Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [150]
“That’s what I thought. Now it’s time to go out and enjoy yourself.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear the commander’s orders about the more recognizable members of the squads?”
She snorted. “That was for Runt’s sake most of all. When you’re two meters tall, covered in fur, and the only member of your species in Starfighter Command, you have to lie low sometimes. But you can put on a disguise. I’ve often suspected that you sometimes put on disguises just to go to the refresher.”
“Now, that’s an idea.” Face looked at her for the first time, gave her a smile that was meant to communicate cheer. “You go ahead. I’ll be fine.”
“Hey, I’m your wingman now. It’s my job to keep you from making big mistakes. And it would be a big mistake not to enjoy the last leave you’re likely to have for a while.”
“Do I have to pull rank on you?”
“You only get to do that when it’s appropriate. That’s the unwritten law.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I read it somewhere.”
Face snorted. “All right. Give me five minutes to transform myself into something inconspicuous. Where are we going?”
Lara jerked a thumb back at her companions. “Since Elassar hasn’t run up against Zsinj—or anyone but his instructors—before now, we’re going to take him to the Galactic Museum’s new display on Imperial Intelligence. Give him an idea what he’s up against. Then we get a drink. Then you and Myn and Elassar give in to male biology and insult a bar full of soldiers, and Dia and I haul your battered bodies back to base.”
Face looked helplessly at Donos and Elassar. “You see what happens when we don’t get involved in the mission’s planning stage?”
The museum’s displays on Imperial Intelligence were not, Donos decided, the one-sided history they could have been.
The first displays on the tour gave details of the Old Republic’s Intelligence division, the secret police who were charged with protecting the Republic from subversion and treason. One display, a holoscreen within a container the size and approximate shape of a bacta tank, played a drama about Republic Intelligence commandos thwarting an assassination attempt made against members of the old Republican Senate. Another display was a transparisteel case holding a score of weapons and gadgets used by field agents; Donos recognized the technological ancestors of gear the Wraiths had carried in the field.
Another holoprojection showed a man in dark commando garments. He was dark-skinned, graying at the temples, intense interest in his eyes, his features just a little too diabolical to be beautiful. “I was Vyn Narcassan,” he said. “In my twenty-year career with Republic Intelligence, I successfully completed over a hundred covert missions. I couldn’t prevent Senator Palpatine’s rise to power or his subsequent reign as Emperor. But I could, and did, engineer my disappearance. And despite Imperial Intelligence’s burning need to silence me and extinguish all the secrets I learned—” the projection leaned forward as if to impart a confidence—“they never found me.” He drew back, his smile creating deep dimples beside his mouth, his expression one of a satisfaction so immense that it bordered on arrogance.
Something about the projection jogged Donos’s memory, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. He filed it away for future reference. Someday, when he was trying to remember something else entirely, the answer would bubble up to the surface of his mind and annoy him intensely.
Farther along the series of black, ill-lit museum display halls—the decor an attempt, Donos thought, to edge visitors into the sort of paranoid mind-set appropriate to subjects such as Imperial Intelligence—the displays became more unsettling. As Palpatine took power, the Intelligence Division became a tool of terror and retaliation. Displays chronicled assassinations, kidnappings of Old Republic loyalists, tortures, subversions. An interrogation chamber was shown in great detail, actual holographic footage of a subject being questioned about a rumored insurrection. The replay showed