Hard Merchandise

9

A woman talked to a traitor.

"You got what you wanted." The traitor's name was Fenald; in the dim, smoky light of the underground wa-tering hole, his smile was both unpleasant and knowing, like an animal toying with its prey. "That's what it's all about, isn't it?"

Kodir of Kuhlvult tried to keep her cloak from touch-ing the damp walls of the establishment. She had known there were such places on the world of Kuat, but she had never been in one before. Her life had been spent in an-other world, one that was on the same planet but that might as well have been light-years away. That world contained all the luxury and power of Kuat's ruling fami-lies; this one contained the planet's human dregs.

A candle stub's inadequate light flickered from a rough niche carved in the wall, merging her shadow and Fenald's with the darkness in which other figures sat hunched and brooding over squat mugs of intoxicants. Even the air seeped rankly into Kodir's lungs, every molecule laden with the soot that lined the low, crouch-inducing stone ceiling.

"I've got some of what I wanted." Kodir leaned for-ward, arms on the sticky-wet table, so that Fenald would be able to make out her hushed words. "There's always more."

Fenald was a little drunk; he had obviously been wait-ing for her to show up for some time. '"Fraid I can't help you much with the rest. I'm not exactly in an influential position these days, am I? I sort of spent all that on the last part of your plans."

"Yes—" Kodir nodded inside the cloak's loose hood that she had put on to conceal her identity from any pry-ing scrutiny. "You're quite an actor. Everybody was fooled. And they still are. So you did a very good job for me. I appreciate that."

"Good," said Fenald thickly. He regarded her from heavy-lidded eyes. "Because I need you to show that ap-preciation. I'm a little short on credits these days . . . what with having lost my job and all. And since you've got that job now—just what you wanted, huh?—then I think it's only fair if you pay a little more than what you did up front. Like on a continuing basis. So I wouldn't be tempted into talking to anybody about our little ... per-formance, shall we say. It'd be a shame to spoil the show, while it's still going on."

"You're right. It would be." Kodir reached across the table and laid her hand on top of his. "But you know—there's more than one way for me to show my appreciation."

In his present state, it took Fenald a few seconds to understand what she meant. Then his smile grew wider and uglier. "Fine," he said. "But that'll have to be in ad-dition to the credits."

She didn't say anything in reply, but leaned farther across the table, bringing her face closer to his. Just be-fore their lips met, her other hand emerged from inside the cloak with something bright and glittering in her grip. Fenald's eyes went round with shock as he felt the object move across his throat.

"No," said Kodir softly. She dropped the vibroblade onto the table, next to where Fenald had collapsed face-down in a widening pool of his own blood. "It's instead."

Drawing the cloak's hood forward, Kodir turned and looked back across the watering hole's dim space. None of its clientele appeared to have noticed that anything at all had happened. She slid a few coins onto the table's corner, then got up and walked unhurriedly toward the steps leading back up to the surface level.

A woman talked to a gambler.

A different woman, and far from the planet of Kuat. But she too had wrapped herself in a hooded cloak to prevent anyone from prying into her affairs.

"Business is still a little slow for me right now," said the gambler. His name was Drawmas Sma'Da, and he sat at a table in a glittering, brightly lit pleasure den. The laughter of the galaxy's rich and foolish denizens sounded from all sides of the establishment. "You have to under-stand, I'm not yet at the level where I used to be—I had a little, um, embarrassment a few weeks ago. I had to spend most of my operating capital getting out of that mess; you know, the usual bribes and payoffs and stuff. Believe me, Palpatine's not the only greedy creature inside the Empire." Lacing his hands together across his expansive belly, he leaned back in his chair. "So I can't cover any big bets at the moment. None of that Alliance versus the Empire stuff."

"That's fine." The woman kept her voice low. "I want to place a different kind of wager. On a bounty hunter."

"Bounty hunters, huh?" Sma'Da's face darkened into a scowl. "I'll give you a good bet on a couple of 'em. You can bet that if I ever get my hands on a pair named Zuckuss and 4-LOM, they're both dead meat. They're the ones who dragged me out of here, not too long ago. She shook her head. "I'm not interested in them."

"All right." Sma'Da gave her a jowly, cajoling smile. "Who do you want to bet on?"

The woman told the gambler.

"You got to be joking." He looked at her in amaze-ment. "Him?"

"Will you cover the bet?"

"Oh, I'll cover it all right." Sma'Da's shoulders lifted in a shrug. "Hey, that's my business. And I'll give you great odds, too. Because frankly—he's not going to make it. I know just what kind of trouble he's in. It doesn't get any worse."

The woman's gaze turned cold. "All the better for you, then."

When the wager was recorded and the stakes trans-ferred to a holding account at one of the galaxy's bank-ing worlds, Sma'Da offered to buy her a drink. "You should get something for your money," he said. "I hate to take credits from a pretty female, and not give them something in return."

"There is something you can do for me." The woman rose from the table.

Sma'Da looked at her. "What's that?"

"Just be ready to pay up when the time comes." She turned and strode toward the establishment's ornately framed exit, the edge of the cloak trailing across the gold-specked floor.

Near the planet Kuat, other conversations were taking place.

"Believe me," said the leader of the Scavenger Squad-ron, "I don't like being here, either. I'd rather be out near Sullust right now, getting ready for the real battle."

Kuat of Kuat turned from his lab bench and looked over his shoulder at the figure standing, flight helmet in the crook of one arm, in the middle of Kuat's own private quarters. To one side of the space, a high, arching bank of transparisteel panes revealed stars and the immense, intricate shapes of Kuat Drive Yards' construction docks. Against Kuat's ankles, the felinx rubbed its silk-furred flank; glancing down at it for a moment, Kuat saw the creature turn a hostile, slit-pupiled glare at the intruder.

"Then you should feel free to leave," Kuat of Kuat said mildly. "The presence of your squadron here is en-tirely unnecessary."

"The Rebel Alliance feels otherwise." An impressive scar ran in an almost perfect diagonal across Commander Gennad Rozhdenst's face, the result of surviving a previ-ous skirmish with Imperial fighters.

"And I have my or-ders, directly from former Senator Mon Mothma, with the Alliance fleet near Sullust."

"So I understand." Kuat had bent down and picked up the felinx; the animal now lay cradled in the safety of his arms. Its yellow eyes closed in contentment as he scratched behind its ears. "But you must also bear in mind, Commander, that I have my duties to perform as well."

Right now, those duties weighed heavily on Kuat of Kuat's shoulders. Everything depends upon me, he mused. The felinx might very well consider its comfort to be the most pressing concern of its master, but there was far more than that in his thoughts. The fate of Kuat Drive Yards itself, the corporation whose ships and armaments spanned the galaxy and formed the bulk of the Imperial Navy—the leadership of that enterprise was Kuat's hereditary legacy, just as it had been for his father and grandfather, and to generations before them. When he gazed out upon the construction docks, with a fleet of Destroyers and heavy cruisers nearing completion in them, he felt as though their combined mass bent his spine. And more: rising above Kuat Drive Yards was the mottled green sphere of the planet Kuat itself, an entire world and people dependent upon the fate of the corpo-ration that funneled such a large share of the galaxy's wealth into their coffers.

And I fought for this. Kuat's fingertips continued their instinctive caress of the felinx's silken fur. I fought to keep this burden mine, rather than let others usurp it from me. At times such as this, when the weight of his re-sponsibilities translated into bone-weary fatigue, he be-gan to question the wisdom of such a struggle. There had been plenty of others in the ruling families of the planet Kuat, nobles whose bloodlines were by custom pre-vented from taking over the leadership of Kuat Drive Yards, who had been eager to conspire against him, over-throw their world's ancient wisdom, and place them-selves in this seat of power. As much as Kuat of Kuat might have been willing to let them have their chance, he had found himself unable to let go of his tight grasp upon the corporation. Because I know—he closed his eyes as he stroked the felinx—that they would never have been able to prevail. Not against me, but against all our other enemies. Kuat found it cruelly ironic that when death had removed the threat posed by Prince Xizor, another potential opponent should arise, in the form of the Rebel Alliance.

"There's no conflict," said Commander Rozhdenst, "between your duties and mine." The wintry blue eyes in the hard-angled face seemed to have peered into and dis-cerned the careful workings inside Kuat's heart. "The Rebel Alliance has no designs upon Kuat Drive Yards. We would just as soon have the corporation remain in your hands."

"I wish I could believe that, Commander." Kuat's hand froze in its gentle motions upon the felinx's neck. He could hear his own voice turning cold. "But station-ing a squadron of armed Rebel spacecraft—even one that so justly merits its 'scavenger' descriptor—is hardly the action of those who seek friendship with Kuat Drive Yards."

"The Rebel Alliance would be satisfied with main-taining a neutral relationship with you. We seek no more than that."

"Ah." Kuat of Kuat managed a wry smile before slowly shaking his head. "But you see, Commander—that's what everybody says. Everybody who has ever done business with Kuat Drive Yards, back to my father's and my grand-father's times before me, has always assured us that they had the corporation's welfare—and independence—at heart. And if we had trusted them on that point, I doubt if Kuat Drive Yards would even exist now. So you'll have to excuse my skepticism; I know it's unseemly in even an unwilling host such as myself. But I assure you that Em-peror Palpatine himself has informed me that he has no 'designs,' as you put it, upon us. Don't be offended if I state that the reliance I place upon his words is just about the same as I put upon those from a representative of the Rebel Alliance."

The commander regarded him for a moment, then spoke. "You have a way of putting things very bluntly, Kuat."

"Ascribe it to my training as an engineer. I prefer to think of it as exactitude, rather than bluntness."

"Then I'll speak to you just as ... exactly." Rozh-denst's voice grew even icier, like durasteel exposed to the vacuum of space. "My squadron and I were sent here on a mission, and we intend to carry that mission out. But you're correct in assuming that there's something that the Rebel Alliance wants from you. I've been quite thoroughly briefed on the political and strategic analysis that's been made by our leadership concerning the value of Kuat Drive Yards. Not just to ourselves, but to Palpa-tine as well. When I say that your neutrality is something that we value, I don't mean just toward the Alliance; I mean toward the Empire."

"Kuat Drive Yards does business with the Empire. Nothing more than that. The armaments and fleet pro-curement authorities of the Imperial Navy value what we do here—as they should; we have no rivals when it comes to our military shipbuilding expertise—and they are capable of meeting our prices." The felinx shifted lazily in the crook of Kuat's arm as his shoulders lifted in a shrug. "We sell to others as well, if they can pay for the goods they desire. That, in fact, is the only distinction we make between our customers and potential customers: whether or not they've got the credits in their accounts, for us to take an order from them." Kuat displayed a thin, humorless smile. "Believe me, Commander, if the Rebel Alliance was capable of paying, Kuat Drive Yards would be happy to take your credits. From the look of that motley collection of patched-together Y-wings you've got stationed around our construction docks, they could certainly use a little maintenance and retrofitting work."

A spark of anger showed in Rozhdenst's eyes, amus-ing Kuat even more. He knew that his comment had struck home. The only reason that this particular collec-tion of Rebel Alliance craft was here rather than on their way to Sullust to join up with the others preparing for the imminent confrontation with the Imperial Navy was that they were too beat-up or outmoded to represent much of a tactical threat against a well-armed and prepared enemy. Most of them were old Y-wings, representing the previous-generation technology that the Imperial Navy's advanced TIE fighters and Interceptors would be capable of chewing up and dispersing into flaming shards within the first seconds of a tactical encounter.

"I have to wonder," Kuat continued maliciously, "whether the Rebel Alliance command sent you and your squadron here to accomplish anything at all, or whether patrolling Kuat Drive Yards is just a convenient excuse for getting you all safely out of the way, so you won't needlessly interfere with the actual fighters, once the bat-tle starts." The felinx sensed its master's amusement and purred in happy agreement. "I imagine that Mon Mothma has more important things to worry about than how to deploy a so-called squadron that's really little more than laser-cannon fodder."

The glower on Gennad Rozhdenst's face was nearly as deep as the disfiguring scar. "My men and their craft can take care of themselves."

"I have little doubt of that, Commander. It's just a question of whether they can accomplish anything else.

Your loyalty to them is impressive, if not unexpected. And of course, the reasons that the Rebel Alliance com-mand put you in charge of them are perfectly under-standable. It speaks volumes about the advanced moral nature of the Rebel leaders that they would be concerned to find an assignment suitable for someone whose mili-tary career has not been crowned, so to speak, with con-spicuous amounts of glory."

In Rozhdenst's eyes, the spark turned darker and smoldering. He made no reply.

"Bad luck can happen to anyone, Commander. I can attest that often that which makes one a hero is a simple matter of chance and fortune—though some would say that the true hero makes his own chances. But that's a lot to be asked of anyone. So your own history—your fail-ures, the crashes and the dogfights that the other creature won—are certainly excusable."

Kuat saw that he had succeeded, though; it was clear that he had managed to goad the Alliance commander into a barely controlled fury. Just what I wanted, he thought with satisfaction. He had never been overly im-pressed with hoary old Jedi blather, but he did believe in the time-tested negotiator's maxim that to anger some-one was to own him.

That anger manifested itself in the form of Com-mander Gennad Rozhdenst striding right up to Kuat and jabbing a blunt forefinger into his chest. "Let's get some-thing straight, Kuat. I got my orders to come here straight from Mon Mothma herself, after I had rounded up this squadron that you think so little of—and that was on her direct orders as well. I scoured every system in this galaxy for every operational remnant, every shot-down fighter and support craft we could lay our hands on, and every orphaned Alliance pilot who'd had to be left behind by his previous outfit. We got our Scavenger Squadron up and flying without any help from techni-cians like you, since your chasing after your own profits kept you just a little too busy for something like that."

The forefinger poked harder into the front of Kuat's regulation KDY coveralls. "My squadron and I were already on our way to Sullust—on Admiral Ackbar's orders—when he was overruled by Mothma and the rest of the Alliance high command and instructed to send us here."

"So I've already heard." Kuat pushed the other man's hand to one side and away from himself. "It seems that there are others inside your Alliance who have a more discerning analysis, shall we say, of the strategic value of your squadron."

"What they have, Kuat, is a pretty keen idea of what they can expect from somebody like you. They know ex-actly how much business that your corporation has done with the Empire." Rozhdenst made a dismissive gesture toward the construction docks visible through the arch-ing panels of transparisteel.

"This whole place would've probably gone broke and been dismantled for scrap if it hadn't been for Palpatine and Vader steering so many procurement contracts your way. You've got a lot to be grateful to them for, don't you? That entire fleet that's nearing completion in your docks is a commission for the Imperial Navy—and the payment for it will put a nice pile of credits in your world's accounts. And that's all that concerns you, right? You've said as much your-self, just now."

"I'm glad to see you've been listening, Commander. That's the kind of observational skill I wouldn't have ex-pected from my previous investigations into your record."

"Don't crack wise with me." Rozhdenst had regained a small measure of self-control. "It would've been better for you—and for Kuat Drive Yards—if we had been able to even pretend to be on a friendly basis. But no amount of hostility on your part—and no amount of affection for the Empire that pays you and your corpo-ration such a handsome wage—is going to stop my squad-ron and me from doing what we were sent here to take care of."

"Which is, exactly?" Kuat resumed his stroking of the felinx's silken fur. "Neither the necessity for it, or the de-tails, have been made clear to me."

"Very well." Rozhdenst gave a curt nod. "Mon Mothma and the rest of the Rebel Alliance high com-mand recognize the long-term strategic importance of Kuat Drive Yards. Not just for what your corporation is capable of doing in the future, but for the armaments and ships that are in your construction docks at this mo-ment. None of us in the Rebel Alliance have any doubts that you are fully willing to shift your allegiances to whichever force emerges victorious from the coming bat-tle, and all the ones that shall follow. As you've indi-cated, you have Kuat Drive Yards' best interests at the center of your thoughts. But if events go as I believe they will at Endor—and how I wish I could be there to see it!—then the Empire is going to need replacements for its operational fleets as soon as possible, and taking delivery of what you've built for them here will be the fastest way of accomplishing that. The Empire knows that, you know that—and we know it. Which is the whole reason we're here. The Scavenger Squadron is going to be keeping an around-the-chronometer vigil on everything that hap-pens here at Kuat Drive Yards; there's not going to be much that we're going to miss. And I promise you"—the commander's jabbing finger stopped an inch short of Kuat's chest—"when word comes from Endor about what's happened out there, and the Imperial Navy tries to take possession of the completed ships in your docks—" Rozhdenst shook his head. "It's not going to happen. The Rebel Alliance command may have decided that they've got enough forces available, out at Sullust, that they can spare my pilots for this detail and still be able to beat whatever Palpatine and his underlings can come up with. Fine; that's a strategic decision and I'm satisfied to go along with it. But it also means that Mon Mothma is confident that my raggedy, patched-together outfit can take of business here."

"Indeed." Kuat raised an eyebrow. "Well, I'm sure you'll make a valiant attempt at it."

"Oh, we'll do more than that. Since we'll be missing the action out at Endor, my squadron will be ready to do some serious damage of their own, right here. If any Imperial forces show up and try to get hold of those ships, or if any of your KDY transport crews think they'll be able to pilot them out to some rendezvous point and deliver them, there'll be hell to pay. You can bank on that."

"And what happens if the Rebel Alliance comes here and wants these ships? What gets paid out then?" The temper in the other man's voice had disturbed the fe-linx in Kuat's arms; he did his best to soothe it.

"Am I to assume that Mon Mothma and the rest of the Al-liance command will be prepared to negotiate a fair— and profitable—deal for them?"

"I'm not authorized," said Rozhdenst, "to make those kinds of arrangements."

"What that translates to is that you don't have the means. The credits. And neither does the Alliance. Other-wise, Mon Mothma would have made the offer already."

A sneer twisted the corner of Rozhdenst's mouth. "And would you have accepted it? Not as long as you're so afraid of the reaction of your best customer, Emperor Palpatine."

"The deals I make," replied Kuat stiffly, "are for the best interests of my corporation."

"And too bad for everybody else in the galaxy." The sneer remained as Rozhdenst nodded. "They're fighting for their freedom—and their lives—and all you're con-cerned about is the amount of credits rolling into your coffers. Fine; arrange your ethics however you want to. You don't want to throw in your lot with the Rebel Al-liance, that's up to you. But I think I'm clear in warning you what the Alliance's'offer' is likely to be for those ships in your construction docks." Rozhdenst pointed to the view beyond the transparisteel panels. "If the Alliance decides that it needs the ships you've been building—and there's a high possibility of that—I'm going to be happy to take delivery of them from you whether or not you've agreed to sell them to us instead of the Empire. And we'll worry about making compensation to Kuat Drive Yards after the war is over."

"Your language doesn't surprise me, Commander. I would have been more surprised if you had persisted in maintaining a pretense of goodwill toward Kuat Drive Yards. But now we know exactly where we stand with each other, don't we?" Kuat turned and set the felinx down on top of the lab bench beside him. "So I guess we have made some progress."

Rozhdenst regarded him through eyes narrowed to slits. "As I said when I came here, Kuat—it would be bet-ter if we could work things out on a friendly basis. I'd rather trust you than have to watch you. But now we will be watching you."

"As you wish." Standing with his back turned toward the Rebel Alliance commander, Kuat picked up a micro-insertion logic probe from his lab bench. With the back of his other hand, he kept the felinx from investigating the delicate tool. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do..."

He heard the commander's footsteps receding, and then the doors of his private quarters opening and clos-ing once more. In the space's restored silence, he re-garded the thin, shining metal of the probe resting in the curve of his palm, as though it were a sharp-edged weapon. "They can watch all they want," murmured Kuat. He addressed his soft words to the noncompre-hending felinx, confident that no one else would over-hear them. Since having been betrayed by Kuat Drive Yards' former head of security, Kuat of Kuat had person-ally overseen the electronic security sweep of his private quarters. "They have no idea what I'm doing here." A faint smile moved across his face. "And they won't have much luck getting their hands on those ships ..."

"So what's the scoop?" Ott Klemp, one of the younger and less-experienced pilots in the Scavenger Squadron, matched his pace to that of his commanding officer. "Are they going to cooperate with us?"

"There's no 'they' at Kuat Drive Yards," replied Com-mander Rozhdenst. He had let Klemp bring him down to the KDY construction docks from the squadron's mobile base-support ship mainly to get the youngster some more, and much-needed, flight time near the immense, system-circling facility. "There's only Kuat of Kuat himself. He makes all the decisions." Rozhdenst continued his pur-poseful stride down the high-ceilinged corridor, away from his unpleasantly terminated conference with Kuat Drive Yards' chief. "And right now, he's decided to keep on be-ing 'neutral,' as he puts it. That's not good."

"You think he'll turn over this new fleet to the Impe-rial Navy?"

"What I think is that he'll do whatever he feels is in the best interests of Kuat Drive Yards. I believe him when he says as much. Which means that he'll do it in a sec-ond, soon as Palpatine forks over the credits for the ships."

The landing dock, with the Scavenger Squadron shut-tle waiting for them, was only a few meters away.

"Maybe we should do a preemptive strike," said Klemp. "Get our pilots inside those ships immediately, so that if any Impe-rial Navy forces show up, we can keep 'em from getting their hands on the goods."

Rozhdenst impatiently shook his head as he walked. "Negative on that. We'd be playing right into the Em-pire's hands if we tried something like that. We don't have enough pilots and crew to fully man even one ship out of a fleet like that. Getting them up and away from the KDY construction docks would be difficult enough, but trying to fight off an Imperial task force from in-side those ships, without enough personnel to crew the onboard weaponry, would be suicide. No, we'd be bet-ter off—we'd have more of a chance, that is—by inter-cepting any Imperial ships coming from outside this sector, and fighting them off with what we've already got."

"Sir, that's not much of a chance at all." Klemp's face had paled with the contemplation of what the commander had described. "Our squadron might be able to keep a lid on a bunch of KDY ship fabricators and tech-nicians, but if the Empire routes any significant number of fighting craft here, we're done for."

"Tell me something," growled Rozhdenst, "that I don't already know." The two men had reached the side of the shuttle craft. Next to the extended landing gear, the commander turned to the younger man. "Let me fill you in on something about our mission here. You're ab-solutely correct: if the Imperial Navy's forces were to move in, there wouldn't be much we could do to stop 'em. There's only one reason we're able to stay up there—" He pointed toward the sealed landing dock's upper reaches, and the rest of the Scavenger Squadron beyond it. "And that's because, right now, the Empire's attention—and its strength—is turned elsewhere. En-dor, to be exact. With our beat-up, inadequate craft, we wouldn't be able to stop the Imperial Navy—but we can slow it down. Maybe, if we fight hard and smart enough, slow it down to the point that we could contact the Alliance communications ship that's in orbit near Sullust, and get some kind of operational task force or-dered out here. And that Rebel force could stop the Imperial Navy from getting hold of these new ships." Rozhdenst started to climb up the rungs of a rolling ladder platform toward the shuttle's hatchway. "Of course," he said over his shoulder to Klemp, "if that's what happens, we won't be here to see it. We'll be dead."

"Maybe." Ott Klemp climbed up after the com-mander. "But that's only going to be after a lot of them are dead as well."

Rozhdenst leaned forward and slapped the younger man on the shoulder. "Save it for when they get here."

The landing dock's doors swung slowly open, reveal-ing the field of stars beyond, as Klemp fired up the shut-tle's thruster engine. A moment later, the craft traced a red arc away from Kuat Drive Yards, heading back toward the waiting squadron.