Star Wars_ X-Wing 04_ The Bacta War - Michael A. Stackpole [20]
“Looks the fair pirate, our friend.” Mirax raised a hand. “Gavin, over here.”
Corran agreed with Mirax’s assessment, though Gavin’s sloppy grin kind of marred the image. “Everything set?”
Gavin nodded. “I have a landspeeder waiting out front. It’s not much, but it was the best I could do. I tried to borrow one off Uncle Huff, but he said the last time he loaned a landspeeder to someone from Rogue Squadron it wasn’t returned in the best of conditions.”
“We might as well head out, then.” Mirax stood and clipped the hold-out blaster to her belt. She dug around in a pouch for some credits as she headed toward the bar. “How much?”
Wuher shook his head. “Your friends got it.” He glanced toward the Rodian and Devaronian.
She smiled. “And they took care of you, too, yes?”
“The spirit of generosity, they were.”
“Good.”
Mirax followed Gavin from the cantina and Corran brought up the rear. He poked his head through the middle of his desert tabard and settled it down around his shoulders. The side flaps allowed for quick access to his blaster or the lightsaber, but he hoped he would not have need to resort to either.
He felt kind of awkward wearing the lightsaber. It had always seemed to him to be something of a genteel weapon of limited use. In his line of work, a Stokhli spray stick and a blaster were usually considered more than enough to handle any situation. Lightsabers had been all but unknown while the Empire considered them a sign of being a Jedi, but now that Luke Skywalker was a great hero, some folks had developed an affectation for them. It seemed to be the sort of weapon one carried if one was afraid to carry a blaster.
That characterization of it made Corran uneasy to wear the weapon, but flipping the bit the other way, he felt proud to be heir to one. He felt as if he had the right to wear it. At first he thought doing so might show disrespect for his grandfather, but then he realized Rostek Horn had risked his own career and life to protect Nejaa Halcyon’s wife and child from Imperial Jedi hunters. Not only had he valued them for who they were, but he had valued them in memory of his fallen friend. I think grandfather would be happy to see me wearing this lightsaber and that’s all the reason I need to wear it.
Corran hooded his eyes with his hand as he emerged into the harsh twin-sun noon. Gavin waved him over to the landspeeder. To Corran it looked a lot like the old SoroSuub XP-38, but the normally compact, dart-shaped craft had been heavily modified. The passenger compartment had been boosted forward by the addition of more seating and cargo space between it and the engines. More disturbing than how the addition had destroyed the fine lines of the vehicle was the fact that beneath the dust Corran saw a pink and puce paint job.
Corran hooked an arm over Gavin’s shoulders. “You know, the womp rats you bull’s-eye in a thing like this might be color-blind, so they don’t care what your speeder looks like, but, really, look at this thing.”
Gavin smiled wryly and spun out from beneath Corran’s arm. “It beats walking, which was the other alternative given our operational budget. Get in. This baby will still hit three hundred klicks per, despite the modifications, and the krayt dragons don’t see the color scheme as edible. We’ll be there in no time.”
The trip actually took half a standard hour, which wasn’t “no time,” and speeding through trackless wastes actually seemed close to forever. If it weren’t for the cloud of dust billowing out from behind them, Corran would have been hard pressed to cite evidence that they were going anywhere at all. The Jundland Wastes mountains became a heat-warped stain on the horizon, and nothing else came even close to serving as a landmark.
Despite the lack of signposts or other waymarkers, Gavin got them to his uncle’s estate without incident. The brief glimpse of it Corran had gotten from the Pulsar Skate as they came in had not prepared