Rebel Dream: Enemy Lines I (16 page)

“Well, then. I’ll be going.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.” Tam’s expression graduated to perplexed, then pained. He stood back from the door and reached up to rub one of his temples. “There’s that headache ag—”

The door slid shut, cutting off his last word.

Danni slumped. This was the third time in three days that Tam had gone out of his way to talk to her, in his inimitably clumsy fashion. Obviously, he’d developed an interest in her, and that was the last thing she needed.

Oh, it wasn’t that she disliked him. But her duties, analysis of Yuuzhan Vong technology, came first. Then there was her as-time-allowed training in the use of the Force, her occasional missions with the Wild Knights. She had meetings with the Insiders and lengthy consultations with others who were knowledgeable in Yuuzhan Vong technology, individuals such as Cilghal, the Jedi healer from Mon Calamari. She had sleep, now her favorite hobby, appreciated because of its scarcity. She just didn’t have time for the legions of male pilots, officers, technicians, and civilians who thought that she surely must be interested in spending some time with them.

It was even worse with Tam, who stared at her with big, needy eyes filled with an emotion she couldn’t quite interpret. It wasn’t love, or affection, or admiration. It was something like longing, only worse.

If she didn’t know better, she’d have said it was desperation.

She rubbed her eyes in the vain hope that it would allow them to focus, then turned her attention back to her instruments.

* * *

Preparing for bed, Iella asked, “Wedge, do you have any reason to distrust Luke and Mara? Or does Tycho?”

Wedge lay back on the bed and winced in anticipation of the day’s accumulation of aches and pains assaulting him. “Of course not. Why?”

“A couple of days ago, I found a listening device planted in the Skywalker quarters. It was an amateur job, attached with a little patch of duracrete to a water pipe in their refresher. So it would only pick up conversations taking place in that one-person refresher, and only when water wasn’t flowing through the pipe.”

He gave her a curious look. “Sounds like we’re being spied on by someone who hasn’t seen enough holodramas.”

She slid into place beside him. “Today I found the corresponding listening device. In Tycho’s quarters.”

Wedge chuckled. “So you suspect Tycho of wanting to listen to fourteen hours a day of crying baby?”

“Certainly not. But I’m taking it seriously because I don’t know what it represents. I know what to do when I find signs that a competent agent is working against us. This, this is just confusing.”

“Maybe our enemy has two listening devices. One to listen to and one to plant to throw blame on Tycho.”

“That’s a good guess.”

“So what did you do about it?”

“I left the listening device, and told Luke and Mara not to talk in the refresher, and why. I’ll script up some false leads for them to say within its range and see what comes of it.”

“Problem solved.” Wedge reached over to switch off the bedside light.

It had been nearly a week since
Lusankya
’s arrival had smashed the Yuuzhan Vong fleet. Since then, squadrons and even smaller units of coralskippers, now based out of the captured lunar station above Pyria VI, had harassed the New Republic ships in orbit and made some daring runs against the biotics station on the ground, but these attacks seemed little more than probes testing for weaknesses.

Luke Skywalker and a man named Kell Tainer worked on Luke’s X-wing, patching up the damage done during the last attack. The damage was mostly minor, hull scoring and components shaken loose, but if allowed to accumulate it would gradually render the snubfighter useless.

Tainer was tall and in shape, the leanness of his muscles suggesting that they were for use rather than for show. His brown hair was receding from his forehead but long in back and braided. He wore a droopy mustache and a close-trimmed beard. He looked like nothing so much as an asteroid miner or backworld mechanic, but Luke knew better.

“I thought you were Intelligence,” Luke said. A needle-thin stream of lubricant sprayed from the engine he was working on, the one at lower starboard, and left a zigzag red-black mark on his cheek and forehead. He tightened the clamp over the perforated hose and mopped ruefully at the fluid on his face. “A Wraith, right?”

“You’re not supposed to know that.” Kell’s voice was muffled. His upper body was wedged into the snub-fighter’s tiny cargo compartment; he dangled from the waist down out of the access hatch at the underside of the X-wing’s bow. It looked as though the X-wing had decided to begin a career as a carnivorous beast and Kell
had been its first, unresisting prey. “Now I have to kill you.”

Luke grinned. “What are you doing working with the mechanics?”

“Used to be a mechanic. Worked for a while in a Sluis Van refitting shop that Admiral Thrawn’s forces eventually blew up, in fact. But I could ask you the same thing. Thought you were a Jedi Master. What are you doing working with the mechanics?”

“Same answer, more or less. I had to maintain all my machinery on Tatooine when I was a kid and many times since. And this is
my
X-wing.”

“Get in there, you little—all right. Your ejector mechanism should be working again. Let me get this panel dogged down so your feet don’t drop into the cargo compartment.”

“I’d appreciate that. Not that my feet always reach the floor anyway.” Luke finished sealing off the second of two valves. He removed the damaged tubing in between and began attaching its replacement.

Kell slid out from the compartment as though the carnivorous X-wing had decided he just wasn’t worth swallowing. He landed on his feet, nimble for such a big man. “Want to test it?”

“No, thanks.”

“Go ahead, hop in and fire it off. That’s the only way to be sure it works.”

Luke glanced up at the drooping metal docking bay ceiling five meters above their heads. “No, thanks.”

“Spoilsport.” Kell grabbed the lip of the hull beside the cockpit—the canopy was raised, allowing him the grip—and heaved himself up, leaning over into cockpit, his upper half disappearing from view again.

“You’re Tyria Sarkin’s husband, aren’t you?”

“Aha, that’s how you knew I was a Wraith. Yes, I am.”

“How is she doing?”

Kell was silent for long moments. Luke heard the ratcheting sound of the man’s hydrospanner. “She’s doing well,” Kell said. “Mostly she travels with our boy, Doran. Teaching him the ways of the Jedi. She travels so far afield … she probably doesn’t even know how bad the Yuuzhan Vong invasion has gotten. We have pretty much a long-distance marriage. Months of separation alternating with extravagant welcome-home celebrations. Back when you confirmed her in her rank as a Jedi Knight, that thrilled her for months. Years.”

“She earned it.” Luke finished fitting the second tube end and reopened the valves. The tube stiffened a little as lubricant coursed through it, but it held.

Tyria Sarkin walked a strange and solitary path for a Jedi, Luke knew, but it was a path he was familiar with; it had been his own. He’d tested her about twenty years ago, when he’d first heard of her, a New Republic pilot candidate with Force abilities, but discovered that her powers were weak, her self-discipline inadequate to the task of shaping her into a Jedi. He’d let her down easy and suggested that she concentrate on her piloting skills. But sometime in the next few years she’d found the discipline she’d needed and resigned from the military to learn the ways of the Jedi. She’d learned mostly on her own, traveling and exploring, experimenting and investigating, reading communiqués and advice Luke had sent her but spending no time at Luke’s Jedi academy on Yavin 4. The fortunate thing, Luke reflected, was that she had never rejected Luke’s guidance and authority the way disaffected Jedi like Kyp Durron had; she had simply progressed in her own way, at her own rate.

Kell dropped to the ferrocrete floor again. “All done.”

“Here, too, just about.” Then Luke felt a new presence and glanced over at the docking bay entrance.

Iella Wessiri stood there. “Thirty standard minutes,” she said. “Insiders meeting.”

“The bantha crows at dawn,” Kell said.

Iella blinked at him. “What?”

“You know. ‘The bantha crows at dawn.’ What’s the countersign?” Kell aimed his hydrospanner at her as though it were a blaster. “Or perhaps you’re not Section Head Iella Wessiri at all? Pull that ooglith masquer off, or I open fire.”

She gave him a thin smile. “My husband never really told me how annoying you were.” She turned to Luke. “Thirty minutes. There’s news.” She turned and left.

Kell adopted an expression of disdain. “No countersign, indeed. What sort of holodrama is this, anyway?”

“You’re going to do what? ” Mara asked. Her voice had not risen to carry through the doors and into the conference room, but it had become sharper. It was loud enough to startle Ben, but the baby merely looked up from her arms, gurgled, looked at Luke, and reached out for his father. Luke gave him the pinkie of his natural hand to grasp.

Luke steeled himself. “I’m going to Coruscant.”

“Your visions?”

“They’re getting worse and more frequent. Whatever is happening there, it’s building. Getting stronger. Or
going
to build,
going
to get stronger—I don’t know if I’m seeing the present or the future.”

“Or the past. You could be seeing something about Palpatine’s rise to power.”

He shook his head. “There wouldn’t be a sense of urgency to the visions.”

“Well, send someone else. This is an Intelligence-style mission. Sneaking around in the dark. Not exactly suited to a fighter pilot with a glowing sword.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should invite some Intelligence types along. But since it’s a matter of the Force, there has to be a Jedi there.” He gave her a reassuring grin. “Everything’s better with a Jedi around.”

“Where did you learn that smile? Have you been practicing in front of a holo of Han Solo? Listen, I’m not objecting to a Jedi going on this mission. But it can’t be
you
. You can’t go.”

“Why not?”

“Because
I
can’t go. I have to stay with Ben.”

“It has to be me, Mara. With the galaxy falling apart and the Jedi needing leadership, and with so many of them looking at anyone
but
me because they believe I’m some sort of passive, prematurely ancient wise man on a mountaintop, I think it would be a good thing for them to hear that I’ve led a mission into Coruscant. They’ll have to rethink my outlook and my opinions.” It occurred to Luke that Leia would probably be pleased with the political slant of his reasoning … and then he realized that he was once again playing in Leia’s battlefield, the universe of politics, where she was a master and he was usually a floundering novice.

“Don’t do this, Skywalker.”

“I have to. Come
with
me.”

“I’m needed here.”

“That’s what your feelings are telling you. What does the Force tell you?”

Her eyes flashed. “It doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Then you’re not open to it. You’re afraid of where it will lead you. You’re afraid it will tell you that you need to step away from Ben, however temporarily.”

Mara’s face closed down, allowing no emotion to escape beyond the event horizon of her features. “I’ll tell you what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid that my husband is becoming
some sort of dried-up desert mystic, cut off from human emotions.”

Luke sighed and abandoned the argument. “The offer’s open until I leave.” He cocked his head toward the conference room door. “We need to join the rest.”

Luke took his customary chair beside Wedge at the head of the table. Mara, still stony-faced, sat beside Han and Leia.

No one was talking; instead, everyone watched Iella Wessiri as she moved the length of one wall, slowly and rhythmically waving an electronic device beside it. The lights on the device blinked a steady pattern in white.

Wedge waited until Iella finished. She nodded at him to indicate that the chamber was free of listening devices.

“Two hours ago,” Wedge began, “a refugee ship arrived from the direction of the Hapes Cluster. It had been part of a fleet heading toward Hapes. The fleet had been assembled in considerable secrecy, but the Yuuzhan Vong intercepted it, and this ship was the only one to escape. This coincides with word we’ve received from Talon Karrde today that the Vong are becoming much more adept at tracking refugee traffic.

“I suspect that the New Republic fleet groups, under direct control of the Advisory Council, are going to be unable to devote their resources to this problem. So I’m going to devote some of ours. I’m looking for ideas.”

“The first step,” Luke said, “has to be to figure out what the Yuuzhan Vong are doing. How they’re getting their accurate information about refugee ship movements. It could be that they’ve infiltrated one of the Yuuzhan Vong into the refugee ship network … in which case you’ll want a Jedi to travel on some of those voyages to try to find a crew member who can’t be detected in the Force.”

“Good point,” Wedge said. “Anyone else?”

Danni Quee waved from the back of the room. “They could be using some sort of tracking creature.”

“Also a good point,” Wedge acknowledged. “What do we do about that?”

Danni considered. “Tracking creatures will probably be using gravitic fluctuations to signal their presence. I can build a detection device similar to what I’m using to track yammosk activities. If we mount it on a refugee vessel, it can record gravitic flux and determine whether a creature like that is aboard. But if the vessel doesn’t survive the trip and we can’t retrieve the recording, that does us no good.”

Corran Horn spoke up. “So we make sure that the vessel survives. We put together a surprise for the Vong and then run the vessel on missions until they decide to take it. This has an additional benefit; the Yuuzhan Vong are preying pretty much at will on refugee ships. If Yuuzhan Vong vessels assigned to this duty start disappearing, they may have to rethink their operations.”