James Luceno - Darth Plagueis

“I don’t know …” Lah took her lower lip between her teeth.

“I’ll go one step further,” Zuto said, leading with his whiskered snout. “I mean, this Muun could be a jackpot that’s fallen right into our laps. Weren’t you just saying that no bank would ever grant us a loan against the Woebegone ? Well, Muunilinst is the bank, and this Muun can provide all the collateral we’ll ever need.”

“Our reward for years of leading clean lives,” PePe added.

Lah regarded the two of them. “Meaning what? We hold him for ransom?”

Zuto drew in his tusks and shrugged. “We don’t have to call it that.”

“Forget it,” Lah said. “We’ve never done that — well, once, maybe — but we’re not about to do it again.”

“I agree,” Maa Kaap said.

Wandau’s head bobbed. “Same.”

PePe withdrew somewhat. “Okay, so I was just thinking out loud.”

“There’s something else,” Maa Kaap said. Raising his big hand, he beckoned to 11-4D. “Tell the captain what you were telling us.”

The droid moved to where the crew members were gathered and swiveled its round head toward Lah. “Captain, I merely pointed out that Muuns are not known to travel unaccompanied without ample reasons for doing so. In fact, most Muuns are reluctant to leave Muunilinst for any purpose other than to transact business negotiations.”

“That’s exactly what I was saying about collateral,” PePe interrupted. “There has to be some financial reason for his being on Bal’demnic — some major deal in the works we might be able to get in on. A construction project, maybe.”

“Let FourDee finish,” Maa Kaap said.

Lah looked at the droid. “Go ahead.”

“It has yet to be determined just what the Muun was involved in. Suppose, however, that the nature of his business is going to impact Bal’demnic in a negative way. Should word spread that the crew of the Woebegone lent their support to the Muun’s illegal departure, then what might become of the ship’s reputation in the Auril sector? You may wish to include the worth of that in your calculations regarding an arrangement for onward passage.”

Maa Kaap folded his arms across his barrel chest. “Is our stowaway going to offer to set each of us up for life, in case our services are no longer wanted in this sector?”

“What about what the Muuns can do to us if we don’t take him,” Zuto said. “They’ve got a reach as long as a galactic arm.”

Wandau laughed without mirth. “What are they going to do — downgrade our portfolios? Freeze our assets? Ruin our credit rating? Our only assets are this ship and our reputation for doing what we say we’re going to do.”

“Mostly,” Maa Kaap said quietly.

PePe slapped his hands on his thighs. “Goes back to what I said about asking for a lot more than what he might see as a fair price. These Banking Clan types hold on to every credit. But we’ve got ourselves a live Muun, and no matter who he is or what he’s pretending to be, I guarantee you he’s worth more than ten years of dealing in meattails and octopods.”

Maa Kaap broke the short silence. “Captain?”

“I’m not swayed by any of this,” she said after a moment. “I want him off our hands.”

A look of puzzlement tugged at Zuto’s features. “You think he’s dangerous?”

PePe ridiculed the idea. “Muuns are cowards, the lot of them. They use credits as weapons.”

Lah took a long breath. “You asked for my gut reaction. That’s what I’m giving you.”

“I’ve an idea,” Maa Kaap said. “A kind of compromise. We drop out of hyperspace and comm the authorities on Bal’demnic. If this Muun’s wanted, for whatever reason, we return him, cargo or no. If not, we decide on a figure for taking him to Ithor, and no farther.” He looked at Lah. “Are you willing to take that deal to him? Captain?”

Lah responded as if her words had just caught up with her thoughts. “All right. That sounds reasonable.” But she remained seated.

“Do you, uh, want backup?” Wandau asked after another long moment had passed.

“No, no,” she said, finally getting to her feet.

I’m the captain , 11-4D could almost hear her remind herself. Focusing its photoreceptors, it observed her right hand move discreetly to the blaster holstered on her hip. And with a flick of her thumb, she primed the weapon for fire.

“We’re going to have to keep you on ice for a bit longer,” Lah said when she entered the cargo bay. Plagueis hadn’t moved from the container that served as his seat, but his robe was parted and his hands rested on the tops of his knees.

“Does that mean you failed to reach a consensus?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Lah said. “We’ve decided we need to know who you are before we agree to provide you with passage. And since you seem reluctant to tell us, we’re going to check with Bal’demnic.”

Plagueis made his eyes dull with disappointment. “Captain, I’ve told you all you really need to know.”

The Woebegone lurched slightly. “We’re dropping out of hyperspace,” Lah said.

In his mind Plagueis heard Darth Tenebrous say: To we who dwell in the Force, normal life is little more than pretense. Our only actions of significance are those we undertake in service to the dark side .

“I can’t permit this, Captain,” he told her.

Her expression hardened. “I’m afraid you’ll have to.”

He had been aware from the start of the conversation that her blaster was primed, and now her hand reached for it. Sharp canines glinted in her slightly open mouth. Had he truly believed that a deal could be arranged with the Woebegone ’s hot-tempered and immature crew members? Their fates had been sealed from the instant Plagueis had glimpsed the ship on the landing field. The possibility of reaching any other conclusion was fictional. From that first moment, all of them had been locked into an inevitable series of events. The Force had brought them together, into conflict. Even Lah must have sensed as much.

Plagueis said: “Don’t, Captain.”

But by then the warning was nothing more than words.

The Woebegone had just reverted to realspace when 11-4D’s audio sensors registered unusual sounds from aft: an activation click, a prolonged hiss of energy, a dopplering slash, a stuttering exhalation of breath. The sounds were followed by a sudden outpouring of heat from the corridor that accessed the cargo bays and what might have been interpreted as a gust of wind. Only by adjusting the input rate of its photoreceptors was the droid able to identify the blur that raced into the cabin space as a male Muun dressed in a hooded robe, trousers, and softboots that reached his shins.

Maa Kaap, PePe, Wandau, and Zuto turned in unison as the Muun came to a momentum-defying stop a few meters from where the four of them were seated. Clenched in his right hand was a crimson-bladed energy device the droid’s data bank recognized as a lightsaber — a weapon used almost exclusively by members of the Jedi Order. And yet the recognition prompted a moment of bewilderment. The Jedi were known to be guardians of peace and enforcers of justice, but the Muun’s comportment — the set of his long limbs, the feral working of his jutting jaw, the yellow blaze in his eyes — suggested anything but peace. As for justice, 11-4D couldn’t retrieve a single instance of the four crew members having performed an offense that warranted capital punishment.

The humming lightsaber dangling from his left hand, the Muun remained silent, letting his posture speak for his nefarious intent. In turn the crew members, realizing that they were being wrongly accused, clambered to their feet, reaching at the same time for the weapons strapped to their hips and thighs. That the Muun permitted them to do so furnished 11-4D with yet another mystery — at least until it realized that the Muun was merely courting combat.