Star Wars_ X-Wing 03_ The Krytos Trap - Michael A. Stackpole [116]
The Imperial facility had a layout that was a lot like a TIE starfighter’s cross-section. The lift, garbage chute, and utility area formed a central core through which ran a long corridor. It intersected two corridors at right angles, one at each end. All of the corridors had high ceilings and doors running off them every seven meters or so.
His first impression of opulence had not been diminished in his survey of the facility. The entire place had been decorated with golden-brown wooden panels and hand-carved trim. Not being often treated to the lifestyle of the rich, Corran couldn’t identify the wood, but he was fairly certain the faint rose scent filling the air came from it. He made a mental note to ask Erisi what kind of wood it was, since he assumed she would know.
More impressive than the wooden furnishings were the huge xenoscapes that took up whole walls in some of the rooms. Some were filled with water and had brightly colored fish swimming through them. Others contained dense, foggy atmospheres or boggy environments in which things flapped and slithered. Each room had its own private xenoscape and while most of the creatures looked harmless, a couple looked positively lethal.
Despite getting frightened by the sudden appearances of several luminous beasts along the wall of a darkened room, Corran was glad for the xenoscapes’ presence. Some specimens were large enough that lifeform scanning equipment might have trouble differentiating him from them, frustrating a search. In his experience that sort of equipment was most valuable in determining where lifeforms were not, so that searches could be confined to the places where they were found. He assumed that if searchers were forced to go over the level carefully, he could elude them in a deadly game of hide-and-seek.
But then, he’d not been counting on the methodical nature of stormtroopers and how they did their work. During his scouting run a squad of eight came up through the turbolift and immediately posted two men in the facility core. The remaining six broke up into two teams of three and proceeded to go through each wing room by room. Once they finished in a room they closed the doors and used a datapad to set the locks and seal the room.
He’d fled from them as carefully as he could, but they pushed on. Finally he’d found himself herded into what, in the golden glow of the large aquatic xenoscape along one wall, appeared to be a very nice library. The shelves on three walls were lined with box after box of datacards. Both desks in the room had tabletop datapads with holoplates that could provide a fully tri-dimensional data-scanning experience. The chairs all seemed comfortable, and had the room not been built on an immense Imperial scale, Corran could have considered it cozy.
It had its quirks, though. In stumbling about he stepped into a circular design on the floor. He would have thought it a continuation of the inlaid wooden pattern, but it felt cold and synthetic to his bare feet. He had barely stepped into it when a holographic image was projected down from the ceiling and filled the circle. Corran leaped back and raised his hands to protect himself.
Ten feet tall, an image of the Emperor stared down at him. The figure looked strong and almost majestic—not at all the image of the twisted, malignant man who had overthrown the Old Republic and created the Empire. The hooded and cloaked figure stood there, then slowly raised his hands toward the ceiling. They returned to his side, vanishing as the cloak slid closed, then the figure shrank to more human proportions and melted away through the circle.
That display so unnerved Corran that he immediately sought cover. He noticed a long low row of cabinets beneath the xenoscape. He opened one of the cabinet doors but found he couldn’t see much inside. The space smelled cramped and close;