Star Wars - X-Wing 02 - Wedge's Gamble

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Corran's eyes became green slits. "I suppose you could have been the one who had my father killed—after all, you threatened us both and left the whole job undone, which means it's in keeping with your usual sloppiness."

  The riposte had no visible effect on Thyne. He looked away from Corran, then watched Wedge for a moment. "Are you the Jedi?"

  "No, I'm just the man who decides if you leave here or not." Wedge jerked a thumb toward Corran. "That wasn't a good start."

  "Oh, forgive me, I've forgotten the Rebels are all sweetness and light. That's what they tell us, you know, all the pols who were sent here." Thyne smiled carefully. "Then again, you're here taking someone like me away from this place. Expediency wins over purity, it would ap­pear."

  The commando at the airlock brought Inyri Forge through and Corran saw the resemblance between her and Lujayne the second she removed her breathing mask. They both had the same brown eyes and trim bodies. Inyri wore her brown hair longer than her sister had and had dyed a forelock the same shade of blue as Thyne's patches. She appeared shocked to see her parents, but her face closed up quickly as she turned away from them and rested her hands on Thyne's left shoulder.

  Wedge studied the woman for a moment, then looked up at Thyne. "The New Republic has authorized me to give you transport from Kessel to a destination you will learn later. You will be given tasks to perform. If you suc­ceed in performing them to our satisfaction, the New Re­public will grant you a conditional pardon for your crimes. Do you understand?"

  "What if I decide to accept your offer, then I just go away."

  Wedge smiled openly. "We'll hunt you down and bring you back here."

  "The galaxy is a big place."

  "You might think that, but it's getting much smaller

  all the time." Wedge shrugged nonchalantly. "The Em­peror couldn't hide from us, don't assume you could."

  Corran nodded. "You weren't that hard to find be­fore, Patches, you won't be again."

  "You don't scare me, Horn."

  "I'm not interested in scaring, just catching, Thyne." Corran bent down, retrieved Thyne's breathing mask, and shoved it onto the man's face. "No matter where you go, I'll find those double diamonds of yours, just like last time. Count on it."

  Wedge nodded to the guards. "Take him outside and prep him for shuttle transport." Inyri started to follow, but a guard stopped her in response to Wedge's hand sig­nal. "Ms. Forge, I'd like to speak to you alone."

  Inyri turned slowly and stiffly. "We're hardly alone."

  "You're not required to go with Thyne."

  She glared at her parents, then looked at Wedge. "I've made my choice to be with him. Leave it alone. It is no one's business but my own."

  "Look," Corran began, holding a hand out toward her, "we can protect you from him."

  "Oh, like you protected my sister?"

  Corran's hand dropped back to his side. The same horrible sensation he'd felt when Lujayne had died rip­pled through him. He knew the pain in Inyri's voice had triggered the memory, but he felt he was also sensing the part of her that had died when she found out about Lujayne's death. Asked to choose between the memory or Inyri's pain, he couldn't have decided which hurt him more, but the inability to redress either frustrated him like nothing else.

  "I did, we did, everything we could to protect Lujayne." Corran tapped a hand against his chest. "We didn't know her as long as you did, nor as well, but you know what your sister was like. You know how good she was at making people feel welcomed and at ease and val­uable. She did that with us, too."

  He pointed at the airlock. "It may not be my business what you do with Zekka Thyne, but I'm certain your sis-

  ter wouldn't have wanted you to go with him. Lujayne's gone, but that's no reason for the people who loved her and respected her to let you get into trouble. Thyne is ev­erything your sister was not."

  "You don't know him."

  "And maybe you don't either." Corran held his hand out to her again. "You don't have to do this."

  "I do." She folded her arms resolutely. "I am."

  Wedge shook his head. "You will have time to reconsider—up to and including your final drop-off."

  "Is that all?"

  Wedge frowned. "You might want to say good-bye to your parents?"

  "Why? That didn't keep Lujayne safe."

  "It didn't get her killed, either."

  Wedge's reply seemed to soften Inyri for a moment. Her gaze flicked toward her parents, and for a heart­beat, Corran thought she was going to come to her senses. Then her eyes hardened and she fitted the breath­ing mask back over her face. Without a word she turned on her heel and stepped into the airlock.

  Wedge turned and looked wordlessly at her par­ents.

  Kassar hugged his wife. "You tried, Commander. That is all we could ask."

  The rest of the exchanges went fairly smoothly. Wedge re­sorted to threats a couple of times when Doole balked at giving him the people he wanted, but by the end of things they had managed to pull 150 political prisoners from Kessel in exchange for picking up sixteen of the most hardened and despicable criminals the galaxy had ever known.

  And by the end of the process Corran had found someone they could use to keep Thyne in check. Wedge suggested a deal to Doole but the pretentious Rybet dis­missed it as one where he got nothing. Wedge had sug­gested he consider it goodwill and after a flyover by the

  airborne portion of Rogue Squadron, Moruth Doole de­cided it was in his best interest to play along.

  "And this is the last time I deal with your Rebellion. Kessel stands alone from now on!"

  Wedge smiled at Doole's image. "Then we won't come back, unless we're returning some of your friends to you." He disconnected the transmission before Doole's howl rose to painful levels.

  Ten minutes later two commandos escorted the last prisoner into the tent. The human was old, though not frail. The holograms Corran had seen of him had not had flesh quite so loose or sallow, but the dark eyes still sparked with life. While smaller even than Corran, the man exuded a certain power. A full shock of white hair crowned him and granted him some of the dignity his dirty jumpsuit stole.

  Even Wedge seemed impressed. "Moff Fliry Vorru, I am Commander Wedge Antilles."

  Vorru smiled graciously. "Charmed. Do I detect a trace of Corellia in your Basic?"

  "You do."

  "A loyal son come to free me from this prison?"

  "Perhaps."

  Corran had never met Moff Vorru before, but his grandfather had told stories of the man. As the adminis­trator in charge of the Corellian Sector under the Old Republic, Vorru had turned a blind eye to smuggling ac­tivities, which made Corellia a center for smuggling and gave it a reputation that had not changed over the years. When Senator Palpatine declared himself the Emperor, he found Vorru to be a rival of sorts. Prince Xizor betrayed Vorru to the Emperor, but the Emperor did not slay him. It was thought that Vorru had ransomed his life by caus­ing his datafiles about others in the Imperial Senate and throughout the Empire to be doled out to the Emperor bit by bit.

  Though it had been decades since Corellia operated as an open sector under Vorru, many criminals thought of Vorru's Corellia as a shining Utopia of unparalleled pros-

  perity. Vorru had become a legend in the Imperial under­world and at CorSec there always were new rumors about an attempt by someone to raid Kessel and free Vorru.

  The ex-Imperial Moff shrugged as much as his bonds would allow. "What do you want me to do for you?"

  "Do you know Zekka Thyne?"

  Vorru sighed. "I do. Aggressive and intelligent, though aggression is his default setting. Surprise him and he strikes out. Unpredictable beyond that."

  "We're going to use him against the Empire, but we do not want him to become excessive and hurt others."

  The old man smiled slowly. "Using strategic weapons to gain a tactical advantage is a sign of desperation."

  "These are desperate times." Wedge nodded toward Corran. "Lieuten
ant Horn thinks you can control Thyne."

  "Control him, no." Vorru closed his eyes for a mo­ment. "Control those he needs to be able to go too far, yes, I can do that for you."

  "Will you?"

  "Gladly." Vorru's confident smile carried on up into his reopened eyes. "It will be dangerous, but seeing Impe­rial Center again will be worth the risk."

  Corran blinked and looked at a stunned Wedge. How did he know he was going to Coruscant?

  The old man read the surprise on their faces, then laughed. "Don't be astonished I was able to figure out where I would be used, rejoice in that fact. Were that sim­ple a deduction beyond me, I would have no chance of fulfilling the mission you have given me."

  12

  Walking through one of the long dark corridors built be­neath the Imperial Palace would normally have depressed Kirtan Loor, especially as he was on his way to a meeting with General Evir Derricote. When Derricote had sum­moned him the General had seemed quite manic—a state Loor had seen crumble into a tantrum filled with de­mands on previous occasions, yet even that prospect could not dampen his mood.

  Corran Horn was on Kessel freeing prisoners. Loor allowed himself a laugh that echoed sinisterly through the passage. Over the past two weeks the freed criminals had been filtered back into Imperial Center. The Rebels had been careful in their insertion efforts—security was main­tained at normal levels, which meant a substantial bribe could make almost any datafile look like it had never been sliced. Had he not been tipped to their arrival, Loor would have missed their reentry into Coruscant's under­world.

  Loor even allowed himself to admire the Alliance for its plan. Criminals had a penchant for making themselves highly visible targets. The Empire did need to maintain order on the capital world, but their resources would only

  extend so far. By bringing to Imperial Center the people they did, the Alliance managed to breathe life back into the corpse that was Black Sun, causing some fairly alarm­ist reports to start filtering up from the constabulary.

  Somehow, though, even their dire predictions amounted to nothing against Loor's mind's-eye image of Corran Horn helping to escort criminals from Kessel. Three of those on the list had actually been arrested on Corellia during Horn's time with CorSec. It must have killed him to let someone like Zekka Thyne escape jus­tice. What I wouldn't have given to be there and see it.

  Kirtan Loor forced himself to laugh again and willed himself to remain feeling triumphant, but could not. His basic fear of Corran Horn undercut his sense of superior­ity. Corran Horn, Gil Bastra, and Iella Wessiri had man­aged to deceive him long enough on Corellia that they were able to escape before he could have them arrested and jailed. He had found Gil Bastra after over a year and a half of searching, but Bastra maintained that's be­cause he had given clues to draw Loor after him. Prior to that he had thought he was close to Corran once, but that had been a mistake, and Loor had no idea where Wessiri or her husband was.

  The fact that they had been able to fool him once meant he had to assume it was possible for them to fool him again. In the old days, before Ysanne Isard had summoned him to Imperial Center and pointed out his penchant for making unwarranted assumptions, he would have assumed he could not be fooled again. That would have guaranteed his being deceived. And that would have doomed me.

  Because he worked to no longer allow himself to as­sume too much, he had reassessed Corran Horn. From this reassessment his fear had grown. Loor had always known Horn was capable of being a killer, and he had labored under the assumption that Horn had actually murdered a bunch of smugglers in cold blood. When it became apparent that those murders were a sham—Loor's face still burned as he realized he had based his assump-

  tions about those murders only on reports created by Gil Bastra—he saw Corran Horn as someone capable of us­ing violence, but also as someone who could control his temper. Horn emerged as more cunning and that trait be­came more dangerous when coupled with his relentless-ness.

  To "motivate" Loor in his supervision of General Derricote's project, Ysanne Isard had released the fact that Loor had killed Bastra into channels that would carry that data to the Rebel Alliance. She also let it be known that Loor was on Imperial Center. She had said at the time that she hoped such information would serve to distract Horn from looking into other matters very closely, but Loor knew it would just draw Corran to Im­perial Center like vice draws Hutts.

  I will have to be very careful when he gets here. If he gets to me it will be because I want him to, but on my terms and to my benefit.

  As Loor neared his destination, the door to Der­ricote's lab opened to an inrush of air and the General himself stood there beaming. Though cadaverously slen­der, there was no way Loor could squeeze past the Gen­eral's rotund form and enter the lab with the man just standing there. "I thought you wanted me to see some­thing in the lab, General."

  Derricote brushed a hand back over his thinning black hair, then clapped his hands. "I do. The Quarren were very helpful, very helpful."

  "Put it in a report, General."

  "No, you must come see for yourself."

  Loor hesitated. The holograms appended to the first of Derricote's reports had been enough to make him queasy. The idea of looking at experimental subjects in person did not appeal to him in the least. Well, perhaps just a bit, but only out of morbid curiosity.

  "Lead the way."

  Derricote stepped out of the doorway and Loor en­tered the lab. Unlike the majority of suites in the Imperial Palace, the laboratory had stark, functional appoint-

  ments. Bright lights reflected from white and silver sur­faces and the only things even approximating decoration were red and yellow signs warning of biohazards, live wires, and operating lasers. Glass walls allowed them to peer into a labyrinth of rooms where white-smocked indi­viduals appeared to be taking creatures apart or putting them back together with the help of surgical droids of various configurations.

  The door closed behind them, with the air whistling in as the opening narrowed. Derricote glanced back. "It sounds like that because we are under negative air pres­sure in here. That way if something breaks out it will not be carried by a draft out of the lab."

  "I thought humans would be immune to this plague."

  "No, that's not exactly correct." The General smiled and Loor knew the man just loved exposing any weak­ness in Kirtan's knowledge of the project. "We are start­ing from a number of viruses for which aliens show a high susceptibility. It is possible that spontaneous muta­tions could change it enough that humans could be af­fected by it. The chances of that are very limited, primarily because the genetic sequences we're using would have to be massively altered for humans to fall sick. It is possible, of course, that this might happen, but at the average mutation rate, it would take a thousand years before that would happen."

  "But you could make a vaccine, couldn't you?"

  "Building up immunity to a virus is not all that sim­ple. It could take years to perfect a vaccine for this dis­ease." Derricote smiled casually, as if talking about an inconsequential amount of time. "It could be done, but it would take a concentration of resources that would ex­ceed these by ten or twenty times."

  At least, then, the Rebels won't have a chance at doing it since they don't even have this facility. Loor low­ered his voice. "You can cure it, yes?"

  Derricote nodded. "Bacta."

  "Is that all?" Bacta was the treatment for everything from a simple cut to severe combat trauma, from a sniffle

  to the virulent Bandonian Ague. "If Bacta will cure your disease, the disease is useless."

  "Hardly. The more severe the case of the disease, the greater the amount of bacta needed to cure it." Der­ricote's dark eyes glittered in a way Loor found rather un­nerving. "In the very late stages of the disease bacta can hold the disease at bay, but some organs and extremities may be so damaged that they will require cybernetic re­placement. Come and see."

  Derricote led him deeper into the labora
tory complex and through a doorway into a stainless-steel corridor. Transparisteel windows lined the walls and gave them views of detention cells with one or two individuals in them. On the left were piggish Gamorreans—naked, as were the squid-headed Quarren on the right side— looking miserable in their clinically spare environs. Those nearest the doorway through which they entered ap­peared relatively normal—though they were such a sight that Loor couldn't bring himself to study them in any great detail.

  "You will notice the transparisteel windows are triple-paned. That central sheet is reflective on their side, so they cannot see us. The walls between the cells are soundproofed. We found that necessary to maintain or­der."

  "I see," Loor said, but he really saw no need for se­curity precautions. The first few Gamorreans were placid, though they did seem to know people might be observing them through the windows, so they sat in such a way that they preserved their modesty. Farther along they appeared to be in some sort of a stupor. Their black eyes had be­come quite glassy and fixed on one point. They just lay there, barely moving, in whatever position they seemed to find themselves, no matter how uncomfortable.

  Loor did notice a splotchiness on the Gamorreans' flesh. Angry black boils seemed to radiate out a spider's web of lines that connected them one to another. One creature had a boil on his tongue and several others showed them on the bottoms of their feet. Loor assumed

  the boils were painful since what little movement he did see seemed to be an attempt to relieve pressure on them.

  He also noticed these Gamorreans seemed very dry. Mucus and saliva did not decorate their faces the way it normally did. Clearly the creatures were sick, but Loor somehow took that to be the most telling sign of their dis­ease.