Star Wars: Scoundrels (41 page)

And gave a strangled gasp as Qazadi’s guard bent his arm against the elbow joint. “I’m not with them,” the prisoner moaned. “I swear.”

For another moment Qazadi stared at him. The man squirmed under the Falleen’s gaze, avoiding his eyes, looking like he was on the verge of tears. A far cry from the arrogant, overconfident drug dealer Crovendif had described, Villachor thought contemptuously.

“Take him to my quarters,” Qazadi said at last. “What was he carrying?”

“A comlink, a holocamera, and a small vial,” Becker said. “Maybe the glitterstim. No weapons.”

“Bring them here.”

Again Becker glanced at Villachor for confirmation, then stepped forward and handed the items to one of the men holding the prisoner. “Take those to my quarters as well,” Qazadi ordered. “Wait for me there.”

“We obey, Your Excellency,” one of the guards said. He nudged the prisoner, and the three of them headed toward the service turbolift at the rear of the foyer.

Qazadi watched them go, then turned to one of his four remaining human guards. “Take two others and my airspeeders and position yourselves in observation sites around the Lulina Crown Hotel,” he ordered. “I’ll order Lord Aziel to bring his cryodex here. If Master Villachor is right and this is merely some clever copy, he’ll answer the summons without hesitation or fear.”

He looked at Villachor. “If Master Villachor is wrong and this is indeed Aziel’s cryodex, he will attempt to run. By his own actions he will be condemned.”

The guard bowed. “I obey, Your Excellency,” he said. Pulling out his comlink, he strode briskly from the foyer, heading in the direction of the garage.

“May I offer the assistance of my own security forces?” Villachor asked hesitantly.

“Are there any you can trust with your life?” Qazadi countered.

Under the circumstances, Villachor knew what the correct answer had to be. “No,” he conceded.

“Then your men may not help,” Qazadi said. “I’ll let you know the results of my interrogations in due time.”

He turned and headed toward the stairs, the two Falleen and three humans forming a moving box around him.

Villachor watched him go, a hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach. In the nearly three weeks since Qazadi and his entourage had arrived, he’d seen the Falleen’s guards take up such an obviously defensive formation only on the rare occasions when they moved from the safety of the mansion out onto the grounds. Clearly, Qazadi no longer felt safe inside Villachor’s home.

Villachor could hardly blame him. If the cryodex was a fake, how had it been done? If it was real, what could possibly have possessed Aziel to make this insane bid for power?

Unless Kwerve’s people hadn’t been targeting only Villachor. Maybe they’d been working both sides: Aziel for his cryodex, Villachor for the files themselves.

Or perhaps there was no treason at all. After all, he had only Qazadi’s word that Kwerve’s cryodex was identical to Aziel’s. Could this be Qazadi’s way of painting Villachor with the suspicion of treason?

If so, there was likely nothing he could do about it. He was a sector chief; Qazadi was a vigo. Whether Aziel was genuinely a traitor or whether Qazadi was manipulating nonexistent evidence to implicate Villachor, it was one side’s word against the other’s.

And there was no doubt at all which of them Prince Xizor would believe.

Suddenly, a deal with the Imperials was looking better and better.

“Sir?” Tawb said.

Villachor snapped out of his dark thoughts, fresh determination flooding through him. He wasn’t going to go running off to Lord d’Ashewl, Darth Vader, or even the Emperor himself. He was going to stand his ground and fight for the power and territory that he’d worked so hard to build. The power and territory that were rightfully his. How could he even have thought about giving in?

And then he realized how he could have thought about it, and he bared his teeth in a vicious snarl.

Curse
Qazadi and his Falleen pheromones, anyway.

“Sir?” Tawb repeated, more urgently.

“What?” Villachor snapped.

“I’m getting reports of a commotion outside,” the bodyguard said urgently.

“What kind of commotion?” Qazadi’s voice wafted across the room.

Villachor turned around. The Falleen and his guard had paused near the foot of the stairway and were looking back at Villachor and the others.

Villachor turned back to Tawb. And curse Tawb and his big mouth, too. “You heard him,” he growled. “What kind of commotion?”

“It appears—” Tawb frowned and leaned closer to his comlink clip. “It appears that some of the droids are … going crazy.”

The sky was darkening, and Bink was wondering if something had gone wrong, when she finally spotted Chewbacca drifting casually toward them.

She breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Sheqoa’s comlink clip had been spitting out new orders or updates every few minutes for the past hour, and though she couldn’t hear any of them distinctly as she nestled against his side, she could tell by his facial muscles and body tension that something wasn’t going well in Villachor’s little corner of paradise. The fact that Sheqoa apparently was ignoring the updates in favor of continuing to wander the crowds and pretending to enjoy Bink’s prattle confirmed that Bink was still his current assignment.

Which was, of course, exactly how she wanted it.

Chewie was moving closer, his attention apparently on something off to the side. Bink hadn’t seen Tavia yet, but she had no doubt her sister was moving up behind her, exactly as she was supposed to.

Casually, she extricated her right hand from Sheqoa’s left arm, reaching up to brush a lock of hair out of her eyes and taking the opportunity for one last visual check of the fingersnips fastened all but invisibly beneath her nails. They were set and ready to go. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Chewbacca moving in from her left …

And suddenly there he was, angling sideways straight into her as he looked at something off to his own left. Bink jerked away from the big furry wall bearing down on her and ducked sideways in front of Sheqoa. She pivoted around to face him as she continued her evasive motion, her left hand clutching at Sheqoa’s shoulder, her right pressed briefly against his upper chest as she breathed a startled and panicky gasp into his face.

As she continued around to his other side, the fingersnips on her right hand deftly cut through the small chain connecting the key pendant to the choker around his neck. The fingertip-sized glazed stone dropped into her hand, and as she palmed it, she continued on to Sheqoa’s right side, grabbing his right arm with both hands.

Which was his gun hand, which he’d already warned her not to grab. Sure enough, before she could even get her feet planted, his forearm lurched reflexively up and back, throwing off her hands and sending her falling backward into the flowing mass of people behind her. She half turned as someone grabbed her, caught a glimpse of a brown dress and floppy hat and Tavia’s face. As the two of them spun around, fighting for balance against Bink’s momentum, Bink’s flailing right hand came up beneath the brim of Tavia’s hat, flipping it back and off her sister’s head. As the hat sailed up into the air, Bink’s left hand slipped into a fold of her skirt and caught hold of Zerba’s magic egg. She squeezed the activator—

And in the blink of an eye, as the two of them toppled to the ground, Bink’s red silk dress was ripped instantly away into the egg, leaving her dressed in a duplicate of Tavia’s brown dress, as Tavia’s brown dress similarly vanished to reveal the copy of Bink’s red one.

Their twirling movement as they fell had landed Bink on the bottom of the two-woman heap. Tavia was off her in an instant, rolling away so as to give Bink the necessary freedom of movement to flip over onto her stomach and get her face turned away from Sheqoa. She finished the roll, then got her hands under her and pushed herself shakily up onto her knees. A second later, half a dozen hands closed around her arms, another half dozen grabbed Tavia’s, and a moment later both women were back on their feet. Standing behind her sister, listening tensely for the cues that would mean Sheqoa hadn’t been fooled by the trick, Bink brushed herself off and drifted farther into the crowd, murmuring her assurances to the anxious people around her that she was fine. Someone handed her Tavia’s floppy hat as she passed; she smiled her thanks and set it carefully onto her head.

“You okay?” Sheqoa said gruffly from behind her. Bink tensed—

“I’m fine,” Tavia said, sounding breathless. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to grab you like that.”

“It’s okay,” Sheqoa said. His voice was still gruff, but Bink could hear that the growl was coming from embarrassment, not suspicion. “Stupid clumsy oaf of a Wookiee. Did he hurt you?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Tavia said again. “I thought for sure he was going to run me straight down.”

“It’s okay now,” Sheqoa said, and Bink could visualize him taking her arm and pulling her gently but firmly back to his side.

Somewhere in the near distance, audible over the roar of the crowd and the hissing of the various flame jets, came the sound of crashing tableware. “Uh-oh—sounds like someone’s going to have some cleanup to do,” Tavia commented. “I guess Wookiees aren’t the only clumsy oafs here today.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when two more crashes sounded across the grounds, each of them coming from a different direction. A half second later, an even louder crash echoed off the mansion wall, this one accompanied by a woman’s or child’s scream.

“That’s not someone being clumsy,” Sheqoa bit out. “Come on.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Bink saw them head off quickly in the direction of the latest crash, disappearing within seconds into the crowd.

She smiled tightly to herself as she made a more leisurely departure from the area. So much for her worries that something had gone wrong.

The plan was back on schedule. Chewbacca and Tavia had done their jobs, and from the ever-growing cacophony of crashes, screams, and shouts it was clear that Kell and Zerba had done theirs.

Time for Bink to do hers.

The others would be waiting for her at the garage door. Picking up her pace, wondering just how big a mess the droids were making, she headed north.

Dayja had never been hit by a Falleen before, and if Qazadi’s slap was a representative sample of their work, he was pretty sure he never wanted to be hit by one again. That single blow was still throbbing through his cheek, his head, and most of the upper half of his body.

But the residual effects from the slap paled in comparison to the mental dizziness that had been created by the revelations ricocheting across his brain.

A cryodex. So
that
was how Xizor had encrypted his blackmail files. Imperial Intelligence had managed to collect alleged bits of those files over the years but had never been able to crack the encryption or even to figure out how it was done. There were many analysts, in fact, who flatly rejected the idea that those bits were genuine Black Sun files and assumed they were simple disinformation designed to keep Intelligence running in loops.

A cryodex explained everything. And if the blackmail files, why not other sensitive information? In fact, why not the whole Black Sun information network?

Dayja wrinkled his nose. Intriguing, but highly unlikely. There might yet be other cryodexes still floating around, any one of which could instantly slice the unsliceable code. Xizor was far too smart to put too many hatchlings in the same basket.

But even if it was just the blackmail files, getting hold of that cryodex would be a major accomplishment. Especially now that most of the remaining models were part of the expanding dust cloud that had once been Alderaan. Dayja had no idea how Eanjer’s team had gotten hold of Aziel’s device, but he had no intention of letting Qazadi or anyone else kick it back into the shadows.

Assuming, of course, that the device he’d left Qazadi holding was indeed the real cryodex.

Mentally, he shook his head. He was with Villachor on this one. Stealing Aziel’s cryodex or duplicating it both seemed to be at roughly the same level of impossibility. The whole thing was smelling suspiciously like a con man’s shell game, and until he knew which shell the real cryodex was under, there was no point making any moves.

Except, of course, for the first move in any and all future plans, which was to get free of Qazadi’s thugs.

“Get in,” one of the thugs growled as the turbolift door slid open. Hunching his shoulders in the very image of demoralization, Dayja obeyed. The guards joined him, and they headed up.

Holodrama writers, Dayja had noticed over the years, had a strange fascination with turbolifts. They especially liked casting such places as the perfect spot for a captured hero or heroine to burst into action against evil captors, using hands or feet or concealed weapons to render their opponents dead or unconscious, usually before they even reached their designated floor. Maybe it was the drama of the close quarters that the producers liked, or maybe it was simply that turbolift fights required no set dressing and left minimal damage to clean up afterward.

It was, of course, ridiculous. The close quarters meant there was nowhere a would-be escapee could run to, along with the added disadvantage of having to fight an entire circle of enemies at the same time. The lack of furniture or decoration meant no impromptu weapons close at hand. There was also no telling what kind of setting or situation the turbolift door would open up on. Even if the hero made it through all that, a turbolift car had no place in which to hide the bodies.

Finally, the fact that the bad guys watched those same holodramas meant that they fully expected trouble to break out in turbolift cars. As a result, guards had a tendency to press even more closely around a prisoner in such a setting, their senses alert to any sign of trouble.

Unfortunately for them, the fact that they were watching for signs of impending violence tended to make them oblivious to everything else. Which made turbolifts the ideal place for a prisoner to pick his binders.

Dayja had his unfastened by the time the door slid open on the fourth floor. “Where are we going?” he asked, peering nervously out through the opening. The hallway was exquisitely decorated, with potted plants and expensive artwork along the walls, a thick carpet on the floor, and a molded glitter-coated ceiling above them. A guest floor, undoubtedly, with Qazadi and his guard contingent probably the only current residents. Several of the doors lining the hallway stood open, but there was no one in sight.