Part 14 (1/2)

That keeps you from getting out, and keeps your friends from getting in.”

”But the interdiction field won't stop the New Republic from intervening,” leia said. ”It will juSt slow it down. If they have to spend a month or two or three flying at sublight speed to get here, they will.”

”leia-Madame Chief of State. With all due respect, I am a master trader. Information is the lifeblood of my work. If I know the Republic Navy is in no shape to fight right now, and if the enemy can read your private cipher, I don't think they know less than I do.

They probably know as much as you do on the subject.

”If not more,” leia conceded. ”And even if Thrackan sets us free, he'll keep very close tabs on us. He'd try and bully me into talks, and I'd be negotiating with a gun to my head.” She paused. ”No thank ou;, No way. I have to get out of here before that happens.

Mara looked hard at leia. ”I was sort of coming around to that,”

she said.

”What do you mean?” leia asked, immediately suspicious. ”You have something in mind.” Mara hesitated a moment, and then shrugged.

”I give up. There's no way I can tell you this without it sounding like a setup. So I'm just going to tell you and let it sound like whatever it will. I have a slave-circuit controller for my s.h.i.+p, the Jade's Fire.”

leia stared at Mara, but her mind was anywhere but on Mara's appearance. Suddenly there were a dozen new variables in the equation.

A slave-circuit control was basically a remote control for a s.p.a.cecraft. The simplest of them were no more than homing devices.

Push a b.u.t.ton and the s.h.i.+p would come to you. The more sophisticated slave systems could operate virtually every major system on a stars.h.i.+p. leia didn't quite know how to react to the news. It was easy to imagine all the ways this might be a trap.

It shouldn't have been a surprise that Ma had such a device, but on the other hand, if she had it, why hadn't she used it by now?

”Where is the control unit?” leia asked.

”It's hidden-well hidden-in my quarters on the twelfth floor. I never had a chance to get to it. For that matter, I still don't see any chance.”

”Nor do I,” leia agreed. ”Unless you can come up with a way to get through locked doors and breeze through their guard stations on the stairs. I know from the door numbers that we're on the eighteenth floorbut I also know the League probably has its own barracks set up on the sixteenth or seventeenth.”

”And how do you know that?”

”My quarters were on the fifteenth floor,” leia said, ”and I saw what shape the building was in before we got locked up. Fifteen was a mess after the attack, and everything between eight and fifteen is even worse, so they can't be lower than sixteen. And my guard mentioned bringing food from downstairs, and he's always out of breath when he shows up.”

”That's it?” Mara asked. ”That's all you've got?”

”It seemed pretty convincing to me,” leia said. ”But this slave conttoller of yours. Wouldn't the guards have found it yet?”

”I doubt this bunch of thugs would be able to find their own heads in the dark,” Mara said. ”I got the distinct impression that they were more interested in browsing through whatever valuables they could slip into their pockets.”

leia thought fast. She was starting to get an idea.

”It's possible-just possible-that I could help you get the slave controller. & I can, and if the controller is still there, can you make it work?”

”How are you going to get the controller?” Mara asked.

”Let's just say that maybe I could,” leia said. There was a flaw, an obvious one. ”The jamming,” leia said.

”How is your slave controller going to get past that?”

”The Human League isn't the first to jam com frequencies. The slave unit has a backup mode, a comlaser mode that works on line of sight.”

Mara stood up, went to the window, and drew open the curtains.

She pointed out the window. ”There's the s.p.a.ceport. She's just a dot on the horizon from here, but I can see her. The Jade's Fire is out there, sealed up tight and locked down. As long as the slave controller can see her, I can bring her in. It might take a little extra doing through the jamming, and at this range, but I can do it.”

”So you think that if you got the controller, you could get the s.h.i.+p here.”

”Something can always go wrong, but I'd say the odds were about ninety-five percent.”

”But could you bring her close enough alongside the building so that we could get aboard?

Mara frowned. ”It would take some piloting. I'd put that at about seventy-five percent.”

”That's better odds than we have at the moment,” leia said.

”But how are you going to get to the slave control?”

Mara asked again.

leia looked hard at Mara. There was no more proof than before that the trader was not involved with the Human League, but somehow, now leia believed her.

But suppose Mara wasn't on the level. Then what? How bad could things get? The worst-case scenario that leia could see was that she might get killed. Not an appealing prospect, needless to say, but from the standpoint of what was best for the New Republic, a martyred Chief of State was probably preferable to one forced to choose between letting millions die or helping to deport a whole planetful of innocent people.

Death she would risk for a reasonable chance of escape. ”It's going to take some luck,” leia said at last. ”And more than a little bit of planning. Les sit down and get to it.”

CHAPTER EIGHT.

The Hard Way have the start of wondering if I should have said one thing to you about your wife's circ.u.mstance,” said Dracmus.

”I thought you said you'd speak Basic better once you had a little practice,” Han said as he paced back and forth in the cell.

”Oh, I would been having to get better,” Dracmus said, ”but honored Solo is driving me bolts by acting so nervous. I cannot concentrate.”

”'Nuts, '” Han said. ”The expression is 'driving me nuts.”' ”Bolts or nuts, you are going around the corner.”

”The bend,” Han said as he paused to examine the door of the cell for at least the hundredth time. ”I'm going around the bend.”

”Truly so,” said Dracmus.

”Listen. I think I have this figured Out. Two guards bring our meals. One carries the food, and the other covers him with the blaster. I take my food tray from the first guard, and throw it in the face of the second guard.

- He dodges the tray, and I grab his blaster while you knock out the first guard and take his weapon. Then we get out into the corridor-”

”And while bravely you are hurling your dinner buns at the first two guards the third guard and the fourth guard and the fifth and sixth and seven guard shoot many holes in all of us both,”