Shield of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  Conspicuously missing from the entry scans were the three Imperial shipyards named in Lieutenant Sconn’s deposition: Black Fifteen, which had been located in orbit at N’zoth; Black Eleven, which had been at Zhina; and Black Eight, at Wakiza. Ackbar noted their absence to Han and added, “I do not think we will find them—I do not put it past the Yevetha to have moved the shipyards to concealed locations. I suspect that that is what Astrolabe stumbled on at Doornik Eleven Forty-two.”

  At 02:05, the signal from Number 16 at Polneye abruptly terminated, the tracking chart freezing with only forty-two percent of the planet scanned. Moments later Number 19, at Morning Bell, and Number 5, at the Duskhan world Tizon, also went dead.

  The losses did not stop there. All over the wall, the individual displays were going blank almost as quickly as they had come to life. Only half the scouts reached the midpoint of their runs. Three more winked out almost as one as Leia drifted away from Nylykerka and toward the middle of the War Hall.

  “What’s going on out there?” she breathed to no one in particular as she stared up at the displays.

  The signals from Z’fell, Wakiza, Faz, N’zoth—all assigned to the 21st Recon Group’s X-wings—were among the last to vanish, but vanish they did. No scout managed to scan more than three-fourths of a Duskhan League target before being destroyed.

  There was not a sound in the War Hall other than a muffled cough or a furniture creak as the five-minute timer expired. Only four scouts survived to jump out of their target systems—all drones. None had found anything during their passes, save for newly dead worlds. Eyes began to turn from the frozen images on the wall to the woman standing alone in the center of the room.

  “Now we know,” Leia said simply. “Controller, put the pilots’ visual IDs up while you queue the data from Number One for replay. I’d like us to remember who we owe for this.”

  The blast that disabled Rone Taggar’s recon-X came from behind and below, without warning. Even before the cockpit went dark, he could tell from the blue lightning dancing over the cockpit that it was a powerful ion cannon bolt that had overwhelmed the fighter’s shields. Twisting in his harness, he tried to look back and find his attacker. There’d been no fire from the ground during the close approach, and he was now out of range for any ordinary ground-based antiship battery.

  “Come on, where are you?” he muttered. “Where’d you come from?”

  There were dozens of stars bright enough that Taggar could not look directly at them without squinting—more than enough dazzle to hide an interceptor or a defense buoy from his eyes. But he didn’t understand why his targeting system had missed it. The recon-X had the smallest blind spot to the rear of any Republic fighter, and on a normal threat acquisition—at fifty thousand meters or more—he would have bet a month’s pay that he could have held off any equal opponent long enough to finish the run.

  Taggar silently counted off the restart interval, fully expecting the killing shot to come before he reached 100. The absorbers worked passively, soaking up the excess surface charge and using it to feed the restart cell. Its momentum unchanged by the blast, his fighter was still speeding away from N’zoth. With a successful restart, he could grab the last thirty seconds of data on the unscanned far side and jump away to safety.

  The count had reached eighty-seven when he felt the lurch of the tractor beam grabbing hold of his ship. With the spoiler shaking and the fuselage chattering around him, Taggar fished in his chest pocket for the purge stick. Another ship, corvette-size, was visible ahead of him as he rammed the stick home into the socket on the control panel.

  The purge charge that jumped from the stick raced through the computer memories of the fighter, erasing every coherent bit. Its final stop was the R2 interface, where it passed to a shape charge under the droid’s sensor dome. The small explosion that followed was surprisingly loud and briefly lit the inside of the cockpit. Glancing back, Taggar confirmed that the charge had completely and thoroughly decapitated the droid.

  That left only one duty—the suicide needle now available at the other end of the purge stick, and the dead-man grip of the ship’s self-destruct trigger. Taggar looked out at the Yevethan warship, measuring the closing distance. He knew that he was taking a chance by waiting, especially after they’d seen R2-R blow its top. But he also knew that the corvette would have to lower its shields to bring him alongside.

  When the ship had drawn close enough to loom over the fighter, Taggar closed his left hand around the trigger and let his head roll to one side as though he were unconscious. Watching through slit eyes, he saw light spilling from the underside of the corvette, between the opening doors of the docking berth. There was no pinnace inside—the berth was meant for his fighter.

  Gambling, he waited longer still, until the coupling lines grabbed the spoilers and drew the recon-X upward, until the doors began to close under him. Then he lifted his head, rubbed his thumb across the pilot’s wings taped to the console, and jammed the palm of his right hand against the end of the purge stick.

  A few moments later his head lolled forward against his chest and the hand closed tightly around the trigger began to relax, his tired fingers yielding against the pressure of the springplate. Taggar was peacefully elsewhere when the destruct charge ripped the belly of the corvette open along the centerline, spilling a churning cloud of debris from both ships into space.

  As bright fire enveloped Beauty of Yevetha, Nil Spaar averted his eyes from the sight, then turned and searched the chamber for the proctor of defense for the spawnworld.

  “Kol Attan!” he bellowed.

  His fighting crests shrunken almost to invisibility, Kol Attan shuffled forward. “Viceroy, I—”

  Nil Spaar silenced him with a glare and pointed at the floor. Trembling, the proctor lowered himself to one knee, closed his eyes, and bared his neck. The viceroy circled him slowly, flexing his right hand in a motion that brought the dewclaw curling out to its full length.

  “You are a coward as well as incompetent,” Nil Spaar whispered at last. “Your blood is not worth spilling. It would be beneath me to touch you. I declare you to-mara, a shamed one. Go home and beg your darna for death.”

  When the proctor did not move, Nil Spaar drew a deep breath that brought a flush to his crests, then sent Kol Attan sprawling with a vicious kick. “You will not provoke me into giving you an honorable exit,” he said through clenched teeth. “Go!”

  As the proctor scrambled away on all fours, Nil Spaar turned his back to him. “Tal Fraan,” he said.

  The nitakka came forward with strength in his strides and pride in his carriage. “Sir.”

  “You anticipated that the vermin would violate the All in an attempt to know us. How is it you come to your prescience?”

  “I have spent time with them, in the camps on Pa’aal, and aboard Devotion of Yevetha, where they serve us,” said Tal Fraan. “I have seen how they hunger to debase even the smallest mysteries, instead of embracing the mysteries as they present themselves. The pale ones, especially, seem to me driven this way.”

  Nil Spaar nodded slowly. “You failed to anticipate that the vermin who came would choose death over captivity. That failure has cost my fleet a useful vessel, and wasted Yevetha blood.”

  Drawing a hard breath, Tal Fraan dropped immediately to one knee. “Yes, darama. I know my error.”

  “Rise,” Nil Spaar said, and the younger Yevetha complied. “I shall not hold you to account for the failure of Kol Attan to seize the hostage you brought to him. Nor for the offense of the vermin in killing above their station.”

  “You are gracious, Viceroy.”

  “There are many kinds of vermin,” Nil Spaar said offhandedly. “Perhaps those that were sent here are more like Commander Paret, who at least had the courage to defy me when I took this ship from him, than they are like those we hold in service. Otherwise, I would have judged them as you do.”

  “I do not deserve your mercy, darama.”

  “No,�
�� Nil Spaar said. “But you will help me think on how to answer the vermin for their boldness, and to strike at this one called Leia, for commissioning such sacrilege. And perhaps I will forget the other after a while, on such pleasures of revenge as you devise.”

  Ackbar stood before the briefing room viewscreen holding one hand behind his back and pointing with the other.

  “This seems workable to me,” he said. “If we tap Task Forces Apex and Summer from the Fourth Fleet, Task Forces Bellbright and Token from the Second Fleet, and Task Force Gemstone from the Third, we should be able to maintain our current patrols through the rest of the New Republic while building the force in Farlax to the strength of two battle groups.”

  “Meanwhile, the Home Fleet will be left at full strength to defend Coruscant,” Leia said. “Which may not sit well with the border sectors, but seems only prudent.”

  “Well—General A’baht will be happy,” Han said, leaning back in his chair. “This is what he’s been saying he needed ever since he got there.”

  Turning half away from the viewscreen, Ackbar exchanged glances with Leia. “General A’baht will not be in command of the combined force,” Ackbar said, and turned back.

  “No? Well—he might not mind too much,” Han said, folding his hands on his lap. “A combined command like that is kind of like being put in charge of a zoo. Who are you going to pull off the line? Admiral Nantz is senior flag officer now, right?”

  Ackbar turned back toward the viewscreen, both hands tucked behind him. “No,” he said. “Not Nantz.”

  A crooked smile creased Han’s face. “You’ll do fine, Admiral,” he said. “It’s like riding a—it’s something you don’t forget how to do.”

  “Han, Admiral Ackbar will be staying here with me,” Leia said quietly. “I’m putting you in charge of the forces in Farlax.”

  The smile faded quickly. “Didn’t we take this class already?” he asked, sitting forward and dropping his forearms on the table. “I’m not the grand admiral kind. And this’ll just make it look like you can’t make up your mind—Etahn, me, Etahn, me—”

  “Han, she had no choice,” Ackbar said without turning. “The Defense Council, led by Senator Fey’lya, insisted on approving the commander. He’s lost confidence in General A’baht.”

  “So why me?”

  “Because you’ve already spent some time with the Fifth. Because you’re already familiar with the geography and logistics out there. But mostly because you’re not tainted,” Leia said. “Fey’lya wanted Admiral Jid’yda—”

  “A Bothan—of course.”

  “—and Bennie offered you as a compromise. As he explained it, the pro-Leia senators see you as supportive of me, and the anti-Leia senators think you’re independent enough to deal with me.”

  Han shook his head. “I can tell that that must have been an elevated debate.”

  “You can’t begin to know how absurd it was at times,” Ackbar said, turning away from the viewscreen and approaching the table. “Senator Cundertol actually supported you on the grounds of—and I quote the great man verbatim—‘He’s not doing anything else, is he?’”

  “A heartwarming recommendation,” Han said. “Remind me to thank His Denseness.” He pulled Ackbar’s datapad toward him and studied the list of force assignments. “I suppose it’s a little late at this point to consider negotiating a truce.”

  “I can’t believe that the Yevetha will ever consider us their equals at the table,” Leia said.

  “I suppose not,” Han said, and pushed the datapad away. “For a while there, Leia dear, I actually let myself think that we’d have a chance for that normal life you told Luke you wanted. I let myself believe that we were through with this sort of thing. And I have to tell you—leaving the uniform in the closet really agreed with me.”

  Leia and Han exchanged rueful smiles at that. “Well—seems like going all the way back to Yavin,” he added, “I’ve made you coax, wheedle, guilt, and shame me into volunteering for dirty jobs. I won’t make you do it this time. Fact is, the Yevetha disgust me—and they scare the stang out of me, too. If we don’t control them now, the future could get very messy. So I’ll take this job, because it needs to be done.”

  “The hard jobs are usually necessary ones,” Ackbar mused.

  “This isn’t hard,” Han said. “Those pilots who flew into the Cluster, knowing the odds on coming back—that’s hard. All I have to do is give men like that a reason. What’s the timetable, Admiral?”

  “There is a ferry flight of recon-X’s leaving for the Fifth Fleet in fifteen hours. They will fly escort for your shuttle,” Ackbar said. “You should arrive not long after the task groups from the Fourth Fleet reach Farlax. Oh, and you will take the temporary rank of commodore for the duration of this assignment.”

  “Commodore, eh?” He tried a cheerful smile on Leia, but she was no more persuaded by it than he was. “Does that come with a hat?”

  Even though he was caught in legal limbo—not quite a full member of the Senate, nor quite a former one—Tig Peramis of Walalla retained some of the usual courtesies of office. Behn-kihl-nahm would not allow him to speak or vote in the Assembly and had removed him entirely from the Defense Council. But Peramis’s access keys still allowed him entrance to all but the Council chambers and restricted records. And that meant access to the other senators, whose gossip he thought worth nearly as much as a senatorial record search.

  Months ago he had denounced the Fifth Fleet as a weapon of conquest and tyranny and warned the Defense Council about the ambitions of Vader’s daughter. He had been reprimanded by Behn-kihl-nahm and ridiculed by Tolik Yar, but events had proved him prophetic, confirming his worst fears. And the lightning annexation—on the flimsiest of pretexts—of eighteen formerly independent worlds in Farlax seemed to Peramis to foreordain a dramatic escalation.

  The middle-of-the-night gatherings in the Defense chambers, Leia’s secret meeting with the Ruling Council, the “bungled” blockade attempt, the nakedly emotional appeals on behalf of tiny alien populations, and the open and deliberate provocation of the Yevetha at every turn all appeared to Peramis as pieces of an elaborate plan to justify annexation of Koornacht itself. Even the periodic outbreaks of criticism in the Senate seemed calculated, the critics themselves buffoons doing more discredit to their cause than damage to the Princess.

  But something a drunken Senator Cundertol carelessly said to him alarmed Peramis to the point that he could no longer be satisfied with rumor and gossip.

  “A Corellian pirate with two battle groups to command,” Cundertol had giggled. “He’ll show you goon-faces something about fighting. Old Eating-a-Boat didn’t want to kill other goon-faces, so he’s goon-goon-gone—”

  Peramis fed him more doan wine in the hopes of coaxing Cundertol to tell him more, but the Bakuran only grew more childishly self-amused at being in the superior position.

  “Should have been a good boy,” Cundertol said, swaying on his feet as he shook a finger. “You can’t come to the party.”

  Half an hour later Cundertol was glassy-eyed with doan shock, and Peramis was entering the Senate office complex with both his and Cundertol’s voting keys in his hand.

  Cundertol’s key alone would not be enough to give Peramis access to the Defense Council records, but Peramis knew from experience that security on senators’ personal logs was much more lax. Convenience demanded it. A personal log kept behind too many barriers would never be used. Of course, nothing classified Secure was supposed to be kept in something as unsecured as a personal log. But Peramis thought Cundertol someone who was likely to place more value on convenience than confidentiality.

  The Bakuran’s voting key opened every necessary door and every damning file. It was all there, in a xenophobic rant that demonstrated the surprising fact that the senator actually did temper his words in public.

  A battle group-strength force was headed to Farlax to reinforce the Fifth—but piecemeal, a clever stratagem that would help concea
l what was happening by allowing all the other battle groups to remain visible on their patrol stations. And the Corellian who was to take charge of the war fleet was, as Peramis had suspected, Princess Leia’s husband, Han Solo.

  Peramis stayed in Cundertol’s office only long enough to watch the log once and copy it to a data card. Then he returned to the private dining room where he had left Cundertol, replaced the voting key in the senator’s valise, and left him to ride out his pleasure trance alone.

  In the privacy of his own quarters in the Walallan mission, he retrieved the small black box Nil Spaar had given him from its hiding place in a chest of his eldest son’s toys. There was no one to see him—he had sent his family home months ago, and the modest staff that served him knew better than to intrude in the middle of the night.

  Seated at a table in his office, Peramis connected both the black box and his datapad to the hypercomm. At that point he paused. The furtiveness, the physical act of readying the devices, made him uncomfortable. He had not used the black box before. He had told himself that he never would. Peramis did not think of himself as a spy, much less a traitor.

  But he had kept the box nonetheless.

  He told himself he was an honorable man, with an honorable cause—to contain the militarism that threatened all that had been won in the Rebellion. After a successful adventure in Farlax, Leia would be untouchable. The Yevetha had to be warned.

  And it appealed to Peramis’s vision of cosmic irony that Senator Cundertol would be the one to warn them, in his own words.

  But when Peramis activated the hypercomm, he left his office so that he would not have to hear those words again.

  Three hours short of reaching Intrepid, the commodore’s Fleet shuttle Tampion and its ferry flight escort abruptly dropped out of hyperspace. They found half a dozen Yevethan ships waiting for them—the Interdictor Dreadnaught that had yanked them down, two thrustships, and three smaller vessels.