فصل 32

Chapter Thirty-Two

Above Elphrona.

Ultident Margrona—just Dent since she was a teenager, she hated the name Ultident, thought it sounded prissy—yanked off her mask and let it fall to the floor of the cockpit. She didn’t care if the stupid miners saw her face. She needed to breathe, needed air.

“They’re on us, Dent!” Buggo said. “Comin’ up fast!”

Dent knew that. The Jedi had landed a glancing blaster shot on their engines, and about 80 percent of top speed was the best they could manage. They had a Path from Lourna Dee that would let them get out of the system, but her ship’s Path engine needed to calculate the jump from a specific region within Elphrona’s gravity well—and that area was too far away to reach before the Jedi caught up. She’d heard stories about what these Vectors could do. They might look spindly, but those ships could take them apart, shot by shot. It wouldn’t even be a contest. They’d end up with their engines completely gone, floating in the void, and then it’d be a hostage scenario, and how would that work out?

You’re a Cloud, she told herself. You wouldn’t be a Cloud if you weren’t smart. You aren’t some stupid Strike. Think this through.

Ride the storm.

If the Jedi disabled their ship, they could buy time by threatening to kill the two kids and the dad until…what? The Jedi wouldn’t let a band of Nihil kidnappers go. They’d board the ship eventually, and would probably kill Dent and her crew with their lightsabers right then and there, frontier justice. Maybe they’d get taken to prison on Elphrona instead.

Bad either way. Utter failure. Not very Nihil. She could just imagine what everyone would say. “You remember that gal Dent? Screwed up the easiest job ever—a snatch-and-grab on some nowhere planet. Got herself and all her Strikes killed. What an idiot.”

She spared half a thought for the two Strikes she’d left back down on the planet, the ones she’d already written off. She guessed it was possible Egga and Rel were still alive down on the planet somewhere, fighting the good fight, two loyal Strikes doing as their Cloud ordered.

They were both so stupid—just went along with what she told them to do even though obviously she was sending them off to get killed to buy time for her, Mack, and Buggo to get off the planet with the cargo.

No, those two idiots were dead, for sure. They hadn’t called in, and if they’d taken out the Jedi they would have asked for a pickup.

Ugh, she thought.

This was supposed to be the easiest job ever. She was so proud of herself for thinking it up. She’d heard that these four people had tried to go it alone in the Outer Rim, live “authentically,” cut themselves off from their rich family on Alderaan. It made her so mad. They had everything, these Blythes, and they threw it away to go dig in the dirt.

But some people didn’t have a choice like that. They were born in the dirt and they’d die there—people like her. Until the Nihil, anyway.

Lourna Dee had recruited her with a promise…they were all in it together, they were a family, a new family…it all sounded so good. And it was working, too. She’d made Cloud, and found Strikes of her own to command—it was all coming together.

And then when she’d come up with this idea to take the Blythes and ransom them back to their rich grandparents on Alderaan, and her Storm had liked it and taken it to Lourna Dee herself, and then she’d taken it to Marchion Ro and he’d liked it, too, and she’d gotten the Paths she needed to pull it all off. It was supposed to work out.

But then, Jedi.

“Boss! What are we going to do? Boss!”

Buggo, bugging her, like he did. She should have sent him up into the hills to ambush the Jedi. But he was her second cousin’s husband, which was family in a way, close as she had.

Laser blasts zipped past the cockpit—warning shots.

Mack was on the guns, returning fire, but she had no confidence in his ability to shoot down a Vector. They moved like ghosts, flipping and moving around and doing impossible things. Like the Jedi themselves, in fact.

Dent reached forward and tapped a few buttons on her control console. She wasn’t supposed to make contact while on a mission— signals could be tracked—but what did she have to lose?

A voice came over the comlink—her Storm, a funny, charming

Ugnaught named Zoovler Tom.

“Dent!” he said, happy to hear from her, apparently. “What’s the good word? You got the packages we sent you to pick up?”

“Got ‘em,” she answered, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.

“But we ran into trouble. Jedi, chasing us. Ship’s damaged. We won’t be able to make it to the transfer point before they get us. We need a new Path, right now. We’re still in atmosphere, so it’ll be a tricky one.” “Jedi, huh?” Zoovler said, no longer so happy. “Path at such a low altitude…that’s gonna run into trouble with the planet’s gravity well.

That’s a big ask, Ultident.”

Dent frowned. She’d told Zoovler her real name once, in a moment of booze-filled closeness at one of the rallies. Now he was using it, just like a weapon. Blasted little nothing man, thought he was so special, so superior because he was a Storm. He was just an Ugnaught. If she made it out of this she’d poison his drink next time, and laugh at him as his ugly little face turned black.

“Send me your coordinates. I’ll have to run it up the line,” the Storm said. “Don’t call again. Either you’ll hear from me with a new Path…or you won’t.”

The connection went dead.

Think, she thought.

It would take time for Zoovler to talk to the other Storms, then they’d have to decide whether to talk to Lourna Dee, and she’d make the call on whether to ask the Eye for another Path or just cut her loose. She was just a Cloud…the odds weren’t good. But she knew the Blythes were valuable, and if this whole thing could somehow be pulled out of the fire, everyone stood to gain—including Zoovler, including Lourna Dee, even including Marchion Ro.

That was the system. That’s why the Nihil worked. Everyone did things their way, lived how they wanted, took what they wanted…and everyone got a piece, so it was in everyone’s interest to keep the system going.

But if the Jedi caught them before all of that thinking and requesting happened, no one would get a damn thing. Especially

Ultident Margrona.

“Mack,” she said.

“Yeah,” he answered, still firing at the Jedi chasing them, his shots hitting nothing but air.

“Take one of the kids,” she said. “The little girl. Throw her out the air lock.”

“Uh…” Mack said, doubt in his voice.

“What, now you got qualms?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t care, except that we already lost the adult human female. Now we lose another one, we’re cutting our return in half.”

You idiot, she wanted to scream. Who cares about money, when if we don’t get away there’s no profits, no credits, no life. We’ll be dead, you dumb Strike!

“The Jedi will try to save the kid,” she said, forcing a patient tone into her voice. “That’s what they do. Might give us a chance to get away.”

Mack grunted, and she heard him get up and head toward the back of the ship, where their three remaining Blythes were tied up in the cargo hold.

“Ride the storm, Dent,” she whispered to herself. “Just ride the storm.”