Star Wars_ X-Wing 08_ Isard's Revenge - Michael A. Stackpole [58]
Looking around at the room again, he realized he was standing in what passed for the small installation’s communications and security office. A dozen monitors showed shifting views of locations within the facility and he took heart that only a couple of the monitors showed folks moving around. Those individuals were not stormtroopers and looked like technicians working on some sort of research project.
Appropriating a datapad, Corran called up a site map and located one of the labs in the north wing. He tried to call for a general security lockdown of the facility, but the computer refused, indicating the user didn’t have the authority to do so. He shifted to another desk—one that looked like it had belonged to the female Major who had died as he broke in—and repeated the request.
The clanging shut of blast doors echoed through the base.
Corran slipped from the office and stopped at the Major’s corpse. He pulled the rank cylinder from her breast pocket, then headed off through the north corridor. It extended twenty meters into the rock and ended in a durasteel security door. He pressed the rank cylinder into the locking mechanism and the door slid open.
The assembled workers, all in long white coats, barely glanced at him at first. When he produced and ignited the lightsaber, they paused and looked at him. He got the distinct impression they were more fascinated by the weapon than they were threatened by it. It’s as if they see it as technology, pure and simple, with no regard for what it could possibly do.
Corran slashed the blade to the left and bisected a duraplast chair. The clatter of both halves toppling to the floor seemed to drill some reality into the techs’ consciousnesses. They returned their attention to Corran and he was pleased to note that a number of them were decidedly pale.
“I’m Captain Corran Horn of the New Republic. Either I’m here liberating you or capturing you, your choice.” He smiled quickly. “One note: I hate taking prisoners.”
He nodded toward a holoprojector on a table in the center of the lab. “Show me what you’re working on and you’d be cooperative, which prisoners never are.”
A small blond woman moved to the datapad connected to the holoprojector and started to punch in a request for data. A man moved to stop her, but Corran waved the lightsaber through the air and its hum seemed to drive the man back. “Cooperative. You want to be very cooperative.”
The woman finished typing her request and an image flashed to life above the holoprojector pad, just hanging there in the air.
“Oh, you have been cooperative with someone, big-time cooperative.” Corran felt his guts tightening into a knot. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks as if you were going to help someone build himself a Death Star.”
16
The briefing room felt hot and close to Wedge, even though it dwarfed the X-wing cockpit he’d ridden in on his return to Coruscant. Corran had flown on his wing in a borrowed X-wing and now stood with him at the far end of the briefing table. Mon Mothma sat stone-faced at its head, with Leia Organa Solo at her right hand and Borsk Fey’lya at her left. In the middle of the table a holoprojector displayed a schematic of a Death Star.
The New Republic’s Chief Councilor looked through the holograph and Wedge felt energy sizzle through her pale, aquamarine eyes. “I am certain that General Cracken and your own experience have made it abundantly clear to you that what you know in this matter is highly classified. You will not speak of it outside this room, neither between yourselves nor to others.”
Wedge nodded. “Understood.”
“As ordered.”
Corran’s voice carried with it the weariness that Wedge felt. The Rogues had brought Kapp Dendo’s Team One