Part 14 (1/2)

”A little of everything,” Luke told him. ”Some Norsam DRX55 lift mines, a few Praxon emergency survival pods, some GTU power armor suits. Plus one or two little surprises.”

”Yeah? The captain hates surprises.”

”He'll love these,” Luke promised. ”Surprise number one is a set of hyperdrive boosters.

Surprise number two is an SB-20 security breach droid.” He shrugged. ”Course, if he doesn't want them, I'll be happy to take them off your hands.”

”Yeah, I'll bet you would.” The sentry snorted. ”Okay, fine, come on in. You know the in-route, or do I gotta draw you a map?”

”I know it,” Luke said, mentally crossing his fingers. There were supposedly only two safe paths in through the maze of asteroids to this particular base of the Cavrilhu Pirates: one of which was safe for the inbound trip, the other for the outbound. He'd pulled visuals for the routes from Pincher's mind while setting up the healing trance, and would feel reasonably confident about tracing out the path in his X-wing.

Doing the same in a lumbering Y60 Thala.s.sian cargo hauler was another matter entirely.

Especially when the Y60 no longer had any sublight drive units behind its central group of drive nozzles.

”Sure,” the sentry sneered. ”Try not to hit anything big.”

The display went dead. Luke switched it off from his end, then keyed the makes.h.i.+ft intercom he'd rigged to the hollowed-out area where the central drive units had once been.

”We're on our way,” he announced. ”You doing okay back there?”

There was a twitter of acknowledgment from Artoo, along with a warble that sounded distinctly nervous. ”Don't worry, we'll get through just fine,” Luke soothed him. ”You just make sure the s.h.i.+p's ready to fly.”

The droid warbled again, and for a moment Luke thought back to the covert shroud gambit he and New Republic Intelligence bad cooked up for his penetration into the Imperial-held world of Poderis during the Thrawn campaign. There, too, he'd had Artoo and his X-wing stashed aboard a larger s.h.i.+p for a quick exit.

But this was a smuggler's freighter they were flying now, not a carefully designed breakaway vehicle. It was going to be a different matter entirely to get the X-wing clear if they needed to get out of here in a hurry.

Well, he'd cross that dune when he reached it. In the meantime, the preferred option would be to keep them from having to make that quick exit at all. And the first step in that was to convince the pirates' sentries that he was indeed a legitimate member of their supply network.

Resting his hands on the freighter's controls, be ran through his Jedi calming exercises.

”May the Force be with me,” he murmured, and beaded in.

It wasn't nearly as bad as he'd expected. With typical smuggler's finesse, Pinchers bad modified the Y60's engines and control surfaces to make the freighter faster and more maneuverable than its ungainly appearance would have implied, and even with the central drive section removed there was more than enough power Left to do the job. The s.h.i.+p easily bandied the sharp turns and backtracks necessary to keep it out of reach of the pirates'

defense setup, as well as the more mundane problem of not b.u.mping into any of the asteroids rolling past.

The whole trip rather reminded Luke of one of Leia's war stories, the one about the Falcon's dizzying escape through the asteroid field after the Rebels' evacuation of Hoth.

But of course, he wasn't flying full-bore through the floating rock pile the way they had, with TIE fighters and Imperial Star Destroyers breathing down his neck.

On his way out, of course, things might be different.

He reached the center of the maze to find himself approaching a large but otherwise undistinguished asteroid. According to New Republic Intelligence's meager information and supplemented by the snippets he'd pulled from Pincher's mind, the pirates' base consisted of a series of tunnels and chambers originally burned into the rock by some enterprising but unsuccessful pre-Clone Wars mining operation. The landing bays were camouflaged as valleys in the uneven surface, and as Luke approached the asteroid a ring of lights came on between two sharp-edged ridges to indicate his designated landing site. He eased the freighter into the opening-felt a brief jolt as he pa.s.sed through an atmosphere barrier-and with a multiple b.u.mp of landing legs he was down.

A lone man was waiting for him at the bottom of the landing ramp. ”You Mensio?” he demanded gruffly, giving Luke's disguised face a quick once-over. His hand, Luke noticed, was resting with total lack of subtlety on the b.u.t.t of his holstered blaster.

”You expecting someone else?” Luke countered, resting his hand on his own blaster in response and looking around the landing bay. The room beneath the atmosphere-s.h.i.+eld ceiling was more or less circular, roughly carved from the rock of the asteroid, with a half-dozen pressure doors s.p.a.ced more or less evenly around the perimeter. Austere in the extreme. ”Yeah, I'm Mensio. Nice place you got here.”

”We like it,” the man said. ”We just talked to Wesselman.”

”No kidding,” Luke said, still looking around. The New Republic Intelligence agent on Amorris was supposed to have locked Wesselman away incommunicado for the next few days. If he'd failed&mdashor if the supplier had somehow escaped&mdash ”I hope you said hi for me.”

”Yeah, we did,” the pirate said darkly. ”He says he's never heard of you.”

”Really,” Luke said casually, reaching out to the other with the Force. There was a level of suspicion in the pirate's mind, but no hint of the certainty that would mean such a conversation had actually taken place. This had to be a bluff.

Or rather, a test. ”That's funny, you talking to him and all,” Luke went on, finis.h.i.+ng his inspection and focusing his gaze on the pirate. ”Wesselman told me he was going to be out of touch for the next few days.” He probed the other's mind a little deeper&mdash ”Heading out to Morshdine sector, as I recall. Something about picking up a load of unregistered Tibanna gas for you?”

The pirate gave him a smile that was half sneer, and as he did so his suspicion faded away. ”Yeah, that's where he's going, all right,” he conceded. ”Hasn't gotten there yet, though. We're still trying to contact him.”

Luke shrugged, wis.h.i.+ng he knew what Wesselman's exact itinerary was supposed to have been.

If the supplier got too far behind schedule, the pirates' suspicions would probably start rising again. Too late to do anything about that now, though. ”Well, when you do, say hi for me,” he said. ”So. Did I pa.s.s?”

The pirate sneered again and lifted his left hand. Four of the six pressure doors slid open and four tough-looking thugs stepped through into the landing bay. Holstering their drawn blasters, they headed toward Luke's freighter. ”Yeah, you pa.s.sed,” he said. ”You got any fancy locks or b.o.o.by traps on your cargo hold we should know about?”

”Nope, everything's clear,” Luke said. ”Help yourselves. You got any food around here?

That s.h.i.+pboard stuff gets worse every day.”

”Sure,” the pirate said, pointing to one of the two doors that hadn't had a guard waiting behind it. ”Snack area's through there. Don't drink it dry-we'll have you unloaded in a couple of hours, and I don't want you tackling the out-route half-drunk. It'd make a mess, and I'd be the one who'd have to clean it up.”

The indicated door led into a room about ten meters long and four wide, with a pair of tables equipped with bench seats arranged down the center. Along the right-hand wall stood various music and vid stations; along the opposite side was a waist-high counter with a gleaming SE-5 service droid waiting behind it.

”Good day, fine sir,” the droid said brightly as Luke stepped into the room. ”May I be of a.s.sistance?”

”You got any tomo-spiced karkan ribenes?” Luke asked, glancing around. There were no exits that he could see that might lead from this room into the rest of the complex. Not surprising, really, considering the sort of visitors the snack area catered to.

”Yes, fine sir, I most certainly do,” the droid a.s.sured him, shuffling over a few steps and producing a package from beneath the counter. ”It will take only a few moments to prepare them.”

Luke grunted. ”Fine.”

It took just under four minutes, in fact, for the droid to heat the slab of ribenes and arrange them artistically on a plate. Luke spent the time wandering around the room, ostensibly looking at the vid stations, actually hunting for hidden spy cams.

He'd spotted three of them by the time his meal was ready. Even in a completely isolated room, the Cavrilhu Pirates weren't taking any chances.

”May I provide you something to drink?” the droid asked as he presented Luke with the plate.

”Don't bother,” Luke said. ”I've got better stuff on my s.h.i.+p.”

”Ah,” the droid said. ”Will you need a set of utensils?”

Luke gave him a scornful look. With spiced ribenes? You must be kidding.”

”Oh,” the droid murmured, looking a little nonplused. ”Well . .. do enjoy, fine sir.”

Luke turned away, suppressing the out-of-character reflex to thank the droid. Tearing one of the ribenes off the end of the slab, he munched on it as he headed back out into the landing bay.

The pirates hadn't been idle in his absence. They'd gotten the Y60's wide cargo ramp lowered and were beginning to bring the big transport boxes out on repulsorlift floater carts. ”I hope you're watching the corners with those things,” Luke warned one of them, jabbing toward the floater cart with his ribene. ”I don't want my restraint rings getting all chewed up.”