Star Wars: X-Wing I: Rogue Squadron (12 page)

“Oh, that?” Erisi chuckled politely. “Better the Moff you know than the Emperor’s new Envoy. I could never truly be friends with anyone who grew up in the Zaltin corporate culture. My people are
with Xucphra, the true leader in bacta production and refinement. My uncle was the person who discovered the contamination the Ashern introduced into Lot ZX1449F.”

“Really?”

The woman glanced sidelong at him, her face frozen for a millisecond, then she smiled and playfully slapped his left shoulder. “You! I know Thyferran corporate politics is boring, but it’s the lifeblood of my people. Though there are thousands of Vratix who actually grow
alazhi
and refine bacta, the ten thousand humans who run the corporations are really the people who make bacta available to the galaxy. Since we’re such a small community—and, I’ll admit, a fairly affluent one—we set great store in the accomplishments of our relatives.”

Corran nodded as they stepped onto an escalator that took them down deeper into the heart of Folor. “Choosing one of you from each corporate family was meant to keep things even?”

“Were that possible, of course.” Erisi winked at him. “More of us would have been sent, I suspect, but strong involvement with the Alliance is a thing of fierce debate on Thyferra. Benign neutrality seems to be the course our leaders are choosing.”

Playing both ends against the middle means big profits for the Bacta Cartel
. “But you felt strongly enough about the Rebellion to volunteer to join it?”

“There are times one must place higher ideals over personal safety.”

At the bottom of the escalator they stepped off and walked across a small chamber to a dark opening carved in smooth-melted stone. Beyond it lay a noisy stone gallery with next to no visible light—unless the bright colors of strobing neon tracery were to be considered adequate for lighting. Voices from dozens of alien throats croaked below or
shrieked above the booming din of human conversation. The heavy, moist air stank of sweat; acrid, cloying smoke; and fermented nectars from hundreds of Alliance worlds and not a few Imperial strongholds.

Corran paused on the threshold of the makeshift tapcafe the Rebels had named DownTime.
If I were still in CorSec, I’d be calling for backup before setting foot in a place like this
.

Erisi, taking his hand in hers, led him into the room. As if she could see things he could not, she guided him between hologame light tables and knots of pilots and techs. Back in the corner a holoprojector had been set up. It appeared to be projecting a sporting event being broadcast down on Commenor, but the exoskeleton padding the players wore and the curiously spiked ball they tossed back and forth weren’t from any game Corran recognized. Aside from a quartet of Ugnaughts sitting right at the edge of the projection ring and staring up at the towering figures, no one appeared to care about the game.

The rest of Rogue Squadron had gathered in a corner of the tapcafe. Corran spotted Gavin first—both because of his size and his nervousness. The youth stared at all the different aliens as if he’d never seen them before. That surprised Corran because he thought, with Mos Eisley being on Tatooine, Gavin would have had his fill of aliens.
Then again, I doubt the kid spent much time there. He’s as green as the foam on Lomiin-ale
.

Over on the right Bror Jace and Nawara appeared to be deep in conversation. Shiel slipped past Corran and handed Gavin a mug full of a steaming liquid that smelled sweet. Lujayne, seeing Corran, smiled at him and rapped the heel of her mug on the table around which they stood.

“Corran’s here.”

The Bothan’s reaction to his arrival appeared to be relatively apathetic, but everyone else seemed to be pleased to see him. The Twi’lek pointed toward Corran with the tip of a head tail and Bror Jace managed a tight smile. Stepping forward, the Thyferran pilot offered Corran his hand. “I want you to know I would not have flown with your data had I known. I’ll be the first to sign the letter of protest to General Salm.”

“Letter of protest?”

Nawara looked a bit exasperated. “Some members of the squadron feel that a protest of Commander Antilles’s treatment of you is in order.”

Corran looked Nawara in the eyes. “You don’t think so?”

The Twi’lek slowly shook his head. “I don’t think it will be effective and I believe, quite honestly, that this incident is really fairly minor.”

Corran smiled. “I’m glad to see someone hasn’t lost a sense of perspective here.”

Bror’s blue eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, my friends, we’re part of a military unit involved in an illegal insurgency against a government that controls the vast majority of planets in this galaxy. We’re all volunteers here, and we’ve all come because we expect to win freedom and liberty for all sapient species by overthrowing the government. We’re all willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if it comes to that, yet we’re going to protest how one of the most decorated and revered leaders conducts training exercises? I don’t think so.”

Gavin gave Corran a wide-eyed look of confusion. “But what he did to you wasn’t right. It was nasty and cold and meant to hurt you.”

“I’ll agree it was nasty and cold, but it wasn’t
meant to hurt me.” He looked around at the rest of the squadron. “Commander Antilles had a point to make with me, and he made it. And he made one with you. Your being here like this, your discomfort with what happened, and your desire to protest my treatment means I know you’re going to be there when I need you to be. And you know I’m willing to do what I need to do to make sure our squadron can do its job. If that means I go in alone or with Ooryl or whatever to get information, I do it.

“The thing we all have to remember is this: There’s nothing Commander Antilles can do to us that will be worse than what the Empire has already done on hundreds of worlds. They destroyed Alderaan. They destroyed the Jedi and they’ll destroy us if they can. Because of what he did today, Commander Antilles knows he can count on me, and I hope the rest of you do, too.”

Erisi raised Corran’s left hand above his head. “I think Corran’s correct. He might not have been the best pilot on the course today, but he’s probably the one who learned the most.”

Lujayne stood and gave Corran a firm hug. “As the
second
worst pilot today, I say thanks—both for your skill and your wisdom here.”

Corran blushed slightly, freed his left hand from Erisi’s grip, and extricated himself from Lujayne’s hug. “Thanks to all of you, but just so you don’t think I’m this cool-headed all the time, I have to admit that I had a discussion with Commander Antilles in which he pointed out most of these insights.”

The wolfman growled in a low voice. “Yelling? Punches?”

“No. Just some clear and concise conversation.”

Shiel bared his teeth and Gavin laughed. Lujayne fished into her flight suit’s thigh pocket and
produced a handful of oddly shaped credit coins. She held them out to the Twi’lek who cupped them in both hands and smiled avariciously. He flicked at a couple with taloned fingers, then looked up and froze as if caught bloody-handed.

Corran knit his fingers together and let them rest against his belt buckle. “And those credits are for?”

“Winning the pool.” Nawara carefully slipped them into his pocket. “I said you’d be reasonable.”

Rhysati elbowed him. “You took reasonable because you got the best odds with that wager.”

The Twi’lek looked offended. “I
hold
opinions, I don’t
bet
them.”

Corran laughed. “Who had ‘will challenge Commander Antilles to an X-wing death duel’?”

Erisi raised her hand. “It was an even-odds bet, too.”

“Nawara won by betting what was in my brain, but you bet what was in my heart.” Corran pointed to the bar. “In honor of your insightfulness, I will buy you that which
your
heart desires.”

She took his left hand again. “And if it doesn’t have a price?”

“Then I’ll buy you a drink and we’ll talk about how else to make you happy.”

Bror Jace bowed from the waist in Erisi’s direction. “To make her happy you would have to make her family’s corporation yet more profitable.”

“And to do that means I’d have to be boosting the use of bacta, right?” Corran opened his hands and took in the whole of the squadron. “And since the Empire buys bacta and we’ll be shooting at their pilots, I don’t think that’ll be hard to do at all.”

The shuttle’s pilot looked back over his left shoulder. “Agent Loor, you’ll probably want to strap yourself in. We’re coming out of hyperspace.”

Kirtan began to fumble with the restraining harness, then brought his head up quickly, embarrassed that his lack of coordination betrayed his nervousness. “Thank you, Lieutenant, but I’ve traveled this way before.”

“Yes, sir,” came the pilot’s oily reply, “but I’d bet this is your first time to Imperial Center.”

Kirtan wanted to snap some sharp reply that would sting the man, but a sense of utter and complete disaster washed over him. He had waited for two full weeks before reporting Gil Bastra’s death to his superiors. In that time he furiously analyzed and tried to expand upon any leads Bastra had offered during his interrogation. They all seemed to be dead ends, leading nowhere, but he knew, he just
knew
, they would put him on Corran Horn if he had enough time to figure out their greater significance.

In his report he had tried to stress the positive, but within hours of the report being sent on up the
line, he had received his summons to Imperial Center, formerly known as Coruscant. He was ordered to make his way to the Imperial capital as quickly as possible. As luck would have it—luck he in no way saw as benign—passage had been arranged on a series of ships with a minimum of difficulty. This last ship, a shuttle on loan from the
Aggressor
, effortlessly carried him to his doom.

The wall of light visible through the viewport dissolved into a million million points of light as the ship left hyperspace. Imperial Center, a clouded grey world ringed by Golan defense platforms, seemed even more forbidding than he had imagined. He had expected to see that the world that had become a city would be as dead and cold as the Emperor who had ruled from it. Instead, with boiling clouds burned white by flashes of lightning, the planet’s true nature lay cloaked and hidden, as did his future.

“Imperial Center, this is shuttle
Objurium
requesting clearance for entry on the Palace Vector.”

“Transmit clearance code, shuttle
Objurium
.”

“Transmitting now.” The pilot turned back toward Kirtan. “This code better be good. We’re well within the range of the two nearest Golan stations.”

“It is good.” Kirtan blanched. “I mean, it is the code I was given with my orders.” He started to go on to explain further, but saw the pilot and copilot exchange a quick wink and realized he was being teased.

“Don’t worry, Agent Loor, the days of the Empire blasting one if its own shuttles apart to kill an Intelligence agent are long past. Can’t spare the ships right now, which is what makes me a bit more secure.”

Kirtan forced an edge into his voice. “And how
do you know, Lieutenant, that I am not here solely to monitor and report on your attitudes?”

“You’re not the first man I’ve ferried to his death, Agent Loor.”

“Shuttle
Objurium
,” the comm squawked, “clearance granted. Align course for beacon 784432.”

“Understood, Control,
Objurium
out.” The pilot punched the beacon number into navigation computer, then gave his copilot a more somber glance.

“What?” Kirtan tried to stop himself from blurting the question out, and began to brace for some stinging jibe from the pilot, but he got none.

“We’re heading to Tower 78, level 443, bay 2.”

“And?”

Kirtan saw the pilot’s Adam’s apple bob up and down. “Sir, the only other time I’ve been given that vector is when I had the pleasure of shuttling Lord Vader to the Emperor. It was after the disaster at Yavin.”

Kirtan felt a chill slowly pour into him and move up his spine bone by bone.
Did Lord Vader fear retribution for his actions as I do? Perhaps the Emperor had meant to kill him, but Vader redeemed his life by bringing news of the existence of another Jedi to his master
. Kirtan’s fist hammered his right thigh.
If I had just a little more time I could have delivered my quarry
.

Ahead of the shuttle Kirtan saw lightning flare from the clouds upward toward space. It hit and spread out, faintly illuminating a hexagonal area hanging above the clouds. “What is that?”

“Defense shield.” The pilot punched a couple of buttons on his command console. A miniature model of the world materialized between pilot and passenger, then two spheres made up of hexagonal
elements engulfed the world. The spheres moved in opposite directions around the world, constantly shifting, with the hexes in the upper layer covering more area than those below. “Imperial Center, for obvious reasons, has the most sophisticated system of defense shields in the Empire. A small portion of it will come down to let us in, then that section will be reinforced behind us, while another one will open below.”

“Nothing can get in without clearance.”

The pilot nodded. “Or out. More than one Rebel agent has been caught trying to race back out while ships are coming in. It’s a gamble, but not one that pays off very often.”

The copilot pushed a glowing button on the console. “We’re through the first shield.”

“Our next opening comes two degrees north, four east.”

“Course set, sir.”

“Not much longer until we’re down, Agent Loor. Only thing that could go wrong now is a cloud discharging and trying to hit the upper shield through our opening.”

“Does that happen?”

“Sometimes.”

“Often?”

The pilot shrugged. “The power for the upper shield comes through openings in the lower shield. This tends to ionize a lot of atoms, making lightning travel that much faster along those routes. However, doesn’t look like our hole served as an energy conduit very recently, so we should be safe.”