Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [41]
“Easily done.”
“You can wipe it in such a way that what’s on it can’t ever be retrieved? Not by anyone, no matter how good?”
“Also easily done. I just have to overwrite every portion of his recording memory with something else—several times, to make sure the most sensitive retrieval equipment can’t dig underneath the new material.”
The cloaked man breathed a sigh of relief. “Good.”
The shop owner tapped the counter. “Plug in here, please.”
The astromech obligingly rolled forward. He extended his datajack arm and plugged in; a moment later, a text screen lit up on the shop owner’s countertop.
“What’s your name, little fellow?” the shop owner asked.
The words THAT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS appeared on the screen. IN ANY CASE, YOUR FACIAL FEATURE SET SUGGESTS THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE THE INTELLIGENCE TO RETAIN MY NAME FOR MORE THAN A NANOSECOND. IT IS EVIDENT THAT YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT TO REPEAT SOUNDS YOU HAVE HEARD AND THAT YOU UNDERSTAND NEITHER THE WORDS YOU HEAR NOR THE ONES THAT EMERGE FROM YOUR MOUTH.
“I see what you mean,” the shop owner said. “Well, this is a simple task. We should be through later this afternoon.”
“Good,” the cloaked man said. He turned to leave.
“Wait a moment. How do I notify you when we’re done?”
“I’ll just return.”
“And we haven’t discussed my fee yet.”
“That’s right. I don’t have any local money.”
“I’m afraid New Republic credits are no good here.”
“I have an extra power cell for the Artoo. Fully charged.”
“If you have two, that would suffice.”
“For ‘a simple task’ you should be through with later this afternoon?”
The shop owner smiled. “Is it a new power cell?”
“Brand new. I bought it on Coruscant about a month before it fell.” The man returned to the counter and produced a standard astromech power cell from beneath his cloak. Its reflective surfaces gleamed in the shop owner’s counter light.
The shop owner picked it up, hefted it, looked at its charge indicator. “Done,” he said. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”
“Thank you.”
Two minutes after the cloaked man left, a young woman entered. She was no customer, the shop owner knew. Despite her fair hair, she seemed somehow somber, and she had the bearing of a military officer.
She displayed an identichip bearing the seal of Vannix Intelligence and put it in the countertop reader for a moment. The display took only a moment to read CONFIRMED.
“What did that man want?” she asked.
The shop owner sighed. Sometimes it was a curse, always knowing when a customer was going to cause trouble.
Senator Addath Gadan kept the smile fixed to her face. Sometimes that extra effort kept her voice similarly pleasant, similarly light. “You can’t make the rally at all?”
Leia Organa Solo’s voice sounded from her desktop comlink, just as light, just as artificial. “Not today’s. I’m sorry, Addath. Han is ill and I just feel I need to stay with him. But send me the schedule for tomorrow’s events and I should be able to make those.”
“I’ll do that. Please give him my best wishes.”
“Of course.”
Addath sat and fumed. Ill, indeed. Han Solo hadn’t been too ill to sneak out of the Presider’s residence, eluding two layers of her security before being detected and followed by the third. Any smart operative could have penetrated one or two layers from the inside out, as he did, but Solo had managed it with an R2 astromech in tow, a pretty good trick.
Not that, ultimately, it had done any good. She hit the desktop button again, and once more the conversation, copied from the R2 unit’s recording memory before it had been wiped, replayed itself.
First was Leia’s voice, a whisper: “So what’s the total?”
Han’s voice was similarly hushed. “He’s promising two squadrons of starfighters, and a light carrier to serve as their base ship.”
“I don’t know, Han. That’s selling oneself pretty cheaply.”
“We need all the military resources we can get, and he wouldn’t commit to any more than that. So I said yes. And the timetable means