X-wing_ The Krytos Trap Part 29

Asyr rolled to port as the second TIE fired. Its first shots splashed harmlessly on the X-wing's aft s.h.i.+elds, but the sub-sequent ones went wide. The eyeball rolled to follow Asyr, but as he leveled out he drifted straight into Wedge's sights. One burst of scarlet laserfire and the eyeball disintegrated into one long, flaming streak in the sky.

Mynock gave Wedge the 30-second warning tone. "Break off, Rogues. The rest are just running." It looked like a half-dozen of the TIEs had survived the battle. As a screen-ing force they'd done their jobs and kept local fighters off the Lusankya while it emerged. While it was trapped beneath the city 1 bet it couldn't power its s.h.i.+elds up. Without them, a concentrated volley of proton torpedoes might have been able to breech the hull, disable that lift sh.e.l.l, or destroy the bridge.

Wedge glanced at his sensor display. "Four, this is Rogue Leader. Break off pursuit."

"Just a couple seconds more."

"Four, break off, now!"

"I've almost got him, Lead."

"You're too close, Four. Break off immediately!" Erisi's X-wing fired a quad burst that caught an Inter-ceptor on the starboard solar panel and right side of the c.o.c.kpit. Something at the rear of the craft exploded, then seconds later the whole Interceptor came apart. A huge golden-red ball blossomed in front of Erisi's X-wing, then imploded into black smoke as she flew through it.

"Report, Four."

"I got him, Lead."

"And got crisped. Get back here."

Fear injected itself into her voice. "Rudder's gone, stick's sluggish."

"Erisi, you're too close to the Lusankya. Get out of there." Wedge brought his X-wing around to the left in a long, orbiting loop. "Mynock, pull status data from her R5 unit, now." He keyed his comm unit. "Erisi, roll and dive. Gravity is your friend."

"As ordered. No, wait." A wail as frightening as any Mynock had ever made shot through the corem unit. "They have a tractor beam on me. I'm at full thrust, but I can't break loose. Help me, help me!"

Pulling back on the stick, Wedge came up and pointed the nose of his fighter at the Lusankya. The big s.h.i.+p h~ang like a silver of ice stabbed deep into the morning sky. He thought he could see Erisi's X-wing as a little speck against the Super Star Destroyer's bulk, but a sheet of turbolaser fire heading back toward him eclipsed her.

Hugging the stick to his chest, Wedge brought the X-wing over the top and pointed it back toward the planet. "On me, Rogues. We're going home."

"But, Lead, we can't just leave her--"

"Euough, Gavin. That's a Super Star Destroyer. It's im-possible to stop if it doesn't want to be stopped."

"But impossible is--"

"1 know, Rogues, I know." Wedge glanced at his moni-tor and let the cold s.h.i.+ver running up his spine bleed into his voice. "Impossible is what Rogue Squadron does, but right now that would cost us too much for too little gain. Just because we can do the impossible doesn't mean we always win."

44.

Corran Horn mustered a smile in response to Admiral Ackbar's blinking expression of disbelief. "If someone is in-clined to call me as a witness, I think ! can shed some light on the murder charges against Captain Celchu."

The Mon Calamari's mouth opened and closed a couple of times, then he nodded toward the prosecution table. "Per-haps, Commander Ettyk, the prosecution would like to re-open its case?"

The dark-haired prosecutor nodded. "Thank you, sir. We call Corran Horn."

Corran limped his way up toward the front of the court. He placed his blaster carbine on the prosecution table, then turned and approached the defense table. He squatted down beside Whistler and wiped a speck of dust from his optical lens. "Thanks for guiding me in here, Whistler. Without you, I've been lost."

The droid hooted softly, then opened the storage com-partment in his dome. Corran reached in and pulled out his own unblemished Jedi medallion and the gold chain from which it hung. Corran fastened it around his neck, then fished the ruined medallion from his pocket and put it into the storage compartment. "Not quite a fair trade, my friend, but I'll make it up to you."

Coming up from his crouch, Corran looked over at Tycho. He nodded and lowered his voice into a whisper. "I owe you an apology, a huge apology, and a debt I can never repay. All this is my fault, and I'm sorry I caused you to go through it."

"You're wrong, Corran." Tycho shook his head. "You were manipulated by the Empire. So was I, so was everyone here. I'll accept your apology, but I won't acknowledge your debt."

"I'll still pay it, or at least make a down payment on it."

Tycho smiled. "Getting the murder charge removed from the indictment is a good start."

"I can do much better. Watch me." Corran nodded, then dropped a hand on Emtrey's left shoulder. He bent in close to the droid's aural sensors and kept his voice low. "Emtrey, say nothing. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up."

The droid's head swiveled around to look at him. "Sir, I understood the first request. Quadruple redundancy in or-ders is hardly required in my case."

Fixed you, have they, Emtrey? That's it, then, the last piece falls into place. Corran straightened up and shot Gen-eral Cracken a quick nod.

Turning back toward the front of the courtroom, Corran bowed his head to the Tribunal. "My apologies to the court, but there were things that needed saying."

Ackbar nodded. "Understood."

General Salm frowned. "Lieutenant Horn, I have to ask, how did you get here?"

"I started, at least this morning, from the Museum next door. Big metal doors sealed the aerial tunnel between the buildings, but, well," he said, brandis.h.i.+ng the lightsaber, "you'd be amazed how effective these things are in opening doors. Your security personnel were stationed at the more accessible entry points, so I made it here without any other trouble."

Salm frowned. "i appreciate the critique of our security, but I meant the question in a more general sense. You, ah, are dead."

Corran limped his way into the witness box. "I think you'll want me sworn before I answer that question. It won't make the answer any more believable, but it'!! give you some peace of mind."

A bailiff swore Corran in and Halla Ettyk approached him cautiously, as if he were radioactive. "I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps you can tell the court what has tran-spired since you were reported dead."

"Sure." Corran took a deep breath, then started. "I'm certain General Cracken will debrief me, and some of what I have to say probably shouldn't be said in open court, but I'll try to keep it cogent and coherent."

Ackbar nodded down at him. "Your discretion is appre-ciated."

"Yes, sir." Corran smiled at the prosecutor. "To answer your question, Commander, I was captured by Imperial In-telligence and taken to Lusankya. Ysanne Isard wanted to do to me what she tried to do to Captain Celchu. make me into an agent who would do her bidding when and where she wanted."

Halla frowned. "You said she wanted to do to you 'what she tried to do to Captain Celchu.' Don't you mean she wanted to do to you what she did to Captain Celchu?"

Corran blushed. "I thought, for the longest time, that she had programmed Captain Celchu and that his lack of memory about Lusankya was a blind to keep his Imperial ties hidden. The fact is, however, that his amnesia about Lusankya is not uncommon among those who wash out of Isard's indoctrination program. Other prisoners at Lusankya remembered Captain Celchu as being a sleeperstheir term for someone who is rendered catatonic by the indoctrination process. I didn't become a sleeper. Later I had a chance to access computer files about prisoners at Lusankya. I re-viewed my own file and then I called up Captain Celchu's file. I wanted it as proof that he was one of Isard's creatures, but he had the same susceptibility rating I did, which is to say that he had no susceptibility to her techniques at all. As far as she was concerned, we were as dense as duracrete."

"But his file could have been altered and left there for you to discover it."

"Possible, but not likely for two reasons." Corran held up two fingers.

"First, the datapad I used to access the files was in a secure area that provided me with access to a work-ing blaster and the means to go from Lusankya to here. Given the precautions Isard took to hide the location of Lusankya when I went in, I doubt any prisoner was meant to have access to that area. Second, at the time I accessed the files, Isard had no way of knowing I was in a position to access them. She believed another prisoner had escaped, not me, so any ruse would have been designed to ensnare him, not me."

Halla hesitated, concentration sinking her brown eyes into shadow. "That notwithstanding, we have to take into consideration the possibility that you might have been turned and are here so that both you and Captain Celchu could be put into positions of trust in the future."

"True, but the fact is that once the shadow of suspicion was lifted from Tycho, I was able to eliminate him as possi-bly being the traitor in the unit. If he is taken out of the hologram, there is only one other logical candidate for that position."

Before Corran could reveal the traitor's ident.i.ty, a sol-dier burst through the courtroom doors and ran over to Gen-eral Cracken. Fie said something quickly and urgently to the Alliance Intelligence chief.

Cracken shot to his feet and pointed at Corran. "Lieutenant Horn, I order you to say nothing more at this time. Admiral Ackbar, we need to use the adjoining jury room, now!"

Corran hesitated, then frowned. "I wasn't going to re-veal any of your secrets, General."

"Horn, shut up. That's an order." Cracken walked across the courtroom to the door in the southeast corner. He opened it and swore. "This can't be happening."

Corran vaulted from the witness box and followed on Cracken's heels into the large, rectangular room. Transpari-steel made up the room's entire southern wall, with a small doorway cut in the middle of it to allow access to a balcony. Cracken worked a set of controls on the wall, fading the sequestration opaquing of the transparisteel to nothingness. Corran looked out to the south and felt his heart sink into his bowels.

A colossal white wedge knifed its way into the sky. A fearsome broadside silhouetted a skyhook against a green background, then sent a smoking crescent cras.h.i.+ng planet-ward. The s.h.i.+p--Corran knew it had to be a Super Star Destroyer because of the size--continued its upward flight and turned its weapons on the lower defense s.h.i.+eld.

Corran found himself drifting through the doorway and onto the balcony with Admiral Ackbar and the others from the court. Above the city TIE fighters and X-wings tangled together in a complicated dance punctuated with fireb.a.l.l.s and underscored with laser light. Corran couldn't get an ac-curate count on the X-wings, but he didn't see any of them go down.

That's gotta be Rogue Squadron up there.

The Super Star Destroyer moved up through the first defense s.h.i.+eld. The TIEs started to run back to the s.h.i.+p that had launched them and the X-wings flew on in close pursuit. Corran smiled as more TIEs exploded or augured into the planet, but that appeared as a minor bright spot in compari-son to the damage the Imperial s.h.i.+p had done to the defense s.h.i.+elds. Corran frowned. "Where did that s.h.i.+p come from?" Whistler popped a sensor dish from his dome and let it spin around a couple of times before keening cautiously. Em-trey's head jerked up and down, from the s.h.i.+p to Whistler and back again. "Sir, he says that s.h.i.+p's transponders report it to be the Lusankya!"

Corran's jaw dropped open. The bulkhead doors closing off access to the gravel mine wasn't salvaged from a s.h.i.+p, it was part of a s.h.i.+p. The turbolifts, too, were part of the s.h.i.+p. Our whole complex must have been one tiny part of the s.h.i.+p with bulkheads trimmed out with stone. The mines were out-side it, but we lived all snugged up in the belly of an Imperial Super Star Destroyer.

Cracken held a comlink up by his ear. "The s.h.i.+p appears to have been buried beneath a portion of the cityscape south-west of the Manarai Mountains. It came up firing. Freeing itself it devastated over a hundred square kilometers. Mil-lions are missing, presumed dead."

Corran pointed at the platform made of hexagons hug-ging the s.h.i.+p's hull.

"What's that below it, some new type of armor?"

Whistler hooted sharply and Emtrey translated. "Whis-tler says it appears to be a ma.s.sive collection of repulsorlift cells grafted together to float the s.h.i.+p free of Coruscant."

"Ah," said Cracken, "so that's what they did with the lift-coils. Well before Endor, we uncovered an Imperial oper-ation to collect an incredible number of repulsorlift compo-nents. We feared they might be planning to produce some new planetary a.s.sault vehicles with them, but could never trace the s.h.i.+pments. Now we know where they went."

He looked over at Ackbar. "Can you stop it?"

"Most of the fleet is staging at . . . elsewhere in prepa-ration for the operation against Zsinj--to hunt down his Super Star Destroyer. The rest of the fleet is on an a.s.signment for you. Can you get them here?"

Cracken shook his head. "From Borleias? Not in time."

"The Golan stations don't have enough power to bring Lusankya down, but they can hurt it."

Emtrey's eyes dimmed. "We're defenseless."

General Crix Madine shook his head. "The Lusankya started inside our defense s.h.i.+elds--the point a.s.sault forces usually see as a goal. The fact that the s.h.i.+p is headed out means escape, not conquest, is its goal."

A Quarren aide slipped through the crowd to Admiral Ackbar's side and handed him a comlink. The Mon Calamari flicked it on. "Ackbar here."

"Antilles here, Admiral. We've broken off our pursuit of the TIEs and are returning to base to refuel and get ready to go out again."

Hearing Wedge's voice again sent a thrill through Cor-ran. He smiled and saw Tycho mirror his expression. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Tycho nodded. "If I had Rogue Squadron on my tail, I'd be running, too, even in a Super Star Destroyer."

Ackbar gave them a wall-eyed stare. "I concur with your plan, Commander, but you needn't have informed me of it at this time."

"No sir, I know that." A cold edge crept into Wedge's voice. "The reason I called is to tell you to let Tycho go. He wasn't the traitor. I know who is and I can prove it."

"What?" Ackbar's mouth hung open. "Who?"

Corran smiled. "Erisi Dlarit."

"I was asking Commander Antilles."

"Who was that?" Wedge asked remotely. "How did he know?"

Cracken made a quick adjustment to his own comlink. "Commander, this is General Cracken. Use no more names on this opchan--it might not be secure."

Ackbar shook his head. "How do you know who the traitor is?" Corran pointed at himself. "Are you asking me?"

"No. Commander Antilles, please answer me."

"Simple. Because of Horn's death I had a subroutine added to the unit's astromech droids allowing me to pull diagnostic data from them. She reported damage over the comm unit that her R5 didn't report. She claimed the Lusankya had a tractor beam on her and pulled her aboard against her will. Work back from there and it's obvious."

Corran nodded. "Right. She was in a position to fore-warn the Imps about Bror Jace's return to Thyferra--and there was no love lost between them.

I told her that when we'd taken Coruscant I was going to search out the traitor in our midst. She'd helped me check out my Headhunter so she knew the codes, the same as Captain Celchu. She cornlinked the data to Isard and I was taken."

General Salm shook his head. "Why would she do that? Why work against us?"

Wedge provided an explanation. "The bacta cartels were formed under the Empire. She and her people might have figured their monopoly would end if the New Republic suc-ceeded in destroying the Empire."

Tycho pointed toward the sky. "It's through the second s.h.i.+eld and outbound."

Barely visible above them, the Lusankya exchanged fire with a Golan s.p.a.ce Defense Station. Gouts of green energy pa.s.sed back and forth between them. The station's fire buck-led the Lusankya's s.h.i.+eld, collapsing the energy sphere that had kept the big s.h.i.+p safe. Explosions played along the huge s.h.i.+p's hull, but in their light Corran saw the Lusankya begin to pull away from the station.

The Golan Station continued to blaze away at the Super Star Destroyer, causing more explosions, but they seemed to form a wall between the station and the s.h.i.+p itself. It took Corran a moment to realize what was happening.

"They jettisoned the lift-cradle, sacrificing it so they could escape."

Cracken nodded. "Nothing to lose by doing that--the Lusankya isn't going to be trapped on a planet again."

"But it will be trapped again." Corran nodded solemnly, recalling his promise to Jan to return and free him and the others. He glanced at Whistler. "Can you determine the damage to the Lusankya?" Whistler blatted negatively and retracted his sensor dish. Corran squinted but couldn't see the Super Star De-stroyer anymore. "Gone to lightspeed. I wouldn't like to be where that s.h.i.+p ends its journey."

"Being where it started from was bad enough." Cracken s.h.i.+vered. "Isard was here all along, and now she's gone."

Haila Ettyk folded her arms across her chest. "I take it I should a.s.sume the evidence against Captain Celchu was largely manufactured by her?"

"I'd say that's a safe bet." Corran nodded a.s.suredly. "If Captain Celchu had been convicted and executed, she would have revealed the truth and made the New Republic look as bad as the Empire ever did. It probably wasn't the most brilliant of her plans, but it didn't take much effort, either."