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  discussions with the Council. Borsk Fey'lya is quite persuasive and he has Mon

  Mothma's ear in many things."

  Wedge looked at Salm. "And you're worried about Tycho being a security risk!"

  "Tycho Celchu did not risk his life to get the Alliance the location of the

  second Death Star."

  "No, he only risked his life to destroy that Death Star."

  Ackbar stepped between his subordinates. "Please, gentlemen, if I want petty

  bickering I can go to more Council meetings. It is important for you to air your

  grievances, but I will not have you fight and refight the same battles over and

  over again."

  "Sorry, sir. My apologies, General."

  "Accepted, Commander. I beg your pardon, Admiral."

  Ackbar nodded slowly. "Commander Antilles, in an effort to minimize damage done

  by the public profile being given your mission, we will keep your destination

  secret. This means your pilots will not know where they will be stationed and

  they will only be told that they are going on an extended training exercise.

  Logistics and Supply Corps staffers

  have prepared lists or equipment that cover anything your unit might not carry

  with it on the trip. We have an Imperial shuttle that Captain Celchu will use to

  bring supplies on your journey."

  "Nav data will be fed out to my pilots prior to each jump?"

  "Exactly. You should give your flight leaders numerous routes for which they

  will compute navigation solutions, then you choose the appropriate one and have

  it communicated to your squadron at each change of course." The Mon Cal pointed

  at the representation of Talasea on the display and it zoomed in. "The Morobe

  system is a red-yellow binary and Talasea is the fourth planet in orbit around

  the yellow primary. The world is cool and moist with indigenous insect and

  reptilian life. There are mammals there as wellferal descendants of the animals

  brought in for an early farming colony. Your base is on the largest of the

  island continents. The atmosphere is thick, fog is common, but the world is

  safe."

  "What happened to the farming colony?"

  "Over the centuries most of the children emigrated to worlds where they could

  see the stars and didn't have to work so hard. The last group of them made the

  mistake of harboring a Jedi after the Clone Wars. Lord Vader destroyed them as

  an example. Settlement ruins are on your island but our people have reported

  there was nothing of interest left behind there."

  "Home Sweet Home." Wedge smiled. "When are we to be on station?"

  "A week from now."

  "That's not much time."

  "I know." Ackbar shrugged his shoulders. "It was all I could buy you. May the

  Force be with you, Commander Antilles. I hope you won't need it."

  12

  Kirtan Loor clutched his hands at the small of his back so they would stop

  trembling. "I am in your debt, Madam Director, and at your service."

  "How kind of you to say so, Agent Loor." Ysanne Isard thumbed a small device.

  The lights in the room slowly brightened while shields descended over the

  windows. The rising illumination revealed the room to have a tall ceiling, with

  dark wooden beams curving up from the four corners to meet in an apex above the

  center of the floor. The walls and carpet shared the same deep blue, though a

  strip of carpet the same bright red as worn by Imperial Guards bordered the

  floor at the edge of the wall. In the far corner he saw a desk and chairs that

  were elegant yet far from ornatein keeping with the general spartan nature of

  the room.

  It struck him as odd that a large room that was all but empty could seem so

  decadently opulent. The only thing the room seemed rich in was wasted space.

  Then it struck him. On a world that is so crowded with so many people, wasting

  this amount of space is the height of luxury.

  Isard's predatory pacing in the center of the room snatched his attention away

  from the subtle messages of the architecture and appointments. She wore an

  Admiral's uniform, complete with boots, jodhpurs, and a dress jacket, though the

  garments were red. A black armband circled the upper part of her left arm and

  the jacket bore no rank insignia or cylinders at all. Yet even without the

  external signs of rank, her intensity and the deliberation with which she moved

  radiated power.

  Though he would have put her age at a dozen years older than his own, he found

  her attractive. Tall and slender, she wore her black hair long, and the white

  streaks descending from her temples made her seem more exotic than middle-aged.

  Her face appeared classically beautiful to him. A strong jaw, sharp cheekbones,

  a high forehead, a gracefully small nose, and large eyes were all the elements

  that most women would have killed to possess, or would have paid to have given

  to them.

  Even as he catalogued all the bits and pieces of her that should have triggered

  some sort of lust in himand the aura of power surrounding her was terribly

  excitingfear overrode any glimmerings of carnal desire. When she looked at him,

  with dark brows accenting her eyes, he knew where the menace dwelt in her. One

  eye was ice-blueas cold as Hoth and as cruel as a Hutt in a sporting mood. The

  other eye, the left one, was a molten red, with golden highlights that flashed

  with fiery determination. The left eye told him that any effort by him that was

  not fully devoted to her service would be met with the bloodless retribution

  promised by her cold right eye.

  Kirtan shivered and she smiled.

  "Agent Loor, your personal file has a number of interesting inputs. You are

  rated as having a visual

  memory retention rate of nearly one hundred percent."

  He nodded. "If I read it or see it, I remember it."

  "This can be a useful tool, if applied correctly." Isard's expression lost some

  of its hardness, though this in no way made Kirtan feel as if he were any safer.

  "In the report about Bastra you mentioned not using skirtopanol during his

  interrogation because he had been dosing himself with lotiramine. This was a

  precaution you learned to take because of a case on Corellia where doing just

  that had negative effects, yes?"

  "The suspect died."

  "Your report says you used the fact that the lotiramine masks the presence of

  blastonecrosis to confront Bastra with his own mortality. When that did not

  prove effective, you began conventional interrogation."

  Kirtan nodded. "Sleep deprivation, protein starvation, coercive holographic and

  auditory illusions taken from what I knew of him. It all proved quite promising

  until the blastonecrosis began to make his whole body septic. I then initiated

  treatment for the condition."

  "And this treatment killed him." Her eyes became mismatched slits. "Do you know

  why?"

  "He had a reaction to the bacta used to treat him."

  "Do you know why?"

  Kirtan was about to offer her the explanation the Emdee-five droid had given him

  when Bastra died in the bacta tank, but he knew that she would not accept it. "I

  do not."

  Isard hesitated for a second and Kirtan knew he had escaped punishment by being

  truthful. "What does ZXI449F
mean to you, if anything?"

  He instantly recognized the number, but held back his answer until he could sort

  out the details and put them in a coherent form. "That is the lot number of a

  batch of bacta that was contaminated by the Ashern rebels on Thyferra. It made

  its way to Imperial Center and infected nearly two million soldiers and

  citizens. It rendered them allergic to bacta." Kirtan frowned. "But Gil Bastra

  never was on Imperial Center."

  "You do not know that for a fact. Perhaps he was here." She shook her head

  slowly. "It does not matter, because he could have run into that batch of bacta

  almost anywhere. It was ordered disposed of, and I saw to it that much of it was

  funneled to the black market. That, however, is not important. What is important

  is this Blastonecrosis is a condition that affected roughly two percent of the

  people who were dosed with that particular lot of bacta. An Emdee droid would

  have inquired of a patient if he been dosed with bacta in the last two years."

  "But because I ordered treatment and didn't recognize the significance of the

  disease, Gil Bastra died."

  "No!" Isard's eyes hardened. "Gil Bastra committed suicide."

  "What?"

  "His reports about you are in your file. Your slicer was able to excise them

  from the Corellian records, but not my records. A man is best evaluated by his

  enemies."

  Kirtan's stomach slowly collapsed in on itself. "Those evaluations were

  prejudiced against me."

  "Perhaps, but Bastra was amazingly perceptive. He wrote that you rely on your

  memory too much trusting that retention of information can somehow compensate

  for an insufficient amount of analysis. Because you know so muchlike the

  obscure fact

  about the fatal interaction of lotiramine and skirtopanol, you didn't look

  beyond Bastra's obvious line of defense to see how much deeper things had gone.

  If you had, you would have known about his possible bacta allergy and he might

  still be with us."

  She slowly exhaled and tugged at the hem of her scarlet jacket. "Bastra knew you

  well enough to know he'd be dead soon. That gave him enough hope to feed you

  useless information. He held out as long as he could because he was playing for

  more time for his confederates to further sever ties with their past."

  The Intelligence agent realized right then that the display of bravado Bastra

  had provided during their first meeting on the Expeditious had not been a false

  and hollow thing. Kirtan's face burned as he heard again everything Bastra had

  said, this time with the man's mocking tones intact and brutal. What I had seen

  as my brilliance in ferreting out his errors had been him playing to my sense of

  superiority, leading me on after him like a nerf eager for slaughter. For two

  years I've been a fool.

  A revelation hit him strongly enough to make him tremble. "I've been fooled for

  even longer than the two years I've chased them down, haven't I?"

  "Very good, Agent Loor." Isard's expression lightened slightly, as if she were

  on the verge of smiling, but she did not. "The responsibility for your

  deception is not wholly your own. Our training and indoctrination tends to make

  agents and soldiers believe in their own infallibility. This has proved to be a

  detriment to the Empire. You were not alone in falling prey to iteven the late

  Emperor had his blind spots."

  Kirtan decided to avoid the invitation to question the Emperor's wisdom, or

  lack thereof, and instead followed up on his previous question. "The

  'falling out Bastra and Horn had was faked. I thought the reason for it was

  stupid, and assumed they were stupid for being at odds over it."

  "This is even better, Agent Loor."

  "I feel as if in realizing how badly I was used, I can see more depth to

  things."

  "A blind spot is eliminated, letting you see more of what goes on around you."

  She ran an index finger along her jaw. "If you had read Bastra's evaluations

  of you instead of having them destroyed, you would have been able to come to

  this epiphany sooner."

  He nodded confidently. "And I would have had them by now."

  "And you were doing so well." Isard's face contorted into a snarl. "Don't

  backslide."

  Kirtan blushed. "I'm sorry."

  "More's the pity that you are not. You assume superiority where there is none."

  She folded her arms across her chest. "The Emperor likewise assumed that if he

  destroyed all the Jedi Knights that his Jedi Knightand a handful of

  Force-trained special agentswould be sufficient to control the galaxy. He did

  not seethough I tried to warn himthe impossibility of proving that all the

  Jedi had been destroyed and that no other Jedi could rise against him. His

  obsession with the Jedi blinded him to the real threat posed by opposition

  leaders who are no more intelligent or remarkable than you are.

  "As a result the Empire is falling apart and the Rebels are threatening to

  supplant the Empire with their own New Republic."

  Kirtan nodded. "And you wish to restore the Empire."

  "No." Her denial came cold enough to freeze carbonite. "My goal is to destroy

  the Rebellion. Im-

  perial restoration can only be accomplished it the Rebels are eliminated and

  that can only be accomplished if we blunt their military, sorely stress their

  administration, and crush their spirits. These goals are interwoven and I have

  operatives, like you, working on all levels to bring my plans to fruition. Can

  you withstand the pressure of so vital a mission?"

  Kirtan slowly nodded. "I can. How may I serve you?"

  This time she did smile and Kirtan wished she had not. "Your target is to cut

  the heart out of the Rebellion. You will be the death of Rogue Squadron."

  "Excuse me?" Kirtan frowned, wondering if he had heard her incorrectly. "I am no

  fighter pilot. I know nothing about Rogue Squadron."

  "Ah, but you have the expertise I want and desire. You served on Corellia and

  the unit's commander is Corellian."

  "Wedge Antilles, I know." Kirtan raised his hands. "But that is not to say I

  know him. I don't. I don't even know anything about the squadron."

  "But you can learn."

  "Yes, I can learn."

  "And you shall learn." She nodded slowly toward him, then brought her head up

  abruptly. "You will also find you have a personal stake in this."

  Kirtan aborted a wince. "Yes?"

  "Our source within the squadron tells us that a friend of yours is a flight

  leader of remarkable skill."

  One of Isard's earlier statements ran through his mind again. A man is best

  evaluated by his enemies. "Corran Horn."

  "You see, you already know more about them than you thought you did." Ysanne

  Isard gave him

  an even stare. "Do you accept being the instrument of Rogue Squadron's

  destruction?"

  "With pleasure, Madam Director." Kirtan smiled to himself. "With the utmost of

  pleasure indeed."

  13

  Corran forced himself to relax. Though Commander Antilles had cast the trip as

  an exercise in astronavigation and hyperspace jumping, deep down in his gut

  Corran thought a lot was being left unsaid. He was certain that if they
had been

  going out on a formal patrol or escort mission Wedge would have told them so.

  The fact that he hadn't said anything conflicted with the mission requirement of

  packing up and stowing their personal gear in their X-wings. This left Corran

  thinking something more than an exercise was taking place.

  Because of his training exercise scores, Corran had been promoted to Lieutenant

  and given the command of Three Flight. As an officer he had expected Wedge

  would trust him enough to let him know what was really going on. Even so, with

  his background he had great respect for security, and that put a brake on his

  uneasiness.

  Those concerns don't matter. Getting through the drill does. Heading outbound

  from Folor's scarred grey surface, Corran flew lead for Rogue Squadron's Three

  Flight. Ooryl was back to star-

  board while Lujayne and Andoorni were off to port, similarly staggered front and

  back. Within the unit they had comm unit call signs of Rogue Nine through Twelve

  respectively, though for this exercise they would be operating as a semi

  independent flight.

  "Let's keep it close, Three Flight. Whistler will send you all our jump

  coordinates and speed parameters. Have your R2s double-check it, then lock the

  route." He checked his datascreen for the positions of the first two X-wing

  flights and Tycho Celchu bringing up the rear in a captured Lambda-class

  shuttle, Forbidden. "We follow One Flight on this leg, then Two Flight on the

  next one. After that we're leading, so let's be prepared."

  The members of his flight signaled their readiness to jump, so Corran keyed his

  comlink over to the command frequency. "Three Flight ready to jump on your mark,

  Rogue One."

  "Good. All flights, five seconds to mark."

  With Wedge's reply Whistler began counting down for the five seconds. Corran

  watched the seconds click off the digital display. When it read 0000 he

  engaged the X-wing's hyperdrive and sat back as the stars filled the viewscreen.

  Just as the color threatened to overwhelm him with its intensity, his

  snubfighter leaped into hyperspace and moved beyond the ability of the light to

  abuse him.

  The first leg was to take them about an hour and had them flying along the plane

  of the galactic dish, moving against the swirl of the galaxy itself. The course

  brought them in ever so slightly toward the Core, which was good because the