“He never … I mean, of all of us, he seemed the least trusting of Fars. Fars didn’t want to do this. I wonder if Dyat and Acer knew—”
“It doesn’t matter, Sheel. He’s burned his bridges. Abandoned the mag-lev line. To me that suggests that he’s set things in motion already.”
Sheel gasped. “Oh, spirits of fire and air! What do we do?”
“You go home and wait for me to contact you. I’m going try to salvage this—if I can.”
He took to the upper levels of traffic then, running with his avoidance system and chase lights on and making for the Western Sea. In the gray of twilight, he emerged from between the two last sky-scraping resiblocks and saw the shoreline neighborhoods laid out before him. Here, only the most elite of the elite owned businesses or homes, and the buildings were strictly limited in height. So he knew even as he left the shadow of the towering resiblocks that something dire was unfolding along the shore in the Golden Crescent.
Fire reflected in the waters of the sea, scattering rubies and topazes across its choppy surface. Smoke billowed above the jetty of the Emperor’s villa, but the villa itself seemed intact. There were ground troops in black uniforms and white-sheathed stormtroopers everywhere. The air was alive with military craft, while out on the water, Imperial launches and patrol vessels formed a barrier against the escape of a group of struggling figures they had trapped against the burning jetty.
He drew closer, falling in with a line of other constabulary vehicles that seemed, like his, to be arriving late to the party. One after another, they were stopped by ISB aircars and turned away. When it was his turn to be checked, he showed his ident to the security officer.
“Prefect Haus? You’re from a neighboring prefecture, aren’t you?”
Haus nodded. “I was pursuing a lead on a smuggling ring that caters to the rich and famous. Looks like you’ve got your hands full here. More than smuggling by the look of it.”
“Rebels, sir. A plot against the Emperor, himself, I’ve heard. Not that I hear much. I’m just directing traffic.” The young officer looked apologetic. “I’ll have to ask you to move along now, Prefect.”
“Sure … sure.” Haus gave the security officer an amicable nod and took his aircar up and about, circling just low enough to be able to see the plaza in front of the Emperor’s villa. Stormtroopers patrolled there, standing guard over a group of bodies laid out on the stones before an elaborate fountain. The vidcam could capture what the naked eye could not; Haus made a slow turn, his vidcam trained first on the bodies, then on the jetty.
He knew, even as he flew away, that one of the bodies in the courtyard was a Sakiyan. And he had recognized several others who’d thrown their lives into Tuden Sal’s plan. In his blind quest for revenge, Sal had wiped out the remainder of Whiplash’s guiding council and a number of its technically adept operatives. The fortunes of the resistance on Coruscant were fading with the smoke from the Emperor’s jetty.
There was a sudden flurry of activity in the courtyard that Haus was now watching through his rear vidcam. A figure had stepped out into the walled enclosure to which every other person alive paid instant obeisance.
Darth Vader—as ever, at the center of it all.
Thirty
The Laranth/Corsair made Toprawa three days after leaving Mandalore. In the dark of the local night, she disappeared into the back door of Mountain Home, her crew met on the landing platform by a welcoming committee that included Degan Cor, Sacha Swiftbird, and the little Rodian mech-tech, Geri.
Jax held his thoughts and emotions close and schooled his face to reveal nothing of the turmoil going on within. Regardless, Degan Cor took one look at him and apparently knew something was wrong.
“I take it things didn’t go very smoothly on Mandalore,” the resistance leader said as Jax stepped off the loading ramp.
“No. Not at all smoothly. We know where Yimmon is, but as far as how we get to him … we’re back to square one.”
“Back?” Sacha Swiftbird glanced from Jax to Den, who had come down the ramp behind him. “Then you tried to get to him?”
“We … I was poised to do that. Thought I had found a way of doing that. But the plans … went up in smoke.”
Den uttered a short bark of laughter, then coughed apologetically. “Sorry. That was inappropriate.”
I-Five reached the bottom of the ramp at that moment, still in his patchwork I-5YQ/Nemesis persona. Standing on mismatched legs—his single I-5YQ limb paired with a unit cobbled from a 3PO-series droid that had seen better days, he had his pit droid chassis tucked under one arm. Geri let out a squawk and squeezed through between the two human Rangers.
“Wow, Five! You look … really awful.”
“Thank you. Perhaps instead of criticizing, you might suggest further modifications?”
“Oh, uh, sure.” He glanced up at Degan Cor. “After you guys—y’know—have your war council, why don’t you come on up to the shop?”
“Perhaps we could go now. I would rather not carry this—” I-Five hefted the pit droid. “—around indefinitely.”
Geri nodded. “Sure. C’mon up.”
Den and I-Five both moved to follow the Rodian into the core of Mountain Home. Jax was glad to see them go. It took too much effort to be with them right now. His head was full of dark, woolly thoughts trying to claw their way toward some glint of light; he had neither the words to describe them nor the desire to explore them.
He moved automatically into step with the two resistance operatives, aware of their intense regard. Degan hurried to the communications center to summon Aren Folee, who was currently away in Big Woolly. That left Sacha to guide Jax to the council chambers.
“You look pretty rough,” the engineer commented as they moved through the corridors beneath the mountain. When he didn’t reply, she went on, “Look, just knowing where they’re holding Yimmon is a big deal. It’s a victory and you know it. We’ll put a team together. We’ll go back and we’ll get Yimmon out.”
Jax almost smiled. Here he was—a Jedi Knight—and a washed-up Podracer was trying to cheer him on. “It’s not quite that simple,” he said. “You’ll understand when we go over the data. Kantaros is … a closed system.”
“Yeah. But it’s a system. Any system can be cracked, sliced, and screwed up royally.”
He turned to look at her. She was in deadly earnest.
“Could you do it without anyone being the wiser?”
“For a while.” She shook back her hair, revealing the silvery scar that bisected her left eyelid.
Jax looked away.
“Want some caf or shig?” she asked as they entered the informal council chamber. “You look like you could use something bracing.”
“Thank you. Shig, please.”
Jax sat down in one of the formchairs, tilted his head back, and considered what Sacha had said.
Any system can be cracked.
That was true enough, and his flirtation with Black Sun hadn’t been entirely a loss. He now knew that Black Sun had regular dealings with the crew at Kantaros and that Xizor’s ships docked there without issue. That gave them an “in.” With I-Five’s talents and the selection of ships available here in Mountain Home, they might credibly pass as a Black Sun runner.
Jax smiled wryly at the thought that Xizor might end up being connected to Yimmon’s rescue whether he liked it or not.
“Here.”
He opened his eyes to find Sacha holding out a cup of steaming liquid to him. He took it, thanked her, then said, “Let’s assume we can arrange to dock at Kantaros Station and I can pinpoint where Yimmon is in the complex. It’s a big complex—built into a good-sized asteroid. If we get in the way I’m thinking, we’d be restricted to the docking bays pretty much—maybe allowed onto the crew’s levels. How would you propose we go places we’re not supposed to without drawing attention?”
She sat down next to him, a cup of shig in her hands. “Misdirection and selective slicing. You don’t defeat sy
stems you don’t need to defeat. Take surveillance cams—you can cause those to develop hiccups with the right energy pulses. If you only mess with one or two cams at a time, it’s hard to pick up.” She shrugged. “Of course, you could also make the cam think it’s seeing something it’s not.”
“An empty corridor.”
“Yeah. Or a corridor with someone in it who’s actually supposed to be there.” She paused to sip her drink. “You could tell it that it saw intruders—but not where the intruders actually were. Of course, you’d need to plan something like that carefully. Takes time.”
“Which we don’t have a lot of.”
“Yeah. Your droid could probably pull off a simple looping effect … or I could.”
Jax ignored the woman’s obvious bid to be included, then looked up as the door of the chamber slid back to admit I-Five and Den. Degan Cor arrived practically on their heels with a look on his face that brought Jax to his feet.
“What?” Sacha asked. “Deg, what is it?”
He shook his head, made a gesture that was eloquent of impotence and frustration. “While I was in the communications bay, we got an urgent message from Coruscant. Whiplash … Whiplash has been shattered. There was a botched attempt on the Emperor’s life. Apparently, the Imperials were ready for it. They wiped out … dozens. Dozens of operatives and most of the leading council.”
Jax felt as if someone had set off a stun grenade in the room. His lips tried to form words, but failed.
I-Five had no such problem. “Who sent the message?”
“Guy who called himself ‘the Constable.’ He said he didn’t know how many dead there were, and that, as far as he knew, he and someone he called ‘the Poet’ were the only members of the Whiplash Council left alive. He said … Vader was there.”
Den Dhur sat down on the floor—hard.
“Pol Haus,” murmured Jax. “And Sheel Mafeen.”
Whiplash was effectively gone. Dead.
Why?
And who had started this chain of events? Who had tipped Darth Vader off to Yimmon’s move in the first place? Had it been Pol Haus?
“Lord Vader will turn his attention to other resistance hubs now that he’s crushed Whiplash,” said I-Five. “He’ll try even harder to squeeze intel out of Yimmon.”
“Yimmon knows about the cell here on Toprawa,” Jax said. “And the one on Dantooine. We have to get him off that station.”
Degan nodded. “I’ll have the communications crew try to get us more information about the situation on Coruscant. We need to know what Vader is doing, where he’s going …”
“I need sleep,” Jax said.
That drew silence. Then Degan Cor nodded. “Yeah. You’re probably right. Trying to plan something in the middle of the night is not a great idea. Let’s grab a couple of hours of rest and come at this fresh in the morning.”
They withdrew, then, to their quarters, but Jax had no intention of sleeping. He waited until the others had been bedded down for close to an hour before he retraced his steps to the great cavern and went aboard the Laranth long enough to pick up his kit and consign Kantaros Station’s last position to a data crystal. Then he found his way to the Jedi starfighter. It had been completely stripped of paint since he’d seen it last and was now a uniformly satiny silver, though he could still see the telltale signs of its last firefight on the port bow.
A nudge with the Force caused the ship to drop its landing ramp and turn on its interior lights.
Jax stepped up onto the ramp, then took a look back at the cavern. A pair of night-duty mech-techs watched him with uncertainty rippling between them. He waved at them, smiled, and went aboard the sleek, bladelike ship. He had no idea what they did once he’d fired up the engines and lifted away from the landing pad. His mind had already leapt ahead to where he would go once he had escaped Toprawa’s atmosphere.
Thirty-One
Pol Haus watched the forensics team work their way over the blast area, picking up and bagging bits of debris, sweeping the twisted wreckage of the train car with sensitive scanners. Certain that the team was focused on the task at hand, Haus turned and walked down the tunnel, firing up a small, wide-area hand lamp as soon as he got out of sight.
Ostensibly, he was heading to see if any debris had been flung farther from the bomb blast. His real intent was to discover where Tuden Sal had hidden the rest of the Whiplash hovertrain. It was probably a vain hope that he had secreted it anywhere near the site of his parting shot of sabotage, but then Sal had a perverse way of doing the unexpected.
The durasteel surface of the old subway was still relatively smooth, though it was dull in places from the lack of maintenance. As he went, Haus tried to walk through Sal’s thought process on where to hide the train. He might have chosen to put it within walking distance of any of the abandoned terminals they used, or even hide it close to the old freighter landing pad that was part of the larger Whiplash Underground Mag-Lev escape system they used to get people offworld.
He might have done that, but it made more sense to the prefect—in a twisted sort of way—for the Sakiyan to have hidden the cars where most authorities would be least likely to look for them. And that might just be near the scene of a police investigation.
He had walked for perhaps two hundred meters and was considering turning around and going back when he noticed that the beam of his lamp was reflecting strangely off the curving wall of the tube—there was a definite, if diffuse, bright spot just where the right-hand wall curved out of sight, as if the light were reflecting off a surface other than the left-hand wall.
Haus took a deep breath and moved forward again. For a moment, he thought he heard another set of footsteps behind him in the tunnel. He halted to listen.
Nothing. The tube breathed, the chill air moving listlessly. That was normal. Beyond that, all Haus could hear was the faint, intermittent hum of the forensics team’s voices far behind him.
He shook off the tingle of paranoia and moved forward again, clamping down on his imagination. Who’d follow him down here without calling for him? Refocusing on the tunnel ahead, he rounded the curve.
Powered down, the hovertrain lay cradled in the floor of the tube; no light peeped from the horizontal slits that served as windows on the outside world. Haus approached it carefully nonetheless, drawing his blaster. Theoretically, any Whiplash members who might be hiding here were his allies. But he knew how often theories failed.
He rounded the premier car, raising a hand to its sleek surface. There was no hint of vibration—the train’s power was off.
At the door, he hesitated. Was this yet another booby trap? He returned his blaster to its holster and pulled out a scanner. If the train was generating even the tiniest amount of electric or electromagnetic signal, the scanner would detect it … theoretically.
It detected nothing.
With a wry grin, Pol Haus moved to the forward portal, pocketed the scanner, and got out a device that was—to the police and emergency services personnel among whom it was a closely guarded secret—a literal lifesaver. Casually known as “the hostage’s best friend,” the electromagnetic manipulator and phantom power unit allowed defunct mechanisms—such as dead doors—to be operated even if their power supply was completely drained or had been destroyed. It virtually eliminated the need to blow doors in with firepower, or force them open manually.
Naturally, the units were greatly in demand on the black market by people who made their living at the dubious art of breaking and entering.
Haus pressed the palm-sized device to the side of the train car just to the left of the irising portal, activated its sensors, and moved it slowly around the perimeter. It vibrated gently when it found the locking mechanism. He activated the magnetic clamp, pressed the activation button to start the power flow, and turned the device clockwise. Then he leapt aside, hunkering down low on the train’s curving flank.
The door’s lock vibrated in response, and the iris opened.
No big bang.
“So far, so good,” Haus muttered, and swept his lamp’s golden beam into the darkness of the car.
Nothing twitched. He swapped the EM unit for his blaster and stepped up into the train. He scanned the interior for life-forms and found none. He swept it visually, as well—one could only trust machines so far.
Assured that no one was hiding in the first car, he made his way to the car in which the Whiplash leadership had held council. It was spooky and more than a little sad.
Haus shook his head. He had only just been accepted into the group, and it was now effectively dead. Sure, there were still cells of resistance—still souls dedicated to helping asylum-seekers offworld. But there was no one directing traffic. No one to keep the avenues of escape open.
Directing traffic. He smiled grimly. Sounded like a good detail for a police prefect.
He found himself standing at the communications console and wondered what it would take to power it up. There would be a redundant power supply, of course; it was just a question of activating it. And if he did—what then?
The big boom?
No. This was Sal’s backup plan. His bolt-hole. He’d expected to return to it. But wouldn’t he have left someone on the train, just in case?
A stealthy sound from the next car made Haus’s hair stand on end. That was not his imagination.
Shielding his lamp in the pocket of his coat, he glided to the intersecting door between the two cars. The doorway was open into darkness. He paused in the short transitional corridor to listen again. From there he could see that the door to Tuden Sal’s quarters was also open.
He moved with all the stealth he could muster, cursing—not for the first time—the long-coat that swirled around his legs. He really ought to consider giving up that affectation. One of these days it was going to get him killed.
He made the entrance to Sal’s quarters and paused to listen again.
Complete silence.
No … not complete. He could hear someone breathing, and he was convinced whoever it was knew he was there. A frisson of unease hit him as he detected a new sound—a stealthy sound—from the conference room in the car he’d just left. He turned, pressing his back against the bulkhead, and palmed his lamp. He focused all his senses on the cabin and thrust the lamp into the empty doorway so that it illuminated the room beyond.
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