Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [53]
Now he had a plan. All he needed was an opportunity, which came a few days later—just after he had finished his preparations for it. How lucky was that?
A troop of droids arrived on an unloaded cargo vessel. Seeing this from his hidden vantage point in a maintenance conduit, Ratua quickly activated his programmed droid and hurriedly donned his vac suit. Then he concealed himself in a packing crate, sealed the crate shut from inside, and waited.
Now it was up to the droid.
He’d programmed it to observe the loaders, see what stores they had come to acquire, and quickly mark the crate containing Ratua so that it appeared to contain the same items. Once this was done, the droid “borrowed” a null-g platform and moved the crate onto the supply vessel. Nobody stopped it—there was no reason to do so. Even if there had been a living security agent on the cargo ship, a mechanical loading a crate of machine parts would be what he expected to see, and that’s what he would see.
And since nobody started yelling and trying to open the crate, Ratua felt fairly confident that his ruse had gone undiscovered.
The hold was airless and unheated, but Ratua was protected in his suit, and he couldn’t imagine the trip to the station would take more than a short time. If he’d guessed wrong, he would eventually run out of oxygen, but few things in life were without risk. And so he settled down to wait, willing himself into a quasi-dormant state so as to conserve air.
After a few minutes, he felt the cargo ship stir to life and move, presumably, away from the warehouse.
Wherever he was going, he was on his way.
CIVILIAN TRANSPORT VESSEL PORTMINIAN, EN ROUTE TO THE HORUZ SYSTEM
The viewports were opaqued, there being nothing to see but a kind of impressionistic fuzzy strangeness. Memah had tried looking out into the higher-dimensional realm early in the voyage, and had quickly realized that the resulting headache and nausea were not to her liking. Rodo, who had undertaken more than a few FTL voyages, had warned her, but she’d had to check it out for herself. Memah Roothes had never been one to take another’s word for something when she could investigate herself; a trait, she reminded herself wryly, that had led to more than one headache over the years.
The vessel, while not a first-class starliner, was comfortable enough. Small but decent cabins, four passengers to a unit. Aside from Rodo, there were two other humans from Imperial Center in their cabin, both civilians contracted for troop services—one was a Corellian who specialized in recreational gaming, the other a woman who was somewhat less forthcoming as to her origins and exactly what her duties were to be.
Nobody had told them about how long the trip would take or where it would wind up, but they had been cruising at superluminal for several days, at least, so it had to be no small distance. Unless, of course, they were going around in circles or other random patterns to make it seem that way. Memah didn’t seriously believe that, though. The Empire might be willing to expend drive fuel and pilot pay to confuse high-ranking officials or important civilian clients, but a tavern keeper, a bouncer, a gamer, and a “dancer”? She doubted it.
And when all was said and done, it didn’t really matter, did it? She was going somewhere, and when she got there, she’d be running a new place and getting paid pretty well for it. Things could be worse. Things could be—and had been—a lot worse. At least no one was likely to burn down a tavern run by the Empire.
23
SSD DEVASTATOR, POLAR ORBIT, DESPAYRE
Darth Vader emerged from his hyperbaric chamber, refreshed insofar as the word had meaning for him. He had been thinking about the incidents that had impeded construction of the battle station, and they seemed to him to be ill formed and poorly operated. This surprised him somewhat, as he considered the Alliance more of a threat than even the Emperor did. That said, he knew that the Rebel network,