Star Wars: Choices of One

by Timothy Zahn

  Only he didn’t head back to Han’s table. Instead, he lumbered through the archway and disappeared into the back room.

  “What’s he doing?” Leia murmured.

  “Saving our skins,” Han murmured back, watching Baldy out of the corner of his eye. Baldy was murmuring urgently to the yellow-eyed alien, his hand on his holstered blaster, his eyes on the archway where Chewie had disappeared. The alien said something in return. Baldy nodded and headed after the Wookiee, his hand still on his blaster. The alien turned and murmured something to the Duros, who nodded and gestured toward Han.

  None of the byplay had been lost on Leia. “Han?” she asked tensely.

  “Just play it casual,” Han told her as the Duros and alien headed toward them.

  “What about Chewie?”

  “He can take care of himself,” Han said shortly. “Sit there and be quiet. I’ll do the talking.”

  Normally, he knew, she would have found something snide to say to an order like that. But she remained silent. Han watched the two aliens coming toward them, also keeping an eye on Baldy as he disappeared through the archway.

  Three seconds later the Duros and alien sat down at their table. “I greet you,” the Duros said, gesturing to Han. “This is my friend—”

  “Call me Shrike,” Han interrupted. “This is Payne. I hear you need some weapons work done.”

  “Which of you is the expert he spoke of?” the alien said. His voice was as shimmery as his skin, with clipped edges to each of his words.

  “We work together,” Han said. “I load, she calibrates.”

  “If the pay is good enough,” Leia added.

  “I pay for speed and expertise,” the alien said, focusing on her. “You can calibrate Caldorf VII and Regginis Mol interceptor missiles?”

  Han felt his throat tighten. It was a trap, a trick question a real weapons programmer would spot in an instant. He should have expected something like this, and warned Leia about it.

  Fortunately, she was already on top of it. “Caldorfs, yes,” she said. “Good luck finding anyone who can do Regginis Mols.”

  “Why?” the alien asked.

  “Because they stopped making those twenty years ago,” Leia said. “That was a Clone Wars–era weapon. Not a very good one, either.”

  The alien relaxed, just slightly. “My mistake,” he said. “I pay two hundred per missile mounted and calibrated. Do you wish the job?”

  “Yes,” Han said. “Where and when? And what do we call you?”

  “Call me Ranquiv,” the alien said. “We leave at once.”

  Beside him, Han felt Leia stir. “I’ll need to stop at my room and get a few things first,” she said.

  “I have all you’ll need,” Ranquiv said. “We leave at once. Or you don’t leave at all.”

  Han looked at Leia. Her mouth was tight, but she nodded. “Fine,” he said, looking back at Ranquiv. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

  “There is also the matter of my fee,” the Duros reminded him.

  “Right.” Han jerked a thumb at him. “He gets another four hundred,” he told Leia. “Pay him, will you?” Without waiting for a reply, he stood up. “Ready when you are.”

  “My transport awaits,” Ranquiv said. “It will be a six-hour trip. Come.”

  Han felt his eyes narrow. “Six hours?”

  “You have agreed,” Ranquiv said, his shimmering voice going suddenly dark. “You may not refuse now.”

  “And would do so at your own risk,” the Duros added warningly. “Other armed beings would come quickly at Ranquiv’s order.”

  Han grimaced. And the first one who would answer that call would probably be Baldy, charging in from the other room. The minute he recognized Han … “Fine,” he growled. “This just better be worth it.”

  Han had assumed that Ranquiv’s transport would be a spacegoing vehicle, at which point six hours from Dankcamp Village could be on the far side of Poln Minor or nearly anywhere on Poln Major. But the vehicle instead turned out to be a thirty-seat speeder bus, in as bad a shape as all the rest of the machinery seemed to be down here. The bus was nearly full, but Han and Leia managed to find a pair of seats together.

  They’d barely settled into them when the bus took off, maneuvering through the dim lights of the half dozen caverns that made up the city and heading out into one of the wide, main tunnels.

  It was quickly clear that it wasn’t going to be a particularly pleasant journey. The bus was old, the paint was peeling off the walls, and it smelled. There was also some malfunction in the left repulsorlifts’ regulator circuit, and every few seconds the vehicle gave a little lurching dip to the side.

  But with the rumble of the repulsorlifts filling the bus, he and Leia finally had a chance to confer in private.

  “Han, what have you gotten us into?” Leia demanded, her eyes flashing ominously. “We’re not heading for the Anyat-en region—even in this thing, that’s less than two hours from here.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Han conceded. “But this whole business still seems pretty shady.”

  “If you want to investigate shady businesses, go join CorSec,” Leia said tartly. “We should have backed out.”

  “Oh, yeah, that would’ve worked,” Han growled. “You know that guy Chewie decoyed away? He was one of the ones who hit us up at the Quartzedge Port three days ago. The ones who weren’t there when we went back. The ones who know we’re Alliance.”

  “Oh,” Leia said in a slightly more civil tone.

  “Right, oh,” Han mimicked. “If he’d spotted us pretending to be guns for hire, Ranquiv would probably have called in all those guns the Duros promised he had waiting to jump.”

  “That could still happen if his friend gets away from Chewie,” Leia pointed out.

  “He won’t,” Han promised. “Not a chance. Not from Chewie.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Leia said. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You and I are headed for an unknown location, up to a thousand kilometers away, to load missiles for an unknown alien with an unknown purpose, with no one in the Alliance knowing where we are. That about cover it?”

  Han thought it over. Put that way, he admitted, it sounded worse than it probably was. “Yeah, I suppose,” he agreed. “Why, is that a problem?”

  She gave him a single glare and then turned to gaze out the window at the utterly uninteresting rock wall flowing past outside.

  Casually, Han looked around. The other passengers seemed about evenly split between hardened fringe types and young, earnest, hungry-looking kids who probably figured they could do anything with computers and were desperate to earn some money. Grimacing, he settled back into his seat. He could try to watch their route in the hope that he could find his way back if he needed to. But unless this was a real straight route, six hours of zigzagging was going to be nearly impossible to memorize or even track on his datapad.

  Besides, Leia was probably planning to try that anyway. She was the senior command staff here, after all. That kind of planning was her job.

  Han’s job, as low-level order follower, was merely to keep up his strength and stamina for whenever senior command staff decided to issue him some orders.

  Leaning back in his seat, he drew his blaster and slipped it inside his vest, folding his arms across it so that no one could accidentally walk off with it.

  It would be all right. He would make sure of that. If only because Her Highness would never let him hear the end of it otherwise.

  Closing his eyes, he settled down to try to get some sleep.

  “Slow down, Chewie,” Luke said as the rumbles and roars poured from his comlink. “I can hardly understand you.”

  There was a short pause as Chewie took a deep breath. Then the rumbles resumed, only marginally slower.

  But it was slow enough, this time, for Luke to get all of it.

  “Okay, calm down,” he told the Wookiee, trying to think. Han and Leia gone, no idea where they’d disappeared to, no idea even whether C
hewie had gotten to the mysterious fake smuggler before he could clue in the Duros and the unknown alien as to who Han really was. “First things first. What did you do with the guy you clobbered?”

  Chewie’s answer was short and succinct. “Okay,” Luke said. “You’d better call Leia—sorry; better call Cracken—and have him send someone to get him out of the dumpster. They might be able to question him and find out where they took Han and Leia after he comes to.”

  Chewie growled an acknowledgment, then another question.

  “Yes, absolutely I’ll come up and help,” Luke promised. Though what he could do to find Han and Leia that Cracken’s people couldn’t do on their own, he couldn’t imagine. “You call Cracken, and I’ll let Axlon know I’m heading up.”

  He keyed off and punched in Axlon’s code. The ambassador had made it clear that he wanted Luke near the palace today, but under the circumstances he would surely be willing to modify his plans.

  To Luke’s surprise, he wasn’t.

  “But it’s an emergency,” Luke protested. “Han and Leia have disappeared, and we don’t know what kind of danger they might be in. They need me there.”

  “And I need you here,” Axlon said flatly. “More than Cracken does.”

  Luke felt a tingling run through him. There was something in the man’s voice … “Is something about to happen?” he asked carefully.

  Axlon hesitated. “I don’t know all the details,” he said. “But I think the governor’s life is in danger. Serious, immediate danger.”

  “Does he know?” Luke asked. “I mean, shouldn’t you be telling him instead of me?”

  “I’ve tried,” Axlon said. “But he’s determined to go ahead with our agreement, and says he won’t hide from shadows.”

  Luke grimaced. Leia was like that, too. A prime target for Imperial agents, yet she always refused to stay behind and keep a low profile when there was work to be done. “Do we know anything about who it is he’s not hiding from?”

  “Nothing solid,” Axlon said. “But it’s rumored that the agent’s weapon of choice is a lightsaber. In fact, I can tell you now that that’s the main reason I wanted you to come here with me. The only weapon that can block a lightsaber, after all, is another lightsaber.”

  Luke felt his mouth drop open. Was Axlon seriously suggesting what Luke thought he was suggesting? “You do realize I’m not a Jedi, right?” he said carefully. “Ben barely got me started on lightsaber combat. I’m not ready to take on anyone who knows what they’re doing.”

  “It won’t come to that,” Axlon assured him. “You have to understand the psychology of the situation. In general, no one carries a weapon like that unless they know how to use it. Therefore, just having you and your lightsaber in sight near the palace gate will force the agent to assume you do know how to fight with it, and to wonder what kind of obstacle you might be. That will force her to rethink her plan—”

  “Her plan?” Luke asked. “The agent is a woman?”

  “So I hear,” Axlon said. “As I was saying, she’ll have to rethink her plan, and anything that buys time is to our advantage.”

  Unless the agent decided to test Luke’s skill before she went to the bother of changing those plans, Luke thought, grimacing.

  Still, the Force was with Luke. Wasn’t it?

  “I’ll call Cracken and tell him that we’re sticking with the original plan,” Axlon went on. “You just settle down and get some sleep. I want you outside, in the vicinity of the palace gate, at ten o’clock sharp tomorrow morning. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Luke said with a sigh. He’d already told Chewie he didn’t think he could do anything to help. Chewie hadn’t listened. There didn’t seem much point in telling Axlon the same thing.

  “Good lad,” Axlon said. “Now go get some sleep.” He paused, and Luke could almost see the other’s tight smile. “Tomorrow, Master Skywalker, you will see the Rebellion start on the path to victory. I guarantee it.”

  THE EARLY-MORNING TRAFFIC RUSH HAD FADED INTO THE STEADY BUT not road-jamming level that LaRone had seen the previous day when he and the others had first arrived in the palace area. Now, three blocks away from the palace gate, he and Marcross waited for Jade to make her move.

  LaRone didn’t know how Marcross felt. But personally, he felt like an idiot. An idiot standing at the center of an optical sight’s cross-lines.

  The full-length hooded robes he and Marcross were wearing weren’t going to work. They just weren’t. Never mind that robes like these were worn by lower-class workers, farmers, and traders all across the galaxy, and that he’d seen at least five other people wearing similar outfits in the past half hour. Never mind that the robes reached to the ground and the sleeves draped past his fingertips, completely covering the stormtrooper armor he and Marcross were wearing underneath them.

  The problem was that their armor was way too bulky to pass as human physique. Even worse, every time Marcross moved, LaRone could see the brief but obvious impressions of the various armor sections pressing against the cloth. LaRone knew he was undoubtedly showing off the same impressions himself.

  Jade, naturally, hadn’t had the slightest qualm about throwing them to the battle dogs this way. She’d assured them that the general population never noticed things like that, especially not in a neighborhood they were already intimately familiar with. They would travel blindly on their respective errands without seeing anything beyond where their feet were striking the ground.

  She had a point, LaRone supposed. But the common people weren’t the population segment he was worried about. Whitestone City’s citizens might ignore their environment, but he doubted the patrollers and roving stormtrooper teams would be so inattentive.

  Particularly, say, those two stormtroopers who were even now coming toward them down the quiet side street where Jade had ordered them to wait.

  Beside him, Marcross murmured something under his breath.

  “Just stay cool,” LaRone advised quietly, feeling the sweat breaking out on his skin as he tried not to stare at the approaching Imperials. “And don’t move,” he added. “Moving accentuates your outline.”

  “Like that’s going to help,” Marcross muttered. “Where is she, anyway?”

  “She’ll be here,” LaRone assured him.

  Unless, of course, Jade’s real plan was simply to set up him and Marcross to be captured. A pair of stormtrooper deserters might easily make enough of a diversionary fuss to let her slip into the palace undetected.

  Twenty meters in front of the approaching stormtroopers, a hooded figure emerged from a narrow alley, moving with the careful fragility of extreme old age. The person started to turn to the right, caught sight of the stormtroopers—

  And abruptly turned and fled back into the alley, at a considerably enhanced rate of speed.

  The stormtroopers, LaRone reflected, were only human. The very sight of fugitive behavior was like throwing raw meat to a rancor. “Halt!” one of them called in his mechanically filtered vocoder voice as both of them took off after the figure. They disappeared into the alley, their BlasTech E-11s lowered into hip-firing position.

  LaRone turned to Marcross. “Should we give her a minute?” he asked.

  Marcross wrinkled his nose. “She’ll probably be mad if we show up late,” he pointed out.

  “Right,” LaRone said, nodding. “Let’s go.”

  They found the two stormtroopers sprawled on the ground near the middle of the alley, more or less out of sight from either end. Jade had pushed back her hood and was crouched over one of them, her hands spread on either side of his faceplate as she gazed intently into his eyepieces.

  “Dead?” LaRone asked as he and Marcross came up to her.

  “Sonic,” she said, her voice sounding distant as she focused on the task at hand. “Delivered up under the helmet rim. They’ll be all right in a couple of hours.”

  LaRone nodded. Jade was ruthless enough with the traitors she was sent to deal with, but he’d see
n her go out of her way to keep the innocent and the loyal out of her line of fire. “Get busy on the other one’s ID,” she added.

  Marcross was already kneeling beside the second unconscious stormtrooper, his removal tool slipped under the man’s left shoulder piece. The white-on-white trooper ID marks were nearly undetectable to normal eyesight, even at close range, but were easily visible to another stormtrooper’s vision enhancements.

  Along with its other covert equipment, the Suwantek had included several false shoulder IDs. Up to now, though, LaRone had always opted for the team to use unmarked shoulder pieces instead. It had seemed preferable to risk the awkwardness of having to explain how their IDs had worn off to facing the instant suspicion of showing up with the markings of a unit that happened to be in an entirely different part of the galaxy.

  Here, given Jade’s plan, they had no choice but to wear IDs.

  Luckily, they also knew which IDs to use.

  Marcross had just finished detaching the shoulder piece when Jade gave a sharp nod. “Got it,” she said. Shifting her hands to the sides of the stormtrooper’s helmet, she started to ease it off over his head. “Marcross?”

  “Clear,” Marcross said, lifting up the detached shoulder piece as he moved over to the stormtrooper Jade had just unhelmeted. Handing the shoulder piece to LaRone, he knelt down and started working on the other trooper’s shoulder. As he worked, LaRone pulled Marcross’s robe open and started fastening the new ID in place, watching Jade out of the corner of his eye as she moved to the trooper Marcross had just finished with.

  Along with the shoulder IDs, the other half of a successful masquerade was getting onto the palace comlink grid. And that was far and away the trickier half. Stormtrooper helmets included a tongue switch, which had to be tripped before removing the helmet. Otherwise, the comlink would instantly scramble both the frequency rotation sequence and the encryption suite, leaving it all but useless.

  For most would-be infiltrators, that was an insurmountable hurdle. But not for Jade. She had the Force, and she knew exactly where the tongue switch was located. A bit of telekinesis, a delicate tweaking of the switch, and the helmet could be removed with its comm system intact.