Star Wars: Scoundrels (12 page)

“What if Villachor’s already closed shop for the night?” Zerba asked. “If he sticks to schedule, he won’t have another meeting until tomorrow morning.”

Bink shrugged. “Then we do it tomorrow morning.”

“In broad daylight?”

“Not a problem,” Bink assured him. “There’s enough foliage out there to hide me from most people.”

“It’s the ones who aren’t
most people
I’m worried about,” Zerba muttered.

“I may be able to buy us another night here if we really need it,” Rachele said doubtfully. “It’ll be tricky, though.”

“Hold it,” Lando said, straightening suddenly in his seat, his eyes on the window. “Looks like they’re on the move.”

Bink turned around, craning her neck. The room’s light was on, with enough of a shifting shadow on the far wall to show that someone was over there opening the safe. She lifted the electrobinoculars to her eyes and focused in on the shadow.

Yes, it would work, she decided. She would have to be right up against the window to read the movements and decipher the keystrokes, but she was planning to be there anyway. The light and shadows shifted, marking the opening and closing of the safe door. The man back there emerged into view—

She stiffened. Only it wasn’t a man. The face that passed briefly through her field of view was green-scaled, with a mass of black hair tied and flowing down his back.

From somewhere in the area where Kell and Zerba were sitting came a sharp gasp. “Is that—”

“It’s a Falleen,” Eanjer confirmed, his voice grim. “What in the Empire is a Falleen doing
here
?”

“Take it easy,” Solo advised. But he didn’t sound any more thrilled than Eanjer did.

Or any more thrilled than Bink felt, for that matter. There were Falleen all over the Empire, of course, just like there were Rodians and Duros and even Wookiees. But this close to Imperial Center, the odds were unpleasantly high that any given Falleen would be working for—

“Take it
easy
?” Kell demanded. “Falleen mean
Black Sun
.”

“Not necessarily,” Winter said. Of all of them, she seemed to be maintaining the best semblance of calm. “Besides, Prince Xizor isn’t the only Falleen voice in the galaxy these days. Most of them have nothing to do with Black Sun. In fact, there are groups who are actively trying to restore honor to the Falleen name by bringing him down.”

Chewbacca rumbled.

“Well, sure, most of those groups are probably on Vader’s payroll,” Solo agreed. “Doesn’t mean they’re not out there.”

“And I’ll bet they’ve got Xizor really worried,” Kell muttered.

“You’re welcome to bail if you want,” Zerba offered.

Kell set his jaw. “No,” he said. “Thanks.”

“If it helps any, I think there’s just the one Falleen in the suite,” Rachele offered, peering at her datapad. “Looking at the room-service records, I see only a single order per mealtime that a Falleen would be likely to choose. The rest of the food is more suited to humans.”

“How many humans?” Lando asked. “What kind of numbers are we dealing with?”

Rachele’s lips moved as she did a silent count. “I’d say ten to twelve, plus our Falleen.”

“Maybe the Falleen isn’t the one in charge,” Tavia suggested.

“Don’t kid yourself,” Dozer said. “If it’s Black Sun, the Falleen is definitely in charge.”

“From what I’ve heard, Black Sun has plenty of humans in its ranks, too,” Eanjer pointed out. “So if it
is
Black Sun, what does that mean for our plan?”

“Right now, nothing,” Han said. “We still have to figure out what his connection is with Villachor, and for that we still need a look into that safe. Bink?”

“I’m game,” Bink assured him, standing up. “And now, you’re all invited to take yourselves and your conversation elsewhere.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Kell insisted.

“Oh, yes, you are,” Bink said firmly. “I need to lay out and test my equipment, and I don’t want a bunch of big nervous feet walking all over it.”

“Besides, we all have jobs of our own to do,” Solo added, getting to his feet. “Rachele, what’s the hotel’s security like?”

“Not too bad,” Rachele said, again manipulating her datapad. “Looks like all you need to get up from the lobby is a keycard. There don’t seem to be any security holocams except in the lobby and meeting areas, either.”

“That’s handy.” Solo looked at Zerba. “You think you can get us a keycard?”

Zerba puffed contemptuously. “With guests walking in and out all the time? In my sleep.”

“Good,” Solo said. “Rachele, I want you to go back to the suite and watch Villachor’s compound. Let us know when the Falleen and his convoy arrive and when they leave.”

“Sounds like I get the boring duty,” Rachele said.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got another job that should keep you busy,” Solo assured her. “Winter, Eanjer, you go with her. Chewie, you and Lando stay here with Bink and Tavia. Zerba, Kell, Dozer—you’re with me.”

“I’d like to stay here instead of going with Rachele, if I may,” Winter spoke up.

“Any particular reason?” Solo asked.

“As I said earlier, I know a fair amount about security systems.” Winter inclined her head toward Bink. “Not as much as Bink and Tavia do, of course. But three sets of eyes are better than two, and I might spot something they missed.”

Solo looked at Bink and raised his eyebrows in silent question.

“It’s fine with me,” Bink said, eyeing Winter. The white-haired woman was right about the correlation between success and the number of knowledgeable eyes on the scene.

Besides, Bink didn’t like working with enigmatic people. Keeping Winter here might give her an opportunity to get a better feel for her.

“Okay, then,” Solo said. “Chewie, Lando—keep an eye out for trouble. Everyone else, we’ve got places to go. Let’s get to them.”

T
he sky had darkened to full night, though the streets and buildings of Iltarr City were as bright as ever.

Which, Winter thought as she stood well back from the window, could be a problem.

Not that Bink in full camo gear was particularly easy to see. In fact, even knowing where she was, Winter had a hard time keeping track of her position. Most of the time she was pressed close to one of the tall trees out there, the outfit she’d chosen blending almost perfectly with the spots and shadows of the city’s lighting. It was only when she was swinging between the trees that she was really noticeable, and those moments passed quickly.

But the moments were still there. And there was something about the brightness of city lights combined with the instinctive fear of the night that made that combination particularly dangerous.

“Seems to be doing all right,” Tavia murmured from her side.

Winter nodded. Outwardly Tavia was as cool as Bink had been as she slipped out the window and began her trek around the edges of the park. But beneath the calm exterior, Tavia was worried about her sister. Winter could see it in the other woman’s anxious glances out the window, in the silent drumming of her fingers, and in her slight back-and-forth rocking even when she was trying to stand still.

The others could see it, too. Across the room, Chewie rumbled soothingly, and Lando looked up from his datapad. “She’ll be fine,” he assured Tavia. “She’s done this a thousand times.”

“I know,” Tavia said tightly. “But usually I’m right there with her. Not
with
her, but—you know what I mean. Wired in and watching to make sure it goes all right.” She shook her head. “I feel helpless just watching. Helpless and useless.”

“You two been doing this long?” Winter asked.

“Since we were ten,” Tavia said. “Not the ghost burglar stuff, not at first. But the whole life-on-the-fringe thing.” She looked sideways at Winter. “We didn’t have a choice,” she added, a defensive edge in her voice. “Our father was killed in the Clone Wars, and Mom died a few years later. We had no other relatives and no friends. It was this or starve to death.”

“Luckily, Bink proved to have some hidden talents in the field,” Lando murmured.

Winter eyed Tavia, noting the tightness around her mouth. “And she also discovered she liked it?”

Tavia lowered her gaze. “Why shouldn’t she?” she said. “Everyone likes doing the things they’re good at.” She smiled wanly at Winter. “I’m sure you do, too.”

“I suppose,” Winter said, looking back toward the window. There was a flicker of movement, and Bink had made it one more tree toward her goal.

Yes, Winter enjoyed her job. Or at least she had once.

But there was enjoyment, and there was passion, and there was duty. Right now, all Winter had left was duty. Duty, and a simmering hatred she didn’t want and couldn’t afford to feel.

Alderaan. Her home, her friends, a lifetime of memories. All of it, all of them, gone.

A haze of red flowed across her vision, flickering with a thousand faces she couldn’t forget and a million memories that would now forever be stained with fire and blood. Princess Leia and the other leaders of the Rebel Alliance had always been in awe of Winter’s perfect memory, of her ability to memorize shipping manifests with a glance and reproduce details of the most complex schematics or transfer operations without effort. None of them had truly grasped the horrible downside of being unable to forget anything.

Long ago, Winter had occasionally tried explaining the reality of her gift to some of the people around her. Now she no longer even made the effort.

The one exception to that rule was Leia. The Princess had enough troubling memories of her own that she might actually understand and appreciate Winter’s burden.

If she was still alive.

More images flicked across Winter’s indelible memory, pictures and events of all the times she and Leia had worked or played or gotten into trouble with Leia’s father, Bail, while they were growing up together.

Had Leia been on Alderaan when that insane monster Tarkin had destroyed it? That was the crucial, horrible question. Leia had been in the area around that time, but she might have been sent on some other mission before her world was destroyed. Winter desperately needed to know the truth, one way or the other, so that she could either get some relief or else add Leia’s face to the collection of bloodstained images in her mind. For her, uncertainty was a killer, an enemy that sapped focus, strength, and determination.

Only Winter had no way of finding the truth. All she knew was that Alderaan was gone, that there were rumors the Death Star was gone, and that neither the Imperials nor the Alliance had quite figured out how they should react to the doubly unexpected situation.

But who had died and who had lived, Winter had no way of knowing. The people she worked with in Procurement had been deliberately isolated from the Alliance command structure and all direct lines of communication. Until some kind of official word came down from Imperial Center, or until she received the less official but usually more accurate information from Alliance HQ, all Winter could do was hope, worry, and pray.

And continue to do the job she’d been given. For now, that meant maintaining her cover as a smuggler’s assistant and doing whatever Mazzic told her to do. Even if the task had nothing to do with bringing down the Empire she had learned to despise.

By the time Rachele reported that the three-landspeeder convoy had once again left Marblewood, Bink had reached the far corner of the park. By the time Han reported from outside the Lulina Crown that the convoy had arrived, she was two trees away from her target window.

She was resting more or less comfortably in her chosen tree, three meters back from the window, when the lights in the suite came on and the Falleen they’d seen earlier strode back into the room.

“Don’t worry, she’ll pull it off.” Lando’s voice came softly from behind her.

Winter looked around. He’d come up from the other end of the room and was standing between her and Tavia. Closer than he needed to be, far closer than Winter liked strangers getting.

But his eyes weren’t on her. They were on the windows across the park. “I’ve seen her pull off crazier stunts than this,” he continued. “Like I said before, she has talent.” He pulled his gaze back long enough to flash Winter a charming, slightly roguish smile. “Both of them do,” he amended, resting his hand on Tavia’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Winter said, turning her own gaze back to the window. It was annoying, though hardly surprising, that Han had been smart enough to insist on the group sticking to first names. There were no fewer than fifteen Landos in the criminal databases she’d memorized over the years, most of those files unfortunately without any decent holos in them. Briefly, she wondered if this Lando was one of those fifteen or someone who hadn’t yet caught the Imperials’ attention.

The Falleen across the way had taken off his coat, revealing an expensive-looking thigh-length tunic beneath it. Winter studied his neck, hoping there would be a clan or loyalty tattoo somewhere that might give some clue to his identity or affiliation. Some groups of Falleen went in for that sort of thing.

But there was nothing, at least nothing she could see from her distance. The Falleen dropped his coat on a low table beside the room door, then reached into a hip pouch and pulled out an odd-looking datapad, setting it beside the coat. Hunching his shoulders once, as if shaking away the residual weight of the coat, he stepped to the safe and disappeared around its side.