Death Star (23 page)

“Copy.”

That last word had an unmistakable ring of contempt. It was as if all the arrogance of a young, full-of-himself, simulator-trained pilot was compressed into it.
Hey
, it said,
I can do this! I don’t need some gutless old squad commander I can fly circles around holding my hand!

He couldn’t help but grin. He had only three years on Kendo; nevertheless, sometimes he felt more like thirty years older than the newbies. He made no reply, just hung zero and watched Kendo make a sharp and well-executed half roll as he lined up for his run. The kid could fly. But could he do what he was told?

Ahead, the six drones sailed serenely through the blackness. They were programmed to activate defensive weapons—low-powered beams that were enough to rattle your teeth if one hit your fighter, but not strong enough to cause any real damage. Anybody paying attention could avoid these, but it took practice. In the real world, even a freighter could get lucky and blow you out of the void, and that’s what training was for, to teach you how to avoid such mishaps. TIEs were fast, but they had neither life support nor shielding; a solid hit from any real weapon could crisp you like a mulch fritter.

Kendo accelerated—a hair faster than called for, but Vil held off calling him on it.
Let’s see what you can do with it, kid …

The newbie zipped toward the target. Vil checked his Doppler-ping. Seven seconds. Six … five …

“Shoot,” Vil said.

No response.

“Kendo, shoot and pull up!”

But Kendo kept boring in, drawing closer to the lead drone.

The stupid mopak! He’s going for the pilot port!

“Pull up, Lieutenant! That’s an order! Pull up,
now
!”

The drone fired its port guns. The attenuated strobe hit Kendo’s fighter. It wasn’t enough to hurt him, but it must have been enough to startle him. He fired, flared to port—

Too late.

A quarter second sooner on the turn and he’d have missed, but as it was the TIE’s starboard solar array hit the drone’s nose. The impact tore the array from the fighter, the energy collection coils unraveling spasmodically, like a beheaded snake; the power lines sparked in cold vacuum as they were torn apart. The housing snapped and the impact spun the craft into a wild tumble.

Vil shoved the stick, feeling g-force slap him hard, knowing it was far too late to do anything but watch. “Kill the power! Kill the—!”

The fuel tank separated from the hull. The seal held, but the fuel line stretched, stretched … Vil could see it happen, slowly, as if time had stalled out …

The line snapped, spewing the radioactive gas in a sudden cloud toward the tumbling craft. Something—a shattered circuit board, perhaps—sparked. There was a soundless, eye-burning
flash
—

“Blast!” Vil shouted. “Blast, blast,
blast
!”

R
atua’s identification wasn’t bombproof, but short of a destructive analysis it would pass any casual scan by anybody—not, he marveled yet again, that anybody seemed to give a braz’s behind enough to bother to ask to see it. From the look of this station, it would, when finished, be impregnable from outside attack; nobody was going to be able to throw much of anything at it that was going to cause it any real problems. And yet here he was, walking around like it was his personal ship, ostensibly a contractor. Had he been a Rebel saboteur, he could have been busy causing a world of problems absolutely unchecked for weeks. How ironic was that?

Of course he wasn’t a Rebel of any kind. He didn’t have much use for politics, never had, couldn’t see that he ever would. For a man in his, ah, profession, whoever was in charge—Empire, Alliance, his dear old uncle Tunia—didn’t really matter. Unless Black Sun managed to take over, whoever ran the show would want to see Ratua stashed in a cell somewhere.

But he wasn’t in a cell now; in fact, he had it pretty cushy. Plenty of credits stashed here and there, a fake identity that nobody questioned, even a legitimate, semi-private room, courtesy of a bribe to a poor clerk with a slight gambling problem. Everything a man might want.

Okay, almost everything. He could use a little female
companionship, and he was working on that. A new cantina had just opened a few levels from where he roomed. He’d heard people talking about the place, and it sounded like fun, so he was on his way to check it out. He wasn’t big on chems, but he didn’t mind having an ale now and then to brighten up a dull evening.

The cantina, which had a small glowing sign that read
THE HARD HEART
above the double portal, seemed fairly busy. He stepped in through the air and caught the smells of a working pub—fragrant smoke, warm beverages, some body odors from patrons who should have showered before they came in. Mostly navy guys, some contractors, more males than females, which was hardly surprising. Most of the customers were human, or humanoid stock close enough that it was hard to tell the difference. Lighting was low enough to afford a kind of privacy, but not so dim it didn’t offer a useful spectrum. His species could see a little deeper into the ultraviolet than some, but not as far into the infrared as others. Still, he wouldn’t be bumping into the walls here.

The tables were mostly full, but there were a few empty spaces at the bar, which ran most of the right-hand wall from where he’d entered. Ratua moved through the crowded tables, being careful, with an ease born of long practice, not to bump anybody or loom into anyone’s space unexpectedly. Surprise some folks and they’d shoot without a second thought, and military types were faster on the trigger than a lot of civilians.

But it looked like that wouldn’t be a problem here. He noticed a sigil over the mirror behind the bar:
U
. Stood for “unarmed.” That was a good idea. Navy guys seemed to enjoy wearing a sidearm everywhere they went; get them soused and angry, and stray blaster bolts could be a problem. Bad enough if you annoyed somebody to the point where he was ready to pull his weapon and cook you; even
worse if you were minding your own business and you caught a bolt aimed at somebody else.

Ratua achieved the bar. There were a couple of droid servers working the floor, one behind the bar, and a most attractive Twi’lek woman with lovely teal-colored skin that showed wherever her short-sleeved coverall left her bare—places that added up to a satisfyingly large number.

“How may I serve you?” one of the droids said.

“House ale,” he said.

“Two credits. Your debit number?”

“Cash.” Ratua dropped two coins into the droid’s cash drawer, which extruded from its torso to receive them. After a moment, the droid tendered a mug of amber-colored ale with a centimeter of frothy foam for a head.

“Thanks,” Ratua said. The ale was cold, crisp, with a hint of something tart under the hops. Nice.

He turned slightly, mug in hand, and observed the room.

Next to the far wall, just to the right of the second entrance, stood a large human. He was watching the patrons without looking at anyone in particular. Ratua felt the man’s gaze touch him and move on. This would be in-house security and, from the looks of him, not a fellow with whom you’d want to argue. Ratua had seen many violent men on many planets, many of whom were just naturally mean, and some who had a certain competent look about them that bespoke training and ability. This guy was one of those. Step crooked here and you’d find yourself unceremoniously displaced to the outside corridor. Start a real fuss and you would, clearly, soon wish you hadn’t.

“That’s Rodo,” a female voice said from behind the bar. “He doesn’t bite. He doesn’t have to.”

Ratua looked. The Twi’lek woman stood there, smiling at him. He nodded, saluted her with his ale. “And I would guess that a sensible person would not care to become the object of Rodo’s irritation.”

“In that, you would be correct. I’m Memah Roothes. I run the place.”

Ratua nodded again. He considered giving her his fake identity, but for some reason he could not begin to understand, he went with his real name instead. “Celot Ratua Dil,” he said. “I liked the joint when I walked in, and I like it even better now that we’ve met.”

“Oh, a ladies’ man.” Her voice was amused, but there was also a hint of interest. At least, he hoped so.

“Not me, Memah Roothes,” he replied. “Just one who appreciates good ale and beautiful females.”

“Welcome to the Hard Heart, Celot Ratua Dil. You’re a contractor?”

“Actually, I recently escaped from the prison planet. I’m just conning my way along.”

She raised an appreciative eyebrow. “A sense of humor is worth a lot around here.”

He looked around, noting the bright colors and decorations that softened but didn’t completely disguise the hard angles and general severity of the architecture. Impressive as the Empire’s new weapon was, it wasn’t going to win any design awards. “I can see that. I guess there’s more than one reason for calling it the Death Star. And,” he added, “call me Ratua, please.” He smiled and raised his mug again. “May I buy you a drink?”

“Too early to start this shift,” Memah Roothes said. “But if you’re still here in an hour or so, maybe I’ll take you up on that.”

Ratua grinned. “A herd of wild banthas couldn’t drag me away.”

She turned aside to serve a new customer, and he watched her, admiring the lithe way she moved. Oh, yes, he was definitely going to be spending some quality time in here.

T
he surgery was not going as well as it should have. Uli was getting frustrated.

“Get a pressor on that bleeder, stat,” he said.

The surgical assistant, an MD-S3 droid, was a stationary unit built into the suite. It used a thin and flexible arm to clamp a field reader onto the cut vein; the flow of blood stopped. The droid adroitly sponged up the blood in the cavity, said, “Sponge four,” aloud, removed the sponge from the endoscopic incision, and dropped the soaked pledge into the waste bin.

“Wipe,” Uli said.

The droid used another of its multiple arms to run a sterile cloth over Uli’s forehead, blotting away the perspiration that threatened to run into his eyes. There were anti-sweat films that could be sprayed on to temporarily keep perspiration at bay, but Uli didn’t like them; most of them made him itch.

Carving humans and humanoids was generally no problem for him—he could do clone surgery in his sleep, might actually have done so a couple of times back when he was in the field, working long shifts and patching up scores of wounded every day. But natural genetics sometimes threw a sport at you, a body that wasn’t built exactly the same way most of that particular species were normally constructed. The navy major here on the surgical table was one
of those sports, and if Uli didn’t figure out what he needed to know, and fast, the major could become an interesting statistic.

Three hours earlier, a forty-year-old human male from the planet Bakura had presented to the screening medic complaining of nausea, loss of appetite, low-grade fever, and pain in his abdomen. Symptoms were classically consistent with an inflamed appendix. The medical examiner made the diagnosis and sent the patient along for surgery.

Normally a surgical droid would have handled an operation like this, quickly and efficiently. But the battle station was still understaffed and underequipped. So Uli had shrugged and scrubbed. It should have been a routine appendectomy, the kind of ho-hum surgery any first-year resident could do one-handed. Except when Uli shoved an endoscope into the major to find the inflamed appendix, he encountered a slight problem:

It wasn’t there.

At least, it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. This was impossible, but Uli didn’t waste time questioning the image on the screen. “Do a tomographic axial scan and find that appendix,” he told the MD droid.

“Yes, Doctor,” the droid replied. Its imaging scanners hummed. A thin green line appeared and moved from the patient’s groin to his chest, mapping the length and width of the scan. “TA scan complete.”