“And if that is not possible?”
“Relocation to a world of my choosing, a world that will be made part of your Alliance with me at its head.”
“A world you will turn into a haven for crime?” Iella looked disgusted.
Corran shook his head. “He’s smarter than that. He’ll solicit bribes from worlds so he doesn’t end up there. He’ll be rich enough to buy a star system or two.”
Vorru opened his hands. “I seek a world where I can live out my days in peace and you think poorly of me. I find it hard to believe you hold the rehabilitative qualities of Kessel in such contempt.”
“Enough.” Wedge held a hand out to forestall Corran’s reply to Vorru’s unctuous comment. “I’ll give you my personal guarantee you and your people will not be held responsible for crimes committed while you are acting in concert with us. That doesn’t mean a sociopath like Thyne here is free to slaughter innocents. We’re only going to hit legitimate military targets. The streets start running with blood and I’ll burn your people down myself. I think this is the best offer you’re going to get.”
“It’s acceptable. For now.” Vorru nodded. “And, no, our slicers have not been able to get into the main computer.”
Thyne shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “We should just blow it up. Everything will stop and the shields will come down.”
“No they won’t.” Winter frowned. “Damage to the main computer system will transfer control to satellite facilities. While they are not as well guarded as the main facility, they will not be easy to take over. There is also a possibility that crucial systems, such as shield control, could get shunted to another satellite center if there is trouble with one. In other words, to get the shields down that way we’d have to guarantee a strike at all of the satellites as well as the main center, and we don’t know for certain where all of those subsidiary centers are.”
Vorru smiled. “I can furnish you with those locations, but your reservations about so explosive a plan are justified. It strikes me that something more subtle would be preferential.”
Asyr laid a hand gently over one of Vorru’s. “I don’t understand why it is so difficult to slice code into the main computer. There are billions of transactions and messages that go through the system on an hourly basis. Something ought to be able to get through, shouldn’t it?”
Wedge shrugged. “Seems like it, but I guess not. Winter?”
She tucked a strand of white hair back behind her ear. “The Imperial computers operate through a very restrictive language that has a hierarchical command and access structure. Programs that go in to be effective across the system have to be authorized at the highest security levels. These levels are ultra-secure. Programs are scanned for content and that content is compared to their access levels. If a system program comes in without an access code that is cleared for entering system programs, it’s dumped.”
Corran frowned. “If you were able to wrap a program up in the right disguise, it would get through, right?”
“Presumably, but we don’t have the right codes. Those codes are changed by the hour and old memory cores are swapped out daily and destroyed within a week—though after a day’s worth of use they’re pretty well ready to be junked anyway. Each night clean new memory cores are placed in the computers and trillions of exabytes of transactions are transferred to the new cores. This happens throughout the system.”
Asyr nodded. “The production facility for the Palar memory cores is on the Invisec border. Nasty work making the things. All sorts of noxious chemicals go on the data retention surfaces, then a lot of energy gets used in formatting the cores. We lose people every day in that plant.”
Wedge folded his arms. “If they’re getting new cores daily, how does the transfer of data occur? I mean, if an old core is replaced with a new core, how does the data from the old core get onto the new core?”
“They have two banks of cores and the data is transferred from one to the other. The process doesn’t take that long.” Winter smiled. “The Imperial Senate’s computer system used the same security system, but on a much smaller scale. Half a standard hour is all it should take to complete the operation.”
Corran sat back. “What happens to the transactions that occur while the transfers are taking place?”
“They get caught on a subsidiary memory bank and queued up to be sent into the main banks when the appropriate cores are free. Then those cores send the data over into the new banks.”
“Okay, Winter, now what sort of program governs the transfer of data between the banks?”
She looked at Corran oddly. “Pretty basic stuff, universal to every system really. It goes into cores when they’re formatted. What are you getting at?”
“Data goes from the first bank to the second, right?”
“Yes.”
“And it goes fast because, presumably, it was checked as it came in and anything bad was discarded, right?”
“Yes.”
“So if something on one of the subsidiary cores was shot over into the security core during the transfer, it wouldn’t be checked by the second bank, right?”
Winter began to smile. “And altering the transfer code on one of the subsidiary disks so it would send a Rebel program over when the secure transfer was taking place, instead of blocking that transfer the way it’s supposed to, wouldn’t be that hard …”
“Because,” said Asyr, “we have access to the plant where the cores are manufactured and we can alter the code used to format the memory cores.”
“Right.” Corran beamed. “We send over a program that causes us to be given clearance codes and addresses for the shield maintenance programs and we can bring the shields down at will.”
Vorru bowed his head in Corran’s direction. “CorSec’s gain was Black Sun’s loss. You have a devious mind—it is a pity you decided to use it to hunt us.”
Corran winked at him. “That’s the trick of it—I can’t stand the thought of a criminal who’s dumber than I am profiting by his crimes. Neither could my father, which explains why we shortened Patches’s career.”
“If your father was that smart, he’d still be alive.”
Corran refused to be goaded. “This operation is a little bit more important than punching holes in your fantasy life, but the time will come.”
Thyne started to get up, but Wedge pushed him back into his chair. “Stay down.”
“Make me.”
Vorru’s right hand struck fast and slapped Thyne on the belly. The younger man howled, then, as he doubled over, Vorru grabbed him by his neck and slammed his forehead into the table. Thyne, glassy-eyed, rebounded and Vorru flung him from his chair. “For some people discipline is a lesson. For others it is a lifetime.”
A shiver ran down Corran’s spine. He goes from gracious to vicious in less time than it takes for darkness to come in when a light goes out. And Thyne is out like a light. He exchanged a knowing glance with Iella and saw her shake her head.
Wedge looked at the man on the floor, then shrugged. “We have enough, I think, to begin some planning. Winter, if you can have your slicers begin the programs we’ll need, that will be a big help. Asyr, we’ll need the basic security setup at the Palar plant, plus the routines and any computer security information you can get us.” He looked at Vorru. “And you …”
“I will find out if any of the computer core technicians have any interesting vices we can exploit or an interest in exploiting the vices we have to offer.”
“I think that will be fine.” Wedge smiled. “In two days we will meet again and see how close we are to making the plan work.”
31
Kirtan Loor’s hands convulsed into fists. Who is more stupid, a fool or someone who relies upon a fool? Zekka Thyne’s initial report about a planning meeting for what the Rogues would be doing to bring Imperial Center down had seemed promising. Thyne had told him who had attended and it had pleased Loor to learn Iella Wessiri and Corran Horn had been reunited. The fa
ct that he’d not known Iella was living right under his nose did not thrill him, but her location had been outside his area of immediate interest until she became part of Rogue Squadron’s operation.
The datafiles that the Imperial Intelligence organized crime division had sent over to him had provided interesting information on Fliry Vorru as well as the Devaronian, Dmaynel Kiph, but of Asyr Sei’lar they had no record. Though he had been chastened before by Ysanne Isard about drawing unwarranted conclusions, Loor decided Sei’lar was probably a member of some Bothan spy network. The possible existence of an independent Bothan Intelligence operation on Imperial Center suggested the Alliance was not a wholly unified front, which meant Iceheart’s strategy for dividing and destroying them piecemeal had even greater merit.
What angered Loor was Thyne’s deception—a deception that became quite apparent from subsequent reports. Thyne had said the first meeting had merely been organizational and had not produced any sort of a working plan. In the five days since that meeting, though, Thyne had been given certain tasks to perform that ran outside the usual duties he had within Black Sun. Initially he had overseen the collection of all sorts of data from the Black Sun’s gambling and spice operations on Imperial Center, but he only collected the datacards. He had no idea what information they contained.
After two days of that he had been shifted over to equipment procurement. While his activities provided Loor with an interesting window on the black market availability of almost anything, it did not give him the sort of information that would be useful for countering the Rogues’ operation. Thyne was overbuying weapons and having them delivered to any number of sites. In this Loor recognized an effort to provide far too many sites for Imperial Intelligence to adequately cover.
It seemed clear to Loor that Thyne had been isolated by the command group and given jobs that, while valuable, were not crippling if bungled. Thyne was not the only person buying weapons on the black market so Loor had to conclude that perhaps none of the arms Thyne had collected would be used. Loor would have decided Thyne’s cover had been blown, but Vorru’s file left little doubt about how the man would have been dealt with if Black Sun knew Patches was working with the Empire.
Several things seemed obvious to Loor. The first was that Thyne had managed to show himself to be unreliable. He assumed this was because Thyne clearly would have loved to supplant Vorru as the head of Black Sun and Vorru, just as clearly, would want to prevent that from happening. Thyne’s animosity for Corran and Iella could have also made him a liability in any planning councils. Loor had decided that Thyne had been ejected from the initial meeting before plans had been discussed and only later learned that Thyne had been concussed and amnesia blanked the substantive part of the meeting.
The spy within Rogue Squadron had not been present at the meeting. The spy’s subsequent reports had been singularly useless. The planning council had compartmentalized the jobs needed to complete the operation, so the spy’s activities proved less enlightening than Thyne’s. Having Rogue Squadron personnel maintain a low profile did make sense, since they were not as familiar with Imperial Center as other members of the conspiracy, but it made their activities useless as indicators of what was going to happen.
The only saving grace in all of it was that things appeared to be building slowly. Isard had told Loor that nothing could happen before two weeks—the incubation period of the new strain of the Krytos virus. The Sullustans taken in the warehouse had been injected with the virus ten days earlier so he was very close to his deadline already. Isard said she’d already introduced the virus into the water supply, so countless creatures were already ingesting it. Loor himself had taken to boiling water and only drinking wines imported from other worlds—even though the virus was not supposed to infect humans, he wanted to take no chances.
Loor sat back in the shadowed depths of his office and rubbed a hand against his forehead. The key to taking any planet was to lower its shields and drop troops. While a planetary bombardment might cause a lot of damage, only troops on the ground could take and hold real estate. Without the shields going down, that couldn’t happen, so the shields had to be the logical target for the Rogues.
The obvious target for taking the shields down was to attack the shield generators themselves. Loading a landspeeder full of Nergon 14 and having a suicide bomber run it into a generation station seemed the most expedient way of dealing with the shields. Two facts argued against that as a strategy—the sheer number of stations would require a metric ton or two for the Rebels to obliterate them all and the Rebels had not, to his knowledge, purchased any Nergon 14 so far. More importantly, destroying the shield generators would work against their future efforts to hold the planet.
A strike against the power generation stations had similar problems. There were even more of them than there were shield generation stations. The planet’s electrical grid was coordinated such that an area that lost its local power plant would immediately have energy supplied by others in nearby sectors. Flickering lights would be the only sign of disruption. In his months on Imperial Center Loor had only seen lights flicker when one of the powerful local thunderstorms broke over a building where he was.
The obvious target was the computer that controlled everything on Imperial Center, but Loor had seen prisons that had less security than the central computer. The center had its own platoon of stormtroopers and the barracks within a fifty-kilometer radius had orders to respond to alarms there with all speed and firepower at their command. The facility itself had been built with more demanding specifications than those of any other building on the planet, including the Imperial Palace. Rumor had it that if the Death Star had been used against Imperial Center, the computer center would have been a recognizable and salvageable piece of debris.
An armed strike on the computer center would seem doomed to failure, but the presence of Rogue Squadron did make it a bit more viable. If they had fighters—and fighters of various types were available on the black market—they might be able to intercept and down some of the incoming troops. That would give the attackers more time, though the outcome would still be dismal for the Rebels. The ground-based TIE fighter squadrons in the area would be able to counter the fighter threat, so placing them on alert was a precaution he would suggest to Isard.
Perhaps the most difficult part of guarding against the Rebel action was balancing on the razored edge of Isard’s plan. She wanted to give Imperial Center to the Rebels, saddling them with responsibility for a population that would drain them of bacta and fluid capital, effectively hobbling them and pinning them in one place. If his precautions against Rebel action were too obvious, the Rebels might do something unusual, giving them the planet before she wanted them to have it or, worse yet, convincing them to scrub their invasion. The idea of facing her anger if things went wrong filled Loor with dread.
Still, there are only four more days until her minimum deadline, two and a half weeks until the maximum. I’m close to success. Loor nodded slowly in the darkness. “If Derricote delivers what he promises with this Sullustan group, the Rebels will take a dying world and their movement will die right along with it.”
32
Corran wetted a small cloth swab with ethyl alcohol and rubbed it over the focal end of the BlasTech DL-44 Heavy blaster pistol. He peered at it closely, then gave it one more light pass with the cloth. As the alcohol evaporated, he saw Gavin reflected in miniature. “Ah, Gavin, this is the third time you’ve asked me if you could ask me a question.”
The kid blushed as he snapped the trigger assembly for his SoroSuub S1BR into the receiver housing. “I know, sorry.” Gavin kept his voice low enough that no one in the warehouse space aside from Corran could hear him. “I wanted to ask you about, urn, you know.”
Corran winced. He didn’t know, but that sort of thing was only said as preface to a question about killing or sex. Since Gavin had long ago become an ace and had acquitted himself well in the firefight in the warehouse acros
s Invisec, Corran assumed the question had to be about sex. His parents should have told him about this before they let him go off to war, shouldn’t they? Corran looked around to see if Wedge was nearby, figuring he would do a much better job helping Gavin.
He couldn’t see Wedge anywhere. Corran shrugged his shoulders and eased the concentration element into the barrel of the blaster pistol. “What’s your question?”
Gavin set his face in what he clearly thought was a serious expression, but the general youthfulness of his features undermined the effort. “On Tatooine, well, in Anchorhead, well, in the area around the farm, it was small and so … We didn’t have a school the way you did on Corellia, see, we all took classes via a local HoloNet and sent lessons in on datacards, you know …”
Corran fit the barrel assembly together and snapped it into the gun’s frame. “Gavin, are you trying to tell me you don’t know how to kiss a girl?”
The young man pulled his head up and blinked, then frowned. “Anchorhead may have been small but not that small.”
“Kin don’t count.”
Gavin blushed. “I wasn’t related to everyone around there, you know.”
Corran raised his hands and smiled. “I know, I know, I was just giving you a hard time. What is it that you want to know?”
“Well, you’ve been around a lot. And you come from Corellia.” Gavin’s voice dropped precipitously. “You’ve seen, you know, two people get together, but they’re different, right?”
“Do you mean like Erisi and me? We come from different worlds, but we’re both human—though we haven’t gotten together.”