Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 07_ Conviction - Aaron Allston [76]
“Intrusive? Ineffective? Tragic?”
“All three.”
He took the chips, saluted, and was gone.
She shrugged, not displeased. After all the dust settled, Hunor might end up being a pretty good gardener.
She hit a desktop button to seal and sensor-insulate her office, then, from a drawer, withdrew a large, elaborate comlink. It broadcast on a specific comm channel to a receiver in this room. The receiver was hardwired to a repeater situated kilometers away.
She recorded a brief message. “This is Nona. On your way back home, would you pick up a container of blue milk? Thanks ever so.” In seconds the circuitry in the comlink would modulate Parova’s voice to more sultry tones, then transmit the recording to the personal comlinks of all the other members of her conspiratorial circle.
The words were innocuous enough, a plausible mistransmission. But everyone who was supposed to receive them would understand.
Daala had taken another self-destructive, citizen-enflaming step, one that the historical archives would, in their jaded wisdom, agree spelled the Chief of State’s doom.
A pity about Fireborn. But no one would ever know that Captain Hunor, before leaving the frigate, had programmed an emergency marker buoy to broadcast Ovin’s last message and had activated a self-destruct countdown authorized by the Chief of Naval Operations. It was the perfect “bombing”—no bomb necessary.
Parova deactivated the room’s sensor insulation, summoned her aides, and rose. She’d spend the next several hours at the Senate Building. She wanted, needed, to be there for the kill.
In the Senate Building, in the increasingly crowded suite of offices appropriated by the Jedi for their own operation, Master Octa Ramis, studying the stream of data scrolling across her desktop monitor, suddenly sat upright. “Kyp.” Her voice was very intense.
Other Jedi and allies in the main office took notice. In a mixed group like this, one Master did not usually refer to another by his or her familiar name—such an informality normally arose only in more relaxed circumstances.
Zekk, dressed as a hangar mechanic, his hair spray-frosted blond and his face enhanced with a false beard, exchanged a look with his fiancée, Taryn Zel, who was dressed and made up as the sort of anonymous, generic office beauty whom many politicians wished to have nearby when holocams were present for recording opportunities. Standing beside the door, Jedi apprentice Bandy Geffer, picture-perfect as a scrubbed, eager naval ensign, looked worried. Masters Kam and Tionne Solusar, gray-haired and distinguished in the guise of expensively garbed ambassadors, focused on Octa from their seats on the sofa.
Kyp, dressed like Octa in Kuati political support team member garments, moved over to stand behind her. He frowned over the stream of words and numbers flowing across the screen. “Node one-one-three. Which one is that?”
Octa consulted her personal datapad. “That’s the monitoring unit the Fleet Intelligence team spliced into the comm trunk feed coming down from the executive-branch offices. We piggybacked a tap onto it. What’s the office of origin?”
“X-wing Commenor Aldera two-four-seven-eight.”
Octa’s eyes widened. “Score. That’s listed as Wynn Dorvan’s inner office.”
Kyp frowned as he puzzled out the unformatted blocks of text. “Am I seeing this right?”
“I think you are.”
“Daala’s issued an extermination order against a series of Klatooinian habitations. Mandos ordered to move in and leave them as smoking craters.” He blew out a long breath. “If we don’t move today, soon, this is going to happen. We have to execute Plan Delta now so we can call this Mando operation off.”
Octa nodded. “I’ll comm the Temple. Kam, Tionne, do you concur?”
The older Masters nodded. That made four Master votes to move. All the Masters remaining