Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 20_ The Final Prophecy - J. Gregory Keyes [79]
“Anyway,” Prann went on, “we managed to get one of the turbolasers on-line and the shields up. We gunned down the skips and put the cloak back on—it was the only thing we could think of to do. There was a whole fleet out there. The Vong apparently thought we’d gone to hyperspace—seems they don’t know Golans don’t usually come equipped for that.”
“But that was more than a year ago,” Jaina said.
“You’re telling me. We’ve just been waiting, tinkering with the station. Everything works fine, by now, at least those things we had the parts to fix. This thing has a terrific power core—had to, to run the shield for so long. We floated a small probe out on an insulated cable so we could see what was going on, which as you’ve probably guessed wasn’t much that was helpful to our situation—just the Vong setting up shop.”
His grin broadened. “This morning, though, we swept and saw your fleet. We dropped the field, hoping you would spot us. We’ve got limited sublight communications, but no hyperwave or HoloNet.” He grinned again. “And here you are.”
It was about then that Jaina understood something was wrong. The feeling in the Force that she took as relief at the end of a long, dangerous isolation was there, but seething beneath it was something hungry.
She was reaching for her lightsaber when something hit her, hard. Her hand, midway to her weapon, suddenly refused to obey her commands, and the room spun dizzily. She tried to focus and use the Force, but the dizziness got worse, and she was vaguely aware that her legs weren’t holding her up anymore. She didn’t feel the deck when she hit it, but she had a strange view of boots and legs moving her way. She heard faraway sounds that resembled thunder, but which she understood to be speech. Then—
Then she woke, strapped down to a table with some sort of webbing, her head pounding, and everything still doing a slow spin.
“Sorry about that,” she heard Prann say. “Sonics leave you with a terrible hangover without the benefit of ever having the fun.”
He was standing a meter away. The Toydarian stood across the room with a blaster trained on her.
“I hear Toydarians are more resistant than most species to Jedi mind tricks,” Prann said. “I hope we don’t have to test that. I’d like to see all of us walk out of this healthy.”
“Prann, what’s going on?” she managed. “Who are you really?”
“Oh, that name’s as good as any.”
“What are you, Peace Brigade?”
His eyebrows squinted together. “Colonel Solo,” he said, “now you’re hurting my feelings. That pathetic bunch of collaborationists? Hardly. I’m a liberator.”
“Of what?”
“Technology, actually.”
“Ah,” Jaina said. “You’re a thief and a smuggler.”
Prann shrugged his shoulders. “What I do is more like emergency salvage. I haven’t taken anything the Vong wouldn’t have destroyed anyway. Remember Duro? We got some good stuff there, in hit-and-run raids after New Republic forces pulled out. If we hadn’t it would have been wasted. The Vong sure weren’t going to use it.”
Her head was starting to clear. “So you came here after the Vong took Bilbringi?”
“Nope, this job was a little different. Most of my story was true—except that it was Vel, here, who discovered the missing station in the shipyard databanks. I’d heard a story that one of the Golans disappeared right before the New Republic forces invaded. A few of us got jobs in the shipyards, and Vel managed to slice into the old Imperial records.” He beamed. “One of the best slicers in the business.”
“Ah, just average,” the Toydarian replied. He didn’t take his gaze off Jaina.
“He’s very modest,” Prann added. “Anyhow, he found an old encryption that suggested the station had been cloaked—apparently Thrawn was keeping it