First Lieutenant Quazont stood up and glanced out of the control room window into the docking bay. The captured freighter sat in the centre of the highly polished floor, making his bay look untidy. He frowned; there was no sign of the two Troopers who should have been standing guard duty. "Where have those guys got to now?" he muttered.
Second Lieutenant Fokasha looked up. "What's up?"
Quazont shrugged. "Those damn Team Buttercup Troopers aren't at their post. I don't know what they're teaching new recruits these days, but I'm worried for the future of the Imperium." He sat back down.
"They're young," said Fokasha. "They'll learn."
"Maybe," said Quazont. "I've heard stories of new squads being mentored by tough old veterans—but it shouldn't be necessary. Half of these guys will be lucky to survive their first day of real combat. They should at least have the training they need to keep 'em alive on the battlefield, and they don't seem to be getting it from the Academy. All they seem to teach them is this touchy-feely crap about respecting public property and not actually upsetting anyone."
"Yeah," sighed Fokasha. "Next thing you know they'll be taking their weapons off them too!"
"So what are they supposed to use? Harsh language?" Quazont shook his head. "Can't even do that any more in case you offend someone." The First Lieutenant tapped a couple of commands into his console and brought up the day's duty roster.
"Too true," muttered Fokasha. "Personally, I think the..." He stopped and glanced around the control room guiltily. The two men were alone. Nonetheless, he leaned in closer to Quazont and whispered, "I think the Imperator has gone soft in his old age."
Quazont looked around for himself. "I heard," he whispered conspiratorially, "that he has been paying too much attention to some new 'advisor'." He made air-quotes with his fingers around the last word. "Some Trileg chick who has him wrapped around her little finger. I've even heard rumours that suggest... Well, they're saying in some circles that this advisor is actually running the whole show." He cleared his throat loudly and sat upright. "But enough of that," he said loudly. "Talk like that can be unhealthy."
Fokasha nodded wryly.
"Now then, where are we?" said Quazont. He trailed his finger down the listing. "Team Buttercup." He tapped the screen, and the squad's details were flashed up on the display.
He stood and looked out into the landing bay again. The Troopers were still absent. He selected the appropriate channel and activated the comm. "TX Four Two One Nine Nine Aye, why aren't you at your post?"
He waited a few seconds. No response.
"TX-42199a, please respond."
Silence.
Movement caught his eye. One of the Troopers appeared at the bottom of the freighter's ramp and tapped the side of his helmet.
"And that's another thing," said Quazont as he watched the Trooper miming something about having an urgent need to dance naked through a meadow of daffodils—or perhaps he meant his helmet's communicator wasn't transmitting. "What's with this new armour that Lord Vapour has got these guys testing?"
"Isn't this the same stuff that we shit-canned last year because it was sub-standard?" asked Fokasha.
"That's what I thought too," said Quazont. "I thought it all got thrown into a trash compactor, though—along with the contractor who tried to sell it to us." He shrugged. "Who knows? Anyway, whatever this stuff is, it doesn't work; looks like we've got a bad transmitter."
"I don't know why they can't just stick with the design that does work," said Fokasha.
Quazont shook his head and shrugged. "Cover for me, will you," he said. "I'd better go down and see what I can do." He tapped briefly at his console, logging out of it before he turned to leave.
"Sure," said Fokasha.
As Quazont stepped into the sensor zone of the door it hissed open—and he found himself face to chest with a large woolly Woonky. The Woonky snarled in a most unfriendly manner.
"Oh crap," Quazont managed to say, and then the Woonky's large fist slammed into his head and threw him back across the room.
"What the...?" shrieked Fokasha. He fumbled for his pistol, but even as he wrapped his fingers around its handle, an armoured Trooper leaned in past the Woonky and shot the Second Lieutenant twice in the chest. He slumped bonelessly from his chair.
Mal Single followed Shagpyle Duphus into the room and looked around. Apart from the two Imperial corpses, it was empty. He beckoned, and Bent K'nobby joined them. Following the old man came the two 'bots. Bringing up the rear, removing his Trooper helmet as he closed the door behind himself—and panting a little breathlessly from the exertion of having sprinted up the stairwell—was Lurk Splitwhisker.
"Y'know," said Lurk, "with his howling, and your blasting everything in sight, it's a wonder the whole station doesn't know we're here."
"Bring 'em on," said Mal. "I'd prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around."
Lurk shook his head in disgust. Ignoring the youth's disdain, Mal pushed the dead Imperial away and slumped down into his recently vacated chair. It was still warm.
"Quickly," said Bent. "Find the computer outlet."
The two 'bots started making excited noises. "Here it is," said Seepy Weepy.
"Plug into it, Arty," said Lurk.
Arty whistled and extended her computer interface probe. She slid it into the socket and, with a half turn, locked it into place.
"Good," said Bent. "You should be able to see the entire Imperial network. See if you can find some way to shut down that attractor beam."
Arty beeped and whistled extensively.
"Oh..." said Seepy.
"What?" said Lurk. "What did she say?"
"Oh dear," said Seepy.
"What is it, Seepy?" said Lurk impatiently. "What did she say?"
"She said," Seepy translated, "'I'm an astrobot, not a hacker!' Apparently the computer feed is encrypted and she can't get any further."
"Hey guys," said Mal.
Lurk ignored him. "She may not be a hacker," he said, "but I am. All I need to do is plug a keyboard into Arty and I can hack in through her."
Arty whistled and beeped.
"She says," Seepy translated, "that she does not have a keyboard input port. Uh, however, I do have one."
"Hey guys," said Mal.
"Well, can you plug into her?" asked Lurk. "Perhaps we can pass the data through her through you."
"Of course, sir," said Seepy. "I've plugged into her on many occasions."
"Hey guys," said Mal, impatience creeping into his voice.
"Okay," said Lurk. "You plug into her. Good."
"Oh yes," said Seepy. "Very good!"
"Now all I need to do," said Lurk, "is plug in to you!"
Mal drew his blaster and fired a bolt of laser fire at the ceiling. The energy blast ricocheted around the room several times before it finally hit the corpse of First Lieutenant Quazont where he lay huddled in the corner. Everybody in the room gaped at him.
"Hey guys," he said with an exaggerated air of innocence, "if you've quite finished whatever kinky sexual fetish it is you're playing out over there, why not just use this terminal?" He indicated the one in front of the seat he occupied; the erstwhile Second Lieutenant Fokasha had not had the presence of mind to use his final moments of life to log out.
"Uh, yeah," said Lurk. "Good point."
Mal moved over to the other chair, and allowed Lurk to get to the terminal. Bent sighed.
Lurk ran his fingers over the keys. "Oh good," he said. "Even the Imperium use the Boggle search engine!" He typed in a query string and then started looking through the results.
"What's that one?" asked Bent, looking over the youth's shoulder.
"Yeah, that looks like it," said Lurk. He clicked on a link labelled 'Attractor Reactor', and a partial schematic of the Devastator Station appeared on the screen.
"Hey guys," said Mal.
"Yes?" said Lurk immediately.
"What is it?" said Bent.
"Can't we just press this switch?" he asked, pointing to a switch on the console. It was in the 'On' position, it had a green light beside it, and the label beneath it read 'Attractor Beam Power'.
Lurk and Bent looked at each other sheepishly.
"Well," said Lurk, "we could, but it's probably not that simple. Uh..."
"Uh, no," continued Bent. "If we merely switch it off, what's to stop them from switching it back on when we take off?"
"I could blast the console," said Mal. "Hell, old man, you could slice it into confetti; you seem even more weapon-happy than I am."
"Well, maybe," said Bent, "but what if, uh, what if there are other switches, in other control rooms?"
Mal shrugged. "We could be out of range before they realise what's happening," he said.
"But, uh, if we didn't get free in time, they'd never believe the Sparrow was abandoned a second time. Not even the Imperials are that stupid!" said Lurk.
"Besides," added Bent, "that is not the way it's supposed to be."
"Are you still waffling on about the Source, old man?" demanded Mal. "About destiny?"
Bent gazed at the smuggler calmly. "Partly," he said at last. "Through my sensitivity to the Source, I can sometimes catch a glimpse of the Script which we must all follow. Always in motion, the future is. Uh. The future is always in motion. But it must always return to the path prescribed by the Script eventually. I cannot see where this path will lead us, but I can see that I must disable the Attractor Beam power source if you, uh, if we are to escape."
"Whatever," said Mal dismissively. "You've gotta do what you've gotta do, I guess."
"Okay," said Lurk to Bent. "The Attractor Beams are powered by these seven reactors." He pointed to the screen. "Disabling one of them should put the whole system out of action."
Mal frowned. "Doesn't that seem a little odd?" he said. "You'd think if a highly critical system was powered by seven separate reactors, it would be designed with multiple redundancies so it would keep running if two or three went down."
Lurk shrugged and pointed at the screen. "What can I say?" he said. "That's what it says."
Bent studied the screen intently. "Okay," he said. "I have to do this alone. You boys stay here and watch out for the 'bots."
"Fine by me," muttered Mal. "This was just supposed to be a quick taxi-ride to Alderbark; I never signed on for all of this..."
"But Bent," whined Lurk, "I wanted to come with you."
"I know," said Bent. "But it is vital that those 'bots are delivered to the Rebel Coalition, or other star systems will suffer the same fate as Alderbark. Your destiny lies along a different path from mine." He hesitated, his brow furrowing in thought. He was sure there was something he had forgotten to mention.
"Well, good luck," said Lurk.
"Thank you," said Bent. He clapped Lurk on the shoulder. "The Source will be with you, always," he said. Then he turned away and slipped out of the room.
Shaggus barked something—What was that all about?—and Mal shook his head. "You got me, pal," he said. He turned to Lurk.
"Boy, where did you dig up that old fossil?" he said.
"Bent K'nobby is a great man!" said Lurk loyally. "A bit quick to fire up that light rapier of his, perhaps, but still a great man!"
Mal shrugged.
As silence descended over the room, Lurk turned back to the console and started playing a solo card game on the screen. He soon bored of that, though. He called up the Boggle search engine again.
"Let's see," he said. He started typing something, erased it, typed something else, erased it too. Finally, on a testosterone-driven whim, he typed 'boobies' and pressed the Search button.
"Oh," he said.
"What?" asked Mal. He wasn't really interested in anything the geeky kid had found, but at least it was some small distraction from the tedium of sitting and waiting.
"Uh, it's a well known fact of computer networking that every network has a percentage of pornography on it."
"Yeah?" said Mal.
"Well, this one hasn't," said Lurk. "I'm not sure quite what it means, but I suspect it's an indication of how truly evil they are!"
"Wait a minute," said Mal. "You're saying these guys are evil because they don't have porn on their computers?"
"Yeah," said Lurk. After a moment he added defensively, "porn is a natural part of a healthy life, and so its absence is very worrying."
"Uh, right," said Mal. Damn farm-boys, he thought, they're all the same! "Maybe you didn't try the right word. What did you type?"
"'Boobies'," said Lurk.
"Well, try something else," he said. "How about 'sex'."
Lurk typed 'sex' into the search engine and waited for the results. "Nothing," he said.
"Nothing?" asked Mal. He leaned over to look at Lurk's screen. "What are all those?"
"Oh, there are some results, sure," he said. "This first one, for instance, is some study on the gender selection of THIGH Pilots, whatever that means. But there is no pornography at all."
Mal frowned. He wasn't particularly interested in pornography—he was charismatic enough that he could have had his pick of women on just about any planet he visited, if he so chose—and apart from the peculiarities of the Serendipity Sparrow's systems, he wasn't overly interested in computers. But the kid did have a point; something was a little strange here.
"Try, uh..." A thought struck him. "Try 'penis'," he said.
Lurk typed 'penis'. "Nothing," he said.
"Well, what about 'vagina'?"
Lurk tried that. "Nothing," he reported.
Mal was rapidly losing what little interest he had had in the situation. He shrugged. He had no intention of sitting here reciting names of body parts until the old man came back. One more, he thought. One more to keep the kid happy, and then I try to get some sleep! "Anything there for 'labia'?" he suggested.
"Oh," said Lurk. "Labia! Of course! How could I forget?"
"Don't get that excited," said Mal. "It's only another word." But Lurk was frantically typing.
"She's here," said Lurk. "She's here. I've found her, I've found her. Detention block 3701F."
"What?" said Mal. This conversation was changing direction too quickly for him to keep up. "Found who?"
"The Princess. Princess Labia," shouted Lurk excitedly. "She's the one in the message. We have to rescue her."
"Wait a minute," said Mal. "Back up there. Did you say her name was 'Labia'?"
"Uh, yeah," said Lurk. "So what?"
"So who the hell names their kid 'Labia'?" said Mal. "Come to think of it, who the hell names their kid 'Lurk'? You two aren't related, are you?"
"No," said Lurk. "We're not. Definitely not. No way, no how. And what's wrong with 'Lurk' anyway?"
Mal held up his hands placatingly. "Hey, I'm just saying..."
"Well don't," said Lurk. "Now, are you gonna help me rescue the Princess or not?"
"I'm happy to stay right here, thanks."
"But she's scheduled for execution. They're gonna kill her!"
"Better her than me," said Mal.
"A minute ago—well, okay, fifteen minutes ago—you were saying you preferred a straight fight. Now you just want to sit here and wait?"
"Yeah," said Mal, "but marching into the detention block isn't quite what I had in mind. Besides, it was your old buddy who told us to wait here, remember?"
"But he didn't know she was here," pleaded Lurk.
Mal shrugged. "Look, I just want to get out of here in one piece. There is nothing you could say that would convince me to go running off on a crazy suicide mission."
Lurk sighed. "She's beautiful," he tried.
Mal shook his head.
"Nice boobies," Lurk added.
"What good are nice boobies," said Mal, "if they get you killed."
Lurk suddenly had a thought. He smiled innocently. "She's rich," he said.
"How rich?" said Mal. Shaggus snarled at him—Don't even go there!—but Mal waved him away.
"Rich. Powerful," said Lurk. It never actually occurred to either of them that any such riches or power might not have survived the destruction of her home planet. In truth, it occurred to Lurk that it wouldn't occur to Mal provided nobody mentioned which planet Labia was a Princess of, which was, at the moment, the only salient factor in the equation. Mal's ignorance, that is. Not Labia's planet of origin.
"Why," Lurk continued, "if you were to rescue her, the reward would be..." He waved his hands in the air to give the impression of size.
"Would be what?" asked Mal.
"Well, more wealth than you can imagine."
Shaggus snorted.
"I don't know," said Mal. "I can imagine quite a bit!"
"Well, more wealth than I can imagine, then," said Lurk. "But you'll get it!"
"I'd better," said Mal.
"You will," said Lurk.
"Well, let's go rescue your Princess then!" said Mal. It never occurred to Mal that Lurk probably wasn't in a position to be able to promise large sums of money on the behalf of the Princess. It did occur to Shaggus, but since Mal never really understood more than the general gist of what the Woonky was trying to say when Shaggus was angry, his howls of protest didn't help.
Mal's greatest flaw was his tendency to be blinded to reality by the offer of large sums of money.
"Don't worry, pal," he said to the angry Woonky, "it'll work out just fine."
Shaggus grunted doubtfully.
"Hey," said Mal, "it's me!"
"Er, sirs," said Seepy Weepy, a little worried. "What about us."
Lurk looked at the 'bots. He didn't particularly want to shepherd them all around the huge Station.
"Take this," he said, producing a mini comm-link from the belt of his Shock Trooper armour, "and wait for us here."
"What if anybody comes?" said Seepy nervously.
"Lock the door," said Lurk.
"And hope they don't have blasters," added Mal.
"Oh."
"Can we go now?" asked Mal impatiently.
"Sure," said Lurk. He started putting his Shock Trooper helmet back on.
Shaggus snuffled.
"Oh," said Mal. "What about Shaggus?"
"Didn't I say?" said Lurk. "That's all part of my plan."
"There's a plan?" said Mal. "Since when?"
"Look, Shaggus," said Lurk, ignoring Mal's sarcastic tone, "I'm just going to put these on you..." He produced a set of handcuffs from his belt. Shaggus roared in rage and shook his arms in the air. He still hadn't forgotten that monkey comment, and the way things were going, he was just about ready to rip the young human's head off and shove it where the sun didn't shine.
Lurk stepped back hastily.
"Relax, Shagpyle," said Mal, "I think I know what he's got in mind."