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 thanksboth 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?"
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."
10
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 itluck he in no way saw as benignpassage 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 wi ll 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."
Turbulence hit the shuttle as it pierced the layer of clouds. Kirtan tightened
some of the belts restraining him, then clutched the back of the copilot's
chair with white knuckles. He wanted to blame his growing feeling of nausea on
the way the shuttle
bounced down through the atmosphere, but he knew that was not its only cause.
The world beneath these clouds is the last thing I will see before I die.
The shuttle broke through the vapor shell around the planet and the pilot smiled
at him. "Welcome to Imperial Center, Agent Loor."
Despite his fear, Kirtan Loor looked out at the dark world below and felt
overwhelmed by the panorama. Instantly recognizable, the Imperial Palace stood
tall, like a volcano that had thrust itself up through the heart of the
metropolis that dominated a whole continent of Coruscant. Towers festooned it,
as if spires on a crown, and thousands of lights sparkled like jewels set in an
incandescent mosaic on its stone hide. Beneath it, dwarfed into insignificance,
lay Senate Hill. Its tiny buildingsraised as monuments to the justice and glory
of the Old Republicseemed frozen with fright that the Palace would grow out and
consume them.
Spreading out from that central point, brilliant neon lights in all manner of
colors pulsed as if nerves carrying information to and from the palace itself.
Kirtan followed one river of light as it shifted from red and green to gold and
blue, from the heart of the world out to the horizon. As the ship swooped lower,
he saw depths to the lightstreams, where buildings had accreted, sinking the
streets into twisted, broken canyons. He knew the light could not reach all the
way down, and his imagination had no difficulty in populating those black
gashes with nightmare creatures and lethal danger.
But the lethal danger I face dwells above all this. Kirtan sat back as the
shuttle banked and the nose came up a bit. The pilot leveled the Objurium off
while the copilot flicked a switch above his head. A red square appeared on the
shuttle's viewport and surrounded the top of one of the palace's towers.
Lights blinked around an opening far too small to admit the shuttle, even with
its wings folded up.
"We can't be going there. Where will we land?"
"It looks small, Agent Loor, because we're still three kilometers away from it."
Kirtan's mouth hung open as his brain fought to put everything he was seeing in
perspective. The streets below, which he had taken to be narrow tracks, had to
be the size of major boulevards. And the towers, they were not slender,
needlelike minarets, but massive buildings designed to house hundreds or
thousands of people on each level. And the structures on the surface, they
armored the planet with layer after layer of ferrocrete.
Kirtan shuddered as he realized how deep the warrens had to run on the planet,
yet he doubted anyone had set foot on the soil beneath Imperial City for
centuries.
It all struck him as impossible that a world could house that many people, but
this was Coruscant. It was the heart of an Empire that boasted milli
ons of
known worlds. If each one required only a thousand people to deal with it and
its problems, Coruscant would have to be home to billions of people. And to see
to their needs, billions more would have to be in residence, working, building,
cleaning.
Suddenly he went from wondering how Coruscant could house so many people to
wondering if even billions of individuals were enough to oversee the Empire. Or
what's left of it.
The Objurium swept in closer to the tower. The opening appeared to be a black
hole waiting to suck him down and rend him atom from atom. Though logic argued
against expending the money it cost to bring him to Coruscant just to kill him,
he knew that Death hovered close and would be seeking
out. He had failed and the price the Empire demanded for failure was dear
indeed.
Kirtan ran a finger around his collar to loosen it. Arguing against his death,
aside from the wasted expense of his travel, was a thought that proved utterly
ludicrous to him. The only way he would stay alive was if he had something the
person who had summoned him here found valuable. But he was just one person. The
only thing he imagined he possessed that was not duplicated by ten or a hundred
or a thousand other people on Coruscant was his life. / have nothing else that
is unique.
The opening loomed close enough for Kirtan to see figures moving around in its
shadows. The pilot punched a button on the command console. The shuttle's wings
rose and locked up while the landing gear descended. The shuttle drifted
forward, easing into the hangar, then slowly settled to the deck. It landed with
only a slight bump, but Kirtan's nerves magnified it until it felt as heavy as
the blow of a vibroblade on his neck.
Steeling himself for the worst, Kirtan slapped the buckle against his breastbone
and slid free of the restraining harness. "Thank you, Lieutenant, for your
efforts on my behalf."
The pilot watched him for a moment, then nodded. "Good luck, sir."
Kirtan pulled on a pair of black leather gloves and flexed his right hand.
"Smooth flight back to the Aggressor."
The Intelligence agent stood slowly, letting his legs get used to the planet's
gravity, then walked back from the cockpit and down the egress ramp. At the base
of the ramp four Imperial Guards, resplendent in their scarlet uniforms, stood
at attention. When he stepped into their midst, they turned as