“I wasn’t planning for you to,” Karrde assured her. “I’d like you here when I greet them, and possibly to join us for dinner, as well. Other than that, you’re excused from all social activities.”
“So they’re staying the day?”
“And possibly the night, as well.” He eyed her. “Requirements of a proper host aside, can you think of a better way for us to prove to the Republic, should the need arise, that Skywalker was never here?”
It made sense. But that didn’t mean she had to like it. “Are you warning the rest of the Wild Karrde’s crew to keep quiet?”
“I’m doing better than that,” Karrde said, nodding back toward the comm equipment. “I’ve sent everyone who knows about Skywalker off to get the Starry Ice prepped. Which reminds me—after you move Skywalker, I want you to run his X-wing farther back under the trees. No more than half a kilometer—I don’t want you to go through any more of the forest alone than you have to. Can you fly an X-wing?”
“I can fly anything.”
“Good,” he said, smiling slightly. “You’d better be off, then. The Millennium Falcon will be landing in less than twenty minutes.”
Mara took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. Turning, she left the room.
The compound was empty as she walked across it to the barracks building. By Karrde’s design, undoubtedly; he must have shifted people around to inside duties to give her a clear path for taking Skywalker to the storage shed. Reaching his room, she keyed off the lock and slid open the door.
He was standing by the window, dressed in that same black tunic, pants, and high boots that he’d worn that day at Jabba’s palace.
That day she’d stood silently by and watched … and let him destroy her life.
“Get your case and let’s go,” she growled, gesturing with the blaster. “It’s moving day.”
His eyes stayed on her as he stepped over to the bed. Not on the blaster in her hand, but on her face. “Karrde’s made a decision?” he asked calmly as he picked up the case.
For a long moment she was tempted to tell him that, no, this was on her own initiative, just to see if the implications would crack that maddening Jedi serenity. But even a Jedi would probably fight if he thought he was going to his death, and they were on a tight enough schedule as it was. “You’re moving to one of the storage sheds,” she told him. “We’ve got company coming, and we don’t have any formal wear your size. Come on, move.”
She walked him past the central building to the number four shed, a two-room structure tucked conveniently back out of the compound’s major traffic patterns. The room on the left, normally used for sensitive or dangerous equipment, was also the only one of the storage areas with a lock, undoubtedly the reason Karrde had chosen it to serve the role of impromptu prison. Keeping one eye on Skywalker, she keyed open the lock, wondering as she did so whether Karrde had had time to disable the inside mechanism. A quick look as the door slid open showed that he hadn’t.
Well, that could easily be corrected. “In here,” she ordered, flicking on the inside light and gesturing for him to enter.
He complied. “Looks cozy,” he said, glancing around the windowless room and the piled shipping boxes that took up perhaps half the floor space to the right. “Probably quiet, too.”
“Ideal for Jedi meditation,” she countered, stepping over to an open box marked Blasting Disks and taking a look inside. No problem; it was being used for spare coveralls at the moment. She gave the rest of the box markings a quick check, confirmed that there was nothing here he could possibly use to escape. “We’ll get a cot or something in for you later,” she said, moving back to the door. “Food, too.”
“I’m all right for now.”
“Ask me if I care.” The inner lock mechanism was behind a thin metal plate. Two shots from her blaster unsealed one end of the plate and curled it back; a third vaporized a selected group of wires. “Enjoy the quiet,” she said, and left.
The door closed behind her, and locked … and Luke was once again alone.
He looked around him. Piled boxes, no windows, a single locked door. “I’ve been in worse places,” he muttered under his breath. “At least there’s no Rancor here.”
For a moment he frowned at the odd thought, wondering why the Rancor pit at Jabba’s palace should suddenly have flashed to mind. But he gave it only a moment. The lack of proper preparation and facilities in his new prison strongly suggested that moving him here had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, possibly precipitated by the imminent arrival of whoever the visitors were Mara had mentioned.
And if so, there was a good possibility that somewhere in the mad scramble they might finally have made a mistake.
He went over to the door, easing the still-warm metal plate a little farther back and kneeling down to peer inside at the lock mechanism. Han had spent a few idle hours once trying to teach him the finer points of hot-wiring locks, and if Mara’s shot hadn’t damaged it too badly, there was a chance he might be able to persuade it to disengage.
It didn’t look promising. Whether by design or accident, Mara’s shot had taken out the wires to the inside control’s power supply, vaporizing them all the way back into the wall conduit, where there was no chance at all of getting hold of them.
But if he could find another power supply …
He got to his feet again, brushed off his knees, and headed over to the neatly piled boxes. Mara had glanced at their labels, but she’d actually looked inside only one of them. Perhaps a more complete search would turn up something useful.
The search, unfortunately, took even less time than his examination of the ruined lock. Most of the boxes were sealed beyond his capability to open without tools, and the handful that weren’t held such innocuous items as clothing or replacement equipment modules.
All right, then, he told himself, sitting down on the edge of one of the boxes and looking around for inspiration. I can’t use the door. There aren’t any windows. But there was another room in this shed—he’d seen the other door while Mara was opening this one. Perhaps there was some kind of half-height doorway or crawl space between them, hidden out of sight behind the stacked boxes.
It wasn’t likely, of course, that Mara would have missed anything that obvious. But he had time, and nothing else to occupy it. Getting up from his seat, he began unstacking the boxes and moving them away from the wall.
He’d barely begun when he found it. Not a doorway, but something almost as good: a multisocket power outlet, set into the wall just above the baseboard.
Karrde and Mara had made their mistake.1
The metal doorplate, already stressed by the blaster fire Mara had used to peel it back, was relatively easy to bend. Luke kept at it, bending it back and forth, until a roughly triangular piece broke off in his hand. It was too soft to be of any use against the sealed equipment boxes, but it would probably be adequate for unscrewing the cover of a common power outlet.
He returned to the outlet and lay down in the narrow gap between wall and boxes. He was just trying to wedge his makeshift screwdriver against the first screw when he heard a quiet beep.
He froze, listening. The beep came again, followed by a series of equally soft warbles. Warbles that sounded very familiar … “Artoo?” he called softly. “Is that you?”
For a pair of heartbeats there was silence from the other room. Then, abruptly, the wall erupted with a minor explosion of electronic jabbering. Artoo, without a doubt. “Steady, Artoo,” Luke called back. “I’m going to try and get this power outlet open. There’s probably one on your side, too—can you get it open?”