Star Wars: Shadow Games (18 page)

“Three … that we found. All supposedly suffocated.” She crossed her arms over her chest as if she were cold.

“So what did you do?”

“What I told you before. I went to the Imperial Security Bureau. They raided my ship, confiscated things and people, and …” She hesitated, took a deep breath. “They made some arrests within Black Sun that netted several lieutenants in the central organization and came oh-so-close to Kris himself. My tours have gone off without a hitch ever since.”

“Until now,” Dash noted. “And I admire how you were able to use that pun with a straight face. So you didn’t just embarrass old Hitch and lose him a courier vessel; you almost got him fried.”

“I did.”

“And you put a hole in Black Sun’s operations.”

“I did that, too.”

“So this is revenge for Kris.”

“Of the worst kind, Dash. He’s basically giving me two choices: come back into the fold and be a good little soldier—or die. He doesn’t just want my ship. He wants me.”

“And it’s payback for messing with Black Sun, too, isn’t it?”

She looked so lost for a moment, he almost put his arms around her. Instead he put his hands on his hips, hoping he looked intimidating. “Admit it, Javul. It’s not
just Hitch Kris who’s after you, is it? It’s Black Sun itself. It’s Prince Xizor.”

She lowered her eyes, folded her arms across her breasts, and nodded.

“Okay. So you’ve told me what I wanted to know. Now I’ll tell you what I know. I know that the cargo hold air lock blew out from the inside.”

Her face paled and she sat down on the edge of a table. “The—the emergency jettison system?”

“Mel thinks it was triggered.”

She swallowed, peering up at him through her lashes. “By what?”

“The attack may have damaged it, but someone wanted to make sure it blew. Someone aboard the
Nova’s Heart
. Looks like someone may have planted a small charge in one of the four outer hatch fail-safe mechanisms. Whether it was blown from inside or triggered by the laserfire doesn’t really matter. Either way—”

“Either way someone has access to my ship—either a stowaway or a mole among my crew.” She glanced up at him, eyes glittering. “The cargo. If we move it to Han’s ship—”

Han
already, was it? “I’m one step ahead of you. Mel and Oto are checking every crate as it leaves the hold. And you said it yourself—it’s not just Hitch who’s had access to the
Nova’s Heart
.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “I get that.”

After a beat, he asked, “Have you thought about who’s coming with us on the
Falcon
?”

She hit him with a dazzling smile that was so unexpected, his pulse kicked up a notch. “Us? Does that mean you’re still my security chief?”

“Yeah, I’m still your security chief. Who’s coming along for the ride?”

“Mel, Nik, Dara, you, Eaden, and Leebo. Mel will
bring Oto and a few of the cargo droids, of course. Everyone else can go with
Nova’s Heart.
”

He looked at her with growing admiration. She really had thought this through. She had the crew she needed and a decent chance of leaving the mole behind on her own ship. He wondered if there was any chance of figuring out who that mole was before the
Heart
was spaceworthy.

“I’m going to go help Mel and Oto,” he said. “I’ll bring Leebo along.” He reactivated the droid.

Leebo straightened up, optics brightening. “Had enough?” he asked.

“Come on,” Dash said, and strode from the room.

Leebo clambered to his feet, servos whining. “Humans,” he said to Javul, “fight dirty.” He followed Dash, the MSE unit scuttling along behind him.

They lifted from Tatooine as soon as the gear was stowed safely. Mel grumbled about the unfamiliar dimensions and arrangement of the
Falcon
’s holds and, after checking every centimeter of each compartment with Dash and Nik at his side, he went off to talk to Javul, who was settling into her quarters on the lower deck.

With Eaden up in the cockpit with Han, and Leebo at a computer terminal “getting acquainted” with the ship and her various modifications, Dash found himself alone with Oto. It was as good a time as any to probe, he figured.

“So tell me, Oto, how long have you been touring with Charn?”

“Three standard years, sir,” said the droid, ticking off items on the manifest Mel had put him in charge of.

“And before that?”

“I have been attached to Mistress Charn’s service since she purchased
Nova’s Heart.
”

“Yeah? What about your boss, Melikan. He always been with the tour?”

“No, sir. Yanus Melikan was previously with another vessel.”

“Yeah? Merchant or Imperial?”

“Merchant, sir.”

He’d have to check that out. “What about Nik?”

The droid made a faint clicking sound that in Leebo, Dash would have read as a sigh. “What about Nik, sir?”

“Where’d you pick him up?”

“He joined the crew about a year ago. Cargo Master Melikan took him on.”

Dash thought about that. “He seems kind of young for an apprentice. Still in school—doesn’t he have any parents?”

“I believe he is an orphan. I have no further knowledge of the young man.”

“I—uh—found him doing his homework really late one night in Mel’s office. He do that often?”

“Quite often.” Oto’s flat mechanical voice somehow conveyed disdain. “He is likely to procrastinate.”

“Mel likes him, though.”

The droid didn’t answer.

“Mel seems like a good guy. Steady, reliable, predictable. Is he?”

Oto made the clicking sound again. “I am unable to determine if he is a good guy. However, I would say that he
is
steady and reliable.”

“Not predictable?” Dash jumped on the omission. “Does he do … unexpected things sometimes?”

“He occasionally makes requests for which I do not see a rationale.”

“Yeah? Such as …”

The droid looked at him blankly.

Blasted mechanicals. Sometimes you had to lead them
by their tin noses. “Nik once told me that Melikan tells him not to notice things. Does he ever tell you not to notice things?”

“He occasionally requests that I do not take note of certain comings and goings.”

“Like when Javul leaves the ship in disguise?”

The droid’s optics blinked. “I would not have noticed, sir.”

No, he wouldn’t have, having received a direct order not to. “What else might you not have noticed?”

Click
. “If I have not noticed something, sir, how would I know what it was that I have not noticed?”

With the beginnings of a headache, Dash wandered to the crew’s quarters, turning the conversation over in his head. Yanus Melikan was in the picture-perfect position to wreak all sorts of havoc on the ship. Could it possibly be coincidence that several of the episodes had involved the hold or its contents? Mel had an apprentice who was young and loyal and a droid who was—well, a droid—and he was close to Javul.

Dash stopped on that thought, spinning it on various mental axes as he went to the galley and poured himself a cup of caf. He sipped it, wrinkling his nose. Wretched brew. No more than he’d expect of Solo’s bucket of bolts. He took the caf to the single table in the middle of the common area and sat down. Blowing steam off the top of the cup, he tried to work out the logistics of Mel’s guilt or innocence in the string of sabotage.

The cargo master was in an almost unassailable position when it came to Javul. She trusted him and he protected her peculiar “comings and goings”—perhaps for his own purposes?

And here, both logic and logistics broke down. Mel was
close
to Javul. So close that if he was working for someone who wanted her dead, she’d be dead. What did that mean? Did it mean that Mel was guilty only of being
very protective of his employer, or did it mean that he was the mole but whoever was pulling his strings didn’t really want Javul dead? They just wanted it to
look
like they wanted her dead.

“Why would they want it to look like they wanted her dead?” he murmured.

“Herding the nerfs, I would imagine.”

Dash shook hot caf from his hand and glared at Eaden, who leaned in the hatchway of the crew’s commons observing him. “
Never
sneak up on a guy like that. You could get yourself shot.”

“How so? You didn’t even sense my presence.”

“I was thinking.”

“You were also talking to yourself. Neither bodes well for your sanity.”

“Stow it. What do you mean by
herding the nerfs
?”

Eaden shrugged and moved to the beverage server to pour himself a cup of some weird-smelling tea. “Just what has been suggested before: that it is not Javul Charn’s death that is desired, but the modification of her behavior.”

“That’d be true if we were just talking about a jealous boyfriend, but we’re not. She admitted to me that it’s a lot more serious than that.” He leaned across the table toward his friend. “She’s in hot lava with all of Black Sun. Apparently her attempts to get shed of Kris caused her to go to the ISB and, in turn, brought down several of Xizor’s Vigos. You know how much Xizor hates the Imperials.”

“With as good a reason as you have for hating Black Sun.”

It was a quiet remark, delivered in a gentle voice, but it struck Dash all the way to the core. He would not feel this. He would not let his own entanglement with Black Sun make him crazy. He’d controlled the impulse to strike out at Hitch Kris just for breathing the same air;
he’d intended to control the impulse to take on Prince Xizor, but …

“It’s not the same thing. My family was no threat to anyone. We were just … in Xizor’s way.”

“
His
family was no threat to the Empire. They just happened to be too close to Vader’s ill-fated bioweapons lab. You might say his family died of hubris and stupidity.”

“Yeah? And what would you say mine died of? Greed?”

Eaden was silent for a moment, then said: “You think Xizor is involved with our current situation?”

“I can
smell
him on this, Eaden. Look, what if it’s like this—what if there are two parties involved here? Two motives?”

“Involved in the sabotage?”

“Yeah. Because it doesn’t make sense to me any other way. You’re right—it seems as if someone is trying to herd the nerf back into line. But some of these incidents could have caused real harm. What if there are two different agendas at work here? What if Kris wants Javul back, but someone else wants her dead? What if there are
two
saboteurs?”

Eaden considered that, his prehensile tresses eerily still. “If that someone is Prince Xizor,” he said, “then you may find yourself in his way again.”

“I wasn’t in his way before,” Dash growled. “I was collateral damage. He was after RenTrans. I just got taken down by shrapnel. He doesn’t give a womp rat’s ass about me personally.”

Which, odd as it seemed to him at the moment, galled. It would have been somehow comforting to be able to say that he was a personal enemy of Prince Xizor—that the Black Sun Underlord hated him. In reality, the Falleen didn’t even know that he existed, much less care. The Rendars had served their purpose. His brother’s ship had been sabotaged and used to destroy Imperial
property, which in turn had ruined the family and put their business on the auction block for Xizor to scoop up. Just a day in the life of a Vigo.

“Perhaps we should walk away from this, Dash,” said Eaden. “If Javul Charn is going to come into direct conflict with Prince Xizor, it might be best if you were not in her immediate vicinity to become collateral damage yet again.”

Walk away
? The thought sat heavily in his gut for a moment until he rooted it out. “I don’t walk away, Eaden. Especially when someone else is counting on me to stay in the game.”

“This is not a game.”

Dash glanced up at the Nautolan sharply. “You pickin’ up something? Y’know …” He made a circular motion indicating the ether.

Eaden frowned. Or at least his face did something as close to a frown as a Nautolan face could perform. “I am … uneasy,” he admitted.

“Why?”

“Uncertain. There is a pattern to events I have not yet recognized, but do not like.”

“Uncertain,” repeated Dash. “I’m really beginning to hate that word. I’m uncertain myself—uncertain about who’s doing what to whom.” He filled Eaden in then, on his thoughts about Mel’s possible involvement. “I mean, think of it: He’s in a perfect position to plant explosives, sneak things into containers, allow access to the ship.
But
he clearly can’t be the one who wants Javul dead or she’d already be that way. In fact, he may be protecting her after a fashion—maybe even on Kris’s behalf. Who knows?”

“A tangled scenario. And our most recent sabotage?”

“I don’t know. It could have been catastrophic, I suppose. But then Mel’s the one who told me that.”

“What would be his motive for such sabotage?”

Dash leaned back in his chair and stared at the bulkhead above him. “Well, let’s catalog the effects it had on the tour. We had to either repair the ship or hire a new one; we’ve had to lose most of the crew, which may mean Javul is more vulnerable—or less, depending; we went to Tatooine.”

The Nautolan cocked his head. “Why Tatooine?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“You’re not entertaining the idea that Han Solo—”

“No. Han can be a jerk at times, but he’s honorable. He wouldn’t deal with Black Sun. Not even if you tied him to the
Falcon
’s plasma vent and threatened to take off.”

“Then …”

“Isn’t it obvious? If we’d gone directly to Christophsis, we’d have stayed with the other ship and the entourage. This way, Javul gets cut out from the rest of the nerfs. This way, we’re on our own.”

D
ASH WAS NERVOUS
. N
O, NOT NERVOUS—HE NEVER GOT
nervous, he told himself. He was on edge. Waiting.

He hated waiting. He was really and truly bad at it, and right now it was all he could do. Mostly, his waiting took the form of wandering the ship, poking his nose everywhere, and staying close to Javul. The latter was no big hardship, but it did put him in the crossfire between Han Solo—who was trying to make time with the lovely holostar—and Spike, who was running interference against both of them. Thank the stars Han was usually engaged in the cockpit.