[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(38)
“I wonder if we should announce ourselves,” Lando said, glancing around uneasily. Flying in cramped spaceships had never bothered him in the least, but walking down a narrow passageway with the top of a mountain weighing down on him was something else entirely.
Or maybe it was that the place reminded him too much of the inside of Mount Tantiss. Either way, as they rounded the corner, he found his right hand resting on the grip of his holstered blaster.
Which made the scene that opened up in front of them just that much more anticlimactic. Sitting at the back of a widened section of the cave was a single ancient Morish, even older than the one they’d talked to at the booth, meditatively plucking the stretched wires of some kind of musical instrument. To his right was a squat military-surplus worklight; to his left, an antique wood brazier. On both sides of the cave, only vaguely touched by the worklight’s glow, were a collection of objects that were apparently the Old Recluse’s household goods. At his back, not quite covering the cave’s back wall, was a hand-decorated curtain of heavy-looking cloth.
If the Old Recluse was surprised to see them, he didn’t show it. He studied them for a moment in silence as they stepped to within a couple of meters of him, then dropped his gaze back to his instrument and muttered something in his own language.
“He’s greeting us,” Tycho translated. “Sort of. He also demands to know what we want.”
“Tell him we’ve heard he knows something about the destruction of Caamas,” Wedge said. “We’d like to hear more.”
“He’ll want money,” Janson warned.
“Right,” Tycho agreed. “Try offering him fifty.”
The Morish stirred. “Three hundred,” he said in clear and nearly unaccented Basic. “This story is worth three hundred.”
Well, well,” Wedge said dryly. “So much for local color. I thought they probably spoke more Basic than they were letting on. I’ll give you one hundred.”
“Three hundred,” the Old Recluse insisted. “Or no story.”
“One-fifty,” Wedge offered. “New Republic currency. All I have on me.”
“Three hundred. No less.”
“I’ll cover it,” Lando spoke up, looking around the cave. There was something odd about this place. Something that was triggering some very unpleasant memories .
“All right,” Wedge sighed. “Three hundred it is. But this had better be worth it.”
“It is,” the Old Recluse assured him. “As the dark battle fleet assembled outside Caamas-“
And suddenly it clicked in the back of Lando’s mind. Stepping around behind the brazier, he got a grip on the edge of the curtain&mdash
“Ka’alee!” the Morish screeched, tossing aside his musical instrument and lunging toward the worklight. His hand darted beneath it&mdash
“Freeze it!” Wedge snapped. All three Rogue Squadron pilots had dropped into combat crouches, blasters in their hands and steady on the Morish “Bring your hand out,” Wedge ordered. “Empty.”
Slowly, glaring at them, the Old Recluse pulled his hand back out. Janson circled over to the worklight and crouched down beside it, coming up with a small but nasty-looking blaster. “All right,” Wedge said as Janson returned to Tycho’s side. “Now you just sit there and be good. And keep your hands where we can see them.” Holstering his blaster, he walked around behind his teammates and came over to Lando. “What did you find?”
“The source of his omniscience,” Lando said grimly, pulling the curtain aside. “Take a look.”
Wedge whistled softly under his breath; and even Lando, who had more or less known what to expect, had to admit he was impressed. Crammed into a wide floor-to-ceiling crack in the back wall of the cave was a fully functioning Imperial communications center, complete with encrypt/decrypt modules, the input jacks for a variety of droids and sensor feeds, a space/planetary monitor module, and a self-contained Generations III power generator. “Well, well,” Wedge commented. “Nice find, Lando, What tipped you off?”
“The smell,” Lando told him, an involuntary shiver running through him. “Dusty electronics have a smell like nothing else in the universe. The Spaarti cylinder chamber in the Mount Tantiss storehouse was reeking with it.”
“Probably set this place up just before we took Morishim back from them,” Janson suggested. “Must have used it to spy on the base.”
“And for propaganda and incitement of the locals,” Wedge said, pushing aside the curtain for a closer look. “There’s a direct feed to the Imperial news service here. And a direct feed to Coruscant Hourly.”