Star Wars - Black Fleet Crisis - Shield Of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  Recon Wing. Pilots--to your ships! I'll see you all on the other

  side."

  The mission synchronization clock was counting down toward zero. For a

  moment Taggar paused to picture the other pilots, in other

  claustrophobic cockpits, nearing other targets scattered halfway across

  the Cluster.

  Even though 21st Recon had been newly formed to serve the Fifth Fleet,

  he had flown with several of them before in other units, other wars.

  He could picture all their faces, guess at all their moods.

  0015

  Good recon, he thought, Sending the wish at them. And good luck.

  Taggar's nose had begun to itch, and he wrinkled it up in an

  unsuccessful attempt to salve it. He licked lips that had gone dry,

  flexed hands that had begun to stiffen from being held too tensely,

  checked systems that he had already checked three times.

  0005

  Taggar's mother, a Y-wing pilot, had died attacking a Star Destroyer in

  the frightful clash at Endor. His own good-luck ritual, performed

  before the start of every mission, was to r ub his thumb left to right

  across his mother's wings, which were taped above the navicom. Mother,

  I hope I make you proud today. 0000

  The universe suddenly expanded around Taggar's recon fighter. Ahead

  lay a gray-green marble frosted with swirls of pale yellow clouds. The

  mission timer started to count upward as the imaging systems stirred in

  their mountings. Taggar flew a steady line as he read the reports from

  R2-R on his cockpit display.

  IDENTIFIED ARAMADIA-CLASS THRUSTSHIP IDENTIFIED ARAMADIA-CLASS

  THRUSTSHIP IDENTIFIED VICTORY-CLASS STAR DESTROYER IDENTIFIED

  ARAMADIA-CLASS THRUSTSHIP IDENTIFIED IMPERIAL-CLASS STAR DESTROYER

  IDENTIFIED EXECUTOR-CLASS STAR DESTROYER

  The list grew longer as N'zoth grew larger ahead.

  Rone Taggar wanted to be afraid, but he did not have that luxury. He

  told himself he could be brave for five more minutes. In five

  minutes--perhaps less--it would be over.

  Taggar tried to whistle past the graveyard, but his mouth was suddenly

  too dry.

  There had been a tug-of-war between Leia and Ackbar over who would be

  invited to be in the War Hall at Fleet Headquarters when the data from

  the Koornacht recon incursion came in.

  "This is not the time to repay favors or curry favor," Ackbar had said,

  holding out for keeping the list as short as possible. "You cannot

  control information that's already been freely distributed. We will

  need time to evaluate the data and place it in context."

  "Everyone on that list has a legitimate right to know what's going on

  in Farlax," she had argued. "They're all going to have to be part of

  the decisions to come--De-fense Council, Security Council, the rest of

  the Ruling Council, Rieekan from NRI. It's not as though I'm trying to

  bring in outsiders."

  "No," Ackbar said. "You are only bringing in a senator who just tried

  to have you removed from office, and another who is likely to try in

  the near future. They are part of the same government as you, Leia,

  but they are not your allies."

  Behn-kihl-nahm's opinion had settled the question in favor of Leia's

  side. As the intercepts neared, the room was full of extra bodies, and

  there was more than enough to occupy them.

  The full-wall display in the War Hall had been divided into twenty-four

  identical rectangles. Each contained an intercept chart, with a blank

  circle representing the target planet and a red line marking the

  expected path of the scout. As the contacts proceeded, the charts

  would change to show the position of the ships and the progress of the

  scans.

  Beside each chart was space for a flat-screen feed from the scout's

  imagers. At the moment the name of the target World and the type of

  scout assigned to it were displayed in that space.

  Ackbar, Leia, and Han stood together at the back of the room, leaning

  on the railing at the edge of the raised observer's platform and

  watching twenty-four timers counting down in synchrony.

  "It kind of reminds me of a tout board I saw at a million-credit

  betting parlor on Bragkis," Han said, "and everyone standing around

  waiting for the race to begin. 'Who's got a favorite?" 'What odds

  will you give me on Wakiza?"" Leia usually found Han's irreverence

  refreshing. But she had no patience for it just then and walked away

  after shooting him a hot sidewise glare. Han's first instinct was to

  follow, but Ackbar stayed him with a touch.

  "Let her be," he said. "This is a hard time. She does not have much

  water under her."

  The room quieted dramatically in the last seconds, as everyone working

  attended to the console before them, and everyone watching turned away

  from their conversations and looked up toward the display. As zero

  turned to plus-1, the entire wall came alive with moving images as the

  charts began to change and the first images arrived.

  It almost seemed to Han as though the wall were a squirming mass of

  tiny creatures made of light. Unless he focused his attention on just

  one area, the effect made his stomach turn and his nerves jangle.

  Ackbar raised a hand and pointed to the lower right corner of the

  wall.

  "One casualty already," he said.

  Number 23, a pilotless ferret, had missed its rendezvous at Doornik

  207, which at last report had been host to a nest of Corasgh. But all

  the other charts were beginning to fill in--the flight tracks changing

  from red to green, the faces of the planets beginning to be shaded

  in.

  The early images from N'zoth caused a buzz in the room. They showed

  the unmistakable shapes of Star Destroyers, singled out by the

  R2-controlled imaging systems on Rone Taggar's Jennie Lee. After

  leaving Han, Leia had gone to stand by Ayddar Nylykerka, who was busily

  capturing individual frames from the data into a collage of ship

  portraits. She listened in while the intense little analyst from the

  Asset Tracking Office talked aloud to himself.

  "That could be the Redoubtable," he muttered, consulting his lists.

  "It's definitely early Imperial-class, despite the modifications to the

  forward superstructure-" The buzz turned into a dark murmur a few

  seconds later, when the view from Number 1 changed and another, sleeker

  dagger shape snapped into focus. There was hardly a person in the room

  who could not identify that profile, and the exceptions quickly learned

  the significance in a hasty whisper from a companion there was a Super

  Star Destroyer in orbit around N'zoth.

  From the beginning, the New Republic had opted to build a larger number

  of smaller vessels--Fleet carriers, Republic-class Star Destroyers,

  battle cruisers--rather than adopt the Imperial design philosophy. Mon

  Mothma had given orders to scrap rather than repair or make a museum

  piece of the sole SSD captured from the Empire. Consequently, the

  eight-kilometer-long behemoth circling N'zoth had anything in the New

  Republic Fleet badly outgunned.

  "Now, that, that can only be Intimidator," Nylykerka pro
nounced. "All

  of the late-production Super-class had that additional shield tower

  located on the centerline--" Shocking as that discovery was, the

  attention of the audience in the War Hall was quickly drawn

  elsewhere.

  As the counters approached the two-minute mark and the scouts raced

  toward the midpoint and closest approach of their passes, the display

  wall was filling with images of warships, until it resembled a larger

  version of the collage at Nylykerka's station.

  There were Star Destroyers at Wakiza, at Zhina, at New Brigia and

  Doornik 881, where the Imperial factory farm had been. The Yevethan

  fleet at Morning Bell now numbered at least sixteen vessels, including

  four Star

  Destroyers, six Aramadia-class thrustships, and a queer-looking

  Dreadnaught-scale ship, which Nylykerka excitedly identified as a

  long-missing Imperial testbed, the EX-F. Other thrustships seemed to

  be everywhere--orbiting all the other Duskhan League worlds, at Polneye

  and the former Morath mining operation on Kojash.

  Conspicuously missing from the entry scans were the three Imperial

  shipyards named in Lieutenant Sconn's deposition Black Fifteen, which

  had been located in orbit at N'zoth; Black Eleven, which had been at

  Zhina; and Black Eight, at Wakiza. Ackbar noted their absence to Han

  and added, "I do not think we will find them--i do not put it past the

  Yevetha to have moved the shipyards to concealed locations. I suspect

  that that is what Astrolabe stumbled on at Doornik Eleven FortytWO."

  At 0205, the signal from Number 16 at Polneye abruptly terminated, the

  tracking chart freezing with only forty-two percent of the planet

  scanned. Moments later Number 19, at Morning Bell, and Number 5, at

  the Duskhan world Tizon, also went dead.

  The losses did not stop there. All over the wall, the individual

  displays were going blank almost as quickly as they had come to life.

  Only half the scouts reached the midpoint of their runs. Three more

  winked out almost as one as Leia drifted away from Nylykerka and toward

  the middle of the War Hall.

  "What's going on out there?" she breathed to no one in particular as

  she stared up at the displays.

  The signals from Z'fell, Wakiza, Faz, N'zoth---all assigned to the 21st

  Recon Group's X-wings--were among the last to vanish, but vanish they

  did. No scout managed to scan more than three-fourths of a Duskhan

  League target before being destroyed.

  There was not a sound in the War Hall other than a muffled cough or a

  furniture creak as the five-minute timer expired. Only four scouts

  survived to jump out of their target systems--all drones. None had

  found any thing during their passes, save for newly dead worlds.

  Eyes began to turn from the frozen images on the wall to the woman

  standing alone in the center of the room.

  "Now we know," Leia said simply. "Controller, put the pilots' visual

  IDs up while you queue the data from Number One for replay. I'd like

  us to remember who we owe for this."

  The blast that disabled Rone Taggar's recon-X came from behind and

  below, without warning. Even before the cockpit went dark, he could

  tell from the blue lightning dancing over the cockpit that it was a

  powerful ion cannon bolt that had overwhelmed the fighter's shields.

  Twisting in his harness, he tried to look back and find his attacker.

  There'd been no fire from the ground during the close approach, and he

  was now out of range for any ordinary ground-based antiship battery.

  "Come on, where are you?" he muttered. "Where'd you come from?"

  There were dozens of stars bright enough that Taggar could not look

  directly at them without squinting--more than enough dazzle to hide an

  interceptor or a defense buoy from his eyes. But he didn't understand

  why his targeting system had missed it. The recon-X had the smallest

  blind spot to the rear of any Republic fighter, and on a normal threat

  acquisition--at fifty thousand meters or mo re--he would have bet a

  month's pay that he could have held off any equal opponent long enough

  to finish the run.

  Taggar silently counted off the restart interval, fully expecting the

  killing shot to come before he reached 100.

  The absorbers worked passively, soaking up the excess surface charge

  and using it to feed the restart cell. Its momentum unchanged by the

  blast, his fighter was still speeding away from N'zoth. With a

  successful restart, he could grab the last thirty seconds of data on

  the un-scanned far side and jump away to safety.

  The count had reached eighty-seven when he felt the lurch of the

  tractor beam grabbing hold of his ship. With the spoiler shaking and

  the fuselage chattering around him, Taggar fished in his chest pocket

  for the purge stick.

  Another ship, corvette-size, was visible ahead of him as he rammed the

  stick home into the socket on the control panel.

  The purge charge that jumped from the stick raced through the computer

  memories of the fighter, erasing every coherent bit. Its final stop

  was the R2 interface, where it passed to a shape charge under the

  droid's sensor dome. The small explosion that followed was

  surprisingly loud and briefly lit the inside of the cockpit.

  Glancing back, Taggar confirmed that the charge had completely and

  thoroughly decapitated the droid.

  That left only one duty--the suicide needle now available at the other

  end of the purge stick, and the dead-man grip of the ship's

  self-destruct trigger. Taggar looked out at the Yevethan warship,

  measuring the closing distance. He knew that he was taking a chance by

  waiting, especially after they'd seen R2-R blow its top.

  But he also knew that the corvette would have to lower its shields to

  bring him alongside.

  When the ship had drawn close enough to loom over the fighter, Taggar

  closed his left hand around the trigger and let his head roll to one

  side as though he were unconscious. Watching through slit eyes, he saw

  light spilling from the underside of the corvette, between the opening

  doors of the docking berth. There was no pinnace inside--the berth was

  meant for his fighter.

  Gambling, he waited longer still, until the coupling lines grabbed the

  spoilers and drew the recon-X upward, until the doors began to close

  under him. Then he lifted his head, rubbed his thumb across the

  pilot's wings taped to the console, and jammed the palm of his right

  hand against the end of the purge stick.

  A few moments later his head lolled forward against his chest and the

  hand closed tightly around the trigger began to relax, his tired

  fingers yielding against the pressure of the springplate. Taggar was

  peacefully elsewhere when the destruct charge ripped the belly of the

  corvette open along the centerline, spilling a churning cloud of debris

  from both ships into space.

  As bright fire enveloped Beauty of Yevetha, Nil Spaar averted his eyes

  from the sight, then turned and searched the chamber for the proctor of

  defense for the spawnworld.

  "Kol Attan!" he bellow
ed.

  His fighting crests shrunken almost to invisibility, Kol Attan shuffled

  forward. "Viceroy, I---" Nil Spaar silenced him with a glare and

  pointed at the floor. Trembling, the proctor lowered himself to one

  knee, closed his eyes, and bared his neck. The viceroy circled him

  slowly, flexing his right hand in a motion that brought the dewclaw

  curling out to its full length.

  "You are a coward as well as incompetent," Nil Spaar whispered at

  last.

  "Your blood is not worth spilling.

  It would be beneath me to touch you. I declare you to-mara, a shamed

  one. Go home and beg your darna for death."

  When the proctor did not move, Nil Spaar drew a deep breath that

  brought a flush to his crests, then sent Kol Attan sprawling with a

  vicious kick. "You will not provoke me into giving you an honorable

  exit," he said through clenched teeth. "Go!"

  As the proctor scrambled away on all fours, Nil Spaar turned his back

  to him. "Tal Fraan," he said.

  The nitakka came forward with strength in his strides and pride in his

  carriage. "Sir."

  "You anticipated that the vermin would violate the All in an attempt to

  know us. How is it you come to your prescience?"

  "I have spent time with them, in the camps on Pa'aal, and aboard

  Devotion of Yevetha, where they serve us," said Tal Fraan. "I have

  seen how they hunger to debase even the smallest mysteries, instead of

  embracing the mysteries as they present themselves. The pale ones,