Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [16]
He had tasked his newest employee—a young kid named Shug Ninx—with searching out someone with a line on a replacement brain, and it was the human–Theelin who entered the garage just then and hurried over to him.
“I might have found us a brain,” Ninx said, flushed with excitement.
“Where?” Bammy started to say, but he stopped when he spotted a familiar figure saunter into the bay. Swinging back to Ninx, he shook his head in disappointment. “Kid, going to him was a bad idea.”
The blue in Ninx's mottled complexion intensified. “I didn't know—”
Bammy put a hand on Ninx's shoulder. “Don't worry about it. Maybe it'll work out in our favor.”
A Koorivar with a pronounced cranial horn, Masel was known on the Smugglers' Moon as a fence, an arms dealer, an opportunist who had worked for both sides during the war. A naturally sibilant tone complemented his deviousness.
“Your young half-breed tells me you're in need of a ship's brain.”
Bammy steered the Koorivar to a cluttered table in a corner of the bay and motioned him to a chair. “Since when are you in the business of ship parts? I thought you only dealt in weaponry?”
Masel's shoulders shrugged under his rich cloak. “Nothing's changed. Except in this instance, I may have something you can use.”
Bammy compressed his lips. “I'll listen, anyway.”
“I've contacts among the crews dismantling the Separatist fleet. I can get you a targeting and fire-control brain off a tri-fighter command ship.”
Bammy scoffed at the idea. “Converting that to serve a YT freighter would take an expert slicer and way more credits than I can afford.”
“I know that,” Masel said. “But I have someone who will do the conversion for you. All you need to do is supply schematics of the ship.”
Bammy thought about it. “I already have the schematics, direct from Corellian Engineering. But how much is this going to set me back?”
“Less than half of what a factory-warranteed Hanx-Wargel Super-flow would run you—even at wholesale.”
“You guarantee it?”
Masel smiled. “Of course I will. A full refund if there's any problem.”
“A refund?” Bammy laughed. “You're gonna have to resurrect me if my client has any problems with it.”
“Resurrection is the provenance of others. I'm only a simple profiteer.”
Bammy thought some more. “How soon could I have it—assuming I decide to trust you?”
“A week after you hand over the schematics and a down payment of half the cost.”
Bammy was still grappling with it when he returned to the YT. The Iktotchi was waiting for him under the starboard-side docking ring, a small module resting on his thick, grease-stained forearms.
Bammy's expression went from pensive to quizzical.
“I extracted it from the droid brain,” the Iktotchi said. “It's the freighter's flight recorder.”
Instead of returning to his apartment in Nar Shaddaa's Corellian Sector, Bammy remained at the shop, downloading data from the Hanx-Wargel Superflow IV computer. Registry information, ownership, flight and service records. His interest piqued by what he discovered, he spent most of the night cross-referencing the data with HoloNet entries, and by morning had compiled what amounted to a brief history of the ship, which had been known by many names over the decades.
YT 492727ZED had come off Corellian Engineering's production lines at Orbital Facility 7, and for the first twelve years of her life had been one in a fleet of more than eight thousand ships