Rebel Bluff Read online

  Clarr shook her head. “The sabacc pot was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. But I came to Old Jho’s searching for someone like you,” she said, looking at Lando.

  “You need the services of a gambler?” Vizago asked.

  “A rebel.”

  Lando chuckled and gave her the same generous smile he’d given a thousand ladies whom he’d refused for one reason or another. “I’m humbled by your request, truly. But revolution is the one game I don’t play.”

  “That’s what I once thought,” Clarr said, “but if you don’t get involved, it’s a game you’re going to lose.”

  Lando’s chrono beeped. He glanced at his wrist. The tracker showed his Ubrikkian had turned around and was traveling toward Tarkintown at high velocity. A second icon blinked behind it in pursuit and was gaining so fast, Lando didn’t need to enlarge it to know what it was.

  “I recommend hiding your true colors at the moment. We’re about to have company,” Lando said, “of the Imperial kind.”

  The pinging of lasers punctuated his warning. Speeding toward them from the west was Lando’s Ubrikkian, with its aft section on fire. The man with the steel headband sat in the cockpit, turned upside down as the craft spun and arrowed right toward the camp.

  Lando dove to the ground for cover. Seconds later, the man’s joyride ended in a ground-shaking crash.

  A scorching wave of heat passed over Lando, singeing his clothes and his back. He held his breath until he couldn’t any longer, waiting for the smoke to clear. Finally he stood, coughing. Other than some minor burns, he’d suffered no injuries. His Ubrikkian, however, had experienced a horrible mechanical death. It lay twisted around the moisture vaporator, pieces of its fuselage strewn about. The man in the cockpit did not move.

  “You again,” said a familiar, filtered voice.

  The stormtrooper squad leader leaned out of the hatch of the Imperial troop transport as it emerged from the smoke. He leapt down to the ground, joined by two troopers. All aimed their blaster rifles at Lando and Vizago, and were backed up by the transport’s forward laser turrets.

  “Why, hello,” Lando said, regaining his breath. “We should get a drink sometime, seeing we run in the same circles.”

  “Where is she?” the squad leader barked. The question carried with it a certain implication, one Lando was unable to fully confirm. When he didn’t answer, Vizago stepped forward. “Has the smoke fogged your visors? She’s on the vaporator.”

  Two of the troopers marched past them to inspect the crash site. Only then did Lando get his confirmation. Neither Clarr nor anything that resembled her remains lay among the wreckage.

  Vizago flexed his gloved hands. “I swear she was there. I just saw her.”

  Lando saw her, too — darting through the smoke on the other side of the troopers. He exchanged a momentary glance with her before she slipped behind the transport.

  The two troopers returned to their commander, pressing their rifle barrels into Vizago and Lando’s sides. “If you don’t tell us the truth we will tear this town apart,” the squad leader said, “after we reduce you to ash.”

  The Devaronian hissed at Lando, as if ready to bite. “Tell him — tell him that was the truth!”

  Lando stared at the squad leader, focusing on the helmet’s curved lenses, which concealed the trooper’s real eyes. Though Lando couldn’t get a read on those eyes, he reminded himself that they were there, that beneath the white plastoid armor there was a person, regardless of how faceless and robotic he or she seemed. And people could be bluffed.

  “Order your troopers to lower their rifles and I’ll tell you where she is.”

  The squad leader leaned close to Lando. “We don’t bargain with scum. This is your last chance.”

  Lando couldn’t see Clarr, but he had to trust to luck that she knew what she was doing. All he had to do was keep the troopers’ attention off the transport for a couple more moments. “That wouldn’t be smart, sir. My partner and I are worth more alive than dead.” He put on his most serious sabacc face. “You see, we’re rebels.”

  Rebels. That single word proved incendiary. They ignited the squad leader’s eyes under the lenses, widening their pupils, making them at last visible. Lando had never seen such hate.

  “What? I’m not a rebel,” Vizago said. “He’s lying, I tell you, he’s lying!”

  “Stuncuff them,” the squad leader said. “We will bring them to Agent Kallus for —”

  A laser blast cut short the squad leader’s order. He was pitched forward into Lando, and both smacked the ground. Lando rolled to his knees, but the squad leader remained face down, a gaping hole in his back.

  The two other troopers whirled and opened fire on the transport. The body of the transport pilot dangled out the hatch, yet the transport’s forward turrets continued to move. Clarr must have infiltrated the vehicle and taken control of its weaponry.

  But managing two targets proved difficult for someone unskilled in military tech. Her next rounds missed. The stormtroopers didn’t. They concentrated their fire through the transport’s open hatch. Within seconds, its turrets stopped rotating.

  The troopers re-trained their rifles on Lando and Vizago. “You’ll pay for this, rebel scum,” both said.

  Lando waited for the inevitable blaster bolt to come. There was no way to bluff out of this one.

  A rock struck one of the troopers’ helmets. Surprised, the trooper and his comrade wheeled around — into a hailstorm. Refugees came out of their hovels and threw whatever objects they had at hand, from bent hydrospanners to shattered glowrods. While most everything bounced harmlessly off the troopers’ armor, the impact was enough to take them off their feet. They never got back up. The refugees descended upon the troopers, their fear replaced by a seething fury. The crackle of nerf-prods silenced the troopers’ screams, but the refugees continued their attack. They would have their revenge.

  Lando hastened away from the mob, heading toward the Imperial transport. He dreaded what he would find in there, but he had to go. Clarr had risked her life to save his, so he owed it to her to see if there was any chance he could save hers.

  The stormtroopers’ shots had turned the interior of the transport into a smoldering ruin. Cockpit consoles sizzled. Live conduits sparked. The piloting yoke hung from a rope of melted wire, while the gunnery controls were nothing but a blackened mess.

  On the floor in the middle of all this lay Ria Clarr.

  Lando stepped over to her and bent down to inspect her wounds. She’d been hit in the hip and abdomen, painful for sure, but not necessarily lethal. His dread edged to hope.

  “Ria?”

  When she opened her eyes and looked up at him, he offered her his most rakish grin. “Not bad for a geologist.”

  The glint in her eyes shone even brighter than before. “Not bad for a rebel,” she said to him.

  On the boarding ramp of the Broken Horn, Lando looked back one last time at Tarkintown. The place was nothing like the desolate camp of his arrival. Refugees hurried about between the hovels, arming themselves with blasters from the troop transport or fashioning crude weapons of their own. Directing all this was Ria Clarr, confined to a repulsor sled because of her injuries, but no less deterred in her fight against the Empire.

  Lando sighed. He had pleaded with them — he’d begged Clarr — to board Vizago’s freighter and leave Lothal, explaining that the Empire would be back in full force and wouldn’t take prisoners. But no one would be swayed, least of all Clarr. Her act of resistance and the resulting victory over the stormtroopers had shaken these people out of their doldrums, given them a purpose, inspired them. Yes, Tarkintown might be a wretched, miserable place to live, but it was their home. And they would defend it, to the death if need be.

  Clarr drove her sled near the ramp. She gave him a look and a smile. “Thank you. For everything.”

  “Sure,” Lando said, unable to muster a smile of his own. “Good luck.”

  Entering the freighte
r, he almost felt guilty he wasn’t staying behind. But the truth was, Tarkintown wasn’t his home, and the Empire wasn’t his enemy. Not yet, at least. And if that day did come to pass, one thing was certain: Lando Calrissian wouldn’t count on his luck. Wise gamblers knew when to double-down, and when not to, particularly if the odds were stacked so heavily against them, as they would be with the Empire.

  The Broken Horn took off, piloted by Vizago’s enforcer droids. The plan Lando had hatched with Vizago called for them to be safely off Lothal for a couple weeks, so they wouldn’t be swept up in any Imperial investigation.

  “Hide my cache of transponders in the shed and remember to walk the puffer pig,” Lando told his protocol droid, W1-LE, over the comm. “I want her sniffing for ore.”

  He shut off his comlink and stood alone in the main cabin. In the viewport, Tarkintown diminished in size until it was just another light on Lothal’s surface. Soon it wasn’t even that.

  Vizago came up beside him. “You still owe me for that land, Calrissian.”

  Lando fingered the few credits he had left in his pocket, the ones he hadn’t bet. They weren’t much, but perhaps they’d be enough, if he was lucky.

  “Sabacc?”

  MORE TO SAY HAVE YOU?

  Star Wars: Battle to the End by Michael Kogge is out now. Del Rey’s A New Dawn is now available in paperback.

  From Star Wars Insider 158 (07-2015)

  11.6.18.15.14.5-1