“So tell me again. Your name is&mdash?”
“Mensio,” Luke said tiredly, glancing out the viewport at the hundreds of asteroids drifting past and wondering which one this particular sentry was hiding on. “I work for Wesselman, and I’ve got a shipment to deliver to you. Which part of that don’t you understand?”
“Let’s start with the part about you and Wesselman,” the man growled. “He never mentioned anyone named Mensio before.”
“I’ll have him send you a complete crew list when I get back,” Luke said sarcastically.
“Watch your mouth,” the other snapped. For a long moment he stared hard at Luke’s face. Luke gazed back, trying to look as bored and unconcerned as possible. All things considered, the face of Luke Skywalker had to be one of the most recognizable in the galaxy. But with darkened hair and skin, an artificial beard, a Gorezh-style slant added to the outer corners of his eyes, and a pair of scars slicing across one cheek, he should be able to pass completely unrecognized.
“Another thing is that Pinchers usually makes this run,” the sentry said at last. “How come he’s not here?”
“He came down with something and can’t fly,” Luke said. Which was true, more or less. Pincers should still be snoozing in peaceful oblivion back on Wistril under the influence of the Jedi healing trance Luke had put on him.
His associates were not going to be happy with the smuggler for letting Luke get the drop on him that way. On the other hand, when he came out of the trance he ought to be healthier than he’d been in years.
“Look, I haven’t got all week to sit out here dishing the dust with you,” Luke continued. “You going to let me in, or do I take it back to Wesselman and let him charge you a double delivery fee? I don’t care-I get paid either way.”
The sentry growled something unintelligible. “All right, keep your blaster tucked. What have you got?”
“A little of everything,” Luke told him. “Some Norsam DRX55 lift mines, a few Praxon emergency survival pods, some GTU power armor suits. Plus one or two little surprises.”
“Yeah? The captain hates surprises.”
“He’ll love these,” Luke promised. “Surprise number one is a set of hyperdrive boosters. Surprise number two is an SB-20 security breach droid.” He shrugged. “Course, if he doesn’t want them, I’ll be happy to take them off your hands.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you would.” The sentry snorted. “Okay, fine, come on in. You know the in-route, or do I gotta draw you a map?”
“I know it,” Luke said, mentally crossing his fingers. There were supposedly only two safe paths in through the maze of asteroids to this particular base of the Cavrilhu Pirates: one of which was safe for the inbound trip, the other for the outbound. He’d pulled visuals for the routes from Pincher’s mind while setting up the healing trance, and would feel reasonably confident about tracing out the path in his X-wing.
Doing the same in a lumbering Y60 Thalassian cargo hauler was another matter entirely. Especially when the Y60 no longer had any sublight drive units behind its central group of drive nozzles.
“Sure,” the sentry sneered. “Try not to hit anything big.”
The display went dead. Luke switched it off from his end, then keyed the makeshift intercom he’d rigged to the hollowed-out area where the central drive units had once been. “We’re on our way,” he announced. “You doing okay back there?”
There was a twitter of acknowledgment from Artoo, along with a warble that sounded distinctly nervous. “Don’t worry, we’ll get through just fine,” Luke soothed him. “You just make sure the ship’s ready to fly.”
The droid warbled again, and for a moment Luke thought back to the covert shroud gambit he and New Republic Intelligence bad cooked up for his penetration into the Imperial-held world of Poderis during the Thrawn campaign. There, too, he’d had Artoo and his X-wing stashed aboard a larger ship for a quick exit.
But this was a smuggler’s freighter they were flying now, not a carefully designed breakaway vehicle. It was going to be a different matter entirely to get the X-wing clear if they needed to get out of here in a hurry.
Well, he’d cross that dune when he reached it. In the meantime, the preferred option would be to keep them from having to make that quick exit at all. And the first step in that was to convince the pirates’ sentries that he was indeed a legitimate member of their supply network.
Resting his hands on the freighter’s controls, be ran through his Jedi calming exercises. “May the Force be with me,” he murmured, and beaded in.