Star Wars - X-Wing - Krytos Trap

  he wanted as many of his people alive on that day as possi-

  ble.

  As wonderful as Jan's care and concern was, it also tor-

  tured the older man. Corran could clearly see Ysanne Isard's

  fine hand in that. By letting Jan take responsibility for all the

  Rebel prisoners, she created dozens and dozens of avenues to

  attack him. With each one of them who went away or died, a

  little piece of Jan died. How he had endured that much pain

  for so long Corran could not imagine, but he hoped, by

  taking responsibility for himself, he could ease the burden on

  Jan's shoulders.

  Seventy paces from the cave mouth they passed the

  opening to the latrine. The fixtures in it were rudimentary,

  but did include a water spigot so a minimum of hygiene

  could be observed. Thirty paces beyond it, about halfway to

  the mine complex, the line of prisoners passed through a

  barred gateway that was locked closed at night. Corran

  thought its presence was unnecessary, since the Imps had

  placed infrared detection units at both ends of the corridors.

  Then again, those units aren't really that hard to defeat, es-

  pecially if the people monitoring them are as alert as the

  guards marching through the dust with us.

  A full 203 paces from the mouth of the cavern complex,

  Corran passed through what had once been a ship's hatch-

  way and into the prisoners' workstation. Rumor among the

  prisoners had it that Lusankya dated from before the Clone

  Wars and incorporated parts from various ships that had

  been blasted to pieces in a naval action beyond the atmo-

  sphere. The scavenged hatch and the condition of the old,

  worn tools did suggest a certain amount of antiquity to the

  facility, but that conclusion came so easily that Corran was

  disinclined to trust it. If that's what Isard wants us to think

  about ber Lusankya, then I don't want to think it.

  Beyond the hatch they proceeded down a steep grade to

  a long rectangular cavern that had five tunnels shooting off it

  like fingers off the palm of a hand. All the fingers ended in

  doors that were cobbled together from ship bulkhead panels

  and held closed by chains and locks. The tunnels were big

  enough to allow a small mining droid to pass through them,

  but the doors were always shut when the prisoners came into

  the room, so Corran never saw the droids digging out the ore

  they processed.

  At the far end of the chamber from the entryway sat

  several piles of huge boulders. Men would work on them

  with heavy sledgehammers, bit by bit breaking them down

  into smaller rocks. Other prisoners would carry those

  smaller rocks to the middle of the chamber, where more pris-

  oners would smash them with smaller sledges. Yet more pris-

  oners with shovels and screens would sift the debris, pitching

  back the larger stones. The resulting gravel would then be

  hauled in buckets to a conveyor belt that carried the gravel

  up and away. At the top of the conveyor belt the gravel

  disappeared through a heavy steel grate.

  No one knew much about what lay beyond the grate.

  They knew air was blowing out of it because they could see a

  fair amount of dust blown back into the air around the con-

  veyor belt. Most of the prisoners assumed the belt led to a

  blast furnace where the gravel was melted down, or a mixing

  container where it was being made into ferrocrete. Corran

  argued that it was just as likely that the gravel was being

  dumped into hovertrucks and taken out to pave walkways in

  some Moff's garden, and if that was true, the grate was all

  that stood between them and freedom.

  All of the prisoners knew what they were doing was

  simply make-work, but the Imps had taken the precautions

  necessary to prevent work stoppages. ]'he conveyor belt's

  workings had been sunk into the ground so the prisoners

  couldn't get access to the motor and sabotage it. Steel fibers

  had been woven into the length of the belt to keep it strong

  and had been tightened so virtually no slack appeared in the

  belt on its return trip to the depths of the mine's floor. A

  railing had even been set up to prevent prisoners from acci-

  dentally falling onto the belt or getting caught in the mecha-

  nism.

  Corran dumped his bucket of gravel into the maw of the

  container bolted on the conveyor belt. Hunnning away

  loudly, the belt started the gravel on its twenty-meter journey

  to the grate. Corran watched it go for a second, then allowed

  the next man in line to bump him out of the way.

  Heading back to where Urlor was shoveling gravel into

  buckets, Corran took a quick inventory of the guards watch-

  ing over them. A full squad of men in stormtrooper armor

  guarded them, providing one trooper for every ten of the

  eighty prisoners in the work detail. Six of the troopers car-

  ried blaster carbines. The other two crewed an E-Web set up

  just inside the hatchway, making any attempt to rush out of

  the mine suicidal. The sharp slope up which the prisoners

  would have to charge would slow them enough that the two-

  man heavy blaster would cut them all down. Though none of

  the guards were as big as stormtroopers, nor seemed as well

  disciplined as the Empire's shock troops, even they would

  have been enough to quell a prisoner revolt.

  Urlor tossed a shovelful of gravel toward Corran's

  bucket but missed with half of it. "Don't do this, Corran."

  He kept his voice low enough that the rattling chuffof gravel

  pouring through a screen hid it from outsiders. "Wait. Learn

  more."

  "This is learning." He winked at the bigger man.

  "Guards have their blasters selected for stun."

  Jan looked over from the end of the screen he was hold-

  ing. "You'll risk your life on the flick of a thumb?"

  Corran tapped himself on the chest. "Rogue Squadron,

  remember."

  "Corellian, more like." Jan shook his head. "None of

  you have any respect for odds."

  "Why respect what you have to beat?" Corran gave

  each of them a nod. "Trust me, I have to make this run."

  Urlor dumped a final shovel's-worth in the bucket.

  "May the Force be with you."

  "Thanks." Corran, letting the bucket dangle down be-

  tween his l egs, started the awkward, hunched-over Rybet-

  walk back toward the conveyor belt. His plan was simple

  he'd dump his bucket, then hop over the railing and ride the

  belt up to the grate. Up there, at least as viewed from the

  work floor, there appeared to be enough shadowed space to

  conceal him. If he could then get down through the grate, or

  find a hidden passageway out, he'd be free. "You there."

  Cotran looked over at the guard pointing at him. "Me?"

  "Come here."

  Why me? Cotran shuffled over toward the man. "Sir?"

  "Don't question me, prisoner." The guard, clad in the

  lighter weight scout version of the armor, loomed over him.

  "As for the reason I picked you, you're new and need a r />
  lesson."

  Without warning the guard brought the blaster carbine

  up and around in a one-handed backhand stroke that caught

  Corran over the right ear. Stars exploded before his eyes and

  the clank of metal on skull started a fierce ringing in his ears.

  A flange on the barrel cut his ear and split his scalp, while the

  force of the blow spun Corran around to the left.

  Pain overrode panic. As Corran whirled he held on tight

  to the bucket, brought it up, and let it fly when his tormentor

  came into view again. The gravel-filled container smashed

  into the guard's faceplate. The man's head snapped back as

  the blow knocked him from his feet. He stumbled backward

  as the bucket flew on comet-like, spraying out a gravel tail.

  Corran's vision cleared and seconds seemed to take

  hours to pass. The guard's carbine, the muzzle glistening

  with his blood, hung in the air. Corran knew he could snatch

  it before it hit the ground and burn down the two closest

  guards in a heartbeat. Half the guards in the detail would

  have been accounted for. Getting the rest would be difficult,

  but the other prisoners could swarm them. They'd take the

  guards' weapons and . . .

  And die trying to clear the E-Web. Or die trying to fight

  our way out of the belly of this prison. All of them will die,

  and their deaths will be on my head, if I grab that gun.

  He heard the whine of a blaster and saw something blue

  shoot past him. All the prisoners dove for the floor. They

  shrank into a huddled carpet of dirty arms and legs, ducking

  their heads to avoid recognition, yet peeking out to see what

  would happen.

  All of them went down save for one.

  Jan.

  Eyes filled with horror and pride, he nodded to Corran.

  Cotran, understanding, nodded back.

  The stun-bolt caught Corran square in the middle of his

  chest. It did to his nervous system what an ion-bolt did to a

  machine. In one instant every nerve in Corran's body fired,

  instantly wracking him with pain, burning him up, shak-

  ing, crushing, and freezing him. All of his muscles con-

  tracted, bowing his back, grinding his teeth, and kicking him

  up into the air with a little hop. His limp body's impact on

  the ground probably hurt, but his nervous system couldn't

  route reports to his brain properly, so he really didn't know

  how he felt.

  Except it's not good.

  He saw Jan crouching over him. "I'll see they get you

  help."

  Corran wanted to nod, wanted to blink, wanted to do

  something to let Jan know he heard him, but he couldn't.

  About half the time he'd been hit with a stun-bolt before--in

  training exercises and a couple of times with CorSec in the

  field--he'd lost consciousness. The times he hadn't, he'd

  wished he had, because the feeling of helplessness created by

  being trapped inside a body that didn't work was worse than

  any pain.

  The medical team called for by the guards arrived rather

  quickly, bringing with them a repulsorlift stretcher. After

  they loaded their unconscious comrade on it, they reluctantly

  draped Corran over the man's legs, leaving Corran's head

  dangling and his hands and feet scraping along the ground as

  they hauled the two individuals out of the mine.

  Staring down at the floor, he couldn't see much on the

  trip out. The medtechs wrestled the stretcher into a lift, and

  the one to the right of the door, at the foot of the stretcher,

  punched a button and started the box ascending. Corran

  heard three tones, which he took to mean they had ascended

  three floors, then the lift stopped and the medtechs again

  struggled to get the stretcher out of the lift.

  They floated Corran on through corridors that appeared

  much more modern and maintained, if floor tile was any

  indication, than the rest of the facility. Finally they brought

  the stretcher to a stop in a place where he caught the familiar

  scent of bacta, and unceremoniously dumped him to the

  floor. He rolled onto his left side, his cheek pressed against

  the cold flooring.

  He caught snatches of the conversation between the

  medtechs and the Emdee droid that would be caring for the

  guard, but the ringing in his right ear made it difficult for him

  to catch everything. Moreover, he wasn't certain he could

  trust any sensory inputs, because what he was hearing

  through his left ear was simply impossible.

  Starting from above his head and continuing on down

  toward his feet, he heard the dopplered sound of storm-

  troopers--real, well-disciplined stormtroopers--marching

  along. That was not remarkable in and of itself except in that

  if they had been there, they'd have been marching over him,

  and as messed up as he was, he was fairly certain he'd have

  noticed that. The only other alternative was that they were in

  a room below him, marching on the ceiling, and what that

  meant was, at that time, well and truly beyond his ability to

  comprehend.

  22

  Wedge thumbed his comlink on. "What do you need,

  Mirax?"

  "Coming up on the Kala'uun Starport, Wedge. I thought

  you might like to be up here on the bridge as we come in. It's

  quite the sight."

  "On my way." He glanced around the cargo hold and

  nodded at his R5 unit. "Hang on, Mynock, we're almost

  there. Keep a scanner on these crates for me, will you?"

  The cylinder-headed droid beeped affirmatively. The R5

  unit then exchanged some softer tones with the Pulsar

  Skate's Verpine maintenance droid.

  No, they can't be talking about me. Wedge laughed at

  his flash of paranoia and stepped out of the hold. The doors

  crunched shut behind him. Letting a hand trail along the

  corridor's ceiling, he made his way along the spine of the

  ship to the bridge. He thought he might have been imagining

  things, but heat from the atmosphere already appeared to be

  bleeding in through the ship's hull. Scant wonder there are

  Twi'leks that think of Tatooine as a suitable place to flee to

  during the hot season here.

  He stepped down into the bridge and dropped into a

  seat behind Mirax. "I'd forgotten how impressive this is."

  The tortured surface of Ryloth spread out before them

  like the shams of a shattered earthenware vase. Black basalt

  mountains thrust up into a dusky red sky. Centermost in

  their view of the planet stood a massive mountain with a

  huge tunnel cored into the interior at its base. The smaller

  holes dotting the face of the mountain would have appeared

  to be natural openings except for the regularity with which

  they were arranged.

  Because the planet rotated on its axis once per year, the

  same side of Ryloth always faced the sun. Kala'uun existed

  near the terminus line--where day and night met--making it

  one of the cooler sunside locations. Because of Ryloth's ellip-

  tical orbit, the planet did have seasons, though most humans
>
  could not tell the difference between summer and the cool

  season since both were unbearably hot.

  "Yeah, impressive and impressively treacherous. Liat,

  watch the crosswinds as we enter the tunnel."

  The Sullustan pilot chittered angrily at her.

  "I know you can't miss the rocks out there, I just want

  to make sure we miss the rocks." Mirax smiled. "No heat

  storm activity today, it seems, but the currents can still be

  tricky."

  "Right."

  Liat Tevv took the Pulsar Skate down into the canyon

  that led to the tunnel. Harsh winds had smoothed the stone

  to the consistency of polished glass in some spots, and had

  torn away huge dagger-like slabs in others. Smaller areas of

  damage to the rocks--some graced with a splash of paint or

  metallic debris--gave mute testimony to the need for care in

  negotiating the approach to Kala'uun.

  The Pulsar Skate slipped into the approach tunnel with

  plenty of room to spare on all sides. Liat flicked on the ship's

  external running lights and floods, filling the dark tunnel

  with jagged shadows. Up ahead a massive portcullis slowly

  rose into the tunnel's ceiling. As they flew past it Wedge

  guessed it was at least thirty meters thick and would require

  a lot of pounding before it admitted unwanted visitors.

  Mirax glanced back at him. "Ever get the feeling that the

  portcullis is as much for keeping folks in as it is for keeping

  them out?"

  "Only when I'm on the inside of it." Three years had

  passed since his first and last trip to Kala'uun, when he and

  the rest of Rogue Squadron had arrived unbidden and in

  pursuit of a Twi'lek. The circumstances of this trip were cer-

  tainly more favorable. Even so, just to make certain there

  were no grudges being borne against him, he'd put Emtrey's

  scavenging abilities to good use and had him round up a

  plethora of gifts for the Twi'leks.

  Mirax nodded. "Kala'uun is the one place my father

  figures he didn't make out like a bandit. The Twi'leks are

  tough negotiators."

  "I hope that skill holds for Nawara's efforts on behalf of

  Tycho."

  Mirax's brown eyes narrowed. "I hope so, too, I think. I

  know you believe Tycho had nothing to do with Corran's