Star Wars: The Last of the Jedi, Volume 5

by Jude Watson

  “He’s nothing to laugh at,” Dex advised, with a frown. “More power has just made him meaner. This is a dangerous game, my friends.”

  “The only kind to play,” Keets replied.

  Most of the population of Sath lived in tall high-rises, some luxurious, some not. The building Ferus was looking for fell somewhere in the middle range. It was built overlooking a canal, and a large landing platform crowned a hangar nearby.

  “Decent place, but what are we doing here?” Clive asked as they zoomed up in the turbolift.

  “All vehicles applying for departure must register an address with the landing platform,” Ferus answered.

  “So you think the person using Quintus Farel’s identity is here?”

  “No. I think whoever sold him the cruiser is here. I think he was able to use the address of the former owner because it hadn’t been changed in the system yet.”

  “I never realized what a mind for details you had, Ferus.”

  “It’s an old skill.”

  “Must have made you popular.”

  “It made me a bore.”

  Ferus pushed the door alert button to an apartment on the fiftieth floor. He stood in front of the security screen. In a moment a voice squawked out of the speaker next to it.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m here to ask you a few questions about a star cruiser you sold several weeks ago,” Ferus said.

  “If there are any problems with it, they aren’t mine,” the voice snarled. “When I sold it, it was in top condition.”

  “No, no problems. Can you open the door? It would be easier to talk face-to-face.”

  A hesitation, then the door slid open. A young woman stood before them, her shimmersilk dressing gown knotted tightly around her waist. She looked Ferus and Clive up and down. “Okay, here’s my face. What is it?”

  “I have some questions about the person you sold the cruiser to. Quintus Farel.”

  “So ask. Do I look like I have all day for this?”

  “Did you meet Quintus Farel?”

  “You’re not from Sath, are you? Who meets anybody in this city? I placed an electronic advert, this Quintus answered it, we exchanged details, I got credits in my accounts, Quintus got the ship. I bought it for some romantic space travel, but my boyfriend took off, the dinko. Anyway, who wants to travel in this galaxy now? Stormtroopers, everywhere I look.”

  “Did you ever speak directly to Quintus?”

  “Once. I parked the cruiser in the wrong space by mistake, so he couldn’t find it. I forgot to move it. Sue me. So I got a comlink call from Quintus, I think he was afraid I was going to cheat him. It wasn’t my fault, my neighbor parked in my space, the monkey lizard.”

  Suddenly Ferus had an idea. “Are you sure Quintus was male?”

  She shrugged. “Deep voice, and it sounded electronically altered. Mr. Secrecy. All I cared about was the transfer of credits into my account.”

  Ferus wasn’t getting much information out of the woman. Clive gave Ferus a look that said, Let me take over. He put one hand on the door frame and smiled down at her. “I can see you pay attention to things. Did Quintus mention where he was going?”

  The woman rolled her eyes. “Why would he do that? And why would I care? Get your hand off my door.”

  Clive straightened, no longer trying to work his charm. “How long is the range of your ship?”

  “No hyperdrive, if that’s what you’re asking. But it was fast. I like to go fast. Are we done?”

  Ferus sighed. “Thank you for your time.”

  Discouraged, he and Clive turned and started back toward the turbolift.

  “Was that the rudest woman in the galaxy, or am I crazy?” Clive muttered under his breath.

  “You’re not crazy.”

  Then they heard her call them. “Fellas?”

  They turned back.

  “Just thought of one thing,” the woman said. “The comlink communication came from the Fountain Towers.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, the blocking mechanism was on, so an address didn’t pop up. But the Fountain Towers complex is new. Nice place, wish I could live there, but I’m stuck in this hole. It surrounds the Seven Minerals Fountain, in the Three Hundredth district.”

  “But if the address was blocked—”

  “I’m not finished. The Seven Minerals Fountain has a chord clock—every half hour, it strikes the first three chords of the Samarian anthem. I heard that. So I’m guessing Quintus lives in the Fountain Towers. Because he was pretty annoyed at me and said he had to go all the way home again without the ship.”

  “I could kiss you,” Clive told the woman.

  “Not tempting,” she said, shutting the door.

  Ferus pressed the turbolift sensor. “What now?” Clive asked. “If this Fountain Towers place is anything like every other building in Sath, it’s got hundreds of apartments.”

  “And a hangar next door, if we’re lucky. A space cruiser will be parked in a numbered space,” Ferus said. “We have him.”

  The turbolift whooshed downward, stopping every once in a while to pick up more passengers. As it descended to the lobby, and the passengers disembarked, Ferus put his hand on Clive’s arm to slow him down before he exited behind them.

  “What is it?” Clive asked when the passengers had exited.

  “I have a funny feeling about this,” Ferus said.

  “That Force of yours?”

  Ferus nodded. “We’re being followed. I’m sure of it.”

  “We lost the seeker droid.” Clive took a few steps into the lobby. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows afforded a view of canal and street and sky. “Nobody out there that I can see.…”

  Ferus walked forward cautiously. Then he stopped. He raised one foot, then the other. He ran his boot along the stone floor and heard a slight clicking noise. “A sensor tag,” he said. “It’s on the sole of my boot.”

  Clive squatted down. “Clever.” He straightened. “But we’re cleverer.”

  “That’s not a word.”

  “Sure it is. Come on.”

  They walked out of the building. They hesitated, watching the passing air traffic.

  “That one,” Clive said, pointing to a shining chromium speeder that was barreling down the space lane, cutting off other vehicles as it swerved.

  “Just what I was thinking.”

  Ferus Force-leaped up to the canopy that overhung the ten-story lobby. He hesitated, balancing on the edge. As the speeder approached, he plucked the sensor off his boot and sent it spinning. It connected to the rear of the speeder. In a moment, the speeder had disappeared around a bend.

  Ferus jumped back to the ground, doing a somersault on the way down.

  “Show-off,” Clive said.

  “Come on,” Ferus said. “I’d guess we have about an hour before Bog figures it out. Well, knowing Bog, we might have more than that.”

  Quickly they headed to the skyhopper and took off. They stayed in the space lanes for the short trip, and Ferus had another hair-raising ride. He was happy to see the Fountain Towers rising against the cityscape.

  The towers were built on the edge of the city, far from the wide aquamarine bay. There were four slender towers, and each had an adjoining hangar that was almost as tall. The hangars contained open-air landing platforms every twenty stories. Three of the towers were completed, and one was half built, its hangar just a shell. The upper levels of the building were full of scaffolding and exposed beams.

  They landed near the fountains, which were now dry. Clive zoomed into the first hangar and parked the skyhopper. They began the tedious process of tracking the registry numbers of the vehicles.

  At last, they found the vehicle on level fifty-eight. Ferus peered inside the cockpit.

  “Clive, look at this,” he called.

  Clive pressed his face against the cockpit bubble. “Wow, a control panel. What a surprise.”

  “No, in the passenger seat.”

/>   Clive looked again. “It’s a laser lasso.”

  “A toy.” Ferus frowned. “I didn’t think there would be a child involved.” Ferus had a bad taste in his mouth.

  Something didn’t feel right. It hadn’t felt right since he’d stepped foot on this planet. He was being manipulated. He was sure of it. But why? Why had Palpatine chosen him for this mission? Ferus had a pretty good idea of his own skills, but he knew he wasn’t the only being in the galaxy who could help with this problem.

  The closer he got to finding the saboteur, the more uneasy he became.

  “Maybe this isn’t the ship,” Clive said.

  “No, this is it,” Ferus said. “I feel it. And look—there’s some mud rubbed on the registry numbers to try to obscure them. It’s an old trick, but it works.”

  Ferus gazed over at the apartment tower, thinking. He knew that Solace would contact him as soon as she’d rescued Roan and Dona. Until then, he would have to keep going, keep following one step after another until he found the saboteur. Whether he handed the saboteur over to the Imperials or not was another question—one he hoped he wouldn’t have to answer.

  Even in the middle of the night, the Senate never shut down completely. As Keets and Curran made their way down the hushed hallways, they passed cleaning crews who didn’t give them a glance, bleary-eyed senatorial aides hunched over their cups of strong tea, and Senators, resplendent in their opera cloaks, stopping by after an evening out to pick up records for the next day.

  But Sano Sauro’s office was dark.

  Keets used a nifty device Dex had loaned him. It fit into the palm of his hand, making it unnoticeable as he pressed it against the sensor panel. With a few beeps, the device broke the code, and the door slid open.

  “Sure wish I had this when my landlord kept locking me out of my apartment,” Keets said as he slipped it into his pocket.

  “Why did he do that?”

  Keets stepped through the doorway. “Oh, a little thing called failure to pay rent. Landlords are touchy creatures.”

  They slipped like shadows into Sauro’s inner office.

  “He’s a tidy fellow,” Keets said, looking around. “I don’t trust anyone this neat.”

  “I’m not interested in his character at the moment,” Curran said, crossing to the desk. “Just his files.”

  Keets followed at a more leisurely pace, as he checked out Sauro’s spare collection of items, the curved horns the color of blood, rising from the edges of his desk. “Old habit, my friend. Investigative journalist. Sometimes I’d learn more from what was in someone’s office than what was in his files. Like this.” Keets paused before what looked like a sculpture, the only decorative object in the room. It was a metal object with a crack down the middle, suspended by a small repulsorlift motor in a clear transparisteel cube.

  “What is it?” Curran asked as he searched for the dataport release button.

  “A lightsaber hilt.” Keets circled it slowly. “He hates the Jedi. He keeps the symbol of their defeat in his office, right in front of his eyes, so he can see it every day.”

  Curran found the release. A datascreen rose from the middle of the desk. He quickly ran through the files. “Coded.”

  “Naturally. Allow me.” Keets slid into the chair and tapped at the keyboard. “I’m in.”

  “That was fast.”

  “It’s all in the wrist.” Keets expertly keyed in a phrase. “I’m going to search any files that were recently opened.…Whoa, what’s this?”

  “What’s what?”

  “A memo Sauro sent to Palpatine. Blah blah, your excellency, your Imperialness, the usual…but here. He promises results on Samaria. ‘Personally responsible for results,’ he says…blah, more drivel, and—wait. Here. He says, ‘and there will be news of a deep interest of yours that has long coincided with mine.’ What could that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Curran said. “But let’s concentrate on the True Justice.”

  Keets returned to searching through files. “Here we go.” He converted a file to holographic mode and sent it into the air.

  Together they leaned closer to scan it. It was a complete record of the True Justice, complete with schematics.

  “We need a ship’s log for coordinates,” Curran said anxiously.

  “Not a problem—we’ll find it,” Keets muttered. “Wait. Something’s wrong. I’ve tripped something.”

  “What?”

  “A security code. Here—see that shimmer on the indicator light? Some models of this dataport display that if it’s been booby-trapped. It’s supposed to be a silent alarm, but if you know where to look…” Keets glanced up at Curran. “We’ll get caught.”

  “Yes.”

  They exchanged a quick look that confirmed what they had both decided. This information was vital. If they were caught, so be it.

  Keets continued to flip through the file, moving even more rapidly now. “Here it is.”

  Curran moved to the door. “I hear them.”

  “I’ll transmit the entire file to Solace.” Keets keyed in the coordinates. “First I have to copy it. If I send it from Sauro’s computer, they’ll be able to track her.”

  “They’re close.”

  “Almost done.”

  Keets watched the streaming file. Every second counted.

  “They’re in the outer office!”

  Keets saw the blinking FILE COPIED.

  The door slipped open and Senate security poured in, Imperial guards led by one short, burly human man.

  “Well, hey there, Zackery. Long time, no—”

  “Keets.” The man pointed a blaster. “Breaking into a Senator’s office again, are you?”

  “Keeps them honest.” Behind his back, Keets’s fingers were working frantically, keying in Solace’s comlink access. He pressed the comlink and sent the file.

  “I’m going to enjoy handing you over to the Empire.”

  “Anything that makes you happy,” Keets said. He glanced at Curran, giving him a look that told him the transfer had been successful. It didn’t matter what happened to them now. They’d won this round.

  “They did it,” Oryon said. He stared at the dataport on the Imperial ship. “They’ve given us coordinates, scheduled stops, even a schematic. I’m going to stop underestimating Keets right now. I’d better send back a thank you.”

  “Don’t,” Solace said. “Look at the last code. It’s our emergency signal. They were captured.”

  Oryon, Solace, and Trever stared at each other. “What should we do?” Trever asked.

  “Our duty,” Solace said. “We get to the ship and release Roan and Dona.”

  Oryon took a deep breath. He walked over to the pilot’s ship and entered the coordinates. “They’re close to Bellassa,” he said. “It shouldn’t take us long. But we have a couple of problems.”

  Solace nodded. “How to board, for one.”

  “And we’re on a stolen Imperial ship,” Trever said. “They’re probably looking for us.”

  “Don’t forget I was a spy,” Oryon said. “I can program the shipboard computer to randomly change our registry number every few minutes. They’ll never get a fix on us. Eventually they’ll figure it out, but we just need a little time.”

  “Good,” Solace said. “Now we have to plan our boarding.”

  She bent over the files again, quickly scanning the information.

  “It could work,” she murmured. She looked over her shoulder at Oryon and Trever. “We have to take the chance.”

  “What chance?” Trever asked. When Solace looked at him like that, he began to feel nervous. The look said, Are you up for this?

  “There’s an Imperial judicial team—an attorney, a judge, and a law clerk—scheduled to board at the Penumbra Spaceport,” Solace said. “They’re to conduct the trial of Roan and Dona. If we went directly to the ship, we could fly right into the cargo hold. We could pose as the team and get aboard.”

  “Wouldn’t the real team contact the sh
ip when the ship never showed up for them?” Oryon asked.

  “We’d have a couple of hours. We could free Roan and Dona and control the ship,” Solace said. “This idea is so new that Roan and Dona are the only prisoners. It’s mostly staffed by droids.”

  “Yeah, a new model of security droids,” Trever pointed out. “The ones with dual laser cannons.”

  “Not so easy,” Oryon said.

  “I didn’t say it was easy,” Solace said. “But it’s our only chance.”

  Trever stirred nervously as Solace guided the ship to a landing hangar inside the Imperial ship. He had no idea what a law clerk actually did, or how a law clerk would speak or act. He had no doubt that a law clerk would be smarter than he was. Maybe it would be a good idea to keep his mouth shut.

  Oryon spoke to him in a soft voice. “The trick is to believe you are what you say you are.”

  “That’s some trick.”

  Solace activated the ramp and turned to them. “Just follow my lead,” she said.

  They walked down the ramp. An Imperial officer waited for them.

  Solace nodded at him shortly. “I am Judge Bellican. This is Attorney Tomay Alcorn and clerk Sam Weller.”

  “First Officer Dicken. Follow me.”

  The officer led them to the cockpit. The captain sat in the control post. He stood as they came in and Officer Dicken introduced them. “We understood that you’d meet us at the spaceport,” Captain Tran said.

  “Change in plan,” Solace said. “There are compelling reasons to speed up the trial.”

  “I’d like to see the prisoners,” Oryon said.

  “They’re in lockdown. The trial will begin in five minutes.”

  “That does not give me enough time to prepare a case—” Oryon said. The plan had been for them to release Roan and Dona as soon as they could.

  He was interrupted by the captain, who gave him a sharp glance. “But these are standing orders for the ship. All prisoners will be tried immediately upon the arrival of the legal team. The point of this new system is speed and efficiency. I understand you’ve already prepared the case.”

  “Of course, but there are always last-minute details.…”