Wedge's Gamble (36 page)

He pulled himself up to his full height. “You will make me, in effect, the Grand Moff of Imperial Center?”

“You will be the leader of the Palpatine Counterinsurgency Front. You will annoy the Rebels on Imperial Center as they have annoyed us throughout the galaxy. If you are successful, we will let the word of your movement spread throughout the galaxy. We want them focused on you so they will not be able to look too far ahead. Hobbling them by giving them this planet, then blinding them by making them focus on you means they will not see the snares I lay for them.”

She smiled coldly. “They stand united now, but that is because they have a common enemy. The Krytos virus, the scramble for power here, and your PCF will help fracture this Rebel Alliance into its constituent parts. Once that happens, once they allow themselves to be divided, sweeping them away will be nothing.”

Loor rubbed a hand over his chin. “If I succeed, what will my reward be?”

“
If you
succeed, you will do so because you will have mastered skills few people today possess.” Isard’s smile broadened, and even though he found the prospect of her being happy frightening, her amusement gratified him somehow. “In that case, Kirtan Loor, you will be in a position to
tell
me what your reward shall be, and to wrest it from me if I am foolish enough to deny it to you.”

Which means you will have to destroy me somewhere along the line, but that is not unexpected
. Loor nodded. “I understand your offer and all it entails.”

“And?”

“And I accept it.”

“Excellent. I have already sent two Star Destroyers and several of the ground-based TIE wings off to prepare the way for what will be a mass exodus when the opposition arrives. I will disappear then.” Isard pressed her hands together. “To you I give the responsibility for Imperial Center, the Heart of the Empire. Ward your charge well and the glory that was Palpatine’s empire will once again shine forth to illuminate the galaxy.”

38

The location Tycho had found to serve as a hideaway surprised Wedge because it seemed quite unusual for Coruscant. Though he did not believe the room actually was beneath the surface of Coruscant itself, it had the sort of feel that made Wedge think of it as subterranean. The ceiling climbed up into a vault that had been finished to look as if it was part of a cavern, complete with stalactites hanging down. However, rust stains and lime scale added details that reminded him where he really was.

So did the moist trash midden in the heart of the room. It consisted largely of things slowly disintegrating to mush, but a few brightly colored plastic things spotted the corroded orange pile like mold. Nothing looked very useful and it all smelted rather bad, a fact that had Shiel feeling rather out of sorts. The moisture in the midden contributed to the room’s microclimate, evaporating and then condensing on the ceiling to drip back down again.

Gavin seemed to be the only person who didn’t mind being dripped upon. “On Tatooine I never even saw rain, much less got rained on.” For the others the dripping water seemed to make their moods more foul and none became quite as foul as Corran’s did when he saw Tycho.

Wedge had spotted Corran’s anger rising up through his surprise. He pulled the younger man aside and away from the others. “Do you want me to apologize for deceiving you, Corran?”

Corran’s green eyes flared. “You’re my commanding officer. You don’t need to explain yourself to me, sir.” The hurt in his voice was unmistakable, but so was the implacability in his eyes. “I’m glad to see Captain Celchu was not killed at Noquivzor.”

“Corran, I chose to keep Tycho’s presence here a secret to safeguard him and to give us a weapon the other side knew nothing about.”

“Wedge, I saw him talking with Kirtan Loor at the Headquarters.”

“Tycho said he was there meeting with a Duros gunrunner named Lai Nootka. He didn’t see you, but he wasn’t meeting any Imp agent, that’s for certain. Had he seen you and the trouble you were in, he would have helped.”

“I bet.”

Wedge grabbed Corran by the shoulders. “Look, he had instructions to contact you if something happened to me. You were going to be told, but only when it was necessary. It wasn’t necessary until now.”

Corran’s head came up. “When Zekka Thyne was dying he said Kirtan Loor knew we were on Coruscant
before
he pressed Thyne into his service. There’s a lying snake among us.”

“And you believe what he said?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“Should you?” Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. “Why do you think Thyne said that to you?”

Corran hesitated. “He wanted to hurt me, sure, but that doesn’t mean he was lying.”

“No, but it also doesn’t mean he was telling the truth, either. He reported what Loor told him.” Wedge frowned. “We’ve not seen Aril Nunb since the warehouse. It is entirely possible she was interrogated before Loor
confronted Thyne. Loor bluffed and Thyne believed him.”

Corran slowly shook his head. “I worked with Loor for years and the one thing I never saw him do was bluff. The man’s got a memory retention rate that rivals Winter’s. Instead of letting a suspect guess at what he did or didn’t know, Loor just started reeling facts off. He’d overwhelm a suspect with detail, proving how smart he was, so it would seem obvious to the suspect that sooner rather than later the truth would be found out. No, if Loor told Thyne he knew we were here, he did. And, remember, at the point she was taken, Aril didn’t know anyone outside her group was here.”

He has a point there, but he’s still inferring a great deal from a dying man’s last statement
. “You think Tycho is the Imperial agent?”

“You know his history. What do you think?”

“I
do
know his history, but the whole of it.” Wedge pointed over to where Tycho and Winter sat in close conversation. “I’ve watched him go through countless missions against the enemy. He has a facility for being in the right place at the right time.”

“A bonus for a spy.”

“Or for a hero. He’s saved my life and he saved yours, as I recall, on numerous occasions for the both of us. I trust him absolutely.
If
there is a spy—and I don’t find a spiteful tale told by Zekka Thyne very reliable—I’d sooner believe it was any one of us than I would believe it is Tycho. More importantly, though, I need Tycho and everyone else if we’re going to bring the shields down tomorrow night.”

Corran folded his arms across his chest. “So you’re telling me to leave it alone even though his presence might jeopardize whatever we do?”

Wedge opened his hands. “Look, Corran, I respect your instincts, I really do, but I’ve been down here for fifteen hours more than you have. Our other caches have been hit by Imps. This is the only safe place for us. If Tycho had betrayed us, this place would have been hit,
too. And, yes, the Imps could be holding off for some other reason, but I can’t think of one aside from their not knowing where we are. That may not seem like much to you, but it’s enough for me to hope we have a shot at accomplishing our mission here.”

The younger man frowned heavily. “It
isn’t
much, but right now it’s more solid than anything I have. I’ll try to keep an open mind here, but if the least little thing gets screwed up, I’m going to find out who did what and there will be hell to pay.”

“I’ll back you all the way.”

“I guess that’s as good as it gets, given the circumstances.”

Wedge brushed a droplet of water off his shoulder. “That’s not saying much here.” He led Corran over to an area with a table and chairs set up under an overhang. “If I could have everyone over here, we need to figure out what we’re going to be doing. Any and all suggestions are welcome.”

The others gathered around the table. Aside from the members of Rogue Squadron the group included Iella, Winter, Mirax, Inyri, Portha, and Asyr. The Trandoshan and Shiel both remained on cots and did not join the meeting. Wedge could see both were sleeping, albeit fitfully in Shiel’s case, so he decided not to waken them.
Better they rest now and are able to fight later
.

Wedge leaned forward on the table. “Our basic problem is the same as it’s always been: The shields on this rock have to come down. We took one shot at getting a computer override established, but that didn’t work. What do we do now?”

Winter raised a hand. “Things are not exactly the same as they have always been. The loss of the memory cores means the central computer has begun to delegate jobs to the subsidiary systems to conserve memory media. The disks they’re using now are in sad shape—a lot more errors are creeping into things. They’ve got a construction droid building a new manufacturing plant as an adjunct to the computer center to bring the memory-core manufacture
under Imperial control, but it won’t be able to turn out product for another two days.”

Wedge shivered. He’d seen construction droids work before and found their efficiency as impressive as he did their potential for destruction. Vast, huge machines, they combined the whole of the manufacturing cycle in one highly mobile package. The front end used lasers and other tools to dissect a structure. Little ancillary droids—some as big as a gravtruck—sorted through the debris and fed the appropriate bits of material into the constructor’s gullet. There metal was resmelted, stone ground down to dust and reconstituted, then extruded in girders, blocks, sheets, and trim. The aft end of the construction droid then took the building blocks and, in accord with preprogrammed plans, created a new structure where the old one had been. Specialized subsidiary construction droids equipped with repulsorlift coils built the walkways that linked structures and worked on the delicate upper reaches of the highest towers on Coruscant.

“It’s hard to believe that a factory can be built and running in three days, but that’s progress.”

Asyr growled. “I hope they evicted the tenants of the building they destroyed to make the factory. They keep forgetting to do that when they have one of those monsters take a slice out of Invisec.”

Corran frowned. “If I remember correctly, the subsidiary computer facilities are not as well guarded as the central computer. This makes them vulnerable to an attack, right?”

“True, but using one of the computers to bring down the shields means we’re only going to get a small portion of the shields down.” Wedge shook his head. “This forces us to concentrate our assault teams in one place and allows the Empire to do the same with their defenses. This world is too well defended for the Alliance to take it by storm.”

Gavin shot from his chair and clapped his hands together. “That’s it! We take the world by storm.”

Only the dripping sound of water violated the silence
that greeted Gavin’s remark. Everyone stared at him and Gavin blushed.

Wedge nodded slowly. “What are you talking about, Gavin?”

“I’m talking about the storms we’ve seen here before. A cloud comes up and a lightning storm hits.”

Corran shook his head. “Conjuring a storm up isn’t that easy, Gavin.”

“No, Corran, it is.” Gavin raked his fingers back through wet hair. “My uncle on Tatooine is a food magnate who has a virtual monopoly on water rights and moisture farms. He wants all the water he can get. Hundreds of people have come to him with schemes to bring rain to Tatooine, and probably ten times that number have come up with schemes they intend to use to break Uncle Huff’s control of the water market. Most he ignores, but occasionally he pays someone off. One of the guys he paid off was someone who had a plan to seed the atmosphere with chemical crystals around which water would condense. The water would form clouds and the clouds would produce rain.”

Wedge straightened up. “Doesn’t that presuppose there is sufficient water vapor already in the air? Aside from this place, Coruscant seems rather lacking in humidity.”

“And when there is some, a storm forms almost instantly.” Pash nodded at Iella. “We saw one of those fast-forming storms when we were at the museum.”

Corran smiled. “Perhaps we could get everyone in the Black Sun and Alien Combine to put a pot on to boil at the same time.”

Everyone laughed except for Winter. “Boiling is a good idea, but we need a lot of water set to boil all at one time. That requires lots of water and lots of heat.”

Corran opened his hands. “So, where do we get that much water?”

Winter chewed on her lower lip for a second. “Water gets melted at the polar glaciers, then pumped through long aqueducts to pumping stations and deep reservoirs
throughout the equatorial areas of the city. There’s plenty of water in any one of the reservoirs.”

“But how do we vaporize it?” Wedge scratched at the back of his head. “Thermal detonators are too inefficient, and repeated strafing runs to use lasers on it would take too long. We need a lot of heat, but we need it delivered all at once.”

“I’ve got it.” Asyr smiled proudly. “We use one of the orbital mirrors. They’re designed to concentrate sunlight and deliver it to the planet to warm up the colder regions. We redirect one of them to focus on a reservoir and it’ll vaporize the duracrete, transparisteel, and water in short order.”

“The problem there, Asyr, is getting up to the mirror.” Corran shook his head. “We’d have to get through the shields we want to bring down first, and that’s not going to be easy, then we have to take the mirror. By the time we finished assaulting it, the Golan Space Defense stations would shoot it down or a TIE starfighter wing would come up and destroy it.”

Iella looked over at Winter. “Are the mirrors crew-controlled or ground-controlled?”

“Ground-controlled. Mirror duty is considered punishment. The crews that maintain the facilities go out to repair damage from strikes by debris, but that’s about it.”

Wedge’s eyes narrowed. “Presumably you’re suggesting we take control of a ground station and redirect one of the orbital mirrors to vaporize a reservoir. That water vapor will condense into a monster storm that will strike with lightning all over the place, taking down the power grid. As the computers try to match power to demand, we should get a complete power grid collapse.”