11
THE MODDELL SECTOR
APPROACHING THE ENDOR SYSTEM
At the dark edges of the star system, a large lump of rock drifted all to itself. It had neighbors, though they were millions of miles apart. Every star system in the universe began as a kind of swirl of raw components, just gases and chemical reactions and chunks of rock compressed into dense clouds, a kind of cosmic soup that agglutinated and manifested all sorts of geological and atmospheric anomalies that eventually became stars, planets and moons. But there were always leftovers, pieces of rock and whirling gases that never found a home and were instead slung to the edges of the newly-made star system. Every star system was encased within billions and billions of rocks, planetoids, carbonbergs, and sometimes even primordial black holes no bigger than a coin. This dense cloud of random debris was usually the most treacherous to navigate for anyone approaching through hyperspace.
This one lonely rock we are looking at, this lonesome kilometer-long malformed lump, had been here for ages, completely unattended, undocumented, and unremarked-upon. It had no valuable minerals, no ice to be found on it, totally useless to a civilized society. The only purpose rocks like these had served, and would likely ever serve, was as the hiding places for scoundrels of every kind.
The Lady of Hope Ascendant was parked on this rock, hiding behind a half-kilometer-tall cliff. The two pilots were inside their individual cockpits, listening to the random flecks of rock panging against the hull. Both of them were watching their sensors closely, talking very little. They were on-mission, and that meant total focus, no idle chitchat if it got in the way of the work. If they were going to approach the gas giant of Endor and its Sanctuary Moon, they needed to be absolutely positive about what they were seeing. They were practicing EMCON--emissions control.
Namyr checked passive scopes once more. There was activity in-system again, lots more flares of hyperdrive engines. The spatial disturbances indicated large vessels, likely Star Destroyers. That meant that the Empire definitely had some sort of project going on. But exactly what, they couldn’t say, not without coming within scanner range of the enemy.
Namyr read the message from Commander Fera again. It was hard to believe the AIN had managed to pick up on Ageless Void’s trail, and that they were tracking him from Sullust. That wasn’t too far from here. Wonder what he’s doing there. Wonder what he’s been doing all this time.
There was at least one obvious answer.
Saving my tail, that’s what.
The heads-up Ageless had given her on Malastare had almost certainly spared her and Kevv capture, even death.
“Got another one coming in,” Kevv said.
Namyr already saw it on her own sensors, even as Kevv was sending the alert over to her console. “Got it.”
“It is pinging as a small craft, probably not a capital ship. Bearing one-three-one by positive two-nine-eight relative. Reciprocal heading.” Kevv paused. “Yep, definitely smaller vessel.”
“Another sweeper. Force, they really are making sure no one can get anywhere closer in-system.”
“This scares me, Namyr. I don’t mind saying. I’ve never seen an Imperial patrol and blockade like this. As in never ever. It's really big.”
"I know."
"Like they've got a major operation going on around the gas giant. Like they're building something."
"Yeah."
Namyr looked out her cockpit window at Kevv in the opposite-side cockpit. Speaking to him from across the ship like he was in the room with her took some getting used to, especially since they were in the immensely dark shadow of a cliff of an asteroid at the fringes of the solar system, and his cockpit’s dim lights made Kevv appear to be floating in nothingness, but the Ascendant was an incredible ship and her unique build certainly made her worth the trouble to get. If the Rebel Alliance won this war, Guriyen had earned a special place in the annals of galactic history.
“Do we try to send word back to the commander?” asked Kevv, looking over at her.
Namyr shook her head. “Even this far out the Empire's got too many ears. We send any message at all, the pulse is likely to give away our position.”
Kevv nodded and sat back in his seat. “So, what next? Do we even chance getting closer?”
That had been the question at the forefront of her mind these last few days as they sat here monitoring a seemingly unimportant system. Namyr said, “Best to err on the side of caution. We were only sent here to verify that the Bothans were right, and there’s something being built out here. Those Arquitens towing in gravity grapnel lines seem to confirm heavy construction, probably orbital. I wish we could find out more but going in-system would get us absolutely vaped by the host of ships patrolling around here. You’re right, Kevv, I have never seen a deployment of assets like this. Whatever is going on, it has to be an engineering feat not seen since…”
She didn’t want to say it, but they both were thinking it. The Death Star.
“So, that’s it, then? We’re bailing?”
“Yeah, we’re bailing,” she sighed. “We’ll give it a few more hours and then we’ll head out. Maybe the Bothans will be willing to help out some more, once we confirm what their friends died for. Meantime, plot us a course out of here. Once we’re safely away, we’ll alert Commander Fera.”
“Where are we heading next?”
“You read the message from her.”
Kevv nodded and said, “I always wanted to see Sullust. You think he’s there?”
Namyr could see Ageless’s face in front of her, that determined look of a killer set on his goals. She wondered what he would do if he found out that she and Kevv were hunting him. Would he be suspicious? Would he assume they were out to assassinate him, tie up the loose end so that the Alliance Intelligence Network could plausibly deny any involvement with an Imperial asset? Would he immediately assume that he had to kill them, that it was either him or them?
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“We’ll have to be careful about it,” Namyr said. “No mistakes in tracking him. If he’s in that area of the galaxy, he may only be doing the work of the IIS. Just like he’s supposed to. He has to keep up appearances that he’s still on their side.”
“What if he is on their side and he’s only playing us? What if the intel his double agents have been sending us is all phony?”
“Then this will be a good opportunity to spy on him from afar, see if he’s on the up and up.”
But the truth was evident, and Kevv had to know it. If they did find Ageless Void, they would have to report it to Commander Fera and she might very well have them go ahead and sweep him, just in case they never got the chance again. Ageless had performed decapitation strikes (assassination of leadership) against the Rebellion for years. What if they let him go now and he went back to his old ways?
And what if Commander Fera tells you to kill him, Namyr? Can you do it, after he saved your life?
She tried not to think about that. Like the dozens of other missions she had performed for the AIN, it was best if Namyr Abjura kept her conscience out of all decision-making matters, and focus coldly on doing the job as instructed.
And yet.
There could be no forgetting how Ageless had gone out of his way to save Kevv from Darth Vader in Cloud City, just like there could be no forgetting how he had saved Namyr’s life while escaping Hoth. He could have left her there to die, pushed her out of the bay door. No one could have stopped him. But he saved her from Korvas Sark, the Kingdom assassin known as Horizon Lost, at great personal risk to himself.
Can you kill him? she asked herself.
Namyr shook herself out of the reverie, and logged in another hour of passive surveillance. A few hours after that, she and Kevv were gone. One Imperial vessel’s sensors registered the tiniest blip at the edge of the system, but the officers dismissed it as background noise. The rock the Ascendant had been hiding behind would float on for billions more years to come, never utilized again.
* * *
SULLUST
The surface of the planet Sullust was so toxic with fumes from overactive volcanic activity that the natives were forced to live beneath in subterranean cities. The cities themselves were vast, stretching for hundreds of miles and connected by hover-train tubes and turbolifts. Corridors were often crammed with Sullustans moving to and from the lifts that took them up to the surface to their factory jobs. The day shift from the SoroSuub Corporation’s many factories were just now getting off work, and the night shift was heading up. The fish-faced, heavy-jowled Sullustans might have thought it odd when they saw the single tall Human walking amid the crowd of workers, but Sullustans were known to be polite and keep to themselves, so they said nothing.
Blond-haired and slim-fit, the Human was an operative for the Imperial Intelligence Service’s off-the-books section called simply “the Kingdom,” and like all Kingdom operatives, he no longer had a true name. He went by only what the Voice of Ether called him: Old Miser. He took a turbolift down sixteen levels and walked the corridor-streets of Eschewga City Three, through the Remzfel Arcade, filled with glittering after-hours cantinas, one of which he suspected was the regular meeting place of a secret Rebel cell.
But Old Miser wasn’t going there today. He had business in the Kaistamon Factory District, where SoroSuub factory workers rented space close to their job, so they did not have far to commute to work. Inside Kaistamon was an impoverished district for off-worlders that had fallen on rough times and couldn’t afford a ship to take them anywhere else. It was a small community, and here Old Miser and his partners had made a home for themselves.
The steps were carved out of rock, and the guardrails were made out of durasteel covered in factory dust. Every few dozen feet, a patch of wall had erupted and a lava vein was spilling beneath a rock bridge, former a glowing-red river that flowed underneath. The lava flow was carefully managed to allow only the amount necessary to heat up the cold corridor-streets.
Before he stepped inside his flat, Old Miser performed a surveillance-detection run to ensure he was not being followed. He rapped twice on the door and it slid open and a giant black-furred Wookiee welcomed him in: the Wookiee’s codename was Vicious One.
“Evening,” Miser said, stepping into the room. If he had said anything else, Vicious would have known that Miser knew he was being followed, and they would casually start to escape the planet.
Vicious grunted a similar greeting in Shyriiwook, then sheathed the claws in his hand. Vicious always answered the door ready to eviscerate any enemy that stepped through.
“Is he here?” asked Miser.
Vicious led him into the main room, where the third and final member of their group, a red-skinned Twi’lek codenamed Saber Unsheathed, sat in front of a holoprojector studying the three-dimensional map of the Sullust system, shrinking it to include the wider Sullust sector, then further out to look at the major hyperlanes in the area: Saber was highlighting sections of the Rimma Trade Route, Sanctuary Pipeline and Incisor Sidestep, all major trade routes for this sector of the galaxy.
“Well?” Miser said, removing his jacket. He took the concealed blaster pistol from the hidden pocket and checked its power cell.
Saber’s lekku twitched excitedly, though his face remained supremely calm. The hallmark of a Kingdom operative. “If I had to guess? I’d say the information the Voice sent shows that the Rebels have a very good reason to suspect the ship they’re tracking is Ageless’s.”
“And?”
“And judging by their calculations, his last known trajectory sent him away from the Rimma Trade Route, cutting across unsafe open space. Space filled with carbonbergs and two or three large black holes, according to these last charts by a SoroSuub expedition that went out that way ten years ago. It’s not ideal for quick transit, star cartographers have never found a viable or safe route.”
“So he went far away from any established hyperlanes,” Miser deduced.
“Yes,” Saber said. “If it’s him.”
“You just said there was good reason to believe the intel.”
Saber made a face. “The Rebels have deceived us before. They could be trying to make us believe it’s him, make us distrust one of our own.”
“Rrrwrrr rrr rwwrrroorrr?” growled Vicious: What are your conclusions? the Wookiee was asking.
Saber put his hands on his hips and paced in front of the holographic map. He was their primary logician and tactician, it was his studies and hunches that had led them to the hidden Rebel cell on Sullust. But Miser knew that Saber liked to be thorough in his research before making a guess, and this had been a rush job from the Voice of Ether, so he hadn’t had all the time he wanted to study the data IIS had stolen from the Rebel message. He pursed his lips, and said, “The only thing out that way is a nothing system called Dagobah, and the planet of its namesake is a bog-covered world with flora and fauna so dangerous no one has tried to tame it in centuries. Sometimes you hear about pirates or smugglers hiding out there for a while, but…” He made another face that indicated he didn’t think many people would survive the planet for long.
“How far away is it from here?” Miser asked.
“Not even ten thousand lightyears.”
Vicious growled, “Arrrworrr rwwwrrroorooo.” That’s not a far ride.
“No, it’s not,” Miser said. “We could check it out in a matter of days, fire a few probe droids down to the surface, give it a week or two, see if we find any signs of sentient life or complex machinery or ship exhaust signatures. Once we’ve eliminated it as a suspect planet, we can tell the Voice we did our part and then come back here and sweep up the Rebel cell in Remzfel Arcade. Then we can be done with this hellhole.”
Vicious growled in eager agreement.
But Saber made another face.
“What?” said Miser.
“It might not be that easy. I’ve heard things about Dagobah. Something about the place puts sensors on the fritz. Sometimes ships go near there and just disappear. I’ve heard there’s a micro-singularity floating around the system like a bullet—some scientists studied it ages ago, and found that it moves closer to ion trails, as if it’s attracted to them. But no one’s seen it since they were out there. That was decades back, like I said. Just strange stuff.” He shook his head. “You send probe droids down there, you might not get them back.”
“We’ll at least give it a try. And if they do go missing, we’ll do it the old-fashioned way.” He looked over at Vicious. “How long has it been since you went hunting?”
The Wookiee gave a huff-huff-huff kind of laugh.