Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [47]
When Lara Notsil examined the file containing the recording of Colonel Repness’s offer to her, it seemed much larger than their conversation should have accounted for. Perhaps, she thought, he’s been using his transmission-detecting sweeper in conversations with others.
He had. In the file were her conversation with Repness, plus the colonel’s subsequent discussions with one of his “team” subordinates, an instructor captain named Teprimal; in their talk, they noted details of their plan for the hiding and subsequent sale of the A-wing.
And there was more. Lara discovered, with glee mixed with a measure of professional horror, that Repness tended to turn on his sweeper whenever doing his most private work at his computer terminal. His paranoia about unseen listeners was his undoing, because he tended to mumble to himself, verbalizing his passwords and secret computer account names when working this way.
Within minutes of listening to the recording, Lara could access all of the man’s recordings that concerned his lucrative side business. It was a black-market business, well entrenched on Coruscant but just getting under way on the training frigate Tedevium, in which cargo was diverted from its intended destination—not even making it onto incoming-supplies manifests—and sold, profits making their way into the pockets of Repness and his team.
She found records of her own scores as a pilot trainee, plus those of a dozen other pilots Repness had subverted or tried to subvert this way. Some, like Wraith Squadron’s Tyria Sarkin, had refused to steal for him … but had been blackmailed into keeping silent. Others had joined his team. The records didn’t indicate whether they had been willing or reluctant. Still others, pilot trainees Lara knew, were going through the ensnaring process even now.
There was no sign that Repness had any allies in the Intelligence division of the armed forces, or in the Inspector-General’s office. She wrote a letter to both General Cracken of Intelligence and to the latter military division. It read,
i am the unseen, the unknowable, the unstoppable.
no computer can stand before me. gates open for me. back doors are revealed to me. knowledge willingly spools itself out for my inspection, i am the jedi of the electronic world.
i have found evil aboard tedevium. i have found corruption, like the jedi, i shall cut it down.
examine these files, test them for integrity. you will find they are the truth.
go where these files lead you.
do what you must do, as i do what i must do.
signed, white lancer
She went back in and inserted some random misspellings and some painful grammatical errors. When it was done, it was, she decided, a note typical of code-slicers who performed anonymous sabotage on computer systems. The true extent of her computer skills were not known on Tedevium, and those of many other crewmen and pilot candidates were; many of them would be suspected of this act, and in order to boost their reputations, some would probably allow the investigators to believe that they were, in fact, the secretive White Lancer.
To the letter, she attached Repness’s recordings and all the passwords and account names she had so far uncovered.
Then there were the files demonstrating how Repness had ensnared other pilots. She paused over those.
Best to expose all those pilots, she decided. Their careers would be ruined, at tremendous training cost to the New Republic—that is, the Rebels—and this would help deplete the Empire’s enemy of skilled pilots. Besides, if they became pilots, most of them would eventually die in action against Imperial pilots. They were better off having their careers torpedoed. If they knew she’d done it to them, someday they’d thank her for it.
Still her hands paused over the keyboard. As a child, she’d hoped to be a starfighter pilot. When she’d followed her parents’ career path instead, going into Imperial Intelligence,