21
The safe house was a clever setup, Luke saw. What looked like a row of old storage units and run-down office space in an industrial park turned out to be something else behind the facade. Past a security checkpoint with a trio of large armed guards was a modern complex of interconnected units, bright and gleaming with the latest computer and electronic gear, plus a bunch of technicians to operate it. Most of them were Bothans, but there were several other aliens at work.
It was a smart camouflage. From outside, you’d never expect to find all this.
“This way,” Melan said.
Luke followed the Bothan spymaster down a gleaming corridor to a room with yet another armed guard posted at the door. Melan showed an ID, and they were admitted.
Inside the room were half a dozen Bothan techs. One of them tended leads plugged into jacks in the computer Melan had collected; others sat at consoles tapping keyboards or using voxax controls. Information danced in the air as holographic images formed and re-formed.
“There’s not much to see, I’m afraid,” Melan said. “Unless you’re an expert in this, the information looks to be pretty much a jumble of numbers and letters.”
Luke nodded. “What do they mean?” He waved at one of the screens.
“Got me,” Melan said. “I’m a spymaster. What I know about programming you could inscribe on a microdiode lead with a dull sword.”
Luke smiled.
“Hey, hey, hey!” one of the Bothan techs said. “Look at this, boys! Scan sector Tarp-Hard-Xenon.”
Luke heard the tap of keys, the commands of voxaxes.
“Wow!” said one of the other techs.
“Oh, sister,” said another. “I can’t believe it!”
“What?” Luke said. “What is it?”
Before anybody could say, the door exploded inward and somebody came in shooting.
Leia smiled at Guri, who was once again seated across from where she herself sat at the desk in their suite. But the smile was to cover her puzzlement.
According to the computer screen inset into the desk and the scanner that fed it, Guri was not human.
What she was, the scanner program could not say.
“Care for some refreshment?” Leia asked.
“Tea would be fine.”
“Threepio, fix two cups of the special tea blend, would you, please?”
Leia turned back from the droid and flashed her smile at Guri again. She caught the computer screen peripherally as she glanced at Black Sun’s representative. According to the scanner, Guri’s skin was around ten standard years old.
“I trust your business went well?”
“It did.”
It would be no trouble to keep her talking for a few minutes, until the “special blend” tea Threepio was preparing did its job. The sleeping potion he was instilling into Guri’s cup would put her out harmlessly for a couple of hours, during which time Leia and the others could make a closer examination of Guri’s person and effects. This was the plan they’d agreed upon if the scan didn’t check out the way it should. After a couple of hours, Guri would awaken and—if the potion worked as it was supposed to work—not remember having fallen asleep. Maybe they could figure out who and what she was during that time. At least Leia’s instincts had been right: There was something odd about Guri. Very odd.
Threepio brought the tea. Leia hoped the droid had gotten the stuff into the right cup. It would be embarrassing if Lando or Chewie had to come in and take over while she took a nap.
Threepio had his back to Guri. Leia glanced at him. His left eye illuminator winked off, then back on.
Leia picked up her tea and smiled again.
When a man comes at you with a blaster spewing, you don’t stand there asking stupid questions. Luke snatched his lightsaber from his belt, lit it, and whipped it up in a right inward block as he slid to the side.
A blaster bolt splashed from the blade in a shower of red and orange sparks. The air stank suddenly of ozone.
The techs were unarmed, and Luke saw two of them take hits and go down. The others scrambled for cover.
Koth Melan produced a small weapon and returned fire, hitting the lead attacker right between the eyes. The attacker fell backward.
There were more behind him, boiling through the shattered doorway.
Luke leaped forward, circled his lightsaber into a horizontal slash, and took down the next man through the door.
Melan fired. The bolt sizzled past Luke’s left ear and hit the third man incoming.
Beyond that, Luke saw, there were at least a dozen more shooters crowding toward the doorway. Maybe more. It wasn’t as if he had time to do a precise count here—
More energy beams cooked the air, scorching past Luke and spearing computer consoles and technicians alike.
“Too many of them!” Melan yelled. “This way!”
Luke wove a curtain of hard light with his blade, deflecting blaster bolts and driving the attackers back temporarily. He leaped to the side, and Melan fired repeatedly into the opening, momentarily clearing it.
“Come on!”
Luke turned and ran. Discretion here was definitely the better part of valor. Who were these guys? They wore black, but didn’t have any insignia he could see. Some kind of new Imperial strike team? Mercenaries?
Never mind that now. Worry about who they are later. This party is over, Luke, it is time to leave!
Luke hurried after Melan.
After twenty minutes of small talk, Leia realized the sleeping potion wasn’t going to work. It was supposed to take five minutes, eight minutes at the outside, if you had the constitution of a rock.
Guri continued their diplomatic back-and-forth without any apparent effects from the powerful potion.
Maybe Threepio had fouled up somehow? Not put the stuff into Guri’s cup?
The computer was still processing information and displaying it for Leia. The … person sitting across from her breathed air and her heart pumped blood, but the lungs weren’t normal, and neither was the heart. The muscles under the supposedly ten-year-old skin weren’t made of any tissue the scanner could recognize. Her body temperature was ten percent cooler than normal. A human that cold would be dead.
On visual inspection, Guri looked like a perfectly normal and attractive young woman in her early twenties. According to the scanner and computer, she was not human; nor was she any one of the eighty-six thousand alien species it was designed to recognize; nor was she any kind of standard droid. And she was, it seemed, immune to a sleeping potion that should work on anybody human.
What was going on here?
No doubt about it, this was a problem, and not one that Leia had anticipated.
Now what were they going to do?
Guri helped her resolve the problem. She said, “All right, Leia Organa, I think this has gone on long enough.”
“Excuse me?”
Guri held her empty container up. As Leia watched, she squeezed the heavy ceramic mug in one hand. Her hand shook a little, but the cup shattered into tiny bits. Guri smiled. “I can do that to your head if I wish. You probably have a weapon hidden somewhere, but I warn you, I am much faster than you, and if you attempt to reach your weapon, I can get to you before you get to it.”
Leia played it out. “Suppose I believe you. What do you want?”
“You are going to accompany me from this place. You will tell the Wookiee in the hall to stay here as we leave; convince him, otherwise he dies.”
“Where are we going?”
“Do not concern yourself with that. Just do as you are told and you will survive to get there.”
“I don’t think so,” Leia said. “Whoever—or whatever—you are, I bet you aren’t faster than a blaster bolt. Lando? Dash?”
The door to the bedroom slid open. Lando and Dash stood there, blasters aimed at Guri. They stepped into the room.
“You might be wrong,” Guri said.
The door to the hall also slid open, and Chewie stood there with his bowcaster leveled at Guri’s back.
“Could be,” Leia said. “But you’d have to be real fast to avoid being hit by three bolts.”
Guri turned her head slightly to glance at Chewie. Turned back to look at Leia. “You have the advantage, it would seem. What do you propose?”
There was a good question. What were they going to do now?
One of the Bothan techs leaped up, grabbed the computer, and jerked it loose from the leads. The undamaged screens went blank.
“Go!” Melan yelled at the tech. “We’ll cover you!”
The tech ran for the rear of the room. A section of the wall slid back to reveal an unmarked emergency exit. The tech with the computer barreled through the opening.
Melan, meanwhile, emptied the charge in his blaster at the attackers coming in again. The weapon clicked dry, and he tossed it aside.
“Run!” he yelled.
Luke didn’t need to hear that twice. But before he could take a step, a blaster bolt hit Melan.
The Bothan went down.
Luke dropped to one knee.
“G-G-Go!” Melan said. “Leave me, get out!”
Luke saw the black-clad attackers stream in. You didn’t leave your wounded comrades in battle. He stood between Melan and the incoming tide.
“Idiot! L-L-Leave!”
Luke chopped the blaster from the hand of the first man to reach them. Wondered briefly why the man didn’t cook them, but had no time to reflect on it as five or six more shooters came in.
“Luke,” Melan said. “Thanks. I—”
Luke glanced down. Melan went limp and his eyes rolled back, showing only the pale sclera. A final, shuddery breath escaped, and he was still.
Dead.
The number of men crowding into the room increased. There were ten, fifteen of them now, all pointing blasters at him but not firing. What—?
“Turn off your saber,” one of them commanded in a rough voice. “You can’t win.”
Luke looked at the speaker. The figure stood in a shadow, was hard to see until it stepped out into the light.
The reptilian alien was about his height, covered with black scales, with a mouth full of pointed teeth. Definitely a meat-eater. He thought he recognized the species as that of a Barabel, but he wasn’t sure; he hadn’t seen a lot of them. Barabels didn’t leave their homeworld very often.
Luke saw that he didn’t have a chance, even using the Force. He clicked his lightsaber off.
“Wise move,” the Barabel said. “My people have great respect for Jedi Knights and I am sorry I must do this, but it is business. Take his weapon.”
One of them moved in and removed the lightsaber from Luke’s grasp.
Luke looked back at the Barabel. “What do you want?”
“Sorry, but we want you, Skywalker.”
Chewie said something. He didn’t sound happy.
“Chewie doesn’t think this is a very good idea,” Lando said. “I agree with him.”
Leia said, “Look, I know you owe Han and you want to take care of me, but we need to do this.”
Dash leaned against a wall, a blaster trained on Guri, who sat in a chair and was bound with cuffbands and a steel cable. They weren’t taking any chances with her. Dash said, “You’re going to waltz into the heart of the Empire, just like that?”
“I have some connections on Coruscant,” Leia said. “That’s where our friend here came from.” She nodded at Guri, who offered nothing. “Somebody is playing games I don’t much like. Luke is in danger; this … person who says she represents Black Sun is our only link to them.”
Lando said, “You know, there were rumors a few years back about human replica droids. Seems like I heard somebody had perfected the method, got them good enough so you couldn’t tell the difference between one of the replicas and a real human by looking. That was about ten, twelve years back. It would fit with the age the scanner gives us about her.” He glanced at Guri.
Guri smiled but said nothing.
“So what if she is a droid?” Dash said. “What good does it do for you to know that?”
Leia shook her head. “Not much good at all,” she said. “But if we can get to whoever sent her, maybe that does. She’s got to be worth a lot to them.”
Chewie moaned something.
“Chewbacca says that if you go to Coruscant, he is going as well.”
Leia glared at Threepio.
“Don’t blame me, I’m only translating what he said.”
“Fine, you can go with me. Lando, you and Dash wait here for Luke. We’ll take Guri with us. Whoever or whatever she is, she’s our pass.”
“How are you going to get there?” Dash asked. “Book a compartment on a liner? They check those things going into Coruscant, you know.”
“I’ll contact the Alliance and have them supply us with a small ship.”
“I don’t like it,” Lando said.
“Why not just take her ship?” Dash asked. “It’s bound to be cleared.”
“And maybe blow ourselves to tiny pieces? We’ve already determined she’s not the most trustworthy being we’ve ever met. Could somebody steal your ship?”
Dash laughed. “They wouldn’t get very far if they tried.”
“I still don’t like it,” Lando said.
“I’m not asking you to like it, I’m telling you to do it.”
Which pretty much ended that conversation.
Leia tried to sound as if she were in charge and as if she knew exactly what she was doing, but that was a stretch. If Guri was a replica droid, surely she must be valuable to whomever had sent her. Maybe that person would be willing to talk to get her back. Conventional wisdom had it that the best plans were usually the simplest ones, and if that was true, this was a great idea.
Conventional wisdom aside, it wasn’t much; still, it was what she had, and she would follow it up as best she could.
“Excuse me,” Guri said.
Leia turned to look at her. “What?”
“There is an easier way.”
Leia stared at her, then at the others. “What are you talking about?”
“You want to go to Imperial Center and meet with the leadership of Black Sun, correct?”
“That was the general idea.”
“That is why I was sent—to provide you escort for such a trip.”
“Then why the threats?”
“It was the fastest way.”
“I wouldn’t trust her, Leia,” Lando said.
“I don’t, but I’m reasonable. Go on.”
“It will be very risky for you to try to sneak past the Imperial pickets around Imperial Center. I can greatly lessen that risk.”
“No offense, but Lando is right. Why should we trust you?”
“Because I work for Prince Xizor.”
Lando and Dash both inhaled sharply.
Leia looked at them.
“Xizor is the head of Black Sun,” Dash said.
“I can arrange for you to speak with him, if you like.”
Leia frowned. “He’s here?”
“I have his private comlink codes.”
“I don’t like this,” Lando said. He waved the blaster.
Lando didn’t much like anything lately.
Chewie growled and harned.
Neither did Chewie like it.
“You are wanted by the Empire, as are your companions. I can arrange disguises, get you past customs and straight to the prince,” Guri said. “It would eliminate much of the risk.”
Leia sighed. It sounded reasonable, despite Guri’s attempt to capture her.
“All right, we can at least listen to what your master has to say.” Before the others could protest much, she waved them silent.
“May I stand?” Guri asked.
“Yes.”
Guri came to her feet in a smooth motion.
“Dash, unbind her,” Leia ordered.
“There is no need,” Guri said, smiling. She flexed her arms. The bands around her wrists popped as if they were made of cheap plasto. She took a deep breath and strained; the cable around her shoulders gave a metallic groan, stretched, then snapped.
“Oh, man,” Lando said.
Guri moved to the room’s com, waved her hands at it. A few moments passed. Then a deep, masculine voice said, “Yes?”
“Guri, Highness. I have Princess Leia Organa here. She would like to speak with you.”
“Where’s the image?” Lando asked.
“My master prefers not to send it out, even on a shielded channel,” Guri said. She looked at Leia.
Leia said, “Greetings, Prince Xizor.”
“Ah, Princess Leia. How delightful to make your acquaintance at last.”
His voice was compelling, at least.
“Your … droid here says you wish to see me.”
“Indeed. I have information that might be of use to you.”
“Concerning …?”
“The attempted assassination of Luke Skywalker. A friend of yours, is he not?”
It took much of Leia’s control to avoid gasping. Xizor knew about the plot!
“We are comrades, yes,” Leia said. “Tell me, how do you know of the attempts on Luke Skywalker’s life?”
“Not over the comlink,” he said. “We must discuss such matters face-to-face. If you will allow Guri to escort you, I will explain all when you arrive.”
Leia looked around the room. This certainly was unexpected. What was she going to do?