• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Everyone, the guards included, looked in the same direction, but the only thing to see was the motion of people walking inside the near bunker, just on the other side of a gallery-length window.

The official asked, “What?”

Face grabbed his tunic, pulled him close, pointed. “Her, her! She’s nearly naked!”

One of the passersby was in a golden, reflective garment that showed a considerable quantity of leg and shoulder.

The official tried to pull himself free. “That’s merely summer wear, sir—”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.” The man tried to pry Face’s hand off but made no headway. He cast a beseeching look over his shoulder toward one of the guards, and Wedge tensed, but the armor-plated trooper didn’t move. He was, Wedge saw, shaking with laughter.

“You don’t know her name? You live in the same village with her!”

The official finally got Face’s hand free. “It’s a city, not a village, and it’s too large for me to know everybody.” As quickly as he could, he cycled Wedge’s and Donos’s cards through the reader.

“That’s not very neighborly.” Face accepted the cards and passed them out among his brothers. “Say, if you could direct us to where the beautiful women looking for husbands are, it’d be worth a credit to you.”

The man looked at him, too drained to be stunned. “A whole credit.”

“Oyah. Always pay for the best, that’s what I say.”

“Try the Howler. It’s a bar. It’s where you’ll find locals with an itch to get offworld but not enough money to do so.”

“Sir, you’re gentleman.” Face dropped a credit coin into the man’s palm and walked into the inspection tube opening.

“A gentleman,” Wedge repeated, and followed. He heard Donos grunt, “Gent,” and come stomping after him.

Kell ambled down the ramp. He saw the inspector’s tired expression and gave the man a knowing smile. “Imagine being trapped aboard a shuttle with them for three days.” He bobbed his head up and down in a fair simulation of Face’s distinctive nod, then handed his identicard to the man.

“Do you think they’ll be any trouble … Captain Doran?”

“Call me Kell. No, none of them is any trouble except the old senator. Just stroke his ego … and don’t shoot against him. I accepted a competition challenge from him, and lost. That’s why I had to carry his damned Gamorrean.” Kell took a step to the side and looked up at the Narra’s flank. The words “Doran Spaceways” and the name Doran Star on the shuttle’s side still looked appropriately weathered, belying the fact that they’d been painted on three days ago and then partly scraped off again.

“Thanks. I’ll make sure the appropriate parties know.” The official handed back Kell’s card. “Are you carrying them back again?”

Kell answered by shuddering.

“Ah. Well, your loss is our gain, provided it’s soon. Please wait in the inspection area. Pending a scan of your shuttle, you’re clear.”

“Thanks.”

As soon as they cleared inspection, the party of Senator-in-Exile Tyestin, known informally on this mission as the Joyride Group, checked into the lodging nearest the spaceport. After they swept their suite against the possibility of listening devices and found none, Janson said, “No reason to go farther away to find TIE fighters. There are some here … and traffic of lots more strangers than on an Imp military base.”

“Atril and I can switch in and out of disguise a lot more easily than you,” Falynn said. It was true; for the two women, all it took was a change of clothing and addition of a wig to cover their severe black hair. “You and Piggy should stay here, in character, for the time being. Let us do the groundwork.”

“Because my disguise is inconvenient,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Not because I’m old and feeble like Commander Antilles.”

She smiled and looked away. “I suppose I’ve had to revise my opinion about old, feeble pilots.”

“Well, you children go and have a good time. I’m going to order expensive meals and expensive entertainments. This is on one of the New Republic’s covert expense accounts, and for once I feel like