Honor Among Thieves

Chewbacca worked at the weapons console while Han throttled up to close the distance. The SR-model TIE was fast, and it appeared to have plenty of spare power for the laser cannons. It fired into the fleeing YU-410 without pause.

  The Empire’s penchant for building fighters without shields had always seemed insane to Han, one of many reasons he didn’t fly for that particular corporation, but working for the opposing team, he was grateful for their lack of compassion for their pilots.

  Chewbacca yowled in triumph, and the Falcon buzzed a target lock signal. Han closed the distance to the optimal firing range and let loose two of his eight ST2 concussion missiles. That was fifteen hundred credits on the wing, but he’d make sure to add that to the bill.

  The TIE began dodging when the missiles launched. The pilot was good. Han had expected that. The Empire didn’t have very many of the SR-class recon fighters, so whoever flew them would be top shelf. Han kept his finger on the trigger, ready to fire two more missiles if he needed to.

  He didn’t.

  The TIE started a hard turn to port, but the YU-410 veered erratically into its path, forcing the pilot to correct in the other direction and into the path of the incoming missiles. Both hit, and the TIE fighter disappeared in a massive concussion blast that blew it into gravel-sized chunks. The forward shields of the Falcon flashed as debris sprayed across the ship.

  Chewbacca barked a victory laugh at the vanished fighter and climbed out of his seat.

  “Yeah,” Han said, “check on that generator. See if it can be saved. I don’t like the idea of flying without rear shields until we can get back to the fleet.”

  Chewbacca growled out his assent and vanished into the back of the ship.

  “Hunter Maas,” Han said, after turning the headset back on. “This is Captain Solo call—”

  “You fired torpedoes at Hunter Maas!” the man shouted back. “The Cosmodium could have been destroyed!”

  “The Cosmodium? Is that your ship?”

  “Hunter Maas carries precious cargo in fragile data storage devices! The pulse from exploding torpedoes can do irreparable damage to such things!”

  “Those were concussion warheads, they don’t make a—”

  “And pieces of the exploding ship have pierced the Cosmodium’s hull! Hunter Maas will require extensive repairs to his ship!”

  “Hunter Maas,” Han said pleasantly.

  “Yes?”

  “Shut up.”

  There was a long silence, though it was impossible to tell if this was obedience or shock.

  “Thank you,” Han said. “Please follow my course to Kiamurr. We’ll make sure you get there safe. We have a secure dock picked out for your landing.”

  “Hunter Maas selects his own dock,” the pirate was saying. “Thank you for your offer, but your work is now complete. Take the compliments and salutations of Hunter Maas to whoever your master is. Good-bye.”

  “Hold on there, pal,” Han said. The guy on the other end of the line was finally starting to get on his nerves. “You’re going to follow me back to my dock, end of story.”

  “And why would Hunter Maas agree to these terms?”

  “Because,” Han said, making sure Maas could hear the smile in his voice, “I saved you.” When Maas started to interrupt, he talked over him. “And I’m sitting behind you right now with six more concussion missiles. So you can fly to Kiamurr, land at my private dock, and meet with my friends. Or I can tow the crippled remains of your ship to that same dock.”

  The pause was shorter than Han had expected.

  “Hunter Maas likes the sound of this private dock! Lead the way, my friend.”

  Han nodded to himself and stripped off the headset.

  “How’s that for persuasive?” he said to no one.

  True to her word, Scarlet had a dock assignment waiting for them at a small freight-forwarding warehouse just outside the main city. The warehouse was closed when they arrived, so the dock was empty of ships and employees. She was waiting for them, lounging on a nearby flight of stairs.

  Han trotted down the ramp from the Falcon, hand on the butt of his blaster. They didn’t really have any idea how many people Maas had with him on his ship, or if they’d be angry about Han forcing them to land. If Scarlet was worried, it didn’t show. She stretched out on the steps, head cocked to one side so that her black hair fell away from her eyes. She gave Han a grin.

  “Good job, Captain.”

  “He had an Imperial scout ship chasing him,” Han said. “The clock’s ticking. The invasion has to be on its way.”

  “We saw,” she said, then jumped lightly to her feet and started walking toward Maas’s freighter. “Thanks for handling that, Han. But it’s possible the scout that was chasing Maas was working on its own. We can’t be sure it was an advance ship of an Imperial fleet.”

  “Are we waiting to find out? Because that seems like a bad hand to bet all our chips on.”

  “Let’s just get this negotiation out of the way,” Scarlet said. “That’s our priority. Then we’ll decide what to do.”

  “Why do I feel like the ‘we’ in that statement doesn’t include me?”

  “Because it doesn’t?”

  Before Han could formulate a good reply, the ramp to Maas’s ship began to open. A thick trickle of smoke and the smell of burned metal drifted out. The Cosmodium had taken a beating, no doubt about that.

  “Chewie,” Han said into his headset, “get your furry backside out here.” The Wookiee growled back. “I know I told you to fix it, but get out here anyway. Bring your bowcaster.” Chewbacca chuffed in agreement and closed the line.

  Hunter Maas appeared at the top of the ramp, bursting out of the smoky ship’s interior like an actor taking the stage. He was a small man, physically speaking, but he managed to take up all the space in the large and mostly empty dock. He didn’t walk down the ramp, he swaggered. He didn’t smile at them, he grinned a mouthful of sparkling white teeth. He was shirtless, wearing his small middle-aged potbelly with a pride it didn’t deserve. His pants were tight black leather. Over his shoulders flowed a floor-length red cape with elaborate gold piping. A meek R3 droid followed after him like a supplicant, and a thin ratlike bird perched on his left shoulder, chittering random words in a dozen different languages.

  “Greetings!” Maas boomed at them, throwing his long cape away from his right hip to expose a holstered blaster. Han worked to keep a grin off his face. The blaster was an ancient model so large that he was pretty sure he could draw and fire three shots in the time it would take that aged monstrosity to clear its holster. If the point of all the cape twirling was to be threatening, it wasn’t working.

  “Hunter Maas,” Scarlet said, giving him a hint of a bow. “We’re very happy you agreed to join us.”

  “Agreed?” Maas said, eyebrows crawling up his face. “All of the posturing from this one”—he pointed at Han—“would have been unnecessary had only Hunter Maas been told of your loveliness.”

  The gunrunner and thief sauntered down the ramp to Scarlet, swept her hand up in a dramatic flourish, and laid a long, wet kiss on it. “Hunter Maas is your servant, my lady. Command him!”

  With a smile, Scarlet managed to pull her hand out of his. “I ask only that you join me for a drink and a conversation.”

  “Ah, my sweetling,” Maas replied, grabbing Scarlet’s hand again and putting it on his arm, “we are meant to be together. You have read Hunter Maas’s innermost thoughts and discerned his own desires. Lead on, lady. Drink and converse we shall.”

  Scarlet left her hand on his arm and began guiding him out of the dock, the R3 scooting along behind like an attendant at a wedding. Han followed once Chewbacca had caught up to them. The Wookiee carried his bowcaster in both hands and frowned a question. Han nodded toward Maas and shrugged.

  As he and Chewbacca followed Scarlet to the meeting place, Maas ignored them completely. He couldn’t blame the man. Scarlet definitely had the air of someone in charge. Whenever she was in t
he room, he and Chewbacca probably looked like hired thugs—the unspoken threat paired to her polite civility. It was a role Han had played before, but it galled him how quickly he fell into it when he was around her.

  Scarlet led them to a small cantina at the edge of the docks. The kind of rough place the warehouse workers and ships’ crews would go after a shift to spend the day’s wages blowing off steam. Chewbacca hung his bowcaster on his back and crossed his arms, over two meters of furry threat to ward off anyone looking for an easy score.

  Inside, the place was all black walls and flashing lights. Gaming machines and gambling tables were scattered around the room as if a bored giant had dumped them out of his pockets on the way through. A dozen different species drank and gamed and scuffled in the cramped space.

  Hunter Maas looked right at home. Leaving the R3 with them, he sauntered up to the bar and spoke to the bartender for a few moments, though with the deafening rattle of gaming machines and piped-in music, it was impossible to hear what was said. A moment later the bartender handed Maas two glasses, and Maas passed the man a coin. He gave one glass to Scarlet, and drank off the other in one long swallow. He said something Han couldn’t make out. Scarlet answered, nodding toward Han and Chewbacca.

  Han could feel the approaching Imperial fleet like an itch on top of his scalp. Every second they spent was one they wouldn’t have when they needed to run. A pair of three-eyed, goat-faced Gran in orange-and-black flight suits walked toward Scarlet and Maas, but Chewbacca stepped in front of them and growled, and the two Gran beat a hasty retreat.

  Han sidled up to Scarlet and whispered in her ear. “Everyone can tell we don’t belong in here.”

  She didn’t reply, but a moment later she finished off the last of her drink and said, “Captain Maas. Would you like to join me in our private room in the back?”

  The shirtless man smiled and downed his second drink, slamming the glass on the bar. “Hunter Maas would very much like to join you in a private room!”

  Scarlet took his arm and led him through the thick knots of bar patrons with practiced ease. She could move people out of her way with just a smile and a polite nod. Han had to use Chewbacca to clear his path to the back of the bar, and still he almost wound up in a fight with a piggish alien of a species he didn’t recognize. In the end, Chewbacca picked up the alien by the scruff of the neck and shook it until it calmed down. After that, everyone cleared a path for them. By the time they caught up, Scarlet and Maas were at a small door. Scarlet knocked, and it slid open.

  The back room of the cantina was bare stone, with rough-surfaced scratches where the marks of the cutting torch hadn’t been smoothed away. A small table with a bottle of liquor and three glasses stood in the middle of the floor under a single hanging light. Boxes of supplies lined the walls—food and drink and other things less familiar.

  Leia stood near the middle of the room, wearing a loose white robe over sand-colored pants. She looked too elegant to be in a port cantina. Han gave her a grin, and one corner of her mouth twitched.

  “Thank you for coming, Captain Maas. My name is Leia Organa of Alderaan, and I would like to buy what you’re selling.”

  Seventeen

  Hunter Maas looked around the room as if he owned it. He bowed to Leia and Scarlet in turn and favored Han and Chewie with a wink before settling into a chair and propping his heels on the table. Now that he was holding still, Han could see that the man’s scuffed work boots were decorated with mosaic skulls made of small shards of crystal.

  Chewbacca silently turned to Han and lifted a brow. Han looked down and bit his lip to keep from laughing.

  “You are the rebel Princess then, hey? The lovely miss says you sent these two to help me escape the Imperial ship,” Hunter said. “Hunter Maas owes you a debt of honor, and it shall be repaid.”

  Leia sat across from the man. From her demeanor, she could have been meeting with a president or a king. Scarlet leaned against the back wall, her face blank, her concentration fierce. Han met her gaze and glanced at Hunter Maas. This guy? Really? A small line drew itself at the corner of Scarlet’s mouth, not a smile but the presentiment of one.

  “I’m pleased the Rebellion could be of service,” Leia said. “It seems we have a common enemy.”

  “Hunter Maas has no enemies,” Hunter Maas said. “He has only admirers and the jealous.”

  “And the fighter that was trying to kill you?” Leia asked.

  “Jealous. Intimidated by my masculinity.”

  Han had been around Leia long enough to recognize some of her small, unconscious expressions. The blink that lasted a fraction of a second too long, the smile that began and ended at her eyes because she’d practiced doing that. Hunter Maas didn’t see any of it. The rat-bird screeched and hopped from Maas’s left shoulder to his right, nipping at his earlobe.

  “I understand that you’ve come to the conference with some information to sell,” Leia said.

  “Not information. Victory. Hunter Maas holds the key to control over the Empire! Such that even the mad Emperor quakes in his boots like a little girl to contemplate.” He swung his boots to the ground with a clunk and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Power such as you have never imagined. Hunter Maas has come not to sell information, no, but to choose his partner in godlike ascendance!”

  Han pretended to scratch his nose to hide his smile, but Scarlet’s expression had gone serious again. Hunter Maas was a buffoon and a blowhard, but Scarlet, at least, seemed to be taking his bragging very seriously.

  “You have Essio Galassian’s project notes,” the spy said. “The report he was preparing for the Emperor.”

  Hunter Maas grinned at her and pretended to shoot her with his fingertip. “The beautiful woman is more than she appears. She has heard of Hunter Maas’s victory. Yes, yes. The report of the great villain Galassian, despoiler of ancient graves and toady to the mad Emperor. Hunter Maas has the only copy of his greatest work. The master discovery that will remake the galaxy forever. Only Hunter Maas!”

  “Galassian’s not dead,” Scarlet said. “He can write the report again. Whatever you have, the Empire does also.”

  “All the more reason to act quickly, yes?”

  “What is in this report?” Leia asked.

  Hunter Maas spread his hands in a wide gesture that took in the room, the city, the world. He leaned forward, his spine straightening. Whatever the man was about to say, Han had the sense he’d rehearsed it a lot.

  “The galaxy is filled with thousands of species, royal lady. Thousands of different shapes of minds. Most, they are of a piece, but some? Some are changed. They find those things that no other can see. Most are turned outward, to the stars and the great community of life, but some turn in to block away the stars. To protect themselves from such as you, yes? Or I.”

  “Silly them,” Han said, and Scarlet shot him a sharp look. Hunter Maas, however, wouldn’t be derailed.

  “Such a species were the K’kybak. Brilliant and fearful. Their race rose, flourished, and passed to the great emptiness of time all within the realm of one small planet. But the mysteries they uncovered there were profound. Deep, yes? Had their temperament been other than it was, we should all still bow down to a K’kybak master. Yes, even Hunter Maas. Such was their power.

  “They were a young species when the invaders came. Long before the Empire. Long before the Republic. Their suffering was under stars of a different color, so long ago this happened. With great wars, they cast off oppression’s yoke. And once free, the brilliant, twisted minds of the K’kybak bent themselves to protection. They took the oppressor’s ships, their weapons, all the technology that had placed the boot upon their necks. And what did they do with it? Did they create a fleet to annihilate? No. They delved deep, deep into the mysteries of physics and built themselves a tool to wrap their star in safety forever. The greatest weapons in the galaxy were as nothing to them then. They lived the span of their people’s lives and died undisturbed by even the most
vicious conquerors.”

  Leia nodded. “That’s fascinating,” she said in a tone that suggested it might not actually be fascinating. “And I assume you’re here to sell whatever defensive technology they discovered?”

  “Alas, no. Hunter Maas instead has the map. The secret coordinates that will lead the wise and powerful to the dead world of the K’kybak, there to retrieve the secret that will lay the galaxy at their feet.”

  “Will this shield protect against something as powerful as the Death Star?” Leia asked.

  Hunter Maas sneered. “Death Star? The K’kybak laugh at this Death Star. Ha!”

  “It destroyed my home planet,” Leia said, and the hardness in her voice caught even Hunter Maas’s attention.

  “And I grieve with you, but ask yourself this, royal lady. What power would it have if it could not move? Could it have destroyed your world from across the galaxy? I think not.”

  Hunter Maas wagged his eyebrows. Han and Chewie exchanged a puzzled glance. Scarlet’s sharp breath cut through the air.

  “Why would they be across the . . . Oh. Hyperspace,” she said. “They found a way to control passage through hyperspace.”

  Han felt his gut tighten. Hunter Maas’s comic smile suddenly seemed a lot less funny.

  “The twiggy little woman is correct,” Hunter Maas said. “They had in their hands the key to controlling all of space, yes? Of saying not who is permitted to go from there to here, but for whom it is possible. Put your Death Star in a system, turn loose its power, and the man who commands it can become the Emperor of gravel. At sub lightspeeds, his grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren might perhaps threaten another planet. The Imperial fleet with its host of Destroyers is nothing if it cannot travel. The Emperor himself. If he cannot send his little men where he wishes, what is he? Nothing. Less than nothing. The greatest gun in the galaxy is of no use when you have no one to point it at.”

  Leia’s face was pale, her lips so thin they almost vanished. It was a tribute to her strength that when she spoke, her voice was as calm and friendly as it had been at the meeting’s start.