Chapter 30: Zero Two Prelude
Dedicated to Tad Williams, for inspiration and chapter names, and Master Eisley Oricla, for affecting in a good way.
Corran Horn moved quickly, because he could feel people watching at the edges of his mind, like a schizophrenic's nightmare. This though was real; in the Force was distraction. Time was running out, and he held all the resources of an Imperial officer. He stood now on the bridge of 'his' ship Bitter Heart, watching as the Imperials reconfigured around the immense gray-black Death Star.
It being brought into the Hoth system and placed in Commander Horn's figurative hands had been Darth Vader's final command before his taking off for somewhere in the Destroyer Valiant. Even more disturbing than the facts that the Empire vs. Rebel conflict here was as mismatched as the real ABY Zero and therefor Vader could spare a destroyer with confidence was that, from the scattered mental maps Corran let through his various passive defenses, Luke Skywalker had departed along with him.
There was really nothing Corran felt he could do about that now. They had been so close--but no use brooding over misses. The Death Star would not be ready to fire on Hoth for at least minutes, and then at his command, unless he was found to be fraudulent. And the codes to tactical and technological machinations of the Death Star...it was, Corran figured not without definite and grim amusement, a worthwhile experience.
He headed back down to the hanger of Bitter Heart, easily shrugging off flunkies wary of the impending attack. He took a gara-katte again. It would be more useful than a TIE fighter, even though it was more alien. Corran could handle a new technology, or so he told himself. It was nothing to handling a new universe.
Out in the space between floating Imperial behemoths, the gara-katte angled for the Death Star. Below--they caught Corran's pilot's eyes as flashes of silver--the rebel craft burst from white clouds trailing mist; X-wings and flat-hulled Corellians in numbers that ceased far to quickly. Corran accelerated out of the fore of the Imperial formation, praying that there would be the delay usual--the delay in which the commander of the Rebels would realize he was going into something insane.
The time was given. Inside the Death Star, just within the blue of a containment field and where he wouldn't have to fly and talk at the same time, Corran sent out a broad spectrum comm call to the opposite fleet that would look to both sides like the first taunt of a space-slaughter.
When Paqs Patra or one of his kind came on the small 2-D visual he looked ready to defend himself against just such a thing, so Corran didn't give him the time. "Greetings officer of the Alliance. I am Corran Horn, and I need to give you information vital to the survival of the Rebellion."
The alien glare intensified, though its response was unanticipated. "The real Corran Horn? Imperial!"
"Yes! The real, not Imperial. I have information you need to destroy this Death Star. I'm an old friend of commander Skywalker."
"You want me to believe that now."
"I'm Jedi; I could make you. But I'm not. I'll give you,"
"What kind of information."
"The original trench run. You can completely vape the Death Star with one of those X-wings but I need time."
Pause.
"There's no danger for you at all." Corran tried to relax the conversation anew. The alien captain's oddly-proportioned face glowed blue and white in the dimmed interior of the gara-katte.
"Tell me when." The Rebel said, and cut the comm.