Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [133]
“I don’t see anything yet.” His position at the viewport added nasal tones to his voice. “Ship should be showing up soon, though.”
“Well, then, I guess I’ll take the opportunity to visit the cockpit.”
Keevy turned back and grabbed my arm. “Take me with you, please?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please?” He looked at me with pitifully large and sad brown eyes. “This is probably the only chance I’ll get to see an AP127CP in a real shuttle.”
I frowned at him. “You wouldn’t touch anything, would you?”
His voice got small. “Nope.”
“Maybe I’ll talk to the captain for you. He should be getting on board soon.” I twisted in my seat to get out and caught a flash of white in space outside. “In fact, I wonder what’s keeping him. Is that the Rainbow?”
Keevy looked back outside. “Nope, looks like a Mark II Imperial Star Destroyer, and a lot of little ships with it. Coming this way.”
I got up from my seat and turned toward the flight attendant, but as I did so two men came running up the gangway and appeared in the front of the main cabin. Both wore blasters holstered on their hips and one, the bigger one, brandished a huge vibroblade. “Stay calm,” the smaller one urged with upraised hands. “Stay calm and no one will get hurt.”
The flight attendant quieted two people as the smaller man waved me from the Premier cabin back with the rest of the passengers. Apparently he missed Keevy. “Glad you could join us. We’re from the Invidious and we’re here to relieve you of your wealth.”
An older man pointed a palsied finger at the leader. “You were Laanars, my cabin steward.”
Laanars took a quick step around to the starboard aisle, approached the man and slapped him. “I was, you cheap pile of nerf-dirt. I did your scutwork because I knew this day was coming.”
“You don’t need to hurt anyone else.” I kept my voice cool as I met his brown-eyed gaze. I stood in the portside aisle, looking at him across a block of three seats. “You’re in control. You can take what you want.”
“That’s right, I am in control.” Laanars’ larger companion slipped past him and stood near the head of the starboard aisle. Laanars held up a hand and waggled his fingers. “Let’s go, off with the jewelry. You don’t surrender it, Biril here will show you why they don’t let him work as a manicurist anymore.”
I could feel the flood of anxiety gushing out of everyone and resorted to a quick Jedi technique to keep from being overwhelmed by it. I spread my senses out, expanding my sphere of responsibility to take in the whole of the shuttle. I wished I could reach out to everyone, inducing calm in them, or causing the two pirates to go to sleep, but I didn’t have such skills. The best thing I could do, I knew from long experience in hostage situations, was to let the pirates have what they wanted.
Then I sensed Keevy tensing for an attack. Unseen, he’d worked his way across the Premier cabin and was set to spring on Biril. The pirate was big enough that I doubted he’d even feel the impact of Keevy’s assault. With no effort at all, Biril would scrape Keevy off him, then probably carve the kid up just because he could.
And Keevy, having grown up his whole life wanting to be a hero, saw this as his chance.
He’d be a hero, all right—a dead one.
“Hey, sport,” I called to Laanars. “This is a onetime offer. Leave now, and you won’t get hurt.”
“Someone gets hurt, it won’t be me.” Laanars watched me closely. “Sit down and shut up.”
I shrugged my shoulders and shook my hands out. “Any time you care to make me.”
Laanars looked right and left, disbelief on his face. “How stupid can you be?” His right hand dropped to the butt of his blaster as he stared me right in the eyes. “You’re dead.”
Using the Force, I filled his mind with the image