The Last Jedi

Forty-Five


The mechanical part of the plan was the hardest in some ways. Having ascertained that an Imperial corvette was entering the Bothan system and making for Kantaros Station, Jax traced its path and placed his Force-cloaked vessel directly in it. It was possible that even this minimal use of the Force—the equivalent of waving a closed fist at someone behind their back—might alert Vader if he were near, but Jax couldn’t let himself worry about the extent of the Dark Lord’s abilities at this juncture.

When the ship overflew his position, Jax tried his hand at Force projection: a swiftly spinning chunk of ice and rock the size of a long-range shuttle seemed to ricochet out of the orbit of the larger asteroid field and tumble into the corvette’s path, causing its helmsman to brake tens of kilometers early.

Pacing the corvette, Jax brought the Aethersprite into contact with the keel of the Imperial ship so gently that he doubted the contact had even registered on the ship’s systems. A moment later the larger vessel raised its shields, enfolding Jax within them as it dived into the asteroid field.

Perfect. Now even the most sophisticated sensors would read the energy profile of his ship as part of the output of the corvette. The trick now was getting onto the station.

The corvette wouldn’t enter the space docks—it was too large. It would use a refueling rig flown from the station to replenish its fuel. Any personnel and cargo that needed to be off-loaded would make use of shuttles to enter the docking bays.

That was where things got tricky. Entering one of the station’s docking areas Force-cloaked was out of the question. Shuttles docked close enough to one another that one of them would be almost certain to collide with him if he seemed to be an empty space. The only possibility was another application of Force projection. A more prodigious one this time: the Delta-7 had to pretend to be a docking shuttle or courier vessel.

And so it did. When the Imperial corvette’s shuttles left for the station, there was an additional courier in their number that was directed to a diplomatic bay in the northeastern hemisphere of the station’s Imperial sector. It landed stem to stern with another courier, docking in the other vessel’s shadow, just within the docking bay’s perimeter force shield.

It was, as far as the Imperial operatives in the area were concerned, unremarkable in every way.



“Sacha, he’s not coming back out.” Den stood in the hatch of the ship’s engineering bay, his stomach feeling as if he’d swallowed a nest of jellyworms.

She looked up from whatever she was working on and let out an expletive that made the Sullustan’s dewlaps quiver and his ears flush. “Where the hell did Jax get that fragging crisper in the first place? He sure doesn’t act like any droid I’ve ever known.”

“Jax inherited I-Five from his father. Can you come talk to him? He seems to feel now that he’s downloaded his data he should continue surveillance.”

“Maybe he’s right.”

“Maybe he’s right?” Den echoed in disbelief. “How’re we supposed to get into the facility if he’s not with us? Someone’s got to take out the stormtroopers while he messes with the cams at the checkpoint, right?”

She grinned at him. “Actually, I’m gonna mess with the cams.” She snapped a cover onto the item she’d been working on and held it up for him to see. “My patented sensor recursor.”

The “patented” recursor was a thin rectangular object about the length of Sacha’s index finger. It had a touch pad on it and a tiny vid display.

“Your what?”

“Recursor. It’ll basically cause whatever cam or sensor it’s aimed at to loop until it’s told to stop. One of the clever things you can do with ionite.”

“So you’re saying we don’t need Five to come back.”

She shook her head, pocketing the recursor and striding to the communications console. “Didn’t say that. We absolutely need him to come back. But additional surveillance would be good, too.”

Den grimaced. “Meaning we need two of him.”

“At least.” She opened a connection to I-Five. “Hey, Tinnie. Your sidekick here tells me—”

“They’re moving Yimmon,” I-Five announced.

Den imagined he could hear tension in the mechanically generated voice. Impossible, of course. But he could see by the sudden stiffening of Sacha’s body that she’d had the same reaction.

Both of them glanced up at the viewscreen above the engineering console. The view I-Five had online showed a group of six stormtroopers and an Inquisitor leading a shambling Thi Xon Yimmon down a short corridor through a set of sliding doors that closed with a snap behind them.

“Where is that?” Den asked.

“Medbay. Two levels up from the high-security area and almost as well protected.”

Even as he answered, I-Five rolled up to an AI port and inserted his data wand. He withdrew it mere moments later and began to move away down the hall.

“They’ve got an OR set up in there. All I could get out of the medbay AI is that they’re planning on performing neurosurgery on him. The AI knows nothing about the nature of the procedure—access to that information was sealed by Darth Vader himself.”

Den felt as if the worms in his stomach had turned to ice. He and Sacha exchanged glances.

“I’m returning to the outer docking portal,” I-Five said, not waiting for them to respond. “There are two stormtroopers there and security apparatus. I need you to come in at the exact moment I’m going out.”

“Yeah, yeah, so the portal will be open. I get it,” said Sacha. “Then what?”

“There is a small life pod under repair just to your left as you enter the portal.”

“Yeah. Saw it when you went in.”

“We should be able to use it to cover our activities. If we can take out the troopers swiftly and quietly, we should be able to make use of one of the uniforms and gear to get you inside. Sacha, you spoke of creating a device that would confound the cams—”

“Done. If we time it right, the surveillance system will never know we’re there.” She quickly explained how the recursor worked, for which I-Five applauded her with a single word of praise.

“Elegant.”

“Not really. But it was all I could do on such short notice.”

Den’s gaze was on the display above the console. It presently showed a set of turbolift doors that hissed open as he watched. The R2 was out like a shot, nearly colliding with a pair of technicians. He rounded them, and continued darting through the mazelike corridors at high speed.

“You might want to slow down a bit, Five,” Den advised. “You don’t want to draw too much attention to yourself.”

“I’m behaving like all the other R2 units I’ve seen here. Bustling little tin cans. No one even notices them—” His voice simply stopped, though the scenery continued to fly by. After a pause, he said, “I’m approaching the inner docking bay doors. Time to scramble.”

Sacha closed the connection to the console, picked up a comlink from the collection above it, and keyed it to I-Five’s frequency. Den did the same. Then they headed for the portal that gave onto the Imperial docking bays.

They wandered up to the checkpoint, stopping just short of the area the cams covered. The stormtroopers turned their heads in unison to track Sacha, proving that there were actual men inside the white shells.

Sacha smiled. Waved. “Hi, boys. Tell me, do you ever get bored standing there like that?”

They ignored her.

Den’s comlink pinged. “Now,” he said.

Sacha targeted one surveillance cam, then the other, starting them on an endless loop that showed two bored guards standing there in their little plastic outfits.

“Hey!” said one of the guards. “What’s that in your hand?” He raised his weapon.

The portal slid open and an R2 unit appeared. It stopped in the exact center of the doorway, effectively holding the doors open. It was enough to distract the guards: Den stunned the one to his right; Sacha took out the one to his left.

Checking to make sure the concourse behind I-Five was empty, Den and Sacha dragged the two unconscious stormtroopers back into the Imperial docking bay and into the lee of the life pod I-Five had identified as the best hiding place.

“I hope that worked,” Den muttered, watching Sacha peel one of the stormtrooper’s gear off.

“It worked,” I-Five said, “because neither of these guards had a chance to call in an alarm. And even if someone should actually be monitoring the surveillance equipment at the various checkpoints, it would be unlikely they’d watch one post long enough to notice the repetitive nature of the guards’ movements.”

He swiveled his turret toward Sacha, who was mostly encased in the lightweight, sturdy plastoid of the stormtrooper’s uniform. “Den is your prisoner,” he told her. “I am your escort.”

She nodded, put on the helmet, strapped on the Imperial weapon, and bundled the guard—clad only in his all-covering body glove—into the life pod with his partner. She gave each an infuser full of something she’d produced from a pocket in her own formfitting coverall.

“What is that?” Den asked.

“Something I picked up in the medbay.”

“Do you—”

“Yes, I do know what it is, what it does, and how long it will take them to wake up and be able to move their joints and use their vocal cords.”

She held up two Imperial comlinks. She opened one and removed its guts, stomping them to shards, then scooted them beneath life pod’s soft-docking skirt. Then she rose and crept to where she could see the full sweep of the concourse.

She knelt there for a moment or two, watching something going on down the way, then rose and beckoned to Den and I-Five. When they reached her, she drew her weapon, pointed it at Den, and nudged him along the causeway toward the inner portal. I-Five, in his astromech camouflage, scurried along at her side.

They were in the middle of the Imperial docking bay and had just come in sight of Vader’s shuttle when I-Five spoke softly.

“He looked at me.”

“Huh?” Den grunted.

Sacha said, “What? Who?”

“In the corridor earlier. When he was coming in from his shuttle. Vader looked at me as he passed by.” He let a beat go by in which time Den’s insides had once more gone squirmy, then added, “No one notices droids.”