Star Wars_ X-Wing 01_ Rogue Squadron - Michael A. Stackpole [38]
The wolfman growled in a low voice. “Yelling? Punches?”
“No. Just some clear and concise conversation.”
Shiel bared his teeth and Gavin laughed. Lujayne fished into her flight suit’s thigh pocket and produced a handful of oddly shaped credit coins. She held them out to the Twi’lek who cupped them in both hands and smiled avariciously. He flicked at a couple with taloned fingers, then looked up and froze as if caught bloody-handed.
Corran knit his fingers together and let them rest against his belt buckle. “And those credits are for?”
“Winning the pool.” Nawara carefully slipped them into his pocket. “I said you’d be reasonable.”
Rhysati elbowed him. “You took reasonable because you got the best odds with that wager.”
The Twi’lek looked offended. “I hold opinions, I don’t bet them.”
Corran laughed. “Who had ‘will challenge Commander Antilles to an X-wing death duel’?”
Erisi raised her hand. “It was an even-odds bet, too.”
“Nawara won by betting what was in my brain, but you bet what was in my heart.” Corran pointed to the bar. “In honor of your insightfulness, I will buy you that which your heart desires.”
She took his left hand again. “And if it doesn’t have a price?”
“Then I’ll buy you a drink and we’ll talk about how else to make you happy.”
Bror Jace bowed from the waist in Erisi’s direction. “To make her happy you would have to make her family’s corporation yet more profitable.”
“And to do that means I’d have to be boosting the use of bacta, right?” Corran opened his hands and took in the whole of the squadron. “And since the Empire buys bacta and we’ll be shooting at their pilots, I don’t think that’ll be hard to do at all.”
10
The shuttle’s pilot looked back over his left shoulder. “Agent Loor, you’ll probably want to strap yourself in. We’re coming out of hyperspace.”
Kirtan began to fumble with the restraining harness, then brought his head up quickly, embarrassed that his lack of coordination betrayed his nervousness. “Thank you, Lieutenant, but I’ve traveled this way before.”
“Yes, sir,” came the pilot’s oily reply, “but I’d bet this is your first time to Imperial Center.”
Kirtan wanted to snap some sharp reply that would sting the man, but a sense of utter and complete disaster washed over him. He had waited for two full weeks before reporting Gil Bastra’s death to his superiors. In that time he furiously analyzed and tried to expand upon any leads Bastra had offered during his interrogation. They all seemed to be dead ends, leading nowhere, but he knew, he just knew, they would put him on Corran Horn if he had enough time to figure out their greater significance.
In his report he had tried to stress the positive, but within hours of the report being sent on up the line, he had received his summons to Imperial Center, formerly known as Coruscant. He was ordered to make his way to the Imperial capital as quickly as possible. As luck would have it—luck he in no way saw as benign—passage had been arranged on a series of ships with a minimum of difficulty. This last ship, a shuttle on loan from the Aggressor, effortlessly carried him to his doom.
The wall of light visible through the viewport dissolved into a million million points of light as the ship left hyperspace. Imperial Center, a clouded grey world ringed by Golan defense platforms, seemed even more forbidding than he had imagined. He had expected to see that the world that had become a city would be as dead and cold as the Emperor who had ruled from it. Instead, with boiling clouds burned white by flashes of lightning, the planet’s true nature lay cloaked and hidden, as did his future.
“Imperial Center, this is shuttle Objurium requesting clearance for entry on the Palace Vector.”
“Transmit clearance code, shuttle Objurium.”
“Transmitting now.” The pilot turned back toward Kirtan. “This code better be good. We’re well within the range of the two nearest