Star Wars: X-Wing VI: Iron Fist Read online

  He decided not to interfere. It was an experiment. They’d see how the enemies responded to their “damaged” interceptor.

  His personal comlink crackled into life. “Commander.”

  “Yes, Runt.”

  “Narra returning. ETA fifteen minutes.”

  “Thank you. Please set up the conference module. Out.”

  He exited Sungrass through its docking tube and passed through the hangar, where the sharp smell of the paints scratched at his sinuses and the chatter of his pilots was so much more immediate. Good men and women in a brief respite from making war. He wished such respites were the norm.

  Then, passing their interceptor, he saw Tyria finish another line of red spiderwebs, set her brush down atop her paint can, and wrap her arms around Kell to kiss him.

  Wedge stopped short, a rebuke on his lips, a reminder that public displays of affection were not appropriate … and then he turned away and kept walking.

  Such a warning might have been appropriate for other units, but not elite squadrons under his command. There were no restrictions against relationships between pilots, even when there was some disparity between their ranks, as was the case with Tyria and Kell. There were no regulations against demonstrations of affection in off-duty and most light-duty situations, such as this little painting exercise. They were doing no wrong.

  Then why was he so annoyed? Why had he been ready to drop kitchen duty on either of them, had his warning been protested?

  He passed through the third set of motorized doors, leading deeper into the shaft, into what Wraith Squadron called the Trench.

  It had been a squarish tunnel bored out of solid stone, a straight shaft notable only for its featurelessness. Now its two walls were lined with medium-sized locking cargo modules stacked three high and stretching for some distance down the shaft. Some had been outfitted as living quarters, some as refreshers, others as conference chambers or communications offices or storage lockers. Roll-away staircases gave pilots easy access to the upper tiers of modules.

  Face had been the first to note that if you flew a toy X-wing down between the rows of modules, the shaft would look a little like one of the deadly surface trenches of the original Death Star. Then, a few days later, when returning from a scouting mission to the surface of Halmad, Wedge had discovered that some joker had painted the shaft’s ceiling black, except for the lights, and had strung strings of miniature twinkling lights here and there, creating an illusion of star-filled sky.

  Wedge had let the decoration stand. It was a bad idea to interfere with things his pilots did to make a gloomy place like this more inhabitable, or, so long as it didn’t interfere with morale or efficiency, with things they did to make their lives happier.

  Yet he’d been ready to do just that a few moments ago, and he grew increasingly annoyed with himself because he couldn’t figure out why.

  The main conference module was on the second tier of the left-hand bank of modules. He took the stairs up and found Runt still there, still sweeping bottles and wrappers from someone’s impromptu meal into a bag. The long-faced alien gave him a salute before finishing up.

  Wedge settled into a seat beside the main table. “Runt.”

  Runt straightened. His ponytail swayed. “Sir.”

  “Do your minds ever confuse one another?”

  The alien grinned. At least, that was how Wedge and the others had learned to interpret it when Runt pulled his lips back over his enormous teeth in an expression that looked more like a prelude to a biting attack. “Yes, Commander. Often. If they were meant to be the same, and therefore easily comprehensible to one another, none of us would have more than one.”

  “Right … What do you do when one acts in a confusing manner and its answers don’t really explain why?”

  Runt sobered and thought about it for a moment, taking the opportunity to pick up one last piece of wrapping. “We have to remember that there are many paths to every answer. The thought path. The emotion path. The memory path. The biology path—we cannot rule out hormones and natural cycles. And every problem might be made up of combinations of those four things.”

  “Good point.” Wedge gave him a nod, his leave to depart.

  And Runt might be right. He couldn’t think of a logical reason to protest Tyria’s show of affection. Nor had witnessing a kiss ever caused him emotional turmoil in the past. He ruled out biology; he was not irritable with fever, had experienced nothing to unsettle him.

  That left emotion, and he already knew what emotion he’d felt.

  Or did he? He’d recognized irritation. Had it masked something else? He thought back over the incident, Tyria’s unthinking affection.…

  Jealousy.

  He shook his head, trying to dismiss the thought. Nonsense. There was nothing for him to be jealous of.

  He’d never entertained any notions about Tyria. She was, to be sure, physically attractive, but she was a very junior officer under his command, and he preferred to steer clear of the extra complications a relationship like that might bring. Too, she was just not the type of woman he was drawn to; she was a little too unsure, too self-critical.

  Nor had he felt any jealousy when it became obvious that Kell and Tyria had fallen in love. If any time were the time to be jealous, that would have been it. So it wasn’t jealousy.

  Except that was what he was feeling. A hard little knot of envy.

  Maybe it was just the fact that he had no one of his own.

  Every so often, he would indulge himself and wonder about the man he would have been had his parents not died in the mishap that had destroyed their refueling station. Who he’d be had he not turned first to smuggling, then to piloting fighter craft for the Alliance and discovered a tremendous aptitude for it. Had he not dedicated himself to a cause that must inevitably kill him. This other Wedge Antilles was probably safe in the Corellian system, owner of a chain of refueling stations, with personal wealth and a waistband measurement that expanded in relationship with one another, with a wife and who knows how many children. A happy man. That was the person Wedge was envious of.

  Not that the real Wedge was unhappy. He was content … but alone. Probably best if he kept it that way. He’d beaten the odds for so many years, years in which literally hundreds of pilots he’d known had died in battle around him, as though they were living shields for his X-wing. Someday his luck would run out and the deadly statistics would catch up to him.

  Yet marriage and family and some sort of normalcy could be his. All he had to do was accept Admiral Ackbar’s offer of a generalship and a staff position.

  Angrily he pushed the idea away. That was a selfish thought. His life meant more as a pilot and squadron commander than it would as a deskbound planner. More citizens of the New Republic were alive and more Imperial enemies were dead because he was the master of a pilot’s yoke instead of a datapad. So long as that remained the case, he didn’t have the right to accommodate himself or pursue his own wishes.

  “Wraith Three to Wraith One.”

  Wedge jolted out of his reverie and stared up into the face of Wes Janson. Behind Janson, Dia Passik stood at attention. Wes was grinning, and even Dia’s stone face suggested amusement.

  There were drinks, still in the bottle, on the table, with condensation collecting on their surfaces. Wedge hadn’t even noticed whether it was Janson or Runt who had brought them in.

  Wedge cleared his throat to cover his momentary discomfiture, then asked, “What’s the word from Coruscant?”

  “Well, they’re cracking down hard on officers caught napping on the job.” Wes handed over a sealed case. “Orders.”

  Wedge popped the seal. From within the case he drew a datapad.

  Dia asked, “Should I leave, sir?”

  “No. Have a seat. You can be the pilots’ official spy for the moment. If there’s anything sensitive here, I’ll discuss it with Lieutenant Janson later.”

  Janson and Dia made themselves comfortable as Wedge scanned th
e text on the datapad. “Congratulations on the raid on the base at Halmad. They seem to think that five interceptors is a better haul than projections called for. Authorization to fund our continued operations from our pirate activities.”

  Janson said, “Whoa. You don’t see that very often.”

  Dia’s brow furrowed. “If I may ask, why is that so unusual?”

  “It’s the place where a lot of long-term secret operations go off course,” Wedge said. “The mission commander sets up a private means of income and funds his operations with it. Then he begins reporting less income than he’s actually taking in. He stashes the surplus away somewhere or uses it for missions not authorized by his control. Soon enough, he has some of his subordinates working with these unauthorized activities, and they’re coming up with more effective means of generating money—such as spice smuggling—that will never get reported. Left long enough, an operation like this can become a full-fledged criminal syndicate within a few years. That’s why the New Republic, particularly Intelligence, doesn’t like doing that. They’re putting a lot of faith in us.”

  Janson glanced at Dia. “In us, he says. He actually deludes himself that anyone’s reputation but Wedge Antilles’s figured into that equation.”

  She managed another cool little smile.

  Wedge returned his attention to the orders. “Authorization to conceive and execute missions against the Imperial and governmental forces in the Halmad system and other systems. In addition, we have a couple of missions here to perform as Wraith Squadron, strikes in collaboration with Rogue Squadron and the Mon Remonda. And no word on replacement X-wings.” He shut down the datapad. “Pretty much as expected. Passik, questions?”

  “No, sir. Thank you for letting me stay, sir.”

  “I know all about the relative value of fresh news. Dismissed.”

  When she was gone, Janson said, “I’ve got some of the mad painters unloading the Narra. We came back with some entertainment holos, some luxury holos, some more ID sets squeezed out of Intelligence, an interceptor simulator module for the TIE-fighter simulator, and that passive sensor set you wanted to monitor the Imperial base.”

  “Good.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  Wedge nodded. “Just feeling my years. Speaking of which, I think I’ll get in some simulator practice and beat up on the youngsters.”

  “That’ll make you feel better. It always does me.”

  Wedge punched his personal code into the keypad located on the hatch of the TIE-fighter simulator. Instead of being located atop the ball-shaped cockpit, where the standard hatch was on real interceptors, the simulator hatch was at the cockpit’s stern, where the twin ion engines would normally be mounted.

  The hatch swung open. Beyond, a shadowy figure pointed a blaster at Wedge. Wedge dropped out of reflex, rolled to the side, came up on his knees with his own blaster in hand.

  But no enemy emerged to fire upon him. He kept his own aim on the hatch and reached for his comlink.

  “Is there a problem, Commander?” That was Face, leaning unconcerned against the X-wing simulator only a few meters away.

  “Get down, there’s a hostile in there—”

  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 cockpit, 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 duty, 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 class 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 repetition, getting on his nerves. He resolved to carry more entertainments on missions, especially those where keeping comm 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 ship 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 hyperspace just outside the outer planet’s orbit 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 ship 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 assumed 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 Hawk-bat 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 be able to pay off. As a child star of holodramas, 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 space. 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. Shields 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 space 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.