Star Wars - [X-Wing 03] - The Krytos Trap (by Michael A Stackpole)

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

ROGUE SQUADRON

COMMANDER WEDGE ANTILLES (human male from

CoreIlia)

CAPTAIN Tvcno CELCHU (human male from Alderaan)

CAPTAIN ARIL NUNB (human male from Sullust)

LIEUTENANT CORRAN HORN (human male from CoreIlia)

LIEUTENANT PASH CRACKEN (human male from

Contruum)

OORYL QRYGG (Gand male from Gand)

NAWARA VEN (Twi'lek male from Ryloth)

RHYSATI YNR (human female from Bespin)

ERIS DLARIT (human female from Thyferra)

GAVIN DARKLIGHTER (human male frons Tatooine)

RIV SHIEL (Shistavanen male from Uvena III)

ASYR SEI'LAR (Bothan female from Bothawui)

INYRI FORGE (human female from Kessel)

M-3PO (Emtrey; protocol and regulations druid)

WHISTLER (Corran's R2 astromech)

MYNOCK (Wedge's R5 astromech)

ADMIRAL ACKBAR

Calamari)

ALLIANCE MILITARY

(Mon Calamari male from Mon

ALLIANCE INTELLIGENCE

GENERAL AIREN CRACKEN (buman male from Contruum)

IELLA WESSIRI (human female from CoreUia)

WINTER (human female from Alderaan)

X / D RAMATIS PERSONAE

CITIZENS ON CORUSCANT

FLIRY VORRU (human male from CoreIlia)

Dmic WESSIR1 (human male from CoreIlia)

BORSK FEY'LYA (Bothan male from Bothawui)

HALLA ETrYK (human female from Alderaan)

QLAERN HIRV (Vratix from Thyferra)

CREW OF THE PULSAR SKATE

MIRAX TERR1K (human female from CoreIlia)

LIAT TSAYV (Sullustan male from SullusO

IMPERIAl. FORCES

YSANNE ISARD, DIRECTOR OF IMPERIAl. INTELLIGENCE

(human female from Coruscant)

KInTAN LOOR, INTELLIGENCE AGENT (human male from

Churba)

GENERAL Evm DERRICOTE (human male from Kalla)

Commander Wedge Antilles would have preferred the cere-

mony to be private. Rogue Squadron had come to mourn the

passing of one of its own on the week anniversary of his

death. Wedge wanted the gathering to be small and intimate,

with Corran Horn's friends all being able to share remem-

brances of him, but that was not possible. Corran's death

had come during the liberation of Coruscant. That made him

a hero from a company of heroes, and while a small memo-

rial might have been what Corran himself would have

wanted, it was not heroic enough for a figure of his posthu-

mous stature.

Even though Wedge had known things would not go

quite the way he wanted, he had not anticipated how out of

control they would get when he requested permission to hold

the ceremony. He had expected a number of dignitaries

would come to the pseudogranite barrow that marked where

Corran had died when a building collapsed on top of him.

He even anticipated people lining the balconies and walk-

ways of nearby towers. At the very Worst he imagined people

might gawk from the beds of hovertrucks.

His imagination paled beside that exercised by the bu-

reaucrats who organized the memorial service. They took a

2 / STAR WARS X-WING THE KVTOS TRAP / 3

ceremony based on heartfelt grief and made it into the focal

point of mourning for the entire New Republic. Corran

Horn was a hero--this they proclaimed loudly--but he was

also a victim. As such he represented all the victims of the

Empire. It didn't matter to them that Corran would have

rejected being labeled a victim. He had been transformed

into a symbol--a symbol the New Republic needed badly.

Rogue Squadron likewise underwent iconization. The

unit's pilots had always worn orange flightsuits in the past,

or, as supplies became harder and harder to find, whatever

had been handy. Corran's flightsuit had been green, black,

and grey, since he'd brought it with him from the Corellian

Security Force. In homage to him, that color scheme was

used to create new uniforms for the squadron evergreen

overall, with dark grey flank panels, black sleeves, leg stripes,

and trim. On the left sleeve and breast rode the Rogue

Squadron crest. It had also appeared on the evergreen

hawkbilled caps designed by a Kuati, but Wedge had vetoed

their addition to the uniform.

The makeup of the Squadron had also been adjusted.

Asyr Sei'lar, a Bothan pilot, and Inyri Forge, the sister of a

dead squadron member, had both been added to the squad-

ron. Wedge would have gladly welcomed them, and they had

been crucial to the success of the mission to liberate Corus-

cant, but they had been pressed upon him for political rea-

sons. Likewise, Portha, a Trandoshan, had been made a

member of the squadron despite his inability to fly. He was

attached to the unit as part of a previously nonexistent secu-

rity detail. Each of them was appointed by bureaucrats as a

reward to various constituencies in the New Republic, and

Wedge hated their objectification.

The ceremony grew out of all proportion until special

grandstands had to be grafted to the nearby buildings and

color-coded for the various levels of access people were to be

accorded. Holocams had been stationed at various positions

so the ceremony could be recorded and replayed on countless

worlds. Despite the very real fears about contracting the

highly contagious Krytos virus, the stands were packed to

overflowing.

He looked up from his position on the reviewing stand

and out at Rogue Squadron. His people were bearing up well

despite the bright sunlight and unseasonably warm weather.

The recent rains had raised the general level of humidity until

clothing clung and the very air lay like a smothering blanket

over everyone. The thick air seemed to deaden sounds and

suppress emotions, and Wedge was tempted to allow himself

to imagine that Coruscant somehow also mourned Corran's

passing.

In addition to the members of Rogue Squadron, Cor

ran's other friends stood on the platform nearest the barrow.

Iella Wessiri, a slender, brown-haired woman who had been

Corran's CorSec partner, stood next to Mirax Terrik. De-

spite being the daughter of a notorious Corellian smuggler,

Mirax had managed to become friends with Corran. Mirax,

who had known Wedge since they had both been kids, had

tearfully confided in him that she and Corran had planned to

celebrate the liberation of Coruscant together. He could see

she'd fallen hard for Corran, and the lifeless expression on

her face made his heart ache.

The only one who is missing is Tycbo. Wedge frowned.

Captain Tycho Celchu was a long-standing member of

Rogue Squadron who had served as the squadron's executive

officer. He'd surreptitiously joined the mission to Coruscant

at Wedge's request and had been instrumental in bringing the

planet's defenses down. His action was the latest in a string

of heroic missions Tycho had carried off during his Rebel

career.

Unfortunately, Alliance Intelligence had developed evi-

dence that indicated Tycho was working for the Empire.

They blamed him directly not only for Corran's death, but

for the death of Bror Jace, another Rogue Squadron pilot

who had died early on in the Coruscant campaign. Wedge

had not been fully apprised of what the evidence was that

they had against Tycho, but he did not doubt the man's inno-

cence for a second. Still, his innocence might mean nothing

in the long run.

In spite of the liberation, Coruscant was not a pleasant

or stable world. A hideous epidemicrathe Krytos virus--was

ravaging the non-human population of the planet. It had

struck at the non-humans in the Rebellion and was hard

enough on some species that even coming down to the planet

was an act of extreme bravery. Bacta, as usual, could cure

the virus, but the Rebellion's entire store of bacta was insuffi-

cient to cure everyone. This resulted in panic, and resentment

against humans for their apparent immunity to the disease.

The memorial service had become an important event

because Coruscant's population needed something to unite

them and to get their minds off their suffering, even if only

for a moment. The fact that Rogue Squadron had humans

and non-humans working together in it showed the strength

of unity that had allowed the Rebellion to prevail. Non-

humans coming together along with dignitaries from various

other worlds to mourn a dead human acknowledged the debt

the Rebels owed humans. Speakers devoted themselves to

exhorting their fellows to labor together in building a future

that would justify the sacrifices made by Corran and others.

Their words raised things to a philosophical or metaphysical

level meant to soothe away the anxieties and worries of the

citizens.

Those were noble messages, to be certain, but Wedge felt

they were not the right messages for Corran. He tugged on

the sleeves of his uniform jacket as a Bothan protocol subal-

tern waved him forward. Wedge stepped up to the podium

and wanted to lean heavily upon it. Years of fighting and

saying good-bye to friends and comrades weighed him

down--but he refused to give in to fatigue. He let his pride in

the squadron and his friendship with Corran keep him up-

right.

He looked around at the crowd, then focused on the

mound of pseudogranite rubble before him. "Corran Horn

does not rest easy in that grave." Wedge paused for a mo-

ment, and then another, letting the silence remind everyone

of the true purpose of the ceremony. "Corran Horn was

never at ease except when he was fighting. He does not rest

easy now because there is much fighting yet to be done. We

have taken Coruscant, but anyone who assumes that means

the Empire is dead is as mistaken as Grand Moff Tarkin was

in his belief that Alderaan's destruction would somehow

cripple the Rebellion."

Wedge brought his head up. "Corran Horn was not a

man who gave up, no matter what the odds. More than once

he took upon himself the responsibility of dealing with a

threat to the squadron and to the Rebellion. Heedless of his

own safety, he engaged overwhelming forces and by sheer

dint of will and spirit and courage he won through. Even

here, on Coruscant, he flew alone into the heart of a storm

that was ravag ing a planet and risked his life so this world

would be free. He did not fail, because he would not let

himself fail.

"Each of us who knew him has, in our hearts, dozens

and dozens of examples of his bravery or his concern for

others, or his ability to see where he was wrong and correct

himself. He was not a perfect man, but he was a man who

sought to be the best he could be. And while he took pride in

being very good, he didn't waste energy in displays of ram-

pant egotism. He just picked out new goals and drove him-

self forward toward them."

Wedge slowly nodded toward the rubble pile. "Corran is

now gone. The burdens he bore have been laid down. The

responsibilities he shouldered have been abandoned. The ex-

ample he set is no more. His loss is tragic, but the greater

tragedy would be letting him be remembered as a faceless

hero mouldering in this cairn. He was a fighter, as all of us

should be. The things he took upon himself might be enough

to crush down any one person, but we all can accept a por-

tion of that responsibility and bear it together. Others have

talked about building a future that would honor Corran and

the others who have died fighting the Empire, but the fact is

that there's fighting yet to be done before the building can

begin.

"We have to fight the impatience with the pace of

change that makes us look nostalgically on the days of the

Empire. Yes, there might have been a bit more food avail-

able. Yes, power outages might have been fewer. Yes, you

might have been insulated from the misery of others--but at

what cost? The security you thought you had froze into an

icy lump of fear in your gut whenever you saw stormtroopers

walking in your direction. With the liberation of Coruscant

that fear can melt, but if you forget it once existed and decide

things were not so bad under the Emperor, you'll be well on

your way to inviting it back."

He opened his hands to take in all those assembled at the

monument. "You must do what Corran did fight anything

and everything that would give the Empire comfort or secu-

rity or a chance to reassert itself. If you trade vigilance for

complacency, freedom for security, a future without fear for

comfort; you will be responsible for shaping the galaxy once

again into a place that demands people like Corran fight,

always fight and, eventually, fall victim to evil.

"The choice, ultimately, devolves to you. Corran Horn

will not rest easy in his grave until there is no more fighting

to be done. He has done everything he could to fight the

Empire; now it is up to you to continue his fight. If he is ever

to know peace, it will only be when we all know peace. And

that is a goal every one of us knows is well worth fighting

for."

Wedge stepped back from the podium and steeled him-

self against the polite applause. Deep down he would have

hoped his words had been inspiring, but those gathered

around the memorial were dignitaries and officials from

worlds throughout the New Republic. They were politicians

whose goal was to help shape the future others of their num-

ber spoke about. They wanted stability and order as a foun-

dation for their constructions. His words, reminding

everyone that fights were yet to be waged, undercut their

efforts. They had to applaud because of the situation and

who he was, but Wedge had no doubt most of them thought

him a politically naive warrior best suited to being a hero

who was feted and used in holograph opportunities to sup-

port this program or that.

He could only hope that others listening to what he had

to say would take his message to heart. The politicians re-

quired stability, and the way they acquired stability was to

ignore instability or patch it over with some quick fix. The

citizens of the New Republic would find their politicians as

distant as the Imperial politicians before them. With their

new-won freedom, the people would be able to let their lead-

ers know what they thought, and might be tempted to pro-

test if things did not move swiftly enough in the direction the

people wanted.

A rebellion against the Rebellion would result in anar-

chy or a return of the Empire. Either would be disaster.

Fighting for progress and against reactionary forces was the

only way to guarantee the New Republic would get a chance

to flourish. Wedge dearly wanted that to happen and hoped

the politicians would look past their efforts to gather power

to themselves long enough to take steps to provide real sta-

bility and a real future.

Over at the grave site an honor guard raised the squad-

ron flag, then backed away and saluted. That signaled an end

to the ceremony, and the visitors began to drift away. A

cream-furred Bothan with violet eyes crossed to where

Wedge stood and nodded ahnost graciously. "You were quite

eloquent, Commander Antilles." Borsk Fey'lya waved a

hand toward the departing masses. "I have no doubt quite a

few hearts were stirred by your words."

Wedge raised an eyebrow. "But not yours, Councilor

Fey'lya ?"

The Bothan snoted a clipped laugh. "If I were so easily

swayed, l could be convinced to back all sorts of nonsense."

"Like the trial of Tycho Celchu?"

Fey'lya's fur rippled and rose at the back of his neck.

"No, I might be convinced that such a trial was not neces-

sary." He smoothed the fur back down with his right hand.

"Admiral Ackbar has not convinced you to abandon your

petition to the Provisional Council about this matter?"

"No" Wedge folded his arms across his chest. "I would

have thought by now you would have engineered a vote to

deny me the chance to address the council."

"Summarily dismiss a petition by the man who liberated

Coruscant?" The Bothan's violet eyes narrowed. "You're

moving into a realm of warfare at which I am a master,

Commander. I would have thought you wise enough to see

that. Your petition will fail. It must fail, so it shall. Captain

Celchu will be tried for murder and treason."

"Even though he is innocent?"

"Is he?"

"He is."

"A fact to be determined by a military court, surely."

Fey'lya gave Wedge a cold smile. "A suggestion, Com-

mander."

"Yes?"

"Don't waste your eloquence on the Provisional Coun-

cil. Save it. Hoard it." The Bothan's teeth flashed in a feral

grin. "Use it on the tribunal that tries Captain Celchu. You'll

not gain his freedom, of course--no one is that eloquent; but

perhaps you will win him some modicum of mercy when it

comes time for sentence to be passed."

2

High up in a tower suite, up above the surface of Imperial

Center, Kirtan Loor allowed himself a smile. At the tower's

pinnacle, the only companions were hawk-bats safe in their

shadowed roosts and Special Intelligence operatives who

were menacing despite their lack of stormtrooper armor or

bulk. He felt alone and aloof, but those sensations came nat-

urally with his sense of superiority. At the top of the world,

he had been given all he could see to command and domi-

nate.

And destroy.

Ysanne Isard had given him the job of creating and lead-

ing a Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front. He knew she did

not expect grand success from him. He had been given ample

resources to make himself a nuisance. He could disrupt the

functioning of the New Republic. He could slow their take-

over of Coruscant and hamper their ability to master the

mechanisms of galactic administration. A bother, minor but

vexatious, is what Ysanne lsard had intended he become.

Kittan Loor knew he had to become more. Years before,

when he started working as an Imperial liaison officer with

the Corellian Security Force on CoreIlia, he never would

have dreamed of finding himself rising so far and playing so

deadly a game. Even so, he had always been ambitious, and

supremely confident in himself and his abilities. His chief

asset was his memory, which allowed him to recall a pleth-

ora of facts, no matter how obscure. Once he had seen or

read or heard something he could draw it from his memory,

and this ability gave him a gross advantage over the crimi-

nals and bureaucrats with whom he dealt.

His reliance on his memory had also hobbled him. His

prodigious feats of recall so overawed his enemies that they

would naturally assume he had processed the information he

possessed and had drawn the logical conclusions from it.

Since they assumed he already knew what only they knew,

they would tell him what he had not bothered to figure out

for himself. They made it unnecessary for him to truly think,

and that skill had begun to atrophy in him.

Ysanne Isard, when she summoned him to Imperial Cen-

ter, had made it abundantly clear that learning to think and

not to assume was the key to his continued existence. Her

supervision made up in severity what it lacked in duration,

putting him through a grueling regimen that rehabilitated his

cognitive abilities. By the time she fled Imperial Center, Isard

had clearly been confident in his ability to annoy and con-

found the Rebels.

More importantly, Kirtan Loor had become certain that

he could do all she wanted and yet more.

From his vantage point he looked down on the distant

blob of dignitaries and mourners gathered at the memorial

for Corran Horn. While he despised them all for their poli-

tics, he joined them in mourning Horn's loss. Corran Horn

had been Loor's nemesis. They had hated each other on

CoreIlia, and Loor had spent a year and a half trying to hunt

Corran down after he fled from CoreIlia. The hunt had

ended when Ysanne Isard brought Loor to Imperial Center,

but he had anticipated a renewal of his private little war with

Horn when given the assignment to remain on Coruscant.

Of course, Corran's demise hardly made a dent in the

legion of enemies Loor had on Imperial Center. Foremost

among them was Gen eral Airen Cracken, the director of Alli-

ance Intelligence. Cracken's network of spies and operatives

had ultimately made the conquest of the Imperial capital pos-

sible, and his security precautions had given Imperial

counterintelligence agents fits for years. Cracken---or Kra-

ken, as some of Loor's people had taken to calling the

Rebel--would be a difficult foe with whom to grapple.

Loor knew he had some other enemies who would pur-

sue him as part of a personal vendetta. The whole of Rogue

Squadron, from Antilles to the new recruits, would gladly

hunt him down and kill him--including the spy in their

midst since Loor presented a security risk for the spy. Even if

they could not connect him with Corran's death directly, the

mere fact that Corran hated him would be a burden they'd

gladly accept and a debt they would attempt to discharge.

Iella Wessiri was the last of the CorSec personnel Loor

had hunted, and her presence on Imperial Center gave him

pause. She had never been as relentless as Corran Horn in

her pursuit of criminals, but that had always seemed to Loor

to be because she was more thorough than Horn. Whereas

Corran might muscle his way through an investigation, Iella

picked up on small clues and accomplished with lan what

Corran did with brute strength. In the shadow game in

which Loor was engaged, this meant she was a foe he might

not see coming, and that made her the most dangerous of all.

Loor backed away from the window and looked at the

holographic representation of the figures below as they

strode across his holotable. The ceremony had been broad-

cast planetwide, and would be rebroadcast at various worlds

throughout the galaxy. He watched Borsk Fey'lya and

Wedge Antilles as they met in close conversation, then split

apart and wandered away. Everyone appeared more like toys

to him than they did real people. He found it easy to imagine

himself a titanic--no, Imperial--presence who had deigned

to be distracted by the actions of bugs.

He picked up the remote device from the table and

flicked it on. A couple of small lights flashed on the black

rectangle in his left palm, then a red button in the center of it

glowed almost benignly. His thumb hovered over it for a

second. He smiled, but killed the impulse to stab his thumb

down and gently returned the device to the table.

A year before he would have punch6d that button, deto-

nating the explosives his people had secreted around the me-

morial. With one casual caress he could have unleashed fire

and pain, wiping out a cadre of traitorous planetary officials

and eliminating Rogue Squadron. He knew, given a chance,

any of the SI operatives under his command would have

triggered the nergon 14 charges--as would the majority of

the military command staff still serving the Empire.

Loor did not. lsard had pointed out on numerous occa-

sions that before the Empire could be reestablished, the Re-

bellion had to die. She had pointed out that the Emperor's

obsession with destroying the Jedi Knights had caused him to

regard the rest of the Rebellion as a lesser threat, yet it had

outlived the Jedi and the Emperor. Only by destroying the

Rebellion would it be possible to reassert the Empire's au-

thority over the galaxy. Destroying the Rebellion required

methods more subtle than exploding grandstands and plan-

ets, accomplishing with a vibroblade what could not be done

with a Death Star.

Rogue Squadron could not be allowed to die, because

they were required for the public spectacle of Tycho Celchu's

trial. General Cracken had uncovered ample evidence that

pointed toward Celchu's guilt, and Loor had delighted in

clearing the way for Cracken's investigators to find yet more

of it. The evidence would be condemning, yet so obviously

questionable that the members of Rogue Squadron--all of

whom had indicated a belief in Tycho's innocence at one

level or another--would decry it as false. That would in-

crease the tension between the conquerors of Imperial Center

and the politicians who slunk in after the pilots had risked

their lives to secure the world. If the heroes of the Rebellion

could doubt and resent the government of the New Republic,

how would the citizenry build confidence in their leaders?

The Krytos virus further complicated things. Created by

an Imperial scientist under Loor's supervision, it killed non-

humans in a most hideous manner. Roughly three weeks af-

ter infection, the victims entered the final, lethal stage of the

disease. Over the course of a week the virus multiplied very

rapidly, exploding cell after cell in their bodies. Their flesh

weakened, sagged, and split open while the victims bled from

every pore and orifice. The resulting liquid was highly infec-

tious, and though bacta could hold the disease at bay or, in

sufficient quantities, cure it, the Rebellion did not have access

Star Wars - [X-Wing 03] - The Krytos Trap (by Michael A Stackpole)

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