42
Gavin’s stomach began to fold in on itself as he heard Wedge’s voice come out of the comlink. “Sorry, Tycho, we’re pinned down here. Unless we get some help, we’re going nowhere.”
“I copy, Wedge.” Tycho looked over at Gavin. “You and I will go see if we can help them out.”
Ooryl raised a three-fingered hand. “Ooryl …”
Tycho shook his head. “I want you here to help Inyri guard Winter. The kid and I will go.”
The Gand nodded, then his mouth parts snapped open. “Ooryl does not question your orders, Captain. Ooryl merely wants to know how this Fex-M3d works.”
Winter slowly straightened up. “You breathe it in, it gets into your bloodstream and binds to neuroreceptors, preventing nerves from passing information. If you get a strong enough dose your autonomie nervous system shuts down and you stop breathing. You suffocate.”
The Gand’s mouth parts closed again. “Ooryl understands. If you will all back down this hallway, Ooryl will open the door, open the interior case, and bring you back respirators.”
Gavin’s jaw shot open. “But you’ll die.”
The Gand shook his head. “Ooryl does not respire.”
Inyri blinked. “What?”
Ooryl tapped his chest. “Gands do not respire.”
“But you talk.”
“Yes, Inyri Forge, but respiration is not required for speech. Ooryl’s body has a muscular gas bladder that allows Ooryl to, among other things, draw in gases and expel them at a controlled rate through pieces of Gand exoskeleton that vibrate and approximate speech. Ooryl gets the metabolic ingredients Ooryl needs through ingestion, not respiration. Fex-M3d will not affect Ooryl.”
Tycho thought for a moment, then nodded. “Here’s what we’ll do. Ooryl will wait here until we retreat. Inyri, you’ll turn the airspeeder around and bring the engine up. Point the exhaust jets down this hallway and we can use them to push the freed Fex-M3d deeper into the building.”
“It will also point the airspeeder in the right direction for our escape.”
“Good point, Inyri.” Tycho looked over at Gavin. “Depending upon how many masks there are in the room, you and Inyri may have to wait outside. If there are enough, we all go down and hold the center.”
“Got it.”
Tycho slapped the Gand on the arm. “Wait until we get clear, then go.”
“Ooryl understands.”
Gavin retreated with the others. They sealed themselves inside the airspeeder. Inyri brought it up and around, giving Gavin a good view of the firefights going on outside. TIE fighters swooped and dove. Green laser bolts flashed through the sky thick and furious. Countless burn marks scored the flanks and front of the construction droid, yet it loomed ever larger as it came on toward them.
Winter twisted around in the seat. “He’s in.”
Gavin turned to look. The room’s door appeared open. A greenish-yellow mist rolled out and carpeted the hallway in haze. The airspeeder’s exhaust pushed it farther down the hallway, but there always seemed to be more of it pouring from the computer center.
The sharp report of an explosion brought all eyes forward again. A pair of blurred Headhunters raced past, flying through a collapsing ball of fire and debris. More laser bolts poured in at the construction droid, but there was no sign they had any effect on the titanic machine. And as bad as things looked in the air outside it, the cold efficiency of the way the droid dismembered the building in front of it was even worse. Their vantage point let the Rogues peer into the construction droid’s maw and Gavin imagined what he saw to be the vision seen by billions of Alderaanians before their world exploded.
A thump on the hood of the airspeeder made Gavin jump and bang his head on the roof. He hunched down and rubbed his head. “Emperor’s bones!”
Outside the Gand looked surprised, then held up four masks. “Ooryl has been successful.”
Tycho reached forward from the back seat and patted Gavin on the shoulder. “Ready to go?”
“Sure. Maybe I can get a light dose of the gas and it’ll slow my heart.” Gavin got out of the airspeeder and pulled his mask on. It immediately felt hot on his face, but he tugged on the straps, fitting it tightly to his face. He took his comlink from his jacket lapel and snapped it into the receptacle near his right ear.
“I’m set, Tycho.”
The Alderaanian Captain gave him a nod. “Come on, then. Let’s go see if we can make it rain.”
As Corran’s Headhunter came up through the towers he caught Wedge’s message to Tycho. “Hunter Lead here, Commander. Got a problem?”
“Seems so, Corran. Tower east of us has an E-web trained on us.”
“Collateral targets?”
“Don’t know, but the building should be evacuated except for troops. Get them gone.”
“As ordered. Stand by.” Corran throttled the black and gold fighter up and aimed for the stars. Before he got there, but after he had left the towers of Coruscant behind, he came up on his starboard wing and started to circle. From up there it was relatively easy to spot the stream of fire coming from a nearby cylindrical tower and lancing out at the construction droid.
Corran extended his loop and let it take him over and around the computer center. He dove and leveled out, coming in on the tower while running parallel to the construction droid’s course. He shot past the droid and came up slightly. Heavy blaster fire lanced out at the construction droid from the tower. Corran let loose with a quick burst of fire, raking it across the side of the building.
His flight took him past his target, so he started to turn around again when fire came at him from the building. The blaster bolts splashed harmlessly against his rear shield, but Corran immediately rolled the Headhunter and turned back away from the side of the building he’d attacked. He leveled out, then dove and came around on a new attack vector. He switched his weapons’ control over to concussion missiles, linked two, then climbed up over the construction droid’s blocky outline.
His crosshairs settled on the genesis of the red stream directed against Wedge’s droid. He got no target lock—an E-web and stormtrooper crew didn’t conform to any target profile in the Headhunter’s combat computer. Regardless, when he hit the trigger, two blue missiles streaked out and hit dead on target.
An argent explosion blew through that floor of the cylinder. The silvery disk spread out through the entire level and beyond, incinerating most of what was in there and scattering the rest of it out over the city. Yet, even for all that violence, the concussion missiles failed to damage the structural supports, leaving the tower intact above and below the level where little fires burned brightly in the night.
Corran keyed his comm unit. “Will that do it for you, Commander?”
“Thanks, Corran. We’re leaving to see some friends.”
“I copy. Want an escort?”
“If you’ve got nothing better to do.”
Corran smiled. “At your leisure, sir, I live to serve.”
Gavin had positioned himself so he could watch the door and still see what Winter was doing from the corner of his eye. Once they’d gotten into the room she’d plugged her datapad into the computer console and very quickly had a representation of Coruscant floating above her workstation. Her fingers flew over the keys and suddenly small cubes appeared to float around the world arranged in three rings. One circled the equator while the other two split the distance between the equator and the poles.
Seeming as insectoid as a Verpine because of the mask she wore, Winter nodded to Tycho. “These are the Orbital Solar Energy Transfer Satellites.” She pointed to a glowing red dot riding just above the equator. “This is our target. It’s night here now, but several orbital mirrors are high enough to give us what we need.”
More typing and a small label appeared attached to each of the floating cubes. Gavin couldn’t read them at that distance but he assumed they were unit designators that would allow Winter to send orders from the computer to the station.
“We’ll use OSETS 2711. First step is to have the mirror opaque itself. Then we focus it here and start it reflecting again.”
Tycho nodded. “Can you also bring up on this display the Golan stations and ships in orbit?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, probably, but if I do it might attract some attention. First things first.”
“Go to it.” Tycho stood behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “This world needs a bath, so start boiling the water.”
• • •
Life could have been worse, Lieutenant Virar Needa thought to himself. The Captain Needa who had once commanded the Imperial Star Destroyer Avenger had only been his cousin, and one generation removed at that. Darth Vader had executed Lorth Needa for incompetence after Hoth, while Virar was still at the Imperial Military Academy. His cousins had all vanished, along with his aunt and his grandparents on the Needa side of the family, but at least he’d remained alive and been allowed to continue in service to the Empire. It could have been worse, I could be dead.
Of course, service on an Orbital Solar Energy Transfer Satellite was about as close to death as someone could get in the Imperial Navy without having shots fired at him. Others, including the rest of the six-man crew, saw OSETS service as punishment, but Virar Needa saw it as noble duty. After all, he was entrusted with the care of a facility that made life on Imperial Center possible. Without OSETS 2711, Imperial Center would be just that much more uncomfortable, and if the people who ran the Empire were uncomfortable, well, then things would just begin to fall apart entirely.
A mild tremor shook the station. The others looked up from their sabacc game in the lounge. He saw fear in their eyes because they had no idea what was happening. He did because of his four years of experience with OSETS 2711. That’s why he was a Lieutenant and in command.
He raised a hand. “Don’t worry, that’s just the mirror panels rotating to opaque the surface.”
One of the cadets looked up. “Why would they be doing that, sir?”
Needa smiled at him. “Well, Pedetsen, I would guess it is because another station is off-line for repairs and we’re going to take over its duty. We’ll have our direction adjusted …” He held a hand up, then cocked his wrist and pointed his index finger just as the altitude adjustment jets started a burn. “There you go.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Needa nodded and went back to looking out the viewport. Below him he saw the dark face of a sleeping Imperial Center. It scintillated with a variety of lights that ran like phosphorescent blood through shadowy flesh. He smiled and tried to burn the vision of the planet into his brain. It always looks so pretty from up here—a potential it fails to live up to when I am down on the ground.
The jet burn went on a bit longer than usual and this disturbed him. Not because he realized anything was wrong, after all, the care of OSETS 2711 was what kept him alive, so nothing could go wrong. He couldn’t and wouldn’t conceive of that possibility. No, the longer than normal burn, he decided, meant they had built a new reception facility for the energy OSETS 2711 was sending down. That he’d not heard of the plans to do this meant they were top secret. The use of OSETS 2711 to power this top secret, vital, new site meant someone down there had finally decided to reward his unswerving and unfailing loyalty.
The tremor again coursed through the station and Needa smiled. “That’s the mirror reflecting again, boys. We’re giving them everything they want. Our contribution to this day will never be forgotten.”