Free Star Wars - Gathering Shadows - The Origin of the Black Curs - Unpublished by Kathy Burdette Page B

what?”
    “Like there’s nobody waiting for me to come back.”

    “What is up with this place?” said Platt for what was about the third time in fifteen minutes.
    Tru’eb glanced up from the information console. “I said I don’t know,” he told her irritably, although he could understand what Platt was talking about. Passengers and flight crews were roaming throughout the starport, checking their cargo specs at public maintenance terminals, slumped in chairs still waiting for their ships to pass muster, rushing to catch the next shuttle. Perfectly normal. But the locals—the maintenance people, the desk personnel, and the green-eyed humans—all had a raw, shaky look about them. Tru’eb usually associated expressions like those, and the scent they gave off, with sheer terror barely held in check.
    “I mean we’ve been waiting for four hours now and nobody knows anything. Dirk could be dead somewhere.”
    “Harkness strikes me as rather resilient,” said Tru’eb. “I doubt he ran into any serious opposition.”
    “Like what? That Imperial garrison nobody knows anything about?”
    Tru’eb didn’t answer. The whole point of the mission had been relatively simple; there was a stash of Imperial-issue weapons being transported in, disguised as ship parts. Platt, Tru’eb, and Harkness had planned on liberating the weapons for their own personal use. Platt had a couple of smuggler friends who were only too happy to provide a distraction. At a place like this, with the starport personnel totally clouded over by fear or whatever, nobody saw Tru’eb and his friends take custody of the alleged ship parts. Or nobody cared.
    The hitch in the plan came with Harkness, after they had the weapons. Platt and Tru’eb hadn’t worked with Harkness for very long, but it wasn’t hard to gather that he had some sort of personal vendetta against the Empire. Where Platt and Tru’eb would not have bothered to ask where the weapons came from (as long as they turned a fair profit), Harkness had to know. Which had led them to some of his contacts within New Republic Intel, and somebody leaked him the information that there was currently a team investigating a probable hidden Imperial garrison on Zelos. While Platt and Tru’eb were discussing terms with an arms dealer at the south end of town, Harkness had rented a repulsorlift vehicle and told them he would be right back. That was four days ago.
    “He’s crazy, but he’s a good man,” Platt said. “I like working with him. Despite the vendetta thing.”
    “I agree, but I was hoping this trip wouldn’t be—”
    “Excuse me, folks?” somebody said. Tru’eb and Platt turned around; standing behind Platt was a green-eyed starport official in a light-green uniform, holding a datapad.
    “I’ve got the—right here, here’s the—” He held out the datapad.
    “Oh, right, you’re the guy I talked to earlier,” said Platt.
    “Yes…about the information you requested? First of all, I’m sorry that took so long.”
    “Don’t worry about it. Although I wouldn’t have thought skiff rentals would be that hard to track down,” said Platt.
    “Well, we’ve had security problems before…there was a shipjacking about four years ago, and some crime lords got involved—”
    “What did you find?” asked Tru’eb.
    The man swallowed and held his datapad close to his chest. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said.
    Platt and Tru’eb exchanged glances. “What?” said Platt. “The skiff blew up? What?”
    “No, but there’s been a….”
    “A what? Tell us!”
    “A—a mistake. On the readout.”
    Platt visibly restrained herself from striking the man.
    “What do you mean?” asked Tru’eb, reaching up and putting a hand on Platt’s shoulder.
    “Well, it says here that the gentleman you’re looking for rented a starport skiff which he took out past the badlands… all the way north, into the mountains.”
    “So what?” said Platt.
    “It’s