other?"
'Yes."
"So, as nearly as you know, Lieutenant Horn might
have had multiple conversations that could have set him
off?"
"I suppose so." Erisi blinked a couple of times. "That
could be it."
The Twi'lek bowed his head. "Thank you, Flight Of-
ricer, that's all I have for you."
Corran felt like a block of burning ice caught in a lightning
storm. His flesh felt on fire while his bones seemed chilled to
absolute zero. Every pain receptor in his body strobed on
and off on a near-constant basis. The pain would start at his
feet and move up in a wave, or descend on him like a rain
shower, or pummel him with randomly delivered jolts.
He would have welcomed death but for the horror of
spending eternity with the memory of such pain so fresh.
He heard a hiss, and the rack retracted from what he
had taken to calling the Inducer. Corran hung limp from the
restraining straps and welcomed the constant, unrelenting,
unshifting pain the straps caused as they sank into his flesh.
Sweat poured down over his face and stung fiercely where he
managed to bite through his lower lip, but even that sensa-
tion was a relief from what he had just been through.
Ysanne Isard entered the interrogation chamber and
waved the Trandoshan out. "I would find you fascinating if
you knew more, Horn." She glanced at the mirrored panel
on the wall. "Your tolerance for pain is remarkable."
Corran would have shrugged, but every ounce of energy
in his body had been exhausted in screaming answers to the
questions fired at him during the session. He couldn't re-
member what he had said. He recalled that in those few
moments of lucidity which he could touch between pulses of
agony, he had tried to focus on the cold or heat. Locking into
those sensations had seemed to dull the pain somehow. Now,
in the absence of pain, he doubted that observation was cor-
rect, but it had been a sanctuary into which he had retreated,
and that was a very small victory.
She posted her fists on her hips. "You present a problem
for me. You don't know enough to be useful, and your posi-
tion within the Rebellion is so low that you are hardly vital.
If I return you to them, they will likely treat you much as
they are treating Celchu now. You won't have even the free-
dom he had before his arrest. This does not incline me to
send you back.
"On the other hand, you would be perfect to mold into
my own avenger. Your resistance to pain will make your
rehabilitation into a right-thinking Imperial time-consuming,
but not impossible. Your core discomfort with the unlawful
nture of the Rebellion is a foundation on which I can build
you anew into the tool I need. I can form an Avenger Squad-
ron around you that will go after and destroy Rogue Squad-
ron. Using a Rogue to destroy Rogues, that would be
delicious."
Corran summoned strength from reserves he didn't
know he had and smiled. "You won't live long enough to see
me turn on my friends."
"Good, anger directed at me, excellent." She politely
applauded him. "Hate me all you want. I'll turn your hatred
for me into hatred for those who haven't saved you from me.
You won't be the first broken that way, and you'll not be the
last."
"I won't break."
"Ah, but you will. They all do." She nodded solemnly as
the rack hissed and slowly lowered him toward the Inducer.
"And when you break, I will put you back together again,
and in gratitude you will do all I ask, without question or
regard for loyalties you once held dear."
15
It was probably in a place like this that Rogue Squadron
plotted the conquest of Imperial Center. Kirtan Loor ducked
his head beneath a series of moist, moldy pipes and followed
his guide deeper into the rusted-out bowels of Imperial Cen-
ter. Loor had been driven deeper into the planet-wide city
than he thought possible, then had gone several kilometers
farther through a hot, wet labyrinth that had him imagining
he'd passed through the core of the world and was now
working his way up and out the other side.
The Special Intelligence operative leading him through
the maze cut to the left and through an oval opening hacked
through the wall of the access tunnel. The opening seemed,
at first glance, as if it was chopped through the wall; but
when Loor grabbed its edges as he climbed through the hole,
the striations he felt made him wonder if it hadn't been nib-
bled out of the ferrocrete. Unless I can find a way to use it, I
don't want to know what chewed this hole.
The low, wide area into which Loor stepped stank of
rust, stagnant water, and mildew. The few standing puddles
had an oily slick on them that phosphoresced slightly. The
weak light supplemented the temporary floodlights the oper-
atives had arranged to display their motley collection of air-
speeders. All in all the tableau was unremarkable and
unlikely to attract attention from anyone save a truly desper-
ate airspeeder thief.
And wouldn't he be surprised at what he got.
The dented and dinged airspeeders, which were of a va-
riety of years and makes, had been carefully worked over by
the operatives and transformed into a half-dozen flying
bombs. The hollow spaces in the chassis had been filled with
explosives. Designed to be flown by remote from a compan-
ion airspeeder, they would be driven like proton torpedoes
into the various bacta storage facilities around the world.
An operative came walking over to Loor, unable to keep
a smirk from his square face. "As you can see, we are pre-
pared to go at any time. We have completed our initial elec-
tronic sweep of the target sites and have found them negative
for counter-remote tactics or equipment."
"Very good." The Empire had long ago perfected pre-
cautionary measures to take against bombs that might be set
to detonate by remote. The easiest of these was to broadcast
strong signals on a variety of comlink frequencies of the sort
used by Rebel terrorists to detonate such bombs, causing a
premature detonation while the bombs were still in the at-
tackers' keeping. Broadcasting from patrolling airspeeders in
hostile areas had even detonated explosives in bomb facto-
ries that Intelligence had suspected existed, but had not been
able to pinpoint for a more surgical strike. The harm done to
innocents in the area when the bombs went off had been seen
as just punishment for the failure of the people to report the
Rebels working in their area.
Although they had been unable to detect similar
counter-remote tactics in the bacta storage areas, Loor's peo-
ple had decided against detonating the bombs by remote.
Getting an airspeeder into position and leaving it there long
enough for the setup team to get away provi
ded a window
for discovery and deactivation. Even though that window
would be small, it was felt to be too risky; they intended to
hit a number of sites in rapid succession, and if the Rebel
forces discovered one bomb and sent out a warning, it would
make hitting the others far more difficult. Moreover, the fact
that they could not detect anti-remote equipment in their
reconnaissance sweeps could have been explained by nothing
more sinister than someone forgetting to turn the devices on
that day.
The plan they h ad hit on was actually fairly simple.
Commercial speeder-ferry vehicles were not an uncommon
sight on Imperial Center, hauling broken air- and land-
speeders to repair shops. Using a tractor beam and a simple
remote-slave hookup, repair techs regularly flew speeders
throughout the city. Using a speeder-ferry to haul a vehicle to
the right area, then having someone fly it by remote into the
building, was seen as a clean way to deliver the bombs. Since
the remote-slave hookup was in common use by these sorts
of vehicles, it couldn't be jammed without causing dozens of
legitimate disasters, so Loor knew their delivery method was
safe from interference.
Contact detonators had been rigged in the various
panels and bumpers on each vehicle. The explosives would
be triggered when the detonators were compressed with the
force of an airspeeder slamming into a building. While a
head-on collision with another airspeeder at significant ve-
locity could cause the bomb to go off, the chances of that
happening were relatively small. Regardless, the amount of
explosives packed into the vehicles meant that any explosion
in the general vicinity of the target would do substantial
damage and, if not destroy the store of bacta, at least make
its distribution difficult.
The operative looked up at Loor expectantly. "When
will we be given the signal to go?"
Loor looked at his wrist chronometer. "Rumor has it
that Mon Mothma is going to announce the particulars of
the bacta distribution plan approved by the Provisional
Council in fourteen hours or so. I am debating whether we
should use these vehicles to punctuate her speech, or let pub-
lic anticipation build for a day or so before striking."
Loor kept his tone light, as if the decision to be made
was of little consequence. He preferred going off sooner
rather than waiting, but he was fairly certain that Ysanne
Isard would want him to wait. So far he had gotten no word
back from her on this plan--or on any of my plans. This
meant the decision was truly up to him, but he knew it didn't
have to be made until an hour or two before the assault
would take place.
The Intelligence agent frowned. "Contact me on a secure
frequency three hours before the scheduled start of Mon
Mothma's speech. Assume the operation will go off during
her speech. When you call me, I will either cancel the assault
and reschedule, or let you go. If you do not reach me, you are
on?
"Very good, sir." The operative waved a hand toward
the airspeeders. "If you care to inspect our handiwork?"
Loor shook his head. "You have ever been efficient be-
fore, Captain. I see no reason to doubt your preparedness
now?
"Thank you."
"Of course." Loor smiled slowly. "And, speaking of effi-
ciency, your people dealt with Nartlo, yes?"
"As you ordered, sir."
"Excellent."
"Yes, sir. I'll have someone conduct you back now, sir."
The operative waved another of his plainly clothed men
over and Loor followed that operative out through another
exit from the underground bunker. Loor found this route less
odious, and the use of a series of turbolifts meant it took less
time to get back into more hospitable regions of the city.
After taking leave of the operative, Loor worked his way up
and through the city. He constantly checked his surround-
ings and back-trail for sign of pursuit, but found none.
The prospect of destroying the Rebels' bacta supply
pleased him, but not for the reasons most Rebels would
ascribe to him. He took no delight in the fact that the de-
struction of the bacta would cause the deaths of millions,
even billions. As odd as it seemed, even to him, their lives
meant nothing. Since he did not know them, they were num-
bers, and Kirtan Loor had never been one to be terribly emo-
tional about numbers.
Destroying the bacta would be a victory in the war he
was waging against the Rebellion. He and his people were
outnumbered, out-gunned, and under-resourced, but they
were winning. So far they had struck when and where they
wished. Just the fact that they were able to assemble an ar-
mada of bombs on Imperial Center without detection was a
triumph in their battle against General Cracken and his
forces.
Oddly enough, Loor realized that he was playing a game
to sudden death, and it was more likely to be his death than
that of his foes. Still, he now understood the secret thrill that
kept the Rebels going. They had been the insects repeatedly
stinging the bumbling giant that was the Empire. Yes, the
giant had swatted them and, in some cases, had hurt them
badly, but it could never kill all of them. The defiance they
showed the Empire now burned in his veins, and while it did
not make him think he was immortal or unstoppable, it did
drive him with a desire to do more and more to torment his
enemy.
He also knew that his efforts would not reestablish the
Empire. That was not the goal Ysanne Isard had in mind
when she set him up on Imperial Center as the leader of a
pro-Palpatine movement. What he was doing would weaken
the Rebellion and allow other forces to tear it apart. Whether
those other forces included a warlord like Zsinj blasting his
way into Imperial Center and taking it over, or the product
of some other scheme Iceheart was undoubtedly planning,
did not matter. Isard wanted to destroy the Rebellion, and
that was the goal he intended to help her reach.
He smiled. He had been given a great responsibility, and
his success would create a power vacuum at the heart of the
Empire. Isard maintained her goal was not the resurrection
of the Empire, but the destruction of the Rebellion; still, it
seemed obvious to him that the recreation of the Empire was
a natural consequence of eliminating the Rebellion. When
the Rebellion collapsed, if he did things well, he would be in
position to help restore the Empire. While he knew better
than to make himself a direct rival to Iceheart, he also knew
she wouldn't live forever.
Nor will I, but if I live longer than she does, the Em-
peror's throne might well be open to me. Loor smiled and
sniffed proudly, but the scent of the city's lower reaches tar-
nished his fantasy. He glanced down at his feet
and saw a
glistening fungoid residue that seemed to shift colors as he
watched it. Immediately desirous of returning to his eyrie
and washing away the stink of Imperial Center's darker
reaches, he fished a comlink out of his pocket and called for
one of his guards to meet him with his airspeeder.
Loor did his best to scrape the goo off his shoes against
the side of a building, but it clung tenaciously. He chuckled
to himself, thinking of it as true Rebel scum. He made no
headway in his battle with it and wondered if a lightsaber
would be able to damage it. He'd concluded it would not by
the time his airspeeder slid up to the curb and the rear gull's-
wing door swung up.
Loor started into the passenger compartment, then
caught himself. Inside, nestled in the corner, a smallish,
white-haired man pointed a blaster pistol at him. "Sorry,
wrong speeder. My mistake."
"No mistake. Get in." The man sighed. "Get in or my
other people will shove you in."
Given no choice, Loor entered the vehicle and folded
himself into one of the jumpseats. The door closed behind
him, leaving the two of them alone in the speeder's darkened
interior. Loor raised his hands and clutched the safety straps.
"Is there any purpose in my putting these on, Moff Vorru?"
Fliry Vorru nodded his head graciously. "Very good,
Agent Loor. Yes, by all means, strap yourself in. I do not
anticipate this being a rough ride, but things can get turbu-
lent here on Imperial Center." "So I have noticed."
"I'm certain you have." Vorru set the blaster pistol on
the seat beside him, then tugged at the grey cuffs on his
midnight-blue jacket. "And I'm no longer a moff, merely a
colonel in the Imperial Center People's Militia."
"Natty uniform. I'm sure it will show you off at your
best when you hold a news conference and announce my
capture." Loor tried to force a smile on his face, but it hardly
seemed worth the effort. "Quite the coup for you."
"Indeed, it could be." Vorru yawned in an exaggerated
fashion. "The question remains as to whether or not that is
necessary."
"Excuse me?"
"You present me with a problem, Agent Loor. Your