Two of the enemy Defenders vectored in on his aft, so he rolled to starboard and began a weaving run in at the space station. Green laser bolts flashed past him from the rear, while curling lines of red bolts rose toward him from the station. Course correcting a bit to the right, he raced in at the station’s central spire. His flight path set him up to run a bit starboard of it, and on his rear scope he saw the Defenders split to pursue him as he came around.
As he came in tight he chopped his throttle back, then activated the Defender’s tractor beam. It latched hold of the space station, but since it massed far more than the star-fighter, it didn’t go anywhere. Instead the tractor beam acted like a line that shortened the arc of Corran’s turn. The pilot flicked the beam off again, then throttled up and hauled back on the yoke to climb.
His HUD went red as his crosshairs swept over one of the Defenders coming after him. He launched another pair of concussion missiles, which drilled into the trip and ripped it apart. Then the missile-lock warning light flashed on his display, prompting him to invert and dive. The concussion missile that had been coming at him shot past, but his dive carried him straight into a turbolaser salvo from the station.
The simulator screens went black, then the egress hatch’s emergency release triggers snapped back into the safe position and the hatch opened. Corran pulled off his helmet, released his restraining belts, and hauled himself up out of the simulator. Sweat poured down his face and stung his eyes. He licked salt from his lips and sat perched on the hatch, luxuriating in the cool air of the simulator chamber.
Looking around he saw some of the Rogues chatting with Imperial pilots. That surprised him, but as he watched the men and women weave their hands through simple pantomimes of the battles they’d fought, he began to smile. They ambushed us, but they ended up being as surprised as we were by it. Toward the back of the room he saw Wedge and the Imperial leader, Colonel Vessery, smiling as they conversed closely.
Corran nodded slowly. Both leaders had clearly seen that their pilots would be suspicious and defensive, ready to take offense at whatever the other group might say or do; yet both groups needed to work together. This little exercise pointed out that each side had good pilots, and that the pilots had more in common than they might have otherwise expected. Mutual respect will bring us closer faster, and let us compete as equals. That’s good.
He swung his legs up over the edge of the hatch, and slid down to the deck. He stumbled as he landed, but an Imperial pilot helped steady him. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem.” The Imp smiled at him. “You were the guy who tractored the station?”
“Guilty as charged.”
The Imp nodded. “Very impressive. I’ll have to keep my eye on you.”
Corran laughed lightly. “Use both of them. I am a Rogue, after all.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Whistler’s lights popped on and the little R2 droid began surveying the room in which he found himself. Aside from the light he produced, he detected no other source of light energy. His scan did reveal power conduits, computer cable conduits, and a fairly large system of air duct-work behind the walls. The room had only one door, which appeared to be quite dense, and he found no thermal bleed-through from any living creatures standing guard near it or against the wall.
All of this data filtered into a simple program that assessed his situation and made available different options for his future actions. In the past the program had recommended returning to a dormant state, with lights off, monitoring local comm frequencies for any communication from Corran. He had been in that passive wait state from the moment the Imperials had placed him in the room with the rest of Rogue Squadron’s astromech droids. Corran had managed to communicate with him via comlink and gave Whistler access to the scramble codes the Imperials used, as well as a way to tap the comm traffic during the training sessions they went through.
Corran had also informed him of the Rogues’ status. The circumstances they found themselves in were indeed alarming. Whistler’s awareness of this fact was based on his analysis of Corran’s speech patterns and the signs of stress in his voice. He catalogued those signs of anxiety along with the key words that seemed to trigger them: Isard [status alive], Imperial Base [secret], TIE Defenders [secret], and mission [secret, dangerous].
Whistler began a passive scan of comlink frequencies. He catalogued the vocabulary being used on each, then ran a correlation between them. First he determined that the Rogues and their Imperial counterparts were running yet another simulation that pitted the rival pilots against each other. Over the past two weeks this sort of training mission had become common. On the other frequencies he began picking up comments that indicated Corran’s hunch about the base had been correct. The pilot had guessed that in such a small facility, with no serious threats to deal with, watching the simulator battles between the Rogues and the Imps would attract a lot of attention. Whistler’s correlations indicated voyeur traffic on 65 percent of the local frequencies and, more importantly, 85 percent of the security frequencies.
That percentage flipped a bit in a program. A line of code called up Whistler’s evasion and escape programming. Such programming was not common in an astromech droid, but few astromech droids had been refitted for work in the Corellian Security Force. Not only had his preparation for that work equipped him with special circuitry that allowed for surveillance and analysis, escape and evasion, and an array of code-slicing programs, but it had even shifted internal components around such that when a restraining bolt was fastened to him it did little more than communicate the result of commands sent by a remote. When the Imperial tech had used the remote on him, Whistler feigned shutting down and starting up again. More than once criminals had assumed a security droid was disabled by a restraining bolt and had learned to regret that assumption.
Regardless of the fact that the cylindrical device afixed to his torso did nothing to restrain him, Whistler rolled over to the corner of a shelving unit, lodged the cylinder next to the edge, and quickly spun his body. The restraining bolt snapped off and clattered to the floor.
Whistler allowed himself a low, barely audible whistle. Whirling his head about he spotted Gate and rolled over to the red and white R5 astromech. Whistler reached out with his pincer arm, sent a blue trickle of energy over the restraining bolt on Gate’s torso, then pulled it free.
Gate’s lights flashed on and the droid began to shudder, bouncing from foot to foot.
Whistler tootled at him to calm down, then quickly answered the taller droid’s inquiries about location and status. Whistler reassured him that the mission they were being sent on had official sanction. He also informed Gate of the highly risky nature of their mission with a low tone.
Gate countered sharply that his microprocessing time was too valuable to waste analyzing meaningless odds. In the final analysis, he suggested, they were droids who had been entrusted with a mission and they would accomplish it. All non-vital calculations would only waste time and power.
Whistler hooted happily and rolled over to the large air intake vent mounted in the wall. He brought out his cutting attachment and sliced through one of the screws holding it in place. Gate joined him, cutting the grate free. Whistler slowly backed away, letting the grate lean into the room, then he caught hold of one edge with his pincer and pulled it away from the dark cavity beyond.
Gate entered the ductwork with no difficulty at all. The maintenance and construction droids used to create and repair the environmental system in the base were slightly taller and decidedly broader than the astromech droids. Gate caught hold of the other edge of the grate, allowing Whistler to come around to the opening. The smaller droid took hold of the grate and pulled it into place, while Gate extended his pincer and crimped ductwork around the edge of the grate to hold it in place.
The astromech droids rolled into the ducts and paused at an intersection. Whistler extended his communications probe and jabbed it into a communications port. The metal ductwork distorted co
mm frequencies enough that the repair droids regularly hooked into the base’s communications and computer system for position updates, repair requests, and other data. During his time passively surveying the comm frequencies on the base, Whistler had picked up enough transmissions from repair droids coming online and hooking into the communications network that he easily mimicked one and got into the system in nanoseconds.
First he calibrated his internal clock with local and Imperial standard times. Second he sliced his way into the local spaceport scheduling and control system to download a complete schedule of arrivals and departures for the next week. He found several ships that were leaving within the next day, most of which could easily find space for a pair of astromech droids. The spaceport computer system even provided a link to a number of cargo brokers. Once in their systems, he could obtain passage for himself and Gate.
Paying for their passage faced him with a quandary. Corran had explained that Isard wanted Rogue Squadron to seem dead. If Krennel was unaware of their continued survival, they could be used against him. The very fact that Rogue Squadron had been ambushed at Distna indicated that Krennel had some intelligence resources in the New Republic, and the intervention of Isard’s forces meant she had intelligence sources within Krennel’s Hegemony—and possibly within the New Republic as well. Paying for the passage from the various accounts Corran held—accounts Whistler could embezzle from without too much trouble since he knew all the relevant passwords and numbers—might suggest Corran lived. That word would get back to Krennel and Isard, placing the Rogues in danger from whatever Isard’s angry reaction might be.
From his communications with the Pulsar Skate’s computer, Whistler had drawn a list of accounts that Mirax maintained for her business dealings. Using one of them seemed most effective, since she often authorized shipments between points so she could pick them up at some waystation. Still, unauthorized use of one of her accounts would likely attract too much attention and might suggest to her that the Rogues had survived. While Whistler had no evidence to suggest Mirax was anything but smart, her reaction in absence of solid evidence might also jeopardize things.
The Skate had yielded yet older accounts, ones that Mirax had not tapped in a long time. All the data concerning them indicated they had been established by Booster Terrik well before he’d been sentenced to Kessel, and had not been touched since. Whistler analyzed the account activity and balances, and picked one of them to finance their escape.
Whistler ran through a quick threat analysis of their escape route, cross-correlating reports of crimes, percentages of Jawas and Ugnaughts in the local populations, and the fluctuating resale prices on droids along the course to their destination. Most of the risks seemed minor but there were a couple of points where the potential for interference seemed high. That assessment clicked in another piece of program that sent off a message setting up a rendezvous with someone who would be able to get them past the dangerous part of their journey and to their final destination.
If he showed up.
Whistler went over the text of the message again, edited it more closely, and sent it.
He would show up.
Whistler quickly established their primary connections, then created four separate and alternate routes to get where they needed to go. With a high-frequency series of squeals and whistles meant to register above the level of human hearing, he communicated full details to Gate. Then the two of them rolled off together to the maintenance egress hatch near the atmospheric control plant at the rear of the building. Once it grew dark outside, they’d escape the base and world, to get Rogue Squadron the help it was sure to need.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Corran Horn wiped the sweat from his face and let his torso sag forward over the padded bar of the abdominal muscle weight machine. Though only driving sixty-five kilos on one gravity per repetition, the weight added up, and his sore stomach muscles were beginning to burn. Something about the dull pain felt good, as if it were reminding him he was alive.
“Flat abdominals? I suppose your wife likes them?”
Corran’s head snapped around. Ysanne Isard, clad in a skintight workout uniform that covered her from knees to elbow and throat, stood in the doorway. Black stripes running down the sides of the arms, flanks, and legs of the red bodystocking matched the fingerless black gloves she wore. She clung to each end of the black towel she had looped around her neck, making her appear almost casual, as if their meeting in the base weight room had been by accident.
Nothing she does is by accident. The pilot narrowed his eyes. “You want something?”
Isard shrugged and moved into the room to seat herself at a leg-curl machine. “I thought I would tell you that your latest attempt to get a message out to your wife has failed. Using her designator code as the origin code for a message destined to be rejected by our system was an interesting idea, but an old one. Our systems here are quite secure.”
“So far, you mean.” Corran gritted his teeth and curled his body forward, hoisting the machine’s weight with his stomach muscles. He forced himself to breathe with each repetition, focusing on the burning sensation in his muscles and using it to drive Isard from his mind.
She waited until he finished. “Your persistence is admirable, as is the passion you express for your wife in the messages.”
“Enjoyed them, did you?” He shook his head, spraying sweat around the room. “I’ll continue to send them.”
“Why? You know I’ll intercept them all.”
“Nice to know you’ll have something to do with your time.” Corran unwrapped his body from the machine and slowly stood. “As for why, it’s because I love her and I know she’ll be hurt thinking I’m dead.”
Isard raised an eyebrow. “You’ll be reunited with her once you’ve destroyed Krennel.”
“So that’s what, another month of pain? No good.” Corran frowned at her. “Haven’t you ever loved anyone?”
The question seemed to catch her off-guard and Corran felt a wave of surprise roll off her. Once again Corran regretted not having gone with Luke Skywalker to train himself to be a Jedi, because he could have used that moment of vulnerability to open her up. I could find out what she’s really planning and prevent her from accomplishing it.
Isard brushed her hands down the tops of her thighs. “I have loved, yes, but I trusted that he would know if I lived or died.”
“That’s asking a lot. No one can possibly know…” He stopped in mid-sentence as he recalled a rumor about her. “The Emperor? You loved the Emperor?”
“Captain Horn, the surprise in your voice is hardly appropriate. Is it any surprise that I would find myself attracted to the brightest star in the galaxy? I was raised on Imperial Center, I came of age during Palpatine’s time. He was immensely charismatic. He could look you in the eyes and touch the person you were. He lived for his dream of a stable galaxy.” Her voice took on an edge. “And he died for it.”
“I hope you’re not expecting an apology.”
“From you? For that? No.” Isard set the weight machine for forty kilos, then began bending her legs, lifting the weight. Her voice remained even though the strain began to flush her skin. “You do owe me an apology, though.”
“Oh, really? For what?” Corran folded his arms across his chest. “Not the destruction of Lusankya, I hope, because I’m not at all sorry about that.”
“No, no, not that.” Isard finished the last rep and smiled up at him. “Actually I’m pleased the ship is gone. Until you escaped from it, the ship had been pristine, even virginal. Your escape… violated it and soiled it. While I used it to escape Imperial Center, I had little to do with it after that. I couldn’t think of it in the same way. In many ways I was glad it died.”
“So were we.” He shook his head. “I’ve heard from Wedge how you scattered the other prisoners, which answers one of the two questions I had concerning the ship.”
“And the other was?”
“How you got it bu
ried beneath the surface of Coruscant?”
Her nose wrinkled with his use of the pre- and post-Imperial name for the world, but it took a moment or two beyond that for her to provide her response. “I wish I knew. I know where and when Lusankya was created, and I know when it was given to me, so I have narrowed down the possible dates for its insertion into the world, but even as director of Imperial Intelligence I could find no clue as to how the insertion happened.”
“But it had to have taken hundreds of construction droids and weeks of time. A project that size could not have gone unnoticed.”
“I would agree, unless… the Force is something I do not understand and cannot touch, but the Emperor could. Is it possible he drew the ship down and buried it using the Force? I suppose. Is it possible that he merely stretched his mind out and prevented anyone from noticing the ship’s descent? Also possible.” She shook her head. “All I know is that the Emperor confided its location to me at roughly the same time its sister ship, the Executor, became operational.”
A chill ran down Corran’s spine. Even unschooled as he was in the Force, he’d managed to blank the mind of a stormtrooper looking for him. If the Emperor could manage to do that for billions of people, the miracle of the Rebellion is that it succeeded at all.
“So, the Emperor never really reckoned with the threat the Rebellion represented to him, did he?”
She began pumping her legs again. “I always thought you were more trouble than he did. He exerted great energies suppressing the internecine warfare between species in the Empire. He underestimated his enemy. This makes him much like you, Corran Horn.”
“Me? How does that follow?”
“The apology you owe me. It’s for underestimating me.” Isard gave him a smile that puckered his flesh. “You thought you’d killed me, but you hadn’t. You didn’t push, you didn’t pursue. I had thought you would have been more diligent than that. Your father certainly would have been.”