27

Corran Horn wiped the sweat from his face and let his torso sag forward over the padded bar of the abdominal muscle weight machine. Though only driving sixty-five kilos on one gravity per repetition, the weight added up, and his sore stomach muscles were beginning to burn. Something about the dull pain felt good, as if it were reminding him he was alive.

“Flat abdominals? I suppose your wife likes them?”

Corran’s head snapped around. Ysanne Isard, clad in a skintight workout uniform that covered her from knees to elbow and throat, stood in the doorway. Black stripes running down the sides of the arms, flanks, and legs of the red bodystocking matched the fingerless black gloves she wore. She clung to each end of the black towel she had looped around her neck, making her appear almost casual, as if their meeting in the base weight room had been by accident.

Nothing she does is by accident. The pilot narrowed his eyes. “You want something?”

Isard shrugged and moved into the room to seat herself at a leg-curl machine. “I thought I would tell you that your latest attempt to get a message out to your wife has failed. Using her designator code as the origin code for a message destined to be rejected by our system was an interesting idea, but an old one. Our systems here are quite secure.”

“So far, you mean.” Corran gritted his teeth and curled his body forward, hoisting the machine’s weight with his stomach muscles. He forced himself to breathe with each repetition, focusing on the burning sensation in his muscles and using it to drive Isard from his mind.

She waited until he finished. “Your persistence is admirable, as is the passion you express for your wife in the messages.”

“Enjoyed them, did you?” He shook his head, spraying sweat around the room. “I’ll continue to send them.”

“Why? You know I’ll intercept them all.”

“Nice to know you’ll have something to do with your time.” Corran unwrapped his body from the machine and slowly stood. “As for why, it’s because I love her and I know she’ll be hurt thinking I’m dead.”

Isard raised an eyebrow. “You’ll be reunited with her once you’ve destroyed Krennel.”

“So that’s what, another month of pain? No good.” Corran frowned at her. “Haven’t you ever loved anyone?”

The question seemed to catch her off-guard and Corran felt a wave of surprise roll off her. Once again Corran regretted not having gone with Luke Skywalker to train himself to be a Jedi, because he could have used that moment of vulnerability to open her up. I could find out what she’s really planning and prevent her from accomplishing it.

Isard brushed her hands down the tops of her thighs. “I have loved, yes, but I trusted that he would know if I lived or died.”

“That’s asking a lot. No one can possibly know …” He stopped in mid-sentence as he recalled a rumor about her. “The Emperor? You loved the Emperor?”

“Captain Horn, the surprise in your voice is hardly appropriate. Is it any surprise that I would find myself attracted to the brightest star in the galaxy? I was raised on Imperial Center, I came of age during Palpatine’s time. He was immensely charismatic. He could look you in the eyes and touch the person you were. He lived for his dream of a stable galaxy.” Her voice took on an edge. “And he died for it.”

“I hope you’re not expecting an apology.”

“From you? For that? No.” Isard set the weight machine for forty kilos, then began bending her legs, lifting the weight. Her voice remained even though the strain began to flush her skin. “You do owe me an apology, though.”

“Oh, really? For what?” Corran folded his arms across his chest. “Not the destruction of Lusankya, I hope, because I’m not at all sorry about that.”

“No, no, not that.” Isard finished the last rep and smiled up at him. “Actually I’m pleased the ship is gone. Until you escaped from it, the ship had been pristine, even virginal. Your escape … violated it and soiled it. While I used it to escape Imperial Center, I had little to do with it after that. I couldn’t think of it in the same way. In many ways I was glad it died.”

“So were we.” He shook his head. “I’ve heard from Wedge how you scattered the other prisoners, which answers one of the two questions I had concerning the ship.”

“And the other was?”

“How you got it buried beneath the surface of Coruscant?”

Her nose wrinkled with his use of the pre- and post-Imperial name for the world, but it took a moment or two beyond that for her to provide her response. “I wish I knew. I know where and when Lusankya was created, and I know when it was given to me, so I have narrowed down the possible dates for its insertion into the world, but even as director of Imperial Intelligence I could find no clue as to how the insertion happened.”

“But it had to have taken hundreds of construction droids and weeks of time. A project that size could not have gone unnoticed.”

“I would agree, unless … the Force is something I do not understand and cannot touch, but the Emperor could. Is it possible he drew the ship down and buried it using the Force? I suppose. Is it possible that he merely stretched his mind out and prevented anyone from noticing the ship’s descent? Also possible.” She shook her head. “All I know is that the Emperor confided its location to me at roughly the same time its sister ship, the Executor, became operational.”

A chill ran down Corran’s spine. Even unschooled as he was in the Force, he’d managed to blank the mind of a stormtrooper looking for him. If the Emperor could manage to do that for billions of people, the miracle of the Rebellion is that it succeeded at all.

“So, the Emperor never really reckoned with the threat the Rebellion represented to him, did he?”

She began pumping her legs again. “I always thought you were more trouble than he did. He exerted great energies suppressing the internecine warfare between species in the Empire. He underestimated his enemy. This makes him much like you, Corran Horn.”

“Me? How does that follow?”

“The apology you owe me. It’s for underestimating me.” Isard gave him a smile that puckered his flesh. “You thought you’d killed me, but you hadn’t. You didn’t push, you didn’t pursue. I had thought you would have been more diligent than that. Your father certainly would have been.”

Corran stiffened, then spitted her with a harsh glare. “What you know of my father you stripped from my brain when you had me on Lusankya. I’m not going to let you use my own memories against me.”

“Oh, it’s not your memories I’m using, but my own.” Her smile tightened slightly as she began a third set of repetitions. “I met your father once. Spent some time with him. He was most annoying and prevented me from accomplishing my mission.”

“Like father, like son.”

“Indeed.” Isard crawled out of the weight machine and stood slightly taller than Corran. “The annoyance factor with you is getting to be too much. I want you to stop trying to send messages out of here. You’ll jeopardize the mission.”

Corran shook his head, then walked over to a triceps extension machine and sat down. He glanced over at her. “You don’t fool me, Isard. You don’t fall in love with someone like the Emperor because you like the way he laughs or the cute dimples he has. You fall in love with him because you feel a kinship to him. You wanted what he wanted, which was power; and that lust for power won’t go away. Just the way you brought us here and keep us here reflects your need for control. You have a goal and everything else will be subordinate to it.”

She dabbed with her towel at a droplet of sweat running down from her left temple. “General Antilles knows what I want. He knows what the price for my cooperation is. What I want from you is your cooperation so that I have my best chance at success.”

“And if I don’t agree?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I know, Corran Horn, you are capable of fierce loves and loyalties. If you persist in sending messages out, I will have your astromech taken apart, and I will scatter those parts further than my clone ever scattered the Lusankya prisoners. With a thousand years and a thousand Jedi you would not be able to reconstruct Whistler. His fate is in your hands.”

Corran let his jaw drop open to cover his surprise. Her bald-faced threat to Whistler didn’t surprise him. He’d considered the droids hostages from the second the restraining bolts had been placed on them. What her threat did mean, however, was that no one had noticed Whistler was missing yet. As nearly as Corran could determine the droid had vanished a week previously, which meant he was fairly well along on the mission Corran had given him.

He scrubbed his hands over his face, then hung his head. “You know, the only problem with you is that while you might have loved, you never were loved back. You know how much your threat hurts, but only because you’ve seen such threats hurt others. You don’t know firsthand the pain you’re inflicting.”

“I don’t have a problem with being saved that sort of pain.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do.” Corran looked up at her and met her bicolored stare openly. “You know, the real pity in that is this: You also don’t know that the best balm for that pain is having a friend, a true friend, someone you can trust no matter what. But, I imagine, to you that sort of blind trust is simply a tool that can be used against someone.”

“Very effectively, too.”

“I’m sure.” Corran reach back behind his head for the weight bar. “Well, the one thing I trust about you is that you’ll be true to your nature. And that nature, Madam Director, is what will kill you in the end.”

Wedge Antilles raked his fingers through his brown beard. He didn’t think the beard made him look any different, and his mental image of himself still hadn’t adjusted to include it. Even so, it changed the outline of his jaw enough to fuzz recognition and, combined with the prosthetic he’d wear to become Antar Roat again, it should enable him to get past any security screening Krennel put him through.

Colonel Vessery looked over at him from across the holoprojector’s sector map of Ciutric. “Do you have reservations about this plan?”

Wedge shrugged. “Same I have about every plan before it goes off. We get slipped into Ciutric as an Imperial unit looking for sanctuary. We fit in, then I send out a message that gets to you and in twelve hours you show up with the commandos we’ll need to break open the prison holding the Lusankya prisoners. At the same time the New Republic shows up with a fleet that will pound Krennel and liberate Ciutric. A lot of things can go wrong there.”

Vessery smiled. “True enough, but most of them come in along the lines of command and control. With the Director controlling communications and making sure messages go where they’re meant to go, everyone should show up on time. Your flight missions are fairly straightforward. One flight will eliminate the shields over Ciutric while the other neutralizes the defensive positions around the prison. Both units will then suppress ground defenses and air support. As you have seen in the simulations, the Defenders are well suited to these tasks and more than capable of standing up to the punishment.”

“Nice machines. I still prefer my X-wing, but I’ll take a trip in a pinch.”

“Flying one in combat will convince you.” Vessery looked over at the doorway as a silhouette filled it. “Come in, Major. This is General Antilles, Major Telik. Major Telik will be leading the commandos on the operation.”

Wedge took the slender man in with a glance. His high cheekbones and sharp nose gave his face an angular cast. Dark brows, which matched the close-cropped hair on his head, shadowed deep brown eyes. Not terribly muscled, Telik took Wedge’s proffered hand and shook it with a surprisingly strong grip.

“Glad to have you with us, Major.”

“My pleasure, General.” He turned to Vessery. “I’ve studied and annotated the plan for hitting the prison. I like the basic setup, but I’ve got a few changes in mind. I don’t want to lock them in until I can run through a sim with my people, but I think they will streamline the operation and minimize casualties.”

Vessery nodded. “That’s to be desired.”

Telik turned back toward Wedge. “I would have preferred to be in on the planning from the start, but I was on Commenor and have only recently returned. While I was there I saw two acquaintances of yours: Mirax Terrik and Iella Wessiri.”

Wedge blinked. “What were they doing on Commenor?”

“Following up on the leads planted by Krennel’s people to lure Rogue Squadron to Distna.”

“Interesting.” Wedge scratched at his throat. He’d noticed that Telik had referred to “Krennel’s people” and not “Isard’s clone” as the one who had been planting those clues. Either he didn’t know, or didn’t feel he could pass that information on to Wedge if he did. Wedge expected no less in the way of informational security by Isard’s people, which was why the whole mention of Commenor struck him as odd.

Telik smiled. “The Wessiri woman impressed me a great deal. She was in a difficult situation and I managed to slip her a blaster, which she used to effect her escape. Terrik went with her and, later, I saw they were fine. Not but one out of a dozen people could have done what she did.”

“For as long as I’ve known her, she’s been very good.” Wedge pasted a smile on his face. There was no way Telik would have mentioned his run to Commenor, his having helped Iella and Mirax, and their escape, if Isard had not told him to do so. Hearing what he’d heard certainly put Wedge in Telik’s debt, which would help inspire the sort of trust that would make the mission work more smoothly.

By the same token, I’ve just been told that Isard has a line on two friends of mine. If things do not go the way she wants them to go, Iella and Mirax could be killed, or worse. The sorry plight of the Lusankya prisoners had not escaped Wedge’s mind. Just because Isard wants me to trust Telik isn’t a reason not to trust him, but I will guard against problems, somehow.

Wedge sighed. “Well, we’ll be going back and forth over these plans for a long while, I guess, since we don’t have someone as good as Iella here to tell us how to fix them. It strikes me that the only remaining part of the plan to put into place is for me to record a message for Admiral Ackbar that will get him to bring a New Republic fleet with him to destroy Krennel.”

Vessery nodded. “Two messages, actually. One will outline the plan and prepare the New Republic to move. The second will contain the order for them to go. Moving forces around a galaxy seldom allows for split-second timing—as we have all learned—but it can be closely simulated and we’ll have to settle for that.”

“Worked when we took Coruscant.” Wedge suppressed a smile. “Well, let us cook up the text of the first message I’ll send, so the Director can approve it. Then we can set about ending Delak Krennel’s long reign.”