by Jeff Grubb
“And it would be a fairly elaborate effort just to test if the coordinates are correct. They have their own ships and pilots, and indeed, they gave us this one,” Mander said. “Let’s assume that what we’ve been told is true, and that these coordinates will take us to Endregaad.”
Reen rubbed her arm where the vaccination needle had bit deep. “Speaking of trust, what do we know about this plague?”
Mander motioned toward Vago’s datapad. “The Endregaad plague is so far confined primarily to Endregaad, thanks to the efforts of the Corporate Sector Authority. A smuggler’s ship from the planet showed up in Rudrig, in the Tion Cluster, about three weeks ago. Its crew was too weak to land, and the ship was boarded and impounded. The CSA quickly slapped a lid down on Endregaad itself, and have one of their Dreadnoughts in orbit.”
“No other cases offplanet?” asked Reen.
“Not according to this report, but the symptoms are similar to a couple of other known diseases that come from blasted, irradiated worlds,” Mander noted. “Symptoms include fever, dehydration, crusting around the mouth and ears, general weakness, and a thickening of the fingers and tongue. Repeated exposures can kill.”
Reen rubbed her arm again. “I’ve never been to Endregaad. Is it a blasted, irradiated world?”
Mander noticed her action. “No, but it’s no surprise you haven’t visited it. It’s hardly a tourist spot. Most of the planet is buttes, mesas, and dry washes. It is a pretty arid place, with the open bottomlands plagued by windstorms. One major city—Tel Bollin. Major product is the geode trade—crystals found within hollow rocks.”
“Which is why Mika Anjiliac was there,” noted Reen.
Mander nodded. “Again, from the report, it looks like it was purely routine business dealings. Then, a couple of days after he arrived, everything went blasters-up.”
“And we have to find him,” Reen said. “A single Hutt on a big world.”
“He’ll definitely stand out in a crowd,” said Mander. “What do you think of his family?”
“Can’t say I like any of them,” said Reen. “Popara is fat, Zonnos is slovenly, and Vago acts like she owns us. That’s the Hutt trifecta right there.”
“Popara is honest,” said Eddey. Mander and Reen both looked at him.
“I can tell,” said Eddey. “It’s not a Bothan ability or anything, but I can tell. Even when his words were translated through a droid. He didn’t lie to you.”
“But he may not have told the truth in all things,” said Reen.
Eddey raised his hands, palms up.
“You had asked if Popara’s clan ran spice,” said Mander. “Did you get the response you expected?”
“No,” said Reen, “I expected a stronger condemnation of it, if they were involved in trading hard spice. So it was a good answer, as far as they were concerned.”
“A good answer,” repeated Mander Zuma. Then added, “While you were sweeping the ship, I did take the opportunity of checking on the Bomu clan. No one had seen any of them on Makem Te since the night of the attack. They are all hiding, dead, or gone.”
The Pantoran smuggler and the Bothan exchanged a glance—just a quick one, but enough to confirm to Mander that they had done some of their own checking when they were supposed to be readying the ship.
“Gone but not forgotten,” said Reen. “Each Rodian clan spans at least a dozen planets. The survivors of our little set are likely on other worlds getting their aunts and uncles all indignant about us shooting up their place.”
Mander nodded and returned to the business at hand. “Thoughts on Zonnos?”
“Reen’s right,” said Eddey. “Typical Hutt.”
“You look up Hutt in a lexicon and you’ll see Zonnos’s picture,” said Reen. “It appears he spends his time drinking his father’s fortune with his Wookiee friends.”
“They didn’t seem to like you much,” said Mander to Eddey.
Another shrug from the Bothan. “I rub some people the wrong way. Some Wookiees are brave and dedicated, some are bullies. The ones with Zonnos are the latter.”
“And as you say, you can just tell,” said Mander, and once again Eddey raised his palms in his What can I do? attitude.
“What did Zonnos want with you?” asked Reen, confident now that they were out of earshot of listening devices. “Back on the ship, when that droid pulled you away.”
“Zonnos Anjiliac wanted to assure me that he had no problem if we failed to find his brother—or failed to bring him back alive,” said Mander.
“Sibling affection,” said Reen. “Rivals for their father’s attention.”
“Zonnos fits the basic assumptions about Hutts well,” Mander said, nodding. “He probably wouldn’t do the deed himself, but he definitely won’t be too heartbroken if something happened to Mika.”
“Do Hutts even have hearts?” said Reen.
“Vago,” said Mander, ignoring her and bringing up the next topic.
“Bureaucrat,” replied Reen. “Petty functionary. Keeps the wheels going, and is afraid to step out of line.”
“I don’t think so,” said Mander.
“What were you talking about in Huttese, back on the Outlander?” asked Eddey, clearly curious. “She didn’t seem too offended by your horrible accent, by the way.”
Mander looked at Eddey. It was an honest question, one he would not have asked if he already had the answer. No, Mander decided, he doesn’t know the language. “She told me that Popara wiped out her family in one of their clan wars, but adopted her instead of killing her. I don’t think she’s just a bureaucrat. She’s devoted to him, probably much more than those Twi’lek handmaidens. Vago is not afraid. But Reen is correct in one thing: she does keep the wheels spinning.”
Reen counted the Hutts off on her fingers. “You think Popara is truly concerned about his son. Zonnos wouldn’t mind being an only child …”
“And Vago wants things to run smoothly,” said Mander. “She wants Popara to be looking at the balance sheets as opposed to fretting about his boy.”
“So that means we go ahead,” concluded Reen.
“That means we go ahead,” said Mander. “Unless Zonnos and his Wookiees had the brains to sabotage the coordinates, the flight plan that Popara gave us should work.”
A small chime sounded in the cabin. “We’re ready to go,” said Eddey. “We’re clear of the gravitational well. Final coordinates locked in for the first jump.”
“Let’s get started, then,” said Mander. He wanted to add, And if the Hutts were lying to us, I apologize for getting us all killed.
Eddey took a deep breath and threw the hyperdrive engage switch. The stars began to lengthen before them, and Mander found he was holding his breath.
The coordinates provided showed six jumps to navigate through the Indrexu Spiral. The first jump took them deep into the Spiral itself, such that the arcs of stars and cometary dust wheeled along the starboard side of the ship. The second put them uncomfortably close to an asteroid cluster—a moon that had either failed to form or been smashed millennia ago and left for dead. They had to wait half an hour before proceeding to the next point, dodging debris. The third point was in orbit around a ruined comet, its last icy blasts echoing in all directions. The fourth was nothing, or rather something dark and malignant that blotted out a quarter of the starfield behind them. Mander was particularly glad to leave that behind.
The penultimate link came out at the tipping point between two gargantuan suns, blue and orange. Flaming plumes from their dappled surfaces reached out and combined in an incandescent rainbow. Dark spots roiled along these liquid rivers like mountains, and for a moment Mander thought them immense living things that migrated along the fiery bridges between the suns, driven by unknowable internal clocks.
And then one last jump and the streaks of hyperdrive-molted light shrank back to the friendly, familiar stars. Reen punched in the local navigation coordinates. “I’ve got a fix on the local astronomical markers. We are where we
are supposed to be. You were right. Nothing to worry about.”
Mander said nothing, but allowed himself an embarrassed grin. Eddey started to run a post-jump analysis, but even Mander could see that all of the telltales were a comfortable green.
Reen said, “I have Endregaad. Far side of its orbit, so it is unlikely that we’ve been spotted by the CSA. We take a high arc and come down over the poles, and, depending on how many ships they have in system, see them before they see—”
She was cut off by twin streaks of ionic energy laced out across the nose of the vessel. The cockpit transceiver let out a bell-like tone and sparked to life.
“Attention, freighter!” said a voice in heavily accented Basic. “You are privileged to be under the guns of the illustrious Bomu clan. Dump your cargo, or be prepared to be boarded.” The message was punctuated by another blast of the cannons.
“Light freighter off the port,” said Eddey, “heavily modded. I see half a dozen hard points. Has us bracketed.”
“Gone but not forgotten?” said Mander.
“Yeah,” said Reen. “Get us out of here, Eddey.”
The Bothan’s furred hands swept over the control toggles, rerouting power to the engines. “Hang on,” he said.
The ship was almost immediately rocked to one side, and energy sparked in the cockpit.
“Hit,” said Eddey, scanning the telltales, a line of them flashing red. “There go our port weapons.”
“Flip us,” said Reen, already heading for the starboard turret.
Mander Zuma barely had time to shout as the stars spun before him, bringing the still-functioning ion blaster turret to bear against their attacker. The deck did not shift, but the swirl of the stars in the viewport caused him to grip the arm of the chair. Even so, the sudden vertigo caused the Jedi to drop to one knee.
Eddey didn’t ask about Mander’s condition. Instead his long fingers were dancing over the controls. The ship leapt forward as Reen fired off a salvo. The beams of ionic energy danced over the hull of the attacking ship but did not leave so much as a scorch.
“Underpowered piece of standard equipment,” muttered the Bothan, and then shouted aloud for Reen to hear him. “Going to keep the spin but shift our deflectors to aft. You’ll have to shoot on the fly.” Reen made a strangled noise that Mander assumed was agreement, and the ship shuddered again as the Bomu’s freighter struck them from behind.
Mander felt helpless. The Bothan was better at the controls, and the Pantoran could handle the guns. He was deadweight at the moment, without a life-or-death task at hand. Instead, his fate was in the hands of the others—and there was nothing he could do.
No, Mander thought. He had the luxury of being able to think. He settled himself back into the jump seat, folded his hands over his chest, and closed his eyes against the spinning stars.
The ship shuddered again, and the Bothan cursed. “I would appreciate any good suggestions now, Jedi,” he snapped. “I say we void the cargo hold and hope they stop to pick up the supplies.” His fingers reached up to touch a toggle overhead.
“No,” said Mander, reaching out and grabbing Eddey’s wrist. “Head in that direction.” He indicated a nondescript piece of space two points off the bow.
The Bothan looked panic-stricken now. “What’s over there?”
“Help,” said the Jedi. “But we won’t reach it unless we get fancy.”
The Bothan muttered something about his opinions of “getting fancy,” but he brought the ship around, the yellow sphere of Endregaad’s sun shifting into view. Behind them Reen shouted out a surprised retort, and a blast of ionic fire raked along the side of the ship. Sparks flew, and the Bothan said, “I hope you know what you’re doing. We should dump the spice.”
“If they’re really the Bomu, they won’t stop for the spice,” said Mander. “That’s just an excuse. I’m going to count to ten. On ten, you kill the engines and throw in the landing retros. Bring us to a stop.”
“A full stop? Are you mad?” Eddey’s face was twisted in fear.
“Completely mad,” said Jedi, “One, two, three, four …”
“Hang on,” snarled the Bothan, “I don’t want to flood the ion chambers.”
“… five, six, seven …”
“Hold on to something, Reen!” shouted Eddey. “We’re getting fancy! Be ready to fire!”
“… eight, nine, ten!” Mander thumped the Bothan on the shoulder, and Eddey mashed one hand against a series of buttons, fingers spread like a jizz performer playing on a nalargon. The other hand pulled back fully on the retrojet lever, which fought the pilot for every millimeter. The ship shuddered as the stern engines sought to keep plunging forward. Behind him, Mander could hear the hull strain and hoped that the engine brackets would hold.
And suddenly they were stopped, still spinning, as the Bomu freighter sailed over them. Mander had timed the order perfectly, so that Reen’s guns were locked on as they shot past. She strafed the lower hull, leaving long furrows along the ship’s belly, from which billowed gases, frozen in an instant into a crystalline mist. Mander nodded. Their attacker had put all deflectors up front in anticipation of the chase.
Mander was going to tell Eddey to do the same thing, but the Bothan was already reconfiguring the shields, swinging them as the enemy ship came around for a head-on assault. Reen fired a few more rounds, but the Rodians had recovered and had their shields up as well.
Double ionic beams lanced forward and the ship shuddered again.
“I hope you have another plan,” said Eddey. “Because we’re dead in space and the deflectors won’t take another hit like that.”
“Wait for it,” said Mander.
“Wait for what?” the Bothan started to say, but his answer crested over the stern of the Bomu freighter.
There were two of them: CSA starfighters. They were Intercept/ Reconnaissance/Defense craft, IRDs for short, and consisted of full-vision cockpit, a pilot’s seat, and an engine. And two forward-mounted blaster cannons, supported by concussion missiles. All of which they brought to bear against the now-unshielded stern of the Bomu raider.
The explosions began in the rear of the ship, cascading forward as the raider was unable to respond in time. There was a fireball, and the New Ambition flinched as the shock wave passed. Parts of their assailant drifted past their ship like small asteroids, some of them still on fire.
“You knew they were there,” said the Bothan, looking at the scattered debris.
“I could feel a ripple in the Force,” said Mander. “But I knew they’d be too late if we simply sent a distress signal. Better to meet them halfway, attract their attention with a display of firepower, and let them come to the rescue.”
Reen appeared at the hatch of the cockpit. Blood oozed at the corner of her mouth, and she had a nasty darkening around one eye. “What do you call that maneuver?”
“Getting fancy,” said Eddey, shaking his head at the amber and crimson lights that now covered one side of his display. The comlink burbled again.
“Attention unidentified freighter,” said the voice—clipped, precise, and no-nonsense. “You have entered a quarantine system, by orders of the Corporate Sector Authority. No landings are permitted on Endregaad. Repeat, no landings are permitted. Either jump out of the system, or we will escort you to the Resolute. Please respond.”
“We could turn tail and try to jump to hyperspace,” said the Bothan, “but after what we put this ship through, I don’t know about our chances.”
Mander flicked open the comlink. “New Ambition to the Resolute fighters. We have been damaged and appreciate the offer of aid. We will follow you.” He closed the transceiver and said “There is a time to sneak about, and a time to talk. This is a time to talk.”
“For all our sakes,” muttered Reen, “I hope you’re right.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
PLANETFALL
The CSA never threw away anything that it could use, and even though faster and better shi
ps had come along since the Resolute’s hull was laid down, it was kept in service, gaining weapons upgrades and durasteel plating like barnacles. Even so, the ancient patchwork Dreadnought was a frightening thing to behold up close, bristling with turbolasers, missile tubes, and tractor beam projectors, a swarm of IRDs in patrol along its flanks. Parked in orbit over the dull, rusty surface of Endregaad, it was more impressive than the planet.
And, Mander thought as their ship limped into one of the stern landing bays, it was probably the jewel of its commander’s eye.
They were met by a squad of CSA security, headed up by a young IRD pilot with sharp features and a stern expression. His uniform, visible beneath his flight suit, was pressed to perfection. Even before he opened his mouth, Mander knew that this was the owner of the voice they had heard on the transceiver. They were this pilot’s trophy, and he would only hand them over in the presence of a superior officer.
“Lieutenant Orrell Lockerbee, Corporate Sector Authority ship Resolute,” he said, and if he had clicked his heels Mander would not have been surprised.
“Mander Zuma of the new Jedi Order,” said Mander.
“My companions Reen Irana and Eddey Be’ray. We appreciate your help back there.”
The young flight officer scowled in the textbook-approved imitation of displeasure. “Your ship should not have been present in the system. We are under quarantine interdict.”
“We are aware of the situation and are on a mercy mission,” said Mander. He felt tempted to put a bit of the Force into the words, but resisted. “I presume you will present us to your commanding officer.”
The flight officer stammered for a moment, the Jedi taking the next line of his carefully crafted speech away from him. Then his frown deepened and he said, “This way, please.”
