X-wing_ The Krytos Trap Part 27

Iella felt the slick caress of a strand of webbing brush against her right cheek. She swept it away with her left hand and heard it snap near her ear. That struck her as odd, then sinister, as she saw Nawara bat at a similar thread with one of his brain tails.

The lift doors, barely ten meters away, opened with little more than a whisper.

As the lift doors parted, Loor felt his pulse quicken. Time slowed until nanoseconds took hours to pa.s.s. His emotions spiked, fear braiding itself together with triumph. The fear came from the realization that he might die, for surely an a.s.sa.s.sin or a.s.sa.s.sins lurked in the lift. I could well be dead before those doors close again.

The triumph that wove in with the fear came from the realization that Ysanne Isard saw him as enough of a threat to kill him. She had always dismissed him before, patronized him, used him, and threatened to discard him. Now she saw how truly powerful he was. The desperation that marked this attempt on his life gave full measure to her concern over what he could do to destroy her.

Loor began to smile. In this you show me I have won!

Iella began to turn toward the unlit box, her blaster coming down as she squared her stance. Something black moved within the lift, a shadow that resolved itself into the form of a man dashing forth, a blazing blaster held in each hand. "Die, Derricote, die!" he screamed.

Scarlet bolts of blaster energy burned toward the trio. One caught Nawara Ven on the right hip. It spun him around and flung him through the air.

Before the Twi'lek could hit the ground, a pair of blaster-bolts lanced through Kirtan Loor's chest. The first, which drilled him high on the left side of his body, lifted him from his feet. The second struck him high in the abdomen and centered on his midline, driving him back and down. He landed beside Nawara Ven's tumbling body and slid halfway over to the airspeeder.

Years of training overrode conscious thought in Iella. As bolts began to track in her direction, she coolly triggered a double-burst that stopped the a.s.sa.s.sin's charge only a stride or two from the lift. The bolts stabbed deep into the man's gut, snapping him forward. Blaster-bolts from his guns traced parallel lines down the ferrocrete as he hunched over, dropped to his knees, then fell forward on his face. His blaster pistols clattered down beside him, abandoned as his hands clutched at his ruined belly.

Keeping her blaster on his form, she ran forward and kicked the pistols away. The a.s.sa.s.sin made a sound, a little moan, and it cut her legs out from under her. She sank to her knees beside him and rolled him onto his back. Even before she saw his face, the sounds he made and the feeling of his bony shoulders told her who he was. Intellect momentarily overrode emotion, providing her the clues she needed to con-firm his ident.i.ty, then it retreated as pain and despair ex-ploded in her.

She pulled his head into her lap and brushed strands of hair from his face. "Why, Diric, why?"

"Lusankya."

Iella's breath caught in her throat. "No, no, that can't he."

"She broke me. She made me into one of her own. She had me placed in Derricote's lab to watch him." Diric winced fiercely, and his body went rigid for a moment. "She sent me to kill him before he could betray her.

I had no choice. That wasn't him, though."

Iella shook her head. "No. It was Kirtan Loor."

Diric managed a weak smile. "Good. I never liked him." He reached a hand up toward her face, but it never got there. 'Tm dying."

"No." She fished for a comlink in her pocket. "I'11 get emergency medical droids here."

"No, Iella, no. Isard made me what others accuse Tycho of being. He isn't. She had me reporting on him, too. From what she did, I cannot be saved." His tongue wet thin lips. "I can't live in suspicion, as a puppet. It would make life too . .. boring."

"Diric, no, we can help you."

"It's over. I love you. She wanted me to kill you. I couldn't resist." He smiled weakly. "I could defy--the trig-ger that opened the lift was supposed to be linked to a bomb. I did what I could. So you could stop me from betraying myself by killing you." Pain contorted his face. "Thank you for freeing me."

With her hand, Iella smoothed the pain on his face into peace, then realized he'd slipped away. Her throat thick, her eyes welling with tears, she gently lowered his head to the ferrocrete floor and kissed him one last time.

Kirtan Loor lay on the ferrocrete and could feel nothing. He knew this was not good. That he was dying was an ines-capable conclusion and it outraged him. He tried to feed that outrage as much fuel as he could, but he simply ran out. The anger and fury in him collapsed in on itself, imploding into a black void that sucked the last bits of life from Kirtan Loor.

At the heart of that void existed one fact, the one true thing that had marked his entire life. Gil Bastra had seen it. Corran Horn and Iella Wessiri had seen it. Ysanne Isard had seen it. Loor had done all he could to combat it, but it was a defect that was inborn and immutable. ! make a.s.sumptions. I refuse to look beyond them for reality. I am defeated by them.

He stared up at the ferrocrete ceiling, seeking in its hap-hazard patterns some cosmic truth, but the only truth he found ground away at him. She did not send an a.s.sa.s.sin to kill me, she sent him to kill Derricote. I am dying in his place, for his crimes. Is there anything worse?

For some reason the image of Corran Horn came to him. Horn said there was nothing worse than dying alone. He fought to dismiss that idea, but as darkness nibbled away at the corners of his sight, he allowed as how that, just once, Corran Horn had been right.

39.

Despite his fatigue, Wedge couldn't remember having felt better. Strapped into the c.o.c.kpit of his X-wing, with Mynock behind him, Asyr on his starboard wing, and atmosphere below his fighter, Wedge felt as if the galaxy's reset b.u.t.ton had been hit. His mission was clear: safeguard the forces making a run on an Imperial terrorist cell. He didn't know if this was all that was left of the Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front, or if this was just one tentacle of that foul kraken, but he had no doubts they'd destroy it.

Gone were the ambiguities that had been forced on him. Tycho's trial was political. The run to Ryloth and the convoy escort mission from Alderaan had both been political. Even the raid on Zsinj's s.p.a.ce station had been political. While he realized the whole Rebellion had, in essence, been political, his role in it had been military. The targets we were given were military, picked because of their military value, and the mission parameters were ones that could be fulfilled through a military effort.

Wedge keyed his comm unit. "Hunter One, this is Rogue Lead. We are onstation."

"l copy, Rogue Lead. Stand by for tactical team direc-tives."

"As ordered." Wedge glanced down at his scanner. The squadron had broken itself down into five pairs of fighters. Four of the pairs...o...b..ted the target district with 90 degrees of separation between their positions.

The last pair, Erisi Dlarit and Rhysati Ynr, flew high cover up around the level of the skyhooks. The lower fighters were meant to a.s.sist the raid and pick up stragglers, while the high-orbit pair would cut off any PCF terrorists that made it out of the district and in toward their target.

"Rogue Lead, this is Hunter One. We are taking heavy fire from the western approach. Help is needed."

"I copy. On the way." Wedge hit a b.u.t.ton on his con-sole, shifting the corem unit to the squadron's tactical chan-nel. "Rogue Two, did you get that?"

"I copied, Lead." Asyr's voice betrayed no nervousness. "After you."

"Five, you and Ten with the next call, then Seven's ele-ment, then Twelve's element."

"As ordered."

Wedge kicked his X-wing up on the port S-foil, then hit the left rudder and pointed the fighter's nose at the ground. He let the fighter succ.u.mb to gravity, then rolled it and pre-pared to glide out onto the target.

The Justice Court building flashed past, then Wedge hauled back on the stick and leveled out. Target is five kilometers out and coming up fast.

Even in the distance he could see blaster fire spraying out to cover the approaches on the west side of the building. As he swooped in, he saw one smoking speeder-ferry slowly drifting down toward the unseen ground.

Wedge flicked his lasers over to single fire and dropped the crosshairs on the focal point for the blaster fire. As range dropped to a kilometer, he tightened down on the trigger and feathered the left rudder pedal to keep his fire tracking on target.

The X-wing's four lasers fired in sequence, peppering the middle level of the building with a staccato hail of energy darts. They swept across the wide doorway, some of them scattering half-hidden individuals inside the warehouse. Other laser-bolts shredded one of the two E-Web Heavy Repeating Blasters just inside the doorway, killing the soldiers crewing the weapon.

Asyr's X-wing came in right behind Wedge's and re-peated his strafing run. As she flew through the area, Wedge chopped his thrust back, hit his rudder, and turned his fighter around. He punched the throttle, killing his momen-tum, then cut his repulsorlift coils in. Asyr sailed on past him and pulled up to begin a loop, while Wedge goosed his X-wing forward and brought it up in line with the ware-house opening.

"They're running!" Wedge hit the trigger and scythed fire back and forth across the gaping warehouse entryway. Two laser-bolts caught a small airspeeder in the middle and aft, slicing it into three equal parts. The pieces flew across the open area and rebounded off a neighboring building, then tumbled into the urban canyon depths.

The rest of his shots missed the legion of targets because what he was trying to hit tended to be small and moving very fast. Speeder bikes with and without sidecars corkscrewed fheir way out and down or up to elude him. One airspeeder just sailed out and dropped like a freefalling Hutt, sinking out of sight before he could track it. Others banked hard and flew fast to escape, though from corem unit chatter, each of them had been tagged and had pursuit on its way.

An ugly green light strobed through the warehouse. Wedge nudged the X-wing forward, and saw boxy silhou-ettes, each supported on twin pillars, bobbing up and down in the warehouse. A shiver ran down his spine, then he keyed his corem unit. "Scout walkers, three of them, with two com-ing our way. I've got them."

Wedge flicked his weapon's-control over to proton tor-pedoes. His aiming reticle went from yellow to red as the targeting computer locked on.

Mynock shrieked with a lock-tone and Wedge hit his trigger. A proton torpedo streaked out, crossing the fifty meters between the X-wing and the warehouse in the blink of an eye.

The proton torpedo caught the rightmost AT-ST in the outside leg, just below the upper joint. The torpedo sheered the leg off, and the impact spun the scout walker around. It crashed into the walker next to it, then rebounded and bounced to the ground. Ten meters behind it the proton torpedo exploded, detonating the walker's concussion grenade magazine.

The second walker, which had awkwardly skipped for-ward after being b.u.mped, ended up being slightly off balance when the grenades went off. A burst of green light from deeper within the warehouse outlined the upright walker as the downed walker's good leg whipped around and caught it across the ankles. The standing walker staggered as the pilot tried to widen its stance and remain upright. His efforts al-most paid off and the walker had begun to straighten up, when its left foot ran out of warehouse floor. The machine wavered for a moment, then slowly keeled over in an un-gainly plunge toward the ground.

The green light, from the last AT-ST's twin blaster can-non, again lit the interior of the warehouse. What is it shoot-ing at? In the time it took him to form that question in his mind, he also came up with the answer. No, can't let that happen.

He nudged the throttle forward and picked up some speed. Flying into the warehouse, Wedge got to see the AT-ST fire one last shot at the far wall, widening the breach. An airspeeder--heavily laden, judging from the way the aft end struck sparks as it slewed around the scout walker--shot in toward the hole. The remaining walker squared off to face him and protect the airspeeder.

The other vehicles were decoyst This one is the bomb. Wedge hit enough left rudder to track the airspeeder, then fired a proton torpedo. The projectile hit the ferrocrete deck-ing and skipped off, rising quickly.

Instead of pa.s.sing be-tween the AT-ST's legs, it slammed full into the c.o.c.kpit. The explosion filled the end of the warehouse with a firestorm.

A black cloud billowed up with red-gold flame-claws slashing their way clear of it, while pieces of debris and shrapnel ricocheted and bounced throughout the warehouse.

Swirling tendrils of smoke curled out through the hole, and Wedge knew instantly where the airspeeder had gone. He guided the X-wing straight for the center of the hole the scout walker had opened in the other side of the warehouse. He made it through with centimeters to spare on both sides, then cut the repulsorlift generators and dove.

"This is RogL, e Leader. The warehouse is clear. I'm out the other side."

Hunter One sounded faintly amused. "We would have let you come back out this way, Rogue Leader."

"Thanks, Hunter One, but I'm in pursuit of the bomb." Deep below him he saw the airspeeder level off and head toward lnvisec. "Let the bacta storehouse know it's incom-ing, and so am I. With luck, only one of us will get there."

40.

"He's not the fat guy," said one of the three men facing Corran.

"Doesn't matter. Kill him anyway."

Corran pulled his right arm back and whipped it for-ward, sidearming the lightsaber toward the trio. The blade spun through a flat arc. The men on either side of the group-ing dove for cover, but the center man's eyes grew wide and glowed in the blade's icy light. He shot twice at the light-saber, but missed with both bolts.

The lightsaber's silver shaft scythed through his middle and dropped him in two parts to the ground. Two wet, meaty thumps swallowed the clatter of the blaster carbine against the floor. The glowrod attached to the barrel flared, then went out.

Corran dove to the left, rolled, and came up in a crouch. He tracked a moving cone of light and fired at its base. He heard no scream to indicate he had hit his target, then a spray of blaster-bolts from the right forced him to duck again. As he slipped back into the shadow of a statue, his two foes extinguished their glowrods, leaving the footlights as the only illumination in the larger room.

Two a.s.sumptions I can make: first, they have comlinks I something solid thump against the wall be-en before he heard the click of a comlink, he ld and rose up on his left knee. Jamming the against the wall with his right hand, he raked it upward. It pulled free of the wall at arc, spitting and hissing as blood evaporated shaft of light.

????? man on the other side of the wall fell across ust as the third man, who had been approach-from the opposite side, opened fire. The ~,ht two bolts that would have killed Corran in shifted aim and started tracking the light-bolt singed the hair on the back of Corran's rest pa.s.sed by without hurting him. left hand came up and he snapped off two blaster carbine's muzzle flashes. Both hit. crashed backward into a display case, then angles.

In the footlight Corran could see once or twice, as if still working the trigger that had fallen to the floor, then the man lay tinguished the lightsaber, then clipped it to his the belt around so the weapon hung at his mldn't bang against the bruised one. Pocketing he crawled over to the body of the first loosened the chinstrap on the hehnet and lside it he found a comlink in a clip. He pulled for a moment to see if other troopers were the comlink remained silent. the second man's blaster carbine and glowrod. He played it over the dead men and black uniforms weren't any sort of Imperial seen before, and the men themselves were that he knew they weren't storm-never seen a stormtrooper without a helmet see them looking quite this ordinary. Still, the T, so he a.s.sumed the three dead of a local constabulary force. Another thought you were allies, but in CorSec we and are going to be coordinating their attack. Second, they can or have called for backup, which means they win the waiting game. I have to get out of here, and the only way to do that is by going out the way they came in. He glanced over at the doorway which the lightsaber's glow backlit. They're moving out to surround me, so now's the best time to go.

Corran bobbed up and down twice, using the light-saber's light to silhouette the obstacles in his way. The path looked fairly clear. He reached into his pocket and ran his thumb over the ruined face of the Jedi medallion. You're not the one I used ?br hack, but here's hoping there was some left in the dies when you were struck.

He took off at a dead run, cutting around one statue and then a display case before heading toward the doorway. Lit-tle holograms flickered to life behind him, drawing attention first to themselves, then to him. The first few shots fired at him burned holes in his cloak, but then his a.s.sailants shifted their aim and raked the doorway with blasterfire--blasterfire that should have exploded his heart and reduced his lungs to cinders.

And it would have except that the Jedi cloak caught the corner of the display case. It yanked Corran from his feet, then the throat clasp snapped. With his momentum thus slackened but far from depleted, he flew through the door-way feet first, centimeters below the line of blasterfire. He hit hard on his right hip and cracked his right knee on the gran-ite floor, then slid toward the middle of the room.

His right hand closed on the hilt of the lightsaber. He switched it off and scrambled back toward the doorway through which he had just flown. He hoped to find the dead man's blaster carbine, but as he settled his back against the wall beside the doorway he saw its outline two meters away on the wrong side of the opening. Hopeless. Gotta get up. gotta run for the exit--wherever it is. Even though he knew running was the only viable plan, the stiffening sensation in his knee and hip told him a weak limp was going to be the best he could manage. And l'll get raped for the ef/~rt. I'm dead.

Then hind him. twisted ar lightsaber~ flicked it c the top ot from the s The b the doorw ing the dt dead man before the saber's arc hand, but Corra shots tow; The third hung then his hands 1 of the wea still.

Corra belt. He sl left hip am his holdou man he'd pulled it ot it out and i on the wa, He FC turned on frowned. ~1 uniform h~ mismatche troopers. I on, but I c~ uniforms x men were time l'd h didn't shoot someone just because he wasn't the suspect we were looking for.

Corran played the glowrod over the bottom of the com-link and adjusted the frequency. Now to find out where we are. While he had long detested the Empire, it did manage to do some things with a remarkable amount of efficiency. One of them was the establishment and maintenance of standard measures. On each world broadcast stations had been set up to provide the exact time, both local and in relation to Co-ruscant. By tuning into that signal he could find out where he was and what time it was. It occurs to me I've not seen outside for a long time.

He held the comlink near his ear and slowly limped over to the hole the trio had blown in the wall on the far side of the chamber. "Must be a real backwater planet if they only sent three guys to catch an escaped prisoner--even if they thought I was Derricote. I wonder if I can ever get off it?"

Over the comlink he heard a mechanical voice an-nounce, "8 hours, 45 minutes, Coordinated Galactic Time."

"Great, I'm on a world that's set its clocks to Coruscant time, no matter what the local situation is." He hefted the blaster carbine, glanced at the power level indicator, then played the light out through the hole into the next room. Unlike the one he had found himself in, the room beyond the hole was clean and orderly. Even better, there is an open doorway to the outside.

He was about to step through the wall when two irrec-oncilable ideas collided in his brain. It was rather clear that he was inside some sort of storehouse filled with Jedi memo-rabilia. The mansion from which he had escaped had obvi-ously been an Imperial Moff's retreat, but what Imperial Moff would risk his position by h.o.a.rding so much Jedi mate-rial?

The only Moff who could do that would be a powerful one, and powerful Moffs weren't found on backwater worlds.

Actually, there were no Moffs so powerful that they would have dared defy the Emperor and Vader by boarding this stuff. Only the Emperor could have . . . Corran's jaw dropped open. And the ch~ck here is set to Coruscant time ....

Corran slumped against the wall. It can't be. I can't be on Coruscant. It makes no sense. I remember traveling on a ship. Then again, I was so doped up . . . Maybe l am on Corusc~ant and lsard just wanted me to think I wasn't on Coruscant. He chuckled. It would explain why no one ever found Lusankya--it was here all the time, which means she is, too.

He glanced back at the dead men. And she has enough pull with local authorities to have them out bunting Der-rioore. I may be out of her dutches, but I'm not free, yet. He glanced at the comlink and thought about tuning into the military frequencies Rogue Squadron used, but rejected that plan for two reasons. I'm not going to have the right scram-bier codes to let me hear and speak with them, and even if I did, there's the traitor to consider.

He shook his head. 1 need someone I can trust. It's a long shot, but it's the only one I have. He set the comlink and opened a channel. "This is Corran Horn calling. I'm not dead--I only feel like it--and I could use some help returning to the land of the living."

41.

Wedge pulled back on the X-wing's stick and leveled out approximately 300 meters behind and above the airspeeder. He had to trim his speed back because even though the X-wing could close fast, the airspeeder could turn faster within the close confines of the city. Part of Wedge knew racing speeder bikes through the forests of Endor was safer than doing what he was doing, but he had no choice. That bomb has to be stopped.

"Mynock, make sure you're getting a solid tracking feed on that airspeeder."

The astromech droid shrilled out a confirmation of that order. Wedge watched the tracking data get updated, then rolled up on the right stabilizer foil and dove. He cruised down below the speeder's line of flight, entering a large bou-levard that sped him forward toward Invisec.

If I can head him off... "Mynock, plot all his routes from here to the target." The droid shrieked like wind howling off the S-foils. Wedge wove his way through the undercity, cutting around buildings, over walkways, and through tunnels, all the while marveling at the intricate labyrinth that was Corus-cant. Making his way in and out, up and over or around tested his skills as a pilot. While not much of the dawn's light penetrated that deeply in the city, he did have enough to navigate by, but only just barely.

A shiver ran down his spine. Corran and the others were flying out here at night when we took Coruscant. I never really appreciated what they did until now.