"If I don't get killed, I'm sure my career is going to crater. I'm going to be a tremendous embarrassment to the Wraiths."
"How about that—me, too! Another thing we have in common."
"Stop it!" She looked surprised by the volume of her voice and looked around to see if anyone had noticed.
Donos looked, too, but the camp was still bustling with activity. No one stopped to peer at the source of the cry.
When he looked at Lara's face again, though, something had changed. There was a stillness to her, a watchfulness that was almost reptilian. He suppressed an urge to step away from her.
"I could say twelve words," Lara said, "and when I was done, the very least you'd do is turn away and leave me alone forever."
He could tell that she was speaking the truth, and the fact that she had the power to do this, to send him away, dismayed him. "Then don't say them."
Donos had really only meant to let her know of his interest, perhaps to rattle her, but she now looked so distant and lost that he couldn't just let her be. He put his arms around her and drew her to him.
When her lips met his, they were clenched tight and she was shaking. But then she relaxed into the kiss. Her arms snaked up around his neck. She made a noise that was part wail, and only he could hear it.
There she was, suddenly part of him, and he wondered how he'd ever lived so long without her being there.
Then she drew back her head, her remoteness gone, her expression a little curious, a little anxious.
"That's more like it," he said. And realized immediately that it was the wrong thing to say.
She gave him a look he could only imagine her normally offering to someone pouring paint into her X-wing's engines. "Thanks," she said. "For reminding me what a gasbag of ego you are." She turned him around, trading places with him, and gave him a hard shove.
His head banged into the interceptor wing. "Ow," he said.
She spun and walked away from him at a fast stride. "Stay away from me, Lieutenant," she said. "Just keep away."
Oh, well. Considering how badly he usually did with people, that hadn't gone poorly at all. Donos sighed and headed back to his snubfighter, resisting the urge to whistle.
5
The landspeeder Seteem Ervic drove along the old country road was old and slow, but it was still powerful enough to haul a several-ton load of grain cakes from his family business to his customers in Lurark.
He ran a hand through what was left of his hair. He could buy a newer, sportier speeder, of course. But he hadn't inherited the family's failing concern and then built it into a flourishing business by throwing money away on nonessentials. He was almost rich. He'd never be rich if he loaded up on luxuries.
True, it had taken him years. Cost him his first wife, who said he was boring, that they never had anything to talk about. Cost him his hair, which had fallen away as the seasons had passed. At least his hair was something to talk about. And, true, nothing ever really happened to him. But he was almost rich, and that was what counted. If his brightest daughter turned out the way he expected her to, she'd take his solid business and make a worldwide concern out of it. And she'd be rich for real.
He rounded a bend in the dusty road and something happened to him.
There, a hundred meters up, something lay in the road. As he got closer, in spite of the glare from the sun, he could see it was a body—a human body. He slowed, and when he was a mere handful of meters away, locked the landspeeder down in hover mode and hopped out to take a look.
Human female, dark-skinned, eyes closed, lying in the dust as though she'd been thrown—from what? A speeder? There was no recent sign of repulsor traffic on this road. A riding animal? No hoof marks. In fact, there were no footprints around her.
She was wearing a black jumpsuit like a TIE fighter pilot's, and her pose—lying on her back, one arm behind her head— suggested she was sleeping rather than injured. There was no sign of gross injury. She wasn't even dusty.
He leaned closer. Maybe she wasn't hurt. Maybe he wouldn't have to interrupt his trip to the city. "Young lady?"
Her eyes popped open. She smiled, showing deep dimples, becoming insufferably cute. "Yes?"
"Are you hurt?"
"Oh, no. Just resting."
He straightened. "Ah. Well, good. Can I offer you a ride?"
She brought her hand from behind her head. In it was a snub-nosed blaster pistol. "Sure. In fact, you can offer me your whole landspeeder."
He turned to look back at his vehicle. A half dozen people were clustered around it, looking at the control board, peering under the reflective sheets tied down over the cargo bay. He hadn't heard them arrive; they might have materialized out of thin air.
He turned back to the young woman, who was on her feet. He offered her a weak smile and raised his hands. Well, at least this would be something to talk about.
By midafternoon, the human members of the Wraiths had been around Binring Biomedical several times and had spent long hours surveying the facility.
It was huge, easily two kilometers wide by one deep, most of that area taken up by fabrication plants. There were staging and loading areas for landspeeders and other transports. The place had its own light-rail depot.
Face, Lara, Donos, Tyria, Kell, Shalla, and Wes sat around a large circular table at an open-air cafe separated from the main Binring Biomedical entrance by a broad traffic thoroughfare. Speeder traffic was constant. Everyone on this world seemed to own a personal speeder, and the city was huge and sprawling, though not densely built up or occupied. Face estimated that he hadn't seen more than a half dozen buildings more than three stories in height. "All right, people," he said. "We have too much factory over there to search in one night. We need to have a good idea where Zsinj's special facilities are, or where we can find out that information, before we go in tonight. If the special facilities aren't at this site, we'll definitely need to get into their computer center. Any ideas?"
Lara said, "I see six likely places for a special facility, all connected to exterior docking areas. West Sixteen, Northwest Seven, Northwest Two, Northeast One, East Thirty, or East Thirty-One." Her designations referred to loading and unloading areas—West Sixteen, for instance, meant Western Quadrant, Loading Area Sixteen.
Wes said, "Just Northwest Two or East Thirty-One. We can eliminate the others."
Shalla said, "Just Northwest Two."
Tyria looked unhappy, but nodded. "Northwest Two."
Face sighed. He hadn't seen anything to suggest likely prospects, and their assessment baffled him. "Let's take that again, in the same order. Lara?"
"The places I noted lack power meters on the roof. Everywhere else in that complex, you get external power meters under lockdown cases. Backup meters for the city power managers to get their data, probably if the standard meter transmitters fail. I bet they're analog rather than digital and retain data even if their own power fails. Anyway, they're at regular intervals . . . except in those six places. This suggests that those zones have separate generators and don't depend on the city grid."
Face gave her a close look. "Lara, are you all right? You don't look too good."
He was right; she seemed paler than usual, with dark half circles under her eyes. She gave him a wan smile. "You always know the right thing to say. No, I just didn't sleep well. I'll be fit to go tonight."
"Ail right... Wes?"
The baby-faced lieutenant took a final sip of his caf and grimaced. "Cold. Um, it has to do with privacy and defensibility. Northwest Two and East Thirty-One have advantages that way. The loading-dock areas are down recessed alley accesses that can be closed, remotely or directly, by gates. Both have roof access for flying vehicles but mesh screens can be dragged across them, as well, to limit access. The alleys don't have doors or viewports, so the traffic down them can be private."
"Right. Shalla?"
She waved toward the east facing of the complex, which was around the c
orner to their right. "East Thirty-One had some vehicle traffic when we were looking at it. Really expensive landspeeder with reflective viewports. One of them was large enough to put a swimming tank in. I think that's the private entrance for corporate executives, board members, and so on. The really wealthy. Also, East Thirty-One opens onto one of the busy thoroughfares, while Northwest Two opens onto a back street with nothing but warehouse buildings facing it. Like Wes said, privacy issues."
"That makes sense. Tyria?"
She didn't meet his gaze. "I just know it." She seemed huddled in her chair. Kell reached over to take her hand, but she barely acknowledged him.
Face said, "That's not good enough, Tyria. What do you know? How do you know it?"
She shook her head hard, sending her blond ponytail flip- , ping across the features of Donos beside her, and finally looked at Face directly. "I felt it. When we cruised past. There's something there. A residue of... pain. Of things so badly hurt that they desperately wanted to die. Not test animals, either. There was awareness there."
Face suppressed a shudder.
Kell said, "You felt something from the Force."
Tyria nodded. "I've been working so hard, to learn to relax into it, not to push at it... not to force the Force, as it were. Sometimes, now, I can put myself into a flow state where I'm almost not myself. I'm just reacting to what I'm feeling. I'd managed to do that when we cruised past. I almost wish I hadn't. I almost lost my last meal."
"Well, that's a good thing," Kell said. When Tyria looked at him, confused, he amended, "Not the throwing-up part. The flow-state part. That sounds like an improvement."
She managed a faint smile for him.
"Northwest Two," Face said. "That's our best entry."
"No," Lara said.
Face held up a hand. "Wait a second. Next to Northwest Two. Northwest One or Three. Where the security is likely to be less substantial."
"Yes," Lara said.
Face sagged in relief. "She said yes," he said. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting to hear her say yes."
Donos murmured something under his breath and Lara flushed red.
Under cover of darkness, they emerged from beneath the sheeting covering the speeder's cargo bed. The speeder was parked between refuse containers in the parking area of a warehouse; across the thoroughfare was Binring's northwestern quadrant. This was the last the Wraiths would see of the speeder; at some point during the day its loss, and the disappearance of its owner, had to have been reported, and there was too much danger in piloting it around avenues of Lurark left almost deserted at nightfall. They'd acquire other transportation for their departure from the city.
Shalla, kneeling in the shadow of one of the refuse containers, scanned the empty street and darkened Binring buildings below through a set of holorecording macrobinoculars. "Downward-facing holocams with overlapping coverage," she said. "Standard placement. For Imperial forces, that is. Overkill for a pharmaceutical-fabrications plant. Wait a second."
Face knelt beside her. The second turned into several, then finally she spoke. "There's a gap in the coverage. The most northern holocam on the western wall is positioned so it can't really see around the corner. The most western holocam on the northern wall isn't far enough west to make up the gap ... I don't think." She lowered the goggles and brought out a glow rod so she could look at the hand-drawn map they'd assembled that afternoon. "That's right. If we come in from the north, along this narrow approach, the holocams can't pick us up."
"It's a lie," Tyria said. Her voice was a whisper, a sad whisper.
Shalla shot her a look. "What do you mean?"
Tyria started as if out of some reverie and gave her a nervous smile. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. It's not your lie, Shalla. It's theirs." Her wave indicated the Binring building. "There's a big . . . watchfulness over there waiting for us. It's laughing."
Shalla said, "You're getting weird, Tyria."
"Yes, but let's take her at her word," Face said. "Shalla, could they have set up the mistake in coverage deliberately, as a lure?"
"Yes."
"What would they be doing?"
"They'd have a secondary set of holocams in a less-obvious place." She brought up the macrobinoculars again. "I'd put them in those overhanging spotlights. There'd be no way to see them without getting right up to them ... and turning the lights out, of course."
There was a whine of machinery behind them and their stolen speeder moved off into the avenue, Donos at the controls. His job was to pilot it some distance away, acquire another one, and return, then set himself up in a position to snipe if the Wraiths experienced pursuit when they departed. Face noted Lara staring after Donos long after the speeder was gone and wondered what was going on between them. Something cheerful, he hoped.
"All right," Face said. "We're going in by the high road."
Minutes later, the entire crew of black-clad Wraiths stood atop the near warehouse, one that was, mercifully, far less thoroughly defended than their target. It was also one story taller than the Binring building, which would work in their favor.
Kell spent a few minutes mounting a device at the edge of the roof. It looked something like a small projectile cannon on a swivel mount, but the repulsorlift-based clamping system at the base of the mount was like nothing seen on a normal cannon. "This had better work," Kell murmured.
"It'll work," Shalla said.
"How do you know?"
"My sister and I had one when we were little girls. They're very reliable. Proven technology."
"You and your sister come from an odd family, Shalla."
She smiled at him, teeth gleaming. "Don't be jealous."
Kell made a final adjustment to the weapon and peered through its scope. "Ready, Captain."
Face said, "Numbers only from now on, people. Five, fire at will."
Kell slowly squeezed the trigger. The device made a noise like a protracted sneeze and launched a missile across the street; the missile dragged a length of black fibra-rope behind it. There was the faintest sound of a metallic clank atop the Binring building; then a motor started up in the gun and drew the fibra-rope taut.
Shalla clipped two devices to the cable: sleeve housings with handlebars hanging from them. "Crawler ready to go."
"Go. Ten, cover her."
Janson drew his blaster pistol and aimed in at the far roof. For most people this would be considered a tricky shot with a pistol—thirty-five or more meters in darkness. But the other Wraiths knew Janson to be an expert pistol shot.
Shalla carefully gripped the handlebars of the lead crawler device and swung herself out over empty space. Nimbly, she brought her legs up so her knees were over the bars of the second device. Then she thumbed a control on the handles she gripped ... and the crawler sped out along the fibra-rope, carrying her to the roof of the far building. A moment later, the two devices came back, the hand device pushing the knee device before it.
One after another, they took the crawler across, each Wraith settling in a crouch on the far roof. By the time Face arrived, halfway through the pack of Wraiths, Lara, Shalla, and Kell had already examined their surroundings for accesses and other sensors.
And found some. "Standard roof hatches at intervals,"
Kell said. "And infrared beams just over there." He pointed. "On the roof over Northwest Two."
"I find myself shocked," Face said. "No, really."
"We'll need to leave L—Two—one of the sets of infra-goggles so she can get through the beams."
"Give her yours. We'll rely on Four and her set when we're in."
Once they were assembled, Face directed Kell to disable security on the nearest roof access adjacent to Northwest Two. Within moments he had bypassed the basic security system there. Tyria led the descent down an access ladder, Face and Shalla close behind her.
And that was already a problem. Ever since Tyria had indicated that her fleeting control over the
Force had given her some insight into what went on at Binring, Face knew he had to put her on the intrusion team. But she'd originally been assigned to planting tracers on the roof. Face had switched her duties with Lara's. But that cost the intrusion team some of its technical proficiency, Lara being more mechanically adept than Tyria. Kell, their demolitions expert, and Shalla, their intelligence expert, now had to share much of the security work Lara would have been handling.
The change also cost them some faith in their tracer team. Tyria was an old enough hand to have managed her temporary partner, Elassar, but Lara's abilities to handle an unknown quantity like the new pilot were unproven.
Face shrugged. It was done, it would do him no good to worry.
Lara placed the fourth transmitter-marker against the knee-high barrier that served as inadequate warning to people that they should not go over the edge and fall off the roof. She activated it and watched it run through its self-test. Then she pulled back away from it in a crouch, making it more difficult for people at street level to see her.
Elassar was already four meters back from the edge, seated, popping something that looked suspiciously like candy into his mouth. "All done?" he asked.
"Not quite. I'm going to take a holo of the rooftop and surrounding area, then show on it where the markers are and transmit that to the Rogues. That'll give them a visual reference to go with their sensor readings. Why don't you make yourself useful? Or is that unlucky?"
He smiled at her, showing his fangs. "Not unlucky. I've done everything I can for this mission in the field of luck. I've cast all the charms I could manage, and unlike the rest of you, I've refrained from doing anything unlucky. And I've made myself useful, too. I found something out."
Lara readied her holocam, held it steady before her eye, and began a slow, careful 360-degree turn. Once this special surveyor's holocam caught the panoramic image she wanted, she would be able to mark points on the image and type in numeric values related to their relative altitude and distance from one another. Then the gadget's internal computer would generate a proportionally correct image that any navigational computer, such as an astromech, could look at from any relative altitude. "What did you find out?"
Star Wars - X-Wing 07 - Solo Command Page 8
