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“Were the details of Operation Blue Plug ever made public?” Niathal asked.

Tycho shook his head. “No, they’ve been classified top secret for decades. Classified, and forgotten, owing to their irrelevance. I wasn’t aware of them. But when I began doing my analysis of the Chasin Document, I was struck by how thoroughly it resembled General Bel Iblis’s preferred logistical patterns. At first I thought it must have been drawn up by a student of the general’s…but then it occurred to me that the plan made no provisions for the use of the most modern classes of ships, and that made me suspicious. So I went looking through the records.”

“I see. And do we have any indication of how the original plan fell into the hands of someone who might revise it and pass it off to the Commenorians?”

“Yes.” A touch of dismay was visible through Tycho’s controlled manner. “Our security has been compromised. An analysis of the data banks where that file was stored indicated that the only times it had been accessed in recent years was when automated backup programming refreshed it and compared it with static stored copies. Military programmers could find no other signs of intrusion, so I requested assistance from Intelligence, which revealed the method used—”

Murmurs from other active-duty officers cut him off. Tycho glanced impassively around the table. Niathal knew the general was in disfavor with his colleagues for bringing in an outsider. She, too, regretted that General Celchu had exposed a security flaw to outsiders, but she also applauded the fact that he’d solved the problem. “By Intelligence in this case,” Niathal said, “you mean your wife.”

“Yes.” Tycho’s wife, Winter, was a longtime operative. She’d been a field agent back when the New Republic had been an ideal rather than a reality. She had helped rear the Alliance’s most popular son, Jacen Solo. Solo was one of the officers at the table, and he listened dispassionately, not reacting when Winter was mentioned.

Tycho continued, “Winter discovered that the backup code had been replaced. It was still doing its job, but it was additionally sending those files to an off-site location. Once we knew what to look for, we found similar programs backing up other banks of data. This programming was self-replicating and could have spread itself through our entire military network, but we caught it in time. It had accessed only older files and some ordnance inventories.”

“And your actions?”

“We scrubbed the malignant code and turned over pertinent details to Military Intelligence, Galactic Alliance Intelligence, and the Galactic Alliance Guard. We could have used their intrusion for disinformation purposes, but this would have been a massive undertaking—the enemy would presumably have noticed if their code had stopped spreading through our network, so maintaining the secret would have called for building an entire second network, full of a combination of false data and noncritical genuine data, and updating it at the same rate the real network is updated.”

Niathal nodded. Such an operation was possible to execute, but it would have been a tremendous drain on resources. “Do we know how our systems were violated?”

“In part,” Tycho said. “Verifiable records suggest that the initial code slicing took place during a routine data inquiry using a GAG passcode.”

That did get Jacen’s attention. “Ridiculous,” he said.

Tycho regarded him steadily. “But verifiable.”

“No one with access at a high enough level to make significant requests of the military network is a security risk.” Jacen kept his voice hard. “In addition to all the security measures we employ, I’m a Jedi. It would be next to impossible for one of my senior officers to deceive me that way.”

“Next to impossible,” Tycho said, “isn’t impossible.”

“Give me the passcode,” Jacen snapped.

Reciting from memory, Tycho said, “Three seven nine aitch oh ell forty-four underscore bee nine two one.”

Jacen whipped out his datapad and accessed a file. He scrolled through it for