Star Wars: Scoundrels (26 page)

“I wouldn’t do that,” Lando said quickly as the second man reached for the cryodex case. “Especially since your little friend hates loud noises.”

The second man paused, his hand touching the case’s handle. “Wolv?” he asked.

Wolv hesitated, and Lando could sense his shrug. “He can keep it,” he said. “We’ll figure out something at the other end of the ride.” He dug his blaster a little harder into Lando’s side. “Come on, step it up. We haven’t got all night.”

“We’re going on a ride, then?” Lando asked as the group picked up their pace.

“A nice little ride to a nice quiet room,” Wolv said. “Where we’ll have a nice little talk.”

“And after that?” Lando asked.

“After that—” Wolv shrugged again. “Well, that’ll be up to you.”

“Yes,” Folx agreed, his voice dark and ominous. “Mostly.”

“They’re heading for the southeast gate,” Rachele’s tense voice came over Han’s comlink. “They’ve already started around the end of the mansion.”

“Yeah, got it,” Han said, striding along the edge of the crowd watching the Grand Tempest, ducking past the people gathered around the food pavilions and trying desperately to strike the balance between speed and caution. If this was a genuine kidnapping attempt, he needed to get there as fast as he could.

But if it
wasn’t
genuine—if it was a trick of Villachor’s to draw out any allies Lando and Zerba had hidden in the crowd—then rushing full throttle to the rescue would do nothing but play perfectly into his hands.

“They’re opening up the distance,” Winter warned from her observation spot in the suite. “If you don’t hurry, you’re never going to catch them before they hit the gate.”

“We can’t go any faster,” Dozer’s voice snarled over Han’s comlink. The ship thief sounded even more frustrated than Han felt. “We do, and they’ll tag us for sure.”

“What a wonderful idea,” Bink cooed over the comlink, her voice still perfectly matched to her air-brained persona despite the tense danger facing them at the moment. “I haven’t been shopping there in
ages
. When do you want me to meet you?”

“Just stay where you are,” Han ordered her. “You’re too far away to help, and we can’t have you blowing your cover. Is Sheqoa there?”

“No, no,” Bink said, still cooing. “I can hardly
wait
to tell you about this new guy I’ve met.”

“Yeah, we can’t wait, either,” Dozer growled. “Come on, kid—we need to know whether he and the rest of Villachor’s people are in on this.”

“Ooh—got to go,” Bink said, pumping some extra excitement into her voice. “Here he comes now. You’re going to love him, Jessie—he is
so
hot.
And
so cool.”

Han snarled an old curse under his breath. Bink’s impromptu verbal code was hard to wade through, but
so hot and so cool
had to mean that she couldn’t tell whether Sheqoa had any of the tension telltales that would indicate the abduction was Villachor’s idea.

More delay and more uncertainty. And all the while Lando and Zerba were getting farther and farther out of range.

And then, suddenly, it was too late. “Dial it back,” Rachele’s tense voice came over the comlink. “You’ll never get there in time now. Not without sprinting across open ground where they’ll be bound to tag you.”

Reluctantly, Han slowed from his fast walk to a slower one and shifted direction instead toward the southwest gate. “At least tell me Chewie’s on it.”

“He’s on it,” Rachele confirmed. “He headed for the roof the minute they were grabbed. Maybe he can get one of the airspeeders in the sky fast enough to follow them.”

“There they go,” Winter cut in. “Looks like an Incom PT-81 airspeeder—dark red, with yellow pinstripes around the front and canopy.”

“Heading?”

“East,” Winter said. “They’re lifting … they’re in the lower airlane. Lifting again …”

“Chewie?” Han demanded.

Even someone like Eanjer who didn’t understand Shyriiwook would have had no trouble recognizing the anger and frustration in Chewie’s roar. He was in the air, but the kidnappers were already gone.

“Too late,” Rachele said, sounding close to tears. “We’ve lost them.”

“W
ell?” Han demanded.

“Nothing,” Rachele said, her head almost touching Winter’s as the two of them peered together at Rachele’s computer display. “There are just too many dark red PT-81s in the city’s records.”

“And the pinstripes are probably aftermarket add-ons,” Dozer muttered. He was sunk deeply in one of the chairs, staring morosely at the tips of his boots.

Han looked around the room. Tavia was peering at another computer display, her face grim. Kell was sitting across from Dozer, tapping the fingers of his left hand soundlessly on the padded arm of his chair and fiddling with a blaster power pack with his right. Eanjer was standing at the window, framed against the lights of the city, staring out into the night as if his prosthetic alien eye could pierce the darkness and spot the missing airspeeder.

“I’ll know it when I see it,” Winter offered hesitantly. “For whatever that’s worth. I could see some scratches and dents in the sides.”

“But that kind of minor damage won’t be in any official records,” Rachele said.

Like Han hadn’t already known that. “Tavia?”

“Sorry,” Tavia said, shaking her head. “Those hats were blocking most of their faces. The bits I could see just weren’t definitive enough for a search. And the ID tag had some kind of sparkledust on it that made it impossible to read from this distance.”

Han nodded heavily as he keyed his comlink. Dead ends, all the way across the board. Whoever these guys were, they knew what they were doing. “Chewie? Anything?”

The Wookiee’s report was short, frustrated, and as negative as everyone else’s.

“Well, keep at it,” Han told him. “It’s sure as Kessel that none of the rest of us are going to spot him from here.”

Chewbacca acknowledged and keyed off.

“Maybe we
should
go out,” Rachele suggested hesitantly. “We’ve got another airspeeder on the roof, and Dozer could probably boost a few more off the street.”

“And then what?” Han demanded. “Zoom around at random and hope we spot them?”

“It would beat hanging around here waiting for them to come get us,” Dozer muttered.

“For who to come get us?” Kell asked.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Dozer bit out. “We don’t have the slightest idea who they are. And until we do, we haven’t got a hope of tracking them down.” He jabbed a finger at Han. “You ask me, the thing to do now is get out of here. And I mean
right
now. Sooner or later, one of them will break. We need to be somewhere else when that happens.”

“No,” Han said firmly before anyone else could voice an opinion. “If they get loose, they’ll be coming back here. We stay.”

“
If
they get loose?” Dozer retorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Who do you think they are, Revan and Malak? I’m telling you, they’re hammer squash. And so are we if we stay here.”

“So go,” Han said, waving at the door. “But you walk through that door and you’re out.”

“Oh, really?” Dozer snarled. He bounded to his feet and grabbed for his blaster—

And froze, the weapon halfway out of its holster, his eyes wide as he found himself staring down the barrel of Han’s fully drawn blaster.

“Really,” Han assured him quietly.

Dozer flashed a look around the room. Whatever he saw in the others’ expressions apparently wasn’t very encouraging. “Fine,” he muttered, lowering his weapon back into its holster and flopping back down into his chair. “So what’s our next move?”

That was, Han knew, a damn good question. In a single heartbeat this whole grand scheme had gone sideways, and suddenly he was flying blind. How this would end he couldn’t even begin to guess.

Except for one thing: they were going to get Lando and Zerba out alive. Guaranteed. Han had lost enough people for one lifetime. He would see Villachor in hell before he lost anyone else.

“We change course,” he said, putting away his own blaster. “Rachele, forget the airspeeder. Lando and Zerba were talking to Villachor. Start making a list of people who might not like that.”

“Got it,” Rachele said, and turned back to her computer.

Han threw a look outside at the deceptively cheerful lights of the city. Somewhere, somehow, they needed to catch a break.

And they had better catch it soon.

“You’ve certainly been busy little banthas,” Wolv commented as the airspeeder wove its way through the nighttime traffic. “I understand this was your second audience with Master Villachor.” He cocked his head. “Or was it your third? That glitterstim peddler
was
one of yours, wasn’t he?”

“I didn’t realize Master Villachor’s guest list was under such scrutiny,” Lando said, feeling his forehead creasing. A
glitterstim
peddler? When had a glitterstim peddler come into any of this?

“Everything Master Villachor does is under scrutiny,” Wolv said. “Especially when it interferes with his proper business activities.” He pointed to the case on Zerba’s lap. “So is that the fancy glitterstim? Or is that the payout?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lando said with as much haughtiness as he could manage. “But I promise you that when Master Villachor learns about this, he is
not
going to be pleased.”

“Oh, I agree,” Wolv said, an evil smile flicking briefly across his face. “The only question is whether or not you two are going to go down with him.”

“I wouldn’t count him out just yet if I were you,” Lando warned.

“And I wouldn’t count on him digging you out of this,” Wolv shot back. “Your best bet right now is to open that case and hand over whatever’s inside. You do that, and I promise you’ll walk away.”

Lando shook his head. “I have my orders.”

The other snorted. “Fine—have it your way. But I’ll tell you right now that when we get where we’re going we’ll be meeting someone who can get that thing open without scattering it over the downwind half of the city. My offer lasts until then, and
only
until then. Think about it.” He looked pointedly at Zerba. “Both of you.”

He held his pose another few seconds. When it was clear that neither of his prisoners was going to say anything, he shook his head in disgust and turned back around to face forward.

Lando looked sideways at Zerba. Zerba twitched an eyebrow and looked down at his binders. Lando followed his eyes and saw the small gap at the binders’ connection.

So Zerba had already gotten his restraints open. No surprise there.

Unfortunately, with the binders connected to chains anchored to the airspeeder’s floor, there was no way for Zerba to get to Lando’s without their kidnappers noticing.

Zerba had obviously figured that out, too. He opened his hand slightly, giving Lando a glimpse of a small three-prong lockpick he’d been hiding somewhere, and twitched his eyebrow again in silent question.

Lando sighed. Equally unfortunately, he’d never mastered that particular school of lock picking. He shook his head, following it up with a short hunching of his shoulders. Zerba wrinkled his nose in sympathy and closed his hand again around the lockpick.

Still, the day wasn’t lost yet. If Zerba could take advantage of his freedom to jump out of the airspeeder the second they touched down and manage to get himself and the cryodex to safety, Lando might be able to bluff or bargain his way to at least a temporary reprieve. Any breathing space he could buy would give him time to come up with something more permanent.

Or would give that same time to Han and the others.

He hoped they were working on a rescue plan. He hoped it very much.

“Can they be traced back to you?” d’Ashewl’s voice came from Dayja’s comlink.

“I don’t know,” Dayja said, scowling at the PT-81 zooming along eight vehicles ahead. Something about the way it was moving warned him that they were about to turn again. “I don’t think so. But that’s not the point. The point is that if Eanjer and his team slide off the edge, this whole operation is likely to slide down with them. I may not be able to restart my own game in time to get into Marblewood before the Festival ends.”

“There’s no indication that Qazadi intends to leave immediately after that,” d’Ashewl reminded him.

“There’s also no indication that he doesn’t,” Dayja countered. Ahead, sure enough, the airspeeder turned right and dropped into a lower, slower airlane. Dayja matched the maneuver, then dropped one level more. He still didn’t know whether they’d spotted him or whether all this weaving in and out and around the city was just their idea of being cautious. Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to let them get a little more distance on him.

“If it slides, it slides,” d’Ashewl said with a hint of impatience. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you move in on this. And I
absolutely
can’t let you call in any Imperial authorities.”

Dayja ground his teeth. But d’Ashewl was right. If Qazadi got even a hint that Imperial Intelligence was on his back trail, the whole group would scramble, and he and d’Ashewl would be going back to Imperial Center empty-handed.