Part 27 (1/2)

Iella felt the slick caress of a strand of webbing brush against her right cheek. She swept it away with her left hand and heard it snap near her ear. That struck her as odd, then sinister, as she saw Nawara bat at a similar thread with one of his brain tails.

The lift doors, barely ten meters away, opened with little more than a whisper.

As the lift doors parted, Loor felt his pulse quicken. Time slowed until nanoseconds took hours to pa.s.s. His emotions spiked, fear braiding itself together with triumph. The fear came from the realization that he might die, for surely an a.s.sa.s.sin or a.s.sa.s.sins lurked in the lift. I could well be dead before those doors close again.

The triumph that wove in with the fear came from the realization that Ysanne Isard saw him as enough of a threat to kill him. She had always dismissed him before, patronized him, used him, and threatened to discard him. Now she saw how truly powerful he was. The desperation that marked this attempt on his life gave full measure to her concern over what he could do to destroy her.

Loor began to smile. In this you show me I have won!

Iella began to turn toward the unlit box, her blaster coming down as she squared her stance. Something black moved within the lift, a shadow that resolved itself into the form of a man das.h.i.+ng forth, a blazing blaster held in each hand. ”Die, Derricote, die!” he screamed.

Scarlet bolts of blaster energy burned toward the trio. One caught Nawara Ven on the right hip. It spun him around and flung him through the air.

Before the Twi'lek could hit the ground, a pair of blaster-bolts lanced through Kirtan Loor's chest. The first, which drilled him high on the left side of his body, lifted him from his feet. The second struck him high in the abdomen and centered on his midline, driving him back and down. He landed beside Nawara Ven's tumbling body and slid halfway over to the airspeeder.

Years of training overrode conscious thought in Iella. As bolts began to track in her direction, she coolly triggered a double-burst that stopped the a.s.sa.s.sin's charge only a stride or two from the lift. The bolts stabbed deep into the man's gut, snapping him forward. Blaster-bolts from his guns traced parallel lines down the ferrocrete as he hunched over, dropped to his knees, then fell forward on his face. His blaster pistols clattered down beside him, abandoned as his hands clutched at his ruined belly.

Keeping her blaster on his form, she ran forward and kicked the pistols away. The a.s.sa.s.sin made a sound, a little moan, and it cut her legs out from under her. She sank to her knees beside him and rolled him onto his back. Even before she saw his face, the sounds he made and the feeling of his bony shoulders told her who he was. Intellect momentarily overrode emotion, providing her the clues she needed to con-firm his ident.i.ty, then it retreated as pain and despair ex-ploded in her.

She pulled his head into her lap and brushed strands of hair from his face. ”Why, Diric, why?”

”Lusankya.”

Iella's breath caught in her throat. ”No, no, that can't he.”

”She broke me. She made me into one of her own. She had me placed in Derricote's lab to watch him.” Diric winced fiercely, and his body went rigid for a moment. ”She sent me to kill him before he could betray her.

I had no choice. That wasn't him, though.”

Iella shook her head. ”No. It was Kirtan Loor.”

Diric managed a weak smile. ”Good. I never liked him.” He reached a hand up toward her face, but it never got there. 'Tm dying.”

”No.” She fished for a comlink in her pocket. ”I'11 get emergency medical droids here.”

”No, Iella, no. Isard made me what others accuse Tycho of being. He isn't. She had me reporting on him, too. From what she did, I cannot be saved.” His tongue wet thin lips. ”I can't live in suspicion, as a puppet. It would make life too . .. boring.”

”Diric, no, we can help you.”

”It's over. I love you. She wanted me to kill you. I couldn't resist.” He smiled weakly. ”I could defy--the trig-ger that opened the lift was supposed to be linked to a bomb. I did what I could. So you could stop me from betraying myself by killing you.” Pain contorted his face. ”Thank you for freeing me.”

With her hand, Iella smoothed the pain on his face into peace, then realized he'd slipped away. Her throat thick, her eyes welling with tears, she gently lowered his head to the ferrocrete floor and kissed him one last time.

Kirtan Loor lay on the ferrocrete and could feel nothing. He knew this was not good. That he was dying was an ines-capable conclusion and it outraged him. He tried to feed that outrage as much fuel as he could, but he simply ran out. The anger and fury in him collapsed in on itself, imploding into a black void that sucked the last bits of life from Kirtan Loor.

At the heart of that void existed one fact, the one true thing that had marked his entire life. Gil Bastra had seen it. Corran Horn and Iella Wessiri had seen it. Ysanne Isard had seen it. Loor had done all he could to combat it, but it was a defect that was inborn and immutable. ! make a.s.sumptions. I refuse to look beyond them for reality. I am defeated by them.

He stared up at the ferrocrete ceiling, seeking in its hap-hazard patterns some cosmic truth, but the only truth he found ground away at him. She did not send an a.s.sa.s.sin to kill me, she sent him to kill Derricote. I am dying in his place, for his crimes. Is there anything worse?

For some reason the image of Corran Horn came to him. Horn said there was nothing worse than dying alone. He fought to dismiss that idea, but as darkness nibbled away at the corners of his sight, he allowed as how that, just once, Corran Horn had been right.

39.

Despite his fatigue, Wedge couldn't remember having felt better. Strapped into the c.o.c.kpit of his X-wing, with Mynock behind him, Asyr on his starboard wing, and atmosphere below his fighter, Wedge felt as if the galaxy's reset b.u.t.ton had been hit. His mission was clear: safeguard the forces making a run on an Imperial terrorist cell. He didn't know if this was all that was left of the Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front, or if this was just one tentacle of that foul kraken, but he had no doubts they'd destroy it.

Gone were the ambiguities that had been forced on him. Tycho's trial was political. The run to Ryloth and the convoy escort mission from Alderaan had both been political. Even the raid on Zsinj's s.p.a.ce station had been political. While he realized the whole Rebellion had, in essence, been political, his role in it had been military. The targets we were given were military, picked because of their military value, and the mission parameters were ones that could be fulfilled through a military effort.

Wedge keyed his comm unit. ”Hunter One, this is Rogue Lead. We are onstation.”

”l copy, Rogue Lead. Stand by for tactical team direc-tives.”

”As ordered.” Wedge glanced down at his scanner. The squadron had broken itself down into five pairs of fighters. Four of the pairs...o...b..ted the target district with 90 degrees of separation between their positions.

The last pair, Erisi Dlarit and Rhysati Ynr, flew high cover up around the level of the skyhooks. The lower fighters were meant to a.s.sist the raid and pick up stragglers, while the high-orbit pair would cut off any PCF terrorists that made it out of the district and in toward their target.

”Rogue Lead, this is Hunter One. We are taking heavy fire from the western approach. Help is needed.”

”I copy. On the way.” Wedge hit a b.u.t.ton on his con-sole, s.h.i.+fting the corem unit to the squadron's tactical chan-nel. ”Rogue Two, did you get that?”

”I copied, Lead.” Asyr's voice betrayed no nervousness. ”After you.”

”Five, you and Ten with the next call, then Seven's ele-ment, then Twelve's element.”

”As ordered.”

Wedge kicked his X-wing up on the port S-foil, then hit the left rudder and pointed the fighter's nose at the ground. He let the fighter succ.u.mb to gravity, then rolled it and pre-pared to glide out onto the target.

The Justice Court building flashed past, then Wedge hauled back on the stick and leveled out. Target is five kilometers out and coming up fast.

Even in the distance he could see blaster fire spraying out to cover the approaches on the west side of the building. As he swooped in, he saw one smoking speeder-ferry slowly drifting down toward the unseen ground.

Wedge flicked his lasers over to single fire and dropped the crosshairs on the focal point for the blaster fire. As range dropped to a kilometer, he tightened down on the trigger and feathered the left rudder pedal to keep his fire tracking on target.

The X-wing's four lasers fired in sequence, peppering the middle level of the building with a staccato hail of energy darts. They swept across the wide doorway, some of them scattering half-hidden individuals inside the warehouse. Other laser-bolts shredded one of the two E-Web Heavy Repeating Blasters just inside the doorway, killing the soldiers crewing the weapon.

Asyr's X-wing came in right behind Wedge's and re-peated his strafing run. As she flew through the area, Wedge chopped his thrust back, hit his rudder, and turned his fighter around. He punched the throttle, killing his momen-tum, then cut his repulsorlift coils in. Asyr sailed on past him and pulled up to begin a loop, while Wedge goosed his X-wing forward and brought it up in line with the ware-house opening.

”They're running!” Wedge hit the trigger and scythed fire back and forth across the gaping warehouse entryway. Two laser-bolts caught a small airspeeder in the middle and aft, slicing it into three equal parts. The pieces flew across the open area and rebounded off a neighboring building, then tumbled into the urban canyon depths.

The rest of his shots missed the legion of targets because what he was trying to hit tended to be small and moving very fast. Speeder bikes with and without sidecars corkscrewed fheir way out and down or up to elude him. One airspeeder just sailed out and dropped like a freefalling Hutt, sinking out of sight before he could track it. Others banked hard and flew fast to escape, though from corem unit chatter, each of them had been tagged and had pursuit on its way.