[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(71)

“Your language doesn’t surprise me, Commander. I would have been more surprised if you had persisted in maintaining a pretense of goodwill toward Kuat Drive Yards. But now we know exactly where we stand with each other, don’t we?” Kuat turned and set the felinx down on top of the lab bench beside him. “So I guess we have made some progress.”

Rozhdenst regarded him through eyes narrowed to slits. “As I said when I came here, Kuat-it would be better if we could work things out on a friendly basis. I’d rather trust you than have to watch you. But now we will be watching you.”

“As you wish.” Standing with his back turned toward the Rebel Alliance commander, Kuat picked up a micro-insertion logic probe from his lab bench. With the back of his other hand, he kept the felinx from investigating the delicate tool. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do…”

He heard the commander’s footsteps receding, and then the doors of his private quarters opening and closing once more. In the space’s restored silence, he regarded the thin, shining metal of the probe resting in the curve of his palm, as though it were a sharp-edged weapon. “They can watch all they want,” murmured Kuat. He addressed his soft words to the noncomprehending felinx, confident that no one else would overhear them. Since having been betrayed by Kuat Drive Yards’ former head of security, Kuat of Kuat had personally overseen the electronic security sweep of his private quarters. “They have no idea what I’m doing here.” A faint smile moved across his face. “And they won’t have much luck getting their hands on those ships …”

“So what’s the scoop?” Ott Klemp,

one

of

the

younger

and less-experienced pilots in the Scavenger Squadron, matched his pace to that of his commanding officer. “Are they going to cooperate with us?”

“There’s no ‘they’ at Kuat Drive Yards,” replied Commander Rozhdenst. He had let Klemp bring him down to the KDY construction docks from the squadron’s mobile base-support ship mainly to get the youngster some more, and much-needed, flight time near the immense, system-circling facility. “There’s only Kuat of Kuat himself. He makes all the decisions.” Rozhdenst continued his purposeful stride down the high-ceilinged corridor, away from his unpleasantly terminated conference with Kuat Drive Yards’ chief. “And right now, he’s decided to keep on being ‘neutral,’ as he puts it. That’s not good.”

“You think he’ll turn over this new fleet to the Imperial Navy?”

“What I think is that he’ll do whatever he feels is in the best interests of Kuat Drive Yards. I believe him when he says as much. Which means that he’ll do it in a second, soon as Palpatine forks over the credits for the ships.”

The landing dock, with the Scavenger Squadron shuttle waiting for them, was only a few meters away. “Maybe we should do a preemptive strike,” said Klemp. “Get our pilots inside those ships immediately, so that if any Imperial Navy forces show up, we can keep ‘em from getting their hands on the goods.”

Rozhdenst impatiently shook his head as he walked. “Negative on that. We’d be playing right into the Empire’s hands if we tried something like that. We don’t have enough pilots and crew to fully man even one ship out of a fleet like that. Getting them up and away from the KDY construction docks would be difficult enough, but trying to fight off an Imperial task force from inside those ships, without enough personnel to crew the onboard weaponry, would be suicide. No, we’d be better off-we’d have more of a chance, that is-by intercepting any Imperial ships coming from outside this sector, and fighting them off with what we’ve already got.”

“Sir, that’s not much of a chance at all.” Klemp’s face had paled with the contemplation of what the commander had described. “Our squadron might be able to keep a lid on a bunch of KDY ship fabricators and technicians, but if the Empire routes any significant number of fighting craft here, we’re done for.”

“Tell me something,” growled Rozhdenst, “that I don’t already know.” The two men had reached the side of the shuttle craft. Next to the extended landing gear, the commander turned to the younger man. “Let me fill you in on something about our mission here. You’re absolutely correct: if the Imperial Navy’s forces were to move in, there wouldn’t be much we could do to stop ‘em. There’s only one reason we’re able to stay up there-” He pointed toward the sealed landing dock’s upper reaches, and the rest of the Scavenger Squadron beyond it. “And that’s because, right now, the Empire’s attention-and its strength-is turned elsewhere. Endor, to be exact. With our beat-up, inadequate craft, we wouldn’t be able to stop the Imperial Navy-but we can slow it down. Maybe, if we fight hard and smart enough, slow it down to the point that we could contact the Alliance communications ship that’s in orbit near Sullust, and get some kind of operational task force ordered out here. And that Rebel force could stop the Imperial Navy from getting hold of these new ships.” Rozhdenst started to climb up the rungs of a rolling ladder platform toward the shuttle’s hatchway. “Of course,” he said over his shoulder to Klemp, “if that’s what happens, we won’t be here to see it. We’ll be dead.”