X-wing_ Iron Fist Part 7

Wedge and Janson scrambled down the side of the hill, not directly toward the other Wraiths, but angling toward the right, an intercept course. By the time they reached the base of the hill-with Janson's armor now somewhat battered by a fall he'd taken during his descent-the other Wraiths were almost to the road.

Wedge and Janson caught up to them and put their helmets back on.

"Snap it up," Wedge said, "march formation. Left foot, right foot."

And the Wraiths managed something like a proper formation in spite of the loads they carried.

Runt carried one of the unconscious pilots over his shoul-der, moving without difficulty. The Gamorrean Piggy could also have carried one of the pilots with fair ease, but could never have worn one of the sets of stormtrooper armor; he remained with the skimmer. Kell, now suited up as a stormtrooper, and Dia dragged an unconscious pilot between them; they held the pilot's arms over their shoulders so the man remained upright.

Phanan, also in a set of stormtrooper armor, and Face also dragged one of the pilots, as did Castin and Shalla, with Donos and Tyria dragging the fifth. The sixth pilot, the ranking officer among them, remained with Piggy.

It was several hundred meters to the gate into the base, but if Wedge calculated correctly, they wouldn't have to walk the entire distance.

They heard the humming of the heavy skimmer behind them and Wedge turned to look. It was a large model, nearly identical to the one that had been part of the trap on Coruscant: It had an enclosure over the bed, and only the pilot and the guard a.s.signed to his protection were exposed to the elements. On the side was painted the stooping bird-of-prey insignia of Victory Base; over that design were the crossed batons of the base's military police.

The skimmer pulled alongside Wedge's troop of ersatz stormtroopers and prisoners. Its pilot called, "What happened to you?"

"Skimmer broke down," Wedge said. "Repulsorlift failure in the energy transference array."

"Care for a lift?"

"I'd put you up for a Hero of the Empire medal."

The pilot tapped a b.u.t.ton and a door in the rear enclosure opened; its hinge was at the bottom, allowing it to open down into a ramp. Wedge peered inside. The s.p.a.cious enclosure held four stormtroopers and another pair of prisoners in the uniforms of Imperial maintenance personnel. Both prisoners were awake, though apparently anesthetized by alcohol.

Wedge's people hauled their unconscious prisoners up the ramp and settled them down on the padded benches against the enclosure walls. Wedge, at the rear of the line, stayed tense.

The stormtrooper armor the Wraiths wore-seized from prisoners during some of the countless clashes the Alliance had had with the Empire and brought as part of the squadron's gear - was authentic enough, but the military-police insignia the Wraiths had meticulously painted on the armor might not pa.s.s close inspection. Also, the officer in charge of these real military police should, if he kept strictly to procedure, demand to see Wedge's papers, and the forgeries Castin had put together... well, Wedge just didn't know the new pilot well enough to rely unquestioningly on the man's work as he'd come to do with Grinder, the squadron's former computer expert.

But the Wraiths all shuffled into the enclosed bed of the skimmer, Wedge followed, the door closed behind him, and the vehicle lurched into motion, all without an unwelcome demand for papers. Wedge smiled. If security was lax here, it might be just as lax within the base.

"Hey, that's Lieutenant Cothron," one of the real stormtroopers said.

Face nodded. "He's a pretty belligerent drunk."

"Nice guy the rest of the time, though."

"Oh, yeah."

"Ever play sabacc with him?"

"Sure, he took me for a week's pay once."

"You're joking. He's the worst player I ever saw."

There was the slightest of delays in Face's response as he adjusted his story in light of new information.

"No, I think I'm the worst."

"Really? You up for a game tonight?"

"No, I've learned my lesson."

The stormtrooper settled back, his posture one of disappointment.

Moments later, the skimmer slowed. Wedge heard a verbal exchange between the pilot and what must have been the gate guards, but he couldn't make out the words. Then they were in motion again.

It was a long minute before they slowed once more. Then the skimmer's repulsorlift depowered and the vehicle settled to a hard surface.

The door beside Wedge opened. They appeared to be in a vehicle hangar, and a few steps away was a table where a uniformed officer and another pair of stormtroopers waited. The officer, a man with graying hair and hard lines to his face, looked bored and irritable. "Move them out. It's time for instant justice."

Wedge waved the real stormtroopers and their prisoners to proceed while his people got their unconscious prisoners up. Then the Wraiths moved out. Wedge was the last one out of the vehicle.

"Papers," said the officer in charge. Wedge tensed. But the stormtrooper he addressed handed him standard ident.i.ty cards bearing the likenesses of the prisoners in his charge. Wedge glanced at Face, who discreetly held up the handful of ident.i.ty cards taken from their own prisoners. Wedge turned away again.

The officer looked over the ident.i.ty cards. "Facts?"

The stormtrooper in charge said, "Drunk and disorderly at Ola's."

The officer grimaced. "You two idiots ought to find a better cla.s.s of drinking establishment. Charges?"

The stormtrooper in charge shook his head, the motion exaggerated by his helmet. "None."

"Well, that's not too bad." The officer glanced up at the two prisoners.

"You two are confined to base for six days."

The prisoners looked relieved.

"That's three days starting now," the officer continued, "and three days starting next payday." He ignored their expressions of dismay and gestured for them to be on their way.

"Next."

Wedge stepped up. He reached over without looking. Face put the ident.i.ty cards in his hand and he presented them to the officer. "Drunk and disorderly at Rojio's. Brawling with civilians."

The officer gave him an I-don't-want-to-believe-you look.

"They're all unconscious. They lost to civilians?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many?"

"Two."

The officer looked pained. "Five of them against two civil-ians, and they're too drunk to make a good accounting of themselves. They'll pay for letting the unit down." He frowned. "Five. Say, these are Captain Wanatte's drinking buddies. Where's the captain ?"

Face spoke up: "Before he pa.s.sed out the last time, Lieutenant Cothron said the captain had found some companions.h.i.+p for the evening."

"Ah. Well, then. Let's see the damages."

Wedge said, "One of the civilians paid for the damages before we dropped them off with the city authorities."

"Commendable. All right. I think these five will be improved by doing a few days of cleanup and breakdown work for the next morale event. Get 'era to their quarters."

Wedge saluted smartly and headed off in the direction the other stormtroopers had taken to leave the hangar. He heard the Wraiths fall in step behind him and the dragging noise of their prisoners' boots sc.r.a.ping against the duracrete.

Then he heard the skiminer's engines start up again. He breathed a sigh of relief. The pilot of the skimmer hadn't noticed that eleven footsore stormtroopers had boarded the skimmer, but only ten had emerged. Janson had taken Shalla's place and was working with Castin to carry a pilot.

Now, if this base followed standard Imperial procedure, that pilot would take this skimmer back to the military police motor pool.

Then it would be up to Shalla. She was still in the skimmer's enclosure, and her job was to prevent the pilot and his guard from talking to anybody.

Her first job. She had other things to do as well. Wedge was reluctant to a.s.sign so much responsibility in a commando mission to a newcomer to the squadron, but Kell had spoken in such glowing terms of the Nelprin family's formidable skills that he'd decided to go ahead with this approach.

Outside the hangar, he took a moment to get his bearings, and silently cursed the restricted field of vision afforded by stormtrooper helmets; lacking peripheral vision, he had to turn in a slow, complete circle to acquire a mental picture of his surroundings. He had a fair idea of the base layout from the reconnaissance they'd clone on the hilltop, but not an idea of where in the base they now were. When he had his bearings, he headed straight toward the group of dome-topped buildings he'd earlier decided were officers' quarters.

They'd never make it there, of course. They'd dump the unconscious pilots in the first dark alley or trench they found and go about their mission.

Lara Notsil, originally Gara Petothel, flinched as pair after pair of TIE fighters broke formation and dove, their engines screaming, toward her and her wingmates. A good mannerism, flinching, she decided. fithey're observing me, they'll log it.

Her wing leader's voice came over the comm unit: "Gold One to Gold Squadron. Break by pairs and engage."

Lara keyed her own comm unit. "Gold Seven?"

"I'm your wing, Eight."

She rolled to starboard, getting clear of the main formation of X-wings, and saw other paired fighters also breaking off.

Then the first blasts of green Imperial laser fire fell among them.

Lara's X-wing was rocked by a stern hit; her aft s.h.i.+elds were knocked partway down and she reinforced them with en-ergy from her forward s.h.i.+elds. The pair of TIE fighters raining laser fire down on both her and Gold Seven slid neatly into killing position behind them.

"Dive for cover, Seven," Lara said, and nosed the stick forward. The terrain below, a sprawling city in ruins, grew larger. She and Gold Seven dropped into a debris-littered street, flying lower than the tops of the surrounding buildings, but their pursuers never lost sight of them and stayed tucked behind. Lara's snubfighter was. .h.i.t by another pair of laser blasts and its aft section slewed slightly to port; she corrected with a deft application of etheric rudder.

Up ahead, the road forked left and right. She knew from seeing the area from above that the two forks turned toward one another farther on, rejoining after only a couple of kilometers. That should have been her tactic: send Gold Seven to starboard while she went to port, then fire upon Seven's pursuer while Seven fired upon hers once the roads rejoined.

But that would probably have worked. And that wasn't what she was here for.

"Seven, at the big blue building, hard to port."

"I read you." Seven's voice sounded a bit worried.

Lara suited action to words. As the X-wings came alongside what had once been a warehouse of tremendous size, painted an eye-hurting cyan, but was now a hollowed, burned wreck of a building with scorch marks surrounding blast holes in the walls, she executed a smart portward turn down a street that ran at right angles to the one over which they'd been flying.

She rotated ninety degrees leftward, so the street was to her left and one row of buildings was beneath her keel.

The sharpness of the angle was more than the X-wing's inertial compensator could bear; she felt weight again, settling into her seat, as the snubfighter turned through the tightest portion of her maneuver.

There was a sharp metal shriek as her keel sc.r.a.ped along one of the building facades; her X-wing lurched. The snubfighter's s.h.i.+elds were no protection against such a graze.

She glanced at her diagnostics board, looking for the telltale red glows of system failures.

Behind her, the sky lit up. The sound and shock wave of an explosion rocked her X-wing. And the blue dot representing Gold Seven disappeared from her sensor board.

Lara grimaced. Gold Seven didn't have the skill to manage a turn like that. Lara had known this, had counted on it, but it wouldn't do for her observers to see a smile of satisfaction cross her face. Knowing she would get no answer, she keyed her comm unit. "Seven? Gold Seven, come in."

Behind her, the two TIE fighters, having no trouble with the sharp turn into this side street, came screaming through the smoke cloud that was what was left of Gold Seven. As soon as they cleared the smoke, they opened fire again.

Lara felt her aft section shudder. It slewed again. Lara deliberately overcorrected and let an expression of shock cross her face as she veered into the side of a building.

She had just enough time to read the words WELCOME TO MOFFICE'S GROCERS before impact...

Or lack of impact. There was no sharp blow, no deceleration, just the abrupt dimming of all c.o.c.kpit lights to nothing-ness.

Then the canopy opened above her.

Captain Sormic - short, bald, human, usually apoplectic, with a face like pink clay molded into a fair approximation of human features-stood outside the simulator, glaring at her.

"Candidate Notsil. Would you explain, for the benefit of the cla.s.s, just what you were trying to accomplish with that last maneuver?"

Lara let a note of uncertainty creep into her voice. "I was trying to regain control..."

"Not that. The suicide turn down the side street."

"Oh. Uh, I was trying to shake the TIE-fighter pursuit..."

"Right. You presumed that a pair of novice pilots could outmaneuver more experienced pilots in more agile s.p.a.cecraft in clear air. Correct?"

"Well, uh..."

"Say, 'Correct, Captain.'"

"Correct, Captain." Lara kept an expression of distress on her face.

"And you got yourself and your wingmate killed."

"Correct, Captain."

"Candidate Lussatte, is that the tactic you would have chosen?"

Lara glanced at her wingmate, who was still in the next simulator over.

The Sull.u.s.tian female gave Lara a look of apology.

"No, Captain."

"What would you have done?"