Star Wars - A Servant of the Empire - Unpublished Read Free

cockpit window as Mace brought the ship in. There were a dozen vessels docked at the ring or floating nearby. Most were scout ships or small freighters like the Ordinary Trader , but there were a few that stood out. Panatic eyed a bulky Corellian corvette nervously. In a stand-up fight the bigger ship could pound Sentinel to scrap.
    A fancy yacht with gold-alloy plating on the hull was clamped to the docking ring. It looked familiar, but Panatic couldn’t place it and Mace’s computer was no help at all. Probably stolen, he decided.
    The traffic controller sounded as if he was overdue for a lung bath. “Welcome to Zahir, crossroads of the sector. All docking fees must be paid in advance. You can dock at Lock 23.”
    Beyond the airlock, Zahir was a dingy place. The broad corridor of the docking ring was full of dust and litter, and half the glow panels were dark. The walls were marked with graffiti and blaster burns. Twice they had to step over people sprawled on the floor, either drunk or dead.
    At the entrance to one of the three tubes linking the docking ring to the central asteroid, they met what passed for customs on Zahir. A wrinkled old Twi’lek with a missing tentacle stopped them at the door while a couple of Gamorrean thugs stood by with blasters.
    “Docking fee. Twenty credits.”
    Mace paid him. Panatic tried to look bored and tough under the gaze of the Gamorreans. One of them snorted and turned away.
    They rode the slideway down one of the tubes linking the docking ring to the main body of Zahir. The center of the complex was a huge domed garden, which time and neglect were turning Into a tangled jungle. A cleared area held an open-air bazaar, where vendors at a dozen crude stalls sold everything from glow-wine to protocol droids.
    “Wait here and try to blend in,” said Mace. “I see a familiar face.” He spent a few minutes chatting with a fat little Sullustan selling tanks of Tibanna gas. Panatic and Ivlik stood stiffly in the middle of the throng, looking warily about them. Mace waved goodbye to his Sullustan friend and threaded his way through the crowd to them.
    “Yab’s here, all right. He’s got a whole load of new slaves down in the holding pens. There’s going to be an auction this afternoon.”
    “Perfect. We can find out who his customers are.”
    “Until then we’d better lie low. You two stick out like a couple of rancors at a garden party. There’s a bar near here with a pretty good band.”
    Panatic let Mace lead the three of them to the saloon. It was a bit rougher than the officers’ clubs he normally frequented. But the music was good, and Sergeant Ivlik was big enough to make the other patrons give them a wide berth. The three of them sat in a corner booth with a view of the door and waited.
    “And I replaced the hyperdrive flux coil with a pair of synch-tuned B-105 units, which improves the jump response time by—” Mace was droning on about his ship, and Panatic was only half paying attention. Suddenly, Mace stopped short, staring at the door. Panatic followed his gaze.

    A small, thin man in the garb of an Imperial administrator had just entered the bar, followed by a pair of stormtroopers.
    “Uh-oh,” Mace whispered. “Maybe if we slip out one at a time they won’t spot us.”
    “Don’t worry, Mace,” said Panatic, smiling. “You’re already in the hands of the Empire, remember?”
    Inwardly, Panatic wasn’t so sanguine. The presence of an Imperial official here on Zahir was a puzzle. How had he come here? And why? And why did nobody seem to care? For a gang of thieves and smugglers, the denizens of Zahir seemed remarkably calm about two Imperial stormtroopers in their midst.
    “I still don’t like this, Captain,” Mace hissed. “He’s watching us.”
    “Calm down. That’s just your imagination.”
    The Imperial official summoned the bartender to his table and ordered quietly. His two guards remained standing on either side of him. scanning the bar for