by Timothy Zahn
Ghent stepped into the doorway, throwing Hestiv a sideways glance as he passed. Admiral Pellaeon had vouched for him, he knew. But the man was still an Imperial officer, and Ghent was from the New Republic. If this Moff Disra person wanted to do away with him, this would be a perfect place to do it.
And then he got his first glimpse of the room itself …
“This is your new temporary home,” Hestiv said from behind him. “What do you think?”
Ghent hardly heard him. Could hardly believe his eyes, for that matter, as he looked around the tiny room. Crammed into it were an Everest 448 DataSifter, a pair of Fedukowski D/Square decrypt/decipherers, five Wickstrom K220 heavy-duty peripheral processors, a Merilang-1221 full-spectrum numerical analyzer—
“The equipment’s probably nothing like what you’re used to,” Hestiv said apologetically. “But hopefully it’ll do.”
—and there as a centerpiece, nothing less than a brand-new Rikhous Masterline-70 OcTerminal. A Masterline-70! “No, not really,” Ghent managed, still staring goggle-eyed at the shining array. And they were going to let him have this whole room? All to himself? “But it’ll do just fine.”
“Good,” Hestiv said, crossing the room in front of him and keying open another door Ghent hadn’t yet noticed. “Your living quarters are in here, so you won’t have to leave this section at all. In fact, you might want to change the coding on the door lock after I leave so that no one can even accidentally walk in on you.”
“Sure,” Ghent said, his nervousness about this place already forgotten. “I can seal it up real tight. Okay if I get started?”
“Whenever you’re ready,” Hestiv said. Dimly, Ghent was aware the other was staring at him oddly. “You know how to get hold of me if you need anything. Good luck.”
“Sure,” Ghent said as Hestiv stepped back through the doorway. There was another puff of air, and Ghent was alone.
Dropping his carrypack to the floor, he shoved it with his foot in the general direction of the living area. Imperial Moffs, lurking danger, and even imminent civil wars all but forgotten, he pulled out the chair in front of the Masterline-70 and sat down.
This was going to be fun.
It took an entire hour of scans and examinations under the watchful eyes and ungentle hands of what seemed to Navett to be half of Drev’starn’s contingent of Bothawui Security. But at last, with the obvious reluctance of a being who heartily dislikes a situation but has no better alternatives available, Field Controller Tri’byia finally led him and Klif down into the lower levels of the shield generator building.
Into the very center of the Drev’starn defense system.
“Impressive stuff,” Navett commented to his glowering guards as he glanced casually around the room. “I can see why you wanna get rid of them fast.”
He hoisted the tank of CorTrehan a little higher on his shoulder. “Okay,” he said, waggling his slender sprayer loosely in his hand. “First thing is for you to show me anything really delicate or critical you don’t want them getting into.”
“We don’t want them getting into any of it,” Tri’byia snapped, his fur rippling.
“Yeah, sure, sure,” Navett soothed. “I just meant where do you want us to start spraying? We should do the most delicate stuff first.”
Tri’byia’s fur rippled again. “I suppose that seems reasonable,” he said unhappily. Clearly, the last thing he wanted to do was point out the most important parts of their precious shield generator to a couple of humans. “This way.”
Not that it mattered, of course. Navett knew perfectly well what everything in this complex was, and neither he nor Klif needed the Bothans to point out the kill-points to them. But it was something an earnest but stupid pet shop owner might be expected to ask. Besides, he was curious to see how honest the Bothans might get in the middle of a crisis like this.
“You may start there,” Tri’byia said, stopping and pointing to a completely nonvital backup comm console.
“Okay,” Navett said. Apparently, not very.
They’d been spraying for fifteen minutes, laying out the elaborate curlicue chemical trails that were the only way to effectively kill metalmites, when things finally began to get interesting. “This one next,” Tri’byia said, laying a hand protectively on the edge of one of the consoles responsible for maintaining the power-frequency coupling between the various poles of the planetary shield.
“Right,” Navett said, his heart starting to beat faster as he stepped over to the console. This was it: the first blade thrust into the heart of the species whose actions had cost the Empire so much over the years. The Bothan techs had already removed the access panels; shifting his grip subtly on the sprayer as he crouched down, Navett eased the tip into the maze of electronics and gave it a delicate squirt.
Only this time he left more than just the metalmite-killing CorTrehan to bead up on the circuit cards and drip slowly down onto the power supplies and ventilation fan casings below. This time, his new grip had allowed the slender tank built into the sprayer handle to dribble some of its own special contents into the mix.
The hour-long examination the Bothans had put their equipment through had scanned for everything those paranoid minds could have thought of: weapons, spy equipment, explosives, poisons, soporifics, acids, wire-spinners, and probably fifty other potential threats.
But nowhere in all those multiple layers of precautions had anyone thought to program a check for food.
Not that anyone in the generator building would have found this particular brew even remotely appetizing, not even the metalmites. In fact, now that the rotten little vermin had played their part, it was time for them to die.
He and Klif spent the next two hours moving systematically through the complex, laying down their poison trails and, at perhaps twenty carefully selected points, adding in a squirt of their liquid nutrient. By the time they finished, the thick, sweet-sour smell of the CorTrehan was almost like a physical barrier that had to be pushed aside as they walked through it.
“Okay,” Navett said cheerfully as they were finally escorted back into the security entrance area. “First step’s done. Now all you gotta do is put a loudspeaker on that’s blasting out the broods’ different carrier pitches. That keeps them from talking back and forth inside their groups, and that keeps them from breeding faster so they can fight with the other broods. Gives the CorTrehan time to work. You see?”
“Yes,” Tri’byia said, looking marginally less unhappy now that the offworlders were no longer in direct contact with his precious machinery. “How long will this be necessary?”
“Oh, a week ought to do it,” Navett said. “Eight or nine days just to be on the safe side. Some broods are harder to kill than others. Don’t worry, though—they won’t be eating anything during any of that. Mostly, they’ll just be dying.”
“Very well,” Tri’byia agreed reluctantly. “I have only one more question, then. I am told these pests are quite rare. How is it they were able to find their way in here?”
Navett shrugged as casually as he could. The groundwork had been laid, but that didn’t mean they were out of the snake pit yet. If the Bothans decided to be suspicious enough to go back in and clean out everything he and Klif had just laid down, this whole setup would have been for nothing. “You got me,” he said. “You bring any new equipment in here in the past week or two?”
The Bothan’s fur rippled uncertainly. “There were two pieces of equipment that arrived seven days ago. But both were scanned thoroughly before they were brought in.”
“Yeah, but I’ll bet your scanners aren’t programmed for heavily metal-based life like these things,” Navett pointed out. It was a safe bet; certainly the Bothans’ scanners hadn’t spotted the little beasts riding in on their incoming techs’ clothing. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know if anyone really knows where they come from or how they get around. They just pop up now and then and make trouble. They probably came in with that equipment, though. You might wa
nt to catch a couple of them and use them to reprogram your scanners so they can’t make any more trouble.”
“Thank you,” Tri’byia said, a bit huffily. Apparently, Bothans of his stature were not used to having the obvious pointed out to them.
“No problem,” Navett said cheerfully. Earnest but stupid, he was the type to take everything at full face value, without noticing any undertones. “Glad we could help. And you’ll get that merchant’s license for us, right?”
“I will do what I can to help with it,” Tri’byia said.
Which was, Navett noticed, not precisely what he’d originally promised. But that was all right. In six days, if all went according to plan, Tri’byia would cease to exist, along with the city of Drev’starn and as much of the rest of Bothawui as the Imperial Star Destroyers hidden out there could manage.
And on that day, Navett planned to look down on the shattered world from one of those Star Destroyers and laugh. But for now, all he needed to do was smile. “Great,” he said cheerfully. “Thanks a lot. And if you guys ever need anything else, just give us a call.”
He and Klif didn’t say anything to each other on the ride back to the pet shop. Nor did they speak once they were there, at least not about anything of substance, until they’d gone over each other thoroughly with the spy-mike detector hidden in the bottom of the dopplefly cage.
But if Tri’byia didn’t especially like them, he apparently wasn’t overly suspicious of them, either. The spy scan came up clean.
“Sloppy,” Klif grunted as they returned the detector back to its hiding place. “You’d think they’d at least want to hear us slapping each other on the back about getting our license so cheap.”
“I’m sure they backchecked our records before they called us in,” Navett said, sniffing in disgust as he slapped at his shirt. That blasted CorTrehan stuck to everything. “Did you get a chance to see where our power conduit came into the building? I never got to that side of the building.”
“I saw it.” Klif nodded. “They’ve actually got a splice going off one of the power cables, probably ready to go to the new equipment Tri’byia mentioned.”
“But they hadn’t opened the wall any?”
Klif shook his head. “They’re not that stupid. No, the whole wall’s still there.”
“Fine,” Navett said, shrugging. It would have been handy to have had some of that meter-thick, reinforced, heavily braced, multiple-layered, impenetrable wall out of their way. But it certainly wasn’t necessary.
“I’m just worried about it taking another six days before we can spring this,” Klif continued. “Won’t the stuff we left start to deteriorate?”
“Not a problem,” Navett assured him. “The tricky part now is going to be digging down to the power conduit from that Ho’Din place and then cutting through it without setting off sensors from here to Odve’starn.”
“You think they’ve wired the conduit itself?”
“I would if I were in charge,” Navett said. “Horvic and Pensin can get us into the place after hours, but we won’t have much time each night to work. Slow and steady is the way to go, and six days should be just about right.”
“I suppose,” Klif said, sobering. “Of course, that assumes we even have six more days. Or have you finally decided to do something about those New Rep agents?” Abruptly, he snapped his fingers. “Oh, blast—I just made that face. Wedge Antilles.”
“You’re right,” Navett said, grimacing as the name belatedly clicked with Brown Eyes’s face. General Wedge Antilles, leader of that multi-cursed Rogue Squadron. A single insignificant group of X-wings that had probably caused the Empire more trouble than all the Bothans in the galaxy put together. “And that’s going to make things that much more awkward. Even without New Republic celebrities involved, a triple murder would create a major fuss.”
He let his eyes drift around the shop, taking in the rows of cages, the subtle mix of smells and sounds. Surely Antilles wouldn’t see any threat in a harmless pet shop.
But no. They’d been standing right here when the call came through, and knew he and Klif had been invited into the shield generator building. No, they’d have the pet shop marked now for sure. “But I don’t suppose we can afford to let them poke around anymore, either,” he conceded. “I guess it’s time we took them out.”
“Now you’re talking,” Klif said with dark approval. “You want me to take care of it?”
Navett cocked an eyebrow. “What, all by yourself?”
“Hey, they’re just X-wing jocks,” Klif said. “At least Antilles is. Outside their cockpits they’re babes in arms.”
“Maybe,” Navett said. “But they found us okay. And that old woman looks like she knows her way around, too.”
“Meaning?”
Navett gave him a tight smile. “Meaning you don’t take them out by yourself,” he said. “We’ll do it together.”
Moranda sipped at her blue-green liqueur. “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t say that any of them really leaped up and waved at me.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Wedge said sourly, massaging his aching temples with thumb and middle finger. Fifty different shops, businesses, service spots, and eating establishments. All of them set up in Drev’starn since the warships began gathering overhead; all of them visited personally by him, Corran, and Moranda in the past four days. The business turnover rate on Bothawui must be astronomical. “Another way is to just admit we’ve hit another dead end.”
“I’m not sure I’d go quite that far,” Corran said slowly, meditatively swirling his drink around in its glass. “There were a couple of places that were definitely more on edge than others. That Meshakian jewelry owner, for one.”
“Stolen goods dealer,” Moranda dismissed him with a flip of her hand. “And he spotted us right off as anything but casual customers, by the way. You’ve really got to learn how to rein in that straight-backed CorSec stance of yours, Corran.”
“And that Ho’Din tapcafe,” Corran continued, ignoring her as he ran a finger down their list. “It’s sitting right on top of one of the power-cable conduits to the generator building.”
“And has been there for ten years,” Moranda reminded him.
“Except that the day manager mentioned they’d just hired a couple of humans for the late cleanup shift, remember?” Corran countered. “There’s something about that that bothers me.”
Wedge eyed him over his cup. Corran, he knew, had never had much luck with the mind-reading aspects of the Force, not like Luke or Leia. But if he couldn’t retrieve other people’s thoughts, he could still pull out impressions and hints and textures. Combined with his old CorSec detective training, it meant that anything that bothered him was worth taking a hard look at.
“And then, of course,” Corran added, “there are our friends at the Exoticalia Pet Emporium.”
Wedge looked at Moranda, waiting for her rebuttal. But it didn’t come. “There’s them, all right,” she said instead, frowning down at the tabletop. “I don’t like that one at all.”
“I thought you said none of them had jumped out at you,” Wedge reminded her.
“No, they didn’t,” Moranda agreed. “That’s just the point. The pet guys acted just perfect. But how many pet shop owners do you know who also happen to be experts at getting rid of vermin? And exotic ones like metalmites, yet?”
“We should be able to backcheck them and see if that kind of experience shows up in their records,” Corran said. But he didn’t look any happier than Moranda did. “I just wish we knew where exactly this metalmite invasion had taken place.”
“Has to be someplace with really high security,” Wedge said. “They weren’t even going to let them in at first.”
“And at the same time, that decision got overruled real quick,” Moranda said, nodding. “Someplace with ultra high security, but yet extremely sensitive and vital.”
For a moment the three of them looked at each other. Corran broke
the silence first. “It’s the shield generator building,” he said. “There’s nothing else in Drev’starn that fits.”
“Agreed,” Moranda said, sipping at her drink. “Question now is, was the metalmite incursion the attack or the bait? If it’s the attack—”
She broke off at a muffled beep from Wedge’s comlink, buried deep in a pocket of his jacket. “Who knows you’re here?” she asked.
“Our shuttle,” Wedge told her, digging out the instrument. “We set up a relay for any incoming transmissions.” Thumbing it on, he keyed for low volume. “Go Red Two,” he gave the codeword.
The message was very short. “This is father,” Bel Iblis’s familiar voice said. “All is forgiven; come on home.”
Wedge squeezed the comlink hard. “Acknowledged,” he said. “On our way.”
He keyed the comlink off and looked up to find Corran’s gaze hard on him. “Dad?”
Wedge nodded. “Dad,” he confirmed. “Time to go home.”
“Meaning?” Moranda asked.
“Meaning we have to leave,” Wedge told her. “Right now.”
“Oh, that’s convenient,” Moranda growled, glaring at him. “What about the shield generator?”
“From now on the Bothans are on their own,” Wedge said, draining his drink and sorting out coins onto the table. “I’m sorry, but we were only on temporary loan anyway.”
Moranda grimaced, but nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Well, it was fun while it lasted.”
“You should probably give Bothan Security a call,” Wedge said, standing up. “Point them to our friends at the pet shop.”
“Whatever,” Moranda said, waving a hand. “Happy flights.”
“Thanks,” Wedge said. “Come on, Corran.”
“Just a second,” Corran said. He hadn’t moved from his chair, and there was a glint in his eyes as he looked at Moranda. “I want to know what Moranda’s going to do now.”
“Oh, go on,” she chided him, making little shooing motions with her hands. “I’ll be fine.”
“In other words, you’re going to stay on this,” he said bluntly.
