Star Wars: Shadow Games

Michael Reaves received an Emmy Award for his work on the Batman animated TV series. He has worked for Spielberg’s DreamWorks, among other studios, and has written fantasy novels and supernatural thrillers for Tor Books. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter; co-writer (with Steve Perry) of the two Star Wars: MedStar novels and Star Wars: Death Star; and the author of the three Star Wars: Coruscant Nights novels. He lives in the Los Angeles area.

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff is the author of the novels Magic Time: Angelfire, The Meri, Taminy, The Crystal Rose, and The Spirit Gate, as well as a slew of short speculative fiction in such magazines as Analog, Amazing Stories, Realms of Fantasy, Paradox, and Interzone. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula and British Science Fiction awards. She lives in San Jose, California.

I’d like to thank our inestimable editors, David Pomerico and Shelly Shapiro, who herded their cats with patience and good humor. (I especially appreciated David’s “out-of-office messages.”) Also thanks to Sue and Leland at Lucasfilm, Ltd. for their assistance with research and continuity, to Dan Wallace and Jason Fry for their very helpful resource manual, and to the team of researchers who put together the Star Wars Encyclopedia that now resides on my laptop. Also, kudos to the team of volunteers at Wookieepedia for helping me to find things. And a special shout-out to all the fans who have built beautiful Star Wars-related websites as a labor of love. You guys are why we write these books in the first place.

Arno D’Vox; commander, Bannistar Station (human male)

Arruna Var; Javul Charn’s engineer (Twi’lek female)

Bran Finnick; first officer, Nova’s Heart (human male)

Dash Rendar; smuggler (human male)

Eaden Vrill; smuggler (Nautolan male)

Edge; assassin (Anomid male)

Han Solo; captain, Millennium Falcon (human male)

Hityamun “Hitch” Kris; Black Sun Vigo (human male)

Javul Charn; holostar (human female)

Kendara “Spike” Farlion; Javul Charn’s road manager (human female)

Leebo; repair droid (masculine droid)

Nik; cargo master’s assistant (Sullustan male)

Oto; service droid (masculine droid)

“Red” Rishyk; security chief Bannistar Station (human male)

Serdor Marrak; captain, Nova’s Heart (Zabrak male)

Tereez Dza’lar; Javul Charn’s costumier (Bothan female)

Yanus Melikan; Javul Charn’s cargo master (human male)

Dash Rendar sat back in the pilot’s chair of the Outrider, feeling an almost palpable sense of satisfaction. It was a good feeling—nearly tingly, in fact. And he expected to relive it every time he bragged about how fast he’d done the Kessel Run. It was, after all, acknowledged to be the ultimate test of a pilot’s skill … and propensity for risk taking. Every time you ran it, you risked your cargo, your life, and your reputation, but you got your goods where they were going faster than more cautious pilots and you could walk into any port with a swagger in your step. The faster your time, the bigger your swagger.

“Hubris,” said Eaden Vrill, his dark, liquid gaze on the tactical display. His voice was a low rumble, more suited for underwater communication than atmospheric, and his Basic took some getting used to, with its hard-edged fricatives and sibilants. Dash was used to it; he and the Nautolan had been partners for some time.

“Confidence,” Dash retorted, annoyed at being pulled out of his pleasant reverie. “The Outrider is twice the ship the Falcon is.” As far as he was concerned Solo’s boat was a scow compared with Dash’s heavily modified YT-2400.

Eaden glanced at him. “You confuse pride of possession with a distinct entity. The ship is not you, nor did you build it. Its speed—”

“Beg to differ,” the Nautolan replied. “The improvements are almost entirely the result of repairs carried out by LE-BO2D9. The rest is unarguably the result of my superior navigation skills.”

“You imply that I’m boasting. I’m not—but feel free to correct me if I’ve misinterpreted your colorful patois. I am concentrating.” He hesitated, then added: “We’re entering the Pit.”

Reason enough to concentrate, Dash knew. He rocked his seat forward, hitting the comm button on the pilot’s console as he did. “Hey, Leebo, we’re headed into the Pit.”

“Imagine my excitement.” The reply came back in the sarcastic voice of the repair droid’s previous owner, Kood Gareeda—a stand-up comic who toured the Rim perpetually. Dash had seen Gareeda’s routine; he was wise to keep moving.

“Try not to break the ship—again,” Leebo added. “And try especially hard not to give me anything to shoot at.”

“Do my best.” Dash took the steering yoke and turned off the autopilot. “Course?” he prompted Eaden.

The Nautolan navigator locked the course coordinates into the navicomp, and Dash watched them appear as a bright saffron arc on the tactical display. He frowned at the solid yellow line. “Hey, this isn’t a leisurely holiday tour.”

Dash sighed and pointed at the navicomp monitor. “Look at the blasted line. Do you see red?”

Eaden Vrill blinked his extraordinarily large maroon eyes. Two of his fourteen tentacle-like tresses lifted their tips toward Dash. “You wish me to recalculate?”

“I’m simply being careful. We have an expensive cargo that we have yet to be paid for.”

“All the more reason to get it to port quickly,” Dash said. He gestured at the monitor. “So reset the course, please. We have to skate as close to the Maw as Solo did. Closer, if possible.”

Eaden made an almost subsonic rumble of disapproval and ran nimble fingers over the console. The arc of light on the tactical display shot forth again. The curve was more pronounced now, running closer to the Maw, where the color deepened from yellow to orange to a satisfying shade of crimson.

“Keep in mind,” Eaden cautioned, “that nothing in the galaxy is static. The orbital trajectories of stars, systems—”

“Are negligible within the context of human and humanoid life spans. If I were a Cephalon, say, it might be something to worry about.” Dash took the steering yoke in hand, aimed the Outrider along the flaming arc, and punched the hyperdrive.

It was just a microjump to put them in the vicinity. To fly hyper along the edge of the Pit was almost impossible. For one thing, the gravity well could yank you out of hyperspace in a heartbeat even if you’d tinkered with your failsafes—which, of course, Dash had. Then there was the fact that the hard radiation from the nebula that cradled the asteroid field played havoc with instrumentation—adhering to a set sublight course that skirted the fringes of the Pit was about the only way Dash knew he could come through in one piece. Deviation on one side could result in clipping a wandering asteroid; deviation on the other would send the ship into the gravitational pull of the Maw, a cluster of black holes that warped local space. Fly too close to one of those singularities and all kinds of bad things could happen—not the least of which was having one’s atoms stretched to an infinite length by the tidal forces that waited to tear everything apart.

He was counting down to the end of the jump when the Outrider trembled abruptly, the unexpected vibration passing through Dash’s hands and up his arms. He frowned. That wasn’t right. He opened his mouth to say something to Eaden when the ship bucked like a fractious tauntaun and dropped out of hyperspace.

“Oh, mother of chaos!” Leebo’s bleat came through the com in a wash of static. “Incoming!”

“Incoming what?” Dash looked frantically at the tac display—which made no sense. There was no gravity well here—

“Incoming Imperials! There’s an Imperial cruiser bearing down on us from astern—Interceptor-class!”

Dash swore in three languages—adding several choice moans in Wookieespeak. The Interceptors had gravity generators—four of them—that could suck a smaller ship right out of hyperspace or keep it from fleeing by producing a false gravity well. They’d flown right into a trap—probably set up here at the top of the Kessel run for the express purpose of catching smugglers.

Before Dash’s eyes the tac display finally made sense. Outrider had dropped back into realspace close enough to the contents of the Pit that they were practically kissing the asteroid field. If the cruiser’s gravity well had hit them a few seconds sooner, they might have hit something big enough to hurt. Bad.

He pushed the thought down and focused on the display. A slowly rotating planetoid the shape of an egg and the size of an old-style generation ship lay several hundred klicks off their port bow. It was moving lazily across the general flow of rocky traffic, rolling on its long axis. In a split second, he’d made his decision. They’d hide behind that and use it to guard their flank while they made their getaway.

He manhandled the steering yoke hard to port and hit the ion drives hard. The Outrider leapt toward the egg-shaped planetoid, nosing down slightly in anticipation of dropping beneath the great rock.

When they were close enough that the bulging flanks of the planetoid filled the forward viewport, there was a resonant ping from the proximity sensors and Eaden sat bolt upright. “Target dead ahead!”

“And up!” Leebo screeched through the intercom. A barrage of laser fire erupted from the Outrider’s cannon emplacement at the upper horizon of the planetoid. Dash looked up and felt his blood run cold. Over the close horizon of the great gray egg loomed the bow of an Imperial light cruiser, its laser ports glowing red. Leebo’s useless salvo had pattered harmlessly against its heavy shielding.

Dash thrust the steering yoke forward. The ship plummeted in response, accelerating as she dived beneath the planetoid. A trail of laserfire from the Imperial ship lit up her wake.

Dash continued to accelerate, giving the Outrider even more juice as they passed beneath the long axis of the planetoid and began ascending. The cruiser was five times bigger than the Outrider, which meant it was, at minimum, at least five times less maneuverable. By the time the captain figured out what Dash was doing and was able to turn the ship or order up a new firing solution, the target would be gone.

The Outrider described a perfect semicircle in the void of space, pressor beams providing maneuverability in the vacuum. It sailed around the planetoid upside down relative to the cruiser and whizzed over it toward the Maw.

“I need a quick course adjustment,” he told his navigator, then spared a second to glance at the rearview screen. As he had hoped, the Imperial captain had read his move as an attempt to flee and had started to turn his ship in anticipation of pursuit into the Pit. He was still swinging to port as the Outrider streaked away in the opposite direction, toward the cluster of black holes.

“I sometimes think,” said Eaden, as his webbed fingers played over the instrumentation, “that you are a certifiable madman. I assume you want a course that the Imperials will be loath to follow.”

The Nautolan gave him a sidewise glance. “You may well have done just that.”

Dash’s gaze swept the tactical display, taking in the diffuse rims of the gravity wells, depicted in the display as broad, glowing bands of faded orange. If they eluded the cruiser, and went to hyperspace at the right moment and dived into the Maw at just the right angle, they could, with more luck than anyone had any right to expect, use their superluminal velocity to skip them along the outer edge of the region like a flat stone across a lake. Theoretically, anyway. If the gravitational waves generated by the various collapsed masses didn’t muck up their navigation or suck them out of hyperspace again. If they could maintain a safe course through the complicated orbital arabesques being performed by the singularities. If they could get far enough from the Imperial’s gravity generators to make the jump in the first place.

Eaden pointed out these various risks with maddening calm, and Leebo chimed in over the comm with even more maddening hysteria. Dash shouted them both down.

“As much as I hate to quote an adversary,” he said, “remember what Han says in situations like this?”

“Enlighten me,” Eaden replied. It was, Dash thought, hard to believe that an amphibious humanoid could manage so dry a tone.

I LOVE TO Watch Your show, and will always come Back for more. I’ll be Coming For about the tenth time to see You At Your Next Concert. —a Die-Hard fan

Javul Charn stared at the holographic message that hovered in the air before her face. On the surface it looked just like all the other fan mail she’d gotten in this packet, but her gut told her it wasn’t fan mail at all. It was a warning.

Reading it over for the second time, she used the tip of her finger to select the oddly capitalized words from the text and drag them to a separate line, wondering how it had gotten past Kendara Farlion, her road manager and professional worrywart. Dara was used to seeing quirky holomail, but quirkiness usually had a pattern to it.

Javul looked at the finished sentences hovering before her eyes: Watch Your Back. Coming For You At Your Next Concert. Die-Hard.

At your next concert, the message said, but that didn’t guarantee that something wouldn’t happen before then. Her next concert was a little over a week away on Rodia, and would kick off a tour that would take them all the way to the Core Worlds, ending on Alderaan.

Panic fluttered beneath Javul’s breastbone and she felt suddenly, unutterably alone. Beyond the door of the luxurious cabin on her equally luxurious private yacht, the Nova’s Heart—named after her first holo-album to sell ten billion copies—her entourage and crew went about the hundreds of daily tasks that were integral to producing and maintaining her seemingly endless cycles of live concerts, holocasts, personal appearances, and travel. And yet—here, in her private sanctum, no less—someone had managed to breach the battlements of her life.

A slender arm the color of burnished bronze thrust over her shoulder, its index finger pointing at the curt warning still hanging in the air. “Chaos Hell, JC! What the blazes is that?”

Javul only just kept herself from falling out of her chair onto the carpeted deck. “Blast it, Dara! Can’t you make some noise when you enter a room? Can’t you ping?” She killed the message and swung around, catching the crest-fallen expression on the other woman’s face.

“Since when do I have to ping to come into your office? And—hey—language? You talk like that in front of a holocam, and your name will be mud in households from here to the Rim.”

Javul gestured helplessly. “I’m sorry, but you scared the fr—” She swallowed. “You scared me.”

“Too late. I saw it. Watch your back? What’s up with that? I didn’t see that in your mail.”

“It was part of a longer communication. There were capitalized words that spelled out this—message.”

Javul worried her lower lip with her teeth, reluctant to admit that she’d come to the same conclusion. “I don’t know that warning is—”

“Oh, it is. Trust me on this one, JC.” Kendara’s dark violet eyes were huge. “You have a stalker. What remains to be seen is how serious he, she, or it is.”

A stalker. There—the word had been spoken, and made real. Okay. Deeeep breath.

“Yeah. Looks like it,” she said. “This … this isn’t the first one of these I’ve gotten. There was one in the batch of holomail after the previous concert, too. Remember the black fire lilies?”

Javul shook her head, remembering the rain of gleaming black, pungently fragrant blooms that had fallen all around her and her entourage as they’d ascended the landing ramp of her yacht after an appearance on Imperial Center. “I think that was a warning, too. He wanted me to know the sort of thing he could arrange.”

“I see. Then all that stuff about cultural relativity and how the black lilies were especially prized by the Elom as—”

Kendara put her hands on her hips and glared down at Javul, one bright orange curl falling over her forehead. “Yeah, I know. You didn’t want us to know your life was in danger. Which is kinda—what’s the word I’m searching for? Oh, yeah—stupid. Of course, I’m just your road manager, the head of your entourage. What good’s an entourage if you won’t let us take care of you?

“I can’t believe you’d leave me out of the loop on something like this. I’m not just your road manager. I’m your best friend. I’m the one who’s been pulling you out of scrapes since we were teenagers. Do I have to remind you of the lengths to which obsessed individuals will go? Do you remember any of our so-called adventures on Tatooine? That Zabrak spacer who thought you’d make the perfect little wifey. That guy who wanted to buy out Chalmun and set you up as the house chanteuse? The stormtroopers who—”

Javul raised her hands against the volley of words. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. I should have said something before. But … well, at first I was thinking it was just an overzealous fanboy and then … I don’t know. I figured if the guy was on Coruscant—I mean, Imperial Center—and we were leaving …”

The truth of that statement made Javul’s throat tighten. She clasped her hands together in her lap, flexing her fingers to make the rainbow stones inlaid into each nail glitter and flash. “So now you know. What do you think we should do?”

Kendara tilted her head to one side in thought. Then she said, “Two things. One, I’d split us into two travel parties. Second, I’d hire bodyguards.”

Javul shook her head. “I don’t know, Dara. It’s already freakishly hard to keep a low profile in this business, and if we contract with a security company, we increase our footprint, our baggage … and the number of people who have to have oversight.”

“Then where am I supposed to come by these steely-eyed, laser-toting … characters?”

A smile curved Kendara Farlion’s lips and her teeth showed, white and even in her face. “I never thought I’d say this, but there are advantages to being from Mos Eisley. I know exactly where to look for that kind of character.”

LEEBO OBJECTED TO the idea of jumping to hyperspace at the very edge of the Maw. Vociferously.

“Stop shrieking like a stuck mynock and secure the weapons battery,” Dash ordered, while inwardly kicking himself for ever thinking that having a droid whose subroutines included a fear of mortality that bordered on paranoia was in any way a good idea. Especially subroutines so deeply embedded in its firmware that it would require major restructuring to root them out, and would likely leave Leebo the cybernetic equivalent of a ripe purnix.

To Eaden, Dash said, “Give me a mark at …” He checked the tactical. “Point-oh-three.”

Dash adjusted their attitude and increased their speed again. The tactical display tracked the cruiser’s last shot. The ship shivered as it glanced off her shields.

In the rearview screen, Dash saw the debris field spread across their wake in an arc as gravitational waves and eddies tugged it this way and that. A second later the Outrider began to fight him, the yoke pulling at his hands as if she were yearning to be at the heart of one of the singularity fields—which, in a manner of speaking, she was. He gritted his teeth harder and began to count: “One-one-hundred, two-one-hundred, three-one-hundred, four-one—”

Dash yanked back on the yoke and accelerated, yet again, hauling the ship out of her dive into a shallow reverse arc. They were about as close to superluminal speed as they could get without jumping to hyperspace. The Maw pulled at them like an undertow, drawing the little ship toward its crushing depths. The Outrider quivered; the quivering became a steady vibration that increased until the vessel shuddered as if caught in the throes of a seizure.

“Our port engine is approaching failure,” said Eaden quietly, his dark gaze on the internal sensor display. Unlike the tactical readouts, those were working just fine.

Blast. Why couldn’t it have at least been the central drive? That could go belly-up without causing instability, even if they lost some thrust by using just the peripherals. Cursing steadily, Dash wrenched at the yoke, flipping the ship over by ninety degrees and—he hoped—increasing their arc.

He could feel that as a series of tiny bumps punctuating the trembling of the ship. There was a moist tickle between his shoulder blades. He was sweating. The realization made him sweat harder. Perspiration stood out on his forehead and began to trickle from his hairline down the sides of his face. He didn’t dare spare a hand to whisk it away—and if they didn’t pull out of this climb into free space in the next several seconds it wouldn’t matter. The drive would fail and they’d go into a spin. But if he cut the drive they’d be sucked into the Maw.

Eaden cut the hyperdrive’s failsafes. Dash activated the drive. Nothing happened.

Eaden shunted the power to the backup hyperdrive. It ramped up quickly—more quickly than was strictly safe, especially in this situation—but it still felt like a long, miserable year to Dash. He felt his navigator’s gaze on him.

“I know what we’re in jeopardy of,” Dash snarled, his own eyes never leaving the power-up gauge on the console. The second the drive came fully online, he activated it.

The ship seemed to hesitate for an instant—an illusion, but terrifying nonetheless—then the stars blurred comfortingly and they leapt out of realspace and away from the Maw and into the Wild.

“We-e-e-ell,” said Leebo’s voice through the com. “That was a lot of fun. Please tell me we won’t be doing it again in the near future. Or, for that matter, the far—”

“Hey! A moment of congratulations is in order, okay?” Dash relaxed back on the steering yoke and took a moment to wipe sweat from his forehead and brush his hair back. “We just foiled an Imperial ambush, escaped certain death and …” He checked the chrono. “Hah! And cut point-three-three-three parsecs off the Kessel Run.”

“Except,” said Eaden, “that we are headed away from Kessel … and Nal Hutta.”

Dash made a dismissive gesture. He felt exhilarated and lightheaded. “No problem, we’ll drop out of hyperspace as soon as we’re out of this bad neighborhood, then set course for Nal Hutta. We’ll be ahead of schedule and earn enough to get the drive fixed twice over.”

As if in response, Outrider dropped suddenly and emphatically out of hyperspace, stranding them at the edge of the Wild.

A cursory examination of both drives showed that there was no hope of swiping enough working parts from one to repair the other. In the end, they were left with no choice but to patch up the ion engines and make the nearest port at sublight speed, which would take—

“Thirty-two-point-six Standard hours,” Eaden announced after consulting the bridge navicomp. “But there is no repair facility there.”

So much for the nearest port. Dash stared, unfocused, at the sparse points of light beyond the viewport. “And Nal Hutta?”

Dash did some quick calculations. With the Imperials patrolling the well-used smuggling corridors, trying to make Nal Hutta on ion power alone was chancy. It severely limited their ability to escape another trap.

“Because that’s where Kerlew is. And Kerlew knows these drives inside out. He’s the only mech-tech I trust to mess with Outrider’s innards.”

“They’re soft in the head, is what they are,” observed Leebo dryly from his post in engineering. “You realize, of course, that the cargo will have to be shipped on to Nal Hutta on a different freighter, which means we’ll have to share the take with another space jockey. I mean, who knows if we’re going to have any creds left after that to even get this bucket fi—?”

Dash killed the feed from Leebo’s comlink, cutting him off mid-rant. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he asked Eaden. “Set course for Tatooine.”

THE BAD NEWS was that the Outrider was going to be in spacedock for a while. The worse news was that it was going to cost them. And since they were now going to have to farm out the cargo delivery to another spacer, it might eat up all their profits. Then, of course, there was the difficulty of finding someone in Mos Eisley who was (a) trustworthy, (b) in need of quick credits, and (c) willing to take freight to Nal Hutta in the middle of a particularly nasty bit of business between the Jiliac and Besadii clans—mostly orchestrated by the ever-scheming Jabba.

To that end, Dash and Eaden left the ship berthed in Docking Bay 92 behind Spacers’ Row and made their way to Chalmun’s Cantina, just off Kerner Plaza. Few actually called the place Chalmun’s Cantina. It was simply the Cantina or the Mos Eisley Cantina, with emphasis on the. There were other cantinas in Mos Eisley, but of them all, Chalmun’s was the largest and the easiest to lose oneself in. This, when one was doing business that was less than legitimate, was a plus. Chalmun’s possessed a warren of booths and small back rooms for private conferences. And, of course, a back door and a cellar retreat that led to yet another escape route.

Dash was not in a good mood when he and Eaden stepped down from the cantina’s foyer into the noisy main room, but he plastered a false smile on his face and gave the room a once-over, scanning for familiar faces. He saw quite a few, but only a handful were pilots he’d trust with their cargo. Most of the patrons, in fact, were aging Podracers, recognizable for the most part by their various honorary badges. Which, among other things, entitled them to free drinks.

“Must be a convention in town,” Dash muttered. “Eaden, how about you take the left side of the room. I’ll take the right. We’ll shmooze a little bit—see if anyone’s looking for a quick turnaround.”

The Nautolan fixed him with an eloquent maroon stare. “I do not … what was that word? ‘Shmooze.’ ”

In the many months he’d been working with the Nautolan, Dash had yet to arrive at a definitive list of all the things Eaden considered beneath his dignity. “How do you know you don’t do it? Do you even know what it means?”

“Whatever it means, I don’t do it. I will ask likely candidates if they are in need of a cargo and are willing to take it to Nal Hutta. That’s all.”

Dash raked his fingers through his thick hair and sighed. Probably not a good idea to tell him that’s a textbook definition of shmooze. “Okay, look. Let’s at least make sure we’re in the same starlane when it comes to what we’re looking for.”

His partner gave him another impenetrable look. “Free of current commitments and desperate for credits?”

“And trustworthy. Don’t forget trustworthy. It’s bad enough we’re losing the full commission. If whoever we hire to take it to Nal Hutta is dishonest …”

Eaden Vrill surveyed the cantina. Then he turned his oversized eyes back to Dash with a blink so exaggerated it used both sets of eyelids, and produced an audible click—the Nautolan equivalent of an eyebrow raised in irony.

“Smart guy. Just help me find us a freighter. And a relatively honest pilot.”

Eaden moved off with the languid grace that was common to his species, leaving Dash to peruse the side of the room he had assigned himself. A number of spacers were standing clustered in the areas between tables, others were seated at those tables, and still others had sought the more private booths. It would be rude—and dangerous—to poke his nose into those dark little cubbies, but he could chat up any folks in the common room and let himself be seen by those in the booths.

Strolling, trolling, and meeting as many gazes as would allow that privilege, he had gotten about halfway up that side of the large room when he spied a Sullustan spacer of his acquaintance. The Sullustan, Dwanar Gher, saw him at precisely the same moment and waved him over to his table. Seated there as well were a Toydarian Dash didn’t recognize and a human he did—to his considerable chagrin. Her name was Nanika Senoj and they’d had a bit of a thing at one point in time. That had stopped abruptly, for the simple reason that she’d driven him swamp-bat crazy. She was gorgeous, no question about that, with her copper-streaked burgundy hair, milk-pale skin, and big, dark brown eyes. But she also had a competitive nature that was perpetually in hyperdrive. No matter where she was or what she was doing—or who she was with—day or night, awake or asleep, she had to be the best.

Seeing her sitting there, smiling at him, chin propped on one fist, he almost excused himself and walked away. That would have been the sane move. But he was a man with a mission. “Hey, Nani. How’s the vacuum treating you?”

“Can’t complain. Except that it’s a bit colder out there without someone to come home to,” she said pointedly. Dash saw Gher turn away to hide a smile.

“Bantha poo,” he said. “You moved on, babe. I heard all about it from Leebo.”

“Leebo?” Her eyes widened. “What’s a droid doing spreading gossip? I would never let my droid get away with that—I don’t care who programmed him. And false, malicious gossip at that! I’m telling you, babe—”

“Cap it,” Dash said. He looked past her at the Sullustan. “Dwanar, what’s up?”

The Sullustan’s wide mouth turned up in a grin. “My associate here”—he nodded toward the Toydarian, a plump little specimen whose wings Dash doubted could carry him more than ten meters before he dropped dead from exhaustion—“is looking for a pilot of an adventurous bent to take on a particularly lucrative job.”

Dash’s heart rate spiked momentarily. For a second the tantalizing words lucrative job had made him forget his circumstances. He shook his head. “Love to oblige you, Dwanar, but the Outrider is out of commission at the moment. In fact, I’m looking for someone to take my cargo the rest of the way to Nal Hutta.”

Gher snorted. “I’m trying to steer clear of Huttdom these days. Very unstable situation.”

Nani didn’t say anything; she merely sipped her drink and watched Dash over the rim of her cup. If looks could maim, he’d be doing his smuggling from inside a bacta tank.

“He can’t do it,” said the Toydarian waspishly, glaring at Dash. “You’re wasting my time, Gher. You promised you’d find me a spacer who would undertake—”

“And I will,” said the little Sullustan, matching his earnest tone with a soulful look from his impossibly large eyes. “Have patience, Unko.”

“Easy for you to say,” growled the other. “You’re not losing fifteen hundred credits an hour!”

“We’re otherwise engaged right now. And Unko needs someone who can leave immediately.”

“Well, then he’s right. Talking to me’s a waste of time. I’m going nowhere.” He sketched a salute at the table and turned to continue his promenade, stewing over the implications of Gher’s words. If a Toydarian was paying someone to help find him a pilot and a ship, the pickings must be vanishingly slim.

His stroll netted him exactly nothing. Everyone was either engaged, reluctant to go to the Hutt home system, or demanding too many credits. Far too many credits. He reached the back of the room and turned to look at the bar, feeling a bit down. The fact that Eaden hadn’t commed him meant the Nautolan was having no better luck.

Might as well go for a drink, then … if he could thread his way through the screen of old racer pilots who ringed the central bar trading stories about their glory days.

Kill me if I’m ever so used up that the most exciting thing I can do is drone on and on about past exploits, Dash thought.

He managed to force his way to the bar and was surprised to see that Chal himself was tending today. The Wookiee usually spent his “working” hours behind the scenes in his office while his staff tended bar and waited tables. But he had a fondness for Podracing and Podracers, and the bar was full of the latter. He was listening to a pair of the codgers argue some rule or other, and seemed as happy as Dash had ever seen him.

“Hey, Chal, can I get a drink, or do I have to get me one of those astral badges?”

The Wookiee looked up and, with a bleat of pleasure, reached across the bar to give Dash an affectionate pat on his shoulder that almost dislocated it. “Whiiinu dasalla?” Chal moaned in his native tongue. What would you like?

“Corellian ale. And by the way—you know anyone with an empty cargo bay who might be looking for a quick score?” Dash’s gaze was still roaming the crowded room.

Chal, setting Dash’s ale before him, harned and moaned to the effect that he just might at that. It was a good thing, Dash reflected, that over the years he had picked up enough of the big furry bipeds’ language to gather the gist of their statements—mostly, anyway. He could still get tripped up by the inflection. Shyriiwook was a tonal language, which meant intonation contour was vitally important. Depending on the phonology, the same phrase could mean either “You honor me with your presence” or “You smell like a dead dewback.”

He understood the Wookiee’s statement well enough, accompanied as it was with the jerk of a shaggy head toward the nether regions of the cantina. “Really?” He brightened. “Where?”

In answer Chalmun pointed to a small cubicle on the other side of the bandstand and closest to the rear exit. There was but one table in it and he could see nothing of the individual sitting in it, save for a hand gripping a mug. Several empties already cluttered the tabletop.

“Thanks, Chal.” He lifted his ale and, sipping it, headed for the corner booth. He could’ve sworn he heard a smothered chuckle from behind him, but when he peered back over his shoulder the big guy was busily serving drinks.

Just shy of the doorway he bumped into a Kubaz who was nattering at the band to set up faster and begin playing immediately, if not sooner. Dash staggered back a few steps, amazingly spilling none of his ale. Hence the smile he showed his potential mark when he slipped into the cubicle was genuine.

Han Solo looked up from his drink, his eyes coming into relatively quick focus on Dash’s face. “Oh, nice. Is that any way to greet an old friend, old friend?”

“Old friend? You’re kidding me, right? I’ve heard all the trash you’ve been talking about me and my ship up and down the space lanes. I seem to recall that the last time we met, you took a swing at my head.”

Dash considered the number of empty glasses on the tabletop. “Not like now, huh?”

Frowning, Dash sidled into the booth and sat down. “What’s up? And where’s Chewie?” An uneasy thought made him sit up straighter. “Nothing’s happened to Chewie?”

Han waved a dismissive hand. “Not unless you consider fatherhood something. He’s back on Kashyyyk with Malla and their new baby boy.”

“So Chewbacca’s home with the family and you’re hanging out at Chal’s drinking yourself under a table?”

“Is that what you humans call it? I had wondered.” Eaden Vrill stood in the cubicle doorway, thumbs tucked into his weapons belt.

Han smiled broadly. “Vrill, old buddy! Good to see you. Still hanging around with losers, I see.”

“None … unless …” Dash regarded Han speculatively. When Solo was this cocky, it usually meant he’d scored some profits. If that were the case, maybe he could be induced to part with a few. Maybe just enough for Dash to complete repairs on Outrider and avoid having to hire another ship.

“I don’t suppose you could see your way clear to lend me a few credits, old friend.”

Han poked a finger into his right ear and wiggled it. “Wait a minute, I can’t have heard that right. You’re asking me for a favor? No—better yet—you’re asking me for money? Oh, that’s rich.”

Dash grabbed hold of his temper with both hands. “Can we be serious for just a moment? The Outrider is out of commission and I’ve got a whole lot of cargo sitting in the hold needing pretty desperately to get to Nal Hutta.”

“We ran into Imperials on the Kessel Run. Almost got blasted out of space, then almost ran into a planetoid, then almost got sucked into the Maw. We fried our primary and secondary drives getting out again.”

Han sat up straighter and leaned toward Dash across the table. “You’re messing with my head.” He glanced up at Eaden. “Isn’t he? He’s joking, right?”

Han leaned back in his seat again, taking a slug of his drink. “I guess you’re lucky to be here then, aren’t you?”

“Sure. Except that I’ve got a ship that can’t fly and a cargo to get to Nal Hutta with no way to get it there.” Dash leaned forward, elbows on the table, trying to look earnest. His mom had always fallen for his earnest look. “I just need enough to get the drive up and running …”

“Even at Kerlew’s best prices that’s gonna come to quite a pile of credits. More than I’ve got. You think I’d be sittin’ here if I had a commishun—com-miss-ion?”

Eaden made a sound like steam venting, then said, “If I may: We have a cargo. Han has a ship. The purchaser has the credits we need so that we can have a ship. Again.”

Dash looked at Han. Han looked at Dash. It fried Dash’s circuits to have to hire Han Solo, of all the people in the galaxy, to take his load to Nal Hutta, but—

Dash came to his feet fast enough to reach orbit. “Forget it! I don’t need—” He felt a heavy hand fall on his shoulder.

“Pride rises before disaster falls,” said the Nautolan philosophically. Then he addressed Solo. “What percentage would you charge to take a full hold to Nal Hutta … and a few items to Nar Shaddaa as well?”

“It’s space lane robbery! It’s—ow!” Eaden’s fingers had tightened on Dash’s shoulder in painful warning.

Dash exploded anew. “We almost died for that cargo! We dodged Imperial ordnance for that cargo! We flew into the sucking Maw for that cargo! In other words, Han, old friend, we did all the hard work!”

Han made his eyes as wide and innocent as possible and shrugged eloquently. “All right. All right. Ice it, okay? Always was a sucker for a sob story. Thirty. And I off-load everything on Nar Shaddaa.”

“Hey, I could be putting my life on the line going back to Nal Hutta right now. Things are kind of tense there, case you hadn’t noticed—what with the assassinations and all. And I hear Jabba’s in a bad mood. Something about a dropped spice shipment.” Han scraped at a smudge on his glass. “Twenty-seven.”

“Done,” said Eaden and pushed Dash inexorably back into his seat. Dash slumped, defeated.

Dash ground his teeth audibly. “It’s Outrider. The usual place—Bay Ninety-two. How soon can you leave?”

Han slid out of the booth and stood, polishing off his drink. “Sure. If you’d been able to do thirty percent on the cut I’d’ve been happy to help with the cargo transfer, but I don’t have a first mate right now and you do. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just go and prep the Falcon. Your hold’s full, is it?”

“No problem. The Falcon’ll take that on with room to spare. See you at the docks in a few, boys.” Han sketched a salute at Dash, returned Eaden’s attenuated bow, and left, whistling.

Dash watched him go, then tilted his head back to look up at Eaden. “Gotta admire your nerve, Eaden. I’d’ve caved at thirty.”

“Which is why we have our respective roles. I knew he would go lower.” He flexed a couple of his head-tresses to emphasize the point.

Eaden gave the Nautolan version of a shrug—a lifting of side locks. “What can I say? It was a good hair day.”

Javul Charn adjusted her weapons belt and checked herself in the mirror of her suite aboard the Nova’s Heart. The wide belt had several utility pockets containing stun pellets, a length of monofilament, a limited-range confounder, and other “gadgets,” as Dara disparagingly referred to them. In addition, a customized DH-17 blaster was holstered on one side and a vibroknife on the other, both riding low across her hips. The synthsilk jumpsuit beneath looked like it had been painted on.

In reality, she was distressingly sure that she looked about as dangerous as a Corellian spukamas, no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise. She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt.

Behind her, Kendara looked on in admiration. “You amaze me, boss,” she said. “I’m a little uneasy about going into that den of thieves and I probably know half of ’em. What if someone recognizes you?”

“I’ll just say how exciting I think it all is,” said Javul, putting on a look of wide-eyed innocence. “How daring. How I’ve just always wanted to meet a real pirate.”

Dara raised her hand. “Excuse me? May I just take this opportunity to say that I think you’re more than a little nuts.”

Javul laughed. “I’m eccentric, not nuts. All celebrities are eccentric. I’m just more adventurous than most, I guess.” And scared. And it wasn’t Dara’s “den of thieves” that scared her. “Besides,” she continued, “you forget my official biography. I was born in the lightless sublevels of Coruscant. Grew up with predatory gangs shooting up the neighborhood.”

“Which is all poodoo. You know, I find it insulting that our PR guy actually thought an Imperial Center Slum was somehow more respectable than Tatooine.”

Javul settled a bright teal turban over her gleaming silver hair and said, “Let’s go shopping for bodyguards.”

The news on the Outrider got worse, if that was possible. The engines had not only crispy-fried their various components, but destroyed the housing assembly as well. The cost of total repairs would have taken a healthy bite out of their commission even if they’d managed to retain all of it. Having to pay Han essentially ate up any profits. Worse, the docking fees were more than Dash could afford to squeeze out of his credit account.

Kerlew, a fellow Corellian, was a good guy and was even willing to make a start on the repairs in his spare time, trusting Dash for the payment, but Dash knew that trust would evaporate quickly if he failed to pay his docking fees. They needed some sort of work—pilot and navigator, trade liaisons, something.

With that in mind, after seeing Han off for Nal Hutta, Dash and Eaden returned to Chalmun’s day after day, making the rounds of other freighter watering holes as well, looking for a ship sans crew.

On day three, Dash sauntered into the Cantina to see Dwanar Gher and his lovely associate at their favorite table. He went over to pay a visit.

The Sullustan blinked at him—an impressive gesture coming from eyes the size of ash angel eggs. “What do you mean?”

“The last time I saw you, you were entertaining that Toydarian character—what’s his name …”

“Yeah—Unko. You fed him some line about not being available to run his stuff wherever it needed to go.”

Nanika rolled her eyes. “We weren’t so much unavailable as disinclined,” she said wryly. “He wanted one of us to run some contraband to Imperial Center and we’re both persons of interest to the Imperial Security Bureau right now.”

“We’re suspected of having helped remove some wanted criminals from the ISB’s clutches.”