Star Wars: Scoundrels (45 page)

One of the handful of people in Marblewood who knew Lando by sight.

And Lando had suddenly run out of time. “Wait a second,” he said, jabbing a finger at the damaged console. “That console—see the cut?”

“Yeah,” Kastoni said as he crossed toward it. “Looks like the same whatever they used to slice open the door.”

“Sure does,” Lando said, joining him and looking over the console itself. There was nothing identifying it as a 501-Z control panel, at least nothing he could see. But obviously Bink had figured it out, and if she could, Police Sergeant Talbot certainly could. “Looks like a 501-Z control console,” he commented. “You have Zeds patrolling the grounds somewhere?”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kastoni’s head jerk toward him. “This controls the Zeds?” he breathed. “Oh,
hell
.” He tapped his comlink clip. Lando held his breath … “Kastoni, sir,” Kastoni said quickly. “It looks like they hit the Zed control panel … Yes, sir.”

He took a step back and craned his neck to look out into the hallway. “Yes, I see him … Master Sheqoa?” he called. “Master Villachor wants you.”

Kastoni stepped into the doorway. Lando turned his back, leaning over the Zed console, pretending to examine the jagged cut Zerba’s light-saber had made. Behind him, the two men conversed in low tones, and though Lando couldn’t make out the words, he could hear the shift in Sheqoa’s tone as he stopped talking to Kastoni and started talking to Villachor. The conversation ended, and Lando heard footsteps heading rapidly away.

“Gone to check on your Zeds?” Lando asked over his shoulder.

“Yeah, if they’re still there,” Kastoni growled, coming up beside him.

“You cops know any fast ways to bring someone out of a stun blast?” Bromley asked. “Some drug or something we can use?”

“Nothing that would be legal,” Lando said. “Sorry. Here, help me move this other console out of the way, will you? We need to see if they got into the wall conduits, too.”

The echo of the hard service corridor gave way to the silence and softer cushioning of the main mansion hallways.

Sheqoa hardly noticed.

So it was the Zeds they’d been after. Kriffing obvious in retrospect, especially after Villachor replaced all the armored human guards in the vault with more of the kriffing droids.

All of which had been Qazadi’s idea. Curse the stupid green-scaled Falleen idiot, anyway.

Unless it
hadn’t
been stupidity. Unless it was part of whatever insane plan Qazadi and Aziel and Kwerve and maybe Prince kriffing Xizor himself had worked up to bring down Villachor and put someone else in his place.

Well, they could just dream on. Whatever success the mysterious intruder had managed with the serving and maintenance droids outside, he’d find the Zeds a much harder nut to crack. They were horribly difficult to reprogram or disable, especially without the general access codes that only Villachor and Purvis, the droid chief, had. Once Purvis recovered from the stun blast, he could check on the Zeds and fix any damage the intruder had managed to inflict. In the meantime, Sheqoa and Villachor would go into the vault—alone if necessary—and guard the safe and Xizor’s precious blackmail files.

Unless Purvis was part of the plot.

Sheqoa glared at the fancy hallway. A nice, complicated Festival of Four Honorings had suddenly become a maze of spinners within spinners within spinners. With Qazadi and his hidden agenda on one end and someone throwing bribe credits at the Marblewood staff on the other, he no longer had a clue as to whom he could trust.

“Master Sheqoa?”

Sheqoa pulled his lips back in a snarl. He
absolutely
didn’t trust this one. “What do you want, Barbas?” he growled, not bothering to turn around or even slow down.

“We have a message from His Excellency,” Barbas said. There was the soft sound of hurrying footsteps, and Barbas and one of Qazadi’s other guards—Narkan, Sheqoa tentatively identified him—came up on Sheqoa’s sides. “His Excellency requests the pleasure of your presence.”

“His Excellency will have to wait,” Sheqoa told him shortly. “Right now we’ve got a possible crisis on our hands.”

“A crisis for Master Villachor and Marblewood?” Barbas asked pointedly. “Or a crisis for Master Lapis Sheqoa?”

Sheqoa shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Then let me make it clearer,” Barbas said. “The woman you sent to us has been making some fascinating statements to His Excellency. One of those statements is that she can’t remember seeing your key pendant for at least an hour before Master Villachor finally noticed it was missing.”

Sheqoa felt a surge of contempt over his anger. “And you believed her? A kriffing thief, and you actually
believed
her?”

“Yes, about that,” Barbas said. “We’ve examined her thoroughly and have found nothing. No hint of tracking dye; no fingersnips, or even marks where fingersnips might have been attached; no weapons, tools, or contraband of any sort. As far as we can tell, she’s nothing more than the brainless social floater that she appears.”

“Then dig deeper,” Sheqoa growled. “She’s the thief. I know it.”

“And His Excellency would be delighted to have you prove that to him,” Barbas said. “This should take only a few minutes of your time.”

“I don’t think so,” Sheqoa said, and stopped dead in his tracks.

Barbas and Narkan were caught completely by surprise, each of them taking another step before they could react. They stopped, turned to face Sheqoa—

And froze at the sight of his drawn blaster.

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen,” Sheqoa said into the taut silence. “I’m going to the vault, and I’m going to confirm that the safe and its contents are secure. After that, if Master Villachor feels he can dispense with my services for the few minutes you mentioned, I’ll be happy to answer any questions His Excellency has for me.” He lifted the barrel of his blaster a couple of centimeters. “You can come with me, you can return to His Excellency and wait, or you can die. Your choice.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Barbas said darkly.

“We have two escaped prisoners and possibly another intruder inside these walls,” Sheqoa reminded him. “One of them could easily have picked up a blaster.”

Barbas’s lips twitched in a small smile. “Very well,” he said. “We accept your gracious invitation. After all, the most valuable item in the safe is His Excellency’s, so it only makes sense for us to help you secure it.” He gestured down the hall. “Lead the way.”

Sheqoa brushed past them, jamming his blaster back into its holster as he did so. Barbas could smile all he wanted, but Sheqoa knew the other wouldn’t forget this.

That was okay. Neither would Sheqoa.

Aziel’s landspeeder hadn’t been nearly as easy to slice as Dozer had made it sound. Far from it. But he was the best, he was determined, and Black Sun really
did
need to spend their credits on better security.

Still, he could hear the approaching footsteps on the duracrete by the time he finally finished and rolled across the floor to safety.

Winter was waiting for him five rows over, crouched behind a classic and lovingly restored Incom T-24. “Nothing like cutting it straight to the wire,” she murmured.

“Keeps the heart pumping,” he murmured back, peering around the T-24’s ventral fin and wondering briefly whether
its
owner had opted for a decent security system. There were twelve of them striding across the floor, including Aziel. The whole contingent, if Rachele’s earlier estimate of their numbers was correct. Wrapped around Aziel’s waist was a hip pouch that presumably held the cryodex.

“What’s the plan?” Winter asked.

“First part of every plan is always the same,” Dozer told her, unfolding the control pad for the remote he’d hooked into the landspeeder’s system. The timing here was going to be critical. “You separate the goodies from the people hired to guard them.”

“If you mean you’re hoping he gets into that airspeeder all by himself, that’s not going to happen,” she warned. “Back at Marblewood, the driver and two guards always got in the same time he did.”

“I know,” Dozer said. “We’ll just have to do what we can with what we’ve got.”

The first human in line stopped at Aziel’s landspeeder and climbed in the driver’s door. As he did so, the next man in line passed him and opened the rear passenger door. He climbed in and was followed by Aziel, who was followed in turn by the next man in line. The rest of the guards waited until both doors were closed, then headed toward the other three landspeeders. Straining his ears, Dozer heard the first landspeeder’s engine activate.

And in the half second between the activation and the driver keying in his power train access, Dozer hit the reroute switch on his pad.

With a roar, the engines kicked to full power. Keying in the boost and twisting the level control all the way over, Dozer sent the vehicle leaping straight up to slam hard into the duracrete ceiling.

The guards were good, all right. Not a single one of them wasted time gaping at the landspeeder’s sudden and inexplicable movement. Instead, all eight snatched out their blasters and spread out, looking for whoever was responsible for the jacking.

A second later, they were scrambling frantically for cover as Dozer dropped the landspeeder squarely into their midst.

“You got one,” Winter called softly from her new position at the T-24’s nose. “The rest are taking cover between other vehicles.”

Where Dozer couldn’t get at them. But it was an obvious defensive move, and he’d expected it. All he’d really wanted to do was slow them down and get them reacting instead of thinking.

Because it was time now to get them away from him. Lifting the landspeeder back up above the general vehicle level, waggling it violently back and forth to keep the passengers flopping around inside, he sent it careening across the garage toward the two-vehicle wreck he and Winter had assembled earlier.

With the perfect mix of frustrated anger and unthinking reaction he’d hoped for, the whole batch of guards rose from their hiding spots and tore off after it.

Dozer smiled tightly. Perfect. Now all he had to do was keep the vehicle bouncing around enough that the driver couldn’t get to the engine kill switch, let the guards go hunt for the jacker who they naturally assumed was somewhere near the vehicle’s end point, and then fly it back here. Before the guards could return he should be able to flip the thing over on its head, pop the door, grab the cryodex from Aziel’s pouch while the Falleen and his guards were still too dazed to do anything, and get the hell out of here.

“Watch it—three of them are getting into one of the other landspeeders,” Winter warned.

Dozer felt his smirk turn into a wince. Okay, so Aziel’s guards weren’t as dumb as he’d thought. They were hedging their bets, one group handling the ground-level search while another went airborne.

Which meant he had less time than he’d thought to finish this up. “Can you hotwire an airspeeder?” he asked Winter.

“Probably,” she said, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her looking around. “Any one in particular?”

“Never mind,” Dozer said, backing up to her and thrusting the control pad into her hands. “Forward—backward—sideways—wiggle—boost,” he said briefly, touching each control to identify it. “Keep it over there, and keep it moving.”

“Dozer—”

“And if it drops out of the sky, that means the driver’s killed the engine, and we give it up and run,” he added, glancing over the nearest parked vehicles. The OS-20 two vehicles over, he decided.

“Dozer—incoming!”

He spun back around. A black airspeeder was roaring through the unblocked entrance, with two more hovering in guard positions behind it. The first vehicle stopped just inside the garage as the driver apparently paused to assess the situation.

“They’re Villachor’s,” Winter said tensely. “The license tags—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dozer cut her off, snatching back the control pad. “Get us a vehicle—I’ll hold them off.” The new arrival finished his assessment, turned toward Aziel’s hovering landspeeder—

And twisted hard to the side, trying to get out of the way, as Dozer sent the jacked vehicle shooting straight at him.

The other pilot almost made it. Aziel’s vehicle caught his fender a glancing blow, bouncing the vehicle into the side wall with a grinding crash. A flicker of motion caught Dozer’s eye: Aziel’s other landspeeder was off the floor now, boosts at full power, heading toward the jacked one.

And with that, Dozer’s numbers had suddenly gone straight to zero. With two other vehicles in the game and two more hovering outside waiting for their chance to join in, it was only a matter of time before they’d be able to box Aziel’s jacked vehicle in long enough for the driver to untangle himself from the seats and get to the kill switch.

It was now or never.

“Cover,” he snapped, and turned the control over hard. The jacked airspeeder reversed direction, slamming again into the newcomer. Dozer switched back to forward motion and ran it straight toward where he and Winter were crouching. Peripherally, he noted that the two vehicles outside had disappeared somewhere. He brought the jacked vehicle almost to them, rammed it one final time into the ceiling, and then flipped it over and sent it crashing to the floor in front of them.

He had no idea how long it would take the men and Falleen inside to recover from that double punch. He also had no intention of hanging around long enough to find out. Jumping up from his crouch, he ran to the turtled vehicle, keyed the lock control, and pulled open the door.

The landspeeder’s interior was nearly as much of a mess as its exterior. Apparently Aziel had had a miniature refreshment bar set up for his convenience, the contents of which were now scattered or dripping across the fancy seats.

But none of that mattered. All that mattered was that the cryodex was fastened around a dazed Falleen’s waist, and there were no blasters pointed at him. Unfastening the hip pouch, Dozer ducked back out and sprinted toward the turbolifts. No time to get an airspeeder now, he knew, even if there’d been anywhere to go with it. Their only chance was to try to beat the pursuit out of the garage and take their chances on the ground.