Star Wars: Legacy of the Force IV: Exile by Aaron Allston

Author:Aaron Allston [Allston, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780345510518
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-04-28T23:00:00+00:00

CORELLIAN SYSTEM EXCLUSION ZONE ERRANT VENTURE

In the first few days after Errant Venture was authorized to ply its trade for Alliance military personnel in the Corellian system, its casinos and other entertainments did great business. Booster Terrik, the Grand Old Man of the operation, though he was theoretically retired from day-to-day duties, was often seen in the casinos, flitting around in his hoverchair, greeting patrons and encouraging workers, his eyes alight in the way that only commerce could make them.

His new, unpaid workers didn’t hurt things, either.

Iella and Myri worked as dealers. Iella wore enough makeup to disguise her true identity; Myri did not need that precaution, but did change her hair color with spray-on hues and combinations each day, just because it was her custom. Two attractive women a generation apart, skillful conversationalists and card handlers, they drew good-sized crowds at their tables each day, and their tips were grand enough to make Myri wonder whether intelligence was the career she wanted for herself after all.

Lando and Han worked the casinos, too, but not as dealers. Each day they set up, in different casinos, at sabacc tables. Lando maintained his Bescat Offdurmin identity, and Han continued to put on his yellow-skinned, thin-mustache makeup each morning. At the end of each day they compared their winnings; after the first week Lando was slightly ahead.

Mirax spent most of her time with her father. During years of retirement on Corellia, she had cheerfully ignored her father’s efforts to bring her to the Errant Venture to learn and perhaps take over its operations. Now her homeworld was for the time hostile to her and she had nothing to do more suited to her talents, so she threw herself into these new studies with typical Mirax obsessiveness, delighting her father.

Leia, Wedge, and Corran concentrated on the data interpretation side of things. Seldom venturing into the ship’s public areas—each such trip, however short, would cause them to have to don disguises—they confined themselves to an auxiliary computer cabin provided by Booster and began meticulously assembling and analyzing the data the others provided them.

Data came from the drunk patrons and the sober ones, from the happy ones and bitter ones, from the officers with marital problems and straying eyes, from the personnel with accumulated resentments and inadequate filters between their brains and their mouths.

The most valuable data often came from patrons who, at the end of their rest-and-recreation leaves, were dead broke and too drunk to stand. The special circle of Errant Venture employees took care of them, letting them sober up in quiet little lounges, giving them enough credits for a return shuttle flight to their military units—assuming they hadn’t bought round-trip fare in the first place, which often they hadn’t—and even half carrying them to the shuttle docks for their outbound flights. Han, Lando, and the other data gatherers became new best friends to an immense number of young soldiers, pilots, and technical personnel.

But the information they farmed was frustratingly tenuous. One week into

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