Star Wars_ X-Wing 01_ Rogue Squadron - Michael A. Stackpole [40]
Spreading out from that central point, brilliant neon lights in all manner of colors pulsed as if nerves carrying information to and from the palace itself. Kirtan followed one river of light as it shifted from red and green to gold and blue, from the heart of the world out to the horizon. As the ship swooped lower, he saw depths to the lightstreams, where buildings had accreted, sinking the streets into twisted, broken canyons. He knew the light could not reach all the way down, and his imagination had no difficulty in populating those black gashes with nightmare creatures and lethal danger.
But the lethal danger I face dwells above all this. Kirtan sat back as the shuttle banked and the nose came up a bit. The pilot leveled the Objurium off while the copilot flicked a switch above his head. A red square appeared on the shuttle’s viewport and surrounded the top of one of the palace’s towers. Lights blinked around an opening far too small to admit the shuttle, even with its wings folded up.
“We can’t be going there. Where will we land?”
“It looks small, Agent Loor, because we’re still three kilometers away from it.”
Kirtan’s mouth hung open as his brain fought to put everything he was seeing in perspective. The streets below, which he had taken to be narrow tracks, had to be the size of major boulevards. And the towers, they were not slender, needlelike minarets, but massive buildings designed to house hundreds or thousands of people on each level. And the structures on the surface, they armored the planet with layer after layer of ferrocrete.
Kirtan shuddered as he realized how deep the warrens had to run on the planet, yet he doubted anyone had set foot on the soil beneath Imperial City for centuries.
It all struck him as impossible that a world could house that many people, but this was Coruscant. It was the heart of an Empire that boasted millions of known worlds. If each one required only a thousand people to deal with it and its problems, Coruscant would have to be home to billions of people. And to see to their needs, billions more would have to be in residence, working, building, cleaning.
Suddenly he went from wondering how Coruscant could house so many people to wondering if even billions of individuals were enough to oversee the Empire. Or what’s left of it.
The Objurium swept in closer to the tower. The opening appeared to be a black hole waiting to suck him down and rend him atom from atom. Though logic argued against expending the money it cost to bring him to Coruscant just to kill him, he knew that Death hovered close and would be seeking him out. He had failed and the price the Empire demanded for failure was dear indeed.
Kirtan ran a finger around his collar to loosen it. Arguing against his death, aside from the wasted expense of his travel, was a thought that proved utterly ludicrous to him. The only way he would stay alive was if he had something the person who had summoned him here found valuable. But he was just one person. The only thing he imagined he possessed that was not duplicated by ten or a hundred or a thousand other people on Coruscant was his life. I have nothing else that is unique.
The opening loomed close enough for Kirtan to see figures moving around in its shadows. The pilot punched a button on the command console. The shuttle’s wings rose and locked up while the landing gear descended. The shuttle drifted forward, easing into the hangar, then slowly settled to the deck. It landed with only a slight bump, but Kirtan’s nerves magnified it until it felt as heavy as the blow of a vibroblade on his neck.
Steeling himself for the worst, Kirtan