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“Have a good trip to Imperial Center, Agent Loor.”

Kirtan raised the bottle in a salute. “Until we meet again.”

Wedge felt a giddy anticipation in his belly the like of which he’d not known since Endor. He glanced over at General Salm. The man sat on the other side of the briefing table with his eyes closed, nodding to himself as he rehearsed what he would say to Admiral Ackbar. The plan they’d concocted over the last week could work, but it was risky and highly time-dependent.

The door to the briefing room opened and Ackbar entered the room. He nodded to both men, then settled down in the chair at the head of the oval table. “What have you woven together?”

Salm smiled and punched keys on his datapad. The small device fed information to the holographic projection disk in the center of the table and a starfield began to sparkle and slowly spin above it. “We have found a way to take Blackmoon.”

The Mon Calamari sat back. “I do not recall your having been told which world Blackmoon was.”

Wedge shook his head. “We weren’t. As per orders, coordinates were downloaded to and erased from all of our astromechs and navigational computers before and after the operation. Unfortunately for operational security, one of my unit’s astromechs has a special criminal investigation and forensics circuitry package. It gathers evidence and, in this case, included a star chart of the area in it.”

Ackbar’s barbels quivered. “Something will have to be done to correct that situation.”

“Agreed, Admiral, but this droid in Commander Antilles’s squadron has provided us with invaluable information that points out why we lost the fight and how we can take Borleias.”

“And more, sir.” Wedge pointed at the starfield. “Computer, isolate the triad.”

The starfield grew and stars bled out of the edges of the image. In the center three stars intensified in radiance and faint green lines stretched out to link them. A small arrow pointed down and away from the lowest point of the triangle indicating the direction of the Core and Coruscant.

“These three systems are, in descending order, Mirit, Venjagga, and Pyria. The center one, Venjagga, is home to the Eviscerator. It is using Jagga-Two as a base and is there to protect the concussion missile production facilities. While the output is considered small by Imperial standards, the fact that the world is actually producing missiles makes it worth protecting.”

Salm indicated the uppermost system, the one on a virtual straight line with Borleias. “The Mirit system is home to Ord Mirit. The Empire abandoned that base shortly after Endor and shifted the garrison all the way over to Corellia to help hold the shipyards there. Ord Mirit is really too far away from anything substantial for us to use it as a base, as we have done with Ord Pardron. Still, it is part of the sector the Eviscerator is tasked to defend.”

“Finally we have Borleias.” Salm hit a button on his datapad and the starfield dissolved into the image of the planet. “When we were there before we discovered the estimates of power generation for the planet were low by at least half and two squadrons of fighters—Interceptors no less—showed up without warning. All of the data we had about the planet had been stolen from Imperial files by Bothan slicers. Unfortunately for us, that information was incomplete.”

Wedge nodded. “We went back and pulled old data files on Borleias and they’ve provided the answers to questions that were never asked before the first operation. Back before the Empire existed, Alderaan Biotics set up a research facility on the far side of the planet. It included a geothermal generation station and a local spaceport. Because everything was located in the northern part of the planet, the facilities were built underground to avoid complications from the harsh winters. A series of scan surveys of the planet would be required to locate the sites from space.”

“What Commander Antilles says is true, sir—and the effort to locate these bases from space would have revealed our interest in the planet to the Empire.”

The Mon Calamari