Star Wars - Black Fleet Crisis - Shield Of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  "Aware of us--what does that mean?"

  "Whoever those men on Lucazec were working for, they wanted what you

  know as much as they wanted you. I don't know what they think they can

  do with you, but the Fallanassi are the prize."

  "I would never betray the circle. And there is nothing anyone could do

  to compel me. Not even you."

  "But you're taking me there," Luke said. "And if they simply keep

  touch with us, you'll take them there, too. All they have to do is

  follow us, and be patient.

  That's what I'm looking for--someone following. If any of these ships

  leaving Teyr now show up at--show up later, we'll have to do something

  about it."

  "The circle can protect itself."

  "I'm sure the Jedi thought they were safe, too," said Luke. "But they

  were wrong."

  "The Jedi faced a terrible enemy, and the betrayal of one of their

  own," said Akanah.

  "There are enough enemies left," Luke said. "All the assorted

  dictators and warlords in the Imperial sectors-including Admiral Daala,

  who isn't likely to have found a new hobby. Then there are the

  hundreds of thousands of inhabited systems in the Borderlands, the

  Corporate Sector--" "And there is the New Republic."

  Luke turned toward her. "What?"

  "The New Republic stands now where the Empire stood--as the single

  great power in the galaxy," said Akanah. "They have the most to lose

  if their power is successfully challenged. And their power is the

  greatest threat to those who choose to stand apart, who take a

  different view."

  "You can't think that the New Republic is hunting the Fallanassi."

  "Why not?" she asked calmly. "It was you who decided th ose men on

  Lucazec were Imperial agents. How do you know they weren't from

  Coruscant? How do you know they weren't from your NRI?"

  The suggestion was absurd, laughable--but it silenced Luke all the

  same. He looked back to the con trols, trying to sort out his

  thoughts. For some reason, he couldn't now remember why it was he had

  been so sure the men at Ialtra were Imperial sleepers. And Akanah's

  suggestion offered an explanation for something he had no explanation

  for--the Elomin were so principled that the prospect of one's working

  for an Imperial spy network was beyond imagining. But the NRI-Out of

  Touch, RN40-844033, owner Tok-Foge Pokresh, registry Bothawui-"They

  would have to have been tipped off by me," Luke said finally, then

  shook his head. "But I only spoke to Leia and Han that night. And

  Leia didn't even give me a chance to tell her what little I knew. No

  one knew I was going away, or why."

  Akanah touched his shoulder. "Please don't think that I suspected

  you," she said. "The men at Ialtra were not expecting you--and if the

  NRI could count on your assistance, they would have no need to shadow

  us."

  "I don't know that anyone is shadowing us," Luke said. "I just want to

  make sure that no one tries--and if they do try, that they don't

  succeed. We can jump out of here at any time if we need to. And

  before we make our final jump, I'm going to go over this ship from bow

  to baffles and make sure we didn't acquire a tracking device while we

  were parked on Teyr."

  "I trust you to take the right precautions. I know you have as much at

  stake as I do," she said. "Do you mind if I go lie down? I did not

  sleep well on the Skyrail."

  Adela, RN32-000439, owner Refka Trell, registry Elom-"Sure," Luke

  said.

  "Go ahead. I'll call you if anything unexpected shows up."

  Akanah squeezed his shoulder. "Thank you," she said, and started to

  turn away.

  "Akanah?"

  "What?"

  "How much do you know about our destination?"

  "I know it's a Free Trader world--not much more."

  "I didn't even know that much," Luke said, turning toward her. "I'd

  like to query the Ministry of State atlas on Coruscant and request a

  diplomatic backgrounder."

  "You can do that?"

  "I think so," Luke said. "I'd be using a point-to-point channel, not

  broadcasting, so no one else will be listening in."

  "But they'll be listening in on Coruscant," Akanah said. "You might as

  well be announcing where we're going."

  Luke shook his head. "I know what you just said, but I can't treat

  those people as the enemy," he said.

  "But I could make a series of queries, so the one for Atzerri is just

  one in the crowd. Would that make you feel any more at ease?"

  "Do what you think is necessary," she said with a small, quick smile.

  "There are risks in ignorance, too.

  Balance them against the risks of showing our hand. If you think the

  weight falls in favor of making the query, and you'll wait until we've

  jumped out from Teyr to do so, I won't question your decision."

  Shortly after the reorganization of the government, Nanaod Engh had

  given Luke keys to most of the real treasures of the New Republic--the

  central data libraries maintained by various branches of the General

  Ministry.

  Thanks to Admiral Ackbar's intervention, Luke also carried the

  highest-grade security clearance held by any civilian.

  Between the two, Luke had--potentially--a great deal of information at

  his fingertips. But the access he had been granted was a courtesy, not

  a necessity. Luke's most urgent curiosities were in areas of little

  interest to bureaucracies, and he had never found reason to make much

  use of the favors extended him.

  But he found himself with reason now.

  So far, it seemed, his contribution to the expedition had been modest

  to the point of invisibility. Luke was completely dependent on Akanah

  for information, and it was difficult to see what she needed from

  him.

  Companionship, perhaps, and a bit of piloting, but not protection-she

  was emphatic about that.

  She had offered him a gift of great value by coming to him, and had

  gone to some lengths to do so. Luke felt himself not only

  uncomfortably dependent, but also involuntarily in her debt. And he

  had little to offer to right the balance.

  But the lead on Star Morning gave him an opportunity to make himself

  more useful.

  If asked, he would have said that suspicion had no part in his decision

  to contact the New Republic Ship Registry under his military access

  code. Even though Akanah had plucked their next destination from the

  Current, a great deal of time had passed since the Fallanassi had left

  Kell Hath. The prospect of another Gri-ann causing them to lose the

  trail was reason enough to follow up on his discovery.

  Still, Luke waited until Akanah was asleep to open the hypercomm link,

  and his reason for doing that wasn't entirely clear to him. True, he

  didn't want her to think he was checking up on her. But Luke was also

  aware that he didn't want to think he was checking up on her. He had

  to be able to trust her. Everything he had done, his very presence,

  was predicated on that.

  "Ship Registry."

  The Adventurer had no secure-entry touchpad, so Luke had to offer ther />
  voice codes.

  "Authorization verified," said the registry clerk.

  "Go ahead."

  "I need a report pulled on a private vessel."

  "Yes, sir. Quick or comprehensive?"

  "The difference is--" "The comprehensive includes everything that's in

  all of the linked databases--taxes, transfers, ports of call, whatever

  we have. On anything but a brand-new ship, that can be quite a bit."

  "Comprehensive," Luke said. "The ship is the Star Morning, Teyr

  registry, owned by--" "I have it on my display, sir," said the clerk.

  "It takes up to an hour to pull a comprehensive. Would you like it

  forwarded to your current hypercomm identifier when it's ready, or held

  here for your next call?"

  "Forward it," Luke said.

  "Very well, sir. Is there anything else?"

  Luke looked back over his shoulder and extended his senses to confirm

  that Akanah was asleep. "Yes," he said on impulse. "I'd like a

  comprehensive pulled on a skiff, a Verpine Adventurer, registration

  number NR80-109399, no name currently profiled, owner and home port

  unknown--" "I have it, sir. Would you like this report forwarded with

  the other?"

  "No," Luke said. "Hold this one for me."

  "Very well, sir. Is there anything else?"

  "No."

  "Clear to close link."

  "Closing link," Luke said, and reached for the controls.

  Then he wondered why what he had just done made him feel so unclean.

  Akanah's nap lasted more than three hours, but the report from Ship

  Registry had not yet arrived when she stirred. She said nothing to him

  when she emerged from the sleeper, disappearing for several minutes

  behind the privacy screen of the refresher unit.

  When she emerged, she had forgone the more flowing, multilayered

  garment she had worn on the planet for the simple, close-fitting,

  long-sleeved one-piece she had worn for much of the jump to Teyr. When

  she joined him at the flight controls, he caught the faint scent of the

  freshener cabinet on her clothing.

  "So, have we a shadow?"

  "None clumsy enough to give itself away yet, anyway," Luke said.

  "There are eighteen ships--make that nineteen, now--in this outbound

  corridor. In theory they're all heading for the Foless Crossroads, or

  for Darepp."

  "In theory?"

  "Under free-navigation rules, they don't have to file flight plans and

  announce their destinations--they just have to announce themselves as

  they leave here and when they get there."

  Akanah leaned forward to study the navigational display. "How did you

  make it display those identifiers?

  When I was coming into Coruscant, all it showed me were those green

  bars--it didn't tell me what they were."

  "The display options are on the command menus.

  But the basic display really tells you all you need, most of the time,"

  Luke said. "A green bar means a ship that is a safe distance away on a

  noncollision course. Yellow bar, a ship that's closer than the

  standard spacing, but not on a collision course. Red bar, something on

  an intercept course. Same rules for rocks, except the symbol is a

  circle--like that one."

  "So any red symbols mean danger."

  Luke nodded. "I'm sure this ship has some fairly obnoxious alarms, and

  collision-avoidance protocols."

  "What if someone fired a missile at us? Would it show up as a red

  bar?"

  Frowning, Luke considered. "Probably as a circle, as though it were a

  fast-moving asteroidal body. Missiles don't send out recognition

  signals, and skiffs don't have threat-recognition modules in their

  scanners."

  "I have never been in a warship," Akanah said.

  "Tell me--how does this compare with the cockpit of a military

  spacecraft?"

  "Oh--worlds apart," Luke said.

  "How, exactly?"

  "Well--in a military ship, the automated systems are there to support

  the pilot--most everything that matters is done with your hands on the

  controls," Luke said.

  "A ship like this is designed to have the expert systems take over as

  much as possible, to protect casual pilots from making mistakes."

  "So there are more controls in a fighter."

  "A lot more. Heck, a combat flight stick has almost as many controls

  on it as there are on this whole panel," Luke said. "Most of what this

  ship will let you do by yourself is buried three levels deep in the

  command option displays."

  She nodded. "Tell me, if we were pursued by a warship, or intercepted

  by a fighter how much could you do?"

  Luke ran his fingers back through his hair. "Less than you're probably

  hoping," he said. "It's not a test I'd look forward to."

  "Not even with your reputation as a pilot?"

  "She's underpowered for realspace, which means we can't run away. She

  doesn't have true vector thrus ters, which means she's not very agile,

  despite her low mass. The nav shields would pop on the first hit, and

  the hull would breach on the second--unless the second hit was from an

  ion cannon."

  "What would happen then?"

  "All the systems would sizzle, and we'd be dead in space." He showed a

  rueful smile. "Piloting ability doesn't count for much then. And

  reputations count for even less."

  "So our only hope would be to jump to hyperspace before we were hit."

  "That's about the size of it."

  Just then a sweet-toned signal sounded from the console, startling

  Akanah. "What is it? What's that?"

  "Nothing to worry about," Luke said as he leaned forward. "Incoming

  hypercomm file transmission. A re port on the Star Morning. I

  requested it from Coruscant while you were napping."

  Her eyes flashed angrily. "I asked you to wait until we'd jumped."

  "You also asked me to use my judgment," Luke said. "We can't do a

  quick jump-and-go if we're sitting out there somewhere waiting for a

  report to come in.

  And I thought this report might have information we'd want in hand

  before we commit to Atzerri."

  "We're already committed to Atzerri," she said stiffly. "That's where

  the scribing at Teyr told us to go."

  "I want to look at the report," Luke said. "The way I see it, the more

  information we have, the better."

  "All it can do is mislead us," Akanah said. "I told you that we leave

  no trail an outsider can follow."

  Another, low-pitched tone signaled the end of the transmission.

  "Then I'll count on you to keep me from getting lost," Luke said,

  bringing up the secondary display panel. "You can look at this or

  not--but I have to. I never have liked making decisions in the

  dark."

  Luke had anticipated two possible reasons for the delay in the report's

  arrival--and either a very thin or a very thick file, depending on

  which was to blame.

  It was a thick file, almost overwhelming with detail. Star Morning,

  a.k.a. Mandarin, a.k.a. Pilgrim, a.k.a. Congere, had had a long history

  before passing into the hands of the Fallanassi and a busy history

  since.

  Built by the Koqus Design Syndic as a variation on an ev
en older

  Republic Seinar design, it was classed as a short-route liner despite

  the sleeper configuration of its fifty-eight-passenger main cabin. At

  forty-four meters long and twenty-eight meters across the spade-shaped

  twin-deck main hull, it was readily capable of planetary landings at

  even the smallest spaceports and a good pilot might even try a

  dirt-field touchdown and get away with it. The hyperdrive was a rather

  ordinary Block 1, with dual fusion generators. But the ion engines, a

  pair of SoroSuub Viper 40s, would have been adequate for a ship with a

  keel mass half again greater.

  With legs like that, she could give the Falcon a run for her money,

  Luke thought.

  More interesting than the specifications, though, was confirmation that

  Star Morning was still the property of Kell Hath Corporation of Teyr,

  and had been so continuously for the past fifteen years. The port call

  list for that period ran to more than two hundred entries, with no

  single port appearing more than three times, and most entries unique.