Star Wars: Shadow Games (27 page)

After a brief look at the C&C—and a chance to admire the view from the bridge at the very top of the structure—they moved to the communal habitat areas, strolling along a relatively broad promenade lined with shops, restaurants, entertainment venues, and drinking establishments. Javul and D’Vox were in front chatting; Dash and Eaden, watchful, brought up the rear. D’Vox had just said something that caused Javul to laugh with feigned delight when a man wearing a uniform in even more disreputable condition than D’Vox’s strode up to the commander and blocked his path.

“We need to talk,” the man said to D’Vox, then gave Javul a scalding once-over through glittering dark eyes.

Dash and Eaden hurried their steps by mutual and silent agreement. The newcomer was almost as tall as D’Vox, but not nearly as well honed physically. He was big-boned, but not particularly muscular. He had a wild thatch of reddish brown hair, an unkempt beard, and a crazy gleam in his brown eyes. The way he looked at Javul made Dash’s hands twitch toward his blaster.

“You might have noticed,” said D’Vox, “that I’m engaged right now in showing our guest the station.”

“This can’t wait.” The newcomer’s gaze shifted from D’Vox to Dash and Eaden. His lip curled.

D’Vox sighed as if his patience were being tested to the utmost. “This is my security chief, Red Rishyk. You’ll have to forgive him. He’s singularly devoted to duty. Rishyk, this is—”

“Yeah, I know who she is,” Rishyk growled. “We need to talk.”

D’Vox turned to Javul. “I’ll only be a moment. Why don’t you wait for me in the cantina here?” He nodded toward a cheerfully decorated establishment just across the promenade, from which strains of relatively innocuous music rolled.

“Sure,” said Javul and led the way across the promenade,
walking with a bouncy dancer’s gait that made her hips sway and her hair ripple like silver fire. Dash and Eaden followed.

The cantina was crowded and had very tiny tables intended for one or two people—three in a pinch. Dash decided they were in a pinch. He snagged an extra stool and pulled it up to the table Javul had appropriated. She’d obviously chosen it for its location—it sat at the terrace rail, overlooking the promenade and allowing them to watch if not hear the dialogue between D’Vox and his chief of security. It did not look like a happy conversation.

All the muscles in Dash’s back tightened. He hoped that Javul and her entourage were not the subject matter. He glanced at Eaden, who wasn’t looking at the two Imperials, but was definitely “sniffing” at them with a couple of carelessly dangling tentacles.

“Anything?”

“No more than you’ve probably divined yourself. Rishyk is excited and angry about something. Though I suspect if I were to ask, Commander D’Vox would tell me that was his natural state.”

“You can’t tell what he’s angry about? Or what kind of anger it is?”

Javul made a face. “What
kind
of anger? There’s more than one?”

“Yeah. Is he mad because he just found out you’re a Rebel sympathizer or because someone put a buzz-bomb in his locker?” He turned his attention back to Eaden. “Any clues?”

“If we were all immersed in liquid, I might be able to tell you about the quality of his anger and excitement, but as it is …” He shrugged. “I am a Nautolan out of water.”

Javul threw back her head and laughed. Eaden made a funny hissing sound that Dash couldn’t interpret.

“What’s funny?” D’Vox was approaching the terrace railing from the promenade; Rishyk was nowhere to be seen.

“It was nothing. Eaden just made a joke,” said Javul.

D’Vox raised his eyes to scan the room behind them. “Quite the comedian, isn’t he? I see an empty table over there that you two could take,” he told Dash. “There’s really not room for four at this one.”

Dash met the other man’s gaze in a clash of wills. He held it until he felt Javul’s hand on his forearm.

“Dash, you and Eaden deserve a break. I’m sure I’m perfectly safe with Arno. This is his station, after all.”

No, Dash thought as he and Eaden moved to a table from which they could only barely see D’Vox and Javul, it
wasn’t
his station. It was the Empire’s station. But he’d be willing to bet Arno D’Vox sometimes had trouble remembering that.

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE HAVING DINNER WITH
D’Vox?” Dash stared at Javul with the same expression of disbelief his face always seemed to wear in her presence.

“You need a translation? I’m going to take a meal with the station commander.”

“Alone?”

She smiled and pulled a blue shimmer-wig on over her own pale hair, peering at herself in the vanity glass of the plush quarters D’Vox had assigned her. “Well, he sure didn’t invite my security chief. Or anyone else. Besides, I need you and yours to figure out the best way to get our property off the station.”

Dash sat down on the foot of the oversized bed. “Wait. You didn’t have that figured out?”

“We did, but I’m doubtful that plan’s still safe. I think it’s going to have to change.”

“What was the plan?”

In answer, Javul palmed the pendant she was wearing, opened it, and extracted a data wafer—presumably the same one she’d retrieved at the shrine of the Equilibrates. She held it up between thumb and forefinger. “This gives the exact location and identifying features of the container and the access codes required to get to it.”

“In Module 4B,” Dash guessed.

“Yes. Storage compartment nineteen, currently facing away from the control module. The
Nova’s Heart
was assigned a berth at that module, which would have made
picking up the container fairly easy. We’d stow some of our gear there and when we left we’d take the container with us. Now that won’t work. I need you and Mel and Eaden to come up with an alternative. Immediately, if not sooner.” She handed him the data wafer, which he pocketed.

“So how big is this thing?”

“It’s about two meters high by a meter wide by one and a half meters long. Full specs are on the data wafer.”

“Except for what’s in it, I’ll bet.”

“Except for that. At any rate, it’s small enough to move along even the narrowest catwalks.”

“If you can get D’Vox to move the modules.”

“Yes—if …” She turned back to the mirror to give herself an assessing look.

Dash thought she looked amazing. Hair rippling in opalescent shades of blue from azure to aqua, a bodysuit and flowing diaphanous robe to match. Her eyes, unaffected by special lenses, were a blue-tinged silver—twin moons.

He warned himself sternly to keep his head on straight. “Let me ask you something—did D’Vox seem different when he came back from his conversation with his security honcho?”

She shook her head. “No. Though I have to admit I had the same scare—that maybe Rishyk was contacted by Imperial High Command. But I somehow doubt it.”

“Why? This is an Imperial fuel dump, after all.”

“Yes, but it’s fringy. We chose this location for the pickup because of D’Vox’s reputation as a renegade. He’s not a by-the-regs kind of guy.”

“So I’ve noticed.” Dash shook his head. “Man, that Rishyk looks more like a pirate than most of the pirates I know.”

“D’Vox isn’t much cleaner,” said Javul, “and I’m not talking about his personal hygiene. According to Mel’s
intelligence associates, he’ll look the other way on just about anything for enough credits.”

“So if worse comes to worst …”

She shrugged. “We offer a bribe. I’d like to avoid that, though.”

“Why? You’ve got the credits, right?”

“Oh, I’ve got the credits. Better than that, I’ve got aurodium ingots. But if we have to pay D’Vox not to notice us, it means he’s
noticed
us. That’s just one more person who’s too close to the truth. It makes him a conscious factor in the success or failure of the mission. Someone else could pay him more to become both conscious and active. It’s better if we can just slide in under his sensors.”

“Right. Hugely popular holostar, big stage show—nothing to see here.”

She grinned at him. “I just dazzle ’em with my footwork. Or baffle them with banthaflop.”

Dash’s stomach knotted. “Make an excuse to have me with you tonight. Say there were attempts on your life—a crazy stalker. I mean, it’s true.”

She sobered quickly. “I can’t, Dash. You know I can’t. I need him to relax all that prickly suspicious male stuff he does when you’re hovering.”

“I do
not
hover.”

“You hover. And I’m grateful that you hover, but not tonight. Tonight you need to figure out a way to get to the package. Besides, I’ll have my comlink. If anything happens, I’ll call you.”

He had an idea. “Hey, I know. What if you double date? Take Mel and Spike with you.”

She cocked her head and made a face. “Spike?”

Dash rolled his eyes. “Oh, man, did I say that out loud? I meant Dara.”

“
Spike
?” Javul repeated.

Her laughter followed him from the room.

Javul wasn’t surprised to find that Arno D’Vox had chosen to take dinner in a very private dining room at the nadir of the station’s primary module. In fact, the restaurant was called The Nadir, and D’Vox’s private dining room had a breathtaking view of the planetoid below. This evening it was especially stunning—the rays of the wan star turned the thin atmosphere ruddy gold and painted the clouds around and beneath the station in myriad glorious hues. She could almost forget that down there, sunken into the misty twilight of Bannistar’s world, was a clutter of ugly refinery facilities. From here they were magical, twinkling with fey lights.

“Yes, even this grimy place has its beauty,” D’Vox said, as if reading her thoughts.

She looked up at him from her view of the planetoid and clouds and endless sky and accepted the seat he offered. The table sat at the edge of a hanging balcony of sorts suspended over an upside-down transparisteel dome.

“It really is beautiful,” she told him and indulged in a little apparent mind reading of her own. “And yes, I’m surprised. When you told me where we were going to have dinner, I’ll admit I was a little … skeptical.”

He sat down opposite her. “I’ve arranged for a variety of dishes to be brought out. I want to impress you, naturally, with my little domain.”

“Not so little,” she said, smiling. “You have an emperor’s view of the world. Or maybe even a god’s view.”

“How appropriate”—his gaze locked suggestively with hers—“since right now I’m looking at a goddess.”

Wow
 … 
that’s one of the corniest lines I’ve ever heard
. “Ooh, and silver-tongued, too.”

Their first course arrived at that moment, brought by a trio of protocol droids. The droids were three different models, and Javul suspected D’Vox had “recruited” them from Imperial diplomatic missions.

The food was, indeed, impressive. Well plated and fragrant, it had nothing of the flat taste of hydroponically grown food, and reminded Javul forcefully of how long it had been since she had eaten anything besides ship’s rations and auto-galley output.

“So,” her host said when the droids had withdrawn, “what brings you to Bannistar. I mean, whatever possessed you to book a performance here?”

“My tour coordinator said he owed one to the crew of Bannistar Station and that the population was underserved. I’m doing an interview here, too, tomorrow. Live. We usually have huge venues,” she added. “There’s hardly room here for half our rigging.”

“I’m disappointed.”

“I’m sorry, but you don’t have an indoor space big enough.”

“What about an outdoor space?”

She smiled, pleased he’d set himself up. That meant she didn’t have to do it. He’d think the whole thing was his idea.

“Well … I did do an outdoor concert on Christophsis …”

“There any way you could do one here?”

“Hmm. I’ll have to think about that. You know, this is excellent soup. What is it again—mynock?”

They found Han, at last, in a dimly lit, noisy cantina with discordant music that blared from every direction. To Dash it felt as if he were swimming in sound waves.

He crossed to the bar—where Han was deep in discussion with a female Wookiee and a much shorter male Advozse—and tapped the other pilot on the shoulder.

“What?” Han turned, blinking in surprise when he saw Eaden, Mel, Nik, and Leebo strung out behind Dash in a wobbly queue. He grimaced. “Do you guys mind? I’m trying to do some business here.”

The Advozse made a chortling sound and scratched at the base of the short, thick horn that crowned his hairless head. “Who your friends be?”

Dash ignored him. “We need to have a little conference about the package we’re supposed to pick up.”

“Maybe later. Right now I’m trying to make this trip worth my while.”

Dash flushed with sudden annoyance. “Javul’s not making it worth your while already?”

Han sighed. “All right, look. Lemme conclude my negotiations here and I’ll be right with you. Go … sit down over there.” He waved his hand toward a table in a particularly stygian corner. “Oh, and try not to look like a cadet review, okay?”

Fuming, Dash, turned to go. Han tapped him. “You couldn’t have left the kid on the ship?”