X-wing_ Wraith Squadron Part 23

Wedge, Kell, and Tyria had blasters in their hands within a split second and had them trained on the intruder before he, Donos, emerged from the trees.

Donos blinked at them. "The suns are down and the last of the worker transports is gone."

"Good," Kell said. "People, remember: Once we reach the bunker, always use your numbers. Never your names.

"Here are the final orders... until circ.u.mstances and screwups dictate that we alter them. Ten, break trail, with One as your backup." Tyria and Wedge nodded. "Four and I follow fairly closely." Grinder, obviously still abashed from his failure to calibrate chronos, merely hoisted his pack onto his shoulders and saluted.

"Nine remains on station here as our long-distance spotter and sniper."

Donos nodded. "The rest follow in a group until we get to the bunker's rear door. Eleven, you'll set up at that door as our secondary spotter."

Janson gave a brief nod. "Inside, Three will choose one vehicle for our escape; I recommend the cargo skiff, but you're the expert on the condition of these crafts, so make your choice at your own discretion.

Disable the rest. Twelve, you'll stay with her as her guard and ears."

Falynn gave him a thumbs-up; Piggy nodded.

"The rest of us will enter, acquire all the data we can, plant the charges, and get out. Questions? No one? All right. Move out."

Wedge, trailing Tyria at a distance of eight or ten meters, marveled at the way she moved.

Hers was not a steady progress. She stopped to listen to animal noises, stray crackings of twigs or other unexplained sounds, and when there was no noise at all. But when the wind stirred the trees, she glided forward at a steady pace, the wind completely blanketing whatever noise she might have made.

Wedge tried to follow her example. After so many ground missions in the last few years, his own intrusion skills were not inconsiderable. On the other hand, he hadn't needed them to survive day after day for years as she had; it was hardly embarra.s.sing to discover she was better at them.

They skirted the forest edge alongside the ferrocrete landing pad until they reached the closest approach to the bunker. Keeping low, they moved across open ground until they reached the bunker's shadow, then hugged the bunker wall all the way to the door. Tyria nodded and Wedge clicked his comlink twice to indicate success. The two of them crouched, motionless, blasters in hand, and covered the approach of the next team.

Within a minute Kell and Grinder joined them. "So far, so good," Kell whispered. "Minimal security."

"On the outside, anyway," Tyria amended.

Kell clicked his comlink twice, then nodded to Grinder.

The Bothan held a small light in his mouth and looked at the access panel beside the door to the hangar. "Standard model," he mumbled around the light.

Kell snorted. "With Zsinj involved? Don't believe it."

"I don't." Grinder brought out a small sensor and ran it around the join where the access panel was sealed shut. "Ooh," he said. "Standard keypad.

Underneath, simplified circuits. Behind that, a denser circuit panel. Not standard."

"What's that mean?" asked Wedge. "False layer to trip up..." Drool ran out of Grinder's mouth around the penlight and he shut up, scowling.

"If you open up the panel," Kell said, "you'll probably get something that looks like the standard wiring you find in these panels. Odds are good you can even patch into it to run a bypa.s.s and get these doors open.

But it's a fake, and the circuitry beneath it will be busy alerting every guard on this hemisphere of the planet. The trick is to open both top layers at once and not trip the security, which is really tough-"

Grinder popped open the access hatch. A panel of dense circuitry in a pattern unfamiliar to Wedge glinted at them. Grinder turned to smirk at Kell.

"All right," Kell said, "maybe not so tough." Wedge had to work to keep a smile off his face. The Wraiths were still surprising one another with what they could accomplish. A good sign. He just wished Kell were not so tense, so rigid; he'd been that way ever since Wedge had announced Kell was leading this mission. Not a good sign.

The others moved up fairly quietly behind them. "All accounted for,"

whispered Janson.

Grinder plugged wires and bypa.s.s circuitry into the access hatch's naked circuitry, then flipped a tiny toggle on an equally tiny capacitance charge. The hangar door groaned and slid open before them. It was pitch-black beyond, and the moons, still arising on the far side of the bunker, offered no light.

Tyria pulled her night-sight gear over her eyes and switched it on; it made a faint hum. "Everyone move in, no more than six paces; we're clear to that point," she said. They did as she said, all but Janson. "Two."

"Yes, Five."

"Can you transmit that signal by touch?"

"Yes, Five."

"Do so."

The door moaned behind them until it was shut again.

"Hand lights on," Kell said.

The commandos' handheld lights sprang to life, tiny beams illuminating small portions of the s.p.a.cious hangar.

"You all know your a.s.signments," Kell said. "Let's go." He headed toward the doors that gave access to the hallway with the bunker's main freight turbolift; all but Falynn and Piggy followed.

In the hall, Grinder took only a minute to bypa.s.s the turbolift controls.

Then he tried to lift the turbolift's ma.s.sive top-closing door. It stubbornly refused his efforts.

"Allow us." Runt stepped in, affecting a swagger Wedge hadn't seen before, and put his fingers under the door's bottom lip. He straightened easily, lifting the door to waist height. He showed big teeth in a near-human grin. His long, furred hands were steady as they held up the door's enormous weight.

Kell ducked to peer inside. The turbolift shaft went down six or more stories, more than the three Face had been shown; the lift car was far below in the dimness. There were access rungs on one side.

On their way down, Grinder spoke to Kell; Wedge barely heard the whispered words. "I haven't seen any cameras. Microphones. No wiring for them in the wall behind the turbolift access panel."

"Have you seen enough to be sure there aren't any?" Kell said.

"No. I'm giving you an impression."

"Keep looking." Face's tape hadn't shown any armed guards, either. The bunker complex might rely on other types of defense... and not knowing what they were had Kell worried.

The turbolift was a freight model, with no roof to impede them. They dropped the last six feet to its floor. Grinder immediately got to work bypa.s.sing the door's electronics, then Runt, with little apparent effort, heaved the car's door and then the armored exterior door up.

The door opened onto a loading area. It was full of loading carts and even some repulsorlift vehicles, with transparisteel products loaded onto some of them.

There were crystal-clear cubes three meters on a side, with small circular holes and an opening, one meter by one meter, cut into the side; there were large, thick sheets shaped as irregular polygons; there were curved disks over two meters in diameter, looking like enormous lenses.

Wedge looked at these last items. "TIE fighter front viewports," he said.

"And the big sheets, unless I'm mistaken, are bridge or lounge windows for a capital s.h.i.+p."

"Sounds like support for Zsinj's Super Star Destroyer," Kell said. He dropped his voice to a whisper, tones probably too low for planted microphones to pick up. "But then why wouldn't Eight have been shown this level?"

Wedge frowned as he considered the question. He responded in a whisper.

"The governor on the other world was reluctant to discuss things with Eight when he'd obviously talked about them with Captain Darillian. My guess is that Zsinj is compartmentalizing information about himself.

Structuring things in cells, like a resistance movement, so that information is contained."

Kell nodded. "When one cell falls, the rest remain safe."

Grinder hissed at them from the doorway to an adjacent chamber. They joined him.

It was an operations control center, banks of computer consoles and black viewscreens that probably showed crucial areas of the manufacturing chambers when live. "The home of data," Grinder said.

"Drain it dry," Kell said. "Replicate everything you downlink into Two's comm gear memory."

Grinder's face twisted. "That'll take extra time."

"Not much. Do it."

Wedge guarded Kell while the mission leader explored other chambers of the sixth subterranean level.

This was just another manufacturing floor; it received superheated transparisteel ingots from the larger foundry floors above and shaped them into parts best suited to Imperial wars.h.i.+ps and fighters, plus those large, inexplicable cubes they'd seen. Kell seemed to pay little attention to the function of the rooms he was in; he simply chose support beams, retaining walls, and power generators on which to plant his demolition charges. Both men preferred to keep conversation to a minimum while Kell was setting up his explosives.

Wedge felt a slight change in air pressure. He turned away from the support pillar Kell was rigging; he moved his hand light beam around the room.

Nothing. Just conveyor belts, receiving receptacles, polis.h.i.+ng machinery, phototropic s.h.i.+elding equipment.

Then his beam flitted across something moving. He caught the barest glimpse of the thing, something taller than a man, moving fast and silently. He flicked the beam in the direction he thought it had been heading, but there was nothing there.

"Trouble," he whispered.

He heard a faint whine as Kell activated the timer on the latest charge, then a sc.r.a.pe of metal on leather as Kell drew his blaster.

It came at them from the side, claws and pinchers extended-16 "Ten."

Tyria looked up, in the direction of Runt's call. Runt was still on station near the door to the turbolift. His eyes were wider than normal.

"Yes, Six?" she said.

"Did you hear something? We heard something." Tyria glanced toward the door to the operations center.

Ton Phanan was still on guard duty there, his blaster pistol up and at the ready. He was peering into the op center and did not look alarmed.

She turned back to Runt. "No, nothing."

The silhouette materialized out of the gloom behind Runt. Before Tyria could say anything it ran him down, smas.h.i.+ng him to the floor like a runaway speeder bike. An ungainly silhouette, round and heavy on top, trailing arms or tentacles like some invertebrate sea life, it came on straight at Tyria.

The attack caught Kell and Wedge off guard. The ma.s.s of the attacker hit Kell head-on, slamming him to the metal flooring. Wedge twisted with the attack, took a grazing impact to the arm, and went down rolling; he ended up under a control console, aiming and firing before he'd come to a stop.

His blaster shot was on-target, hitting the attacker dead center. The laser blast charred what it hit but did not penetrate; it merely illuminated the attacker.

It was a floating ma.s.s of machinery. The main portion was a roughly spherical body, the top and bottom hemispheres divided by a narrowed equator that Wedge knew allowed the two portions to swivel independently.

A half-dozen articulated limbs trailed below it. The designation A3 was painted on the upper hemisphere. The spherical portion was studded with sensor ports and blaster nozzles. The top hemisphere rotated, bringing one of those blaster nozzles in line) almost instantly.

Wedge ducked behind the console support as the thing fired. The blaster shot hit the console, burning through it, showering Wedge with sparks.

Imperial probe droid. Wedge came up in a half crouch, running behind this console and the one adjacent. Beyond it he could see Kell's foot. The big man was not moving.

Wedge grabbed Kell's leg and hauled him behind the console. The probe droid fired again, the shot melting into slag the metal deck where Kell had just been lying.

Tyria ducked behind one of the carts loaded with TIE fighter viewports.

She fired at the oncoming droid, hitting it once, twice beside the characters A2 painted on the upper hemisphere. Surface armor charred a little but the thing was not slowed.

It fired a return shot. It hit the TIE fighter viewport Tyria hid behind.

The viewport instantly opaqued and the laser blast did not penetrate; the transparisteel slowly began to fade to gla.s.slike clarity.

She breathed a sign of relief. These viewports had already gone through their phototropic s.h.i.+elding treatment. They'd stop anything short of the blast from a tripod-mounted laser cannon.

The probe droid sideslipped to get around the impedi - ment of the viewport. A blast fired by Phanan hit one of its sensor eyes, shattering it, but the droid returned fire almost instantly; Tyria saw Phanan duck back behind the doorway to the op center.

"We're under a.s.sault," Wedge said. "A probe droid, military model. Our hand blasters aren't going to do it much harm."

Kell's eyes opened. "I know that."

"I'm talking to Jesmin," Wedge said. "They're under attack by another one."

"Shouldn't we be keeping comm silence?"

"If the probots are active, the locals know we're here, Tainer."

"I can kill ours." Kell lifted his head and groaned. "But I'd like a nap first."

"No time for a nap. You're going to use explosives?"

"Of course."

"How do you plan to plant them?"

Kell grinned. "I was sort of hoping you'd lead the droid around so I could get a good approach on it."

"Great."

When the droid glided around the side of Tyria's cart, she broke the other way, running straight toward one of the repulsorlift carts. Phanan fired a steady stream of blasts to cover her movement; the droid returned fire, superheating the op center's metal doorjamb to a dripping, golden, glowing ma.s.s.