Corellian Trilogy_ Ambush At Corellia Part 28

"Listen!" he said. "That's not Mom and Dad. It's just one person walking around, and that's not Mom's footsteps or Dad's. There's someone in the apartment." Jaina sat bolt upright in bed and listened for herself.

"You're right," she said. "Come on." And with that, she was out of bed and over to the door. Jacen wanted to ask her what she thought she was doing, or what she expected to be able to do against a burglar that could get past all the security in Corona House, but it was too late. He knew he would have to follow after her. Otherwise, he would have to spend the rest of his life being told what a coward he was. He went after his sister, out into the upstairs hallway, and was not in the least surprised to see Anakin hopping out of bed and following after him.

The family had been put in a two-level apartment, with the bedroom upstairs and the living room and dining room down below.

The living-room ceiling went as high as the ceiling of the upper floor, like someone had taken all the rooms that should have been over the living room and turned them into extra ceiling s.p.a.ce. The stairs leading from the lower floor came up along the west wall of the high-ceilinged living room, and ended in a landing that ran the width of the north wall. A railing ran along the edge of the landing to keep people from falling off into the living room below. An entryway at the end of the landing opposite the stairs led off into a narrow hallway, where the doors to the bedrooms were. It had taken the children about eighteen seconds after moving into the apartment to realize just how good a place for spying the entryway to the landing was. You could stay in the shadows there, and see practically everything that went on in the living room.

The three children huddled there in the shadows, and looked down into the living room. And what they saw did not look much like a burglary-in-progress. For one thing, burglars rarely turned the lights on.

A tall, pretty lady with red-gold hair, wearing a long black dress, was pacing back and forth. She had a worried expression on her face, and she kept glancing at the door.

It was obvious that she was waiting for someone. And that someone had to be Mom and Dad.

Jacen thought for a moment, then plucked on Jaina's sleeve, and gestured for her and Anakin to follow him back to the bedroom. As soon as they were all back inside, he swung the door shut, but did not let it close all the way, for fear of making a noise. "Listen," he said in as low a whisper as he could manage. "Something is going on. It has to be.

That lady is there to talk to Mom and Dad. As soon as they come back, the first thing they're going to do is check on us to make sure we're sleep so it's safe to talk."

276 s-kbAaen MallHATcOaaLM 277 "1 recognize that lady," Jaina said. "It's Mara Jade."

Jacen's eyes widened. She was right. How could he have missed that?

But Jaina was still talking. "We have to be in bed, and doing the best job we ever have of pretending to be asleep, when Mom and Dad come back. After they check on us, we can sneak back out to the landing."

Anakin and Jacen nodded, and both of them hurried back to theIr beds and pulled the covers over themselves.

This was going to be interesting.

Leia ushered Han and Micamberlecto into the apartment, and then followed them in, closing the door behind her.

"I'll just be a moment," she said. "I want to check on the children." She crossed to the stairs and hurried up to the children's room. She swung open the door and looked in on three softly breathing small bodies. Anakin's arm had slumped out again. She knelt by his bed, tucked his arm back, and gave him a kiss on the forehead. He muttered something and rolled over on his side. Leia glanced at the tw. Clearly they were fine. Satisfied, she turned and went out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Leia returned downstairs. "All asleep," she announced.

"Now then, Mara, what is the message?"

Mara was carrying a small satchel, and she opened it up.

She looked around the room and nodded toward the far end of it.

"Over there," she said. "On the couches."

The room had been designed for holding small, informal meetings. In the center of the living room were three couches, formed in a U-shape, all facing a low table in the center. The open end of the U-shape fazed the south wall, so that anyone sitting in the center couch would have his or her back to the upstairs landing-and anyone standing at the south end of the room would be clearly visible to as many people as you could crowd into the place. There was a flat panel display on the south wall. At the moment it was showing a reproduction of some painting of a stirring moment in Corellian history, but it could be set to display more or less any twO- or three-dimensional image.

Han, Leia and the Governor-General found places on the couches, and Mara pulled the message cube out of her handbag and set in on the low table. She stood over the open end of the U-shape, and gestured to the other three with a sweep of her hand. "There it is," she said.

None of the others made a move to touch it. All of them knew it might have been set to activate at the touch of their fingerprints, or body chemistry, or whatever. All three of them leaned in and examined it carefully.

"Any markings on the bottom of it?" Han asked.

"Believe me," Mara said, "I've looked at that thing up, down, and sideways. Nothing on the bottom. The only markings are the ones you see on the top."

"which look suspiciously like an Imperial code I used to crack now and again for very profitable reasons," said Han. " 'To be opened in the presence of Leia Organa Solo,' " he read, " 'self-styled Chief of State of the so called New Republic, Han Solo, and the de facto Governor General of the Corellian Sector. Code Rogue Angel Seven." Well, they're not going to get high marks for politeness, that's for sure. what's the Rogue Angel Seven business?"

"Oh, nothing very much," Leia said. "Just the key phrse for my private diplomatic cipher. Someone wants us to know they can read my mail." Micamberlecto let out a low whistle, a sound that somehow seemed wholly incongruous coming from him. He unfolded his long, multijointed legs and leaned in closer to the cube to get a better look. "Someone knows, someone knows very much about us," he said.

"The thing I don't understand," said Mara, "is why they used me for the courier, whoever they are. They'd have to know that my relations with you people haven't always been of the warmest."

"1 can answer that," Leia said. "You were second choice. Luke.

Luke was intended to be the courier for this 278 a-Mc-eAIcn A-IATCOflRLM

279.

message." She pointed at the cube, still being careful not to touch it, and pointed at the lettering peeking out from under the label. "I don't read it myself, but that looks like the written form of Jawa."

"Jawa?" Mara asked.

"The language of a race from Luke's homeworld, Tatooine. He could read it pretty easily, but most other people couldn't make anything of it without a great deal of effortthe same way you could read the Imperial code. I'll bet that's the same message as the code, intended for Luke's eyes."

"So why didn't Luke carry it?"

Leia shrugged. "I don't know," she said.

"I do," Han said. "Remember he was going to go meet with Lando about some business deal just before we left.

Lando told me that he was planning to go off on a trip before he came to the trade summit here. My guess is that Luke decided to go along for the ride, maybe on the spur of the moment."

"And so he wasn't there to get the message cube," Mara said. "So when they couldn't find him, they threw together a backup plan and came looking for me. It makes sense."

"Well, now that we all feel better apout that, how about reading the message?" Han suggested.

"Right," said Leia. "Han, start the sight-and-sound, F will you? I want to have a recording of this, in case this is one of those one-playbacknly units."

Han flipped open a small panel on the corner of the table and pressed in a b.u.t.ton. "All set," he said.

"Okay, then," Leia said. "Here goes." She reached out gingerly with one hand and picked up the cube. It immediately let out a low beeping noise, and there was a loud click. The lid of the cube popped up a millimeter or two.

"Cued to my fingerprints, all right," Leia said. She opened the lid and looked inside. "Well, that's a bit anticlimactic.

I thought there was going to be a holographic image popping out of the top. But there's nothing but a data chip." She took the small black chip out of the cube. "Han, are the player controls there, too?"

"Yeah," he said, and took the chip from her. He examined it.

"Well, it's not a one-shot, anyway. We can play it as often as we like.

He dropped it into the slot of the player set into the tabletop.

The display screen suddenly stopped being a heroic Corellian scene and went blank.

Mara stepped out of the way.

"Everybody ready?" There was a murmur of a.s.sent, and Han pressed the play b.u.t.ton.

Without any preamble, a screenful of numbers appeared, and stayed on the screen. A male human voice began to speak in Corellian-accented Basic. "This will be your only notification prior to events," the voice said. "Inform no one of this message and await instructions so as to avoid the need for further action. we will be monitoring all communications. Do not attempt to call for help. Any violation of instructions will result in an acceleration of the schedule." The numbers stayed on the screen, but the voice said nothing more. Han frowned.

"That voice almost sounded like me," he said. "why would they want to simulate my voice?"

"If they did want to, they didn't do a very good job," Mara said.

"It's close to your voice, but it's not you exactly."

"What are those numbers?" Leia asked, looking up at the screen.

"Are they another code? what are they supposed to tell us?"

"Those on the right are static stellar coordinates," Han said. "And with three extra decimal places. The Imperial Navy used to do that, but the only people who have them that accurate is the New Republic Navy.

Whoever wrote this got their data from the navy's secret data sets. Must have sliced a computer, or done some good old-fas.h.i.+oned bribery, or else the opposition has friends in high places.

And that's recent data, too." The stars were in constant motion as they orbited the core of the galaxy. It was therefore necessary to note not only where an object in s.p.a.ce was, but when it had been there.

Han looked harder at the numbers. "If I've got this right," he said, "those are all points in a rough sphere around the Corellia star system-and the last set of coordinates is for the star Corell itself. I recognize it from setting our navicomputer on the way in. At a g ue s, the other coordinate sets are all star positions, too."

"The numbers on the left are time notations in astronomical format," Mara said. "Not astrogational notation, but the time format astronomers use. Those are extremely accurate time notations as well.

The first one is about sixteen standard days ago. The others are all in the future."

"In other words," Han said, "something is going to happen at these places at these times, unless we do whatever the guy who sounds like me says in his next message."

"Burning skies," said Micamberlecto as he stood up to his lull height. "Burning, burning skies. Three days ago a probot droid came out of the sky and set off a CDF beacon signal. The CDF picked it up, and found a message for me. An image of a star explosion, with s.p.a.ce-and-time coordinates. Nothing else. The time data was sixteen days ago.

Han shrugged. "So someone got imagery of a star blowing up. So what? Mara-when did you get this message?"

"Fourteen days ago," she said. "After the star blew up."

"But Luke was supposed to get the message," Leia said.

"Allowing for time for them to discover he wasn't there, and to find Mara, and get the cube to her, and it would have gotten to him before the star exploded."

"Unless it's a big-time con," Han said. "The sort of thing Lando might have done in the old days. Suppose somebody spotted the explosion, faked up the message cube to look like it was intended for Luke, and just got there late? They could make it look like they had caused it, if they were really sharp."

"But my scientists tell me the star in the image was of a type that could not possibly undergo a supernova explosion," Micamberlecto said.

"They were quite at a loss to explain how it could be. They wanted to dispatch a s.h.i.+p at once to get a look at it. I said we could not afford the mission-"

"But you'd better afford it now," Mara said. "Solo's right, it could be an extremely clever con jobr it could be that someone is better at blowing up stars than sending messages. I don't think you can afford to a.s.sume it's a trick."

"No, we can't," Han agreed. He was punching the stellar coordinates into a data pad. "The first star on that list is in an uninhabited system. All the rest of them have inhabited planets. It looks like they are listed in order of population.

The second star just has a small outpost, but the next one on the list-" Han checked his numbers and shook his head. "One inhabited planet, population eight million at the last census. And, like I said, the last star on the list is Corell." 'Do what we say,' "Leia half whispered." 'Do what we say or we'll kill everybody." At the back of the room, at the top of the stairs, inside the shadows of the entryway, three small scared children listened in horror.

In a secret bunker deep under the city of Coronet, the Hidden Leader of the Human League read over the latest reports with a stern and hard-edged calm. Perhaps his underlings would have expected him to show some sign of jubilation that the moment had finally come, that the last piece of the puzzle was finally in place. But that was why he was the Leader, and they were underlings. Let them show their every reaction and emotion. The Hidden Leader would hide his emotions, as well as his ident.i.ty.

But for all of that, the time had come. All was in readiness.

Everything he had worked for, schemed for, plotted for, was in place. It was time.

The Hidden Leader dropped the report on his desk and leaned back in his chair.

"Begin it", he said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Uprising an! Han! Wake up and come to the window." Leia was shaking him hard.

Han lurched up into a seated position and stumbled out of bed.

"What? What is it?" He glanced at the wall clock and confirmed his suspicion that he hadn't gotten much sleep. It had been a very late night indeed, trying to hash out the implications of the threat message, trying to come up with some answer, some plan of action. And none of it had come to anything.

"Leok out the window!" Leia said again. "There, to the south of us."

Han went to the window and looked out-and swore to himself. "Devils in s.p.a.ce," he said. "It's started. It's staned." A thick plume of black smoke was rising up out of the city, about three kilometers away. He pulled open the window and heard, far off but distinct, the sounds of sirens, of shouts, of blasters being fired.

"What's started?" Leia asked.

"That's the Selonian Enclave on fire down there," Han said, his voice sad, bitter, tired. "Something has touched it off-and now it will spread from there."

There was a loud, far-off thud, and a second or two later a slight tremor that sent just the tiniest of shakes through the window. "Wide-area concussion grenade," Han said.

"About three kilometers away. Probably right in the middle of all that." Even as they watched, another plume of smoke began climbing lazily into the air, followed by another, and another. "This isn't a coincidence," he said. "It can't be.

There are people watching. Once they knew Mara had gotten the message to us, they touched this off. Has to be."

"Come on," Leia said. "We have to find the governorgeneral."

"What about the kids?" Han asked.

"chewbacca's with them, and so are Ebrihim and Q9.

They're all right. Come on."