X-wing_ Iron Fist Part 14

He wondered if Tyria had been part of Phanan and Face's plan all along.

No; she was unskilled at deception, an honest spirit who took no satisfaction in lying. A refreshing change from most of the other Wraiths.

"You didn't..."

"No, sir. I didn't steal anything for him. But I did something just as bad. I let him blackmail me into keeping quiet. I could have turned him in, opposed him the way Notsil did... but I didn't." Her shame was evident in her expression. "Repness was an obsessive record keeper, sir.

He has records of my scores. He can prove that he doctored them to let me pa.s.s. And when that happens, they're going to vape my flying career..."

Wedge sighed. "In the face of evidence like that, I doubt I'll be able to offer you much protection."

"I'm not here to ask for protection, sir. There is no protection. But I thought you ought to know-so you can prepare for itmthat there's a possibility that I'm going to be yanked from the squadron."

"I understand. But let's say Repness doesn't accuse you. That he gets in touch with you privately and says, 'I can torp your career, but I won't.

All you have to do is send me a few creds to help pay my legal team for my defense.'"

She took that hurdle without hesitation. "If he asks for one credit, sir, he doesn't get it. Let him turn me in and be d.a.m.ned."

"You're sure."

"I'm positive. I'm not going to let him have even the most tenuous of leashes on me. No more. Not ever."

He was silent a long moment. A shame she hadn't come to him right away upon joining Wraith Squadron's training program. If she had done so, he could have...

Could have? No, perhaps he had done so. Just after joining the Wraith Squadron, Flight Officer Sarkin had come to him, not knowing who, further up along any official channels, might be part of Repness's organization.

Wedge had a.s.signed Face and Phanan to find someone to act as bait, and within weeks they'd clone so, in the hospital on Borleias. It was his plan, as well as Face and Phanan's, that had sent Lara Notsil to Tedevium and Colonel Repness.

The one thing that made him uncomfortable about this altered history was that he would be taking credit for initiating a plan actually brought into being by two of his subordinates... but the results would be worth this little deception.

"Flight Officer Sarkin."

She heard the change in his voice and snapped to attention.

"Sir."

"You're too good a pilot for the squadron to lose you this way."

"I'm at the bottom of the squadron rankings, sir."

"No longer true. One of the new pilots has taken over that singular honor, at least temporarily. And even if it were true, the so-called worst Wraith is one of the galaxy's most dangerous opponents by any standard, else he or she wouldn't be in the squadron."

"Um..."

"That didn't call for a response. Now, this is a direct order: If anyone comes to you with questions about your dealings with Repness, you will give no answers. Instead, tell him you are under orders, from me, not to discuss the matter-until he has come to talk to me. Do you understand?"

"I understand the order, sir, but not what it means."

"What it means is that you're going to be with the Wraiths until you die or you decide to transfer-not until someone outside the unit decides you're not one of us. Now, dismissed."

Startled, she saluted and fled.

Wedge sat back. His story would survive interrogation up until the time anyone involved was called on to testify, but his gut feeling was that it wouldn't go that far. If it did, neither he nor his subordinates would commit perjury, and so they'd be in for punishment from the investigators .... But they'd all endured such punishment before. And would again, to retain the skills and loyalty and comradeship of a pilot like Tyria Sarkin.

Lara Notsil paused just inside the broad opening to Mon Remonda's port hangar doors. Just stepping into the hangar was entering a different world.

The high-pitched whine of repulsorlift engines being tested cut into her.

It was a welcome noise now, one she'd come to appreciate. Less welcome was the cold that accompanied it.

The great doors at the hangar's far end were open, the cham-ber's atmosphere held in only by its magnetic containment field, and magcon was not an insulator-heat fled through the field into the vacuum of s.p.a.ce.

Outside the atmosphere, fighter hangars tended to be chilly places.

The hangar was occupied by twenty-one X-wings, and they'd been settled in tight to one another. Taking off without grazing an adjacent snubfighter would be a minor challenge. But that appeared to be characteristic of Commander Wedge Antilles - never letting his pilots grow complacent, even with such a simple task as taking off for a mission.

She headed toward her X-wing. As the last squadron pilot to land, she was in the rear of the packed formation, nearest the magcon shield, so she'd be among the first to take off. She waved at various Wraith and Rogue pilots, who acknowledged her with waves of their own, shouts of encouragement, or mock disparagement.

She didn't know what to make of them or how they were reacting to this mission.

The mission itself made perfect sense. Go in, stage a failed a.s.sault, try not to kill anyone - but defend yourself with all necessary force - and then get out safely. Let Zsinj jump to the wrong conclusion, that they'd fouled up and been driven off.

What was different, what was wrong, was the lack of disappointment among the Wraiths. Admiral Trigit's TIE-fighter pilots would have accepted such a mission with just as much discipline, but they would have been relentlessly unhappy about the restrictions against unnecessary elimination of the enemy. How can you reach the rank of ace, establish a name, gain fame as a fighter pilot, without killing the enemy? And the very prospect of leaving an armed enemy alive would have been repellent.

But these Rebel pilots took the restriction in good grace, and their relaxed att.i.tude about it seemed to be genuine.

That, more than anything, bothered her about this unit. The Rebel pilots were supposed to be barely restrained mad dogs. Sure, she'd met several at the hospital on Borleias who didn't match that profile, but those were men and women recuperating from injuries, anxious to have some rest and recreation. But these Wraiths and Rogues were gearing up for combat.

Their desire to eliminate the enemy should have been strong in them.

Perhaps Imperial evaluations of Rebel pilots were simply wrong. Not even accidentally wrong-just distorted to provide the Imperial pilots with more and better motivation to fight fiercely. Imperial pilots were, in fact, kept at a honed edge of ferocity, held at a barely contained level of fury that sometimes boiled out into violence at inappropriate times-in their quarters, with their families, on leave. By comparison, these X-wing pilots seemed emotionally quite healthy.

She shook her head. That had been a treasonous thought, dangerous to a woman who would be once again working for Imperial forces in the near future. She tried to banish it. She climbed the ladder to her snubfighter's c.o.c.kpit. A Mon Remonda mechanic was up there on the fuselage, making sure the R2 unit tucked in behind the c.o.c.kpit was securely attached. "You've got a beauty here," the man said. The R2 unit emitted a chirpy series of musical notes, acknowledgment of the compliment.

She stepped up into the c.o.c.kpit and settled into her pilot's couch.

"Brand-new from the factory." It was true; Colonel Repness could requisition new gear whenever a shipment was delivered to his training squadron, and apparently did. Her R2 unit, nicknamed Tonin, "Little Atton" in the Basic dialect of Aidivy, since she'd had its memory purged, was brand-new and unscathed, its base color a pretty silver white, its trim color an arterial red. It was loaded with several bells and whistles of top-of-the-line units. Warlord Zsinj's quartermaster would doubtless feel a little flicker of grat.i.tude when she handed it over to him.

"Best of luck, pilot."

"Thanks."

Moments later, she had her helmet on and canopy down and was going through her power-up checklist. Four engines showing green, full power-Repness had made sure his personal X-wing was in tip-top shape, too. She still needed the mechanics to move the pilot's couch forward; it was adjusted as far forward as it would go, and she had to extend herself a little uncomfortably when handling rudder pedals. Repness had been a tall man.

Her comlink crackled into life. It was Wedge's voice: "All right, Rogues, Wraiths. Call'em out in order."

"Rogue One, ready."

"Rogue Two, four lit and in the green."

"Rogue Three, ready to dance."

Only the Wraiths would be going as far as Lavisar. The Rogues would accompany them as far as the Lavisar system's outermost planetary ring, and would wait there. If, though odds were against it, this mission was a Zsinj trap against Mon Remonda, the Rogues would be ready to jump in and give Zsinj's forces a surprise they might not be ready to withstand.

A sudden chill pa.s.sed through her, one not even her insulated pilot's suit and c.o.c.kpit heater could immediately dispel. The Wraiths were supposed to fire a few shots, even land a few hits if they thought they could do so without unnecessarily taking life, and then flee.

But anything could happen. A laser blast aimed at a solar wing array could miss and hull a starfighter's c.o.c.kpit. A sudden maneuver could startle a TIE-fighter pilot into veering straight into the path of one of his fellows.

Lara didn't want to kill today, and it wasn't for the apparently altruistic reasons demonstrated by the Wraiths. If she killed an Imperial pilot, how would she be regarded when she returned to Imperial employ?

"Wraith Twelve, ready for lift."

That was Piggy's mechanical voice. She'd left a note to herself, in the portions of her mind that were so usefully automatic, for his voice to cue her own response. She shook away all the thoughts distracting her and said, "Wraith Thirteen, four green and topped off."

"Exit by current formation, by proximity to the magcon field, then form up by wings and units." That made her first.

She began to run through the checklist in her mind that covered repulsorlift backing, rotating, exiting this type of facility - but no, it was not a good idea to overintellectualize among these pilots. She took the pilot's yoke, engaged the repulsorlift, and pulled up and backward with a smooth motion, beginning her rotation before she was two meters into the air. She smoothly cruised through the magcon field, which permitted her pa.s.sage without the slightest discernible resistance. And she was in s.p.a.ce.

Not for the first time; she'd flown training missions with the Y-wings of Screaming Wookiee training squadron after Repness's arrest, had soloed in both Y-wings and Repness's X-wing, had flown her own choice of course to rendezvous with Mort Remonda. But this was her first action.

She continued with repulsorlifts and rose until her stern pointed into empty s.p.a.ce well above the entrance to the hangar, then engaged her thrust engines and pulled smoothly away from the Mon Calamari cruiser.

Smooth, and by the numbers - but she was still acutely aware of the eyes that were and would be upon her.

Moments later, Wedge pulled beside and slightly ahead of her, and Face Loran took up position on the other side of the commander, drawn back level with her. As the ninth pilot of a unit that normally flew by paired wingmen, Lara had been a.s.signed as the temporary third member of an existing pair.

They'd timed their arrival so that the face of Lavisar featuring its capital city, Syward, would be dead ahead when they emerged from hypers.p.a.ce. And so it was: When the dazzling light show that was the end of a hypers.p.a.ce jump faded, the Wraiths were aimed squarely at the portion of Lavisar's red-brown face that featured the largest recognizable glowing dot. Off to their starboard and ahead was the planet's largest moon, black in the eclipse shadow of the planet. The moon's gravity well, whose influence extended into hypers.p.a.ce, had, as they'd intended it to, plucked them back into real-s.p.a.ce. While this close to the moon, they would not be able to reenter hypers.p.a.ce, and as they got closer to the planet's surface, the situation got even trickier; Lavisar had a number of moons, all of them large enough to hinder hypers.p.a.ce jumps.

"Great placement, Twelve." Wedge's voice again. "All right. We should have a five-to-ten-minute window before they can bring online any secondary sensor arrays worth worrying about. Remember, you'll be aiming for a complex three times as long as wide, featuring sky-blue buildings..."

"Leader, this is Eight." Face's voice. "Visual sensors on the Syward military base show TIE fighters scrambling. I see two full squadrons mobilizing. They're wearing planetary defense colors."

"They can't be coming after us, Eight. Their sensors-can you visually scan their main sensor station?"

"Working on it, Leader."

Lara smiled. Though their transmissions were encrypted, she had to a.s.sume the Wraiths would be using a code sequence that had been in use for a while-one whose useful lifetime was nearing an end. If the planetary defenders recorded enough of these transmissions and could crack them, the Wraiths' pre-scripted dialogue would sound perfectly normal for a botched mission in progress.

"Tonin, scan normal Imperial frequencies," she said. "Send anything you hear that sounds like pilot traffic to my helmet comlink. When Wraith transmissions and Imperial transmissions conflict, continue recording the Imperial transmissions but let me hear only the Wraiths."

The display unit set aside for communication with the as-tromech popped up with a quick reply: UNDERSTOOD.

And almost immediately she began to hear faint, fuzzy transmissions, garbled words: "...ming up. Deploy by fists..."; "...file suggests still in approach vec..."

"Leader, Eight. Visual sensors show the ground sensor complex intact.

There seems to be some scoring damage on the northeast wall and civilian crews there. It looks like our ground team fouled up."

Even distorted by New Republic comm equipment, Wedge's voice was hard.

"They're going to be sorry they got back to us. They'll wish they only had Lavisar authorities to deal with. Wraiths, come about in formation.

Twelve, confirm and then transmit our escape vector."

"Twelve, understood."

The Wraiths began a slow sweep, bringing them around toward deep s.p.a.ce again, taking them back out the way they had come.

"...trol indicates enemy force is flee..."; "Stay in formation, we're chasing them all the way..."; "...like banthas to the hunters. Stay tight."

Lara frowned. That last transmission had not sounded right.

"Tonin, can you plot the origins of the Imperial transmissions you've received so far?"

APPROXIMATELY.

"Do so. Put them up on my sensor board."

Her sensor screen, which previously had shown only the two nearby planetary bodies and a single blue blip representing all the Wraiths, now added two fuzzy red fields-one at the planet's surface, one near the nearest moon's surface at a point not too distant from the Wraiths'

escape vector. The fields wavered as the astromech continuously recalculated probable points of origin and projected them onto the screen.

"Tonin, subtract the Lavisar transmissions from the image."

DONE.

"Transmit the image to Wraith Leader's R2 and ask him to put it on his sensor screen."

DONE.

She activated her comm system. "Leader, this is Thirteen. I'm picking up indications that we have company ahead. Probably the garrison of a lunar station."

"Understood, Thirteen. Good work. Wraiths, break to starboard on my lead.

Twelve, give us a new escape course."

"Twelve, understood."

Wedge rolled out to starboard, a course that would take the Wraiths past one of Lavisar's secondary moons - and keep them within troublesome gravity wells, unable to jump to hypers.p.a.ce, even longer, but now the shortest course away from the planet and new enemies. Lara followed, her maneuver as smooth as that of the commander's other wingman.

New activity on the sensor board: a single red blip distancing itself from the primary moon, heading toward the Wraiths on an intercept course.

As Lara watched, the blip became two, one ahead, one lagging behind. She adjusted the display to zoom in on the image and saw that the forward blip was registering as a full squad of TIE fighters, moving at maxi-mum speed, while the rear blip was four units "unknown type" with a 75 percent probability that they were Lambda-cla.s.s shuttles.

That made sense. A manufacturer making Lambda-type vehicles probably had a production combat model, one with heavier armor and equipped with heavy guns, to supplement its s.p.a.ce forces.

"Wraiths, this is Leader. My astromech calculates that the lunar unit will be on us before we clear the gravity well of that second moon. Once they encounter us-a.s.suming we engage them - we'll have about three minutes before the planetary units catch up to us. Mission Order One is rescinded. Engage and eliminate the lunar force with all dispatch. Then form up and get back to our escape course. Twelve?"