Chapter Twelve
Heavy alloy music played softly in the background of the main hold. Andano sat at the round game-table and sipped a mug of Corellian Blue Ale as his ship hurtled through hyperspace towards the Tasrov Cloud. He was already running behind schedule thanks to Neela, though he was partly to blame. He'd meant to leave as soon as possible after getting the alert from the hypertransceiver, but Neela had him entwined in her lekku, and the little lethan refused to let him go. Thus, he'd ended up staying two days longer than he'd intended, not that he was complaining too loudly. Neela was one of his closest friends and lovers, but she could be so possessive at times. A little of her went a long way, he thought with a grin.
He pulled out a small, palm-sized holo-cube she'd presented him with at the base of the boarding ramp before giving him a long, lingering kiss that was anything but chaste. He smiled as he looked at one of the images—Neela wearing only microbriefs of a sheer fabric and the aurodium anklet he'd bought her for her life day, laying back on her bed and smiling up at the imager with her arms folded behind her head and her lekku draped over her shoulders. Something to keep him company in hyperspace, she'd said.
A wave of loneliness swept over him. He sipped the ale—maybe he could numb it, he thought, then shook his head. He wasn't an alcoholic, nor did he have a desire to become one. He would have loved to take Neela with, but he knew he'd been right to leave her behind. It was too dangerous, and what if the Empire caught up with him? More importantly, opening that door would mean he would have to divulge the full-extent of his involvement in the Clone Wars, something he was not ready to do, and if the Empire ever did catch up with him, she would go down as well. Even if she wouldn't blame him, he would blame himself if that ever happened.
He had tried that once with Luka, a beautiful blue-skinned Twi'lek, but it had been a disaster. No, it was best to leave her on Ryloth where she was safe and he wouldn't have to worry as much. He held his mug up in a silent toast to her holocube resting on the table.
It was strange that as he grew older, he began to find it harder and harder to leave his friends behind and get back on the road. He could remember a time when he found a thrill in the very idea of the open space-lanes and outwitting the white-hats, but now it was becoming a grind. His two traveling companions might make his business run smoother, but they were worthless for conversation. One didn't understand humor, and the other seemed to be growing more and more bloodthirsty.
He finished his beer and put the mug in the sink, then followed the corridor to the starboard engine room. He wanted to check the hyperdrive's in-flight telemetry; he hadn't pulled it apart recently to realign the charge-planes and de-gauss the field stabilizers. With a .75-class military hyperdrive, such maintenance was not only necessary, it was critical.
The engine room was show-room clean. He couldn't stand messy engine rooms. The hyperdrive in the corner hummed along, and all of its indicator lights were green, signaling that all was nominal. The sublight engines were powered down and in stand-by mode, their indicator lights blinking yellow. On the bulkhead next to the hyperdrive was a centerfold poster of the honey-skinned Nahno Orteka, showing her standing against an old ARC-170 with her arms outstretched to the sides, wearing nothing but a demure smile.
He stepped over the power cables snaking across the floor and accessed the hyperdrive's control interface, bringing up the in-flight data. The power-to-field strength ratio was only off a few thousandths of a point, so the hyperdrive's efficiency was right on track. He would have to do a little maintenance soon, but it was nothing that couldn't wait.
He winked at the poster as he walked out of the engine room. "See ya around, love," he chuckled. Nahno Orteka might have been cute, but he'd take the ARC-170 over her any day. If he could find one still in working order, he'd buy it in a heartbeat. The closest he'd ever come was finding the fuselage for one from which he'd harvested some of the cockpit avionics and control yoke and installed them aboard the Glory Days. Taja had told him he was a fool for doing so, but she'd done so with a grin.
There were times when he missed the towering furball. A Togorian with black-striped gray fur and emerald green eyes, she was as tall as a male Wookiee and resembled a bipedal feline. Taja Shar Kreel had been his first traveling companion, joining him about a year after he'd obtained the Glory Days; she was also his best friend and one of only a handful of people who knew the full extent of his past.
A crack shot and brilliant co-pilot, she had an intuition that bordered on the uncanny, and for nearly a decade, they had worked the Corellian Run together, earning a great deal of money and a reputation that opened a lot of doors. The day she had left to pursue bounty hunting like her idol, Boba Fett, had been a sad one for him, but he didn't grudge her anything. They still talked via hypertransciever and met up occasionally to share a beer and swap stories, but it wasn't the same.
He turned off the jukebox and checked his chrono. Only a few more minutes until the ship reached the Tasrov Cloud. He sighed and looked around. It had only been two years since Taja had left, but it seemed like ages ago. Shaking his head, he climbed the turret well up to the cockpit.
"Greetings, sir," T.C. said as the door to the cockpit opened. "Two minutes until we revert to realspace at the edge of the Tasrov Cloud."
"Great." He sat in the pilot's chair and thought about who could've left the message. If it had been Taja, it probably meant that she was in some kind of trouble again, but he doubted it was her. She was the only other person who even knew of the base's existence, having helped him build it, and she would've just shown up there and contacted him directly.
The event timer on the back wall beeped.
"Reverting to realspace," T.C. called out as the purple-black swirls of hyperspace gave way o the white streaks of stars that snapped into place as the ship completed its reversion. The whine of the hyperdrive wound down as the sublight engines rumbled to life.
"Here we go," he said, grabbing hold of the control yoke and activating the ship's sensors.
"Reversion complete." The droid activated the shields and adjusted their power level. "Deviation is less than point-zero-zero-three. Current bearing is zero-six-two-point-nine, attitude seven degrees positive. Haven Base is on a bearing of zero-four-one-point-seven, nine-point-five degrees negative."
He sighed. "Why? Why do you do that, T.C.?"
"Do what, sir?"
"Call out tactical information as if you were aboard a capital ship?"
"I do not understand the nature of your query, sir. I am unaware of any other way of relaying such information." The droid sounded flustered.
He shook his head. "Nevermind, T.C. Carry on." He would much rather have T.C. give him all the information he could, even if some of it was a little much, rather than not give him enough.
The Tasrov Cloud was the remnant of a dead solar system whose primary star was the blackened cinder of an extinct red dwarf. The system had harbored an advanced civilization eons ago, but the planets that the system once had were now broken apart, resulting in a vast asteroid field almost an entire light hour across. How they'd broken up was as much of a mystery as who the ancient civilization had been.
Now, it was a hyperspace hazard and only fools tried to actually navigate through the field. The dangers were many. There was no primary star to provide light to navigate by, and there was no drift chart of the field. Worse, there were still active weapon emplacements drifting through the asteroids that would fire on any passing ships, and though they were ancient beyond imagining, their plasma-based ordnance was still capable of great damage. On top of that, the high metallic content of the asteroids themselves played hell with the sensors, and Andano had quickly learned to home in on specific asteroids and weapon emplacements to navigate. This would have been impossible if the field wasn't static with little movement.
Surprisingly, though, even pirates and smugglers avoided the field, claiming the place was haunted. There had been numerous rumors of ghost ships prowling its depths, though he didn't really believe these tales, dismissing them as the product of a combination of mass hysteria and too much alcohol. Spacers did tend to be a superstitious lot.
I guess I'm a fool, then, he laughed to himself, putting the ship into a dive and zipping past huge asteroids and chunks of rock that only the sensors could see. As for haunted ships, he'd never seen any, and if they existed, he was curious to see if their shields could stand up to Bull's Eye.
"Coming up on a weapon emplacement, sir."
The warning light went off as a weapon system locked onto the ship.
"Now!" he yelled, pulling back on the yoke and feathering the throttle. The ship sailed within a few meters over the top of an asteroid.
T.C. cranked up the rear deflectors.
Large, yellow streaks of plasma shot past the ship as he flew it down under and around several smaller asteroids, blocking the emplacement's view of the Glory Days. The weapon emplacements were nothing more than blackened emitter tubes sticking out of the face of the asteroids, and had probably been part of some type of planetary defense grid.
"Clear, sir."
"Those things sneak up on you, don't they?"
"Your query suggests that they possess an intelligence and such a conclusion is in error, sir. This civilization is extinct, and the weapon emplacements' computer systems most likely—"
"Okay, T.C. I get the idea."
He spent the next half hour deftly flying the ship around asteroids and avoiding the weapon emplacements' plasma-fire. That poodoo stuck like glue; he'd seen it melt completely through smaller asteroids. He didn't need a drift chart to navigate, though. By orienting on the still-present but greatly diminished gravity well of the dead star, and on the "landmark" asteroids and weapon emplacements, he could find his way to the Haven, as he called it, and avoid the nuclear torpedoes all together. They weren't neat and surgical like proton torpedoes roughly were; they'd explode like a star being born and scatter radioactive dust everywhere. He had no desire to scrub that mess off the hull.
"That is odd," T.C. said as they approached within the last few thousand kilometers of the base. "I keep spotting intermittent radio-frequency noise, sir, almost as if there is another ship out there."
"Can you get a lock?" he asked, recalling stories of the ghost ships.
"No, sir. I'm not even sure that what I'm seeing is indicative of ships. It's very strange."
"All right. Stay on it." He toggled the ship's intercom. "Look alive, Bull's Eye. We may have company."
"Look alive? Are you trying to be funny?" was the response.
"I only meant stay sharp." He cut the comm off before the IG-86 could respond and pulled the throttle back a little, activating the thrusters and braking. The ship slowed to a crawl.
There were two emplacements near the Haven, but they were on the other side, and he doubted T.C. was confusing them for ships. If someone had found his little base, he wanted to get the drop on them and figure out whether or not he had to kill them. If nothing else, he could always activate the self-destruct sequence for the Haven remotely.
"Strange. The RF noise has vanished, sir." T.C. tried adjusting the sensors. "Even on the high-gain antenna array, the signal is gone."
"Did you get a recording of the noise?"
"Yes, sir."
"Run it through the sensor computer later and see if an analysis algorithm can't figure out what it is."
"Yes, sir."
"Last asteroid," he murmured, slowly edging around the side of the monolithic ball of rock.
Straight ahead was the large, lopsided asteroid he'd built his base into the side of, it's surface dark gray and pockmarked with craters from millennia of impacts. About a half-kilometer in diameter at its widest point, it was surrounded by about ten klicks of clear space. The blast doors built into the wide end of the asteroid lead into the hangar bay were sealed shut, as was the external airlock next to it.
No ships were in sight as he oriented the ship in front of the hangar doors, and there was nothing to suggest that the secrecy of the base had been violated. Still, his cautious nature had made him feel that he should proceed with care. He toggled the subspace radio and tight-beamed a transponder code at the doors. A moment later, a horizontal line of light split the center of the doors and grew wider as they slowly opened, revealing a large, well-lit hangar bay that could fit two ships.
He carefully guided the ship in, then spun it so it faced outward. "Turn off the shields."
"Yes, sir." The droid toggled the shields off.
He engaged the landing gears, and a mechanical whine reverberated through the hull as they descended and locked into place with a clunk. He set the ship down gently. "T.C., leave the ship on stand-by until I give the all clear," he said, standing up and remotely activating the hangar doors. He'd have liked to install an atmospheric retainment field generator, but they were so blasted expensive. As soon as the doors closed with a boom that he felt through the deck of the ship, there was a dim hiss, growing louder as the hangar bay pressurized. "Once I do, have the ASP droids start refueling the ship."
"Very good, sir," T.C. responded. He began switching everything over to stand-by mode.
Andano quickly exited the ship, drawing his blaster pistol as he crept down the boarding ramp. He thought briefly about taking Byll's Eye along, but decided against it. If somebody had infiltrated the Haven, he wanted answers, and Bull's Eye seemed too likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
The hangar was big, sixty-five meters wide, forty meters deep, and fifteen meters high, giving it an odd appearance with a ceiling that looked too low. There were a series of doors on the back wall leading to the air, fuel and water tanks, and some storage rooms, an airlock door leading into the base itself, and a wide alcove that served as a machine shop and storage area for tools and spare parts.
The outer airlock door didn't look tampered with, nor did the inner door, but he quickly became certain that there was someone in the base; he could sense it, and his intuition was rarely wrong. Opening the inner door confirmed it; the corridors were darkened and lit in a red glow from the emergency back-up lights. This can't be good, he thought, stomach sinking. If somebody had gotten to the hypertransceiver computer…
The corridors, made from corridor tubing he'd salvaged from junked CEC ships, made the inside of the base resemble a YT series transport. The main corridor ran straight ahead to the generator room. Along the right side were three doors: the far door led to a chamber containing life support equipment; the middle door led to a droid bay containing a dozen or so ASP droids; and the closest door led to a large storage room.
A large door in the middle on the left side of the main corridor led into another that formed a large, perfect circle. Its sides were lined with eight doors, six of which led to storage chambers. One door led to the external airlock, and the last door, opposite of the opening into the main corridor, was the control room. Across from the door leading into the control room was a mag-sealed door leading into the center of the circle formed by the corridor. Inside was the most important piece of equipment in the whole base, the hypertransceiver.
As he approached the back of the circular corridor where the door to the comm room was located, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. The door to the comm room was still secure, but there was a tiny washer in front of the door that led to the control room. He picked it up and examined it in the dim red emergency lights. Someone had shorted something out, otherwise, the emergency lights wouldn't be on. He examined the control plate for the door to the control room next.
There were scratch marks around the screws holding the surface plate in place.
"Chuba!" he whispered. At least the comm room was secure; there was no control plate to open the door there, just a series of hidden switches that had to be opened in the right sequence. If not, the intruder would be immobilized by several hidden stun blasters.
He went to one knee off to one side of the door to the control room and reached up and slapped the control plate. As the door hissed open, he aimed.
It was pitch black inside save for the lighted instrumentation, another warning sign. It should've been lit with normal lighting. Suddenly, he was sure that there was more than one person in there; he could feel it. He debated whether or not to go back and get Bull's Eye, who could see perfectly in the dark.
"You look like a fool, Kryss," a raspy, feminine voice said.
He froze. How—?
"Oh, for the Throne's sake! Stand up, will you? I want to look at you," the voice purred.
"Xian?" Oh, this was worse than bad.
"Who else would it be, love?"
"How did you—" he started to ask, standing up.
"Find this little love nest?" she finished for him. "It wasn't easy, I assure you." She turned on the lights, which came on slowly, revealing a tall, powerfully built Falleen woman with dark green skin and long black hair pulled back into a pony tail. She wore a leather vest, cargo pants, and combat boots, all black, and had a large, chunky chrono on one wrist and a bracer computer on the other. Around her waist was a gun belt with a large, heavy blaster pistol in its holster—a 454 Death Hammer, if he wasn't mistaken.
Nor was she alone. A tall, muscular male Falleen stood next to her and was dressed similarly, though he was armed with a heavy blaster rifle. His eyes were narrowed as he glared warily at Andano.
"Who's your friend?" Kryss asked.
"Riyax," she answered. "A girl has to have protection when traveling the spacelanes alone." She smiled faintly at him, which was even more unsettling; Falleen were normally rather distant in expressing emotions. "Especially from you."
He snorted. "I've never known you to need anyone's protection. How did you find this place?"
The male growled and leveled his rifle at him.
"You're a dangerous man, Kryss Andano," she murmured as she approached. She oozed a potent sexuality that flooded his senses. She stopped in front of him and caressed the side of his face. "Put away your blaster, Kryss. We're all friends in here."
He shook his head and blinked his eyes to try clearing his mind. He knew she was emitting pheromones to make him more pliable, a trick the Falleen excelled at which is why they made such dangerous enemies. Her request sounded so reasonable, too, but he fought off her chemical influence. "No," he said quietly.
She grabbed him by the throat so fast that he didn't have time to react, bearing her sharp teeth in an amused but restrained grin that told him she had absolutely no fear of him whatsoever, despite what she said.
The male snarled and raised his rifle.
"Grisshak! Ta pak chi ra!" Xian hissed over her shoulder, flicking a glance at the male. "He is mine. Do not forget your place."
The male's face became passive and his coloration faded to its normal greenish hue.
Andano, meanwhile, struggled to remain calm; if Xian had wanted to kill him, she'd be squeezing a great deal harder. Unfortunately, he'd dropped his blaster to cling to her massive forearm to keep from strangling.
She returned her cool grin back to him. "I want my money, Kryss." Her color darkened briefly, for his benefit, he was sure, showing a hint of her anger. "You would make a fine addition to my harem, and I have ways of dealing with your kind." A blast of pheromones, smelling faintly of warm sand and citrus that had a profound physical effect on him told him just what those ways were.
Xian was a very powerful vigo in Black Sun, one he'd done fairly brisk business with for the past several years, running various contraband and information for her. She was atypical of most Falleen, though, as she was more emotive than others of her species, making her inferior in their eyes. This was probably one reason she found criminal operations more to her taste, where she didn't have to care about what others thought of her. Power and money did have their priveleges.
She was also known to keep a harem of males of various species on Nar Shadda to wait on her hand and foot, and was rumored to put particularly attractive men who worked for her in it if they couldn't pay their debts to work off what they owed through other means. Kryss wasn't sure whether to be flattered or terrified.
"Can't—breathe—" he gasped, fear beginning to trickle down his spine.
"I'll make sure your slave collar is comfortable, love," she said, laughter in her eyes. "You would be a prize. The wait is almost worth it."
"I—money!" he coughed.
She loosened her grip. "You have the money?" She sounded almost disappointed.
"No. I have something, though," he rasped. He only hoped she'd accept them.
"No tricks, Andano," she warned, releasing him.
He bent over, taking big, gasping breaths. "Chuba, woman!" he coughed, rubbing his neck.
She grabbed him by the hair on the back of his head and slowly pulled until he was bent backwards and facing the ceiling. "I like you, Kryss. You amuse me," she said, looking down into his eyes. "That's the only reason I haven't yet terminated our relationship." She nuzzled his neck. "You smell of Twi'leks. Now, why doesn't that surprise me?" There was a hint of jealousy in her eyes; or was that his imagination?
He grinned even as his eyes watered from the pain. "Envy?"
She jerked his head. "Would you like me to brand you mine?" she asked, eyes narrowing in anger—a huge display of emotion for her. "Do not test my patience. Now, tell me what you have besides money, and yourself, of course, that I might be interested in."
He knew the male couldn't be pleased at seeing her flirt with a human—the Falleen considered all other species to be lesser beings, and for her to keep a harem of such creatures would be considered a perversion among her kind. Only her position within Black Sun protected her.
His debt came from having to bail Taja out of trouble about a year ago. She'd been arrested on Tatooine by Imperials for seditious activity, which came from her shoving a stormtrooper out of her way as she was chasing down a bounty. The lieutenant, an avaristic man named Harburik, had demanded fifty-thousand credits, but he'd finally settled for half that amount. Kryss didn't have that kind of cash laying around, so he'd gone to Xian.
"I have something in storage you might like," he said
"You'd better hope I do," she said, lightly kissing him and nipping at his lower lip. Her pheremonal cloud's effect on his body was nearly instantaneous.
His anger kindled. "Blast it! Stop with the kiffing pheromones!"
"Hmm," she said, pretending to consider it. "No." She grinned and released him. "Lead on, love."
The male shot him a withering glare, almost as if daring him to try something so he had an excuse to shoot.
He reached down to pick up his blaster, slowly, of course.
"Ah, ah, ah," Xian said, putting a boot on it. "No one is going to take it. Now, stop wasting time before I just decide not to wait to add you to my collection."
He shuddered at the thought. "All right. This way." He knew he could have easily rid himself of Xian and her companion without too much risk, but he didn't sense much danger, yet. Not only that, he wasn't ready to burn his bridges with Xian, and Black Sun, especially, because Xian wasn't the only member of the criminal syndicate he knew.
He led her into storage room three, the door next to the control room, flipping on the lights and gesturing towards the back. "Back there." The room was packed with dozens of crates of different shapes and sizes, some stacked on top of each other two and three high. "Wait here and—"
"I don't think so, love. I'm not letting you out of my sight."
He sighed. "I'd still like to know how you found this place," he grumbled, picking his way around the boxes and crates as he led her to the back.
"It wasn't easy. I had to figure out where you change course on the Corellian Run from Arkanis to Sirpar," she explained, examining the crates she passed. "Oddly enough, your vectors always suggested the Tasrov Cloud. 'Why here?' I wondered. Unfortunately," she said, her voice hardening, "I didn't know about the weapon emplacements. I lost three ships. For that alone, you are very lucky to be still drawing breath. Riyax's brother was on one of those ships."
"That explains the surliness."
"Stow it, Andano. I'm still debating whether or not to add those ships to your tab," she hissed. "We picked up your little nest on sensors as soon as it began transmitting something we couldn't decode, and had one hell of a time getting here, but I wasn't leaving without my money or you in a slave collar."
"So those were your ships I picked up," he said, recalling T.C.'s odd sensor readings. "How are you leaving?"
"Sir?" a voice came from his comm. "It is T.C."
He felt a blaster pressed to the back of his skull. "Be very careful how you answer, love," she warned.
"I'm just going to tell him to refuel the ship," he said, then activated the comlink. "T.C.? It's all clear. Go ahead and take on fuel and replenish our water and air."
"Very good, sir. I was beginning to worry. I've been thinking about those anomalous sensor readings—"
"T.C., it's all right. We got some guests—"
Xian hissed, pressing the blaster into the base of his skull.
"—uh, but they're fine. Everything is fine, here," he finished hastily.
"Very good, sir." The comlink shut off.
He put it away. "Uh, you still haven't answered my question. How are you going to get out of the Tasrov Cloud? You have no ship nearby."
"What are you talking about? I have a ship not far from here—"
He shook his head. "There is no ship anywhere near here."
"I sent it to park behind this rock, fool! It's there!"
"Xian—"
Snarling, she pushed him forward and pulled out her comlink, then shouted something into it. Only static came back. She glared at him murderously. That's four ships you have cost me!" She stalked towards him.
"Wait! I'm giving you something you'll be able to sell to recoup your costs!" He pulled out a large, powered crate, setting it on top of a wooden box.
Her skin was very dark, and the 454 Death Hammer in her hand looked very big indeed. "You have one chance to impress me, Andano. No more games. If I like this, you'll drop me off at one of my ships waiting outside the Cloud. If I don't, I'm taking you and your ship."
"So much for a secret base," he muttered, disengaging the locks, which hissed.
"Oh, believe me, I'll be the only one who knows the exact location of this place," she said, "and as long as you continue to please me, it'll stay that way. If I have to come back here, though, I'll be bringing the Empire with me."
He swallowed nervously. Maybe it was time to cut ties to Black Sun after all. Xian knew too blasted much; he couldn't allow her to go to the Empire. "Um—"
"There won't be any need for Imperial intervention because this is going to pay me back with interest, right?" The tone in her voice suggested that wasn't a question so much as an order.
"Of course!" he scoffed, his mind racing to weigh the consequences of disposing of her.
"Is this it?"
"Yes." He pulled the top off the crate, and mist floated out; when it cleared, it revealed a trio of large, rust-colored eggs, each the size of his fist, resting on a cushion of foam.
"I want money, not breakfast!"
"These are kreehawk eggs, not food!" he snapped, tired of her irksome presence. "Each one alone is worth more than I owed you!"
"That doesn't cover my ships!" She reached across the crate and grabbed his shirt front. "You still owe me!"
"I didn't tell you to come looking for me. If you would have just waited, I would have brought you the money, and maybe even a little more just because! So don't put those ships on me."
She snarled, then released him and caressed the eggs. "Where did you get these from?
"Does it matter? There'll be a feeding frenzy on Nar Shadda when the Hutts find out you have these. They're a mark of prestige. Believe me. You'll have no problem selling them, and will probably get more than enough to replace at least one or two of the ships." He knew she wouldn't have cared in the least that he'd stolen them from another Black Sun vigo, but he had to have some secrets around her.
She came around to his side and closed the box, then turned to him, pressing herself against him and running her hands through his hair, grabbing it and pulling his head back once more. "Ooh," she purred, grinning hungrily. "I am sorely tempted to put that collar on your neck anyways, Kryss Andano." She kissed him hard, biting his lower lip and drawing blood. "I can offer you so much more than some silly Twi'lek." She kissed him again.
He could feel his mind growing muddy in the presence of the pheremonal invitation she was offering him. She would protect him, he knew, and she had a great deal of money and influence to keep him safe. He would be the Prime among her harem, too, and would share more than just her bed; he would stand by her side and together, they would wrest control of Black Sun away from Xixor. He could have power beyond his wildest dreams—
"Come with me, Andano," she murmured hotly in his ear. "I won't even make you wear a collar." She drew her sharp teeth gently along his neck, then kissed him again, revealing emotions that would cause other Falleen to look at her in disgust. "Say, yes."
Struggling to clear his mind—it would be so easy to just give in and say yes—he said, "You only want me around because I can make you a lot of—ah!" He yelped as she nipped the side of his neck, drawing blood—what was it with women biting him? "—money!" he finished.
She grinned and licked her teeth. "True," she admitted cheerfully, "but I pay very well, and there are fringe benefits." She kissed him again and laughed. "I find money to be a stimulating subject."
He squinted his eyes shut. Say it! he raged at himself, fighting to make his mouth work. "I—can't!" he whispered at last. Saying that made him break into a sweat with the effort it had taken. He had people who depended on him, and if he said yes, Xian would only keep him all to herself and he'd never see his friends like Taja and Neela again.
Her eyes widened slightly in surprise. "How do you do that? How do you resist?" She pushed him away, turning to make sure the crate was locked.
The fog clouding his mind began to clear. "It's not easy," he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose and squinting his eyes in pain. He was getting a headache.
"There is one other thing," she said.
He opened her eyes in time to see her pull out her blaster and shoot Riyax in the chest, killing him instantly.
"Close your mouth, Kryss. You look like a fish." She put her blaster away. "I told you I'd be the only one who'd know this place existed. Besides, Riyax here had been trying to sway my majordomo to his side to overthrow me."
"What about the other ship waiting for you?"
"Droid crew. Your secret is safe with me as long as you continue to please me."
He hated being involved in the politics of Black Sun, but at least Xian had kept her word about being the only one who knew about this place. He grabbed Riyax's legs and dragged him to the airlock, then disposed of the body. Then, he picked up his blaster and holstered it, then asked Xian to wait down the corridor.
"Why?" she asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion.
"Because I don't want you seeing the code for this door."
"What's in there?"
"A communication node."
"How clever," she laughed. "Let me guess. A hypertransceiver relay."
"Something like that."
She walked around the corner. "No tricks, Andano."
He made sure that she couldn't see him as he operated the hidden mechanisms to unseal and unlock the door. It hissed open, revealing a perfectly round chamber three meters in diameter whose center was dominated by a column-like Fabritech SB-3n hypertransceiver array that he'd salvaged from a Corellian corvette. Cobbled to it was a MicroThrust Processors TR5 Asymmetrical Lattice Relay computer that would route data to the Glory Days according to pre-programmed protocols. Last but not least was the encryption module, a Carbanti Stutter Matrix he'd first encountered while working with CEC, who often used them to ensure that trade secrets stayed secret.
The chamber was lit with soft, low-EM lights recessed in the ceiling, though there were enough indicator lights on the array to provide plenty of illumination. Power and life support conduits ran down the sides of the bulkhead, some terminating in junction boxes, others continuing through the floor.
"Very nice," Xian purred as she came through the door. "Looks like something you'd find in a junk lot."
"If you did, it would cost as much as one of your ships." He walked around the side of the array and accessed the data file. The coded message was blinking red. Not only was it hands-on, it was a priority message; someone was in a hurry to get to him.
"What is all this?"
"Don't touch anything." He ran the message through the Stutter Matrix to decode it. Decoding a message usually took a few minutes and depended on the complexity of the algorithm used. Barely a half-minute later, though, the machine beeped, signaling that decoding was complete.
The message was from Beriska on Denon, another Black Sun vigo he knew—what was it today with Black Sun? he wondered. Then, he read the message, and his blood ran cold. It was a single word, one that he'd long ago arranged with her and never expected to see used.
Almas.
"Damn," he hissed, erasing the message. "Come on. We gotta go."
"What, no tour?"
"Now, Xian!" he said, moving past her. Oh, please, don't let it be too late, he silently prayed, though he was anything but a pious man. He locked the door behind Xian and ran towards the hangar bay; the ship should be refueled by now, and the air and water replenished, but the next shipment that was supposed to be loaded onto the ship would have to wait.
Almas.
Stang! He hadn't thought about that code word in years. Not only that, what was he going to do once he got to Denon? What was the situation there? There was no real way of knowing until he got there, and he couldn't get there until he dropped off his unwanted Falleen guest.
"There always seems to be excitement when you're around, Kryss," Xian said as she ran at his side. "Maybe I should come with you."
"No. Not this time, Xian. Besides, you have eggs to sell."
"You're right. There is money to be made."
Thankful that she was only kidding about coming with him, he rounded the corner and enter the hangar bay right as an ASP droid was detaching the fuel line.
"Are we leaving so soon, sir?" T.C. asked from the boarding ramp.
"Immediately," he answered. He only hoped he wasn't going to be too late.