All Fett cared about was the job.
The bounty hunter went to the computer terminal and removed a small device from his belt. The device had cost him thousands of credits, but it helped him do his job, so it was worth the price. Once it was attached to a computer, the device began to search the files for anything that had been erased. If used quickly enough, the device could recover data that had been deleted.
After a moment, the device beeped and began to collect information that had been erased.
Fett had found what he was looking for. He studied the data for a moment and nodded in satisfaction. Now he knew where they were going. They were headed for a swamp planet called Dagobah.
The hunt was on.
CHAPTER 5
Zak, Tash, and Hoole were on board Platt’s starship, the Last Chance. Since the Imperial presence on Koaan was very small, they’d had no difficulty reaching her ship, and once they were in deep space, there was no way for the local authorities to follow them.
It wasn’t long before a few questions and a few guesses gave Zak and Tash a pretty good idea of who their new acquaintance was.
Her name was Platt Okeefe and she was a smuggler. Zak always thought of smugglers as crude, unlikeable characters who worked for gangsters like Jabba the Hutt. But Platt seemed friendly enough. She laughed when she noticed Zak giving her a suspicious glance.
“You’ve got a problem with me, kid?” she asked.
Zak shrugged. “You’re a smuggler. What am I supposed to think?”
Platt shrugged. “Think anything you want.”
Zak frowned. “Do you ever work for the Empire?”
The smuggler laughed. “I might, if the price was right. But mostly I carry stuff the Empire says is illegal to people who want it anyway. So I guess you could say I work for the other side.”
Zak’s eyes brightened. “Do you ever work for the Rebellion?”
“Sometimes. I don’t mind doing a job for them now and then, when they can pay. I consider it a bonus to be able to stick it to the Imps.”
“Imps?” he asked.
“Imperials,” Platt said. “I don’t really take sides, but if I had my way, all the Imps could jump into hyperspace and never jump back.”
That was good enough for Zak.
Platt, the Twi’lek called Tru’eb, and the rest of their gang were trying to set up a new base of operations. Because of all the Imperial activity in every corner of space, not to mention competition from other smugglers, they wanted to find someplace unknown to the rest of the galaxy. Platt had heard of the information stored at the Research Academy and decided to make use of it.
Tash and Hoole had been reviewing information about Dagobah. They found Zak and Platt and brought them up to date on what they had learned.
“Dagobah is covered by swamps,” Tash said. “The research team that went to study it never returned. We found only a few of their recorded entries. It looks like they started having trouble after a couple of months on the planet. They sent out a distress signal, but no one answered it, at least not by the time they made their last entry.
“It appears that the automatic distress signal was picked up years later by a passing freighter,” Hoole said. “They recovered the team’s research logs, but found no survivors.”
Zak’s jaw dropped. “And this is where we’re going? It
sounds dangerous.”
Platt yawned. “Relax, kid. Those science teams are usually a bunch of pinheads who spend all their time looking at bugs and not watching where they’re going. Besides, I want someplace no one else wants to go.”
“So do we,” said Tash.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” the smuggler said. “Why are you looking for a deserted planet? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
Hoole answered her question. “We need to avoid the Imperials. Let’s leave it at that.”
“So you’re on the run,” Platt said. “You’re welcome to come with us to Dagobah for now. Once we’ve laid low for a while and checked the place out, we can think about what to do next.”
Zak knew Hoole would accept Platt’s terms. What choice did they have? They didn’t have a ship of their own anymore.
“Very well,” Hoole said.
The trip to Dagobah took less than a standard day. The planet was fairly close to normal space routes-it was just that no one ever bothered to stop there.
The Last Chance dropped out of hyperspace, and Platt made one orbit around the planet, scanning it with the ship’s sensors. “I’m getting major life-form readings,” she said. “There’s something alive down there.”
“A lot of somethings,” Zak said. Platt had allowed her passengers to sit in the cockpit during the landing. Zak stared through the viewscreen at the glowing green ball that was Dagobah.