They had the wrap-protection off the first couple of meters of the Hammertong by the time Cai joined them. “Any trouble?” Shada asked.
“Not really,” Cai said, stepping up to the Hammertong and peering closely at it. “I’m not sure they even picked me up coming in. They sure didn’t hail me.”
“Usually no one bothers with ships that aren’t coming into the spaceport at Mos Eisley,” Shada said. “A lot of contraband comes through Tatooine, and everyone pretty much looks the other way.”
“I’m glad one of us keeps up with these things,” Cai said dryly. “So this is the Hammertong, huh? Any idea what it is?”
“Not yet,” Shada said. “How’s your astromech droid doing these days?”
“Deefour? Erratic but functional. You want me to go get him?”
Shada nodded. “We’ll want to get a technical readout at the very least. Is the Mirage ready for that sandstorm?”
“As ready as it’s going to be,” Cai said, heading back toward the hatchway. “I tried to position it to keep a passage clear to both ships, and we can put the hatchway deflector shields up just to make sure. I’ll be right back.”
The full force of the sandstorm hit about ten minutes after Cai and the droid returned; and it took less than ten minutes more for Shada to wonder if this whole idea might not have been a big mistake. Even through the thick hull they could hear the drumming of the sand against the ship, a drumming that was growing louder with each passing minute. The plan had been to hide the Strike Cruiser from probing Imperial eyes; it would be a rather costly victory if they all wound up entombed inside it.
Cai was apparently thinking along the same lines. “That’s all the bolts down there,” she said, climbing out from under the Hammertong and handing her hydrospanner to Karoly. “I’m going to go check on the storm. Make sure we’re not getting buried too deep.”
“Good idea,” Shada said, returning her attention to her own line of bolts. She finished them, waited as Karoly finished hers, and then together they eased the massive access panel off.
The Hammertong’s inner workings weren’t nearly as complex as the number of pipe and power connections poking through the surface would have suggested. Most of the power and control cables seemed to run to a series of multihelix prismatic crystals and a group of unlabeled but identical black boxes; the piping seemed mostly connected to coolant lines and sleeves. “Maybe it’s some new kind of power core,” Shada suggested. “It’s a modular design—see how the pattern of connectors repeats every five meters down the side? We ought to be able to take it apart at those spots.”
“Maybe,” Karoly said, prodding thoughtfully at one of the black boxes with the end of her hydrospanner. “Deefour, see if you can find a place to tie in. Might as well start pulling a technical readout—we’re going to want everything we can get on this thing.”
“Hey!” Cai called from the cockpit area. “Shada, Karoly—you’d better come see this.”
She was hunched over the main display, fiddling with the fine-tuning, when the other two reached her. “What is it?” Shada demanded.
“I’m not sure,” Cai said. “Hard to tell through all the sand, but I think there’s a battle going on up there. An Imperial Star Destroyer against something about the size of a bulk freighter.”
Shada leaned over the display, heart pounding. If Sileen had been unexpectedly fast at bringing in transport for them … “Can you scrub the image any more?” she asked.
“I’m at the limit already,” Cai said. “It’s the sandstorm—wait a minute, there’s a break. It’s a Corellian Corvette.”
Shada let out a quiet sigh. Not one of the Mistryl’s ships, then. “I wonder what’s going on.”
“I don’t know,” Cai said slowly. “Wait a minute. Two more Star Destroyers coming in from hyperspace.”
“That’s a lot of firepower for a planet like Tatooine,” Karoly said. “They only had one Star Destroyer guarding the Hammertong.”
“Unless one or more of these were supposed to have been there, too,” Shada suggested. “Could be they got pulled away to help chase that Corellian.”
“Either way, the Corellian must be pretty important to them,” Cai said. “We could be in the middle of something really big here.”
Shada looked back at the Hammertong and the diminutive droid working alongside it. Cai was right … and suddenly she was feeling very short on time. “Cai, do you think we could get one of those modules off the Hammertong”
“We could try. Probably take a couple of days with just the three of us and Deefour. Why?”
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to wait for Sileen to bring back a ship,” Shada said. “If she hasn’t made it in by the time we get one of those modules off, we’d better take what we’ve got and get out of here.”
“You’ll never get one of those modules into the Mirage,” Karoly objected. “It’s way too big.”
“I know,” Shada said. “That’s why, if it comes to that, you and I will go to Mos Eisley and hire ourselves a freighter. Come on, let’s get started.”
“Over there,” Shada said, pointing toward a dilapidated building across the sandy Mos Eisley street and double-checking her datapad. “That’s the cantina.”
“Doesn’t look like much,” Karoly said, swinging the Mirage’s antique speeder over toward it. “You really think we’re going to find a good pilot in there?”
“Someone in the Mistryl thought so.” Shada shrugged. “It was the top name on the contingency list for Tatooine.”
“I doubt that’s a really telling recommendation,” Karoly grumbled, letting the speeder coast to a stop. “I don’t like this, Shada. I really don’t.”
“Brea, not Shada,” Shada corrected her. “And you’re Senni. Don’t forget that inside or this whole thing could fall apart.”
“It’s got a good chance of doing that all by itself,” Karoly shot back. “Look, just because a couple of stormtroopers on traffic duty bought this charade”—she gestured sharply at the slinky jumpsuit and hived-hairdo wig she was wearing—“doesn’t mean anyone who actually knows the Tonnika sisters is going to fall for it. They’re not.”
“Well, we certainly can’t use our own names and IDs,” Shada pointed out, trying to hide her own nervousness about this masquerade. “This place is crawling with stormtroopers already, and if they haven’t got listings on us yet, they will soon. The Mistryl have been running this camouflage prematch system for a long time now, and I’ve never yet heard of it failing. If it says the two of us can pass as Brea and Senni Tonnika, then we can.”
“Looking like them and acting like them are two very different things,” Karoly countered. “Besides which, pretending to be a couple of criminals is not my idea of keeping low.”
She had a point, Shada had to admit. Brea and Senni Tonnika were professional con artists—good ones, too—who were said to have separated an impressive amount of wealth from an equally impressive list of the galaxy’s rich and powerful. Under normal circumstances, borrowing their identities would indeed not be a smart way to stay inconspicuous.
But the circumstances here were far from normal. “We don’t have any choice,” she said firmly. “Complete strangers automatically draw attention, and a place like Mos Eisley is always crawling with informants. Especially now. Our only chance of keeping the Imperials off us is to look as if we belong here. To everyone.” She looked out at the cantina. Karoly was right; the place didn’t look very inviting. “If you’d rather, you can stay out here and watch the door. I can find a pilot by myself.”
Karoly sighed. “We’re going to have to talk someday about these sudden surges of recklessness. Come on, we’re wasting time.”
Shada had held out the hope that, like certain other criminal dens she’d heard of, the cantina’s interior would be a marked improvement over its exterior. But it wasn’t. From the dark, smoke-filled lobby and flickering droid detector to the curved bar and secluded booths along the walls, the cantina
was as shabby as some of the less choice tapcafes on their own world. Karoly had been right: Being number one on Tatooine wasn’t saying much.
“Watch the steps,” Karoly murmured beside her.
“Thanks,” Shada said, catching herself in time not to trip over the steps leading down from the lobby to the main part of the cantina. She hadn’t realized until then just how much her eyes were having to adjust from the bright sunlight outside to the dimness of the interior. Probably deliberately designed to give those already inside a chance to check out any newcomers.
But if any of the patrons were overly curious about her and Karoly, they weren’t showing it. Around the room, humans and aliens of all sorts were sitting or squatting at the tables and booths or leaning against the bar, drinking a dozen different liquids and chatting in a dozen different languages and not paying the least bit of attention to the new arrivals. Apparently, the Tonnika sisters were familiar enough to the clientele to be known on sight.
Or else minding one’s own business was the general rule here. Either way, it suited Shada just fine.
“What now?” Karoly asked.
“Let’s go over to the bar,” Shada said, nodding to an empty spot against one side. “We can see the room better from there than from a table or booth. We’ll get a drink and see if we can find anyone from our listings.”
They made their way through the general flow of bodies to the bar. Across the room, a Bith band was belting out some bouncy but otherwise nondescript tune, the music not quite able to drown out the mix of conversations. Partway around the bar a tall not-quite-human was smoking from an oddly shaped loop pipe and gazing off broodingly into space; beyond him, an Aqualish and a badly scarred man were drinking and glaring around at other customers; beyond them, another tall human was holding a quiet conversation with an even taller Wookiee.
“What’ll you have?” a surly voice asked.
Shada focused on the bartender standing there in front of them. The expression on his face matched his voice; but there seemed to be some recognition behind the indifference in his eyes.
Enough to risk an experiment. “We’ll have the usual,” she told him.
He grunted and busied himself at the bar. Shada glanced at Karoly’s suddenly aghast expression, winked reassuringly, and turned back as the bartender put two slender glasses in front of them. He grunted again and walked away.
Shada picked up her glass, willing the tension to flow out of her. “Cheers,” she said, lifting the glass to Karoly.
“Are you crazy?” Karoly hissed back.
“Would you rather I had ordered something way out of character for us?” Shada asked, taking a careful sip. Some kind of Sullustan wine, she decided. “Let’s get started.”
Still glowering, Karoly pulled the slender cylinder of their spies’ scanner/datapad from her jumpsuit and flicked it on. “All right,” she muttered, glancing back and forth between it and the cantina’s patrons. “The fellow with the loop pipe … never mind, he’s an assassin. Those two Duros over there … no listing here for them.”
“Their flight suits look too neat for smugglers, anyway,” Shada said. Across the bar, an old man with white hair and beard and dressed in a brown robe stepped up to the Wookiee and his tall companion. There was a short conversation between the two humans, and then the tall human gestured to the Wookiee and wandered away. “What about that Aqualish over there?”
“I was just checking him,” Karoly said, peering down at the end of the scanner. “Name’s Ponda Baba, and he’s definitely a smuggler. That scarface beside him—”
“Hey!” the bartender barked.
Shada stiffened, her hand reaching reflexively for her hidden knife.
But the bartender wasn’t looking at her. “We don’t serve their kind here,” he snapped, gesturing sharply.
“What?” came a voice from behind her.
Shada turned around. At the top of the steps stood a boy about her own age, dressed in loose white clothing and frowning in puzzlement at the bartender. Beside him were two droids, a protocol droid and an astromech unit similar to Cai’s Deefour model. “Your droids,” the bartender growled. “They’ll have to wait outside—we don’t want them here.”
The kid spoke briefly to the droids, who turned and scurried back out. Continuing down the steps alone, he moved over to the bar and gingerly wedged himself in between the Aqualish and the old man in the brown robe.
“The scarface is named Dr. Evazan,” Karoly said. “I’ve got ten death sentences listed here for him.”
“For smuggling?” Shada asked, frowning at the brown-robed old man. There was something about him; some sense of quiet alertness and self-control and power that set the hairs tingling on the back of her neck.
“No,” Karoly said slowly. “Botched surgical experiments. Yecch.”
“We’ll keep him in mind as a last resort,” Shada said, her eyes and thoughts still on the brown-robed man. Whoever he was, he definitely didn’t fit in with the rest of the clientele. An Imperial spy, perhaps? “That old man over there—do a check on him,” she told Karoly. The kid was still standing on his other side, gawking around like a tourist. Were they together? Grandfather and grandson, maybe, in from the countryside to see the big city?
And then, abruptly, the Aqualish gave the kid a shove and snarled something at him. The kid looked at him blankly, then turned back to the bar. Stepping away from the bar, smiling rather like a predator preparing himself for lunch, Dr. Evazan tapped the kid on the shoulder. “He doesn’t like you,” he said.
“Sorry,” the kid breathed, starting to turn away again.
Evazan grabbed a handful of the kid’s clothing and yanked him back around. “I don’t like you, either,” he snarled, shoving his mangled face close to the kid’s. Around them, conversations came to a halt as heads turned to look. “You just watch yourself,” Evazan continued. “We’re wanted men.”
“Uh-oh,” Karoly said quietly.
Shada nodded silently. The kid was in for it now—she’d seen enough tapcafe fights to know a setup when she saw one. “We’re staying out of it,” she reminded Karoly.
“But if they get arrested—”
Shada cut her off with a sharp gesture. Smoothly, gracefully, as if he’d been fully aware of the situation from the start, the old man had turned away from his conversation with the Wookiee. “This little one’s not worth the effort,” he said soothingly to Evazan. “Come, let me get you something.”
It was, Shada realized, as neat a face-saving gesture as she’d ever seen. Evazan and the Aqualish could now accept a drink, maybe snarl and posture a little more, and then move on with whatever passed for personal honor intact.
But unfortunately for the old man, Evazan wasn’t interested in a peaceful settlement. For a split second he glared at the old man, his predator look hardening into something ugly and vicious. Conversation at the bar had all but ceased now, every eye turned toward the violence about to break. From their alcove the band played on, oblivious to what was happening.
And then, with a roar, Evazan shoved the kid violently to the side to crash into one of the tables. His hand swung up, a blaster gripped in it. Beside him, the Aqualish also had his blaster out, an urgent “No blasters—no blasters!” from the bartender going completely unnoticed. The weapons swung up, targeting the old man.
They never got there. Abruptly, the old man’s hand exploded into brilliant blue-white light, a flickering hard-edged fire that slashed with surgical precision across his two attackers. There was a blaster shot that ricocheted into the ceiling, a scream and gurgling roar—
And then, as abruptly as it had begun, it was over. Evazan and the Aqualish collapsed out of sight beyond the bar, their moans showing they were at least temporarily still alive. From where she stood, Shada could see the Aqualish’s blaster lying on the floor, still clutched in a hand no longer attached to its owner.
For another moment the old man remained as he was, his glowing weapon humming, his eyes
flicking around the cantina as if assessing the possibility of more trouble. He could have saved himself the effort. From the casual way the other patrons were turning back to their drinks, it was obvious that no one here had any particular affection for the downed smugglers. At least not enough to take on the old man over it.
And it was in that second’s worth of pause that Shada was finally able to identify the weapon the old man had used against his attackers.
A lightsaber.
“You still want to know who he is?” Karoly asked dryly from beside her.
Shada licked at her lips, a fresh tingle running through her as the old man closed down his weapon and helped the kid back to his feet. A Jedi Knight. A real, living Jedi Knight. No wonder she’d sensed something odd about him. “I doubt he’s for hire,” she told Karoly, taking a deep breath and forcing her mind back to the business at hand. If the Jedi Knights of the Old Republic had still been in power when their world was destroyed … “Well, that eliminates Evazan and the Aqualish,” she said to Karoly. “Keep looking.”
They spent the next few minutes sipping their drinks and surreptitiously scanning the room, then spent a few minutes more talking to three of the most likely prospects. But to no avail. Two of the smugglers were already under contract, though one of them offered with a leer to take them along as passengers if they were nice to him. The third smuggler, an independent, was willing to talk, but made it clear that he wasn’t planning to move his ship until this sudden Imperial focus on Tatooine had calmed down.
“Great,” Karoly grumbled as they returned to their previous spots at the bar. “Now what?”
Shada looked around. A few new faces had come into the cantina since they’d begun their search, but most of them had the look about them of men who didn’t want to be disturbed. She looked in turn at each of the booths lining the walls, wondering if they might have missed someone.
And paused. There, right behind them, were the Jedi Knight and the kid. Talking to the Wookiee and a man she hadn’t seen come in. “Check him out,” she said, nodding toward the latter.
Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina Page 9
