Star Wars_ X-Wing 08_ Isard's Revenge - Michael A. Stackpole [139]
Isard started toward the docking collar, but the Swift’s Captain stopped her. “Colonel Vessery’s squadrons have made the jump in-system and have taken up patrolling in case garrison troops from Bilbringi come up. I’ve told him you’ll issue a recall for his fighters to dock with Lusankya or that Helm will send him coordinates for a jump when we leave the system.”
“Very good.” Isard eyed the man up and down. “Perhaps it is time for you to move up and command something larger than this freighter.”
The man smiled. “It would be my pleasure.”
“Report to the bridge and let me know when you get there.”
The Captain straightened up to his full height. “It would be my honor to escort you to the bridge, Madam Director.”
“I’m certain, but I am headed elsewhere.”
“We only have fifty commandos on the ship. Not all areas are secure.”
Isard drew back her left sleeve to reveal a holdout blaster concealed there. “I am not without resources to defend myself, Captain Wintle. Contact me when you reach the bridge.”
“As you command.” Wintle took off running into Lusankya, as eager as a little boy being given his first airspeeder.
Isard allowed herself to smile at that, less taking joy in his display of enthusiasm than in her realization that allowing someone to attain a dream, or think a dream is within grasping distance, creates a vulnerable period during which striking at and destroying them is easy. In their joy they let their guard down, and that is when they die.
The solitary echo of her footfalls as she entered Lusankya reminded her of the first time she set foot on the ship. The Emperor had brought her to one of his hidden sanctums, one of the various satellite palace complexes he maintained on Imperial Center. He let her enter Lusankya all alone, being the first person to touch it, the first person to see it. If it was true that the very act of observing and experiencing something changed the thing being observed, then Isard had been the agent of change in Lusankya, and it had changed her as well. It became her source of power, hidden, lurking, much as she hid and lurked and worked to preserve the Emperor’s power.
She entered a turbolift and ascended to a midway point in the command tower. She exited the lift and paced down a half-lit hallway. A couple of twists and turns later she stood before a pair of red doors. She pressed her hand to the center of them and they opened at her touch. She smiled. The ship’s ability to recognize her had been hard-coded into the basic systems and clearly the New Republic had not found all of them.
She entered a room that was small by planetary standards, but huge when compared to the cabins on a ship—even a ship the size of a small city. The Emperor had ordered it finished in fine exotic woods—something he knew would please her—and the New Republic had not stripped away his handiwork. The dimmed lights glowed golden off the strips of paneling, imparting a warmth to the room that made her realize that for the longest time she had felt terribly cold and disconnected from the world.
Stepping deeper into the room, she did notice one change. There, on the back wall, between the hatchways to the rest of her suite and a small storage closet, the wood-workers had once used ebony to create the Imperial crest. The whole of that inlay had been pulled out and, in its place, natural reddish woods had been employed to display the Rebel crest.
She hated the Rebel crest’s soft curves and languid angles. To her it had no strength, no ability to stir the spirit. The Imperial crest, all hard and angular, sharp and dark, radiated strength and commanded fealty. The Rebels, they never could appreciate that fact. I will give them another chance to learn that lesson.
Isard strode to the high-backed chair set in the middle of the forward part of the room. She sank into the thick nerf-hide