Lando hissed softly between his teeth. “Well, that brings us to the worst case scenario, Han old buddy. Namely, that your friend the Senator is a complete phony : and that what we’ve got here is a giant Imperial scam.”
Han blinked. “Now you’ve lost me.”
“Think about it,” Lando urged, lowering his voice as a group of uniformed men rounded a corner of one of the buildings and headed off in another direction. “Garm Bel Iblis, supposedly killed, suddenly returned from the dead? And not only alive, but with his own personal army on top of it? An army that neither of us has ever heard of?”
“Yeah, but Bel Iblis wasn’t exactly a recluse,” Han pointed out. “There were a lot of holos and recordings of him when I was growing up. You’d have to go to a lot of effort to look and sound that much like him.”
“If you had those records handy to compare him with, sure,” Lando agreed. “But all you’ve got is memories. It wouldn’t take that much effort to rig a fairly close copy. And we know that this base has been sitting here for more than a year. Maybe abandoned by someone else; and it wouldn’t take much effort to throw a fake army together. Not for the Empire.”
Han shook his head. “You’re skating on drive trails, Lando. The Empire’s not going to go to this much effort just for us.”
“Maybe they didn’t,” Lando said. “Maybe it was for Fey’lya’s benefit, and we just happened to stumble in on it.”
Han frowned. “Fey’lya’s benefit?”
“Sure,” Lando said. “Start with the Empire gimmicking Ackbar’s bank account. That puts Ackbar under suspicion and ripe for someone to push him off his perch. Enter Fey’lya, convinced that he’s got the support of the legendary Garm Bel Iblis and a private army behind him. Fey’lya makes his bid for power, the New Republic hierarchy is thrown into a tangle; and while no one’s watching, the Empire moves in and takes back a sector or two. Quick, clean, and simple.”
Han snorted under his breath. “That’s what you call simple, huh?”
“We’re dealing with a Grand Admiral, Han,” Lando reminded him. “Anything is possible.”
“Yeah, well, possible doesn’t mean likely,” Han countered. “If they’re running a con game, why would they bring us here?”
“Why not? Our presence doesn’t hurt the plan any. Might even help it a little. They show us the setup, send us back, we blow the whistle on Fey’lya, and Mon Mothma pulls back ships to protect Coruscant from a coup attempt that never materializes. More chaos, and even more unprotected sectors for the Imperials to gobble up.”
Han shook his head. “I think you’re jumping at shadows.”
“Maybe,” Lando said darkly. “And maybe you’re putting too much trust in the ghost of a Corellian Senator.”
They had reached their quarters now, one of a double row of small square buildings each about five meters on a side. Han keyed in the lock combination Sena had given them, and they went inside.
The apartment was about as stark and simple as it could be while still remaining even halfway functional. It consisted of a single room with a compact cooking niche on one side and a door leading to what was probably a bathroom on the other. A brown fold down table/console combo and two old-fashioned contour chairs upholstered in military gray occupied much of the space, with the cabinets of what looked like two fold-down beds positioned to take up the table’s share of the floor space at night. “Cozy,” Lando commented.
“Probably can be packed up and shipped off planet on three minutes’ notice, too,” Han said.
“I agree,” Lando nodded. “This is exactly the sort of feel that lounge should have had, only it didn’t.
“Maybe they figured they ought to have at least one building around here that didn’t look like it came out of the Clone Wars,” Han suggested.
“Maybe,” Lando said, squatting down beside one of the chairs and peering at the edge of the seat cushion. “Probably pulled them out of that Dreadnaught up there.” Experimentally he dug his fingers under the gray material. “Looks like they didn’t even add any extra padding before they reupholstered them with this-“
He broke off, and abruptly his face went rigid. “What is it?” Han demanded.
Slowly, Lando turned to look up at him. “This chair,” he whispered. “It’s not gray underneath. It’s blue-gold.”
“Okay,” Han said, frowning. “So?”
“You don’t understand. The Fleet doesn’t do the interiors of military ships in blue-gold. They’ve never done them in blue-gold. Not under the Empire, not under the New Republic, not under the Old Republic. Except one time.”