Tales from the New Republic (39 page)

“Well, Cap’n,” the port mechanic drawled, running a filthy rag between his blackened hands. “You’ve done quite a number on your ship here.”

“I didn’t do anything to my ship!” Fen Nabon barked. “A power flux ripped us out of hyperspace! It fried the drive, cooked the backup, and melted the stabilizers and motivator on its way out!”

Fen knew she should have patched the hyperdrive together with spit and engine tape and coaxed the
Star Lady
into Nad’Ris City, Prishardia’s planetary capital. But the planet guide glibly guaranteed a “standard-class starport with all amenities” in Lesvol, Prishardia’s second-largest city. On landing in the agricultural backwater, Fen realized she was more likely to find the promised “excellent accommodations and dining opportunities” in the molten core of Hoth.

The pasture of some smelly, indeterminate ruminant ringed the spaceport. More ominous, Fen noted, were the rusted swoops and ancient, gutted freighters which littered the cramped landing pad. She doubted anything in the port had operated under its own power in the last sixteen years. And the greaseball now droning on was likely personally responsible for the disrepair.

“Gibb,” as the name stitched on his coveralls proclaimed him, paused to spit expressively onto the baked dirt, wisely missing the
Lady
’s extended ramp, then withdrew a datapad from a grimy pocket. “This is the inventory of replacement drives we can get, from here or from Nad’Ris.”

As she reviewed the meager list, Fen realized why she had to pry the pad out of Gibb’s shaking hands. There was a very old, very overpriced Horizon-Hopper. The SoroSuub would entail a repair even Fen wouldn’t attempt. Several new Lifesaver 1000s were also handy, death wish included free of charge. There wasn’t even a quick-and-dirty substitute that was safe enough and cheap enough to get her to a decent shipyard.

The bulge in the little man’s throat rose and fell. “We don’t have anything else,” he choked.

Fen shoved the pad back at him. Space, there wasn’t even anything worth stealing. “How long?” she growled.

“We can order an Avatar,” Gibb stammered.

“How long?” Fen repeated, a little closer and a lot louder.

“Corellia is a long way, even at…”

“How long?” Fen was so close she could smell the chew that hung on him.

Gibb whispered, “A month, maybe two.”

“One month,” Fen ordered.

“Yes, Cap’n,” Gibb squeaked before rushing off.

“Fen, you should teach diplomacy,” a cultured voice scolded. Ghitsa Dogder emerged from the shadows of the
Star Lady
’s ramp.

“I didn’t hear you offering to help,” Fen retorted.

“Why would you need a con artist when your intimidation and yelling were so very effective?” Brandishing a datapad, Ghitsa continued. “I decided to read about our temporary home instead.”

“The rube who wrote that backgrounder is a dead man,” Fen gritted. “I’m gonna get a drink in the ship. You coming?”

“No, I think I will investigate for a little while.”

Fen shrugged and headed up the
Lady
’s ramp. At the hatch she turned back to say something, but her partner had already disappeared into the decaying spaceport building.

Ghitsa’s ambiguous statement set off a muted alarm in Fen’s head. It wasn’t as if she was worried about her partner’s safety. Even in an unfamiliar place the con always took care of herself. No, the real big worry was that Ghitsa’s sharp eye had probably spied something in the backgrounder on Lesvol. Something Fen missed.

“Sith,” Fen muttered, scraping some of the pasture from her boot tread. Digging her fists into her pockets, she went in search of the bottle of Corellian Reserve she kept for really bad days. Whatever the crisis, Corellia had the cure.

Fen was into her third drink, cursing fates and the universe, when her partner finally returned carrying a fist-sized, bright orange fruit.

As Ghitsa set it down on the table, Fen eyed the fruit suspiciously. There were several explanations, each worse than the last. “I don’t suppose you picked that up for a snack?”

“Of course not, Fen,” Ghitsa sniffed haughtily.

“That’s right. You haven’t had a nonliquid meal since the Battle of Endor,” Fen called as Ghitsa retreated toward her cabin. Against her better judgment, Fen climbed slowly to her feet and followed.

“Ghits, what are you up to?” Fen asked as she leaned against the open hatch to Ghitsa’s quarters, nursing her drink.

“Just a way to pass the time and refresh the coffers while we wait for your beloved Corellian parts,” came the muffled reply. Only Ghitsa’s hindquarters, sticking out from a stowage closet, were visible. Fen had to resist the urge to administer a swift kick.

Ghitsa emerged a moment later, shaking out her prize.

Fen felt her jaw drop. “No,” she said sternly.

Ghitsa responded by pulling on the simple robe.

“You must be joking!”

“Fen, you know I have no sense of humor.” A metal cylindrical handle appeared from the robe’s deep pocket. Ghitsa experimentally flicked the switch on and off. Nothing happened, of course.

Ghitsa pushed past her partner, headed for the main cabin. Fen once again trailed behind her.

“I’m surprised that after all these years you haven’t been able to con a real one from someone,” Fen mumbled.

Ghitsa was suddenly quite serious. “Given what we’ve heard recently about the Jedi Academy from the Fringe, I would not be surprised to see lightsabers showing up on the black market.” Ghitsa stared at her, waiting, expectantly.

Fen hedged. “What?”

“You know what,” Ghitsa said impatiently. “That rigged sabacc deck and the repulsor remote. Where are they?”

It was hopeless. Settling back into her seat with a resigned sigh, Fen said, “They’re in the weapons closet, third shelf, in the back.”

“How quaint,” Ghitsa cooed, returning with Fen’s lockbox. She set it on the table and sat across from Fen, helping herself to a glass of the Reserve. In the time it took Fen to pour herself another, Ghitsa had jimmied the box open.

“This is a really bad idea,” Fen finally said.

Ghitsa picked up the fruit on the table and began drilling a delicate hole in it with her pocketknife. “I confirmed what was in the backgrounder. There are thousands of people in Lesvol and the only legal authority is more than two thousand kilometers away. It’s chaos out there. I’d be providing them an invaluable service.”

“For target practice,” Fen grumbled. “Don’t you remember what happened last time?”

Ghitsa nodded, but continued her carving.

“Can I just point out that the
Lady
is out of commission? We don’t have any way of getting out of here once they figure out you’re a fraud.”

“We shall just have to make sure they don’t figure it out then, won’t we?”

Fen swirled the golden liquor in her glass, admiring the way the contents clung to the sides before surrendering to gravity. “I’m not helping you this time,” she declared, knowing her resistance was as futile as her drink’s, but still feeling the need to make a token stand.

From across the table, Ghitsa handed her the remote’s tiny control. “Of course you will.”

Fen developed hate relationships with many places in the galaxy. She loathed Socorro during the hot season, detested Mos Eisley during the dusty season, and her irritation with the exhorbitant prices of Coruscant during Fete Week was a matter of public record. But Lesvol on market day earned a whole new level of disdain.

With a deep breath Fen plunged into the throng of peasants and animals crowding the market square. Squeezing between an oversized vegetable cart and a booth of wheel-sized cheeses, Fen then swerved to avoid a shaggy something smelling vaguely of nerf. When a gap-toothed woman in shapeless black thrust a squawking bird in her face, Fen almost cooked both poultry and purveyor with a blaster bolt.

In contrast to Fen’s mad dashing and darting through the market, Ghitsa’s progress ahead was unhurried. Crowds and livestock magically parted for the woman in the brown robe. She walked serenely, the lightsaber handle swinging freely and conspicuously at her side. They were in the market barely ten minutes when Fen began hearing the whispered word of awe and respect: “Jedi.”

Fen circled around, seeing Ghitsa find her target. Two quarreling men, one as short as the other was fat, had attracted a crowd. Words and spittle flew, with fists sure to follow, to the smaller man’s disadvantage. A groat stood between them, oblivious, complacently chewing her cud.

“Friends,” Fen heard Ghitsa say. “May I assist you?”

A hush fell as all eyes turned to the Jedi woman. “Who are you?” the larger man demanded.

“Jedi!” someone called from the back.

“Don’t look like no Jedi,” the man snarled.

Ghitsa smiled patiently. “Size and sex are not the measure of a Jedi, friend.” She gestured to a nearby fruit stand. “I do not approve of casual use of the Force,” her voice rang out. “But the gentleman here requests some verification.”

Ghitsa held out her right hand. Her left, Fen knew, concealed a tiny remote which controlled the repulsor. A bright orange fruit rose from atop the mounded produce display, circled above the stunned crowd, then fell into Ghitsa’s waiting palm.

She gathered the growing crowd with her eyes and authoritative presence. “I ask again, do you require the assistance of a Jedi?”

“I ask for Jedi mediation,” the small man stammered, with a feisty glare at his combatant. “Baxendahl here sold me a breeding groat, but she’s barren.”

Fen turned away and began pushing against the throng, shaking her head in disgust. Ghitsa would wield her negotiation skills as others used weapons and push the men to some settlement involving cost of a groat’s care, earning potential of a groat’s milk, and value between a breeding and a barren groat. The grateful participants would then pay her for the trouble in some local currency or good. By the end of the afternoon, with another piece of floating fruit and a few “I can read your mind” sabacc tricks, the Lesvol community would think Jedi Master Skywalker himself had come to pay a visit. Force forgive her, but Fen didn’t want to stay around to watch.

The moment would go down in the annals as one of the best of Fen’s life. Twenty-nine days, fourteen hours, and twenty-seven minutes after a power flux forced her into the Maker-forsaken Lesvol, the brand-spanking-new Corellian Avatar-10 hyperdrive finally arrived.

“Cap’n, she’s a beauty.”

“That she is, Gibb.” Fen sighed happily and gazed adoringly at the glistening drive, the stabilizers, the motivator, and the converters, spread out carefully and ordered. “I just wish we found the cause of that flux.”

Gibb’s small shoulders shrugged in his oversized uniform. “I’ve seen it on old YTs before, especially the ones with so many custom features and special modifications. At least you know you won’t blow the Avatar when you put it in.”

A month’s close observation revealed that Gibb was a pretty fair mechanic. Fen hadn’t asked, nor had Gibb explained, where he became so well acquainted with old-model starfighters and Corellian freighters. Everyone had a past and the secrets that go with it.

Gibb was right, though; these things did sometimes happen and the best you could hope for was that they don’t kill you when they did.

Fen bent down, picked up a rock, and pitched it at a groat wandering too close to her new hyperdrive. With a frightened bleat the animal bolted across the landing pad.

“Jedi Ghitsa doesn’t like it when you do that to her pets,” Gibb warned, glancing about nervously.

“Well, she can just use her powers to stop me,” Fen groused. With her busy social and negotiation schedule, Ghitsa wasn’t there, but that didn’t stop even the sensible Gibb from worrying what the All-Knowing Jedi would see. The whole con was going to Ghitsa’s head and really getting to Fen. Apart from Ghitsa’s solemn pontifications, the spaceport and ship fìlled with farm animals, sickly fruit wines, and other homegrown products—all gifts that grateful but very poor clients gave their revered, dealmaker Jedi.

“I’m gonna pull the readings off the old drive,” Fen said, pulling her favorite scanner from her back pocket.

Gibb nodded. “I’ll finish prepping the ship.” He disappeared into the
Lady
, the tools on his belt clanking noisily.

They wrestled the old drive out of the ship and set it on the grass next to the landing pad. With a few well-aimed rocks, Fen scattered the birds—more gifts to Jedi Ghitsa—that had taken to roosting on the drive.

Squatting down, Fen gently turned the first section over and clicked on the scanner. She dusted off bits of blackened char between the two and three couplings, then continued down the drive shaft. And stopped.

Fen thumbed the scanner off and rocked back on her heels. The good news was that she had just found, buried in the most inaccessible part of the drive, what had caused the power flux. The bad news…

The timid, “Uh, excuse me,” so startled Fen that she reflexively hurled the nearest spanner in the direction of the voice.

Fen scrambled to her feet. The uninvited visitor hit the ground to avoid swallowing her thrown tool. “Ever heard of knocking?” she snapped. As he stood slowly, Fen took in the simple brown robe he wore and the untouched metal handle at his waist.

“Where?” He shrugged and looked about expressively. They were, after all, outside, on a spaceport landing pad.

Fen checked the grin. “Right…”
They sure started
them young at Skywalker’s ranch
, Fen mused.
This one couldn’t be a day over twenty
. But then, wild rumors about the Jedi Academy had been flying for months in the Fringe.
Could this soft-faced, shaggy-haired youth really be a fully trained Jedi Knight? By all accounts, probably. And she could just guess what brought a Jedi Knight to the wilds of Lesvol
.

“Well, well,” she said with a low whistle. “Could it be one of the ascetic Luke Skywalker’s little followers in the flesh?”

He straightened with her challenge but stumbled over the words. “Yes, I’m from Master Skywalker’s Academy. I’m Zeth Fost.”

“Fenig Nabon. You can call me Fen.” Another matter demanded her attention, one even more urgent than exploring what a real Jedi was doing here and what she was going to do about it. Fen crouched down again at the drive.

“I don’t suppose the Force can tell you what these char marks between the couplings mean?”

Zeth squatted next to her. “It doesn’t really work like that.”

“Too bad.” Fen pulled a magnifier from her front pocket and began crawling up the length of the drive shaft. There. Between the eighth and ninth couplings.

“What is it?” a soft voice asked, too close to her ear. She almost slugged him, just out of reflex.

“Here,” she said and handed him the magnifier.

“It looks like a… wire?”

“It’s an old saboteur’s trick. You create a complete circuit by connecting the couplings of a hyperdrive. A piece of wire as thin as a hair will do the job. Then send a spark up the drive shaft and it’ll arc, from one coupling to the next. Fry the entire system.” She waved at the drive’s far end. “Somewhere in there I’ll find the remains of a relay or battery that generated the power surge.”

Zeth cleared his throat. “Do you know why?”

Fen slowly stood. “Yeah. Probably. Someone’s likely gunning for my partner, Ghitsa Dogder.”

There was a sharp but not very surprising intake of breath. “She’s why I’ve come,” Zeth said quickly, rising as well. “We’ve heard she is a very powerful Jedi and is doing much good here.”

“Well, she’s got a lot of enemies, too.”

Fen was very proud she did not choke when Zeth intoned, “Those who do good things often have many enemies.” His young face turned somber. “And those with untrained Force powers can be manipulated. Where is she?” he asked, now sounding more urgent.

As soon as he meets Ghits, the gig will be up
, Fen thought.
That alone would be worth the admission price
. “I don’t know,” she finally said, making her decision. “She had a negotiation today. But Gibb will know where she is.”