we can determine from this.”
“Yeah there is,” said Arruna, leaning over Finnick’s shoulder to point at the very beginning of the message in the flight control record. “This was keyed in. Probably from the sender’s console.”
“How can you tell?” Dash asked, frowning.
“If it were sliced in from a remote source, you’d see some artifacts from the tunneling. There’d be, um, slicing and transport code, basically. That is, the code that created a hole in the data stream, then inserted the message. As you can see”—she pointed from the flight control readout to the one from the ship’s transceiver—“these two pieces of code, while pure garbage, are identicalpieces of pure garbage. They’re deteriorating in the same predefined way.”
“Yeah. I get it,” said Dash. “There was no slicing code in
our
message, so if there was any in the port’s exchange, we’d see it as … different garbage.”
“Exactly.”
“But that means that whoever was sitting on the console in flight control deliberately sabotaged us. They’re part of the conspiracy.” He hated the word, but there it was.
“It might have been a flunky who was just told to enter this code without realizing what it would do,” said Finnick, “but yeah, there’s a chance it was someone who knew exactly what they were doing.”
Dash stood up and moved away from the console. “And they might’ve been doing it because they
wanted
to do it or because they were
paid
to do it or because they were
ordered
to do it by a superior. And there’s no way for us to know which.”
“One thing we do know,” said the Twi’lek engineer. “Someone with tentacles in the port authority set this up. Which suggests—”
“Someone with almost unlimited resources,” said Dash.
Like a Vigo, for example
. He rubbed at the back of his neck. This whole situation was giving him a headache.
Javul flew at the end of her lifeline high up in the dome, adorned in her sprite costume, her wings trailing glitter through the star-spangled ersatz heavens. Music soared around her—the opening strains of the centerpiece of the second act in which the sprite bemoaned the loss of her free-spirited love to the groundlings who could not fly and who therefore sought to keep all others from the sky.
Borne upward on the winds of melody and harmony, she opened her mouth and began to sing:
I see you in your tiny box;
My heart falls and breaks and bleeds
.
The opti-fiber line played out and she plummeted right on cue, drawing up mere meters from the floor.
I would come to you
.
I would rage for you
.
I would free you
.
She raised her arms in a graceful dancer’s pose and shot skyward again.
But if I come and if I rage and if I seek to free
,
Will they not spring the tender trap?
Your pain is only bait
…
for me
.
She’d reached the apex of the dome again and let the last note of the verse ring out long and mournfully before swooping into the aerial “steps” of her dance. She worked in a spiral, pushing the circumference of the dance out and out. With the seating in place, it would seem to her watchers that they sat within the forest of Kashyyyk or cloud city on Bespin or the heights and depths of Imperial Center. She would pass so close to them that they could almost reach out and touch her.
She looked down as she soared through the forest of Kashyyyk and saw the holographically projected trunks of the great trees reaching down and down.
Then she saw something else. She saw the aperture in the middle of the stage begin to iris open.
Before she could wonder what Mel was doing moving scenery during rehearsal, she felt a deep thrum, a mechanical rumble. The air trembled and the concert seats—all of them—shot out of their storage pits into the great, open dome.
Javul shrieked and jerked out of her spiral into a back-flip that carried her toward the center of the space. The seats were moving many times faster than intended … and all at
“Yeah there is,” said Arruna, leaning over Finnick’s shoulder to point at the very beginning of the message in the flight control record. “This was keyed in. Probably from the sender’s console.”
“How can you tell?” Dash asked, frowning.
“If it were sliced in from a remote source, you’d see some artifacts from the tunneling. There’d be, um, slicing and transport code, basically. That is, the code that created a hole in the data stream, then inserted the message. As you can see”—she pointed from the flight control readout to the one from the ship’s transceiver—“these two pieces of code, while pure garbage, are identicalpieces of pure garbage. They’re deteriorating in the same predefined way.”
“Yeah. I get it,” said Dash. “There was no slicing code in
our
message, so if there was any in the port’s exchange, we’d see it as … different garbage.”
“Exactly.”
“But that means that whoever was sitting on the console in flight control deliberately sabotaged us. They’re part of the conspiracy.” He hated the word, but there it was.
“It might have been a flunky who was just told to enter this code without realizing what it would do,” said Finnick, “but yeah, there’s a chance it was someone who knew exactly what they were doing.”
Dash stood up and moved away from the console. “And they might’ve been doing it because they
wanted
to do it or because they were
paid
to do it or because they were
ordered
to do it by a superior. And there’s no way for us to know which.”
“One thing we do know,” said the Twi’lek engineer. “Someone with tentacles in the port authority set this up. Which suggests—”
“Someone with almost unlimited resources,” said Dash.
Like a Vigo, for example
. He rubbed at the back of his neck. This whole situation was giving him a headache.
Javul flew at the end of her lifeline high up in the dome, adorned in her sprite costume, her wings trailing glitter through the star-spangled ersatz heavens. Music soared around her—the opening strains of the centerpiece of the second act in which the sprite bemoaned the loss of her free-spirited love to the groundlings who could not fly and who therefore sought to keep all others from the sky.
Borne upward on the winds of melody and harmony, she opened her mouth and began to sing:
I see you in your tiny box;
My heart falls and breaks and bleeds
.
The opti-fiber line played out and she plummeted right on cue, drawing up mere meters from the floor.
I would come to you
.
I would rage for you
.
I would free you
.
She raised her arms in a graceful dancer’s pose and shot skyward again.
But if I come and if I rage and if I seek to free
,
Will they not spring the tender trap?
Your pain is only bait
…
for me
.
She’d reached the apex of the dome again and let the last note of the verse ring out long and mournfully before swooping into the aerial “steps” of her dance. She worked in a spiral, pushing the circumference of the dance out and out. With the seating in place, it would seem to her watchers that they sat within the forest of Kashyyyk or cloud city on Bespin or the heights and depths of Imperial Center. She would pass so close to them that they could almost reach out and touch her.
She looked down as she soared through the forest of Kashyyyk and saw the holographically projected trunks of the great trees reaching down and down.
Then she saw something else. She saw the aperture in the middle of the stage begin to iris open.
Before she could wonder what Mel was doing moving scenery during rehearsal, she felt a deep thrum, a mechanical rumble. The air trembled and the concert seats—all of them—shot out of their storage pits into the great, open dome.
Javul shrieked and jerked out of her spiral into a back-flip that carried her toward the center of the space. The seats were moving many times faster than intended … and all at
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