"Nothing that concerns you," Karoly said. "As of right now, you"ve been pulled off the job."
Shada frowned at her. "What are you talking about? I"ve been with Mazzic for over twelve years now. You can"t end that kind of relationship with the snap of a finger."
"We can, and we are," Karoly said. "It"s clear now that Mazzic"s group isn"t going to become the galaxy-spanning organization that the Mistryl hoped when they first planted you on him. And with Talon Karrde"s Smugglers" Alliance all but defunct, the Eleven have decided you"re just being wasted here. It"s time for you to move on."
"Fine," Shada said, taking two steps back away from Karoly along the roof edge and craning her neck as if trying to see if she could catch a glimpse of Karoly"s client. "I"ll tell Mazzic tonight that I"m resigning as his bodyguard. We can leave in the morning."
Karoly shook her head. "I"m sorry. We leave now."
Shada looked back, leveling a hard stare at Karoly and surrept.i.tiously gauging the distance between them. Three meters; just about right. "Why?" she demanded. "Because your new client wants to murder him?"
Even in the dim light she could see Karoly wince a little. But when the other woman spoke her voice was firm enough. "I suggest you try to remember who we are, Shada," she said.
"We"re Mistryl. We"re given orders and we follow them."
"I"m also Mazzic"s bodyguard," Shada said quietly. "And once upon a time the Mistryl were given honor and obeyed duty. Not just orders."
Karoly snorted under her breath. "Honor. You have been out of touch, haven"t you?"
"Apparently so," Shada countered. "I"ve always tried to believe that being a Mistryl put me a few steps above the garbage heap of mercenaries and a.s.sa.s.sins-for-hire. Forgive my naivete."
Karoly"s face darkened. "We do what"s necessary to keep our people alive," she bit out., "If some slimy Huts wants to back-blade some other slimy smuggler, that"s none of our concern."
"Correction: it"s none of your concern," Shada said. "It is mine. I have a job to do, Karoly; and you can get out of my way or you can get hurt." She reached up to her harness and locked her safety line&mdash Karoly"s hand seemed to twitch, and suddenly there was a small blaster in it. "Freeze it,"
she ordered. "Move your hands away from your body. Empty."
Shada held her arms loosely out from her sides, fingers spread to prove she wasn"t holding or palming anything. "You"ll have to kill me to stop me," she warned.
"I hope not. Now turn around."
This was it. Arms still held away from her body, Shada rotated ninety degrees to face the skylight&mdash And taking a step backward, she dropped off the edge of the roof.
She"d half expected Karoly to get a quick blaster shot off before she disappeared over the edge. It didn"t happen; Karoly either freezing with surprise or else too self-controlled to fire uselessly. But Shada didn"t have time to speculate on which it was. The safety line snapped taut, and suddenly she was caroming off the wall as she swung down and to her right, pivoting about that last anchor she"d set near the rooftop. Another two seconds, she estimated, and she would pa.s.s the midpoint of her oscillat ion and swing up again to the rooftop where Karoly and her blaster waited.
She had just those two seconds to find a way to take down her onetime friend.
The startled blufferavian didn"t even have time to squawk as Shada s.n.a.t.c.hed it from its nest. She managed to grab one of the eggs with her other hand, and then she was swinging back up toward the roof.
And her two-second grace period was over. Even as she c.o.c.ked the bird over her shoulder in throwing position Karoly appeared above her at the edge of the roof, hurrying toward the spot from which Shada had jumped, her eyes and blaster tracking down the side of the building. She caught sight of Shada-floundered off balance for a split second as she tried to halt her forward movement and shift her aim&mdash And with a grunt of exertion, Shada hurled the blufferavian at her face.
There was no time for Karoly to think, no time for her even to pause and evaluate. There was a sudden confused flurry of wings in front of her as the blufferavian tried to recover its equilibrium; and in the absence of thought, powerfully ingrained Mistryl combat reflexes took over. She jerked back, the movement eroding her precarious balance even further, twisted the muzzle of her blaster toward the incoming missile, and fired.
The blaster bolt caught the blufferavian dead center, and suddenly the flapping wings became a turmoil of flame and sparks and acrid smoke. Karoly ducked away from the fireball, twisting her head to the side&mdash Just in time to catch Shada"s thrown blufferavian egg squarely across the bridge of her nose.
She gasped as the egg splattered into her eyes, throwing her free hand up to try to wipe away the semiliquid ma.s.s blinding her as Shada hit her safety-line feed release again and vaulted up onto the rooftop. Circling a couple of meters to her right to get out of the line of fire of the blaster still waving in her general direction, she angled in.
She reached Karoly just as the younger woman got her eyes cleared, kicking the blaster out of her hand as she tried to bring the weapon around toward her. The blaster hit the edge of the roof behind Karoly and bounced off into the darkness below. "Sha.s.sa," Karoly hissed the old curse, jumping to her right out of Shada"s reach and producing a gleaming knife from somewhere. "Shada-"
"I"m obeying my duty," Shada said, sidestepping to her right away from the knife tip.
"You"ve still got the option of getting out of my way."
Karoly hissed something else and lunged forward. Shada sidestepped again toward her right, feinted toward Karoly, took another quick step to the side and then changed direction back toward the skylight.
But Karoly had antic.i.p.ated the move. Blinking more of the egg out of her eyes, she took a long step the same direction, her knife waving warningly. Shada countered by stepping perilously close to the roof edge and taking two quick strides along it in an attempt to get around onto Karoly"s left side away from her knife hand. Karoly spun around in response, knife held ready. "Don"t make me do this, Shada," she snarled.
Snarled. And yet, Shada thought she could hear a buried note of pleading there as well.
"All right, Karoly," she said softly. "I won"t." Snapping on her climbing harness"s feed lock again, she leaped backward one last time along the edge of the roof&mdash And the safety line that her carefully ch.o.r.eographed sparring maneuvers had threaded neatly around behind Karoly snapped up tautly to catch the younger woman across the tops of her low boots. Flailing her knife uselessly as her feet were yanked out from under her, she fell with a painful sounding thud flat onto her back.
Shada was on her in an instant, one foot coming down on Karoly"s knife wrist as she slapped away the other hand and then jabbed stiffened fingertips into the soft spot beneath her rib cage. With an agonized grunt Karoly folded up around the impact and toppled over on her side. Shada jabbed again, this time behind Karoly"s ear, and the younger woman relaxed and lay still.
Breathing hard, Shada reached over and s.n.a.t.c.hed the knife from Karoly"s limp hand, cutting her safety line before she wound up tangled in it herself. The fight hadn"t taken long and had been reasonably quiet, but odds were that Karoly"s client had heard the ruckus and would be coming to investigate. If she could arrange to meet him halfway&mdash A movement at the corner of her eye was her only warning. But it was enough. Even as she threw herself to the side in a flat dive a blaster bolt sizzled through the air where she"d been standing. She rolled back to her knees, eyes sweeping the raised section of rooftop and locating her a.s.sailant: a p.r.o.ne figure in a black poncho and hood, the protruding snout of his blaster rifle tracking toward her. Snapping her hand up, Shada threw Karoly"s knife toward him.
The sniper rolled instantly to the side, leaning his head into the relative protection of his arms and rifle, the weapon now spitting its deadly fire on repeater mode as it tracked toward her. But in this case the old bounty hunter"s reflex had betrayed him. The knife spun precisely into its intended target not the dodging sniper himself, but the flicker of blaster fire from his weapon. It cut across right in front of the gun barrel, the bolts catching the blade and blasting it apart in a blue of molten shards and reflected light.
And for the next pair of heartbeats the sniper would be effectively blind.
Two heartbeats was all Shada needed. She came all the way up off the roof, leaping over the sputtering blaster fire now tracking blindly toward her, fingers darting into her plaited hair for one of the lacquered zenji needles. It came free in a cascade of loosened coils; and as her feet hit the roof again, she threw it.
And with a m.u.f.fled clatter the blaster fell silent.
She was beside the sniper in an instant, twisting the weapon out of the dead man"s hands and running across the roof. If the sniper was merely the backup and not the main attack, she might still have failed. Skidding to a halt beside the skylight, she crouched at its edge and peered down into the high-ceilinged room below.
She hadn"t failed. Three meters below her was an ornate decorated table, with Mazzic and Griv on one side and the Kubaz and a rough-looking human on the other. The two sides had already exchanged cases and were in the process of checking their new prizes. The Kubaz shut his case after what seemed to be a cursory examination, standing stiffly behind the table with an obvious air of expectation about him. It took Mazzic another minute to be similarly satisfied with his side of the trade, then he too close d his case. He nodded pleasantly to the Kubaz and took a step back from the table, his mouth moving with what were probably his usual farewell remarks. The Kubaz remained where he was . and as Mazzic and Griv took another step back, his air of expectation gave way to one of puzzlement. His long snout twitched in indecision, clearly wanting to look up but just as clearly not wanting to telegraph the surprise ending he was still expecting.
Still, if a surprise was all he wanted, Shada could oblige him. Lining the blaster rifle up on the base of the alien"s long snout, she tapped the barrel lightly against the skylight."
All four of them looked up. The Kubaz"s expression was impossible to read, but his companion"s more than made up for it. His mouth fell open in stunned disbelief, his hand dropping to the blaster belted at his side. Shada shifted her aim to his forehead; slowly, he raised the hand-empty-to his chest. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mazzic throw her an abbreviated salute, and then he and Griv walked out of her field of view.
Shack kept her weapon trained on the Kubaz and his friend for a count of thirty. Then, throwing them the same salute Mazzic had just given her, she backed away from the skylight.
"It"s over?" Karoly"s voice asked from behind her.
Shada turned to look. The younger woman was standing beside the dead a.s.sa.s.sin at the edge of the upper roof, her expression impossible to read. "Yes," Shada told her. "Your client decided not to go back on the deal after all."
Karoly looked down at the body at her feet. "The Eleven aren"t going to be happy about this."
"I"m used to people not being happy with me," Shada sighed, lowering the blaster rifle to the rooftop. "I"ll get by."
"This is not a joking matter, Shada," Karoly growled. "You"ve been given a direct order.
You stay with Mazzic now and they"ll have a squad on you before the week"s over."
"I"m not staying with Mazzic," Shada said. "As I told you, I"ll resign as his bodyguard tonight."
"And you think that will fix this with the Eleven?" Karoly scoffed.
"I suppose that depends on whether any of them still remembers who we are," Shada said, a deep sense of sadness flowing into her. A sadness that felt as if it had been collecting around her heart for a long, long time. "The Mistryl that I joined twenty-two years ago was an honorable clan of warriors fighting to preserve what was left of our people.
Honorable warriors don"t knowingly deal in murder. I would hope at least some of the Eleven remember that."
"Maybe the Eleven have changed." Karoly looked away across the dark rooftops of the city.
"Maybe the Mistryl have changed."
"Maybe they have," Shada said. "But I haven"t." She studied her friend. "But then, neither have you."
Karoly looked back at her. "Really. I"d like to know what I said to give you that impression."
"It"s not what you said," Shada told her. "It"s what you did. After I kicked your blaster away, when you pulled that knife on me."
"Pulling a knife convinced you I was on your side?"
"Yes," Shada said. "You still have my blaster." Karoly put her hand to her side. "Yes, I suppose I do. I imagine you want it back."
Shada shrugged. "It might be harder to explain what happened here if you still have it when you get back to Emberlene."
"Point," Karoly conceded. She flicked her wrist, and the blaster sailed in a flat arc to drop neatly into Shada"s waiting hand. "Speaking of Emberlene, I"d stay away from there if I were you. For that matter, I"d stay away from any other Mistryl, period. For the next ten years, if you can manage it."
"I won"t need to hide that long," Shada said, sliding the blaster back into its holster.
"Looks like the galaxy is coming to a boil again over this Caamas thing. The Eleven will soon have more important things than me to think about."
Karoly spat something. "Caamas. Caamas, and Alderaan, and even that mudwater Noghri planet Honoghr. It almost makes me laugh sometimes when I think about which worlds get cried over."
"Being bitter about it won"t help," Shada said.
"So what will?" Karoly retorted. "At least being bitter proves you"re not dead yet."
"Perhaps," Shada said. "If that"s what you"re willing to settle for."
"I suppose you"ve found something better?"
"I don"t know," Shada said. "There has to be something, though." She pointed to a small rectangular shedlike structure on the far side of the skylight "That the exit over there?"
"One of them," Karoly said. "If you don"t mind taking a chance on running into the Kubaz and his pals on the way down."
Shada smiled tightly. "They"ll make room for me."
Almost unwillingly, Karoly smiled back. "I"m sure they will." The smile faded. "But understand this, Shada. Whatever I did here, I did it for-well, the reasons are complicated. But if the Eleven send me after you . . ."
"I understand," Shada nodded. "I"ll try not to put you in this position again."
"Never mind me," Karoly said. "You just be careful of you." She c.o.c.ked her head slightly.
"You have any idea what you"re going to do?"
Shada looked up at the stars. "As a matter of fact," she said quietly, "I do."
"Hold still, please, sir," the Emdee droid said in its deep voice, its mechanical fingers wielding the probe with microscopic precision as he lined it up. "I expect this to be the final pa.s.s."
"Good," Luke said, taking a deep breath and cultivating his patience. He"d been sitting here for nearly half an hour now, but it was almost over.
The droid eased the probe into Luke"s right ear, with a sensation that oscillated between an itch and a tickle. Luke braced himself; and then, with a loud slurping sound it was over.
"Thank you, sir," the Emdee said, lowering the probe into the reclamation container beside him and discharging a final few drops of bacta into it. "I again apologize for the time and inconvenience this has caused you."
"That"s all right," Luke a.s.sured him, sliding off the table and rubbing the last vestige of the itch/tickle away with a fingertip. "I know it"s easy to say there"ll never be another bacta shortage like the one during the war. It"s not always so easy to believe it."
"I was with this facility during that time," the Emdee said gravely. "We could not afford to buy the black market bacta, even if it had been available to us. I saw many die who could have been saved."
Luke nodded. And as a result, for the past twelve years the medics in charge here had made it a rigid policy to conserve every single drop of bacta, even to the point of siphoning it out of patients" ears when necessary. "I can"t say this last part was very pleasant,"
he said. "On the other hand, I"d hate to have arrived and found out you didn"t have enough bacta to treat me."
"Perhaps it is simply the path of old habit," the droid said. "Still, I am told it is wise to remember the past."
"It is indeed," Luke agreed soberly, nodding to the bacta reclamation container. "And even wiser to learn from it."
Artoo was waiting in their a.s.signed room, plugged into the desk and warbling softly to himself as he conversed with the medical facility"s main computer. His dome swiveled as Luke came in, the warbling changing to an excited whistling. "Hi, Artoo," Luke said.
"Keeping busy?"
The little droid made an affirmative-sounding twitter, which changed to something questioning. "Oh, I"m fine," Luke a.s.sured him, patting his side. "Some of the shrapnel was in pretty deep, but they got it all out. A little dip in a bacta tank, and I"m good as new. The medic said I shouldn"t fly for another hour or so, but it"ll probably take that long to get the ship rolled out and prepped anyway."
Artoo whistled again, rotating his dome around in a complete circle. "Yes, I see they did a good job with you, too," Luke agreed. "Did you ask them to take a look at the X-wing?"
Another affirmative twitter. "Good," Luke said. "Then I guess the only question left is where we should go next."
Artoo"s dome swiveled back again to face him, a distinctly suspicious note to his next warble. "We"re not out here on vacation, Artoo," Luke reminded him, pulling up a chair beside the droid where he could keep an eye on the desk"s computer display for more complicated translations. "We"re here to track down those clones and find out where they"re coming from. We"re not going to accomplish that by going home to Yavin or Coruscant."
He looked out the window at the hills rising steeply behind his room, their carpet of gold-colored gra.s.ses gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Yes, the mission statement itself was perfectly straightforward. Unfortunately, the necessary procedure for completing it was anything but. He"d tried the surrept.i.tious approach to that Cavrilhu base; all he"d gotten for his trouble had been yet another swim in a bacta tank. And, of course, the chance to see Mara again.
He grimaced. Mara. He"d been expecting to run into her again ever since that pirate raid he and Han had thwarted off Iphigin-in fact, he wouldn"t put it past Han to have had something to do with Mara showing up at the Kauron asteroid field that way. He"d expected to run into her, and had secretly dreaded the prospect.
And yet, looking back on it, the encounter hadn"t been nearly as tense as he"d feared it would be. She"d been cooperative and polite, or at least as polite as Mara ever got. More significantly, the quiet but strong animosity he"d sensed radiating toward him at their last couple of brief encounters hadn"t been present.
Or maybe it had been there and he just hadn"t noticed. Maybe his deliberately diminished use of the Force these days had simply prevented him from sensing that deeply into her mind without a deliberate probe.
He scowled out at the hills. There was definitely some kind of cause and effect at work here-that much he was sure of. The question was, which was the cause and which the effect?
Artoo warbled questioningly. "I"m trying to figure it out," Luke told him, glancing at the translation. "Just relax, okay?"
The droid warbled again and fell into an expectant silence. Luke sighed and settled back into his seat, gazing out at the hills. Mara was a puzzle, but she was a puzzle that would have to wait. At the moment, his immediate future was focused on this cloning question.