Star Wars - And Leebo Makes Three Read online

  Star Wars

  “And Leebo Makes Three”

  by

  Michael Reaves and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  The Rodian glanced around The Nexu’s Den as if looking for someone he desperately hoped not to see. Sitting across from him at the dimly lit corner table in the seedy port bar, Dash Rendar absently wondered why he even bothered trying to see - the air was a bilious pall of deathstick smoke and other inhalants, all designed to make the present more interesting and the future less attainable. His lungs protested in spite of his shallow breathing.

  Aside from the smoke, the place smelled like stale droid lube and fermented fruit. He’d been in worse. It didn’t seem anything to be particularly proud of at the moment.

  His Nautolan partner, Eaden Vrill, endured it the way he endured everything - with silent stoicism. Nautolans as a species tended to be unemotional. Add to that Eaden’s few decades of training in the teras kasi martial arts discipline, and the result was a very inscrutable alien. They’d been working together for over four months, and Dash still found it hard to fathom what was going on much of the time behind the amphibian’s large, maroon eyes.

  “Awright, look,” Kood Gareeda said at last, his vocal organs giving the Basic a whistling, rubbery sound that made comprehension dicey. Once again, Dash marveled at the alien’s choice of occupations. Stand-up comedy was hardly the best choice for someone whose sibilants and fricatives all sounded alike. Not that most audiences stayed around long enough to be annoyed by this. Put bluntly, Darth Vader probably did better shtick. But concern about Gareeda’s financial future would have to take a back seat to concern about their own. As far as Dash was concerned, it was all over but the counting. He doubted that Eaden wanted to spend the money, but a mech-of-all-trades would be useful aboard the Outrider.

  “Remind me again what he’s programmed for,” Dash prompted the Rodian. He’d swear the guy was sweating, and Rodians didn’t even have sweat glands.

  Gareeda ticked off the droid’s features on his scaly digits. “Navigation, piloting, and weapons, as well as da usual repair capabilities standard in da LE series.”

  “And you’re selling him because….?”

  Another glance at the door, “‘cause I was misinformed. I was told his safety protocols been hacked. Dey lied ta me.” The Rodian glowered at the dormant droid. “He’s a mopak bodyguard. He’ll shoot at sentients, but he won’t hit ‘em. What good’s dat?”

  A heavy thump from the door’s direction once again drew the Rodian’s attention. Dash decided it was time to wrap up this palaver.

  Comedian or no, Gareeda’s behavior suggested he was expecting something decidedly unfunny to happen at any second. It was even making Eaden jinky, judging from how the heavy cilia on his head twitched whenever Gareeda’s nervous gaze swept past the entrance.

  Besides, if the Rodian was under some sort of time pressure, that could only work to their advantage. “Fifteen hundred,” Dash offered.

  He got a baleful look from Gareeda’s black, insectile orbs. The comic’s fleshy proboscis worked angrily for a moment. Then-

  “Fine. Gimme da creds. I gotta get off dis rock.”

  “Well, if you need a boost off world, we can offer that, too.”

  The Rodian’s bulbous eyes seemed to protrude even further. “No, no. I, ah, I c’n find ‘nother passage….”

  “You don’t need to. You got us. Ten hundred - and a lift.”

  Gareeda made a slurping sound that approximated a human’s gnashing of teeth, then stuck out a scaly hand. “Fine. Done. How soon d’you - we - space?”

  Dash, suppressing a grin, handed over a one thousand credit note. “One hour. Dock Eighty-Four Twelve. Mid-Town facility.”

  Gareeda nodded and stood up to leave. Eaden halted him. “It’s got a restraining bolt installed. What’s wrong with it?”

  The sharp, bitter odor of rank fear again pervaded the air. “Nuttin’. Jus’ wanted ta make sure it didn’t….wander off, dat’s all.”

  “Great!” said Dash. “Let’s fire it up.”

  The Rodian looked like he might cry. Dash had never seen such a sight; in fact, he wasn’t even sure if Rodians could cry. “Look, if I’m gonna make it t’your ship inna hour, I gotta get my gear.”

  He was so obviously desperate that Dash gestured for him to be gone; there was no fun in torturing someone in such dire straits.

  Gareeda fled like a mynock out of Mustafar. He didn’t use the front entrance; he headed out the back.

  “Well,” said Eaden, “there he goes. Leaving us a thousand credits lighter with what’s probably an inert piece of junk.”

  “At that price, who cares? Even if it doesn’t work, the chassis alone is worth half again as much.” He flipped the droid’s master switch, and was pleased to see its photoreceptors light up.

  “Optic circuitry works,” Eaden said. He addressed the droid. “Are you functional?”

  “Who’s asking?” the droid replied tartly, then scanned the noisy, smoky chamber. “What’s wrong with this reality? Where’s my boss?”

  Dash rolled his eyes. Wonderful. The Rodian had given the droid a personality substrate. Fairly easy to embed, and almost impossible to remove, because the more it interfaced with those around it, the more ingrained the substrate became. It was probably almost firmware by now.

  Well, nothing to be done about it. “Your boss took off.”

  The droid’s optics fluttered. “He…. left me?”

  “Sold you. Took a thou of my hard-earned

  “One thousand? I’m worth five times that!”

  The droid’s voice carried such indignity that Dash grinned in spite of the situation. “Got a pretty good opinion of yourself.”

  “Believe me, you don’t want to know my opinion of you.”

  Before Dash could reply, the bar’s front door slammed open. Four beings entered. Two were large, brutal-looking humans, followed by a Barabel. The last was a Trandoshan. They looked exactly like what they undoubtedly were: trouble. One of the humans zeroed in on Dash’s table and pointed. The others looked. Then, all four moved with a purpose - right at them.

  Eaden stood. Cracked his knuckles.

  Dash turned to the droid. “What do you call yourself?”

  “None of your business. I-”

  “Stow it. Emergency nomenclature override. New name: Leebo.”

  “Integrating data. New name: Leebo.”

  “Okay, Leebo, let’s move back. We don’t want to get hit by flying thugs.”

  * * *

  As Eaden had anticipated, Kood Gareeda was a no-show; they lifted off without him. No sooner were they clear of the planet’s gravity well and entering deep space than they were hailed.

  “Heave to,” came a raspy voice over the comm, speaking Shyriiwook, Dash noticed with surprise.

  “Says who?” he asked.

  “Says Kravengash, business associate of Hox Bilan.”

  Dash blinked at the comm. Neither of the names meant anything to him, but the phrase “business associate” did. It meant “Trouble” with a capital Blaster. This far Rimward the ubiquitous crime syndicate Black Sun was little more than a name; even so, it was still a name that inspired caution. Even the Empire stepped lightly around the interplanetary criminal organization. Dash had run afoul of them more than once and he hated them with a passion; an emotion many rank-and-file criminals heartily echoed, although Dash’s loathing went quite a bit deeper. He didn’t have time to dwell on that now, though.

  Out here in the Deep it was the dream, he’d heard, of most small-time organleggers, spice runners, and purveyors of other ill-gotten merchandise, to som
eday pull off something of such audacious criminality as to become noticed by the galactic underlords of crime - to become a “made sentient,” as it were.

  Dash gritted his teeth. He’d thought - hoped - that by heading this far out he’d finally be rid of that whole noxious crew of cutthroats, at least for awhile. That maybe he could at least let some memories settle before going back to the more “civilized” center.

  Apparently not.

  “It would seem that we now know why Kood Gareeda was so anxious to consummate his deal with us,” Eaden said mildly.

  “You think?” Dash flipped the comm off. “Time to go. Stand by for lightspeed.”

  But the Wookiee was impatient; he started blasting before they could make the jump. Charged-particle beams sizzled past them, close enough to burn paint.

  Dash canted the ship to port, but not fast enough - a beam splashed against the rear deflectors, rocking the Outrider and jolting her crew. A sizzle of sparks erupted from the console.

  Eaden looked at Dash. “Hyperdrive is-”

  “Offline again, yeah, I noticed.” He hit the thrusters, pulled the ship into a tight parabola and started looking for cover. There was nothing save the flat blackness of space, with a few stars twinkling….

  Very few, he realized.

  Somewhere close by was a light source big enough to wash out the starlight. Dash looked at the mass indicator and quickly homed in on the source - a huge gas giant, over 200,000 kilometers in diameter. He didn’t stop to think. He slewed the ship to port and up.

  “I need calculations, Leebo! Plot a slingshot orbit around that gas giant. If we can get enough speed, we can kick-start the hyperdrive.”

  “Just what makes you think I can do that?” Leebo asked. “And if by some chance I could, hull integrity would be at risk, and-”

  “Getting shot by that gunship will risk hull integrity a lot more, bolthead! Gareeda said orbital navigation was part of your package. So get me those numbers or I start ejecting mass - and guess what’s first out the airlock?”

  “Your point is persuasive,” Leebo said. A moment later, the droid rattled off a complex calculation.

  “Implement,” Dash said tersely to Eaden.

  “No time to check the sequence,” Eaden objected.

  “If he’s off by so much as a decimal point-”

  “Just do it!”

  The Wookiee’s cruiser hung close behind them as if tethered by a tractor beam as Dash plunged the Outrider into the far reaches of the huge planet’s atmosphere.

  Behind him, Leebo rattled off coordinates, velocities, and vectors.

  “Optimum perigee in twelve-point-nine-seconds….increase thrust by point eighty-one….ninety-seven degrees vertical, thirty-seven degrees starboard roll on my mark,” the droid said. “Four…. three…. two…. one - now!”

  Eaden made the corrections while Dash engaged the thrusters. TheOutrider shot out of the gas giant’s gravity well like a laser lancing off a durasteel mirror and rocketed into vacuum - close enough to the cruiser that they could see their distorted reflection in its fuselage.

  “All right!” Dash yelled. The ship vibrated from the combination of speed, gravity, and the thrust of her own engines. It rattled his teeth, but the hull held together.

  “We have hyperdrive,” Eaden said, his eyes on the instruments.

  “Fire ‘em up. Let’s ditch this system.”

  The cruiser was turning, but there was no way it could complete the maneuver in time. Eaden threw Outrider into hyperspace. The stars blurred, and a moment later they winked out of normal space.

  “My previous master wouldn’t have yelled at me,” Leebo pouted.

  When Dash glared at him, his temper slowly building, the droid added, “I’m just sayin’….”

  Eaden cleared his throat.

  Dash swung about, “What?”

  “It appears that we lost Kravengash,” the Nautolan said, his voice maddeningly mild.

  “Yeah?” Dash tripped both scanners, close-and long-range. No hyperdrive signatures detected. “Still think Leebo was a bad investment? If he hadn’t been here, we’d be plasma.”

  Eaden didn’t say anything.

  “What, too stubborn to admit you were wrong?”

  “Not at all. I was merely wondering what this Hox Bilan fellow wanted with us.”

  Dash shrugged.

  “Where are you going with this?”

  “Back to the cantina, where those four thugs were obviously looking for something they thought we had.”

  Dash turned to look at the droid. He didn’t like where this was headed. “They might have had a perfectly legit reason-”

  “And I suppose it’s a coincidence that Kood Gareeda is not on this vessel, though he desperately wanted to flee Rodia. And also that a local crime boss tried to stop us as soon as we lifted.”

  Dash blinked. Yeah. It didn’t take an astrophysicist to plot that course intersection. “Put it on autopilot. You and I and Leebo are gonna go down to the common room for a little talk….”

  * * *

  “He sold me. I still can’t believe it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, we’ve established that. Moving on. Why would this Hox Bilan be looking for you? Seriously enough to send muscle and a cruiser?”

  “Not a clue. I’ve done nothing to justify such action…that I recall.”

  “What about Gareeda? He do anything?”

  “Other than irritating audiences by being painfully unfunny?” The droid rattled its shoulders in a shrug. “Although probably he wasn’t bad enough to score a deathmark from a career criminal. Probably not.”

  “I’m curious,” Eaden said. “Why are you so fond of him?”

  Leebo hesitated. “He programmed me to like him.”

  Dash laughed. “That’s funny.”

  “Your face is funny.” Leebo’s tone was decidedly sulky.

  Eaden had been studying the droid, intently. Now he said, “That restraining bolt’s pulling too much power.”

  Dash looked at him. “And you know this how?”

  “I once worked security in a droid factory on Coruscant. That is not a standard design.”

  “Get a wrench and let’s have a look.”

  Eaden removed the bolt. When he turned it over, a short, thin rod fell onto the table. “Hmm. That appears to be a micro-datastick.”

  Dash picked up the tiny device, which was as long as his thumbnail and one-eighth as wide. He looked at Leebo. “Got a reader slot?”

  “Of course.” Leebo took the proffered datastick and pressed it into the tip of one finger. There was a short pause. “It’s encrypted.”

  Of course it is. “Can you break the code?” Dash asked.

  “Eventually.”

  Dash swore softly. He’d bet the Outrider and everything on her that the datastick belonged to Bilan and that the criminal wanted it back. A lot.

  This was bad…but maybe not all bad. Maybe they could swing a deal. If they could convince Kravengash they neither knew nor cared what was on the datastick….

  Hey, we acquired this by mistake, don’t know what it is, don’t care, happy to give it back, and if you want to, you know, give us a little something for our trouble, we’re okay with that, too.

  That these crooks were more of the penny-ante nature could actually work in their favor. Most of them were little more sophisticated than space pirates. Surely he could smooth-talk his way out of their bad graces.

  Could be worse…

  * * *

  An hour later, Leebo came into the cockpit. “I’ve decoded the datastick.”’

  Dash said, “And….?”

  “It’s a list of Black Sun Vigos in the Third Quadrant, along with data records of their transactions for the last six months, profits and losses, along with names of those on their payrolls - including police, military, judges, and politicians.”

  Dash stared, speechless. “All that….?”

  “For starters.”

  Okay, it couldn’t be worse.<
br />
  “Let’s pretend we didn’t hear this.” He looked at Leebo. “And you forget you know it.”

  “Kind of hard without scrubbing my memory.”

  Dash felt like his scalp had been given a knuckle burn by a wampa.

  He was quite literally stunned, speechless. “How - how did -”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Eaden said.

  Dash stared at him.

  “Most likely the Rodian needed cash and agreed to ferry - or let Leebo ferry - the data.” He looked at the droid. “Did you have any idea of the stick’s ultimate destination?”

  “Sorry. My boss was fond of the phrase ‘Need to know.’”

  Eaden stated the obvious: “Knowledge of this makes us a danger to both Black Sun and the Empire. The Imperials would move planets to get this data. With it they could wipe out a major portion of the criminal organization in the Third Quadrant. Black Sun wants this, obviously, and anybody who might have learned what it was will be vaporized.”

  Dash looked at the droid. “There’s probably a transponder of some sort in the datastick. That’s how they tracked you.”

  “Oh, I feel so loved. Can’t we eject it into space and let them find it?”

  “They could tell it’s been decoded, and we don’t want that,” Eaden said. “The only hope we have of surviving is to make sure, somehow, that they - Bilan, Black Sun, the Empire, whoever finds it first - think we never knew it existed, much less what was on it.”

  “Would it help,” Leebo asked, “if we could suddenly be halfway across the galaxy?”

  “Sure couldn’t hurt. What have you got in mind?”

  * * *

  They were approaching a binary star system, where an old Hutt jumpgate, though officially out of commission, was still in operation, maintained by a cadre of smugglers who offered passage for ships in a hurry - at a price, of course.

  As they drew closer, they noticed two things: First, the com was silent; the gate crew wasn’t responding. Could be the com was out, or it could be the crew wasn’t around?