Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [83]
He put a furry little paw behind Threepio’s golden elbow and tugged, and so disoriented was he that Threepio followed, trying hard to frame his objections to the deception. Artoo rolled obediently in their wake, leaving the barkeep squinting suspiciously after them, fingering her snout rings and twitching her ears.
“I’m terribly sorry,” said Threepio, once they were in the rain-slick street. “I have reviewed all my files and I can find neither your name nor your likeness in any of my records.”
“Yarbolk Yemm. Reporter for the TriNebulon News. Not that it’d be in any of your circuits, Threesie—where is your boss?”
“My counterpart and I are the property of … Artoo, what are you doing?” The little astromech swung sharply around in a ninety-degree turn, banging his golden counterpart with the drum that was still attached, like a mammoth mechanical pregnancy, to his leading surface. Artoo followed up the assault with a trilling obbligato of beeps, tweeps, and wibbles, to the effect that it would not be a particularly good idea to inform a reporter for TriNebulon of their mission, goals, or concerns.
And there was much, Threepio had to admit, in what he said.
“Our master is waiting for us on Cybloc XII,” explained Threepio, after considerable thought that fortunately took place so quickly as to make the remark have the promptness of truth. “Through a shipping error my counterpart and I were dispatched to Nim Drovis instead, and we have been unable to get in touch with our master to arrange for our transport. It is vitally important that we rejoin our master with the utmost speed. Hence the regrettable exigency of acquiring sufficient funds by these means.” He gestured to the concertinium, folded into a neat red lacquer box and hanging by its straps from his chest, and to Artoos drum. They stood on one of the myriad little bridges that led from the Old Town to the New, the lightening rain flecking the brown water beneath them and trickling down the two droids’ casings and the Chadra-Fan’s black-wet silk tunic. Across the canal, rising commotion and the sound of shots grew louder, voices shouted orders, feet splashed through the puddles.
Yarbolk turned his head sharply, long ears twitching; then he looked back at the droids with speculation in his black little shoe-button eyes. “Cybloc XII, eh? There’s been no word out of there in thirty hours, from everything I’ve heard. They sent out two cruisers to deal with the wildcat pirate fleet out of Budpock—the Ithor Lady and the Empyrean. Nobody’s heard word of them, either. Now the talk all around the bars here is that somebody’s supplying the Gopso’o with weapons, and promising them the guard stations on the roads are going to be down—and aren’t they just, tonight? You boys be careful,” he said, pulling up the wet silk hood over his head. “There are laws governing ownership of droids, but I’ve yet to see them enforced, anywhere, and anyway they’re only as good as the last memory flush. There’s any number of people in this town who’d welcome a windfall like a free See-Three unit and an astromech with nobody’s name on them.”
He fished in his sporran again, and brought out a red-burnished twenty-credit cylinder, which he dropped into the half-full basket of credits on top of Artoo’s cap. “Buy your tickets in a human name—Igpek Droon really is a small-time trader, if you want to use his—and get yourselves out of here. Good luck. Thanks for the music.”
There was another crescendo of mayhem, closer this time, and with it the bass roar of ion cannons. Yarbolk Yemm shifted to the front of his belt the small recording devices he wore, and scampered off across the bridge in the direction of the noise, a bright, wet little form