Han shook his head. “He said he wouldn’t. I believed him.”
Leia winced and rubbed her forehead again, as if trying to massage away a headache. Han’s hand twitched to rub her forehead for her, or her neck, or …
With an effort, he brought his mind back to the matter at hand. Anyway, he was pretty sure the next thing he had to say might cause Leia to rip his head off. But that had never stopped him before. “Here’s another thing,” he told her. “Viest sent Metara after Davit’s ship. Metara didn’t happen to mention that to you, did she?”
Leia eyed him, her expression impossible to read.
Han forged on. “Metara let us think she just had to snatch a cargo, any cargo, and take it back to Viest to seal their deal and start paying off what she owed. But Viest didn’t care about the cargo—she wanted Davit and those other merchants dead or in her slave pen. That was the whole point.” All that stuff about Metara always meaning to let the crew go was just so much mynock dung. It might have been Metara not wanting Leia, and maybe even her own crew, to know just how low she was planning to go, but Han didn’t like it. If Metara had lied about that, there was no telling what else she had lied about, and they were depending on the Aegis’s crew to get off this blasted mine.
Leia’s eyes narrowed, but all she said was, “Hmm. We’ll see. I’ve been waiting for Metara to pull something. She’s been far too cooperative. I know she doesn’t want me killed or injured, and she does want to get out from under Viest’s thumb, but I’m not sure what else she has in mind.” She must have read his expression, because she lifted her brows. “You didn’t think I trusted Metara, did you? An Alderaanian turned pirate—of course I don’t trust her. But I’ve recruited a lot of people for the Alliance whose morals I’ve found wanting. All that matters is whether they mean to fight the Empire.”
Suddenly Han felt like he had been pinned to the wall. Before he could stop himself, he asked, “And I’m one of them?”
Leia rolled her eyes in pure exasperation. “Not everything is about you, Han.”
Han was formulating a reply to that when someone knocked on the door, and Sian’s voice said, “Princess? There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”
CHAPTER TEN
AS THEY SPILLED OUT of the refresher, Leia grimly reminded herself that she couldn’t afford lapses like that. It was all right to be attracted to Han, but she couldn’t be tempted, especially not in the middle of a mission, and being attracted at such close range, watching him shifting around in that confined space, made her think about warm skin and hard muscle … She couldn’t be tempted, especially not in the middle of a mission.
Sometimes she felt like the Empire had killed part of her when they killed Alderaan, but moments like that made her remember she was still alive, still whole. It made her want to take all she could while she could, before the Empire killed her again. But there was never any time. Not when there were so many more important things to do.
Maybe that was why she had little difficulty in sympathizing with Metara, no matter how reprehensible she found the woman’s choice to pursue piracy. They were both arrested in time, in that moment when their home had cracked and burned and turned to dust. But they were coping with it in very different ways.
Leia was relieved to hear that her visitor was Anakaret. The Twi’lek had come alone, talking her way past the guards at the bay doors by pointing out very reasonably that Viest had said the Aegis crew wasn’t to leave the bay, but nothing had been said about them receiving visitors.
“They won’t tell Viest,” Anakaret said as Kelvan led her into the ready room. “They aren’t so stupid; they know what she would do to them. And they don’t like to obey her orders like good little clones, either, but they don’t have much choice, unless they can get berths on a ship, and no one will give them any without Viest’s say-so.”
Anakaret took a seat on the couch built against the bulkhead and looked around expectantly. Leia was fairly certain she knew what the etiquette was in this situation and glanced at Metara. “Do we have a drink for our friend?”
Metara nodded to Terae, who looked startled but got up and went out, returning a moment later with a bottle of Corellian wine and some glasses. Leia hoped they had bought it at a port somewhere and not taken it off some unfortunate ship. At Metara’s nod, Terae opened it and poured out glasses for Anakaret, Leia, and Metara.
Anakaret took a drink and nodded to the others. “These are your people?” she asked Leia.
Leia knew what she meant. She nodded to Han, Sian, and Kifar. “They’re my people. The others are our allies, and prospective business partners.” She took a small sip of wine, mindful that she couldn’t afford to lose her edge; she hadn’t even done anything for her bruises except take the mildest painkiller the ship’s medic had. The impacts from the remote weren’t so bad, but the place on her back where the droid’s claw had slapped her ached badly.
With a nod, Anakaret got right to the point. “You know now Viest wants to kill you. Maybe she didn’t want to when you first arrived, but now she thinks you’ve challenged her authority.”
Leia was all too aware of that. “I shouldn’t have provoked her after the game.”
Anakaret waved that away. “It was too late to talk reason to her when she sent you down there to play. When she has it in for you, she has it in for you, and nothing you do can change it. Others warned me about this, and I didn’t listen. I didn’t know about the droid, either. I thought we would play, appease her, and then I could do business here. But she didn’t keep her bargain with you, who won her lousy game, so why should I trust her now? That’s why I’ll be leaving as soon as my crew readies our ship.”
“So Viest will try to … what?” Metara asked. “Summon us to her control center again so she can kill us? Attack the ship while we’re in dock?”
Anakaret shrugged. “She won’t order anything directly, because it would anger too many of the other captains. They don’t like her in the first place. If they see that she isn’t dealing fairly with a ship that hasn’t made any trouble, then they’ll have reason to turn against her.” She added, “But you’ll have to watch your backs. She has other ways of making things happen. The others here have told me rumors of ships that dock here and then just disappear, never leave the mine, are never seen or heard from again.”
Leia wasn’t certain what to make of the rumors, but the rest fit with what she had expected. Viest would keep them trapped here in dock, hoping they would make a run for it so she could order the ships who owed her debts to destroy them. If they didn’t make a run for it, she would call in a favor and have someone attack them. But Leia wanted to know more of Anakaret’s motivation. “I know why Viest hates me. She thinks I’m lying to her about being able to buy this ship’s debt from her, and she’s angry that I even made the offer. Why does she hate you?”
Anakaret sighed and held out her glass for a refill. “She doesn’t like my attitude. It’s not the first time I’ve had this problem.”
Han snorted. “I know how that goes.” Leia lifted her brows. He’d better not be talking about me, she thought. But he said, “People who set up little kingdoms like this are touchy about anybody who looks like trouble.”
Anakaret gave him an understanding nod. “I thought this place was a good idea for my ship, until I got here and saw the way things were. Besides, I don’t like being told what to do.”
Leia could see that. Han and Anakaret did both look like trouble, by anybody’s definition. “I’m not keen on being told what to do, either,” she said.
“Then this place isn’t for people like us.” Anakaret set her glass down. “I have a small ship; my crew is only six strong. I thought we could increase our business and make ourselves rich by working with this clearinghouse, but I didn’t figure on these killing games and Viest being so capricious. We’re smugglers, not pirates, and I don’t owe Viest money like so many of the others. Since I didn’t win her blasted game she doesn’t care if I leave or n
ot. What will you do?”
“We want to get this ship out of here and away from Viest.” Leia hesitated, but Anakaret had seemed to hold a high opinion of debts and honor. “Viest confiscated a prize from this ship, a merchant freighter. We don’t want the freighter itself back, but we want the crew. Viest will sell them as slaves, and we promised we would release them if they surrendered. We want to keep our promise.” In light of what Han had discovered, she was keeping an even closer eye on Metara for her reaction. But Metara didn’t betray anything. It was exasperating that Metara couldn’t have kept her expression under this much control in Viest’s presence.
Anakaret grimaced. “Viest won’t give anything back, once she gets her hands on it. She doesn’t care about other people’s promises and honor.” She regarded Leia. “As I said, I owe you a debt. I’ll help you if I can. But if you ask me to help you free the captured crew, I can’t. I can’t do anything that would endanger my own crew. My promises to them come first.”
“I understand.” Leia hadn’t expected Anakaret to join their escape effort; she had just been thinking of ways the Twi’lek might aid their plan without putting her own life on the line. The idea to distract the pirates with an explosion would be more effective if they could combine it with something that made all the pirate ships in orbit, and not just those in dock and close enough to detect the blast, think the asteroid was being attacked. Something from outside the asteroid, from farther out in the system.
And suddenly Leia thought she knew what that was. “When we arrived, the ship was given a local comm frequency for alerts and messages. Do all the ships in orbit monitor that frequency?”
Anakaret looked interested. “If they have any sense. It’s where warnings would be broadcast, if the clearinghouse was attacked by raiders from a rival organization, or Imperials, or security ships, or any other threat.” Watching Leia’s face, she said, “You have an idea.”
Leia nodded. “As you’re leaving the system, could you send a transmission on that frequency, telling all the pirates that you’ve just detected Imperial ships coming out of hyperspace?” Everyone was watching Leia now, either baffled or intrigued.
Anakaret quirked her lips, clearly taken with the idea. “But why should they listen to me? Maybe I’m just an angry troublemaker.”
Leia turned to Metara. “Do you still have the recording of the transmissions you intercepted that time, of Imperial ships entering a system?”
It took Metara a moment to realize what Leia meant, and then she was shocked. “Yes, but …” Her eyes narrowed in thought as the possibilities occurred to her. “The codes they used would have been changed since then …”
“The pirates won’t know that,” Leia said. “With some careful editing, it should be convincing.” They could fake something up using the Aegis’s comm system, but starting with a genuine transmission would add that much more verisimilitude. Leia turned back to Anakaret. “We can give you a short audio recording that you can play over the frequency, as proof of what you’ve seen.”
Anakaret smiled slowly. “I like this plan.”
It took Leia and the Aegis’s comm tech less time to get the fake transmission ready than it did for Terae and her munitions team to alter the seismic charge. As the comm tech played the final version for Leia’s approval, she said, “No disrespect, Your Highness, but this just seems … sacrilegious, to use the transmission that the Death Star made when it was coming within range of Alderaan.”
They weren’t trying to make Viest and the other pirates think a new Death Star was entering the system. The tech had carefully cut out any identifying ship’s IDs and obscured the voices with static. What it did sound like was that something large, heavily armed, and brimming with Imperial might was entering a system with the specific purpose of destroying an already selected target. Viest might suspect it was a trick, especially with it being relayed by Anakaret’s ship. If even one of the guards passed on the information that Anakaret had visited the Aegis, she would certainly suspect something. But Leia was betting many of the pirates in orbit wouldn’t wait around to find out, and the flightmaster would hopefully be too busy dealing with the explosion to give any orders. If Viest wasn’t dead or injured herself.
Leia had heard versions of this transmission and others, captured in bits and pieces by other Alderaanian survivors and by Alliance intelligence sources. She told herself it no longer affected her, and maybe that was true. She only said, “I don’t think anything is so sacred that it can’t be used to save lives.” She added, “I just hope this works the way we think it will.”
She took the slim data card with the edited transmission and carried it back to the ready room, where Anakaret waited with Metara. “Here it is.”
Anakaret accepted the card and stood. Her smile was predatory. “My only regret is that I won’t be around to watch them all scatter like startled rycrits.”
Leia smiled back. “I wish we could take a vid of it for you, but I doubt we’ll have time.”
She walked Anakaret to the hatch with Metara following. They spent a few moments making sure their chronos were all reading approximately the same time. Leia just hoped they had planned on enough leeway in the schedule for everyone to get into position. She thought they had, but she knew how seldom even the most careful plans survived contact with reality. “Thank you for doing this, Anakaret.”
“I might have done it even if I didn’t owe you a favor,” Anakaret said. She patted Leia on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, Leia.”
“You, too,” Leia said. She watched Anakaret walk down the ramp and across the bay, wanting to make certain she got out without any trouble from the guards. Anakaret sailed past them without a word, and Leia breathed out in relief. She turned to see Metara staring at her. “What?”
Metara shook her head slightly, as if she would rather not say, then admitted, “It surprises me. That you got along with her so well.”
Leia was honestly baffled for a moment. “Why? Because she was working with pirates?” Leia certainly objected to Anakaret’s career path, but she didn’t know enough about the woman’s past to judge her. Unlike Metara, Anakaret might not have had a choice.
Metara looked away, clearly uncomfortable. “Partly that. But she’s not exactly the kind of person that Alderaanian royalty would normally … interact with.”
“You’d be surprised,” Leia said drily. She waited a moment, watching Metara, then said, “I know Viest sent you to capture that merchant ship’s passengers. When you offered to release them at Arnot Station so I would come aboard the Aegis, did you have any intention of keeping your word?”
“Yes, I …” Metara hesitated, and then all the stiffness and resolve seemed to go out of her body at once, and she rubbed her temple wearily. “I don’t know what I meant to do. All this time, since Alderaan, I haven’t had one doubt that what I was doing was right. Right for me, right for my crew, the right thing to honor the memory of our dead. But … when I spoke to you, it was as if … I woke up from a dream. Since then, I haven’t been sure about anything.” She laughed a little bitterly. “This is the part where I should swear to you again that I won’t do anything to harm or betray you or your people, but after that little speech, why should you believe me?”
“Because you’re being honest with me.” Leia knew this was not the moment to push. By admitting doubt, Metara had just made an enormous concession. What she needed now was time to think. And continuing to work with Leia wouldn’t hurt, either. “We’ll talk about it once we’re all safe and away from here.”
Metara took a deep breath and nodded. By the time they stepped back into the ready room, she was as perfectly composed as if nothing had happened.
The most difficult part of the plan was going to be getting the merchants out. Leia and Metara walked into the ready room where Han, Sian, Kelvan, Terae, and Kifar were doing the planning. They had an image of a map of the mine displayed above the holotable, but they must have copied it from a faulty source beca
use it was blurry and apparently couldn’t be adjusted. Still, it was better than nothing. Kifar was saying, “Blasting them out would be quicker.”
“Also stupid,” Han told him. “The whole idea is to do this quiet-like, until we get to the bay doors, or did you miss the memo on that?”
Kifar bristled, but before tensions could rise even farther Leia interrupted, “Quietly is exactly how we’re going to do it. What’s the plan?” She wasn’t certain what problem Kifar had with Han, but it was more than tiresome, and if he let it interfere with the mission she would be happy to order him to wait in the Aegis instead of participating.
Kelvan answered, “We have to coordinate this with the movements of the refuse haulers Solo encountered, but we’ll send someone in first to cut through the grids blocking the tunnel’s access to the detention area. It’s bringing the prisoners out and down the tunnel to the nearest exit where the timing gets tricky.”
“Ideally, we could rig something up to stall the hauler or knock out its power source,” Terae added, “but we’re not sure what frequency it’s operating on. Also, I’m worried that if something goes wrong with it, it will activate a maintenance system somewhere that will set off an alarm or summon a higher-level droid.”
Leia nodded. “In any other part of the mine, it wouldn’t be a problem, but someone might take notice of an alarm directly under the slave pen.” She turned to Han. “Are you sure you can get all these people out through the corridors without anyone noticing?”
Han shrugged. “It’s not going to be easy, but this place isn’t run like an Imperial base, or even a commercial port. The only security we saw was right around the cargo receiving area and the slave pen. They guard what they think is valuable, and the rest they let go to hell.”
Sian added, “We thought we’d divide up into smaller groups and take them out through different routes, so even if one of the bands of castaways sees us on the way, they’ll assume we’re a crew exploring for salvage or a new group of castaways.”