X-Wing The Krytos Trap by Michael A. Stackpole

Author:Michael A. Stackpole [Stackpole, Michael A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 7 ABY
Amazon: B00PR4B44K
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 1996-10-02T03:00:00+00:00

things got tight, he'd go through the chute and take his chances getting out

that way.

The Imperial facility had a layout that was a lot like a TIE

starfighter's cross-section. The lift, garbage chute, and utility area formed a central core through which ran a long corridor. It intersected two corridors

at right angles, one at each end. All of the corridors had high ceilings and

doors running off them every seven meters or so.

His first impression of opulence had not been diminished in his survey of

the facility. The entire place had been deco-rated with golden-brown

wooden panels and hand-carved trim. Not being often treated to the

lifestyle of the rich, Cor-ran couldn't identify the wood, but he was fairly

certain the faint rose scent filling the air came from it. He made a mental

note to ask Erisi what kind of wood it was, since he assumed she would

know.

More impressive than the wooden furnishings were the huge xenoscapes that took up whole walls in some of the rooms. Some were filled with water

and had brightly colored fish swimming through them. Others contained

dense, foggy atmospheres or boggy environments in which things flapped

and slithered. Each room had its own private xenoscape and while most of

the creatures looked harmless, a couple looked positively lethal.

Despite getting frightened by the sudden appearances of several luminous

beasts along the wall of a darkened room, Corran was glad for the

xenoscapes' presence. Some speci-mens were large enough that lifeform

scanning equipment might have trouble differentiating him from them,

frustrat-ing a search. In his experience that sort of equipment was most

valuable in determining where lifeforms were not, so that searches could

be confined to the places where they were found. He assumed that if

searchers were forced to go over the level carefully, he could elude them in

a deadly game of hide-and-seek.

But then, he'd not been counting on the methodical na-ture of

stormtroopers and how they did their work. During his scouting run a

squad of eight came up through the tur-bolift and immediately posted two

men in the facility core. The remaining six broke up into two teams of three

and proceeded to go through each wing room by room. Once they finished

in a room they closed the doors and used a datapad to set the locks and

seal the room.

He'd fled from them as carefully as he could, but they pushed on. Finally

he'd found himself herded into what, in the golden glow of the large aquatic

xenoscape along one wall, appeared to be a very nice library. The shelves

on three walls were lined with box after box of datacards. Both desks in the

room had tabletop datapads with holoplates that could provide a fully tri-

dimensional data-scanning experi-ence. The chairs all seemed

comfortable, and had the room not been built on an immense Imperial

scale, Corran could have considered it cozy.

It had its quirks, though. In stumbling about he stepped into a circular

design on the floor. He would have thought it a continuation of the inlaid

wooden pattern, but it felt cold and synthetic to his bare feet.

He had barely stepped into it when a holographic image was projected

down from the ceil-ing and filled the circle.

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