TWENTY-THREE
“You mustn’t let them find us!” Elan wailed into Han’s ear as they threaded and shouldered their way through a mixed-species mob jamming the passageway.
Han angled his head just enough to throw her a warning look. “Either you pipe down or I turn you over to them myself!”
Elan’s eyes became hooded.
Han snorted in response. “That the best you can do?”
“You’d do well to fear me,” she told him.
“Save the threats for someone who cares, sweetheart. I’m only doing this because Showolter took a blaster beam for you, which means he thinks you’re pretty important.”
“More important than you know.”
“We’ll see about that. But right now you’re my charge and you’ll do as I say, got it?”
She allowed a defiant nod.
The captain’s request for calm notwithstanding, disorder reigned. Reports of raiders were seldom greeted with enthusiasm, but the fact that most of the Queen’s passengers had experienced the Yuuzhan Vong firsthand had only made matters worse. Most were searching out places of concealment in utility lockers, ventilation shafts, cargo containers, and the narrow closets of lower deck cabins. As a consequence, crowds of passengers and crewmembers swarmed the corridors and clogged the interdeck transfer chutes. Many had made frantic dashes for escape-pod bays only to find them locked down; others had stormed the upper decks only to be repelled by armed contingents of ship’s officers and vendors. Clearly intent on ignoring the time-proven dictum that surrender was the best survival strategy against pirates, the Queen’s refugees had turned the starliner into a seething catacomb.
In spite of everything, Han and company had succeeded in making their way to the docking bay deck, where if nothing else, the crowd was more dispersed and acquiescent. The worst that could happen, Han had told himself, is that he would end up in the same fix as Roa and Fasgo.
From a portside blister it was possible to observe the approach of the raiders’ ship, from relatively below and slightly aft of the starliner. Running lights suggested a long, cylindrically shaped vessel, equivalent in size to an old Blockade Runner.
As it maneuvered within range of the Queen’s outboard illumination arrays, Han saw—much to his initial bafflement—that the ship was in fact an old Corellian corvette, though heavily modified and anodized a non-reflective black. In addition to the standard aft and ventral turbolaser batteries, the vessel’s barrel-shaped bow boasted side-mounted Taim & Bak H9 cannons, and the dome that usually supported the communications array had been elongated to house either a formidable interdiction field generator—or the Yuuzhan Vong dovin basal that had tugged the Queen from hyperspace.
A trio of twenty-year-old Martial-class shuttles dropped from a retrofitted launch bay in the corvette’s belly and made for the Queen’s own ventral docking bay deck. As the corvette’s steering thrusters fired to bring her into alignment with the liner’s portside airlock, Han got a good look at the starboard side, where just aft of the cockpit module the matte hull was emblazoned with the clasped-hands insignia of the Peace Brigade.
The words of Big Bunji’s Aqualish lieutenant rushed to mind. They have an operation planned for Bilbringi.
Reck! Han said to himself in astonishment.
The Peace Brigade was after the defectors. Reck might already be aboard the Queen, he thought. With luck the mercenary would turn out to be the one Showolter claimed to have killed.
“Why are we standing here?” Elan asked anxiously. “The agent who escaped will be searching for us.”
“That isn’t a Yuuzhan Vong ship,” Han told her.
“But that is,” Droma said, pointing.
Han followed the Ryn’s thin, velvety finger. High up in the blister, starlight glinting off a curve of scabrous surface, a flattened oval of yorik coral was paralleling the corvette, as if waiting in the wings. Fear laddered up Han’s back as he recalled going to guns with similar Yuuzhan Vong at Dubrillion and Helska months earlier.
He turned to Elan. “I take back what I said. You must be pretty important for them to send a warship.”
“As important to my people as I am to yours,” she answered in a rush, without a trace of arrogance. “I have vital information for your Jedi Knights.”
Han’s brows knitted in interest. “Concerning what?”
“An illness my people introduced.”
Before he could stop himself, Han had taken her roughly by the shoulders. “You’re serious about this?”
She nodded, seemingly unruffled by the pressure of his hands. “I am against the use of bacterial weapons. Such a tactic demeans the Yuuzhan Vong.”
Han tightened his grip and held her gaze. “Don’t toy with me, sister. I was at Sernpidal and Dubrillion. I know exactly what you people are capable of, and a little thing like disease wouldn’t rattle the Yuuzhan Vong conscience for a moment.”
She raised her head haughtily. “It prompted me to secrete myself in an escape pod and allow myself to be captured by your forces.”
Han looked over at the woman’s wondrous companion. “And you?”
Vergere regarded him calmly. “I am with her.”
Han let go of Elan and jerked a thumb toward Droma. “Yeah, well, he’s with me and that doesn’t say a whole lot.”
“I couldn’t have put it more delicately,” Droma muttered.
Vergere looked at Droma, then Han. “I’m Elan’s familiar. Where she goes, I follow.”
Han ran his hand down his face. Out of nowhere another choice had been forced on him. By remaining on the Queen he might be able to finish the business with Reck, as Roa had put it. But if Elan was who she claimed to be, her safe conduct to Coruscant could mean a cure for Mara’s illness.
He blew out his breath. Reck would have to wait.
“Maybe you are worth the effort after all,” he said at last. “Which means we should be thinking about getting you some different clothes.” He glanced at Droma. “Think you could rustle up new outfits for these two?”
Droma rocked his head from side to side. “Provided that they’re not particular about size or fashion.”
“They can’t afford to be.” Han paused to study Elan in earnest. “Is that the real you or are you wearing one of those living body sheaths?”
“I am adorned with an ooglith masquer.”
Han nodded. “Well, a Yuuzhan Vong in a masquer fooled the members of the ExGal team on Belkadan. Let’s see if it works as well with the Peace Brigade.”
The Queen shuddered concussively as the corvette fastened herself alongside.
“The raiders will hook up with the survivors of the team that hit Showolter and begin a deck-by-deck search,” Han said, his nose all but pressed to the transparisteel bubble. “They might sweep with sensors or dose the ship with obah or some other disabling gas.” He whirled from the view. “We need to move fast.”
“Where to?” Droma asked.
“The docking bay. Our only hope is to make off with one of their own ships.”
A hatchet-faced Peace Brigade member met Reck Desh and his heavily armed escort as they emerged from the docking bay. Reck was outfitted with only a hand blaster, but his riot-helmeted cadre carried stun batons, stun nets, flechette launchers, and other antipersonnel weapons. By Reck’s side marched the Yuuzhan Vong overseer he’d persuaded to join them in the retrieval operation, cloaked to conceal the telltale markings of his kind.
“Bridge is secured?” Reck asked as he brought everyone to a halt.
His confederate nodded. “But we’ve got problems. Which do you want to hear about first?”
Reck glanced around. “Where’s Darda? Has he got them?”
“Darda’s dead. The Rodian took a beam, too, but he’ll live. Capo being the only one who’s seen the defectors, we had him patched up. He’s waiting for you in sick bay.”
Sudden blood mottled Reck’s face. “The two of them tried to take on the Intelligence team?”
“There were only three agents. Capo swears that two of them are dead, and the third is badly wounded. Besides, Darda insisted on it.”
“And Capo listened to him,” Reck grated. “I’ll deal with him later.”
“This was supposed to be in and out,” the hulking human to Reck’s left said. “There isn’t time to search the entire ship. I say we abort.”
Two of the other men grumbled agreement.
“Stow it!” Reck told them. “What else?” he asked the bearer of bad news.
“A Yuuzhan Vong ship has shown up.”
“What?” Reck stared in disbelief, then swung to the Yuuzhan Vong among them.
The enemy operative nodded. “I was compelled to reveal the nature of this operation to my superiors. It’s likely that the ship has been sent to support us.”
Reck gestured broadly and furiously. “That ship’s going to draw New Republic forces into this! They’ve got too much to worry about to bother with chasing pirates. But with the Yuuzhan Vong involved—”
“Maybe the ship can buy us the time we need to flush out the defectors,” the sharp-featured messenger said. “Even if New Republic forces do show. So long as we’re the ones to return the defectors, nothing’s changed, right?”
Reck tugged at his jewel-studded lower lip for a moment, then nodded. “Time the passengers knew the score.”
The messenger pointed to a comlink on the bulkhead. “We can tie into the public address system.”
Reck took the comlink in hand while one of his men fiddled with the channel selector. The man nodded when he found the proper channel, and Reck switched on the handheld device.
“Attention, all passengers,” he began in Basic. “Just to set all of you at ease, we have no designs on hijacking, piracy, or turning you over to the Yuuzhan Vong. We’re looking for two passengers in particular—a human-looking female and a nonhuman female, probably in the company of a wounded human male. If they want to come forward and save everyone a lot of grief, they should report to the bridge. If anyone has information on their whereabouts and is interested in collecting a substantial reward, they should also come to the bridge.
“If no one comes forward and we’re forced to conduct a deck-by-deck search, we’re going to go hard on everyone, and you just might end up in enemy hands after all.” Reck paused briefly. “Oh, and a note to the two we’re searching for: we have ways of identifying you. If you think you can hide or lose yourself in the crowd, think again.”
An ovoid of yorik coral, nubbed with cone-shaped projectile launchers and propelled by a dovin basal of the highest caliber, Commander Malik Carr’s personal ship was the swiftest vessel in his flotilla. From the bridge, Nom Anor addressed villips consciousness-joined to the commander and Harrar. His view through the crystalline viewport took in not only the Peace Brigade’s gunship and the Queen, but also several cratered planetoids and the distant sun beyond them, all in near syzygy.
“I have my agents under surveillance,” Nom Anor updated. “The capabilities of the dovin basal aboard the gunship have been neutralized, and I have commanded our own dovin basal to prevent the gunship from separating from the starliner. Should the Peace Brigade succeed in locating Elan, any attempt at embarkation will fail.”
“That corvette may carry fighters that will be able to launch,” Harrar’s villip relayed with a grimace.
“Three vessels have already done so and have docked aboard the liner. I will utilize our dovin basal to thwart their return to the gunship.”
“House a dovin basal in a remote to accomplish both tasks and prepare to withdraw,” Commander Malik Carr’s villip relayed. “By the time your agents discover what has happened, New Republic ships will have come to the liner’s rescue.”
Harrar’s villip spoke. “No doubt your misguided operatives are aware of our presence. When they realize that they are unable to launch, they will wonder why you aren’t coming to their assistance and they may attempt contact.”
“Let them wonder,” Nom Anor snapped. “I’m only interested in persuading the New Republic to conclude that the actions of the Peace Brigade are simply another attempt on our part to retrieve Elan.”
He was interrupted by his second on the bridge, fists snapped to opposite shoulders in apology for the intrusion.
“A ship emerging from hyperspace, Executor.” The subaltern pointed out the viewport in the direction of the nearby primary. “Our signal villip identifies it as a New Republic cruiser-carrier.”
Nom Anor addressed the villips. “The arrival of that vessel should simplify matters. As suggested, I will position the dovin basal in a remote. The Peace Brigade will attempt to flee and be apprehended, and Elan will remain in custody.”
He swung to the bridge officer. “Make ready to engage the enemy’s starfighters, as well. You may disapprove of this, Subaltern, but you’re going to have to make it appear as if you were chased off. You have my word that your losses will not be held against you.”