by Timothy Zahn
“That solar wind is going to be a real nuisance,” Bel Iblis commented as the third transport headed out. “We may want to consider going with larger dust particles on the next batch.”
“Or shifting operations to the night side,” Rieekan suggested. “That would at least cut back the effect—”
“Turbulence!” the sensor officer barked. “Vector one-one-seven—bearing four-nine-two.”
There was a mad scramble for the sensor console. At the very edge of the still-expanding second dust cloud a hazy orange line had appeared, marking the turbulence created by the invisible asteroid’s passage. “Get a track on it,” Drayson ordered. “Harrier, fire at will.”
On the visual, red lines lanced out as the Dreadnaught’s turbolasers began to sweep across the projected path. Leia watched the visual, hands gripping the sensor officer’s chair back … and suddenly, there it was: a misshapen lump of rock, drifting slowly across the stars.
“Cease fire,” Drayson ordered. “Well done, gentlemen. All right, Allegiant, it’s your turn. Get your tech crew out there—”
He broke off. On the visual, a mesh of thin lines had appeared crisscrossing the dark bulk of the asteroid. For a brief moment they flared brilliantly, then faded away.
“Belay that order, Allegiant,” Drayson growled. “Looks like the Grand Admiral doesn’t want anyone else getting a look at his little toys.”
“At least we found one of them,” Leia said. “That’s something.”
“Right,” Rieekan said dryly. “Leaves just under three hundred to go.”
Leia nodded again and started to turn away. This was going to take a while, and she might as well get back to Winter and Ghent—
“Collision!” the sensor officer snapped.
She twisted back. On the visual the third transport was spinning wildly off course, its stern crushed and on fire, its cargo of dust spraying out in all directions.
“Can you get a track?” Drayson demanded.
The officer’s hands were skating across his board. “Negative—insufficient data. All I can do is a probability cone.”
“I’ll take it,” Drayson said. “All ships: open fire. Full-pattern bombardment; target cone as indicated.”
The cone had appeared on the tactical, and from the distant fleet turbolaser fire began to appear. “Open the cone to fifty percent probability,” Drayson ordered. “Battle stations, you take the outer cone. I want that target found.”
The encouragement was unnecessary. The space above Coruscant had become a fire storm, with turbolaser blasts and proton torpedoes cutting through the marked probability cone. The target zone stretched and expanded as the computers calculated the invisible asteroid’s possible paths, the ships and battle stations shifting aim in response.
But there was nothing there … and after a few minutes Drayson finally conceded defeat.
“All units, cease fire,” he said, his voice tired. “There’s no more point. We’ve lost it.”
There didn’t seem to be anything else to be said. In silence they stood and watched as the crippled transport, far out of range of the fleet’s tractor beams, spun slowly toward the planetary shield and its impending death. Its crushed stern skimmed the shield, and the fire of burning drive gases was joined by the sharp blue-white edge of shattered atomic bonds. A muffled flash as the stern broke away—a brighter flash as the bow hit the shield—scatterings of dark debris against the flame as the hull began to break up—
And with a final spattering of diffuse fire it was gone.
Leia watched the last flickers fade away, running through her Jedi calming exercises and forcing the anger from her mind. Allowing herself the luxury of hating Thrawn for doing this to them would only fog her own intellect. Worse, such hatred would be a perilous step toward the dark side.
There was a breath of movement at her shoulder, and she turned to see Winter at her side. The other woman was gazing up at the visual, a look of ancient pain deep in her eyes. “It’s all right,” Leia assured her. “There wasn’t anyone aboard.”
“I know,” Winter murmured. “I was thinking about another transport I saw go down like that over Xyquine. A passenger transport …”
She took a deep breath, and Leia could see the conscious effort as she put her always-vivid past away from her. “I’d like to speak with you, Your Highness, whenever you’re finished here.”
Leia reached out past Winter’s carefully neutral expression and touched her sense. Whatever the news was, it wasn’t good. “I’ll come now,” she said.
They left the war room and circled back past the turbolifts to the service corridor and their secret decrypt room. And the news was indeed not good.
“This can’t be,” Leia said, shaking her head as she reread Ghent’s analysis. “We know there’s a leak in the Palace.”
“I’ve checked it backwards, forwards, and from the inside out,” Ghent said. “It comes up the same every time. Feed in everyone who heard and didn’t hear the stuff Delta Source sent out; feed in everyone who heard or didn’t hear the stuff Delta Source didn’t send out; and you come out with the same answer every time. A straight, flat zero.”
Leia keyed the data pad for a replay and watched as the list of names dwindled with each sifting until it was gone. “Then Delta Source has to be more than one person,” she said.
“I already ran that,” Ghent said, waving his hands helplessly. “It doesn’t work, either. You wind up having to have at least fifteen people. Your security here can’t be that bad.”
“Then he’s picking and choosing what he transmits. Sending some of what he hears but not all of it.”
Ghent scratched at his cheek. “I suppose that could be it,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t know, though. You look at some of the really stupid stuff he’s sent—I mean, there was one in that last transmission that was nothing but a couple of Arcona talking about what one of them was going to name her hatchlings. Either this guy doesn’t remember too good or else he’s got a really weird priority list.”
The door opened, and Leia turned as Bel Iblis stepped in. “I saw you leave,” the general said. “Have you found something?”
Wordlessly, Leia handed him the data pad. Bel Iblis glanced over it, then read it through more carefully. “Interesting,” he said at last. “Either the analysis is wrong, or Winter’s memory is starting to fail her … or Delta Source is onto us.”
“How do you figure that?” Leia asked.
“Because he’s clearly no longer transmitting everything he hears,” Bel Iblis said. “Something must have aroused his suspicions.”
Leia thought back to all those staged conversations. “No,” she said slowly. “I don’t believe it. I never picked up even a hint of malice or suspicion.”
Bel Iblis shrugged. “The alternative is to believe we have a whole spy nest here. Wait a minute, though—this isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. If we assume he didn’t catch on right away, we should still be able to use the data from the first two days to cut the suspect list down to a manageable number.”
Leia felt her stomach tighten. “Garm, we’re talking about over a hundred trusted members of the New Republic here. We can’t go around accusing that many people of treason. Councilor Fey’lya’s accusations against Admiral Ackbar were bad enough—this would be orders of magnitude worse.”
“I know that, Leia,” Bel Iblis said firmly. “But we can’t let the Empire continue to listen in on our secrets. Offer me an alternative and I’ll take it.”
Leia bit at her lip, her mind racing. “What about that comment you made on the way to the war room?” she asked. “You said you thought Delta Source might be nothing but an exotic recording system.”
“If it is, it’s somewhere in the Grand Corridor,” Winter said before Bel Iblis could answer. “That’s where all the conversations that were transmitted took place.”
“Are you sure?” Bel Iblis frowned.
“Absolutely,” Winter said. “Every one.”
&n
bsp; “That’s it, then,” Leia said, feeling the first stirrings of excitement. “Somehow, someone’s planted a recording system in the Grand Corridor.”
“Don’t get excited,” Bel Iblis cautioned. “I know it sounds good, but it’s not that easy. Microphone systems have certain well-defined characteristics, all of which are quite well known and can be readily picked up by a competent counterintelligence sweep.”
“Unless it goes dormant when counterintelligence comes by,” Ghent suggested. “I’ve seen systems that do that.”
Bel Iblis shook his head. “But then you’re talking something with at least minimal decision-making capabilities. Anything that close to droid-level intelligence would—”
“Hey!” Ghent interrupted excitedly. “That’s it. Delta Source isn’t a person—it’s a droid.”
Leia looked at Bel Iblis. “Is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” the general said slowly. “Implanting secondary espionage programming in a droid is certainly feasible. The problem is how to get that programming in past the Palace’s usual security procedures, and then avoiding the counterintelligence sweeps.”
“It would have to be a droid that has a good reason to hang around the Grand Corridor,” Leia said, trying to think it through. “But who can also leave without attracting notice whenever a sweep gets under way.”
“And given the sort of high-level traffic that passes through the Grand Corridor, those sweeps are pretty frequent,” Bel Iblis agreed. “Ghent, can you get into Security’s records and pull a list of sweep times over the past three or four days?”
“Sure,” the kid shrugged. “Probably take me a couple of hours, though. Unless you don’t care if they spot me.”
Bel Iblis looked at Leia. “What do you think?”
“We certainly don’t want him to get caught,” Leia said. “On the other hand, we don’t want to give Delta Source free rein of the Palace any longer than we have to.”
“Your Highness?” Winter asked. “Pardon me, but it seems to me that if the sweeps are that frequent, all we need to do is watch the Grand Corridor until one gets under way and then see which droids leave.”
“It’s worth a try,” Bel Iblis said. “Ghent, you get started on Security. Leia, Winter—let’s go.”
“They’re coming,” Winter’s voice came softly from the comlink nestled in Leia’s palm.
“You sure they’re Palace Security?” Bel Iblis’s voice said.
“Yes,” Winter said. “I’ve seen Colonel Bremen giving them orders. And they have droids and equipment with them.”
“Sounds like this is it,” Leia murmured, surreptitiously raising her hand near her mouth and hoping the three Kubaz sitting across the lounge/conversation ring from her wouldn’t notice the odd behavior. “Watch carefully.”
There were acknowledging murmurs from both of them. Lowering her hand back to her lap, Leia looked around. This was it, all right: possibly the clearest shot at Delta Source they were likely to get. With an Assemblage meeting just letting out and a Council meeting about to start, the Grand Corridor was crowded with high-ranking officials. With officials, their aides and assistants, and their droids.
On one level, Leia had always known how common droids were in the Imperial Palace. On another level, as she was rapidly coming to realize, she’d had no idea how many of them there actually were. There were quite a few 3PO protocol droids visible from where she sat, most of them accompanying groups of offworld diplomats but some also in the entourages of various Palace officials. Hovering over the crowd on repulsorlifts, a set of insectoid SPD maintenance droids were systematically cleaning the carvings and cut-glass windows that alternated along the walls. A line of MSE droids scuttled past along the far wall, delivering messages too complex for comm transmissions or too sensitive for direct data transfer and trying hard not to get stepped on. At the next of the greenish-purple ch’hala trees down the line, occasionally visible through the crowd, an MN-2E maintenance droid was carefully pruning away dead leaves.
Which one of them, she wondered, had the Empire turned into a spy?
“They’re starting,” Winter reported quietly. “Lining up across the Corridor—”
There was a sudden rustle of sound from the comlink, as if Winter had put her hand across the microphone. Another series of muffled sounds; and Leia was wondering if she should go and investigate when a man’s voice came on. “Councilor Organa Solo?”
“Yes,” she said cautiously. “Who is this?”
“Lieutenant Machel Kendy, Councilor,” he said. “Palace Security. Are you aware that a third person is tapping into your comlink signal?”
“It’s not a tap, Lieutenant,” Leia assured him. “We were holding a three-way discussion with General Bel Iblis.”
“I see,” Kendy said, sounding a little disappointed. Probably thought he’d stumbled onto Delta Source. “I’ll have to ask you to suspend your conversation for a few minutes, Councilor. We’re about to do a sweep of the Grand Corridor, and we can’t have stray comlink transmissions in the area.”
“I understand,” Leia said. “We’ll wait until you’re finished.”
She shut off the comlink and replaced it in her belt, her heart beginning to thud in her ears. Twisting casually around in her seat, she made sure she could see the entire end of the Grand Corridor. If there was an espionage droid present, he’d be shuffling this direction as soon as he noticed the sweep team coming from the other end.
Overhead, the hovering cleaning droids had been joined by a new set of SPDs, moving down the corridor as they methodically checked the upper walls and convoluted contours of the vaulted ceiling for any microphones or recording systems that might have somehow been planted there since the last sweep. Directly beneath them, Leia could see Lieutenant Kendy and his squad, walking through the milling diplomats in a militarily straight line stretched across the corridor and watching the displays of their shoulder-slung detectors. The line reached her lounge area, passed it, and continued without incident to the end of the corridor. There the squad waited, letting the SPD droids and a group of wall-hugging MSEs finish their part of the sweep and catch up. Re-formed again, the entire group disappeared down the hallway toward the Inner Council offices.
And that was that. The entire Grand Corridor had been swept, and had obviously come up negative … and not a single droid had scurried out ahead of the sweep.
Something off to the side caught her eye. But it was just the MN-2E maintenance droid she’d noticed earlier, rolling up to the ch’hala tree that sprouted out of the floor beside her conversation ring. Clucking softly to itself, the droid began poking delicate feelers through the branches, hunting for dead or dying leaves.
Dead or dying. Rather like their theory.
With a sigh, she pulled out her comlink. “Winter? Garm?”
“Here, Your Highness,” Winter’s voice came promptly.
“So am I,” Bel Iblis added. “What happened?”
Leia shook her head. “Absolutely nothing,” she told them. “As far as I could tell, none of the droids even twitched.”
There was a short pause. “I see,” Bel Iblis said at last. “Well … it may just be that our droid doesn’t happen to be here today. What we need to do is send Winter back to Ghent and have her add droids into the list.”
“What do you think, Winter?” Leia asked.
“I can try,” the other woman said hesitantly. “The problem will be identifying specific droids. Externally, one 3PO protocol droid looks basically like any other.”
“We’ll take whatever you can get,” Bel Iblis said. “It’s here, though, somewhere close by. I can feel it.”
Leia held her breath, stretching out with her Jedi senses. She didn’t have Bel Iblis’s fine-honed warrior’s intuition, nor did she have Luke’s far deeper Jedi skill. But she could sense it, too. Something about the Grand Corridor … “I think you’re right,” she told Bel Iblis. “Winter, you’d better head down and get busy on this.”
> “Certainly, Your Highness.”
“I’ll come with you, Winter,” Bel Iblis volunteered. “I want to see what’s happening with the Stardust plan.”
Leia shut off the comlink and leaned back in her seat, fatigue and discouragement seeping into her mind despite her best efforts to hold it back. It had seemed like such a good idea, using Ghent’s decrypt to try to identify Delta Source. But so far every lead had simply melted away from in front of them.
And time was running out. Even if they were able to keep Ghent’s work a secret—which was by no means certain—each of these failed gambits simply brought them closer to the inevitable day when Delta Source would finally notice all the activity and shut down. And when that happened, their last chance to identify the Imperial spy in their midst would be gone.
And that would be a disaster. Not because of the leak itself—Imperial Intelligence had been stealing information since the Rebel Alliance was first formed, and they’d managed to live through it. What was infinitely more dangerous to the New Republic was the deepening aura of suspicion and distrust that Delta Sources mere existence had already spread through the Palace. Councilor Fey’lya’s discredited accusations against Admiral Ackbar had already shown what such distrust could do to the delicate multispecies coalition that made up the New Republic. If that leadership was found to contain a genuine Imperial agent …
Across the conversation ring the three Kubaz got to their feet and headed away, circling around behind the ch’hala tree and the MN-2E droid working alongside it and disappearing into the traffic flow down the corridor. Leia found herself staring at the droid, watching as it eased a manipulator arm carefully through the branches toward a small cluster of dead leaves, clucking softly to itself all the while. She’d had a brief run-in with an Imperial espionage droid on the Noghri home planet of Honoghr, a run-in which could have spelled disaster for her and genocide for the remnants of the Noghri race. If Bel Iblis was right—if Delta Source was, in fact, merely a droid and not a traitor …
But it didn’t really help. The Empire simply could not have infiltrated an espionage droid into the Palace without the collaboration of one or more of the beings here. Security invariably did a complete screening of every droid that came into the Palace, whether on a permanent or temporary basis, and they knew exactly what to look for. Hidden secondary espionage programming would show up like a burst of pale red against the subtle background pattern on that ch’hala tree—
