The Krytos Trap

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Despite those inauspicious thoughts, which sparked new feelings of unease in him, Corran pushed on. He reached the hatchway leading into the caverns and found it open. Well, perhaps I am lucky, just a bit. He would have felt luckier if he had a light of his own, but the prisoners had no access to anything more technologically sophisticated than a shovel. To navigate through the darkness all he had to guide him was the faint glow from the amber ready-lights at the base of the floodlights they used when working in the mine. Corran had mentally mapped them the way an astronomer mapped constellations, and he knew exactly where to head to get to the gravel loader. Having oriented himself toward his goal, he stood straight and started to make his way down the slope.

  Pain exploded across the middle of his back, numbing his legs. He pitched forward and tried to tuck into a ball, but his legs ignored him. He knew from the pain in his back and knees, as they alternately struck the stone slope in his tumble, that his spine hadn’t been severed. While this was good news, it paled within the larger context of his having been attacked in the mines.

  He hit bottom and skidded to a halt on his back. He could feel the burning tingle of sensation returning to his legs, but they felt like lead and had no strength in them. The poor footing provided by the gravel combined with the weakness in his legs to keep him down, which he saw as a distinct problem as a massive, bulky shadow eclipsed several of the amber lights. The orange glow, though very weak, clearly illuminated the edge of the upraised shovel the man held.

  “Nothing personal, Horn, but you’re my way out of here.”

  Derricote? “How did you get past the gate? You couldn’t have squeezed through.”

  The shovel remained at the top of the arc for an overhead blow. “I have money hidden away, in numbered accounts. I bribed a guard for the combination to the gate lock, same as I bribe them for ingredients for my nectar.”

  Appeal to his vanity. Buy yourself time to be able to move. “Very clever, General.”

  “And too clever to let you recover. Good-bye…”

  The shovel began to fall. Corran rolled to the left and felt the shovel bounce off his right shoulder. He expected another blow, but instead heard Derricote gurgle and the shovel clatter to the ground. Gravel hissed as the Imp’s bulk twisted around into Corran’s line of sight. He heard someone grunt, then the sound of a falling body, but Derricote’s silhouette remained upright.

  Reaching back with his right hand, Corran grabbed the shovel’s shaft, twisted his grip, and whipped the metal end around. He caught the Imp in the back of his legs, upending him. Gravel sprayed Corran as Derricote hit the ground. Rolling up onto his knees, Corran smashed the shovel down on the man’s stomach, and when Derricote’s hands dropped to cover his belly, Corran caught him with a blow to the head.

  Derricote went limp.

  “Is he dead?”

  Corran looked over to where the voice had come from. “Jan?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  The older man came close enough that Corran could hear the wet rustle of his tunic. “I noticed Derricote wasn’t around—he’s too big not to see. Urlor told me you were off. I assumed he was informing on you, so I came to stop you. When I saw him standing over you, I had to do something.”

  Corran reached out to check Derricote for a carotid pulse and found the braided cord Jan used to tie his hair back wrapped around the man’s neck. He handed it back to Jan, then checked Derricote’s pulse. “Weak and thready. I must have broken his skull.”

  “Leave him. They’ll think he fell trying to escape. We can get back before they notice.”

  Corran shook his head. “Can’t do it. If they find him here, they’ll know we know Lusankya’s secret. We’ll never get out.” He grabbed the upper part of Jan’s right arm. “Come with me. We can drag the body off and deposit it somewhere. They’ll never find it until we’re long gone.”

  The older man laughed lightly. “Oh, they will notice my departure more quickly than anyone else’s. I can’t go for that reason.”

  “And because they’ll kill the others.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to come back for you, you know. Whenever I get clear, I’m going to have Wedge bring the squadron in and we’ll get you out.”

  “I know that, son. I’m counting on it.” Jan clapped him on the shoulders. “I might never have known your grandfather, but I’m certain he’d be proud of you. I am. May the Force be with you.”

  “And you, sir.”

  “I’ll clear away signs of the struggle. If you drag Derricote with you, I’ll give you a head start and then I’ll report he’s missing. They’ll be searching for him, but they’ll not be looking in the places where you could hide. We’ll cover for you as long as possible, but anything more than twelve hours is optimistic.”

  “I copy, Jan.” Corran got up and began to drag Derricote’s body by one arm toward the gravel loader. Jan grabbed the Imp’s other arm and helped. Together they hefted him up on the safety railing. Corran checked Derricote’s neck for a pulse. “Nothing. He’s gone.”

  “Someday, perhaps, no one else will need to die in service to the Empire.”

  “Agreed.” They upended the man and let him fall. Though Corran couldn’t see Derricote hit, he did hear a crunch.

  “Again, Corran, may the Force be with you.”

  “Thanks. Until we meet again.” Corran shook Jan’s hand, then climbed the railing and slowly lowered himself into the darkness. He stepped on Derricote’s body, then crouched and scuttled under the conveyor belt. Beneath the belt itself, where it fed back into the drive-engine compartment, Corran felt around the outline of a hole in the sheet steel lining the pit. He’d first seen it a week earlier when shoveling gravel out of the pit, and knew it was what he wanted in the way of an escape tunnel.

  Now, if only Derricote will fit. Corran wrestled the fat man’s body over to the 60-centimeter-wide hole and stuffed him through. He heard another muffled impact, then slipped into the hole himself. This has got to work.

  Corran had previously noticed that there was no access panel for the drive-engine compartment. If the engine broke down, it had to be accessed from another point entirely, which meant there was another way into the compartment. Down inside it Corran found himself on a steel-grate catwalk. He crawled around, reconnoitering by touch. Finally, off to the left side of the compartment near an access hatch, he found a light switch and punched it on. One dim panel provided the illumination for the chamber. Corran quickly dragged Derricote over to the closed hatchway, then he turned the light off again.

  He listened at the metal hatch but heard nothing. His mouth dry, his nostrils filled with gravel dust, Corran took hold of the hatch’s internal handle and eased it back. The latch system squeaked just a bit and rasped some, too, all of which sounded to Corran like the sounds issuing from an Imperial torture chamber. Certain he had alerted all Imperial forces in the facility to his presence, Corran carefully opened the access hatch.

  The rectangular room on the other side of the opening was empty. Corran let out his breath—not realizing until that point he had been holding it. Just to be on the safe side, before he entered the room himself, he dragged Derricote’s body over and shoved it through the hatchway. So far he’s been a good point man.

  Derricote fell to the floor of the room, and Corran slid easily through the hatch after him. He closed the hatch behind him and dragged Derricote’s body to the doorway. Beyond it lay a cylindrical corridor roughly three meters in diameter. A red stripe of tiles spiraled down through it, starting at the center of Corran’s side and ending up on the ceiling fifteen feet away. Decorations! And who says the Imps are all gloomy?

  Corran started off into the corridor and found himself stumbling to his left. To make matters worse, Derricote’s body slid in the same direction. Waves of dizziness slammed through Corran as he tried to walk the corridor straight through. He finally lost his balance and fell, ending up with his spine pressed to the red lin
e about a meter into the corridor.

  Oddly enough, lying there felt normal, even though he could see he was lying firmly against one of the tunnel’s side walls. He shook his head as if that would clear up the problem, then he let his head slip back and rest on the red tiles. Of course! This has to be a transitional corridor. Gravity is directly oriented on the red strip. It takes you from upside-down to rightside-up.

  With reason thus injected back into his world, Corran scrambled to his feet and started hauling Derricote along. His shoulders ached from the exertion, but he had no intention of leaving the man behind. Finding a place where Derricote’s body could be hidden, or allowed to fall from a height before being discovered, would provide the Imp searchers with what they wanted and buy Corran time to complete his escape. As long as they’re looking for a fat man, they won’t be looking for me.

  At the far end of the tunnel Corran straightened up. The room he found himself in, though dimly lit, appeared to be a utility room. He saw panels dealing with climate control as well as electrical power and other conveniences he had so recently lived without. From the number of different zones on the climate control panel, he knew the facility beyond the door was fairly large. He listened at the fiberplast door, but heard nothing from beyond it.

  He drew in a deep breath, then hit the door release and crouched in the shadows as the door cracked open. The doorway provided access to a fairly opulent hallway which reminded him, rather faintly, of images he’d seen of the Imperial Palace. Great, I escape a prison to find myself in some Imperial Moff’s palace. It’s certainly better than the hole I just got out of, but getting out of here unnoticed is not going to be that easy.

  He shrugged. But easy isn’t the object of this exercise—escape is. Escape I will.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Nawara Ven traced a talon through the ring of moisture left behind on the table by his mug of lomin-ale. I shouldn’t be here. This is madness. He drank more of the bitter and spicy ale. This is insane.

  By rights he shouldn’t have been anywhere near a tapcaf, much less a dim, smoke-choked place like the Hutt Haven. The prosecution had rested its case and had left Nawara in a serious bind. While the evidence presented had been, for a large part, circumstantial, it was a mountain of circumstance. He had character witnesses, but nothing to refute the basic facts upon which the prosecution was basing its case, which meant he ultimately had nothing.

  Which is why I’m here. Two hours earlier he had received a message requesting the meeting. He would have ignored it, but it had been signed “Hes Glillto,” the name Lai Nootka had assumed on his last trip to Coruscant. Whistler had gotten the name from Iella, and that had prompted the droid to flag the message when it came through to Nawara. Whistler also reported there was no way to trace it back to the sender—it had come through a public terminal.

  It’s not a good thing when a lawyer is given to meetings with mystery witnesses to bolster his case. If the person he was to meet was really Lai Nootka, the state’s case against Tycho would fall apart faster than a Jawa-fixed droid. Nootka could prove he’d met with Tycho on the night Corran said he saw Tycho meeting with Kirtan Loor. Once that fact was established it showed Tycho had nothing to fear from Corran and, hence, had no reason to want him dead.

  Of course, I’ve got no reason to suppose it will be Nootka. Probably will just be some glitbiter looking to make money in return for some rumor. Nawara raised his glass to finish it, but before he could swallow the liquid, he saw a tall, slender figure enter the tapcaf. The figure wore a hooded cloak that hid him entirely. It’s just the way Nootka appeared in Corran’s description of him. Nawara straightened up as the figure cut through the crowd, then slipped into the booth’s other seat.

  Nawara offered his hand. “Nawara Ven.”

  A pair of long-fingered human hands came out from beneath the cloak and pressed flat against the table. “I know who you are.”

  “And you’re not Lai Nootka.” Nawara’s eyes narrowed. “Are you going to take me to him?”

  “No. I would apologize for the deception, but I am not sorry. Lai Nootka will not be coming. He is dead.”

  “What? Can you prove that?”

  “He’s dead, and I cannot prove it.” The man’s voice came low but strong from within the shadowed hollow of the cloak’s hood. “I can, however, prove your client was not meeting with Kirtan Loor on the night Corran Horn saw him.”

  Nawara’s lekku writhed as disbelief flooded his voice. “You deceive me and then expect me to believe you? How can you prove that?”

  The man tugged the hood back far enough to admit some light, and Nawara felt his heart ache. He looks like the ghost of Grand Moff Tarkin.

  “I can prove it, Nawara Ven, because I am Kirtan Loor and I was nowhere near Tycho Celchu that night. In fact, I have never met him.”

  “And you can verify where you were?”

  “Yes. I have evidence enough to satisfy you.” Loor smiled slowly. “And evidence about spies throughout the New Republic that will satisfy even General Cracken.”

  What! This is too good to be true. This can’t be happening. Nawara’s jaw shot open. “You’re lying. You can’t be who you say you are.”

  “I can and I am. I will testify on your client’s behalf provided the New Republic is willing to offer me immunity from prosecution for any activity I have undertaken on behalf of the Empire. They will pay me a million credits, create a new identity for me, and get me off Coruscant. I will tell them everything they want to know, and then some. Every Imperial agent on Coruscant will be exposed. It is that simple.”

  “But…” Nawara’s mind was reeling. The implications of what Loor had said were staggering. “How can we be sure…?”

  Loor grabbed Nawara’s hand and impaled his own palm on one of Nawara’s talons. A bead of blood bubbled up. Nawara heard the sound of cloth tearing, then saw Loor blot the blood with a strip torn out of his tunic. He tossed the bloodied cloth to Nawara, then tore another strip from his shirt and bound his hand.

  “Take the cloth to Commander Ettyk. Have her duplicate my Imperial file, then run a DNA comparison between the duplicate and the sample. She must run it against a duplicate of the file—if she runs it against the file itself, others might discover you’re checking me out. Once you’re certain I am who I say I am, you will broker the deal for me. It is a take-it-or-leave-it deal, no negotiation. Once you have the deal made, you will hold a press conference. At one point during the conference, whenever you wish, you will say ‘I am very confident, supremely confident, that we will win.’ I don’t think I’ve heard you say that so far in the proceedings, so that will be the signal.”

  “No, I don’t think I’ve said that. I know I haven’t felt it.”

  “When you give the signal, I will send you another message to arrange pickup. At that time you and Iella Wessiri will get me. I don’t want to see anyone else, just you and her. You I have to trust, her I know well enough to trust. You can’t betray me and she won’t. Anyone else, anything fancy, and no one will benefit from my information. Got it?”

  Nawara nodded slowly. “I understand.”

  “Good. You have five hours.”

  “Five hours! That’s not much time, especially starting at midnight.” Nawara frowned. He almost added that he couldn’t call a press conference at two or three in the morning, but the media operated in a frenzied enough atmosphere that he could tell them to meet him on Kessel at noon and they’d find a way to be there. “I need more time.”

  “You don’t have it.” Loor nodded once and the hood slid forward to again hide his face. “I don’t have it. This all happens on my timetable. If it doesn’t, if there is trouble, a lot of people will be sorry. I can give freedom to your client and Coruscant to the New Republic, for which I am asking so little. See that it gets done.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Corran squeezed himself back in the corner of the library’s cabinet and waited. He decided it was just as well that he didn�
��t have a chronometer, because he would have constantly been looking at it. It seemed as if he’d been hidden away for years, though he knew it had hardly been more than fifteen minutes. I can only hope that some of the criminals I hunted felt like I do now while stormtroopers are hunting me.

  Corran had been able to make a basic scouting run on the facility where he found himself and had concluded two things. First, the utter lack of windows suggested that this facility was underground. Given the general taste for grand vistas and high towers he’d seen in Imperial architecture on Coruscant, this led him to believe that whatever the planet’s surface looked like was not worth seeing. This, in turn, made him think the surface was inhospitable and, therefore, not a place he wanted to travel without proper equipment.

  Second, he concluded there had to be a secret exit from the facility. Aside from the tunnel back to the prison, the only visible means of leaving was a lift that had a keypad and clearly required a code for operation. While he assumed the Moff who owned the place would have had the code for the lift, he couldn’t imagine the Moff did not also have a private bolt-hole. Unfortunately his hurried survey of the area hadn’t given him any obvious candidates for its location.

  One thing he had found was a garbage disposal chute. He dragged Derricote’s body to it and dumped it in. He distinctly heard a splash; then a disgusting odor wafted back up, so he closed the hatch. It was only when he realized that he didn’t smell much better himself that he decided, if things got tight, he’d go through the chute and take his chances getting out that way.

  The Imperial facility had a layout that was a lot like a TIE starfighter’s cross-section. The lift, garbage chute, and utility area formed a central core through which ran a long corridor. It intersected two corridors at right angles, one at each end. All of the corridors had high ceilings and doors running off them every seven meters or so.