“I agree,” Han said. Colonel Harcen jumped like a poked cat. “You’ve got to keep the scum out.”
“Captain Solo,” Harcen said. “I didn’t see you there. I hope I gave no offense.”
“No. Of course not,” Han said, smiling insincerely. “I mean, you weren’t talking about me, were you?”
“Everyone is very aware of the service you’ve done for the Alliance.”
“Exactly. So there’s no reason you’d have been talking about me.”
Harcen flushed red and made a small, formal bow. “I was not talking about you, Captain Solo.”
Han sat at one of the unmanned stations, stretching his arms out like he was in a cantina with a group of old friends. It might have been an illusion, but he thought he saw a flicker of a smile on Leia’s lips.
“Then there’s no offense taken,” he said.
Harcen left, his shoulders back and his head held high. Chewbacca took a fraction of a second longer than strictly needed to step out of the man’s way. Luke leaned against one of the displays, his weight warping the display enough that it sent little sprays of false color through the lines and curves.
When Harcen was gone, Leia sighed. “Thank you all for coming on short notice. I’m sorry I had to pull you off the training exercises, Luke.”
“It’s all right.”
“I was in a sabacc game,” Han said.
“I’m not sorry I pulled you out of that.”
“I was winning.”
Chewbacca chuffed and crossed his arms. Leia’s expression softened a degree. “I was supposed to leave ten hours ago,” she said, “and I can’t stay much longer. We’ve had some unexpected developments, and I need to get you up to speed.”
“What’s going on?” Luke asked.
“We aren’t going to be able to use the preliminary base in Targarth system,” she said. “We’ve had positive identification of Imperial probes.”
The silence lasted only a breath, but it carried a full load of disappointment.
“Not again,” Luke said.
“Again.” Leia crossed her arms. “We’re looking at alternatives, but until we get something, construction and dry-dock plans are all being put on hold.”
“Vader’s really going all out to find you people,” Han said. “What are your backup plans?”
“We’re looking at Cerroban, Aestilan, and Hoth,” Leia told him.
“That’s the bottom of the barrel,” Han said.
For a second, he thought she was going to fight, but instead she only looked defeated. He knew as well as she did that the secret rebel base was going to be critical. Without a base, some kinds of repair, manufacturing, and training work just couldn’t be done, and the Empire knew that, too. But Cerroban was a waterless, airless lump of stone hardly better than the rendezvous point, and one that was pounded by asteroids on a regular basis. Aestilan had air and water, but rock worms had made the planetary mantle so fragile that there were jokes about digging tunnels just by jumping up and down. And Hoth was an ice ball with an equatorial zone that only barely stayed warm enough to sustain human life, and that only when the sun was up.
Leia stepped to one of the displays, shifting the image with a flicker of her fingers. A map of the galaxy appeared, the immensity of a thousand million suns disguised by the fitting of it all onto the same screen.
“There is another possibility,” she said. “The Seymarti system is near the major space lanes. There’s some evidence that there was sentient life there at some point, but our probes don’t show anything now. It may be the place we’re looking for.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” Han said. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?” Luke asked.
“Ships get lost in Seymarti,” Han said. “A lot of ships. They make the jump to hyperspace, and they don’t come back out.”
“What happens to them?”
“No one knows. Something that close to the lanes without an Imperial garrison on it can be mighty appealing to someone who needs a convenient place to not get found, but everyone I know still steers clear of that place. Nobody goes there.”
Luke patted his helmet with one thoughtful hand. “But if nobody goes there, how can a lot of ships get lost?”
Han scowled. “I’m just saying the place has a bad reputation.”
“The science teams think there may be some kind of spatial anomaly that throws off sensor readings,” Leia said. “If that’s true, and we can find a way to navigate it ourselves, Seymarti may be our best hope for avoiding Imperial notice. As soon as Wedge Antilles is back from patrol, he’s going to put together an escort force for the survey ships.”
“I’d like to go with him,” Luke said.
“We talked about that,” Leia said. “Wedge thought it would be a good chance for you to get some practice. He’s requested you as his second in command.”
Luke’s smile was so bright, Han could have read by it. “Absolutely,” the kid said.
The communication panel beside Leia chimed. “Ma’am, we’ve kept the engines hot, but if we don’t leave soon, we’re going to have to recalibrate the jump. Do you want me to reschedule your meetings again?”
“No. I’ll be right there,” she said, and turned the connection off with an audible click.
Han leaned forward. “It’s all right. I see how I fit in here,” he said. “The weapons run from Minoth to Targarth is off. That’s not a big deal. I’ll just bring the guns here instead. Unless you want the Falcon to go along with the kid here.”
“Actually, that’s not why I wanted to talk with you,” Leia said. “Something else happened. Two years ago, we placed an agent at the edge of Imperial space. The intelligence we’ve gotten since then has been some of the most valuable we’ve seen, but the reports stopped seven months ago. We assumed the worst. And then yesterday, we got a retrieval code. From the Saavin system. Cioran.”
“That’s not the edge of Imperial space,” Han said. “That’s the middle of it.”
Chewbacca growled and moaned.
“It’s not what I would have picked either,” Leia said. “There was no information with it. No context, no report. We don’t know what happened between the last contact and now. We just got the signal that we should send a ship.”
“Oh,” Han said with a slowly widening grin. “No, it’s all right. I get it. I absolutely understand. You’ve got this important guy trapped in enemy territory, and you need to get him out. Only with the Empire already swarming like a hive of Bacian blood hornets, you can’t risk using anyone but the best. That about right?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, but it’s in the neighborhood of right, yes,” Leia said. “The risks are high. I won’t order anyone to take the assignment. We can make it worth your time if you’re willing to do it.”
“You don’t have to order us, does she, Chewie? All you have to do is ask, and we are on the job.”
Leia’s gaze softened a little. “Will you do this, then? For the Alliance?”
Han went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Just say ‘please,’ and we’ll get the Millennium Falcon warmed up, skin out of here, grab your guy, and be back before you know it. Nothing to it.”
Leia’s expression went stony. “Please.”
Han scratched his eyebrow. “Can I have a little time to think about it?”
The Wookiee made a low but rising howl and lifted his arms impatiently.
“Thank you, Chewie,” Leia said. “There’s also a real possibility that the whole operation was compromised and the retrieval code is bait in a trap. When you make your approach, you’ll need to be very careful.”
“Always am,” Han said, and Luke coughed. “What?” Han demanded.
“You’re always careful?”
“I’m always careful enough.”
“Your first objective is to make the connection and complete the retrieval,” Leia said. “If you can’t do that, find out as much as you can about what happened and whether any of
our people are in danger. But if you smell a trap, get out. If we’ve lost her, we’ve lost her. We don’t want to sacrifice anyone else.”
“Her?”
Leia touched the display controls again, and the image shifted. A green security warning flooded it, and she keyed in the override. A woman’s face filled the screen. High cheekbones, dark eyes and hair, V-shaped chin, and a mouth that seemed on the verge of smiling. If Han had seen her in a city, he’d have looked twice, but not because she was suspicious. The data field beside the picture listed a life history too complex to take in at a glance. The name field read: Scarlet Hark.
“Don’t get in over your head,” Leia said.
READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM
STAR WARS: MAUL: LOCKDOWN
BY
JOE SCHREIBER
PUBLISHED BY DEL REY BOOKS
HOT MESS
MAUL MOVED ACROSS THE PRISON MESS HALL like a predator recently released from its cage, passing sleekly through the mob, parting them with scarcely a glance. Some of the inmates took an uneasy step back to allow him to go by, while others simply froze in place. Heads swiveled to watch him pass. The continuous ambient drone of voices dropped to whispers and the whispers lapsed into watchful, estimating silence as he made his way among them.
He walked to the last table and sat down.
On the other side of the table, two inmates who had been in the middle of an argument—one a pallid, frightened-looking human with a four-day stubble, the other a Gotal who appeared to be missing an eye—stopped talking, picked up their trays, and made a hasty departure.
Maul sat motionless, observing everything around him without giving any indication that he was doing so. Although his peripheral vision still hadn’t fully recovered from last night’s attack, he saw enough to realize that he had become the current object of everyone’s attention. Even the guards up on the catwalks overhead seemed to have gone on high alert, one hand on their blasters, the other resting on the small flat consoles that they wore on their belts. From both inmates and guards, Maul could smell a certain unmistakable commingling of fear, desperation, and the grinding monotony of paranoia that emerged when living things were penned up together in close quarters for indefinite spans of time.
It disgusted him.
Yet, for the time being at least, it was home.
He had stepped aboard this floating sewer less than twenty-four standard hours earlier, and in that time he’d come to understand all that he needed to know about the place. The rest of his time inside, he knew, would simply be a question of patience, of accomplishing his mission here without being discovered for what he truly was.
Neither of these things would be difficult for him.
They were simply the mandates of his assignment, and as such, beyond all question.
His arrival on Cog Hive Seven had come courtesy of the only transport of the day, a nameless prison barge with a stripped-down interior that reeked of high-carbon anthracite and unwashed flesh. The cargo hold was stocked with thirty-seven other inmates whose presence Maul barely registered after gauging none of them worth a moment of his time. They were a foul-smelling, nit-infested lot comprised of a dozen different species, some clearly deranged and muttering to themselves, others staring blankly through the vessel’s only viewport as if something in the depthless black void might give perspective to their pointless and insubstantial lives.
Throughout it all, Maul had sat apart from his fellow inmates in absolute stillness. Some of them, apparently, couldn’t wait to start fighting. As the trip wore on, boredom became restlessness and scuffles had broken out as sidelong glances, petty grievances erupted into acts of seemingly unprovoked violence. Several hours into the journey, an over-muscled ectomorph with bulging crab-stalk eyes had leapt up and lunged at a Rodian who’d somehow managed to smuggle a whip-band that he’d sharpened and apparently planned to use as a makeshift vibroblade. The fight hadn’t lasted long, and only when the blade-bearer had accidentally bumped into him had Maul glanced up long enough to drive an elbow upward and shatter the Rodian’s lower spine. The guards onboard hadn’t even blinked as the Rodian pitched over sideways, wailing and paralyzed, to the deck where it lay whimpering for the duration of the trip, gazing up through moist and pleading eyes.
It was the only time during the entire trip that Maul had moved.
When they’d finally docked, a retinue of fatigued-looking corrections officers had met them in the hangar, herding them down the berthing port with static pikes and go-sticks, running the biometric scans as the new inmates had shambled forward, blinking into their new surroundings. Maul had seen more guards at this point in processing than anywhere else aboard the space station. At the end of the line, he stood motionless as a jumpy young CO whose ID badge read Smight swept a wand over him, scanning for infection and hidden weapons. There was no mistaking the tremor in the man’s hand as he passed the wand in front of Maul’s face.
“You know why you’re here, maggot?” Smight had asked, struggling to hide the quaver in his voice behind a pitiful note of bravado.
Maul had said nothing.
“Twenty-two standard hours a day,” Smight told him, “you’re free to roam the gallery and mess hall. Twice a day, when you hear the clarion call go off, you return to your cell for matching.” The guard swallowed, the bump in his throat bulging up and down. “Any attempt to escape results in immediate termination. Failure to report back to your cell for matching will be treated as an escape attempt and will result in immediate termination. You got that?”
Maul had just stared back at him, waiting for the guard to finish his business and back away. As he’d walked away, he heard the young CO find enough courage to snarl out one final declaration.
“You’ll die in here, maggot. They all do.”
Medbay had come next, an hour’s worth of decontamination and tox screens, neuro readouts and electroencephalograms administered by disinterested droids. After a long round of ultrasonic full-body scans, a refurbished GH-7 surgical unit had inserted a long syringe into Maul’s chest, withdrawn it, only to plunge it back in again at a slightly different angle. A final scan had confirmed whatever the droid had done to him, and the CO at the far end of the concourse had waved him forward.
Afterward, two more officers armed with E-11 assault blasters had appeared and led him through a circuitous network of increasingly narrow concourses. The final walkway had led unceremoniously to his cell, a featureless, alloy-plated dome perhaps three meters in diameter. The carbon composite floor was the color of dirty slate. A single air vent whirred overhead. Stepping inside, Maul had sat hunched on the single, narrow bench, gazing at the only light source, an unremarkable panel of blinking yellow lights on the opposite wall.
“This is where you’ll come for lockdown and matching,” one of the guards had told him. He was a grizzled older man, a veteran whose ID badge identified him as Voystock. “You hear the clarion, wherever you are, you have five standard minutes to get back here for lockdown before you’re terminated.”
Maul looked at him coldly. “Terminated?”
“Yeah, I guess nobody told you.” The guard nodded down at the flat gray control unit strapped to his hip. “We call this thing a dropbox. Wanna know why?”
Maul just gazed at him.
“Oh, you’re a hard-case, right?” Voystock snorted. “Yeah. They all start out that way. See, every inmate who comes through medbay gets a subatomic electrostatic detonator implanted in the walls of his heart. Both your hearts, since apparently you’ve got two of ’em. What that means is, I type in your prison number here, 11240—” He ran his fingers over the dropbox’s keypad. “—those charges go off. And that’s when you drop. Permanently.”
Maul said nothing.
“But hey,” Voystock said with a crooked grin, “a tough guy like you shouldn’t have any problems here.” He reached up and patted Maul’s cheek. “Have yourself a nice day, right?”
They left the hatch open behind them, but
Maul had stayed in his cell, crouched motionless, allowing his new surroundings to creep in around him in the slow accretion of physical detail.
There were words scratched on the walls, graffiti in a dozen different languages, the usual cries of weakness—pleas for help, forgiveness, recognition, a quick death. The bench was equipped with handgrips, their surface worn smooth by hundreds of palms, as if the inmates who’d occupied this cell before him had all needed something to hold onto. Maul had dismissed this detail as irrelevant.
Until the clarion had sounded.
Then he had sat up, snapped into total alertness, as the panel of yellow lights in front of him stopped blinking and turned solid red. The signal keened for five minutes. From outside, Maul had heard voices along with the frantic scuffle and clang of footsteps on floorboards as inmates had hurried back to their cells. As the alarms cut off, he heard the sounds of cells around him sealing shut.
The walls had started shaking. Complicated scraping noises came from somewhere deep inside the prison’s infrastructure itself, gnashing together in complicated arrangements of pneumatics. Reconfiguration. Maul looked down. The floor beneath him had already begun to bow downward into a bowl shape as the dome became a perfect sphere.
And the cell had begun to turn.
Only then had the well-worn handgrips on the bench made sense. He’d taken hold of them for support, hanging on as his cell rotated completely upside down and backward again, then barrel-rolled sideways like a flight simulator with a broken oscillation throttle. Throughout it all, the metallic clacking and clanging continued, as the various plates of his cell reshaped themselves around him.
When the rotation stopped, a recessed hatchway had hissed open into what appeared to be another empty cell, thick with shadow and little else. At first Maul had simply stood gazing into it. Then he’d taken a step inside. By the time he’d picked up the presence of another lifeform behind him—the warrior with mismatched arms and the amphistaff—the first blow had already come.