of his team toward the final bulkhead that stood between them and the centersphere turbolifts. Sirens shrieked and howled in the thin air. Crisscrossing and ricocheting blaster bolts created a pyrotechnic display worthy of a Republic Day parade on Coruscant.

  Cohl fired on the run, losing count of how many droids he had dropped and how many blaster gas cartridges his weapon had expended. Two of his band were pinned down by droid fire, but there was little he or anyone else could do to help them. With luck they would get to the rendezvous point, even if they had to drag themselves there.

  Pursued by three binary loadlifters, the team raced through the final bulkhead door and fought their way to the closest bank of turbolifts.

  The hatch that accessed the transfer tubes was locked down.

  “Boiny!” Cohl shouted.

  The Rodian holstered his blaster and hurried forward, eyeing the hatch up and down, then moved to the control panel set into the wall. Preparing to slice the code, he rubbed his palms together and cracked his long, suction-tip-equipped fingers. Before he could lay a hand on the panel keys, Cohl slapped him in the back of the head.

  “What is this, amateur night?” Cohl asked with a menacing scowl. “Blow the thing.”

  Dofine was pacing the walkway when the bridge hatch blew inward, loosing a brief storm of paralyzing heat that tumbled him to the deck.

  Cohl’s band of six hurried in behind a roiling cloud of smoke, their mimetic suits allowing them to blend even with the burnished bulkheads of the bridge. Quickly and efficiently, they disarmed the Gran and shot restraining bolts onto the chest plastrons of the droids.

  Cohl waved one of his men toward the communications station.

  “Contact the Hawk-Bat. Tell them we’ve secured the bridge. Have the starfighters deploy for defense, and stand by to cover our exfiltration.”

  He waved another of his cohorts toward the Gran’s duty station. “Order the central control computer to stand down. Have it open all bulkheads in the hangar arms.”

  The human nodded and dropped down below the walkway.

  Cohl tapped a code into his wrist comlink and raised it to his mouth. “Base team, we have the bridge. Move the pod into zone three and set it down as close as possible to the inner wall hangar portal. We’ll be there soon enough.”

  Cohl zeroed the comlink. His eyes roamed over the faces of his five living captives, settling finally on Dofine. Then he drew his blaster.

  Spreading his arms wide in a gesture of surrender, Dofine took two backward steps as Cohl approached.

  “You would shoot an unarmed individual, Captain Cohl?”

  Cohl pressed the barrel of the weapon to Dofine’s rib-cage. “I’d shoot an unarmed Neimoidian—and I’d sleep better for it.”

  He glared at Dofine for a long moment, then holstered the blaster and turned to the Rodian member of his band. “Boiny, get to work. And be quick about it.”

  Cohl swung back to Dofine.

  “Where’s the rest of your crew, Commander?”

  Dofine swallowed and found his voice. “Returning by shuttle from Dorvalla.”

  Cohl nodded. “Good, that’ll simplify things.”

  Repeatedly poking Dofine in the chest with his forefinger, Cohl moved him backwards along the walkway until they reached the navigator’s chair. A final poke sent Dofine off the walkway and into the seat.

  Cohl jumped down to face him. “We need to discuss your cargo, Commander.”

  “The cargo?” Dofine stammered. “Lommite—destined for Sluis Van.”

  “To the depths with the ore,” Cohl snarled. “I’m talking about the aurodium.”

  Dofine tried to keep his red eyes from bulging. His nictitating membranes spasmed, and he blinked half a dozen times. “Aurodium?”

  Cohl leaned toward him. “You’re carrying two billion in aurodium ingots.”

  Dofine stiffened under Co
hl’s gaze. “You—you must be mistaken, Captain. The Revenue is carrying ore.”

  Cohl raised himself to his considerable height. “I’ll say it once more. You’re carrying aurodium ingots—bribes proffered by Outer Rim worlds to ensure the continued blessing of the Trade Federation.”

  Dofine sneered, in spite of himself. “So it is currency you seek. I had always heard that the notorious Captain Cohl was an idealist. Now I see that he is a simple thief.”

  Cohl almost grinned. “We can’t all be licensed thieves like you and the rest of your bunch.”

  “The Trade Federation does not deal in violence and death, Captain.”

  Cohl grabbed two fistfuls of Dofine’s rich raiment and yanked him halfway out of the chair. “Not yet you don’t.” He pushed Dofine back into the seat. “But we’ll save that for another day. What matters now is the aurodium.”

  “And should I refuse to submit?”

  Without taking his eyes from Dofine, Cohl pointed to his Rodian comrade. “Boiny, there, is affixing a thermal detonator to the Revenue’s fuel-driver control system. As I understand it, the device will trigger an explosion large enough to destroy your ship in … Boiny?”

  “Sixty minutes, Captain,” Boiny shouted, holding aloft a metallic sphere the size of a stinkmelon.

  Cohl pulled an object from the thigh pouch pocket of his mimetic suit and slapped it against the back of Dofine’s left hand. Dofine saw that it was a timer, already counting down from sixty minutes. He raised his eyes to Cohl’s steadfast gaze.

  “About the ingots,” Cohl said.

  Dofine nodded. “Yes, all right—if you promise to spare the ship.”

  Cohl laughed shortly. “The Revenue is history. But you have my word I’ll spare your life if you do as you’re told.”

  Again, Dofine nodded. “That way I’ll at least live to see you executed.”

  Cohl shrugged. “You never know, Commander.” He straightened and grinned at Rella. “What did I tell you? Easy as—”

  “Captain,” Cohl’s man at the communications station cut him off. “Vessel emerging from hyperspace. Authenticators paint her as the TradeFed freighter Acquisitor.”