X-wing_ Iron Fist Part 24

"All right. We have a small satellite dead ahead. One signal's stronger than the others. And that gives us..."

He punched a b.u.t.ton to isolate the signal.

"Greetings, Hawk-bats. This is Warlord Zsinj. I welcome you. Prepare to receive a new set of coordinates. Do not rebroadcast them. Simply follow them. Soon we will be dining in comfort and coming to terms of great mutual profit." The message began to repeat.

"We're getting a file on the same band," Dia said.

"Don't bring it up," Kell said. "It might be the kind of program Castin likes to work up. Something that will give them more information about us than we'd like."

Face nodded. "Good point. It's not a big file. I'll transmit it to my datapad and we can reenter the nav data by hand. What do you figure would happen if we did want to retransmit the file?"

Dia said, "One of two things. That satellite will have an extra system.

Either it's a weapons system, designed to destroy us, or it's a hypercomm system that will warn Zsinj before we get to him."

Kell dragged his hair back over his shoulder again. "It'll be whichever system is cheaper."

"Well, in either case, we won't be doing that." Face compared the navigational data on his datapad with that which he'd just typed into Narra's computer. It matched. He punched the execute b.u.t.ton and nodded for Dia to bring the shuttle around to its new course.

"All right, stage two."

The two X-wings dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce at the outer periphery of the Aldivy system, well beyond the solar-gravity well that would prevent their reentering hypers.p.a.ce. Lara immediately brought up her visual sensors and trained them on the planet of Aidivy. The picture that emerged, jittery and blurry, was of a blue-and-white globe with no features she could identify.

She restrained herself from making a sour face. What she knew of Aidivy all came from Imperial surveys and publicly available data. She knew the map of the planet's surface, but from s.p.a.ce, of course, cloud cover kept those easily recognized continental borders from sight.

Her comlink crackled. "I can't detect any traffic on Imperial channels,"

Donos said. "Just some routine stuff on standard planetary and commercial channels. Pretty light, actually."

"Aldivy isn't heavily settled," she said. "A couple of hundred communities. Not enough value there for the Imperials to protect it when they occupied it. At the height of Imperial occupation, we had two TIE fighters and a shuttle protecting us."

"In addition to your own planetary defense forces, I a.s.sume."

"Um, yes." She wished he'd quit asking questions. Too much of this and he'd catch her out in a wrong answer. "Our police. Not much defense against a.s.sault forces, I'm afraid."

"Is your home on the day side or night side right now?"

"I'm trying to figure that out." Shut up. Just shut up. "I can't tell.

I'll know when we're closer."

The main doors to Iron Fist's false bridge rose with their customary startling speed and General Melvar entered. He stopped short at the sight of the dinner table now occupying the center of the command walkway.

Zsinj was seated at the head chair of the bare table, his booted feet up on it. Behind him, at the bow end of the chamber, the holoscreens had been activated and were now a perfect match for the view from the real bridge's forward viewports; they framed Zsinj, making him the central feature of the galaxy they showed.

Zsinj smiled at him. "What do you think?"

"Perhaps your most ostentatious demonstration yet," Melvar said as he approached. "Shouldn't you surround yourself with a nimbus of light to complete the effect?"

"Not a bad idea. Maybe next time. What do you want?"

"Sensors have reported a shuttle's appearance from the hypers.p.a.ce course you provided to the Hawk-bats. They'll be here within minutes."

Zsinj's feet hit the walkway surface and he stood.

"a.s.semble the cast. Notify the galley. And get into makeup. This should be entertaining."

As he watched Iron Fist growing in the forward viewport, Face willed his stomach to quit crawling around. "All right. Here's your last bit of advice. Remember, we're just as arrogant as they are but nowhere near as strong. So respond appropriately to bad manners-but not so appropriately that you get us killed."

Kell mimed entering data on an imaginary datapad.

"No get killed," he said. "I'll try to remember."

"I'd like to say leave all the talking to me, but that's not going to work - we're here to impress them with our individual skill and readiness. Just keep all your responses in character, and refer any question about our unit strength, tactical readiness, that sort of thing, to me."

"Understood, General," Dia said. Her voice was an insinuating purr, far different from the flat, sometimes emotionless tones he was used to from her. He glanced at her, and it was a stranger's face that looked back at him: Dia's features with another woman behind them. Her eyes evaluated him with the steady regard of a half-tamed animal watching its owner for some sign of weakness. He looked away quickly, uneasily aware that he didn't know whether she was simply a natural actress or this was a layer to her that he hadn't seen before.

To his disappointment, the Iron Fist bridge crew instructed the Hawk-bats to land in a secondary hangar well forward of the main hangar. He would have liked to have seen the damage done to the main hangar by Kell's tanker bomb, to have seen its state of repair. Dia brought the shuttle into the designated hangar. Within already were a pair of interceptors, another Lambda-cla.s.s shuttle, and a larger Raptor transport shuttle-an ugly, boxy troop carrier known to be favored by Zsinj's forces. And a reception committee-an officer and a half-dozen stormtroopers. One of the troopers hand-guided Narra to a landing pad marked off by red paint. Dia set the shuttle down expertly.

"Show time," Face said.

They descended the boarding ramp in proper form, Face first, Dia and Kell to either side of and behind him. Face stopped directly before the officer. Neither that man nor any of the stormtroopers reacted visibly to Face's scar makeup, the first time he could remember such a lack of response.

The officer before him was not what Face had expected. The man was tall and lean, with features that might have been bland had they not been twisted into such a predatory smile. He seemed to glow with an inner light, and Face suspected that it was a dangerous light. The man liked to win, or to kill, or to inflict pain - Face wasn't sure which, but he did know that this was a man to watch. The officer also, incongruously, had long and perfectly reflective fingernails; Face suspected they were metal and would not have been surprised to discover that they were very, very sharp.

Face cleared his throat. "I am General Kargin, founder and leader of the Hawk-bat Independent s.p.a.ce Force." He put on an urbane smile and lowered his voice. "I believe I have an invitation."

"Indeed you do. General Melvar. I am in charge of the warlord's a.s.sault forces, and I welcome you to Iron Fist."

The general shook Face's hand. Firm grip, fast shake-he made no effort to conduct a contest of grip strength to demonstrate dominance.

"Your a.s.sociates ?"

Face gestured first to Dia, then to Kell. "Captain Seku, my second-in-command. Lieutenant Dissek, my bodyguard."

"Delighted. Before we continue, though, there is a bit of bureaucratic unpleasantness to accomplish."

"Oh?"

The general looked regretful. "Zsinj is a man with many enemies. For this reason, many policies surround him, policies that I do not let him overrule, for his own safety. One of them leads me to insist that you turn over all weapons to my men for the duration of your stay."

Face shrugged. Then he drew his blaster pistol with such speed that the stormtroopers present were caught off guard, their weapons out of line; he could have shot Melvar and one or two others before they would have been able to react. But just as quickly he flipped the blaster in the air and caught it, then handed it, b.u.t.t first, to the nearest stormtrooper.

"I have no fear of treachery here," Face said. "Alive, I promise additional strength to Zsinj. Killed, I would cost him very dearly."

Melvar gave him a polite nod and shrug, neither agreeing to nor denying Face's a.s.sertion. Dia and Kell handed over their own blasters in a less dramatic fas.h.i.+on.

"The second part of this unfortunate protocol," Melvar said, "is that you must tie scanned for additional weapons you might have forgotten to hand over, because of your habitual wearing of them almost as clothing rather than weapons. Please."

Obligingly, Face and the others raised their arms and let a stormtrooper specialist run a handheld scanner around them.

Face came up clean, then Dia.

Then it was Kell's turn. His accoutrements also failed to trigger the weapons scanner, but the stormtrooper behind him obviously thought his arms needed to be a little higher; with the barrel of his blaster rifle, he tapped the underside of one of Kell's arms to raise it.

Kell stepped back so that the stormtrooper's barrel protruded beneath his right arm. He clamped his right arm upon it, then twisted, simultaneously yanking the blaster out of the man's hand and bringing his elbow up under the stormtrooper's helmet. A slight change to the angle of his attack and the blow would crush the man's windpipe, but Kell instead brought his elbow up into the man's chin. Everyone heard the crack of the man's jaw snapping shut.

The stormtrooper dropped to the floor, his armor clattering. The other stormtroopers aimed at Kell. With admirable aplomb, Kell slowly reached over to switch off the blaster rifle's power, then lowered the weapon onto its fallen owner.

"Is there a problem?"

General Melvar's mouth twitched into what looked like an amused smirk.

"You appear to be punis.h.i.+ng one of my men."

"Punis.h.i.+ng?" Kell looked down at the stormtrooper as if seeing him for the first time. "Oh, I a.s.sure you, no punishment was intended. That was simply reflex. If I'd intended to punish him, he'd be begging you to kill him now."

Face turned back to Melvar. "My apologies."

The general shook his head. "No need to apologize. The trooper was not instructed to behave this way toward honored guests. I think a little experience with electricity will do him some good." He gestured for another stormtrooper to attend to the unconscious man, then for Face to fall in step beside him. "How much do you pay for this man Dissek's services?"

"I'll never tell," Face said. "If you want to try to hire him away, you'll have to offer him a bribe without knowing my own economies."

Melvar offered a little sigh of vexation.

They landed in a grove of fruit trees less than a kilometer from the charred oval of dirt that now lay where the community of New Oldtown had once stood. It was night, and only the crescent of a single moon afforded Lara and Donos any light.

Together, they approached the area of char from the east, where a rise overlooked the destroyed town. Lara a.s.sured Donos that a farmhouse had once stood there; she didn't tell him that she knew this only from publicly available information taken from the community's main computer shortly before Admiral Trigit bombarded the town out of existence. At the summit of the rise, they got down on hands and knees to crawl until the ruined area was beneath them.

What had been New Oldtown was as black as cloudy night.

What she could see of the terrain suggested that the onetime community and outlying farms were now a series of charred furrows and craters-certainly, the nearest terrain was like that.

In the midst of it all, though, was a house - a prefabricated brick-shaped dwelling of an incongruous blue, cheery lights in the windows. It looked like a cheap dollhouse.

Donos sighted in on it with his sniper rifle, adjusting the range on his sight. He did not speak, but worked with confidence and precision. Lara could tell he'd done this many times in similar circ.u.mstances.

"They'll probably scan for large life-forms when I arrive," she said.

"In case I brought allies. Which I have."

"We're nearly a kilometer out," Donos said. "They might have a scanner that could find me, but probably not. Have you got your comlink to broadcast continuously?"

"No. They're sure to check for that. I'm going in with it off, and I'm leaving it off."

He looked at her, one eye visible in the shadow of his face.

"That's not a good idea. If you get in trouble...-"

"If I hold up a fist, it means I'm in trouble. Come to the rescue. If I don't, i have the situation under control."

He sighed, obviously unhappy. "All right. But call for help the instant you feel the situation spin out of control."

"If it does." She hesitated, at a loss for what to say next. His tone suggested that he wasn't just being professionally methodical - he actually cared about what happened to her. She wasn't used to that and didn't know how to respond. No words suggested themselves, so she simply rose and headed down the hill toward the ludicrous blue house.

Castin Donn watched Zsinj's scanner team go over the interior of Narra.

The picture on his handheld screen wasn't good - a flickery blue and white, limitations imposed by the micro-miniaturized holocam lens he had set up to observe the shuttle's cabin-but it did allow him to see which of the c.o.c.kpit's control panels they popped open so as to install the machinery they'd brought with them. A tracking device, probably. They brought up the shuttle's master control program, too, but didn't spend much time with it - probably just erasing the record of their entry and exit. Not that such a tactic would work; Castin had done considerable work on Narra's systems, so that now what appeared to be the standard interfaces to all shuttle programs were actually a false layer. Code-slicers could adjust those layers all they wished, but their modifications would be trapped and later presented to the shuttle's authorized operators for confirmation or deletion.

The scanning team departed and the boarding ramp rose into place. It was time to get moving.

Castin switched off the holocam and gingerly set the screen down beside him. Every move had to be precise and careful. He lay on his back in full stormtrooper armor, the helmet tucked in beside his head, and could still occupy only half of the smuggling compartment. He'd arranged to extend a holocam lead and a breathing tube out through the scanner s.h.i.+elding-turning them off while scanning was actually taking place - but the compartment had no other comfort conditioning, and he'd been sweating in here for hours. He stank like a bantha in mating season.

Tape held the mirror in place beside him. The mirror was a long strip of reflective material set up to adhere to the bottom and top surfaces of the smuggling compartment at a forty-five-degree angle so that anyone looking in would see the compartment's top surface instead of the back.

It was carefully situated so that it covered him but led anyone looking in the compartment to believe that it was empty at the rear.

Now he went through the actions that had gotten him here, but in reverse order. He detached the tape that held the mirrored material to the compartment's ceiling and lowered it in place beside him. He carefully moved aside the supplies he'd loaded into the compartment, giving him a narrow channel for escape. He flipped the switch that popped the compartment door open, and then wriggled out into Narra's main compartment-and into comparatively fresh air. He lay there on the floor for a few moments, gulping in air, then retrieved his helmet and other gear from the compartment and sealed it back up.

His plan was under way. He had to get out of the shuttle and hangar without the hangar guards noticing, find his way to a full-function computer coupler, slice his way in through s.h.i.+p security, and upload his program-then get back and wait. It would be tough, but he was a Wraith.

He could do it.

And days from now, when Iron Fist was a glowing ball of superheated gas or a prize vessel in the hands of the New Republic, Commander Antilles would be forced to acknowledge that Castin had been right all along.

General Melvar and the Hawk-bats swept into a bridge that was a riot of activity. A narrow but full-length dinner table, large enough to accommodate twenty people, was set up on the command walk-way and more than half-filled with diners. Seated at the head of the table, his back to the viewports now showing the swirl of hypers.p.a.ce travel, a vast area of brightness in his spotless white grand admiral's uniform, was Zsinj.

His hands were clasped over his expansive belly, his mustachios drooped rakishly, and his expression was one of great contentment.

The officers a.s.sembled at his table were engaged in vigorous conversation, but as the Hawk-bats entered the chamber they could hear none of it - it was drowned out by the din from the crew pit below.

There, uniformed bridge officers stood their watches with a startling unconcern for military decorum. Some monitored their screens while leaning back with their feet up on their con-soles. Others stood in groups of three or four, eyes on their screens but their attention on their fellows. Several crewmen were huddled close to their screens, absorbed in low-grade TIE-fighter simulators. At one point toward the bow, two stormtroopers were engaged in a vibroblade duel, apparently a friendly one, but their blows still caused deep scores in their white armor.

They were all talking, a jumble of noise that made the chamber sound like a conference hall rather than a s.h.i.+p's bridge.

General Melvar led the Hawk-bats toward the head of the table and had them sit before offering introduction.

"Warlord, allow me to present you General Kargin, Captain Seku, and Lieutenant Dissek, honored representatives of the Hawk-bats. General Kargin, your host, the warlord Zsinj." Face offered a seated half bow.

Zsinj finally turned his attention to the new guests and smiled. "Good to meet you at last. Welcome aboard Iron Fist."

Face said, "A formidable vessel. I trust we did not do her too much damage."

"Certainly not. Oh, several such explosions would have been most inconvenient, but our capacity for repair is unparalleled."

Face drew a hand across his brow, an exaggerated demonstration of relief.

"Well, that's cause for us to celebrate. I have no quahns about preying on ground-pounders like the people of Halmad, but-and it costs me no honor to say it - I would avoid earning the prolonged enmity of Zsinj."