Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [21]
“Leave it to Artoo,” Luke said. “Mind your station.”
“But—with all due respect, sir, even astromechs of substantially more advanced design than that old Artoo unit find our information technology almost imposs …” The lieutenant’s voice trailed off as the battle bridge’s holoprojector array flared to life, filling the room with a schematized holorepresentation of the Taspan.
Luke let himself smile, just a bit. “That old Artoo unit, Lieutenant, is not exactly an ordinary astromech. I trust him more than most people I know.”
The lieutenant’s nictitating membranes slid halfway across his eyes and flittered there for a second or two as he turned back to his console: the Mon Cal equivalent of a sheepish blush. “Yes, ah … sorry, sir. It won’t happen again, sir.”
Luke reached out and laid a hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder. “It should happen again, Lieutenant. Being a general doesn’t make me infallible.”
“But, sir—the general is also a Jedi, sir.”
Luke sighed. “Jedi aren’t infallible, either.” He turned once more to Admiral Kalback. “If you were based in this system, how would you have set up your defenses?”
Kalback’s eyes rolled to take in the whole cloud-fogged system at a glance, and nodded slowly. “Without capital ships, I suppose I would have based my starfighters in the asteroids.”
“Me, too,” Luke said. “If I were Shadowspawn, I wouldn’t even have a base. Hollow out a couple dozen of the bigger asteroids, and they become your carriers and base stations. It wouldn’t take much to make them practically invisible. It’s the perfect camouflage.”
“Then we’re lucky you’re not Shadowspawn.”
“Ben Kenobi used to tell me there’s no such thing as luck. Think about it: I’m a brand-new general. A few weeks ago I was just a jumped-up fighter jock. If I could think of it in a couple seconds, how did Shadowspawn miss it when he’s had months?” Luke paced through the holodisplay and waved a hand at the pinpoints that represented the CC-7700/Es. “Look at those asteroid clouds. How many good places are there to station interdiction ships?”
Kalback responded only with a thoughtful blink.
“So if you knew your enemy had to bring capital ships, and you knew pretty much exactly where those capital ships had to go, what would you have done?”
“I’d have filled those points with mines,” Kalback said. “And concentrated my starfighters nearby.”
“But he set up his base—and his forces—on the planet.” Luke nodded at R2-D2. “Artoo, bring it up.”
The tiny shining disk of Mindor swelled to engulf and erase the rest of the system. It was an ugly place.
What had once been a lush and beautiful resort world was now mere rockball, battered clean of life by the endless rain of meteorites left over from the Big Crush; the only significant geographic features were the ubiquitous volcanoes that boiled from cracks in the planet’s crust. Even the oceans had shriveled to widely scattered toxic sumps, churning at the very bottoms of what had once been the sea floor, and the atmosphere was so charged with vaporized metal and mineral salts that it formed a significant barrier to all forms of realspace communications; Lord Shadowspawn’s initial transmission requesting the truce, for example, had been voice-only, with significant static interference.
Even the Justice’s powerful sensors could only scan through the murk with difficulty, and at very low resolution. The only way to locate Shadowspawn’s base had been visible-light optical sensors, and even now, the task force’s best scans could not determine with any certainty how many troops, vehicles, and emplacements might be down there, aside from the major planetary-defense installations visible from orbit.
Luke shook his head, frowning. “He’s tied himself down on a planet that has no drinkable water, no food supply, and where the atmosphere’s caustic enough to cause long-term lung damage. With the interference from the atmosphere, he can barely even communicate with his fleet.