22: Closing In
ABOARD THE SENTINEL-CLASS SHUTTLE MIDRA’HARA
ORBITING BIRILLA, BESPIN’S SECOND MOON
“Say again, Mordenta!” Fera shouted, racing over to the main comms station and holding the comm mike to her mouth. “Say again, I did not read you!”
“I said we’re—” A barrage of static clouded Namyr’s words. “—and our pilot may be down! I repeat, our ride may be—and it looks like—” Once again, her words were swallowed by static.
“Radiation spikes are intensifying,” said Mynyra. The fur rippled on the head of the Bothan signals specialist as her clawed hands clicked and clacked across her keyboard. “Pretty soon we’re not going to be able to pick up anything transmitted from the planet. Bespin’s magnetosphere is going through a crazy bit of tumult.”
“It picked a heck of a time for it,” Fera grumbled. “Kajjak, any predictions on when it’ll let up?”
“Bespin’s own weather satellites typically monitor these things, but right now they’re not ready with a solid prediction.”
“Best guess?”
Kajjak’s lekku twitched uncertainly. “I think we’re looking at at least two, maybe three hours of continued radio disturbance. Subspace transmitters won’t work, either, not this close to the anomaly.”
“Sithspit,” she hissed. They all looked at her. Fera’s fingers traced the tattoos across her chin. “All right, let’s at least see the silver lining here. If we’re experiencing this kind of comms disruption, the Imperials won’t be faring much better. So, when those Star Destroyers show up again, they’ll be just as in the dark as we are. Meantime, we can get the jump on them. Before we totally lose all comms, let’s contact our operatives at the Cloud City listening outpost, have them transmit a false story, something to confuse the search for Zumter and keep Imperial resources away from our chase.” She thought quickly. “All right…before Kevv went down, Mordenta reported there were three possible bounty hunters following Zumter, and that Boba Fett was present. Let’s see if we can use that.”
“How?” asked Mynyra.
“A psy-op,” she said, referring to psychological operations. It was something the Rebel Alliance had gotten good at—it included spreading misinformation, demoralizing the enemy with rumors, spreading propaganda, and just generally messing with their enemies’ minds. “Have our people contact local news agencies and leave a few anonymous tips that an unknown Imperial has been captured at a spaceport on the north side of Cloud City. By…” She searched for a name she recalled from her days with the Empire, a contact they would believe. “By a bounty hunter named Bossk. A Trandoshan.”
Mynyra nodded approvingly. “So, when the Imperials get here, they may get wind of it, and think the hunt for Zumter is already over, and concentrate their search there.”
“Exactly. Which leaves Boba Fett and these other three hunters without any Imperial backup—it would be disastrous for us if the Imperials tried to get their claws in there to help.”
“I think I can manage that,” Kajjak said. “I’ll get right on it.”
To her right, Denzen called out, in Rodian, “Commander, I’ve got a link to Cloud City’s security camera system. It’s tenuous at best, considering all the interference, but our people at the listening outpost got us in.”
“Excellent, pull it up.”
Tens of thousands of cameras were emplaced all over the massive floating city. An enormous menu came up, showing the cameras district by district, and Fera’s team had to carefully select which ones they thought were closest to their ground team. When they found the cameras close to the bank, Fera assigned all of her people to use facial-recognition software to look for their quarry.
“I have eyes on Zumter!” Mynyra called out. “Heading east on Kullunda Row!”
“Get that to Ageless and Mordenta, if they can still hear you. How are we doing on that psy-op?”
“Our outpost team is implementing it now, Commander.”
* * *
CLOUD CITY
URJIGAL BUSINESS DISTRICT
The Bo’lu’nak Theater was putting on a play of The Longest Time Apart. Inside her secret room, Changwa Hastra could just hear the curtain call, and the applause from the crowd. The music had been a welcome diversion from her work, but just now she received the order from the Midra’hara. Her lekku twitched excitedly with each word she decoded. “This sounds like fun,” she muttered to herself. Spinning her chair around, she faced a different array of computers, and began sending out the orders. She had numerous paid informants throughout Cloud City, ranging from simple tibanna miners, to wealthy businessmen, to custodians, to hungry journalists. Those latter were starved for a scoop, anything to give them a break, and she fed three of them the false story.
The message was sent as an anonymous tip that had come in from local law enforcement, a mere rumor, something that sounded just believable enough to tantalize the reporters: ATTENTION! Unknown Imperial agent intercepted at Cloud City Spaceport! Not sure which bounty hunters got him—possibly a trio of Guildmembers? My informants say there is some dispute there between the bounty hunters and local authorities. All of them want credit for capturing the fugitive. If you want the scoop, you best get there first.
Changwa smiled as she typed out a description of the captured Imperial. She even sent it out over an unsecure channel, knowing that at least one or two Imperial agents on Cloud City—and there were at least a dozen of them that she knew of—would intercept it and take it as gospel.
Within minutes, she saw hits on private HoloNet chat rooms. Changwa watched her rumor starting to spread between journalists, all seeking verification from their own informants at Cloud City Spaceport. And that was all Changwa needed, just the merest morsel to stir up the rumor mill.
Some of her informants wanted verification from her. Changwa knew it would strain her relationships with them, when they later discovered she was lying, but it had to be done.
She sent a message back to Midra’hara saying it was done, then leaned back in her chair and enjoyed a snack while listening to an encore of Karandra E’lel’s solo, The Man Who Came Down the Mountain for Me.
She started singing along.
* * *
CLOUD CITY
APPROACHING KULLUNDA ROW
Ageless caught only glimpses of the back of Zumter’s head as the old man maneuvered expertly through the crowds on the plankway. He wanted to close in faster, but he had to hang back. The three bounty hunters were also stalking Zumter, and Ageless did not want them to become aware of his presence. He felt a pull to check in on Kevv, to see if he had died or if he was all right—they had barely known each other but they had also saved each other’s life, and it had been a while since he had had someone do that for him. But he was on-mission, and he could not falter now.
Not when Zumter is this close.
Everyone had seen the airspeeder go wheeling through the sky, its engines squealing, then sputtering out. There was tumult on all the plankways and glideways as pedestrians panicked, and Ageless had seen Zumter pause only a moment to watch it go down. Almost no one had seen Boba Fett race through the air, for the airspeeder only started to crash after the bounty hunter had zoomed by and was long gone. Still, Zumter was a veteran, and the strangeness of the event, and the sirens it brought from emergency vehicles converging on the area, would obviously call up his hackles.
So Zumter moved quickly, his case of money in hand, walking fast and maneuvering in such a way as to break line-of-sight with anyone that might be following him.
It was all Ageless could do to keep his target in sight, while also monitoring the large Trandoshan and his two pals following Zumter. And he also had to keep a lookout for Fett. How did he know? Did he notice Kevv circling one too many times? Was there something else? Did he pick up on our radio chatter? How did he know Kevv was after Zumter?
That little mystery had to be pushed aside, for Zumter was now moving onto a street that was like a wide balcony that encircled a huge, bulbous building that looked like it was some kind of refinery. And on the other side of it, emanating like the roar of a concert, were thousands of angry voices. The union workers’ protest. He’s going to use it as cover.
“Target is heading for the protest,” Ageless said into his commlink. “I have eyes on him but I’m going to have to break off for a moment. I think I need to deal with his three followers.”
“Copy that,” said one of the Rebel operatives stationed on the rooftops. “We see him heading our way. Sorry we didn’t catch Fett in time. Didn’t see him. It’s so dark out here—”
“Forget it. Keep eyes on Zumter.”
“You need help with those three guys?” Namyr called over the commlink.
“Negative. Stay on Zumter. Everybody, stay on Zumter. I’ve got these guys.”
As he made his way through a main thoroughfare that led away from the plankways, and onto Potnuf Square where the protests were, Ageless checked for coverage. In tradecraft, spies were taught to be constantly on the lookout for coverage, to look for repeats, the same faces that kept popping up. There were three main ways to perform coverage: leading, parallel, and following. Each one was easily detectable if you knew what to look for. Ageless saw no telltale signs of either type. He kept glancing up at the sky, waiting for Fett to reappear.
How did he know?
It bugged him. He was sure he had missed something.
Ageless followed the Trandoshan easily, for he stood well above the rest of the crowds. People were running all around, either towards Potnuf Square or away from it. He saw a police airspeeder come streaking out of the night sky and its spotlight flashed through an alley on Ageless’s right.
“Looks like police are looking for somebody,” Ageless reported.
“Relax, it’s not you,” Fera said. “Our reports show—the riots are—” She broke off in a hail of static.
“Say again, Mother. I didn’t read.”
No response from Midra’hara’s team. Another radiation spike had cut them off.
Ageless watched the Trandoshan and his two pals turn sharply down an alley on the right, and he followed them. He paused at the corner, peeked around the side, and saw them running wide open down the alley before turning left towards Potnuf.
“Targets are running. Think maybe somebody warned them about something. Maybe Zumter’s got a ride outta here.”
“Or Fett warned them they’ve got competition in the area,” Namyr said. “Namely us.”
One of the Rebel agents reported in, “I’ve got eyes on Zumter. He’s headed east through the crowd of protesters, looks like he’s trying to make the repulsor-train on East Potnuf.”
“Copy,” Namyr reported. “I’m headed that way. Ageless? You still good?”
“I good. Stay on Zumter. I’m closing in on these hunters.” He turned down another alley, maneuvered through a group of four people fleeing the protest. Another person was racing towards the protest, carrying a sign that said BRING FAIR WAGES! BRING THE MINING GUILD TO CLOUD CITY! The three bounty hunters were racing ahead of him. “They’re in a hurry. Someone definitely gave them the heads up on Zumter’s escape plan. I imagine Fett is flying somewhere above us, feeding them Zumter’s movements.”
Suddenly, there came a roar from up ahead, as though an entire stadium filled with sports fans had just gone on the attack. Two more airspeeders came down from the sky, moving lugubriously slow, and as they passed over the next building, Ageless saw them turn on their water cannons. Water cannons, he knew, were usually only used to suppress large riots.
A man ran past him and threw what looked like a droid’s arm through a window, then he and three of his friends jumped inside and started looting the place.
“Heads up, team,” said Fera, her voice returning in a crackling static. “More police are showing up to Potnuf Square. Those protests going on? Yeah, they just turned into a riot. Someone threw a flaming bottle through a shop’s window, and two more picked up some droids and hurled them at a couple of police barricades. An overzealous officer shot someone, and apparently forgot to set his blaster for stun, so now the mob wants blood. Can you—get—where—”
“Say again, Mother?” came Namyr’s voice. “Say again, you’re breaking up.”
Ageless did not pay attention to any more of the conversation. He focused on the Trandoshan and his pals as all three kicked open the front door of a three-story cantina that was closed—the sign outside said CLOSED DUE TO PROTEST. The Trandoshan bashed his way inside and his pals did not even look around to see if anyone noticed them. They didn’t care.
Ageless waited a few seconds before entering, then slowly slipped inside, into a darkened bar room, with seats and booths all empty. He hid at the end of a short hallway that led into the main dance floor, watching the three hunters as they bounded up a flight of stairs. He hustled up after them, keeping crouched, with soft knees. He heard them going up the next flight, and followed them all the way to the roof.
He heard the loud sizzle of a blaster bolt being fired.
At the top of the last flight of stairs, there was nothing but a single door whose latch had been melted off by the blaster bolt. His hand slipped inside his jacket and pulled out the holdout blaster. With the end of the snub-nosed barrel, he lightly pushed the door open and stepped out onto the roof, where he saw the three bounty hunters jogging over to a plankway that led from one rooftop to the next—such plankways were meant as emergency exits for people in cities like this.
The three hunters started across the plankway. Ageless crept up behind them. Just to his left, over the roof’s edge, a screaming mob of angry rioters was attacking a host of police officers, and so the hunters never heard him.
However, Ageless realized his one mistake, just before he set for stun and fired into their backs. The Trandoshan pulled up short, lifted his nose to the air, and sniffed. Trandoshans had an unreal sense of smell, vastly more powerful than most humanoids. Ageless fired at him first, and the Trandoshan went down, but soon whipped back up onto his feet and fired back with a carbine rifle, but not before Ageless had already stunned his two partners into unconsciousness.
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The Human and the Rodian were out, but both Ageless and the Trandoshan dove for cover—Ageless towards an air-conditioning unit, and the Trandoshan behind a large durasteel column that held up the sign with the cantina’s name on it. They unleashed bolt after bolt at each other, narrowly missing. Yellow and green bolts sliced through the night like fireflies being slingshotted around, tearing into walls, into signs, into the air-conditioning unit, and sparks flew in Ageless’s face as the Trandoshan, driven by the rage in his species’ blood, ran from behind his own cover and leapt at Ageless, roaring.
In midair, the Trandoshan got off a shot that would have surely killed Ageless, if not for his jacket’s diffusion capacitors. It felt like a hard punch to his chest and he went down, and surely the Trandoshan thought him dead.
Ageless rolled backward, onto his feet, and got one more bolt off and hit the Trandoshan in his left shoulder just before they both collided. He batted the Trandoshan’s barrel away, an instant before it would have fired into his head. His enemy’s injured arm smashed him across his face. Rocked on his feet, Ageless’s holdout blaster slipped from his hand. But one of his hands had the wherewithal to snatch the Trandoshan’s barrel, wrap around it, and pull him in tight so that he could perform a barrel sweep and a disarm.
Both of their weapons went flying away across the roof, but the Trandoshans’ claws slashed at his throat, narrowly missing as Ageless shuffle-stepped backwards, then side-stepped the second attack, bobbed and weaved the third and fourth attacks, and came up with a finger thrust into his enemy’s throat. The Trandoshan gagged, but then he reared back, and sprung at Ageless lightning fast. Ageless caught his enemy’s outstretched wrists—the claws were again going for his throat—and he twisted the arms around one another, turned, stuck out his foot, and sent the Trandoshan slamming against the roof’s pavement. Then he stomped his enemy’s face once, twice, thrice, until at last the Trandoshan went still, its eyes glossed over, semi-conscious.
“Targets are down,” Ageless panted, quickly gathering up the weapons of the downed hunters and tossing them all but one over the side of the building, into a pile of junk in an alleyway. The one he kept was a WESTAR-34 blaster pistol, and he tucked it behind his waistline and hid it with the flap of his jacket.
Ageless felt something hot running down his neck, and when he touched it, his fingertips came away with blood. The Trandoshan had come scarily close to opening his throat, after all. He rubbed his chest, which was also sore from the diffused blaster bolt. “How are we looking on Zumter?”
“It’s chaos down here,” Namyr said. “But I’ve got him in sight.”
Ageless walked over to the edge of the building and looked down. And there, he saw the most tangled web of bodies and seething violence he had seen since maybe during the invasion of Ord Mantell. Thousands of people, throngs of belligerents, all heaving as one, pushing against multiple police barricades, toppled statues, fires ranging on the streets, in the windows of small shops. Police droids were going around with stun batons that belched out little arcs of purple lightning, and even they were hit by flaming bottles. They went walking around on fire, as people kicked them over.
“Stars above and below,” he said. “Where are you, Mordenta?”
She tried to reply, but wherever she was, she must have been smack in the middle of the protesters because all Ageless could hear were people screaming all around her.
“Blast! Anybody else have eyes on Mordenta?”
“Negative,” said one of the rooftop Rebs. “I’ve lost her.”
“Me, too,” said another.
“I’ve got her, zzzzir,” R-3PO reported. “She’zzzz moving west towardzz the repulsor-train zzztation, just now going up the steps to the train.”
Ageless’s eyes quickly raked westward. Then he saw her. A small dot moving through the throngs of madmen. She had ditched her green cloak, possibly because she suspected Zumter had clocked her and she wanted to change her silhouette. He looked a dozen yards ahead of her and saw Zumter, still with his case of money, still hustling to get away, almost to the train. And all around Namyr were police officers tackling rioters, spraying them with some sort of blinding agent, zapping them with batons, or blatantly shooting them with stun weapons.
“I see her,” he said. “I’m en route.”
He bolted across the plankway, leaving the Trandoshan and the others where they fell, and when he came to the next rooftop he found a plankway that went west, directly towards the train station. He crossed over two more roofs before he found a fire escape that led back down to street level, but, unfortunately, it meant getting right into the thick of it.
Right into the middle of the riots.
People were yelling all around him. Protesters were running in large groups of five or ten or twenty, shouting to one another, “This way! We can get around the police barricades through here! There’s a shortcut!” Someone else cried, “We can get all the way to Administration Hall, and take this fight directly to the poodoo scumbags! Long live the Mining Guild!”
Cheers went up. A lone rioter, a Twi’lek male, came running directly towards Ageless with what looked like a stun baton he had stolen off a police droid. Ageless waited until the Twi’lek was running past him, then stuck out his forearm and chopped him across the throat and sent him to the ground. He wrenched the baton out of the Twi’lek’s hand and jogged down the next alley before any rioters could stop him. He dipped through the door of an on-fire pottery shop, leapt out the smashed window on the west side, and ran directly through a horde of rioters fighting the police, pushing and shoving and throwing anyone that got in his way.
Up ahead, the crowd parted for a group of six officers, two of them droids, as they came plowing through the protesters with riot shields, batons, and blasters set to stun. A flaming bottle arced over the crowd and smashed into one of their shields, setting both it and the ground on fire. The officers kept coming, straight towards Ageless and a large Wookiee protester.
The Wookiee took care of the two droids, grabbing hold of their arms and ripping them out of their sockets. Ageless met two of the officers that came right for him, and first he batted away one of their shields and hit an officer with the stun baton, sending him right to ground. The other officer rammed him, and a third grabbed him around the neck in a choke hold. Ageless teep-kicked the shield of the officer in front him, sending them both backwards. The Wookiee grabbed the officer off of Ageless’s back and flung him bodily into the crowd.
Cheers went up. The rioters reveled in the chaos.
Ageless scrambled into the crowd, eager to become lost in it. He came upon three people assaulting an officer, dragging him to the ground, pulling his riot shield away from him as he screamed. He leapt over this scene and continued on, towards the steps, where he could already see Namyr at the top, disappearing into the mob that was racing down from the train station.
On his way up, a police droid came at him with a baton. Ageless intercepted the attack, disarmed the droid, smashed its lead leg with his own baton and sent it clattering to the ground. He leapt over its body and dodged around another officer who fired off a stun bolt that hit a protester coming up the stairs behind him.
“Zumter is on the train!” Namyr called over commlink. “I’m following him inside—”
“I’m afraid it wazzz a feint, Mordenta,” R-3PO reported. “He did indeed step into the train, but I just saw him stepping out the back of it. My guezzz is, he senses he’zzz being followed, and he’s trying to lead you astray.”
“Got it, thanks,” she said.
Ageless came up to the train, saw its doors sliding closed. It glided away on its repulsors just as another one came sliding into station. He looked up at the sky, still searching for Fett or anyone else they might have missed. As soon as the doors slid open, Ageless shoved his way through the throng of passengers stepping out, ignoring their indignant cries, and ran to the opposite side of the train and stepped out onto the opposite platform. He jogged fifty feet through a horde of rioters coming to join the fun, past a statue of some important Rodian or other, over to a large, central kiosk with interactive screens showing arrival times of the trains.
And from there, twenty feet to his left, he saw Namyr racing after someone.
“Mordenta! I’m on your six! I’m right behind—”
“Above you, Ageless!” R-3PO suddenly shouted.
He looked up, just in time to see the flames from the jetpack and the Mandalorian helmet before they both rammed into him. Immediately, the wind was sucked out of his lungs, and he slammed hard against the pavement. Even still, his instincts forced him back to his feet, ready to fight, but the bounty hunter was too fast. Hovering a meter off the ground, Fett aimed his gauntlet at Ageless and spat out a long tether and grapnel that wrapped around his whole body like a dianoga’s tentacles. And suddenly he was lifted off the ground, completely ensnared in Fett’s rope, dangling beneath the bounty hunter as he took flight.
* * *
Namyr had Zumter in her sights, and she was just about to pounce on him as he was stepping into a turbolift when she heard the gasps of the crowd behind her. When she turned, she saw the familiar shape of Boba Fett’s armor as it soared down from the sky, dragging a column of smoke behind it as he collided with Ageless, lifted him off his feet by a rope, and carried him into the sky.
Her hand went inside her jacket, to her blaster.
In that moment, she had a decision to make. Fire openly in a crowd at a fast-moving jetpack, and hope she shorted it out or caused some other malfunction, all in the vain hopes of helping Ageless, or continue on her mission. She turned and saw that her hesitation had already given Zumter time to step into the turbolift, and the doors were closing.
She looked around quickly for the nearest stairs, and, leaving Ageless to his fate, bolted for them. The spiral stairs led up from the open-air courtyard, spiraling around and around, allowing her to see where the turbolift she was racing against was going.
The lift reached the very top before her, of course, but before it emptied out, Namyr could see the face of Zumter in the transparisteel window. She saw his face of alarm as he looked towards the sky. He had seen Boba Fett, too. Had seen him lifting Ageless Void into the air. He knew it could not be a coincidence. He knew now that the airspeeder crash from before was no isolated incident. There were hunters after him, and they were all competing for the reward on his head.
But if he saw Ageless, then he knows it’s about more than that.
Panting, she came to the top of the stairs, to a rooftop where still more rioters were racing across plankways and eager to join in the fracas down below. The rooftops of this city sometimes acted as tiers, levels, and pseudo-streets, with ramps and sloped edges, across which people ran as openly as if they were roads. She looked around for Zumter, but he was gone. Nowhere to be seen in all these dashing crowds. Namyr raced across the plankways, peered over rooftops. She called out to the droids and the other Rebel officers in the neighboring buildings for help, but none of them could. “Lost visual on target!” she cried. “Anybody got eyes?”
“Negative,” they all reported desultorily. “No eyes. Repeat, no eyes.”
Namyr was ready to call up to Commander Fera, tell her they had done their best, and that the best thing to do now was to escape before the Impaler returned.
Then, a voice from the dead. “I’ve got him,” came Kevv’s strained transmission. He sounded like his throat hurt. Probably from screaming. And Namyr’s heart leapt.
“Kevv?”
“That’s affirmative.”
She wanted to laugh. “Thank the Force! You got it under control?”
“Barely. I’m flying at quarter-impulse, cruising high to stay out of that bounty hunter’s jetpack range,” he laughed mirthlessly. “But I’ve spotted our guy, heading west on S’evulda Street, towards what looks like an upscale district.”
One of the other nameless Rebel agents spoke up. “A search of the HoloNet shows it’s known for cantinas and upscale hotels.”
Upscale hotels. “Carjukk. Zumter is going to the Hutt for help.”
“If he getzz there,” R-3PO chimed in, “he could be dug it for good. I’ve seen the inside of a Hutt compound, it is like a fortrezzzz.”
“Where is Agel—?” Kevv stopped himself from saying Ageless’s codename over comms. “Uh, where’s our other friend?”
“Fett got him. He’s airborne now, probably. Saw him heading west over those three towers shaped like a fork. Think you can locate him?”
Kevv’s voice was filled with vengeful purpose. “It would be my pleasure.”
* * *
Arms pinned, he could not reach around to grab the WESTAR-34 pistol. Ageless soared helplessly over Cloud City, dangling from the steel-like cord that hung from Boba Fett’s gauntlet. The bounty hunter glided from building to building, going high above the sky traffic. The city lights spun below Ageless in a sickening, vertiginous spiral. Fett called down to him, “Tell me where the rest of the Rebels are, and I’ll let you live! Play dumb, and I’ll retract the cord and let you become a stain on the plankways below!”
“I’m not a Rebel!” he hollered back.
“I know you’re not. You’re another former Imperial on the run, just like Zumter. I’m not here for your bounty, I’ve promised you to someone else. I’m here for larger quarry. I just need to know where any Rebel enclaves happen to be on Cloud City—I’m assuming they’re helping you, since I picked up your radio chatter. I don’t know how you came to be in their service, and I don’t care. Tell me where the rest of them are stationed. Tell me where the Millennium Falcon is.”
Ageless’s mind was trying to work a way out of this, and so he almost missed the significance of that. The Millennium Falcon? The same ship he and Zumter had failed to stop at Echo Base? It was here? Here, on Cloud City?
“I know Han Solo is here,” Fett went on, still soaring above his captive. “I have people here that have passed word around to Cloud City’s leadership to keep him delayed. But no one seems to know exactly where his ship is parked.”
He’s here. My target is here on Cloud City…
Ageless cast that aside and thought of a way to stall Fett. Then, over the crackle of static, he heard a familiar voice talking to Namyr. It was filled with the same radiation-saturated interference, but he thought he caught the sound of Kevv answering, saying something to the others. R-3PO was talking, too.
Kevv’s alive. And he’s still in his airspeeder.
Ageless spun in the air. The city swayed nauseatingly below him. His arms were pinned to his side, but he could still thumb the commlink clipped to the inside of his sleeve. He hit the transmit button and shouted up to Fett, loud enough for the commlink to pick it up, “You gonna just drop me into the smokestacks here?” he said, looking down into the black maw of the giant smokestack that Fett was now dangling him over. “Just going to let the refinery incinerate me? You’d do that to a fellow Imperial?”
“I’m no Imperial,” Fett said. “You should know that.”
“But you work for them. Them and the Hutts, almost solely.”
“I work for who pays best. Where are the other Reb—”
“I’ll double it! Whatever you’re being paid to bring me in, I’ll double it!”
“As I said, I’m not here for you. I’ve got other quarry in mind. Now, stop stalling. Tell me where they—”
Fett cut himself off. Ageless figured he had just realized what had happened, why Ageless was calling out his location above the smokestacks. Then, before Fett could react, here came the black airspeeder with the blue stripe, streaking out of the sky above him with all engines screaming, and smashing into the bounty hunter.
Fett had just barely pulled out of the way, his jetpack getting nicked as he spun out of control. Both Fett and Ageless fell, down, down, down into the smokestack. The fall was so swift and sudden that his guts rose into his throat. The world spun out of control all around him. But Kevv pulled the airspeeder alongside Ageless, matching his speed.
The wind roared through Ageless’s ears and he heard the screaming of the airspeeder’s engines straining against gravity.
The driver’s side door slid open and the Duros stuck out a hand and grabbed hold of one of Ageless’s feet and then turned the speeder away from the smokestack. Now it was Fett dangling from the cord he’d wrapped around Ageless, his jetpack still out of control as he fell into darkness and the rising column of smoke. Kevv set the speeder’s course so that he was going to just graze the edge of the smokestack. Fett was going to smash into the wall. The bounty hunter had a choice to make, and he made it. To survive, he severed the cord, releasing Ageless, and Kevv then pulled up hard and got free and clear of the refinery.
Moments later, still hanging on to Ageless by one foot, Kevv sat his airspeeder down on a plankway with about a dozen injured rioters lying on the ground. Police sirens were all around them. Flaming bottles smashed into streets, into droids, into kiosks, into windows. Ageless stood up, looking around at all the fires, a little shaken, and when he looked at the Duros he smiled. “Anybody ever tell you your timing is impeccable?”
Kevv chuckled. “Hey, I owed that filthy piece of Bantha poodoo.”
“How did you survive? I thought your speeder lost all power.”
“I blacked out when the speeder started crashing, but you’re lucky I recovered in time.” He nodded westward. “Namyr seems to think our guy is headed to Carjukk the Hutt. Want to go scoop her up, then see if we can swoop down to intercept Zumter?”
“You read my mind,” Ageless said, sliding into the passenger seat.
“Okay,” the Duros said. “But it’s going to be bumpy. Fett really screwed things up with the exhaust and I had to reroute all kinds of systems just to get quarter-impulse power. It’ll be a race to reach him, even if he’s still on foot.”
* * *
ABOARD THE SENTINEL-CLASS SHUTTLE MIDRA’HARA
ORBITING BIRILLA, BESPIN’S SECOND MOON
Fera saw the hairs on Mynyra’s head stand straight on end. “We’ve got incoming! Star Destroyers! Two of them! Moving in-system at sublight! ETA…six minutes!”
“Blast!” Fera cursed. “They shouldn’t be back so soon, not if they’re on a patrol! Why the blazes are they back?” Fera paced, her mind racing. “Warn the team. Tell them we’ll have to go total radio silence. We can’t chance the Imperials catching on to us out here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kajjak said, and moved to obey.
Fera turned to the pilot and copilot. “Captains, any chance we can linger out here unseen, or do we need to pull back from the moon-planet system?”
The captain waggled his head back and forth, thinking. “This moon has many pits and caves. We passed by a few back there that I think we can nestle ourselves in. As long as we’re radio silent, we should be good. The second we cue up our engines, though…” He shrugged, as if to say who could tell. “Any ship like the Impaler will have sensors sophisticated enough to pick up a drive trail like ours, even if we stay on low-impulse power.”
Fera thought about that for a moment. She nodded. “We’ll take the chance,” she said, and hoped it was not the kind of fatal decision that could sink an operation. “Find us a cave to hide in.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Commander?”
“Yes, Mynyra?”
“I’ve warned the team about the Star Destroyers, and that we’ll be going silent. They said they think the target is now headed to an upscale district. They suspect Carjukk is there. I asked our girl down at the listening post, and she confirmed that Carjukk the Hutt is known to stay at a place called the Wayfarer’s Hotel. I relayed that to the team and they’re on their way there now. That’s the last I heard from them before switching off all comms.”
“Excellent. Good job, Mynyra.” The Bothan’s fur rippled with pride.
Kajjak said, “We are now switching from sensor-active, and going sensor-passive. The only way for us to know what’s going on with the team now is when they find a way to signal us, Commander.”
Fera nodded, then spoke to her whole team. “We’re in the endgame, folks. Get comfy. It’s all on our grab team now. Let us hope they can grab Zumter and find a way to signal us.”