Then the emergency lighting, dim orange glow rods installed where the ceiling met the walls, came on. Wedge could now see the desk stations here in the outer chamber, could see Barthis where she stood a few meters away, a comlink in her hand.
And she could see him, too. Her eyes widened.
He shot her. Nerveless, she hit the floor with a much less resounding noise than Titch had.
He appropriated her comlink, blaster pistol, identicard, and other effects, stuffing them in his pockets. In seconds, he hauled her over to the door to his prison, shoved her through, and then kicked at his chair until it was forced back out of the doorway. The powerless door slid down into place with a thump.
Beginning on the far side of the chamber, beside the door by which they’d entered this complex of offices, Wedge methodically smashed the emergency glow rods with the butt of Titch’s blaster. Completing the circuit of the room, he smashed the last rod, then situated himself under a desk beside the exit.
Sixty seconds later, there was a whine from that door as the temporary power supply someone had attached outside was activated and lifted it out of the way. Four armed and armored security officers rushed in. The first shouted, “Captain Barthis?”
Sliding quietly out from his desk, Wedge cased out through the doorway and into the dimly lit hallway beyond. He grabbed the temporary power supply now attached to the doorway control console and yanked it free. That door came down with a thud, trapping the security detail within.
So far; so good, he told himself. Now all he had to do was find a locker room, shed the clothes he was wearing-whatever sensor they’d been using to make sure the door would close when he came near it had to be in his clothes or gear somewhere-and substitute a local uniform, then find his way to a hangar and steal some hyperdrive-equipped starfighter or shuttle, with Intelligence Section crawling all over the place looking for him.
Easy.
Chapter Eight
CORELLIAN SYSTEM,OUTBOUND FROM PLANET TALUS
THE SHUTTLE WAS NOT ELEGANT; IT WAS JUST AN OBLONG MASS with thrusters and hyperdrive at one end, a viewported bridge at the other, and plenty of room for passengers in between. But in the passenger compartment, the seats were well spaced and well padded. In the back of each one was a monitor allowing the passenger behind to watch Corellian news or entertainment holocasts, or to see what the holocams spaced around the shuttle’s exterior were viewing.
Dr. Seyah kept his monitor switched to the bow view. In it, he could watch, as he always did, Centerpoint Station first appear, then grow larger and larger and larger. Just now, there was nothing to see but stars; the shuttle hadn’t performed its final hyperspace jump to drop it into the vicinity of the station.
Seyah wore a plastic shirt. It was comfortable enough that it didn’t always feel plastic, but plastic it was, and embedded with circuitry. Just now it was orange, with violent purple flames crisscrossing it, a design suited to someone wandering around in a warm and sandy vacation paradise, which was precisely what Dr. Seyah’s documentation said he’d been doing for the last few weeks. The spray-on suntan he sported, covering the fact that he’d only become paler while training Jedi to destroy Centerpoint Station, supported his cover story.
But the thing about the shirt, sold to wealthy tourists, was that whenever it was poked with sufficient energy, it would make an audible boop noise and change both color and design.
The little human boy in the next seat, dark-skinned like his mother and perhaps three standard years of age, had discovered this when he’d kicked Dr. Seyah, minutes after they’d taken off from Talus. He’d been persuaded by his apologetic mother not to kick Dr. Seyah anymore, but couldn’t be restrained from reaching over and poking the scientist-spy, causing the shirt to make its pleasing boop noise and change its color scheme. And the little boy would chuckle, and look at the new colors, and about a minute later reach over to poke the shirt again.
Dr. Seyah barely noticed. Inside, he was sick. As long as he’d been assigned to Centerpoint Station, he’d known that the sheer power and destructiveness it represented might someday result in it being destroyed. It could destroy entire stars, and the only thing that could ever keep it from being civilization’s greatest weapon of terror was the wisdom of its controllers … or its destruction.
And wisdom was in increasingly short supply.
Boop. Now his shirt was pink, with frothy clouds on his shoulders and upper chest, recreational seaspeeders skimming across red waters at his waist.
He didn’t want Centerpoint Station to be destroyed. Like almost everyone who’d worked there, he was desperate to learn more about the long-vanished species that had built it and used it to drag habitable planets to the Corellia system. It was a rare system that had two worlds lush enough to sustain life; Corell was orbited by five. If the station’s secrets could be cracked, the intelligent species of the galaxy could recreate that feat, engineering whole systems to please or accommodate the beings who would live there.