[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(27)

have disappeared. And the clerk of records on Cloud City refuses even to answer our inquiries, citing something he called the Founder’s Contract.”

Shaking his head, Pakkpekatt said, “Under his uniform, General Calrissian remains a smuggler and a scoundrel. Was anything else found in the sweep, Pleck?”

The agent frowned. “Yes, Colonel—though I don’t know what significance to assign to it.”

“Tell me what you can.”

“Yes, sir. We recovered a relatively large amount of an unidentified biological material from the facing of the sled this area, here,” the agent said, pointing. “The quantity is on the order of two million cells—I should say cell fragments, because most were mechanically damaged.”

“Mechanically? As if these pieces had been used as weapons?”

“No, sir. The distribution was too uniform. More like—well, sir, more like you’d sat down and sanded the outside of the frame with a roughskin rat. I’m sorry, sir, I know that’s rather unscientific.”

“You said the cells were unidentified.”

“Yes, sir. And they may stay unidentified. The leading theory is that they may be artificial cells, a mechanism rather than an organism. The genetic sequences are much too short and seem to have little extra material.

With your permission, we’d like to use one of Glorious’s hyperspace probes to send a sample back to the Exobi-ology Institute on Coruscant.”

Pakkpekatt bared his teeth. “See to it, Lieutenant,” he growled. “It should have been done when you first thought of it.”

The agent hurriedly left the room under the heat of Pakkpekatt’s glare, and the colonel turned his attention back to Taisden. “Was anything else recovered from the location where these were found?”

“No, sir. Nothing else. Stendaff is still on station, sweeping the area, but it looks clean down to decimeter resolutions.”

akkpekatt picked up the short section of sled frame. “A most curious kind of flotsam, Agent Taisden.

Difficult to construct a scenario to account for it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are all of our people off Marauder now?”

“Yes, sir. The section came over with me, and Captain Garch had quarters assigned to them on X Deck.”

“Then I suppose I have delayed as long as I can, hoping that these foolish orders would be withdrawn,” said Pakkpekatt. “Advise Captain Hannser that I am releasing Marauder from this command effective immediately.

He is to return his ship at best possible speed to Krenhner Sector Station and report to the commodore there.”

Taisden nodded. “I’ll see to it immediately, sir.”

Left alone in the wardroom, Colonel Pakkpekatt slowly cupped his right hand and began to smack it against the table, driving his friction pads against the retracted points of his nails. The pain proved unequal to the anger he was wrestling, so he methodically increased both the force and frequency of the blows.

There was an eerie deliberateness to his self-abuse, and his face remained expressionless throughout. He did not stop until the pads were swollen and pulpy-soft, and the pain shooting up through his arm and deep into his chest had bled off the restless need that impatience and frustration had bred in his pedrokk gland—the fighter’s heart.

By that time Marauder was ready to depart, and Pakkpekatt waited until he had watched it go, jumping toward Krenhner the moment it cleared convoy radius.

Then he turned to his recording log and began at last to dictate a report he did not want to make for a supervising committee he no longer could say he respected.

Four little ships, groping through the dark for a few short days. That is all your lives are worth to them. I never would have thought I would see such dishonor. I never thought I would feel such shame.

Over the next several hours, Artoo added twenty chambers to his map of the vagabond, numbering each in turn as the team visited it. To help them remember where they had been, he also recorded for each a fish-eye holo of what Lando had dubbed “the pop-ups.”

So far, they had discovered two basic patterns for the pop-ups. Eight of the chambers were like the first—one side of the chamber would reveal a large figure that might have been a sigil, a sculpture, or symbolic writing.

The opposite face would reveal a finely detailed geometric design that Lando and Lobot both were convinced was the map of a temple or small city. Somewhere in every map room was a key that triggered Qella music, though every “song” was different from the others.

Apart from the music, the pop-ups in the map rooms appeared to be static. They remained on display as long as the team lingered; when the team moved on to another chamber and the connecting portal closed, the pop-ups collapsed and vanished as quickly as they had appeared.