BY CHUCK WENDIG 5 страница

He mentioned it to Sinjir a few weeks back and the ex-Imperial shrugged (he was a bit sauced at the time on Corellian sap-wine) and said: “Nobody knows who they are or what they want, and most people just wait for everyone to tell them. Then they line up and do what they’re told. My only advice to you, boy—” He burped, then, and never got around to giving the advice because he passed out. Maybe one day.

For now, Temmin only knows that he’s so excited to get back in the cockpit he’s almost jumping out of his own skin.

—

“Captain Antilles. ”

“Lieutenant Wexley. ”

A cool breeze kicks up over the landing platform as the rain clouds drift closer. Temmin circles his droid, kicking the metal skeleton in the hindquarters with his boot and then waiting for Bones to chase after. Which the droid does, like an eager friend.

Wedge smiles, then grabs his cane and moves toward Norra, embracing her as they meet.

“Much nicer than when that droid did it, ” he says, giving her one last lingering squeeze before letting her go.

“Bones? ” She laughs. “Oh, he’s harmless. Well. Not harmless…”

“I get it, I get it. How’d the mission go? ”

“We bagged Gedde, ” she says, looking over her shoulder. Nobody’s emerged with the prisoner, yet, though here comes Sinjir down the plank. Chin up, lips puckered like he’s proud of himself about something.

“Off to get a pint of…something, ” he calls, and then heads right for the stairway. “Toodles. ”

She thinks to call after him with some motherly admonishment, but she stays her tongue and gives Wedge a slightly embarrassed look. “It’s a rough crew, but they work. How’s your treatment? ”

“Physical therapy is good, and they’re giving me serolin injections now. They say I might be in a cockpit again by the end of the year. But it’s fine. I like this. I like…commanding, too. ” She doesn’t have to possess Sinjir’s gift with body language to suss out Wedge’s lie. He’d do anything to get back behind the flight stick. His whole body seems to hunger for it. “Never mind that, Norra, there’s someone who wants to—”

“We’ve got a problem! ”

There, standing on the ramp, is Jom Barell. Norra gives him a shrugging, half-irritated look like, Well, go ahead, get on with it.

“It’s Gedde, ” he says. “He’s dead. ”

—

The Imperial vice admiral’s body lies there on the table in the main hold of the Halo. His lips are slick with spit froth. His skin’s already gone pale and gray. Dark striations mark the brow and draw shadowy lines around the mouth and wide-open eyes. Norra is reminded how something seems truly gone when someone dies—it’s not just about the little micro-movements of the body or a chest no longer rising and falling. It’s something deeper. Something less tangible, less substantial. She has little cause these days to think overlong about the nature of a soul, but…

Maybe the Force really exists.

And if it does—it is gone from this body, sure as anything. It’s like nothing connects it to the world anymore. It’s just meat on the slab.

“Simple, ” Barell says, solving the mystery. “He was a spicehead. He’d just taken a pinch before we took him. Wouldn’t be the first addict to take too much and go sucking void, would he? ”

“Jas, ” Norra says. “How hard did you knock him out? ”

“Please. I’m a professional. I don’t make mistakes like that. ”

Wedge scratches his head. “We’ll have to do an inquiry. I’ll call down and get a couple of droids to take the body to Doctor Slikartha—he’ll give the body the once-over and rule out any malfeasance—”

“You can take the body to whoever you want, but I assure you, this man was murdered. ” Jas stoops down and gets her face near to the corpse’s. Cupping her hands, she scoops air near his mouth and takes a long deep sniff. “That smell. Bitter citrine. Like a too-ripe kakadu fruit. And see the fluid in the mouth? ” She peels back his lip, already gone stiff. Saliva there has pooled, but it’s neither white nor clear: It’s bruise-dark. “He was poisoned. Kytrogorgia. Aka cerulean slime mold. It goes dry, then you powder it, and then—well, if I had a guess, someone sprinkled it in his spice tin, ensuring that he’d blissfully off himself without a clue in the world. ”

Wedge and Norra share a look. He says, “I’ll tell the doc. Thanks. ”

“At least we don’t need to waste time or money on a trial, ” Jom says. “This guy killed a whole lot of people. Sometimes poisoning whole worlds. Whoever did him in has a good sense of irony, you ask me. ”

—

Outside the ship, Norra tells Wedge: “I’m sorry, Wedge. It’s our job to bring these guys in alive, not dead. I assure you, it wasn’t one of us—I know I said we’re a rough crew, but we’re not that rough—”

“It’s okay. I know. Whatever this was—it wasn’t that. ”

“Okay. Good. ” But he’s still on the cusp of something. “What? ”

“Someone wants to meet you. ”

“Us? The team? ”

“Just you. ”

“Who? And…when? ”

“Princess Leia. And she wants to meet right now. ”

“My husband, Han Solo, is missing. ”

Norra blinks. Husband? Her lips move to form words, but no sound actually manifests. All she can do is stand there, gaping, gawking at the woman who singularly represents the voice of the New Republic across the galaxy. Leia Organa is a princess and a general and, most important, a figure of inspiration that few can deny. She stands there wearing loose-fitting white robes—somewhat traditional in the style here—with her hands clasped in front of her. The woman offered no introduction. Norra simply stepped into Leia’s expansive office—which overlooks the coast of the Silver Sea—and tried to control the quivering in her voice as she announced herself: “Lieutenant Norra Wexley. You asked to see me? ”

All Leia said in response was that one thing:

My husband, Han Solo, is missing.

“I’m…sorry? ” Norra asks. “I don’t understand. If General Solo—”

“He is no longer a general. He resigned his military commission. ”

“Oh. I…”

Leia lifts her chin, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. The Chandrilan air must agree with her—her skin shines. She’s like a precious stone, flawless and glowing. After a slow exhale, Leia says: “My brother taught me to center myself. To be mindful of what I’m feeling—a cup to be filled up, he says. ” She winces. “And I’m just now realizing that this is likely quite sudden for you and I’m being very rude. Hello, Lieutenant Wexley, I am Leia Organa. ”

She hesitates when she answers: “I’m Norra. It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Your Highness. All you’ve done for us…”

It’s a strange thing to watch, but Leia has this faç ade, this veneer—it’s not haughty, not exactly. A bit icy. Certainly confident—a confidence, in fact, that borders on arrogance. It’s not as if she’s looking down on you, but it is very much as if she is in command of you. It’s a command that is as natural as the elliptical orbit of a world around its star, as obvious and as eternal as the flow of time itself or the presence of gravity.

But Norra watches that ice crack. The veneer crumbles. The tension goes out of Leia’s shoulders as she leans against her desk. “Please, Norra. Don’t call me ‘Highness. ’ I have too many people who can’t seem to break that habit. ”

“I just…feel weird calling you Leia. ”

“I can order you to call me Leia, if that helps. ”

“…it actually would. ”

Leia again stands more stiffly, as if to invoke a special formality. “Lieutenant Norra Wexley, I command you by the power invested in me as the Last Princess of Alderaan and the Supreme High Something-or-Other of New Republic forces—” And here Leia moves her hands about in impatient gesticulations. “And so on and so forth, I demand that you call me Leia. ”

Norra gives a small bow. “Thank you. Uh. Leia. ”

“I summoned you here because I have heard good things about your team. You get results. In just a few short months you’ve already found half a dozen notable Imperial criminals—”

“We brought in number seven today. Vice Admiral Gedde. But something…happened. Regrettably, he didn’t survive the trip. ”

“I heard about it. I’m sure that mystery will provide answers soon enough. ” Leia reaches over and takes Norra’s hand. “Your work is important. It tells a fractured galaxy that the New Republic is capable of delivering its own brand of law and order. And it helps us understand how all of this happened. Once we know that, we can work together to ensure that history does not repeat itself. ”

“Thank you. But I don’t understand what this has to do with General, ah, Captain Solo—”

Leia pauses. Her face is like a wave about to break. There in her eyes is a war for control, as if she knows it is her job to be calm and measured, but what she really wants is to let it all loose. All the pent-up feelings, all the frustrations of running a government, all her fears and desires.

She says the words slowly, carefully:

“Han went missing. I need him found. And your team finds people. ”

“You want…us to find him? ”

“You don’t need to go out of your way. ” Leia seems suddenly rattled. “To speak frankly, none of this is precisely aboveboard. And you can in turn tell me no. This isn’t me commanding you. This is me asking for your help. ” She proceeds to explain what she knows. “Han and Chewbacca, his copilot, went on some half-cocked mission to free the Wookiee planet of Kashyyyk. But it was a ploy by the Empire. They captured Chewie, and Han barely escaped. Now he’s out there alone and his last transmission ended abruptly and I haven’t heard from him since. I fear he’s in danger…”

Leia pauses. Her face tightens with sorrow. But again she pauses, takes a deep breath, and seems to swallow her grief.

Norra says: “I didn’t realize you two were married. ”

“It was right there on the Endor moon after everything. We had a small ceremony, just those we trust. We don’t keep it secret, but we didn’t make it public, either. ”

“It must be hard, then, having him gone. ”

“It is. You know something about that, don’t you? ”

She means Brentin. Even just thinking about him brings the memory to bear like the bloom of heat from a crashing ship. Stormtroopers kicking down their door. The Imperial officer with a writ of arrest. Them dragging her husband out into the night. Her comforting Temmin into morning, assuring the boy that they’d bring Brentin back in the morning, that it was all just a mistake, that everything would be fine. That was years ago. They haven’t seen Brentin since. Norra has grown woefully comfortable with the idea that her husband and Temmin’s father is most likely dead.

“I understand, yes, ” Norra says, forcing a small smile. “Do you have any information on where Captain Solo is? ”

“He was searching the Outer Rim and he said he was close to Wild Space. I can send you a map of the Falcon’s movements—he’s far enough out there our sensors can no longer reliably track that hunk of wonderful junk he calls a freighter. I’ll forward the map to your quarters. ”

“You can send them directly to the ship. Docking Plat OB-99. ” Norra pauses, then adds, “We’ll find him. ” It’s a promise she feels ill equipped to make, and as soon as she makes it the burden of the task at hand puts a tremendous weight on her—a crushing weight, in fact. But what can she say? What can she do? It’s out there now. Her promise is a living thing.

Leia smiles—warmly, truly warmly, as all the ice has melted—and nods. “I believe you. Thank you, Norra Wexley. May the Force be your guide. ”

It is not easy to sneak away from your own command.

It took a bit of doing, in fact. She considered faking an illness, but these days, with all eyes on her as the identified leader of the Galactic Empire, the barest sniffle will have her swarming in nursedroids and health technicians. Instead, Rae Sloane’s ruse went like this: She used her already overburdened schedule as an advantage. She told Ferric Obdur that she had to take time to talk about fleet movements with Vice Admiral Gaelan—which was true enough. Gaelan’s been asking for a meeting to discuss just that for days—no, weeks—now.

She sent word ahead to Gaelan’s office that she couldn’t meet today because she had a meeting with General deVores to discuss troop movements. (That would incite the ire of Gaelan, but the man would take it in stride. He would swallow his impatience and toe the line as he always had. )

To deVores she sent word that she wanted a meeting but had to take time out to meet with Ferric Obdur in propaganda…

And so, the triangle of deception was arranged. Three points, one leading to the other. Unless someone was truly diligent about checking her whereabouts, it would seem from each to each that she had to move one meeting in favor of another. Few would seek to disturb her, lest they incite her ire—and Sloane was known for not taking that in stride. She did not toe any line. These days, she was the line, and none dared cross her.

(None except their mysterious fleet admiral, of course. )

The next step of her ruse required Adea’s help. Sloane couldn’t just hop into a craft and take off for regions unknown; she ran a tight ship. Accountability was king. A single ship gone missing was a breach of bureaucratic structure. And bureaucracy, vile as many considered it, was the foundation on which the entire galaxy was built. Bureaucracy would save them all. Violating that bureaucracy would upset the checks and balances…

…unless, of course, Sloane had Adea change the designation and destination of a small supply ship. And so an Imperial Lambda-class shuttle scheduled for Questal got rerouted instead to bring a load of naamite batteries and transponder arrays to the throneworld of Coruscant. The pilot: a young recruit named Dasha Bowen. Or so the registry says—really it’s just a watertight identity also put together by Adea.

“Imperial shuttle CS-831, ” Sloane says into the comm. “This is transport pilot Dasha Bowen. Transmitting clearance code and credentials now. ”

Ahead, Coruscant glows brightly. A massive world carved with lines of light, the geometric patterns of its planet-encompassing ecunemopolis giving it the look of being on the edge of breaking apart. As if a frozen moment in time captures it seconds before it glows, swells, and detonates.

That may be truer than I care to admit, she thinks. The throneworld of the Empire is in the midst of being pulled apart—not so dramatically as having its mantle shattered, no, but its populace is undergoing that kind of tectonic shift. The citizens in some sectors have risen up against the Empire. While others have instead fought against their insurgent neighbors—a veritable civil war. One whose flames are stoked nicely by the New Republic resistance fighters entrenched on the surface. They sow distrust. Chaos is the result.

All around her little cargo ship, a defensive armada forms a protective shield around the planet. These are ISB ships—Imperial Security Bureau. Not the navy. Admiral Rax was very clear on that point. He said that they were not to commit resources protecting the throneworld. The ISB is controlling this world—and the navy doesn’t want any part of it. It shows the fractures in the Empire: all the broken pieces drifting apart.

“It is a symbol, ” he told her, “of our indolence and torpidity. It is the moldering core of our overripe fruit, and I wish to cut away such rot so as to preserve our sweet remains. And, of course, the seeds within. ”

She argued that saving Coruscant would be a better symbol.

He answered with: “It is of far greater consequence to show how much we are willing to lose to preserve the strength of our Empire. ” It was then that he echoed the words of Count Vidian: “Forget the old way. ” Was this echo deliberate? How would he know what Vidian told her? “We must discard the obvious choices, Admiral Sloane. We must forge our own path through the stars if we are to survive. ”

And with that, the argument was done.

Now she hovers above the world, a world they have willfully forgotten. One left to the ISB under the command of Palpatine’s old administrator, Grand Vizier Mas Amedda.

She wonders idly what it would take to retake the planet. The New Republic could fairly easily wipe out the ISB’s defensive blockade. It would take time, but reports arrive daily of the Republic’s growing military might. Still, the Empire’s presence here on the surface is deeply dug in. An aerial campaign wouldn’t be enough—

Finally, her comm crackles and a response returns:

“Code checks out. Cleared for landing, CS-831. ”

Of course it does, she thinks. Adea knows what she’s doing. “Dasha Bowen” sets the ship for a landing trajectory.

—

Sloane leaves the cargo ship behind on the landing platform—droids move to unload the very real technical parts from inside its hold. While they are occupied, she pulls her visor low. The visor both hides her face and, with the tap of a button on the side of the helmet, pulls up a heads-up display glowing on the plastoglass shield. In this case, it’s a map of Coruscant.

Her destination is a pulsing red star on the map:

The old Hall of Imperial Register building.

Less affectionately known as: “The Pit. ”

It is a storehouse of deeds, records, and data dumps.

It is to most a worthless aggregation of the Empire’s bureaucracy—as records pile up in ships and transports and nav computers, across offices and academies and depots, those records must occasionally be off-loaded to backup. And so they are dumped here, offsite (often via droid). Few care to come here, for combing through the information is an act not unlike trying to find one particular grain of sand on a windswept beach. Worse, the information is often quite valueless. Trajectory calculations, inventory lists, personnel records all fill the massive warehouse of data.

But it’s that last bit she’s looking for: personnel records.

If there’s anything about Gallius Rax, it will be here. That is, if she can find it.

Thankfully, Sloane is quite adept at navigating this place. To others, it is a Pit. To her, it is a temple.

The Pit sits at the margins of the Verity District—a well-fortified Imperial part of Coruscant. Home to the Hall of Adjudication, the Institute to Preserve Imperial History, and the ISB Academy and Offices. The streets here are usually clean, well kept, and busy. But now, not so much. She passes a pair of stormtroopers sitting against a steel barricade, helmets off their heads and held between their legs—the two men are sweaty, tired, and staring off at nothing. Ahead, the street is scarred with starburst streaks of char—the plastocrete shattered and cracked, as if by thermal detonator.

It’s quiet, too. Usually, she’d hear the thrumming, vibrant traffic of the city above her—speeders and grav-bikes whipping past in crisscrossing lines like little myrmidants serving their colony. Now, though, the sky above is dead. Not a single speeder. No droids, no birds, nothing. The airspace is closed, isn’t it? She’d heard reports of citizens loading up their speeders with explosives and driving them into Imperial buildings.

Then, as if on cue, the ground shudders. Somewhere off in the distance, just such an explosion: She can feel it vibrate up through her heels, all the way into her teeth. Sloane can’t see anything, but it isn’t long before she sees the trail of red smoke climbing into the sky like a crawling serpent.

Klaxons go off. A pair of ISB speeders streak overhead.

What a horror show, she thinks. But Rae has no time to dwell on this. Her time here is limited, and she has to move.

The Pit is ahead. From the surface, it looks like nothing but a single-story fortified bunker. It has a single door and a shuttered window.

As Sloane approaches, the shutter slides up with a rattle-bang. There stands the top half of an administrative droid, its capsule-shaped head leaning forward. From its mouthpiece comes a tinny, mechanized voice:

“HOLD STILL FOR OCULAR SCAN. ”

Sloane can’t hide from this. No matter how well crafted the persona of Dasha Bowen, Adea’s efforts do not carry as far as creating a whole new pair of eyeballs. This one will not be faked, and so she lifts her visor.

From the droid’s own eye comes a shimmering red beam.

She blinks and winces as it passes over her face.

“GRAND ADMIRAL RAE SLOANE, ” the droid says. “IT IS GOOD TO SEE YOU. WELCOME TO THE HALL OF IMPERIAL REGISTER. PLEASE WATCH YOUR STEP. THE FALL IS QUITE STEEP. ”

The droid is right. The Pit is fifty floors. Not straight up, but rather, straight down. Plunged into the exomantle of Coruscant like a pneumatic bolt. The shape of it is circular, and it spirals ineluctably downward, giving Sloane the sense that she is swirling down the drain. At the bottom, she half expects that the Hall of Imperial Register gobbles you right up like a mouth: a sarlacc nesting at the nadir, digesting wayward data-miners.

She will not be digested, not today.

She will, however, go mad if she doesn’t get moving. Inertia is a curse and Sloane’s whole life and career have been about combating it. So she sets up shop in a little alcove. Hours pass. The droid attendants—more administrative droids, these fixed to the railings so that they can zip past the shelves of records both hard copy and digital—bring her old data cartridges. She told them that she needed a proper accounting of all the ships of the Imperial Navy in play as of the destruction of the second Death Star. She’s on her eighth and final cartridge.

She starts with the Dreadnoughts—the Super Star Destroyers.

Thirteen were in service before the revivified Death Star was destroyed above Endor. One of those is the Ravager, the SSD from which Sloane rules the Empire (and which, strictly speaking, is now Gaelan’s command). One of those is the Executor, Vader’s command ship. The Executor was lost that day, plunging into the surface of the Death Star. Taking hundreds of thousands of the best Imperials with it.

Sloane shudders as she thinks of it.

That leaves eleven others.

Three are now in the hands of the New Republic. Two of those were from admirals willingly surrendering the ship and its people. One was taken forcibly by New Republic forces while it underwent repairs over Kuat.

Five were destroyed outright in battles across the galaxy with the New Republic—the ships were understaffed, underprotected, and on the run. (The Dreadnoughts are home to massive batteries of fleet-killing weapons, yes, but are also slow, unwieldy beasts—they hang there in the sky like bricks, and without adequate protection it is an inevitability that enemy forces could erode the ships until obliteration ensues. )

One was taken by pirates: the Annihilator. Tagge’s old ship. But who controls the Annihilator now? The reports don’t say.

Another, the Arbitrator, made a bad hyperspace calculation to escape pursuing NR ships. It evaporated when it was sucked into a gravity well.

That leaves Palpatine’s own command ship:

The Eclipse.

Records show that it, too, was destroyed by a fleet of New Republic vessels—Ackbar’s own frigate, Home One, firing the ship-killing shot.

Ah, but there’s the catch, and it’s why Sloane is here: The ships dumped data across the stars, transmitting pulses of information to this location. That provides a black-box recording of information so one could discern what exactly happened before a ship was destroyed, captured, or surrendered. All the other tracking data adds up to the known fates of each SSD. Their stories match the data for all of them—except one.

For the Eclipse, the data ends a full day-cycle before the ship was reportedly destroyed. It shows no siege by New Republic forces. It simply…drops off the star map. Gone. Vanished.

Sloane concedes that it’s possible the ship stopped reporting due to a malfunction in its data recorder. Though redundant systems were supposed to alert command if that had happened—again, bureaucracy and reiterative mechanisms should have saved the day here.

And yet they didn’t.

Is it possible that the Eclipse is still out there? Could the Ravager not be the last Super Star Destroyer in the naval arsenal?

The inventory of the Star Destroyers is similar, but on a far grander scale. Seventy-five percent of the Star Destroyers in service before Endor can capably be tracked to similar fates: destroyed, captured, lost in confirmable if curious ways. But a full quarter of those ships cannot be accounted for. Records show fateful ends that contradict their black-box recordings.

Does the Empire have more ships than she knows? Ghost fleets out there somewhere? Are they operating independently? Have they been captured or abandoned? Something else may be going on.

Does Rax know? Or is he in the dark, too?

Speaking of Gallius Rax…

Picking through the data to find anything on the erstwhile fleet admiral will be an act of finding a precious gem in a box of broken glass—it will be a slow and miserable retrieval. But it’s why she’s really here, so she summons a droid and sets it to work.

“I WILL SEE WHAT DATA I CAN EXCAVATE, ” the droid says, then gives a small nod before its servomotors whir and carry it away.

Excavate, she thinks. A perfect word. And from a droid, no less.

—

Flip, flip, flip. Page after page on the cartridge reader—she palms the control orb and swipes it left again and again, scrolling through endless administrative pages. Here, as with the naval archives, the presence of Rax is naught but a vapor trail. She’s chasing shadows.

And so she’s down to searching the records of those who associated with him: Yularen, Rancit, Screed, and Palpatine himself. She cross-references personnel reports, genealogical records, inventory lists, anything, everything. Hours pass. Her eyes are bleary. She feels alone and overwhelmed, and the only sound that accompanies her frustration and her anxiety is the sound of droids clicking and clacking and rattling about.

She stands up. The search is over.

Rax barely exists.

Trying to figure out who he is or who he was is an act of grabbing at fog—it dissipates in your hand while still obscuring everything beyond it.

It’s time to go, so she packs up her notes and tucks them in a side satchel before slinging it over her shoulder.

Suddenly movement behind her—

She wheels on it. Reaching for her blaster.

It’s the droid. Of course it is. It wouldn’t be anyone else, and yet—well, she has to excuse her own shock. I’m tired and angry.

The droid buzzes: “AN IMAGE CRYSTAL. ” It extends a telescoping arm. In it, a small smoke-gray crystal. The Empire doesn’t use these anymore, as they’re somewhat antiquated, but decades before, single-serving image crystals were still in use. Now the Empire has the ability to archive visual and textual information across cartridges or datacards.

She’s about to hand it back. What could one image matter?

Still. The reader is right here. She unslings the bag and, without sitting, places the crystal in the smooth portal on the alcove desk, then hits the button beneath it so it lights up.

A three-dimensional image emerges in the space before her.

It looks like somewhere in an Imperial docking bay. In the background, a Lambda-class shuttle sits. At the margins of the holo, white-armored stormtroopers and a pair of red-armored Imperial Royal Guardsmen.

There, in the middle of the photo:

Wullf Yularen, Dodd Rancit, Terrinald Screed, plus three others: Grand Vizier Mas Amedda, Emperor Palpatine, and…

A boy.

Or, rather, a boy on the cusp of being a young man.