Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [122]
“It’s hard to believe that a factory can be built and running in three days, but that’s progress.”
Asyr growled. “I hope they evicted the tenants of the building they destroyed to make the factory. They keep forgetting to do that when they have one of those monsters take a slice out of Invisec.”
Corran frowned. “If I remember correctly, the subsidiary computer facilities are not as well guarded as the central computer. This makes them vulnerable to an attack, right?”
“True, but using one of the computers to bring down the shields means we’re only going to get a small portion of the shields down.” Wedge shook his head. “This forces us to concentrate our assault teams in one place and allows the Empire to do the same with their defenses. This world is too well defended for the Alliance to take it by storm.”
Gavin shot from his chair and clapped his hands together. “That’s it! We take the world by storm.”
Only the dripping sound of water violated the silence that greeted Gavin’s remark. Everyone stared at him and Gavin blushed.
Wedge nodded slowly. “What are you talking about, Gavin?”
“I’m talking about the storms we’ve seen here before. A cloud comes up and a lightning storm hits.”
Corran shook his head. “Conjuring a storm up isn’t that easy, Gavin.”
“No, Corran, it is.” Gavin raked his fingers back through wet hair. “My uncle on Tatooine is a food magnate who has a virtual monopoly on water rights and moisture farms. He wants all the water he can get. Hundreds of people have come to him with schemes to bring rain to Tatooine, and probably ten times that number have come up with schemes they intend to use to break Uncle Huff’s control of the water market. Most he ignores, but occasionally he pays someone off. One of the guys he paid off was someone who had a plan to seed the atmosphere with chemical crystals around which water would condense. The water would form clouds and the clouds would produce rain.”
Wedge straightened up. “Doesn’t that presuppose there is sufficient water vapor already in the air? Aside from this place, Coruscant seems rather lacking in humidity.”
“And when there is some, a storm forms almost instantly.” Pash nodded at Iella. “We saw one of those fast-forming storms when we were at the museum.”
Corran smiled. “Perhaps we could get everyone in the Black Sun and Alien Combine to put a pot on to boil at the same time.”
Everyone laughed except for Winter. “Boiling is a good idea, but we need a lot of water set to boil all at one time. That requires lots of water and lots of heat.”
Corran opened his hands. “So, where do we get that much water?”
Winter chewed on her lower lip for a second. “Water gets melted at the polar glaciers, then pumped through long aqueducts to pumping stations and deep reservoirs throughout the equatorial areas of the city. There’s plenty of water in any one of the reservoirs.”
“But how do we vaporize it?” Wedge scratched at the back of his head. “Thermal detonators are too inefficient, and repeated strafing runs to use lasers on it would take too long. We need a lot of heat, but we need it delivered all at once.”
“I’ve got it.” Asyr smiled proudly. “We use one of the orbital mirrors. They’re designed to concentrate sunlight and deliver it to the planet to warm up the colder regions. We redirect one of them to focus on a reservoir and it’ll vaporize the duracrete, transparisteel, and water in short order.”
“The problem there, Asyr, is getting up to the mirror.” Corran shook his head. “We’d have to get through the shields we want to bring down first,