[Thrawn Trilogy] - 02(11)

“Sure, take it back. Anything new on your X-wing?”

“Not really,” Luke said, reaching past him to pick up the data pad. “They’re still saying it’ll take another few hours at least to-“

He caught the abrupt change in Lando’s sense a second before the other’s hand suddenly snaked up to grip his arm. “What is it?” Luke asked.

Lando was staring at nothing, his forehead furrowed with concentration as be sniffed the air. “Where were you just now?” he demanded.

“I went through the reception area to one of the public comm desks,” Luke said. Lando wasn’t just sniffing the air, he realized suddenly: he was sniffing at Luke’s sleeve. “Why?”

Lando let Luke’s arm drop. “It’s carababba tabac,” he said slowly. “With some armudu spice mixed in. I haven’t smelled that since:” He looked up at Luke, his sense abruptly tightening even further. “It’s Niles Ferrier. Has to be.”

“Who’s Niles Ferrier?” Luke asked, feeling his heartbeat start to pick up speed. Lando’s uneasiness was contagious.

“Human-big and built sort of thick,” Lando said. “Dark hair, probably a beard, though that comes and goes. Probably smoking a long thin cigarra. No, of course he was smoking-you got some of the smoke on you. Do you remember seeing him?”

“Hang on.” Luke closed his eyes, reaching inward with the Force.

Short-term memory enhancement was one of the Jedi skills he’d learned from Yoda. The pictures flowed swiftly backward in time: his walk to the medical wing, his conversation with Wedge, his hunt for a public comm desk—

And there he was. Exactly as Lando had described him, passing no more than three meters away. “Got him,” he told Lando, freezing the picture in his memory.

“Where’s he going?”

“Uh :” Luke replayed the memory forward again. The man wandered in and out of his field of vision for a minute, eventually disappearing entirely as Luke found the comm desks he’d been hunting for. “Looks like he and a couple of other’s were heading for Corridor Six.”

Lando had punched up a station schematic on the data pad.

“Corridor Six:blast.” He stood up, dropping both the data pad and the desensitizer onto his chair. “Come on, we’d better go check this out.”

“Check what out?” Luke asked, taking a long step to catch up as Lando hurried off through the maze of waiting patients to the door. “Who is this Niles Ferrier, anyway?”

“He’s one of the best spaceship thieves in the galaxy,” Lando threw over his shoulder. “And Corridor Six leads to one of the staging areas for the repair teams. We’d better get out there before he palms a Corellian gunship or something and flies off with it.”

They made their way through the reception area and under the archway labeled “Corridor Six” in both delicate Sluissi carioglyphs and the blockier Basic letters. Here, to Luke’s surprise, the crowds of people that seemed to be everywhere else had dropped off to barely a trickle. By the time they’d gone a hundred meters along the corridor, he and Lando were alone.

“You did say this was one of the repair staging areas, didn’t you?” he asked, reaching’ out with Jedi senses as they walked. The lights and equipment in the offices and workrooms around them seemed to be functioning properly, and he could sense a handful of droids moving busily about their business. But apart from that the place seemed to be deserted.

“Yes, I did,” Lando said grimly. “The schematic said Corridors Five and Three are also being used, but there ought to be enough traffic to keep this one busy, too. I don’t suppose you have a spare blaster on you?”

Luke shook his head. “I don’t carry a blaster anymore. Do you think we should call station security?”

“Not if we want to find out what Ferrier’s up to. He’ll be all through the station computer and comm system by now-call security and he’ll just pull out and disappear back under a rock somewhere.” He peered into one of the open office doorways as they passed it. “This is vintage Ferrier, all right. One of his favorite tricks is to fiddle work orders to route everyone out of the area he wants to-“

“Hold it,” Luke cut him off. At the edge of his mind: “I think I’ve got them. Six humans and two aliens, the nearest about two hundred meters straight ahead.”

“What kind of aliens?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never run into either species before.”

“Well, watch them. Aliens in Ferrier’s gang are usually hired for their muscle. Let’s go.