Specter of the Past

by Timothy Zahn

  “He’s right,” Tierce agreed. “So shut up your whining and do your part. Or it’ll be penal colonies for all of us.”

  “Agreed,” Disra said reluctantly. “My apologies, Major. It won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” Tierce said briskly. “Back to business. I’m going to need a copy of the decryption algorithm you used to slice into the Emperor’s and Thrawn’s private records.”

  Disra frowned. “What for?”

  “So that I can pull a complete list of the sleeper cells Thrawn planted around the Rebellion,” Tierce explained. “We’re going to need all the trained Imperial soldiers and pilots we can get our hands on.”

  That seemed reasonable enough. “All right,” Disra said. “But I can pull the list for you.”

  “It would be useful if I could get into those files myself whenever I needed to,” Tierce pointed out.

  “It would also be useful for me to know a few things that you don’t,” Disra countered. “For the sake of balance and all.”

  Tierce shook his head. “Fine. Go ahead and play your little games. Just get me that list.”

  Disra inclined his head in an ironic bow. “Immediately, Major.”

  No, there would be no more outbursts, Disra decided as he walked back across the office to the secret tunnel. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep a close eye on his partners in this triumvirate. And if they both still needed him, the time might well come when he no longer needed them.

  It was something to think about.

  CHAPTER

  6

  She was short, she was furry, she was loud, and she was determined to sell him a melon. “Sorry,” Wedge Antilles said, moving away as best he could in the press of the crowded Morishim marketplace, holding his hands palms outward in front of him. “Not interested in wk’ou melons today, thanks.”

  Either the female Morish didn’t understand Basic or else she wasn’t ready to concede defeat quite yet. She followed along with him behind her produce table, paralleling his retreat, thrusting the double-bulbous, pale red melon toward him and jabbering away nonstop in her own language. “Not today,” Wedge repeated firmly, looking around and trying to catch a glimpse of any of his Rogue Squadron teammates in the crowd of shoppers. Janson and Tycho were supposed to know a little of the Morish language, but neither of them was anywhere to be seen.

  But there was a gap freshly opened up in the pedestrian traffic pattern beside him. “Maybe tomorrow,” he called to the wk’ou seller, and made his escape.

  “For a big bad X-wing warrior, you’re sure rotten at saying no,” Janson’s voice said from behind him.

  “I didn’t buy it, did I?” Wedge countered, turning to face his grinning teammate. “Where were you when I needed you?”

  “Oh, I caught most of the show,” Janson said, grinning a little wider. “I especially liked the part where you gave her that palms-outward sign.”

  Wedge felt his eyes narrow. “That doesn’t mean ‘no’ here?”

  “Not quite,” Janson said, clearly enjoying himself. “It means you don’t want it at that price but that she might want to try a better offer.”

  “Oh, well, thanks for telling me that going in,” Wedge growled. “No wonder she wouldn’t leave me alone.”

  “It’s a big galaxy,” Janson said philosophically. “There’s so much out there to learn. Come on—I ran into an old friend of yours over here.”

  “As long as he doesn’t try to sell me something,” Wedge grumbled as Janson led the way through the shoppers. “Any word from the base?”

  “Hardly,” Janson said over his shoulder. “The meeting only started half an hour ago. With a general of Bel Iblis’s standing, they probably haven’t even gotten through the preliminary compliments yet. Here we go. Hey—General!”

  A few people away a distinguished-looking man in a black cloak turned around—

  “Well, well,” Wedge said, easing through the passersby and offering his hand. “General Calrissian.”

  “It’s just plain Calrissian now,” Lando Calrissian corrected, tucking the wk’ou melon he was carrying under one arm and gripping Wedge’s hand. “My military days are long behind me. Good to see you again, Wedge.”

  “You, too,” Wedge said. “What are you doing in this part of the galaxy?”

  “Hoping for a chance to talk to General Bel Iblis,” Lando said, nodding his head back toward the pyramidal launch towers of the New Republic Starfighter Base rising up behind the city. “We have got to do something about the pirate activity we’ve been getting out near Varn.”

  “Been hitting your ore shipments, have they?” Wedge asked.

  “That, and scaring away potential customers,” Lando said. “I don’t know if you knew I added a casino and observation gallery to the Deep Pockets.”

  “Sounds like a really big draw,” Janson said dryly.

  “You’d be surprised how interesting underwater mining is to watch,” Lando told him. “Actually, at full capacity the casino could probably pay the overhead for the whole operation all by itself. But not if everyone’s afraid to come there.”

  “Pirate gangs have been coming out of the stonework just about everywhere,” Wedge agreed. “Even in the Core systems. Have you tried talking to Coruscant?”

  “Till my voice gave out,” Lando said sourly. “Didn’t gain me a thing. The bureaucratic bit-sorters there are as bad as the ones we had under the Empire.”

  Janson snorted. “Some of them are the same ones.”

  “This latest policy reorganization should help,” Wedge said, trying to steer the conversation away from what was a permanent sore point for him and his Rogue Squadron comrades. “Shifting the bulk of political power back down to system and sector levels is definitely the way to go. The Empire already proved the centralized approach doesn’t work.”

  He looked up at the clear blue sky overhead. “Funny, isn’t it, how things wind up. I remember when being in a system this close to the edge of Imperial space meant you slept in your X-wing. Instead, here we are, strolling along like we were on Svivren or Ord Mantell.”

  “I wouldn’t get too overconfident if I were you,” Janson warned. “The Empire isn’t exactly dead yet. They could still deliver a pretty good punch if they wanted to.”

  “And they’ve looked like they were ready to throw in their cards before,” Lando added. “Remember what things were like just before Grand Admiral Thrawn came back from wherever it was he’d been hiding?”

  “Wedge?” a voice called over the din. “Hey—Wedge!”

  Wedge peered over the crowd, caught a glimpse of tousled light brown hair, and lifted a hand. “Over here.”

  “Who’s that?” Lando asked, craning his neck to peer over the crowd.

  “His name’s Tycho Celchu,” Wedge told him. “One of my Rogue Squadron people. I don’t know if you ever met him.”

  Tycho reached them. “Hey, Wedge, you’ve got to come hear this guy,” he said, his voice and face dark. “Come on—he’s over here.”

  He led them through the marketplace to a small booth with a wizened Morish hunched over it. “Here he is,” Tycho said, gathering the others in front of the booth. “W’simi p’rotou?”

  “M’rish’kavish f’oril,” the Morish wheezed. “M’shiskt C’aama’, por kri’vres’mi B’oth.”

  Janson whistled softly. “What is it?” Wedge asked.

  “He says new information’s just been dug up about the destruction of Caamas,” Tycho said grimly. “And that it was the Bothans who were responsible.”

  Wedge stared at Tycho. “You must be joking,” he said.

  “Do I look like I’m joking?” Tycho bit out, a fire in his blue eyes. “Figures, doesn’t it? Endor, Borleias, and now this.”

  “Take it easy,” Wedge said, putting some parade-ground steel into his voice. “Borleias wasn’t really the Bothans’ fault.”

  Tycho’s shoulders shifted uneasily. “Not all of it, anyway,” he conceded grudgingly.

  Wedg
e looked at Lando. “Have you heard anything about fresh Caamas information?”

  “Not a whisper,” Lando said, eyeing the Morish suspiciously. “Ask him where he heard it.”

  “Right.” Tycho spoke to the Morish again, got an answer. “He says it came from the Old Recluse,” he translated. “He lives up in a cave in the High Tatmana. Apparently knows everything about what goes on in the galaxy.”

  Wedge turned and looked up at the Tatmana Mountains, rising in a saw-toothed crest in the distance on the opposite side of the city from the New Republic base. On the face of it, it was absurd to think that some old native hermit would have any idea what was even going on in the city down here, let alone in the larger galaxy above his mountains.

  But on the other hand, Wedge had hung around Luke Skywalker long enough to know that there were a lot of unexplainable things in the galaxy. Maybe this Old Recluse was one of those latent Force-users Luke was always trying to find.

  And it wasn’t like they were exactly busy right now, anyway. “Ask him where we can find this Old Recluse,” he instructed Tycho.

  “You going up there?” Lando asked as Tycho began talking to the Morish again. “What in the worlds for?”

  “Curiosity,” Wedge told him. “We’ve got time—the general won’t be needing us for at least a few more hours. You coming?”

  Lando sighed. “Lead the way.”

  Leaning slightly into the steady wind, the three X-wings settled smoothly onto the bluff overlooking the city. “Easy for you,” Lando muttered under his breath, mentally gauging the chunk of space they’d left him to put the Lady Luck down onto. It would be tight, but pride alone dictated he not back out now. Muttering some more, he eased the yacht down toward the bluff.

  It was indeed a tight squeeze, made all the trickier by the wind. But he managed it without too much trouble and, more important, without any embarrassment. Dropping the engines into their standby settings, he climbed down the ladder just aft of the cockpit bridge and headed for the yacht’s hatchway.

  Wedge, Janson, and Tycho were waiting for him at the foot of the Lady Luck’s ramp. “Chilly up here,” he commented, gripping the edge of his cloak to keep it from flapping. “I hope the Old Recluse’s cave is heated.”

  “At least it’ll be out of this wind,” Janson agreed, pointing toward a narrow, two-meter-high crack in the cliff face. “That must be it. Let’s go.”

  The cave was much deeper than Lando would have guessed from the relatively small size of the entrance. It was also surprisingly warm. “Looks like a glow up ahead,” Wedge said, his voice sounding odd in the enclosed space. “Around that bend.”

  “I wonder if we should announce ourselves,” Lando said, glancing around uneasily. Flying in cramped spaceships had never bothered him in the least, but walking down a narrow passageway with the top of a mountain weighing down on him was something else entirely.

  Or maybe it was that the place reminded him too much of the inside of Mount Tantiss. Either way, as they rounded the corner, he found his right hand resting on the grip of his holstered blaster.

  Which made the scene that opened up in front of them just that much more anticlimactic. Sitting at the back of a widened section of the cave was a single ancient Morish, even older than the one they’d talked to at the booth, meditatively plucking the stretched wires of some kind of musical instrument. To his right was a squat military-surplus work-light; to his left, an antique wood brazier. On both sides of the cave, only vaguely touched by the worklight’s glow, were a collection of objects that were apparently the Old Recluse’s household goods. At his back, not quite covering the cave’s back wall, was a hand-decorated curtain of heavy-looking cloth.

  If the Old Recluse was surprised to see them, he didn’t show it. He studied them for a moment in silence as they stepped to within a couple of meters of him, then dropped his gaze back to his instrument and muttered something in his own language.

  “He’s greeting us,” Tycho translated. “Sort of. He also demands to know what we want.”

  “Tell him we’ve heard he knows something about the destruction of Caamas,” Wedge said. “We’d like to hear more.”

  “He’ll want money,” Janson warned.

  “Right,” Tycho agreed. “Try offering him fifty.”

  The Morish stirred. “Three hundred,” he said in clear and nearly unaccented Basic. “This story is worth three hundred.”

  “Well, well,” Wedge said dryly. “So much for local color. I thought they probably spoke more Basic than they were letting on. I’ll give you one hundred.”

  “Three hundred,” the Old Recluse insisted. “Or no story.”

  “One-fifty,” Wedge offered. “New Republic currency. All I have on me.”

  “Three hundred. No less.”

  “I’ll cover it,” Lando spoke up, looking around the cave. There was something odd about this place. Something that was triggering some very unpleasant memories …

  “All right,” Wedge sighed. “Three hundred it is. But this had better be worth it.”

  “It is,” the Old Recluse assured him. “As the dark battle fleet assembled outside Caamas—”

  And suddenly it clicked in the back of Lando’s mind. Stepping around behind the brazier, he got a grip on the edge of the curtain—

  “Ka’alee!” the Morish screeched, tossing aside his musical instrument and lunging toward the worklight. His hand darted beneath it—

  “Freeze it!” Wedge snapped. All three Rogue Squadron pilots had dropped into combat crouches, blasters in their hands and steady on the Morish. “Bring your hand out,” Wedge ordered. “Empty.”

  Slowly, glaring at them, the Old Recluse pulled his hand back out. Janson circled over to the worklight and crouched down beside it, coming up with a small but nasty-looking blaster. “All right,” Wedge said as Janson returned to Tycho’s side. “Now you just sit there and be good. And keep your hands where we can see them.” Holstering his blaster, he walked around behind his teammates and came over to Lando. “What did you find?”

  “The source of his omniscience,” Lando said grimly, pulling the curtain aside. “Take a look.”

  Wedge whistled softly under his breath; and even Lando, who had more or less known what to expect, had to admit he was impressed. Crammed into a wide floor-to-ceiling crack in the back wall of the cave was a fully functioning Imperial communications center, complete with encrypt/decrypt modules, the input jacks for a variety of droids and sensor feeds, a space/planetary monitor module, and a self-contained Generations III power generator. “Well, well,” Wedge commented. “Nice find, Lando. What tipped you off?”

  “The smell,” Lando told him, an involuntary shiver running through him. “Dusty electronics have a smell like nothing else in the universe. The Spaarti cylinder chamber in the Mount Tantiss storehouse was reeking with it.”

  “Probably set this place up just before we took Morishim back from them,” Janson suggested. “Must have used it to spy on the base.”

  “And for propaganda and incitement of the locals,” Wedge said, pushing aside the curtain for a closer look. “There’s a direct feed to the Imperial news service here. And a direct feed to Coruscant Hourly.”

  “Might be interesting to have someone go back through the recent history records,” Lando said. “See if we can spot their hand in events.”

  “Yes,” Wedge agreed. “They must have abandoned it in a hurry to have left this much stuff behind …”

  He trailed off, frowning at the space monitor display. “Tycho, get out to your X-wing and give the base a call. Looks like we’ve got a Corellian Corvette coming in. Broadcasting an Imperial ID—”

  Abruptly he stiffened. “Belay that,” he snapped, dropping the curtain and charging past the Old Recluse. “Get to your fighters—double-time.”

  The others fell into step behind him, the group disappearing around the bend in the tunnel. “What is it?” the Old Recluse demanded anxiously. “You—human—what is it?”

>   A single look at the display was all Lando needed. “It’s an Imperial Star Destroyer,” he said. “It dropped in right behind the Corvette.

  “Heading this way.”

  “Lando?” Wedge’s voice came from the Lady Luck’s console. “You reading me?”

  “Loud and clear,” Lando said, making one last adjustment to the speaker control.

  “Stay close,” Wedge warned. “This freq-mixing trick won’t work against their jamming if we get too far apart.”

  “Got it,” Lando said, eyeing the confused readouts from his comm board. His comm system was pretty much state-of-the-art, with a few exotic add-ons besides, but it wasn’t really set up to deal with New Republic military frequencies and encrypts. But so far the jury-rig he’d thrown together on the fly seemed to be holding. “What’s happening?”

  “I got through to the base while you were getting set up,” Wedge said. “The rest of Rogue Squadron’s on the way, along with every starfighter the base can scramble.”

  A couple of wings of X-wings and A-wings, against an Imperial Star Destroyer. Terrific. “What about the Peregrine and the Assault Frigate that Admiral Vriss came in with?”

  “The Peregrine’s on its way, but it’s having to come from around the far side of the planet,” Wedge said, an edge of contempt creeping into the cool professionalism in his voice. “The Assault Frigate, unfortunately, is going to be out of it. Apparently, they let the systems drop a little too far past standby.”

  “Sloppy,” Lando grunted. “Who’s in command?”

  “A committee of Bagmims,” Wedge told him. “The crew is mostly Bagmims, humans, and Povanarians.”

  “Bagmims are pretty good fighters when they get riled.”

  “They should have stayed more riled, then,” Wedge said. “Right now, they’re just a waste of air.”

  “Too late to worry about it now,” Lando said, carefully refraining from reminding Wedge about his own earlier comments on how much more relaxed things had become. “What’s the plan?”