discussions with the Council. Borsk Fey'lya is quite persuasive and he has Mon
Mothma's ear in many things."
Wedge looked at Salm. "And you're worried about Tycho being a security risk!"
"Tycho Celchu did not risk his life to get the Alliance the location of the
second Death Star."
"No, he only risked his life to destroy that Death Star."
Ackbar stepped between his subordinates. "Please, gentlemen, if I want petty
bickering I can go to more Council meetings. It is important for you to air your
grievances, but I will not have you fight and refight the same battles over and
over again."
"Sorry, sir. My apologies, General."
"Accepted, Commander. I beg your pardon, Admiral."
Ackbar nodded slowly. "Commander Antilles, in an effort to minimize damage done
by the public profile being given your mission, we will keep your destination
secret. This means your pilots will not know where they will be stationed and
they will only be told that they are going on an extended training exercise.
Logistics and Supply Corps staffers
have prepared lists or equipment that cover anything your unit might not carry
with it on the trip. We have an Imperial shuttle that Captain Celchu will use to
bring supplies on your journey."
"Nav data will be fed out to my pilots prior to each jump?"
"Exactly. You should give your flight leaders numerous routes for which they
will compute navigation solutions, then you choose the appropriate one and have
it communicated to your squadron at each change of course." The Mon Cal pointed
at the representation of Talasea on the display and it zoomed in. "The Morobe
system is a red-yellow binary and Talasea is the fourth planet in orbit around
the yellow primary. The world is cool and moist with indigenous insect and
reptilian life. There are mammals there as wellferal descendants of the animals
brought in for an early farming colony. Your base is on the largest of the
island continents. The atmosphere is thick, fog is common, but the world is
safe."
"What happened to the farming colony?"
"Over the centuries most of the children emigrated to worlds where they could
see the stars and didn't have to work so hard. The last group of them made the
mistake of harboring a Jedi after the Clone Wars. Lord Vader destroyed them as
an example. Settlement ruins are on your island but our people have reported
there was nothing of interest left behind there."
"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 ornatein 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
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 himand the aura of power surrounding her was terribly
excitingfear 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-blueas 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 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 muchlike 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 iteven 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 Knightand a handful of
Force-trained special agentswould be sufficient to control the galaxy. He did
not seethough I tried to warn himthe 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. Im-
perial restoration can only be accomplished it 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 star-
board 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 semi
independent 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 0000 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