Star Wars: The New Rebellion (8 page)

Artoo bleebled some more.

“I’m sure Master Luke did know of it,” Threepio said. “I’m sure they notified him. Really, Artoo. You get upset about the strangest things.”

Artoo whistled repeatedly and rocked on his two wheels.

“I will not ask Master Luke down here,” Threepio said. “We don’t even know what they’re going to do to the X-wing.”

Artoo whistled louder, a piercing shriek that echoed in the enclosed space.

“Artoo!”

The clank of his rocking treads added to the shrillness.

“Yes, I understand that you have a bad feeling about this,” Threepio said. “But Master Luke didn’t, and he is the expert on feelings.”

At that moment, the maintenance doors opened. A Kloperian stood behind them, six of its tentacles crossed over its squishy chest. “You want to explain to me why you’re illegally jacked into our computer system?” it asked.

Artoo removed his jack and pulled his service arm inside its case. “We meant nothing,” Threepio said. “Our master had sent us here to check on his ship. We couldn’t get in and my counterpart here was trying to open the door.”

“That’s the door panel,” the Kloperian said, pointing with a seventh tentacle at a small panel on the other side of the maintenance doors.

“Oh, dear, Artoo,” Threepio said. “I told you not to touch anything.”

The Kloperian’s bulbous eyes narrowed. “All right, you two. Get inside. We’re going to check your hardware.”

It grabbed Threepio and Artoo with four of its tentacles and pulled them in the maintenance bay. The metal doors clanged shut behind them. Fifty Kloperians stared at them. Dozens of droids stopped work to watch.

“Artoo,” Threepio whispered. “I have a very bad feeling about this.”

K
ueller stood on the sandstone streets of Pydyr, his legs spread, hands clasped behind his back. The air was warm and dry with a touch of salt, reminding him that an ocean loomed over the artificially created hills. In the arid heat, the death’s head felt like a mask. He was sweating beneath it, destroying its delicate calibration with his skin.

He couldn’t remain on Pydyr long. The mask, a finely tuned instrument, only worked properly in certain environments.

This wasn’t one of them.

He hated to think of what it was doing to his face.

But if he was uncomfortable, the troops were as well. The stormtrooper uniforms, cleaned up and repaired, looked fine. Menacing. The memories of the Empire were embodied in the white suits and the elaborate helmets, memories of power he hoped to arouse.

Image was everything, as Pydyr once knew.

The empty streets spoke of wealth. The sandstone blocks wore down after only a few days. The Pydyrians had a special droid designed specifically for street care, another designed for building wash. Pydyr’s wealth was
the stuff of legends, its aristocratic class the inspiration for stories told all over this section of the galaxy.

Almania had envied Pydyr for generations.

But no more.

Pydyr was his.

The quiet was eerie. All he could hear was the sound of booted feet brushing against sandstone. The troopers were investigating each building, making certain no one remained.

He had half-expected the stench of bodies decaying in Pydyr’s harsh sun, but Hartzig, the officer in charge, had been thorough. Pydyr’s aristocracy was dead, its bodies disposed of within hours. But the moon’s wealth remained.

And he needed it. His timing couldn’t have been better. He tried to smile, but his skin slid beneath the mask. The lips still adhered, though.

He whirled on a booted foot and walked into one of the buildings the troopers had already investigated.

Pydyrian architecture was bold, with heavy brown columns and large, square rooms. Each surface was covered with decoration, some hand-painted by famous artists long dead, and others studded with tiny seafah jewels. In addition to the wealth accumulated over centuries, Pydyr had its own source. Seafah jewels were formed in the ocean in the shells of microscopic creatures. Kueller had ordered the seafah jewelers spared; it took a trained eye to locate most of the jewels on the seabed. A trained Pydyrian eye. The aristocratic Pydyrians had tried for generations to create droids that could locate the jewels, but no matter how good the droid, it couldn’t tell the jewel from centuries of hardened fish dung.

He walked to a column and ran a gloved finger over the ridged jewels embedded in the baked surface. The jewels were bright spots of swirled color, some blue and green, some black and red, some white and orange, some
a startling, lusterless yellow. Each jewel, no wider than the seam on his fingertip, had formed over the centuries from tiny seafah bodies discarded on the ocean floor.

The column alone held two years of materials cost for him at the rate he had been spending it. He would probably increase his spending now. He had some large ships that needed rebuilding quickly. Unlike the Pydyrians, he was not one to hoard his wealth. He would have plenty more within a few months.

“It feels as if someone just left.” Femon’s soft voice boomed in this empty place. She had apparently finished her tasks on Almania and decided to join him.

“Someone did.” Kueller did not turn. His mask was slipping more than he liked. The mouth no longer moved with his. “They haven’t been dead very long, Femon.”

“It seems so strange. I was in the eating wing, and there were still dishes on the tables.”

“But the food was gone,” Kueller said. Cleaned up by the droids, as was anything organic and likely to decompose.

“Of course.” She walked up behind him. He could feel her warmth against his back. He did not move, even though he wanted to. She was getting too presumptuous of her own power. He would have to remind her who controlled whom, and soon. “I don’t understand why the Emperor didn’t do this. He was so destructive.”

Kueller remembered the delicious feeling of all those screams, all those lives, all that fear filling him. “He hadn’t found a clean way yet. Maybe he didn’t look for one. Sometimes I think Palpatine was less interested in power than in destruction itself.”

“But you’re interested in power.”

She seemed to be making a statement, but he thought he heard a question beneath it.

“You have an opinion?” he asked in a way that made it sound as if she had no right to one.

“It would seem to me,” she said slowly, “that if we are going to conquer, we should do so now. Everything is in place.”

“Only on Coruscant,” he said.

“But that’s where it’s needed.”

He brought his hand down. Her questions were interrupting his fine mood. “It’s needed on all the designated planets. The secret to control is thoroughness.”

“So we do Coruscant first. Everything else will be in place in a few days.”

“Timing is everything,” Kueller said. “I will wait.”

“If you get rid of the leaders—”

“Others will rise in their place.” He resisted the urge to turn, to glower at her through the mask. The mask wasn’t working, and he didn’t want her to see his face. Sweat dripped off his chin onto his linen shirt.

“Is that why you’re trying to get rid of Skywalker?”

He hesitated, unsure how much he wanted to reveal himself to her. Then he said, “Skywalker’s sister leads the Republic.”

“How do you know she survived the attack on the Senate Hall?”

“She survived,” he said softly.

“So go after her.”

“I am.” He clenched his fists, careful not to let his temper show on such a fine, successful day. “I most assuredly am.”

The ship hung in space. Lando Calrissian peered out the cockpit on the
Lady Luck
. He was alone on this trip, having dropped Mara Jade off at the Minos Cluster to run some errand for Talon Karrde. Lando didn’t like their continued association, but he had no real right to complain—and he wasn’t sure he wanted that right.

Still, the last few weeks with Mara in the floating cities
of Calamari had been delightful. He hadn’t seen her in a long while. He had enjoyed her company, and only a few times had longed for solitude.

He had the solitude now, but he no longer wanted it. At the moment, he’d give anything to have someone to consult about the ship spinning slowly in front of him.

It looked familiar. At first he had thought it was the
Millennium Falcon
. Then he realized that the Arakyd concussion-missile tubes weren’t just missing. They hadn’t been there at all. Something had been built to fill the area and that something was long gone. He had only seen one other stock light freighter that so closely resembled the
Falcon
, and that had been the
Spicy Lady
. Although the
Spicy Lady
had a modified A-wing where the missile tubes had been.

An A-wing that could fly on its own. A separate ship, for escapes and escapades.

Lando hailed the
Spicy Lady
, his heart pounding. “
Spicy Lady
, this is
Lady Luck
. Are you in distress? Over?”

No response. The ship looked abandoned. Only he had never known Jarril to leave the
Spicy Lady
for long. Jarril had invested his personal fortune in her, and used her to make more money. He never let her drift. Even when he was in the A-wing, he made certain she looked powered-up so that no one would board without major preparation.

“
Spicy Lady
, this is
Lady Luck
. Over.”

Lando swore under his breath. This was supposed to be a simple trip. He didn’t like flying solo. He had a new astromech droid that Mara had bought with profits from their most recent shared venture, but even with the modifications, the droid wasn’t a lot of help in a situation like this.

He scanned the
Spicy Lady
for life signs. None. She was dark. Life support wasn’t even functioning.

He sighed. He couldn’t board her. He didn’t want to leave the
Lady Luck
without good cause. Instead he checked to see if the
Spicy Lady
had slave circuitry. He doubted it. Most smuggling vessels avoided slave circuits, which allowed remote control of the ship from other ships. But business had changed since Lando entered it. A few suppliers were requiring slave circuits. And Jarril was still hip-deep in the business. He might be dealing with some of those suppliers.

The
Lady Luck
’s computer beeped at Lando. The
Spicy Lady
not only had slave circuits, she had fully rigged slave circuits.

“First break I’ve had all day,” Lando said.

He linked the
Spicy Lady
’s internal holocams to the
Lady Luck
’s and surveyed the interior of the ship.

It looked like an Imerria Windstorm had gone through the public sections. Supplies floated in the zero-gravity environment. Blaster scars seared the couches in the rec area. The oxygen masks were broken, the emergency equipment destroyed.

Lando panned through the public areas. He knew that Jarril wouldn’t allow holocams in the storage compartments. Lando’s mouth was dry. The discomfort he had felt when he first saw the ship was growing.

Except for the blaster scars in the rec room, he saw no signs of battle. No real destruction, only the kind made when someone—or several someones—searched a ship. Still, the tension in Lando’s shoulders was growing.

Finally he brought the
Spicy Lady
’s cockpit up on his screen. And then he let out the breath he had been holding.

Jarril floated, his body bumping against the controls, the viewport, the ceiling, the floor. Judging from the hole in his chest, he had been hit with a weapon at very close range.

Lando closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his
nose with his thumb and forefinger. An old friend shouldn’t die like that. Especially not in the rear-end of nowhere with no one to guard his back.

Then Lando frowned. Jarril usually had a Sullustan with him. Seluss. Had Seluss taken the A-wing? For help? That made no sense. He would have been back.

Unless he was followed.

But Lando had seen no other vessels in this corner of space. Very few ships went back and forth here. There was nothing to smuggle. Lando himself wouldn’t have been here if Mara hadn’t had to meet Karrde. The Republic had little interest in the primitive planets nearby and the Empire had abandoned hope of uniting such diverse peoples.