Star Wars - Black Fleet Crisis - Shield Of Lies Read online

  assault boat at a rate of one per secN and ."

  "Jump troops have the benefit of training and gravity.

  I have modeled it with Artoo's nav processor. At best, one of us would

  not make it through."

  "Well--that is a problem," said Lando. "Because I have a sneaking

  suspicion that when we cut a hole that size, this ship's going to get

  fed up with us and try to spit us out again. I don't think we'll get a

  chance to do it twice." He thought hard for a moment, then waved the

  blaster in the air. "Everything off the sled. I need to make some

  modifications."

  The equipment sled was an uncomplicated device.

  Its thick rectangular frame contained the gyros, fuel cells, and thrust

  stabilizer system, and also provided cutout handholds at regular

  intervals. The standard diamond-pattern metal grid that filled the

  frame provided a wealth of lockdowns for gear kits and tools. Both

  sides of the grid on the team's sled were heavily loaded.

  "Modifications?"

  "Yeah," said Lando. "I think we need a frame for our door."

  Clinging to the sled with one hand and wielding the cutting blaster

  with the other, Lando slashed away where the grid joined the sled

  frame. When he was finished, the sled was in two pieces. Lando pushed

  the wobbly, heavily loaded grid toward Artoo. "You tow that through to

  the other side."

  The droid's grappling clamps appeared and latched onto the grid

  securely.

  "Give me a hand here, Lobot?"

  Lobot eased forward and grabbed a handhold at the opposite end of the

  gutted sled frame. "I am remembering something I accessed earlier," he

  said. "The chief designer of the Ma'aood funerary temples directed his

  draftsmen that all obvious passages should be booby-trapped, and all

  traps should be made as inviting as possible."

  "Thank you for that uplifting thought," said Lando.

  "If we get out of this, you should think about a new career as a morale

  officer. Everyone ready?"

  "Master Lando, what should I do?"

  Lando checked his combat blaster in its holster, then slid the selector

  on the cutting blaster to WiDE. "Add this to our apology," he said,

  and pointed it at the bulkhead.

  "Hang on."

  The brilliant flare of the cutting beam momentarily dazzled the

  viewscreen of Lando's contact suit, and the vaporized material from two

  and a half square meters of bulkhead filled the air as a gray cloud.

  Before Lando could even see clearly, the hole began to close.

  "Let's go, let's go--get it lined up!" Lando shouted.

  The two men maneuvered the frame into position, and the bulkhead closed

  around it as though it were a tailored fit.

  But as they did, they heard a deep, rumbling groan from the ship, a

  sound that had no direction. Though the surroundings were alien, the

  sound was familiar--the signature of a form of stress that aged large

  vessels' hulls and led to the spectacular form of self-destruction

  known as an exit breach. It was the exit growl, the characteristic

  sound caused by portions of the ship emerging from hyperspace

  nanoseconds before the rest as the jump field collapsed.

  "I hate it when I'm right," Lando said, gesturing with his free hand.

  "Move it, Artoo. Now!"

  The little droid jetted quickly toward the opening, towing the heavily

  loaded grid behind it. For a moment Lando thought the frame looked too

  small for Artoo to pass through it. But the droid retracted his treads

  as far as they would go, turned his body, and cleared the opening by

  bare centimeters. The equipment grid smoothly passed through behind

  him.

  "Wait for me, Artoo!" Threepio called, flailing his arms and legs in

  midair.

  "Go ahead," Lando said to Lobot, passing him the cutting blaster and

  waving him on. "I'll get Threepio."

  Lobot didn't wait to be told twice, swinging himself feetfirst through

  the improvised doorway as neatly as a gymnast taking a turn on the

  parallel bar. Meanwhile, Lando clipped the safety line from the

  contact suit's belt to the handhold of the frame and launched himself

  toward the droid, his gloved hand extended to him.

  "Oh, thank you, Master Lando," the droid said relievedly as he grabbed

  hold of Lando's arm. Then Threepio saw Lando's eyes suddenly widen in

  alarm.

  "What is it, sir?"

  Watching from the inner passage, Lobot saw the same thing Lando had

  seen when he looked past Threepio toward the outer bulkhead a small

  opening appearing and quickly irising into an airlock that revealed a

  stark, starry blackness beyond. Moments later the external mics on the

  suits picked up the hiss of out-rushing air.

  Lando did not take the time to answer Threepio's concerned inquiry.

  "Heads up--incoming!" he bellowed, and swung Threepio by the arms

  toward the inner doorway. Bracing himself against the frame, Lobot

  reached through, caught Threepio's right foot, and dragged him into the

  inner passage.

  But the rush of air through the inner passage and out through the wound

  kept building, and it was all Lobot could do to keep himself from being

  sucked through.

  Nor was he the only one in trouble. Artoo's thrusters could not hold

  against the screaming wind, and he squawked loudly as he was dragged

  inexorably back down the inner passage toward the opening, clinging

  determinedly to the equipment grid.

  Meanwhile, Lando dangled helplessly at the end of his safety line, his

  feet banging against the edge of the outer airlock as the air grabbed

  at him on its way into the vacuum beyond.

  Only Threepio was relatively secure, his metal body braced across one

  end of the sled frame, blocking part of the opening. But he was waving

  his arms wildly like a shell-spined mud crawler that'd been flipped on

  its back.

  "Oh, Artoo, we're doomed!" he cried. "I never did like space

  travel.

  Look where your adventuring has led us--" "You have to cut the frame,"

  Lando was shouting into the comlink. "Cut the frame and it'll pull

  out--the rest of the hole will close. Do it!"

  "Not with you on that side," Lobot said, climbing across Threepio to

  where the safety line was attached.

  "There's a take-up crank on that belt line. See if you can pull

  yourself up that way."

  "No good," said Lando. "Too much load. Just cut the frame, will

  you?"

  Lobot glanced sideways down the corridor to see if he and Threepio were

  in danger of being knocked through the hole by an out-of-control Artoo

  and his cargo. But to Lobot's relief, he saw that Artoo had made his

  way to the edge of the passage, burned a small hole with his arc

  welder, and let the hole close around a repair arm. So far, the anchor

  was holding against the current--which seemed to Lobot to be

  weakening.

  "Forget it," Lobot directed, reaching down between his braced legs and

  catching hold of the thin safety line.

  He began hauling on the line hand over hand, reeling Lando in like a

  great white fish. The cyborg's wiry body concealed surprising


  strength, and soon he had hold of the tow ring on Lando's suit, at the

  back of the neck.

  "Use your thrusters now--full vertical."

  "Full vertical," Lando echoed.

  With one smooth, powerful motion, Lobot pulled Lando up between his

  widely spaced knees, lying straight back to drag Lando's legs clear and

  hurl him free down the passage.

  Quickly sitting back up, Lobot pulled out the cutting blaster and

  slashed the frame in two places. There was a shower of sparks each

  time, then a puff of D20 propellant from the broken lines as he kicked

  out the section between the cuts. It spun free and tumbled out through

  the airlock on the breeze.

  The bulkhead groaned under Lobot, and the rest of the frame began to

  collapse, twisting sideways as it did, until it, too, was carried

  away.

  Seconds later the hole had closed under them, the pitch of the roaring

  air rising to a shrill note before it cut off entirely, leaving them in

  silence.

  "I guess we only get to use that doorway trick once," Lando said. The

  inside of his faceplate was fogged with sweat. "Where'd you learn

  that?"

  "I learned it wild-water rafting on Oko E," Lobot said. "It is the

  preferred method for getting a raftmate out of the river before the

  sulfur ice pulls him under.

  That was my last vacation," he added.

  "You have unexpected depth, Lobot," said Lando.

  "Is everyone all right?"

  "I am certain that several of my circuits are overheated," Threepio

  pronounced. "With your permission, Master Lando, I would like to

  perform a self-diagnos-tic."

  "Go ahead," Lando said. "While you're doing that, we'll get Artoo

  free. And then we can start figuring out what to do next."

  "That should not prove too taxing," said Lobot.

  "The choices appear to be to go that way"--he crossed his arms over his

  chest, pointing a finger in each direction"or that way."

  "Shhh," Lando said, craning his head. "Wait. Listen."

  They listened in silence, with sinking hearts. In the mysterious

  hollow spaces of the vagabond, the fading rumble of the entry growl

  echoed for a long time.

  "Blast." Lando sighed. "She's jumped again."

  "Something interesting here," said Josala Krenn.

  ner. The false-color image mapped the undulations of a great glacier

  as it crawled its way along a widening, steep-sided valley toward a

  frozen sea. "Where?"

  "Here," said Josala, pointing out a string of small blue blotches

  scattered along the northeast edge of the glacier. "The side-scanning

  radar pulled these up--they're sitting anywhere from eleven to nineteen

  meters down in the ice."

  "Rock from the lateral moraine?"

  "No, for two reasons. First, they're awfully regular in size, oblong,

  between one-point-five and two meters in the long axis. And second--do

  you know anything about the flow lines in the accumulation zone of a

  glacier?"

  "Not a thing."

  "Something that falls on the surface of a glacier moves down-valley

  with the ice and down into the body of the glacier as more snow falls

  on top of it," Josala said. "The lateral moraine running through that

  part of the glacier is made up of rock coming off this cliff face."

  She pointed at a side valley well back along the path of the glacier.

  "So by the time that rock gets to here--" "It's fifty meters down.

  These other objects, they haven't been in the ice as long as that rock

  underneath them. And they would have had to come onto the ice

  somewhere in here." Josala traced a circle with her finger over a flat

  area up-valley.

  "That's out in the middle of nothing," said Stopa.

  "Right." She wrinkled her face in thought. "It's hard to be sure of

  the timetables with cataclysmic climatic change, but I'd guess that

  whatever these are, they've only been in the ice for fifty to a hundred

  years."

  His eyes widened. "Bodies. Burials on the ice."

  "That was my thought."

  "It makes sense. Nomadic groups, or perhaps caves somewhere

  nearby--ice caves, possibly--" "It doesn't matter where they lived, so

  long as we've found where they died."

  "How deep is the shallowest of those bodies? Eleven meters?" When

  Josala nodded, Stopa turned to the pilot.

  "We're going to want our rover."

  "Kroddok--" "I know, I know. But hear me out--we'll wait until the

  weather's good there," Stopa said, his eyes animated by anticipation.

  "We'll set the rover down right on top of the site. We leave the

  engine running at idle so there's no chance for anything to freeze

  up.

  We work right out of the gear bay, because all we have to do is take a

  core.

  Our equipment ought to be able to handle that."

  "You want to drill a core?" Josala said in horror.

  "That'll mangle the remains."

  "Yes," Stopa said. "I know it violates the usual protocols.

  But we weren't sent here to recover bodies. We were sent here to

  recover biological material. When our reinforcements arrive, they can

  go down and excavate the other sites. But in the meantime, we'll have

  something we can analyze and report back on."

  Josala shook her head. "I'd really rather wait for the people who know

  what they're doing."

  "But we know how to take a core," Stopa said.

  "Krenn, a first-year apprentice knows how to take a core. We'll be out

  of there in thirty minutes. Twenty."

  Josala's reluctance still showed on her face.

  Kroddok drew closer and dropped his voice. "The bonus from the NRI

  would be enough to fund the expedition to Stovax," he said. "But if we

  wait until Penga Rift arrives, we'll have to share the bonus. We might

  even end up being cut out completely."

  He waited to see if that would sway her, then added, "I give you my

  word that we'll withdraw at the first sign of any trouble. No, better,

  I'm making you expedition boss. You say 'That's it,' and that's it."

  Josala looked up at him with a frown, then past him to the pilot.

  "What Dr. Stopa said. We're going to want our rover."

  The archaeologists' little Mark II World Rover skimmed across the top

  of snow-covered southwest range and began its descent into the glacier

  valley.

  "You're on the beam, eight hundred fifty meters out," said the voice of

  IX-26's pilot, continuing to talk Stopa and Krenn down to their

  destination. The navigation and sensor arrays of the rover were no

  match for those of the ferret.

  "Copy," said Stopa, who was at the controls. "I'm going from glide to

  hover mode now."

  "Seven hundred. Six hundred. Five fifty--" Several small shield doors

  on the rover's fuselage and delta wings slid open, revealing vector

  nozzles for the thrustjets. With the rover's nose stall-high and the

  nozzles perpendicular to the wings, the little ship quickly lost its

  forward velocity and began to settle.

  Josala was peering out the starboard cockpit viewpane, studying the

  ground below them. The steep inner slope of the southwest range wore a

  smooth blanket of sno
w, but the surface of the glacier itself was a

  field of jagged ice blocks, some as large as the rover itself.

  "It looked a lot smoother on the SSR display," Josala said.

  "The rover can cope with a forty-degree terrain tilt.

  We'll be all right."

  "It's going to be like drilling thlough rock."

  "But ice won't wear the bits like rock does," said Stopa. "We'll get

  through."

  "Two hundred twenty," the pilot was saying into Stopa's headset. "Ease

  her a hair to port."

  "Copy," Stopa said. "Krenn, we have to at least give it a try--" Just

  then a cloud of swirling white particles billowed up around the rover

  from below, closing in around the cockpit viewpanes and cutting

  visibility nearly to zero.

  "It's our downblast," Stopa said quickly. He raised

  Shield of Lies 35

  the control handle, and the rover climbed nimbly out of the cloud,

  which immediately began to dissipate beneath them. "Not a problem."

  "One fifty."