The Krytos Trap (17 page)

“Yes.”

“You stated he seemed anxious and agitated. Did you find his state of mind unusual?”

“Objection, counsel is leading the witness.”

“Rephrase the question, Commander.”

“Flight Officer Dlarit, how did Lieutenant Horn’s state of mind strike you at the time?”

Erisi tugged at a wisp of hair behind her left ear. “Anxiety I could understand. We were all anxious to get going and to see if the mission would succeed or not.”

“And his agitation?”

“That wasn’t like Corran.”

“Had you seen or heard anything that, in your mind, explained his agitation?”

The witness hesitated. “I saw Corran speaking with Captain Celchu. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I saw them speaking together. Then Corran came over and spoke with me.”

“And you concluded?”

“Something in their conversation had set Corran off.”

Iella glanced down at the datapad on the prosecution table. Halla had gotten out of Erisi all she expected the witness to admit—testimony showing Corran to be out of sorts as a result of his conversation with Captain Celchu. When they had deposed Erisi they had learned the nature of her conversation with Corran. While Halla would have loved to get that testimony in, hearsay prevented it. The excited outburst
exception wasn’t something she had expected to succeed.

Halla smiled at Nawara. “Your witness.”

The Twi’lek stood. “Flight Officer Dlarit, how long was it between the time you reported speaking to Corran and the previous time you had spoken to him?”

“An hour.”

“Now, you just testified that you saw Corran speak with Captain Celchu. Did you see Lieutenant Horn speak with anyone else before speaking with Captain Celchu?”

“No.”

Nawara’s head came up as if her answer surprised him. “You didn’t see Lieutenant Horn speak with Mirax Terrik?”

Erisi shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose I did. I saw them standing near each other and saw her run off, but I don’t recall any conversation.”

“But you do concede that they may have spoken to each other?”

“Yes.”

“So, as nearly as you know, Lieutenant Horn might have had multiple conversations that could have set him off?”

“I suppose so.” Erisi blinked a couple of times. “That could be it.”

The Twi’lek bowed his head. “Thank you, Flight Officer, that’s all I have for you.”

Corran felt like a block of burning ice caught in a lightning storm. His flesh felt on fire while his bones seemed chilled to absolute zero. Every pain receptor in his body strobed on and off on a near-constant basis. The pain would start at his feet and move up in a wave, or descend on him like a rain shower, or pummel him with randomly delivered jolts.

He would have welcomed death but for the horror of spending eternity with the memory of such pain so fresh.

He heard a hiss, and the rack retracted from what he had taken to calling the Inducer. Corran hung limp from the restraining straps and welcomed the constant, unrelenting,
unshifting pain the straps caused as they sank into his flesh. Sweat poured down over his face and stung fiercely where he managed to bite through his lower lip, but even that sensation was a relief from what he had just been through.

Ysanne Isard entered the interrogation chamber and waved the Trandoshan out. “I would find you fascinating if you knew more, Horn.” She glanced at the mirrored panel on the wall. “Your tolerance for pain is remarkable.”

Corran would have shrugged, but every ounce of energy in his body had been exhausted in screaming answers to the questions fired at him during the session. He couldn’t remember what he had said. He recalled that in those few moments of lucidity which he could touch between pulses of agony, he had tried to focus on the cold or heat. Locking into those sensations had seemed to dull the pain somehow. Now, in the absence of pain, he doubted that observation was correct, but it had been a sanctuary into which he had retreated, and that was a very small victory.

She posted her fists on her hips. “You present a problem for me. You don’t know enough to be useful, and your position within the Rebellion is so low that you are hardly vital. If I return you to them, they will likely treat you much as they are treating Celchu now. You won’t have even the freedom he had before his arrest. This does not incline me to send you back.

“On the other hand, you would be perfect to mold into my own avenger. Your resistance to pain will make your rehabilitation into a right-thinking Imperial time-consuming, but not impossible. Your core discomfort with the unlawful nature of the Rebellion is a foundation on which I can build you anew into the tool I need. I can form an Avenger Squadron around you that will go after and destroy Rogue Squadron. Using a Rogue to destroy Rogues, that would be delicious.”

Corran summoned strength from reserves he didn’t know he had and smiled. “You won’t live long enough to see me turn on my friends.”

“Good, anger directed at me, excellent.” She politely applauded him. “Hate me all you want. I’ll turn your hatred
for me into hatred for those who haven’t saved you from me. You won’t be the first broken that way, and you’ll not be the last.”

“I won’t break.”

“Ah, but you will. They all do.” She nodded solemnly as the rack hissed and slowly lowered him toward the Inducer. “And when you break, I will put you back together again, and in gratitude you will do all I ask, without question or regard for loyalties you once held dear.”

15

It was probably in a place like this that Rogue Squadron plotted the conquest of Imperial Center
. Kirtan Loor ducked his head beneath a series of moist, moldy pipes and followed his guide deeper into the rusted-out bowels of Imperial Center. Loor had been driven deeper into the planet-wide city than he thought possible, then had gone several kilometers farther through a hot, wet labyrinth that had him imagining he’d passed through the core of the world and was now working his way up and out the other side.

The Special Intelligence operative leading him through the maze cut to the left and through an oval opening hacked through the wall of the access tunnel. The opening seemed, at first glance, as if it was chopped through the wall; but when Loor grabbed its edges as he climbed through the hole, the striations he felt made him wonder if it hadn’t been
nibbled
out of the ferrocrete.
Unless I can find a way to use it, I don’t want to know what chewed this hole
.

The low, wide area into which Loor stepped stank of rust, stagnant water, and mildew. The few standing puddles had an oily slick on them that phosphoresced slightly. The weak light supplemented the temporary floodlights the operatives had arranged to display their motley collection of airspeeders.
All in all the tableau was unremarkable and unlikely to attract attention from anyone save a truly desperate airspeeder thief.

And wouldn’t he be surprised at what he got
.

The dented and dinged airspeeders, which were of a variety of years and makes, had been carefully worked over by the operatives and transformed into a half-dozen flying bombs. The hollow spaces in the chassis had been filled with explosives. Designed to be flown by remote from a companion airspeeder, they would be driven like proton torpedoes into the various bacta storage facilities around the world.

An operative came walking over to Loor, unable to keep a smirk from his square face. “As you can see, we are prepared to go at any time. We have completed our initial electronic sweep of the target sites and have found them negative for counter-remote tactics or equipment.”

“Very good.” The Empire had long ago perfected precautionary measures to take against bombs that might be set to detonate by remote. The easiest of these was to broadcast strong signals on a variety of comlink frequencies of the sort used by Rebel terrorists to detonate such bombs, causing a premature detonation while the bombs were still in the attackers’ keeping. Broadcasting from patrolling airspeeders in hostile areas had even detonated explosives in bomb factories that Intelligence had suspected existed, but had not been able to pinpoint for a more surgical strike. The harm done to innocents in the area when the bombs went off had been seen as just punishment for the failure of the people to report the Rebels working in their area.

Although they had been unable to detect similar counter-remote tactics in the bacta storage areas, Loor’s people had decided against detonating the bombs by remote. Getting an airspeeder into position and leaving it there long enough for the setup team to get away provided a window for discovery and deactivation. Even though that window would be small, it was felt to be too risky; they intended to hit a number of sites in rapid succession, and if the Rebel forces discovered one bomb and sent out a warning, it would make hitting the others far more difficult. Moreover, the fact
that they could not detect anti-remote equipment in their reconnaissance sweeps could have been explained by nothing more sinister than someone forgetting to turn the devices on that day.

The plan they had hit on was actually fairly simple. Commercial speeder-ferry vehicles were not an uncommon sight on Imperial Center, hauling broken air- and land-speeders to repair shops. Using a tractor beam and a simple remote-slave hookup, repair techs regularly flew speeders throughout the city. Using a speeder-ferry to haul a vehicle to the right area, then having someone fly it by remote into the building, was seen as a clean way to deliver the bombs. Since the remote-slave hookup was in common use by these sorts of vehicles, it couldn’t be jammed without causing dozens of legitimate disasters, so Loor knew their delivery method was safe from interference.

Contact detonators had been rigged in the various panels and bumpers on each vehicle. The explosives would be triggered when the detonators were compressed with the force of an airspeeder slamming into a building. While a head-on collision with another airspeeder at significant velocity could cause the bomb to go off, the chances of that happening were relatively small. Regardless, the amount of explosives packed into the vehicles meant that any explosion in the general vicinity of the target would do substantial damage and, if not destroy the store of bacta, at least make its distribution difficult.

The operative looked up at Loor expectantly. “When will we be given the signal to go?”

Loor looked at his wrist chronometer. “Rumor has it that Mon Mothma is going to announce the particulars of the bacta distribution plan approved by the Provisional Council in fourteen hours or so. I am debating whether we should use these vehicles to punctuate her speech, or let public anticipation build for a day or so before striking.”

Loor kept his tone light, as if the decision to be made was of little consequence. He preferred going off sooner rather than waiting, but he was fairly certain that Ysanne Isard would want him to wait. So far he had gotten no word
back from her on this plan—
or on any of my plans
. This meant the decision was truly up to him, but he knew it didn’t have to be made until an hour or two before the assault would take place.

The Intelligence agent frowned. “Contact me on a secure frequency three hours before the scheduled start of Mon Mothma’s speech. Assume the operation will go off during her speech. When you call me, I will either cancel the assault and reschedule, or let you go. If you do not reach me, you are on.”

“Very good, sir.” The operative waved a hand toward the airspeeders. “If you care to inspect our handiwork?”

Loor shook his head. “You have ever been efficient before, Captain. I see no reason to doubt your preparedness now.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course.” Loor smiled slowly. “And, speaking of efficiency, your people dealt with Nartlo, yes?”

“As you ordered, sir.”

“Excellent.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll have someone conduct you back now, sir.”

The operative waved another of his plainly clothed men over and Loor followed that operative out through another exit from the underground bunker. Loor found this route less odious, and the use of a series of turbolifts meant it took less time to get back into more hospitable regions of the city. After taking leave of the operative, Loor worked his way up and through the city. He constantly checked his surroundings and back-trail for sign of pursuit, but found none.

The prospect of destroying the Rebels’ bacta supply pleased him, but not for the reasons most Rebels would ascribe to him. He took no delight in the fact that the destruction of the bacta would cause the deaths of millions, even billions. As odd as it seemed, even to him, their lives meant nothing. Since he did not know them, they were numbers, and Kirtan Loor had never been one to be terribly emotional about numbers.

Destroying the bacta would be a victory in the war he
was waging against the Rebellion. He and his people were outnumbered, out-gunned, and under-resourced, but they were winning. So far they had struck when and where they wished. Just the fact that they were able to assemble an armada of bombs on Imperial Center without detection was a triumph in their battle against General Cracken and his forces.

Oddly enough, Loor realized that he was playing a game to sudden death, and it was more likely to be his death than that of his foes. Still, he now understood the secret thrill that kept the Rebels going. They had been the insects repeatedly stinging the bumbling giant that was the Empire. Yes, the giant had swatted them and, in some cases, had hurt them badly, but it could never kill all of them. The defiance they showed the Empire now burned in his veins, and while it did not make him think he was immortal or unstoppable, it did drive him with a desire to do more and more to torment his enemy.

He also knew that his efforts would not reestablish the Empire. That was not the goal Ysanne Isard had in mind when she set him up on Imperial Center as the leader of a pro-Palpatine movement. What he was doing would weaken the Rebellion and allow other forces to tear it apart. Whether those other forces included a warlord like Zsinj blasting his way into Imperial Center and taking it over, or the product of some other scheme Iceheart was undoubtedly planning, did not matter. Isard wanted to destroy the Rebellion, and that was the goal he intended to help her reach.