by Alex Wheeler
Either way, at least he'd get out of this shuttle.
"This is the shuttle Arkanoid," Han said into the comlink. "Requesting permission to dock."
"Transmit authorization codes, Arkanoid," came the impersonal response.
"You sure these codes are good?" Han asked Lore, who had purchased them on the black market.
Lore raised his eyebrows. "Don't trust me?"
Han wouldn't trust Lore to deal an honest hand of sabacc or play an honest round of four-cubes, and he certainly wouldn't trust his old friend around an open till. But when it came to plundering Imperial secrets, there was no one he'd rather have at his side.
Well, almost no one.
That's over now, Han reminded himself sternly. Luke, Leia, and the Rebellion were in the past, and he'd closed the door on that. A cargo of glitterstim and a good chunk of the credits he'd need to repay Jabba were his future—as long as he could get aboard the station.
Han transmitted the codes. A moment later, the station's tractor beam activated, sucking the shuttle into the docking bay.
"Welcome, Arkanoid," the voice said. "We've been expecting you."
"Maintenance crew down that way," the stormtrooper said, waving them down a long corridor. "Dump the Wookiee at the operations station with the rest of the furbags."
Chewbacca growled. He hated to be treated like an animal. But this was all part of the plan. Han had asked around and discovered that a team of Wookiees had been shipped in from the nearest prison planet to complete labor on the shield generators. From there, Chewbacca would be in perfect position to infiltrate the station's defense and weapons systems, ensuring that, if anything went wrong, the shuttle would make an easy escape. On a remote station like this, it seemed likely that security protocols would be lax enough to allow the Wookiee all the access he needed. Han prodded Chewbacca with his blaster. "You heard him, Wookiee. Let's go."
The stormtrooper shot him a sympathetic look. "You ask me, they may be strong, but they're not worth the trouble. Easier to wrangle a ship full of furnocs than get a good day's work out of a Wookiee."
"Tell me about it," Han said, as Chewbacca issued a long string of angry barks. Han suppressed a grin. No need to translate exactly what Chewbacca thought of this Imperial slug. Even a stormtrooper was likely smart enough to figure that one out on his own.
"Meet you in the cargo bay," Lore murmured, as Han escorted Chewbacca to the Wookiee labor unit. The Wookiee wore a thick, ill-fitting tunic that looked ridiculous but was loose enough to hide the bowcaster tucked beneath it. When the time came to leave, he'd hopefully have no trouble. "And we'll get to work."
The Imperials thought their newest maintenance team would be repairing the docking racks in the shuttle staging area.
But that wasn't exactly the kind of work Han had in mind.
Han had long ago learned that wearing a maintenance uniform was the key to getting pretty much anywhere you wanted to go. While high-profile visitors to an Imperial satellite station had to pass through any number of security checks as they wandered from one sector to another, no matter how important they were, maintenance workers quickly faded into the background. These days the Empire was doing so much construction work that most new projects were staffed by prisoners. There was little time or energy left over to guard the crews who kept the place running. No one cared what happened to the guy who fixed the plumbing or took out the trash. Which meant, thanks to their orange maintenance uniforms, no one gave Han or Avik a second look at they hurried away from the docking bay toward the aft cargo hold.
It had taken a good twenty minutes on the station's nearest computer terminal to determine where the shipment of glitterstim—confiscated from a rogue transport ship and en route to a legitimate distributor in a nearby star system—was stored. Not for the first time, Han found himself missing that annoying little astromech droid, who would have been able to ferret out the information in seconds. Still, they found it and easily slipped into the empty cargo hold. It was at least a hundred square meters in area and filled with stacks and stacks of shipping containers. There were no humans inside, only a few binary loadlifters, none of whom were sentient enough to note the presence of a couple unauthorized visitors.
"So far, so good, Chewie," Han said into his comlink. "Now we just need to dig up the shipment and we'll get out of here."
Avik dropped the two large tool cases he'd been carrying on the ground and flipped them open. Both were empty. Han glanced up at the giant piles of crates lining the walls of the cargo hold. He groaned. "This could take a while."
They began searching through the stacks, prying open one crate after another. Han found several cases of Whyren's Reserve (its amber color marking it as a particularly valuable vintage), kilograms of ionite (enough to retrofit the Falcon and several other ships), and a month's supply of bacta. But no glitterstim. They'd been at it for about fifteen minutes when the door to the cargo hold swished open. A stormtrooper in white armor clomped into the room, looking suspiciously back and forth between Han, Lore, and their empty toolboxes.
Han clambered off the crates of fusioncutters he'd been sorting through and ambled over to the guard. His hand strayed toward his blaster, but he kept calm. It was important not to act suspicious.
"What are you two doing in here?" the stormtrooper asked. "All maintenance crews were to report to sector seven."
Han shrugged. "No one told us, buddy," he said. "They sent us here." He jerked a thumb at Lore, who was fiddling with some exposed wiring in the far corner. "Told us we needed to repair the, uh, gyrostabilizers in the cargo lifts," he said, taking a wild guess at something that might need repairing.
The stormtrooper raised his comlink. "I'll have to check on that," he said.
"Don't bother," Han retorted, throwing all his weight against the stormtrooper and knocking him to the ground. The guard fumbled for his blaster, but Han knocked it out of his grasp. He reached for his own weapon. The stormtrooper lunged at Han, just as he was taking his shot. The laserfire went wild, crashing into a box of muja fruit. A geyser of bright red muja juice exploded into the hold. With a swift chopping motion, the stormtrooper smacked Han's blaster out of his hand, then headbutted him, hard. Han shook off the ringing in his ears to deliver a solid punch to the guard's stomach. But the white armor was impervious to the blow. "Little help here?" Han called to Lore, who was watching the fight, looking almost bemused.
"Sure," Lore said, as Han wrestled the stormtrooper to the ground, trying to pin him down long enough to reach for one of the fallen blasters. But every time he got the upper hand, the stormtrooper struck back, with a fist to Han's nose or an armored boot to his gut. And Lore was, inexplicably, taking his time. Out of the corner of his eye, Han saw him scoop up first the stormtrooper's fallen blaster, then Han's. Only then—Han darted out of the way just in time—did Lore take his shot.
The stormtrooper went limp. His helmet slipped off, and Han, as always, experienced a moment of surprise to see the human face beneath the white plastoid mask. "Took you long enough," Han snapped at Lore. "But thanks."
"Don't thank me yet," said Lore, raising his blaster.
Han didn't have enough time to ask what he was doing.
Only enough time to think: should have known better.
And then Lore swung, hard.
The weapon struck the back of Han's head.
Lights out.
When Han woke up, he was propped against the wall of the cargo hold, his arms tied behind his back with a loop of fibra-rope. Lore was packing the final vials of glitterstim into the toolboxes. He smiled wryly at Han, without a hint of shame.
"Don't tell me this is payback for Dubrillon," Han said. He groaned at the sharp pain shooting through his head with every motion.
"Oh, please," Lore said. "This isn't personal, it's business."
"Someone trusses me up like a rong boar, I take that personally," Han warned him.
"Come on. Why split the payment in half when I can take i
t all? You'd have done the same thing, if I hadn't done it first."
"Never," Han said.
Lore laughed harshly. "Come on, Solo, you're the one who showed me the ropes in this game. Is it my fault you forgot the first thing you taught me?"
"Don't chew nerf steaks with your mouth open?"
"Trust no one," Lore said. "Look out for yourself, because no one else will." He grinned. "This must be a proud moment for you. The student surpasses the teacher." Moving quickly, he relieved the stormtrooper of his uniform, and then donned the armor himself. "Now, because we're old friends, you get a choice," he told Han, brandishing the stormtrooper's comlink. "I leave you for the Imperials to find…or I put you out of your misery, here and now."
"How about you untie me and we forget this whole thing ever happened?" Han suggested.
Lore didn't bother to respond.
Han ran out of patience. "Okay then, how about you take that blasted comlink and shove it in your frinking—"
"We have an intruder in the aft cargo hold, sector five," Lore said into the comlink, affecting the flat monotone of a stormtrooper. "Repeat. Intruder in aft cargo hold, sector five. Send reinforcements."
Moments later an alarm sounded, and the room lit up with flashing red lights.
Lore holstered his blaster, hoisted the tool cases, and slipped through the door, offering Han a farewell salute. "Remember, nothing personal!" he shouted over his shoulder.
"Nothing personal. Right. And I'm a gundark's uncle," Han grumbled, as a thunder of footfalls rumbled down the hall, and a sea of white armor flooded through the open door.
It looked like the reinforcements had arrived.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The stormtroopers yanked him to his feet.
"This is all a big mistake," Han said. "I'm just here to fix the cargo lifts."
"The cargo lifts don't need fixing," one of the stormtroopers responded, marching him into the corridor.
"All a big misunderstanding then," Han blustered. "No need to apologize. Just show me what needs fixing and I'll…uh…fix it."
This time the stormtrooper just ignored him, handing him off to two others. "Take the prisoner to interrogation," he said. They nodded in unison. Each grabbed one of Han's arms, and they marched him down the narrow white hallway.
Han had experienced Imperial interrogation tactics. He didn't have too much interest in a return visit. He wriggled around in his restraints. The stormtroopers had replaced Lore's makeshift rope cuffs with a pair of standard Imperial binders. There was no hope of escape, but if he stretched, he could just reach his comlink and open a channel to Chewbacca. Hopefully, Han could alert the Wookiee to the situation before he responded and gave the game away. "So, you're taking me in for an Imperial interrogation?" he said loudly, once he'd opened the channel. "Where is that, exactly?"
The stormtroopers ignored him. Hope you're listening, Chewie, he thought. There was the possibility Chewbacca had been taken prisoner as well. But Han didn't let himself think like that. The Wookiee was too smart.
Of course, so am I.
As they turned a corner, Han spotted the two things he needed for an escape: a notation marking this as corridor E-71, and a damaged bulkhead, its top half peeling away from the wall.
"See, you could use some maintenance after all," Han said loudly, hoping that Chewbacca could hear him—and that he'd succeeded in infiltrating the station's operating systems. Specifically, it's electrical system. "Look at that shoddy workmanship, right here in corridor E-71. That could be dangerous," he warned the stormtroopers. "What if you had some kind of electrical failure with your lighting system and someone just blundered into the bulkhead?" He shook his head, taking a close look around to memorize his surroundings. The remote locking device for his wrist binders was tucked into the utility belt of the stormtrooper to his left. "Nothing more inconvenient than an on-the-job injury," he said. "You should really get that checked out. Now, while the lights are still on."
"What are you yammering about?" the stormtrooper on his right snapped irritably.
Come on, fuzzbrain, Han thought. Get the message. But nothing happened. He'd have to buy himself some time.
Feigning clumsiness, he tripped and stumbled to his hands and knees. The stormtroopers stopped and hauled him back to his feet. "See, this is what I'm talking about," he said, even louder than before. "Imagine a bunch of clumsy folk bumbling around here in a blackout. Here in corridor E-71. You wouldn't want—"
The lights went out.
Han was ready. Before the stormtroopers knew what was happening, he slung his bound hands into the first one's head knocking him into the second one. They tumbled to the floor together. By feel, Han found the locking device lodged by the stormtrooper's blaster, and then for good measure, snatched the weapon, too.
"See, fellas? This is what I'm talking about," he said, as he pried the peeling bulkhead off the wall. The stormtroopers were shooting blindly in the wrong direction, their laserfire sizzling through the dark.
"You said right!" Han hissed into the comlink, slithering backward through the duct until he reached the fork. This time, he took a left. Chewbacca growled into his ear. "No, if you'd said left, I would have gone left," Han snapped, inching forward again. He'd been shimmying through the ducts and conduits of the station for what seemed like hours, following Chewbacca's hastily whispered instructions. If all went according to plan, he'd eventually emerge in the shuttle docking bay, meet Chewbacca, steal a shuttle, and fly off to safety.
If he could ever find his way out of these tunnels.
This one passed right over a series of crew quarters, and the ceilings were thin enough that he could hear snatches of conversation filtering up from below. Banter about a recent game of zoneball, gossip about the latest antics of a well-known HoloVision star, even a parent yelling at his kid for shooting out a viewscreen with his junior blaster—it was almost easy to forget that this was an Imperial outpost, bent on rooting out the heart of the Rebellion and stomping it to pieces. They all seemed so normal.
And then:
"This is taking far too long!" an angry voice raged. "You know the punishment for failure."
"I have a lead," said another voice, strangely familiar. "Only a little more time and Skywalker is mine."
Though he knew the stormtroopers were tearing the station apart searching for him, and any delay could mean his life, Han froze.
One of the voices belonged to a stranger.
The other—it made no sense, but Han had no doubt it belonged to someone he knew and trusted. More to the point, someone Luke knew and trusted. It belonged to Tobin Elad.
X‑7 couldn't avert his eyes from the screen. The Commander was terrifying in his rage. His narrow, pinched face remained palely inexpressive. But X‑7 knew well the anger that roiled behind his steely eyes.
"You think you can escape?" the Commander roars.
X‑7, who once thought himself a man without fear, cowers in the corner. A large borrat scampers toward him and begins gnawing at the flesh of his hand. X‑7 ignores it. Locked in the dark for endless days, he has become used to the borrats.
"There is no escape from me," the Commander says, quiet now. Dangerous.
X‑7 no longer knows how long he has been in the training facility. He no longer remembers how he came to be there. And he no longer knows who he once was.
But he knows he was someone.
Before they cleansed his brain, before they turned him into a machine to do their bidding, before he belonged to the Commander, he belonged to himself. He remembers that.
Which is why he killed the guards, scaled the walls, escaped.
Until the Commander's men dragged him back and threw him into the dark.
"You thought you'd succeeded, didn't you?" the Commander asks. He laughs. "I let you try. Wanted to see whether you'd make it."
X‑7 is afraid to speak. He doesn't want to say anything that might make the Commander leave him alone again, in the silent dark. A
ny longer, and he fears he may go mad.
The Commander crosses the room, strokes X‑7 gently across the forehead. X‑7 shivers at the touch of another human, the confirmation that he is not alone in the galaxy. "This has been very hard for you," the Commander says softly. "I know. And you have a long road still to walk, my young friend. But at the end of it, you will emerge strong. I will make you strong. You want that, don't you?"
X‑7 nods. He wants whatever the Commander wants. Because the Commander holds the keys to the door. The Commander can let him out of the dark.
"You're not going to try to escape again, are you?" the Commander asks. "You've learned your lesson, haven't you?"
X‑7 nods again. He means it. But the Commander frowns. "No, you haven't," he says. "But you will. We'll make sure that you don't want to be anywhere else than here. That you don't want to do anything else but serve me, Only that will make you happy. You'd like that, wouldn't you?" he asks. "To be happy?"
X‑7 nods.
"Speak, boy," the Commander snaps.
"Yes," X‑7 says, hesitantly, his voice dry and raspy. It has been so long since he's spoken. "I want to be happy."
"And only one person can make you happy," the Commander says. "Do you know who that is?"
"You," X‑7 whispers.
"That's good," the Commander says. He kneels down, eye to eye with X‑7. He brings his face close enough that, in the dim light filtering through the open door, X‑7 can see the rage in his eyes. The Commander pulls out a vibroblade, the light glinting off its razor edge. He presses it to the soft flesh beneath X‑7's jaw. "Now then," the Commander grits, bearing down. "Let's teach you how to be happy."
X‑7 recoiled from the rage in the Commander's gaze, glad that several light-years separated him from his master.
"Where is Skywalker?" the Commander asked, as he had been asking for the last several days. Each time, his voice grew quieter and tighter, as if a great force of will was needed to keep him from climbing through the screen and throttling X‑7 with his bare hands.
