Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [62]
“This is not funny,” the man said.
“What’s your name, pal?”
“I am Mudlath, Captain Mudlath, of Aphran Planetary Exosecurity.”
“Well, that’s funny. See, you don’t lack a sense of humor.”
Leia gave her husband the eye. What he was doing wasn’t likely to make things much worse, but there was no way his taunts would make the situation better, either.
They sat around a table in a duracrete-lined room deep in the spaceport base. Han and Leia, their hands manacled behind their backs, their ankles bound together by cutproof cords half a meter long, sat on one side of the table; Captain Mudlath sat opposite, with two of his men, unfriendly-looking ones, flanking the one door out of the chamber.
“I am pleased that you’re comfortable enough in your current circumstances to remain jovial,” Mudlath said. “Now, you should admit it: you are here engaged in some military action directed against the Yuuzhan Vong, knowing full well that any action you take could embroil the people of this peaceful world in your destructive war.”
Han considered. “Isn’t destructive war kind of redundant? Until I see a constructive war, or even a giggly war, I have to think so.”
Clearly exasperated, Mudlath turned his attention to Leia. “Surely you can ease your situation by being more cooperative than your husband.”
“Well, he’s angry,” Leia explained. “And rightly so. We employed costumes precisely to save your people from any inconvenience. If the Yuuzhan Vong knew we were here, they might come, but if they didn’t, they wouldn’t. We were thinking of you, your needs and feelings, and you reward us with hostility. He should be angry.”
“An interesting notion,” Mudlath acknowledged. “But it still doesn’t explain your mission here. I need the names of everyone you’ve spoken with since your arrival.”
“Oh, dear.” Leia thought about it. “Well, there was the officer who contacted us first. The one with the spaceport authority. I transmitted him our documents and we got a homing beacon from him.”
“That’s right.” Han nodded. “He was friendly. Unlike you, Captain. Then there was the baymaster who met us outside our bay. Rulacamp, wasn’t it?”
“Elderly woman,” Leia said. “Not very talkative.”
“Then there was her aide, the one who liked my scar.”
Sighing, Captain Mudlath cupped his chin in his hand. “Are you going to make me resort to sterner measures?”
“You mean torture?” Han perked up. “Well … if you have to. But make it a good one. One I haven’t seen before. I was tortured by Darth Vader.”
“So was I,” Leia said. “That was before we met.”
“You’ll have to go some to top him.”
“Take them out of here.” Mudlath suddenly sounded weary. “We’ll get our answers later, and probably very unpleasantly.”
C-3PO moved away from the bay where the Millennium Falcon was being held. It was the hour before dawn, so he was slightly less conspicuous than a gleaming golden droid would be during the daylight, but he felt as obvious as a two-meter glow rod.
A pack hung around his neck; filled and then lowered to him by R2-D2, it held items the astromech had thought he would need for his trip. He pulled out one of these now, a datapad, and opened it up. He keyed its audio input. “Artoo? Do you read me?”
The screen lit up: YES.
“Oh, I’m so relieved. So they are no longer jamming comlink frequencies?”
THEY ARE STILL JAMMING WITHIN THE BAY. BUT YOU PLUGGED ME INTO THE DOOR COMPUTER DIRECTLY, AND I’M TRANSMITTING THROUGH THAT TO A COMM UNIT OUTSIDE THE JAMMING FIELD.
“I don’t need the details. A simple yes or no would have sufficed.”
INCORRECT. THE PROPER ANSWER WOULD HAVE BEEN NO, THEY ARE STILL JAMMING COMLINK FREQUENCIES, AND YOU WOULD THEN HAVE BEEN MYSTIFIED AS TO HOW I WAS COMMUNICATING TO YOU.
“Your infernal devotion to minutiae is beginning to overload my logic circuits. Try a simple answer again. What do I do now?”
WHERE ARE YOU?
C-3PO looked around