Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 01_ Before the Storm - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [26]
Lando cocked an eyebrow questioningly. “The Alderaan armory ship? Of course. Every smuggler in that sector has a story about seeing it. Which means that every smuggler in that sector is a bald-faced liar.”
“You don’t believe the legend, then?”
“Revisionist history,” Lando said, shaking his head.
“Explain.”
“I just can’t believe that when the pacifists took over Alderaan’s Council of Elders, they were cynical enough to pack all the weapons into a ship and send it hopping through hyperspace. They just had reason to wish they had done it, when the Empire came knocking a few years later.” Lando sighed deeply. “Believe me, I wish the legend was true. I wish they’d recalled Another Chance before the Death Star reached Alderaan. But it’s just another shaggy-ghost-ship story.”
“I agree,” Drayson said, reaching out and tapping the surface of the screen. “But this is a real ghost ship—probably the one that’s kept the legend of Another Chance alive. This holo was taken by the New Republic frigate Boldheart, five years ago, right in the middle of that business with Admiral Daala.”
Lando smiled wryly, remembering just how close “that business” had come to being the end of the New Republic.
“Just after this image was taken, Boldheart fired across the vagabond’s bow,” Drayson continued. “The vagabond fired back with some weapons we still don’t understand, disabling Boldheart’s engines with one shot. Then it jumped into hyperspace. It wasn’t seen again for almost two years. Bored yet?”
“No, go on.”
Admiral Drayson turned away from the briefing display and walked back to a seat at the conference bar. “That was actually the second documented sighting. The first to spot it was a Hrasskis monitor ship working the Teljkon system.”
“Thus the name.”
“Right. The Hrasskis took it for a derelict and tried to intercept it. Now, mind you, they’d been hailing it for hours, and not a peep in reply. Then the vagabond broadcast a five-second wide-spectrum modulation that nearly burned out every comm circuit on the Hrasskis ship. There’s a recording, but it’s so distorted it’s almost useless. Anyway, thirty seconds after it sent the signal—”
“Let me guess. Skipped into hyperspace.”
“On the numbers.”
“What about the third sighting?”
“That was ours. We thought we were going to be smart. An Intelligence Service ferret tried to attach a locator limpet to the vagabond’s hull. Never even got close.”
“And the fourth?”
Drayson leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingertips on the armrest. “It’s in deep space near Gmar Askilon right now. We’re trailing it with another ferret—”
“Keeping a safe distance, I hope.”
“Very safe. But we’re going after it,” Drayson said. “Intelligence is putting together a small task force this very minute. They mean to catch the vagabond, board it, and unravel the riddles. Colonel Pakkpekatt of the Intelligence Service is in charge. If you’d come to me even a week from now, it would have been too late—they’d already have sailed.”
“Is that so,” Lando said, his face as unreadable as if he were at a sabacc table. “What fortuitous timing.”
“Indeed. So—is that interesting enough?”
“It’s an interesting story,” Lando said pointedly. “I don’t see anything interesting to do yet, though.”
Drayson’s expression turned gravely serious. “I’d like to put you on Pakkpekatt’s ship—nominally as Fleet liaison. Boldheart was regular navy, after all. Intelligence can’t deny that they have an interest.”
“But I’d really be there for you?”
“No,” said Drayson. “I could have put any number of Alpha Blue agents in the task force. In fact, you don’t know that I haven’t. No, I don’t want you to report to me.”
“Then why do you want me on the mission?”
“Because you think like a smuggler, and Pakkpekatt thinks like a colonel. Because you have a way of getting yourself where people don’t want you, past traps that others don’t see until it’s too late. Because I think the mission has a better chance of succeeding if