Part 6 (1/2)

”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 a.s.suredly am.”

The s.h.i.+p hung in s.p.a.ce. Lando Calrissian peered out the c.o.c.kpit on the Lady Luck. He was alone on this trip, having dropped Mara Jade off at the Minos Cl.u.s.ter to run some errand for Talon Karrde. Lando didn't like their continued a.s.sociation, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p from other s.h.i.+ps. 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 s.h.i.+p.

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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p. Still, the tension in Lando's shoulders was growing.

Finally he brought the Spicy Lady's c.o.c.kpit up on his screen. And then he let out the breath he had been holding.

Jarril floated, his body b.u.mping 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 Sull.u.s.tan 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 s.p.a.ce. Very few s.h.i.+ps 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.

The Empire had long ago abandoned hope of anything.

Something nagged at the back of Lando's mind. He had seen something in that debris. Something that didn't belong.

He opened his eyes as he panned away from the c.o.c.kpit, searching, searching, scanning the debris at close range until he found what he was looking for.

In the galley, banging off one wall and ricocheting into another like a puck in null hockey, a stormtrooper helmet floated.

A helmet so clean it reflected the emergency glow panels.

Stormtroopers. This far out. Perhaps Lando had been wrong about the Empire.

With a flurry of movements, he rigged up the rest of the slave circuitry.

He'd tow the Spicy Lady to his mining operation on Kessel and then inspect the interior himself. Maybe he could see what Jarril had been into.

Lando had a hunch he wouldn't like what he was about to find.

EIGHT.

The surviving senators filled the Emperor's Audience Room in the Imperial Palace. The senior senators, the ones who clearly supported the Republic, were mingling with one another, and talking about substantive issues.

Leia stood beside the buffet table that lined one wall. She wasn't interested in her colleagues. She was watching the junior senators, many of them former Imperials, argue. Her hands still hurt from the burns she had sustained in the blast, but otherwise she felt fine.

Except for her hearing.

She wished it hadn't returned.

The arguments rose around her, so loud that one voice would quickly cover another.

”... decide who's in charge now that...”

”... never would have allowed such chaos...”

”... glad we're here. The New Republic can't afford such lax... ” She didn't need to hear more than a few s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation to know what was happening. Here, at least among the junior senators, the blame for the destruction of the Senate Hall was going to fall on her government.

She shouldn't have listened to Han. She should have been up and around the day of the explosion. Two days away had allowed this situation to get out of hand.

Leia took a vagnerian canape and ate it quickly, hoping its sweetness would give her energy she still lacked. The doctors said she needed time to recover, that she had nearly died, but she had made it through serious wounds before. This time, she suspected, part of the problem was her att.i.tude.

She wiped her hands on her pants-she wore a loose, flowing pair that resembled a skirt, with a blouse over them, deciding to be dressy but comfortable at this meeting-and stepped into the crowd of junior senators.

Their conversation ceased. She smiled at them, as if she had heard nothing, and clapped her hands for attention.

”I want to thank you all for coming on such short notice,” she said. ”We are currently preparing the ballroom as a temporary home for the Senate, but it won't be completed until tomorrow. In the meantime, I thought we would hold this informal meeting. I wanted to get you all up-to-date on the investigation.”