Solo Command

by Aaron Allston

  "We haven't seen any sign of other intruders."

  "We will."

  She turned back to Drufeys. "Monitor their progress. When they've settled in, have a squad of stormtroopers stand by within striking distance of them."

  "Yes, Doctor."

  She quelled an excitement rising within her and turned back to Netbers. "I have a feeling this is going to be fun, Cap­tain. Is it usually fun?"

  He nodded.

  Kell swore and pushed his head deeper into the access hatch. He was hanging from sturdy metal rungs in the turbolift shaft, one floor below street level, illuminated only by the glow rod held by Shalla, who stood on the same rung he did and helped brace him as he worked. The panel Kell investigated opened into a maze of wires and circuitry, and his head was missing in that forest of equipment. "Give me more light."

  Shalla leaned in closer to oblige, poking her hand and glow rod through the curtain of wiring. She could see his neck flex as he looked around.

  Finally Kell withdrew—slowly, so as not to knock Shalla free of her perch. He twisted to look over his shoulder at the other Wraiths, clustered in the open turbolift door behind him. "Two was right. There's new wiring throughout. If we'd gone down and disabled the monitors on the panel between lift shafts, we would have set off another alarm."

  Face asked, "Can you disable that alarm?"

  Kell considered. Shalla knew this really wasn't his special­ ity. He'd said he was lucky to have done as well as he had on this mission. "Maybe," he said. "But I can't be sure I've identi­fied all the security at that entry point. I think instead we need to go through a non-entry point."

  "Like where?"

  "Like here." He gestured at the curtain of wires. "Beyond this monkey-lizard nest, we have a riveted panel of metal be­ tween us and the Northwest Two lift shaft. But it's not armor quality. I vote we just cut through and descend."

  "Doit."

  Kell brought out his vibroblade and powered it on.

  They were within three meters of the bottom of the shaft when Kell spotted the access hatch they would have used had they not changed plans. "Nine, the gauge again?"

  He felt Shalla rummage around in the top pocket of his de­ molitions pack. Then she handed him the sensor device he'd had to use so many times tonight. It read electrical currents and was of vital use to mechanics and demolitions experts, two categories into which Kell fit.

  He aimed the device at the panel and swept it all around the bottom of the shaft. It registered a considerable amount of electrical current flow beyond the panel, no surprise, and along the recessed slot used by turbolift cars of this sort to acquire their power.

  There was also a suspicious spike of activity on the wall opposite the panel, just above the door out of the lift shaft. It took him a few moments to identify the hemispherical depres­sion, not larger than the end of his thumb, in the metal just above the door. "Holocam recess," he said. "But it's set up to watch the panel. If we get across to the door side and drop be­side it, it shouldn't spot us."

  Face said, "There are no rungs over there, Five."

  "Oh, well. Guess we go home instead." Kell had Shalla tuck the gauge back in his pack. He checked to make sure that his pack and other gear were secure.

  Then he let go of the rung he was holding on to and leaped across the turbolift shaft, slapping into the far wall like a slap­stick character from a holocomedy. He dropped the final three meters to the duracrete bottom of the shaft, his large frame easily handling the shock of landing. He gestured up at his comrades as though to say, "Simple."

  He saw Face shake his head ruefully.

  One by one they followed his lead. He half caught each of them, fractionally slowing their descents, then got to work on the minimal security on the turbolift door.

  The halls were empty, sanitary, still smelling faintly of some­ thing antiseptic. The lights were on at half intensity, making even the whiteness of the walls and floor seem dim. All the Wraiths could hear was the distant hum of air-moving machin­ ery and their own faint footsteps.

  Face didn't like it. It felt abandoned, and an empty facility would not yield them any secrets. It also felt somehow wrong. He glanced at Tyria to gauge her response—perhaps her abili­ties with the Force, however faint or erratic, would tell her something. But he could not read her face; at his own com­mand, all the Wraiths, now that they were moving in what should have been populated areas, were wearing black cloth masks covering everything but their eyes and mouths.

  All the Wraiths but Piggy, that is. No mask could conceal his species, and only one member of his species would travel with a commando unit this way.

  "I know this floor," Piggy said. Both his real voice and his mechanical one were modulated so low that Face could barely hear them. "This was the third of four floors. We came down here only when we were injured. The bacta ward was right down—" He pointed his finger at a blank section of wall to his right and stopped.

  Face asked, "Right down where, Eight?"

  "Down this hall."

  "That's a wall."

  "I know." Piggy stepped up to the wall and looked at it very carefully. Then he bent to look at the flooring beneath it. When he turned to Kell, his expression, to the extent that Face could read Gamorrean expressions, was confused.

  Kell obligingly aimed his electrical current detector at that section of wall, waving it about slowly. "Nothing to suggest any sort of door mechanism. There's some faint electrical ac­tivity beyond, but not immediately beyond. Several meters, I think, and no heavy electrical currents."

  Tyria said, "The wear on the floor doesn't show that any­ thing has turned down a hall here, Eight. And the floor looks as though it's been through several years of wear."

  "Yes," Piggy said. But he still stared at the wall as if accus­ ing it of lying. "They've taken up the floor from somewhere else and moved it here to conceal the deception."

  "All right," Face said. "But even so, the only thing down this hall of yours was a bacta ward—correct?"

  "Correct."

  "We'll check it out if we don't find anything elsewhere. Let's look at what you never got to see before. All right?"

  Piggy nodded.

  They continued up the main hall, the only hall, to its end. On the left was a large double door leading into a circular cham­ ber filled with equipment—panels, consoles, and terminals ar­rayed in a circle around some sort of large chair. The chair was obviously intended for medical usage; it featured brackets to fit around wrist and ankle, and was festooned with equipment on armatures—injectors, viewscreens, racks filled with bottles.

  "I know that chair," Piggy said. "You got your shots there. And performed tests. But it was one floor up."

  "Door's clear," Kell said. "No undue security. Do I open it up?"

  Face said, "You said three of four. This was the third floor of four. You meant two above this one and one below?"

  Piggy nodded.

  "How did you get to the fourth floor?"

  "By the turbolift." Then Piggy frowned and looked back down the hallway toward the distant turbolift door.

  "But the turbolift ended at this floor," Face said. "There was duracrete below.'"

  Shalla said, "It was very clean duracrete. No oil stains. I thought that was odd. But everything here has been so clean it seemed in keeping with the rest."

  "Obviously, it was new," Face said. "They've blocked off the fourth floor. I wonder why?"

  The others shrugged. Tyria merely gave him her I-have-a- bad-feeiing-about-this look.

  "We can leave now," Shalla said.

  "There is no data without risk," Face said, "as one of my instructors used to say. We always wanted to shoot him for it. All right, Five, let's go in."

  Kelt triggered the door control. The double doors slid open and the Wraiths entered, blasters up, fanning to either side.

  "Doctor?" said another technician. "They're in the First Cham­ber." He put through the holocam feed to one of her terminals.


  Gast looked at the screen and frowned. "They got through our outer perimeter."

  Netbers leaned over her shoulder. "They're pretty good. But they're here. So they're dead."

  "Alert your stormtroopers," Gast said, then issued com­mands to the others. "Prepare the Second Chamber. Activate comm jamming as soon as the door to the Second Chamber is opened. No, wait: Alert the other team of stormtroopers to take the intruders on the rooftop, then activate comm jamming as soon as the Second Chamber is opened." She frowned, an­gry with herself for her mistake.

  "You're getting the hang of it," Netbers said.

  Kell waved an all-clear signal to the others. The walls and ceil­ ing offered no circuitry suggesting additional security.

  Dia and Shalla covered the door with their blasters. The others looked at the equipment in the room.

  "I was never in here," Piggy said. "I don't know what the chamber was for. The chair wasn't here. The chair was one floor up, where they did a lot of testing. I solved math problems in that chair while drugged or while being electrocuted."

  "Charming," Face said.

  "There's something awful about this room," Tyria said. "Not in the room itself. Nearby."

  "This is a game-table unit," Kell said. He was on one knee, looking intently at one of the pieces of equipment around the chair. "The table itself has been taken off and the unit repainted."

  "So it broadcasts to the screen on the chair?" Face asked.

  "Maybe." Kell looked over the unit, puzzled. "It doesn't seem to be fastened down, but it's powered."

  "This machine washes clothes," Runt was staring with equal concentration at a silver-gray metal cube two-thirds the height of a human. "They had one like it on the ship Sungrass."

  Kell waved his current detector at Runt's device, then at the floor around it. "It's self-powered. Like the game table. It's battery-powered or something."

  "Why?" Face asked. He looked at Piggy, but the Gamor­rean looked blankly back at him.

  "Transfer control to my terminal," Gast said.

  Then she caught the hurt look on the face of Drufeys and she relented. "Oh, very well, you do it."

  Drufeys brightened and pressed a button on his console.

  Face felt the floor give way beneath him. All around him, Wraiths and equipment dropped. There was blackness and heat beneath him. When his feet hit he tried to roll and absorb some of the shock of impact, but he did a bad job of it and landed on his chest, the wind knocked out of him. He felt something heavy and sharp slam into his back and he grunted from the blow. There were cries and sounds of crashing all around him.

  Awkwardly, he rolled to his back. The floor of the room above had split down the middle. Hinges to either side had al­lowed it to open like a door, dropping them what looked like a fall of six or seven meters.

  And now stormtroopers were lining up at the edges of the room above. They aimed their blasters down at the Wraiths. One called out, "Throw up your demolitions gear or we open fire."

  Face looked around. The Wraiths were in no position to re­ sist. Only Kell and Shalla were already on their feet. Beyond Kell, Runt was unmoving, apparently unconscious. Beside him, a piece of machinery on her back, was another fallen Wraith—

  "Dia!" Face was suddenly on his feet despite the pain. He knelt beside Dia, saw at once that she was unconscious, that her left arm lay at an angle that was not right. She was still breathing.

  "Demolitions bag," the stormtrooper repeated. "Or you're all dead."

  Face caught Kell's attention and nodded.

  But Kell turned to Shalla, and said, "Do what they say, Demolitions."

  Shalla didn't hesitate. She shucked off her own pack, which contained her infra-goggles, spare glow rods, and pre­served food. She swung it around at the end of its straps and hurled it up to the stormtroopers above.

  The speaker caught the bag. He and the others retreated. The ceiling began to close.

  "What are you doing?" Face asked. "In thirty seconds they'll know we've lied. They'll open it up and start shooting."

  "In thirty seconds we're supposed to be dead," Kell said. He pulled off his own pack and rummaged around in its contents. "Take a look around, One. You know what this place is?"

  Face forced himself to look away from Dia.

  The floor was some sort of grating. It seemed to be con­ tinuous, not made up in sections, and was sturdy enough not to flex beneath the weight of the Wraiths and all the equipment from the chamber above. The walls were heavy, dark metal with a tight grid of nozzles protruding from them.

  As he looked, the floor grating beside the walls began glowing red. The redness spread toward the center of the room at a quick rate. Heat from the glowing portions of the grate swept across Face and the other Wraiths.

  "They burn organic material here," Piggy said. He struggled to his feet, holding his side. "It's an incinerator."

  Lara knelt and fretted. Still no communication of any sort from the team. Of course, they were supposed to keep comm trans­missions to a minimum. But she wanted to know what was hap­pening down below.

  It didn't help that Elassar was so calm. The Devaronian junior pilot lay on his back, admiring the stars. "A shooting star!" he whispered. "That's good luck."

  "Is it still lucky if it's one of the asteroids we shot into the atmosphere as cover?" Lara asked.

  He frowned, considering. "I don't know."

  Sixty meters away, there was a terrific metal crash and two hinged pieces of roof slammed open. An open-sided turbolift rose into view. The dozen stormtroopers within it jumped out, turning toward Lara and Elassar.

  "I guess not," Elassar amended.

  Face lifted Dia, as mindful as he could be of her broken arm. "Sorry I said anything, Five. Blow us out of here."

  Kell slipped his bag back over one shoulder. He held two charges, one in each hand. He tucked one charge into a pocket and tapped something into the keypad of the other.

  Tyria hopped up on a boxy piece of metal equipment as the redness of the floor neared her feet. She peeled off her face mask. The other Wraiths began following suit. Face could see that they were already sweating heavily. So was he, but bur­dened as he was, he couldn't do anything about it. Tyria said, "What if the chamber is magnetically sealed?"

  "It's not," Face said. "If it were, they wouldn't have both­ ered to demand our demolitions."

  Kell said, "One?"

  "What?"

  "Where do I place this?"

  "Your best guess. You're the demolitions expert. But this deep down, we may have stone and dirt on ail sides."

  "Imperial architecture is kind of conservative," Kell said. "One floor is often like another. Meaning that the main hail above may have a parallel on this floor. Which was—where?" He looked around blankly. In the fall and the Wraiths's subse­quent disorientation, he'd lost track of directions.

  Piggy pointed at one wall, then yanked Runt up before the heat in the floor grid reached him. The Thakwaash pilot looked groggy, but mobile.

  Flame erupted from every nozzle along the chamber walls. The flames were no more than half a meter in length, but the temperature in the room rose instantly. Several Wraiths swore and all flinched away from the new heat.

  "Three seconds," Kell said. "Find cover." He threw his package against the wall and moved to crouch behind one of the ruined metal cases of false lab equipment.

  Face followed suit. He felt the floor grating begin to burn its way through his shoes the moment they made contact. He crouched and leaned back against the experiment chair, keep­ing it between him and the explosive charge, trying to keep Dia's limbs from trailing against the floor.

  One floor up, a stormtrooper opened Shalla's pack and ex­tracted a tube of processed nutrients. He pawed through the other contents of the pack, then held out the nutrient tube to his commander for inspection.

  The commander said, "Uh-oh."

  6

  "I wasn't too sure about this crematorium idea," Netbers said. "But I must admit
it seems to have come off rather well. Though the warlord might have preferred a better souvenir than several kilograms of ashes."

  Dr. Gast nodded. "But I think he'll be pleased that they didn't just die—that they died very, very painfully."

  "True."

  The building rocked and the sound of a muffled detona­ tion reached them. Technicians jumped up and looked around as though deciding whether to situate themselves in doorways.

  Netbers sighed. "Not good," he said. "I'm going to lead the stormtroopers down to the crematorium level."