Delta source
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Delta Source was a fictional intelligence system in the Star Wars Universe. It first made an appearance in the Timothy Zahn novel Heir to the Empire, when it is discovered that Grand Admiral Thrawn has personally re-activated the mysterious Delta Source. He informs Captain Pellaeon that Delta Source was known only to The Emperor and his closest advisors, including the 12 Grand Admirals and that information gleaned from Delta Source could be trusted absolutely. He advised Pellaeon that, when the time was right, he (Thrawn) would reveal Delta Source to him, calling it a measure of trust.
Delta Source is also known by people in the upper echelons in the New Republic hierarchy, such as Mon Mothma, Leia Organa Solo, Admiral Ackbar and Borsk Fey'lya as an intelligence system by which Grand Admiral Thrawn is able to gain information from the very centre of Coruscant, including private conversations between Senators and highly secret missions. During the Thrawn Campaign, the whereabouts of several senior New Republic personnel, including Luke Skywalker and Han Solo are suspected of being compromised by Delta Source. As such, Leia Organa Solo makes it one of her personal missions to uncover the secret of Delta Source.
Initially, Delta Source is believed to be a single individual. It is not possible that the main corridors of the Senate Building are bugged, since counter-intelligence sweeps are done regularly - all of which turn up no leads. This causes considerable strain in attempting to locate Delta Source, since there are literally thousands of possible candidates. Suggestions are made that Delta Source is a Senator, especially after Admiral Ackbar is arrested for corruption, following payments into his account (later discovered to have been planted by Imperial Intelligence agents) and a failed political coup by his counterpart, Borsk Fey'lya. Even if Delta Source is not a Senator, each Senator can have several assistants and aides, any one of which could be the elusive leak.
Due to a fortunate piece of top-level ignorance, a top slicer, named Ghent is stranded on Coruscant. Ghent - who normally works for the smuggler, Talon Karrde - is able to decrypt the code which Delta Source uses to transmit information simply, he says, because he has nothing else to do, whilst he waits for Karrde to collect him. He turns his discovery over to Leia Organa Solo, who concocts a plan. She and her aide, Winter walk down the main corridor in the Senate building, where Delta Source is known to operate, holding mock conversations regarding apparently important issues. Then, they sneak into a hidden room, where Ghent works on decrypting Delta Sources transmissions.
After a while, the number of likely candidates, who are in the corridor at the time of every fake conversation comes down from thousands, to hundreds, to dozens and then to just a few possible candidates. But still they are no nearer to discovering who is Delta Source.
An off-hand comment leads Ghent to surmise that perhaps Delta Source is a droid. Leia and Garm Bel Iblis watch the Grand Corridor when the next Counter-intelligence sweep is conducted, but no droids appear to try and get out of the way of the sweep. Despite feeling disappointed, Leia still feels that they are getting close. Almost sub-conciously she watches as a maintenance droid, beeping quitely to itself, causes ripples to appear in the decorative trees that line the Grand Corridor.
She realises that she has located Delta Source.
Delta Source is discovered to be a natural spy network. Over 8 metres below the surface, the roots of the decorative trees feed into communications pipes, which then lead to a small, hidden transmitter. Every vibration in the Grand Corridor (even those caused by speech) caused a ripple to appear on the surface of the tree, which worked its way up and down the bark. These ripples were translated back into their original form during or after transmission.
Mon Mothma surmises that Delta Source explained how private secrets, used by Palpatine against the Senate, had first been given away. Naturally, once Palpatine suspended the Senate (in 0 BBY) these transmitters were no longer needed, but Palpatine clearly decided that they were useful and did not bother to have them removed. Following the excavation of the trees, Delta Source was silenced.
