Mercy Kil

by Aaron Allston

  “That’s not a good answer.”

  “It’s all you’re getting. Now, you said something about what’s really been bothering you.”

  Voort turned his head to stare at the blank wall opposite him. “I’ve been thinking about the Starhook and the other ships showing up with nothing but capturing us on their mind. I’ve been thinking about it during our whole time on Tatooine and the trip back. We’ve been talking as if Thaal’s decision to send that command to get us was the action of an innocent man, or at least had that appearance. Now I say it didn’t. Thaal’s decision was that of a guilty man trying to appear incompetent. It means he’s guilty. And I hope he puts up a fight when we come for him, so I can vape him myself.”

  Bhindi seemed to welcome this chance not to think about Face. “What’s your reasoning? I don’t follow.”

  They were interrupted by a metallic screech from overhead—the distinctive sound of their sanisteam stall’s malfunctioning compressor being activated.

  Voort waited a few moments until the sound subsided. He scratched his cheek and his tone turned thoughtful. “Thaal did not act as a good senior officer should unless there are some odd influences at work. An offer made by an officer of a distant power to a major political force of the Alliance should pique the interest of anyone whose job is rooting out enemy spies. Meaning Galactic Alliance Security. If Thaal had reported the attempt to suborn him along official channels, it would have gone straight to General Maddeus. And I have a hard time imagining that Maddeus wouldn’t have put Thaal on a ship, sent him out to meet Hocroft, and had him play along. To give security more information about the effort to flip him. So Maddeus wasn’t notified. What happened instead was the most awkward and ineffective ‘innocent’ response possible. For it to have happened, Thaal had to have bypassed security completely. He had to have gone to an ambitious friend or acquaintance in another service and said, ‘You want to stay on the fast track to promotion? Here’s a spymaster you can catch.’ ”

  Scut’s smiling human face frowned, an odd study in contrasts. “Which he would do only if he is stupid, or a really bad tactician—”

  Bhindi nodded. “Which we know he isn’t.”

  “—or because he wanted to make a big public show of being innocent, and is not worried about the harm the stupid tag might do to his reputation.” Scut looked thoughtful.

  “It’s the last part that I find especially unlikely. If Thaal doesn’t mind people thinking he’s stupid—especially with a new Chief of State in office!—then he doesn’t care if he remains Chief of the Army. An ambitious officer who gets to the very top rung of his profession and then doesn’t care if he stays there.”

  Bhindi caught the eye of each of the others in turn, Voort excepted. “That’s today’s lesson, children, except it’s from Math Boy instead of me. Be sure how smart your mark is. Be sure what his tactics should be. Then, when he deviates from them, you know you’re on to something.”

  Scut reached up to pull off his neoglith masquer. “Sorry. I have to scratch.” He did, furiously scratching behind one ear. “But I see. The general does not care about being thought stupid, does not care about offending Maddeus of security by bypassing him, because he has no interest in protecting his current position. Because he knows he is leaving it. Leaving it for his new identity.”

  “Thank you, Voort.” Bhindi sounded thoughtful. “This makes me feel a lot better. We didn’t lose the Concussor for nothing. We lost it to confirm, in a way that is inadmissible in court but I’m happy with, that Thaal is guilty. He’s our man.”

  “I have some good news, too.” Myri tried to put on a hopeful expression. “It came up while you were in transit.”

  Bhindi brightened. “Show me.”

  Myri sat down beside Bhindi at the computer, brought up a planetary map, and began scrolling westward from Ackbar City.

  Trey moved around behind her. “We really need a holoprojector. One, can I buy one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great! Ummm ... we need a mansion?”

  “No.”

  Myri’s scrolling and zooming filled the monitor screen with an ever-closer satellite map view of foothills graduating to mountains at the bottom of the screen, a village in the lower right corner, an irregular oval-shaped patch of what looked like indigenous scrub foliage dominating the left side, and grain fields everywhere else. “I also have a lot more information about procedures and schedules at the army base. And by the way, Pop-Dogs are much more grabby than normal soldiers, and I suspect there’s a warrant out for my arrest—well, me with white hair and dark skin—but none of that may be relevant anymore. The good news is that two more of Trey’s battery droids went active ... and one of them is nowhere near Fey’lya Army Base.” She pointed at the monitor screen, toward the top of the natural-landscape oval. Under her fingernail was a small black square. “Last night, the new droid started transmitting from here. Right at that square.”

  Bhindi leaned closer to peer. “What’s there?”

  “The Javat Caridan Environment and the Javat Caridan Children’s Animal Habitat. It’s a preserve for endangered animal species—endangered because they’re from Carida and most were wiped out when that system was destroyed. Just after the Yuuzhan Vong War, one of the original Pop-Dogs, Captain Jam Javat, bought this property and turned it into a preserve. He retired a major a few years back and moved out of the Coruscant system. The property operates under a trust now. No business relationship at all to General Thaal, in theory. Anyway, over the years Javat assembled breeding populations of several Caridan species, including real pop-dogs, and let them adapt.”

  Voort moved to stand by Trey. “No business relation to Thaal.”

  “None. So it doesn’t show up on any searches of Thaal’s business connections anywhere. He’s never even contributed to the charity fund that operates it.” Myri hit a few keys. Abruptly there was a design superimposed on the map, a wire frame representing some sort of structure, narrow, a few hundred meters in length. “Parasite Droid Twelve sent us a few floor-level views of a dark bunk room with army-style beds and no occupants. Apparently the only droid it’s managed to subvert runs on nonvisual sensors, so I don’t have any pictures from it to offer you. Just distance measurements from its movements, which I’ve turned into this schematic. This is a subterranean complex, ranging from one to four vertical levels depending on where you are, with working turbolifts, including one to the surface. Right where that black square is. At maximum magnification, the square looks like an old equipment barn, a good-sized one.” She pointed to a white square at the top of the property. “That’s the children’s habitat. Not that they keep children there. Children visit to pet the pop-dogs and the dwarf banthas, and to learn about the bluehair spiders and walking cephalopods.”

  Bhindi stared off into the distance, past the walls. “Fruit crates.”

  Turman glanced at Scut. “I’ll admit it: I did not know she was going to say that.”

  “I, either.”

  Bhindi snapped back to reality. “Trey, new shopping list.”

  Trey scrambled to bring out his datapad and opened it. “Recording.”

  “We need a big load, several bushels, of fruit in crates. Local produce. Some carpentry tools and some heavy-duty flexiplast sheeting. Rope. Small winches capable of hauling any of us up or down. Ambience suits for all of us, but don’t be surprised if you can’t get one for Voort, even from Coruscant. An ambience shroud. Make sure everyone has a blaster pistol and a vibroblade. Macro-binoculars or goggles with night-sight functions. Packs and gear belts in black.” She thought it over. “Various types of detonators, and lots and lots of explosives. Estimates?”

  Trey thought it over. “Two days.”

  “Get started. Take all the boys with you. You can sanisteam when you get back.” She gave them a little shooing gesture.

  Scut pulled his mask back on, and the men left.

  Overhead, the sanisteam screeched as it was shut off.

  Bhin
di returned her attention to Myri. “I don’t know how close they actually are, but Jesmin’s known Face all her life.”

  Myri nodded. “He’s basically an uncle to her. Not so much to her brother Doran. Jezzie and Doran weren’t raised that much together.”

  “And Jesmin’s known you a long time. I don’t normally ask this sort of thing ... but would you tell her? About Face?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Suddenly Myri began experiencing that sinking feeling again, worse than before.

  It was not a thing of beauty, the wooden framework Trey and Turman built atop the cargo bed of their landspeeder, but it would do the job.

  It started with Vandor-3 yellow spotmelons. The spotmelons filled numerous wooden crates, which the carpenters fitted to a wooden rack affixed with quick-release bolts to the upper rim of the speeder bed. The crates covered the rack’s top so that it looked as though the bed was loaded with them, but the space beneath the rack was open, with a layer of insulating foam laid in place for the comfort of passengers there. When it was done, the landspeeder looked like many such vehicles destined for a growers’ market. But the space beneath the rack was large enough to comfortably hold four normal-sized humans.

  Voort studied the design, then went inside to talk to Bhindi. “Three in the cab and four in the bed, then.”

  She sat in the midst of a riot of purchases, doing a quick check on the battery packs supplied with the ambience suits. She smiled up at him. “Yes.”

  “We’re taking all seven of us on this operation.”

  “Again, yes.”

  “Shouldn’t this be a one-or-two-Wraith job? Minimum presence, maximum speed?”

  She shook her head. “Maximum mutual support.”

  “Which makes sense if we know the environment we’re going into, or know that it’s going to be a firefight. If we take seven operatives in, we’re more likely to be detected.”

  Her expression became thoughtful, as if Voort were imparting wisdom. “In which case we know there’s going to be a firefight.”

  “Bhindi—”

  “That was a joke, Voort. But you’re partly right. You’ll remain with the speeder. You’ll be the armored cavalry if things go bad. Scut will stay topside, too, since he has no insertion skills to speak of.”

  “Leaving five going in. Still twice as many as we want for an initial reconnaissance.”

  “I know it’s not the way we used to do it.” She returned her attention to the power packs. “Things change, Voort.”

  The next afternoon, they loaded up—Bhindi, Turman, and Voort in the pilot’s compartment, the rest reclining in the bed—and the Wraiths began the long haul to the village of Kreedle, the community nearest the mystery installation. They arrived just before nightfall, Vandor’s setting sun casting and then lengthening the shadows of the mountain foothills south of them. In the landing area of a wooden general store shaped like a truncated cone, Voort and Bhindi stretched their legs while Turman went in to shop for refreshments and snoop for information.

  A crate of spotmelons spoke up. “Leader, I need to go to the refresher.” The crate had Trey’s voice.

  Bhindi grinned. “Not here. We’ll be back in the air in a few minutes and we’ll find you a tree. Are you finding anything in local news or tourism archives?”

  The spotmelon’s voice became deeper, smoother—Turman’s announcer voice. “ ‘The most famous sites in Kreedle Precinct are Sachet Springs, a popular water park known for its natural beauty, water-sport facilities, and campsites; the Javat Caridan Environment and the Javat Caridan Children’s Animal Habitat, a preserve for endangered Caridan species, with a petting area for children’—it says something here about not petting the bluehair spiders, because though they are not aggressive their hair-bristles conduct a rash-inducing toxin—and ‘Mount Lyss Meteorological Station, a long-abandoned government facility used during the Yuuzhan Vong War as a hideout by freedom fighters.’ Tours apparently not available, as the place was abandoned again after the war and is in an ongoing state of decay.”

  Another crate of melons, this one with Myri’s voice, spoke up. “I say we bag the mission and go to the water park.” There was a general murmur of agreement from the rest of the crates.

  “Good try, Three, you almost convinced me.” Then Bhindi frowned. “How do they keep the toxic spiders from spreading all over Vandor-Three?”

  Voort heard key clicks from under the crates, and then Trey answered. “A series of three one-meter-high perimeter barriers that transmit low-intensity tones, supersonic and subsonic, that send the spiders and other nonindigenous species into retreat.”

  Bhindi laughed. “That’ll be where their perimeter sensors will be, as well.”

  Turman returned, with no new information except that the locals seemed to be suspicious only of people who spent no money at the store. He carried two bags of refreshments, one for the passengers in the pilot’s compartment and one for those in the bed. Then the Wraiths boarded the speeder once again and lifted off.

  The route to the Javat Caridan habitat was marked by a paved ground-vehicle road used by heavy haulers taking crops to processor plants or market. Trey’s downloaded data showed that the road went all the way to the children’s animal habitat and beyond. When the Wraiths, traveling just above that road, came within a few kilometers of the preserve, sturdy, low Vandor-3 scrub trees bordered the road, blocking ground-level views of the preserve all the way to the children’s habitat building.

  Darkness had fallen by the time they reached the preserve. Two hundred meters from the children’s animal habitat, Voort could still not see it ahead; the road curved, blocking his view.

  At the speeder’s controls, Turman brought the vehicle to a slow landing off the pavement, as close to the scrub trees as was feasible. Voort, out first, retried the ambience shroud from the very back of the speeder bed.

  The shroud looked like a green awning of thick flexible material, a telescoping pole at each of its four corners. Hastily, Voort situated each pole just beyond a corner of the speeder and triggered a button at the pole’s bottom. Each trigger deployed a spike that punched its way into the ground, giving it an instant, firm foundation in the soil. In moments the awning’s cloth top was taut, waving slightly in the mild summer breeze.

  Voort activated the power pack nestled against the awning’s underside. In moments it would compensate for heat rising from organisms and vehicle engines beneath it, making it difficult for infrared sensors in satellites and airspeeders to detect the speeder.

  Voort wrote a note in big letters on a sheet of flimsi—REPULSORS FAILED, RETURNING ON FOOT TO KREEDLE, PLEASE DON’T STEAL OUR MELONS—and affixed it to the front window. Meanwhile, the other Wraiths struggled into their ambience suits. Made of black elastic cloth a centimeter thick, the suits operated on the same principle as the ambience shroud. A web of temperature sensors throughout the suits sent data on interior and exterior temperatures to a tiny processor. The processor adjusted the power sent to thousands of fluid-filled capillaries embedded in the material, cooling or heating different areas in turn. The result was a material that cooled its wearer’s skin and maintained its own external surface at the temperature of the surrounding air—again, making the wearer almost invisible to infrared holocams. The suits included long-sleeved body stockings stretching from neck to ankle, gloves, shoes, and hoods that bared only the wearer’s eyes.

  In minutes they stood ready as a unit. Scut carried a blaster rifle; the others wore holstered blaster pistols. All had black packs. Others had tools of individual preference clipped to belts: glow rods, pouches, vibroblades, comlinks.

  Bhindi turned back to Voort. “If you hear alarms go off, don’t wait for us to signal. Come roaring in, purge anyone shooting at us, and get us out of the danger zone.”

  Voort nodded. “Sure you don’t want to reconsider?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Once the black-clad Wraiths had vanished into the line of scrub trees, Voort took his blaster rif
le and walked a few dozen meters into the trees. He sat down to wait.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Wraiths waited in a little hollow, a depression in the ground twenty meters from the outermost sensor ring.

  A few hundred meters north, by the ground-vehicle road, was the children’s building, a low, long yellow structure with glow rods up on poles all around it. A paved landing zone surrounded the building, with a few landspeeders parked on it. Lights glowed behind curtains in the viewports, but there were no people to be seen around the building. The Wraiths had looked over the building from a distance for a few minutes, then had moved on to this location.

  A few hundred meters to the south lay the building that was supposed to be the surface access for the mystery installation below. Myri stayed at the depression’s upper rim, her macro-binoculars trained on the building. She had a good view of it. Square-shaped, it was constructed along the lines of corrugated sheet-metal businesses in Ackbar City. In her macrobinoculars’ infrared filter, the building was a sieve for internal heat. Warm air poured out of a number of gaps and seams all along the angled metal roof, from a tall rolling door on the east face, from various vents, and from what looked like popped rivets along the north and east facings.

  Myri set down her macrobinoculars and slid a couple of meters down into the depression, joining Scut, Turman, and Bhindi. “It doesn’t match the satellite view.”

  Bhindi pulled at the eye opening of her hood and peeled the hood off her face, exposing her features and giving herself some fresh air. “What do you mean?”

  “The whole place is bigger than that image shows, at least thirty meters on a side and ten high. And it’s surrounded by a permacrete lot. None of that’s on the satellite image.”

  “Meaning ...” Bhindi pondered that. “Meaning they have to have sliced a constant image into what the satellites see—either an old scan or a computer-generated image. I’ll bet Four would call that some tricky coding. Speaking of Four ...”