Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [97]
Face looked around. “Is he here?”
“Baron Fel? No, he’s on duty.” The warlord shrugged. “Not the most congenial of dinner guests in any case.”
“So he bites, too?”
Zsinj laughed.
Castin waited until the hallway was momentarily clear. He moved up to the closed turbolift and quickly popped open its control panel. Beneath was the usual collection of wiring and computer boards. Deftly, he stripped the insulation from two wires and twisted them together.
The turbolift doors slid open, revealing an echoing shaft beyond. Castin untwisted the wires, slapped the control panel shut, and stepped out to grab the maintenance access rungs inside. He swung his feet clear of the opening just in time; the doors slid shut again just as rapidly.
Now he had to find a level where he could have some privacy—and access to a computer interlock.
Down or up? He could see the terminus of the shaft above him, some considerable distance, but not below him. That meant there was more to explore below. He climbed down.
Moments later, he gripped the rungs as though his life depended on it while a fast-moving turbolift sailed past. The wind of its passage shook him and knocked his feet from the rail they rested on. Swearing to himself, he pulled himself back up and continued downward.
If only these Imperial twits had seen fit to label the interiors of the turbolift doors. Level 15: HANGARS, ARMORY, CAFETERIA—that would have been nice.
Still, there were clues he could interpret. The pattern of wear on the turbolift’s machinery against the walls of the lift shaft, for example. There were telltale marks where the lifts came to rest, marks where the metal of the shaft had been worn away, showing which levels were the most heavily accessed. He’d have to avoid them.
Six levels down, he found a turbolift door where the shaft showed almost no wear. A good sign. He opened the maintenance panel leading to the control box … and nearly dropped off his rung in surprise.
This control box was not standard. In it was a sealed security module, an indication that whatever was beyond the door was very important to somebody.
He leaned away and held tight as another turbolift shot past, this time rising from below, then returned to the problem at hand. This was probably too dangerous a level to enter for his task. On the other hand, he was curious. He broke out his pouchful of tools.
The sealed security module was sophisticated, but he’d grown up slicing Imperial hardware and software, so after a few minutes it yielded to his experience and opened. Within were the standard turbolift door controls, plus a variety of security measures—sensors to register whenever the doors were opened or closed, to note whenever a turbolift was called from this level or directed here, and to send all that data to the ship’s main computer. He disconnected the sensors. He couldn’t disconnect the computer relay; it also handled the permissions for people to enter and leave the level, and if he disconnected it and someone with proper authorization tried to enter or leave, his modifications would be detected immediately.
He could open the door from here without effort, but once the door was closed, he wouldn’t be able to leave again without that authorization. It was time for some improvisation. He patched a small comm-enabled datapad into the circuit, programming it to do two things: monitor his comlink frequency and issue the command to open this door when he broadcast a specific signal. That should do the trick.
He put away his tools and brought out his blaster rifle. Then he tripped the switch to open the door.
It slid open silently, unlike most turbolift doors, revealing a darkened passageway beyond. There was no one in sight. He hopped from his rung perch to the passageway floor and swept it around in a covering arc, but there was still no one to see.
It wasn’t a passageway, precisely. It was a gallery, a long hall in which one wall was made up of large viewports. The chambers