Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 03_ Tyrant's Test - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [132]
The heralds of the coming armada were stasis probes 203, 239, and 252.
They were the last remaining survivors from more than fifty such probes Alpha Blue and the Fleet had sent into the N’zoth system. The others had either been hunted down by Yevethan patrol ships, or had expired under the stress of their mission profile.
Undetectable in hyperspace, a stasis probe would drop into realspace only long enough to take a sensor snapshot, transmit the data to its controller, and receive the interval instruction for its next appearance—altogether, a matter of no more than twenty seconds. Only passive sensors were used. Stealthiness was essential to the probes’ survival.
Ordinarily, the most severe challenge to stealthiness was the Cronau radiation from the entries and exits. But with the probes’ zero space velocity, the Cronau radiation collapsed into a narrow wave cone, which was carefully directed away from enemy sensors.
But the last instructions received by the three probes were far from ordinary. They were unprecedentedly strange—strange enough that probes with more sophisticated system droids might well have refused them.
The probes were to orient themselves gyroscopically so that on their next entry, the Cronau wave cone was pointed at N’zoth like a spotlight. Next, they were to begin active sensing, sending out optical and radar pings at ten-second intervals. Finally, they were to remain in that mode for the next hundred minutes.
Taken together, the instructions guaranteed that the probes would be found and destroyed long before that hundred minutes had elapsed. The flow of new data would be cut off—the probes’ missions would be cut short, in failure.
But the three probes were not meant to survive. The data they were transmitting was now considered inconsequential. They were being sacrificed to draw as many Yevethan eyes as possible upward and outward—to assemble the audience for the show that was to follow.
And as heralds, they succeeded marvelously well.
Nil Spaar’s highest priority that day had been replenishing the breederies. Nearly all of the new mara-nas had been destroyed during the vermin’s clumsy and unsuccessful attempt to rescue Han Solo. The losses left Nil Spaar both grieving and aggrieved, and he had closed himself away with the most select marasi in order that the alcoves of the undamaged breederies be filled with all haste.
But the news delivered to his quarters with great timidity by the second proctor of defense was urgent enough to excuse the interruption.
“Darama—ten thousand apologies. But alien vessels of an unknown type have appeared in defense zones nine and eleven,” the proctor said, flinching. “Our fleet is being scanned. Primate Dar Bille has called the ship to readiness, and begs your counsel.”
When Nil Spaar reached the bridge, he found a disagreeable amount of confusion. Multiple alarms were sounding, and the new proctor of defense for the spawnworld was engaged in a loud clash of dominance with the ship’s primate. But the viceroy’s arrival resolved the hierarchical crisis, as both Tho Voota and Dar Bille knelt before him and then pressed their cases on him.
“Show me what has happened,” Nil Spaar said, waving away their words.
He watched earnestly as the logs of various monitors and pickets were replayed for him on the main viewscreen. Three alien probes had appeared within moments of each other—probes of the same size, perhaps even the same type, as those the outer patrols had been destroying with some regularity. They marked the corners of a lopsided triangle, the longest side of which spanned fifteen degrees of the sky. The probes were persistently hurling radionic and light energy in toward the fleet, accounting for most of the