up his decorations with a cross expression on his craggy face. "And
you can't know if it will fool them."
"What Wialu is offering us is no 'trick,' "Luke said with studied
patience. "Her instrumentality is older than the technology of that
blaster you wear, and more powerful. But it's more difficult--it takes
a life commitment, not just a squeeze of the trigger."
"Perhaps she could tell us more about how it works," said Mauit'ta.
Luke turned away, raising his hands in the air in disgust and
frustration.
"Reflection," said Wialu, "from the surface of the Current."
"I'm afraid that's not very useful to me," said A'baht as Luke turned
back. "You must realize that you're asking us to mount a major
military operation around something we've never experienced. Would it
be possible to have a demonstration?"
Luke expected Wialu to refuse that imposition, but she surprised him.
"You are asking me to create a major projection of something I have
never experienced," she said. "It seems it would be to the good of all
if you would demonstrate first, and then you can judge my practice."
A'baht glanced at Corgan. "Colonel?"
"Well, there are about twenty ships from the Fourth due to join us
in"--he glanced at his chrono--"about half an hour. Would that do?"
"I would like to be as close to the phenomenon as possible," said
Wialu.
"There's an observation bubble on the maintenance rover," Marano
offered. "I think we can probably squeeze the seven of us in there.
If you don't object to the presence of skeptics, that is--" "Your
beliefs are irrelevant to me," Wialu said. "I am empowered by mine."
When the rover had reached the fifty-kilometer boundary of the arriving
task force's jump target, General Etahn A'baht tapped the driver on the
shoulder from behind.
"That's close enough, son," said A'baht. "And drop us a few kilometers
below the entry track. I don't wish to have the command staff erased
by a navigational error."
"I'm more worried about being erased by an error of enthusiasm by some
gunnery lieutenant," said Cor-gan.
"Those ships are jumping into a hot zone, and they're not going to be
expecting us to be sitting here waiting for them."
"Akanah will address that," said Wialu. "The ships will not see us."
"What do you mean?" asked A'baht.
"General, just take her at her word," Luke said. "If I had wanted it
that way, you wouldn't have known Mud Sloth was in the neighborhood
until I'd parked it in your space."
Corgan shook his head disbelievingly, but there was no opportunity to
pursue the issue.
"Here they come," said Maiut'ta.
One after another, the great ships emerged out of the center of
overlapping white flashes of radiation, like new stars winking on in
the night. Cruisers and attack
carriers, Star Destroyers and gunships, all quickly closed the
distance to the rover, roaring by overhead in a spectacular display.
"Are we allowed to talk?" asked Corgan.
"Patience," said A'baht, gazing up with his fingers laced together
behind him. "Patience and attentiveness will both be rewarded, I
suspect."
"I don't take your hint."
"How many ships were we expecting?"
"Twenty-two."
A'baht nodded. "I have counted thirty so far."
Corgan and Morano stared, gaping, as the broad hull of a fleet carrier
sliced the vacuum above their heads. "That has to be a mistake."
Luke caught A'baht's faint smile. "I'm confident I can still count to
thirty," he said. "I suggest you check with Tracking."
Maiut'ta was already reaching for his comlink.
"Sweep the arriving ships," he ordered. "Give me a count."
"Thirty-eight-- forty-- forty-one-- still clicking over."
"Are they all normal tracks?"
"Everything as expectedwwait a minute, some of the IDs are
duplicated.
Colonel, do you want to tell me what's going on now?"
"No, Lieutenant. Stand by," Mauit'ta said, switching off the
comlink.
A'baht turned to the other officers. "Well, gentlemen, we have our
demonstration." He gestured with his hand as a gunship rumbled by just
a kilometer away.
"Which ones are real? That one? The next? I can't tell--I suspect
even Tracking can't." He turned back to Akanah. "Thank you. I am
quite satisfied."
In the next moment, half the battle group passing in review vanished.
Wialu sagged noticeably and sought her seat immediately afterward.
Akanah settled beside her protectively.
"General, what did I just see?" the rover driver asked in an awestruck
voice.
"Nothing, son," said A'baht. "Officially and literally nothing."
But--" "Don't ask about it and don't think about it," the general
said.
"Just get us back to the barn as quickly as you can." He glanced at
Luke. "We all have a lot to do."
They were on final 'approach to Intrepid when they were waved off for
the launch of a flight of fighters.
Morano's face immediately took on a worried expression.
"What's that about? Patrol rotation isn't for another hour."
He got an answer from the flight controller after the rover landed.
"Outer patrol is moving out on an intercept," the controller advised
them. "We've got a ship coming in from the interior, high speed, no
proper ID, nothing but some kind of jammer or scrambler signal in
response to our hail."
Morano wheeled around to face Wialu. "Is this part of your
demonstration, too?"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "This one belongs to you."
"General, Commander Jarrou has taken the group back to a level' two
alert," the controller continued.
"Captain, you and the general are wanted upstairs, flank speed."
Luke raced to the bridge at General A'baht's heels, then anchored
himself in front of a tracking display.
The image was still small and two-dimensional. His head cocked to the
side, Luke studied the image as it slowly grew larger.
"Specialist, how fast is that ship moving?"
"Eight sublight, sir. She's cooking."
"Can you let me hear that jammer signal she was transmitting?"
"Still transmitting," said the specialist. "On the
headphones, sir. Watch the volume--it's an eardrum killer."
Luke slipped the earpieces in place and listened.
Almost at once, he laughed.
"Sir?"
"That's not a jammer. That's Shyriiwook.
Wookiee-talk," he said, tearing off the headphones.
"It's Chewbacca, and he's upset about something."
Luke peered at the display again. "He wants those pilots to get out of
the way. General A'baht!"
A'baht looked up from a huddle with the tactical officer. "What
now?"
"Better tell those fighters they're on a rendezvous and-escort, not an
intercept," said Luke. "That's the
Millennium Falcon coming in."
Shoran and Han were both carried off the Falcon on medevac
stretchers.
By appearance alone, they looked to be in equally dire straits, but the
&
nbsp; indicator lights on the stretchers' monitor panels foretold their
different destinations. The indicators on Shoran's stretcher were
static and mostly red, and he was taken directly to Intrepid's
morgue.
The indicators on Han's stretcher were jumpy and mostly yellow, and he
was taken directly to a bacta tank in med ward one.
There was no chance for Luke or anyone else to talk to Han before he
went into the tank. He had apparently been unconscious since before
the Falcon jumped out from N'zoth, his already fragile state aggravated
by the stresses of the rescue, particularly the high-g escape.
And even if Han had been conscious, there was Chewbacca to contend
with--the Wookiee hovered over Han so protectively that he got in the
way of the doctor and the medical droid, and ultimately had to be
dragged back from the triage table by two of his companions.
The four Wookiees made an impressive sight, and their presence in the
med ward drew a great deal of curious attention. Luke thought he
recognized the injured one as Lumpawarrump, a thought confirmed when
Chewbacca made him the next object of his anxious hovering.
Lumpawarrump had limped off the ship under his own power, but the
second-degree blaster burn on his right calf was ugly with leaking
blisters and needed care as well. A translator droid arrived in time
to assist K-1B to negotiate with his patient.
"Skin and hair cell damage is serious. Underlying fat and muscle
damage is limited," said K-1B. "All damage is repairable. Prescribe
immersion, one session, ten hours."
Both Chewbacca and his son looked at the prep table where Han was being
fitted with his breather and monitors. Chewbacca drew his upper lip
back over his teeth in an expression of disgust, and Lumpawarrump shook
his head vigorously as he growled an answer.
The droid's translation was diplomatic. "The patient has expressed an
unwillingness to be immersed."
K-1B's head swiveled in a distinctively mechanical fashion. "Topical
treatments are of limited effectiveness.
Grafts are contraindicated for species with body fur.
Scarring is likely without immersion."
Both Lumpawarrump and Chewbacca answered at once, and their growls had
sharply contrasting timbres.
"The patient says that he finds scarring socially desirable.
The patient's guardian expresses his concern that if the injury is not
effectively treated, K-1B will experience serious malfunctions and
system disruptions."
Despite the shadow of concern for both Han and Chewbacca's son, Luke
could not contain a chuckle at the droid's obvious paraphrase. The
sound led Chewbacca to look up and in Luke's direction--the first time
their eyes had met since the Falcon had docked.
The Wookiee gestured angrily toward Han, and voiced a sharp-edged
rebuke. No translation was necessary.
The look said, Where were you?
"I didn't know, Chewie," Luke said. "It wasn't
even in the TBM. The General says there was a complete blackout on
the news. I was away, and no one told me. Not even Leia." He looked
across the room at Han, who was at that moment being transferred from
the prep table to the bacta tank. "I just didn't know."
Technically, the camp on Pa'aal, the primary moon of the fifth planet
of the N'zoth system, was not a prison. Slaves are not housed in
prisons.
The camp was the permanent residence of the surviving members of the
former Black Sword Command occupation force under Governor Crollick.
At its peak, it had housed nearly three hundred thousand--mostly human,
and mostly from the crews of the Star Destroyers Intimidator and
Valorous, captured intact by Yevethan raiders on what was to have been
the final day of the Imperial occupation.
The captives had purchased their lives with service to the viceroy, and
in the beginning, that service had been essential. They had taught the
Yevetha both the operation of a capital warship and the final secrets
of their construction. They had served aboard their renamed vessels
under new, alien captains and labored in the shipyards under new, alien
overseers. The knowledge in their heads and the experience in their
hands made them valuable enough to keep alive--at least until the
Yevetha had wrung every last secret from them.
In the first and second year, only the uncooperative were removed from
the population on Pa aal. But in the third year, their keepers began
to thin their holdings in earnest. By that time, the overseers had a
clearer idea of who had specialized technical skills and who did not.
The latter could be replaced in their duties by Yevetha, and were--many
trained their replacements before being executed. The former were kept
without regard to need, as spare parts for the war machine the Yevetha
were building.
Half the population of Pa'aal disappeared during the third year--most
at the hands of the Yevetha, but no small number through suicide.
Conditions on Pa'aal were desperate and miserable, and hope of rescue
had collapsed as the coldly calculated winnowing wore on.
Those who survived to see the fourth year were in many ways a select
groupssmart, tough-minded, in-ured to the privations of their
existence, astute in the politics of their status. And they had found
a replacement for hope, in the form of a leader and a plan.
In the long years since, every slave taken from Pa'aal for a day's, a
week's, a month's service tO the Yevetha had gone willingly, with a
purpose and a mission beyond mere survival. The more useful they were,
the more opportunities there would be to advance the plan. They needed
access to the ships, to materials and tools, to unsupervised time--all
of which could only be obtained through guiltless and systematic
collaboration with the enemy.
Despite their efforts, there had come a time when the Yevetha seemed to
no longer need them, and Pa'aal had become not a storehouse but a
dumping ground. An entire year would pass with no measurable progress
and no promise of change. Suicide and the carelessness that went with
profound depression once more began to thin the numbers.
But seven months ago, the slavemasters had started coming to Pa'aal
again. For the first time since the end of the winnowing, there were
Yevetha in camp for more than a few hours, observing, questioning. The
additional scrutiny was more than balanced by the additional
opportunity, as more and more of the population was called to service
and carried off in the parade of shuttles. Before long, Pa'aal seemed
primarily populated by ghosts.
Word of the reasons for the change filtered back with returnees--new
ships being launched, new crews being trained, new problems with cloned
drives and weapons. Gradually the whole story was pieced together,
until the prisoners on Pa'aal were more aware of the coming war than
the Yevetha themselves.
And through it all, the work went on, at an intense-even
dangerous--pace.
"There is a moment coming," Major Sil Sorannan ha
d told his secret
command, "a moment of opportunity that will never be repeated in our
lifetimes. If we are not ready when that moment comes, we will all die
on Pa'aal."
Sorannan remembered his words as he gazed at the four tiny
pulse-transceiver chips that had just been delivered to him by a
courier from a returning work party.
"Major Neff said to tell you that they'd passed all the tests with
generous margins," said the courier. "He has very high confidence that
they're good."
Nodding, Sorannan gestured to the other man in the room. "Have the
controllers brought here."
From four different parts of the compound, four very different--yet
commonplace--objects were rounded up and placed before Sorannan. Using
an engineer's loupe, 'an improvised jig, and a handheld microwelder,
Sorannan added one of the chips to the circuitry concealed inside each
THE BLACK FLEET CRISIS #3 - TYRANTS_TEST Page 36
