Torvon was going to haul him into the line of the accident!
Just then, though, the groaning pipe burst. Too soon.
Gushing, infinitely cold vapors blasted Torvon’s legs, right where he’d been trying to pull Nien Nunb. The carbonite instantly froze the tall administrator’s joints, turning his lower legs into poles of solid ice. Torvon howled in shock and tried to move out of the way, but his feet were stuck to the floor. The tall man bent over, tugging at his feet, but his legs, like sticks of brittle kindling, shattered. Torvon fell face-first into the blast of ultrafrigid gas.
The carbonite did its work, even as the murderous administrator’s broken body fell, freezing his head and body core absolutely solid in the fraction of a second it took for him to tumble the remaining distance to the hard stone floor. When he struck the unyielding surface, Torvon smashed into a million glittering pieces. His hand still clutched Nien Nunb’s vest—not frozen, but no longer alive.
The Sullustan manager backed up to huddle in the cranny again, terrified but unhurt.
Alarms sounded. Lights flashed. Automatic systems sealed off the breached carbonite tube, preventing further loss of the precious freezing substance.
Within moments the air would clear, though Nien Nunb didn’t know if he would ever be able to drive away the chill in his heart. He had trusted Torvon—and Torvon had tried to kill him. Hadn’t he? Nien Nunb shook his head to clear it. He didn’t know what exactly had gone on here, and he doubted anyone else would give him the answers—but the Chief Administrator knew for certain that this was no mere accident.
Torvon had died, but the actual target must have been Nien Nunb himself.
5
When Anja headed for Kessel in the stolen Lightning Rod, it felt just like old times. She was flying in a ship as an independent pilot—just like the smuggler and expediter she had been for Czethros. She could take care of herself. She always had. Anja had her wits about her, and she had the antique lightsaber she had bought from a scavenger merchant in an illicit market on Ord Mantell. She didn’t need the Solo twins or their friends to solve her problems for her.
She could handle this.
As she came in to the Kessel system, she steered clear of the treacherous conglomeration of black holes known as the Maw Cluster, which had given rise to the classic challenge of the “Kessel Run.” Kessel itself, a small world not much bigger than a planetoid, was surrounded by a wispy white mane of atmosphere that leaked away into space like a comet’s tail.
The shattered moon, blasted apart by the prototype Death Star, had turned into countless obstacles in the sky, but Anja was confident in her piloting abilities. She locked onto the spaceport beacon, and the Lightning Rod cruised down through the atmosphere, banging and bouncing as it struck meteors too tiny to be marked on any hazard charts.
“Spaceport Control, this is an unlicensed trader,” she said into the comm system. “I wish to land for maintenance and services. I’m out of Ord Mantell and ran into some damage flying too close to the black holes out there.”
“You’re far from home, unlicensed trader,” said the attendant.
“Yeah, right. And I’m trying to get back there,” Anja replied. “Do you have a maintenance dock I could hire?”
“Follow this vector,” came the answer. Coordinates scrolled up on her screen. Anja smiled, followed the beacon to a contained cargo area at those coordinates, and approached the opening dome to land.
Anja felt the hunger screaming inside her more stridently than ever. Down beneath the white alkaline surface of Kessel, hidden in the rocks of this planet, was spice … spice for the taking. All she needed for now was one more dose just to help her get by. She only had to track down a sample, just a tiny amount. That would buy her more time in which to battle her addiction.
She hadn’t been lying to Jacen and Jaina Solo when she’d said she only took andris because she liked to. Just for kicks. She had believed that. Sometimes she did need spice, though. And the twins had made her realize, reluctantly, that she needed andris more than she had let herself believe.
Anja Gallandro did not like to depend on anyone or anything. She had to kick this habit, break her addiction … and she would start as soon as she formed a plan. After she got herself another dose to tide her over, she would be able to think more clearly.
But now that she was on Kessel, with the Lightning Rod settled into an unmarked berth inside the enclosed cargo bay, she didn’t know how to go about obtaining a new supply. Security would be tight. Although smugglers sometimes made a living from selling andris and glitterstim and ryll offworld, she couldn’t just step into the local mercantile and order a container for herself.
But she hoped there might be some people in the docking bays who had a tiny bit of skim they could sell from their cargo … under the table, of course.
She stepped out of the cooling Lightning Rod, looked around, and tossed her long hair behind her back. She still wore her skintight outfit from her smuggling days. The sleeveless shirt showed off her taut muscles and the piranha beetle tattoo on her arm. But Kessel was a cold world, and even here in the docking bay she felt a bite to the air. Shivering, she considered going back into the Lightning Rod to rummage through the supply compartments and find warmer clothes.
But then her eyes fixed on a familiar craft at the other side of the docking bay. She was puzzled for a moment. She’d seen the ship not long before. When a little grayish-skinned man with winglike eyebrows and a ridged scalp emerged, she put the pieces together instantly. She remembered this man and his ship.
Lilmit.
His craft was the Rude Awakening, a cargo hauler licensed out of Ord Mantell. Lilmit had been on his way from Ord Mantell to Anja’s homeworld of Anobis, hauling a load of black-market weapons. Those contraband tools of destruction were for sale to one of the sides fighting in the ongoing civil war that had devastated Anobis for decades. Worst of all, Lilmit was no mere gunrunner: he was an opportunist without a conscience. He had sold weapons to both sides in the conflict, making his profit by perpetuating the destruction, the misery, the bloodshed.
Han Solo had stopped Lilmit’s ship, using the Millennium Falcon to intimidate him. Together, Anja and the young Jedi Knights had boarded the Rude Awakening, discovered the weapons cache, and destroyed all the deadly items in an explosion in space. It was one of the few good things Han Solo had ever done, as far as Anja was concerned.
And now she had caught Lilmit here on Kessel, no doubt causing more problems.
Before she could stop herself, Anja sprinted across the enclosed cargo bay, her long legs carrying her rapidly in the low gravity. Lilmit looked up from tinkering in his open engine compartments. He saw her coming and either recognized her or instinctively drew back from the blazing fire in her large eyes. He raised his webbed hands and backed against the hull of his ship in surrender.
Anja was there, glaring down at him. “What are you doing here, little man? Procuring more weapons?”
“No, no!” the diminutive smuggler said, flapping his fingers. “There’s nothing in my cargo that would interest you. It has nothing to do with you—and Czethros would be very angry if you sabotaged me again.”
Czethros? Anja drew back. “What are you talking about?”