departure record for Novachild could have meant nothing
more sinister than that the ship had left while Needa was
sleeping, but Iella felt in her gut that was unlikely.
She sat back in her chair and looked at the data on the
screen again. The fact that no other Imperial records men-
tioned the Novachild or Hes Glillto told leila the records had
been deliberately purged. And anyone with the access needed
to purge those records could easily manufacture and enter
the data that shows Tycho was in Imperial lntelligence's pay.
Or, Tycho himself could have doctored things to make it
look as if he had been framed.
Iella slowly shook her head. The information she had
was intriguing but essentially useless. She could not prove
Lai Nootka and Hes Glillto were the same person. The
Novachild's arrival put it on Coruscant a couple of days
before the meeting Corran had witnessed, but she couldn't
exclude the possibility that the ship had departed before the
date of the meeting. Unless she could definitively place
Nootka on Coruscant at that time, she couldn't prove Tycho
was telling the truth.
And I'm not so sure I want to do that. She sighed. Diric
had told her about some of the conversations he'd had with
Tycho. He was more convinced than ever of Tycho's inno-
cence, and his opinion did carry a lot of weight in her mind.
Even so, if Tycho had caused Corran's death, lella didn't
want him to be able to get away with it. I owe Corran that
A familiar hoot brought her back to the present and
sparked a smile on her face. "Whistler!"
The small green and white R2 beeped happily. Behind
him, tortling along, came Rogue Squadron's black, clam-
shell-headed M-3PO unit. "Good morning, Mistress."
"Morning?" leila glanced at the chronographic readout
at the top of her datapad's screen. "I don't believe it. I've
been here eight hours. Diric will kill me."
Emtrey's head canted to the left. "I would hope not,
Mistress leila. That would be a crime and--"
"I was speaking metaphorically, Emtrey, not literally."
leila frowned at the droid. "I meant that he would be upset
with me."
"Ah, I see."
leila patted Whistler gently on his domed head. "So
what are you two doing here in the computer center?"
Whistler warbled nonchalantly.
"We can so tell her, Whistler." Emtrey's head righted
itself and thrust forward, giving leila a good view of the gold
eyes burning in the hollow of his face. "You do want the
truth to triumph, don't you?"
leila nodded slowly. "Every day it seems I'm hearing less
and less of it. What have you got?"
Emtrey pointed toward her dataterminal's I/O port.
"Whistler, hook in there and show her what we found."
Whistler squawked rudely--a sound leila recognized as
one she'd often heard the droid use to chasten Corran. Her
throat thickened as melancholy tried to suck the life out of
her, but she shook her head. She looked up at Emtrey and
forced words out past the lump in her throat. "What have
you been doing?"
"We have finished the tasks Master Ven set for us before
he left with the others, so we started going over transcripts
and noticed an underlying assumption everyone seems to
have made concerning the conquest of Coruscant." "And that is?"
"It is assumed that Ysanne Isard let us have the world
because she wanted us to have it, infected as it was with the
Krytos virus. The stresses possessing it has put on the Alli-
ance certainly are great, and the assumption is probably
valid, but there is no straight-line correlation between her
desire to let us have the planet and actions taken in the final
days."
"I'm not certain, at this hour, I follow what you're say-
ing." Iella rubbed at her burning eyes with her left hand.
"Can you break it down and be more specific?"
"Certainly." Emtrey glanced down at the R2 unit.
"Show her the current disease case grid."
Whistler chirped happily. The data on the terminal's
screen vanished beneath a graph that plotted incidences of
sickness over time in red. A thick blood-red line quickly blos-
somed into a triangle with a steep hypotenuse, then leveled
out into a rectangle that began to flare upward again over the
last ten days. The disease had spread quickly at first, but had
plateauedmuntil recently.
Iella nodded. "The plateau indicates the period when the
disease stopped spreading because bacta therapy managed to
keep it under control."
"Exactly. The graph of fatalities has a similar profile."
"I can imagine. This is pretty horrible."
"True, Mistress. Whistler, now run the plus-six graph."
"Plus-six?"
"The projected disease report graph we would have seen
if the planet had fallen to the Alliance just six days later than
it did." The new graph exploded from the starting point and
spiked quickly off the top of the screen. "Projected fatalities
in this model are 85 percent of afflicted populations."
Iella's jaw dropped open. "Whole alien populations
would have been wiped off Coruscant."
"Exactly. This model, when broken down by species,
shows a complete depopulation of Gamorreans, Quarren,
Twi'leks, SuUustans, and Trandoshans. The chances of the
disease traveling off-world are incalculable, but the potential
for galaxy-wide extermination of some species cannot be dis-
counted."
She blinked and rubbed at her eyes again. "Why are the
models so different?"
Silvery highlights flashed from the edges of Emtrey's
black carapace as he raised his hands. "One reason is highly
speculative. First, it seems that in boiling off a reservoir to
create the storm that brought down the planet's shields, our
efforts destroyed a large amount of the virus present in the
planetary water system. Second, and far more germane to
our discussion, is the abbreviated incubation period our ar-
rival gave the disease. Had the Alliance arrived just a week
later, we would already have had a wave of deaths and a
whole new round of infections because of contact with
bodily fluids from the victims and the virus in the water
system."
leila nodded slowly. "If we had been just a week later in
liberating the planet, there would have been no way to save
it. Non-human members of the Alliance would have fled,
dooming their own populations. Without non-human sup-
port, the Alliance would have foundered." "That seems probable, Mistress."
"Yeah." lella's brown eyes tightened. "So the reason the
Imps stopped our initial effort to shut down the shields was
to keep us from taking over the world too soon. For Iceheart
it wasn't a matter of if but when we'd take the world. And
since Tycho's contribution to our efforts were what enabled
us to bring the shields down before the time that would have
been optimal for Iceheart,
we can suppose he wasn't working
for her."
Emtrey nodded and Whistler trumpeted triumphantly.
"Unless, of course, that's exactly what Iceheart wants us
to think." lella shook her head. "Not bad work, you two,
but it's about as helpful as what I found on Lai Nootka. I can
put someone who ought to be him flying something that
ought to be his ship here about the time Tycho said he met
with Nootka, but I can't prove it. I'd dearly like to believe
Tycho is being framed, but I don't see a good reason why
Isard would be devoting so many resources to getting some-
one who is really not that important."
Whistler reeled off a series of sharp bleats.
"Yes, I will tell her." Emtrey looked down at Iella.
"Whistler says discrediting Tycho will discredit Rogue
Squadron. If Tycho is convicted, Commander Antilles will be
distracted. Tycho's conviction could also cause an inquiry
into the events of the first assault on Borleias. He could be
blamed for the disaster, absolving the Bothan General of his
mistake, and that might make the Bothans feel they can grab
for more power."
"I can follow that, but it's too risky a return for Iceheart
to take an interest in it. There has to be something else."
"There is, Mistress Wessiri." Emtrey lowered his hands
to near his hips. "Whistler says Ysanne Isard would do it
because she's cruel."
That idea landed in Iella's gut and sat there like one of
Hoth's frozen continents. "You know, Whistler, you may
have something there. Toying with an innocent man like that
is exactly what she would do, especially when it meant that
the Alliance was dancing to a tune she called. Of course,
that doesn't prove Tycho is innocent, but thwarting her is
enough to make sure I keep digging until I learn what's really
going on, one way or another."
24
Corran scratched at his right ear, flaking off some crusted
flesh. "Yeah, I know it sounds as if I got hit harder than I did,
but I'm convinced I'm right." He looked at Jan. "l think it's a
good shot at getting out of here, or at least one that has to be
explored."
"I agree."
Urlor shook his head. "Too far-fetched."
"Which is why I want to test my theory when we're
down in the mine."
Urlor's massive left hand stroked his beard. "Will you
give this foolishness up if your experiment fails?"
Jan raised an eyebrow and glanced at Corran. "Will
you?"
Corran hesitated before answering. Though he had not
blacked out, the Emdee droid had kept him in the infirmary
overnight for observation--at least Corran assumed it was
overnight, having had no way of judging the passage of time.
Corran had gone over in his mind what had happened and
came to two conclusions. The first, which no one doubted,
was that the guard had singled him out because someone had
mentioned his desire to escape. Though Corran hadn't men-
tioned it to anyone other than Jan and Urlor, the questions
he had asked of the inmates would have been enough to alert
even the most dense of individuals to his plans.
The second thing he had concluded, and had spent the
last week attempting to convince Jan and Urlor was true,
was that they were all upside down. The technology for cre-
ating and negating artificial and real gravity was ancient.
Ships of all sizes and stripes could generate their own gravity.
Reversing the gravity in the complex would lead any escap-
ees to assume that by going up they'd be getting closer to the
surface and freedom when, in fact, they'd be getting farther
from it and killing their chances of escape. If Corran had
heard troopers marching past, any escapee would run full on
into at least one level occupied by soldiers. Even if he didn't
get captured, by the time he realized what had happened,
he'd have a long way to go just to get back to the prison
level, much less go beyond it to freedom.
He shook his head. "No, I'll still go even if my experi-
ment is unsuccessful. I have no doubt that I'm right--the
experiment is just to convince you I'm right."
Urlor folded his arms across his chest. "Why do you care
if we believe you?"
"If I'm right, you can come with me."
The big man held up his ruined right hand. "You'd find
a cripple of little use to you. I've learned to become patient.
I'll wait for you to come back."
"You're wrong there." Corran looked at Jan. "How
about you?"
The older man sat silently on his billet for a moment,
then shook his head rather firmly. "Forgive me. There is no
way I can go, but I allowed myself to indulge in the fantasy."
"You're strong. You could make it."
"I appreciate your assessment of me, Corran, but it is
overgenerous." Jan shrugged. "Besides, just as a desire to
keep me safe prevents our people from harming our Imperial
compatriots, so a desire to keep our people safe prevents me
from joining you. If I escape, Iceheart will kill the lot of us.
I'll remain here and keep them safe until you can bring help
back."
Corran frowned. "So neither of you will go?"
"No." Urlor shook his head. "You'll be on your own."
Unspoken in that sentence was the conviction there was no
Alliance prisoners.
And my traveling alone means that if I'm a spy, I won't
be taking anyone else with me. "Don't worry, I'm no Tycho
Celchu, nor will I let myself be betrayed by one another
time."
Jan's eyes narrowed. "Tycho Celchu? He was here once
for several months. They called him out one day and he
vanished. Was he a traitor?"
"He's the reason I'm here. He gave the Imps override
code data on a Headhunter I was flying. They took control
and I'm here." Corran forced his balled fists open. "Isard
told me Tycho is on trial for my murder, so justice does
prevail."
Urior scratched at his jaw. "Celchu was a sleeper, wasn't
he?"
As much as Corran hated Tycho, that description sent a
shiver down his spine. Within the prisoner population were
individuals who were suffering severe shock from their inter-
rogations. Most were ambulatory, but not much beyond
that. In the brief time he'd been in the general population
he'd seen one or two of them recover to a certain extent, but
their attention spans and short-term memory were short and
shot respectively. They did seem to get better, but only grad-
ually.
"I believed he was, but that must have been an act. If
you think about it, being a sleeper meant many people would
speak in front of him. When he recovered he'd have folks
trying to help him with his memory." Jan shook his head.
"When he got to the point where he should have been better,
they pulled him out and debriefed him. He had me fooled."
"He had a lot of people
fooled, Wedge Antilles in-
cluded." Corran nodded firmly. "He's not fooling folks any
longer, though. Just goes to show the Empire doesn't win
them all, not by a long shot. And if my experiment works,
we'll give them one more loss to account for."
In some ways Wedge was surprised by his reaction to the
display of hospitality Koh'shak put on for his benefit. He
found it both barbaric and somehow naive. An area had
been cleared near the Alliance ships. Opalescent glow-
stones--technological lamps designed to look like natural
stones--had been brought out from homes and arranged in a
circular pattern. While red and gold highlights played
through them, the illumination they produced was coldly
blue and white. It made the humans into pale ghosts and
rendered the Twi'leks as cyanotic ice creatures.
Rogue Squadron and the ships' crews had been invited
to the celebration. The visitors arrayed themselves in a circle
that put them five meters from the outer edge of the glow-
stone circle. Twi'leks from various clans interspersed them-
selves among the visitors, with one who spoke passable Basic
acting as interpreter for two or three others. Wedge harbored
no illusions about what was going on--his people were being
interrogated, albeit politely. Their stories would be com-
pared at Twi'lek councils, and decisions would be made
about the future of Ryloth based on what the Twi'leks
learned.
Servants passed around the outside of the circle, offering
the visitors food, drink, and gifts. The musicians who had
been assembled opposite him played a variety of string and
wind instruments producing notes that ran up and down on
a thirteen-note scale. Wedge found the music only marginally
painful, while Liat Tsayv and Aril Nunb seemed to be mov-
ing in sync with notes he couldn't hear. Out behind the cold
spectral light cast by the glowstones, life continued as usual
in Kala'uun. People walking by gawked for a moment or
two, and many braintails--or lekku, as Wedge had learned
they were called in Rylothean--twitched with silent messages
about the assembly.
Wedge didn't really have eyes for much of what was
happening outside the visitors' circle, primarily because of
what was going on at its heart. A lithe, petite Twi'lek female