Star Wars the Truce at Bakura - Kathy Tyers [93]
Her own tragedy. If fate guaranteed her life an ending, what tragedy did she choose?
A triumphant one. Gingerly she handled the fragile new thought. She couldn’t deliver Eppie Belden to Wilek Nereus. And there’s your answer, she told herself. There wasn’t a single Imperial officer, bureaucrat, or professor that she’d ever admired the way she loved Eppie.
Then this was her decision. She loved Bakura, not the Empire. “I’m with you,” she said softly.
Eppie seized her hand and squeezed it. “I knew you had more sense than you were letting on. It’s a hard decision, girl, and it’ll cost you … but congratulations. Now let’s see what else we can do at that repulsorlift coil plant.”
“You sent the automation haywire?”
Eppie’s smile smoothed half of her wrinkles and deepened the rest of them. “That plant’s worth all the rest of Bakura to the Imperials. If production shuts down, even during wartime, they’ll send every trooper left in Salis D’aar to restore order. That leaves the Bakur complex for me—and a few friends.”
Gaeri’s blood tingled. “I can help you better from my office. I’ve got one of the Rebels’ droids stashed away there.”
“Wait.” Eppie rummaged in a drawer and drew out a tiny bit of metal and plastic. “You know about that allegedly secure stormtrooper channel?”
Gaeri nodded.
“Orn wanted you to have this a long time ago, but he couldn’t trust you. Use it now. It’ll let you give the stormtroopers a few commands before they come for you.”
Gaeri closed her hand around it.
“Well, go! Run!” Eppie slapped her shoulder.
Gaeri flew her aircar back to the complex, dodging security patrols and steering between trouble spots and firefighting crews. The Rebels’ droid, Artoo Detoo, stood right where she’d left it, beside her desk, spinning its dome and beeping unintelligibly. Gaeri groaned. “You must be trying to tell me something. But I can’t understand any of that. Aari?”
“Here,” exclaimed her aide.
“Dump all the information you can get from Nereus’s office net, even if it means compromising our security. Everything’s about to break apart.”
“Will do.” To Gaeri’s amusement, the droid rolled to a terminal and plugged in, too. Evidently it had a good deal of perception and volition programmed into it.
“Here, Senator.” Aari had delivered a screenful. Nereus had ordered stormtroopers across the city to quell three demonstrations, and sent his top intelligence man to the coil production plant in Belden’s district. Intell officers shot first and interrogated survivors.
Gaeri clenched a fist. She must try to free Uncle Yeorg, and that Rebel princess as well. But first, no Captison had ever dallied when turmoil wrenched Bakura. She handed Aari the chip. “Install that. It’ll give us the stormtrooper frequency.”
Aari raised one black eyebrow. Artoo Detoo beeped and trilled. Even to Gaeri, it sounded excited.
Her own hands shook. They’d catch any unauthorized user on-line and change all security codes within minutes, but this would be her memorial to a brave old man.
“You’ve got it,” Aari announced a moment later from her adjoining desk. Working her main bank, Gaeriel accessed factory data for the namana juice extraction plant fifteen kilometers down the seacoast—a safely irrelevant, nonmilitary distraction—and then she dumped it onto the troopers’ information banks, replacing their data for repulsorlift coil production. When they tried to move in on Belden’s factory, they would possess all the wrong information. They’d be totally lost, and that might give Belden’s people enough time to … well, she wasn’t sure what Eppie was up to, and she didn’t want to know.
But she did call the repulsorlift plant supervisor on a conventional frequency. She warned him he had troopers on the way—and that Bakura’s resistance had begun. It might not be wildly revolutionary action, but it would confuse the Empire for a few minutes longer.
“All right, Aari. Pull the chip.”
Aari dove for her tool kit and removed the illicit Imperial chip. “I’d better melt this.”
“Right.