Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [139]
“You’re sure the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship? I’m taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work.”
It was indeed a risk, letting the Princess and her band of rogues “escape.” If it didn’t work, they would not only lose a high-level prisoner and a couple of Rebel spies—they would lose the Death Star plans as well. And even though Tarkin tended to agree with Motti that having the plans wouldn’t really do the Alliance any good now that the battle station was operational, he wasn’t interested in taking any risks with the ultimate weapon. But if the escapees fled to the main Rebel fortress, as Vader was certain they would, the war would be over sooner than expected.
Much sooner.
The plans, after all, would hardly survive the destruction of whatever planet they came to rest upon.
The Death Star was at last operational, and there was no place in the galaxy where a beat-up Corellian freighter could run that they could not follow.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES, DEATH STAR
Making good on his promise that he could retrieve classified information and use it was proving to be somewhat harder than Atour Riten had anticipated. While he had certain codes that would allow him to access restricted files, the nuts-and-bolts operation of a vessel as large as this one was not a simple matter. There were so many subsystems, so many backups and redundant programs, that winnowing out the precise details was time consuming in the extreme.
Were it not for P-RC3, he would never have been able to manage it.
“What do we have so far?” he asked the droid. “And please skip the part where you warn me how dangerous it is.”
P-RC3 said, “I have accessed the shuttle-craft codes. The vessel most likely to be of use is the E-Two-Tee Medical Shuttle, a small, fast ambulance craft. It is unarmed and clearly marked as a noncombat medical transport, and under normal circumstances neither the Rebel Alliance nor the Empire will fire on it. It also has limited hyperdrive capability. It generally carries a crew of six, with facilities to transport and maintain twice that many human-sized patients.”
“Good, good, that gives us plenty of room. What about the tractor beam?”
“Recent misuse of tractor beam controls has resulted in increased security. However, surreptitious programming using an ouroboros routine will, with a proper activation signal, result in a temporary overload to the beam projector’s circuit breaker in the sector from which the ship would, in theory, be departing. This will keep that particular projector offline for approximately thirty seconds before the automatic reset. A return to full power will require fifteen seconds more. A pilot of sufficient skill should be able to accelerate far enough during that time to be out of range; however, if he ventures into the path of any of the other sectors’ beams, they could capture the ship.”
“Excellent.”
“I have not, however, been able to bypass bay door controls for egress. Those systems are not yet linked to the main computer.”
“That’s no good,” Atour said. “If we can’t get the shuttle launched, the rest doesn’t matter.”
“So it would seem.”
Atour considered the problem. “What is the procedure for standard emergency medical transport launch?”
“The onboard crew sends a copy of its orders to Bay Door Control and requests permission to depart. The flight plan is checked via comlink to Flight Control and, if valid, the officer in charge gives the order to his technicians. A force field sufficient to retain atmosphere but permeable enough to allow vessels to penetrate is produced. The vessel exits, the doors are closed and sealed, the field is shut off.”
Atour nodded. “So the only reasonable solution here is to have the doors opened by the BDC crew.”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Can you produce a bogus flight plan and order for transmission?”
“I can, but I cannot insert that plan into the Flight Control systems, which are independent of the main computer. They will have no record of them.”
“But you can jam or redirect communications if you have the op-chan frequencies?