X-wing_ Iron Fist Part 25

The warlord's smile became broader. "It was already obvious that you were an intelligent pirate-else you would not have enjoyed the success you did. But before we get to our main subject of conversation for the evening, let us dine."

"Please." Face knew he'd kept all tension from his voice and manner, but it was still there, and the meal was one more opportunity for Zsinj to visit some new difficulty upon them-such as poison. If they'd read the man correctly, there would be no such subterfuge here. But they could always have made a mistake in their evaluation.

Lara drew to a stop a dozen steps from the house. She surrept.i.tiously touched the b.u.t.t of her blaster, rea.s.surance that it was still at hand.

"Hail the camp," she called out, a standard Aldivian greeting from arriving visitors - even when arriving at a vast government building or a rich villa, tradition insisted it be called a camp.

"Tavin, are you there?"

The front door slid open and he was there, the human complication from her mail message, dark and good-looking, the sort of man who knew his handsomeness was a tool and used it at every opportunity. He beamed.

"Lara." He approached her, arms up for an embrace.

She put her palm against his chest and kept him at bay.

"Nothing like that. I don't feel that close to you right now."

His face fell. "I'm sorry. Maybe you will later. Come inside?"

"No. I spend too much time cooped up as it is. I like the breeze out here."

He shrugged. "Well, let's have some light." He returned to his door and switched something just inside it. A floodlight mounted above the door illuminated the charred blackness be-fore his house. "I have someone to introduce you to."

"I imagine so."

He beckoned, and a moment later was joined in the door-way by another man. This one was rail lean, dressed in a brown Aldivian farmer's garments... but the fineness of his blond hair, the fact that there were no calluses on his hands, the autocratic expression on his face, and-not least of all-the blaster on his belt made it clear to Lara that this was no Aldivian farmer.

"Lara, let me introduce you to Captain Rossik. He has been most anxious to speak to you."

The blond man smiled, an expression that was both beautiful and manifestly insincere, and advanced to shake Lara's hand.

"I have indeed. Lieutenant Petothel, allow me to congratulate you on all you've accomplished."

She took the compliment with a frosty little smile and nod. That was why she had declined to have her comlink broadcast back to Donos; she couldn't have her fellow Wraith hear her being addressed by a different name.

"I'm so happy you were at last able to reach me," she said.

"Tavin, go fetch us some chairs and drinks." Rossik returned his attention to Lara. "How long can you stay without eliciting suspicion?"

"A couple of days. I received special leave because of Tavin's sudden reappearance, but it's only for a few days."

"Well, your record demonstrates that you're a smart one. It shouldn't take you too long to learn to use the equipment we're going to give you."

"Equipment?"

"A special transmitter. It sends very small information packets via the old Imperial HoloNet. Yet it's only about thirty kilos. Costs more than a TIE interceptor. We can use it to track Mon Remonda and put an end to her."

"With me aboard."

"No, certainly not. You'll plant it, then on your next mission just vanish and come to us. Then, and only then, do we wipe out that ship."

Lara appeared to think about it, long enough for a surly-looking Tavin to reemerge from the house with chairs for them all. He plopped them down in a semicircle and went back in.

At Rossik's gesture of invitation, Lara sat.

"I'm sorry, that won't work."

"Why?"

"Security is very high on Mon Remonda. When we return from any leave, anywhere, we get a thorough search of belongings. And they never let us know where we are. All mission briefings use code names. We are kept completely in the dark."

Rossik's eyebrows rose. "I wasn't aware that the Rebels had adopted such sensible security precautions. All their talk of individual freedoms..."

Lara waved his words away.

"A lie. I was never under such close scrutiny on Implacable as I have been on the Rebel ship."

"Well, is there any way to transmit using Mon Remonda's communications systems ?"

"Yes, that could be done."

I could lead you right to the a.s.sembled fleet and watch as Iron Fist is blown out of s.p.a.ce.

"That's probably our best approach."

Rossik's pocket beeped at him. From it he drew out a datapad. He glanced at its display and his shoulders tightened up.

"n.o.body react. I'm getting a signal from the life scanner - inside the house. There is someone a little less than a kilometer to our east. That would put him on the first hill that way."

Lara tried to remain nonchalant. "That's my wingman. He accompanied me here for security's sake."

Rossik gave her a cool look. "Funny you didn't mention it before now."

"It wasn't relevant, was it? He stayed behind to service the X-wings while I came to visit my dear brother."

"Well, the problem is, he's now close enough that he might have seen me.

We can't have that. The Rebels have holos of me in their records. You two keep talking. I'll go back into the house, exit the rear way, and circle around to get behind him. I'll need ten or fifteen minutes if I'm to do it quietly."

"No," Lara said.

"What did you say?"

"I said, no. I can't show up on Aidivy with my wingman and then go back to the Wraiths without him. They'd be curious."

She did little to sacrifice the sarcasm in her voice.

Rossik considered. "Very well. New plan. I go and kill your wingman, and then we take you and your two X-wings back to Iron Fist. Right now."

15.

Face was actually enjoying his main course, some sort of fowl in a sunfruit marinade, and idly hoping it wasn't poisoned, when Zsinj asked a question he wasn't prepared for.

"Am I mad, General Kargin, or do you have an Ewok pilot in your unit?"

Face froze. He swallowed and hastily cleared his throat.

"What leads you to that conclusion, sir?"

"Intercepted transmissions. a.n.a.lysis of the vocal characteristics of your pilot, Hawk-bat One, suggests that he was probably, though not definitely, an Ewok. But I don't understand how that could be possible."

Face shrugged and ran through a mental list of a dozen different possible responses. "Well, he is an Ewok. Mostly an Ewok. Lieutenant Kettch. My most ferocious pilot, actually. He can't really reach the controls, but a somewhat crooked prosthetics expert on Tatooine built him a set of hand-and-leg extensions he can wear, so his height has not limited him in the least."

"Obviously. But I thought Ewoks were far too primitive to handle complex machinery or astronautics theory and prac-tice. Too primitive even to learn an adequate vocabulary in Basic."

"They are. But Kettch was... modified. We don't know where or why it happened. He was taken from the sanctuary moon of Endor as a cub, reared in a laboratory somewhere, and fed chemicals that apparently increased his ability to learn. He's a genius, especially with mathematics." That was, in fact, the true background of Piggy, and Face was suddenly very glad to have it on hand as a resource.

Zsinj and Melvar exchanged a glance and Face suddenly felt his heart race. There was something in their expressions, as brief as that glance was, that told Face this subject was of vital interest to them. What did it mean?

"Anyway," Face contiuued, "he has a very nasty disposition. I wouldn't care to bring him to you even if you'd asked about him in your earlier colnmunication. He bites strangers. I'd hate to have him tear away a mouthful of Zsinj and for the rest of us to be s.p.a.ced for his bad manners."

Once again jovial, Zsinj turned his smile on Face. "Very amusing. Still, I hope to see him fly sometime. Perhaps even a practice run against our best pilot."

Face looked around.

"Is he here?"

"Baron Fel? No, he's on duty." The warlord shrugged.

"Not the most congenial of dinner guests in any case."

"So he bites, too?"

Zsinj laughed.

Castin waited until the hallway was momentarily clear. He moved up to the closed turbolift and quickly popped open its control panel. Beneath was the usual collection of wiring and computer boards. Deftly, he stripped the insulation from two wires and twisted them together.

The turbolift doors slid open, revealing an echoing shaft beyond. Castin untwisted the wires, slapped the control panel shut, and stepped out to grab the maintenance access rungs in-side. He swung his feet clear of the opening just in time; the doors slid shut again just as rapidly. Now he had to find a level where he could have some privacy-and access to a computer interlock.

Down or up? He could see the terminus of the shaft above him, some considerable distance, but not below him. That meant there was more to explore below. He climbed down. Moments later, he gripped the rungs as though his life de-pended on it while a fast-moving turbolift sailed past. The wind of its pa.s.sage shook him and knocked his feet from the rail they rested on. Swearing to himself, he pulled himself back up and continued downward.

If only these Imperial twits had seen fit to label the interiors of the turbolift doors. Level 15: HANGARS, ARMORY, CAFETERIA-that would have been nice.

Still, there were clues he could interpret. The pattern of wear on the turbolift's machinery against the walls of the lift shaft, for example.

There were telltale marks where the lifts came to rest, marks where the metal of the shaft had been worn away, showing which levels were the most heavily accessed. He'd have to avoid them.

Six levels down, he found a turbolift door where the shaft showed almost no wear. A good sign. He opened the maintenance panel leading to the control box... and nearly dropped off his rung in surprise.

This control box was not standard. In it was a sealed security module, an indication that whatever was beyond the door was very important to somebody.

He leaned away and held tight as another turbolift shot past, this time rising from below, then returned to the problem at hand. This was probably too dangerous a level to enter for his task. On the other hand, he was curious. He broke out his pouchful of tools.

The sealed security module was sophisticated, but he'd grown up slicing Imperial hardware and software, so after a few minutes it yielded to his experience and opened. Within were the standard turbolift door controls, plus a variety of security measures-sensors to register whenever the doors were opened or closed, to note whenever a turbolift was called from this level or directed here, and to send all that data to the ship's main computer. He disconnected the sensors. He couldn't disconnect the computer relay; it also handled the permissions for people to enter and leave the level, and if he disconnected it and someone with proper authorization tried to enter or leave, his modifications would be detected immediately. He could open the door from here without effort, but once the door was closed, he wouldn't be able to leave again without that authorization. It was time for some improvisation.

He patched a small corem-enabled datapad into the circuit, programming it to do two things: monitor his comlink frequency and issue the command to open this door when he broadcast a specific signal. That should do the trick.

He put away his tools and brought out his blaster rifle.

Then he tripped the switch to open the door.

It slid open silently, unlike most turbolift doors, revealing a darkened pa.s.sageway beyond. There was no one in sight. He hopped from his rung perch to the pa.s.sageway floor and swept it around in a covering arc, but there was still no one to see.

It wasn't a pa.s.sageway, precisely. It was a gallery, a long hall in which one wall was made up of large viewports. The chambers beyond the viewports were well lit. He liked that; it would be next to impossible for people within them to see him. He reached back, tripped the switch again, and then yanked his arm out of the way so the door wouldn't close on it.

There was a computer interlock here, just beside the turbolift door, but that would not be safe. He advanced along the gallery with the precise pace of an Imperial stormtrooper, looking for another.

The chambers beyond the large viewports came into view as he pa.s.sed them.

The first was large. Against the far wall were large cages or small cells, stacked three high, made of gla.s.s or transparisteel, each occupied by a single creature. Castin saw a number of Gamorreans, a large dark arthropod whose cell was festooned with some sort of organic webbing, and an Ewok. In one oversized cell mostly filled with water was a dianoga, a tentacular scavenger with a single eye-stalk; it watched him as he pa.s.sed. There was one human male outside the cages, seated at a desk with a large, elaborate computer terminal on it, his feet up on the desk as he idly tapped away at a personal datapad; he looked as though he were playing a game. He took no note of Castin.

Up ahead, despite the dimness of the pa.s.sageway, Castin could make out a darkened desk and computer terminal in the left corner. He couldn't tell whether this pa.s.sageway ended there or turned to the right. That terminal was what he needed, a.s.suming he could power it up without alerting anyone.

He pa.s.sed by the next section of viewports. These displayed a smaller chamber, an operating theater. There was an operation in progress, a team of four human males, gloved and masked, working on a large, white-furred creature with two large eyes and two small. Castin recognized it as a Talz, then took a closer look.

The Talz had some sort of drip tubes implanted in its head; fluids moved slowly from the bottles set up beside the operating table. The creature was strapped in place... and it was awake. As Castin watched, it opened its mouth and roared, the noise not penetrating the viewports. Its clawed hands opened and closed as it strained against its bonds and its four eyes glared redly at the doctors.

These were not roars of pain, Castin decided, but of rage. An unsettling image. The Talz were supposed to be peaceful creatures.

A few steps more, and the operating theater was behind him. He seated himself at the darkened terminal and brought out his tool kit again.

"Return to Iron Fist? I don't think so." Lara shook her head.

"I'll be far more valuable to Zsinj on Mort Remonda."

"Not necessarily," Rossik said. "We'd be getting a couple of X-wings-which you'd be able to fly for us in covert missions - and your a.n.a.lyses of the missions you've flown so far and of the thought processes of the Wraiths and Rogues. These could be as valuable as getting an accurate fix on Mon Remonda's position."

"I'd still prefer to return to the Wraiths."

"Well, it's not going to happen that way. Now, a.s.suming that he's looking at us, keep your wingman distracted with some animated conversation with the most unanimated Tavin while I get into position."

Gloom settled over Lara as she realized what she had to do... as she realized that she was about to take prisoners who knew her secret, that she had to reveal that secret to Wedge Antilles. "I don't think so. Put your hands in the air. You're now in the custody of the New Republic."