• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Elegos narrowed his eyes. “And where would that rumor have come from?”

I shrugged. “You know me, when I’m drinking I can’t keep a secret and I’m depressed enough to mourn my love life in public.”

“Well done.” He sipped from a glass of the blue syrup, which turned the golden down of his upper lip green until he licked it clean. “Will you rest today, or keep up the pressure?”

“Nothing breeds success like success.” I took a big bite out of a pastry, chewed, then swallowed. “The Invid system has one huge weakness and I need to push and exploit it before Tavira can act.”

The huge flaw in the way Tavira controlled her groups was what she saw as keeping her safe: all communication was pretty much one way. The HoloNet could keep her informed about big events in the galaxy, like a major New Republic push against her subsidiary groups, or events like the Sun Crusher and its destruction; but she was blind to local Courkrus news. Word of an impending operation reached us when a small craft, like a Skipray blastboat, entered the system and commed directly with the headquarters of the various groups. During these runs she picked up local news, but until she made one of those runs, she’d not know anything about what I was doing.

I handled the benefactor problem rather quickly, and mopped up the rest of Shala’s crew at the same time. Rach’talik had gathered a small band around himself and set up housekeeping in a warehouse in which Shala had stored a lot of the loot his group had taken. The night after the Great Hutt Roast—as it became known locally—I hit the warehouse, scattered the various denizens, then threw the place open to the public. This action became known as the Fire Sale, since it was assumed anything left in the place would be burned, and it was picked clean in hours. A few minor scuffles broke out, but visions of a shadowy presence caught in the corner of the eye was enough to quell them.

Two days later a communications ship arrived from Tavira. I would have loved to have been there to watch the communications officer when he tried to raise Shala and the Fastblast and got no answer. The information he got from the others wouldn’t have pleased him any better, since desertions had decimated the Blackstar Pirates and LazerLords. Most of the Red Nova crew had gone native, leaving the Survivors and Riistar’s Raiders the best off of the groups. In three weeks of absence, the cutting edge of the Invids had been considerably dulled.

Elegos and I expected a reaction from Tavira, and got it more quickly than we thought possible. Within a day after her communications ship left Courkrus, I awakened to a pounding on my suite’s door. I heard Elegos’s voice, had thrown back the covers and pulled my robe on, but didn’t get even as far as closing it when the door to my bedroom burst open and Tavira stalked in. She shoved me back on the bed, then stood there with her fists on her hips, looking down at me.

“Surprised to see me?”

I blinked and swiped sleepsand from my eyes. “Surprised? No, I suppose not.”

“Are you pleased?”

“Yes.”

“Harumph.” She eyed me appraisingly. “I would think you would show it more.”

I pulled my robe closed and sat up against the headboard. “It’s early.”

“And you had a late night.” She sat on the foot of my bed. “Alone?”

“Completely.”

She smiled briefly, the same way pet owners do when they discover their animal hasn’t messed something up in their absence. “Good. And you’ve not been bothered by this Jedi?”

I shook my head. “I’ve heard the stories, seen things occasionally, but come to no harm, no.”

Her eyes shrank to amethyst and jet crescents. “But you were there the first time he appeared.”

“What?”

Tavira brought her chin up triumphantly. “The visitation. People have determined that was the Jedi. He warned of his own impending campaign against the Invids. Well, this Skywalker won’t get away with it.”

“Skywalker?” My jaw shot open. “You think it is Luke Skywalker?”

She reached out and grabbed the big toe on my right foot, playfully