They slid the door open and went in, closing it behind them before turning on the light. The shed was less than half full, with most of the boxes piled against the right-hand wall. The exceptions to that rule …
Han stepped over for a closer look. “Well, well,” he murmured, gazing at the removed power outlet plate and the wires poking through the gap. “Someone’s been busy over here.”
“Someone’s been even busier over here,” Lando commented from behind him. “Come have a look.”
Lando was crouched down beside the door, peering into the inside of the door lock mechanism. Like the outside, half of its covering plate had been blasted off. “That must have been one beaut of a shot,” Han frowned, coming over.
“It wasn’t a single shot,” Lando said, shaking his head. “The stuff in between is mostly intact.” He pushed back the cover a little, poking at the electronics inside with his fingers. “Looks like our mysterious prisoner was tampering with the equipment.”
“I wonder how he got it open.” Han glanced back at the removed power plate. “I’m going to take a look next door,” he told Lando, stepping back to the entrance and tapping the release.
The door didn’t open. “Uh-oh,” he muttered, trying again.
“Wait a second—I see the problem,” Lando said, fiddling with something behind the plate. “There’s a power supply been half spliced into the works …”
Abruptly, the door slid open. “Back in a second,” Han told him, and slipped outside.
The shed’s right-hand room wasn’t much different from the other one. Except for one thing: in the center, in a space that had very obviously been cleared for the purpose, lay an open droid restraint collar.
Han frowned down at it. The collar hadn’t been properly put away, or even closed again—hardly the way someone in an organization like Karrde’s would be expected to take care of company equipment. Roughly in the center of the collar’s open jaws were three faint marks on the floor. Skid marks, he decided, formed by the restrained droid’s attempts to move or get free.
Behind him, the door whispered open. Han spun around, blaster in hand—
“You seem to have gotten lost,” Karrde said calmly. His eyes flicked around the room. “And to have lost General Calrissian along the way.”
Han lowered the blaster. “You need to tell your people to put their toys away when they’re done,” he said, nodding his head at the abandoned restraint collar. “You were holding a droid prisoner, too?”
Karrde smiled thinly. “I see Ghent was talking out of turn again. Amazing, isn’t it, how so many expert slicers know everything about computers and droids and yet don’t know when to keep their mouths shut.”
“It’s also amazing how so many expert smugglers don’t know when to leave a messy deal alone,” Han shot back. “So what’s your Grand Admiral got you doing? Formal slaving, or just random kidnappings?”
Karrde’s eyes flashed. “I don’t deal in slaves, Solo. Slaves or kidnapping. Never.”
“What was this one, then? An accident?”
“I didn’t ask for him to come into my life,” Karrde countered. “Nor did I especially want him there.”
Han snorted. “You’re stretching, Karrde. What’d he do, drop in out of the sky on top of you?”
“As a matter of fact, that’s very nearly the way it happened,” Karrde said stiffly.
“Oh, well, that’s a good reason to lock someone up,” Han said sardonically. “Who was he?”
“That information’s not for sale.”
“Maybe we don’t need to buy it,” Lando said from behind him.
Karrde turned. “Ah,” he said as Lando stepped past him into the room. “There you are. Exploring the other half of the shed, were you?”
“Yeah, we don’t stay lost very long,” Han assured him. “What’d you find, Lando?”
“This.” Lando held up a tiny red cylinder with a pair of wires coming out of each end. “It’s a micrel power supply—the kind used for low-draw applications. Our prisoner wired it into the door lock control after the power lines had been burned away—that’s how he got out.” He moved it a little closer. “The manufacturer’s logo is small, but readable. Recognize it?”
Han squinted at it. The script was alien, but it seemed vaguely familiar. “I’ve seen it before, but I don’t remember where.”
“You saw it during the war,” Lando told him, his gaze steady on Karrde. “It’s the logo of the Sibha Habadeet.”
Han stared at the tiny cylinder, a strange chill running through him. The Sibha Habadeet had been one of the Alliance’s major suppliers of micrel equipment. And their specialty had been—“That’s a bioelectronic power supply?”
“That’s right,” Lando said grimly. “Just like the kind that would have been put in, say, an artificial hand.”
Slowly, the muzzle of Han’s blaster came up again to point at Karrde’s stomach. “There was a droid in here,” he told Lando. “The skid marks on the floor look just about right for an R2 unit.” He raised his eyebrows. “Feel free to join the conversation anytime, Karrde.”
Karrde sighed, his face a mixture of annoyance and resignation. “What do you want me to say?—that Luke Skywalker was a prisoner here? All right—consider it said.”
Han felt his jaw tighten. And he and Lando had been right here. Blissfully unaware … “Where is he now?” he demanded.
“I thought Ghent would have told you,” Karrde said darkly. “He escaped in one of my Skipray blastboats.” His lips twisted. “Crashing it in the process.”
“He what?”
“He’s all right,” Karrde assured him. “Or at least he was a couple of hours ago. The stormtroopers who went to investigate said that both wrecks were deserted.” His eyes seemed to flatten, just for a minute. “I hope that means they’re working together to make their way out.”
“You don’t sound sure of that,” Han prompted.
The eyes flattened a little more. “Mara Jade was the one who went after him. She has a certain—well, why mince words. In point of fact, she wants very much to kill him.”
Han threw a startled glance at Lando. “Why?”
Karrde shook his head. “I don’t know.”
For a moment the room was silent. “How did he get here?” Lando asked.
“As I said, purely by accident,” Karrde said. “No—I take that back. It wasn’t an accident for Mara—she led us directly to his crippled starfighter.”
“How?”
“Again, I don’t know.” He fixed Han with a hard look. “And before you ask, we had nothing to do with the damage to his ship. He’d burned out both hyperdrive motivators tangling with one of the Empire’s Star Destroyers. If we hadn’t picked him up, he’d almost certainly be dead by now.”
“Instead of roaming a forest with someone who still wants him that way,” Han countered. “Yeah, you’re a real hero.”
The hard look hardened even further. “The Imperials want Skywalker, Solo. They want him very badly. If you look carefully, you’ll notice that I didn’t give him to them.”
“Because he escaped first.”
“He escaped because he was in this shed,” Karrde retorted. “And he was in this shed because I didn’t want the Imperials stumbling over him during their unannounced visit.”
He paused. “You’ll also notice,” he added quietly, “that I didn’t turn the two of you over to them, either.”
Slowly, Han lowered the blaster. Anything said at the point of a gun was of course suspect; but the fact that Karrde had indeed not betrayed them to the Imperials was a strong argument in his favor.
Or rather, he hadn’t betrayed them yet. That could always change. “I want to see Luke’s X-wing,” he told Karrde.
“Certainly,” Karrde said. “I’d recommend not going there until tomorrow morning, though. We moved it somewhat farther into the forest than your ship; and there will be predators roaming around it in the darkness.”