X-wing_ The Krytos Trap Part 1

Star Wars.

X-Wing.

Krytos Trap.

by Michael A. Stackpol.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

ROGUE SQUADRON.

COMMANDER WEDGE ANTILLES (human male from Corellia) CAPTAIN Tvcno CELCHU (human male from Alderaan) CAPTAIN ARIL NUNB (human male from Sull.u.s.t) LIEUTENANT CORRAN HORN (human male from Corellia) LIEUTENANT PASH CRACKEN (human male from Contruum) OORYL QRYGG (Gand male from Gand) NAWARA VEN (Twi'lek male from Ryloth) RHYSATI YNR (human female from Bespin) ERISI DLARIT (human female from Thyferra) GAVIN DARKLIGHTER (human male frons Tatooine) RIV SHIEL (Shistavanen male from Uvena III) ASYR SEI'LAR (Bothan female from Bothawui) INYRI FORGE (human female from Kessel) M-3PO (Emtrey; protocol and regulations druid) WHISTLER (Corran's R2 astromech) MYNOCK (Wedge's R5 astromech) ALLIANCE MILITARY.

ADMIRAL ACKBAR (Mon Calamari male from Mon Calamari) ALLIANCE INTELLIGENCE GENERAL AIREN CRACKEN (human male from Contruum) IELLA WESSIRI (human female from CoreUia) WINTER (human female from Alderaan) DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

CITIZENS ON CORUSCANT.

FLIRY VORRU (human male from CoreIlia) Dmic WESSIRI (human male from CoreIlia) BORSK FEY'LYA (Bothan male from Bothawui) HALLA ETrYK (human female from Alderaan) QLAERN HIRV (Vratix from Thyferra) CREW OF THE PULSAR SKATE.

MIRAX TERR1K (human female from CoreIlia) LIAT TSAYV (Sull.u.s.tan male from Sull.u.s.t) IMPERIA

l. FORCES

YSANNE ISARD, DIRECTOR OF IMPERIAl. INTELLIGENCE (human female from Coruscant) KIRTAN LOOR, INTELLIGENCE AGENT (human male from Churba) GENERAL Evm DERRICOTE (human male from Kalla)

Commander Wedge Antilles would have preferred the cere-mony to be private. Rogue Squadron had come to mourn the pa.s.sing of one of its own on the week anniversary of his death. Wedge wanted the gathering to be small and intimate, with Corran Horn's friends all being able to share remem-brances of him, but that was not possible. Corran's death had come during the liberation of Coruscant. That made him a hero from a company of heroes, and while a small memo-rial might have been what Corran himself would have wanted, it was not heroic enough for a figure of his posthu-mous stature.

Even though Wedge had known things would not go quite the way he wanted, he had not antic.i.p.ated how out of control they would get when he requested permission to hold the ceremony. He had expected a number of dignitaries would come to the pseudogranite barrow that marked where Corran had died when a building collapsed on top of him. He even antic.i.p.ated people lining the balconies and walk-ways of nearby towers.

At the very Worst he imagined people might gawk from the beds of hovertrucks.

His imagination paled beside that exercised by the bu-reaucrats who organized the memorial service. They took a ceremony based on heartfelt grief and made it into the focal point of mourning for the entire New Republic. Corran Horn was a hero--this they proclaimed loudly--but he was also a victim. As such he represented all the victims of the Empire. It didn't matter to them that Corran would have rejected being labeled a victim. He had been transformed into a symbol--a symbol the New Republic needed badly.

Rogue Squadron likewise underwent iconization. The unit's pilots had always worn orange flightsuits in the past, or, as supplies became harder and harder to find, whatever had been handy. Corran's flightsuit had been green, black, and grey, since he'd brought it with him from the Corellian Security Force. In homage to him, that color scheme was used to create new uniforms for the squadron: evergreen overall, with dark grey flank panels, black sleeves, leg stripes, and trim. On the left sleeve and breast rode the Rogue Squadron crest. It had also appeared on the evergreen hawkbilled caps designed by a Kuati, but Wedge had vetoed their addition to the uniform.

The makeup of the Squadron had also been adjusted. Asyr Sei'lar, a Bothan pilot, and Inyri Forge, the sister of a dead squadron member, had both been added to the squad-ron. Wedge would have gladly welcomed them, and they had been crucial to the success of the mission to liberate Coruscant, but they had been pressed upon him for political rea-sons.

Likewise, Portha, a Trandoshan, had been made a member of the squadron despite his inability to fly. He was attached to the unit as part of a previously nonexistent secu-rity detail. Each of them was appointed by bureaucrats as a reward to various const.i.tuencies in the New Republic, and Wedge hated their objectification.

The ceremony grew out of all proportion until special grandstands had to be grafted to the nearby buildings and color-coded for the various levels of access people were to be accorded. Holocams had been stationed at various positions so the ceremony could be recorded and replayed on countless worlds. Despite the very real fears about contracting the highly contagious Krytos virus, the stands were packed to overflowing.

He looked up from his position on the reviewing stand and out at Rogue Squadron. His people were bearing up well despite the bright sunlight and unseasonably warm weather. The recent rains had raised the general level of humidity until clothing clung and the very air lay like a smothering blanket over everyone. The thick air seemed to deaden sounds and suppress emotions, and Wedge was tempted to allow himself to imagine that Coruscant somehow also mourned Corran's pa.s.sing.

In addition to the members of Rogue Squadron, Cor~ ran's other friends stood on the platform nearest the barrow. Iella Wessiri, a slender, brown-haired woman who had been Corran's CorSec partner, stood next to Mirax Terrik. De-spite being the daughter of a notorious Corellian smuggler, Mirax had managed to become friends with Corran. Mirax, who had known Wedge since they had both been kids, had tearfully confided in him that she and Corran had planned to celebrate the liberation of Coruscant together. He could see she'd fallen hard for Corran, and the lifeless expression on her face made his heart ache.

The only one who is missing is Tycbo. Wedge frowned. Captain Tycho Celchu was a long-standing member of Rogue Squadron who had served as the squadron's executive officer. He'd surrept.i.tiously joined the mission to Coruscant at Wedge's request and had been instrumental in bringing the planet's defenses down. His action was the latest in a string of heroic missions Tycho had carried off during his Rebel career.

Unfortunately, Alliance Intelligence had developed evi-dence that indicated Tycho was working for the Empire. They blamed him directly not only for Corran's death, but for the death of Bror Jace, another Rogue Squadron pilot who had died early on in the Coruscant campaign. Wedge had not been fully apprised of what the evidence was that they had against Tycho, but he did not doubt the man's inno-cence for a second. Still, his innocence might mean nothing in the long run.

In spite of the liberation, Coruscant was not a pleasant or stable world.

A hideous epidemicrathe Krytos virus--was ravaging the non-human population of the planet. It had struck at the non-humans in the Rebellion and was hard enough on some species that even coming down to the planet was an act of extreme bravery. Bacta, as usual, could cure the virus, but the Rebellion's entire store of bacta was insuffi-cient to cure everyone. This resulted in panic, and resentment against humans for their apparent immunity to the disease.

The memorial service had become an important event because Coruscant's population needed something to unite them and to get their minds off their suffering, even if only for a moment. The fact that Rogue Squadron had humans and non-humans working together in it showed the strength of unity that had allowed the Rebellion to prevail. Non-humans coming together along with dignitaries from various other worlds to mourn a dead human acknowledged the debt the Rebels owed humans. Speakers devoted themselves to exhorting their fellows to labor together in building a future that would justify the sacrifices made by Corran and others. Their words raised things to a philosophical or metaphysical level meant to soothe away the anxieties and worries of the citizens.

Those were n.o.ble messages, to be certain, but Wedge felt they were not the right messages for Corran. He tugged on the sleeves of his uniform jacket as a Bothan protocol subal-tern waved him forward. Wedge stepped up to the podium and wanted to lean heavily upon it. Years of fighting and saying good-bye to friends and comrades weighed him down--but he refused to give in to fatigue. He let his pride in the squadron and his friendship with Corran keep him up-right.

He looked around at the crowd, then focused on the mound of pseudogranite rubble before him. "Corran Horn does not rest easy in that grave." Wedge paused for a mo-ment, and then another, letting the silence remind everyone of the true purpose of the ceremony. "Corran Horn was never at ease except when he was fighting. He does not rest easy now because there is much fighting yet to be done. We have taken Coruscant, but anyone who a.s.sumes that means the Empire is dead is as mistaken as Grand Moff Tarkin was in his belief that Alderaan's destruction would somehow cripple the Rebellion."

Wedge brought his head up. "Corran Horn was not a man who gave up, no matter what the odds. More than once he took upon himself the responsibility of dealing with a threat to the squadron and to the Rebellion. Heedless of his own safety, he engaged overwhelming forces and by sheer dint of will and spirit and courage he won through. Even here, on Coruscant, he flew alone into the heart of a storm that was ravaging a planet and risked his life so this world would be free. He did not fail, because he would not let himself fail.

"Each of us who knew him has, in our hearts, dozens and dozens of examples of his bravery or his concern for others, or his ability to see where he was wrong and correct himself. He was not a perfect man, but he was a man who sought to be the best he could be. And while he took pride in being very good, he didn't waste energy in displays of ram-pant egotism. He just picked out new goals and drove him-self forward toward them."

Wedge slowly nodded toward the rubble pile. "Corran is now gone. The burdens he bore have been laid down. The responsibilities he shouldered have been abandoned. The ex-ample he set is no more. His loss is tragic, but the greater tragedy would be letting him be remembered as a faceless hero mouldering in this cairn. He was a fighter, as all of us should be.

The things he took upon himself might be enough to crush down any one person, but we all can accept a por-tion of that responsibility and bear it together. Others have talked about building a future that would honor Corran and the others who have died fighting the Empire, but the fact is that there's fighting yet to be done before the building can begin.

"We have to fight the impatience with the pace of change that makes us look nostalgically on the days of the Empire. Yes, there might have been a bit more food avail-able. Yes, power outages might have been fewer.

Yes, you might have been insulated from the misery of others--but at what cost? The security you thought you had froze into an icy lump of fear in your gut whenever you saw stormtroopers walking in your direction. With the liberation of Coruscant that fear can melt, but if you forget it once existed and decide things were not so bad under the Emperor, you'll be well on your way to inviting it back."

He opened his hands to take in all those a.s.sembled at the monument. "You must do what Corran did: fight anything and everything that would give the Empire comfort or secu-rity or a chance to rea.s.sert itself. If you trade vigilance for complacency, freedom for security, a future without fear for comfort; you will be responsible for shaping the galaxy once again into a place that demands people like Corran fight, always fight and, eventually, fall victim to evil.

"The choice, ultimately, devolves to you. Corran Horn will not rest easy in his grave until there is no more fighting to be done. He has done everything he could to fight the Empire; now it is up to you to continue his fight. If he is ever to know peace, it will only be when we all know peace. And that is a goal every one of us knows is well worth fighting for."

Wedge stepped back from the podium and steeled him-self against the polite applause. Deep down he would have hoped his words had been inspiring, but those gathered around the memorial were dignitaries and officials from worlds throughout the New Republic. They were politicians whose goal was to help shape the future others of their num-ber spoke about. They wanted stability and order as a foun-dation for their constructions. His words, reminding everyone that fights were yet to be waged, undercut their efforts. They had to applaud because of the situation and who he was, but Wedge had no doubt most of them thought him a politically naive warrior best suited to being a hero who was feted and used in holograph opportunities to sup-port this program or that.

He could only hope that others listening to what he had to say would take his message to heart. The politicians re-quired stability, and the way they acquired stability was to ignore instability or patch it over with some quick fix. The citizens of the New Republic would find their politicians as distant as the Imperial politicians before them. With their new-won freedom, the people would be able to let their lead-ers know what they thought, and might be tempted to pro-test if things did not move swiftly enough in the direction the people wanted.

A rebellion against the Rebellion would result in anar-chy or a return of the Empire. Either would be disaster. Fighting for progress and against reactionary forces was the only way to guarantee the New Republic would get a chance to flourish. Wedge dearly wanted that to happen and hoped the politicians would look past their efforts to gather power to themselves long enough to take steps to provide real sta-bility and a real future.

Over at the grave site an honor guard raised the squad-ron flag, then backed away and saluted. That signaled an end to the ceremony, and the visitors began to drift away. A cream-furred Bothan with violet eyes crossed to where Wedge stood and nodded ahnost graciously. "You were quite eloquent, Commander Antilles." Borsk Fey'lya waved a hand toward the departing ma.s.ses. "I have no doubt quite a few hearts were stirred by your words."

Wedge raised an eyebrow. "But not yours, Councilor Fey'lya ?"

The Bothan snoted a clipped laugh. "If I were so easily swayed, l could be convinced to back all sorts of nonsense."

"Like the trial of Tycho Celchu?"

Fey'lya's fur rippled and rose at the back of his neck. "No, I might be convinced that such a trial was not neces-sary." He smoothed the fur back down with his right hand. "Admiral Ackbar has not convinced you to abandon your pet.i.tion to the Provisional Council about this matter?"

"No" Wedge folded his arms across his chest. "I would have thought by now you would have engineered a vote to deny me the chance to address the council."

"Summarily dismiss a pet.i.tion by the man who liberated Coruscant?" The Bothan's violet eyes narrowed. "You're moving into a realm of warfare at which I am a master, Commander. I would have thought you wise enough to see that. Your pet.i.tion will fail. It must fail, so it shall. Captain Celchu will be tried for murder and treason."

"Even though he is innocent?"

"Is he?"

"He is."

"A fact to be determined by a military court, surely." Fey'lya gave Wedge a cold smile. "A suggestion, Com-mander."

"Yes?"

"Don't waste your eloquence on the Provisional Coun-cil. Save it. h.o.a.rd it." The Bothan's teeth flashed in a feral grin. "Use it on the tribunal that tries Captain Celchu. You'll not gain his freedom, of course--no one is that eloquent; but perhaps you will win him some modic.u.m of mercy when it comes time for sentence to be pa.s.sed."

2.

High up in a tower suite, up above the surface of Imperial Center, Kirtan Loor allowed himself a smile. At the tower's pinnacle, the only companions were hawk-bats safe in their shadowed roosts and Special Intelligence operatives who were menacing despite their lack of stormtrooper armor or bulk. He felt alone and aloof, but those sensations came nat-urally with his sense of superiority. At the top of the world, he had been given all he could see to command and domi-nate.

And destroy.

Ysanne Isard had given him the job of creating and lead-ing a Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front. He knew she did not expect grand success from him. He had been given ample resources to make himself a nuisance. He could disrupt the functioning of the New Republic. He could slow their take-over of Coruscant and hamper their ability to master the mechanisms of galactic administration. A bother, minor but vexatious, is what Ysanne lsard had intended he become.

Kittan Loor knew he had to become more. Years before, when he started working as an Imperial liaison officer with the Corellian Security Force on CoreIlia, he never would have dreamed of finding himself rising so far and playing so deadly a game. Even so, he had always been ambitious, and supremely confident in himself and his abilities. His chief a.s.set was his memory, which allowed him to recall a pleth-ora of facts, no matter how obscure. Once he had seen or read or heard something he could draw it from his memory, and this ability gave him a gross advantage over the crimi-nals and bureaucrats with whom he dealt.

His reliance on his memory had also hobbled him. His prodigious feats of recall so overawed his enemies that they would naturally a.s.sume he had processed the information he possessed and had drawn the logical conclusions from it. Since they a.s.sumed he already knew what only they knew, they would tell him what he had not bothered to figure out for himself. They made it unnecessary for him to truly think, and that skill had begun to atrophy in him.

Ysanne Isard, when she summoned him to Imperial Cen-ter, had made it abundantly clear that learning to think and not to a.s.sume was the key to his continued existence. Her supervision made up in severity what it lacked in duration, putting him through a grueling regimen that rehabilitated his cognitive abilities. By the time she fled Imperial Center, Isard had clearly been confident in his ability to annoy and con-found the Rebels.

More importantly, Kirtan Loor had become certain that he could do all she wanted and yet more.

From his vantage point he looked down on the distant blob of dignitaries and mourners gathered at the memorial for Corran Horn. While he despised them all for their poli-tics, he joined them in mourning Horn's loss.

Corran Horn had been Loor's nemesis. They had hated each other on CoreIlia, and Loor had spent a year and a half trying to hunt Corran down after he fled from CoreIlia. The hunt had ended when Ysanne Isard brought Loor to Imperial Center, but he had antic.i.p.ated a renewal of his private little war with Horn when given the a.s.signment to remain on Coruscant.

Of course, Corran's demise hardly made a dent in the legion of enemies Loor had on Imperial Center. Foremost among them was General Airen Cracken, the director of Alli-ance Intelligence. Cracken's network of spies and operatives had ultimately made the conquest of the Imperial capital pos-sible, and his security precautions had given Imperial counterintelligence agents fits for years. Cracken---or Kra-ken, as some of Loor's people had taken to calling the Rebel--would be a difficult foe with whom to grapple.

Loor knew he had some other enemies who would pur-sue him as part of a personal vendetta. The whole of Rogue Squadron, from Antilles to the new recruits, would gladly hunt him down and kill him--including the spy in their midst since Loor presented a security risk for the spy. Even if they could not connect him with Corran's death directly, the mere fact that Corran hated him would be a burden they'd gladly accept and a debt they would attempt to discharge.

Iella Wessiri was the last of the CorSec personnel Loor had hunted, and her presence on Imperial Center gave him pause. She had never been as relentless as Corran Horn in her pursuit of criminals, but that had always seemed to Loor to be because she was more thorough than Horn.

Whereas Corran might muscle his way through an investigation, Iella picked up on small clues and accomplished with ~lan what Corran did with brute strength. In the shadow game in which Loor was engaged, this meant she was a foe he might not see coming, and that made her the most dangerous of all.

Loor backed away from the window and looked at the holographic representation of the figures below as they strode across his holotable.

The ceremony had been broad-cast planetwide, and would be rebroadcast at various worlds throughout the galaxy. He watched Borsk Fey'lya and Wedge Antilles as they met in close conversation, then split apart and wandered away. Everyone appeared more like toys to him than they did real people.

He found it easy to imagine himself a t.i.tanic--no, Imperial--presence who had deigned to be distracted by the actions of bugs.

He picked up the remote device from the table and flicked it on. A couple of small lights flashed on the black rectangle in his left palm, then a red b.u.t.ton in the center of it glowed almost benignly. His thumb hovered over it for a second. He smiled, but killed the impulse to stab his thumb down and gently returned the device to the table.

A year before he would have punch6d that b.u.t.ton, deto-nating the explosives his people had secreted around the me-morial. With one casual caress he could have unleashed fire and pain, wiping out a cadre of traitorous planetary officials and eliminating Rogue Squadron. He knew, given a chance, any of the SI operatives under his command would have triggered the nergon 14 charges--as would the majority of the military command staff still serving the Empire.

Loor did not. lsard had pointed out on numerous occa-sions that before the Empire could be reestablished, the Re-bellion had to die. She had pointed out that the Emperor's obsession with destroying the Jedi Knights had caused him to regard the rest of the Rebellion as a lesser threat, yet it had outlived the Jedi and the Emperor. Only by destroying the Rebellion would it be possible to rea.s.sert the Empire's au-thority over the galaxy. Destroying the Rebellion required methods more subtle than exploding grandstands and plan-ets, accomplishing with a vibroblade what could not be done with a Death Star.

Rogue Squadron could not be allowed to die, because they were required for the public spectacle of Tycho Celchu's trial. General Cracken had uncovered ample evidence that pointed toward Celchu's guilt, and Loor had delighted in clearing the way for Cracken's investigators to find yet more of it. The evidence would be condemning, yet so obviously questionable that the members of Rogue Squadron--all of whom had indicated a belief in Tycho's innocence at one level or another--would decry it as false. That would in-crease the tension between the conquerors of Imperial Center and the politicians who slunk in after the pilots had risked their lives to secure the world. If the heroes of the Rebellion could doubt and resent the government of the New Republic, how would the citizenry build confidence in their leaders?

The Krytos virus further complicated things. Created by an Imperial scientist under Loor's supervision, it killed non-humans in a most hideous manner. Roughly three weeks af-ter infection, the victims entered the final, lethal stage of the disease. Over the course of a week the virus multiplied very rapidly, exploding cell after cell in their bodies.

Their flesh weakened, sagged, and split open while the victims bled from every pore and orifice. The resulting liquid was highly infec-tious, and though bacta could hold the disease at bay or, in sufficient quant.i.ties, cure it, the Rebellion did not have access to enough bacta to treat all the cases on Coruscant.

The price of bacta had shot up and supplies dwindled. People h.o.a.rded bacta and rumors about the disease having spread to the human population caused waves of panic. Al-ready a number of worlds had ordered ships from Imperial Center quarantined so the disease would not spread, further disrupting the New Republic's weak economy and eroding its authority. It did no good for human bureaucrats to try to explain the precautions they had taken for dealing with the disease since they were immune, and that immunity built up resentment between the human and non-human populations within the New Republic.

Loor allowed himself a small laugh. He had taken the precaution of putting away a supply of bacta, which he was selling off in small lots.

As a result of this action, anxious Rebels were supplying the financing for an organization bent on the destruction of the New Republic. The irony of it all was sufficient to dull the omnipresent fear of discovery and capture.

There was no question in his mind that to be captured was to be killed, yet he did not let that prospect daunt him. Being able to turn the Rebels' tactics back on them struck him as justice. He would be returning to them the fear and frustration Imperials everywhere had known during the Re-bellion. He would strike from hiding, hitting at targets cho-sen randomly. His vengeance would be loosely focused because that meant no one could feel safe from his touch.

He knew his efforts would be denounced as crude ter-rorism, but he intended there to be nothing crude about his efforts. Today he would destroy the grandstands around the memorial. They would be nearly empty, and all those who had left the stands would breath a sigh of relief that they had not been blown up minutes or hours earlier; but everyone would have to consider congregating in a public place to be dangerous in the future. And if he hit a bacta treatment and distribution center tomorrow, people would also have to weigh obtaining protection from the virus against the possi-bility of being blown to bits.

By choosing targets of minimal military value he could stir up the populace to demand the military do something. If the public's ire focused on one official or another, he could target that person, giving the public some power. He would let their displeasure choose his victims, just as his choices would give direction to their fear. Theirs would be a virulent and symbiotic relationship. He would be nightmare and ben-efactor, they would be victims and supporters. He would become a faceless evil they sought to direct while fearing any attention they drew to themselves.

Having once been on the side attempting to stop an anti-government force, he could well appreciate the difficulties the New Republic would have in dealing with him. The fact that the Rebellion had never resorted to outright terrorism did not concern him. Their goal had been to build a new government; his was merely to destroy what they had cre-ated. He wanted things to degenerate into an anarchy that would prompt an outcry for leadership and authority. When that call went out, his mission would be accomplished and the Empire would return.

He again took up the remote control and returned to the window. Down at the memorial he could see small pinp.r.i.c.ks of color that marked pa.s.sersby on their way to and from other places. He glanced at the holograms striding across his holotable and saw that none of the people were of conse-quence. He followed the course of one woman, allowing her to clear the blast radius, then pressed the b.u.t.ton.

A staccato series of explosions went off sequentially around the memorial. To the south the grandstands teetered forward and started to somersault their way into the depths of Imperial Center. A half-dozen people who had been seated on them fell like colorful confetti. One actually grabbed the edge of the platform next to the barrow and hauled himself up to safety, but a subsequent blast tossed him back into the pit from which he had narrowly escaped.

Other explosions twisted metal and shattered transpari-steel windows in the surrounding buildings. Grandstands clung to the sides of buildings like mutilated metal insects with bleeding, moaning people clutched in their limbs. Dust and smoke cleared to show the central ferrocrete ring around the memorial had been nibbled away, with a huge chunk of it dangling perilously by a reinforcement bar or two.

Loor finally felt the blast's shockwave send a tremor through his tower.

The hawk-bats flapped black wings to steady themselves, then dropped away from their perches. Wings snapped open, sending the creatures soaring into a slow spiral that would take them down to the blast site. Loor knew enough of them to know the hawk-bats would first look to see if the holes in the buildings revealed previously hidden granite slugs, but when deprived of their favorite prey, they would settle for the gobbets of flesh left behind by the victims.

"Good hunting," he wished them, "eat your fill. Before I am done there will be more, much more for you to consume. I shall let you feast on my enemies, and together, here on a world they call their own, we shall both thrive."