Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [61]
Security appeared to be lax, but Corran picked up on things that Erisi clearly missed. Stormtrooper squads did patrol the main floor and passed certain checkpoints at fairly precise intervals. They appeared to be most concerned with breaking up or moving along knots of non-humans. Those with legitimate reasons to be in the building were urged to be on their way, while those gawking at the magnificence of the Palace were directed to join escorted tours or to leave.
The upper galleries of the Grand Corridor appeared to be alien free, yet the mechanism for maintaining them that way was remarkably unobtrusive. Side passages leading to stairs or lifts narrowed considerably, forcing individuals to move through them no more than two or three abreast. Guards wearing a more stylized and esthetically pleasing form of stormtrooper armor maintained posts at these passages and gently redirected anyone who appeared to be lost. They did respond to questions, but only with the directions to the nearest visitor and information kiosks where the questions could be asked again.
The stairs themselves doubled back twice. This meant anyone who got past the guards on the lower level could be isolated on the middle staircase and dealt with. The landings on either side of the staircase appeared normal, but Corran knew of a dozen ways anyone traversing them could be trapped or, with a laser cannon emerging from behind a hidden panel, cut down with little or no risk to Imperial personnel. While quite fantastic in its design and execution, the Grand Corridor had not been created without an eye toward security.
Corran made some quick assumptions about other precautions that had to have been set up. He suspected that in the narrow corridors below there were weapons detectors. The technology for locating an inorganic object next to the flesh of or within the body of a living creature was old and unobtrusive. By detecting the disturbance a weapon made in the creature’s bioelectric field or the planet’s own magnetic field a computer could comlink to the guards the identity of the person carrying the weapon, its location on his body, and even the type of weapon he was carrying.
Other passive monitoring devices could be used to locate things like gas canisters or bombs by picking up on molecular traces coming off them. For all Corran knew the ch’hala trees could have been genetically altered to make them into botanical sniffers. The patterns of light flashing across their bark could have some sort of significance, alerting Imperial officials to danger without anyone in the Grand Corridor being the wiser.
You’re definitely thinking too hard about this, Corran. He smiled and looked over at Rima. He caught her staring at him for a moment, but her eyes had enough of a soft focus that he knew she’d not been seeing or thinking about him. “Imperial Center to Rima. Hello?”
She blinked, then grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. I was thinking.”
“That was apparent. What about?”
Rima hesitated and that caught Corran’s full attention. Throughout the time he had spent with her he’d come to realize two things: She was incredibly observant and she seemed to forget little or nothing of what went on around her. Actually Corran couldn’t remember having caught her out at having missed a detail about something, and he’d frequently been corrected by her. The only times she had previously hitched before answering a question were times when the answer had the potential of violating the security envelope surrounding the mission.
Rima’s expression softened somewhat and Corran sensed she was about to open up a bit about herself. “I was thinking that we might actually have a friend in common. He was from back home, though I did not know him there. I was wondering how he was.”
Corran smiled and picked