Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 04_ Backlash - Aaron Allston [119]
Thirty meters below one such tourist-populated walkway, in a middle level of a skeletal airspeeder parking structure, a very specialized speeder waited. It was huge and stretched across eight normal parking spots at the end of one parking lane. It was black and boxy, fully enclosed, with heavily tinted viewports and circular hatches atop its rear compartment in addition to the standard doors to either side of its cockpit. Anyone who had seen the funeral procession of Admiral Niathal would recognize it as one of the official speeders of the Mon Calamari embassy on Coruscant.
But despite the fact that its identity tags claimed it to be that vehicle, it was not. The ersatz diplomatic vehicle was only a durasteel foil shell rigidly mounted to a slightly smaller enclosed cargo speeder, also black. And within that vehicle’s main compartment were banks of comm equipment, stools for four communications officers, and comfortable chairs at either end, two of which seated Moff Lecersen and Senator Treen.
“It seems very conspicuous.” Treen did not sound in the least worried.
Lecersen nodded and passed her a saucer and a cup of caf. “It is. Very conspicuous indeed. And should anyone note and recall its presence where it should not be, all questions will go to the Mon Cal ambassador.”
Treen took the cup and saucer. She passed the cup beneath her nose and gave the most delicate of sniffs. “And if, by chance, a security agent should wish to interrogate the driver or enter the vehicle?”
Lecersen glanced toward the pilot’s compartment. “Our pilot is a Quarren whose identicard matches that of one of the Mon Cal embassy’s employees. And if she can’t bluff her way past a security guard, we strap in and she roars off in an attempt to escape. If she can get clear of the direct line of sight of pursuit for a second or two—and believe me, she can, she’s a former A-wing pilot—she just has to hit a button to blow explosive bolts holding the shell in place around this vehicle. Suddenly we’ll be a completely innocent speeder headed in a completely different direction and the security agent would be diving after wreckage.”
Treen looked sad. “But we’ll spill our caf.”
Lecersen drew in a breath to reply, but the nearest comm officer spoke first. “Sir, operative coming on station now.”
“Have you patched in to the restaurant holocam system?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Put it up, please.”
A monitor situated at the end of the comm boards, facing Lecersen and Treen, glowed into life. It showed, from about a three-meter altitude, a large chamber occupied by dozens of high-ranking Imperial officers in the uniforms of four and a half decades before. They clustered around computer consoles and viewports the height of tall men. At the center of the chamber was a single black chair, high-backed, set upon a low dais, with a small rectangular table before it. In the chair sat a tall, pale man clad all in black, dark polarized optics over his eyes.
Treen blinked, clearly confused. “I thought we would be looking at a restaurant.”
“We are.”
“But that’s the control chamber of the first Death Star. Or am I hallucinating?” She looked with suspicion at her cup of caf.
“Take a closer look. This man is actually in a chamber no more than four meters by six. But the walls are floor-to-ceiling monitors. Every dining room in the Pangalactus Restaurant is similarly equipped. Some are larger, some smaller, but they all have total-immersion visuals, and Pangalactus has an extraordinary library of images to put up on the walls, including some stills, but mostly active.”
“You sound like an advertisement.”
“I am a shareholder, through a variety of intermediary names and insulators.”
Reassured, Treen took another sip. “So.”
“So the man