by James Luceno
“I don’t know. Iceheart has been shifting some resources around, and some Admirals move them even further to avoid her control. It could be the Eviscerator was moved at random.”
Wedge frowned. “Or Iceheart anticipated where we were likely to strike.”
“Or”—Salm looked at Wedge over the rim of his glass—“someone told Iceheart where we were going to be.”
“Tycho was in the dark about our destination as the rest of us were—and he was out there without any lasers or torps pulling in EV pilots.”
Salm held up his open hand. “Easy, Commander, I wasn’t accusing your XO. I don’t trust him, but I know he was innocent this time.”
“You checked the monitor logs on him?”
“I checked the logs on everyone. There were more call-outs than I like, but nothing incriminating. Now I didn’t know where we were going before we pulled out, so I assume no one else did, but there are always leaks.” The General set his cognac on his desk, then walked over to the small bar in the corner of his quarters. “Would you like a drink, Commander Antilles?”
“I’d prefer it if you’d call me Wedge.”
The smaller man seemed to consider that for a moment, then he nodded. “Very well, Wedge. A drink?”
“How old is the Abrax?”
Salm smiled. “I don’t know. My aide obtained it from the black market so your guess is as good as mine. The bottle does have Old Republic tax holograms on it, though.”
Wedge shrugged. “I’ll chance it, then, thanks.”
The General poured him a generous dollop of the aquamarine liquid. “Please, be seated.”
The General’s quarters were as sparsely furnished as his own, with munition cases and old ejection seats being about the best thing available to use as tables and chairs. Salm’s liquor cabinet had been built out of a plasteel helmet case with foam inserts to keep glasses and two bottles safe. Wedge appropriated one of the ejection seats and raised his glass of cognac. “Thank you for coming to our rescue out there.”
“Defender Wing pays its debts.”
Glasses clinked as they touched and both men drank. The liquor’s spicy vapors opened up all of Wedge’s nasal passages. He let the liquid pool on his tongue for a moment more, then swallowed it. A warmth started in his belly and pulsed out to ease some of the fatigue in his limbs.
The General hunched forward, cupping his glass in both hands. “I want to ask you what you intend to put in your report about what I did out there.”
Wedge made no effort to cover his surprise. “You saved my unit. I thought I might recommend review for the Corellian Cross. Since I’m not your commanding officer I can’t put you in for it, but …”
Salm shook his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What, then?”
The man’s brow furrowed. “I disobeyed a direct order to leave the system.”
Wedge blinked in confusion. “If you had returned to the Mon Valle, your entire wing would have been killed.”
“We know that now, but we did not know that at the time the order was given.” Salm swirled the cognac around in his glass. “General Kre’fey and I had often been at odds with each other—you may have gathered that from the briefing. I felt, when he ordered me out, that he wanted to rob me of any credit for the operation. I started us on an outbound vector, but came in close to the Emancipator so I could claim its mass prevented us from making the jump to light speed. I didn’t want to leave and closing with the Star Destroyer made for a convenient excuse, but datafeeds from the onboard computers will reveal the truth.”
“And so you were in position so the Emancipator could screen you from ground sensors and the incoming squints.” Wedge shrugged. “If I’d been given that order and thought of that trick to let me stick around, that’s what I would have done.”
“I know.” Salm stood and began to pace. “That’s the problem, Commander Antilles: What I did is exactly what you would have done.”
“It worked.”
“It doesn’t matter that it worked. I’m not you. My people are not your people.” Salm’s face became a mask of frustration. “The only thing that keeps my people alive out there is rigid adherence to discipline, and this discipline is instilled through consciously constructed drills that build them into a unit. My people lack the native talent in your squadron, but we make up for it because we cover for one another and watch out for each other.”
“As you watched out for my people.”
“Yes, I did that, but only by disobeying an order from a superior officer. And you have to write it up that way.”
Wedge shook his head. “I don’t want to see you taking slugs for something that wasn’t wrong.”
“But that’s not up to you, Wedge. You can excuse something one of your pilots does, but only Ackbar and the High Command can forgive me for this mutiny.” Salm tossed off the last of his cognac. “So, don’t give the Admiral a single byte report—tell him what happened.”
“What, and pretend I understand it?” Wedge sat back in the padded chair. “Interceptors came out of nowhere and the base suddenly developed more power than even the worst case allowed. If the Eviscerator had showed up and dumped two wings’ worth of fighters into the battle, we would have lost all our ships. With the Star Destroyer-II in the area, of course, Blackmoon won’t fall.”
“You’re probably right, though the presence of an Impstar-Deuce is not insurmountable.” Salm splashed some more cognac into his glass. “Stripped of their fighters, they are vulnerable to TRD.”
Wedge waved away a refill and smiled. TRD was Alliance slang for Trench Run Disease, or the tactics that had destroyed the first Death Star. The Empire had developed Lancer-class frigates to prevent TRD from claiming any capital ships. While attacks by snubfighters had proved relatively insignificant in hurting Star Destroyers, TRD was something Imperial officers feared and took great pains to avoid.
“Fine, I’ll head out with my half-dozen pilots and we’ll vape the Eviscerator’s TIEs so you can waltz in and give it a dose of TRD.”
“It would be my pleasure, Commander, but High Command is going to want a lot of questions asked and answered about Blackmoon before more operations are conducted in that sector of space.”
A tone sounded at the door, but before Salm could say anything, the door retracted and Corran Horn rushed in, followed closely by an infantry Lieutenant. “Commander, you wouldn’t believe …” The enthused smile on Corran’s face died as he saw Salm.
Both men snapped to attention. “Begging the General’s pardon.”
“At ease, Lieutenant Page, Lieutenant Horn.” Salm clasped his own hands behind his back. “What’s the meaning of this?”
Corran’s gaze darted back and forth from Wedge to Salm. “Emtrey just said Commander Antilles was here, sir. He didn’t mention these were your quarters, sir.”
Salm looked at Wedge. “Your officers barge into your quarters uninvited?”
“Not so far. Perhaps, General Salm, I need to institute some of the discipline you were speaking about earlier.” Wedge stood and gave Corran a hard stare. “News of our compatriots in the medical unit?”
“No, sir.”
Wedge could see Corran was fit to burst. “This had better be good, Mr. Horn.”
“Yes, sir.” Corran looked at Salm. “With the General’s permission.”
Salm nodded. “Proceed.”
Corran’s smile blossomed again. “If we want Blackmoon, we’ve got it.”
“What?”
The junior officer nodded. “Whistler, my astromech, collected a lot of data while we were out there and has been running it through the programs he used to analyze smugglers’ bases so CorSec knew where to hit them.”
Salm’s face hardened. “This is an Imperial base, not some bandit’s hideout.”
Page shook his head. “Begging your pardon, sir, but the droid found a lot of parallels to smugglers’ bases, and that gives us some new options. Whistler also pinpoint
ed Blackmoon from a star chart and is pulling up more data than we were given in our briefings. It can fall.”
Wedge shook his head. “Good work, gentlemen, but there’s an Imperial Star Destroyer Mark II we have to figure into the scenario. That changes everything.”
Salm held a hand up. “Perhaps not, Commander.”
“No?”
“Not entirely.” Salm folded his arms. “Who knows about this information you have?”
Horn thought for a second, then answered, “As nearly as I know, just Page, my R2, the unit’s 3PO, and me.”
“I want you to confirm that. You two are hereby sworn to secrecy. If any word about this gets out I’ll have you flying solo missions against Ssi-ruuk strongholds, got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Wedge smiled. “Being a bit lenient there, aren’t you, sir?”
“Perhaps I am, but I think they know I’m serious.” Salm smiled confidently. “Now let’s see what you have, gentlemen. Blackmoon was picked as our best, closest step to Coruscant yet. No reason we should abandon our quest if we don’t have to.”
28
Kirtan Loor raised a hand to ward off the dust storm raised by the shuttle’s landing jets. The Sipharium settled down easily, its landing lights strobing brightly in the Borleiasian evening. The hum of the engines filled the air, drowning out the sound of the gangway being lowered from the belly of the ship.
The Intelligence agent smiled at General Derricote as the base’s commander crested the stairs to the landing platform. “Come to see me off? I’m honored.”
Derricote returned the smile. “Your visit was not as onerous as you might imagine, Agent Loor.” The older man held a bottle out to him. “A memento of your visit.”
Kirtan took it. “Corellian whiskey, Whyren’s Reserve, no less.” He looked closely at the cap and the holographic tax seal. “It looks genuine. Is it, or have you prepared this so I can poison myself and eliminate a problem for you?”
Derricote opened his hands. “If you want to open it and lumguzzle, I’ll join you. It is genuine, and quite costly, but I have connections that make it possible for me to obtain it. It’s not poisoned because it is given by way of thanking you. Had you not come here the Rebels might have taken me by surprise. I think the result would have been much the same as it actually turned out to be, but one can never know. Your use of influence to transfer a squadron of TIE starfighters from the Eviscerator until my fighters can be replaced was also appreciated.”
The General’s openness surprised Kirtan. “You do not feel my being ordered back to Imperial Center is a threat to your operation here?”
Derricote shrugged. “I am too much a realist to imagine I could keep this operation secret forever. I trust you will use your knowledge of it to your own gain, which means I will not be sacrificed casually. This operation, of course, has uses. I would think that Ysanne Isard would find it more valuable than any object lesson she could provide others by destroying it and me.”
The man’s eyes hardened. “Besides, if I saw you as a threat, you would have died during the Rebel attack.”
Truly spoken. Kirtan nodded slowly. “I accept your gift in the spirit in which it is given.” But I will have it tested before I drink.
“I hope, also, you will view this invitation in the spirit in which it is given.” Derricote spread his arms wide to encompass the planet. “The Empire is dead. What will rise to replace it, I don’t know, but the Core will be heating up and Imperial Center is going to be roasted alive. Rebels, warlords, either could do the job. Old Borleias here, it’s been through its time of fire. I’ll be here when Imperial Center isn’t. If you need a haven when things break apart, remember that I’m here.”
Kirtan brought his head up. “Thank you, General. I shall remember you. I hope I won’t have to avail myself of your invitation, but if I do, I know where to find you.”
“Have a good trip to Imperial Center, Agent Loor.”
Kirtan raised the bottle in a salute. “Until we meet again.”
Wedge felt a giddy anticipation in his belly the like of which he’d not known since Endor. He glanced over at General Salm. The man sat on the other side of the briefing table with his eyes closed, nodding to himself as he rehearsed what he would say to Admiral Ackbar. The plan they’d concocted over the last week could work, but it was risky and highly time-dependent.
The door to the briefing room opened and Ackbar entered the room. He nodded to both men, then settled down in the chair at the head of the oval table. “What have you woven together?”
Salm smiled and punched keys on his datapad. The small device fed information to the holographic projection disk in the center of the table and a starfield began to sparkle and slowly spin above it. “We have found a way to take Blackmoon.”
The Mon Calamari sat back. “I do not recall your having been told which world Blackmoon was.”
Wedge shook his head. “We weren’t. As per orders, coordinates were downloaded to and erased from all of our astromechs and navigational computers before and after the operation. Unfortunately for operational security, one of my unit’s astromechs has a special criminal investigation and forensics circuitry package. It gathers evidence and, in this case, included a star chart of the area in it.”
Ackbar’s barbels quivered. “Something will have to be done to correct that situation.”
“Agreed, Admiral, but this droid in Commander Antilles’s squadron has provided us with invaluable information that points out why we lost the fight and how we can take Borleias.”
“And more, sir.” Wedge pointed at the starfield. “Computer, isolate the triad.”
The starfield grew and stars bled out of the edges of the image. In the center three stars intensified in radiance and faint green lines stretched out to link them. A small arrow pointed down and away from the lowest point of the triangle indicating the direction of the Core and Coruscant.
“These three systems are, in descending order, Mirit, Venjagga, and Pyria. The center one, Venjagga, is home to the Eviscerator. It is using Jagga-Two as a base and is there to protect the concussion missile production facilities. While the output is considered small by Imperial standards, the fact that the world is actually producing missiles makes it worth protecting.”
Salm indicated the uppermost system, the one on a virtual straight line with Borleias. “The Mirit system is home to Ord Mirit. The Empire abandoned that base shortly after Endor and shifted the garrison all the way over to Corellia to help hold the shipyards there. Ord Mirit is really too far away from anything substantial for us to use it as a base, as we have done with Ord Pardron. Still, it is part of the sector the Eviscerator is tasked to defend.”
“Finally we have Borleias.” Salm hit a button on his datapad and the starfield dissolved into the image of the planet. “When we were there before we discovered the estimates of power generation for the planet were low by at least half and two squadrons of fighters—Interceptors no less—showed up without warning. All of the data we had about the planet had been stolen from Imperial files by Bothan slicers. Unfortunately for us, that information was incomplete.”
Wedge nodded. “We went back and pulled old data files on Borleias and they’ve provided the answers to questions that were never asked before the first operation. Back before the Empire existed, Alderaan Biotics set up a research facility on the far side of the planet. It included a geothermal generation station and a local spaceport. Because everything was located in the northern part of the planet, the facilities were built underground to avoid complications from the harsh winters. A series of scan surveys of the planet would be required to locate the sites from space.”
“What Commander Antilles says is true, sir—and the effort to locate these bases from space would have revealed our interest in the planet to the Empire.”
The Mon Calamari acknowledged Salm’s comment with a nod. “Why was there no information about this place in the Imperial files, General?”
“The facility was shut down years ago. We suspect that the current base commander, Evir Derricote, refurbished it and has it operating to produce goods—foodstuffs mostly—that are sold to the refugee Alderaanan population via the black market. At the very least his Imperial superiors would see this as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, so hiding knowledge of it from them makes sense.”
“So you suspect this facility and its generator was the source of the power used to reinforce the base’s shields?”
“Yes, sir.” Wedge pointed to a faint red line linking the military base and the Biotics facility. “A tunnel that runs about one and a quarter kilometers beneath the surface of the planet links the two facilities. There is a rift valley where a ferrocrete conduit links the tunnel one side to the other. This is the weak link—the generator is too deep to blow with proton torpedoes and destroying it makes no sense if we intend to take the planet.”
Ackbar nodded, then tapped his lower lip with a flipperlike hand. “If you sever the connection with the military base, you bring us back to the original Bothan estimates of the defenses. If we bring our ships back in, we should be able to bring the shields down as we did before. We could take the base, but then the Eviscerator would come and destroy it.”
Salm shook his head. “Not if the Eviscerator arrives too late. Our plan in this—we stage a feint at Jagga-Two. The Emancipator and the Liberator arrive in-system, just at the outer edge of the gravity well created by the seventh planet, a gas giant. They deploy my Defender Wing and another wing of fighters, matching the Eviscerator’s complement of TIEs. The Eviscerator will deploy its fighters and move out behind their screen to engage our ships.
“Even at full speed, it will require two hours for our ships to engage each other. Our snubs won’t be traveling at full speed, and our Star Destroyers will be pulling back. It will appear to the Eviscerator that we’re running from it or, at the very least, are reluctant to engage it. When the Eviscerator moves into position within the system to engage us, our ships will go to light speed. The Star Destroyers will head for Ord Mirit while the fighters will head for Borleias. The Eviscerator will be unable to follow our Destroyers immediately because of its position in the system and the presence of planets that act as natural Interdictor cruisers.”