"Could they be launching a whole TIE squadron together?" Leia suggested.
"I don't think so," the officer said. "That's the other thing: near as we can tell, nothing at all left the bay."
Beside Leia, Bel Iblis stiffened. "Calculate the exit vector," he ordered. "All ships: sensor focus along that path for drive emissions. I think the Chimaera's just launched a cloaked ship."
Someone nearby swore feelingly. Leia looked up at the master visual display, her throat suddenly tight as the memory of that brief conversation she and Han had had with Admiral Ackbar flashed back to mind. Ackbar had been solidly convinced—and had convinced her—that the double-blind properties of the cloaking shield made it too user-dangerous to be an effective weapon. If Thrawn had found a way around that problem . . .
"They're firing again," the sensor officer reported. "And again."
"Same from the Death's Head," another officer put in. "—firing again."
"Signal the battle stations to track and fire along those vectors," Bel Iblis ordered. "As close to the Star Destroyers as possible. We've got to find out what Thrawn's up to."
The word was barely out of his mouth when there was a flash of light from the visual display. One of the Escort Frigates along the first projected vector was suddenly ablaze, its aft section trailing fiery drive gases as the whole ship spun wildly about its transverse axis. "Collision!" someone barked. "Escort Frigate Evanrue—impact with unknown object."
"Impact?" Bel Iblis echoed. "Not a turbolaser shot?"
"Telemetry indicates physical impact," the other shook his head.
Leia looked back at the visual, where the Evanrue was now wreathed in burning gas as it fought to get its spin under control. "Cloaking shields are supposed to be double-blind," Leia said. "How are they maneuvering?"
"Maybe they're not," Bel Iblis said, his voice dark with suspicion. "Tactical: give me a new track from point of impact with the Evanrue. Assume inert object; calculate impact velocity by distance to the Chimaera, and don't forget to factor in the local gravitational field. Feed probable location to the Harrier; order it to open fire as soon as it has the coordinates."
"Yes, sir," one of the lieutenants spoke up. "Feeding to the Harrier now."
"On second thought, belay that last," Bel Iblis said, holding up a hand. "Order the Harrier to use its ion cannon only—repeat, ion cannon only. No turbolasers."
Leia frowned at him. "You're trying to take the ship intact?"
"I'm trying to take it intact, yes," Bel Iblis said slowly. "But I don't think it's a ship."
He fell silent. On the visual, the Harrier's ion cannon began to fire.
The Dreadnaught opened fire, as indeed Thrawn had predicted it would. But only, Pellaeon noted with some surprise, with its ion cannon. "Admiral?"
"Yes, I see," Thrawn said. "Interesting. I was right, Captain—our old Corellian adversary is indeed in command below. But he's allowed us to lead him by the nose only so far."
Pellaeon nodded as understanding suddenly came. "He's trying to knock out the asteroid's cloaking shield."
"Hoping to take it intact." Thrawn touched his control board. "Forward turbolaser batteries: track and target asteroid number one. Fire on my command only."
Pellaeon looked down at his magnified visual display. The Dreadnaught had found its target, its ion beams vanishing in midspace as they flooded down into the cloaking shield. It shouldn't be able to take much more of that. . . .
Abruptly, the stars in that empty region vanished. For a couple of heartbeats there was complete blackness as the cloaking shield collapsed in on itself; then, just as abruptly, the newly uncloaked asteroid was visible.
The ion beams cut off. "Turbolasers, stand by," Thrawn said. "We want them to have a good look first. . . . Turbolasers: fire."
Pellaeon shifted his attention to the viewport. The green fire lanced out, disappearing into the distance as they converged on their target. A second later, there was a faint flash from that direction, a flash that was repeated more strongly from his visual display. Another salvo—another—and another—
"Cease fire," Thrawn said with clear satisfaction. "They're welcome to whatever's left. Hangar bay: firing status."
"We're up to seventy-two, sir," the engineering officer reported, his voice sounding a little strained. "But the power feedback shunt's starting to glow white. We can't keep up these dry firings much longer without burning out either the shunt or the tractor projector itself."
"Close down dry firing," Thrawn ordered, "and signal the other ships to do likewise. How many total firings have there been, Captain?"
Pellaeon checked the figures. "Two hundred eighty-seven," he told the Grand Admiral.
"I presume all twenty-two actual asteroids are out?"
"Yes, sir," Pellaeon confirmed. "Most of them in the first two minutes. Though there's no way of knowing if they've taken up their prescribed orbits."
"The specific orbits are irrelevant," Thrawn assured him. "All that matters is that the asteroids are somewhere in the space around Coruscant."
Pellaeon smiled. Yes, they were . . . except that there were only a fraction of the number the Rebels thought were there. "And now we leave, sir?"
"Now we leave," Thrawn confirmed. "For the moment, at least, Coruscant is effectively out of the war."
Drayson nodded to the battle ops colonel and stepped back to the small group waiting for him a short distance behind the consoles. "The final numbers are in," he said, his voice sounding a little hollow. "They can't be absolutely certain they didn't miss any through the battle debris. But even so . . . their count is two hundred eighty-seven."
"Two hundred eighty-seven?" General Rieekan repeated, his jaw dropping slightly.
"That's the number," Drayson nodded, turning his glare on Bel Iblis. As if, Leia thought, all this was somehow Bel Iblis's fault. "What now?"
Bel Iblis was rubbing his cheek thoughtfully. "For starters, I don't think the situation is quite as bad as it looks," he said. "From everything I've heard about how expensive cloaking shields are, I can't see Thrawn squandering the kind of resources three hundred of them would take. Especially when a much smaller number would do the job just as well."
"You think the other tractor beam firings were faked?" Leia asked.
"They couldn't have been," Rieekan objected. "I was watching the sensor board. Those projectors were definitely drawing power."
Bel Iblis looked at Drayson. "You know more about Star Destroyers than the rest of us, Admiral. Is it possible?"
Drayson frowned off into the distance, professional pride momentarily eclipsing his personal animosity toward Bel Iblis. "It could be done," he agreed at last. "You could run a feedback shunt from the tractor beam projector, either to a flash capacitor or a power dissipator somewhere else on the ship. That would let you run a sizable surge of power through the projector without it really doing anything."
"Is there any way to tell the difference between that and an actual asteroid launch?" Mon Mothma asked.
"From this distance?" Drayson shook his head. "No."
"It almost doesn't matter how many are up there," Rieekan said. "Eventually, their orbits will decay, and letting even one hit ground would be a disaster. Until we've cleared them out, we cant risk lowering the planetary shield."
"The problem being how we locate them," Drayson agreed heavily. "And how we know when we've gotten them all."
A movement caught Leia's eye, and she looked over as a tight-faced Colonel Bremen joined them. "Again, it could be worse," Bel Iblis pointed out. "The sector fleet can have the out-orbit relay station replaced in a few hours, so at least we'll still be able to direct the New Republic's defense from here."
"It'll also make it easier to transmit an all-worlds alert," Bremen spoke up. "Mara Jade's escaped."
Mon Mothma inhaled sharply. "How?" she asked.
"With help," Bremen said grimly. "The guard droid was deactivated. Some kind of jury-rigged restraining bolt. It erased t
hat section of memory, too."
"How long ago?" Rieekan asked.
"No more than a few hours." Bremen glanced around the war room. "We've had extra security on the command floor since the break was discovered, thinking they might have been planning some sabotage to coincide with the Imperials' attack."
"That could still be the plan," Bel Iblis said. "Have you sealed off the Palace?"
"Like a smuggler's profit box," Bremen said. "I doubt they're still here, though."
"We'll need to make certain of that," Mon Mothma said. "I want you to organize a complete search of the Palace, Colonel."
Bremen nodded. "Right away."
Leia braced herself. They weren't going to be happy about this. "Don't bother, Colonel," she said, touching Bremen's arm to stop him as he turned to leave. "Mara's not here."
They all looked at her. "How do you know?" Bel Iblis asked.
"Because she left Coruscant earlier tonight. Along with Han and Luke."
There was a long silence. "I wondered why Solo didn't come to the war room with you," Bel Iblis said. "You want to tell us what's going on?"
Leia hesitated; but surely none of these people could possibly have anything to do with the Delta Source security leak. "Mara thinks she knows where the Empire's cloning facility might be. We thought it would be worth sending her and a small team to check it out."
"We thought?" Drayson snapped. "Who is this we?"
Leia looked him straight in the eye. "My family and closest friends," she said. "The only people I can be absolutely certain aren't leaking information to the Empire."
"That is a gross insult—"
"Enough, Admiral," Mon Mothma cut him off calmly. Calmly, but there was a hardness around her eyes. "Whatever reprimands may be due here can wait until later. Whether it was prudent or otherwise, the fact remains that they're on their way, and we need to decide how best to help them. Leia?"
"The most important thing to do is to pretend Mara's still here," Leia said, the tightness in her chest easing slightly. "She told me she'd only been to Wayland once, and she couldn't guess how long it would take her to reconstruct the route. The longer lead they have, the less time the Empire will have to rush reinforcements there."
"What happens then?" Mon Mothma asked. "Assuming they find it."
"They'll try to destroy it."
There was a moment of silence. "By themselves," Drayson said.
"Unless you have a spare fleet to lend them, yes," Leia said.
Mon Mothma shook her head. "You shouldn't have done it, Leia," she said. "Not without consulting the Council."
"If I'd brought it to the Council, Mara might be dead now," Leia said bluntly. "If news leaked to the Empire that she could find Wayland, the next commando team they sent wouldn't stop at just trying to discredit her."
"The Council is above suspicion," Mon Mothma said, her voice turning chilly.
"Are all the Council members' aides?" Leia countered. "Or the tactical people and supply officers and library researchers? If I'd suggested an attack on Wayland to the Council, all of those people would eventually have known about it."
"And more," Bel Iblis nodded. "She has a point, Mon Mothma."
"I'm not interested in laying blame, Garni," Mon Mothma said quietly. "Nor in defending anyone's little niche of power. I'm concerned about the possibility that all this was indeed a setup, Leia . . . and that it will cost your husband and brother their lives."
Leia swallowed hard. "We thought about that, too," she said. "But we decided it was worth the risk. And there was no one else to do it."
For a long minute no one said anything. Then Mon Mothma stirred. "You'll need to talk to everyone who knows Mara Jade is gone, Colonel," she said to Bremen. "If and when we obtain Wayland's location, we'll see what we can do about sending reinforcements to help them."
"Provided we can be sure it isn't a trap," Drayson added, glowering.
"Of course," Mon Mothma agreed, avoiding Leia's eyes. "For now, that's all we can do. Let's concentrate on Coruscant's immediate problems: defense, and finding those cloaked asteroids. General Bel Iblis—"
A tentative hand touched Leia's shoulder, and she turned to find the slicer Ghent standing there. "It's all over?" he muttered to her.
"The battle is, yes," she said, glancing at Mon Mothma and the others. They were already knee-deep into a discussion about the asteroids, but eventually one of them was bound to notice Ghent and realize he wasn't supposed to be here. "Come on," she told him, steering him back toward the war room exit. "I'll tell you all about it outside. What did you think of Imperial battle encrypt codes?"
"Oh, they're okay," he said. "The guys in there didn't let me do all that much, really. I didn't know their machines as well as they did. They had kind of a silly drill going, too."
Leia smiled. The best and smoothest decrypting routine the New Republic's experts had come up with, and Ghent considered it a silly drill. "People get into routines on the way they do things," she said diplomatically. "Maybe I can arrange for you to talk to the person in overall charge and offer some suggestions."
Ghent waved a vague hand. "Naw. Military types wouldn't like the way I do things. Even Karrde gets bent out by it sometimes. By the way, you know that pulse transmitter you've got going somewhere nearby?"
"The one Delta Source has been using?" Leia nodded. "Counter-intelligence has been trying to locate it since it started transmitting. But it's some sort of cross-frequency split-phase something-or-other, and they haven't had any luck."
"Oh." Ghent seemed to digest that. "Well, that's a tech problem. I don't know anything about those."
"That's all right," Leia assured him. "I'm sure you'll find other ways to help."
"Yeah," he said, digging a data card from his pocket. "Anyway . . . here."
She frowned as she took the card. "What's this?"
"It's the encrypt code from the pulse transmitter."
Leia stopped short. "It's what?"
He stopped too, turning innocent eyes on her. "The encrypt code that cross-frequency whatsis is using. I finally got it sliced."
She stared at him. "Just like that? You just went ahead and sliced it?"
He shrugged again. "Well, sort of. I've been working on it for a month, you know."
Leia gazed at the data card in her hand, a strange and not entirely pleasant thrill of excitement tingling through her. "Does anyone know you have this?" she asked quietly.
He shook his head. "I thought about giving it to that colonel in there before I left, but he was busy talking to someone."
Delta Source's encrypt code . . . and Delta Source didn't know they had it. "Don't tell anyone else," she said. "And I mean anyone."
Ghent frowned, but shrugged. "Okay. Whatever you say."
"Thank you," Leia murmured, sliding the data card into her robe pocket. It was the key to Delta Source—deep within her, she knew that. All she needed was to find the right way to use it.
And to find it fast.
Chapter 15
The fortress of Hijarna had been crumbling slowly away for perhaps a thousand years before the Fifth Alderaanian Expedition had spotted it, keeping its silent, deserted vigil over its silent, deserted world. A vast expanse of incredibly hard black stone, it stood on a high bluff overlooking a plain that still bore the deep scars of massive destruction. To some, the enigmatic fortress was a tragic monument: a last-ditch attempt at defense by a desperate world under siege. To others, it was the brooding and malicious cause of both that siege and the devastation that had followed.