Star Wars: Shadow Games (38 page)

“They knew where to look,” Dash murmured half to himself. “That means she must’ve told them.” He hoped
that meant she’d
wanted
them to know where it was. He closed the deck plate that covered the now-empty compartment. It glided shut with a solid
thump
and a click from the locking mechanism.

Han straightened. “Let’s get out of here.”

Dash didn’t move. “Yeah. I guess.”

Han came to put a hand on his shoulder. “Dash, old buddy, there are just some things you can’t do anything about. This is one of them. We don’t know who took the container. We don’t know where it is. We don’t know where
she
is.”

Dash didn’t comment that he
did
know that much. He’d seen her as they crossed the landing bay. She’d been standing, unfettered, beside a petite, dark-haired woman, looking down on them from a high, glassed-in gallery that ran partway around the upper latitudes of the dome. The body language between the two women hadn’t been that of prisoner and captor, which gave Dash some reason for hope that Javul had things under control. That, and the fact that Han had been right about the soldiers on duty here—every one of them was a member of Bail Organa’s elite guard. And Bail Organa, he knew, was not often a friend of Imperial policy. He had been outspoken in his opposition to the Emperor’s more draconian measures—such as the infamous order to hunt down and annihilate the Jedi.

“C’mon,” Han said, heading for the cockpit. “Let’s go.”

Dash followed. “Yeah. Sure. Where’s Leebo?”

“Dunno. They sent him back to the ship, so he’s gotta be here somewhere.”

Dash activated his comlink. “Hey, Leebo—where are you?”

There was no answer. He tried again.

“Leebo? Leebo! Where are you, tin man?”

Still no answer.

He entered the cockpit in Han’s wake and slid into the copilot’s seat, reaching forward to activate the ship’s intercom system.

“What’s up?” Han was already doing his preflight prep, checking systems one by one.

“Can’t raise Leebo. Maybe his comlink is down. Leebo, this is Dash. Get your tin can up to the cockpit.”

Still nothing. Dash felt a tickle of apprehension. “They’d better not have confiscated him.” He opened a channel to the facility control even as the dome rolled back overhead. “Docking Control, this is Dash Rendar in Docking Bay Alpha Nine. Did you remove my droid from the ship?”

“Sir?” The controller sounded startled.

“My droid. A modified LE-BO2D9 model. I can’t locate him. Did your guys remove him from the ship?”

“I don’t know, sir. Let me check.”

The channel went dormant. Dash turned to Han. “Why’re they being so polite?”

“Don’t knock it.”

When the connection went live again, the female controller was back, her voice crisp and businesslike. “Specialist Rand says you were asking about your droid. What seems to be the problem?”

“The problem is I can’t
find
my droid. What did you do with him?”

“The droid unit was returned to your ship.”

“You didn’t impound him or something?”

“The whole ship was impounded, Captain, with your LE unit aboard. No one saw it leave.” Now she sounded faintly amused.

“He might have snuck out while your guys were off-loading the cargo.”

“Why? Is your droid prone to wandering off without orders?”

“Not normally,” Dash fibbed. “Did your guys turn him off?”

“That I can’t tell you. I suppose they may have. Are you ready to launch?”

“Not without my droid!”

“I assure you, Captain, the unit is aboard somewhere. If by some wild fluke it’s not, we’ll find it and return it to you. Right now I need you and your friend to get off the planet. Please.”

“Uh, Control?” said Han. “This is his friend. We’re getting.” He turned to Dash. “Go look for your droid. He’s gotta be here somewhere.”

“Right.” Dash pulled himself out of the copilot’s chair and went in search of Leebo.

D
ASH MADE HIS WAY AFT, PORT-SIDE FIRST, POKING INTO
every compartment … again. He saw nothing amiss, but also no Leebo. He called out. He tried the comlink several more times. He even looked in the storage lockers in the crew’s quarters, checked the engine room, the weapons batteries, the galley.

No Leebo.

Frustrated and worried, he made his way back around to the starboard side, thinking that just maybe the droid had hidden himself in one of the secret cargo holds. While Han had peeked into them to make sure the cargo was intact, neither of them had gone below to check them thoroughly.

Dash started with the aftmost compartment, kneeling to depress the near-invisible locking mechanism on the first deck plate. It glided upward on its hydraulic pistons, revealing cargo and nothing else. He poked his head into the opening, pulling out a glowlight and playing it about the interior.

Negative. He closed that deck plate and moved to the next. More nothing. He knelt to activate the next plate. His fingers had no sooner released the lock than it opened suddenly beneath him, flinging him from his feet. The hydraulics gave a whine of protest. Dash tumbled back and sideways, slamming his left shoulder against the hatch frame of the starboard docking ring and landing on his back across the threshold of the access corridor.

Breath knocked from his body, he looked down between his knees—and saw the impossible. Edge—battered, torn, but still alive—was rising out of the cargo compartment like an avenging demon, his body armor holed and awry. He wielded a cortosis staff in one hand and a darkstick in the other. Dash saw immediately that the Anomid assassin had not made the same mistake twice—the end of the darkstick’s horrific claw dripped with a red liquid Dash knew was lethal.

He pushed himself farther up the access and scrabbled for his laser pistol, only to recall as it met his hand that the Alderaanians had removed its power cell and he hadn’t yet reloaded.

No time for that now. The big Anomid already loomed over him, one knee on the edge of the cargo compartment. Without warning the assassin swept the cortosis staff toward Dash’s midsection, its plasma blade spitting fire. Dash lashed out with booted feet. His heel connected with Edge’s left hand. The staff spun from his grip, searing across the top of Dash’s left thigh. He gasped in pain and kicked again, knocking the staff away, but Edge had the darkstick raised, ready to strike.

Dash met the strange orange eyes. They had been cold before—implacable, emotionless. Now they were filled with fire. This had obviously become personal. Edge probably wasn’t used to having his prey skitter to safety or unseat him not once, but twice.

Dash felt a supreme sense of betrayal in the frozen moment before the darkstick began its downward descent toward his heart. Not his own betrayal, but Eaden’s. He was angry. Angry that the Universe—or the Force or the Deity or whatever—had allowed Eaden to die and this death machine to survive. The injustice was galling and Dash roared aloud with it.

From out of nowhere, Leebo’s pet MSE droid shot through from one side of the corridor to the other. The
sudden, unexpected movement distracted Edge—only momentarily, but that was all that was needed. Two pulses of light flashed from behind the Anomid. One energy bolt hit his shoulder where the armor had been shot away. The other caught him with pinpoint accuracy in the back of the neck where the body armor met his helm. He jerked upright, his knees slipping from the rim of the compartment.

Han! Dash felt a surge of relief … until Edge toppled forward, the darkstick continuing its downward plunge.

Dash rolled half on his left side and the weapon’s tip buried itself in the deck plating, roughly where his right lung would have been. He looked down the length of his body. The Anomid was laid out with his head between Dash’s feet, his long, muscular arm stretched upward, his hand still clutching the weapon. His body was smoking where the energy bolts had caught him. Dash gagged on the smell of burned flesh.

The big sentient quivered, not yet done, and tried to push himself up.

“Oh, blast it!” said a voice from the main corridor. Two more energy bolts took out the hydraulic assists on the cargo compartment’s hatch.

The heavy durasteel deck plate dropped shut, crushing the Anomid’s lower body. He made a horrible, strangled bleat of rage and pain and looked up at Dash through those burning eyes. With a last, tremendous effort, Edge pulled the tip of the darkstick out of the decking, its tip dripping venom. He lifted it high, preparing to swing it at Dash—

And died.

Dash saw the light go out of his eyes, draining away like water from a broken bowl, and was glad he hadn’t witnessed that moment with Eaden. The thought of it would haunt him anyway.

Edge went limp, his hand releasing the darkstick, which clattered to the deck. His body released its last breath.

Dash carefully moved the darkstick away from his body. Then he scrambled to his feet, wincing a little, and stepped cautiously around the corpse into the main corridor.

“Han, you are a—”

But it wasn’t Han standing hip-deep in the next-door cargo compartment. It was Leebo. Mousie was by his side.

Dash gaped. “Leebo? But …” He glanced at the dead Anomid. “You can’t … you’re not supposed to … What
happened
?”

The droid gave as close to a shrug as Dash had ever seen. “I missed.”

“You … missed.”

“Is there an echo in here? I missed with the first two shots. I was aiming for the hydraulics. Got ’em the third time, though.”

“You missed.”

“That’s what I said.” Leebo glanced at the MSE unit. “Had some help, though.”

Dash laughed and shook his head, his heart struggling to return to a normal rhythm. “You’re something else.”

“I’m a souped-up LE-BO2D9 Cybot Galactica repair droid. I am
not
something else.”

“Hey!” Han appeared in the hatchway that led to the cockpit. “What are you two doing down here, throwing a party?”

Once Han recovered from finding a dead, armor-plated assassin in his secret cargo compartments, they confirmed his demise, stripped him of his weaponry, and put him in a contraband stasis pod that Han had added to his equipage. Dash had wanted to flush the Anomid
out an air lock, but Han was insistent that there surely must be a bounty on him somewhere that could bring them some “serious credits.”

Dash wasn’t sure how he felt about making money from Edge’s death, but he supposed there was a certain poetic justice to it. Maybe he could find Eaden’s cousin or sister, give some of the bounty to them.

He was more intrigued by the alleged glitch that Leebo blamed for the assassin’s destruction. The droid said he didn’t want to talk about it—said it was humiliating to a mechanism of his capacity to have so badly missed a target. He was perfectly willing, though, to describe how he’d been alone aboard the
Millennium Falcon
—or rather how he
should
have been alone aboard the
Millennium Falcon
—when he realized there was another presence on the vessel. He’d seen Edge move from concealment in the aft hold and had hidden himself in the compartment beneath the deck plating.

“It didn’t occur to you to call me?”

“It
did
occur to me to call you, but I figured that if I did that while you were chatting with the nice soldiers it might cause problems for you. So I decided to wait until you came back aboard.”

“Which we did,” noted Dash, “but you
still
didn’t call me.”

“Well, you see, I ran into a bit of a problem. I was hiding in the secret compartment there, when this big ugly guy moved in right next door. If I’d made a peep …”

Dash nodded. “Yeah, he’d have scragged you.”

“Precisely. So, I waited him out. When he popped out of hiding, I figured to drop the lid on him, so to speak.”

“And missed.”

“And missed. Much to my dismay, of course. It was a humbling experience.”

“You’ve got a BlasTech sighting mechanism built into
your optics,” Dash reminded the droid. “Practically brand new. You trying to tell me it’s faulty?”

“Must’ve gotten misaligned somehow,” Leebo said blandly. “I ran a diagnostic, so it should be aces now.”

“Aces.”

“There’s that echo again. You on some sort of repeat loop, boss?”

“Don’t change the subject. That’s a helluva glitch to result in the death of a sentient, don’t you think?”

Leebo was silent for a moment, then said, “He was not a pleasant sentient. Initially, you seemed pleased that I … neutralized him.”

Leebo, Dash had come to know, tended to retreat to a more droidlike way of self-expression when cornered. Right now, he sounded almost like Oto. “I can’t say I was unhappy about it, no. If you hadn’t shot him—”

“I didn’t shoot him. I shot the hydraulics and missed.”

“Okay. If you hadn’t missed the hydraulics, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation and you’d belong to Han.”

“Force forbid,” said Leebo with a metallic shudder.

“You don’t like Han?”

“He treats me like a machine.”

“You
are
a machine.”

“There, you see? His attitudes are rubbing off on you. I’ll be pleased to return to Tatooine.”

They did that—uneventfully, thank the stars—some ten standard days later, moving at flank speed and making only one stop for fuel at a little outpost off the beaten track. In Mos Eisley, they discovered—much to Han’s glee—that he’d been right about Edge. There was a bounty on his masked and helmeted head. Dead or alive. It seemed that in executing some of his Black Sun contracts, he had assassinated a rogue Vigo who happened
to be the favorite nephew of the Mandalore, himself. The ruling council of the New Mandalorian tribes had therefore put a bounty on him.

Han was altogether too tickled by the idea that he had done what Boba Fett had not.

“You didn’t do anything, Han, old buddy,” Dash reminded him as he, Han, and Leebo left the Mandalorian “embassy”—a suite of rooms in the Dowager Queen Hotel. “In fact,
I
didn’t do anything except almost get myself staked to the decking with a darkstick. Leebo killed the assassin.”