X-wing_ Iron Fist Part 35

But that would have to wait. For now, he began solving intricate astronautic formulae, beautiful numeric structures describing the relations.h.i.+p between real s.p.a.ce and hypers.p.a.ce.

The stars he could see in his disadvantaged position suddenly elongated as Zsinj's fleet entered hypers.p.a.ce.

In Iron Fist's main hangar bay, Face emerged from Sungra.s.s's airlock.

Quite a reception awaited him and the representatives of the various pirate bands. Melvar was at the center of the largest open area, a phalanx of stormtroopers around him. He was shaking hands with motley-looking pilots and officers, occasionally handing out s.h.i.+ny new datapads to them.

As Face approached, one pirate in particular was haranguing Melvar, shaking a fist in his face, gesturing with an angry theatricality Face decided was not simulated. The man was a Devaronian, and one given much to decoration; the horns on his forehead were gilded, and his sharp teeth gleamed so brightly they had to have been augmented by some surface bonded to them. His clothes were similar to an Imperial admiral's in cut, but made of red cloth and leather, with an eye-catching red-and-gold overcloak.

As Face drew near, he could hear the Devaronian's voice; it was that of Vibroaxe Prime. "... malicious lies. This is not the way allies collaborate, Melvar."

Zsinj's general shrugged. "The lie was a matter of security. I did not underrepresent the forces we would be facing."

"Yes, you did! My fleet would have fared better against Y- wings and X-wings. We did simulator training against them that we could have spent against simulated TIEs. That was lost time. I've suffered eighty percent vehicle losses, nearly fifty percent pilot losses!"

Melvar's voice became soothing. "And you'll receive the bonuses we promised for those losses, in the second round of payments."

"There will be no second round! I want it all now. And not accounts-materials, precious gems, cargo. None of your datapad treachery."

Face shouldered his way to the front of the crowd and frowned.

"What treachery, Melvar ?"

"Ah, General Kargin." Melvar extended a hand back and one of his aides handed him a datapad. "Twenty-eight percent losses and an impressive kill rate. You're in for a bonus on that alone with the second round. For now, your initial payment, as promised." He offered the datapad.

"What's this ? This isn't Imperial credits."

"It's all the information you need to access a numbered account where your payment resides. On Halmad. We thought that would be convenient for you."

"lt would." He looked dubiously at the datapad.

"And if, like Vibroaxe here, I want material goods?"

"You'll have them. Half the value of the payment we negotiated. If we're inconvenienced enough to have to carry hard currency and goods, we take a substantial cut. No negotiation."

Face shrugged and took the datapad. "I trust Zsinj," he announced.

"Simply because it's not cost-effective for him to betray us. Word would spread to every pirate band in Imperial and Rebel s.p.a.ce. He'd never get anything but blasters in the teeth from them afterward."

Melvar smiled. "As ever, the Hawk-bats make the intelligent choice. You have my sympathies for your losses. The woman Qatya was of special help."

"Her efforts will, I hope, be long remembered. Until the second payment, Melvar." Face brought the datapad up to his brow in a mock salute and turned back toward Sungra.s.s. Behind him, Vibroaxe Prime and others of the pirate leaders, more subdued, began accepting the datapads or negotiating for the reduced fees in material goods.

Sungra.s.s's first hypers.p.a.ce jump was straight toward Halmad, but only a light-year in length. Its second carried the cargo hauler straight to the deep-s.p.a.ce rendezvous point where Mon Rernonda waited.

Not just Mon Remonda. Other elements of General Solo's fleet were in evidence, including a Nebulon-B-cla.s.s frigate, a Quasar Fire-cla.s.s cruiser refitted as a light starfighter carrier, and a somewhat decrepit-looking Marauder-cla.s.s corvette, a cla.s.s of fighting s.h.i.+p normally found in the Corporate Sector. Wedge decided that Han Solo had to have cobbled together his force from disparate and overtaxed sources.

When Wedge reached the bridge of the Mon Calamari cruiser, General Solo was waiting with a smile and a handshake.

"Any word from the Super Star Destroyer?" Wedge asked.

"Fine, thank you," Solo said. "You?"

Wedge grinned. "Sorry. How are you?"

"No, no word." Han gestured at the holoprojected starfield that dominated the center of the bridge. Around it, s.h.i.+p's officers, chiefly Mon Calamari, ignored the humans and went about their business. "Don't be so anxious. Your pilots could use a little time to rest."

"Piggy's fighter only carries so much air, even with the extra life-support units he's carried aboard," Wedge said.

"When it runs down, he has a choice to make. Try to run to freedom-which does him no good if he's in the middle of unoccupied s.p.a.ce, since that TIE fighter won't carry him very far, a.s.suming he can even elude Iron Fist's tractors and guns. Turn himself in-which is very bad, for the usual reasons and some other ones, too. Or maybe try to sneak aboard the destroyer, very tricky. And we have no idea what Shalla Nelprin's status is. So even if our comm control program is planted correctly, the Parasite part of our plan is on a limited schedule."

"Well... still. Stand down for a while. Iron Fist and the other Destroyer may be jumping around for a while, and it could be some time before they reenter normal s.p.a.ce and fire up their hypercomm system. a.s.suming, of course, that your program is planted and operational..."

The Mon Calamari captain, Onoma, swung around in his command chair and sent it gliding toward Solo and Wedge on its armature. There was excitement in his gravelly voice.

"Communications reports a signal from the Donn program," he said. "We have a location on the target s.h.i.+p, only minutes old."

"You know, I almost never get to be right," Solo said quietly. He raised his voice: "Put that location up on the board."

A blinking yellow glow appeared in the midst of the starfield projection.

Han, Wedge, and Onoma moved next to it. Solo said, "Looks like they took a course perpendicular to a straight run back into the areas of s.p.a.ce he controls. And that's good for us. Mon Remonda is the closest force to him."

Wedge asked, "Are you planning on a jump straight to the broadcast position?"

Han shook his head. "No, I want a little dispersal. See if we can have s.h.i.+ps on all his escape vectors. He's out in deep s.p.a.ce, away from any known gravity wells-he can jump back to hypers.p.a.ce pretty quickly if we don't finish him. You have any ideas on how he'll behave in real s.p.a.ce, before his next jump?"

"He's going to spend some time where he is, having his technicians go over the new Destroyer's hyperdrive engines." Wedge considered. "Which means stopping dead or cruising. He kept moving after he made his first jump out of Kuat system, and he was moving in the same direction as the hypers.p.a.ce jump.... Can you indicate his course from Kuat to his current position ?"

A thin white line appeared, tracing from the blinking yellow dot to a star a couple of hand spans away.

"That's my guess," Wedge said. "He'll be at cruising speed along the same course until it's time to jump again."

"Magnify it," Han said, and the holoprojected image ex-panded until the white line representing Iron Fist's hypers.p.a.ce jump dominated most of the image; only a few dozen stars remained within the magnified area.

Han pointed just ahead of the Destroyers' projected course.

"All right. Calculate time to jump to this point. Compare it with Iron Fist's normal cruising speed. Project its probable location based on that. That will be fid on Remonda's arrival zone. Now, a.s.suming he wants to run to his own s.p.a.ce, we'll figure out the two most likely courses for him to take and put Tedevium in front of one of them and the rest of this group in front of the other one."

"Tedevium?" Appalled, Wedge glanced out the forward viewports to catch sight of the frigate. "That's a training vessel, not a combat-ready frigate."

Han shrugged-apparently not out of unconcern, but out of helplessness.

"My fleet's in three pieces, with strength balanced as closely as I could make it between them. We use what we have. Tedevium has a graduating cla.s.s of Y-wing pilots and a commander who's always good in a sc.r.a.p."

"True. Still-trainees." Wedge suppressed a shudder.

Han put out a hand. "Good luck, Commander. Sorry you didn't get that rest I was offering."

Wedge took it.

"Either way, I'm going to get it pretty soon."

20.

"Accuracy was nearly ideal, sir," said Captain Raslanor, rather, his holographic image now wavering in the security foyer of Iron Fist's bridge. "Efficiency, however, is another matter. The jump here used nearly three times as much energy as it optimally should."

Zsinj kept any annoyance out of his face. This was not bad news. He'd gambled almost everything on the a.s.sumption that Razor's Kiss actually was as complete as its builders claimed and had made it to safety with his new prize. All other considerations were minor ones.

"What about damage?"

"It appears that, contrary to safety regulations, some of the Kuat workers had jammed an airlock open where the access armature attached from the station to Razor's Kiss. When the s.h.i.+p blasted free, that section vented its atmosphere rather precipitously. We've corrected the problem. The Kuat Drive Yards workers who were on duty at that portion of the s.h.i.+p perished, of course. Instant corrective measures for those who disobeyed the rules."

Zsinj grinned, then suppressed it. "Very well, Captain. Carry on. Keep me updated."

"Yes, sir." The image faded.

Zsinj turned and jumped. General Meivar stood right behind him, his makeup removed and his features returned to their usual cheerful blandness.

"You did it again," Zsinj said, CROSS.

"Yes, sir."

"All the pirate captains happy?"

"Not one of them was happy, but none of them shot me, which I took to be a good sign. I think most of them will work with us again. Especially once those who took the credit vouchers take them to their systems of origin and determine that they're real." He gave Zsinj a curious look.

"I'm surprised you're not over there now. On Razor's Kiss, looking at every rivet and dab of paint."

"Oh, I will be soon. Best to wait until Security has removed the last Kuat forces and possible saboteurs."

There was a sudden surge of noise from the crew pit, voices raised in fast exchanges. Iron Fist's captain, Vellar, a stern-faced man just now going to fat, leaned over the command walkway to peer down into the midst of the noise, then looked back at Zsinj, unhappiness in his expression.

"Several s.h.i.+ps have just dropped from hypers.p.a.ce in our vicinity. One dead ahead as we bear, the rest situated to our starboard and trailing.

The one ahead is tentatively identified as a Mon Calamari cruiser."

Zsinj felt as though he'd been dropped into a polar breeze.

He suppressed a shudder. "Mon Remonda, here?"

"That's not determined yet, sir, but..."

"Shut up. Signal Razor's Kiss. Coordinate a five-light-year hypers.p.a.ce jump on this course and execute it."

"Sir, the cruiser is maneuvering directly into our path. We'll be on her before it's time to jump. Shall we change course to avoid ?"

"No, you idiot. One Mon Calamari cruiser in the path of two Super Star Destroyers? Bring all guns of both s.h.i.+ps to bear. Before we make the transition to lightspeed, we're going to rid the galaxy of the Rebels'

most annoying cruiser... and of the legacy of Han Solo."

Her comlink suddenly crackled with activity on New Republic bandwidths, and Shalla jumped in surprise. Guiltily, she checked her life-support unit. She'd fallen asleep and the thing had run down almost to empty. A really stupid way to die, she told herself. She removed another unit from the storage compartment beneath her seat and put it on.

The comm transmissions were all encoded, but by straining her eyes she could see, in the incredible immensity of the starfield ahead of her, a distant needle of light that could not be a star. Her sensors might tell her what it was... then again, if activated, they might alert the Razor's Kiss crew to her presence.

But the domes to the right and left of her suddenly pulsed with power, bringing their mighty s.h.i.+elds up over the Super Star Destroyer, and she decided the s.h.i.+p's crew had other things to worry about. She began her power-on sequence.

Wedge roared out of Mon Remonda's port hangar, came around to a course matching the cruiser's, and waited as the others formed up on him.

Kell flew Piggy's X-wing, but that left the unit shy one snubfighter. Dia was in one of the TIE interceptors, hastily painted in Wraith Squadron grays to disguise its recent activities with the Hawk-bats. Wedge tried to force a nagging voice of worry from his mind. He didn't need to tell Wes to look after his underdefended wingman. He just wanted to.

The last members of his unit to launch, Face and Lara, formed up. Moments later, Rogue Squadron began emerging by twos, Tycho Celchu and Corran Horn first, and forming up by wingmates. On the opposite side of Mort Remonda, the A-wings of Polearm Squadron and B-wings of Nova Squadron would also be a.s.sembling.

Han's voice crackled in his ear. "They're aware of us. They're not deploying their fighter screen. That suggests they plan to blow their way through and launch back into hypers.p.a.ce."

"The rest of our group?" Wedge asked.

"Coming up fast in their wake."

"Please inform them that if they're very nice, maybe we'll leave them something to shoot at."

Han Solo watched the universe tilt through the viewports as Mon Remonda turned on its intercept course.

He could feel Captain Onoma's eyes on him. He turned to the captain and shook his head.

"Not yet," he said. "Save your fire. This is going to be a slugging match."

"You sound regretful."

"I hate slugging matches."

Piggy activated his power-on sequence.

Nothing happened. The fighter's interior remained dark and silent.

Shalla's sensors showed four squadrons of starfighters approaching.

When should she act? The later she made her a.s.sault on the s.h.i.+eld projectors, the better it would be for her unit. But she knew her fellow pilots had to be suffering, approaching without any knowledge of whether she'd be able to accomplish her task.

She calculated their rate of approach based on sensor data. When they were thirty seconds short of firing range, she activated her repulsorlifts, bringing her interceptor up a mere meter above the deck of Razor's Kiss and well back from the domes. She swung toward the starboard s.h.i.+eld projector dome and fired.

The dome blew apart in an impressive display of flaming gas and metal shards; she heard shrapnel bounce off her hull.