woodlands that surrounded the splashed-out pond made the mud and the mire
and the mess of the landing seem just that much more out of place, just that
much more absurd. The coneship had buried itself at least a half meter into
the soft mud of the pond bottom. What had been a meter and a half drop from
the hatch to the ground was suddenly a lot shorter. Han sal down on the edge
of the hatch and hopped down-only to sink in over his ankles in the thick
mud. He lifted his left foot up out of the muck, nearly losing a boot in the
process, and planted it as far away from the ship as possible before pulling
his right foot out. He squelched out of the pond basin toward dry land and
saw a Selonian, an older-looking female with graying dark brown fur and a
moody look in her eyes. "That's a Hunchuzuc coneship, be it not?" the
Selonian asked, watching Dracmus and Salculd stagger out of the craft.
"That's right," Han said, a bit distractedly as he slogged through the mud.
That was the Sclonians for you. A spaceship crash-lands in a pond in front
of one, and what was the response? Not shock, or surprise, or fear. Not
"hello," not "what an amazing escape," not "are you all right?" No. The
first thing to worry about was what Den was involved. "Hmmph," said the
Selonian. "This is Chanzari land. We be Republicists, Hunchuzuc allies."
"Good," said Han, still struggling toward shore. "Glad to hear it." Han half
climbed, half crawled out of the pond basin, and paused there a moment. The
old Selonian looked at the ship and shook her head. "Coneships," she said,
her torre derisive. "The Hunchuzuc are foolhardy. Selonians do not belong in
space." Han looked at the Selonian for a long moment. "You know," he said,
"I'd just about worked that out for myself." He turned his back on the
coneship and staggered off toward the other side of the clearing, where the
Jade's Fire was settling in for a nice, calm, sedate landing.
CHAPTER THREE
At the Source Tendra Risant sat in the pilot's station of the Gentleman
Caller, and wondered if it was going to be all right, wondered how it could
be all right. She had done her part, however little that might be. In purely
objective terms, all was well. She had used the radionics transmitter to
tell Lando of the fleet hidden in the Sacorrian-system. His friends had
gotten the news, and it might well prove vital to them. She knew Lando was
alive, and well, and that he was glad she was in-system. But none of that
eould change the fact that she was stuck out here, and no one could get to
her. She looked through the forward viewport at the bright star of Corell,
dead ahead. Unless that interdiction field went down, it was going to take
her months to cross the distance from here to there. It was worth it, she
knew that. She had more than likely saved lives, many lives-perhaps even
Lando's life. But the thought of more months alone on this ship was more
than she could bear. But the people Lando was with, the Bakurans, had asked
her to send them more information. There was not much she could tell them
that she had not said already-but she would tell them what she could. She
switched on the radionics transmitter and set to work. The Bakuran light
cruiser Intruder fired her main forward turbolaser battery three times, and
three times Pocket Patrol Boats exploded. "Very well," said Admiral Hortel
Ossilege. "You may hold your fire. Bring the turbolasers to their stowed
position and power them down. Make sure our friends can detect what you are
doing. We have shown we can hurt them at will. Now we extend an invitation
to leave. Let us see if our friends out there understand that we plan to
play rough if they stay." A reasonable tactic, Luke Skywalker thought,
feeling none too happy about it. A show of overwhelming force might convince
the surviving defenders to withdraw. After all, the odds of a handful of
fighters defeating the Inmider and her sister ships, Sentinel and Defender,
and all their fighters were almost zero. On the other hand, the Rebels had
faced such odds more than once in the war against the Empire, and had
emerged victorious. Good training, strong motivation, good equipment, good
intelligence--and plain good luck-could even up the odds quite a bit. There
was no such thing as certainty in war. Luke Skywalker stood next to Admiral
Ossilege on the bridge of the Intruder. As always when he agreed with the
man, he did not feel comfortable doing so. Luke glanced at Lando Calrissian,
standing on the other side of Ossilege, and the look on his face told Luke
that Lando shared his concerns. The tactics were sound, even conservative.
The enemy forces consisted of little more than twenty or so PPBs. There was
nothing much to be gained in wiping out such a small force. If Ossilege
could convince them to withdraw without exposing his own forces to needless
casualties, that would be all to the good. Very sensible and cautious.
Except that Ossilege was not a cautious commander. If it seemed he was
trying something careful. Luke had a hunch that it was merely a cover for
something madly audacious to fol- low. Ossilege had shown a tendency to dare
too much rather than too little. When he played a conservative game, the
odds were fair that what appeared to be caution was just an elaborate
preparation for a very large gamble indeed. Or had losing the Watchkeeper to
the Selonian planetary repulsor cost him his nerve? Ossilege was a small,
wiry-looking man, who favored dress-white uniforms that set off his
collection of medals and ribbons. He was a dried-up, self-important little
man who seemed to have little patience for anyone or anything. He looked to
be a comic-opera caricature of an admiral-but Luke had never met as
hard-edged, as cold-blooded, a military commander. No one found it relaxing
to spend time in the presence of Admiral Ossilege. Of course, with the
massive, overwhelming bulk of Centerpoint Station dominating the sky outside
the viewports, Luke would have felt a little edgy even if the Watchkeeper
hadn't been destroyed. "There they go," Lando announced, pointing toward a
cloud of tiny dots lifting away from one of the docking bays of Centerpoint.
The defending fighters were withdrawing. "Decided they couldn't do any good
against us, I guess." "Or perhaps they decided we wouid be unable to do
Centerpoint any harm," said Ossilege. "A wise tactician retreats from an
indefensible position in order to preserve his forces. But a wise tactician
will likewise avoid expending his forces needlessly in the defense of the
impregnable." "What are you saying?" asked Luke. Ossilege gestured toward
Centerpoint. "We are dismissing the enemy fighters because they are so small
in comparison to us. But, proportionately, we are far smaller in comparison
to Centerpoint. It is, somehow, the source of power that can impose an
interdiction field over an entire planetary system. What other powers might
it have?" "No way to know," said Lando. "I figure the one thing we can count
on is being surprised. And I doubt that many of the surprises arc going to
be pleasant." Just at that moment, a service droid wheeled up from behind
; them and came around to stop in front of Lando. "And here's a surprise now,"
Lando muttered. "Yes, what is it?" he asked the droid. "Begging your pardon,
sir, but Lieutenant Kalenda wishes to see both you and Master Skywalker,
sir. A new message from Source T has come in." Lando looked worriedly at
Luke. "That ought to make me happy," he said. "But I have the feeling she's
not calling in just to chat." He turned toward the service droid. "Lead the
way." Source T was Tendra Risant. Lando and Luke had met Tendra on her home
world of Sacorria, one of the so-called "Outlier" worlds of the Corellian
Sector. The local authorities had kicked Lando and Luke off Sacorria almost
immediately after meeting Tendra. As they followed the droid down to the
cruiser's com section, it crossed Lando's mind, not for the first time, that
Tendra would be vastly amused to learn that Bakuran military intelligence
had given her a name as ridiculously pompous as Source T. Lando had met
Tendra while searching the galaxy for a rich wife. Tendra was certainly well
off enough to qualify as rich, and it was certainly within the realm of
possibility that she would make a good wife for Lando-if they could get
together in the same place at the same time long enough to get to know each
other. But even if they had not had the time to fall madly, passionately in
love with each other, the two of them had very definitely made a connection
with each other, established a solid bond, something that they could build
on, someday, if the universe gave them that chance. As best he could piece
together, Tendra had some- how managed to spot some sort of military buildup
in the Sacorrian system. Connecting the buildup to the interdiction field,
she had decided she had to get word to Lando, Toward that end, it would seem
she had gotten her hands on a spaceship, bribed her way off Sacorria, and
crashed it into the Corellian interdiction field. None of that would have
done anyone much good, but for one other fact-Lando had given her a
radionics communications set. The radionics set did not use any of the
standard comlink frequencies, but instead sent and received messages on a
modulated carrier wave in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The radionics signals were completely immune to the system-wide jamming, and
were likewise completely undetectable to anyone using comlink equipment. The
downside was that like all other forms of electomagnetic radiation-infrared,
visual light, ultraviolet, gamma ray, X ray, and so on-radio band radiation
traveled at the speed of light. Tendra's messages to Lando, and his replies,
therefore likewise crawled along at the speed of light, and were highly
susceptible to interferenee. She was still aboard her ship, the Gentleman
Caller, at the outskirts of the Corellian system, ambling gradually in
toward the inner system at speeds that were distinctly sublight. It took
long hours for her messages to reach him-but it could well take long, weary
months before her ship could cross the same distance. Unless, of course,
they could bring down the interdiction field. And that was what they were
here to do. They arrived at the com section. He and Luke waited as the
service droid extended a data probe and plugged into the security port by
the com section door. Lando's original radionics set was still aboard his
ship, the Lady Luck, but the Intruder's tech staff had had no trouble at all
putting together their own radionics set from the plans and spec sheets the
Lady Luck also car- ried, and had actually managed to make their transmitter
more powerful, and their receiver more sensitive. But it wasn't radionics
Lando had on his mind. He was concerned with Tcndra. As if the situation
with Tendra wasn't complieated enough, there was the small matter of the
aetual information she was broadcasiing to Lando. It was enough to give the
intelligence staff fits. The security system beeped its clearance code, and
the hatch to the com section slid open. Lando looked inside before entering
and let out a small sigh. There she was, as if the mere thought of anxious
intelligence officers was enough to su mmon one. Lieutenant Be-lindi
Kalenda, of New Republic Intelligence, was waiting for them, and she did not
look happy. "Didn't anyone ever tell your lady friend how to count!" she
demanded the moment the hatch slid shut. Kalenda had never been much for
small talk, and she was just about at the end of her tether now. "What's the
problem now, Lieutenant Kalenda?" Lando asked wearily. "The same as always.
Numbers, that's the problem," Kalenda said. She was a somewhat odd-looking
young woman. Her wide-spaced eyes were glassy, almost milky, and a bit
off-kilter. She was almost, but not quite, cross-eyed. She was a bit
darker-skinned than Lando, and her black hair was done up in a complicated
sort of braid piled on top of her head. The scuttlebutt was that she had at
least some small skill in the Force, or at least that her intuition was
good, and her hunches tended to play out, that she seemed to see more than
most people. In any event, she had an odd way of seeming to look past your
shoulder at something behind you, even when she was glaring right at you-as
she was right now. "Numbers. We still have no idea how many ships arc
waiting out there at Sacorria." "We wouldn't know there were any ships at
all there, if not for Lady Tendra," Lando said sharply. "Maybe your NRI
operatives on Sacorria know more about ship spotting, but did any of them
have the initiative to get into the Corellian system and let us know about
them?" Kalenda looked woodenly at Lando. "1 never told you there were NRI
agents on Sacorria," she said warily. "And I never told you I used to be a
smuggler, but you know it just the same," Lando snapped. "Don't treat me
like a fool. If you didn't have agents there, someone wasn't doing their
job." "Let's try and get back on track here," Luke said, attempting to
smooth things over a bit. "What's wrong with Lady Tendra's message?" "We
have sent three follow-up queries asking her to give further details of the
types, sizes, and numbers of ships she saw. Her latest message seems longer
and more detailed, but once you weed out all the qualifiers and caveats, we
still have nothing but the vaguest sorts of estimates." "She can't tell you
what she doesn't know," Lando said, wondering how many times he would have
to tell that to Kalenda before she would believe it. Or when he would stop
being frustrated by the intelligence group reading messages intended for
him-and reading them first. "But we have to know more than we do!" Kalenda
said. "Whose ships are those? How many are there, and how well armed are
they? Who commands them, and what are their intentions? You'll have to
transmit again, and ask for more information." "I won't," Lando said
sharply. "I don't care what your psych teams say about her responding best
to me. She told you all she can, and I'm not going to help you harass her
anymore." "But we need more-" "The trouble is, she doesn't have any more,"
he snapped. "You have all the details you're going to get. Did you expect
Tendra to be able to tell you the fleet co
mmander's middle name by looking
at ships in orbit through macrobinoculars? She's given us a warning, and a
very useful one. She's given you all the information she can, and there are
limits on how far we can press her." "And there are also limits to how many
messages you can ask her to send," Luke put in. "Every time she sends us
one, the odds of her being detected go up." Kalenda looked at Luke sharply.
"Detected? How? By whom?" "Think about it," Lando said. "You're the
intelligence officer. The way she's broadcasting is secret, but it's not
hidden in any way. She's broadcasting in clear, without any coding or
encryption. Anyone who had the right sort of gear for scanning radio-band
frequencies could lock in on her radionics transmission in a heartbeat. You
did it easily enough. Then they'd not only know that we know about the ships
tucked away in orbit of Sacorria, they'd be able to triangulate back and
zero in on her location, the same way we did." "What difference would that
make?" Kalenda asked. "Plenty, if we're talking about the people who control
the interdiction field. They'd want to silence her. Say they switched the
field off for thirty seconds. With good targeting and good planning, that
would be enough time for a ship to drop into hyperspace, pop out next to the
Gentleman Caller, blow Tendra out of the sky, and then return to base before
the field went back up." "But she broadcasted constantly for days without
anything happening to her," Kalenda objected. "She didn't have any choice.
She had to transmit until I responded. Now she doesn't have to take that
chance. Your radionics broadcasts are much more powerful than hers, and
they're closer to anyone listening in the inner system. If the opposition
spots your transmissions, they'll know to look for her." Kalenda's face was
expressionless. Had she known all this, and elected to risk Tendra's life on
the chance of getting more information? Or had it not occurred to her? That
seemed unlikely enough in an officer as sharp as Kalenda seemed to be-though
the last few days had been hard on all of them. Lando half expected her to
offer excuses, to lie and say she hadn't thought it through. But even if
Kalenda played a cagey game, she didn't play a dishonest one. "It's never
easy," she said, "figuring the balance. I knew the risk was there, but I had
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