Crisis at Crystal Reef

5

When Anja headed for Kessel in the stolen Lightning Rod, it felt just like old times. She was flying in a ship as an independent pilot—just like the smuggler and expediter she had been for Czethros. She could take care of herself. She always had. Anja had her wits about her, and she had the antique lightsaber she had bought from a scavenger merchant in an illicit market on Ord Mantell. She didn’t need the Solo twins or their friends to solve her problems for her.

She could handle this.

As she came in to the Kessel system, she steered clear of the treacherous conglomeration of black holes known as the Maw Cluster, which had given rise to the classic challenge of the “Kessel Run.” Kessel itself, a small world not much bigger than a planetoid, was surrounded by a wispy white mane of atmosphere that leaked away into space like a comet’s tail.

The shattered moon, blasted apart by the prototype Death Star, had turned into countless obstacles in the sky, but Anja was confident in her piloting abilities. She locked onto the spaceport beacon, and the Lightning Rod cruised down through the atmosphere, banging and bouncing as it struck meteors too tiny to be marked on any hazard charts.

“Spaceport Control, this is an unlicensed trader,” she said into the comm system. “I wish to land for maintenance and services. I’m out of Ord Mantell and ran into some damage flying too close to the black holes out there.”

“You’re far from home, unlicensed trader,” said the attendant.

“Yeah, right. And I’m trying to get back there,” Anja replied. “Do you have a maintenance dock I could hire?”

“Follow this vector,” came the answer. Coordinates scrolled up on her screen. Anja smiled, followed the beacon to a contained cargo area at those coordinates, and approached the opening dome to land.

Anja felt the hunger screaming inside her more stridently than ever. Down beneath the white alkaline surface of Kessel, hidden in the rocks of this planet, was spice … spice for the taking. All she needed for now was one more dose just to help her get by. She only had to track down a sample, just a tiny amount. That would buy her more time in which to battle her addiction.

She hadn’t been lying to Jacen and Jaina Solo when she’d said she only took andris because she liked to. Just for kicks. She had believed that. Sometimes she did need spice, though. And the twins had made her realize, reluctantly, that she needed andris more than she had let herself believe.

Anja Gallandro did not like to depend on anyone or anything. She had to kick this habit, break her addiction … and she would start as soon as she formed a plan. After she got herself another dose to tide her over, she would be able to think more clearly.

But now that she was on Kessel, with the Lightning Rod settled into an unmarked berth inside the enclosed cargo bay, she didn’t know how to go about obtaining a new supply. Security would be tight. Although smugglers sometimes made a living from selling andris and glitterstim and ryll offworld, she couldn’t just step into the local mercantile and order a container for herself.

But she hoped there might be some people in the docking bays who had a tiny bit of skim they could sell from their cargo … under the table, of course.

She stepped out of the cooling Lightning Rod, looked around, and tossed her long hair behind her back. She still wore her skintight outfit from her smuggling days. The sleeveless shirt showed off her taut muscles and the piranha beetle tattoo on her arm. But Kessel was a cold world, and even here in the docking bay she felt a bite to the air. Shivering, she considered going back into the Lightning Rod to rummage through the supply compartments and find warmer clothes.

But then her eyes fixed on a familiar craft at the other side of the docking bay. She was puzzled for a moment. She’d seen the ship not long before. When a little grayish-skinned man with winglike eyebrows and a ridged scalp emerged, she put the pieces together instantly. She remembered this man and his ship.

Lilmit.

His craft was the Rude Awakening, a cargo hauler licensed out of Ord Mantell. Lilmit had been on his way from Ord Mantell to Anja’s homeworld of Anobis, hauling a load of black-market weapons. Those contraband tools of destruction were for sale to one of the sides fighting in the ongoing civil war that had devastated Anobis for decades. Worst of all, Lilmit was no mere gunrunner: he was an opportunist without a conscience. He had sold weapons to both sides in the conflict, making his profit by perpetuating the destruction, the misery, the bloodshed.

Han Solo had stopped Lilmit’s ship, using the Millennium Falcon to intimidate him. Together, Anja and the young Jedi Knights had boarded the Rude Awakening, discovered the weapons cache, and destroyed all the deadly items in an explosion in space. It was one of the few good things Han Solo had ever done, as far as Anja was concerned.

And now she had caught Lilmit here on Kessel, no doubt causing more problems.

Before she could stop herself, Anja sprinted across the enclosed cargo bay, her long legs carrying her rapidly in the low gravity. Lilmit looked up from tinkering in his open engine compartments. He saw her coming and either recognized her or instinctively drew back from the blazing fire in her large eyes. He raised his webbed hands and backed against the hull of his ship in surrender.

Anja was there, glaring down at him. “What are you doing here, little man? Procuring more weapons?”

“No, no!” the diminutive smuggler said, flapping his fingers. “There’s nothing in my cargo that would interest you. It has nothing to do with you—and Czethros would be very angry if you sabotaged me again.”

Czethros? Anja drew back. “What are you talking about?”

Lilmit misinterpreted her question. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten you. Your name is Anja Gallandro, and I found out that you work for Czethros, too. You were with Han Solo, and you helped him destroy my entire cargo on its way to Anobis. Czethros really didn’t seem surprised when I told him. Oh, he was displeased to hear that you cost him most of his business on Anobis, but he was most displeased with me. He said your assignment was your business, and my assignment was my responsibility. I had to pay Czethros back for that loss out of my personal accounts. I barely kept my family from being sold into slavery. Now that I’m almost back on my feet, I won’t let you destroy my work again. I can’t afford it.”

“Czethros … you’re sure you work for him?” Anja said, thinking of how Czethros had pretended to be her friend, taken her under his wing, trained her on Ord Mantell. How could he be involved in such terrible things? Of course, he had ordered his henchmen to kill the young Jedi Knights….

“Yes!” Lilmit insisted. “Just as you do! But after that disaster of losing all the weapons, Czethros assigned somebody else to those duties and transferred me to the spice run instead. Please—don’t ruin this for me.” His voice carried a whining tone.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” she said masking her confusion with a smooth reply. “We’re colleagues, right?” She fell silent, hoping he would blunder through more of an explanation. But already Lilmit’s words echoed like thunder through her head. Czethros himself had been involved in the gun-running to Anobis!

She couldn’t believe it. He had lied to her! And not just about the addictive properties of spice. He’d known all along how much she despised the endless conflict on her war-torn world. He had pretended to understand what Anja had been through. Czethros had consoled her, offered her a new chance at life, given her a job working for him. And all the while he had secretly been selling weapons so that the people on her world could destroy themselves!

He was a liar and a traitor.

Czethros had played her for a fool. He’d kept his true activities secret. He’d used her. In fact, Anja suddenly found it easy to accept that, in all likelihood, the man had purposely addicted her to spice just to keep her under his thumb.

It made complete sense now. Czethros was not a generous or benevolent man. He had managed to trap Anja in a prison of her own anger and need, and now that she needed the andris more than anything else … he had run. He’d disappeared, gone into hiding to protect his own skin. He didn’t care about her at all.

Her face hardened into a grim scowl. “And just where were you intending to go, Lilmit? You have a shipment of spice, you say?”

“I’m picking one up today. Just a small shipment,” the smuggler said. “Taking it to Mon Calamari. Czethros probably told you all about the Black Sun activities there. We’ve been building up quite a spice stash close to Crystal Reef, their largest resort city, near the Arctic. We hide the andris in the water beneath the polar ice caps to keep it potent. From there, we plan to sell it to select clientele in the floating casinos. The profits from this operation alone could make Czethros a wealthy man for the rest of his life. There’s a thriving black market. Only the wealthiest people from all over the New Republic can afford to stay on one of those oceangoing resorts. Especially Crystal Reef.”

Anja nodded slowly. A stash of andris on the ocean world…. Black Sun agents making illicit drug sales to customers in the floating casinos. It all made sense now. Czethros was indeed part of Black Sun, perhaps one of its leaders. He already had his claws into the gambling and entertainment on Cloud City. He stockpiled drugs on Mon Calamari … and had been running weapons to the civil war on Anobis, all the while pretending to be her friend and protector. Many of Anja’s people had died because of him. She began to wonder how many pots Czethros was stirring that she didn’t know about yet.

“Tell me the coordinates of your stash, Lilmit,” she said. “How do I find it? I’ll be taking over this run from you.”

Lilmit blanched. “No, please!”

“It’s all right. I’ve been testing” you,” she said. “For Czethros. He wanted to be sure you were up to the new assignment.” She paused, thinking fast. “You’ll make the delivery to Coruscant. I’ll take care of Mon Calamari, because—because it falls into my new territory. I’m surprised Czethros didn’t warn you.”

Lilmit said, “But what you ask is impossible. I couldn’t possibly make it past security to Coruscant with a load of spice.”

She sighed and shook her head in a disgusted fashion. “I told him he wouldn’t be able to entrust this mission to you, but he assured me you wouldn’t disappoint him again….”

“Wait! No. I can do this. If Czethros is trusting me to pull this mission off, then I will.”

“Good. Now tell me how to find the stash of andris on Mon Calamari. Czethros has ordered me to move it.”

In a stuttering voice, Lilmit told her. He gave her maps and the transponder frequency of the stash so that she could locate the supply in the extremely cold waters of the ocean world’s polar seas.

“I need to hurry,” Lilmit said, his voice quavering. “I don’t have much cargo, but …” He looked around furtively, anxiously. The other people in the domed space dock didn’t seem to feel his nervousness. “You know something’s about to happen here—and it’s got to be very soon now. Czethros has plans for Kessel.” He lowered his voice. “Between you and me, I don’t want to be here when his troops come in for the big takeover.”

“When?” Anja said.

“I don’t know. If he didn’t tell you, he certainly wouldn’t have told me.” Lilmit shrugged. “But these people don’t suspect at all, and I don’t want to be here during all the blaster fire. I need to get off this planet.”

“You will,” Anja said. “But I’m leaving first.”

“Wait. Why didn’t Czethros tell me about this change of plans?” Lilmit wanted to know.

“You said yourself there are many things Czethros tells me that he wouldn’t tell you,” Anja said.

“All right.” Lilmit glanced furtively around. “Just don’t let Czethros touch my family.”

Remembering that Lilmit had a family—one that he had barely kept out of slavery—Anja felt a pang of conscience. Although this man had smuggled who knows how many weapons to Anobis to fuel the war there, Anja found it harder to judge him now. She herself could no longer justify all of the work that she had done in Czethros’s service. She couldn’t even be certain that she knew the consequences of all of the tasks she had performed for him.

“If all goes according to plan, I assure you Czethros will never touch or threaten your family again,” she said.

Lilmit’s eyes lit with enthusiasm and wonder. “Then this assignment is important.”

Anja cocked her head to one side and gave him a wordless look that said, Of course. What did I tell you?

“Now, I’m going to need two doses of spice before I head out,” Anja said briskly, folding her arms across her chest and fixing him with a no-nonsense stare. She cast about in her mind for a good reason. “Uh, Czethros has asked me to do a bit of … spying for him while I’m on Mon Calamari.” She gave a meaningful lift to her eyebrows.

“Oh, I see. Certainly,” Lilmit said, hurrying into his ship and returning moments later with two insulated cryovials and a miniature carbon-freeze unit. “He told me I might need to be flexible on this assignment. Now I understand.” He handed her the vials. “Czethros warned me I wouldn’t be able to contact him until everything was ‘in place.’ So when you speak to him next time, tell him that I got the message. I won’t let anything get in my way this time, not even Han Solo himself.”

Anja tucked the two insulated vials into a pocket, then graced him with a thin smile. “I see Czethros was right about you after all, Lilmit. I’ll remember not to underestimate you from now on.”

Lilmit squared his bony shoulders. “Yes. You remember that, young lady. Someday we may even end up working on the same team.”

Anja did not try to hide the genuine smile that sprang to her face. Things were working out even better than she had hoped. She had gotten her needed dose of spice, had discovered Czethros’s true colors, and had already hatched a plan to make her former employer pay for at least some of his misdeeds.

With any luck she would also be able to keep the poor bumbling Lilmit out of harm’s way while she carried out her plan. Perhaps Kessel would be the safest place for him. For now. She gave him a brisk nod. “No time to lose.” She started to go, then turned back. “And Lilmit, whatever happens, don’t let yourself be caught or hurt.”

Lilmit nodded, misunderstanding her words. “Yes, I know how important the mission is. I won’t let Czethros down. Just let me pack up and go now.”

“Of course,” Anja said. “I’ve got what I need. Thank you.”

The man scuttled back into his craft and closed the door, sealing the hatch as if afraid she might follow him inside.

Anja looked around to make certain she wasn’t being observed, and quickly took a dose of the precious spice.

More andris awaited her. She would go to Mon Calamari and find the stash. But now that she realized she’d been betrayed and duped, it had become vital for her to foil Czethros’s plans. She would keep only a small amount and destroy the rest, denying him that profit. She would ruin this scheme, just as she had helped destroy Lilmit’s Anobis-bound weapons.

“You called me your little velker, Czethros,” Anja purred in a low voice. “Now I’ll show you just how unwise it is to get a velker angry!”

She clicked on her antique lightsaber, and the acid-yellow energy blade throbbed and sizzled. She ducked low, narrowing her huge eyes to see the workings of Lilmit’s engines. She slashed quickly, severing two of the coolant lines in a sizzle of flashing sparks and smoking lubricants.

Lilmit might not notice immediately, but as he warmed up his engines in preparation for takeoff from Kessel, the engines would overheat and burn out. His craft would be stranded here, out of her way—and out of harm’s way—for the duration of whatever was about to happen.

Before Czethros could set his plans in motion, Anja would be far away, putting her sabotage plans into effect on Mon Calamari.

At first, Czethros probably wouldn’t even suspect who was doing this to him. But eventually he would learn.

Yes, eventually he would learn.