Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [33]
“Are you hurt?”
“Oh, no. Just resting.”
He straightened. “Ah. Well, good. Can I offer you a ride?”
She brought her hand from behind her head. In it was a snub-nosed blaster pistol. “Sure. In fact, you can offer me your whole landspeeder.”
He turned to look back at his vehicle. A half dozen people were clustered around it, looking at the control board, peering under the reflective sheets tied down over the cargo bay. He hadn’t heard them arrive; they might have materialized out of thin air.
He turned back to the young woman, who was on her feet. He offered her a weak smile and raised his hands. Well, at least this would be something to talk about.
By midafternoon, the human members of the Wraiths had been around Binring Biomedical several times and had spent long hours surveying the facility.
It was huge, easily two kilometers wide by one deep, most of that area taken up by fabrication plants. There were staging and loading areas for landspeeders and other transports. The place had its own light-rail depot.
Face, Lara, Donos, Tyria, Kell, Shalla, and Wes sat around a large circular table at an open-air café separated from the main Binring Biomedical entrance by a broad traffic thoroughfare. Speeder traffic was constant. Everyone on this world seemed to own a personal speeder, and the city was huge and sprawling, though not densely built up or occupied. Face estimated that he hadn’t seen more than a half dozen buildings more than three stories in height. “All right, people,” he said. “We have too much factory over there to search in one night. We need to have a good idea where Zsinj’s special facilities are, or where we can find out that information, before we go in tonight. If the special facilities aren’t at this site, we’ll definitely need to get into their computer center. Any ideas?”
Lara said, “I see six likely places for a special facility, all connected to exterior docking areas. West Sixteen, Northwest Seven, Northwest Two, Northeast One, East Thirty, or East Thirty-One.” Her designations referred to loading and unloading areas—West Sixteen, for instance, meant Western Quadrant, Loading Area Sixteen.
Wes said, “Just Northwest Two or East Thirty-One. We can eliminate the others.”
Shalla said, “Just Northwest Two.”
Tyria looked unhappy, but nodded. “Northwest Two.”
Face sighed. He hadn’t seen anything to suggest likely prospects, and their assessment baffled him. “Let’s take that again, in the same order. Lara?”
“The places I noted lack power meters on the roof. Everywhere else in that complex, you get external power meters under lockdown cases. Backup meters for the city power managers to get their data, probably if the standard meter transmitters fail. I bet they’re analog rather than digital and retain data even if their own power fails. Anyway, they’re at regular intervals … except in those six places. This suggests that those zones have separate generators and don’t depend on the city grid.”
Face gave her a close look. “Lara, are you all right? You don’t look too good.”
He was right; she seemed paler than usual, with dark half circles under her eyes. She gave him a wan smile. “You always know the right thing to say. No, I just didn’t sleep well. I’ll be fit to go tonight.”
“All right … Wes?”
The baby-faced lieutenant took a final sip of his caf and grimaced. “Cold. Um, it has to do with privacy and defensibility. Northwest Two and East Thirty-One have advantages that way. The loading-dock areas are down recessed alley accesses that can be closed, remotely or directly, by gates. Both have roof access for flying vehicles but mesh screens can be dragged across them, as well, to limit access. The alleys don’t have doors or viewports, so the traffic down them can be private.”
“Right. Shalla?”
She waved toward the east facing of the complex, which was around the corner to their right. “East Thirty-One had some vehicle traffic when we were looking at it. Really expensive landspeeders with reflective viewports. One of them was large enough to