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Authors: Roger MacBride Allen
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milky, and a bit off-kilter. She was almost, but not quite, cross-eyed. She was a bit darker-skinned than Lando, and her black hair was done up in a complicated sort of braid piled on top of her head. The scuttlebutt was that she had at least some small skill in the Force, or at least that her intuition was good, and her hunches tended to play out, that she seemed to see more than most people. In any event, she had an odd way of seeming to look past your shoulder at something behind you, even when she was glaring right at you—as she was right now. “Numbers. We still have no idea how many ships are waiting out there at Sacorria.”
“We wouldn’t know there were any ships at all there, if not for Lady Tendra,” Lando said sharply. “Maybeyour NRI operatives on Sacorria know more about ship spotting, but did any of them have the initiative to get into the Corellian system and let us know about them?”
Kalenda looked woodenly at Lando. “I never told you there were NRI agents on Sacorria,” she said warily.
“And I never told you I used to be a smuggler, but you know it just the same,” Lando snapped. “Don’t treat me like a fool. If you didn’t have agents there, someone wasn’t doing their job.”
“Let’s try and get back on track here,” Luke said, attempting to smooth things over a bit. “What’s wrong with Lady Tendra’s message?”
“We have sent three follow-up queries asking her to give further details of the types, sizes, and numbers of ships she saw. Her latest message seems longer and more detailed, but once you weed out all the qualifiers and caveats, we still have nothing but the vaguest sorts of estimates.”
“She can’t tell you what she doesn’t know,” Lando said, wondering how many times he would have to tell that to Kalenda before she would believe it. Or when he would stop being frustrated by the intelligence group reading messages intended for him—and reading them first.
“But we have to know more than we do!” Kalenda said. “Whose ships are those? How many are there, and how well armed are they? Who commands them, and what are their intentions? You’ll have to transmit again, and ask for more information.”
“I won’t,” Lando said sharply. “I don’t care what your psych teams say about her responding best to me. She told you all she can, and I’m not going to help you harass her anymore.”
“But we need more—”
“The trouble is, she doesn’t have any more,” he snapped. “You have all the details you’re going to get. Did you expect Tendra to be able to tell you the fleetcommander’s middle name by looking at ships in orbit through macrobinoculars? She’s given us a warning, and a very useful one. She’s given you all the information she can, and there are limits on how far we can press her.”
“And there are also limits to how many messages you can ask her to send,” Luke put in. “Every time she sends us one, the odds of her being detected go up.”
Kalenda looked at Luke sharply. “Detected? How? By whom?”
“Think about it,” Lando said.
“You’re
the intelligence officer. The
way
she’s broadcasting is secret, but it’s not hidden in any way. She’s broadcasting in clear, without any coding or encryption. Anyone who had the right sort of gear for scanning radio-band frequencies could lock in on her radionics transmission in a heartbeat.
You
did it easily enough. Then they’d not only know that
we
know about the ships tucked away in orbit of Sacorria, they’d be able to triangulate back and zero in on her location, the same way we did.”
“What difference would that make?” Kalenda asked.
“Plenty, if we’re talking about the people who control the interdiction field. They’d want to silence her. Say they switched the field off for thirty seconds. With good targeting and good planning, that would be enough time for a ship to drop into hyperspace, pop out next to the
Gentleman Caller,
blow Tendra out of the
“We wouldn’t know there were any ships at all there, if not for Lady Tendra,” Lando said sharply. “Maybeyour NRI operatives on Sacorria know more about ship spotting, but did any of them have the initiative to get into the Corellian system and let us know about them?”
Kalenda looked woodenly at Lando. “I never told you there were NRI agents on Sacorria,” she said warily.
“And I never told you I used to be a smuggler, but you know it just the same,” Lando snapped. “Don’t treat me like a fool. If you didn’t have agents there, someone wasn’t doing their job.”
“Let’s try and get back on track here,” Luke said, attempting to smooth things over a bit. “What’s wrong with Lady Tendra’s message?”
“We have sent three follow-up queries asking her to give further details of the types, sizes, and numbers of ships she saw. Her latest message seems longer and more detailed, but once you weed out all the qualifiers and caveats, we still have nothing but the vaguest sorts of estimates.”
“She can’t tell you what she doesn’t know,” Lando said, wondering how many times he would have to tell that to Kalenda before she would believe it. Or when he would stop being frustrated by the intelligence group reading messages intended for him—and reading them first.
“But we have to know more than we do!” Kalenda said. “Whose ships are those? How many are there, and how well armed are they? Who commands them, and what are their intentions? You’ll have to transmit again, and ask for more information.”
“I won’t,” Lando said sharply. “I don’t care what your psych teams say about her responding best to me. She told you all she can, and I’m not going to help you harass her anymore.”
“But we need more—”
“The trouble is, she doesn’t have any more,” he snapped. “You have all the details you’re going to get. Did you expect Tendra to be able to tell you the fleetcommander’s middle name by looking at ships in orbit through macrobinoculars? She’s given us a warning, and a very useful one. She’s given you all the information she can, and there are limits on how far we can press her.”
“And there are also limits to how many messages you can ask her to send,” Luke put in. “Every time she sends us one, the odds of her being detected go up.”
Kalenda looked at Luke sharply. “Detected? How? By whom?”
“Think about it,” Lando said.
“You’re
the intelligence officer. The
way
she’s broadcasting is secret, but it’s not hidden in any way. She’s broadcasting in clear, without any coding or encryption. Anyone who had the right sort of gear for scanning radio-band frequencies could lock in on her radionics transmission in a heartbeat.
You
did it easily enough. Then they’d not only know that
we
know about the ships tucked away in orbit of Sacorria, they’d be able to triangulate back and zero in on her location, the same way we did.”
“What difference would that make?” Kalenda asked.
“Plenty, if we’re talking about the people who control the interdiction field. They’d want to silence her. Say they switched the field off for thirty seconds. With good targeting and good planning, that would be enough time for a ship to drop into hyperspace, pop out next to the
Gentleman Caller,
blow Tendra out of the
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