Star Wars - Credit Denied - Unpublished by George R. Strayton Read Free Book Online Page A

machinations—looked on as First Minister Pon Svale continued to congratulate himself on capturing the would-be assassins and to deride her and her companions for their evil intentions. She wished she could show him some evil. Luckily for him there were two meters of durasteel chain holding her back.
    She’d already suffered through half an hour of being pelted with everything from stones to sour vegetables—she was pretty sure one of the gourd-like fruits had broken a couple of ribs—and now the ceremony seemed to be coming to an end.
    Where in the stars was Nopul? Time—at least hers and her companions’—was quickly becoming a rare commodity.
    “Traitors like these,” Svale went on, “must be purged from both our systems if this new alliance is to flourish.” The crowd responded with a raucous cheer.
    Vakir, who was closest to her, glanced toward her. “You sure Nopul can handle this?”
    “Would I lay all of our lives on the line if I thought he couldn’t?” She hoped her forceful tone would cover up the fact that she had no idea what Nopul was capable of. She knew nothing about computer slicing—she’d left that all to him—and so she hadn’t ever been able to gauge his level of ability.
    But Vakir seemed to buy into it. “I cannot wait to see this man,” he threw a disgusted look in Svale’s direction, “fall from his high promontory and be trampled upon by his own people.”
    Rendra, even in the midst of her current situation—and then again, perhaps precisely because of it—found herself grinning. “You and me both.”
    The roar of the masses seated and standing throughout the Coliseum—there seemed to be more here today than yesterday, a sad comment on sentient nature, she supposed—died down, and Svale regarded them all in silence, building up dramatic tension to elicit the greatest response from what he was about to say, which Rendra, unfortunately, could guess word for word.
    Come on, Nopul. I have faith in you. More than I have in myself at this point. But you’re just about out of time.
    “Send these… insidious demons,” Svale said, his voice booming over the amplifiers placed throughout the arena, “to their makers!”
    The throngs cheered, whistled, clapped, and stomped, making enough noise to drown out the last syllable of Svale’s decree. Four soldiers detached from their unit and walked across the dais, each taking up a position next to one of the guilty, placing blasters against the temples of their victims.
    Rendra looked to the vidscreens around the Coliseum. They switched from a focus on Svale to the quartet of soldiers with their blasters held ready for the killing blow. Come on. Nopul. Come on.
    And then every vidscreen in the arena erupted in static. Rendra’s heart leaped. Almost. You almost have it.
    She glanced at Svale, who was basking in the vengeance of the crowd. He nodded to the soldiers, who then turned their attention to Rendra and her fellow captives.
    Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement high above, and she looked up to see the image of Pon Svale on the vidscreen—but this time he was standing in an underground corridor, not on the dais in full sunlight. Nopul had done it.
    But as she turned to the soldier about to end her life, she realized it might be too late. No one was paying any attention to the vidscreens. They were all focused on the execution about to take place in front of them.
    “Hey!” she found herself yelling at the Weequay soldier. “Look! Look at the vidscreen!” He responded only with a confused expression.
    “You can kill me in two seconds. Just please look at the vidscreens.”

    He thought for a beat, and then threw a side-long glance across his shoulder. And didn’t look back.
    His fellow executioners—apparently his subordinates—hesitated as well, unsure why their leader had failed to carry out his task. They, too, looked to the vidscreens.
    The audience booed and hissed—and then, amazingly, fell silent as they