Heir to the Jedi (29 page)

“I’ll help,” Drusil said, and the two of them left together, with Nakari dropping a “Hurry up, pilot!” to me in a perfect imitation of her father.

I looked at Artoo, whose cam eye swiveled from their retreating forms to my face. “I guess chewing your food is overrated, huh?” It was the wrong thing to say to a droid. His eye rotated back to Nakari and Drusil and his body followed, a few beeps chiding me for being a slowpoke. With the three of them headed to the
Desert Jewel
and the pressure off, I took my time finishing my breakfast and clearing off the table.

Azzur Nessin found me by the sink while I was recycling my plate, partly to wish us a safe journey but primarily to give me one last update. “After some thought, I changed the transponder signal to the fleet code of a competitor last night,” he said. “They’re called Polser Couriers. The story you’ll tell the Empire as you leave the planet remains the same: You’re still bearing important diplomatic pouches to Rishi. But once you turn and run, the Imperials might inquire afterward why a courier would behave so strangely and jump into nothingness. I’d prefer not to answer such questions.”

I shook his hand and thanked him for his help. He bobbed his head, setting off one last clacking party among his beard beads, and said it was a pleasure conducting business with me. His primary ears twitched, his mouth turned downward, and he began to turn, saying, “Someone—”

Then his skull exploded in a bolt of superheated plasma, spraying me with blood, bone fragments, and brain tissue. Another high-powered blaster bolt followed close behind it, but I
had already ducked instinctively, and it sailed over me and Azzur Nessin’s fallen body. I yanked my blaster out of its holster and spied the assassin from a squatting position. It was the mechanic, Ruuf Waluuk, and he had company—a horned Devaronian dressed in black and laden down with weaponry. They had come in from the hangar entrance and were squatting down by the engines of the
Desert Jewel
, firing at me from under the wing. The bounty hunter loudly called the Kupohan an idiot for his poor aim, which told me that I had been the target.

I squeezed off a couple of shots in their direction to disrupt their focus and dived for the dining table. I flipped it on its side for a makeshift shield and crouched down behind it as fresh bolts slammed into the top. The table wouldn’t hold up for long, and I knew it was tactically a terrible idea to let the enemy pin me down with no place to run, but they had timed their ambush well and it was either use the table or let them shoot at me in the open.

Drusil might have stymied Ruuf’s direct attempts to communicate with the Empire, but she couldn’t have stopped him from going into almost any cantina and looking for help. He could have reported—and probably did—through an intermediary that we were on the planet, thereby corroborating the story of Migg Birkhit, but he wanted to make sure he collected that full bounty himself, hence the blaster and the Devaronian bounty hunter. He probably figured even half the price on our heads would be a good haul—assuming he survived his partnership with the bounty hunter long enough to split the proceeds.

A chunk of the table on the top side sheared apart under a bolt, and a couple of thin needles of hot metal tore gashes in my scalp and forehead as they passed by. I was lucky they didn’t punch through my skull. Instead I felt warm trickles of blood cooling as they dripped down my head; the trail from my forehead was diverted to the side by my eyebrow, for which I had never been so grateful.

I needed some kind of counterattack. Keeping my body behind the table, I stretched out my right arm and pointed my blaster around the edge, firing off three quick unaimed shots to draw their attention. While they directed return fire there, thinking my head must be nearby, I popped up over the top to locate them and took a careful shot at the easy target, Ruuf Waluuk. I was already ducking back behind my cover as I heard him grunt in surprise, a sound that was followed closely by the clatter of his blaster on the hangar floor and the thump of his body afterward.

I’d seen only a sliver of the Devaronian; more used to fighting than Ruuf, he’d minimized his silhouette by flattening himself on the floor. It was his blaster methodically taking apart the table now. Though the furniture was sturdy enough for the purposes of supporting a light lunch, it had not been built to withstand sustained fire from someone determined to punch through it with a blaster.

I spread myself out flat in imitation of the Devaronian, planning to roll to my left and take shots at him as I moved. Neither of us would have much chance of hitting the other in that scenario, but a second later I had to go with it, because the table developed a hole and the bounty hunter was pouring shots through it with frightening accuracy. He probably had his elbows braced on the ground and one hand supporting the wrist of his firing hand.

Tumbling to my left and squeezing the trigger of my blaster, I hoped some of my shots would be close enough to make him rethink his position or at least slow down his own barrage. If I moved fast enough, I’d put the
Jewel
’s landing ramp between us, and then he would have to move if he wanted a clear shot—and I’d be ready for him.

He saw what I intended and stopped shooting to move first and skew the field of fire in his favor. He was a thin shadow topped with a red globe of a head, and he moved fast. I quit
rolling and tried to pick him off before he found cover, but I wasn’t accurate enough. He ducked out of sight, and now I had to wonder if he would try to flank me or wait for me to try to flank him.

A loud crack sounded in the hangar and echoed off the walls, almost simultaneously with the taut tapped-cable noise of his blaster firing. Another crack, then silence, and I realized I recognized that pattern.

“It’s okay, Luke, he’s down,” Nakari called. “I just made sure he’ll stay down, too.” She stepped out from behind the landing ramp, slugthrower cradled in her arms. “You all right? You’re bleeding.”

“I’ll be fine. Azzur Nessin won’t, though. Ruuf got him.” The cargo magnate clearly should have cultivated the habit of spying on his employees.

Nakari noticed Nessin’s bloody remains on the tile floor and said, “Damn. I didn’t want our knocking on his door to bring him that kind of end.”

“Me, neither. We’d better get out of here if we don’t want to end up like him,” I said. “Those two might have been acting alone, but they might have also called in some Imperials so they could hand us over.”

“Or to serve as backup, yeah,” she said. “I think we’re just about ready. Status panels are looking green.”

“Thanks for the assist, by the way.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Thanks for distracting him. He didn’t see me until it was too late.”

There was no time and really no need to investigate the body; nothing about the bounty hunter would help us escape the system, and we had to be gone long before local authorities discovered what happened and tried to detain us. We boarded and closed the ramp and I caught Nakari up on what Azzur Nessin had said and the sequence of events before she had gotten involved. I made a quick trip to the bathroom to throw some disinfectant
and adhesive on my scalp and forehead, hoping it wouldn’t scar.

Artoo reported finding and eliminating not one but five different tracking programs hidden in the nav computer’s code sometime during the last few days. Drusil found another he missed, an Imperial Sleeper she called it, tied to the ship’s clock. It would become active at a set time, triggered by the turning of the clock, note our current course and position, and send a coded burst reporting it to the nearest Imperial world. There was no way to tell if they had been installed by a single person or several individuals, but at this point we had little choice but to run and hope we had found them all.

Lifting out of the atmosphere was even rougher than descending to the surface; we weren’t as streamlined now with the modifications, and at one point a particularly bad stretch of turbulence surprised Nakari, causing her to bite her tongue.

We emerged into vacuum on a heading to the galactic south, where an Interdictor and half a dozen Star Destroyers had bottled up exiting traffic bound in that direction. The Star Destroyers were sending shuttles of troops from ship to ship, inspecting and clearing them, and the Interdictor turned off its projectors periodically to allow cleared vessels to go about their interstellar business.

We traveled with the sublight engines running at about half their capability. The uneven thrust from the replacement had introduced some resistance into turns or rolls to starboard, but otherwise it gave us respectable if not blistering speed.

A curt Imperial query asking for our destination, business, and number of passengers and crew elicited a slightly impatient reply from Nakari, precisely the tone one should take. Once the Imperial traffic controller instructed us to hold course and prepare for boarding and Nakari acknowledged, I asked Artoo and Drusil if they were ready to run east and make the first jump.

“Ready,” Drusil said. A clacking noise could be heard through
the comm as she ran her fingers over her datapad. “Monitoring Imperial frequencies in system.” Artoo confirmed he was ready, as well, so I banked the
Desert Jewel
to port and opened up the engines to full.

It didn’t take long for the Empire to notice aloud that we did not appear to be maintaining our course. Nakari ignored two requests to resume previous course and acknowledge transmission. Drusil’s voice blared over the intercom, reporting intercepted transmissions she had decrypted.

“Bridge of the Interdictor is talking about us to the bridge of the flagship destroyer in the southern battle group.”

“Talking is fine. They can talk all they want.”

“The destroyer has assigned a TIE squadron to pursue us,” Drusil continued. “I calculate intercept in approximately ten minutes. Too late to capture us before we jump, though they don’t know that. A shuttle is following to board us immediately.”

“How long until we can jump, Artoo?” I asked.

FOUR MINUTES EIGHT SECONDS,
he replied.

“The destroyer captain believes we are the ones they are looking for. He wants the Interdictor to redirect its gravity projectors.”

That wouldn’t be good. They might be able to do it in time.

“But now a third captain has interrupted from another destroyer,” Drusil said. “He argues that we couldn’t possibly be going anywhere without an established hyperspace lane in this direction, and it is more likely that we are a distraction. In other words, the real fugitives are already waiting in queue, and once they move the gravity projectors the lane to the south will be open and allow their escape. Amusing.”

Nakari laughed in agreement.

“The flagship captain points out that if I am on board, I might be capable of charting a new hyperspace lane on my own. That is sobering. I fear he may be distressingly competent.”

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“The Interdictor has just sent a request to Polser Couriers on Kupoh to confirm our transponder code and that we are conducting legitimate business on their behalf.”

“That’s not going to end well,” Nakari said.

“But it will take them some time to respond,” I reminded her. “Even if it’s a minute, that could help.”

Drusil continued her reporting. “An argument rages. The flagship captain wants the gravity projectors to be redirected this instant; the other destroyer captain maintains we are a ruse; and the Interdictor captain insists that they wait on an answer from Polser before acting rashly.”

Nakari looked at me. “Why doesn’t the flagship captain simply order it done?”

“He probably will in a moment. The other captains are making sure their objections are heard and recorded so that if the operation goes badly they can’t be faulted for the decision.”

“Ah, got it,” Nakari said, nodding with comprehension. “Standard operating procedure in a culture of blame where risk taking and initiative are punished. Always tell Lord Vader it was someone else’s fault.”

“Polser Couriers just simplified matters,” Drusil said. “They report they currently have no outbound shipments headed that way and we are not one of their ships.”

“That was fast.”

“The flagship captain has ordered us stopped now, and the Interdictor captain is complying. Turning off gravitational projector to realign in front of our present course.”

“Can they stop us?” Nakari asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “Depends partly on the crew and partly on their power situation. They’ve been conducting operations for a while here, turning the projectors on and off, and their generators might be drained. Or they might not. I haven’t done this all that often in raids, much less alone. We’ll find out in a couple of
minutes. Or less. Artoo, will you throw up a countdown giving us the time until the jump?”

He chirped, and the display indicated we had eighty-nine seconds left.

I’ve noticed the curious ability of time to linger and stretch instead of pass by under moments of stress or boredom, and yet it can slip past unnoticed during periods of rest and contentment. Right then it was a monstrous, lumbering creature that barely moved as we waited for the seconds to tick by.

With thirty-two seconds to go, Drusil made another report. “Interdictor captain announced the projector is down and realigning to our sector. Spinning up.”

Our intelligence was spotty here. Thirty seconds had to be a minimum time to get a gravity field projected—intelligence suggested it took more like a couple of minutes—but we weren’t safely outside of operational parameters yet.

“You know what, Luke? You’re kind of cute when you’re nervous.”

The twin shocks of being called both cute and nervous tore my eyes from the countdown. Nakari was smirking at me. “I also like how you’re completely calm when people are shooting at you but are easily rattled by compliments.”

“It’s not everyone who can rattle me,” I said. “Just you.” She tilted her head and I added, “But in a good way.”

Nakari flashed her teeth at me and said, “Of course. I’m the good kind of rattling.”