Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [44]
Brun was human, kind of; he looked like nothing so much as a normal-sized male who’d been sat upon by something large and heavy. His trunk was shaped like a canister, and his head was almost wider than it was tall. He was from some planet that Ratua had never heard of before they’d met. Brun had been on the prison world for years, and had worked his way up to a position of some trust in that he was allowed inside the compound to help in the loading and unloading of cargo supplies for the dirtside guard posts.
The only way off the world was by ship, and the guard supply craft were the most likely conveyances. There had been organized breaks in which whole ships had been commandeered, but that was, in Ratua’s considered opinion, stupid past the point of suicidal. The Empire had all kinds of firepower up there, and they weren’t shy about using it if they knew a transport had gone rogue. That had happened six months or so ago, and there hadn’t been any survivors of that attempted escape.
If you couldn’t sneak past, you weren’t going to get very far. And in a stand-up with Imperial warships, you were going to lose.
Brun was not a man for pleasantries. “Krovvy me th’ bit-ska, floob. M’hitch revs inna cyke.”
Whatever world Brun was from was either too far out on the Rim for a decent education program, or its indigent population really didn’t care about being understood all that much. After months of conversation, Ratua had picked up enough of Brun’s patois to understand the gist of his statement, which was something along the lines of Tell me your idea, friend. My shift starts in an hour. The term floob was considerably less benign than “friend,” but Ratua was willing to overlook that. He pointed at one of the two chairs. As Brun sat, the wood creaking under his weight, Ratua went to his stashbox and came out with a bottle of wine. It wasn’t a great wine, but it was from off-world and not a local vintage, so it was better by far than what was available to most prisoners. Ratua had been saving it for a special occasion, and this was about as special as it was going to get.
He unsealed the cap and poured some in the two mugs, handing one to his guest.
“Starry,” Brun said, tasting it. Not bad.
“Keep the bottle.”
Brun nodded. “ ’Shuwan?” What do you want?
Ratua took a deep breath, composing himself as best he could. Nothing ventured, nothing … “I want you to get me onto the supply ship before it leaves in the morning.”
A long heartbeat of silence; then Brun laughed, shook his bread-loaf-shaped head, had another sip of the wine, and replied, to Ratua’s surprise, in perfectly understandable Basic, “I can do that, but what’s the point? It’s not going anywhere except back to the freighter parked up in geo-sync. Any ship leaving the system’ll be scanned down to the rivets, and you’ve probably heard that none has been leaving lately. You can’t go anywhere, Ratua. Life in a warehouse won’t be any better than here. You do know that every now and then, they open the doors to vac and let it get real cold in the noncritical storage units? Just to get rid of, uh, vermin?”
Ratua shrugged. “Yeah, I know.” He wasn’t going to stay in the stores area, but he saw no point in telling Brun his plans. The less the squat humanoid knew, the better. “Let me worry about that. Do we have a—”
Brun waved the cup. “Hold up, hold up. Haven’t said I’d do it. If they catch you alive and you give me up, I’m back in the pack, with no perks. Why would I risk that?”
Ratua had expected him to make just that point. He went back to his stashbox and dug out a small electronic device, which he showed to Brun. “Know what this is?”
Brun was in for a raft of crimes, one of which was piracy, specializing in stripping and then reselling the electronics from captured ships. He nodded. “Looks like an embedder.”
“Exactly right. Onetime spy-killer. Check it out.” He handed it to Brun to examine.
“Where’d you get this?”
“You know me; here, there, I get around.”
Brun