Star Wars - Credit Denied - Unpublished (6 page)

Rendra jiggled her lockpick—the it refused to come out of the lock. She looked down the corridor, past the point where Vakir could see, and then yanked at the lockpick with all her might, pulling it free with a loud scraping sound.

“Maex,” said a voice, the owner of which remained out of Vakir’s sight. By Rendra’s shifting gaze, he could tell that whoever it was was coming toward her.

Minister Pon Svale came into view. “Thank you for giving yourself up. I thought you might try something this stupid. But then again, you fell completely for my little game.”

Rendra assumed a casual stance. “I have to admit, Svale. You got me. Played on my fears and my ethics, knowing the whole time that I would be too preoccupied with both to realize what you were doing.”

Svale issued a satisfied chuckle. “I’m not brilliant, but I am thorough.”

“I just don’t understand why you went to all that trouble.”

“Please, Maex, I’ve studied you long enough to know you’re not that incompetent.”

“Well, frankly, I’m beginning to think you’re insane.”

The remark did not sit well with Svale. His thin smile changed quickly to a sneer. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but if you think it can get you out of this, you’re the one who is insane. You are a dozen meters below the surface, surrounded on all sides by thousands of troops loyal to me. I don’t know how you got in here, but I do know how you’re going out.”

Rendra said nothing. Neither did Vakir or Oro. But Svale continued.

“Now that you have completed your assignment. I have been appointed First Minister of Defense, second only to Uli himself. It was I who urged him to wear a personal shield, even though he thought it a politically incorrect thing to do. But thanks to the attack on his life—courtesy of me—I was able to prove him wrong.”

He pulled a slim device from his front pocket and clicked one of its protrusions. The cell opposite Vakir’s and Oro’s opened, and Svale motioned for her to enter.

Rendra stood her ground.

“Please, let’s not make this any messier than it already it is.” And with that he drew a blaster from his hip.

She acquiesced finally, moving into the cell with a look of defeat on her face.

“Make peace with your makers. You will be executed tomorrow after your trial.” Svale gave the aliens one last look and then returned down the corridor.

The espionage droid floated into view.

“It worked,” Rendra whispered. “Now get back to the ship. Nopul has to take it from here.”

Vakir and Oro looked to one another, but neither seemed to have any understanding of what had just taken place right in front of them.

“Don’t worry,” Rendra said from across the way as the droid hovered out of sight. “I’ll fill you In later. If Nopul’s slicing skills are as good as he says, we should have at least a slight chance of getting out of this.”

Vakir didn’t know how Oro was taking the news, but to him. that didn’t sound as promising as he would have liked.

Nopul swiveled the cockpit chair one more time. That made six hundred and twenty-eight revolutions, and he’d still not heard a word from Rendra.

He’d set the ship’s comm system to the METOSP channel after she’d left. According to the updates, all of Sriluur had erupted into chaos. No vessels were being allowed to lift off until flight control could determine whether the threat had passed.

Threat?
Nopul thought.
Trust me, there’s no longer a threat.

He glanced over at the exterior ocular sensor display for a quick look—and then stopped to stare at the squad of armed security guards marching straight for the
Zoda
.

This was it. The end. All his hopes and aspirations dashed over the course of a few hours. Well, for what it was worth, he wasn’t going to let it end so neatly.

With his last embers of vigor, he sprang from the chair and pulled a blaster rifle out of the cockpit weapons locker. He checked the charge and found it three-quarters full. He gave a nervous chuckle: the weapon would probably last longer than he would.

With a stride infused with the power of imminent death, he headed for the airlock. Before he hit the release, he took a deep breath, guesstimating the time it would take for the patrol to reach the ship but before they were in a readied position.

He exhaled quickly and—before he let his common sense inform him of his insanity—jammed the airlock control with his elbow. As the door hissed open, he hefted the blaster rifle and took up an offensive stance. He began to ease the blaster’s trigger, just enough so that he knew he’d get off the first shot.

When the airlock had fully opened to reveal the open-air bay to the starboard of the
Zoda
, he was alarmed at what he saw.

Nothing. Where had they gone? Around to the other side of the ship? Were they laying in wait for him to poke out his head so they could blast him into a million pieces without exposing themselves?

When no one appeared to answer his questions, he eased forward down the ramp, careful not to break the plane of the hull. To test the waters, he shoved the muzzle of the rifle outside.

No response.

Which didn’t do much to settle his nerves. Maybe they were smarter than he was. No, he didn’t like this one bit.

Realizing he had no other option—the ocular sensor unit was fixed on an aft view—he poked his head out and glanced in both directions, fully expecting not to live long enough to perceive the information his eyes absorbed.

So he was completely surprised to find himself unharmed in the next moment, the squad of security guards getting smaller as they headed for another ship a few dozen meters away.

Nopul took in a sweet breath. The adrenaline, though now unneeded, still coursed though him, making his hands—and in turn, the blaster rifle—shake. The movement woke him out of his respite and he scuttled back up the ramp and hit the locking mechanism. He left the airlock to shut by itself as he headed to the cockpit.

When he got there he saw the incoming message light blinking. That was the signal. He grabbed his slicer tools, thought twice about leaving the blaster rifle behind, and finally headed off without it. He had a lot to do. Rendra, Oro, and Vakir were counting on him. He couldn’t take the risk of carrying a lethal weapon. If he were arrested or even detained for a few moments, all of them, including himself, would lose their lives. And that would definitely not make his day.

Sriluur’s yellow sun blazed down on Rendra from its position just to the morning side of the sky’s zenith. She’d been too busy to notice how bright it was yesterday, but now, chained to a makeshift pillar on the dais in the center of the Coliseum floor, she didn’t have the option of missing out on that bit of information.

Next to her, Oro, Vakir and some other alien she didn’t recognize—apparently caught up in the same political machinations—looked on as First Minister Pon Svale continued to congratulate himself on capturing the would-be assassins and to deride her and her companions for their evil intentions. She wished she could show him some evil. Luckily for him there were two meters of durasteel chain holding her back.

She’d already suffered through half an hour of being pelted with everything from stones to sour vegetables—she was pretty sure one of the gourd-like fruits had broken a couple of ribs—and now the ceremony seemed to be coming to an end.

Where in the stars was Nopul? Time—at least hers and her companions’—was quickly becoming a rare commodity.

“Traitors like these,” Svale went on, “must be purged from both our systems if this new alliance is to flourish.” The crowd responded with a raucous cheer.

Vakir, who was closest to her, glanced toward her. “You sure Nopul can handle this?”

“Would I lay all of our lives on the line if I thought he couldn’t?” She hoped her forceful tone would cover up the fact that she had no idea what Nopul was capable of. She knew nothing about computer slicing—she’d left that all to him—and so she hadn’t ever been able to gauge his level of ability.

But Vakir seemed to buy into it. “I cannot wait to see this man,” he threw a disgusted look in Svale’s direction, “fall from his high promontory and be trampled upon by his own people.”

Rendra, even in the midst of her current situation—and then again, perhaps precisely because of it—found herself grinning. “You and me both.”

The roar of the masses seated and standing throughout the Coliseum—there seemed to be more here today than yesterday, a sad comment on sentient nature, she supposed—died down, and Svale regarded them all in silence, building up dramatic tension to elicit the greatest response from what he was about to say, which Rendra, unfortunately, could guess word for word.

Come on, Nopul. I have faith in you. More than I have in myself at this point. But you’re just about out of time.

“Send these… insidious demons,” Svale said, his voice booming over the amplifiers placed throughout the arena, “to their makers!”

The throngs cheered, whistled, clapped, and stomped, making enough noise to drown out the last syllable of Svale’s decree. Four soldiers detached from their unit and walked across the dais, each taking up a position next to one of the guilty, placing blasters against the temples of their victims.

Rendra looked to the vidscreens around the Coliseum. They switched from a focus on Svale to the quartet of soldiers with their blasters held ready for the killing blow.
Come on. Nopul. Come on.

And then every vidscreen in the arena erupted in static. Rendra’s heart leaped.
Almost. You almost have it.

She glanced at Svale, who was basking in the vengeance of the crowd. He nodded to the soldiers, who then turned their attention to Rendra and her fellow captives.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement high above, and she looked up to see the image of Pon Svale on the vidscreen—but this time he was standing in an underground corridor, not on the dais in full sunlight. Nopul had done it.

But as she turned to the soldier about to end her life, she realized it might be too late. No one was paying any attention to the vidscreens. They were all focused on the execution about to take place in front of them.

“Hey!” she found herself yelling at the Weequay soldier. “Look! Look at the vidscreen!” He responded only with a confused expression.

“You can kill me in two seconds. Just please look at the vidscreens.”

He thought for a beat, and then threw a side-long glance across his shoulder. And didn’t look back.

His fellow executioners—apparently his subordinates—hesitated as well, unsure why their leader had failed to carry out his task. They, too, looked to the vidscreens.

The audience booed and hissed—and then, amazingly, fell silent as they noticed the scene playing on the massive screens.

“But thanks to the attack on his life—courtesy of me,” Svale’s recorded image was saying, “I was able to prove him wrong.”

Minister Aaregil raced to the podium. “Stop the execution. We cannot send these people to their deaths until we have investigated this new evidence.”

Svale was too far from the microphone to be picked up, but Rendra could see by his angry expression and exaggerated gestures that he was not taking Aaregil’s announcement well.