Star Wars_ Cloak of Deception - James Luceno [84]
Rella leveled a blaster at her. “Trouble.”
The woman’s eyes widened. Noises behind her prompted her to glance over her shoulder once more. Two robust humans and a Gotal answered her obvious surprise with pernicious grins.
“We’re holding the other two aft,” Lope said. “The animal’s dead.”
“Good work,” Rella said, deftly disarming the chief.
Pressing the blaster to the woman’s ribs, she steered her toward the freighter’s communication suite.
“I want you to raise your ship,” Rella said while they walked. “Tell whoever’s in charge that you’ve discovered a load of contraband, and that you need the entire inspection crew over here on the quick.”
The woman tried to turn out of Rella’s grip, but Rella only tightened her hold and shoved her down into the chair at the control console.
“Do it,” Rella warned.
The woman hesitated, then complied, resignedly.
“The entire crew?” someone on the picket ship asked in disbelief. “Is it that bad?”
“It’s that bad,” the chief said toward the console pickup.
Rella switched off the feed and took a step back to appraise the chief. “I’m going to need your uniform.”
The woman stared at her. “My uniform?”
Rella patted her on the shoulder. “That’s a good girl.” She swung back to Boiny and the others. “Position yourselves at the airlock and be ready to receive company.”
The mercenaries enabled their blasters and hurried off.
Not fifteen minutes later, and now wearing the chief’s uniform, Rella entered the bridge of the picket ship and swept her eyes over the instruments. Boiny’s charge, the chief, followed, her wrists sporting stun cuffs and the rest of her clothed in Rella’s spacer garb.
Boiny motioned the woman into the copilot’s chair, then pressed his sucker-tipped forefinger to a communications bead in his right ear.
“Lope wants to know what he should do with the inspection team,” he said to Rella.
She answered while continuing to study the instruments. “Tell him to secure them in the aft hold of the freighter.”
She eased into the pilot’s chair and adjusted it to her liking. Drab Eriadu filled the forward viewport. Rella switched on the communications array and swiveled to face the chief.
“Send a message that you’re bringing a load of confiscated cargo down the well. Say that you want the cargo transferred to the customs building for immediate inspection, and to have hoversleds standing by to meet you.”
The woman smirked. “That’s against procedure. They won’t do it.”
Rella smiled. “Thanks for the warning. But they will do it this time, because the people in the customs building are on my team.” She gave it a moment to register. “Glare at me all you want, chief, but you’re going to do it eventually.”
The woman bent toward the audio pickup, clearly hoping that Rella would be proved wrong. But after listening to the transmission, the voice on the other end replied, “We’ll have the hoversleds waiting.”
The chief continued to glower at Rella. “You think no one knows we boarded your ship?”
“I’m aware of that,” Rella said. “But we don’t need all day to accomplish what we came here to do.”
She fastened the chief’s seat harness in such a way that the woman could scarcely move. Then she accepted an adhesive strip from Boiny and plastered it over the chief’s mouth.
“You sit tight for a while,” Rella said, squatting to eye level with the woman. “We won’t be long.”
She and Boiny went aft to the picket’s small rear compartment. Cohl and the mercenaries were already there, pressed in among a half-dozen two-meter-tall cargo tubes that had been conveyed from the freighter. All of them were wearing rebreathers and extravehicular suits, with armorply vests beneath.
“Is this necessary?” one of the humans was asking Cohl, gesturing to the upright cargo tubes.
“I suppose you’d rather blast your way through customs, is that it?”
“No, Captain,” the man answered sullenly. “It’s just that I don’t like tight spots.”
Cohl laughed ruefully. “Get used to it. It’s going to