Arlington Cove, Coveway System
Koradin Sector, Outer Rim
0 BBY, 6 weeks later
Morning
Karmack watched as the Hope descended gently onto the landing pad, his lips tight. The ship, normally gleaming white and light gray looked battered and worn, with areas of heavy carbon scoring and obvious impact damage from heavy blaster bolts and shield leak-through from turbo-lasers. The ship’s defensive turrets also showed signs of wear and heavy use, as did the forward-firing laser ports and concussion missile tubes. Whatever run the Hope had been on she’d come to mischief at some point and had been forced to fight her way out. Hopefully she’d not been positively identified in the process. If the Hutts or techno-union were after a Correllian XS Light Freighter answering to a general description, they could fix that with a few tweaks to her emissions signature and some judicious painting. If the Empire had a full emissions read, however, they’d have a far harder time spoofing them and they’d need more than paint to pass any detailed port inspection.
The freighter settled onto its landing struts, giving off cooling pings and groans as the engines spooled down and the outer hull shed the last of the heat of re-entry. Servo-bots and a small team of repair droids were already advancing on the ship, as well as two droids designed to handle cargo. It was when the entry ramp came down, however, that Karmack sensed trouble. As Joanna emerged from the ship, a pair of individuals flanking her and her Uncle Sam trailing behind, a squad of Storm Troopers, accompanied by a pair of Port Customs officials and the local constable, emerged from the sally port opposite the ramp and the gallery where Karmack waited to greet his wife. Before he could do anything or even call out to them the squad leader barked a command to halt.
Karmack gripped his saber, but changed his mind as the docking bay exploded in chaos. Most of the folks in the gallery were there to meet various ships due in at one of the four bays served by it. The open gallery was in between the four bays, with four narrow windowed corridors serving the central open gallery from each of the cardinal points. Each bay was linked to the service terminals and cargo handling facilities of the port via underground tunnels and a wide area of service cubicles arranged along the outer walls of each quad of landing pads. Civilian traffic was funneled through corridors adjacent to the cargo handling transport tubes, consolidating along the way into the central port terminal. The sally ports on the outside edges of the bays gave law enforcement as well as service droids and personnel access to both the ship’s bays and service infrastructure without having to go into the port’s public corridors. Karmack had been into these areas many times and had access as an authorized port technician, but first he had to reach his wife and find out what was going on. Whatever it was, he was pretty sure that if she were taken by the Imperials he’d never see her again.
His hand flexed one more time on his saber before withdrawing from under his robe empty. The troopers were deploying, spreading out with weapons rising. Joanna, Sam and the two strangers with them were also deploying, albeit in a slightly less precise manner. Joanna and one of their passengers went to the right of the ramp, diving behind a pair of cargo containers, while Sam and the other stranger used a droid moving to clear the sudden combat zone as cover to reach a large pallet of spare parts stacked at the edge of the gallery. Karmack sensed the panic around him as civilians, mostly there to meet a small passenger liner due to land in another twenty minutes, realized what was happening behind them. There was a sudden surge as the panicked crowd split and headed for the corridors leading out of the gallery. Fortunately the gallery wasn’t packed and there was more than enough room for people to get out without a crushing tragedy.
Unfortunately, no one had told the storm troopers to be careful with their fire. Blaster bolts cascaded toward Joanne and Sam and their companions and almost immediately the thinning crowd took casualties. Karmack jumped over the wall, heading in the general direction of the place his wife was sheltering and with a quick jab through the force he knocked the local Constable backward into the two port officials, driving them all into the wall and into a tangled heap. The heavy blaster the Constable carried came loose and Karmack snatched it to himself with the force, snagging it out of the air as he dropped into cover himself. He took a moment to check the weapon’s charge and safety before rolling out and opening fire.
His blaster bolt impacted on the helmet of the squad leader, sending him sprawling. The other troopers continued to pour a withering fire onto Joanna’s position in return. Karmack found he had no angle on the two remaining troopers, but there was a high-pressure fuel transfer duct immediately behind their position. He concentrated for a moment, then reached out with the force and pulled on a microscopic fault in the pipe. The pipe split, jetting fuel across the troopers, knocking them across the bay and into their fellows, where they tangled for a critical moment. In that moment, the stranger with Sam fired a blaster bolt which missed the troopers but ignited the fuel.
Karmack ducked as shrapnel pinged off the pallet he was hiding behind. The Hope absorbed most of the impact with nothing more than some slight scorching to the paint, but attacking troopers, the customs agents and the Constable were all incinerated as the fuel duct vented a super-hot cone of fire across the space between the Hope and the back wall of the bay.
“Come on!”
Karmack looked over to Sam, who was moving quickly across the bay to another sally port. Karmack jumped up and started forward but stopped when he realized Joanna had not risen with her companion. “Joanna!”
In an instant he was at her side, senses reaching out to her. He noted her breathing and heart rate, both elevated but happening. A quick scan looking for injuries as Master Cunn had taught him revealed several “hot spots” but nothing life-threatening. A trickle of blood ran down from her hair line where something had hit her in the head, probably from the explosion.
Karmack dropped his blaster and scooped up his wife. “GO!” he yelled to the stranger next to them, who was also still stunned by the explosion that had killed their attackers. He secured Joanna in a shoulder carry and then lifted the other man bodily to his feet, practically hurling him toward the exit. He took the hint and started running, following Sam and the other man into the warren of service tunnels running below and through the port.
They moved through the semi-darkness for a couple of minutes before Sam called a halt. “Ok, we should be clear of the initial response now. We can take a minute to breathe.”
Karmack gently set Joanna down in the tunnel, leaning against the wall. Sam came and leaned over his shoulder, looking at her with concern. “How is she?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.” Karmack said. He reached out and laid his hand across her face, lightly gripping her temples. He felt the ebb and flow of her mind, examining the complexity of her mind. He concentrated, going deeper, following the glowing lattice of the force that overlaid her synapses and nerves. He followed them just as he did logic circuits and physical connections in droids and equipment. After a time, he came to the place where damage had interrupted the system, the reason she was unconscious. Something had hit her hard in the head and her brain was already hard at work repairing the damage. Gently Karmack reached out, using the force lattice as his guide, and smoothed the disrupted pathways, restoring connections and removing shorts. After only a few seconds he was able to carefully withdraw.
Joanna’s eyes fluttered open. “Karm…”
“Joe.” Relief flooded him. “I guess you should have ducked more quickly.”
“Yeah, well, someone kind of blew up the bay…”
“Joanna, you’re back. Good. Can you walk?” Sam’s voice betrayed his own concern. They were not out of the woods yet.
Joanna answered by struggling to her feet. “Yes, I can walk. Shoot, too, if necessary.”
“Good.” Sam handed her a small blaster. “You lost your weapon in the bay. This will have to serve until we get back aboard the Hope.” He glanced at Karmack. “To bad you left that trooper’s weapon behind…”
Karmack grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m armed.”
One of the strangers laid his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Sam, we must go. They will be in pursuit. If we do not move quickly the safe house will be compromised.”
“I know…” Sam turned and looked up the corridor, then back the way they’d come. “Just one problem… I don’t know where we are.”
“What?!? Why did you lead us into this maze if you did not know how to…”
“Where do you need to go?” Karmack asked, cutting the man off.
“Why? So you can betray us?”
“Betray you to whom? I’m on your side, or did you miss the fact that I saved your butts in the landing bay?”
The stranger barked a laugh. “Saved us? I saw nothing to suggest that we were saved by you. If anything your effect on the engagement was negligible.”
Karmack pushed the anger that threatened to bubble up back down, carefully centering his mind and pushing his emotions aside. “That’s a matter of … some debate. But unlike Sam, I know EXACTLY where I am. I also know that there are fourteen troopers moving in this general direction, including a squad of six directly following our pathway. If we delay more than another two minutes, we’ll be engaged in another fire fight. Only this time…” Karmack reached out and tapped the brightly colored fuel lines running along the tunnel next to them “…we’ll be the ones getting bar-b-qued.”
The other man’s jaw worked as he considered. “Who are you? How do you know we are pursued?”
“My name is Ka’Ma’Aak Krin of House Krin, but I have not been known by any name beyond Karmack since I was very young. My friends call me Karm.” Karmack reached out his hand.
The other man’s eyes had widened slightly as Karmack spoke his family name for the first time in years. The Krin family had fought the Emperor long and hard – and paid the ultimate price for it. They had been made public examples by the Empire and were still trotted out on holovid on occasion as a reminder of the penalty for resistance, lest anyone become tempted to join the Rebellion.
Karmack grinned. “I am also Joanna’s husband. I have a good reason to see she’s not taken by the Empire. We all know what they do to members of my family, even if they didn’t know what they were getting into when they married.”
The other man relaxed slightly, and took Karmack’s hand. “Very well, I am Hamah and this is Joal. We need to get to Greggor’s Deli on Main street.” He cocked his head in a gesture that was mildly feline. “That doesn’t explain how you know we are pursued.”
Karmack let his grin widen. He shook Hamah’s hand and then released his grip, reached under his tunic and withdrew his saber. “That’s simple: I’m a Jedi.”
Karmack ignited the saber, letting its golden glow illuminate the passage. “This way. We need to go three intersections down and turn right. After that, just follow me.”
* * * * * * * * *
Two hours later the two men entered the deli, widely spaced and from different directions to avoid suspicion. Karmack stepped back into the dark alley they’d emerged in after following a utility tunnel away from the main service areas. The hatch to the utility tunnel had been sealed, only his force-enhanced lock-picking skills had allowed them to access it at all, and it was highly unlikely any pursuit force would have access or even think to try to follow them. “So now what?” He asked his wife and her uncle.
“Now we find a way to get back to the Hope and get out of here.” Sam replied. “Am I right in thinking you want to come along?”
Karmack nodded. “Yes, but I think we need to plan this out. They’ll be hunting us, and I can only provide so much surprise help along the way. Do you have a place to lay low?”
Sam shook his head. “No. I always stayed aboard the ship…”
“What about Donnigan’s place?” Joanna asked, looking up at Karmack.
“That might work…” Karmack considered the option. Duval Donnigan ran a small training gym and recreational center near the port. Karmack had spent time there teaching martial arts but had not been there to recently. Better, Donnigan had dealings with many shady characters. He wasn’t the sort to turn folks in or blab about who frequented the place to anyone in authority. “By now they’ve identified the ship and crew, and probably know I was there and involved as well as Joanna. They’ll be watching our flat and the shop, and probably even Jed’s place, but I doubt they’ve tumbled to my association with Donnigan.”
Karm, Jed…” Joanna said, concern in her eyes. “You need to warn him.”
“Yeah, I know. Let’s get moving, its going to be a bit of a hike to Donnigan’s place from here.”
The trio began moving on foot through the shadows. As they went Karmack withdrew his communicator and keyed it alive. He tapped out a quick text, a routine inquiry to his shop droid to upload the day’s activities to him with a very specifically misspelled word. Once the message was sent, he stripped the battery from the device and then flipped it into the air. His saber ignited in his hand and the blade vaporized the small device before disappearing again into the hilt, which was back on his belt before Sam or Joanna could turn to shoot a questioning look in his direction.
* * * * * * * * *
In his shop, a small astro-mech droid activated at the beep of an incoming message. The droid read the message, then sent the requested report back to the sender. He then followed the instructions buried in his memory banks, activating and sending another encrypted message before shutting back down. After a period of a month of inactivity the droid would leave the shop and travel to Jed’s place, but for now it would stay in place, just in case its master did in fact return – or someone was watching.
* * * * * * * * *
In a small dive near the port, a waitress received a message from her boyfriend. She grinned and wrote back, sending a pre-selected phrase to a return number she purposely typed incorrectly, connecting her loving response not to her supposed boyfriend but instead to a humble man who lived on the edge of town, tending to a small orphanage full of lost boys.
* * * * * * * * *
Jed received the message and sighed. “Be safe, my friends. Go with the One.” He murmured, closing his eyes to offer up petition for them to the One they both believed guided their steps.
** To be continued **