Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [162]
Like Moff Tarkin, she thought. Trying to figure out what would cause her to break.
“Now, it’s very possible that you will escape the destruction by virtue of concealment in these tunnels. But I assure you”—and that flicker of spitefulness crept into her voice again—“everyone in the valley will die. That presumably includes your husband. And in every other valley on this planet. What did you do to your droid?”
“I didn’t do anything,” said Leia quietly. “After his attempt on our lives last night he had to be rewired.”
“You changed its schematic!” Irek was shocked. “But a droid can’t run if you change its schematic!” He looked in horror from his mother to Keldor, as if for confirmation of this fact. “Old Man Magrody said that every droid has a standard schematic, and—”
“Professor Magrody,” said Leia, “obviously didn’t hang around much with spaceport mechanics.”
“But that can’t be the reason!” Irek slewed in his chair to face Keldor again. “Nobody rewired the Eye—”
“That we know about.” The chubby little man glanced once more at his sensor screen, and in the shadowy fragments of light his face looked suddenly fallen in, as if someone had let the air out of him. Leia could almost hear his battle against panic in his voice. “But the fact is, my lord Irek, we don’t know if the damage to the activation relays was the only reason the Eye of Palpatine didn’t rendezvous with the assault wing here thirty years ago. It’s just possible that enemies of the New Order did learn what the relays were supposed to summon, and did get a saboteur on board. If part of the computer core was damaged, for instance, in an attempt to overload the reactors—”
“Can you fix it?” Roganda put a hand on her son’s wrist, to forestall whatever he was getting ready to say with his intaken breath. “Take a ship up there and disable the mission command center?”
Keldor’s eyes shifted. Leia could almost hear him estimating the possible strength of the rock above and around them, measuring it against the firepower of the Eye’s torpedoes …
“Of course I can.”
“And if you can’t,” Leia snapped sarcastically, “I suppose you figure you’ll be safer up on the ship than down here?”
Roganda’s eyes met Irek’s.
“I blew out the central servo on the landing silos,” said the boy. Then, defensively, “You told me to!”
“Theala Vandron’s ship is still on the ice pad.” Roganda got to her feet, nodded to the portable terminal in the corner. “Bring that,” she said. She paused, considering Leia for a moment, then said, “Bring her. If you can’t get that battlemoon disarmed we’re going to need a hostage.”
Irek’s lightsaber flashed out, flame-colored in the darkness of the black-draped room. He stepped close to Leia, the cold cautery of the blade hissing faintly as he brought it toward her face. “And you’d better not try anything,” he said, a glitter of evil glee in his smile. “Because I don’t think we need a hostage that badly.”
The corridor outside was empty.
Garonnin, thought Leia desperately, pushing aside the last traces of the drug’s breathless dizziness. There has to be some way to alert Garonnin that he’s being betrayed …
She cast a swift look toward the red alarm buttons every dozen meters or so along the wall, wondering if Irek’s reflexes were up to slicing her in two if she lunged for one.
She rather suspected that they were.
“I warn you, Madame,” panted Keldor, hurrying at Roganda’s side with his portable terminal bundled up under his arm and straps hanging in every direction. “The gunnery computer was a semi-independent entity from the central mission control computer—the Will. If there’s been a problem with the Will itself, it may not even let us on board, much less permit us into the central core.”
“You mean we may not be able to stop the Eye, or control it afterwards?” Her obsidian-black eyes glittered like a snake’s, furious at the stupidity that dared to unravel her plans.
Keldor flinched. “There is that possibility.”
“Then wait here.” Roganda ducked through a nearby door in a swirl of white skirts, and Irek