Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [19]
“I’ve put her file in there with the communiqué. In short, she’s an Imperial Intelligence prodigy who was orphaned—she was in deep cover as a Rebel mission coordinator when Ysanne Isard was killed. Her controller was a member of Isard’s support staff and also died. Petothel managed to get in touch with Apwar Trigit, offered her continued services to him, and fed him information that led Trigit to some important temporary provisioning centers and allowed him to annihilate an entire Rebel X-wing squadron. She joined his crew and was presumed dead when the Implacable was destroyed.”
“Oh, she’s that one. So she eluded capture. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she was captured, then turned, and is being used to flush us.” Zsinj shrugged. “Where’s her holo?”
“We found that holos of her in both Imperial and Rebel records show the wrong woman. She has covered her tracks well. I’m having a simulation assembled from people who were in her Rebel academy class … which will take some time and caution.”
“Very well.” Zsinj handed the datapad back. “Pursue this. Have an agent or a cell on Coruscant try to do independent verification of what she’s saying. Find out what identity she’s currently wearing. Once that’s determined, we must find out where her loyalties lie before we commit any real resources to her.”
“Done. And Ensign Sprettyn?”
“Do you want to handle that? It’s a task for his executive officer.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“Very well. Sprettyn is under direct orders not to waste time with the simulators, but he just wants to fly too much. So spirit him off into the night. Tell the rest of the crew he’s been executed for disobeying orders. But tell him that he’s being taken aside for pilot evaluation. Put him through the simulators.”
“And if he turns out to be a good pilot trainee?”
“Weren’t you listening?” Zsinj looked regretful. “I deplore the waste of good crewmen, I really do. But we can’t have pilots who disobey orders. Evaluate his piloting performance, chastise or compliment him as appropriate, then execute him.”
“The evaluations of the three Zsinj theories have come back from Admiral Ackbar’s office,” Wedge said.
They were in the briefing room temporarily assigned to Wraith Squadron. This was an office far enough down in the building that there were no viewports; viewports would only have shown a depressingly bleak vista of dark, grimy duracrete corridor between the lower reaches of skyscrapers. Instead, the orange walls were decorated with large holoscreens that transited between views shot from planetary orbits, vistas of distant and beautiful worlds, and promotional images of hotel resorts belonging to the same chain that had once owned this facility. The Wraiths were all seated near Wedge’s lectern, except for Shalla Nelprin, who paced at the back of the hall—until Wedge caught her eye. She quickly sat in the seat nearest to her.
“Before I get to the admiral’s conclusions,” Wedge continued, “I think we ought to let the writers of the three reports synopsize their conclusions; not everyone has heard these. Runt?”
The long-faced alien stood up. His body language changed; his posture became that of a human carrying a fair amount of extra weight and he folded his hands over his belly in the fashion of a well-fed senator. “In our considered opinion,” he said, once again taking on the mellow voice of the ersatz Zsinj, “the warlord’s overt and covert tactics suggest that he will continue to add resources, industrial and planetary, with as much cost-effectiveness as possible. This means continuing the expansion of the secret financial empire whose edges we detected … and a more direct appeal to the unaligned governors that previously belonged to the Empire and now belong to the Empire’s successors. I think this means using Iron Fist in actions of direct interdiction that benefit these governors more than Zsinj himself, an effort to bind the governors to him in debts of gratitude.”
“And your