Star Wars - Missed Chance Read online

  But retreat she really did want to do, because she had never been more scared in her whole entire life. There was no question in her mind about that — clear of drugs or dosed to the top of her cranium. The terror of being arrested and tossed into jail had been enough to make her tell the authorities everything she knew.

  The problem was she didn’t know anything.

  To her the Rebellion had been a distant conflict, one full of romance and heroism. The last True Jedi fighting the monster that destroyed his predecessors and a rogue of a smuggler winning the heart of a princess from a dead world — these were the things she knew about the New Republic. They had destroyed the Death Stars and the Emperor, but other than a change of the military prefect, those events had no effect on her or her friends at the university.

  Then the Star’s Delight had come to Garqi and had been taken for smuggling supplies to Rebels. She and others she met on the computer comnets — in temporary areas they sliced open and let close after the conversations were done — had mentioned suspicions that the New Republic had agents on Garqi. Dynba had found that prospect thrilling and not a little scary. People speculated about all sorts of things concerning the Delight, and a natural linkage was made between it and the phantom X-wing that had been reported flying at night all over Garqi.

  Then she met Xeno. He sliced his way into one of the covert conversations — marking him as being better at codeslicing than anyone in the Imperial Security outfit on Garqi. Though he never said it, from his name and the fact that he only showed up after the Delight’s capture, Dynba concluded he was one of the Delight’s crew that the local authorities had failed to pick up.

  Xeno organized her and her byte-friends, keeping them all anonymous. She never knew what she’d find on her datapad once she linked into the planetary network, but it was always an adventure. Xeno showed her and the others how to graft slogans and graphics into the system, so datapad screens everywhere in the comnet would get New Republic messages at random intervals.

  The shock and the outrage, as voiced by her parents and their friends, was wonderful. Dynba had struggled numerous times to maintain a straight face when some atrocity was being described to her by her apoplectic father, all the while knowing she’d composed the slogan and aimed it to hit his computer first. Doing things like that marked the highest point in her personal rebellion against his authority, and she found planning and executing new code assaults rather cathartic.

  Dynba had long held the opinion that Xeno was grooming her and the others for something bigger — possibly the liberation of the Delight even — but she wanted to do something more. Abandoning the virtual realm of computers, she went out and bought a can of paint. In big, sloppy red letters she wrote “The death of a Tyrant is the triumph of Justice!” on the side of the Imperial Court building in the heart of the capital, Pesktda.

  It had not occurred to her until later — about the time the local constabulary was putting her in binders — that having the store mix up a precise shade of red and charging the purchase to her personal account was not exactly the way to maintain her anonymity. The constabulary seemed to think her boldness meant she was dangerous and the interrogation to which she was subjected had been ruthless and efficient. Her lack of substantive answers angered her questioners and she knew she was in very serious trouble.

  The door to her cell hissed open and the lights came up slowly. A small man with blond hair and beard entered and descended the metal-lattice steps to the floor. He turned back and gestured toward an unseen guard. The door clanked down, leaving her alone with this man wearing the uniform of the prefect’s personal staff. She thought she recognized him, but she could attach no name to his face.

  Dynba drew her legs up and tried to wedge herself more deeply into the corner of the cell. “I don’t know any more.”

  The man nodded. “I know, child.” He sank down in a squat, bringing his eye level down to hers. “It is my sad duty to tell you that Prefect Barris has decided to have you executed for your crime.”

  “What?” Dynba gulped air. “He can’t.”

  “Oh, but he can.” The man’s green-eyed gaze flicked down toward the floor, giving her a moment to recover herself, then he looked back up. “I, on the other hand, cannot stand by and let this happen.”

  “What are you saying?” She thought she heard sincerity in his voice, and read it in his eyes, but the clothes he wore and the fact that a guard had followed his direction argued against any compassion on his part. The fact that he was there and talking to her at all made her wary of a trick. “You work for him. You won’t help me.”

  The man broke off his stare and color rose to his cheeks. “Please, this is difficult for me as it is.”

  “Were I not here I might be more considerate. You work for a monster.”

  “I know.” His hands balled into fists. “I am his personal aide.”

  “You! You are Eamon Yzalli!”

  “I am.”

  “Then you are here to trick me.” Dynba let her anger flow fully into her voice. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  Eamon sighed loudly. “I am.”

  “What?”

  “I am ashamed.” He swallowed hard. “I should have seen sooner that to which I have chosen to be blind — the Empire corrupts people. I denied this truth and my denial is a crime that makes me complicit in the death of my homeworld, Alderaan. I came here and served here in hopes of forgetting. Then, when Prefect Barris was installed, I made myself a buffer between his capriciousness and the people of Garqi. Even now I tried to get him to moderate your punishment, but to no avail. I cannot allow your death to be upon my head, so I have chosen to act against him and for you.”

  Dynba shook her head to clear her brain of the buoyant hope bubbling up into it. “What can you do?”

  A broad smile split Eamon’s beard and in that moment Dynba thought him just a little bit handsome. Like a hero of the New Republic.

  “What I can do and will do is this: I will arrange for your liberation. You will have approximately two days in which to execute a rescue of the Star’s Delight crew. You and your confederates will board the ship and leave with it. Garqi is no longer safe for you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Captain Nootka will need things to trade if he is going to resupply the ship and get to the New Republic. I will arrange for the contraband he smuggled here to be placed aboard — I can tell the workers we want the evidence replaced in the compartments to show an Imperial Intelligence agent how we found it. They will believe that and it will save us having to move it ourselves.”

  Dynba’s blue eyes widened. “You’re coming with us?”

  Eamon nodded solemnly. “I can cover your escape, but once the ship gets away there would be no concealing my part in all of this. When you are set to go, have one of your slicers get into the Imperial comnet and leave me a message as to where and when I should meet you.”

  “I’ll do it myself.” Dynba swung her legs over the edge of the cot and her toes touched the cold floor. “What you’re doing, the people you lost on Alderaan would be proud.”

  Eamon closed his eyes and nodded. “It is my hope you are correct.” He reached out and took her hand in his. gently stroking warmth back into her flesh. “You only have to endure this prison for a few hours more, then you shall be free.”

  She gripped his hand tightly. “And soon after that, we shall be free!”

  Barris raised a nearly empty glass in Eamon’s direction. “I salute you, Eamon. It seems as if everything is going perfectly.”

  “Yes, sir. Dynba Tesc is secreted away, bringing her confederates together to free the Delight and its crew. She is also altering her appearance so she can claim to be Kirtana Loor, Imperial intelligence agent, and take the Delight’s crew from custody without having to notify you for authorization. Several landspeeders have been organized for transport.”

  “And the Delight is ready?”

  The small man nodded solemnly. “Using TIE pilots as
workers was difficult, but once I explained the necessity of limiting knowledge of the operation to them, they agreed they were the best people for doing the job. The X-wing munitions are on board the Delight, though the spare parts appear to have been pilfered. As a skilled technician can convert them to work in Incom’s T-47 landspeeder, my assumption is that someone in property storage gave himself a bonus. I have a few leads in that regard.”

  “We will deal with him, later.” Barris snorted, drank and set his glass down. “The shields on the ship are disabled?”

  “Yes, sir. We replaced a duplex circuit with its triplex equivalent.”

  “But a codepatch will allow them to bring the shields up.”

  “Yes, sir, but an initial diagnostic run on the ship will report the circuits as complete. Only when they discover the failure will they begin to look for the triplex. At that point slicing the proper sequence out of it will take approximately an hour.”

  The Prefect tapped a finger against the empty rim of his snifter. “An hour they will not have.”

  “Precisely, sir.” Eamon refilled the glass with choholl.

  “While you have been busy, Eamon, so have I.” Barris winked at his man. “I have composed the report about your execution.”

  “Not on the system, sir?”

  Barris smiled in response to the urgency in Eamon’s voice. “No, of course not.” He tapped the fingers of his right hand against the side of his white-haired head. “I have it all up here. You were terminated for ‘anti-imperial activity.’”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “I may modify it. I want it to be perfect.”

  “I am certain it will be more than suitable, sir.”

  “I thought I would enter it into the computer just around sunset tomorrow. Things should be ready by then?”

  “Yes, sir. Agent Loor will be arriving then, so he should see the pursuit and how you handle it.”

  “Excellent.” Barris hefted the glass and raised it again in a salute. The destruction of the Delight should make for great entertainment. I think I will have some friends in to watch.”

  Eamon nodded solemnly. “Very good, sir. I had already requested the kitchen prepare suitable refreshments for a gathering of ten. Will that be sufficient, sir?”

  “Quite, Eamon.” Barris sipped his choholl and smiled. “You anticipate my desires as well as my needs. What would I do without you?”

  “A hypothetical question, sir.” Eamon’s expression became placid. “One hopes there is never need to answer it.”

  Her now-brown hair pulled back into a tight bun at the back of her head, Dynba stepped from the first landspeeder and tugged at the hem of her uniform jacket. She marched crisply to the door of the local detention center and drew from the jacket’s breast pocket what looked to be an ordinary rank cylinder. She touched it against the I/O port beside the door.

  Somehow, above the thundering of her heart, she heard a click and the door withdrew upward. At the other end of the short corridor she saw a guard standing behind a transparisteel shield look at her, then at the image on the screen of his datapad and back again. As he did so the blood drained from the man’s face.

  His clear anxiety gave Dynba a chance to conquer her own fear. Eamon had assured her that the rank cylinder he had given her would identify her as an Imperial Intelligence agent sent out from Coruscant to inspect Garqi. It made her Kirtana Loor and made her answerable to no one on the planet. A word from her and anyone could be sent to Kessel to mine spice while awaiting interrogation. “You will be someone they fear as much as you fear them. Use it and you will dominate them,” he had told her.

  And use it I shall. Keeping her steps crisp, and relishing the click of leather on stone, she approached the guard. “Are the prisoners ready for transfer?” She let the lilt of the common Core-dweller accent enter her voice, and underscored her words with impatient indignation.

  The man’s lower lip started quivering. “Transfer? I know nothing of…”

  “Of course you don’t.” She drew her black leather gloves off by tugging on each finger in succession, then slapped them against the palm of her left hand. “The inefficiency of Rim-world officials should not surprise me, should it?”

  “Well, I… ”

  “You were not going to venture an opinion, were you? What is your name?”

  The man smiled weakly. “Which prisoners were those, my lady?”

  “The crew of the Star’s Delight.” Her eyes became slits and she forced her nostrils to flare. “Returning them to the scene of the crime — you do know about using that investigative technique, don’t you?”

  The man furiously punched keys on his datapad. “Well, I … ”

  “Of course you don’t — the technique predates the Emperor’s murder by a year, so it hasn’t gotten out here yet. You probably think he is still alive.”

  “Yes, my lady. I mean, no … ”

  Dynba barked a harsh laugh. “You don’t know what you mean. Why the Rebels would strike at this witspare compost heap, I do not know.”

  “No, my lady.”

  The door to her right buzzed and slid into the ceiling. Three bedraggled figures, a small female Sullustan, a morose giant of a Duros and a Devaronian with several missing teeth and a broken horn shuffled through the doorway. They wore binders on their wrists and had another pair hobbling them. Each individual looked away from the dying sunlight pouring through the open doorway to the street.

  Dynba looked up at the Duros. “Captain Lai Nootka, you and your crew are charged with treason. I am a representative of Imperial Intelligence and the resolution of your case is in my hands. Come with me.”

  She led the prisoners from the detention center and waved the landspeeders forward. Each prisoner was secured in a different speeder, then they headed off toward the hangar where the Star’s Delight had been kept in impound.

  The vehicles followed one after the other all the way to the spaceport. Dynba regretted not being able to tell the crew they were safe and with friends, but doing so would have put the mission in jeopardy. If the crew did not look scared and defeated as they rode through the streets of Pesktda, someone could note their happy demeanor and that would attract attention to them and the operation. Eamon had pointed out that people tended not to pay too much attention to those who appear to be doomed because they might attract attention in doing so. Even before he’d said anything, she’d known that was true.

  In keeping with her role as Loor, she met the gazes of the curious and held them until the others turned away. I don’t like making people afraid, but it is the only way to save these people and Eamon. And myself and my friends, too. She kept her stare hard and terrifying throughout the ride until the speeders slid into the shade of the hangar.

  The second her landspeeder stopped, she loosed her hair and shook it out over her shoulders. “Open the binders.” She pointed at Nootka. “The ship is ready to go, complete with your X-wing munitions. Start pre-flight. The only thing on this world that can stop us from getting out of here are four TIE starfighters. Is that a problem?”

  The Duros rubbed at his wrists as his driver tinkered with the binders on the starpilot’s ankles. “We are matched for speed. We have hyperdrive, they do not. We have a blaster cannon, they have lasers. We have shields, they do not. I think we are not far from freedom”

  “Dynba, you did it!” A Twi’lek woman came running down the gangplank of the long CorelliSpace Gymsnor-3 Freighter. With her head tails twitching excitedly, she brandished her datapad. “No alarms, no traces. We’re clear.”

  “Good.” Dynba looked past Arali Dil’s shoulder, then frowned. “Are Eamon or Xeno here?”

  Arali shook her head. “No one has been here except Sihha and me.”

  Dynba frowned. Prior to departing for the prison, Dynba had left a message with Eamon telling him when they planned to leave, and another to Xeno inviting him to reunite with his crew and escape. She had expected both of them to be present when she returned an
d she had especially wanted to see the look on Eamon’s face when he realized his plan had worked perfectly.

  “Arali, link into the comnet and see if you have anything from Xeno or Eamon.”

  “Right.”

  The Twi’lek and a Bothan had turned out to be the only non-Humans in Xeno’s circle. The circle itself only had seven members, not counting Xeno, and all of them had thought it funny that even being so few in number, they had caused enough trouble for the Empire to send an Intelligence agent out from the Core to Garqi to deal with them.

  Dynba had briefed everyone on their role in the Great Evacuation. Because of the Empire’s xenophobic bias, neither Arali nor Sihha, the Bothan, would pass for Imperial officers, so they had remained with the ship while the five Humans used the speeders to get the prisoners. Now back in the hangar, everyone hurried aboard the Delight and prepared for departure.

  “Interesting.”

  Dynba glanced away from the hangar opening and toward Arali. “What is?”

  “Message to all of us from Xeno. He says his work here isn’t done. He’ll catch up with us later and we will all laugh about this.”

  “I’d prefer it if he came with us. I hope they don’t need him to run the ship.”

  “Sihha can fill in — he was an astrogation student here.”

  “Right.” Dynba felt a heavy darkness begin to spread from her stomach out to her limbs and stab straight up into her heart. “Nothing from Eamon.”

  “By the foul hearts of the Sith!”

  Dynba whirled at the sound of Arali’s voice. “What?”

  The Twi’lek held her datapad out and Dynba snatched it from her trembling hands. “By order of Prefect Mosh Barris, at the conclusion and in resolution of his personal investigation into the actions of Eamon Yzalli, ordered and carried out the discreation of an enemy of the state.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as she read. “He’s dead.”

  The datapad slipped from her hands, but the Twi’lek deftly caught it, then started pulling on Dynba’s arm. “Come on, we have to go.”