X-wing_ Iron Fist Part 11

Face half ducked behind the corner of his simulator, then took another look. "I don't think so, sir." His mouth twitched, a partially successful effort to hide a smile.

Wedge rose and came forward, leaned out far enough for a quick peek into the simulator c.o.c.kpit, then leaned in again for a longer look.

His intruder was an Ewok.

Not even a living Ewok. It was a stuffed toy the size and girth of a real Ewok, and designed to look just like one, but just a toy.

It was dressed in a scaled-down version of a New Republic fighter pilot's uniform, down to the authentic-looking suit system control panel on his chest, helmet on his head, and blaster in his paw.

In his other paw was a datapad. Wedge retrieved it and looked at the message. It read: Lieutenant Kettch reporting for you, sir. Yub, yub, Commander.

Wedge shook his head sorrowfully. "Sometimes I miss my sanity." He retrieved the toy and handed it to Face. "Deal with that."

Face, who was working so hard to repress a laugh that he couldn't speak, simply threw a salute and escaped with the Ewok pilot.

"Transferred to Colonel Repness's group?" Lara glanced again over her orders and feigned ignorance. "I don't understand. I haven't completed my basic training set in X-wings. I'm going to get advanced training now?"

The student leader of her own group, a redheaded man, barely out of boyhood, whom she could outfly on the worst day of her life if she weren't shackled by the demands of the role she was playing, gave her a superior smile. "You don't understand. Repness handles the remedials.

Including you. Notsil, you've washed out. All Repness is, he's a temporary reprieve for you. This time next week, you're going to be an empty bunk."

"Lowan, you're a stain."

"I'll forget you said that. You'll be tossed out of here fast enough without my putting you on report."

Lara stared after him as he departed, and pictured a target painted on his back, a blaster in her own hand, and a sudden improvement in the average merit of this cla.s.s of candidates.

But, no, that wouldn't be appropriate. Better still to make her way to Zsinj's company, return as a TIE-interceptor pilot, and flame Lowan in a dogfight.

Then again, what if she came up against Lussatte, who was also not her equal as a pilot but was not the blemish Lowan was? A simple matter to vape her... but Lara had the uneasy feeling that such an action would cause her a lingering regret.

She shook off the feeling. Transfer to another group meant transferring to another dormitory. It was time to pack.

7.

If this is a reward, Face thought, I need to stop earning them.

He sat in weightlessness, strapped securely into the control seat of one of the captured interceptors, staring at stars and a tiny, distant sun through the starfighter's viewport. The image hadn't changed in an hour, and the music he was playing on the fighter's internal speakers was, on its eighth repet.i.tion, getting on his nerves. He resolved to carry more entertainments on missions, especially those where keeping corem silence was a priority.

In a bar in Hullis, Face had been the one to spot the freighter navigator whose hand trembled with more than eagerness when the man reached for his first drink of the night. He'd been the one to get the man so drunk that discretion wasn't an option, and to listen to the fellow's rambling praise of his captain's intelligence.

The s.h.i.+p the alcoholic navigator served on was the Barderia, and it hauled cargo on three-way runs out of Halmad with an admirable record for avoiding pirates. With enough liquor in him, the navigator told Face their secret for success. "Leave each system from a random point, enter each system at a random point. Your courses can't be plotted."

"That makes for pretty complicated courses," Face had said.

"Not really. On arrival in each system, you first drop out of hypers.p.a.ce just outside the outer planet's...o...b..t to sample the comm frequencies and get any pirate reports available, then make a course correction and jump in where you want to arrive."

"Ah. And this first arrival, before you make your course correction, is to the same spot every time?"

"That's what keeps things simple."

Face was nice enough to make sure the man made it back to his s.h.i.+p when all the night's drinking was done and the navigator was too far gone to recognize surroundings, friends, or his own features. But first Face played a hunch and a.s.sumed that a man sloppy enough to reveal a crucial detail to a stranger might be sloppy in other ways. He copied the encrypted contents of the fellow's datapad to his own, and when back at Hawkbat Base from this intelligence-gathering run, he handed that data over to Castin Donn. Castin cracked the code and the files yielded up no information about freighter routes... but did have a file of specific locations just outside a large number of planetary systems. It was a simple matter to find out to which planets Barderia's next cargo run would take her.

The skin around Face's mouth itched, but he could not scratch it, even if he took his Imperial pilot helmet off. His whole face was crisscrossed with horrible puckering scars - artificial ones, created by painting a makeup chemical across his skin and letting it dry. His own genuine scar was not missing; it was just incorporated into the design of false scar tissue.

That real scar made things a little difficult. Every disguise he wore had to conceal it or incorporate it. A simple, if somewhat pricey, cosmetic skin abrasion and bacta treatment would eliminate it. But it was part of him now, a constant reminder of the debt he would never he able to pay off. As a child star of holo-dramas, he had unknowingly helped boost Imperial morale, promote Imperial projects, even improve Imperial military recruitment. Crimes he'd never be able to erase. The scar was the living sign of those crimes. Look at me. I know what I did.

Regardless, all the extra scars, the false ones, made a good disguise, but they itched. And itched. While the same music played over and over again.

His sensor board lit up as an eighth blip suddenly joined the seven waiting there in s.p.a.ce. Barderia had arrived, within range of his guns, of Wedge's.

His comm crackled as he reached for his yoke. "This is One, targeting engines. s.h.i.+elds still down. Firing!"

As Face brought his interceptor around, he saw the bulk of Barderia, a boxy Corellian freighter about a hundred meters long, below him and to his starboard. Green laser fire from a point in s.p.a.ce nearly two klicks away was dancing across its stern. Face marveled at the speed of Wedge's response; the commander hadn't been any closer to or oriented any better toward the freighter's arrival. Face got his guns lined up on the freighter, saw a turreted turbolaser swinging around to aim in on Wedge.

He gritted his teeth, but that was not the s.h.i.+p's most dangerous remaining system. He ignored the gun and targeted the s.h.i.+p's communications array. He fired, his first shot scoring the s.h.i.+p's hull, the second turning the comm gear into molten metal and escaping gas in a minor explosion. Then, as he accelerated toward the vessel, he belatedly linked his lasers to quad fire and opened up on the turbolaser.

This blast was larger and much more satisfying, eliminating the turret completely. His interceptor and Wedge's crossed one another in flyovers of the crippled vessel as they visually surveiled the damage.

"This is One. Engines out. No sign of atmosphere venting. Hull integrity seems to be fine."

"This is Eight. Comm antenna down. Main weapon down. I'd call this definitely a strong negotiating position. I'm opening communications." He switched his comm frequency to a wide band including the range normally used by personal comlinks and jumped his power setting up so personal systems would be likely to receive him. He cleared his throat in a deep growl that was his mnemonic for this character's vocal mannerism, then said, his voice a gravelly rumble, "Barderia, this is General Kargin of the Hawkbat Independent s.p.a.ce Force. We are seizing your vessel. We are businessmen and will do no harm to surrendering crew members, to whom I guarantee safe pa.s.sage into the hands of this system's rescue forces. But we are rather short-tempered businessmen and any crewmen offering resistance will be brought back to our base for a debriefing session they will never forget... much less survive. Surrender your vessel and prepare your docking ports for boarding... or prepare to breathe vacuum."

His response was not long in coming. A man's voice, raspy and dismayed, replied, "This is Captain Rhanken of the independent cargo vessel Barderia. I surrender my vessel. Port and starboard docking ports standing by."

It seemed like such a small boarding party. Face, Castin, and Phanan, wearing only gray versions of the standard TIE-fighter pilot's uniform, arrayed against whatever forces occupied the cargo s.h.i.+p. But five sets of starfighter guns in the hands of the other Wraiths kept Barderia in their sights, and the freighter, lacking engines to power its s.h.i.+elds, stardrive, and weapons, would be easy prey to any one of them.

The Wraiths, led by a visibly trembling navigation and communications officer, the very man who had inadvertently given Face the information he'd needed for this act of piracy, entered the freighter's spotless bridge. Waiting there were other members of the bridge crew: the captain, a middle-aged, graying man with the look of a former Imperial officer about him, and a younger chief pilot whose hard look and demeanor suggested that he was also the s.h.i.+p's master at arms and would like nothing more than to eradicate the pirates.

Face took off his helmet, revealing his gloriously horrible makeup job, and was rewarded with sudden intakes of breath from the two younger officers. "I am," he said, "the glorious General Kargin, founder and leader of the Hawk-bats." He kept his voice low, gravelly. "Captain?"

The freighter's master did not salute, but he straightened with pained formality.

"Captain Rhanken of the Barderia."

"Captain?" Face injected a note of menace into his voice.

"And I am obliged to surrender this s.h.i.+p to you."

Face extended a hand. "Cargo manifest?"

The communications officer, jolted into action by the demand, searched his uniform pockets increasingly frantically until he found the object he was searching for - a datapad, which he handed to Face.

Face handed it in turn to Castin. "Two, slice into their master computer and find the cargo manifest there. If it does not agree one hundred percent with this list, we execute them all." Face turned his gaze back to the captain.

"Though I can be forgiving. If you antic.i.p.ate any errors in your list, you can tell me about them now and avoid unpleasantness."

Captain Rhanken met his eyes unflinchingly. "I antic.i.p.ate no problems. If my crew has done its customary good work." He glanced at the communications officer. "Will there be a problem, Lieutenant?"

The communications officer, no master of concealing his emotions, went pale. "I d-d-don't recall whether I called up the final inventory-match manifest or used last week's projected manifest, sir."

"Get the final manifest and give it to him. Just to be sure."

"Yessir." The officer bent to his task.

Interesting. Face had to work to keep both amus.e.m.e.nt and contempt from his expression. The captain wanted to play the unerring officer and was willing to let his subordinates a.s.sume responsibility for a tactic that had to be the captain's own decision. Depending on the pirates involved, that could have led to the lesser officer's death.

Long minutes pa.s.sed while the officer brought up the correct manifest and Castin verified it by scutting through the computer's defenses and slicing his way down to the original file. They matched and Face and Castin looked through their winnings while Phanan kept the bridge officers under guard.

"Look at this," Face whispered. "Halmad Prime, s.h.i.+pped by the ton.

Halmad's best and most expensive grain alcohol. You can't get it on-planet except through the black market; they s.h.i.+p it to other Imperial worlds as one of their major exports. Various medicines. Duracrete sprayers. Prefabricated shelters. We'll take all the Halmad Prime and a cross section of the medicines; that's about all we can load on Sungra.s.s.

See anything else we need?"

"TIE fighter and interceptor parts."

"What ? Where ?"

Castin turned his datapad so Face could see the screen. It showed a different inventory list. "I pulled this off their computer when I was verifying the current manifest. It's an estimated inventory from the second leg of their voyage. We could really use some spare parts and maintenance gear."

"True, but our little raid here is bound to change their schedule for the rest of their mission."

"But if we can figure out what they'll change it to..."

"Good point." Face straightened and glared at the captain.

"Rhanken, have your cargo handlers a.s.semble lots twenty-eight through one hundred twenty-seven and two hundred at your cargo bay. Two, call Sungra.s.s and have them move in to accept delivery."

"And then what?" asked Captain Rhanken.

"Then we leave."

"Leaving us to drift, without communications, without enough power to limp into the system, to die out here?"

Face gave him a tight smile. "You have escape pods suffi-cient to get a message to your rescuers. But we'll save you some time and call in an emergency signal. Wouldn't want you to be inconvenienced. And you can tell your fellow captains, whom I'll be meeting in the foreseeable future, that the Hawk-bats don't kill. Unless we're annoyed. Or become bored. They can take that under advis.e.m.e.nt."

Colonel Atton Repness, leader of the Screaming Wookiee training squadron aboard the New Republic frigate Tedevium, pointed the device at Lara as though it were a miniature blaster.

She looked curiously at it. It was shaped like a standard cylindrical comlink, but that's not what it was. She was sure of this because she'd examined the device inside and out, and done far more than that, when she'd broken into Repness's quarters two days ago. "I'm sorry, sir.

Should I be putting up my hands? Or making a speech?"

He smiled. "Very funny. This isn't a weapon. It just en-sures that we aren't being recorded."

"Who would want to record us?"

The colonel looked around, though he and Lara were the lightly furnished conference room's only inhabitants. "You'd be surprised. I'll just keep this on."

"You're the colonel." But, inwardly, she smiled. He wasn't speaking as a colonel; his mannerisms had s.h.i.+fted, probably without him realizing it, to those of a friend. Or conspirator.

"You're aware that your scores have come up since transferring to the Screaming Wookiees."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, this is in part from improvement in your skills."

"Only in part?" She affected surprise.

"Only in part." Repness pulled a datapad from a pocket and slid it over to her.

The file it displayed was her training record. But the scores from after her transfer were shown in two columns, labeled "True" and "Adjusted."

She gave him a troubled look.

"I don't understand, sir. The 'True' column would indicate that I'm still failing. Just barely failing. What are the adjustments from the other column?"

"Oh, I merely wanted your scores to be higher."

She let her features go slack, as if caught so far by surprise that she didn't know how to react or what to say.

"You see," he said, "I think you have the potential to become a good pilot. So I've temporarily adjusted things to keep you from being booted.

But I don't think you can do this without help. It will take a team effort... and you haven't been a team player, have you?"

"Well, I'd... like to be. I just don't know how. Things are so different here."

"Excellent! We could use you on my team. Working on my team calls for some extra effort on your part... but it comes with rewards you can't get from any other unit."

And then he told her of a mission. It would be a milk-run training mission within the atmosphere of the nearest uninhabited planet in an Awing. Her control boards would register a critical failure of the engines, which would overheat and threaten detonation. She'd be ordered by Repness to eject, which she would-well after the trouble-free A-wing was safely on the ground. An ion bomb detonated in the atmosphere would give investigators the evidence they needed to corroborate the fighter's utter destruction, and a rescue crew would pick her up well after Repness's crew ferried the expensive fighter away for sale in some distant black-market port.

Lara listened, bored, to the whole inevitable deal, feigning puzzlement, shock, indignation, futile resistance, and finally pained acceptance as the hopeless nature of her situation was made clear to her.

And she knew, with a growing glee that was hard to conceal, that every word she and Repness said was being sent, by the very device he thought was a transmission-detecting sweeper, to a file under a forged pilot account on the frigate's main computer.

Contact Wraith Squadron for help when matters with Repness came to a head? Why bother, when she could engineer his destruction and her own career's salvation with far more panache than those pilots could ever manage ?

It was a different star system-the Halmad system, well outside the orbit of its outermost planet-but the situation was very familiar.

Captain Rhanken could not maintain an expression of imperturbability the second time the Hawk-bats boarded his freighter. His voice was one of pure despair: "How did you know where we'd be?"

"We asked the right people," Face said. "Your trade guild has a security breach in it I could pilot a Death Star through."