Star Wars_ X-Wing 05_ Wraith Squadron - Aaron Allston [86]
They did as she said, all but Janson.
“Two.”
“Yes, Five.”
“Can you transmit that signal by touch?”
“Yes, Five.”
“Do so.”
The door moaned behind them until it was shut again.
“Hand lights on,” Kell said.
The commandos’ handheld lights sprang to life, tiny beams illuminating small portions of the spacious hangar.
“You all know your assignments,” Kell said. “Let’s go.” He headed toward the doors that gave access to the hallway with the bunker’s main freight turbolift; all but Falynn and Piggy followed.
In the hall, Grinder took only a minute to bypass the turbolift controls. Then he tried to lift the turbolift’s massive top-closing door. It stubbornly refused his efforts.
“Allow us.” Runt stepped in, affecting a swagger Wedge hadn’t seen before, and put his fingers under the door’s bottom lip. He straightened easily, lifting the door to waist height. He showed big teeth in a near-human grin. His long, furred hands were steady as they held up the door’s enormous weight.
Kell ducked to peer inside. The turbolift shaft went down six or more stories, more than the three Face had been shown; the lift car was far below in the dimness. There were access rungs on one side.
On their way down, Grinder spoke to Kell; Wedge barely heard the whispered words. “I haven’t seen any cameras. Microphones. No wiring for them in the wall behind the turbolift access panel.”
“Have you seen enough to be sure there aren’t any?” Kell said.
“No. I’m giving you an impression.”
“Keep looking.” Face’s tape hadn’t shown any armed guards, either. The bunker complex might rely on other types of defense … and not knowing what they were had Kell worried.
The turbolift was a freight model, with no roof to impede them. They dropped the last six feet to its floor. Grinder immediately got to work bypassing the door’s electronics, then Runt, with little apparent effort, heaved the car’s door and then the armored exterior door up.
The door opened onto a loading area. It was full of loading carts and even some repulsorlift vehicles, with transparisteel products loaded onto some of them.
There were crystal-clear cubes three meters on a side, with small circular holes and an opening, one meter by one meter, cut into the side; there were large, thick sheets shaped as irregular polygons; there were curved disks over two meters in diameter, looking like enormous lenses.
Wedge looked at these last items. “TIE fighter front viewports,” he said. “And the big sheets, unless I’m mistaken, are bridge or lounge windows for a capital ship.”
“Sounds like support for Zsinj’s Super Star Destroyer,” Kell said. He dropped his voice to a whisper, tones probably too low for planted microphones to pick up. “But then why wouldn’t Eight have been shown this level?”
Wedge frowned as he considered the question. He responded in a whisper. “The governor on the other world was reluctant to discuss things with Eight when he’d obviously talked about them with Captain Darillian. My guess is that Zsinj is compartmentalizing information about himself. Structuring things in cells, like a resistance movement, so that information is contained.”
Kell nodded. “When one cell falls, the rest remain safe.”
Grinder hissed at them from the doorway to an adjacent chamber. They joined him.
It was an operations control center, banks of computer consoles and black viewscreens that probably showed crucial areas of the manufacturing chambers when live. “The home of data,” Grinder said.
“Drain it dry,” Kell said. “Replicate everything you downlink into Two’s comm gear memory.”
Grinder’s face twisted. “That’ll take extra time.”
“Not much. Do it.”
Wedge guarded Kell while the mission leader explored other chambers of the sixth subterranean level.
This was just another manufacturing floor; it received superheated transparisteel ingots from the larger foundry floors above and shaped them into parts best suited to Imperial warships and fighters, plus those