Star Wars - Credit Denied - Unpublished (5 page)

Blazing stars,
Rendra cursed. She put the blaster back into her pocket and took out her comlink. pressing it against her lips. “Nopul.”

A pause, then, “Yeah.”

“No speech. Alternative: fire when he introduces the next politician.”

“Right.”

“Vakir. Oro.”

No response—not that she had expected one. She could only hope they’d figure out the problem on their own and contact her or Nopul.

As she exchanged her comlink for her blaster, she hoped Dania Starcrosser was having a good time wherever she was in the galaxy on the credits Rendra has paid her, because it was the last good time she was ever going to have.

Aaregil spoke. “We are about to embark on a new path for both of our species, one filled with freedom—freedom from the horrors of conflict; freedom from senseless death; freedom from meaningless ideals.”

She adjusted the macroscope until the readings indicated she had a perfect shot at Aaregil’s chest.
Meaningless ideals…! I should have had you speak to my father years ago.

If her father knew what she was about to do, he would have shot her himself. Good old Dad, always placing ideals before everything else—including his family, Rendra had committed her life to avoiding that mistake and…

Look where it had gotten her.

She stared at Aaregil through the sights. What was she doing?

Saving herself from returning to the life she had struggled so hard to escape, that’s what. She pushed away her misgivings.
Ideals get you killed. Your father learned that the hard way. Don’t follow in his footsteps.

She breathed out, hoping to send her inner conflict along with it, when her comlink beeped. She yanked it out of her pocket without bothering to hide the blaster. “Yeah.”

“I got through to Oro and Vakir. They know the new plan.” He paused. “You sure killing him is worth a ship?”

Just what she needed right now, another outsider questioning her life.

“No,” she said crisply, “but it is worth my life.”

“And that of millions of Weequay and Houk, as well, apparently.”

It was a damning statement…

And yet, it was true. She could not deny the logic, no matter how much she wanted to.

Aaregil continued his remarks. “But I was not alone in this struggle to bring about peace…”

“Time’s running out,” came Nopul’s filtered voice.

She couldn’t believe she’d come this far only to question herself now. She should just do it and get it over with. Then she’d have no decision to make.

But by then it would be too late.

“He is not only my colleague,” Aaregil said from the podium. “He is also my friend.”

Rendra raised her blaster again and targeted Aaregil. She could now see that another Weequay had risen from his seat and was standing behind the ambassador. Sunlight suddenly flashed on an object hanging from the being’s clothing, blinding her for a moment. When she looked again, he had shifted just enough to stop the reflection.

She adjusted the zoom on her blaster’s macroscope, favoring the spot that had glinted a second before.

From a long chain around his neck hung a crescent-shaped amulet made from a lustrous metal, its hue falling somewhere in the bluish green range.

Her mind flashed on an image of the meeting with her employer in the temple—the Temple of Quay, Weequay god of the moon. The realization came instantly: it had all been a set-up. For what reason, she had no idea—not that it mattered right now. She could take time to figure that out later.

“Here he is,” Aaregil’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers, “Minister Pon Svale.”

She put the comlink to her mouth. “Don’t shoot!”

Ambassador Svale clasped Aaregil’s arm in peace.

Rendra keyed her comlink again, recycling the entire system in case it had gone on the blink. “Repeat. Terminate mission. Confirm?”

On the dais, Svale situated himself at the podium as Aaregil moved off the side.

“Confirm?” she whispered as loud as she could in the sea of onlookers.

A pair of blaster bolts, each from a different direction, pierced the hushed silence in rapid succession, striking Ambassador Aaregil full on. Rendra cursed as she shoved her blaster inside her tunic—and then fell completely silent as she saw the result of the attacks.

Rather than knocking the ambassador down, the bolts collided with a shimmering energy shield, ricocheting the blasts upward into the sky and leaving Aaregil dazed but otherwise unharmed.

At that moment, the solemnity of the ceremony erupted into frenzied chaos. Security guards hefted their weapons and took off through the crowd. Minister Pon Svale shouted orders over the speaker system—the words all but lost in the cacophony of confused and outraged citizenry.

Rendra leaped forward, knocking down several bewildered Weequay as she vaulted down the steps into the central walkway. She flicked on her comlink and screamed into it at the top of her lungs, “Everyone back to the
Zoda
! Now!”

She pocketed the comlink, and then pushed herself through the thickening mobs, heading, however slowly, toward the exit. She felt like an amoeba stuck in a pool of heavy plasma, and for once she could relate to the life of a single-celled organism.

She had no way of discovering the fates of her companions at the moment, so she instead concentrated on her own escape, hoping they would all meet at the
Zoda
and get off the planet before it was too late—if it wasn’t already.

As she squeezed through the crowd, a lone thought dominated her mind: Minister Pon Svale would pay for setting her up. And the gods help him if any of her companions were hurt…

Rendra sat in the cockpit of the
Zoda
, cycling up the ship’s systems so she could take off as soon as Nopul and the others arrived—if they arrived. She didn’t have much of a window left, but she wasn’t going to leave them behind.

A hollow pounding came at the airlock. She grabbed her blaster, which she has placed in front of her on the nav computer, and headed for the airlock.

“It’s me…-on” said a voice over the comm system among the fuzz of static. “Hurry, I’m…-lowed.”

Rendra punched the release mechanism, and the airlock hissed open. Nopul jumped before it had come to Its full aperture. “Close it!” were the first words out of his mouth.

“What about the others?”

Nopul looked at her, his gaze penetrating further than she liked, and then he shrugged.

She slammed her fist against the airlock controls, and the servomotors issued their hydraulic hush as the hatch closed. Rendra headed back to the cockpit.

Her hands were dancing across the console before she even hit the seat. After she made several adjustments, she fit the comm headgear over her ears.

“Well, you got us into a real mess, but I have to admit,” Nopul said as he took the co-pilot’s seat. “You made the right decision.”

She continued readying for takeoff for a moment before she turned toward him. “Don’t be too proud. I never had the chance to make the decision either way.”

“What?”

“I didn’t fire—but not because I had a moral wake-up call. The whole thing was a setup. I didn’t fire because I realized we were being used.”

Nopul said nothing and his expression failed to betray his thoughts. Rendra didn’t have time to deal with his thoughts on the subject anyway, so she turned back to her initiation routines.

“You’re not going to leave them here, are you?” he said finally.

“What do you want me to do? Walk up to security and say, ‘These are my mercenaries. Please let them go. They were only acting on my orders.’ That’ll get us
all
thrown into the detention center.”

Nopul stared at her as if examining her for the first time. She felt his gaze upon her like charged Tibanna gas, eating through to her soul. She’d never seen him give such an accusatory look—to anyone.

And the first was directed at her, of all people. How dare he…

Something in his expression stopped her line of silent defiance. It wasn’t accusation etched into his face. It was surprise. Complete shock.

The same look her father had given her when she’d announce she was leaving their home, and more importantly, him. She’d realized only later that her words had devastated him, left him speechless. What she had taken for silent acceptance was actually complete shock.

Her hands slid from the console into her lap. When she was leaving the Coliseum she wanted nothing more than to rescue her companions and to make Svale pay for his betrayal. But once she had reached the
Zoda
, the more logical part of her mind had taken over. Only now did she realize that she was acting exactly as Svale had, betraying those who had trusted in her.

She slowly turned to Nopul, who was now staring through the forward viewport. She had a lot to say, her thoughts jumbling together so that she couldn’t utter a syllable. She felt her emotions swimming in her chest, threatening to explode upward through her throat and into her head. Only through her strength of will was she able to keep them down. Without looking, she keyed the computer, shutting the engines down.

Nopul glanced over at her, a hint of hope showing through the pain and anger.

She locked gazes with him. “We’re not leaving here without Vakir and Oro.”

Nopul’s face broke into a full smile, from forehead to chin. If Rendra hadn’t seen it, she wouldn’t have believed it was possible. “How?” was all he could say.

“I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

At that moment, a short whir preceded the espionage droid’s appearance at the entrance to the cockpit.

“But I’m starting to get an idea…”

Oro gently touched the bars of their cell, eliciting a spatter of electrical discharges from the durasteel that burned his fingers. “Aah!”

Vakir shook his head. “What are you doing, nerf-head?”

“Try to get free. What you do to help?”

“Well, I’m not wasting time checking to see if the bars are still charged every five minutes.”

“Could turn off.”

Vakir snorted. “If it makes you feel better, you can continue to think that. But it’s just about as likely as Maex showing up to rescue us.”

A clatter from down the corridor drew their attention. But the source of the noise was beyond their range of sight. After a moment they heard the soft patter of footsteps coming toward them.

And suddenly Rendra stepped into view, startling them both.

She put a gloved finger to her lips, and then pulled a lockpicking tool from her pocket. As she inserted the thin wand into the cell door’s narrow lock, another figure floated past her.

Vakir recognized it as the espionage droid that had stowed away aboard the
Zoda
—except that now it was outfitted with brushes of all shapes and sizes. The droid floated to the end of the cell bay, finally resting quietly in a darkened corner. “What the—”

Rendra silenced him and then went back to work. To Vakir the whole process seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time, but then again, he decided, it could just be his frayed nerves. He glanced over to see Oro grinning like an idiot, and it was all he could do to stop from slapping it off his face.

And then they all stopped what they were doing. Voices. Down the hall.