Star Wars: Shadow Games (15 page)

Not a peep from the other side.

A very bad, very dark feeling began to rise up from the pit of Dash’s stomach. In all likelihood, there was a mole in the crew … and the crew now knew about Javul’s escape route.

Cursing, he manually punched in the security override code for the lock. The door slid back, revealing the dimly lit living room.

“Stay out here in the corridor,” he told Leebo and stepped into the suite.

“And I wanted
so
badly to risk my life alongside you. But hey—you’re the boss.”

Dash ignored the droid as he moved deeper into the suite. The lights were on, but dimmed, and he knew before he looked that he wouldn’t find her. The bed hadn’t been slept in, the suite was empty, and she hadn’t gone past her guardian droid. That meant only one thing—it meant Dash Rendar was an idiot for not posting another guard at the far end of Javul’s no-longer-secret escape route.

“She’s gone,” he told Leebo tersely as he left the suite. “Roust Eaden, will you?”

“The last time I rousted Eaden, I ended up embedded in the bulkhead of his quarters.”

“This time it’ll be different.”

“How so?”

“Softer bulkheads. Now move!”

The droid moved off, grumbling, while Dash went next door and pinged Dara Farlion’s door … repeatedly. She answered within ten pings, her hair twice as spiky as usual, her eyes at half-mast. She was wrapped in a velvety-looking shawl.

“What’s up? Sheesh, Dash, you got a death wish? You’d better—”

“Javul is gone.”

“
What
?”

“She’s gone. Out through the escape hatch—I assume
willingly, though I could be wrong. There was no sign of a struggle, but I suppose someone could’ve slipped in and drugged her.”

Dara’s eyes flicked toward Javul’s door. “Not with the alarm system …”

“Do I need to remind you that someone has been able to get close enough to her to sabotage her props and rigging?”

“What d’you want me to do?”

“Get everybody up and accounted for. I’m going to see if she left any kind of trail.”

Eaden was just entering the hallway from their suite as Dash crossed back to Javul’s door.

“Leebo explained,” the Nautolan said, tying the sash around the waist of his tunic. “Down the hatch?”

“Yeah … and Leebo,” Dash told the droid, “stick with Spike. She’s gonna wake everybody up and make sure they’re all here.”

Dash and Eaden popped the door on Javul’s secret gangway and descended carefully to the cargo hold. Neither saw any indication of a struggle in the narrow passage. The hold was surprisingly eerie without most of its crates and containers, which were currently stored beneath the Holosseum stage, awaiting the morrow’s packing. Dash was surprised to find a light on in Mel’s office. He was more surprised to see that it was Mel’s apprentice cargo master, Nik, burning the midnight photons. The young Sullustan jumped almost his height out of his seat at the computer console when Dash leaned into the office through the open door.

“Where’s your boss?”

“Uh … sleeping. Like most people.”

“Yeah? Why aren’t
you
sleeping—like most people?”

“Schoolwork. Mel insists that I keep up my education.”

“You’re doing schoolwork in the middle of the night after a three-night gig?”

The kid looked guilty. “I … sort of procrastinated this week. ’Cause of the gig. Mel says I have to finish this tonight or I don’t get to help with tear-down.”

Dash shook his head.
Get to help
? Whatever happened to adolescent laziness?

“You been up for a while, kid?”

Nik nodded solemnly.

“You see anybody come through the cargo hold?”

The Sullustan’s big dark eyes shifted from Dash to Eaden and back. “Anybody?”

“Charn. Did you see Javul Charn down here tonight?”

The youngster nodded, looking guilty. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. She, um, she went out.”

“We
know
she went out. Was she alone?”

The youngster nodded again.

“Did she say where she was going?”

“I didn’t talk to her. She just came straight through and headed for the cargo bay hatch.”

This was like pulling teeth. “She see you?”

“Yeah. I went out on the catwalk and she saw me and put her finger to her lips and went on out.”

“And you didn’t think to wake up Mel or report the incident to Dara?”

“No, sir. I mean, it’s like Mel always says:
Whatever it was you just saw
—
you didn’t.
”

“Says that often, does he?”

“Often enough.”

“Well, I’m sure he doesn’t mean when something like this happens. Someone tried to kill our boss three days ago, Nik. Given that, she shouldn’t be out roaming around the city, should she?”

Nik had the good grace to look contrite. “No. I suppose not.”

“Okay, kid, listen—this is important. What was she wearing?”

“Uh, she was dressed pretty wild. Lot of makeup—that
glowy stuff around her eyes and a jewel in the middle of her forehead. She had this sparkly outfit on that …” A blush spread out across his dewlaps and over his large ears. “… Well, you could see through parts of it. And she was wearing one of those light-fiber hair things.”

“How long ago did she leave?”

Nik shrugged. “Sorry. I was doing homework. Lost track of time.”

Dash pulled out his comlink, called Leebo, and told him to let everyone go back to sleep. There’d obviously been no kidnapping. “I don’t suppose you saw which way she went when she left the landing park.”

Color suffused the Sullustan’s ears. “Actually, I did. I watched her all the way down the ramp and across the pad. I mean, I’ve never seen her dressed like that before. Ever.” He swallowed.

Dash scowled at him discouragingly, but he just shrugged.

“I think human girls are pretty. And Javul is one of the prettiest,” Nik defended himself.

“Which way did she go?”

“West. Toward Port Town.”

West toward Port Town led Dash and Eaden directly into a brightly lit warren of entertainment spots—cafés, music clubs, spice houses, pubs, gambling dens, and places that tried to corner the market by being all of the above. Middle of the night or no, the streets were alive with people of diverse species, drifting back and forth, staggering here and there, even dancing in the street. Equator City nightlife was in full swing.

The two men stopped at the top of the glittering main avenue to consider the sheer magnitude of the task before them. They had no idea when Javul had left the ship, where she was heading, or why. Which meant they were effectively groping in the dark.

“You got your comlink with you?” Dash asked Eaden.

The Nautolan nodded.

“Great. You take the right side of the street; I’ll take the left. If you see her or see anything that might—”

But Eaden was already gone, slipping into the traffic and somehow managing not to look horribly out of place despite his somber, almost monkish garb. Dash took a deep breath and muttered a prayer to any Corellian deities that might be eavesdropping. If that failed, he hoped maybe the Force might lend a hand if it had no more pressing business. He headed for the first establishment on the left side of the street.

Long after Dash had lost count of the number of doors he’d plowed through into too-bright or too-dim rooms, he came to the broad archway of a place that promised every delight. In fact, that was the name over the door:
EVERY DELIGHT
. Stepping through the entry, he realized it was a bazaar of sorts—a row of rounded arches along a broad central arcade, each decorated with a skillful painting that indicated what type of delight lay within.

Some of the doorways were bright and some were stygian or filled with shifting, muted light in a rainbow of hues; some blared music and some were silent or carried the sound of breezes or wind-bells or ocean tides. Dash moved slowly past the doorways, wishing he had some keen sixth sense that would light up like a targeting array when he neared his goal. Alas, he had no such sense, but Eaden did—sort of. Dash stepped into a niche that was half filled by a kinetic sculpture of something vaguely humanoid, then pulled out his comlink and called Eaden.

The Nautolan was there in short order, and Dash pointed him in the direction of the row of arches. “You’ve read Javul before—sort of. Think you could pick her out of a crowd?”

Eaden looked at him skeptically. “My sense is just that—a sense. It is not a scientific instrument.”

“Yeah, well—it’s all we’ve got.”

The Nautolan shrugged and started a slow walk down the broad, festively decorated gallery, his head-tresses turning this way and that in graceful unison. As they passed each doorway, he murmured a word or two about what he sensed from within.

“Dancing—much mindless celebration. Anger—ah, a gambling den, of course. Chaos—a spice parlor, I suspect …”

Toward the end of the bazaar, before a dark archway to the left, Eaden paused and tilted his head, his tresses moving in sinuous harmony. “Something is buried in there that does not belong.”

“Worth a look?”

In answer, Eaden moved through the arch, slipping past a clump of patrons clogging the entry. Dash noted their position in case he and Eaden should have to make a hasty exit. The large, long room was dark, lit by tiny table lights and wall sconces that only relieved the gloom within a bare meter radius. It created the effect of hundreds of little pools of illumination around which faces floated in the darkness like disembodied spirits. Occasionally, a hand or its equivalent would flash out into the light to snatch a treat from the array of containers on the table, then dart back into darkness.

There were other, smaller archways along the walls of the big room that hinted at privacy. All were protected by damping fields that served as curtains. You had to pass through the damper to see what was inside. Moving close to one of the fields raised the hair on Dash’s head—they were weak electrostatic fields as well, warning the careless wanderer not to enter.

Eaden led Dash straight to the far end of the room,
past little groups of people who talked, drank, smoked scented death sticks—and who seemed to be predatorily intent on one another. Reaching the wall, the Nautolan hesitated, his head tilting first this way then that.

“What is it?”

“Let’s try that one.” He tipped his head toward the door directly before them. It seemed silent inside, but that was an illusion—each patron could be, and probably was, listening to his, her, or its own personal soundtrack, beamed in tightwave hypersound.

Dash resisted the urge to fidget; the various fields were just strong enough to make him antsy. “But is
she
in there?”

“I don’t know. A certain … energy is within. Akin to what I felt earlier, when she spoke to Kris.”

“Well, then it must be her.” Dash took a step toward the doorway, only to be brought up short as a woman in a glittering and very revealing bodysuit stepped out. Pulses of light like little shivers of lightning ran through the fabric of the outfit, imprinting the shape of that body on Dash’s retinas. The light fed upward through a shock of electrostatically charged hair into a woven cascade of light-emitting filaments that rotated through all the colors of the visible spectrum.

She bumped into him, looked up with an apology on her lips, then gasped in recognition. “Dash? Eaden?”

“Well,” Eaden said, his tentacles weaving a complex pattern in front of her, “she’s not amnesiac.”

“Good.” Dash turned to Javul. “Here I was afraid it had to be amnesia, given that you must’ve forgotten what almost happened to you the other day or who showed up at your gig tonight.”

“Not here,” she said, putting a hand on his arm and glancing about.

“We’ve been looking all over—”

“You found me, okay? Now drop the big, bad bodyguard
routine, will you? A girl’s gotta slip the leash once in a while. Right?”

“Slip the leash?
Slip the leash
? Lady, I think you’ve slipped your—”

The darkness in the doorway Javul had just exited rippled and a tall, slender person of indeterminate gender and species stepped out into the room. On second look, his gender was unquestionably male, but his face was so thickly painted with the same glowing makeup that Javul wore and his hair—or were those feathers?—formed such a massive, wild cascade about his head and shoulders that all features were blurred except for a pair of enormous golden eyes.

“You okay, Night Cat?” the person asked. “These guys bothering you?”

“Night Cat?
Night
—
oof
!”

Eaden stepped adroitly in front of Dash to give his partner time to recover from the elbow he’d just received in the solar plexus. “We’re her co-workers.”

“Right,” Javul said. “I guess it’s time for us to get back to the conference hotel. C’mon, boys.” She turned on her heel and strode off down the length of the room, her stride snappy and quick, her hips swinging, her hair changing color rapidly. The two men gave her companion a last once-over before following her.

Dash and Eaden caught up with Javul simultaneously as she reached the outer mall. They flanked her in silence, Dash slipping his arm around her—he was
not
going to lose track of her again—and pulling her tightly to his side.

She laughed at him.

“What in the name of all that is patently idiotic were you doing out there after everything that’s happened?”

Dash paced behind Javul’s chair as she sat at her vanity console and removed her makeup. She turned off the
tiny generator that had charged her hair, peeled off prosthetics that made her nose longer and her face wider, and took out lenses that turned her eyes a pale mauve—a pastel version of the bodysuit she’d worn. That had been discarded as well, and she’d wrapped herself in a long, fluffy tunic that ended just above her knees.

“I told you. I was slipping the leash—blowing off steam. And I needed to do that
especially
after everything that’s happened. Do you have any idea what it’s like to come that close to dying?”

Dash stopped pacing and glared at her in the mirror.

She blinked back at him. “Oh. Of course you do. Sorry.”