Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [91]
Tuerto was a world that had attracted intrepid Sullustans before her, although even on Tuerto short beings received short shrift. Jobs were hard to come by, and anonymity was a constant companion. However, when you're a being of natural technical expertise who can see in the dark and memorize a map at a glance, opportunities of an illegal sort present themselves, and it wasn't long before Zenn Bien found her way into one of them.
Ship theft, she convinced herself after committing the first of many such acts, was not in the same league as shipjacking, in which violence almost always played a part and victims were often injured while trying to hold on to their property. Also, victims of ship theft were usually reimbursed for their loss by insurance companies; so sometimes you were actually doing beings a favor by separating them from vessels they couldn't really afford to own or operate.
None of the vessels Zenn Bien stole in her first couple of years in business were for her personal use. Nine times out of ten she worked for crime families that filled orders for beings in need of a certain class of ship, or obsessed with one ship in particular. Rarely did she see a ship after she had done her part—overriding security, disabling a wide array of tracking and anti-theft devices, hot-scrambling it. Most stolen vessels were piloted to far-flung worlds where registries were altered and telesponders swapped, and the ships began new lives under new ownership.
Quip Fargil was one of the few humans on Tuerto she counted as both employer and friend. A notorious joyrider, Quip had learned much of what he knew from Zenn Bien, and on two occasions only had hired her to steal a ship for resale. When he approached her about adding a third to the list, she had to suppress a strong urge to talk him out of it. But Quip was nothing if not persuasive.
“A fifty-year-old YT-Thirteen-hundred,” he told her. “It's been in Imperial impound for so long, no one will even know it's gone.”
“What do you want with a fifty-year-old freighter?”
“We're going to jump it to the Tungra sector, strip it, and sell it for parts.”
“Freighter parts?”
“It's a YT-Thirteen-hundred, fem. Parts for those ships sell for a small fortune in the Outer Rim.”
She laughed at the foolhardiness of the idea. “You know how much fuel a trip like that will require?”
He had an answer for that as well. “We're going to put in at Sriluur on the way. I've got a contact there that can get us fuel at wholesale— without the Imperial tax. He'll ride with us to the Tungra and supervise the dismantling himself. He already has a slew of junkyard owners lined up.”
“How much are you planning to pay me?”
“Ten for helping get the ship out of impound, another fifteen for piloting it to Sriluur and the Tungra, plus fifteen percent of what we make on the parts after costs are met.” He paused, then added: “More than enough to pay for that operation on your eyes.”
As with many Sullustans, her corneas were already showing signs of deterioration. Corrective surgery was certainly preferable to having to wear spectral goggles for the rest of her life.
“Where's the impound facility?”
“Practically next door. The Nilash system. I've also got a contact there who's going to make things easy for us.”
“An Imperial contact?”
“You know what enlisted-ratings make? You might as well be a stormtrooper the way you're forced to live.”
“So paying him falls under the category of costs.”
“Right.”
“And your friend on Sriluur?”
“He's satisfied to take a split of the profits.”
Zenn Bien took a day to decide, and told Quip she'd do it.
Guarded by a contingent of aging stormtroopers overseen by a cadre of bored human officers and enlisted-ratings, the Nilash Impe rial Impound Facility opened its hangar door every so often to prospective buyers of ships that were being put up for auction—a wide assortment of vessels confiscated from