Hero's Trial: Agents of Chaos I (25 page)

“Our ships were scattered, as were our families. I’ve been searching for my clanmates ever since, including a sister and several cousins.”

“Tough,” Han said.

Droma nodded. “But what about you, Roaky? You handle a ship as masterfully as a starfighter pilot—or a successful smuggler. What brings you out here?”

Han took a moment to collect his thoughts. “I’m more a mechanic than I am a pilot. Taking time off from normal life to figure some things out.”

“So you, also, are trying to return to your family?” Droma said.

Han looked at him. “Maybe I am.”

From the restaurant came the strains of “Smoky Dreams,” a song that had been perfectly matched to Bria Tharen’s whiskey contralto, and one she would often sing.

“The song reminds you of something,” Droma said, observing Han cannily.

Han smiled without showing his teeth. “Good old days.”

“How old?”

“Old enough to be good,” Han told him.

His back to the room, Luke was standing at the wraparound transparisteel window when Kyp Durron, Wurth Skidder, Cilghal, and the other Jedi he had asked to come to Coruscant filed in. The chamber occupied the top floor of the Ministry of Justice building, which while far from the tallest tower in the vicinity, nevertheless enjoyed majestic, panoramic views of the cityscape in all directions. Against the light of the sinking sun, the windows were darkly tinted, but not so impenetrable that the chamber wasn’t bathed in the same reds and oranges that painted the sky.

Luke was seemingly absorbed in watching Coruscant’s ceaseless traffic flow. By the time he turned from the window, all twenty Jedi Knights had entered and were taking seats at the round table or simply standing about, hoods lowered, waiting for Luke to explain why he’d asked them to come nearly halfway across the galaxy.

“The New Republic has two enemy defectors in custody,” he announced without preamble. “One is a priestess, the other is apparently her mascot or companion. As a result of their supplying military intelligence that was at least in part responsible for the recent
victory at Ord Mantell, the defectors are being brought to Coruscant for further debriefing.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Kyp Durron said above outpourings of surprise and excitement. “I knew there had to be some disaffected among the Yuuzhan Vong.” He showed Luke an eager, thin-lipped smile. “When do we get a shot at debriefing them?”

“But it has to be subterfuge, doesn’t it?” Cilghal said before Luke could respond. “Notwithstanding the alleged military intelligence.” Her webbed hands were concealed in the opposite sleeves of her Jedi robe, and her bulbous eyes took in Luke and Kyp simultaneously.

Luke nodded as he moved to the table. “The New Republic is being cautious. If the defectors continue to supply intelligence that holds up, they’ll be given more credence.”

“They’ve agreed to provide more?” Wurth Skidder asked. He was the only one who wasn’t wearing Jedi robes, though from the tousled look of his blond hair he might have passed the entire journey from Yavin 4 with the hood of his cloak raised.

“Conditionally.”

Many of the Jedi traded glances, but no one spoke. Luke perched himself on the edge of the table, with one booted foot extended to the floor.

“They’ve requested a meeting with us.”

The gray-haired and bearded Streen uttered a short laugh. “Exactly the sort of thing I expected.” He regarded Luke. “Did they happen to say why they want to meet with us?”

Luke stood up and took a few steps toward the former Bespin miner. “They claim to have information about an
illness Yuuzhan Vong agents introduced, long before the first worldships landed on Helska 4.”

A shocked silence fell over the room.

“I won’t try to fool any of you,” Luke said after a moment. “With all my heart I want to believe it’s the illness Mara has been suffering, but that remains to be seen.”

“If it is the same,” Cilghal said, still a bit stunned by the revelation, “dare we surmise that the Yuuzhan Vong
know
that Mara is ill?”

Luke tightened his lips and shook his head. “I don’t think we should leap to that conclusion.”

“Of course they know,” Wurth said firmly. “What’s more, I say they’re using Mara to get to us the same way they got to her.”

“You don’t know that,” Anakin said sharply. “The defectors have been scanned for just that sort of thing, and they’ll be scanned again before we meet with them.”

Nonplussed, Wurth sat back in his chair and stared at Luke. “Then you’ve already made up your mind to meet with them?”

Luke nodded once. “As an accommodation to the New Republic as much as anything else—a way of demonstrating to them that we can work together.”

Several meaningful glances were exchanged.

“We can all appreciate that, Master,” Ganner Rhysode said, “but if we’re going to do this, let’s do it for Mara and not for the New Republic. Personally, I couldn’t care less about accommodating the military or the senate after all that’s happened.”

Murmurs of agreement filled the room. Luke waited for everyone to settle down, then said, “I’m going to propose that the defectors meet with Mara and me alone.”

Jacen shot to his feet. “You
do
think it’s a trap!”

Luke turned to him. “I don’t know that it is or it isn’t.”

“Then let them meet with me or Streen or Kam Solusar,” Jacen said. “Any one of us would be willing to risk our lives to help Mara.”

Cilghal looked at Jacen and Luke, her broad slash of mouth slightly ajar. “Your nephew is correct, Master. If there is some risk, you and Mara are the last ones who should assume it.”

Luke glanced around the room. “What are you suggesting, that all of us meet with them?”

“You can count me in,” Kyp said. “I’d like nothing better than a few moments alone with a Yuuzhan Vong.”

“Kyp speaks for me, as well,” Wurth said.

Lowbacca brayed forcefully. Em Teedee, the miniaturized translator droid hovering near Lowie’s shoulder on his own repulsorlift jets, supplied, “We’re all for one. Together, we are stronger than the sum of our individual powers.” Built by Chewbacca and programmed by C-3PO, Em Teedee spoke in the voice of the protocol droid, but absent his sometimes prissy inflection.

“I stand with Lowbacca,” Streen said. “Whatever insights are to be gained about the Yuuzhan Vong will be shared by all of us.”

“I, too,” Tenel Ka added.

Luke clasped his hands behind his back and paced to the windows. The camaraderie heartened him. He thought back to the early years of the academy, and how his students had rallied to defeat the spirit of a dark Jedi who had sought to possess Yavin 4. Some of those in the room now had been there—Cilghal, Streen, even the kids. And some who had joined the fight were
dead, as were Cray Mingla, Nichos Marr, Miko Reglia, Daeshara’cor …

Luke exhaled slowly, turned, and nodded. “I’ll inform New Republic Intelligence of our decision. We’ll meet with the defectors as soon as they arrive on Coruscant.”

“One for the human,” the dealer said, pressing a sabacc chip-card from the shoe.

An Ithorian card-bearer fitted with a paddle appendage where an arm should have been slid his wafer-thin device beneath the microcircuitry-embedded card and deposited it faceup in front of Han.

“Six of sabers,” the dealer announced to the table.

Han calculated the total of the three cards he held and made a subtle waving motion with the forefinger and middle finger of his right hand, signaling the dealer that he would stand.

The dealer, a Bith whose opposable thumb and little fingers made for adroit card handling, looked to the Sullustan seated to Han’s left for instructions. The heavyjowled, jut-eared being rapped his fist once on the long table’s nonskid surface and failed to repress a grin when a card flipped by the bearer’s paddle turned out to be the face card Endurance.

The Bothan in the next seat folded, as did the diminutive Chadra-Fan alongside him. That left Han playing against the Sullustan, and to Han’s right, an Ithorian and a Rodian—both of whom were unscrupulous vendors—the latter holding tightly to the two cards originally dealt to him, and with none on the table.

Han leaned back to show Droma his concealed cards: the Ace of coins, worth fifteen, and the one of staves—recently
altered by the sabacc randomizer from the Queen of Air and Darkness. With the six of sabers showing, the hand had a total value of twenty-two, a mere point away from a pure sabacc. He felt certain that the Sullustan wasn’t holding more than twenty, despite the Endurance face card. The Ithorian’s two table cards alone valued twelve, and from the way the alien had bet, Han doubted he held more than eighteen or nineteen. As for the Rodian, his two cards certainly totaled more than twenty but probably not more than twenty-two. A pure sabacc dealt to him earlier in the game had all but propelled him from his chair, and while he had greeted the present hand with excitement, there was nothing in his glassy, bulging eyes to suggest another instant win.

No one had fixed the value of any chip-cards by placing them in the interference field at the table’s center.

Additional cards were refused all around, and final bets were placed. Unless the randomizer struck again, Han knew he had the pot.

The Sullustan called, and everyone showed their hands.

Han’s instincts were right on the money, and he won his third straight pot. Under the wary and watchful gaze of a human pit boss with enhanced vision for spotting skifters—rigged chip-cards sneaked into the game—or players attempting to glimpse color reflections from ionization of the interference field, the bearer’s paddle gathered the cards, and the banker assembled Han’s winnings into neat stacks and slid them across the table.

The game was being conducted in the
Queen
’s sole extant gaming parlor, where a couple of uvide and jubilee wheels spun noisily in the background and a half-dozen Twi’lek women with tattooed head-tails moved about
with trays of free drinks, transdermal drugs, and a host of smokable substances.

Curiously, Droma had ridiculed Han’s decision to buy into the game—at the cost of almost all his credits—even when Han had justified it as a means of delaying the inevitable return to his filthy cabin, where Han had reluctantly passed the previous night and most of the day, and even the current win failed to disabuse the Ryn of disdain.

“An enterprise entirely lacking in depth,” Droma commented as Han, with arrogant delight, made even neater stacks of his winnings. “And humans, owing perhaps to their evolutionary good fortune, seem more inclined to be taken in than any other species.”

Han’s retort was a smug snort, but he couldn’t help recalling a similar sentiment he’d heard expressed more than twenty years earlier.

“
Of all the races who gamble their well-being on uncertain returns—and there aren’t many, statistically—the trait’s most noticeable in humans, one of the most successful life-forms.
”

The speaker had been a Ruurian academic named Skynx, who had accompanied Han on the search for Xim the Despot’s treasure.

“Laugh all you want,” Han told Droma, “but I’ve been playing since I was fourteen, and sabacc once won me a ship, not to mention a planet.”

“It’s a fool’s enterprise, nonetheless,” Droma said.

Han smiled cavalierly. “I’ll take a handful of luck to a cargo hold of wisdom any day.”

The Bith loaded a new deck into the shoe and showed the palms of his hands—ritual assurance that he had
nothing up his sleeves, as well as the signal for the start of a new round.

Traditional sabacc games pitted player against player in a contest to come closest to negative or positive twenty-three, without bombing out by breaking twenty-three or holding cards equal to zero. And while the
Queen
’s casino employed the standard four-suit, seventy-six-chip-card deck, randomizer, and interference field, the house not only demanded a buy-in price but withheld 20 percent of all pots—the entire pot if all players folded—half of which went into a special bank for rounds played against the house.

The
Queen
also had special rules governing pure sabacc hands. A positive twenty-three beat out negative twenty-three, but a two-card twenty-three beat out a three-card twenty-three, and no player was permitted to request more than three cards in addition to the two received on the deal.

The next round found Han with an initial value of fourteen, a twenty after one randomizer hit, but a thirteen after an unexpected second randomizer hit. Even so, he drew the five of coins and, through skillful bluffing, managed to keep three of his opponents betting until the call, when he raked in another pot.

The following round went much the same, though he wound up edging out the Sullustan by a mere point and winning with a fifteen. With his original buy-in stake, plus his winnings, Han had close to eight thousand credits stacked on the table.

“When they fold every time you bet a good hand, you play to their eyes,” he bragged to Droma, just loudly enough to be heard.

He was about to ante up for another round when Droma called, “Bank!”

While Han’s jaw was dropping, the pit boss hurried over to confer with the cashier, who shortly announced that Han needed 7800 credits to play the hand against the house.

Murder in his eyes, Han whirled on Droma. “Is that fright wig of yours growing down into your brain? If I lose, I’m cleaned out!”

Droma merely shrugged. “The randomizer is the only worthy opponent in this game. The randomizer is fate. Play against that if you want to impress me.”

“Impress you?” Han echoed irascibly. “
Impress
you? Why you—”

“You called ‘bank,’ ” the strapping pit boss reminded in a threatening tone. “Are you playing or not?”

Everyone at the table looked at Han, and a crowd of passengers began to gather round. To decline would not only be gutless but an insult to the players he had nearly cleaned out. He shoved the credits toward the center of the table.

“Bank,” he grated.

As the Bith prized cards from the shoe, the passengers pressed closer to watch. Outside of tournaments, it was rare to see so many credits wagered on a single hand.