“Yes, as sensor stations only.”
“Can you get me any reports of small craft entering the atmosphere in the last few days, especially if they bypassed Koval Station?”
“Probably.”
“And I was hoping to learn something of the Theran Force Listening technique …”
“Which I’d be honored to teach you.”
“But now, I think I’d also like to see this mnemotherapy technique.”
“Which I can’t teach you … but I can introduce you to someone who can.”
“Thank you.” It felt strange to be grateful to someone who, for the last thirty years, Luke had remembered as an object of revulsion at worst, pity at best.
She put her hands over his. “Welcome back to Nam Chorios.”
SENATE BUILDING, CORUSCANT
The shuttle DeepRay, a Lambda-class vehicle much newer than the one Luke had boarded at Koval Station, glided through the open blast-style hangar doors south and west of the Senate Building’s main entrance hall. Alone in its tiny flight deck, Seha Dorvald put all her attention on making the last moments of this flight smooth and unremarkable.
Ahead and below, a jumpsuited Gamorrean, his greenish, porcine features disinterested, gestured with a pair of guidance glow rods for her to bring the DeepRay farther into the hangar. Seha did as directed, gliding forward on repulsorlifts only until the shuttle was directly over a landing spot limned by glows embedded in the gray permacrete floor—the entire hangar was like that, the layout of its landing spots computer-controlled and infinitely reconfigurable.
She brought the shuttle down to a landing smooth enough that it was almost undetectable as a cessation of motion. She began powering down immediately and toggled her comm board. “This is Pilot Dorn. Welcome to Coruscant and the Senate Building. I hope you enjoyed your flight.” With no additional speech making, she tripped the switch to lower the belly boarding ramp.
In her peripheral vision, from the port side, she saw an interior hangar door slide upward, allowing a small party, mostly humans, to enter. She recognized Chief of State Daala, gleaming in a spotless white admiral’s uniform. With her were a number of security agents and aides, including a green Twi’lek woman.
Seha pretended to pay no attention. She brought up a diagnostics screen—a simulated diagnostics screen—and began tapping each item on it in turn as she would for a normal power-down checklist.
She heard her passengers catch up their carry bags and briefcases. Noisily, they began trooping down the boarding ramp.
And then there was Daala’s voice, drifting up from the ramp: “Wynn. General Jaxton, Senator Bramsin. Delighted to have you back in one piece.”
The gruff voice of General Jaxton followed, but grew fainter with each word. “Good to be back. So I can mount an operation against the Errant Venture and the Jedi. Imagine the arrogance …” Seha saw the Chief of State’s party, now considerably larger in size with the addition of her passengers, move back toward the door.
Moments later there was a creak as someone moved up the boarding ramp too silently for footsteps to be audible but not so carefully that the ramp itself settling did not make noise. Then a man spoke from just behind Seha: “What do you think you’re doing?”
Seha glanced up at him. He was youthful, nice-looking, with brown hair in a military cut. He wore a Galactic Alliance Security lieutenant’s uniform and a scowl that suggested he needed her to be impressed with his sternness and force of will.
She smiled up at him. “Powering down. I’m getting some anomalous readings from the thrust generators.”
He shook his head. “You’re authorized only to set down, let your passengers off, and lift. You’re going to have to leave.”
She gestured at the monitor screen with the checklist on it, at the three items blinking red. “I’d really rather—”
“I’m sorry, I have to insist.”
Seha let her tone turn frosty. “Well, then you have two seconds to get your rear end off my shuttle.” She turned her back on him and began a fast restart of powered-down systems.
The lieutenant was halfway down the ramp when the right stern thruster blew.
It didn’t explode, not really. The plastoid-shelled capacitor and associated chemical package wired into the circuitry there, activated by the power-up switch, discharged, frying all the circuitry in that module, as well as catching on fire and emitting a tremendous amount of red-gray smoke.
Seha let out a well-practiced yell of outrage and frantically flipped all the emergency-off switches within reach.
On the permacrete just ahead of the shuttle, the lieutenant stood, staring up into her viewport, looking stricken. She glared at him, then rose. She ran back and down the boarding ramp to confront him.
A holodrama stereotype of righteous hostility, she thrust her datapad, showing a feed of the new, revised diagnostics screen, toward his face. “You see this? Couldn’t wait five minutes for a simple diagnostics check and slow restart, could you? What do I tell my captain? What do I tell the Senator? The whole thruster array is blown because somebody couldn’t wait. What is your name, Lieutenant Used to Have a Career? The Senator’s going to want to know.” She didn’t bother to say which Senator. It was better for him to assume it was the one the shuttle had just delivered.
The lieutenant’s words came out in a desperate, disorganized string: “Didn’t. Predict. Regulations. Fire.”
Smoke, pooling up against the permacrete ceiling, triggered the hangar’s fire-control system. Articulated tubes descended from the ceiling, aimed, made a coughing noise, and emitted a tremendous quantity of gray-white fire-smothering foam.
Seha and the lieutenant were drenched in it. Seeing his uniform suddenly become matted with material the approximate consistency of dessert topping, seeing his once-natty hat adorned with a large triangular quantity of the stuff, Seha burst into laughter and couldn’t stop.
The lieutenant managed a few more disjointed words and then heaved a sigh. The tubes ceased spewing. The lieutenant’s pose of military competence irreparably shattered, he gave Seha an apologetic half grin. “All right. Start over. What do you need?”
Seha managed to bring her laughter under control. “Um, extend my access until I can get a mechanic in to look her over?”
“Consider it done. Twenty-four standard hours, maybe more pending your mechanic’s report.”
“And take a lady out to dinner? Once she’s cleaned up, that is.”
“Also done.”
“What is your name, anyway?”
“Javon Thewles. Lieutenant, GA Security.”
She held out a hand lightly insulated in foam. “Sela Dorn.”
OBRIDAGAR’S SIMULATOR PALACE, CORUSCANT
THERE WEREN’T MANY PLACES, MOFF DRIKL LECERSEN REFLECTED, where an aging man, far older than any active-duty starfighter pilot, could dress up in the uniform of a TIE fighter pilot with a unit designation forty years out of date and attract absolutely no attention.
Obridagar’s Simulator Palace was one such place. Lecersen, clad head-to-foot in that black uniform, wearing the unit patch of one of the squadrons that so famously and unsuccessfully defended the original Death Star in the Yavin system before most of the Palace’s patrons were born, walked the aisles of this curious establishment and nobody gave him a second look. The forbidding but anonymous helmet he wore concealed the gray hair, fierce bristly mustache, and military manner made famous by his many appearances on HoloNews broadcasts and addresses to those he governed within the Imperial Remnant.
The Palace’s main room and many of the branching side rooms were, of course, dominated by gleaming banks of the highest-quality civilian-grade flight simulators. The carapaces enclosed cockpits featuring state-of-the-art vidscreens and sound systems; their bases and ceilings were implanted with acceleration/deceleration simulators similar in design to the inertial compensators found in starfighters. Slide into a cockpit, issue a verbal command indicating which vehicle was to be simulated
and which mission was to be flown, and the simulator would do the rest, reconfiguring the cockpit components and throwing up the video images appropriate to those choices. Elsewhere in the establishment, a patron could find room-sized simulators, rented by teams, that replicated the interiors of capital ship bridges and famous fleet actions.
Obridagar’s went a step beyond many similar businesses by encouraging costumes. So long as the uniform a customer wore was either from a decommissioned service or was more than twenty years out of date, it was permissible. So, in addition to tourists in glaringly mismatched colors or anonymous traveler’s robes and university students in whatever style had been predetermined to represent rebellion and individuality on a universal basis this season, there were customers in the uniforms of pilots, ship officers, and infantry of the Empire, the Rebel Alliance, the Old Republic, the Alderaan Royal Guards … Lecersen continued to be amazed at the variety of styles and the attention to detail that went into some of them.
He turned left down a side corridor. Five paces behind, two similarly anonymous TIE fighter pilots, not obviously accompanying him, followed. A few steps more and Lecersen reached a door flanked by potted plants and a handful of costumed ersatz pilots standing in a group and talking in low tones—not obviously blocking access to the door, but doing so from any perspective of practicality. These men and women glanced at him, and one woman looked down at a datapad in her hand—this one designed to receive a transceiver signal from a device Lecersen carried. The signals they exchanged were apparently correct; the pilot, dressed in a sixty-year-old style from Naboo, nodded and stepped aside.
Lecersen brushed past her. The door opened and he went through, emerging into a small private cantina, heavy with plants in the sort of long, thin boxes that were normally placed just outside viewports. The lights overhead were bright, the wood lining the walls dark. Lecersen’s escorts did not enter with him, and the door slid shut. Lecersen removed his helmet, glad to have moving air on his face again.
The others were already waiting for him.
Senator Haydnat Treen of Kuat, her years not diminishing her alert eyes or perfect posture, wore a uniform matching that of the datapad sentry outside. On the card table beside her rested the antiquated helmet of a Naboo pilot. Her gray hair, though immaculately styled, bore the unmistakable signs of having been mashed by the helmet and then teased back into a semblance of its correct shape.
General Merratt Jaxton, Chief of GA Starfighter Command, burly and surly, sat on a stool at the bar. His costume was a mismatch of components: A jumpsuit, once probably orange, that had been imperfectly dyed into something that was now the murky green of a lizard’s innards and subsequently patched. His boots, knee-high, had glaringly obvious sheaths for hold-out blasters and vibroblades clipped inside the upper cuffs. His nerf-hide flak jacket was stenciled on the back with kill markings—ridiculous ones: silhouettes of a city construction droid, a sarlacc, two communications satellites, a refueling station, and an Ewok. His helmet and face mask were of identical leather and lay on the bar to his right.
Senator Fost Bramsin, tall, ancient, and cadaverous, occupied a stuffed chair of black leather beneath the drooping fronds of a tropical fern. He was dressed as if for a day’s activities at the Senate, in a dark, expensive, and immaculate suit, but draped over the back of the chair was the red robe of an Imperial throne room guard, the matching helmet resting on the floor by his feet. Over his steaming cup of caf, he gave Lecersen a cordial little nod.
And then there was the newest member of their conspiracy. Lecersen saw what she was wearing and stopped where he was. “That, my dear, is a genuinely sick joke.”
Admiral Sallinor Parova smiled, taking the remark as a compliment—though Lecersen had not meant it as such. A dark-skinned human woman of over-average height, her short hair tightly curled, she sat opposite Treen in a costume that was at once childlike in its crudity and very sophisticated in the offense it offered.
It started with a white admiral’s uniform, decades out of date, but the uniform itself was of the sort one might buy for a child at a novelty costumer’s—it was made in a single piece, like a loose-fitting jumpsuit, of slick woven flimsiplast, the uniform details printed on its surface in color rather than being actual components such as trousers, jacket, and buttons.
On the felt tabletop before her lay the costume’s other components, a simple, inexpensive mask of a Bothan head and matching gloves.
She held up a hand. “Wait, you have to get the full effect.” Her voice was surprisingly low and rich; it seemingly belonged to a much larger woman, one who might perform opera.
Senator Treen shook her head sorrowfully and, theatrical in her movements, buried her face in her hands. Obviously she had seen this before.
In moments Parova donned the mask and the gloves. Lecersen could see that the right glove was larger than the other.
Parova turned to face Lecersen, then flung up her hands as if trying to take command of a meeting. Her right glove slipped off and went flying; Jaxton fielded it. Parova had already withdrawn her hand into her sleeve, so the effect was as if her hand had come flying off.
She shrugged. “Whoops!” Her voice was merry, and she broke into laughter as attractive as wineglasses shattering on a permacrete floor. She was still laughing as she pulled the mask and other glove off.
Lecersen shook his head and joined Jaxton at the bar. He set his helmet on the bar to one side. “Even sicker than I had guessed.”
Jaxton looked over at him and gave a small, glum nod.
Lecersen did not know Parova well. She had been maneuvered by Jaxton, Treen, and Bramsin into a position within Admiral Bwua’tu’s command hierarchy after the conspiracy had been formed. And though the eventual assassination attempt on Bwua’tu had failed—it had resulted in internal injuries, the loss of his right arm, and a coma—it had been just as successful as if it had been carried off as planned. Parova had been appointed by Chief of State Daala as acting Chief of Naval Operations, giving her all the power, influence, and resources she would have had if Bwua’tu had died.
Lecersen’s due-diligence research on the woman strongly suggested that she was competent, resourceful, and dedicated to the conspirators’ common principles of order, unity, and dispassionate rule of law … but this display gave him pause. Bwua’tu had been an impediment, an obstacle between them and their mutual goal, but he was an honorable warrior, deserving of respect, not mockery.
The bartender, a silvery protocol droid styled as a female, moved to stand before Lecersen. “May I bring you a drink?” The droid wore a restraining bolt, the large variety called an Inhibitor, which, when pulled, would take with it every recording made by the droid during the time it wore the bolt. This was an admirable security touch, a device that made any droid temporarily pressed into service a nonthreat to security.
“Sonic Screwdriver.” Lecersen turned to face the others. “Well? Any progress while Jaxton and I were hostages of the Jedi?”
Treen smiled. “I think so, but it is Jaxton himself who offers confirmation.”
Lecersen looked at the general. “Well?”
“I just spent about an hour being debriefed by Daala.” Jaxton took a small sip from his drink, which smelled like something warm composed of caf, cream, and Corellian brandy. “She was under perfect, rigid control. Like the string of a musical instrument tightened until one note played on it will cause it to snap.”
“Excellent. So now we may just need that one little pluck to set things into motion.”
Bramsin shook his head. “If I may introduce a metaphor that could prove painful to the two of you, we want to program a skifter first.”
A skifter was a rigged card used to cheat at sabacc. Lecersen did not allow himself to react to the reference, but Jaxton shot the aged Senator a dirty look. Lecersen and Jaxton had each lost the million-credit stake with which they had bought their way into the celebrity sabacc tournament that had just been held on the Errant Venture. Lecersen
saw the loss as one of the inevitable possibilities of a gamble, but Jaxton had apparently had more emotion invested in the likelihood of his own victory.
Bramsin continued. “Our odds of making this coup fast and bloodless increase if we can cause some mistrust by Daala of her security details. If she has reason to mistrust Galactic Alliance Security …”
Lecersen thought it over. “Then she’ll rely on her first love. The fleet. The navy. Even if it isn’t the navy of her early days.”
Parova smiled. “And I would be very happy and proud to provide the Chief of State with an elite security detail.”
Lecersen’s drink arrived, and he took a sip. The protocol droid had provided an absolutely average, by-the-recipe-book Sonic Screwdriver, the standard proportions of fruit juice and liquor, indistinguishable from the drink as served in a million cantinas and spaceports. He set it down again. “What if she goes to the Mandalorians instead?”
“We don’t think she will.” Treen’s voice was certain; the only thing not certain was whether she was speaking of the conspirators in general or employing the royal we. “As she is subjected to more and more stress, we believe she will continue to trust them to destroy her enemies, but not to guard her while she sleeps.”
“She really is becoming the old Daala.” Jaxton actually sounded a bit regretful. That was not too surprising; three or four decades earlier, as a starfighter pilot, he might have faced Daala’s forces. “Talking in tones as if her speeches were being recorded for replay by the Imperial-era Moffs. Brooking no argument. Snappish. Brittle. Still raw from Grand Moff Tarkin’s death. She didn’t know the Mandalorians well then, but she did know the fleet.”
Parova nodded. “And my father, who served with her once upon a time.”
“Ah.” Lecersen gave her a little nod of respect. “You have impeccable credentials.”
“And they’re getting more impeccable all the time.”
“So.” Lecersen considered their options. “If and when we can maneuver security out of favor and your security detail into favor, and it becomes time to act, how do we push her over the edge?”
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Conviction Page 8
