Star Wars: Shadow Games (34 page)

“Well? Was there any additional messaging going on there?”

Leebo shook his head, but he was tapping a metal finger against his faceplate. “No … he just sent the comm, but …”

“But what? He’s a ticking time bomb? He called Darth Vader directly? What?”

“Relax,” the droid said. “It was no big deal. Just a sort of odd background noise.”

Mel looked at the droid sharply. “Background noise? What sort of background noise?”

As if in answer to the question, the
Millennium Falcon
’s emergency klaxon sounded, prompting a shriek from Javul. All three humans in the bay pressed their hands over their ears.

Adding to the cacophony, Han’s voice blasted from the intercom: “Dash! Up here! Now! We have a problem.”

Dash bolted for the cockpit, gritting his teeth against the grating blare of the horn and the ache of his wounded leg. He threw himself through the hatch and into the copilot’s seat just as Han shut off the klaxon.

“What’s going on? Why aren’t we—?”

His eye caught on Han’s “problem,” then. A huge, black-hulled yacht easily three times the size of the
Millennium Falcon
hung over them like the threat of imminent doom. It had no markings on it. Glancing at the communications board, Dash could see it had not identified itself.

He swallowed. “Where’d
that
come from?”

“It just appeared there. Or just about. Dropped out of hyperspace practically on top of us.”

Dash’s mouth was as dry as the Jundland Wastes. “Black Sun.”

Han glanced sideways at him. “Y’think?”

“Can we throw this thing in reverse and get out of here?”

“You see that weapons port, there? The one that’s aimed right at me? Hi, fellas.” He raised his hand and waggled his fingers at it.

Dash took a deep breath. “It’s probably Xizor.”

“If it’s Xizor, why are we still alive? And how’d he find us so fast? Our little droid buddy just sent our position.”

“Oh, son-of-a-bantha.” Javul had slipped into the cockpit and into the jump seat without either man being aware. “Oh, you perverse, stubborn,
boneheaded
son-of-a-bantha! Where’s the comm?”

Han made a half gesture at the communications board in front of him. Javul reached between Dash and Han, shoving both aside, and activated it.

“Hailing Black Sun vessel. This is Javul Charn. What are you doing?”

Han’s eyes were wide as he met Dash’s over the curve of Javul’s back.
What’s
she
doing?
he mouthed.

There was a moment of dead silence, then a male voice said, “I might ask you the same thing.”

“Who, me? I’m just waiting around to get skewered by Prince Xizor and half a dozen Imperial vessels. You?”

“I’m tracking you—”

“Javul,” began Dash, “maybe you should—”

She bulled through both of them. “Hitch, listen to me: if we do not jump away from here in short order, a lot of really bad things are going to happen.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t have time. Do you intend to fire on us?”

“I might.”

She cut the connection and sat back in the jump seat. “He’s bluffing. Get us out of here.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Han didn’t wait for her to repeat the order. He fired the thrusters, sending the ship back and down, then pivoted and shot away toward the Circarpous system.

“How did he know?” demanded Dash. “How did he know where we were going to be? Oto just sent
coordinates and—” Dash broke off, remembering what Leebo had said about the funny background noise.

Han was watching him. “Bad feeling?”

“Very bad.” Dash took off for the forward cargo bay.

Mel was still there with Leebo and the dormant Otoga droid. Nik had joined them and sat on his makeshift bunk, looking scared.

“What’s happened?” Mel asked.

Dash held up a hand. “In a minute. Leebo, the background noise you were picking up from Oto—could it be some sort of homing beacon?”

The droid seemed almost to blink. “Uh-oh.”

“Can it be sending while it’s shut down? Please tell me it can’t be sending while it’s shut down.”

“It can’t be sending while it’s shut down … although …”

“I don’t wanna hear—aw … Although
what
?”

“You just said you didn’t want to hear—”

“Forget what I just said.”

“Although it’s theoretically possible that someone fitted Oto with an independent transponder.”

“How would you tell?”

In answer, Leebo moved to stand face-to-face with the other droid. He poked his data transfer digit into the dataport behind Oto’s left optical array. After a moment he swiveled his head to look at Dash. “It’s still transmitting.”

Dash drew his blaster.

Mel stood, waving him back. “Don’t. Not unless we absolutely have to. He’s worth a lot to us whole, if for no other reason than that we can study how he was compromised. He may also have intelligence on both Black Sun and Imperial operations.”

Dash hated complications. He re-holstered his blaster and pointed at the cargo droid. “Find it, Leebo. Take
that mechanical traitor apart piece by piece if you have to, but
find that transponder.
”

“Will do, boss,” Leeo said. “What do you want me to do with it when I find it? Toss it out an air lock?”

“Not yet.”

“Where were you going to rendezvous with the
Nova’s Heart
?” Dash swung back into the cockpit to find Javul still sitting tensely in the jump seat.

Han called up a tactical display of the region on his console and poked a finger into the Circarpous system. “Somewhere in here—close to Mimban.”

Mimban was the local name for Circarpous V—a system ideal for their rendezvous because of its sheer size and complexity. Circarpous Major was an O sequence star, which meant that it had a large habitable zone. Traffic of all sorts—mining platforms, ore carriers, freighters, passenger vessels, and pleasure craft—buzzed through the system making “noise.” And noise, Han said, was exactly what they needed.

“But we can’t pop in there if we’ve got a tracking beacon on us,” he observed. “Has the tin man solved that little problem yet?”

Dash headed for the forward cargo hold, but didn’t make it that far. He found Leebo in the forward engineering bay just off the main hold, practically bumping heads with Mel and Nik as they examined something sitting between them on the circuitry console. Dara Farlion sat on the padded bench that ran around the holodisplay, trying—and failing—to concentrate on the three-dimensional schematic puzzle.

Dash had scarcely entered the area when Leebo turned and put a small, irregularly shaped object into his hand. “Here y’go, boss.”

The transponder. He blinked at it. “Deactivated?”

“Oh, no, I thought I’d just crank up the gain and let all of Black Sun and the entire Imperial Navy know where we are.”

“You know, I’d cheerfully punch you in the nose if you had a nose and I could do it without breaking my hand. You didn’t destroy it, though, right? We can turn it back on?”

“Yeah, but why you’d want to is beyond me.”

“That,” Dash said, “is why I’m the captain and you’re the funny tin sidekick.”

T
HEY DROPPED OUT OF HYPERSPACE WELL BELOW THE
plane of the system’s ecliptic, and emerged in Mimban’s gravity shadow on the dark side of her largest moon, just a tiny blip among hundreds of other tiny blips. Han locked the ship in selenocentric orbit and ordered everybody to battle stations.

“I’m tired of getting caught with my pants undone—at least by nasty-tempered, oversized Anomids with attitude problems,” he told them. “So I want Dash in the—”

“I’m in the cockpit with you. I’ll take the forward lasers.”

“Just what I was gonna say. Leebo, handle countermeasures.”

The droid saluted smartly. “Handling countermeasures. Copy, sir.”

“Good. Dara, can you take care of the main weapons battery?”

“You bet. Cut my teeth on laser cannons.”

“I can believe that.” Leebo said aloud what Dash was only thinking. Spike ignored the droid and headed for the gunnery tower amidships.

“Mel, keel battery.”

Mel glanced at Javul, then nodded assent. “Nik, why don’t you come with me? Probably time you learn something besides shifting cargo.”

The young Sullustan was on his feet in a flash, his huge, dark eyes sparkling. “Yessir!”

“What about me?” asked Javul.

“I need someone here in engineering … just in case we sustain damage. And to keep an eye on
that
.” He nodded toward the dormant Oto, who stood in a corner of the hold where Leebo and Mel had stowed him after his hasty reassembly.

They’d been at their various stations for perhaps an hour when the communications panel beeped. Han sent a shipwide heads-up, then answered the hail. It was
Nova’s Heart
. Javul connected with the bridge of her ship from engineering. “I’ve got this,” she said, and the cockpit communications feed went silent.

Han stared at the console, his mouth open in disbelief. “She just overrode the bridge. She’s got my control codes. How did she get my control codes?”

Dash wasn’t all that surprised. “She’s clever that way,” he said.

“Well, what do I do?”

That deserved—and got—a full-throated laugh. “You’re asking
me
? Let’s review,” Dash said, counting points on his fingers: “I’m the guy who thought he was providing token protection from an overzealous, stalking fanboy. Only it’s not a fanboy, it’s a Black Sun Vigo, after my client due to a case of mistaken identity. Oh, wait, no—not so mistaken after all. I’m really protecting her from an extremely mad jilted Vigo fiancé. But no, it’s
not
an extremely mad Vigo ex-fiancé, it’s the Black Sun
Underlord
himself I’m protecting her from, and he doesn’t just want her back, he wants her
dead
. Except that it’s not Prince Xizor who’s got her in his crosshairs, it’s the
Empire
, which means Palpatine, Vader, and who knows who else? But wait—there’s more! Because it’s not just an obsessed fanboy, or a jilted Vigo, or a pissed-off underlord, or the Imperial high muck-a-mucks who’re after her, it’s—wait for it—
all of the above.
”

Han was staring at him. “Was it really … I mean, did she really …”

“Yeah. She really.”

“All that and you haven’t bailed on her?”

Dash glowered at him. “I suppose you would’ve.”

“Blasted straight, I would’ve.”

“Uh-huh. Yet here you sit with her secret whatever-it-is in your hold, no longer in charge of your own bridge control codes, while she uses your comm to chat with her confederates, and Black Sun and the Empire close in for the kill. Did I miss anything?”

Han didn’t respond. He just turned and stared at his sensor display. “Well, at least it really is the
Nova’s Heart.
”

“Han, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the entire crew of that black yacht are Jedi and that the Empire’s sent Darth Vader himself after us.”

Han’s face drained of blood. “Tell me you’re joking.”

Dash sighed and rubbed at his patched right eye, watching as Javul’s yacht drew up along their flank from the stern. “Yeah, I’m joking. Everybody knows there aren’t any more Jedi.”

“Dash?” Javul’s voice came to them from the console.

“Here.”

“I need that transponder Leebo took out of the other droid. Can you bring it back to engineering?”

“May I ask why?”

“We’re going to use the
Nova’s Heart
as a decoy.”

“And that,” said Han as Dash exited the cockpit, “is the first thing I’ve understood in the last week.”

Dash reached the engineering bay to find not just Javul, but Mel, Nik, and Spike as well. As an added bonus surprise, the container they’d snatched from Bannistar Station had been moved from concealment to the center of the main hold.

“What are you doing?” Dash asked.

Javul held out her hand to him. “Do you have it? The transponder?”

Dash hesitated.

“Trust me,” she said.

Why not? He was too tired not to. He dug the transponder out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

She smiled at him. “It’s almost too bad the eye patch will come off soon. It makes you look rakish and piratical.”

“Yeah, and plays havoc with my depth perception. What are you doing?” he repeated. “What’s with the container?”

“The container and this transponder are going over to the
Nova’s Heart.
”

“Okay. The transponder I understand, but why the container?”

“We’ve got a big fat target painted on our hull right now,” she answered. “The
Nova’s Heart
has been out of sight and out of mind for a while.”

“Not sure I agree with your line of reasoning, but it’s your show.”

Javul nodded. “Yeah, right now, it is. Thanks, Dash.”

“What for?”

She smiled gently at him; even a man with only one good eye could read plenty into it. “For trusting me, even though I’ve given you every reason not to.”

He felt the gentle bump as the yacht made a soft connection with the
Millennium Falcon
’s port-side docking ring. Mel moved to cycle the air lock. A moment later the hatch opened and Captain Marrak appeared in the pass-through between the two vessels.

Javul flipped the transponder to Spike, who grinned and strode with it through the access tunnel to meet the yacht’s Zabrak captain. She handed him the transponder,
then kissed him enthusiastically enough to raise Dash’s temperature.

Mel and Nik, meanwhile, were maneuvering the container into the cargo pass-through. Behind Javul a light flashed on the sensor panel. As Dash reached for the comm, the ship trembled.

He grabbed the back of the engineering station’s chair to steady himself. “Oh, that can’t be good.”

Javul’s eyes were wide with sudden alarm and, from the cockpit, Han was shouting, “Rendar! Get up here! Now!”

He got up there.

The approaching ship was stealth black, so light-sucking fuliginous that it registered on Dash’s wonky perception as a hole in space. It was coming at them at an oblique angle, from around the curve of another of Mimban’s moons.