Part 32 (1/2)
”She's right, sir. Anb if she's going on this mission, it's good that she can recognize the difference.”
”Well, then.” Melvar returned his attention to Face. ”Will you be deploying your TIEs for launch from our bay?”
”No. Kettch is agitated enough as it is, and being exposed to too many strange humans would unsettle him. I think we'd prefer to launch from Sungra.s.s.”
”Understood. Please switch your comm systems to our frequency and cancel your starfighters' usual encryption; we do want to be able to talk to one another. Launch and stand by at your convenience, and I will deliver this formidable young woman to the unit she will be working with.”
There were eight of them. Three men and a woman, all large, with movements like natural fighters, were dressed in the non-descript uniforms of maintenance workers, the words KUAT DRIVE YARDS emblazoned above the left breast of the uniforms. Four others were in stormtrooper armor. Melvar introduced them and Shalla filed their names away. He also succinctly explained the difference between the mission as described earlier and the way it was now. Shalla let her eyes open in simulated surprise when she ”discovered” that the target was no cargo satellite but a Super Star Destroyer.
”At this hour,” Melvar continued, ”on this s.h.i.+ft, Razor's Kiss - that's the name of the new Super Star Destroyer, unless Zsinj chooses to rename it - is almost deserted. What's left is mostly security details and workers finalizing critical a.s.semblies.
”We've spent two years helping a colonel in charge of the s.h.i.+p's landing parties build himself up a lucrative little smuggling operation. He doesn't know 'we' means Zsinj, though he'll find out when they court-martial him, if not before. Anyway, to facilitate his trading and dealing, he had to arrange for ways by which his people could bypa.s.s several layers of Kuat Drive Yards defense, and by monitoring him very closely we found out what those means were.
”This crew of specialists will be taking a standard shuttle in to the officers' landing bay under access codes he uses for his little side operation. That will get you onto Razor's Kiss... but no farther, I'm afraid.
”The crew will advance from the landing bay to the bridge and seize it, then enter programming that will allow you to operate the s.h.i.+p in limited capacity solely from the bridge. A false leak alert should clear everyone out of the engineering section and auxiliary bridge, at which point you'll lock them out to prevent sabotage. Finally, a hypercomm signal to us will alert the fleet that it's time to jump in and Razor's Kiss can move out on its escape vector. Any questions?”
The faces of the other members of the team showed clearly they were all fully briefed on the situation. Shalla said, ”I take it that I'm to be some sort of lure?”
Melvar nodded. ”You'll take point through much of the team's advance through the s.h.i.+p. It's inevitable that the team will run across crewmen we haven't accounted for. Your job is very specific: Distract them, delay them for the others to get in position, but most importantly, don't let them get off any sort of signal. Any comlink notification of the bridge can ruin the whole plan.”
Shalla nodded. ”Except for stormtroopers, with their comlinks built into their helmets, it shouldn't be too hard. And even with them, just striking fast and hard enough should solve the problem.”
In looking over the other team members, she'd noticed that the only other female member of the team, though rather plain in her current guise, could, with a little makeup and attention to detail, have been quite attractive. Shalla said to her, ”You were originally supposed to have my job.”
The woman, whose name, if Shalla remembered correctly, was Bradan, nodded. ”The general thought that a smaller woman would be less suspicious, less intimidating to the security forces aboard Razors Kiss.”
”He's probably right.” Shalla shrugged. ”I'm sorry.”
Bradan gave her a searching look. ”You bring this mission off and we'll all be covered in glory. Do it and I'll forgive you.”
”Done.”
”The sign of a perfect mission,” said Captain Raslan, ”is that it's boring.”
Shalla nodded. The mission had been boring so far. They'd taken a dirty, creaky wreck of a first-generation Lambda shuttle from Iron Fist, made the hypers.p.a.ce jump into the Kuat system, made an approach vector on the planet, transmitted pa.s.scodes that were apparently accepted, and now the shuttle was finis.h.i.+ng its first orbit so that it could continue on to the s.h.i.+pbuilding station from a proper approach vector.
”When it's not boring,” the captain continued, ”you know that you've failed.”
”You're obviously unused to failure,” Shalla said.
”You have that right.” Raslan turned his attention back to the shuttle's controls. ”We're getting the automated turn-back message. I'm transmitting our pa.s.scode.”
Bradan leaned forward to speak in Shalla's ear. ”If this works, we won't even get a voice acknowledgment. Just several minutes of silence as we approach.”
”Thus,” Shalla said, ”more boring, thus even better.”
”That's right.” Bradan leaned back.
Shalla had to consider that. It was so contrary to Face's a.n.a.lysis of Iron Fist's officer corps, with their rough, piratical behavior on the bridge during the dinner with Zsinj. It was, in fact, more logical, more in line with the kind of success Zsinj enjoyed. But, of course, not all the officers would necessarily share Zsinj's flamboyance.
And despite their words, the approach to Razor's Kiss, made in near silence, wasn't boring. As they approached the enormous arrowhead-shaped vessel, now wrapped up in the spars and projections of the s.h.i.+pbuilding satellite, which looked like a monstrous insect stinging the destroyer into submission, she felt her pulse and breathing increase, her temperature rise.
One mistake and she'd die aboard that s.h.i.+p. Even, perhaps, if she didn't make a mistake. The innocuous-looking datapad in her pocket could mean the difference between life and death for thousands in the New Republic.
Her father would be proud.
And that thought, recollections of the irascible man, already old when he'd falsified records of his death, resettied on the world of Ingo, and begun fathering children, the man who'd taught his daughters to look out for evil and watch out for good, calmed her. If he were here now, he'd be whispering in her ear: Now you're Qatya. Keep your mercenary face on. Be nice to these people because they might hire you again in the future.
Watch out for the backstab in case they decide to save themselves your fee. It won't happen before you take the bridge; right now they're anxious for you to succeed. It might not happen at all; Melvar was impressed with you, and they noticed. With the sound of his soothing voice in her ear, she finally relaxed. She gave Raslan a confident smile.
”Don't get too bored,” she said. ”You'll be asleep by the time we land.”
Razor's Kiss grew before them until it blotted out the entire universe.
Raslan guided them toward a tiny white dot that gradually grew into a standard rectangular bay opening.
He brought the shuttle into a bay that was half-filled with other shuttles and with a pair of interceptors.
There were no people in the bay. Shalla frowned over that. Was it unguarded, with no mechanics on duty? But if the duplicitous colonel had automated instructions set up, he might require bay personnel to absent themselves when vehicles using specific pa.s.scodes arrived.
In silence, they exited the shuttle. Shalla was the first out of the bay, entering a long corridor that was eerily dim and quiet.
As she moved along the deserted corridor toward the bridge - a hike of over three kilometers-she decided that this was a ghost s.h.i.+p. Every other s.h.i.+p she'd been on had pulsed with life, a steady vibration that one could feel in the soles of her shoes and every rigid surface, a sensation so commonplace that s.p.a.cegoers no longer noticed it after their first few days. This s.h.i.+p had no such vibration, and she imagined that if she saw someone materializing out of the gloom ahead of her, it would be a ghost.
But the first contact she had with the inhabitants of Razor's Kiss was not so ethereal. Barely a kilometer into her walk, a doorway to a set of private quarters hissed open beside her and a stormtrooper emerged.
He tried to bring his blaster rifle in line.
”Say...”
She leaned into him, pinning the rifle to his chest, and brought her hand up, an open-palm blow that caught the trooper's helmet just at the chin.
The force of the blow popped the helmet free of his head, sent it clattering into the quarters from which he'd emerged.
He backed away, trying to free his weapon, and she followed him. She crossed her arms and got both hands on the weapon, then stopped and yanked. The sudden torque ripped the blaster from his grip.
He lunged forward, grabbing, and she swung the b.u.t.t up into his jaw. He fell like an anesthetized bantha.
Shalla looked around. This was a small office, perhaps a junior officer's. No one else was present. She took a look in its interior door, but it led only to an empty refresher.
Raslan was in the office when she emerged. ”You could hear his helmet bouncing for fifty meters,” he said, complaint in his voice, and held out his hand.
She handed him the rifle and slid past him. ”You would have heard a blaster shot from three hundred.”
For the next kilometer, she encountered nothing except some floor-scrubbing droids, machines so primitive that they recorded nothing but locations they had cleaned. Had she been invading Iron Fist, she would have been worried about their presence; a man like Zsinj would probably have adapted them to be an innocuous part of his s.h.i.+p security. Here, she had no such concerns.
She checked the map Bradan had transmitted to her datapad, turned left into a cross corridor... and b.u.mped straight into a lean Imperial naval lieutenant standing there. The man rocked back, reached for his sidearm - and then got a good look at Shalla and relaxed. ”Identify yourself,” he said, his voice more curious than angry.
Shalla put her hands on her hips, a pose of naive irritation.