Rebel Stand: Enemy Lines II Read online

  Before moving on, she looked around and found a small button control by the top of the hidden staircase. She pressed it and the stairs rose, locking into place behind her.

  The gap in the wall opened into a cylindrical chamber a few meters across. Occupying most of the chamber, resting on its stern, was a vehicle—about twelve meters long, squat at its stern and tapering toward the bow, all in a uniform deep matte blue that made it difficult for Viqi to make out details of its hull. There were protrusions everywhere, plates and hemispherical antennae and maneuvering or braking flaps.

  The floor of this chamber was some four meters below Viqi’s feet. She stood directly opposite a hatch that opened into the vehicle’s interior, one-third of the distance from the stern.

  The thing looked like some sort of oversized military landspeeder, enclosed to protect its crew, but since it rested on its tail—with no machinery evident to allow it to be lowered into a horizontal position—Viqi suspected that it was equipped for flight; she could not tell if it was an atmospheric vehicle or spaceworthy. On the side was stenciled the vehicle’s name, Ugly Truth.

  She looked up. The cylindrical chamber continued upward another thirty meters beyond the vehicle’s nose, ending in a jumble of fallen metal beams and duracrete blocks. Viqi could see faint sunlight through that deadfall.

  Scarcely able to believe her good fortune, she moved forward across a narrow span of metal that gave her access to the open hatch and clambered into the vehicle. As the vehicle was resting at a ninety-degree angle to its intended orientation, when she stepped down from the hatch she stood on what was obviously meant to be the main cabin’s rear bulkhead. A crudely constructed ladder of spare metal parts wired together allowed her to climb up to the pilot’s seat at the bow.

  Under her touch, the secondary power switch engaged without hesitation or resistance. The cabin lights came up; the vehicle’s navigation computer went through its power-up sequence.

  Viqi felt a slow, wondering smile spread across her face. This was an emergency evacuation vehicle, cunningly hidden away in the event of disaster … but its owners had not been able to get to it in time as Coruscant fell. Perhaps they had died, perhaps they had been off-world already.

  Who was the youth who’d given her the locator? Son of the vehicle’s owners? A builder who’d known and kept the secret of this hidden chamber, and later intended to use the vehicle when it became clear that its owners would be unable to? He’d probably been prevented from escaping by the collapse of the access above him. Perhaps he’d been working all this time to dig his way clear of that obstacle. Now he was dead, and the vehicle was hers.

  She was free of the Yuuzhan Vong and in possession of an escape from their world.

  A thought hit Viqi and her hands fell away from the controls. If this vehicle was designed as a last-ditch opportunity for survival, perhaps it was carrying …

  She scrambled down the makeship ladder to the vehicle’s stern. A hatch into the stern compartment lay at her feet. She struggled with its locking bar and then hauled the heavy hatch open.

  Below was a storage compartment with restraining nets to either side and a hatch at the far end. Doubtless the hatch gave access to the vehicle’s thrusters. Viqi didn’t care. Her attention was riveted by what she saw in the nets.

  Rations. Military rations, carefully packed into individual meals, guaranteed to survive for years on the shelf.

  With a moan, she clambered down into the compartment, grabbed the nearest meal at hand, and tore into the wrapping flimsy around it.

  EIGHT

  Aphran System, Aphran IV

  Aphran IV was a heavily forested world whose green landmasses stood out in stark contrast from her blue seas. She was a warm world, lacking polar ice, with no moons to contribute tides. And she was a comparatively poor world whose people were noted chiefly for mastery in woodworking, whose artistic inlays were prized by collectors.

  All this Han knew from a brief look at the star map records in the Falcon’s computer. The records suggested that Aphran would never survive even a weak Yuuzhan Vong attack. Considering how close she was to the Yuuzhan Vong zone of control, not far from Bilbringi, only her relative unimportance had kept her from being conquered by the enemy.

  Han glanced at his wife. She looked very different than usual: her hair was long, black, and straight, her eyebrows broader and darker to match, and she wore garments that Senator Leia Organa Solo would never have been caught dead in.

  They started with a bodysuit that was black and glossy. Though synthetic, it creaked like hide when she moved. Her boots, low-slung blaster holster, and gloves were of a similar material, but matte rather than glossy. In the spirit of the character she was to portray, she had her feet up, crossed at the ankle, on the copilot control board before her. She fixed Han with a forbidding stare. “What are you looking at, ground-pounder?”

  Han shook his head. “If your daughter could see you now …”

  Leia broke character for a moment and grinned. “I’ll make sure Artoo gets a holo for her. He’ll have to get you, too.”

  Han nodded. “I am magnificent.” He’d spent enough time in front of the mirror both to make sure that his disguise was adequate and to be certain that his costume provided sufficient dash and drama.

  He wore a close-trimmed beard. His real hair and his false facial hair were a matching, distinguished shade of silver-gray. But he was not trying for the look of an elder statesman; his uniform was a dark gray, two shades more somber than the old Imperial Navy uniform, and thick with accoutrements: a brand-new pistol on his hip, twin vibroblades on the other hip, a brace of alternating vibroblades and small backup blasters across his chest. The metal gauntlet on his left hand looked like a commercial robotic replacement and contained enough circuitry to read as a prosthetic to most scanners. The contact lens on his left eye made the eyeball silver-reflective; the false puckering scar reaching upward and downward from the eye suggested the violence that had caused the mechanical replacement to be installed.

  C-3PO, in the passenger seat behind the pilot’s chair, spoke up. “So that I do not jeopardize your mission through misstatement or omission, Princess, may I ask, why the deception?”

  “Aphran is something of an unknown quantity,” Leia said. “The smugglers we’re going to meet and try to persuade to act as our local resistance organizers say that there’ve been a lot of surreptitious comings and goings with government envoy ships. What does that suggest to you?”

  “That matter is rather outside my fields of expertise,” the droid replied. “But it would seem to me that the planetary government does not need to be surreptitious when sending representatives to the New Republic. That would suggest that they are sending their envoys to someone they wish the New Republic to know nothing about.”

  Leia nodded. “Very good. To whom?”

  “Since the most far-reaching government outside the New Republic is that of the Yuuzhan Vong, simple statistics give the highest probability of it being them.”

  “Correct. Or perhaps the Peace Brigade, acting as intermediaries for the Yuuzhan Vong.”

  “Oh, I hope not, Princess. The Peace Brigade are, well, very unpleasant. Very difficult.” This was something of an understatement; the Peace Brigade was a loose alliance of mercenaries who cooperated with the Yuuzhan Vong. Believing the Yuuzhan Vong claim that a galaxy without the Jedi would be a galaxy at peace, or just to earn profits, they had hunted the Jedi, capturing some and turning them over to the enemy. Definitely “unpleasant”—except to those who shared their ability to cast blame for the current war on anyone but the aggressors—they were widely regarded as traitors to the New Republic.

  Han said, “And if they’re talking to the Vong, the Solos can’t be recognized here.”

  Leia nodded. “If the Yuuzhan Vong learn that the Solos are here, they come to get us. Even if we use false names, if a Corellian YT-Thirteen-Hundred freighter lands with a dashing, vainglorious man at the controls, it does
n’t matter what name he uses, people are going to think Han Solo.”

  Han shot her an offended look. “Vainglorious?”

  “Vainglorious,” Leia affirmed. “Vain plus glorious. Go ahead, deny it.”

  “Well … I can’t, really.”

  Instead of being directed to a berth on the planetary capital’s commercial district, the Falcon followed her homing beacon to a government spaceport district some distance away from the capital. The spaceport was an enormous thing, kilometers long, with landing bays and warehousing domes on spars that extended like the arms of some sort of mutant sea creature from a central hub.

  As they followed the beacon in, Han spent a lot of time at the comm board, arguing first with one minor official, then another. Finally, just before final approach, he leaned back and sighed. “We can’t land in the commercial zone,” he said.

  Leia frowned. “Why not?”

  “All cargo has to be off-loaded and inventoried here. New regulations. Once it’s all off-loaded, we can decide where it’s to be taken by their cargo haulers. Back on the ship, for transport elsewhere, or into one of the warehouses up here for evaluation by buyers. The thing is, no matter where it’s loaded, it costs money to move it … and it costs more to put it back on the ship than to warehouse it.”

  Leia nodded, a world-weary smile on her lips. “Which is an inducement to keep the cargo up here so that a more limited range of buyers can look at it. Which helps keep prices and bribes where they want them.”

  “And people called me dishonest,” Han muttered. “On the other hand, we don’t have to wait around for them to complete their inventory. We can take a commercial landspeeder in to their capital. That’ll give them lots more time to steal expensive bits and pieces from our cargo, which is really what it’s for anyway.”

  A pair of Aphran men standing in front of a refueling station watched the duo emerge from the landing bay that now housed the Corellian YT-1300 freighter.

  “I see a man and a woman I don’t recognize,” said the first. He was a man of middle height, his hair, beard, and mustache graying. With his reserved, courteous manner and his colorful, comparatively expensive clothing, he looked like a fit merchant. But the hardness of his eyes, when he was not trying to cause someone to like or trust him, suggested that he was not that peaceable a man. “And while the man and the woman could be the Solos, they could also be billions of other people.”

  “I didn’t say they were the Solos,” the second man said. His jumpsuit matched the lavender-with-black-pinstripes decor of the front of the refueling station; he was as lean and tough looking as the banded artificial muscles found in cybernetic limbs. “I said that it was the Millennium Falcon. I don’t care where they slap paint on her or how many new antennas they mount on her, I know the look of her. I know the sound of her creaks when she comes in for a landing.”

  “Hmm. Well, until we’re sure, we play it safe.”

  “There’s less money in playing it safe.”

  “There’s longer to live and spend that money in playing it safe.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  The bearded man eyed his companion. In his experience, You’re the boss always meant, I’ll shut up for now, then put a vibroblade in your back when the profit is highest. He mentally crossed his companion off his “useful” list and moved him to “expendable.” “I’ll get things started,” he said. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Anytime.”

  The bearded man moved off toward his personal transport, a late-model landspeeder paid for by information he’d furnished to the Peace Brigade. If these were the Solos, he might be able to afford a personal spacecraft now—even factoring in the sum his companion’s elimination would cost.

  On the balcony of their rented quarters, Leia sat, her ankles crossed on the railing before her, and entered notes.

  Things were going well … mostly. The Talon Karrde organization had already led her to a pair of retired—semiretired—smugglers who were trusted by Karrde and whose enthusiasm for hunkering down in anticipation of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion matched hers. With their experience, they could find their own bases of operations, could even help with the acquisition of some vehicles and other equipment. What Han and Leia had to do now was help them set up a communications system, a combination holocomm and comlink that could transmit and receive the short, hard-to-track data packets that were the essence of resistance communications.

  But Leia set her notes aside for a moment, distracted by the view. Below the balcony, a small lake stretched into the distance; its far shore was at the base of a low line of hills, and Aphran, the planet’s sun, was now setting beyond them. It was a red-gold orb, distorted by distance and atmosphere. The hills cast shadows over the distant part of the lake, while sunbeams illuminated the nearer portions, turning the water from green-blue to a brilliant gold.

  It was only a sunset. She’d seen lovely sunsets all over the galaxy. But it had been some time since she’d paid attention to one, appreciated one.

  This sunset meant nothing in the face of Yuuzhan Vong invasions, the death of Anakin, the disappearance of Jacen, her long separations from the rest of her family. But just for this moment, those sacrifices didn’t dig pain into her, and she could appreciate what she was seeing, its simple beauty.

  “Bottle that and sell it, and we could make a fortune.”

  Leia started. She looked up to where Han stood behind her. The energy field that kept the cooler air inside their quarters also muffled sound, so it hadn’t been too difficult for him to sneak up on her. He stared into the distance, watching the golden rays retreating as the sun continued its descent, and for once there was no self-deprecating humor, no expression of suspicion or cynicism on his face. Just contemplation.

  Leia reached up to take his hand. He settled into the chair next to hers. “How were your errands?” she asked.

  “Pretty good. The inventory is about half done, and the locals haven’t found any irregularities.” His last words were private code, agreed upon before the Falcon had set out on this series of missions. Irregularities meant the smuggling compartments and the shielded escape pod; those secrets remained intact. “And I was able to make some purchases. Cabinets. I need to arrange for their delivery.” So he’d been able to find the comm gear he needed, but delivery to wait until the new resistance leaders locally had a place for it. “You?”

  “Oh, I may have made some new friends.”

  “That’s good. You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to talk about work anymore today.”

  “Me, either.”

  Borleias

  Tam and Wolam sat in the pilot’s seats of Wolam’s shuttle. Once a military blastboat, it had been stolen from the Empire early in Wolam’s career and gradually converted to a lightly armed mobile office. Now it sat in the kill zone in front of the biotics building, one of the few vehicles internally lit at this nighttime hour.

  In the absence of true broadcaster facilities, Wolam did have a less comprehensive set of tools built into the ship’s computer, and now he and Tam looked over their last couple of days’ recordings, annotating them, choosing which to use and which to discard in Wolam’s next historical documentary.

  “Here’s one.” Wolam paused the image and then tapped the figure of one mechanic working energetically on an X-wing engine.

  “A mechanic,” Tam said.

  “A female mechanic.” Wolam dialed the image so that the woman expanded to fill the screen. “Corellian, unmarried. Good looking. I spoke with her for a few minutes while you were showing Tarc the zoom functions.”

  “Ah. I see. We now take a break from work so you can once again try to set me up with a woman.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And I should seek her out because she’s good looking. Not that she isn’t … but am I that shallow?”

  “At your age, you should be.”

  Tam sighed and took the recording off pause. It c
ontinued on, focusing for a few more moments on that X-wing and its crew, before blanking. A moment later, the image of the biotics building’s main lobby snapped into focus.

  “More important, now’s not the time,” Tam said. “I have a few things to get through first. Such as my reputation as a traitor.”

  “A reputation that exists only in your own mind.”

  “And the fact that all my savings were on Coruscant. The fact that all my possessions fit in a bag that I have no trouble lifting.”

  “So seek out a woman who isn’t as shallow as I wish you were.”

  “What’s this?” The image on the screen became jerky, blurring across a sea of waists and belt buckles. Then it rose, and Wolam’s face appeared on the screen, saturated with light, recorded from about waist height. The recorded Wolam grimaced and tried to turn his face out of the glare.

  “Oh, that’s young Tarc’s recording.”

  “That’s right, our second tour of the building.”

  “I think he was experimenting with the notion of using the holocam glow rod as a weapon.”

  Tam snorted, then became serious again. “Wolam, he doesn’t belong here.”

  “True.”

  “And the Solos—well, I don’t have any criticism of them, they have their duties, but they’re not exactly around here much. They’re just momentary reassurances for him.”

  “Yes. They’ve accepted responsibility for him, despite their inability to be available to him at all times, because he needs someone, and no one else is that someone.”

  “Pretty much the way you accepted responsibility for me, ten years ago.”

  Wolam shook his head. “Not quite. You were sixteen, more or less an adult.”

  “Just like now.”