Star Wars: Scoundrels (42 page)

“To your own personal hell,” one of the guards answered, giving him a shove out of the car. “Move.”

Turbolift cars were rotten places to pick a fight. Turbolift car
doorways
, on the other hand, were ideal.

The nearest open door led into a sleeping room that was even more nicely furnished than the hallway. The walk-in closet had a lock, but there was enough room on the far side of the massive bed for both of the bodies. Dayja paused long enough to relieve the late guards of his appropriated comlink and holocamera, then headed back to the turbolift. It would have been nice to take one of their blasters, too, but he wouldn’t put it past Qazadi to have all his guards’ weapons track-chipped. Once the alarm went up and the hunt began, there was no point in making it too easy for them to find him.

The original plans for the governor’s mansion had included a roof stairway beside the dumbwaiter shaft that led up from the kitchen in the building’s central section. There was a chance Villachor had sealed it up as unnecessary and a possible security risk, but it was worth a try.

To his mild surprise the stairway was still there, its entrance concealed behind an impressive four-panel wall painting. He got the door open and slipped inside, closing the painting behind him as best he could.

Rooftops were traditionally a bad place for a fugitive to be trapped, especially rooftops high enough that jumping would almost certainly lead to death or serious injury. But his escape probably would be discovered within a very few minutes, and the same logic that argued against rooftops as a hiding place should send Villachor’s searchers running off to check all the other likely places first. At the very least, it should buy Dayja a little more time.

And right now, time was what he needed most.

Taking the stairs as quietly as he could, he pulled out his comlink. He only hoped his call wouldn’t be too late.

A
cross the darkening grounds came the sound of crunching wood. “There,” Tawb said, pointing in that direction. “There goes another one.”

“Sounds like a maintenance droid kicking over a bench,” Manning added. “Yes—make that an affirmative. Tallboy’s heading over to try to tackle it.”

With an effort, Villachor held on to what was left of his patience. A few malfunctioning droids, and his so-called professional security men were panicking? “We have tech people for this,” he growled, spinning around and heading back toward the open doorway behind him. “Call
them
.”

“No,” Qazadi’s voice came from inside the doorway.

Villachor stopped, swallowing a curse. “They’re malfunctioning droids, Your Excellency,” he bit out. “It happens all the time. Probably a frequency bleed-through between motivators—”

“Or a deliberate attack,” Qazadi cut him off. “Your security chief himself seems to think so.”

Villachor frowned. “What?”

“He comes to you now,” Qazadi said.

Villachor turned back around. Sure enough, Sheqoa had appeared from the edge of the crowd and was hurrying toward him, his hand locked around the wrist of a young woman in a red dress as he half pulled, half dragged her behind him.

And there was definitely a hard set to his face.

Villachor bared his teeth. Treason and betrayal all around him, prisoners who might hold the key waiting to be interrogated, and all these fools could worry about were a few rampaging
droids
?

But Qazadi was concerned, and Qazadi was the one calling the shots. All Villachor could do was get the mess fixed as quickly as possible and get back to the real issues.

“It’s the droids, sir,” Sheqoa said as he came up to them. “Serving and maintenance both.”

“Yes, I can hear them,” Villachor snarled as another crash and startled scream came from somewhere to the northwest. “I’ve already called Purvis. If there’s a programming glitch, he’ll fix it.”

“I don’t think it’s a glitch,” Sheqoa insisted. “I think this is a deliberate diversion. My men are already stretched thin, and this is distracting them even more—”

“Sheqoa!” Villachor snapped, feeling a surge of horror and fury. The man’s neck—“Your key pendant!”

Sheqoa’s free hand went to his throat, his eyes widening in the same horror as he touched the spot where the pendant should have been. Then, with a curse, he hauled the woman around in front of him. “Where is it?” he bit out as she stumbled to a halt between him and Villachor. “Curse you, where
is
it?”

“Where is what?” she protested, shrinking back from his glare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sheqoa swore again and shoved her toward Tawb. “Hold her,” he ordered as he dug into his pocket and pulled out his glow rod. Spinning the selector to ultraviolet, he grabbed the woman’s right hand, pulled it close, and turned the light on it. Villachor took a step closer and peered down at the hand.

Nothing. Just plain skin, the calcium in her fingernails glowing the usual white, with no signs anywhere of the tracking dye that coated all the key pendants.

Sheqoa flashed Villachor an unreadable look, dropped the girl’s right hand, and tried the UV light on her left. Still nothing.

“And?” Qazadi prompted from inside the doorway.

“She took it,” Sheqoa said blackly. “I don’t know why there’s no dye, but I know she took it.” He dropped her hand, all but throwing the arm back to her side. “Maybe with—” He grabbed her left hand again, this time turning it so that he could look closely at the undersides of the fingernails. He swore under his breath and swapped it out for her right hand, giving that set of nails the same scrutiny.

“Fingersnips?” Villachor asked.

Again Sheqoa flung the woman’s hand back at her. “She must have gotten rid of them somehow,” he growled.

“What are you talking about?” the woman demanded. “Look, I don’t want to bring any trouble on you people, but enough is enough. I have rights, and I don’t have to—”

“Shut up,” Sheqoa cut her off. He turned and looked out over the crowd, reaching for his comlink clip. “Kastoni should be closest. I’ll have him take her inside and do a complete search.”

“No,” Qazadi said calmly. “I will take her.”

Villachor turned, frustration surging through him. “With all due respect, Your Excellency, you have other prisoners to interrogate,” he said as civilly as he could. “Prisoners we
know
are involved.”

“She’s involved, too,” Sheqoa insisted.

“The others will keep, Master Villachor,” Qazadi said. “But this one’s a female. We Falleen have a certain way with females.”

Villachor looked at the woman. Her face had gone rigid. “Anything you want to tell us?” he invited.

She swallowed. “I have nothing to do with whatever it is you’re all talking about,” she said firmly. “I came here today to honor moving fire, and—”

“Take her inside, Sheqoa,” Villachor said, jerking his head toward the door. “If His Excellency wants her, His Excellency can have her.”

“Yes, sir.” Sheqoa took her wrist and once again half pulled, half dragged her to the door and the waiting Falleen.

“And then pull some men from the grounds and do a sweep of the mansion,” Villachor called after him. “Starting with the prisoners.”

“Yes, sir.”

Villachor turned back to the grounds, snarling under his breath at each distant crash or thud or scream. Apparently, Kwerve’s boss wanted his people back.

Time to see just how big a price he was willing to pay for them.

“They’ve taken her inside.” Rachele’s tense voice came from Lando’s comlink. “Someone in there took her—I couldn’t see who it was.”

Lando gazed across the darkening grounds, ducking reflexively as a spiraling fireball overhead briefly lit up the area. “I’ll lay you odds it was Qazadi,” he said. “At least I hope so.”

“You
hope
so? Lando, do you have any idea what Falleen do to women?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard the stories,” Lando said grimly. “I’m hoping he’s got her because I figure he’s got Han, too. And we know where Han is.”

“Maybe,” Rachele said. “
If
Winter was right about the smoke.”

“I haven’t seen her wrong yet,” Lando reminded her. “And begging a cigarra from someone just so he could send a few puffs into a skylight is exactly the sort of thing Han would do.”

“Fine,” Rachele said. “You just better get in there and get them both out. And fast.”

“As fast as we can,” Lando promised. “Give me the signal.”

“Right,” she said reluctantly. “Just watch yourselves, and don’t forget Dozer’s run-in with Aziel. They’re almost as bad with men as they are with women.”

“We’ll be careful.”

He keyed off and looked at the sky. Night was rapidly falling, with the main fireworks display no more than half an hour away. They had to get this thing done before then.

Only he and Chewbacca couldn’t move. Not yet. Not until Bink had the others safely inside the vault.

For her sister’s sake, Bink had better be on schedule.

Kell and Zerba were waiting near the garage door when Bink arrived. “You get it?” Kell asked.

Bink nodded, reaching into her mouth and retrieving the key pendant from where she’d concealed it under her tongue. The tracking dye tasted exactly the way it smelled, only stronger. “Nice work with the droids, by the way,” she said as they hurried to the door and went through. Beyond was a plain tan-colored service corridor. “Where to?”

“Droid repair room is this way,” Kell murmured, heading off down the service corridor. “Droid control and operations are typically bundled into the same area.”

“Go ahead,” Bink said to Zerba, pulling at the sealing strips of her brown dress. “I’ll catch up.”

“Right,” Zerba said, pulling a hold-out blaster from his belt. “Light-saber?”

Bink pulled up the hem of her skirt and unstrapped the lightsaber from her inside calf. She handed it to Zerba, accepted the blaster in exchange, and as he trotted down the corridor after Kell, she returned to the task of getting rid of her dress.

It wasn’t the same easy tear-away material as the red dress that she’d worn on top of it. But Zerba had at least made sure there were no complicated hooks, laces, ties, or any of the other annoyances often associated with this class of dress. Within a minute she had the dress off and the tools and other bits of equipment fastened to her lower legs back to more convenient spots on belt and hip.

Her last task was to embed the key pendant in a glob of rock putty, open the door a crack, and toss the putty to the ground beside the door. Now, whenever Lando was ready to make his move, he could get inside without having to bully some security man into unlocking the door for him.

She was less than two minutes behind the others. But those two minutes had made all the difference in the universe. Just beyond the droid repair room, she spotted a door with a long, black-edged slice cut into it. Wincing, she hurried over and looked through the crack.

It was the droid control room, all right, its walls lined with controls, computer consoles, and status displays. Kell and Zerba were inside, moving around and between three unmoving bodies sprawled on the floor near various chairs. Grimacing, she eased the door open and went in.

Zerba spun around as the door opened, his hold-out blaster tracking toward her. He lowered the weapon again as he saw who it was. “What kept you?” he asked.

“You try getting out of one of those dresses,” she countered, nodding back toward the door. “I never realized lightsabers made that much of a mess.”

“Mine does,” Zerba said, still sounding a little annoyed. “Why did you think I didn’t want to use it on the outside door? Come here and tell me what I need to do.”

“Probably nothing,” Bink said, gingerly stepping over one of the bodies. “I hope you remembered Han’s order not to kill anyone if we could avoid it.”

“Don’t worry—they’re just stunned,” Kell assured her. “I think this is the Zed console over here. But it looks pretty solid.”

“Not a problem,” Bink said, glancing over the console Zerba was standing beside. “Zerba, that keypad there. Enter eight or nine numbers—any eight or nine will do—then repeat three or four times.”

“Right,” he said, and got to work.

She crossed to Kell’s console, a more heavily armored version of Zerba’s. “Same thing,” she told him, pointing to one of the keypads. “Zerba, toss me that lightsaber, will you?”

“I’ll do it,” Zerba said. He keyed in one final number and then walked over to them, pulling his lightsaber from his belt. “Sorry, but it’s temperamental enough as it is. What do you need?”

“A small cut right here,” she said, running her finger along one of the rear connections. “About three centimeters long, and
don’t
cut any of the wires behind it.”

“Got it.” He ignited the lightsaber, which gave a gurgly sort of hissing that didn’t sound a thing like the ones in old holodramas. The blade didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen, either, a sort of sickly yellow that was no more than fourteen or fifteen centimeters long.

“I know,” Zerba growled as he positioned it carefully at the spot Bink had indicated. He probably found himself apologizing for the weapon a lot.