Star Wars_ X-Wing 03_ The Krytos Trap - Michael A. Stackpole [120]
Lost in his thoughts, he stepped into the circle in the middle of the floor. The Emperor descended upon him and Corran jumped back. He snarled up at the image and marched on through it. “Quite the mess you created with your Empire, you know.”
Corran realized that Isard’s actions made no sense to him because she was coming at things with an Imperial sense of ethics—ethics that frightened him. She fed his hatred of Tycho because it gave her a button to which she knew he would react. His hatred was unthinking, and she didn’t want him thinking at all. Once she got me reacting through emotions, she could manipulate me. The problem was that my feelings in favor of the other members of Rogue Squadron overrode my hatred for Tycho. And, maybe, just maybe, somewhere deep down I didn’t doubt him.
However, there is evidence of a spy being connected with Rogue Squadron. He returned to the datapad and punched in the names of all the personnel in the unit or support staff. They all came up blank. Feeling a bit frustrated, he called up Tycho’s file again and read over the parts concerning his time at Lusankya. The details were pretty much in keeping with what Tycho had told him: he didn’t remember much of his time there, then he was transferred to Akrit’tar. The Lusankya file made reference to his escape from that facility and included a couple of notes about Tycho’s life since then, but didn’t include much detail until data started flowing from the Rogue Squadron source.
Pacing again, Corran began to work things out in his mind. If Tycho was not an Imperial spy, then he wouldn’t have been meeting with Kirtan Loor. As much as Corran was certain he had seen Loor that night, he admitted that having seen the man earlier in the day at the Imperial Palace had rattled him, and could easily have made him misidentify a Duros in a hooded cloak as Loor.
Bits and pieces of things began to drop into place for him. By a simple process of elimination he narrowed down the list of possible spies, and one name rose quickly to the top of the list. No doubt about it—but then, that’s what I thought about Tycho. I have to get clear of here and check some things out. I can’t afford to be wrong this time.
He looked up as the Emperor towered above him. Corran stepped back. “You know, the sheer ego it takes to plant your image in your own facility is unbelievable. This display does nothing but take up space.” It struck him as another useless bit of Imperial ostentation. Then it occurred to him that just as the cabinets hid the structure that supported the xenoscape, the holograph did do more than one thing.
It stops people from standing on this spot.
Corran stepped forward and oriented himself to face in the same direction as the Emperor. The world hazed out slightly as the hologram settled down over him, but out of the corner of his left eye he caught the momentary red spark of a low-grade spotting laser being shot at him. It flickered on and off a few more times, then the Emperor’s hologram collapsed around him. As it did so, the circle shifted and began to descend beneath the level of the floor.
The cylindrical hole closed over the top of him, then a man-sized panel slid open in front of him. Through it he saw the entry portal to a luxurious private tunnel-shuttle. Similar to what we used to move prisoners from the detention center to court on Corellia, though this is much, much nicer.
The panel closed and the circular platform began to ascend again. Corran found himself once more in the library and smiled. He went to the datapad, got back to the prompt he’d found initially, then shut the holopad off. Picking up the holdout blaster, he inserted himself again into the Emperor’s image. The lift again took him down and he entered the tunnel-shuttle.
In the forward compartment he found a keypad and controls, but he had no idea how to program destinations. Up at the top he saw a red button