The Black Fleet Crisis_ Tyrant's Test Part 36

"General, just take her at her word," Luke said. "If I had wanted it that way, you wouldn't have known Mud Sloth was in the neighborhood until I'd parked it in your s.p.a.ce."

Corgan shook his head disbelievingly, but there was no opportunity to pursue the issue.

"Here they come," said Maiut'ta.

One after another, the great s.h.i.+ps emerged out of the center of overlapping white flashes of radiation, like new stars winking on in the night. Cruisers and attack carriers, Star Destroyers and guns.h.i.+ps, all quickly closed the distance to the rover, roaring by overhead in a spectacular display.

"Are we allowed to talk?" asked Corgan.

"Patience," said A'baht, gazing up with his fingers laced together behind him. "Patience and attentiveness will both be rewarded, I suspect."

"I don't take your hint."

"How many s.h.i.+ps were we expecting?"

"Twenty-two."

A'baht nodded. "I have counted thirty so far."

Corgan and Morano stared, gaping, as the broad hull of a fleet carrier sliced the vacuum above their heads. "That has to be a mistake."

Luke caught A'baht's faint smile. "I'm confident I can still count to thirty," he said. "I suggest you check with Tracking."

Maiut'ta was already reaching for his comlink.

"Sweep the arriving s.h.i.+ps," he ordered. "Give me a count."

"Thirty-eight- - forty- - forty-one- - still clicking over."

"Are they all normal tracks?"

"Everything as expectedwwait a minute, some of the IDs are duplicated.

Colonel, do you want to tell me what's going on now?"

"No, Lieutenant. Stand by," Mauit'ta said, switching off the comlink.

A'baht turned to the other officers. "Well, gentlemen, we have our demonstration." He gestured with his hand as a guns.h.i.+p rumbled by just a kilometer away.

"Which ones are real? That one? The next? I can't tell--I suspect even Tracking can't." He turned back to Akanah. "Thank you. I am quite satisfied."

In the next moment, half the battle group pa.s.sing in review vanished.

Wialu sagged noticeably and sought her seat immediately afterward.

Akanah settled beside her protectively.

"General, what did I just see?" the rover driver asked in an awestruck voice.

"Nothing, son," said A'baht. "Officially and literally nothing."

But--" "Don't ask about it and don't think about it," the general said.

"Just get us back to the barn as quickly as you can." He glanced at Luke. "We all have a lot to do."

They were on final 'approach to Intrepid when they were waved off for the launch of a flight of fighters.

Morano's face immediately took on a worried expression.

"What's that about? Patrol rotation isn't for another hour."

He got an answer from the flight controller after the rover landed.

"Outer patrol is moving out on an intercept," the controller advised them. "We've got a s.h.i.+p coming in from the interior, high speed, no proper ID, nothing but some kind of jammer or scrambler signal in response to our hail."

Morano wheeled around to face Wialu. "Is this part of your demonstration, too?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "This one belongs to you."

"General, Commander Jarrou has taken the group back to a level' two alert," the controller continued.

"Captain, you and the general are wanted upstairs, flank speed."

Luke raced to the bridge at General A'baht's heels, then anch.o.r.ed himself in front of a tracking display.

The image was still small and two-dimensional. His head c.o.c.ked to the side, Luke studied the image as it slowly grew larger.

"Specialist, how fast is that s.h.i.+p moving?"

"Eight sublight, sir. She's cooking."

"Can you let me hear that jammer signal she was transmitting?"

"Still transmitting," said the specialist. "On the headphones, sir. Watch the volume--it's an eardrum killer."

Luke slipped the earpieces in place and listened.

Almost at once, he laughed.

"Sir?"

"That's not a jammer. That's Shyriiwook.

Wookiee-talk," he said, tearing off the headphones.

"It's Chewbacca, and he's upset about something."

Luke peered at the display again. "He wants those pilots to get out of the way. General A'baht!"

A'baht looked up from a huddle with the tactical officer. "What now?"

"Better tell those fighters they're on a rendezvous and-escort, not an intercept," said Luke. "That's the Millennium Falcon coming in."

Shoran and Han were both carried off the Falcon on medevac stretchers.

By appearance alone, they looked to be in equally dire straits, but the indicator lights on the stretchers' monitor panels foretold their different destinations. The indicators on Shoran's stretcher were static and mostly red, and he was taken directly to Intrepid's morgue.

The indicators on Han's stretcher were jumpy and mostly yellow, and he was taken directly to a bacta tank in med ward one.

There was no chance for Luke or anyone else to talk to Han before he went into the tank. He had apparently been unconscious since before the Falcon jumped out from N'zoth, his already fragile state aggravated by the stresses of the rescue, particularly the high-g escape.

And even if Han had been conscious, there was Chewbacca to contend with-- the Wookiee hovered over Han so protectively that he got in the way of the doctor and the medical droid, and ultimately had to be dragged back from the triage table by two of his companions.

The four Wookiees made an impressive sight, and their presence in the med ward drew a great deal of curious attention. Luke thought he recognized the injured one as Lumpawarrump, a thought confirmed when Chewbacca made him the next object of his anxious hovering.

Lumpawarrump had limped off the s.h.i.+p under his own power, but the second- degree blaster burn on his right calf was ugly with leaking blisters and needed care as well. A translator droid arrived in time to a.s.sist K-1B to negotiate with his patient.

"Skin and hair cell damage is serious. Underlying fat and muscle damage is limited," said K-1B. "All damage is repairable. Prescribe immersion, one session, ten hours."

Both Chewbacca and his son looked at the prep table where Han was being fitted with his breather and monitors. Chewbacca drew his upper lip back over his teeth in an expression of disgust, and Lumpawarrump shook his head vigorously as he growled an answer.

The droid's translation was diplomatic. "The patient has expressed an unwillingness to be immersed."

K-1B's head swiveled in a distinctively mechanical fas.h.i.+on.

"Topical treatments are of limited effectiveness.

Grafts are contraindicated for species with body fur.

Scarring is likely without immersion."

Both Lumpawarrump and Chewbacca answered at once, and their growls had sharply contrasting timbres.

"The patient says that he finds scarring socially desirable.

The patient's guardian expresses his concern that if the injury is not effectively treated, K-1B will experience serious malfunctions and system disruptions."

Despite the shadow of concern for both Han and Chewbacca's son, Luke could not contain a chuckle at the droid's obvious paraphrase. The sound led Chewbacca to look up and in Luke's direction--the first time their eyes had met since the Falcon had docked.

The Wookiee gestured angrily toward Han, and voiced a sharp-edged rebuke. No translation was necessary.

The look said, Where were you?

"I didn't know, Chewie," Luke said. "It wasn't even in the TBM. The General says there was a complete blackout on the news. I was away, and no one told me. Not even Leia." He looked across the room at Han, who was at that moment being transferred from the prep table to the bacta tank. "I just didn't know."

Technically, the camp on Pa'aal, the primary moon of the fifth planet of the N'zoth system, was not a prison. Slaves are not housed in prisons.

The camp was the permanent residence of the surviving members of the former Black Sword Command occupation force under Governor Crollick.

At its peak, it had housed nearly three hundred thousand--mostly human, and mostly from the crews of the Star Destroyers Intimidator and Valorous, captured intact by Yevethan raiders on what was to have been the final day of the Imperial occupation.

The captives had purchased their lives with service to the viceroy, and in the beginning, that service had been essential. They had taught the Yevetha both the operation of a capital wars.h.i.+p and the final secrets of their construction. They had served aboard their renamed vessels under new, alien captains and labored in the s.h.i.+pyards under new, alien overseers. The knowledge in their heads and the experience in their hands made them valuable enough to keep alive--at least until the Yevetha had wrung every last secret from them.

In the first and second year, only the uncooperative were removed from the population on Pa aal. But in the third year, their keepers began to thin their holdings in earnest. By that time, the overseers had a clearer idea of who had specialized technical skills and who did not.

The latter could be replaced in their duties by Yevetha, and were--many trained their replacements before being executed. The former were kept without regard to need, as spare parts for the war machine the Yevetha were building.

Half the population of Pa'aal disappeared during the third year--most at the hands of the Yevetha, but no small number through suicide.

Conditions on Pa'aal were desperate and miserable, and hope of rescue had collapsed as the coldly calculated winnowing wore on.

Those who survived to see the fourth year were in many ways a select groupssmart, tough-minded, in-ured to the privations of their existence, astute in the politics of their status. And they had found a replacement for hope, in the form of a leader and a plan.

In the long years since, every slave taken from Pa'aal for a day's, a week's, a month's service tO the Yevetha had gone willingly, with a purpose and a mission beyond mere survival. The more useful they were, the more opportunities there would be to advance the plan. They needed access to the s.h.i.+ps, to materials and tools, to unsupervised time--all of which could only be obtained through guiltless and systematic collaboration with the enemy.

Despite their efforts, there had come a time when the Yevetha seemed to no longer need them, and Pa'aal had become not a storehouse but a dumping ground. An entire year would pa.s.s with no measurable progress and no promise of change. Suicide and the carelessness that went with profound depression once more began to thin the numbers.

But seven months ago, the slavemasters had started coming to Pa'aal again. For the first time since the end of the winnowing, there were Yevetha in camp for more than a few hours, observing, questioning. The additional scrutiny was more than balanced by the additional opportunity, as more and more of the population was called to service and carried off in the parade of shuttles. Before long, Pa'aal seemed primarily populated by ghosts.

Word of the reasons for the change filtered back with returnees--new s.h.i.+ps being launched, new crews being trained, new problems with cloned drives and weapons. Gradually the whole story was pieced together, until the prisoners on Pa'aal were more aware of the coming war than the Yevetha themselves.

And through it all, the work went on, at an intense-even dangerous--pace.

"There is a moment coming," Major Sil Sorannan had told his secret command, "a moment of opportunity that will never be repeated in our lifetimes. If we are not ready when that moment comes, we will all die on Pa'aal."

Sorannan remembered his words as he gazed at the four tiny pulse-transceiver chips that had just been delivered to him by a courier from a returning work party.

"Major Neff said to tell you that they'd pa.s.sed all the tests with generous margins," said the courier. "He has very high confidence that they're good."

Nodding, Sorannan gestured to the other man in the room. "Have the controllers brought here."

From four different parts of the compound, four very different--yet commonplace--objects were rounded up and placed before Sorannan. Using an engineer's loupe, 'an improvised jig, and a handheld microwelder, Sorannan added one of the chips to the circuitry concealed inside each of the objects.

The chips were the last pieces missing from the controllers, and Sorannan irreversibly sealed the clever access slides and panels before handing each object over to a courier.

"Deliver this to Dobbatek.

"See that this reaches Jaratt on Valorous.

"This is for Harramin.

"I want this delivered to Eistern on Intimidator. Tell him I will be there soon. Tell him to pa.s.s the word that it is almost time."

Chapter 10.