25: In the Pocket
ABOARD THE MIDRA’HARA
ORBITING BIRILLA, BESPIN’S SECOND MOON
Fera sat in the seat just behind the pilot. “Easy now, Captain. Easy.” She looked through the forward viewport at the huge orange dome of the half-lit gas giant. Birilla was on the night side and the Midra’hara was slowly emerging, barely using her thrusters to coast away from the moon’s orbit. They were still running on passive sensors, trying to give off as little emissions as they could. Emissions of any kind—radio, exhaust, even light—could get them spotted by a keen-eyed sensor officer on board that huge, spearhead-shaped Super Star Destroyer.
The Executor loomed like the giant gray tomb of some dead god, and it orbited the planet lugubriously. But it was on the light side of the planet, so close that, as Bespin rolled underneath them, they saw more and more of the massive ship revealed through a haze of atmosphere and glinting light.
“Easy,” Fera said again. “Tell me when we are in range.”
“Thirty-two seconds to the pocket,” the copilot said.
She looked behind her sensor specialist. “Denzen?”
The Rodian nodded wordlessly in his seat, and got to work. Denzen prepared the three data packets—one highly encrypted, another slightly less so, and the last one sloppily encrypted. When Fera gave him the word, he would broadcast all three in different directions, but on broad X-band emissions. Once picked up by Imperials, both on- and off-world, these signals would be decrypted and their messages, which were all carefully constructed lies, would set in motion a series of events.
And if they believe it, Fera thought, it will help open a window. She believed the Imperials would buy it. They had to. Her unique insight to the Imperial intelligence networks said that they would.
“We are in the pocket, Commander,” the copilot said.
“Do it, Denzen.”
The Rodian tapped a single button and it was done. The messages were sent silently and invisibly across the void. Each message included dates and times, along with codenames, using kuma-string codes, unique Rebel encryption sequences that Fera happened to know the Empire had discovered ages ago. When she came aboard with the Rebels, Fera had told Director Eeja and Mon Mothma that the Empire had successfully decoded the kuma-string sequences, and ever since then the Rebels had used them sparingly, and only to allow the Empire to decrypt them, so as spread disinformation.
Hopefully the Empire has not caught on to this fact, she thought. Fera reached out to the Force with her heart and hoped that IIS had not become aware that the Rebels knew of the kuma-string break. As long as the Empire believed the veracity of the messages the Midra’hara was sending, then Fera felt confident the Imperials would do as she predicted, and pull back from Bespin to start looking for—
“There!” Mynyra called. “Sensors show the Executor’s engines are flaring up. They’re getting ready to pull back from the planet.”
Fera let out the breath she had been holding. But it wasn’t over yet. “All right, Captain. Now we need to make this charade seem real.” The messages Fera had sent were complete with dates, times, and fake codenames, and the brief mention of Home One. It was made to look as though a Rebel stealth ship was operating somewhere around Bespin as an advance scout, and was now coordinating with multiple ships at the edge of the system, calling them in for a fight.
The Imperials were now thinking that an ambush was on its way to Bespin, and that Admiral Ackbar was leading it.
The Midra’hara had to play the part of the scout ship, to make this ambush seem imminent. All this did was buy time for Mordenta and the others, by getting the Super Star Destroyer to pull back from the planet and remain on constant patrol, rather than looming directly over Cloud City in geosynchronous orbit.
“Let’s get them to come look for us,” Fera said.
“Yes, ma’am,” the pilot said tensely, and, with one hand on the thrust control and the other on the attenuator, he began ramping up their thrust.
“Easy, Captain. Just enough to make it plausible. If we do too much, we’ll seem obvious, and they’ll know we’re false. Put us on a parabola with the planet, as though we mean to borrow from Bespin’s gravity and head out-system using a slingshot maneuver.”
“I understand the plan, Commander,” the captain said testily. They were all testy right now. All of them were scared.
They moved farther into the dark side of the planet, leaving a tantalizing ion trail behind them.
“Executor is altering course,” Kajjak said. After a few seconds, he smiled. “They’re beginning a slow orbit in the opposite direction.”
Fera nodded. “Moving to intercept us on the other side of the planet. Good.” She sighed. “Now we just have to remain ghosts.”
“Commander?” Mynyra said.
“Yes?”
“I intercepted an encrypted message moments ago. An Imperial code. Took me a bit to decrypt but…it looks like the Executor captured someone in a tractor beam. A Duros, piloting the same kind of airspeeder that Kevv was in. The tractor beam couldn’t pull him up, or else the pilot would’ve died in vacuum, so they guided the airspeeder over to a platform on Cloud City, and…” She read the rest of the message in silence.
“What is it?”
“It reads, ‘Airspeeder wrecked. Being taken to Bespin Medical Center. Pilot’s status unknown. Fencer and Horizon Lost both en route to inspect.’”
They all exchanged worried looks. Fencer. Horizon Lost. Fera knew from her time at IIS that “Fencer” was the codename Imperials used for Darth Vader, and she had shared this knowledge with the rest of the AIN. Her heart froze to think of the Rebel pilot in the Dark Lord’s clutches. To have survived the horrors of Hoth, only to escape and fall into the Empire’s hands…
And Horizon Lost. By the Force, if he’s here—
She looked at Kajjak, and said, “How are our comms?”
“Radiation is still spiking somewhat,” he said. “I think we could get a message down. But at this point, odds are the Imperials will pick it up, encrypted or no.”
“I don’t care if it’s encrypted. At this point, the more they think we’re coordinating with mysterious persons, the more it helps our ruse that an ambush is imminent. But I don’t want the transmission to be long, or else it’ll be traceable and they’ll be right on us.” She waved to Kajjak. “Get me a signal to one of the satellites to bounce around the planet to Cloud City. It’s going to have to be short, so I hope Mordenta hears it, because I can’t risk sending it twice.”
* * *
CLOUD CITY
PLATFORM 326
Namyr stood on Platform 326, staring across at Platform 327, where the Millennium Falcon sat right out in the open like an Alderaanian salamander unaware of the fiendhawk’s claws. She looked around, astonished at the relatively peaceful scene. No Imperials. No local law enforcement converging on the YT-1300 freighter. If General Solo is here, she thought, he must have powerful friends like Ageless said, or else he would not have felt confident enough to just park his ship out the open like this.
Namyr had tried several times already to contact the Rebel listening outpost, which was hidden somewhere in Cloud City, in order to give them the warning to pass along to Solo. But there was no response, only static. Either the outpost had pulled up their wheels and moved shop because of the Executor’s arrival, or else the radiation spikes in Bespin’s atmosphere were just getting too wild.
Sky traffic swished by all around her. So far, no one seemed to be coming for her. She felt like an orphan almost, lost in a city without parental guidance. Her and Kevv’s daring aerobatics seemed to have been completely missed by air-traffic control, perhaps because they were too far above the city when it happened.
Kevv…
Namyr felt somehow responsible for the pilot’s death. He had been a good man, a good ally, and, briefly, a good friend to have around in a jam. They had known him a short time and yet he had been pivotal in their mission too many times to count.
A crackle came from the commlink tucked in her sleeve, a staticky transmission filled with random dips. “—package is in hand. Repeat, I have the package. It is—hand. I—back to Cloud City. Just need—find a landing platform—”
Namyr excitedly put the commlink to her lips. “Ageless?! That you?”
“Mordenta?”
“I’ve got a landing platform reserved. Platform three-two-six! Repeat, three-two-six!”
Two minutes later, the Hard Leaf came roaring around the corner of the main station, extending its landing gear and plopping down beside Namyr’s airspeeder with just enough room. The landing struts moaned, and the outgassing plumes flooded the platform like a krayt dragon’s exhaled breath, enough that she almost couldn’t see the loading ramp descend. Ageless came down, bruised and battered, with dried blood on his lip and shirt, but it looked like he had found a medkit somewhere and sealed up most of his wounds with gel.
“Zumter?” she said. “You got him?”
“He’s inside. Found some binders and spare wire to tie him and the rest of the crew up.” Ageless massaged his jaw, then cracked his neck. “Wasn’t easy. It was almost me instead of him, if you know what I mean.”
Namyr nodded. “Honestly, I thought you were dead. I was already looking for a way out.” She nodded across the way, towards Platform 327. “I remembered you spotted it over this way.”
Ageless looked at the Millennium Falcon, their ticket out of here sat not forty meters away. “Thought if you could find Solo, he’d give you a lift out of here?”
“It was worth a try.”
“Yeah, well, it still may be.”
“Why? We have the Hard Leaf now, right? We can just…wait, why did you come back?”
“Why do you think?” he said. “I couldn’t just leave you guys.”
Namyr wanted to ask him what exactly that meant. Part of her understood. There was a connection between them now, that much was obvious, even if it was unspoken. Still, there was some other facet to his return, something more than loyalty to those that had helped him catch Zumter. To her, Ageless Void’s demeanor was nearly always unflappable, like a statue in a gale, nothing fazed him. But that had changed, he was after something more, it was written all over him.
Ageless turned quickly at the sound of a siren, but the police airspeeder went flying over their heads. He looked only mildly relieved. “Any contact with the other Rebels? Mother? Omega or Theta? The droids?”
“None,” she said. “But comms seem tetchy. I barely heard your call. I think I only picked it up because you were so close. And I think the Imperials may be starting to blanket the area in radio saturation.”
He pointed to the Hard Leaf. “So, here’s the thing. She looks all right from the outside, but there’s serious fire damage to some of the wiring—Zumter and I had a little firefight. Insulation caught fire inside the walls and melted superconducting wires. There’s a pair of maintenance droids inside, I’ve got them working on it, but the problem is life-support. Remember how I said before that tibanna transports aren’t usually meant for large crews, so the life-support isn’t usually the best?”
Namyr nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, this one’s no different. The entire crew is Ugnaughts, and Ugnaughts don’t take up much oxygen—their vascular systems are different than ours—so the scant life-support systems are already nominal. That’s bad enough for beings like Humans and Zabraks, but it gets worse. The heat damaged the systems. If we take off now, we’ve got about a twenty-percent chance of total life-support failure. That’s not necessarily high, but…”
“But it’s high enough,” Namyr agreed.
“Right.”
“So, we get it repaired and then we head out.”
“Sure,” he said. “Except the life-support may need to be completely replaced. We won’t know for sure for an hour, so we’re just burning time until then. If it turns out we need a replacement and we didn’t even have a backup plan…” He let her figure out the rest.
“Right. So, we look for Solo and see if he’ll be our contingency plan.”
Ageless nodded, and his eyes kept ranging across the skies, searching for any more surprises. “Any idea where to find him?”
Namyr thought for a minute. How much did she know about Han Solo? She had never met him, but she knew he was friends with Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, and a Wookiee named…What’s his name? Wookiee names were strange to most other humanoids, and commonly hard to remember. But then, Namyr was struck by an idea. Using her datapad, she pulled up a traveler’s guide on Bespin, and did a search for population and demographics. She smiled. “No Wookiees,” she said.
Ageless tilted his head quizzically. “Come again?”
“Han Solo travels with a Wookiee friend,” Namyr explained. “They’re practically inseparable. The Wookiee is his copilot, the way I hear it. Anyway, the last census shows only ten Wookiee residents on Bespin.”
Ageless nodded. “Right. So, we ask around for anyone that’s seen one, and that should help narrow it down. Wookiees are hard to miss, someone must have seen—”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Suddenly, a half-scrambled message came through. “—Medical Center! Repeat, this message is for Mordenta! Your compatriot in the airspeeder is alive and being taken to Bespin Medical Center! Get there before Halo does. Urgent! Halo is currently three kilometers out! You need to—”
Namyr checked the frequency on her commlink, and tried to adjust to get a clearer signal. But the message did not repeat. “That was Mother,” she said, and looked at Ageless. “I think she was saying Kevv is alive. He’s at Bespin Medical Center.”
Ageless winced. “She also said to get there before Halo does. Who is Halo?”
“AIN codename for Darth Vader.”
A cloud came over Ageless’s features. “Where is Bespin Medical Center?”
Namyr looked it up on her datapad. “Ten kilometers south of us.”
“That’s halfway across Cloud City.”
She nodded, and looked up at the sky, at the traffic, which was lightening up. There was a tinge of blue to the sky, some of the stars were beginning to disappear. Morning was not far off. “In this traffic, we might make it in time. My airspeeder is more nimble than any Imperial shuttle, so I’m sure we can—” She stopped herself. “Blast! I forgot! The airspeeder is a one-seater! Both of us can’t go!”
Ageless turned away, paced two steps, seemingly torn, then spun back around to her. “I’ll take the airspeeder to find Kevv. You stay here and look around for Solo and the Wookiee.”
She shook her head. “What about Zumter? We can’t just leave him here.” She pointed to the Hard Leaf parked behind him.
“He and the crew are all bound inside, and half of them are unconscious. They’re not going anywhere. I can send a quick payment to the people who control this platform and rent it for the rest of the day, and I’ll tell them no one is to go near it. Let’s move!” He started to turn.
“Wait…are you sure?”
“No, I’m not. But often, more is lost by indecision than by making the wrong decision. And I’m not letting Vader get his hands on Kevv.” He turned and bolted for her T-79 airspeeder. Over his shoulder, he called back, “Find Solo! Get us a ride out of here! I’ll handle Kevv, trust me!”
Namyr wanted to stop him. You’re going to be close to Vader, she wanted to say. Too close. If even half of what we’ve heard about him is true, you’ll never get past him.
But she knew it was their only chance, and so, following his wisdom about indecision, Namyr turned and ran into the platform station, her eyes peeled for a tall, furry humanoid.
* * *
Ageless was just stepping into the T-79 when he stopped. A thought suddenly occurred to him. He ran back inside the Hard Leaf, back into the fire-suppressant foam-covered quarters where he and Zumter fought, and he opened up the durasteel case, which was, predictably, loaded with hard credits. He took out the larger denominations, and stuffed them into the secret pockets of his jacket. There was also a spare flashbang grenade, the same kind Zumter had used on him. He pocketed that, and ran outside to the airspeeder and did a brief systems check, making sure the climb into high atmo had not burned them all out, then took off and headed south across the city.
Skylanes were a bit more freed up at hours such as these, the boundaries a tad looser, so Ageless could dip far below the upper levels and descend below the plankways. This allowed him to keep out of sight of the Imperial shuttle, which he knew would be bringing Lord Vader down, probably flanked with a couple of TIE fighters as honor guards.
And there they are. Just as he came within sight of the spherical building that was the Bespin Medical Center, the Lambda-class shuttle could be seen folding up its wings and making its landing.
Ageless throttled up the power, and before any policing channels could ping him for speed violations, he sent out an emergency distress beacon—Code Red for medical emergency. This made the AI programs that ran air-traffic control a bit more permissive in what they would allow a lone airspeeder to do. It even got him a private platform reserved at the hospital’s perimeter, and as soon as he landed, he popped the top and hopped out of the T-79 and bolted inside, just as a pair of medical droids were coming out to receive him.
“Midair collision!” he said urgently. “I’m the only one injured! I can see myself to the emergency room!”
The droids shouted a few objections but he ran past them without looking back.
Ageless bolted through the side entrance, down a hallway with gleaming metal floors and large bay windows that looked out at the supermassive cloud plume that rose up from Bespin’s belly, and now swirled around the city. The sun was coming up, a molten ingot that set fire to those famous clouds. He looked around for a map, which all hospitals kept on their walls to delineate emergency exit routes. He found one on the wall, took a snapshot with his datapad, then bolted up the stairs towards the ER. He had not seen Kevv or his banged-up speeder out on the platform when he landed, so they must have already brought him in.
When he got to the third floor, he stopped running, not wanting to draw any attention. He walked at a brisk pace, matching the energy and posture of almost everyone else in the ER—doctors and medical droids and family members, all rushing around for answers to questions.
Ageless consulted the emergency-exit map he had taken a pict of, all the while looking for his opportunity, and he saw it. A Zabrak male, walking right towards him. He was wearing a nurse’s uniform. Ageless brushed right past him, eyeing him quickly, spotting the nurse’s credentials hanging around his neck. He saw an opportunity to put the fake ID slates to good use.
Fake ID slates were nothing new. The Kingdom had something similar called DIVINER. It was an IR-based hard drive reader/copier. A spy could download a computer’s entire hard drive at close range via an infrared link. Just point the infrared laser at any computer’s terminal or dataport, and DIVINER would do the rest. The fake ID slates he found inside Echo Base used the same tech, only Ageless was willing to bet it would be a little sloppier than what the Imperials had. Just a hunch, and that hunch was telling him he would need to be awfully close to another person’s personal datapad, which most people kept connected to their ID slates—it fed their personal info into their datapad for the sake of ease, like purchasing things quick and easy on the HoloNet. If he could secure a personal datapad, he could rip the user’s personal info and imprint it onto one of the ID slates.
Ageless bumped into the nurse. “Oops. Sorry,” he said, deftly sliding his hand inside one of the nurse’s pockets and lifting his datapad. “Excuse me, I’m so sorry, I’m just in a rush. Do you know where the freshers are?” The nurse looked him up and down. Ageless’s jacket and shirt were mildly scorched from two blaster shots he had taken today, and so the nurse probably wondered what that was about. But he looked only mildly irritated as he pointed down the hall.
Ageless slipped inside the fresher, took out one of his fake ID slates, and ran its scanner over the datapad. A chime went off, and he scanned his own face into the ID slate. The slate came with a name and personal records of another individual named Han Islic, and all he had to do was merge the two identities to create a new persona with nurse’s credentials.
Eight seconds later, he had transformed into Medical Assistant Han Islic of Tatooine. Islic now had the credentials of the Zabrak nurse, and those credentials showed he had access to go anywhere in the ER. The ID slate was now permanently burned with this identity—it could not be reused to copy another fake identity. That left him with two fake ID slates.
Ageless slid back out into the hallway, just in time to spot the cadre of stormtroopers coming towards him. And behind them, the Dark Lord himself, covered in gleaming black and pulling an air of menace around him.
Ageless nearly froze.
Then his training took over and he patted himself down, pretending to have lost something back inside the fresher, and ducked back in. Listening from the door, he waited for their clipped footsteps to go past. It was a long five seconds. Darth Vader had seen Ageless Void before. As a spy, he had flown in the Executor a number of times, and had been in the Dark Lord’s presence twice, if at a distance. Still, Vader’s powers of perception were uncanny. Would he somehow recognize the fugitive Kingdom agent here, now?
The footsteps retreated down the hallway.
When Ageless stepped back out, they were gone. Breathing a sigh of relief, he rushed over to a help desk and said, “The Duros they just brought in. Where did they take him?”
The clerk droid said, in a friendly female voice, “Are you family or—?”
“Yes! He’s my brother. Adopted. He was supposed to meet me at my hotel, but I heard about his accident. Please, where is he?”
The droid could have asked for some ID, but instead her empathy programming came through, and she said, “He is stable. He is merely being taken to the emergency room as a precaution, in case his concussion is more severe. But I’ve already gotten the chart here, and it says X-ray scans showed no serious swelling, no need to alleviate the—”
“Which room?”
“Six-oh-one, one floor above,” she said, watching him turn and jog away. “Oh, but…sir! No one is allowed to see him right now—”
Ageless knew he wouldn’t beat Vader to the ER, not by stairs or turbolift. So he jogged the halls, looking for an open door…and he found it! A medical droid was just stepping out of a patient’s room, and the door hadn’t yet closed. Ageless shoved right past him, ignoring the droid’s protests and the confusion of the female Arkanian lying in her hospital bed. He found the latch to open the window, took a single peek outside, looked down at the thousand-foot drop to his death, then climbed onto the ledge.
High-level winds buffeted him, whistling in his ears. He focused on not looking down.
Upon approach in the T-79, Ageless had seen the ornate grooves carved into the hospital’s exterior, grooves that formed the hospital’s cloud-and-sun logo, and which would also serve as good footholds and handholds. He climbed the wall to the next floor, and, naturally, found the window locked from the inside. He hung by one hand, took out the WESTAR-34 with his other, and blasted the window open, then slid inside, once again ignoring the shock of a patient in his bed. This one was a Rodian, and he had visitors, all of whom leapt away from Ageless in terror.
He now jogged down the halls, turning left at a T-junction, then right again, following the map in his datapad. He came to a door that was locked, a sign said it admitted only authorized personnel. He flashed his ID slate at the door panels, which recognized his nurse’s credentials and the doors slid open for him.
Behind him somewhere, someone shouted, “Security! Security! Over here! Someone fired a blaster—”
No time to delay. He found room 601 and stepped inside and held his blaster up to the Mirialan doctor and the 2-1B droid overseeing Kevv. Sithspit. He’s not ambulatory. Kevv was lying down, bandaged up, with bacta patches strapped to his head, arms, and chest. Thankfully, he was still in the repulsor pod that the emergency workers had used to bring him in.
“Give me your coat,” Ageless commanded, and the doctor complied. He took off his jacket and threw in on the floor, then pulled on the doctor’s coat and grabbed Kevv’s repulsor pod. “Turn around. Face the wall. Don’t do or say anything for ten minutes.” He had no idea if the doctor would comply for that long, but he hoped at least to buy some time.
Ageless’s heart was racing, but he kept his cool, kept to his breathing exercises. Outwardly calm, inwardly bursting with volcanic purpose.
He pushed Kevv out the door. And as soon as he did, an alarm went up. Someone shouted over intercom that a man with a blaster was loose in the hospital and that everyone should lock their doors. All hospital personnel were advised to check on all patients and secure them, and wait on security droids to clear every room.
Thankfully, the turbolift was not shut down, and Ageless slipped inside with Kevv. He hit the button for the landing platforms. While the lift moved swiftly down, he waited with bated breath to see if the hospital staff would shut down the lifts while he was trapped inside. Ageless took the dataslate that was attached by magnet to the side of Kevv’s pod. He looked over his chart. Broken ribs, treated with bacta patches. A herniated disc, treated with kolto injections. Minor concussion, treated with bacta and three different kinds of—
“Age…less…?” the Duros mumbled. His eyes fluttered, trying to focus on something.
“Keep quiet,” Ageless said.
“Age…”
“Hang in there, pal. Almost out.”
Three floors down, he came to the same landing platform where his T-79 was still parked. The doors swished open and he pushed the pod out, hustling over to the airspeeder and hauling the Duros into the pilot’s seat. “Okay, pal,” he said. “This is only a one-seater, so I can’t come along. But I’ll fix you up with the autopilot and send you along. Okay?”
“Age…Age…lesssss.”
“Okay. You’re good to go. Good luck, Kevv. And thanks. Thanks for everything.” He pulled the canopy down and stood back as the T-79 slowly lifted off. It dipped below the platform, presumably to hit one of the skylanes.
Ageless watched it descend, and when he finally exhaled the breath he’d been holding, his shoulders sagged. Immense relief flooded him.
Until he heard the familiar footsteps of armored stormtroopers approaching fast from behind. “Freeze!” one of them shouted. “Hands up!”
Ageless did indeed freeze. But before he turned around, his right hand slipped inside his pocket. “Turn around slowly!” the stormtrooper ordered him.
Ageless made a spontaneous decision.
“I said turn around!”
He did as he was told, moving slowly, and dropped the flashbang grenade between the four of them. Then he turned and ran, just as it went off, leaping off the platform and falling twenty feet and landing on the tail end of the T-79, just as it turned north and sailed off.
* * *
A tremor in the Force. Barely detectable. But Vader had sensed such a disturbance many times before. He knew forces were at work around him. He detected minds set against him. Enemies. Creatures built for stealth, with training in subterfuge. He sensed that subterfuge all around the hospital. It permeated the walls, and before the stormtrooper lieutenant even said anything, he knew what he was about to hear. For he had seen it briefly in a foggy vision. A Zabrak. One with a clipped horn. Jumping off the platform after an airspeeder that contained an unconscious Duros.
But he could not grasp the context of it. It all remained so elusive. Even as the lieutenant explained that his men had been hit unexpectedly by the flashbang grenade, Vader closed his eyes. He stood in the corridor, all his troopers silent around him, the only sound was his own mechanical breathing.
It was another tremor in the Force that had brought him to Bespin Medical Center in the first place. When he saw the airspeeder crashing, and sensed the pilot’s plight, he had detected a sense of not just the despair of dying, but a fear that the pilot had failed his friends. The Duros was afraid he had let someone down. Vader had ordered the Executor to lock the airspeeder down in a tractor beam, and wanted it brought to the hospital for his inspection.
Now, more than ever, he was certain he had just narrowly missed his chance to uncover a hidden Rebel plot.
It wasn’t just the Force telling him that. It was his base instincts. Yet it was the Dark Side that told him there was more to this plot. Much more. He sensed it all around him, and above him, as if the Dark Side was drawing his attention to Bespin’s moons, towards the stars themselves—
“Their helmets’ visors diminished the effects of the flashbang, of course,” the lieutenant was saying, “but, being at close range when it went off, it still confounded my troopers enough to allow the suspect escape.”
“They should be punished for their lack of discipline,” Vader said, opening his eyes. The Dark Side had just informed him of something. More than one Rebel plot was afoot on Cloud City. He felt the truth of that knowledge in every cell of his body.
“They will be reprimanded thoroughly, my lord,” the lieutenant said.
“My lord!” said an Imperial commander named Daggin, who had accompanied him in the shuttle. Daggin was meant to stay back with the shuttle, but he came running forward now, panting. “We searched every floor, checked all the cameras, there is no sign of another interloper. However, I did just receive this message from the Executor.” He presented a datapad with an emergency message. It stated that Executor’s sensor specialists had intercepted messages that indicated an ambush may be imminent in Bespin, and that Home One might be on its way. Admiral Piett had ordered the Super Star Destroyer to pull back and begin hunting for a small spy vessel he believed was operating somewhere in Bespin’s orbit.
So, the Dark Side led me true. There is more going on here than just Captain Solo’s retreat.
He reached out with his feelings, his senses, and tried to find the Kingdom agent that had accompanied him—Horizon Lost was somewhere inside the hospital. And he’s hunting.
Many small plays were being written all around him.
“There’s more, my lord,” said Daggin. “We’ve received word from Lando Calrissian. As the Baron Administrator of the mining operations here, he’s been able to keep Solo and his friends in play, but he says he detects suspicion from some of them, particularly the princess. He says if we are going to make our move, we must do it now. He warns of Rebel sympathizers among the ranks of the Mining Guild, some of whom know Solo and Organa are here, and he fears they may sway Calrissian and get the Rebels out soon. Boba Fett also sent a short message: ‘Now or never.’ His exact words.”
Vader handed him back the datapad. All that mattered to him now was getting Skywalker, this other business with the Duros could wait. “Alert Cloud City authorities to be on the lookout for a single-seater T-79 airspeeder carrying a Zabrak male on top of its canopy,” he commanded. “It is in their hands now. Let us return to my shuttle. We will apprehend Captain Solo and his friends before any more snags ruin our plans. And then be done with this overlong chase.” He turned quickly, his black cape billowing behind him.
* * *
Vader was long gone when Sark entered Bespin Medical Center’s security room with two stormtroopers and demanded the security droids hand over the footage from the hospital’s cameras. He breezed through the footage fast, dismissing the stormtroopers, who had been assigned to help him in whatever he needed.
It only took two minutes to find the familiar Zabrak in the footage, and see that he had indeed come to save a certain Duros pilot, who was badly injured and swaddled in bacta patches. Wonder what the story behind that is? he wondered. Has he turned Rebel? He smiled to himself, rewinding the footage further, seeing the airspeeder he came in on.
T-79s are a little luxurious, he thought. Should be easy to spot, especially on a place like Cloud City.
In fact, Sark happened to know a thing or two about luxury speeders, he used to be really into them when he was younger. He knew T-79s were bad on emissions, and therefore had all sorts of tests they had to pass in order to be imported to a place like Bespin, where creatures like beldons (the creatures that secreted the coveted tibanna gas) were highly protected and prone to suffer from bad exhaust emissions.
That means it has to be registered. Not just to the owner, but with local air-traffic control. Probably also has an emissions monitor on it, which can be tracked.
Sark was already looking for a terminal that would let him slice into Cloud City’s central mainframe. He thought about warning local authorities, but figured that since the latest rumor was that the Rebels had some help from local sympathizers, he’d keep this little piece of intel to himself, lest it leak out. And he would leave Vader alone with it—after all, the Dark Lord had his mission, and Horizon Lost had his own.