Part 4 (1/2)
”Please, both of you, be seated. Captain Showolter, perhaps you could arrange for some refreshment?”
”Nothing for me, thanks,” Lando said.
”I'm fine as well,” Luke said. ”Somehow going through those corridors didn't leave me with much of an appet.i.te. Not the most appealing odors out there. My apologies if we brought any of it in with us.”
”Not at all,” Mon Mothma said. ”But please, all of you, be seated.”
They all took chairs toward the same end of the table. ”Tell me, Captain Calrissian,” Mon Mothma went on, ”was your trip profitable?”
”Very definitely yes, Mon Mothma, although in a personal sense, rather than a financial one,” Lando said.
”However, I'm afraid it was cut short somewhat abruptly before we got as far as Corellia.”
”How so?” Admiral Ackbar asked, a bit eagerly.
”Please, tell us everything.”
”Well,” said Lando, ”we got as far as Sacorria, but we were there less than half a day before we were ordered off the planet. It was some sort of antiforeigner crackdown. We weren't there long enough to learn much, but Tendra-the local woman Iepoke with, seemed to think there was some sort of crisis coming to a head.”
”Could that crisis have anything to do with Corellia?”
Showolter asked.
”I suppose it's possible,” Lando replied. ”We never got a chance to find out. We were stopped by an interdiction field.”
”An interdiction field near the Corellian planetary system?”
Ackbar asked. ”Why didn't one of you say so?
How big and where?”
”I was about to say so, but we got a little sidetracked,” Lando said evenly. ”That's why we never got a chance to learn what was going on in the Corellian system. The field is what kept us from getting there.”
”How could that be?” Ackbar demanded.
”The field isn't just near Corellia It completely surrounds the Corellian planetary system,” Luke explained.
”at? That's impossible!” Ackbar said. ”No one has ever managed to generate a field that large.”
”That's exactly what I thought,” Lando replied. ”But it's there, nevertheless. We were knocked out of hypers.p.a.ce about twenty light-hours out from Corell, Corellia's star. And it's n0t just a big field. It's a powerful one.
It nearly blew out the safeties on the Lady Luck's hyper.
drive.”
Luke looked to Ackbar and Mon Mothma. ”Wait a second. If you don't know about the interdiction field, why are we here?”
”It's very simple,” Mon Mothma said. ”We have lost all-and I repeat, allommunication with the Corellian planetary system.
”Communicator silence?” Lando asked. ”Maybe, if there's some sort of military situation going on, Governor-General Micamberlecto decided to order a blackout.”
”Things would have to be pretty grim for that to be plausible,”
Ackbar said, ”but I'm afraid even that is a highly optimistic interpretation. It's not a blackout. It's jamming. System-wide jamming of all communications in and out of the Corellian planetary system.”
Lando let out a low whistle. ”Whoever is behind all this is not shy about thinking big.”
”But you have something else that's got you worried, ' Luke said.
”Otherwise we wouldn't be meeting underground.”
”Quite right.
Captain Showolter?”
”Thank you, ma'am.” Showolter turned to Luke and Lando. ”Even before the communications blackout, we were concerned that someone in the Corellian planetary system had managed to penetrate our communications.
We kept sending agents in, and they kept vanis.h.i.+ng. The more carefully we planned the penetration, the faster we lost the agent.
There has to be some sort of leak outside the Corellian system.
Even without the communications blackout, it was getting to be enough to raise a major ruckus back here. It would seem the last two or three agents we tried to insert were shot down or apprehended the moment they entered the system.”
”Therefore,” said Mon Mothma, ”we have decided that all business related to this situation must be dealt with in topsecret, face-to-face meetings, in secure facilities.”
”We have also decided we're going to have to go in, ' Admiral Ackbar said in a voice that was gruff, even for him. ”I don't see any real way around it. Unfortunately, I don't have any s.h.i.+ps available for the job.” Admiral Ackbar swiveled his goggle eyes from side to side and shook his head. ”Readiness is at an all-time low. We have all the admirals anyone could want, but the fleet is a skeleton force at the moment. And I don't need to tell you that information is highly confidential.
”We must a.s.sume that whoever grabbed our agents and ordered the jammingnd created this interdiction fielddid so to cover something we're not supposed to know about. And they managed to do it at exactly the moment nearly all of our s.h.i.+ps were committed elsewhere, or in dry dock.
I don't think that's a coincidence.
But leave all that to one side for the moment. What more do you know about the interdiction field?” Ackbar said.
Luke turned to his astromech droid. ”Artoo?” R2-D2 beeped twice and rolled over to stand next to Luke's chair. ”Show the graphic images on the interdiction field.” Artoo blooped obediently and activated his internal holographic generator. An image started to form.
”We didn't stay around long enough to get much information, but we did pull what we could off the Lady Luck's automatic data recorders and then enhanced it as best we could. And bear in mind that this data has been more than a littlema.s.saged. All sorts of errors could have crept into it.
Artoo projected a standard wire-frame schematic diagram of the Corellian planetary system, showing the star Corell, the planet Corellia, and the other inhabited planetSelonia, Drall, and the Double Worlds of Tralus and ThIus, along with the outer planets. After a few moments a hazy gray cloud appeared around all of it, a sphere that extended far beyond the outermost planet of the system.
”It's not centered on the star,” Ackbar said at once.
”Very good, Admiral. It took us the better part of a day to notice that. But you're right, it isn't. As best we can tell, it seems to be centered somewhere in the vicinity of Thins and Tralus, the Double Worlds.”
”The Double Worlds?” Mon Mothma asked. ”I'm sorry, I'm not as familiar with the Corellian system as I ought to be.”
”Don't feel bad about it,” said Luke. ”I had to look them up myself. They're the least populous and least important of the inhabited Corellian worlds.