Star Wars: Heist
Author: Timothy Zahn
Date: 2021-09-07 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Science Fiction; Space Opera; Action & Adventure

The world of larceny, like every other field of endeavor, had its collection of conventional wisdoms. Near the top of that list was the warning that pulling off a heist aboard a starliner was a stupid thing to do. With a limited roster of suspects, and with nowhere to run until the ship made port, the odds were dangerously high that a thief would be caught.

Bink Kitik had heard that bit of conventional wisdom many times
throughout her career. But she’d never much worried about the odds.

“You’ll be seeing him again tonight?” Bink’s sister Tavia asked.

“Unless you think he’ll come rushing into my arms with all those pretty jewels if I stand him up,” Bink said as she gave herself a final look in their stateroom’s mirror.

“I suppose that’s unlikely,” Tavia conceded, coming up behind Bink and adjusting a stray lock of her hair.

Bink gazed fondly at their side-by-side images, playing her usual game of pretending to be a stranger trying to pick out which of the identical twins was which. Even knowing all the hidden subtleties that distinguished them from each other it was still a challenge. To the best of her knowledge, no one else had ever figured out how to do it.

It was a happy accident of nature that had come in handy any number of times throughout Binks career. And would do so again tomorrow.

“At least you didn’t have to—you know—in order to get into his stateroom,” Tavia continued, her reflection wincing.

“I appreciate you at least drawing the line there.”

“I know how much that sort of thing bothers you,” Bink said soothingly. In actual fact, given the right circumstances, she would probably have been willing to let herself be lured to Cristoff’s bedroom. It would have been much easier to break into his stateroom’s private safe if she were already on that side of the door.

But while Cristoff had repeatedly angled for an invitation to Bink’s stateroom, he’d never offered to bring her to his. Even people with more wealth than they could spend in five lifetimes were wary of being robbed, and apparently he didn’t buy into the conventional wisdom any more than Bink did.

“How does the mesh feel?” Tavia asked as she finished with Bink’s hair and shifted her hands to the sleek dress wrapped snuggly around her sister’s modest curves.

“It’s great,” Bink assured her. Actually, the sensor mesh Tavia had designed, built, and layered into the dress material was a little scratchy. It was also likely to get unpleasantly warm as the evening wore on, especially given that Bink’s neck, shoulders, head, and hands were the only parts of her body the dress didn’t cover. But the thing was such a marvel of electronic engineering that Bink couldn’t bring herself to get picky. “Wish me luck,” she added as she turned from the mirror and headed toward the stateroom door.

Behind her, she heard Tavia’s sigh.

More than anything else, Bink knew, her sister longed for a quiet, peaceful, legal life. Someday, Bink promised herself. Someday, when the big score finally came. Until then, life would continue to be a struggle to keep their heads above water and daily bread on their table.

With luck, Cristoff would soon be making his own contribution to that goal.

Cristoff was one of those men who exuded a carefully tailored mix of gallant, charming, and predatory. Bink had studied it, and him, from a prudent distance before finally making her approach three days earlier. It was a compelling combination, one that had probably worked on most women.

But Bink wasn’t most women. She’d also dealt with more than her share of such men since her teenage years, and she knew exactly what they wanted and how they liked to get it. More importantly, she knew that the chase was more to them than the actual conquest, and that an elusive quarry was guaranteed to pique both interest and a heightened level of pursuit.

Most important of all was that fact that, while she knew his agenda, he had no idea of hers.

And so once again she sat beside him at dinner, this time among the elite at the Captain’s Table, playing the prey as adroitly as he played the hunter. She laughed at his jokes, occasionally reached out to touch his arm or let him touch hers, sometimes subtly pulled back. After dinner came a couple of drinks, then dancing to the surprisingly entertaining rhythm-skee of the liner’s comedy caller, then a couple more drinks.

Finally, pleading fatigue and the upcoming busyness of the cruise’s final day looming ahead, she let him escort her to her stateroom door. Once again, he tried to finesse an invitation to come inside; once again, she begged off on the grounds that the falpas sauce he’d ordered for their appetizer glaze had left her stomach a little queasy. Hinting that she would make it up to him after tomorrow’s final evening, she offered a down payment in the form of a long, close hug and an even longer and more lingering kiss.

Tavia, as usual, was waiting anxiously for her return. “How did it go?” she asked as she led Bink to the couch and helped her sister out of the tight-fitting dress.

“About as expected,” Bink said, resisting the urge to give each freshly released patch of skin a vigorous scratch. She’d been able to ignore the mesh while she was playing her coy temptress role, but now that she was back in the safety and privacy of their stateroom, the itching had come roaring back. “It took a bit of skip-dancing to get him to order the falpas sauce, but I’m pretty sure he remembers it as being his idea.” She pulled on the soft and delightfully non-itchy robe Tavia had laid out for her and nodded to the dress now draped over her sister’s knees. “The big question is whether it was all worth it.”

“We’ll know in a minute,” Tavia said, moving a small sensor slowly and methodically over the mesh.

“Probably depends on whether you hugged him the way you said you were going to,” she added, her voice carrying a hint of disapproval.

“Someone has to do it,” Bink murmured, suppressing a grin.

“Here we go,” Tavia said, easing the sensor closer to the dress. “Right hip pocket.” She shot Bink a stern look. “I’m not even going to ask how you got in range of that part of his anatomy.”

Bink shrugged. “Hey, if he would be a proper gentleman and always carry his keycard in the same place, I wouldn’t have to resort to such underhanded tricks.”

“Underhanded,” Tavia repeated, making a face. “Cute.”

“Thanks,” Bink said modestly. “The point is that we got it. Which means—”

“Hold it,” Tavia interrupted, peering at the sensor’s display. “What in the…? Oh. Oh, very nice.”

“What is it?” Bink asked, sitting down beside her. The data streaming across the sensor s display was way too fast for her to read. “What’s nice?”

“Your friend isn’t as stupid as he looks,” Tavia said. “He’s actually expecting to have his pocket picked. Hence, this keycard.”

“I thought it was hence, he moves it randomly from one pocket to another,” Bink said, frowning.

“No, that part is because he doesn’t want to be obvious about it,” Tavia corrected. “See, this keycard will open his stateroom door just fine. It’ll also send a simultaneous alert to ship’s security.”

“Unless he punches in a code somewhere?” Bink asked hopefully.

“No code,” Tavia said. Tapping the reset on the sensor, she started moving it down the dress again. “No, this one’s a hundred percent booby trap. However…”

She paused. “However?” Bink prompted.

“Wait for it,” Tavia said, moving the sensor down toward the dress’s lower hem. “However…ah. The other keycard—the real one—is down here in a sock holster. No way anyone could get that one out without him noticing.”

Bink smiled. “Good thing we don’t need the card itself.”

“A very good thing,” Tavia agreed, studying the display. “I’m also glad I insisted the dress be formal-length.”

“Me, too,” Bink said. Keycards were shielded against sensor scans beyond a few millimeters precisely to prevent this kind of surreptitious scan-and-copy, which was why she’d had to snuggle up so close to him. “But then, it was the Captain’s Table. They expect a certain elegance there anyway.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Tavia eyed her sister. “So it’s on?”

Bink nodded. “It’s on.”

It was the last night of the cruise, the last few hours before the starliner docked at the Kailor V transfer station in the small hours of the morning and the passengers prepared for the mass morning departure. Everyone was decked out in full-bore finery, their outfits designed to attract and impress and, possibly, to finalize unspoken hopes and promises that had been made earlier in the voyage.

And for once, it was Tavia, not Bink, who was dressed to the full limit of elegance and style.

But then, Tavia wasn’t really herself tonight. Tavia was, rather, Bink.

“Now, you remember all my catchphrases?” Bink asked as she looked her sister over. Tavia was a lovely woman, Bink had always thought, far lovelier than Bink herself, despite the fact they shared the same face. Unlike Bink, Tavia had an inner poise and a plain, simple likeability that Bink herself always had to work hard to counterfeit.

“All of yours, and all of his,” Tavia said, her smile showing just a hint of the tension she was obviously feeling. “I also remember his tastes in music, food, and drink, and all the life stories he told you. Don’t worry, I can handle this.”

“I know,” Bink assured her, trying to put aside her own tension. Tavia had long since resigned herself to the necessity of playing these roles on occasion, and despite her ethical resistance she really was quite good at it. But that didn’t mean Bink ever felt comfortable throwing her to the wolves this way. “I’ll signal as soon as I’m back.”

“Don’t cut corners on my account,” Tavia said. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know,” Bink said again.

Ten minutes later, Cristoff came by to collect his date for the evening. Hidden inside the ‘fresher, Bink pressed her ear to the door and listened closely to the small talk as Tavia collected her purse and wrap and the two of them left the stateroom. Everything sounded all right, but Bink knew that could change in a heartbeat.

She wouldn’t cut corners, because that was how a job blew up in your face. But she definitely wouldn’t be lingering.

She waited another ten minutes before leaving the stateroom herself, dressed more modestly than most of the preening travelers, and with just enough actor’s putty layered across strategic parts of her face that she no longer looked like the woman currently hanging on Cristoff’s arm. Cristoff’s suite was on the liner’s upper-elite deck, behind a locked corridor door which required one of those same elite stateroom keycards to open. The copy Tavia had created from the sensor mesh data passed this first test, opening the door without fuss and letting Bink inside.

As she’d expected, the corridor was deserted, with all the occupants down in the public areas. Bink walked through the silence, watching and listening for any hint that her unauthorized entry had been detected and tagged. But no security officers or inquisitive droids had shown up by the time she reached Cristoff’s door.

Once again, the keycard did its job. Bink went inside, wondering briefly if Cristoff might have pulled some kind of double-reverse that would leave this keycard as the one that would trigger the alarm. But Tavia hadn’t seen any hidden coding, and anyway Bink’s own reading of Cristoff hadn’t indicated that kind of overdeveloped subtlety. Whatever creativity the man possessed would more likely manifest itself in the combination he’d arranged for the stateroom’s private safe.

Fortunately, creativity was one of Bink’s own specialties.

The safe was exactly as the stateroom floor plans showed it: built into the right-hand side of the computer desk, molecularly bonded to the deck, and constructed of hull-metal slabs thick enough to require a plasma torch, a couple of tanks of fuel, and several perfectly good hours of a thief’s life. The electronic keypad was built into the door and surrounded by enough sensor blocks and scramblers to keep anyone from brute-force slicing the combination. Once the pattern was set, only the stateroom’s current occupant could get it open.

And Cristoff had recently done just that, Bink saw as she held Tavia’s sensor over the keypad. Earlier this evening, probably when he pulled out his rings and the absurdly expensive wristband he liked to show off.

She smiled as she peered at the sensor’s display. One of the best things about falpas sauce, aside from its delicious taste, was that the warm, tingling glow it sent through the bloodstream ultimately emerged a few hours later as a slight alteration in sweat composition. Last night’s dinner had left traces of distinctive chemicals on the buttons Cristoff had touched, chemicals that could be scanned for.

Which was only half the battle, of course. No one with any brains used a code that utilized any given button only once, and whatever else he might or might not have, Cristoff did have brains.

But Bink had both brains and an experienced eye. The falpas-laden sweat left marks that were distinct enough that she could see the faint double edges where he’d keyed a given button twice, or even three times.

Unfortunately, none of that could tell her the order in which the various numbers had been keyed. For that, she would have to rely on Cristoff’s history, his current life, three long days spent hanging onto his every word, and the extensive data-search profile Tavia had worked up while Bink was enjoying the liner’s upper-end amenities.

Entering the keystroke data into her datapad, she punched for all the possible combinations. There were, not surprisingly, a lot of them. Calling up Tavia’s list of the significant times, dates, and events of Cristoff’s life, she ran her eyes down the parallel columns, searching for a match.

And there it was: the date and CTE market number of his first successful corporate takeover, the triumph that had launched him on his path to his current level of wealth and power. Smiling triumphantly, she keyed in the combination.

With a quiet, genteel snick, the safe popped open.

The jewel cases, she knew, would have integrated tracers. So would some of the bigger gems. But Bink hadn’t planned to be overly greedy. She dumped out the cases into the safe, spreading the contents around just to confuse the issue a bit, then selected a half dozen of the more modest-sized stones. She put them in an anti-sensor pouch, just to be on the safe side, and slid the pouch behind her belt.

And with that, she was almost done. Almost. Because the minute Cristoff opened the safe and saw the mess she’d left behind there would be hell to pay from one end of the liner to the other.

Which simply meant making sure he never again opened the safe.

A dead energy cell on this kind of sequentially shared public safe typically triggered one of two default modes. The first was for the door to simply unlock, which would allow the current owner to retrieve his or her valuables. The downside there was that it would likewise allow anyone else to do so if he or she got there first. The second, more common approach, was for the safe to lock down completely, requiring a visit from the ship’s purser and a specialized power/code pulse to reopen it.

The first step was to make sure the default setting was for a complete safe lockdown. The second was to drain the energy cell. The third was to reset the purser’s master code.

Just for fun, she set it to the date and CTE market number of Cristoff’s second successful corporate takeover.

She’d given Tavia the all-clear and had been waiting anxiously in their stateroom for nearly an hour when her sister finally returned.

“You all right?” Bink asked anxiously once she’d made sure Tavia was alone. “I was starting to get worried.”

“I’m fine,” Tavia said, kicking off her shoes and dropping tiredly onto the couch. “Your Cristoff has a great deal of stamina.”

Bink felt her eyes widen. “Stamina?”

“On the dance circle,” Tavia assured her hastily. “He also drinks way more than he should.”

“And tried to get you to match him drink for drink, no doubt,” Bink said sourly.

“He tried.” Tavia cocked her head. “How about you?”

“No problems,” Bink said. “Everyone will assume the safe’s malfunctioned, and they’ll be hours cutting it open. By the time they realize what really happened we’ll be long gone.”

“I hope so. How much did we get?”

Bink shrugged. “We’re set for the next month. No more than that, I’m afraid.”

“A month works,” Tavia said, nodding. “There are some good-sized electronics firms on Kailor V. Maybe I can finally get a job that meets with your approval.”

“Maybe,” Bink said diplomatically. “I’m sure there are jobs like that somewhere out there.”

Only there weren’t, she knew. Not the kind of job Tavia was looking for.

But they had a month’s worth of breathing space. By then, Bink would have something else lined up. Probably something small, but maybe something big.

Maybe even that big score that would finally let them be free of this life forever.

She could always hope.

EXPANDED UNIVERSE

Bink and Tavia return in Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn, available from January 1, 2013

See more of Brian Rood’s art at http://brianrood.com/

FROM STAR WARS INSIDER 138 (01-02-2013)

11.6.18.15.14.5-1