Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [100]
Wedge looked at the man on the floor, then shrugged. “We have enough, I think, to begin some planning. Winter, if you can have your slicers begin the programs we’ll need, that will be a big help. Asyr, we’ll need the basic security setup at the Palar plant, plus the routines and any computer security information you can get us.” He looked at Vorru. “And you …”
“I will find out if any of the computer core technicians have any interesting vices we can exploit or an interest in exploiting the vices we have to offer.”
“I think that will be fine.” Wedge smiled. “In two days we will meet again and see how close we are to making the plan work.”
31
Kirtan Loor’s hands convulsed into fists. Who is more stupid, a fool or someone who relies upon a fool? Zekka Thyne’s initial report about a planning meeting for what the Rogues would be doing to bring Imperial Center down had seemed promising. Thyne had told him who had attended and it had pleased Loor to learn Iella Wessiri and Corran Horn had been reunited. The fact that he’d not known Iella was living right under his nose did not thrill him, but her location had been outside his area of immediate interest until she became part of Rogue Squadron’s operation.
The datafiles that the Imperial Intelligence organized crime division had sent over to him had provided interesting information on Fliry Vorru as well as the Devaronian, Dmaynel Kiph, but of Asyr Sei’lar they had no record. Though he had been chastened before by Ysanne Isard about drawing unwarranted conclusions, Loor decided Sei’lar was probably a member of some Bothan spy network. The possible existence of an independent Bothan Intelligence operation on Imperial Center suggested the Alliance was not a wholly unified front, which meant Iceheart’s strategy for dividing and destroying them piecemeal had even greater merit.
What angered Loor was Thyne’s deception—a deception that became quite apparent from subsequent reports. Thyne had said the first meeting had merely been organizational and had not produced any sort of a working plan. In the five days since that meeting, though, Thyne had been given certain tasks to perform that ran outside the usual duties he had within Black Sun. Initially he had overseen the collection of all sorts of data from the Black Sun’s gambling and spice operations on Imperial Center, but he only collected the datacards. He had no idea what information they contained.
After two days of that he had been shifted over to equipment procurement. While his activities provided Loor with an interesting window on the black market availability of almost anything, it did not give him the sort of information that would be useful for countering the Rogues’ operation. Thyne was overbuying weapons and having them delivered to any number of sites. In this Loor recognized an effort to provide far too many sites for Imperial Intelligence to adequately cover.
It seemed clear to Loor that Thyne had been isolated by the command group and given jobs that, while valuable, were not crippling if bungled. Thyne was not the only person buying weapons on the black market so Loor had to conclude that perhaps none of the arms Thyne had collected would be used. Loor would have decided Thyne’s cover had been blown, but Vorru’s file left little doubt about how the man would have been dealt with if Black Sun knew Patches was working with the Empire.
Several things seemed obvious to Loor. The first was that Thyne had managed to show himself to be unreliable. He assumed this was because Thyne clearly would have loved to supplant Vorru as the head of Black Sun and Vorru, just as clearly, would want to prevent that from happening. Thyne’s animosity for Corran and Iella could have also made him a liability in any planning councils. Loor had decided that Thyne had been ejected from the initial meeting before plans had been discussed and only later learned that Thyne had been concussed and amnesia blanked