Most planets were overflown at close to maximum speed. Only if the approach data showed signs of life would a probe slow to quarter-speed. Only the markers of technological habitation could make them linger as long as a single orbit. Only the most extraordinary anomalies in the scans could make a flatfish lot turn back and make a second pass. And landings were so rare as to be nearly unheard of.
Astrolabehad been diverted from work in Torranix Sector to fill a gap in the standard star charts-a gap left by the fallen Empire’s obsessive secrecy, which treated ordinary astrographic data about the territory it controlled as classified military data.
The pilot, an eighteen-year veteran known to his crew as Gabby, had overflown more than a thousand planets in his career-but had set foot on only three.
His senior surveyor, Tanea, had nearly three thousand overflights on her jacket, yet had ground-level memories of only half a dozen. The junior surveyor, Rulffe, expected to pass the five hundred mark on this tour, but had never drawn a breath on any world but his homeworld.
This mission began like all the others. The first hour was the busiest-while Tanea and Rulffe checked out the scanners, Gabby calibrated the probe’s autonav for the shortest-path mapping pass over the system’s quartet of cold, gaseous planets. They had every reason to think that their visit to Doornik-1142 would be short and uneventful, ending with a compressed data dump to Coruscant and the jump to the next gravitational well.
But it would end early, and hard.
Gabby and Tanea were playing a word game over the ship’s comm system asAstrolabe approached the second planet.
“Hemostat, ” said Gabby.
“Oh, easy. Statistics. “
“Eh-experience. “
Tanea laughed. “That’s not legal, but I’m going to give it to you anyway, because I’m such a kind and loving soul. Encephalitis. “
“Tissue. “
Tanea frowned. “I take it back. I think you’ve got me now-” Without warning the ship began to shake violently.
The cabin was filled with a roaring sound like an animal wind, a deep growly rumble, and crackling like fire.
“What the hell! ” Rulffe exclaimed.
“Something’s wrong with the engines! ” Gabby cried as the roar became a screaming whistle.
In the next moment, the air was ripped from his lungs in a frosty plume, and silence reigned.
Moments later, with the temperature plunging, the cabin lights failed.
The trouble board, now a mass of blinking red and yellow squares, provided the only illumination.
In the last excruciating seconds of consciousness, with the gases boiling in his blood vessels, the pilot tried to reach the switches to manually fire the emergency buoy and transmit the log. But his limbs, bound up by agony, would not obey him. He was already dead, and consciousness soon gratefully followed volition into the abyss.
Vol Noorr, primate of the battle cruiserPurity, watched approvingly as a fierce salvo of high-energy laser pulses blindsided the intruding vessel.
The accuracy and discipline of his gun crews pleased him, and he made a note to commend the weapons master. The firing ceased with the vessel holed and ravaged but not destroyed. A cloud of white fire and metal dust would have had little to tell them.
But there would be wreckage enough to examine, and Vol Noorr’s follow-up report could be as complete and useful as possible.
“Send out the salvors, ” he ordered. “Make certain they maintain hygienic protocols on all material recovered. “
Then Vol Noorr locked himself in the secure communications booth. A few minutes later he transmitted what would be the only alert concerning the destruction of theAstrolabe to be sent from Doornik-1142-a short burst of code aimed not at the Astrographic Survey Institute on Coruscant but at the viceroy’s flagshipAramadia , ground-moored at Imperial City’s Eastport.
“Three days in a row now, ” Princess Leia said to those gathered in the staff conference room. “Does anyone have any hint why Nil Spaar has been canceling our sessions? Is he ill? Do we know anything about what he’s been doing? “
“He’s only left the ship once, ” said General Carlist Rieekan. “He went to the diplomatic hostel and stayed two hours and thirteen minutes-“
“Never mind that. Who did he go there to see? ” asked Ackbar.
“We weren’t able to develop that information, ” Rieekan admitted. “You know what the hostel is like-hot and cold running privacy. The diplomatic missions expect that. I can tell you that the hostel host has been keeping a chalet reserved for the Yevetha since before they arrived, and this is the first time any of them have turned up there. “
“So he could have met with any or all of the legates staying at the hostel, ” said Leia.