Solo Command (36 page)

So far, the ship’s main computer hadn’t noticed. This was, Tonin reflected, because Tonin was so much better at this task than the ship’s computer was. Perhaps the ship’s computer considered maintenance of a fleet of MSE-6 droids beneath its dignity.

The droid-guard in the corridor transmitted a warning to Tonin; it indicated someone was approaching Lara’s door. Tonin decoupled himself from Lara’s terminal and rolled hastily into her closet. But when the door opened, it was Lara herself who entered, looking tired and even dazed—but not hurt or unhappy, so far as Tonin could read human emotions. “Good morning, Tonin.”

He beeped a greeting at her, then returned to his post at the terminal and extended his scomp-link once more into its data port. To the terminal’s screen, he transmitted,
YOU WERE GONE FOR A LONG TIME
.

“I’m sorry. I had to go on a mission. I think I got a communication through to
Mon Remonda
, though.” She sat on her bed, pulled her boots off, and lay down. “I also gave myself a mild concussion and got personally congratulated by General Melvar for ‘tenacity and courage in pursuit of the enemy.’ ”

THE CONCUSSION WAS PROBABLY A BAD IDEA
.

“Don’t be so sure.” She gave him a little smile. “What have you been up to?”

WE HAVE HOLOCOMM ACCESS WHENEVER YOU NEED IT, BUT IF YOU USE IT, THEY WILL DETECT IT VERY QUICKLY. AND MY DROIDS FOUND AN UNMAPPED SECTION OF THE SHIP
.

“Show me.”

Tonin accessed this morning’s most interesting recording and transmitted it to the terminal’s screen.

It was a very low view, as was to be expected due to the MSE-6’s tiny size, of a bank of rectangular viewports seen from an adjoining corridor. Beyond the viewports were chambers
that were obviously medical wards. One was an operating theater. Another held cages filled with sapient and near-sapient life-forms: Ewoks, rodentlike Ranats, Bilars with their stuffed-doll features but lacking the carefree expressions of most of their kind, a pink Ortolan with its trunklike nose pressed against the front bars of its cage, meter-long Chadra-Fan with their furry faces and gigantic ears, and more.

She sat up, her tiredness apparently forgotten for the moment. “Is this everything you have on this chamber?”

YES, FOR NOW
.

“We need more. Get a holocam droid into that chamber, assign it there permanently. And get a droid with a computer link in behind the walls, see what sort of data we can intercept. This is really important.”

IT WILL BE DONE
.

“Now, I’ve got to sleep.” She flopped back onto the bed. “Concussions are no fun.”

DON’T DO THAT ANYMORE
.

Admiral Rogriss froze with his wineglass halfway to his lips. “You want what?”

Face smiled. “Surely you have one available.”

Rogriss set his glass down with a thump. “Available to me, yes. I can’t make it available to you.”

“Even to destroy Zsinj?”

“Even then. Factor in the likelihood that
Iron Fist
will destroy her. Factor in the likelihood that you Rebels will destroy her—accidents
do
happen. Then append the certainty that you’ll take the credit for Zsinj’s destruction regardless. I become a failure who, at worst, collaborated with the enemy and, at best, lost an Interdictor cruiser. No, no, no.”

“Well, we can do a lot of things to keep this from happening,” Face said. “First, we’ll assign two of our own Imperial Star Destroyers to protect your Interdictor. Second, if you inform only the most trusted members of the Interdictor’s bridge crew that they’re temporarily working with the New Republic, the majority of the crewmen will never figure it out—they’ll see our Star Destroyers out of their ports and presume that they’re
Imperial. Later, you can say that the Interdictor blundered into a fight between the New Republic and Zsinj and was able to get in the killing blow while everyone else was figuring out whom to shoot.”

“What will you give me?”

Face frowned. “How’s that again?”

“If I do this, I’ll be giving you an Interdictory even temporarily. Will you give me, say, a Mon Calamari cruiser for one of
my
missions?”

“I’ll give you a framed and autographed holo of Face Loran, Boy Actor.”

Rogriss brightened. “Excellent! I can trade it for a framed and autographed holo of Tetran Cowall. I always preferred his holodramas anyway.”

Face seized his chest over his heart. “A good shot, Admiral. I concede the duel.” Then he gave the admiral his most frank and evaluative stare. “Realistically, you’re not giving us anything. You’re joining us on a mission of mutual interest. If we succeed, we both win. If you lose your Interdictor, you can be assured we’ll have lost both Imperial Star Destroyers assigned to protect it … and many more ships besides. I guess it boils down to the question of what’s more important—accomplishing your Zsinj mission because it’s good for the Empire or because it’s good for Admiral Rogriss.”

The admiral touched his own chest, an echo of Face’s gesture. “You shoot well yourself.” He looked away, at the white bulkhead wall, and was silent for several long seconds. “I’ll do it,” he said.

“I’m glad.”

“We must have a rendezvous point.” The admiral held up his wineglass.

Face touched it with his own. “Good to be collaborating with you, Admiral.”

Lara could almost feel the stare of Tonin’s holocam eye on her. The R2 had been very solicitous since her return from the Comkin mission. Worse, it seemed to sense the way her spirits
lowered as she reviewed the data they continued to receive from the secret chamber on
Iron Fist
.

It was awful stuff. She didn’t get into the worst of it in the summary she recorded for
Mon Remonda
. The attached data file would give the New Republic the most gruesome details.

“Project Chubar is what they call the techniques used to raise the intelligence of sapient and near-sapient beings. The name derives from a character in a series of children’s holos about a bilar, a cute mammalian creature, who is a clever pet of a young girl. The holos used animated graphics instead of actors. It’s a twisted sort of touch that Face Loran supplied the voice for Chubar. Maybe you ought not tell him that one of his roles was the inspiration for the name of the project. Anyway, Chubar involves chemical treatments and a teaching regimen to bring a humanoid’s mental functions up to those of human average—sometimes higher. In the case of creatures that are already intelligent—for instance, Ewoks—the process enhances mental traits that bring its
type
of intelligence more in line with a human’s. Less reliance on sensory data and more on analysis, for instance.

“Project Minefield derived from Chubar. It involves a second, and much faster-acting, set of chemical treatments that affect the victim’s mind on a much shorter-term basis. While the chemicals are at their maximum effect, Zsinj’s agents can implant a delusion and a mission in the victim’s mind. The delusion is usually that some awful situation is in effect and can’t be stopped until the mission is accomplished.

“Both the delusion and the mission are associated with a trigger, usually a code phrase. Until the phrase is used, the victim is unaware of what has been done to him … in theory. Some of the doctors’s annotations indicate that the victims sometimes suspect that something is wrong. But when the phrase is used, the mission pops to the top and becomes the victim’s number one priority. Um, this conditioning wears off after a while. The length of time it remains viable varies from species to species, but seldom exceeds one standard year.”

She scrolled through screens of data on her terminal. “The code phrase can have a variable in it. Let’s say the mission is
‘Kidnap someone’ and the trigger phrase is ‘I need a new speeder, someone broke mine.’ You’d tell the brainwashed agent, ‘I need a new speeder, Elassar Targon broke mine,’ and the victim would interpret that as ‘Kidnap Elassar Targon.’ It’s a fairly versatile setup.” She skimmed through more screens of data. “So far, the treatment only works on mammalian species.

“Project Funeral is Zsinj’s major operation using the Minefield technique. Our brainstorming session pretty much nailed its purpose and intent—fomenting suspicion between the humans and nonhumans of the New Republic. Addenda to the files suggest that the project has recently been suspended, pending a new direction or a shutdown. In other words, it’s been stopped dead, at least temporarily.

“I’m going to do what I can for the test subjects on
Iron Fist
. I’ll end their suffering, one way or another.

“End Session Three.” She switched off the recording and leaned back in her chair.

She felt strange. Growing up on Coruscant, raised in the planet’s long-standing traditions concerning other species, she’d always believed in the basic superiority of humans. Oh, it wasn’t necessarily wrong to have affection for a member of another species—a household servant, or a reliable merchant who knew his role in life—but Coruscant was a world for and made by humans. Imperial doctrine solidified these traditions into something like duracrete.

Then, as an infiltrator in the Rebel navy and, later, Wraith Squadron, she’d run again and again into evidence suggesting that these traditions simply made no sense. With Wraith Squadron, her long-standing assumption of superiority over even the nonhumans she’d liked simply wilted away.

And now, with only a droid—held by the Empire in even lower esteem than nonhumans—for a friend, longing to return to a society full of what she’d once considered aliens, she once again knew that the Gara Petothel that had been her childhood identity was dead. Dead and unmourned.

And the nonhumans in their cages deep in
Iron Fist’
s belly were beginning to haunt her dreams.

Words popped up on her screen,
ARE YOU SAD?

“No,” she lied. “Just tired. But it’s time to get back to work.” She leaned forward again. “What’s our situation with the hyperdrive?”

WE HAVE UNITS IN PLACE ALL OVER THE ENGINES. THEY CAN BEGIN THEIR SABOTAGE AT ANY TIME. BUT THERE ARE NOT YET ENOUGH IN CRITICAL POSITIONS FOR US TO BE CERTAIN THAT THEY CAN DISABLE THE HYPERDRIVE
.

“Keep pouring on resources,” she said. “We have to be able to bring those engines down when we want to.

“Let’s see here … even though we have some access to the ship’s computers, we can’t afford to play around with them too much. We’ll be detected. Zsinj’s slicers aren’t bad. So I’ve been thinking about the most efficient way to give Solo’s force an advantage in any direct confrontation with Zsinj’s fleet. To me, that suggests messing with
Iron Fist’
s strategic coordination of Zsinj’s fleet. We might be able to flag friendly ships as enemies, temporarily, and enemies as friendly. Can we proceed that way?”

YES
.

“Chance of being detected?”

VERY LOW, IN OUR INITIAL PHASE OF MANIPULATING THE PROGRAMMING. ONCE THE PROGRAM IS ACTIVATED, DETECTION CHANCE IS
99%
IN THE FIRST SECOND OF OPERATION, WITH ODDS INCREASING EACH ADDITIONAL SECOND. PROBABLE DURATION OF PROGRAM ONCE IT IS RUNNING IS ABOUT TWELVE SECONDS
.

“Not good enough. How about something to lower the ship’s shields?”

PROBABILITY OF SUCH A THING SURVIVING EVEN IN LATENT FORM FOR MORE THAN A FEW MOMENTS IS VERY LOW. THE MAIN COMPUTER’S SECURITY MEASURES LOOK FOR PROBLEMS THAT CATASTROPHIC
.

“So most forms of self-destruct are not even worth looking into.”

THAT IS CORRECT
.

“Well, then what—” She stopped as a new idea occurred to her. “Ooh.”

•    •    •

The document on Wedge’s screen was labeled “Routine Examination,” but Wedge knew it to be anything but. It was a fitness report, the accumulated conclusions of
Mon Remonda’
s most experienced medics and analysts.

About Myn Donos.

The review board had been unable to confirm or deny that the torpedo launch was an accidental discharge. That was a break in his favor.

However, the medics collectively pronounced him borderline. One medic said it was a certainty that he’d lose control again; the trauma from the loss of his squadron and his conflicting feelings concerning Lara Notsil made it inevitable. The others disagreed, but indicated that his stress levels made him a less than ideal candidate for missions.

It was the sort of data-based torpedo that could sink a career. All Wedge had to do was accept their conclusions, scrub Donos permanently from the active flight list, and the problem he represented would go away forever.

But one party hadn’t voted yet, and that was Wedge’s gut instinct.

A knock sounded on his door. “Come,” he said.

Donos entered, saluted. “Reporting as ordered, sir.” His expression was somber, but was not the rigid mask Wedge remembered from most of their earlier interviews.

“Have a seat.”

Donos complied, then quirked a smile. “Shall I take off my boot, sir?”

“Not this time. Lieutenant, I’ve asked you in here to find out what role you’d like to play in the Vahaba mission.”

“If I could do anything I wanted?”

“That’s right.”

“I’d be back in my X-wing. That’s where I feel I belong.”

“And if that were denied you?”

“I’d like to be put in command of the
Millennium Falsehood
.”

Wedge leaned back. Donos’s comment had taken him momentarily off guard, though he believed he’d kept his surprise from his face. “That has been my role.”

“I expect you’d rather be back in
your
X-wing, sir.”

“I don’t recall inviting you to attempt mind reading, Donos.”

Donos’s expression became more serious. “No, sir. But we’ve flown in the same squadron. Learning to anticipate the reactions of your squadmates—emotional ones as well as physical reflexes—is a survival trait. Maybe you find it a gross insult for me to make predictions this way, sir, but I’d say you wanted to get back in your X-wing cockpit and were doing these
Falsehood
runs because of duty. Because you’re most qualified—second, perhaps, to General Solo. If I can’t fly my own snubfighter, I’d be happy to free you up to fly yours.”