18

Though the week he’d already spent wandering through the upper precincts of Coruscant had allowed him to become accustomed to constant observation, Corran could not shake the background sense of being watched. Of course there were reasons for people to watch him. He sat at a tapcaf table on the edge of a promenade in the Imperial Palace’s Grand Corridor accompanied by two strikingly beautiful women. Erisi with her short black hair and Rima with her longer white hair proved enough of a contrast to each other that eyes were naturally drawn to them. That he, a lone man, should be blessed with their company made him the object of a certain amount of envy, as did the apparent leisure with which all three of them sat at the table and chatted away idly.

Corran and Erisi had been given two areas to study in their survey of Coruscant. They were to cover basic security and peacekeeping as well as medical services and facilities. Having been a security officer, Corran knew what to look for by way of force allocation, morale, discipline, response times, and tactics. Much of the week had already been spent in passive observation of the Coruscant constabulary and the stormtrooper contingents that worked with them.

Coming to the Palace’s Grand Corridor had been the final and crowning expedition in their survey of the upper, most public levels of Coruscant. At first Corran had absolutely balked at taking such a risk because he felt security there, in the heart of the building from which the government was run, had to be maintained at the highest level. The chance of detection there was greatest, yet the need for study there was equally great. He knew that any attempt to take Coruscant might well end up with a running lightfight through the halls and corridors of the Palace, so any information about its security would clearly save lives.

And in this place Rogue Squadron could have dogfights with a whole wing of TIEs.

The Grand Corridor had immediately impressed him with its scope and size. The corridor itself ran on for kilometers and the open areas at the floor level could easily have accommodated a Star Destroyer. Banners of all colors and designs hung from balustrades and arches. Each one represented a world in the Empire and there were more of them than Corran figured he could count in a lifetime.

Purple and green ch’hala trees lined the main floor and each of the upper levels. Their bark reacted to vibrations and sounds, sparking displays of color that splashed an ever-changing, opalescent mosaic on the grey granite walls and pillars. Corran had overheard from the numerous tour guide droids that ch’hala trees had been a favorite of the Emperor’s and placed here at his specific request. Though he hated everything the Emperor had stood for, Corran had to admit that the ch’hala trees were what truly made this place grand.

The necessities of modern life did not intrude and spoil the majesty of the hall. Reader strips, like those scrolling out the latest news stories everywhere else on Coruscant, had been shielded so that anyone wanting to read their messages had to stand at a specific point on the floor to actually see the scarlet letters rolling by. Information kiosks were warded by ch’hala trees. Small alcoves scooped from the walls at regular intervals provided people a modicum of privacy for using the holo-link stations built therein.

Security appeared to be lax, but Corran picked up on things that Erisi clearly missed. Stormtrooper squads did patrol the main floor and passed certain checkpoints at fairly precise intervals. They appeared to be most concerned with breaking up or moving along knots of non-humans. Those with legitimate reasons to be in the building were urged to be on their way, while those gawking at the magnificence of the Palace were directed to join escorted tours or to leave.

The upper galleries of the Grand Corridor appeared to be alien free, yet the mechanism for maintaining them that way was remarkably unobtrusive. Side passages leading to stairs or lifts narrowed considerably, forcing individuals to move through them no more than two or three abreast. Guards wearing a more stylized and esthetically pleasing form of stormtrooper armor maintained posts at these passages and gently redirected anyone who appeared to be lost. They did respond to questions, but only with the directions to the nearest visitor and information kiosks where the questions could be asked again.

The stairs themselves doubled back twice. This meant anyone who got past the guards on the lower level could be isolated on the middle staircase and dealt with. The landings on either side of the staircase appeared normal, but Corran knew of a dozen ways anyone traversing them could be trapped or, with a laser cannon emerging from behind a hidden panel, cut down with little or no risk to Imperial personnel. While quite fantastic in its design and execution, the Grand Corridor had not been created without an eye toward security.

Corran made some quick assumptions about other precautions that had to have been set up. He suspected that in the narrow corridors below there were weapons detectors. The technology for locating an inorganic object next to the flesh of or within the body of a living creature was old and unobtrusive. By detecting the disturbance a weapon made in the creature’s bioelectric field or the planet’s own magnetic field a computer could comlink to the guards the identity of the person carrying the weapon, its location on his body, and even the type of weapon he was carrying.

Other passive monitoring devices could be used to locate things like gas canisters or bombs by picking up on molecular traces coming off them. For all Corran knew the ch’hala trees could have been genetically altered to make them into botanical sniffers. The patterns of light flashing across their bark could have some sort of significance, alerting Imperial officials to danger without anyone in the Grand Corridor being the wiser.

You’re definitely thinking too hard about this, Corran. He smiled and looked over at Rima. He caught her staring at him for a moment, but her eyes had enough of a soft focus that he knew she’d not been seeing or thinking about him. “Imperial Center to Rima. Hello?”

She blinked, then grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. I was thinking.”

“That was apparent. What about?”

Rima hesitated and that caught Corran’s full attention. Throughout the time he had spent with her he’d come to realize two things: She was incredibly observant and she seemed to forget little or nothing of what went on around her. Actually Corran couldn’t remember having caught her out at having missed a detail about something, and he’d frequently been corrected by her. The only times she had previously hitched before answering a question were times when the answer had the potential of violating the security envelope surrounding the mission.

Rima’s expression softened somewhat and Corran sensed she was about to open up a bit about herself. “I was thinking that we might actually have a friend in common. He was from back home, though I did not know him there. I was wondering how he was.”

Corran smiled and picked up his cold cup of espcaf. He’d assumed all along she was from Alderaan. She’d never confirmed this, nor had she denied it. He couldn’t remember having said anything to her that told her his assumption, but from the look in her eyes, he had no doubt that he had said something, allowing her to phrase her question in such an oblique manner.

He lowered his cup and kept his voice neutral. “Do you mean Sel?” He abbreviated Tycho’s last name, assuming that even if the conversation were being overheard, the intelligence value of one syllable was tiny.

“Yes, I was thinking of him.”

Erisi smiled. “He is doing well. He recently got me out of a very tight spot. Quite a treasure.”

“Really? That’s good.”

Corran caught a flicker of surprise and hurt in Rima’s eyes. She covered it quickly, but he thought he recognized jealousy in her reaction to Erisi’s flirtatious response to the question. She and Tycho must have some history. “I guess you know him better than either one of us. We’re really just casual acquaintances of his.”

Rima’s eyes sharpened slightly. “Only casual acquaintances? I would have thought you two would have been fast friends.”

“We could have been, but the man has secrets.” Corran shifted his shoulders uneasily. Despite his original resolve to trust Tycho, reality had slowly impinged on him. The preparation for the mission to Coruscant had stressed trust and sharpened his sense of paranoia. At the core of the Tycho problem was the fact that no one save Ysanne Isard knew if Tycho was her puppet or not. Corran had emotionally begun to insulate himself from Tycho, but until now had not realized how far along that unconscious process had gotten. “Secrets establish a distance and undercut trust.”

Hurt returned to Rima’s eyes. “He’s had a hard life.”

“So haven’t we all.”

Rima’s head came up. “You don’t understand. His family died …”

“I do understand.” Corran kept the volume of his voice down, but let the emotions bubbling up in him pour straight through into his words. “I have no family either and do you know what? I saw my father get shot up. Murdered. And I couldn’t do anything about it. I was a hundred meters away, watching him by remote, backing him up, when a bounty hunter walked into the cantina and lit up the booth where he was sitting with two other people. Killed them all and I couldn’t do anything about it. I got there and held my father in my arms, but it was too late. You want a hard life, there’s a hard life for you.”

Corran’s hands contracted into fists and Erisi leaned over to hug him. He stared openly at Rima, daring her to deny his pain. He wanted her to break, to lose that look of superiority she wore. He wanted her to admit that nothing Tycho had been through, even the destruction of his homeworld or his Imperial captivity, could have measured up to what Corran had endured.

Even as Erisi whispered, “I’m so sorry,” in his ear, Corran knew he had overreacted and overreacted badly. What’s gotten into me? He searched his mind for an answer, tracing back fleeting thoughts, and slowly came to a realization that surprised with its simplicity and amazed him with its power.

Tycho, in saving his life and in shepherding him through his introduction to Rogue Squadron, had moved into an august company in Corran’s mind. Corran’s father, his CorSec supervisor, Gil Bastra, and Wedge Antilles were the only other people that Corran saw in the guardian and mentor roles in his life. With his father and Gil both dead, Corran realized he had begun to rely on Wedge and Tycho to serve as touchstones and moral compasses for him.

The fact that Tycho could not be fully trusted had gone to war with the esteem in which Corran had held him. As he had mentally distanced himself from Tycho, he began to feel that Tycho had somehow betrayed him. The anger he felt toward Tycho, the anger that had triggered his outburst, had come from this sense of betrayal and Corran’s guilt at having elevated someone so untrustworthy to a rank equal to that of his father.

This is crazy. I have to sort all of this out. Tycho has not betrayed me or anyone else. I need to apologize to him and to Rima.

Before he could say anything, Rima began speaking in low, even tones. “I do not doubt the sincerity of the anguish you feel, and I am most sorry for you. As tragic as is your story, though, I think Sel’s story can be considered of equal weight.”

Corran wanted to tell her she need say nothing more, she need not explain, but the solemnity of her tone froze his words in his throat.

“He had graduated from the Academy and was assigned to a Star Destroyer—the Accuser. On the occasion of his birthday—something most TIE pilots celebrate because of their rarity—he was engaged in a realtime HoloNet connection to our home. His family was there: father, mother, brother, sisters, grandparents, and his fiancée. He was speaking to them when the transmission was cut off. That sort of thing was not unusual and he planned to chide his father about it since his father ran Novacom, the largest HoloNet provider on the world. The fact was that Sel never got a chance to do that because, as he discovered shortly thereafter, his family had died in a monumental catastrophe.”

Corran’s stomach collapsed in on itself like a neutron star. Tycho was speaking to his family when Alderaan was destroyed. I saw my father die, but he saw everyone die. I was able to hold my father and give him a funeral. I was able to comfort his friends and be comforted by them. My father may have died alone, but I didn’t have to endure his death alone. My life’s as soft as a Hutt’s underbelly by comparison.

He heard Erisi stifle a sob and felt a tear moisten the side of his neck. He turned to face her, then saw a vision from the past that sent a chill straight through him. His hands came up to cup Erisi’s face, tipping her chin upward, then he pulled her to him and kissed her fiercely. He felt her start to pull away, but he restrained her gently and she flowed into his arms to return the kiss with a passion that all but melted what he felt inside.

Part of him wanted the kiss to end and wanted him to escape her arms. Corran resisted the idea of escape because he couldn’t be certain of how he would spend his freedom. What he really wanted to do was insane on an Imperial scale. It would compromise the mission. It had the potential to delay or prevent the New Republic from taking Coruscant and finishing the Empire. It ran the risk of destroying everything the Rebellion had worked for.

But it would feel very, very good.

Over Erisi’s shoulder Corran had seen Kirtan Loor. The tall slender body, the crisp gait, and the head held imperiously high were unmistakable. He’d memorized all those things about Kirtan Loor months before his father’s death. Subsequent to it he had reveled in the fury and contempt they had spawned when he saw the man.

What Corran wanted to do at that moment, more than anything else in the galaxy, was to walk over, grab Loor, and pitch him from the promenade. He would have preferred being on a higher level to do so—a much higher level—but that problem could not be helped. He hoped the fall would kill the man, though from a mere ten meters up the chances were it would only break a few limbs and possibly rupture some internal organs.

Corran felt someone tap him on the shoulder and for the barest of moments thought Loor had spotted him. About the time he realized that hadn’t happened—the fact that no stormtroopers were closing in and no alarms were going off cinching it for him—Rima said, “The danger is past. He’s gone up another level.”

Corran pulled back and gave Erisi a quick kiss on the nose, then looked over at Rima. “How’d you know?”

“Kirtan Loor’s presence on Coruscant has not gone unreported. Correlating things I know about him and you were not difficult.”

Erisi blinked her big blue eyes a couple of times, then looked from Corran to Rima and back. “What was all that about?”

“You saved my life.” He smiled at her. “Forgive the liberty I took, but …”

She caught her breath, then returned the smile. “I understand. If you ever need your life saved again, I’ll be honored to be of service to you.”

He patted her on the knee. “Thanks. I’ll remember that.” He turned back toward Rima. “I’m not afraid of him.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“I want to kill him.” Corran reached out and tapped her lightly on the temple. “Do you know why?”

“I know many things, but not all things.”

“I caught the Trandoshan who killed my father, but Loor let him go.” Corran took in a deep breath and let it out. “He’ll pay for that one day. Sooner than later, I hope, but don’t worry, I have my priorities straight. His date with justice can wait, wait until we bring down the government that gives people like him the power to perpetrate evil on more worlds than we can count.”