"What about your grandfather, Rostek Horn?"
"He's on Corellia, under the Diktat. I haven't had a chance to communicate with
him. Perhaps when this is all
over, that's an option. Still, I would have liked to hear my father talk about
his father."
Whistler tootled.
Corran glanced at his monitor. "Whistler, what do you mean by 'All you have to
do is ask'?"
The droid hooted at him.
"Okay, so the statement is self-explanatory. What will happen if I ask?"
Whistler piped a triumphant tune.
"What's Whistler saying, Corran?"
"Just a second, Mirax." Corran reached out and ran a finger beneath the letters
glowing on his monitor. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. My father
encrypted a holographic file and loaded it into Whistler. Apparently he did
this back when I joined CorSecthough Whistler says the message was recorded
well before thatin case anything happened to him. Whistler says he was
instructed to play the file for me at any point where I asked about it and could
provide the encryption key. I'm going to assume the key is either Nejaa Halcyon
or my father's true name, Valin Halcyon."
Even as Corran explained to Mirax what the droid was telling him, a chill
puckered his flesh. He felt as if his father were reaching back out of the grave
to touch him, and he marveled how his father had anticipated Corran's eventually
learning enough about his heritage to find the file of value. Before he had ever
heard of Nejaa Halcyon, Corran would have put his father's foresight down to
luck or even coincidence, but he knew the Jedi believed in neither. My father
knew that someday I would want this information, so he prepared a way for me to
get it.
That realization opened a whole new den of Hutts, with every one of them a
criminal kingpin. He thought of Luke Skywalker's invitation to join him and
train to become a Jedi Knight. Did my father create this file in hopes that I
would do just that? Because the file had been created well before the Jedi's
reemergence had been confirmed, Corran knew his father couldn't have
anticipated the Jedi's invitation to him. Or could he? Regardless of that, had
his father intended his message to inspire Corran to learn more about his
heritage?
The droid chirped out a question.
"No, Whistler, save the message. Now's not the time to look at it."
"Why not, Corran? We've got time to kill."
"Because, Mirax, I don't have time to consider all of the questions it might
raise."
"Such as?"
"Such as making me reconsider my answer to Luke Skywalker. Perhaps what my
father has to tell me in this message will make me realize I should be learning
to become a Jedi Knight. That decision would force other decisions, and some of
them I don't want to makeprimary among them a decision to leave you to go off
and study the ways of the Force. My other responsibilitiesto the squadron and
the prisoners we're going to freelikewise make such a decision difficult. Right
now I need to be able to focus on what I'm doing."
"So you won't play the message?"
Corran shook his head. "Not right now, certainly not until the Thyferran
situation is over."
"What I hear in your voice, Corran, is that you might not ever play it."
"You know me very well, love." Corran closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed
against the lump in his throat. He reached up with a hand and pressed the gold
Jedi Credit against the flesh of his breastbone. "This hologram is the last
thing my father has left me, but he never would have done it if he thought it
would completely disrupt my life."
"Can you be sure of that?"
"Yeah. If it was something I had to hear, for my own good, Whistler would never
have been instructed to wait until I asked to hear it." Corran laughed, and that
eased the tightness, in his throat. "My father trusted me to make my own
decisions and deal with the consequences."
"That trust, Corran, is the last thing your father left you. It's a most
precious gift indeed, and one well suited to you."
"Thanks, Mirax." Whistler shrilled a warning, prompting Corran to look at his
monitor. A dozen ships popped in from hyperspace in an arrow formation and
headed straight
for the Rogue escort. "Whistler, pull manifests from each of the ships, then see
if stated mass and performance profiles match." He hit a switch on his comm
unit, bringing him online with the Rogue's tactical frequency. "Three, Five,
and Six, fan out and pull life scans on the ships. If any of those ships are
packed with more crew than we expect, I want to know about it."
Corran waited five minutes for the other X-wings to gather the data and for
Whistler to crunch it all down. The various freighters appeared to be massing
about as much as they should for their stated cargoes, and none of them was
loaded down with troops, so Corran assumed the convoy was legitimate. "The
convoy is secure from my standpoint, Mirax."
"I copy, Nine. This is Pulsar Skate to Empress's Diadem. You've been cleared for
continuation of the journey."
"I copy, Skate. Feed us the coordinates and we can get this thing moving."
"Coordinates for exit vector, jump duration, and speed on their way."
Corran watched the data stream flow across the bottom of his monitor and
wondered what Melina Carniss was making of it. He imagined she'd be
disappointed because the first jump was just a short hop to a dead system. From
there they'd get another exit vector that would put them on a straight line for
the Yag'Dhul system, but the speed and duration data would suggest they were
going to another system well beyond Yag'Dhul. She'll be anticipating calling in
a strike on Folor in the Commenor system.
Corran smiled as he thought about the surprise the convoy would be in for
during their journey. The speed that was being set for them would allow them to
slip past the Yag'Dhul system in hyperspace, but Booster had thought of a way to
end their journey prematurely. The gravity well projector he'd gotten from
Karrde and had grafted onto the station would create enough of a gravity shadow
to pull the convoy out of hyperspace. The premature end of the flight would
deliver the goods where they were most needed and
would be a trick clearly meant to conceal the location of the base from
outsider s.
Which ought to be enough to make Carniss think secrecy is still important to us.
Corran dearly wished he knew the full extent of Wedge's plan to deal with
Isard's forces, but he respected the security provided by the
compartmentalization of such information. / doubt I'll know everything that goes
on unless or until this is all over and I get debriefed.
Corran brought his X-wing around on the appointed exit vector and chopped his
throttle back to 51 percent of thrust. In hyperspace, the X-wings were twice as
fast as the freighters, save Carniss's Diadem and Mirax's Skate. By dropping
his thrust to just over half, the X-wing would arrive in-system just before the
freighters and could head off any ambushes.
The other X-wings pu
lled up off his S-foils. "Nine to Skate. Escort is ready to
head out."
"Lead on, Nine, and be careful."
"As ever, Skate. Wouldn't want your father to be disappointed in me."
33
Melina Carniss managed to keep a smile on her face and a light lilt in her voice
despite being anxious to leave the Yag'Dhul station. "No, Mirax, no need to
apologize. I've enjoyed your company over the last two days. I would have felt
quite out of sorts and lonely had you not taken me under your wing."
Mirax smiled. "I'm glad you feel that way. I am sometimes accused of being
somewhat smothering."
Somewhat? Lady, you could smother a Givin, and they don't need to breathe.
"Again your company was appreciated. And let your father know I'm sure Karrde
won't have a problem with my having been kept here awaiting payment. He's very
understanding that way."
Mirax stepped back away from the turbolift opening. "See you on the next trip."
"I'm sure. Good-bye." Melina remained smiling even after the door closed. Be
just like her father to have security holocams set up here in the turbolift. I
have to maintain the charade until I'm back aboard Diadem.
Carniss had hoped to be away from the Yag'Dhul station as quickly as possible,
but the delay in payment meant her
ship was the last of the convoy to leave. Despite being a huge station,
Yag'Dhul's docking bays were mostly in use, requiring a piecemeal unloading of
the convoy. That delay meant the shipments couldn't be verified, hence the
reason payment was late. Mirax's insistence that she leave Diadem and enjoy the
station's facilities meant she had no chance to send a message out to Thyferra
to report the location of Rogue base.
While it certainly was Mirax's fault that she'd not been able to make her report
sooner, the fact was that she didn't really want to make it until her ship was
outbound anyway. Her navicomputer had worked out the time it would take for
Iceheart's taskforce to arrive at Yag'Dhul from Thyferra. Had she sent out the
coordinates when she arrived, she would have been trapped on the station and
killed along with all the others. While Iceheart appreciates my information, I
don't doubt I'm seen as expendable.
Carniss exited the turbolift and cut between two battered freighters on her way
to her ship. The motley collection of freighters and fighters reminded her of
the force Karrde had said had been used to take Coruscant from Isard. Except
this force is lacking Star Destroyers and Mon Calamari cruisers. Most of the
ships looked as if they had been cobbled together from scrap salvaged from Endor
or Alderaan. Isard's Virulence could defeat this fleet all by itself.
She walked up the ramp on her modified Corellian YT-1210 light freighter, the
Empress's Diadem, and closed it behind her. The disk-shaped ship had a pair of
blaster cannons in a turret mounted above and below a boxy concussion missile
launch tube assembly that fired into the ship's aft arc. What I can't outrun I
can discourage from chasing me.
"Peet," she shouted at her pilot, "get us off this station and bound for
Corellia. We have business on Selonia. Once you compute the route and have the
times, let me know. I'll be in my quarters."
"As ordered, Captain Carniss."
Melina headed back to her quarters and sealed the hatch behind her. Because
space was at a premium on the freighter, her cabin was small, yet not without
luxuries. Included among them was a small refresher station which meant she
did not have to use the facilities shared by the rest of the crew. Since she was
the only woman on board, the concession had a practical side to it, as well as
serving to remind the crew of her superior status.
She opened the central drawer on her datapad desk and pulled it all the way out.
On the back panel she slid aside a finger-length wafer of duraplast, revealing a
small cavity. From it she pulled out a slender, silver capsule approximately the
size of her smallest finger. She put it on the desk, then returned the duraplast
wafer and the drawer to their proper places.
From her personal gear she got two small batteries and a transparisteel flask
with a chrome bottom and capped with a chrome tumbler. She worked two screws
loose on the bottom of the bottle and pulled the base off. Into the hollows in
the base she snapped the batteries and the capsule. She fastened the flask's
base back on the transparisteel bottle, then tossed the whole assembly into the
refresher station's bowl and evacuated it.
The flush of disinfectant washed the flask down into a holding tank. As the
Diadem came about on its exit vector, the pilot hit a switch that dumped the
holding tank's contents out into space. The fluid immediately froze into a mass
of blue ice that slowly began to drift in toward the system's sun. It would be
months before the debris finally evaporated in the solar engine.
The sudden drop in temperature around the flask immediately started the capsule
issuing orders. A tiny port opened in the tip of the flask's cap and a spark
from the batteries ignited enough of the Savareen brandy to burn the flask free
of the ice and jet it away. At the same time, a panel on the bottom of the flask
opened up to expose electromagnetic sensors that started feeding system data to
the capsule.
The capsule itself was really the heart of a probe droid. Stripped of the armor
and devices necessary to let it enter an atmosphere and operate in a hostile
environment, the droid took up a minimum of space and could easily function on
batteries for a dozen hours. Its mission was simple pinpoint the location of
the system in which it was dropped, locate a
hidden HoloNet transmission station, and pulse out a tight-beam message
conveying that information to the station. The automated station would, in turn,
deliver that information through the HoloNet to Fliry Vorru within seconds of
its reception.
With the sensors, it mapped the sky and compared the configuration of stars with
what would be available at various systems in the galaxy. While a complete
catalog of systems would have required far more storage than the probe droid
possessed, Vorru and his people had ruthlessly eliminated systems that lacked
habitable worlds, had settlements that were insufficiently developed to help
maintain the Rogues and their ships, or that otherwise appeared to be
inappropriate.
Within an hour of beginning its mission, the probe droid found a match in its
star catalog. It knew it was in the Yag'Dhul system. It oriented itself so it
could pulse its message out to a clandestine HoloNet transmission site, but
found an obstacle in its way. It did pick up comm frequencies emanating from the
obstacle and also saw how many stars it blotted out of the sky, but had no way
to identify it as a space station. It did catalog the item's presence, then it
jetted up to a point where it could locate the relay station.
Once it found its target, the droid pulsed its message out. It continued to do
so for the next three standard hours before a meteorite shattered the
transparisteel flask and reduced the droid to so much junk
orbiting Yag'Dhul.
Wedge looked out over the assembly of pilots in the station's amphitheater. They
all looked eager, which was good, but that surprised him. When he began the
briefing he expected their hungry expressions to melt into disappointment. "So,
there it is within the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours we anticipate the
arrival of Isard's Lusankya and Virulence here at Yag'Dhul. We've already begun
an evacuation of the station, with our ships taking up a position on the edge
of this system. Their position provides a clean exit vector to
Thyferra, which is where you will be going along with them. Is that understood?"
Nawara Ven raised a hand. "Forgive me, Commander, but do you think having all of
us fighters scramble and then run away will fool the Thyferran commanders?"
Bror Jace turned in his seat to look at Nawara. "If they were Thyferran
commanders it wouldn't, but these are Imps. They're used to imagining that
Rebels run at the sight of them."
Wedge smiled at Jace's answer. "Just as you've been sim-ming a lot of antiship
attacks, we've been simming the likely reactions on the Thyferran command level.
We're pretty certain they'll believe our retreat, especially when we jump to
lightspeed on a vector bound for Thyferra. Captain Drysso will assume, in our
desperation to save the station we're going to strike at Thyferra. Because our
snubfighters are twice as fast as the Lusankya, we'll have twelve hours there to
batter Thyferra unopposed. He knows he can't beat us back there, so he'll
finish our station off, then come after us."
Corran frowned. "What if his people pick up on the fact that we rendezvous with
our freighters before we head out?"
"Still no cause of alarm for him. The Lusankya still out-guns our entire fleet.
More ships just provide his gunners with more practice." Wedge shrugged. "I know
there are dozens of unanswered questions you have right now because I've been
fairly vag ue about our overall plan and have just concentrated on your roles in
what is going to happen. Your squadron leaders have more specific orders on
which they will brief you at the appropriate time. Right now I just wanted to
let you know that action is imminent, so you should take care to put your
affairs in order and prepare any holograms you want sent in case of death."
Gavin smiled. "But you're not going to leave those things on the station here,