Star Wars: Scoundrels (29 page)

The far wall was coming up fast. The plan was for him to fire another burst, make a new hole, and get out before he got himself shot down. Instead, he pulled back on the throttle, doing a quick skid turn to kill his forward momentum and coast to a stop. It was risky, and Chewie probably would have something to say about it later if they all survived.

But Han’s plan was so insane, and the execution so impossible, that he just had to stick around and see for himself if it actually worked.

Some things in life really
were
worth risking everything for. The rest … well, it was always a judgment call.

Kell had blown through the wall and disappeared inside, he’d called out the targeting zone to Chewie, and the E-Web covering fire hadn’t yet brought down the whole factory. So far, things were going according to plan.

And now, from out of the gloom, blazing its way across the night sky, was the
Falcon
.

Han clenched his hand into a fist. Chewie was one of the best pilots he’d ever seen, but this was the sort of gamble even Han would normally dismiss out of hand.

But when you had no other choice, you had to go with it. “Come on, Chewie,” he muttered under his breath as the ship shot toward the hole in the wall Kell had made. The opening was way too small for the
Falcon
to fit through, of course, and there was no way any of them was going to try enlarging it, not with the shape the building was in. Even letting Kell in and out had been a calculated risk.

But Chewie didn’t need to make the hole any bigger. All he needed to do was to play a single round of the galaxy’s biggest game of hit-the-Hutt.

And he had exactly one chance to get it right.

The
Falcon
was gaining a little altitude now, and Han could hear Chewbacca easing back on the throttle as he fine-tuned his run. A quick surge of frustration and guilt washed through Han as he watched—by all rights, that should be him up there. He should be the one flying his ship and making this work.

But if he’d taken that job, who would he have left to organize the ground action? Dozer? Winter?

No. For better or worse, whether it made sense or not, he was the leader of this group. Down here, where the blaster bolts were flying the thickest, was where he needed to be.

Nearly there. A little more altitude … a bit less … slowing just a fraction more … shifting the approach vector just a shade …

And then Chewbacca was there, yanking up the bow with a fraction of a second to spare, the ship angling up and over the edge of the building and shooting off toward space.

And only because Han was specifically looking for it did he spot the squat metal cylinder that popped out of the rear of the ship and arced neatly through the smoking hole into the factory.

Lando’s first horrible thought was that the rumble approaching from outside was a missile, heading in to level the building and disintegrate every shred of evidence of what had happened here. But at the last millisecond the dark bulk flashed past the ragged opening the Z-95 had made, angling upward and roaring over the roof. He felt the whole place shake with the backwash, and a fresh rain of debris began falling on them. An extra-big piece of ceiling tile hit Lando’s side of the canopy, shattering it and sending bits of transparisteel flying.

Without warning, something big and solid slammed into the floor directly between their airspeeder and the Falleen’s men, the impact sending up a huge cloud of dust and duracrete chips. Lando winced back, wondering if it was in fact the missile nose cone he’d been anticipating a few seconds earlier.

It wasn’t a missile. It was a CEC Class 1 escape pod.

The kind carried aboard the
Falcon
.

And with that, he finally got it. “Come on!” he snapped to Zerba, forcing open the airspeeder door and rushing out into the dust and falling tiles and metal shards. Running bent over at the waist to stay out of the blasterfire still pouring through the windows, he headed for the escape pod.

He was halfway there when Zerba caught up, the cryodex case clutched tightly to his chest. “Where are we going?” he panted.

“Inside,” Lando told him. He dropped to one knee beside the pod and cycled the hatch. “It’s Han’s idea of armored sanctuary.”

“But it’s only a one-passenger pod.”

“It’ll be tight,” Lando agreed as the hatch popped open. “You can stay out here if you’d rather.”

Zerba didn’t bother to reply.

“They’re in!” Kell shouted toward the comm. “Hatch is sealed.”

“Great,” Han called back, and for the first time in hours Kell could hear some actual relief in his voice. “Kell, Dozer—take it down.”

With a suddenness that caught Dayja completely by surprise, the multiple E-Web blasterfire hammering the factory shifted from covering to demolition.

His comlink signaled. “Dayja, what’s going on out there?” d’Ashewl demanded. “Police nets are lighting up from here to Grackleton with reports of a firefight in your area.”

“Oh, it’s definitely a firefight,” Dayja confirmed, peering at the factory from what he hoped would continue to be a safe distance. “But at the moment, it’s seriously one-sided. E-Webs on the outside, a Z-95 Headhunter on the inside.”

And some variety of Corellian light freighter
, he didn’t add, frowning as he searched the sky. The freighter had made a single run at the place and done nothing except veer off at the last second, then had headed off and hadn’t been back. Either he was on some really wide return circle or he’d turned tail and made a run for it.

The first didn’t make much sense. The second seemed way out of sync with what he’d seen of Eanjer’s group.

And then he got it. The freighter pilot hadn’t gotten cold feet. He’d done whatever he was supposed to do for the operation—distraction, reconnaissance, whatever—and then had taken off because he was hurrying to get back to the spaceport before the police and port authorities reacted to all the noise and started paying attention to what was happening in the sky above them.

Which meant the freighter was the one item Eanjer’s team had brought out here that they weren’t intending to abandon after the rescue.

Interesting. He wished now that he’d gotten a better look at it.

With a distant
whoof
a section of factory roof caved in, followed immediately by a partial collapse of the north wall. The attackers seemed to be deliberately bringing down the building, which begged the question of how they expected their kidnapped teammates to survive.

Maybe they were already dead. Maybe that was what the freighter and the Z-95 had been sent in to confirm.

Another section of the roof went, this piece apparently hitting some old tank on the way down and sending up a plume of gas that looked green and vaguely evil in the reflected light from the blasterfire. A second part of the northern wall collapsed.

And with that, the kidnappers had apparently had enough. Even as the blasterfire continued to wreak havoc, Dayja saw the three airspeeders shoot out from the freshly gaping holes and claw for altitude.

This time he was ready and got some good image captures with his electrobinoculars. Whoever they were, he should be able to track them down.

“Dayja? What’s happening?”

“Looks like it’s mostly over,” Dayja said as the E-Web fire came to a halt. The Z-95 had now emerged and was settling to the ground nearby, and he could see three figures hurrying toward the wrecked building from different directions. “But it wouldn’t hurt to keep the police away from the area for a few more minutes. Can you manage that without showing your hand?”

“
My
hand, yes,” d’Ashewl rumbled. “But your team’s hand may already be dead. If the kidnappers were indeed corrupt police, I don’t know how they’re going to spin this incident without Villachor and Qazadi concluding that Eanjer is connected with someone official.”

“I don’t know, either,” Dayja said. “But I’m looking forward to finding out.”

Lando already had the hatch open and was working his way out of the escape pod when Han and the others reached them. “You okay?” Han asked, offering a hand.

It seemed to him that Lando hesitated a fraction of a second longer than he needed to before taking the proffered hand. But his grip was solid enough. “Thanks,” he grunted as Han helped him out. “Nice move, by the way. I gather that was Chewie in the
Falcon
?”

“Yeah,” Han said, looking around. The devastation looked even worse in here than it had from the outside. “Figured if you got winged by the pod, you wouldn’t be as mad at him as you would have been at me.”

“Probably not.” Lando half turned. “Zerba?”

“I’m here.” A thin hand popped into view through the hatch. “A little help, please?”

“Hand me the case,” Dozer instructed, crouching down beside the pod.

The hand disappeared and reemerged with the cryodex case. Dozer took it and handed it behind him to Winter, then helped Zerba out.

“Thanks,” Zerba puffed. He turned a baleful eye on Han. “Don’t
ever
do that again.”

“Which part?” Han asked. “Shooting the bad guys off your back, or saving your life?”

Zerba considered. “Okay, good point,” he conceded, sounding marginally mollified. “Can we get out of here now?”

“Sure,” Han said. “Dozer, take them to your airspeeder and get them back to the suite. Kell can go with you, too.”

“We leave the gear?” Dozer asked.

“All of it,” Han confirmed. “Winter and me’ll go to the spaceport and wait for Chewie.”

Some orders, he reflected, only had to be given once. Dozer was already picking his way through the debris, Lando and Zerba right behind him.

“Interesting tactic,” Winter commented.

Han turned. She was staring at the dented escape pod, an odd expression on her face. “They’re designed to handle deep space, atmo penetration, and bumpy landings,” he reminded her. “I figured they could hold off anything the kidnappers had with them.” He waved a hand upward at the stars showing through the wrecked roof. “And that, too.”

“It did seem to do the job,” Winter agreed. “I was thinking more of what would have happened if Chewbacca had missed.”

“Lando would probably never want to see me again,” Han said. “Come on, let’s go see if Chewie’s made it back down yet.”

“So you have no idea who they were?” Tavia asked as she handed Lando a drink.

“Only that there was a Falleen in the group,” Lando said, taking a careful sip. Cognac was a notoriously unpredictable drink, the taste and quality varying widely between systems and often even across different regions of the same world. Thankfully, Tavia had picked a good, smooth one. “No idea whether it was Dozer’s friend Lord Aziel, or this Qazadi person Eanjer’s contact claims is hiding in Marblewood.”

“Not sure it matters which it was,” Kell said. “They’re both on the same team, aren’t they?”

“He wasn’t either of them,” Zerba said. He was gripping his own cognac glass with both hands, clearly still shaken by the evening’s events. “He was probably someone’s bodyguard.”

“How do you know?” Lando asked, thinking back. He hadn’t noticed any weapons or body armor that might have led Zerba to that conclusion.

“He was young,” Zerba said. “Way too young to be anyone with that kind of prominence.”

“He ran back inside the airspeeder when the firing started,” Lando pointed out.

“He got the bomb guy into the airspeeder when the firing started,” Zerba corrected. “
Then
he got in. But he left the door open.”

“So that he could direct their return fire,” Winter murmured. “He did a decent job of it, too. Even firing blind, they were able to take out one of the E-Webs before Kell got inside.”

“Well, whoever they were, they weren’t with Villachor,” Bink said positively. “Neither Sheqoa nor any of the other security guys I saw showed the slightest indication that they knew something big was going on.”

“They must not have been monitoring the police comms, then,” Tavia pointed out. “The whole network was going crazy with all the reports. I’m kind of surprised that they didn’t drop the hammer on you before you got out of there.”

“What, charge in on a Black Sun interrogation?” Lando countered. “Not likely.”

“So what does all this mean for the mission?” Eanjer asked. He sounded calm, but the restless twitching of his fingers betrayed his tension.

“Nothing, really,” Han said. “Whoever was behind it, all he knows is that Lando’s got an impressive organization behind him. That’s the story we were pitching in the first place.”

“Except now that Lando’s been tagged he needs to lie low,” Bink said. “I guess Dozer’s up next. Or you, Han.”

It seemed to Lando that Han’s lip twitched, just a bit. “Probably,” Han conceded. “We can talk about that later.” He turned to Rachele. “You ready?”

“Yes,” Rachele said, her eyes looking troubled. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“Ready with what?” Zerba asked.

“The analysis of the sensor data from the card you planted,” Han told him, looking around. “Dozer?”

“Right here,” Dozer said, emerging from the kitchen hallway with a sandwich in his hand. “Rescue work makes me hungry.” He dropped onto the couch beside Tavia, forcing her to scoot to the side to make room. “Ready.”

Han gestured to Rachele. She tapped her datapad, and the image of a mostly rectangular room appeared in the air above the holoprojector. “Villachor’s vault,” she identified it. “As we’ve already noted, it was built into the junior ballroom—note the curved corners and conversation alcoves.”

“Which are probably guard posts now,” Lando murmured.

“Mostly,” Rachele confirmed. “Also note the high, undulating ceiling. That’s the ballroom’s original glitter coat up there, by the way, with the layer of armor plate we discussed earlier set into the between-floors gap above it.”

“Glitter coat, huh?” Bink asked sourly. “Terrific.”

“What’s glitter coat?” Kell asked.

“The fancy man’s interior décor of choice,” Bink told him. “Nice, smooth, resilient, glitters in every type of lighting—you get the idea. Problem is, it’s impossible to cut through without scattering clouds of white sparkly flakes all over the place.”