Star Wars: Shadow Games (16 page)

“What were you doing—spice?”

She shook her head.

“That weird guy? Were you and he—?”

She smiled but shook her head again. Well, that tallied with what Eaden had sensed. Dash found that more of a relief than he was comfortable with.

“Then what,
Night Cat
?”

Javul adopted a look of long-suffering patience. “Everybody uses pseudos in places like that. The guy’s was
Rancor’s Wrath
. It’s just a bar.”

“Just a bar with enough dark spots, strobe lights, and hypersound to give an assassin all the cover he could ever ask for.”

She lowered her gaze, turned back to her mirror.

He had her on the ropes and knew it. He pressed his advantage. “You didn’t think of that, did you? What if whoever made the attempt on your life knows you well enough to know you’d go out to blow off steam? What if they followed you?”

She stopped, frozen in the act of fluffing out her short hair. After a moment of silence, she lowered her hands and turned to face him. Her face was almost albino white. “Do you think someone did? Other than you and Eaden?”

“No. You’re still alive.”

“Right.” She took a deep breath. “Right.”

Dash sat down on the foot of her bed. “Javul, listen to me. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Before, the stuff that happened—the lilies, the mail, even the fake emergency—none of it was deadly. But this last one—that was potentially fatal.”

She nodded. “Yeah. I get that.”

“And?”

She shrugged artlessly.

“Blast it, Javul, you’re not a child! You may think of this—this crazy behavior as
slipping the leash
but it’s likely to get you killed. The
leash
is what keeps you alive.”

“Yeah. I get that, too, believe it or not. But here’s the problem. Right now, I don’t know who I can’t trust. I only know who I
can
trust.” She looked him square in the eye. “That’s a select group. It includes you and Eaden and Leebo.”

“Okay. So, what’re you going to do?”

She took another deep breath. “I’m going on with my tour, Dash, because I don’t have a choice. I’ll just have to … keep my eyes open, I guess.”

“You
guess.
”

“Can I sleep now? I’m really, really tired.”

She looked it.

He stood. Shook his head. Impotent anger roiled his gut. “You’re crazy, lady.”

He thought he heard her crying as he left her room.

T
HE NEXT MORNING A CREW CONSISTING MOSTLY OF
droids broke down the concert rig and loaded it back into the tour’s two vessels. Reloading took until early afternoon.
Deep Core
, being the slower of the pair, was packed up first and sent on her way.
Nova’s Heart
left Rodia two hours later bound for Christophsis, where Javul planned to do a special open-air performance using the natural properties of the planet’s crystal formations to enhance her holographic and photonic displays.

Arruna recalibrated their communications system to screen for peculiarities in the carrier waves coming out of Rodian space control (and any other source), and Bran Finnick kept a close watch on the live chatter the flight controllers were routing to their helm.

Even with those precautions, Dash was nervous. That whoever was after Javul could dance into Rodian space control and issue spurious orders to incoming vessels implied a level of authority that made his head hurt. He wouldn’t relax until they’d engaged the hyperdrive.

Traveling at flank speed, they’d just cleared the Rodian system, when the proximity alarm sounded.

Captain Marrak sat bolt upright in his command chair, his eyes on the main viewport. “Chaos take it!” he shouted. “Evasive maneuvers!
Now!
”

Finnick leapt for his controls and executed a hard roll nintey degrees to starboard.

Through the viewport, Dash saw a small, dart-like
ship stooping toward them at an extreme angle. It was matte gray—almost invisible against the roiling blur of stars—and unmarked.

How the
…?

Nova’s Heart
rolled to starboard again as a series of blue-green charged-particle bolts zapped from beneath the little ship’s prow. The
Heart
jumped and shimmied. Klaxons sounded; Captain Marrak checked his instruments and swore in Zabraki.

“We’re losing pressure. Looks like the cargo area.”

The bridge comm bleeped. It was Mel, confirming their worst fears. “We’ve had a blowout down here. Outer cargo hatch went, damaged the air lock. Oto was able to get a patch on the door, but we don’t dare go anywhere until we can secure it.”

“I’m on my way down,” said Marrak.

Dash followed him into the lift, and they went down to the cargo hold together. As they exited the lift, the cargo master’s Otoga 222 unit was in the process of making fast a hard seal around the edges of the large, clear duraplast bubble he’d affixed as an emergency patch. Mel was checking the seal by dragging a piece of diaphanous fabric over it, looking for flutters and drag on the thin cloth.

“What’s the damage?” Marrak asked the moment he was out of the lift.

Mel finished his survey of the patch job and straightened to face the two men. “Not sure, but it looks as if there was some warping and we lost a little hull integrity right around the hatch. What happened?”

“We were attacked,” Dash said.

“
Attacked
? By who?”

“Unknown,” said Captain Marrak. “It was a small ship, unmarked. How bad is it?”

“Bad enough,” said Mel. “I’m not sure we’re safe to go into hyperspace. At least not for the long haul.”

Dash moved to the bubble patch and peered through it, scanning the inner hatch. A spot about a meter in length seemed to be the only part of the inner hull that was visibly damaged. Looking beyond the clear surface of the patch and through the air lock window, he could see the emptiness of space and the mangled frame of the blown hatch. The worst damage to the outer frame was also about shoulder height on the left side.

The hatch frame was bent outward.

“That was a lucky shot,” said Mel. “Gunner must’ve been a pro.”

“He had help,” Dash said, turning from his inspection.

Both men stared at him.

“The hatch frame is pushed
out
. That means there was some sort of explosion on the
inside
of the air lock.”

Mel’s pale eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. Take a look for yourself.”

Mel moved to peer through the plastic bubble for a moment, then shook his head. “He’s right, Captain. This is getting uglier by the minute.”

“It’s worse than ugly if we can’t get into hyperspace. We’re stranded over Rodia. It would take forever to get to Christophsis on sublight power alone. We could limp back to Rodia.”

“We’re not going back to Rodia.” Dash blurted the words before he could think better of it.

The Zabrak raised one brow.

“That might be exactly what the saboteur intended. Need I remind you of what happened on our first approach to Rodia? You really want to let them take another shot at us?”

“Can we chance going to hyperspace?” the captain asked.

Mel pursed his thin lips. “Well, I’d have to consult with Arruna, but it’s possible we can … if we don’t try too long a jump. I mean, we could probably make it to
Christophsis, but there’s no major SoroSuub repair facility there. We could get a few dents hammered out or get some scarring planed and polished, but we’ll need to replace both the inner and outer hatches.”

The captain nodded. “Then the most logical place to head for would be Edic Bar. The SoroSuub facility there could set this thing to rights better than anybody.”

Mel shook his head. “I can almost guarantee we wouldn’t make it that far.”

Captain Marrak blew out a gust of air. “Exquisite. What about short jumps, though? We can make it to Christophsis, you thought. Fine. We do that. The rest of our jumps are relatively short—”

“Bannistar to Bacrana?” said Dash. “Not my definition of short.”

The corner of Mel’s mouth twitched. “No, it’s not. Besides, cumulative stress is just as bad as prolonged stress in cases like this. The ship essentially has a hole in her side. I’ll send a droid out to patch that, of course, but it’s still not going to take well to the rigors of hyperspace travel. I’d advise against making more than one jump with her in this condition.”

He was right. Captain Marrak acknowledged it with a nod. “I suppose the most logical thing would be to go to Christophsis and keep our appointed schedule. We’ll be there for four days. Maybe during our stay we might make better repairs or locate a replacement hatch or find some other solution to the problem.”

Mel snorted. “Like what—a whole new ship?”

Marrak’s expression said that he wouldn’t consider it out of the question. “Time to bring Javul into the conversation.”

Javul stared at the tabletop before her as if their options were laid out there for her to sort through. Dash had to admit that none of them looked very good.

Javul agreed. She looked up at the group gathered around the table in the crew’s commons, and said, “Tatooine is within reach. We’ll go there.”

Everyone stared at her. Everyone being Dash, Eaden, Mel, Captain Marrak, Bran Finnick, Arruna Var, and Lady Spike. Well, Eaden didn’t so much stare as blink slowly and waggle a couple of head-tresses in Javul’s direction, but the general mood was one of disbelief.

“What’s on Tatooine?” asked the captain.

“A ready supply of scruffy-looking freighters,” said Javul without hesitation.

Dara was nodding. “Sure. I should’ve thought of that myself. Makes perfect sense.”

“No, it doesn’t!” objected Finnick. “What we need is a replacement air lock. Yeah, you might be able to get a stopgap one on Tatooine, but that’s not really a solution, is it?”

“Hence the term
stop-gap
,” said Spike.

“And it’s better than no air lock at all,” Dash pointed out.

“Hear me out,” Javul said, holding up her hands to quiet dissension. “We’re not going to make it to Edic Bar. It makes more sense to me to send the
Deep Core
on to Christophsis while we go back to Tatooine, pick up a freighter capable of handling this load, then rejoin
Deep Core
. We could have a new air lock sent from Edic Bar and installed on Tatooine. I’m sure there are repair bays on Tatooine that could handle the job.”

“Any number of them,” Dash said. “In fact, the guy who’s working on
Outrider
for me is one of the best.”

“Great. Then maybe he can work on
Nova’s Heart
. And while he’s at it, he can make sure there aren’t any more hidden booby traps aboard.”

Dash blinked. He hadn’t thought of that, but it made perfect sense.

Captain Marrak said, “All right, yes. That seems reasonable.
With the repairs done we can rejoin you on one of the later tour stops. No later than Corellia, I would hope.” He rose from the table. “I’ll have the helm reverse course immediately.”

The rest of the group dispersed, returning to their duties, but when Dash and Eaden rose to leave, Javul put out a hand to stop them. She watched as the commons cleared, then turned to Dash.

“You said this engineer was working on your ship—the
Outrider
. How close is she to being refitted?”

“I’m not certain. That is, I’m not sure how much work Kerlew’s done on her. I, uh, wasn’t able to pay the full amount he needed to finish the repairs. That’s why I’m working for you, if you recall.”

“Of course. If I were to pay for the repairs, would the
Outrider
be able to handle the contents of the
Heart
’s hold?”

Dash exchanged glances with Eaden, who gave the Nautolan approximation of a shrug.

“Absolutely. With room to spare.”

“Is she fast?”

“The fastest.”

“I think you’re biased. Let me get a second opinion.” She turned to Eaden. “Is she as fast as he thinks?”

“Quite nearly so. There might be one or two as fast.”

Dash glared at him.

“But none appreciably faster,” Eaden concluded.

Javul nodded. “All right, then. When we get back to Tatooine, we’ll look into resurrecting your ship. We’ll see if the
Outrider
can get us to Christophsis on time.”

When Javul left the crew’s commons, Dash let out a hoot of laughter and drummed exuberantly on the tabletop. “Did you hear that? Did you
hear
that? We’re gonna get the
Outrider
back. And it’s not gonna cost us a single millicred.”

“You’re celebrating?” Eaden asked blandly. “You
realize, of course, that our lady friend’s enemies will continue to try to get to her. Are you really happy to have to transport her aboard our own ship?”

Thoughts of the
Outrider
with holes in her hull brought Dash up short. His smile faded. “Anyone ever tell you you’re the biggest killjoy in the galaxy?”

Within half an hour of docking on Tatooine, Dash was in Kerlew’s facility promising him payment in full for
Outrider
’s retrofit. Kerlew was pleased. Dash was pleased. Everyone was pleased … until Kerlew gave his estimate of how long it would take to complete repairs on the hyperdrives.

“A
week
?” Dash gasped.

“More or less.”

“I need
less
, Ker. A
lot
less. As much less as you can manage. My client needs to be on Christophsis in four days.”

Kerlew gave him a wry look. “It takes a day and a half to get from Tatooine to Christophsis. That would leave me two days to do the repairs. I’m good, but I’m not that good. Besides, I’ve got other jobs—”

“Put them on hold. She’ll pay more if you give
Outrider
priority.”

Kerlew was skeptical. “She’s got that kind of money?”

“You have no idea. This is big, Ker. And important.”

The mechanic looked up at the
Outrider
. She sat in the middle of the bay, her engines completely disassembled. He sighed. “Okay, I’ll give it my best shot. But I’ll need the credits up front. I’m going to have to buy new power couplings for the starboard and central drives, and you know how Watto is about being paid up front.”