"You're the boss."
The bearded man eyed his companion. In his experience, You're the boss
always meant, I'll shut up for now, then put a vibroblade in your back when the
profit is highest. He mentally crossed his companion off his "useful" list and
moved him to "expendable."
"I'll get things started," he said. "Thanks for the tip."
"Anytime."
The bearded man moved off toward his personal transport, a late-model
landspeeder paid for by information he'd furnished to the Peace Brigade. If
these were the Solos, he might be able to afford a personal spacecraft now--even
factoring in the sum his companion's elimination would cost.
On the balcony of their rented quarters, Leia sat, her ankles crossed on
the railing before her, and entered notes.
Things were going well... mostly. The Talon Karrde organization had already
led her to a pair of retired - semiretired-smugglers who were trusted by Karrde
and Whose enthusiasm for hunkering down in anticipation of the Yuuzhan Vong
invasion matched hers. With their experience, they could find their own bases of
operations, could even help with the acquisition of some vehicles and other
equipment. What Han and Leia had to do now was help them set up a communications
system, a combination holocomm and comlink that could transmit and receive the
short, hard-to-track data packets that were the essence of resistance
communications.
But Leia set her notes aside for a moment, distracted by the view. Below
the balcony, a small lake stretched into the distance; its far shore was at the
base of a low line of hills, and Aphran, the planet's sun, was now setting
beyond them. It was a red-gold orb, distorted by distance and atmosphere. The
hills cast shadows over the distant part of the lake, while sunbeams illuminated
the nearer portions, turning the water from green-blue to a brilliant gold.
It was only a sunset. She'd seen lovely sunsets all over the galaxy. But it
had been some time since she'd paid attention to one, appreciated one.
This sunset meant nothing in the face of Yuuzhan Vong invasions, the death
of Anakin, the disappearance of Jacen, her long separations from the rest of her
family. But just for this moment, those sacrifices didn't dig pain into her, and
she could appreciate what she was seeing, its simple beauty.
"Bottle that and sell it, and we could make a fortune."
Leia started. She looked up to where Han stood behind her. The energy field
that kept the cooler air inside their quarters also muffled sound, so it hadn't
been too difficult for him to sneak up on her. He stared into the distance,
watching the golden rays retreating as the sun continued its descent, and for
once there was no self-deprecating humor, no expression of suspicion or cynicism
on his face. Just contemplation.
Leia reached up to take his hand. He settled into the chair next to hers.
"How were your errands?" she asked. "Pretty good. The inventory is about half
done, and the locals haven't found any irregularities." His last words were
private code, agreed upon before the Falcon had set out on this series of
missions. Irregularities meant the smuggling compartments and the shielded
escape pod; those secrets remained intact. "And I was able to make some
purchases. Cabinets. I need to arrange for their delivery." So he'd been able to
find the comm gear he needed, but delivery to wait until the new resistance
leaders locally had a place for it. "You?"
"Oh, I may have made some new friends."
"That's good. You know what?"
"What?"
"I don't want to talk about work anymore today."
"Me, either."
Borleias
Tam and Wolam sat in the pilot's seats of Wolam's shuttle. Once a military
blastboat, it had been stolen from the Empire early in Wolam's career and
gradually converted to a lightly armed mobile office. Now it sat in the kill
zone in front of the biotics building, one of the tew vehicles internally lit at
this nighttime hour.
In the absence of true broadcaster facilities, Wolam did have a less
comprehensive set of tools built into the ship's computer, and now he and Tam
looked over their last couple of days' recordings, annotating them, choosing
which to use and which to discard in Wolam's next historical documentary.
"Here's one." Wolam paused the image and then tapped the figure of one
mechanic working energetically on an X-wing engine.
"A mechanic," Tam said.
"A female mechanic." Wolam dialed the image so that the woman expanded to
fill the screen. "Corellian, unmarried. Good looking. I spoke with her for a few
minutes while you were showing Tarc the zoom functions."
"Ah. I see. We now take a break from work so you can once again try to set
me up with a woman."
"That's correct."
"And I should seek her out because she's good looking. Not that she isn't..
. but am I that shallow?"
"At your age, you should be."
Tam sighed and took the recording off pause. It continued on, focusing for
a few more moments on that X-wing and its crew, before blanking. A moment later,
the image of the biotics building's main lobby snapped into focus.
"More important, now's not the time," Tam said. "I. have a few things to
get through first. Such as my reputation as a traitor."
"A reputation that exists only in your own mind."
"And the fact that all my savings were on Coruscant. The fact that all my
possessions fit in a bag that I have no trouble lifting."
"So seek out a woman who isn't as shallow as I wish you were."
"What's this?" The image on the screen became jerky, blurring across a sea
of waists and belt buckles. Then it rose, and Wolam's face appeared on the
screen, saturated with light, recorded from about waist height. The recorded
Wolam grimaced and tried to turn his face out of the glare. "Oh, that's young
Tarc's recording."
"That's right, our second tour of the building."
"I think he was experimenting with the notion of using the holocam glow rod
as a weapon."
Tam snorted, then became serious again. "Wolam, he doesn't belong here."
"True."
"And the Solos-well, I don't have any criticism of them, they have their
duties, but they're not exactly around here much. They're just momentary
reassurances for him."
"Yes. They've accepted responsibility for him, despite their inability to
be available to him at all times, because he needs someone, and no one else is
that someone."
"Pretty much the way you accepted responsibility for me, ten years ago."
Wolam shook his head. "Not quite. You were sixteen, more or less an adult."
"Just like now."
Wolam smiled. "Tam, listen. If you have a failing, it's that you don't
seize the initiative, don't grasp the opportunities that are before you. Such as
going out and spending the occasional rowdy evening with people your Own age-
there are plenty here, including that mechanic. Such as finding out for yourself
that your worries about your reputation as a traitor are unfounded. But that
railing is not too great a sin. Its consequences eat at
you, but don't hurt
anyone except you. You don't hurt other people, you do a necessary job quietly
and well, and when a hard task moves into your path-such as shaking off the
domination of the Yuuzhan Vong-you accomplish that task."
"Eventually."
"I'm trying to say, as your friend rather than as your employer, that I'm
proud of you, and I wish you were proud of yourself."
Tam met Wolam's eyes, then looked away, concentrating on the screen again
rather than let Wolam see tears trying to form. "Wolam, that hoy needs somebody.
When it comes time to shove off Borleias, I want to take him along with me. With
us, if you'll have him along."
"See there? Another task accepted. A gigantic one compared to shaking off
Yuuzhan Vong brainwashing - accepting responsibility for a whole, entire child.
But have you asked him? Have you talked to the Solos?"
"No. I will. And if any of them say no, then it's no. But I think Tarc
deserves the offer."
"I think you're right. And of course, I'd be happy for him to come along.
If he can learn to stop spinning, he could be a useful backup holocam operator."
Tam grinned.
On the screen, Tarc's low-point-of-view recording continued, catching both
Tam and Wolam as they marched down one of the biotics building's basement
hallways.
Something on a wall over a doorway flashed with reflective light, just for
a moment, then disappeared as the holocam view progressed.
Tam sat upright. "Hold it." He paused the recording, then reversed it until
that door frame came into view again.
"What is it?"
"I'm not sure." He wasn't sure, but if it was what he thought it was, it
was bad news.
He scrolled the screen view back and forth across that one second of
recording. One moment, the wall above the door frame was blank, then there was
that reflection, then it was blank again.
"Are you sure now?"
"Let's go look."
It was a low-security hallway, though there were higher-security doors on
it; they were protected by keypads and alarms, and around the corner from the
portion of the hallway where they stood, doors providing access to the Twin Sun
Squadron's special turbolift were guarded by security personnel.
But here there were two doors immediately across from one another. The one
on the left had a keypad access and was marked ENVIRONMENT. The one on the tight
led to a well-packed utility closet.
Tam reached up over that doorway and ran his finger along the wall. After a
few centimeters of paint, his fingertip encountered a smoother substance, though
no change in the wall texture was visible to him. The smoothness ran for perhaps
ten centimeters, then turned to paint texture again.
"I saw that," Wolam said. "What was it?"
"A Yuuzhan Vong toy. When they had control of me, I put one up on the wall
outside Danni Quee's laboratory. Watch this." Tam stroked the thing along its
left edge, a combination he'd been taught during his brief, painful, life-
changing stay among the Yuuzhan Vong.
Vibrant colors suddenly appeared on the patch of material. They showed the
keypad on the door opposite showed hands moving across the keys, tapping in an
access code.
Tam looked at Wolam. His expression was unhappy, He pulled a comlink out
from a pocket. "Tam Elgrin to Comm Main Control, put me through to the
Intelligence office."
"This is Comm Main, say again your name and authority."
"This is Tam Elgrin. I'm one of the civilians on base."
"Oh. Right. You're that civilian. Who did you want again?"
"The Intelligence office."
"The Intelligence office isn't staffed every hour of the day, and you
aren't authorized to demand the attention of the head of the department. I'm
amazed you're authorized to remain on Borleias."
Tam covered over the microphone portion with his palm. He offered Wolam a
cynical smile. "So my reputation is all in my imagination, huh?"
"Give me that."
Tam handed the comlink over.
"Hello, this is Wolam Tser. I, too, want to speak to the director of
Intelligence, or the director of Security, and I mean immediately."
Tam moved to the keypad and tapped at several of its keys. There was an
audible click from the lock and the door slid up and open. Beyond were floor-to-
ceiling hanks of mechanical and electronic equipment and a narrow, worker-sized
gap between them.
No, you're just Tam Elgrin again, changing his voice, and if you continue
to broadcast on this frequency, I'm eoing to have you dragged through the kill
zone behind a landspeeder."
"State your name and rank."
"I'm Warrant Officer Urman Nakk, Security."
"Warrant Officer Urman Nakk, Security, are you widely considered to be an
idiot?"
"What?"
"Because in less than a day, I can guarantee that you will be. By your
fellow security officers. By your superiors. By your family and your pets. By
the officers who court-martial you. And the taint will stay with you throughout
your life, because I am a brilliant historian and commentator and you are, at
best, a mediocre desk pilot. This will happen despite your best efforts...
unless you hand me over to one of the officers I asked for, right now!"
Tam gave Wolam a thumbs-up of approval. He took a step into the niche. Then
he backed out again and bent over, studying the floor of the electronics-access
closet. "I, ah, I, hold on."
Tam reached down to the seam where the metal floor of the closet met the
duracrete floor of the hallway. He lifted, and the floor came up, revealing a
hole in the duracrete beneath. The hole was smooth-edged but irregular, lacking
the mathematically precise curve of something cut by machinery.
A noise floated up out of the hole. It seemed to come from a great
distance, but it was recognizable: a wail of despair, of pain. Tam sat down at
its edge, dangling his legs into the hole. "I'm going down."
"No, you're not,"
"I'm seizing the initiative, Wolam."
"No, you're waiting for an officer to come on rhe comlink."
Tam pushed the portion of metal flooring over until it leaned against a
panel of machinery and would not fall across the hole. Then he slid down into
the hole.
"Tam, blast it, don't do what I say, do what I mean."
Nine
The tunnel did not descend in a straight line. Tam didn't expect it to. It
was something of the Yuuzhan Vong, and they never did anything in straight
lines.
But that, and the fact that it had been bored through duracrete, meant that
Tam could clamber down rather than drop to a messy, bone-breaking stop at the
bottom.
Another scream floated up at him, louder. A few meters down, the duraerete
gave way to bedrock, then became duraerete again; it looked as though there were
sub-basements below, levels that perhaps were not accessed by the public
turbolifts and emergency stairwells, and the Yuuzhan Vong intruder had found
them. Tam could see, even dig his fingers into smaller side holes in this
tunnel; he supposed that whatever stone-eating
organisms had made the tunnels
had first dug around in all directions and then conveyed images or other
knowledge to the Yuuzhan Vong spy who commanded them, allowing him or her to
choose which path the main tunnel would follow.
He found a larger niche, two meters deep and one high. Its bottom was lined
with some sort of mossy substance; he'd seen it before, one type of sleep
surface.
There were also gelatinlike bags he knew to contain bio-engineered
creatures that performed various functions when released from the jelly. He'd
possessed some of them when he served the Yuuzhan Vong.
There was another scream, and the sound of voices speaking. He slowed his
descent, tried to make it quieter.
A few more meters, and the hole opened up into a chamber. Lights flickered
red and blue down there, suggesting a computer terminal screen rather than
overhead illumination.
And finally Tam could understand one of the voices. It was a male, and he
spoke Basic with the halting accent and peculiar rhythm he'd come to associate
with a member of the Yuuzhan Vong trying not to reveal his true origins.
"Where is the true crystal?" he asked.
There was no immediate response. Then there was another shriek. The next
speaker also sounded male, though his words were distorted by pain: "It's gone.
It's been taken to the pipefighter already."
"The pipefighter abominations are still in the flat building. They have not
fired upon us. They leave the lambent in that building when guards are more
numerous here?"
"Yes, yes-" There was another scream. This one went on and on, ending only
as the second speaker ran out of wind.
Tam grimaced. He had to see what was going on in that chamber before he
could act. But although he could wait here at the tunnel end, his legs braced at
the side, for some time, he couldn't turn upside down to peek outside it. He
wasn't that nimble.
Ah, but he had another set of eyes. Hurriedly, he took his light-duty
holocam from around his neck. He detached its neck cord, attached it so that the
unit could dangle, its lenses pointed to the side and its quick-review
viewscreen oriented up toward him. He adjusted the lenses to wide-angle viewing,
then lowered the unit to the very bottom of the tunnel and slightly beyond.
Rebel Stand Page 15