The Krytos Trap (41 page)

A shiver ran down his spine.
Corran and the others were flying out here at night when we took Coruscant. I never really appreciated what they did until now
.

Mynock hooted at him. Wedge glanced down at his monitor and saw various schematics flash past. “Slower, Mynock, I’m flying here, too.” Wedge marked the location of the airspeeder and compared it with the maps. As the air-speeder sank to his level and below it, something clicked in the back of his mind.
That’s it. I’ve got them
.

“Give me the lowest route in you can find, Mynock.” Wedge banked starboard, chopped his thrust back, and brought the repulsorlift coils online. He hovered and drifted forward, remaining just outside the corridor described by the map Mynock had brought up. As he watched he saw the airspeeder move onto the route and begin to follow it in.

Wedge smiled.
It struck sparks in the warehouse and dropped like a rock outside. It’s still going down because it’s carrying too much weight. The speeder-ferry that was going down when I first flew in must have been meant to haul this bomb to a point where it could head down in at the bacta store. Now they have to go low because they don’t have enough power to go high
.

He switched his fire control over to lasers and linked all four to give him a quad burst. As he did so, the airspeeder cruised through the thoroughfare. Wedge picked his speed up and dropped straight in behind it. Someone in the speeder spotted him and started shooting at him with a blaster rifle, but the bolts harmlessly impacted on Wedge’s forward shield. The pilot tried to make the airspeeder juke, but every sideslip and turn just brought the vehicle lower and lower.

And into Wedge’s sights.

He hit the trigger and sent a quartet of scarlet laser-bolts to converge on the blocky vehicle. The lasers vaporized the roof and filled the passenger compartment with fire. The speeder began to fall faster, with the aft end sagging downward.
Something exploded up front, starting the speeder into a backward somersault. Two more quad bursts from the X-wing reduced the large chunks of vehicle into mist and metal hail.

The vapor cloud—made up mostly of gaseous explosives—ignited in a flash, momentarily blinding Wedge and prompting a scream from Mynock. Wedge kept a light but steady hand on the stick and rode out the shockwave. The X-wing’s shields held, saving the fighter from damage. As his vision cleared and he flew through the smoke, he saw no trace of the airspeeder.

He smiled. “See that, Mynock? That mission wasn’t so tough.”

The droid brayed in what Wedge took to be a vaguely triumphant manner.

“Rogue Leader here. The bomb is gone. Report.”

“Three here, Lead. We are over the Manarai Mountain district and have big anomalies out to the southwest. I have TIEs coming in, at least one wing.”

“I copy, Three. On my way.” Wedge hauled back on the stick and jammed his throttle full forward. The X-wing rocketed straight up. “Confirm thirty-six TIEs, Three.”

“Confirm thirty-six, Lead, eyeballs and squints. They’re coming this way and there’s something else out there.” Rhysati sounded shaken. “My sensors aren’t picking it up at all well.”

“Standby, Three.” Wedge punched his comm unit over to another opchannel. “Antilles here. What’s down there to the southwest?”

“Palace district control here, Rogue Leader. We’re not sure. Civilian side is reporting groundquakes and massive destruction. We’re just turning a satellite in that direction. Data coming up—I’ll give you the raw feed.”

“I copy, control.” Wedge looked at the scan splaying itself across his sensor monitor and felt his spirits sinking as low as Mynock’s mournful whistle. “That can’t be. It just can’t be.”

“You’re getting what we’re getting, Rogue Leader.”

Wedge flicked the comm unit back to the squadron’s tactical frequency. “Three and Four, get back here. Now.”

“What’s out there, Lead?”

Wedge shivered. “It’s something that shouldn’t be there, Three. IFF beacons report it’s a Super Star Destroyer that goes by the name
Lusankya
.”

42

Admiral Ackbar took his seat at the high bench, with Generals Madine and Salm below and to the left and right respectively. He waited for the defendant and prosecutor to be seated, then he looked out over the sparsely populated courtroom. “Today’s session will be abbreviated. Even the most simple voyage can be ended by an unanticipated wave, and the wave affecting us here was titanic in proportions.”

He glanced down at Tycho Celchu and the two droids at the defense table. “Captain Celchu, your lawyer is not here because approximately an hour ago he was shot and seriously wounded in the parking facility on the upper floors of this building. The assassin has been killed, but we have sealed the building for security reasons nonetheless. Nawara Ven was shot while in the process of bringing to court a witness who had recently surfaced to provide proof of your innocence. The witness offered his testimony on your behalf in return for a new identity and repatriation to another world. He provided a datacard filled with encrypted information that backed his claims concerning you as well as claims concerning the Imperial espionage net here on Coruscant.

“Unfortunately the assassin who wounded Counselor
Ven succeeded in killing this witness.” Ackbar looked over toward where Airen Cracken sat on the prosecution side of the court. “General Cracken has assured me he has people working on the datacard to see if they can slice the information out, but there is no telling if or when they will succeed.”

Tycho frowned. “Where does this leave me?”

Halla Ettyk stood. “Admiral, the prosecution would be amenable to a continuance until Counselor Ven has recovered.”

“Granted.” Admiral Ackbar raised a gavel. “If there is nothing more we will stand in recess until Counselor Ven is able to continue.”

Tycho held a hand up. “Wait, please, isn’t there something I can do? Isn’t it possible for me to represent myself in his absence?”

“That has always been your right, Captain Celchu.”

Halla looked over at Tycho. “The admiral is correct, but really there is nothing you can do.”

“I can call and question a witness.”

The prosecutor shook her head and pointed at her datapad. “Not really. I have before me the list of witnesses Counselor Ven said you were going to call. None of the members of Rogue Squadron are here and available. The Duros Lai Nootka is not here and, unfortunately, is probably dead. You have no witnesses.”

Whistler tooted.

Emtrey’s clamshell head came up. “Whistler says we
do
have a witness.”

Halla frowned. “Who?”

Tycho stood. “I can testify on my own behalf.”

“It would be a mistake to do so, Captain. I would rip you apart on cross.”

The R2 unit blatted rudely.

Tycho patted Whistler on the dome. “I agree.”

Emtrey canted his head to the side. “Ah, sir, Whistler was agreeing with Commander Ettyk. You’re not his witness. Your testimony won’t put this whole business to rest.”

Halla shook her head. “The only witness who could do that is dead.”

Whistler trumpeted loudly, whirling his head full around in a circle. The droid bounced excitedly and his tone became a piercing shriek.

Ackbar’s gavel cracked once, sharply, jerking Emtrey to attention. “Tell Whistler to calm down or I’ll have a restraining bolt put on him.”

The little droid stopped and hummed mournfully.

“Now what was he talking about, Emtrey?”

Whistler answered.

Emtrey glanced sharply down at him and gave him a good clout on the dome. “Make sense, Whistler. They’re waiting.”

Whistler repeated his previous answer.

The 3PO unit raised its arms and looked up at Ackbar. “I am sorry, sir, but he makes no sense. The stress—circuits must have become polarized. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

Ackbar sighed. “Answer my question. Who is he saying this witness is?”

Before Emtrey could answer, a man spoke from the court’s open doorway. “Begging your pardon, Admiral, I think Whistler intends for
me
to be called as a witness.”

Ackbar’s barbels twitched.
From the black depths all manner of beasts can swim
. “This is impossible.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Corran Horn smiled, “but as for impossible, Admiral, you know impossible is what Rogue Squadron does best of all.”

43

Wedge snaprolled up on the port S-foil, then pulled the stick back to the box over his breastbone. He rolled the X-wing into a dive, then came up and around to starboard in a horizontal loop that brought him back head-to-head with the pair of eyeballs that had been bucking his exhaust. He spitted one on his crosshairs and hit the trigger, filling it with coherent light. The cockpit instantly combusted, and, trailing thick black smoke, the TIE fighter corkscrewed down to slam into a ferrocrete tower.

The TIE’s wingman tried to avenge his partner, but Wedge never gave him a chance. He hit the left rudder pedal, pulling the aft end of the X-wing off to the right. The maneuver skidded the fighter out of the TIE’s line of flight and fire. The TIE pilot tried to match the stunt, but as he did so he brought his fighter’s hexagonal solar panel perpendicular to the ship’s flight-line. In the vacuum of space that move would have given him a good shot at Wedge, but in atmosphere, it made the TIE jump and begin to roll.

Wedge brought the X-wing up on its port stabilizers and dove after the TIE. Just as the pilot began to regain control, slowing his spin, Rogue Squadron’s leader tightened up on his trigger. A quad burst of laserfire blasted the port solar
panel off the fighter. The TIE began to tumble uncontrollably toward the ground, but before it could descend into the black bowels of Coruscant, it bounced off an aerial walkway and exploded.

Pulling back on his stick, Wedge nosed his fighter toward the sky. He wanted to feel some remorse for the pilots he’d just killed. He waited for concern to bubble up in him for the people who could have been hurt when those TIEs fell into the city below. He wanted something other than cold concentration filling him, but he didn’t expect it to come.
Those thoughts and emotions are normal, but normal doesn’t exist at this place and time
.

All around him TIEs and the X-wings of Rogue Squadron swooped and climbed, rolled, dove, and looped. Laser-bolts, green and red, filled the air as if each fighter was a renegade cloud spitting abbreviated lightning bolts at its enemies. TIEs exploded with regularity, showering the cityscape with half-molten bits of metal and staining the sky with oily black streaks that were the mortal remains of their pilots.

As exciting and dramatic as the dogfight raging above the mountain district was, Wedge remained cold and in shock. Out there a white needle stabbed skyward. The
Lusankya
—a Super Star Destroyer eight kilometers in length—laid waste to the area beneath which it had lain buried for years. Green turbolaser bolts pounded the cityscape, freeing the ship from the ferrocrete and transparisteel prison in which it had laired.

Wedge knew Super Star Destroyers had only come into service after the Battle of Yavin, which meant the
Lusankya
had to have been created and hidden on Coruscant before the battle of Endor.
Unless the constructor droids just built it there, then built over it
. The idea that a hundred-square-kilometer area of the planet could have been razed and rebuilt to hide a Super Star Destroyer seemed beyond belief, especially with no one noticing the ship’s insertion into the hole.
Could the Emperor’s power through the dark side of the Force have been sufficient to compel thousands or millions of people to forget having seen the
Lusankya
being buried?

As hideous as that idea seemed, Wedge hoped it was the truth. The likely alternative—that the Emperor had ordered the deaths of all the witnesses—seemed that much more horrible.

“Lead, you have a squint coming up from below.”

“Thanks, Five.” Wedge rolled to port, then dove into a looping roll that took him out and around the Interceptor’s attack vector. He let his dive carry him down into the upper reaches of the city. Using control telemetry from a skyhook to keep track of the squint, he cut around one of the star-raking spires and came up at it on a nearly vertical run.

It started to roll to elude him, but a little left rudder kept his lasers tracking. Half the quad burst missed, shooting past the cockpit windscreen, but the other two bolts hid dead on. They cored through the Interceptor’s starboard solar panel and pierced the cockpit. The squint continued its lazy roll, then tightened it into a spin that sped the ship in an ugly, squared-off tower.

Out to the south the
Lusankya’
s aft came free of the planet. The superstructure of the Super Star Destroyer and its general outline fit with what he remembered of Vader’s
Executor
at Hoth and Endor, but the
Lusankya
hull appeared to be resting on a massive platform made up of hexagonal cells. It fit the bottom of the starship perfectly, with openings in the hexagonal field so weapons could fire down at targets below and TIE fighters could launch from the ship’s belly.

Wedge frowned.
What is that? It reminds me of a Hutt’s repulsor-lift couch, hut the
Lusankya
is a warship, not a lounging crime boss
. Suddenly he realized his analogy wasn’t that far off.
The
Lusankya
is built for space travel, not fighting its way free of a planet. That must be a lift-cradle designed to get it up and out of the hole in which it was entombed
.

With the prow stabbing up into the sky, the
Lusankya
’s thrusters ignited. Searing blue plasma vaporized huge chunks of cityscape beneath the ship’s aft end. The destroyer began to move forward and upward out of the column of smoke that marked its birth.
A ship that boasts a crew of over a
quarter of a million individuals must have killed ten times that many lifting off
.