X-wing_ The Krytos Trap Part 13

He paused halfway through, and Corran thought for a moment he might have been stuck, but the fat man turned to look at Jan again. "Before I forget what I came here for, a batch is ready."

"Thank you. I'll have Urlor organize a party to help you decant it." Jan nodded at Urlor and the large man stooped to force Derricote from the doorway, then followed him out. The older man smiled. "The general is a recent addition to our population, but he has proved himself useful in that he's good with biotics. He's managed to ferment a relatively mild ale here, providing us with a forbidden pleasure that many of us had forgotten."

"You trust him and drink it?"

Jan shrugged. "He drinks enough of it that if it were lethal, he'd have long since been dead. Despite being proud of his Imperial service, he seems somewhat perplexed by his imprisonment here. He thought he had fulfilled the parame-ters of a project for Iceheart, but she disagreed and he's here."

Corran nodded. "I can understand his confusion. I don't know why I'm here either."

"It may be temporary. We get a lot of transients who are transferred out in bulk. Traffic into and out of Lusankya seems to be relatively rare."

"That's not good news. If this place is truly a backwater planet, the chances of our being found by the Alliance are tiny."

Jan fingered the knots in the braided canvas cord that gathered his hair into a ponytail. "I've been here for, as nearly as I can determine, seven years, and no one has found me yet." His laugh came warm and natural, not tinged with the sort of madness Corran had heard in Derricote's laugh.

"There's always tomorrow."

"Right." Corran sighed and looked around the small chamber. "Urlor's acquainted me with one rule. Are there others?"

"We do what we're told when we're told to do it. Ra-tions are not great but are not starvation fare, either. Pro-duce is seasonal but not so peculiar as to let us pinpoint where we are. I think there's an agrocombine maintained to supply us, though none of us down here ever see it. We as-sume there are lower grade prisoners who are used to main-tain it, but we're in the deepest level, which has the highest security. At least that's where we think we are. Could be there's something more stringent, but I've not seen it."

"What do they have us do?"

"Hard labor make-work." The old man sighed. "Big rocks are made into little rocks, little rocks are made into gravel, and gravel is moved from one point to another. It is painfully and mind-numbingly boring, designed to crush hope and make the days meld one into another. It drives some of the men insane."

Corran lowered his voice. "Anyone ever escape?"

"Not quite that insane, son."

"No one has tried?"

"Few have tried, no one has made it."

"To your knowledge."

Jan's mouth opened, then he shut it and nodded. "To my knowledge--you are correct. At any rate, no one has made it since I've been here."

Corran frowned. "Those who have tried, they get brought back here?"

"Parts of them, anyway." The old man pointed vaguely off deeper into the caverns. "The Imps have a chamber where they keep the skulls and other relics of their dead. We smuggle ours into the mines where we work and bury them."

"So escape is impossible?"

Jan winked at him as he dropped his voice into a con-spiratorial whisper.

"I never said impossible, I just said it hadn't been done successfully."

Corran laughed quietly. "I'm with Rogue Squadron. Im-possible is our stock in trade, and success is what we de-liver."

Jan slapped him on the shoulder. "Now I'm thinking it's a pity I didn't know your grandfather. With a grandson like you, I'm sure we would have gotten along famously."

"I have a feeling you're right, sir." Corran nodded sol-emnly. "And being his grandson, I'm going to do everything I can to get out of and off of this rock."

The old man smiled. "From the moment I saw you, Cor-ran Horn, I somehow expected nothing less."

18.

Wedge felt more trapped by wearing a dress uniform and being in the witness box than he ever had in action against tile Empire. He didn't see Halla Ettyk as a simulacrum of Ysanne Isard or an enemy warrior with whom he would be doing combat. The pleasant expression on her face belied either of those descriptions. Moreover, Wedge knew he had entered her arena--for him to think about defeating her here was as foolish as for her to imagine she could best him in a dogfight. This is all about survival--mine and Tycho's survival The prosecutor looked up from her datapad. "Com-mander Antilles, how did you come to be on Coruscant before our forces had taken possession of it?"

"My squadron and I were inserted into Coruscant in a pathfinder capacity.

We were here to evaluate the world from a number of points of view to determine if, how, and when the Alliance might want to attempt to take it."

"I see. What was the security cla.s.sification on this oper-ation?"

"The highest. If it had been known that we were coming or that we were here, we would have been dead."

Halla nodded sagely. "In preparation for sending your squadron out, what role did Captain Celchu play?"

Wedge shook his head. "He played no part."

"Why not?"

"Objection." Nawara stood at the defense table. "Calls for a conclusion."

"It goes to the witness's state of mind, Admiral." Admiral Ackbar shook his head. "Counselor Ven, please do not object to questions calling for answers that Captain Celchu's commanding officer should know. Overruled.

You may answer the question, Commander."

Wedge nodded. "Captain Celchu was seen as a security risk by General Cracken, so he was not involved in the prep-aration for the mission."

"Then how did Captain Celchu end up on Coruscant?" This is not going to sound good. Wedge sighed. "I do not like covert missions. The things you don't know always seem to be the things that get you into trouble. If any of our people got picked up on the mission, it would be logical for the Imps to conclude there were more of us present, and hunt us down. I wanted someone on Coruscant whom I could trust to get me out of difficult situations."

"So you chose someone that Alliance Intelligence did not trust."

"I chose Tycho for a number of very good reasons, Com-mander Ettyk. He had been to Coruscant before and knew his way around."

"But he was captured on Coruscant, correct?"

"Yes."

"And imprisoned in a place the Empire uses to create covert operatives, correct?"

"So I have been told."

Halla smiled slightly and gave him a slight nod. Wedge felt it was the sort of salute one pilot might toss another for a good shot--the sort of salute that came with the promise of destruction on the next pa.s.s. A wave of heat washed over him and he wanted to loosen the collar of his dark green jacket. Can't. Don't want to let her know she's beginning to get to me.

"Commander Antilles, why did you feel you needed your own person operating independently on Coruscant?"

"If things went bad and some or all of General Cracken's operation here on Coruscant was uncovered, we would be in dire straits."

"Did you have a reason to suppose there was a chance the operation would be compromised?"

"Tm not certain I understand the question."

"What reasons did you have to fear your operation might be compromised to Imperial Intelligence?"

"There is always a risk of such betrayal with any covert operation.

Certainly the fact that we were going to be on Coruscant had to suggest that was a possibility."

"And you knew, as you just told us, that Captain Celchu had been captured on Coruscant, so that was certainly in your mind, yes?" Wedge frowned.

Where is she going with this? "Yes."

"And there were other incidents involving Rogue Squad-ron where betrayal had been previously mentioned, cor-rect?"

"I am not certain I understand what you mean by that."

"Please characterize for the court the first mission to Borleias."

"It was an unmitigated disaster. I lost people, the Alli-ance lost people, and we didn't take the planet."

Halla glanced down at her datapad. "And there was an investigation conducted upon your return to determine if your mission had been betrayed to the enemy, was there not?"

"Yes, but Tycho was never implicated, never under sus-picion."

"I know---still, your mission to Coruscant was staging from Noquivzor, which was where the mission to Borleias staged from, was it not?"

"Yes."

"So the spectre of a chance that whoever might have betrayed your first mission to Borleias could betray your mis-sion to Coruscant certainly existed, did it not?"

"Yes."

"Hence your precaution."

"Yes."

"And yet you would tell us that you had no cause to suspect Captain Celchu of collusion with the enemy?"

Wedge blinked as Halla shifted her aim to a new target. "I had no reasons to suspect Tycho of anything."

The prosecutor's head came up. "You did not find the circ.u.mstances of Bror Jace's death the least bit suspicious?"

"Excuse me?"

Halla folded her arms across her chest. "I believe, Com-mander Antilles, you were present in the courtroom for the testimony of Captain Uwlla Iillor in regard to the mission to capture Bror Jace. At the time of his death did you not con-sider the possibility that news of his travel to Thyferra had been leaked to the Empire?"

"No."

"Not at all?"

"Well, not in any substantive way, and certainly not with Tycho being the source of the leak."

Halla narrowed her eyes. "Who obtained the permis-sions and filed the flight plan for Bror Jace's trip to Thyferra?"

"Tycho did, by my order."

"Did you approve the flight plan?"

Wedge hesitated as he felt pressure building up in him-self. "No."

"Did you know the flight plan?"

"No."

"To the best of your knowledge, did anyone in your squadron outside of Captain Celchu and Bror Jace know that flight plan?"

Wedge's hands pulsed into fists. "No."

"Captain Iillor testified that her ship, the Black Asp, had been given specific orders as to where to go and when to be there to encounter Bror Jace. How could they have gotten that information, do you think?"

"A spy, I suppose. I don't know. Espionage is not really my stock in trade."

"So you would have a difficult time determining if some-one was a spy or not?"

Wedge glanced down. "You're good at twisting my words, Commander. I know Tycho wasn't working for the Empire."

Halla's eyes narrowed. "You may have felt that, Com-mander Antilles, but tell me truthfully, when Corran Horn told you he'd seen Captain Celchu speaking to an Imperial Intelligence operative, tell me you didn't wonder, just for a heartbeat, if everything General Cracken and others had said about Tycho Celchu wasn't true."

Wedge closed his eyes. When Corran had come to him on Coruscant and reported what he had seen, Wedge had been unable to cover his shock. I said to him, "That's impos-sible, Corran." I followed up with the explanation about Warlord Zsinj having attacked Noquivzor, but the first thing out of my mouth had been a denial of what I feared might be true.

Just for a second I allowed myself to accept what he said. I refused to let myself believe what he had said, but I knew I could not prove his statement to be absolutely false.

The leader of Rogue Squadron nodded and refrained from looking over at Tycho. "Yes, for a heartbeat, I did al-low myself to consider what Lieutenant Horn said. I rejected it just that quickly."

"On what grounds?"

"I knew Tycho wasn't a spy."

Halla raised an eyebrow. "You didn't know Zekka Thyne was working for the Empire, did you?"