by Timothy Zahn
Which meant it wasn’t just Rieekan and Axlon who were playing this stupid game. Luke was in on it, too.
“Hey, Han,” Luke greeted him hesitantly as the three of them came up to him. “Hey, Chewie. I thought—” He looked uncertainly at Axlon. “That you …”
“No, he wasn’t supposed to know,” Axlon said pointedly. “You were supposed to keep him from spotting you.”
Luke winced. “Sorry.”
“So we’ll just have to make do,” Axlon went on. He nodded to the bay entrance. “Any trouble?”
Luke shook his head. “Like you said, there are a lot of Z-95s around, and the special-pass ID you gave me worked just fine.” He looked at Han. “You had one, too, right?”
“No, we were challenged and shot down an hour ago,” Han growled. “So where’s this airspeeder rental place?”
Axlon looked around them. “It should be right over—” He broke off, his eyes widening at something behind Han. “Watch out!” he snapped.
Han spun around, his hand dropping to the grip of his blaster. Walking toward them were three aliens, their eyes small and white-rimmed beneath heavy brow ridges, their skin a mix of dark green scales and similarly colored patches of fur. They were wearing cheap-looking sack clothing, mismatched, probably bought from one of the booths in the area.
And each of them was holding a long, exquisitely detailed, hook-tipped knife.
Behind him, Han heard the snap-hiss as Luke ignited his lightsaber. “Han?” Luke muttered tensely.
“Easy, kid,” Han said, leaving his blaster right where it was in its holster. “Just relax.”
The aliens weren’t holding the knives in stabbing or throwing positions. The weapons were simply resting across their palms.
They weren’t a gang looking for an easy score. They were a group of merchants hoping to sell their wares. And judging by their suddenly widened eyes, they were just as startled by Luke and his lightsaber as Axlon had been by them and their knives.
“Your pardon, noble friendlies,” the lead alien said in heavily accented Basic as he and the other two came to an abrupt halt. “Such finely clothed and equipmented—” He stumbled over the word. “And equipped beings as yourselves must surely have a high interest in uniquely hand-forged carving tools.”
“Not today,” Han told him, eyeing the knife in the alien’s outstretched hand. It was a pretty nifty-looking weapon, he had to admit. In close quarters, if you knew what you were doing, it would probably do as well as a blaster. Close quarters like, say, a crowded cantina with one of Jabba’s trigger-happy bounty hunters sitting across the table.
But handy though the knife might be, Han knew better than to buy one. At least not here and now. The instant the other merchants and vendors in the area spotted credits changing hands, they would be on him like carrion flies, shoving cloth and furs and melons and everything else in his face, blathering their sales pitches in his ears as they tried to get him to buy something from them, too. Not exactly the way to start a supposedly low-key mission.
And speaking of low-key … “Luke, shut that thing off, will you?” he growled.
There was a sizzling hiss, and the lightsaber hum cut off. “Sorry,” Luke said. “I thought—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” The three aliens were still standing there, their hands outstretched hopefully. With one last look at the knives, Han turned away. “So once we get the airspeeder, where are we going?” he asked, putting one hand on Luke’s shoulder and the other on Axlon’s and pushing both of them in the direction of the airspeeder rental sign he could now see hovering over the street a couple of blocks away.
“Luke and I have a rendezvous with our new friend,” Axlon said. “What you and Chewbacca do is entirely up to you.”
“Great,” Han said. “We’ll come with you.”
“Except that,” Axlon said firmly.
“I don’t know, Governor,” Luke spoke up hesitantly. “As long as they know anyway—”
“We don’t need them,” Axlon cut him off. “They were only to provide transport. More than that, we don’t want them.”
Luke threw a furtive look at Han. “But—”
“It’s okay,” Han told him, feeling a twinge of guilt at his earlier unkind thoughts. Luke might have been dragged into this thing, but he wouldn’t have been the one who decided to lock Han out of it. “I know when I’m not wanted. Just watch yourselves.”
“We will,” Axlon promised. “Come on, Skywalker.” Tapping Luke’s arm, he headed off through the milling crowd. Luke gave Han and Chewie one final look, then turned and followed.
Beside Han, Chewie rumbled a suggestion. “Forget it,” Han growled. “You don’t exactly blend into a crowd, you know. He’d spot us before we got within three blocks of wherever this meeting is.”
He looked up. Beyond the wispy clouds, Poln Minor was a small, pale half circle floating against the blue sky. “So let him go play deal maker,” he went on. “You and me are going to go see what kind of stuff our supposed new best friend has to offer.”
He turned and headed back toward their docking bay, waving away the knife merchants as they started hopefully toward him again. “Or,” he added, “whether this whole thing is nothing but a trap.”
The Poln system was reportedly one of the closest inhabited double planetary systems in the Empire, with the two worlds separated by only fifty thousand kilometers. There were a fair number of ships traveling between them, though from the size of the corridors that had been zoned Han guessed that the traffic had once been more than twice what it was at the moment.
Still, Axlon had at least been right about the Poln system being able to handle Rebel traffic along with its own.
Axlon had been pretty closemouthed during the trip from the Rebel base, refusing to give Han so much as a hint as to what Governor Ferrouz might have already discussed with him or Mon Mothma. But Axlon liked his sleep as much as anyone, and the encryption he’d put on his datapad had turned out to be one of the ones Han had been given for use with his own Alliance reports. According to the notes tucked away on one of Axlon’s data cards, the mines Ferrouz was offering were in Poln Minor’s Seventh Octant. The safest and easiest access to that region was a series of tunnels leading out from the Yellowstrike Spaceport, the octant’s largest landing site.
Which, to Han’s way of thinking, automatically put Yellowstrike at the bottom of the list. The safe and easy routes, he’d learned a long time ago, were traveled mostly by the lazy, the unimaginative, and people who wore badges and carried stacks of wanted posts on their datapads.
Instead, he turned the Falcon toward one of the octant’s smaller and less conspicuous ports.
Like everything else on Poln Minor, Quartzedge Port was built mostly underground. Its organization was also decidedly on the casual side, to the point where Han was simply instructed by the control center to choose any of the unoccupied landing bays he wanted. Picking one of the eight open pits at random, he maneuvered the Falcon into it. By the time he’d finished powering the engines down to standby, the dome had closed above him and the bay had been brought up from Poln Minor’s marginal surface air pressure to the more comfortable standard level. Lowering the ramp, he headed outside with Chewie.
The bay, he’d noted on the way down, had a single exit door, probably leading into an air lock for the times when someone needed to get in while the dome was open. Lounging by the door were three men, all armed, all with the look of Mos Eisley troublemakers about them. Making sure his blaster was riding loose in its holster, Han headed over.
“Afternoon,” one of them called genially, his greasy-looking hair and impressively scraggly mustache glinting in the light. His eyes flicked to Chewie, then back to Han. “Need your name and cargo.”
“Name’s Darth Vader,” Han told him. “Got a flat-load of broken Imperial promises.”
None of the three men so much as smiled. “Cute,” Mustache grunted. “You want to try again?”
“Actually, my c
argo bay’s empty,” Han told him. “We’re here to try our luck at a little prospecting.”
Given that every mine in this part of Poln Minor had been drained dry decades ago, that one should have gotten at least a cynical smile from them. But again, none of their expressions even cracked. “Yeah?” Mustache asked, his voice as expressionless as his face. “Heading anywhere in particular?”
Han shrugged. The most heavily marked part of Axlon’s encrypted map had been something called the Anyat-en mining complex. “I thought we’d try the old Anyat-en area,” he said, trying to watch all three of them at once.
And that one finally got him a reaction. It was small, just a twitch of cheek muscles from one of Mustache’s buddies, a balding, unshaven man with dark eyes. But it was definitely there.
These weren’t just random fringe cutthroats or smugglers. And they’d definitely heard of Anyat-en.
Mustache played it cool. “Anyat-en, huh?” he asked casually. “Yeah, I think I’ve heard of it. What’s there that’s still worth digging up?”
“Don’t know yet,” Han said, playing it just as cool. “But the place used to be all platinum, and platinum prices are up. I had some time on my hands, and figured it’d be worth a look.”
“Could be,” Mustache agreed. “Tell you what. Just because I like your face, we’re going to let you go without paying the usual docking fee. But if you find anything, we’ll take half on your way out. Fair enough?”
Han shrugged. “Make it a tenth and you’ve got a deal.”
Baldy made a contemptuous sound in the back of his throat, but Mustache merely smiled. “We got three blasters. You’ve got one. Make it half.”
“One blaster, plus one Wookiee,” Han reminded him. “A tenth.”
Mustache eyed Chewie. “A quarter.”
“Fine,” Han said. It was, he knew, a little ridiculous to be bargaining over profits he was never going to make. But there was still a chance Mustache and his pals thought he and Chewie were just innocent treasure hunters, and it would be out of character for him not to bargain.
“Good,” Mustache said briskly. “Best of luck to you. There’s a row of landspeeders just past the air lock—help yourself. Fact, we’ll make it even easier. I think there are some shovels and pickaxes in one of the lockers across from them. Probably a little rusty, but they ought to do, ’specially seeing as you don’t have any of your own.”
“That’s because we were just going to scope out the place this time around,” Han improvised. “But as long as you’re offering, sure, why not?”
“You’re welcome,” Mustache said drily. “You need a map?”
“No, thanks,” Han said. “It’s supposed to be about a hundred fifty kilometers straight down Corridor CC Four-Oh-Eight-Seven, right?”
“If you say so,” Mustache said. “Have fun.”
“And come back rich,” Baldy added as Han and Chewie walked past them through the door.
The landspeeders and tools were right where Mustache had said. The shovels were indeed rusty and half broken, and the landspeeders weren’t in much better shape. Han gave each of the vehicles a test rev, picked the one that sounded least like it was going to fall apart in the next two hours, and they headed out.
The tunnel Han had headed down was probably typical of the abandoned mine system. Most of the overhead glow panels were gone, though the emergency permlights set into the upper and lower walls every hundred meters or so were still running. Fortunately, the landspeeder had good headlights, which let Han avoid the various heaps of stone chips that littered the tunnel floor, residue from years of small rockfalls from the ceiling and walls. The air smelled thin and stale, and aside from the labored hum of their own landspeeder the whole place was eerily quiet.
Chewie rumbled a question into the hum. “Of course we’re not going straight there,” Han confirmed. “You saw how Mustache and his buddies reacted when I told them where we were going. They either know something, or think they do.”
Chewie growled again.
“Sure, but just because someone knows we’re coming doesn’t mean they know where we’re coming from,” Han reminded him as he pulled out his datapad and the copy he’d made of Axlon’s maps. “Here—see if you can find a back way into the caverns. Maybe we can at least surprise them a little.”
The cantina where Axlon and Governor Ferrouz had arranged to meet was large, elaborately decorated, and—from what Luke could see of the menu—very expensive.
But they didn’t have enough time to properly enjoy either the décor or the aromas wafting through the main room. A hard-faced thug type with eyes that seemed to be trying to cut straight through to the back of Luke’s skull intercepted them at the door and led them through the main dining area to a private room more subtly decorated than the rest of the restaurant.
Sitting alone at the head of a long table, a steaming platter of small, off-white spheres in front of him and three more hard-faced men standing against the wall behind him, was Governor Ferrouz.
He rose to his feet as Luke and Axlon were ushered into the room. “Governor Axlon,” Ferrouz said gravely. “It’s an honor to meet you in person.”
“The honor is mine, Governor Ferrouz,” Axlon assured him. “May I present my associate, Master Luke Skywalker.”
“Master Skywalker,” Ferrouz said, a frown creasing his face as he nodded in greeting. “I believe I’ve heard your name before.”
“He was at Yavin,” Axlon said. “One of those who helped avenge the destruction of Alderaan.”
Ferrouz’s cheek twitched. “Of course,” he murmured. “Please; sit down. I took the liberty of ordering some stuffed sharru mushrooms for us.”
“Thank you,” Axlon said, walking to the table and taking the seat at Ferrouz’s right. “Have you ever had stuffed sharrus, Luke?”
“No,” Luke said, feeling distinctly uncomfortable as he sat down beside Axlon, trying not to look at the three expressionless bodyguards behind Ferrouz. “We didn’t have them where I grew up.”
“Well, you’ll like them,” Axlon said placidly, selecting one of the small spheres and taking a careful bite from one side. “Ah—a seafood stuffing, is it?”
“Yes,” Ferrouz said. “Local shell-crayke from Burnish Bay. Shall we get to business?”
“By all means,” Axlon said. He popped the remainder of the mushroom into his mouth and selected another one. “What I’d like first is a confirmation of the exact location you have in mind for our use, including which spaceports and other facilities will be available. I also wish to know what equipment and support you intend to supply, and who will be acting as liaison between us.”
Ferrouz frowned, shooting a glance at Luke. “If you’ll forgive me, Master Axlon, we could have done all that via comlink.”
“I said that was for a start,” Axlon reminded him. “At any rate, face-to-face meetings are always so much more rewarding. Wouldn’t you agree, Luke?”
Luke suppressed a grimace. Here he was, doing his level best to vanish into the background, and meanwhile Axlon seemed to be doing his level best to drag him into the forefront of everyone’s attention.
Could that be the real reason Axlon had brought him along? Did he simply want Luke to draw the attention of Ferrouz and his bodyguards away from Axlon so that—
With an effort, Luke forced himself to relax. So that Axlon could do what? Nothing, that was what. There was literally nothing the man could do with four pairs of suspicious eyes watching his every move.
No, Luke was surely here for the reason Axlon had first approached him: to see what his Jedi senses could get from Ferrouz. Taking a careful breath, listening with half an ear as the two men began throwing around names and numbers, he stretched out with the Force.
And felt his chest tighten. Normally, he could barely sense the emotions moving along beneath the surface of the people he was with. But Ferrouz wasn’t like Leia or Han. His whole sense was practically screaming with emotion. All sorts of emotions: fear and ang
er, hopelessness and defiance, sadness and determination.
And betrayal. Especially betrayal.
But whose betrayal? Axlon’s? Ferrouz’s? Someone else’s? Luke stretched out harder, focusing on the Force, trying to sift through the turbulence—
“Luke.”
The sound of his name abruptly snapped him out of his concentration. He opened his mouth to acknowledge—
“—may want to come along as well,” Axlon continued, and Luke realized that he was addressing Ferrouz, not talking to Luke himself. “I trust that will be acceptable?”
“If he wishes to accompany you,” Ferrouz said, looking at Luke. Luke held the other’s gaze, trying to reach out again with the Force.
But the moment had passed. The turbulence was still there, but Luke was too weak and inexperienced to get the connection back.
“Excellent,” Axlon said. “At the palace, then, whenever we’re able to get our team here to assess the Anyat-en facilities. Say, a week or so?”
“Whenever you’re ready,” Ferrouz said. “You have the pass I gave you?”
“Right here,” Axlon said, tapping his tunic. “Thank you for your time, Governor.” He lifted a finger. “One more thing,” he went on. “I’d appreciate it if you could make sure all your people are out of the Anyat-en area, including the Yellowstrike and Quartzedge spaceports.”
“That’s already been done,” Ferrouz said. “I had my people out of the area two days ago.”
“Including customs officials?” Axlon asked.
“Including everyone,” Ferrouz said tartly. “I just said that.”
“So you did,” Axlon said, ducking his head in apology. Tapping Luke on the arm, he stood up. “Thank you again, Governor. I’ll be in touch.”
They were outside the cantina, wending their way through the crowds toward their rented airspeeder, before Axlon spoke again. “What do you think?”
“About what?” Luke asked.
