None of which was likely to help them at the moment, as they wriggled their way like worms along a damp, constricting waste-fluids pipe. Seha had said that it hadn’t served its intended purpose in all the time she had been alive. But cracks all over the ancient city infrastructure allowed water from other pipelines to leak in, some of it foul smelling. And Seha had told them that during a fierce rain, pipes like this could be flooded and washed clean.
“Don’t worry, “she’d said. “If there’s a flood, we’ll have a few moments’ warning. You just whip out your lightsabers and cut a hole in the pipe.”
“Can you whip out your lightsaber, Kolir?” Valin made his whisper loud enough to carry to the ears of the Bothan, who crawled before him. All he could see of her were her black-clad feet and lower legs, barely discernible in the light from the glow rod tucked behind his ear.
Her voice, a low growl, floated back to him: “Quiet, you.”
“Just asking. Polite conversation. You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”
“No!”
“Because that would account for your irritability.”
“So would hunger. And you’re beginning to sound a lot like red meat.”
“When we’re done here, I’d be happy to treat you to dinner.”
“Sons of famous fathers do have to try harder, to compensate.”
Valin grinned. At least she could banter.
He heard a familiar buzzing noise from ahead and stopped to listen. Yes, it was a lightsaber, but not being used in haste. Kolir stopped, too. The buzz went on for nearly a minute, then ceased.
Kolir finally passed back the news. “Seha reached a new obstacle, a metal grate. She was using her lightsaber to cut through it.”
“Her lightsaber, which I suppose she dropped, and now she needs to borrow one.”
Very distantly, he heard Seha’s voice: “I heard that.” Then Kolir was crawling forward again, and Valin followed.
Moments later he wriggled out through the newly opened, still-warm end of the tube and dropped lightly to a duracrete floor two meters down. Here, too, there were no working glow rods, but at least he could stand upright. He stood aside to let Mithric drop beside him.
Valin glanced around. The others had smudges of grease and filth on their faces. Kolir’s tan fur was matted and encrusted in places. Mithric’s ponytail had a spherical, six-legged bug climbing through it. Valin assumed he himself looked equally unappetizing.
Seha, the least filthy of them, glanced around to get her bearings. “We’re inside the second security zone, under the plaza approach to the Senate Building.” She pointed in the general direction the pipe end faced. “That way is toward the Senate Building. If we keep going, we run into the innermost ring of security, the thickest concentration of sensors. It’s not that they’re especially hard to get past individually-just that there are so many, with overlapping coverages, that it’s practically impossible to disable them all or get through them undetected. It could be done, but even someone with much better skills than mine would take weeks to do it.” Master Katarn nodded as if satisfied. “Staging from here will be fine. Though it would be better if we had several lines of sight and firing positions.”
Seha gestured forward and up, toward a dark vertical shaft accessed by durasteel rungs inset into the permacrete. “That’s the closest one. There will be a sensor at the access hatch, but we can disable it. I can take you laterally to three or four similar spots, each with a view of the front entrance.”
Katarn considered. “I need to have the position closest to Colonel Solo’s usual approach to the building. We’ll spread out among all the accesses. Seha, I want every one of us to be able to find our way back to this spot by touch. And this will be your station, too. Your job is to stay alive, stay here, and get us all out, regardless of whether the mission is a success or a catastrophic failure.”
Seha nodded, clearly intimidated by the responsibility placed on her.
Chapter 9
COMMENOR
At times like this, Lieutenant Caregg Oldathan wondered who creaked more-himself, or the aging K-wing assault starfighter he flew. Both of them had been recalled from honorable retirement to active duty when the civil war had begun, and both were in dire need of maintenance and rest. Not that they were likely to get any today. Rising through high planetary orbit to the engagement zone, where Alliance ships were once again arriving to assault planetary defense forces, he shook his head and offered up a near-silent curse. The Alliance units being brought to bear against them were not enough to crack Commenor’s defenses, but were sufficient to keep them from being deployed to other theaters of war. They were enough to wear those forces down over time, and Oldathan was certain they were doing their job.