The Krytos Trap

by Michael A. Stackpole

  And get her I will, somehow. Iella checked the advanced scanning system on the airspeeder’s console. The scanner compared the profiles of all the traffic it had encountered so far against everything it was detecting as the journey continued. Matches would indicate they were being followed, but nothing had passed the computer’s standards for a threat. Good. We’re clear, so far.

  “Coming up on the parking facility. We’re going into the secure level, then down into the Justice Court.” She wanted to add that the next few seconds, as she slowed to enter the building, were the most vulnerable in the whole flight. A single proton torpedo or concussion missile could destroy the airspeeder in the blink of an eye. A timed or proximity warhead could be launched from anywhere and catch them.

  The airspeeder slid into the darkened tunnel and slowed. Ahead a green holographic projection cycled through various alphabets. The words “Facility is Full” appeared in Basic above and below whatever language was being displayed in the middle. The green backlight illuminated a gate that barred further passage.

  Iella hit a button on the console keypad, then punched in her security code. Instead of giving her a new security code to use in bringing Loor to court—the addition of which might have alerted Imperial agents to strange goings-on—Halla Et-tyk had just locked everyone else out with code that made the lockout look like a computer glitch.

  The gate retracted into the floor. “We’re in.”

  Loor shifted in his seat in the back. “Does it bother you, Iella, to be shielding me this way?”

  “No more now than it did the first time you asked the question, Loor.” She moved the vehicle forward into the darkened parking area, and midway between the gate and the lift doors, she slung it around, swapping it end for end, so the nose pointed back out toward the exit. She let the speeder drift to a stop approximately twenty meters from the lift. “Does it bother you having to depend upon me?”

  Loor shook his head. “Not at all, my dear. You have a facility for loyalty—I don’t imagine you are wasting it on me—and to your mission you will be true. Your job is to deliver me to court, then watch me walk away, shedding my crimes like a Trandoshan shedding skin.”

  “Reminding me that you let the Trandoshan who murdered Corran’s father go isn’t the way to get me to feel good about helping you.”

  “No, I suppose it isn’t.” Loor sighed nonchalantly. “I’ll have to trust you’ll want Corran’s betrayer more than you want me dead, won’t I?”

  “That you will.” Iella cracked her door open and emerged from the speeder. She took a quick look around, saw nothing, then rapped on the top of the car. “Come on out. It’s clear.”

  As the other two left the vehicle, Iella pulled out her blaster and checked the power cell. Full charge, good. “Let’s go. We get to the lift, I input the code, we head down and through the prosecutor’s office. Simple, swift, and no one will get hurt.”

  Loor pulled up the hood on his cloak. “After you.”

  Iella growled at him and moved toward the elevator, taking up a position on the right side of the group. She held her blaster in two hands, up by her face, with the barrel pointing toward the ferrocrete ceiling. As she walked toward the lift she kept looking about, backward, forward, and side to side, trying to pick up on any movement, anything out of the ordinary. Across from her, unarmed though he was, Nawara looked about vigilantly as well.

  Between them, his cloak billowing out to inflate his silhouette to the size of his code name, Loor strode confidently. Though she could not see his face, his stance and stride indicated he was blithely amused by her caution. The grant of immunity has made him feel invincible.

  Iella felt the slick caress of a strand of webbing brush against her right cheek. She swept it away with her left hand and heard it snap near her ear. That struck her as odd, then sinister, as she saw Nawara bat at a similar thread with one of his brain tails.

  The lift doors, barely ten meters away, opened with little more than a whisper.

  As the lift doors parted, Loor felt his pulse quicken. Time slowed until nanoseconds took hours to pass. His emotions spiked, fear braiding itself together with triumph. The fear came from the realization that he might die, for surely an assassin or assassins lurked in the lift. I could well be dead before those doors close again.

  The triumph that wove in with the fear came from the realization that Ysanne Isard saw him as enough of a threat to kill him. She had always dismissed him before, patronized him, used him, and threatened to discard him. Now she saw how truly powerful he was. The desperation that marked this attempt on his life gave full measure to her concern over what he could do to destroy her.

  Loor began to smile. In this you show me I have won!

  Iella began to turn toward the unlit box, her blaster coming down as she squared her stance. Something black moved within the lift, a shadow that resolved itself into the form of a man dashing forth, a blazing blaster held in each hand. “Die, Derricote, die!” he screamed.

  Scarlet bolts of blaster energy burned toward the trio. One caught Nawara Ven on the right hip. It spun him around and flung him through the air.

  Before the Twi’lek could hit the ground, a pair of blaster-bolts lanced through Kirtan Loor’s chest. The first, which drilled him high on the left side of his body, lifted him from his feet. The second struck him high in the abdomen and centered on his midline, driving him back and down. He landed beside Nawara Ven’s tumbling body and slid halfway over to the airspeeder.

  Years of training overrode conscious thought in Iella. As bolts began to track in her direction, she coolly triggered a double-burst that stopped the assassin’s charge only a stride or two from the lift. The bolts stabbed deep into the man’s gut, snapping him forward. Blaster-bolts from his guns traced parallel lines down the ferrocrete as he hunched over, dropped to his knees, then fell forward on his face. His blaster pistols clattered down beside him, abandoned as his hands clutched at his ruined belly.

  Keeping her blaster on his form, she ran forward and kicked the pistols away. The assassin made a sound, a little moan, and it cut her legs out from under her. She sank to her knees beside him and rolled him onto his back. Even before she saw his face, the sounds he made and the feeling of his bony shoulders told her who he was. Intellect momentarily overrode emotion, providing her the clues she needed to confirm his identity, then it retreated as pain and despair exploded in her.

  She pulled his head into her lap and brushed strands of hair from his face. “Why, Diric, why?”

  “Lusankya.”

  Iella’s breath caught in her throat. “No, no, that can’t be.”

  “She broke me. She made me into one of her own. She had me placed in Derricote’s lab to watch him.” Diric winced fiercely, and his body went rigid for a moment. “She sent me to kill him before he could betray her. I had no choice. That wasn’t him, though.”

  Iella shook her head. “No. It was Kirtan Loor.”

  Diric managed a weak smile. “Good. I never liked him.” He reached a hand up toward her face, but it never got there. “I’m dying.”

  “No.” She fished for a comlink in her pocket. “I’ll get emergency medical droids here.”

  “No, Iella, no. Isard made me what others accuse Tycho of being. He isn’t. She had me reporting on him, too. From what she did, I cannot be saved.” His tongue wet thin lips. “I can’t live in suspicion, as a puppet. It would make life too… boring.”

  “Diric, no, we can help you.”

  “It’s over. I love you. She wanted me to kill you. I couldn’t resist.” He smiled weakly. “I could defy—the trigger that opened the lift was supposed to be linked to a bomb. I did what I could. So you could stop me from betraying myself by killing you.” Pain contorted his face. “Thank you for freeing me.”

  With her hand, Iella smoothed the pain on his face into peace, then realized he’d slipped away. Her throat thick, her eyes welling with tears, she gently lowered his head to the ferrocrete floor and kissed him
one last time.

  Kirtan Loor lay on the ferrocrete and could feel nothing. He knew this was not good. That he was dying was an inescapable conclusion and it outraged him. He tried to feed that outrage as much fuel as he could, but he simply ran out. The anger and fury in him collapsed in on itself, imploding into a black void that sucked the last bits of life from Kirtan Loor.

  At the heart of that void existed one fact, the one true thing that had marked his entire life. Gil Bastra had seen it. Corran Horn and Iella Wessiri had seen it. Ysanne Isard had seen it. Loor had done all he could to combat it, but it was a defect that was inborn and immutable. I make assumptions. I refuse to look beyond them for reality. I am defeated by them.

  He stared up at the ferrocrete ceiling, seeking in its haphazard patterns some cosmic truth, but the only truth he found ground away at him. She did not send an assassin to kill me, she sent him to kill Derricote. I am dying in his place, for his crimes. Is there anything worse?

  For some reason the image of Corran Horn came to him. Horn said there was nothing worse than dying alone. He fought to dismiss that idea, but as darkness nibbled away at the corners of his sight, he allowed as how that, just once, Corran Horn had been right.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Despite his fatigue, Wedge couldn’t remember having felt better. Strapped into the cockpit of his X-wing, with Mynock behind him, Asyr on his starboard wing, and atmosphere below his fighter, Wedge felt as if the galaxy’s reset button had been hit. His mission was clear: safeguard the forces making a run on an Imperial terrorist cell. He didn’t know if this was all that was left of the Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front, or if this was just one tentacle of that foul kraken, but he had no doubts they’d destroy it.

  Gone were the ambiguities that had been forced on him. Tycho’s trial was political. The run to Ryloth and the convoy escort mission from Alderaan had both been political. Even the raid on Zsinj’s space station had been political. While he realized the whole Rebellion had, in essence, been political, his role in it had been military. The targets we were given were military, picked because of their military value, and the mission parameters were ones that could be fulfilled through a military effort.

  Wedge keyed his comm unit. “Hunter One, this is Rogue Lead. We are on-station.”

  “I copy, Rogue Lead. Stand by for tactical team directives.”

  “As ordered.” Wedge glanced down at his scanner. The squadron had broken itself down into five pairs of fighters. Four of the pairs orbited the target district with 90 degrees of separation between their positions. The last pair, Erisi Dlarit and Rhysati Ynr, flew high cover up around the level of the skyhooks. The lower fighters were meant to assist the raid and pick up stragglers, while the high-orbit pair would cut off any PCF terrorists that made it out of the district and in toward their target.

  “Rogue Lead, this is Hunter One. We are taking heavy fire from the western approach. Help is needed.”

  “I copy. On the way.” Wedge hit a button on his console, shifting the comm unit to the squadron’s tactical channel. “Rogue Two, did you get that?”

  “I copied, Lead.” Asyr’s voice betrayed no nervousness. “After you.”

  “Five, you and Ten with the next call, then Seven’s element, then Twelve’s element.”

  “As ordered.”

  Wedge kicked his X-wing up on the port S-foil, then hit the left rudder and pointed the fighter’s nose at the ground. He let the fighter succumb to gravity, then rolled it and prepared to glide out onto the target. The Justice Court building flashed past, then Wedge hauled back on the stick and leveled out. Target is five kilometers out and coming up fast.

  Even in the distance he could see blaster fire spraying out to cover the approaches on the west side of the building. As he swooped in, he saw one smoking speeder-ferry slowly drifting down toward the unseen ground. Wedge flicked his lasers over to single fire and dropped the crosshairs on the focal point for the blaster fire. As range dropped to a kilometer, he tightened down on the trigger and feathered the left rudder pedal to keep his fire tracking on target.

  The X-wing’s four lasers fired in sequence, peppering the middle level of the building with a staccato hail of energy darts. They swept across the wide doorway, some of them scattering half-hidden individuals inside the warehouse. Other laser-bolts shredded one of the two E-Web Heavy Repeating Blasters just inside the doorway, killing the soldiers crewing the weapon.

  Asyr’s X-wing came in right behind Wedge’s and repeated his strafing run. As she flew through the area, Wedge chopped his thrust back, hit his rudder, and turned his fighter around. He punched the throttle, killing his momentum, then cut his repulsorlift coils in. Asyr sailed on past him and pulled up to begin a loop, while Wedge goosed his X-wing forward and brought it up in line with the warehouse opening.

  “They’re running!” Wedge hit the trigger and scythed fire back and forth across the gaping warehouse entryway. Two laser-bolts caught a small airspeeder in the middle and aft, slicing it into three equal parts. The pieces flew across the open area and rebounded off a neighboring building, then tumbled into the urban canyon depths.

  The rest of his shots missed the legion of targets because what he was trying to hit tended to be small and moving very fast. Speeder bikes with and without sidecars corkscrewed their way out and down or up to elude him. One airspeeder just sailed out and dropped like a freefalling Hutt, sinking out of sight before he could track it. Others banked hard and flew fast to escape, though from comm unit chatter, each of them had been tagged and had pursuit on its way.

  An ugly green light strobed through the warehouse. Wedge nudged the X-wing forward, and saw boxy silhouettes, each supported on twin pillars, bobbing up and down in the warehouse. A shiver ran down his spine, then he keyed his comm unit. “Scout walkers, three of them, with two coming our way. I’ve got them.”

  Wedge flicked his weapon’s-control over to proton torpedoes. His aiming reticle went from yellow to red as the targeting computer locked on. Mynock shrieked with a lock-tone and Wedge hit his trigger. A proton torpedo streaked out, crossing the fifty meters between the X-wing and the warehouse in the blink of an eye.

  The proton torpedo caught the rightmost AT-ST in the outside leg, just below the upper joint. The torpedo sheered the leg off, and the impact spun the scout walker around. It crashed into the walker next to it, then rebounded and bounced to the ground. Ten meters behind it the proton torpedo exploded, detonating the walker’s concussion grenade magazine.

  The second walker, which had awkwardly skipped forward after being bumped, ended up being slightly off balance when the grenades went off. A burst of green light from deeper within the warehouse outlined the upright walker as the downed walker’s good leg whipped around and caught it across the ankles. The standing walker staggered as the pilot tried to widen its stance and remain upright. His efforts almost paid off and the walker had begun to straighten up, when its left foot ran out of warehouse floor. The machine wavered for a moment, then slowly keeled over in an ungainly plunge toward the ground.

  The green light, from the last AT-ST’s twin blaster cannon, again lit the interior of the warehouse. What is it shooting at? In the time it took him to form that question in his mind, he also came up with the answer. No, can’t let that happen.

  He nudged the throttle forward and picked up some speed. Flying into the warehouse, Wedge got to see the AT-ST fire one last shot at the far wall, widening the breach. An airspeeder—heavily laden, judging from the way the aft end struck sparks as it slewed around the scout walker—shot in toward the hole. The remaining walker squared off to face him and protect the airspeeder.

  The other vehicles were decoys! This one is the bomb. Wedge hit enough left rudder to track the airspeeder, then fired a proton torpedo. The projectile hit the ferrocrete decking and skipped off, rising quickly. Instead of passing between the AT-ST’s legs, it slammed full into the cockpit. The explosion filled the end of the warehouse with a firestorm.
A black cloud billowed up with red-gold flame-claws slashing their way clear of it, while pieces of debris and shrapnel ricocheted and bounced throughout the warehouse.

  Swirling tendrils of smoke curled out through the hole, and Wedge knew instantly where the airspeeder had gone. He guided the X-wing straight for the center of the hole the scout walker had opened in the other side of the warehouse. He made it through with centimeters to spare on both sides, then cut the repulsorlift generators and dove.

  “This is Rogue Leader. The warehouse is clear. I’m out the other side.”

  Hunter One sounded faintly amused. “We would have let you come back out this way, Rogue Leader.”

  “Thanks, Hunter One, but I’m in pursuit of the bomb.” Deep below him he saw the airspeeder level off and head toward Invisec. “Let the bacta storehouse know it’s incoming, and so am I. With luck, only one of us will get there.”

  Chapter Fourty

  “He’s not the fat guy,” said one of the three men facing Corran.

  “Doesn’t matter. Kill him anyway.”

  Corran pulled his right arm back and whipped it forward, sidearming the lightsaber toward the trio. The blade spun through a flat arc. The men on either side of the grouping dove for cover, but the center man’s eyes grew wide and glowed in the blade’s icy light. He shot twice at the light-saber, but missed with both bolts.

  The lightsaber’s silver shaft scythed through his middle and dropped him in two parts to the ground. Two wet, meaty thumps swallowed the clatter of the blaster carbine against the floor. The glowrod attached to the barrel flared, then went out.

  Corran dove to the left, rolled, and came up in a crouch. He tracked a moving cone of light and fired at its base. He heard no scream to indicate he had hit his target, then a spray of blaster-bolts from the right forced him to duck again. As he slipped back into the shadow of a statue, his two foes extinguished their glowrods, leaving the footlights as the only illumination in the larger room.