Pulling from the shoulder, he hauled himself closer to the window. The proton grenade teetered on the edge of the table as he slipped his fingers in through the open window, holding the shorting power cell against the frame just where the monofilament attached. A trickle of blood ran down his left wrist. Voices echoed above him. Someone was approaching the catwalk. He tried to push the power cell a little closer to the line. The hot smell of melting filament began to overpower the scent of peppers.
The voices came closer and clearer. The tinny voices of stormtroopers.
“Come on,” Han said. “Come on …”
Inside the apartment, the monofilament broke, floating down like a wisp of smoke. Han shoved the window open enough to slide through, cut the grapnel line, and haul himself over the sill. He lay on the apartment floor, curled around his protesting hand. The troopers’ voices didn’t rise in alarm. He sat up, trembling. The proton grenade showed ARMED. Gently, he pushed the switch back, and a second later the readout shifted to INACTIVE.
Across the air shaft, a small figure looked out the opposite window, long dark hair silhouetted against the light. Han waved and gestured. The child went to open her window, paused, and then followed through. Her eyes were wide.
“Lost my keycard,” he shouted across the shaft.
“Oh,” she said.
He grinned, nodded, and closed the blinds.
All the rooms were trapped in the same way. Simple, fast, efficient. Not foolproof by any means, but effective enough. There were still clothes in the bedroom. The food in the storage unit hadn’t gone bad. Scarlet Hark had been there, but she was gone, and there was no note saying where she’d gone.
He examined the bedroom, the bath, the dining area. All the small signs of occupancy, but nothing that helped. Scarlet Hark drank Surian tea. She solved math puzzles before she went to sleep. She ordered breakfast meals of eggs and roasted peppers from a nearby restaurant. Apart from the death traps on the windows and doors, she could have been anyone.
He’d been working all night. Somewhere high above where the city reached the sky, the sun would be coming up soon. Chewbacca was probably pacing the Falcon right now, wondering what had happened to him. Han sat at the table. His eyes felt as if someone had rubbed grit into them, and his wrists ached. The Imperial guard’s uniform was cheap and uncomfortable. Start to finish, it just hadn’t been his best day ever.
When he stretched his neck, the joints cracked. There had to be a way. There had to be something that would point him toward Hark. Or give her a way to find him. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands until blobs of false color danced before him. There had to be a way.
His stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since before the failed drop. The scent of yesterday’s roasted peppers started smelling almost good.
He frowned, sat forward. The recycling bin was half full of old tea and the wire remains of a robotic project. Greasy wrapping paper had an order—#29 PEPPERS & EGGS—printed on it with a comm code, the address of Hark’s apartment, and the minimalist logo of a Twi’lek female holding a plate of food. KAYI’S GRILL: BEST SANNOS PLATE IN THE EMPIRE! There was another wrapper underneath it from the day before. And another. She had a habit, then. It didn’t seem like it could matter, but something tugged at his mind.
He frowned at it for a moment. Why would it have her address on it? Then he knew. She’d had it delivered. And if she’d been getting it delivered here, she might be getting it delivered someplace else. Han smiled and tapped his fingertip against the words.
“I ordered a number twenty-nine,” the scruffy lieutenant said, slapping the back of his hand into his palm. “It was supposed to be delivered. And now I have to come all the way down here.”
Kayi leaned against the counter. She’d hardly been here two hours, and her feet already hurt. The man scowled at her. His black uniform looked like it had been slept in, and he had a day’s worth of stubble on his chin. She comforted herself with the idea that his superior officer would be chewing him out before lunchtime.
The breakfast rush was in full swing, aliens of half a dozen different species pushing and jockeying for a place to stand. None of the sharp-lined, high-official types were here. All of them had the tired expressions of workingbeings facing down another long day. The air was thick with aromatic grease and the voices of the three Twi’lek men, her husband and brothers, shouting obscenities from the kitchen.
“When did you order it?” Kayi asked.
“This morning,” the man said, waving his hand vaguely.
“A particular time this morning?” she asked, the two lekku that hung from the back of her head twitching in annoyance.
“Long enough,” he said. “Plenty long enough.”
“Let me check,” she said, with the best smile she could manage. She leaned back toward the kitchen and shouted in her own language, “Tai’mer! This nerf’s behind out here says he ordered a twenty-nine sent out.”
“It’s almost done,” her brother said.
“Why isn’t it out yet?”
Her brother leaned out of the kitchen, holding up the wrapping. “I printed up the order fifteen minutes ago, and we’re in the middle of the rush. That’s why not.”
A bronze-and-blue delivery droid zoomed past him, two Sannos Plates in its spiderlike silver arms, and flew out over the heads of the crowd. Kayi sighed and turned back to the lieutenant.
“The order must have been delayed, sir,” she said in Basic. “It’s almost done now. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.”
“It’s all right,” the man said. His smile was gentler now. He was almost good looking. “Just wrap it up when it’s ready, and I’ll take it.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I mean, I don’t want to be a nerf’s behind about the whole thing.”
Kayi blushed, but the man’s smile was so warm, his eyes so merry, she found herself smiling, too.
There were two beds in Scarlet Hark’s hired rooms. One, she’d slept in. The other had her equipment laid out in neat rows and columns. The magnetic grapnel. Three blasters, each from a different kind of material that could pass Imperial scanners. The false ID array. Her security countermeasure pack, each black-steel tool in place like the legs of a centipede. The data disks with the schedule and internal layout of the intelligence command offices, and the offices above and below them as well. Everything she needed was in place, except for one thing.
The door chimed. When she opened it, a man was standing there, her breakfast in his hand. He looked both exhausted and smug.
“Scarlet Hark,” he said, bowing ironically and presenting her meal like he’d done something clever. Her spine went stiff. An Imperial officer … only no.
“Aren’t you a little old for a delivery boy?”
“Depends what you want delivered,” he said. “Leia said you’d called for pickup.”
She accepted the wrapped package with a smile. “You’re late.”
IN PERSON, SCARLET HARK looked sharper than the stills in her profile. Sitting cross-legged on the unmade bed, she unwrapped her meal with an economy of motion that gave the slant of her eyebrows and the half smile on her lips a sense of purpose and professionalism. The smell of spiced egg filled the room, reminding Han that he was still hungry. Ignoring the feeling, he stepped over to take another look at the equipment arrayed on the spare bed. Some of the items laid out there he didn’t recognize, but he was pretty sure that if a real Imperial security officer had stepped into the room, it would have meant a firing squad for everyone in a half-kilometer radius, just for the sake of completeness.
Scarlet Hark sighed. Her finger was on the take-out wrapper where her address was listed.
“I should have thought of that,” she said. “I’ve been in the field too long. Getting sloppy.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Han said.
A secretary droid with a blue metal casing stepped out of the closet.
“CZ, this is my ride out of here. R
ide out of here, this is CZ-Thirty-Three.”
“The pleasure is mine,” the droid said in a deep, rolling voice.
“Certainly is,” Han said, and then turned his attention back to Scarlet. “The name’s Solo. Han Solo. Might have heard of me.”
“Might have,” Scarlet said, the corners of her lips pulling out another millimeter. “In my line of work, that’s not necessarily a good thing.”
“Well, the sooner we get you out of here, the sooner that stops being a problem. Why don’t you pack up your toy box here, and we can get to the dock. Chewie should be ready for us.”
Scarlet sighed and leaned back against her pillows. “There’s a problem with that. There’s something we need to do first.”
Han shook his head. “No, there isn’t. You called us for a ship out of here. Ship’s here. It’s time to go.”
“True enough,” she said around a mouthful of eggs. “But that means it’s time to do the work I couldn’t do when I didn’t have a way out. Do you want some of this? You keep looking at it.”
“Since you’re offering,” Han said.
Scarlet Hark ripped the take-out package in two and put a portion of the meal on one half, talking as she did.
“Have you ever heard of Essio Galassian?”
“No. Why? Is he important?”
Scarlet nodded to the droid. “CZ? Do the honors?”
A holoprojector emerged from the droid’s left eye, and tiny figures appeared above the bed. One was a man with an athlete’s build and flowing shoulder-length hair. He was screaming at an older man who was cowering before him. As Han watched, two floating droids the size of two balled human fists followed the long-haired man’s sweeping gestures, slamming into the older man’s ribs and the side of his head. The older man went down, face and knees slack.
“That’s him with the sparring floaters,” Scarlet said.
“Seems charming,” Han said. “I’m guessing not your old boyfriend.”
“He’s the Emperor’s pet astrocartographer. Runs private missions for the highest ranks of the Empire. Answers to no one, but sometimes he shares information with the security services. He’s also a megalomaniac, a fanatic, and a murderer.”
CZ turned off the hologram and Galassian vanished. Han accepted the rough paper with its load of egg and pepper. It was still warm, and the smell made his stomach feel empty and eager. He scooped up a mouthful with two fingers. It tasted better than he’d expected.
“I’ve been infiltrating his operations for the last year and a half,” Scarlet went on. “He was on an exploratory mission of some sort. Very quiet. And when he showed back up, he was very, very pleased with himself. The rumor was he’d found something interesting. The sort of discovery that the Emperor would give his favorite pet a treat for. Only someone stole the report and all the preliminary data from his private station on Tyybann, and wiped his file system.”
“Someone being you,” Han said.
“Unfortunately, no,” Scarlet Hark said. “An amateur got lucky. No planning ahead of the heist, and no back end once it was over. Galassian figured out he’d been compromised almost at once, and he threw a fit. Had his entire household staff killed or wiped and reprogrammed.”
“Harsh,” Han said, sitting on the edge of her bed.
“CZ and I were in his household staff at the time,” Scarlet Hark said. “So, yes. It was unpleasant. I was three days from getting a covert copy of his whole records system, and he would never have known it happened. Instead, I wound up tracking through an ice jungle for three weeks, breathing stale air out of tubes and drinking recycled water.”
“Recycled water doesn’t sound good,” Han said.
“It was undignified.”
“Still very sorry about that, ma’am,” the droid said.
“But,” Scarlet went on, “it also gave me enough time below Galassian’s radar that when I made it back to a civilized port, he’d moved on. Taken his personal Star Destroyer and headed out … somewhere. There was a full investigation going, trying to track down what had happened to the data.” She finished the last of her eggs and crumpled the paper in her fist. “Security had a task force on it for a month and a half. They must have pulled in a hundred people for interrogation, and probably three-quarters of those came back out in enough pieces that they could get sewn back together.” She tossed the wadded paper across the room, and the droid plucked it out of the air.
“Did they find anything?” Han asked despite himself.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Don’t know,” Scarlet said with a sunny smile. “Whatever it was, it has half the Imperial fleet getting pulled off missions and the security services scrambling like a kikka nest on fire.”
“Can I take that for you, sir?” the droid asked, extending its hand. Han put the torn paper with its eggy film into the blue metal palm, still chewing thoughtfully.
“What did this astrocartographer find in the first place?” he asked.
“Good question. That’s what I was trying to find out. Only the amateur got it sloppy before I could get it clean.”
“Well, did the Imperials get whatever it was back, or did they just find out who stole it?”
Scarlet lifted her hands. “Dunno.”
Han scratched the back of his neck. “Well, that’s …”
“It really is. The good part is that the security forces’ complete and final report on the theft is about ten minutes from here by hired flier. Maybe an hour on foot. Losing that data has the security forces throwing a quiet seizure, and everything they know is right there for the taking.”
Han smirked. “Unless another bunch of amateurs gets to it before you.”
“Not likely. It’s on a physically isolated deck in the Imperial Intelligence Service Center. It’s encrypted with Galassian’s personal cipher. And they have a constant audit routine that sounds the alarm if anyone so much as makes a copy.”
“Well, that’s too bad then, sister,” Han said. “Because I wasn’t hired on to have the security service blow my brains out. I was supposed to get in, get you, and get out. And that’s what I plan to do.”
“Well then, sister, you’ll have to wait until I’m done. I’ve spent too long on this to walk away.”
“Brother. If I call you sister, you call me brother, see, because—”
“CZ? Let’s see the layout.”
“Of course, ma’am,” the droid said, and five layers of architectural schematics appeared floating above the sheets. The lines glowed in crisp blue. Scarlet reached into the display. “The first problem is getting into the building at all. The intelligence services control the eightieth and eighty-first floors, but there are access ways on seventy and seventy-three. No one gets into the complex without authorization.”
“Which you don’t have,” Han said. Scarlet pulled a card from her pocket and tossed it through the projection to him. Her face looked out from identification for Choya Sebastiao, environmental technician third class. “I was thinking I’d make you my apprentice, but if you’re the guard acting as escort, that’s probably better. CZ? Can we arrange that?”
“The card is already being programmed, ma’am. I took the liberty of capturing sir’s image when he arrived.”
“Spiffy.”
“Hey!” Han said.
“Once we’re in, we make our way here,” Scarlet said, tracing her finger through the tiny, glowing corridors. A pathway of soft green followed where she traced. “It’s the probe and sensor encoding regulatory council annex. Still part of the intelligence services, but lower security. We’ll need to watch for security droids here and here.” Two blobs of dull orange appeared in the schematic. “And there are regular patrols that take this path. And this.” Two orange pathways appeared, intersecting the green. Tiny orange dots tracked along them, marking the positions of the guards in time.
“This is a terrible plan,” Han said.
“There’s a cable conduit access here.” The green pathwa
y wormed up through the floors. “It carries the main trunk cables from the transmission towers on the roof to the processing levels down in the forties. Bad place to slip and fall, but it’ll get us up to the intelligence service center. We’ll need to cut our way through.”
“Because no one will notice that.”
“I have decking tape,” she said. “I’ve got a high-strength grapnel line that will get us up the vertical parts, and that will get us here.” A tiny point of brilliant red appeared on the map, very close to the end of the green pathway.
“Where everything will be open and easy, and no one will get hurt,” Han said.
“Where I can use the passcodes and identity records I got while I was working with Galassian to get access and drop a copy of the report to a memory chip.” Scarlet’s mouth twisted into a tiny smile that was as much regret as amusement. Han looked at the little crimson dot, but the glow didn’t give him anything that would explain her expression.
“All right,” he said. “And then what?”
“And then every alarm on the planet goes off, and we leave very, very quickly.”
“Let’s go back to my last points, which were ‘terrible plan’ and ‘not going to happen.’ ”
“This is the part where things are a little more problematic,” she said. “I haven’t been able to get a full breakdown of the intelligence service emergency intrusion protocols. But we’ll have the advantage of knowing that it’s going to happen. No one will expect that anybody would attempt to breach physical security like this—”
“You know there’s a reason they wouldn’t expect that, right?”
“—but this is why I needed to wait until I had a way off planet that could go immediately. There is going to be a gap when people are confused and scrambling. If we’re not in hyperspace before they restore order, we’re screwed.”
Han waved his arms through the hologram, and CZ let the image fade.
“We’re in the Galactic Core and we’re working for the Rebellion,” Han said. “In most contexts, that’s screwed enough right there. I can get you out of here right now, but that’s because I’m the best pilot there is. If we light up the security arrays before we even get to the ship—”