Rogue Squadron (15 page)

“Home Sweet Home.” Wedge smiled. “When are we to be on station?”

“A week from now.”

“That’s not much time.”

“I know.” Ackbar shrugged his shoulders. “It was all I could buy you. May the Force be with you, Commander Antilles. I hope you won’t need it.”

12

Kirtan Loor clutched his hands at the small of his back so they would stop trembling. “I am in your debt, Madam Director, and at your service.”

“How kind of you to say so, Agent Loor.” Ysanne Isard thumbed a small device. The lights in the room slowly brightened while shields descended over the windows. The rising illumination revealed the room to have a tall ceiling, with dark wooden beams curving up from the four corners to meet in an apex above the center of the floor. The walls and carpet shared the same deep blue, though a strip of carpet the same bright red as worn by Imperial Guards bordered the floor at the edge of the wall. In the far corner he saw a desk and chairs that were elegant yet far from ornate—in keeping with the general spartan nature of the room.

It struck him as odd that a large room that was all but empty could seem so decadently opulent. The only thing the room seemed rich in was wasted space. Then it struck him.
On a world that is so crowded with so many people, wasting this amount of space is the height of luxury
.

Isard’s predatory pacing in the center of the room snatched his attention away from the subtle messages of the architecture and appointments. She wore an Admiral’s uniform, complete with boots, jodhpurs, and a dress jacket, though the garments were red. A black armband circled the upper part of her left arm and the jacket bore no rank insignia or cylinders at all. Yet even without the external signs of rank, her intensity and the deliberation with which she moved radiated power.

Though he would have put her age at a dozen years older than his own, he found her attractive. Tall and slender, she wore her black hair long, and the white streaks descending from her temples made her seem more exotic than middle-aged. Her face appeared classically beautiful to him. A strong jaw, sharp cheekbones, a high forehead, a gracefully small nose, and large eyes were all the elements that most women would have killed to possess, or would have paid to have given to them.

Even as he catalogued all the bits and pieces of her that should have triggered some sort of lust in him—and the aura of power surrounding her was terribly exciting—fear overrode any glimmerings of carnal desire. When she looked at him, with dark brows accenting her eyes, he knew where the menace dwelt in her. One eye was ice-blue—as cold as Hoth and as cruel as a Hutt in a sporting mood. The other eye, the left one, was a molten red, with golden highlights that flashed with fiery determination. The left eye told him that any effort by him that was not fully devoted to her service would be met with the bloodless retribution promised by her cold right eye.

Kirtan shivered and she smiled.

“Agent Loor, your personal file has a number of interesting inputs. You are rated as having a visual
memory retention rate of nearly one hundred percent.”

He nodded. “If I read it or see it, I remember it.”

“This can be a useful tool, if applied correctly.” Isard’s expression lost some of its hardness, though this in no way made Kirtan feel as if he were any safer. “In the report about Bastra you mentioned not using
skirtopanol
during his interrogation because he had been dosing himself with
lotiramine
. This was a precaution you learned to take because of a case on Corellia where doing just that had negative effects, yes?”

“The suspect died.”

“Your report says you used the fact that the
lotiramine
masks the presence of
blastonecrosis
to confront Bastra with his own mortality. When that did not prove effective, you began conventional interrogation.”

Kirtan nodded. “Sleep deprivation, protein starvation, coercive holographic and auditory illusions taken from what I knew of him. It all proved quite promising until the
blastonecrosis
began to make his whole body septic. I then initiated treatment for the condition.”

“And this treatment killed him.” Her eyes became mismatched slits. “Do you know why?”

“He had a reaction to the bacta used to treat him.”

“Do you know why?”

Kirtan was about to offer her the explanation the Emdee-five droid had given him when Bastra died in the bacta tank, but he knew that she would not accept it. “I do not.”

Isard hesitated for a second and Kirtan knew he had escaped punishment by being truthful. “What does ZXI449F mean to you, if anything?”

He instantly recognized the number, but held back his answer until he could sort out the details and put them in a coherent form. “That is the lot number of a batch of bacta that was contaminated by the Ashern rebels on Thyferra. It made its way to Imperial Center and infected nearly two million soldiers and citizens. It rendered them allergic to bacta.” Kirtan frowned. “But Gil Bastra never was on Imperial Center.”

“You do not know that for a fact. Perhaps he
was
here.” She shook her head slowly. “It does not matter, because he could have run into that batch of bacta almost anywhere. It was ordered disposed of, and I saw to it that much of it was funneled to the black market.
That
, however, is not important. What is important is this:
Blastonecrosis
is a condition that affected roughly two percent of the people who were dosed with that particular lot of bacta. An Emdee droid would have inquired of a patient if he had been dosed with bacta in the last two years.”

“But because I ordered treatment and didn’t recognize the significance of the disease, Gil Bastra died.”

“No!” Isard’s eyes hardened. “Gil Bastra committed suicide.”

“What?”

“His reports about you are in your file. Your slicer was able to excise them from the Corellian records, but not
my
records. A man is best evaluated by his enemies.”

Kirtan’s stomach slowly collapsed in on itself. “Those evaluations were prejudiced against me.”

“Perhaps, but Bastra was amazingly perceptive. He wrote that you rely on your memory too much—trusting that retention of information can somehow compensate for an insufficient amount of analysis. Because you know so much—like the obscure fact
about the fatal interaction of
lotiramine
and
skirtopanol
, you didn’t look beyond Bastra’s obvious line of defense to see how much deeper things had gone. If you had, you would have known about his possible bacta allergy and he might still be with us.”

She slowly exhaled and tugged at the hem of her scarlet jacket. “Bastra knew you well enough to know he’d be dead soon. That gave him enough hope to feed you useless information. He held out as long as he could because he was playing for more time for his confederates to further sever ties with their past.”

The Intelligence agent realized right then that the display of bravado Bastra had provided during their first meeting on the
Expeditious
had not been a false and hollow thing. Kirtan’s face burned as he heard again everything Bastra had said, this time with the man’s mocking tones intact and brutal.
What I had seen as my brilliance in ferreting out his errors had been him playing to my sense of superiority, leading me on after him like a nerf eager for slaughter. For two years I’ve been a fool
.

A revelation hit him strongly enough to make him tremble. “I’ve been fooled for even longer than the two years I’ve chased them down, haven’t I?”

“Very good, Agent Loor.” Isard’s expression lightened slightly, as if she were on the verge of smiling, but she did not. “The responsibility for your deception is not wholly your own. Our training and indoctrination tends to make agents and soldiers believe in their own infallibility. This has proved to be a detriment to the Empire. You were not alone in falling prey to it—even the late Emperor had his blind spots.”

Kirtan decided to avoid the invitation to question the Emperor’s wisdom, or lack thereof, and instead followed up on his previous question. “The
‘falling out’ Bastra and Horn had was faked. I thought the reason for it was stupid, and assumed they were stupid for being at odds over it.”

“This is even better, Agent Loor.”

“I feel as if in realizing how badly I was used, I can see more depth to things.”

“A blind spot is eliminated, letting you see more of what goes on around you.” She ran an index finger along her jaw. “If you had read Bastra’s evaluations of you instead of having them destroyed, you would have been able to come to this epiphany sooner.”

He nodded confidently. “And I would have had them by now.”

“And you were doing so well.” Isard’s face contorted into a snarl. “Don’t backslide.”

Kirtan blushed. “I’m sorry.”

“More’s the pity that you are not. You assume superiority where there is none.” She folded her arms across her chest. “The Emperor likewise assumed that if he destroyed all the Jedi Knights that
his
Jedi Knight—and a handful of Force-trained special agents—would be sufficient to control the galaxy. He did not see—though I tried to warn him—the impossibility of proving that all the Jedi had been destroyed and that no other Jedi could rise against him. His obsession with the Jedi blinded him to the real threat posed by opposition leaders who are no more intelligent or remarkable than you are.

“As a result the Empire is falling apart and the Rebels are threatening to supplant the Empire with their own New Republic.”

Kirtan nodded. “And you wish to restore the Empire.”

“No.” Her denial came cold enough to freeze carbonite. “My goal is to destroy the Rebellion. Imperial
restoration can only be accomplished if the Rebels are eliminated and that can only be accomplished if we blunt their military, sorely stress their administration, and crush their spirits. These goals are interwoven and I have operatives, like you, working on all levels to bring my plans to fruition. Can you withstand the pressure of so vital a mission?”

Kirtan slowly nodded. “I can. How may I serve you?”

This time she did smile and Kirtan wished she had not. “Your target is to cut the heart out of the Rebellion. You will be the death of Rogue Squadron.”

“Excuse me?” Kirtan frowned, wondering if he had heard her incorrectly. “I am no fighter pilot. I know nothing about Rogue Squadron.”

“Ah, but you have the expertise I want and desire. You served on Corellia and the unit’s commander is Corellian.”

“Wedge Antilles, I know.” Kirtan raised his hands. “But that is not to say I know
him
. I don’t. I don’t even know anything about the squadron.”

“But you can learn.”

“Yes, I can learn.”

“And you shall learn.” She nodded slowly toward him, then brought her head up abruptly. “You will also find you have a personal stake in this.”

Kirtan aborted a wince. “Yes?”

“Our source within the squadron tells us that a friend of yours is a flight leader of remarkable skill.”

One of Isard’s earlier statements ran through his mind again.
A man is best evaluated by his enemies
. “Corran Horn.”

“You see, you already know more about them than you thought you did.” Ysanne Isard gave him
an even stare. “Do you accept being the instrument of Rogue Squadron’s destruction?”

“With pleasure, Madam Director.” Kirtan smiled to himself. “With the utmost of pleasure indeed.”

13

Corran forced himself to relax. Though Commander Antilles had cast the trip as an exercise in astronavigation and hyperspace jumping, deep down in his gut Corran thought a lot was being left unsaid. He was certain that if they had been going out on a formal patrol or escort mission Wedge would have told them so. The fact that he hadn’t said anything conflicted with the mission requirement of packing up and stowing their personal gear in their X-wings. This left Corran thinking something more than an exercise was taking place.

Because of his training exercise scores, Corran had been promoted to Lieutenant and given the command of Three Flight. As an officer he had expected Wedge would trust him enough to let him know what was really going on. Even so, with his background he had great respect for security, and that put a brake on his uneasiness.

Those concerns don’t matter. Getting through the drill does
. Heading outbound from Folor’s scarred grey surface, Corran flew lead for Rogue Squadron’s Three Flight. Ooryl was back to starboard
while Lujayne and Andoorni were off to port, similarly staggered front and back. Within the unit they had comm unit call signs of Rogue Nine through Twelve respectively, though for this exercise they would be operating as a semiindependent flight.

“Let’s keep it close, Three Flight. Whistler will send you all our jump coordinates and speed parameters. Have your R2s double-check it, then lock the route.” He checked his datascreen for the positions of the first two X-wing flights and Tycho Celchu bringing up the rear in a captured
Lambda
-class shuttle,
Forbidden
. “We follow One Flight on this leg, then Two Flight on the next one. After that we’re leading, so let’s be prepared.”

The members of his flight signaled their readiness to jump, so Corran keyed his comlink over to the command frequency. “Three Flight ready to jump on your mark, Rogue One.”

“Good. All flights, five seconds to mark.”

With Wedge’s reply Whistler began counting down for the five seconds. Corran watched the seconds click off the digital display. When it read 00:00 he engaged the X-wing’s hyperdrive and sat back as the stars filled the viewscreen. Just as the color threatened to overwhelm him with its intensity, his snubfighter leaped into hyperspace and moved beyond the ability of the light to abuse him.

The first leg was to take them about an hour and had them flying along the plane of the galactic dish, moving against the swirl of the galaxy itself. The course brought them in ever so slightly toward the Core, which was good because the databases containing information about navigation hazards got progressively better as they headed toward the Core.