[Dark Nest] - 1(139)

“Right.”

Luke was so excited by the hologram that he had let it overshadow the mission for a moment. Anakin-his father-had been in love with a beautiful woman named Padme. And Padme did not look so different from Leia. Did they finally know their mother’s name? He could sense that Leia thought so-but she was too afraid to say as much out loud. So was he.

Luke fell in beside Ghent. “You were explaining why Artoo won’t let me access those memories?”

“Because he thinks he’s protecting you,” Ghent said. “He’s a very stubborn droid.”

“But you can get around that, right?” Leia asked. “I’ve seen you slice codes on units far more sophisticated than Artoo’s.”

Ghent turned around and looked at Leia as though she had asked for the name of the last girl he had tried to pick up in a cantina-they never told him their name.

“No,” he said. “Artoo units were designed to military standards. That means their security protocols will destroy the data before they let it fall into unauthorized hands. If you try to force access, a doomsday gate will reformat the entire memory chip.”

“And there’s no way to beat that security without wiping Artoo’s personality first?” Luke asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Ghent said. “There’s a way-but you’d have to help me, and you probably can’t do it.”

“Try us,” Han said.

“Okay,” Ghent said. “Bring me the Intellex Four designer’s datapad.”

“What for?”

“Because he had to have a way to access the data when his prototypes developed glitches like these,” Ghent said. “And if he’s like most droid-brain designers, that hatch became part of the Intellex IV’s basic architecture. It’s a very complicated computer unit, so there’ll be a long list of passwords and encryption keys on that datapad.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult, assuming it wasn’t destroyed in a war,” Luke said. “Who was this designer?”

Ghent shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. The Artoo was originally an Imperial design, and the Imperial Department of Military Research kept the identities of its top scientists secret.”

“You must be joking,” Leia said. “You want us to find this guy’s datapad without knowing anything about him?”

“It’s not quite that bad,” Ghent said. “Do you remember when Incom’s design staff defected to the Rebellion with the X-wing prototypes?”

“Of course,” Leia said cautiously.

“Well, this guy was consulting with them on the Artoo interface,” Ghent said. “And after the defection, Industrial Automaton never made another design modification to the Intellex Four.”

“They were afraid to,” Han surmised. “Because this guy was the only one who could do it right, and he had defected with the X-wing designers.”

“No, not because he had defected,” Leia said. She was studying Ghent intently. “If he had, we’d know who he was. Right?”

“Right,” Ghent said. “He just disappeared.”

Luke had a sinking feeling. “When you say disappeared, do you mean-“

“Nobody knows.” Ghent turned to Leia. “That’s what disappeared means, right? Nobody knows.”





THIRTY-THREE


The sky had been dark for hours beneath clouds of dartships, roaring into the Taat nest to refuel and refresh life-support systems, roaring back out to await the arrival of the Chiss assault fleet. Jaina had given up trying to estimate how many craft the Colony had assembled for the ambush, but the number had to be over a hundred thousand. The Taat hangars alone were servicing six swarms an hour, and there were three other nests in the Qoribu system.

It makes us proud, Zekk said through the Taat mind. No other species could mount such an operation.

The Chiss will be surprised, Jaina agreed. Somewhere deep in her mind, she knew that this was a bad thing, that it would make her mission as a Jedi more difficult-but it did not feel that way to Taat. To Taat, it felt like their nests were finally going to be saved. They will pay a terrible price.

Good, Zekk said.

Good, Jaina agreed.

The roar of arriving dartships faded to a mere rumble, and the kilometer-long oval of a top-of-the-line Gallofree medium

freighter descended out of the rocket smoke. The well-maintained hull was finished in the scarlet-and-gold flames of the Bornaryn Trading Company, with an escort of corporate E-wings providing security.

Jaina wondered what the vessel was doing so far from home, but Taat did not know. Unu wished the nest to welcome Roaming Ronto, and so Taat welcomed Roaming Ronto. Taat had heard, though, that similar vessels had landed on Ruu and Zvbo carrying a big surprise for the Chiss.