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

  “A holdout, sir. A laser scalpel. Hard to distinguish from a writing tool without close inspection … and up close, I’m pretty effective with it.”

  “I’d say so. Did you surrender this weapon to our guards before coming before me?”

  “What weapon, sir?”

  “The laser scalpel.”

  “Not a weapon, sir. It’s a tool of medicine. I wasn’t asked to turn over my bandages, bacta treatments, disinfectant sprays, or tranquilizers either, but I can kill a man with any of them, under the right circumstances.”

  The colonel glanced at Wedge, a beleaguered look Wedge knew well from his own mirror—it asked, What sort of unit have you assembled here? Wedge merely shrugged.

  The colonel closed down his datapad. “All right. Pending the results of further investigation into this matter, I’m going to release your squadron.”

  Wedge said, “Thank you, sir.”

  “How are your injured squad members? Ekwesh, wasn’t it, and Janson?”

  “Both in sick bay,” Wedge said. “Runt Ekwesh has a mild concussion, and is thoroughly embarrassed that Phanan knocked him down to keep him out of the fight. Lieutenant Janson got a blaster crease across the ribs; he’s got a bacta patch on it and will be fit for duty in a day or two.”

  The colonel rose; Wedge and his subordinates followed suit. The colonel said, “I wish them every luck in getting back to duty as soon as possible.” He left unstated the obvious fact that he far preferred them facing Imperial stormtroopers and warlord forces than the civilians of the planet Coruscant. An exchange of salutes later, he departed.

  Admiral Ackbar came forward. “Before you go: What are your thoughts on this matter?”

  Wedge said, “I’d prefer to see what General Cracken’s people get out of the survivors, but my guess is Zsinj. We hurt him pretty badly when we destroyed the Implacable.” That ship, an Imperial Star Destroyer, belonged to Admiral Apwar Trigit, a subordinate of the warlord Zsinj, who was now the chief enemy and target of the New Republic. “He’s shown a vengeful streak in the past, and has enough intelligence and contacts to mount a plausible-looking trap like that. I’d say that he’s figured out who Wraith Squadron is and has decided to make us pay.”

  Ackbar nodded. “My own conclusion as well. I will leave the matter of protection of your subordinates to you, Commander Antilles—I am sure you are fit to decide whether to complete your leave or return to duty and the safer confines of Starfighter Command’s barracks and facilities. But I do have orders for you.” He tapped the bulge of the datapad in his pocket. “I have transmitted them to your datapad. I think you will find them to your liking; they play to the, how should I put it, improvisational strengths of your new squadron.”

  Wedge smiled. “Those improvisational strengths are beginning to give me gray hairs, Admiral. But thank you in spite of that.” He let the smile fade. “I hope I’m not being presumptuous, sir, but I was wondering if you’d heard anything about Fel.”

  Ackbar pulled out his datapad and tapped at it. Wedge wondered if the admiral really was accessing data, or whether this was a delaying tactic, a moment to give him time to prepare an answer.

  Baron Soontir Fel had been the Empire’s greatest starfighter pilot in the years after Vader’s death. Leader of the elite 181st Imperial Fighter Group, he had bedeviled Rogue Squadron on occasion, and had been a lethal weapon used against the New Republic on many missions. Later, he had changed his alliance to the New Republic and had even been a part of Rogue Squadron.

  What wasn’t as widely known was that Wedge’s sister Syal was Fel’s wife. Or that both Fel and Syal had disappeared, years ago. The 181st was theoretically now under the command of another Imperial officer, serving the coalition of Moffs and military officers that now acted as the unofficial heir to the rule of what was left of the Empire. And this made Fel’s sudden recent reappearance, commanding portions of the 181st as part of the complement of starfighters aboard Star Destroyer Implacable, particularly unsettling. Fel and many of his pilots had escaped Implacable’s fate and their location was now unknown to the New Republic … but Wedge had a suspicion that Fel would be found serving Warlord Zsinj.

  Ackbar met Wedge’s gaze again and shook his head. “We have no news on any official cooperation between the remains of the Empire and Zsinj. No idea why the Empire would loan the One Eighty-first to the warlord. No news of Fel, the details of his return … or his family. I am sorry. I will let you know if his name crosses my desk.”

  “Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”

  In the hangar temporarily assigned to the vehicles of Wraith Squadron—seven battered X-wing snubfighters, two battle-scarred captured TIE fighters, and a comparatively pristine-looking Lambda-class shuttle—they explained the colonel’s decision to the Wraiths who had not been called in for the second stage of interrogation. “I hate to say it,” Wedge said, “but leave is effectively canceled. I want volunteers to act as guards for Runt and Wes until they’re discharged. I want someone on duty here with our vehicles until we lift for our next assignment, and I want everyone walking around with eyes behind as well as in front. Understood?”

  The Wraiths nodded. “I’ll work out a duty roster,” Face said.

  “Why you?” Kell asked.

  Face smiled at the big man. “Because Janson’s not here to do it. Because I was promoted two minutes ahead of you, so I outrank you. Check back with me in a few minutes and I’ll have assignments ready to transmit.”

  As the Wraiths moved their separate ways, Phanan threw his arm over Kell’s shoulder. He looked at Tyria. “Tyria, if you’d excuse us for a moment, I have a few words to say in private to your toyfriend—”

  She gave him an arch look. “My what?”

  Kell straightened, causing the shorter man’s arm to slide off, and glared. “Her what?”

  “What did I say?” Phanan shrugged. “A few moments.”

  She shrugged and moved to her X-wing.

  “Did you catch the name of the colonel?” Phanan asked.

  Kell’s scowl turned from irritation to confusion. “I don’t think Commander Antilles mentioned it.”

  “Repness.”

  Kell glanced over at Tyria, but she had one of her snub-fighter’s engine ports open and was intent on the machinery within. “That’s the name of the trainer who tried to get her to steal an X-wing. Before she joined the Wraiths.”

  “The same. I checked on him as we were marching back from the interrogation. He’s still training pilots, now here on Coruscant, though he’s about to be assigned to the training frigate Tedevium. He has other duties as well, mostly high-profile volunteer stuff—not unusual for an ambitious officer. He was officer of the day today for the subbase the military police belong to, which is why he debriefed us on the incident.”

  Kell took a deep breath. Atton Repness was an instructor for New Republic pilot trainees who were on the verge of washing out of the training program. He had a reputation as being good at salvaging pilots thought unsalvageable. But Kell and Phanan knew that he had secretly altered Tyria’s failing grades to make them passable, then tried to enlist her in an effort to steal an X-wing, and had used the revelation of the grade forgery to blackmail her into silence. “You wouldn’t have mentioned him if you didn’t already have a plan,” Kell said. His voice was hard.

  Phanan smiled. “That’s what I like to hear. Acknowledgment of my superior intellect along with a desire to hurt somebody else very badly. It’s a good day for me.

  “Yes, I have a plan. We know of one and only one tactic he has used. He approached a struggling pilot candidate, female, attractive—we don’t know whether those characteristics are important to his thinking, but let’s put a skifter in the deck and make sure—and helped her two ways. Extra training, for legitimate gains in her scores, and doctoring of her grades, to ensure she passed … and to ensure that she was in debt to him, or could at least be blackmailed into silence. If we wave some bait around in front of him, maybe he’ll sna
p at it.”

  “Bait.” Kell scowled and leaned against the strike foil of the nearest X-wing. “Phanan, I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had enough time to make enough friends and acquaintances that I can just snap my fingers and find someone with the qualities you’re talking about.”

  “Ah, but you don’t have my superior intellect, do you?”

  “One more mention of your superior intellect and I’ll make it necessary for you to install a brain that’s all mechanical.”

  Phanan leaned close, unfazed by or oblivious to the threat. “When I was in the hospital on Borleias, the patient in the next room was a woman. A beautiful woman. A survivor off the Implacable.”

  “So she’s a military prisoner now? Ton, we can’t break her out of jail for your plan—”

  “Not a prisoner now. She was a prisoner aboard the Implacable. Admiral Trigit’s mistress—unwilling mistress. She was snatched off a planet colony Trigit bombarded into sand, she was kept drugged … you can guess the rest.”

  Kell grimaced.

  “She had a whole lot to tell New Republic Intelligence about Trigit and his methods. A very observant, intelligent young woman. Not to mention a beauty.”

  “You’ve already mentioned that she was a beauty.”

  “Yes, but I’m still not over her. I heard she was being transferred to Coruscant for further debriefing. If we can find her and convince her to help …”

  “We could sponsor her to pilot training and catch Colonel Repness in his same pathetic tactic.” Kell glanced again at Tyria. “I’m in.”

  “Good. I’ll see if I can track her down—Lara Notsil is her name—and then see if Face will keep us off the duty roster long enough to talk to her.”

  “And if he won’t?”

  “I’ll bring him in on the plan.” Anticipating Kell’s objections, Phanan hastily continued, “I won’t mention Tyria by name. I can keep her out of the story.”

  “Well … all right. Let’s keep her out of this end of it, too.”

  “Done.”

  A day later, they reassembled in the same hangar, all the Wraiths and more personnel besides.

  Face looked over the newcomers with interest. Tallest among them was a human male, on his head an untidy mess of straw-colored hair. Next was a dark-skinned woman with large, alert eyes, a red bead tied to one lock of hair on her forehead, and a broad smile that suggested that every minute of every day she was thrilled to be alive. The last, and shortest, was a Twi’lek woman, her features startlingly beautiful by human standards but her red-eyed stare forbidding, her brain tails hanging loose behind her instead of being draped over her shoulders in the fashion of a Twi’lek among friends and allies. All three wore the standard orange-and-white New Republic pilot’s suit.

  “Lots of news today,” Wes Janson said, looking over his datapad. He was, Face saw, back to his usual self, his eternally youthful features merry, no sign on them of discomfort from the injury to his side. “Most of it good, some bad.

  “Bad news: I’m back. Bad for me, because I was enjoying my rest, and bad for you, because if some of you had been a little quicker, I wouldn’t have been shot. Keep it in mind as I make up assignments over the next few weeks.”

  He smiled at the chorus of groans that resulted. “Runt, also, is fit for duty, which is probably both good and bad, because some of his personalities enjoy working and some don’t.” The greatest mental peculiarity of Runt’s Thakwaash species, now well known to the Wraiths, was that most had multiple personalities—not caused, as they were among humans, by great emotional trauma, but occurring as a natural part of their mental development. Each of Runt’s personalities was adept at a different task, and new personalities tended to emerge as he learned.

  “We have new pilots to fill our roster.” One of the Wraiths had died at the battle on the moon of System M2398; two more had perished in the fight that destroyed the Implacable. “I present to you Flight Officer Castin Donn, our new computer specialist.” The blond-haired man nodded cheerfully. Janson continued, “Castin is a native of Coruscant, so the next time we decide to walk into a trap here, we’ll take him along to make sure it’s a better grade of trap.

  “Flight Officer Dia Passik is a native of Ryloth.” The Twi’lek woman nodded, looking among the Wraiths as if to guess which one would attack her first. Janson said, “She has experience with a broad variety of New Republic and Imperial vehicles, especially larger space vessels, and knows quite a bit about criminal organization—she’s a new resource for us where things like smuggling, the slave trade, and mercenary operations are concerned.

  “Our third pilot is Flight Officer Shalla Nelprin—”

  “Oh, no,” Kell said. He banged his head against the fuselage of Face’s X-wing.

  Janson looked vaguely amused. “You have something to say, Lieutenant Tainer?”

  Kell stopped hammering the snubfighter for a moment. “You’re related to Vula Nelprin?”

  The new Wraith’s smile broadened, causing dimples to appear. “She’s my older sister.”

  “And your father trained you, too?”

  “Yes … though I think I’m a little better than Vula.”

  Kell sighed. “I think I’ve told you all about my hand-to-hand instructor in the commandos, the one who could throw me around as though I were a dust rag without even letting me see her sweat—this is her sister.”

  Janson said, “This should come as no surprise to you, then: Nelprin is going to be our new trainer in unarmed combat. You make her the best pilot she can be, and she gets to reward you by beating the life out of you. But she’s also well versed in Imperial Intelligence doctrine and tactics, which is helpful to us, since Zsinj seems to be fond of employing Intelligence personnel. Wedge?”

  Wedge said, “Make the new pilots welcome, Wraiths. We’re going to put them, and you, immediately to work on our new mission.” He drew his datapad from a pocket and punched in a command on its keys. “I’ve just transmitted to your datapads the details of our assignment … one which, unfortunately, won’t take us off Coruscant yet.” He waved down the chorus of groans that resulted. “Sorry. But our results on this task may determine where we’re assigned next, so pay attention.

  “Our efforts in tracking Admiral Trigit and insinuating ourselves into his confidence have gone over very well with High Command. We’ve demonstrated that we have both skill and luck on our side. But now we have to prove it beyond a doubt.

  “We’re going to divide ourselves into three groups. Each group is to ask the following questions: What is Zsinj up to? What are his specific plans and strategies? Once you’ve arrived at a set of theories, we’ll put them to the test: We’ll go out into the field and look for evidence to corroborate the best of the theories.

  “I’m choosing three of you to head these groups based on your ability with tactical thinking and skill in getting into your enemies’ heads.” Wedge nodded toward three pilots in turn. “Runt, you’re Zsinj-One. Piggy, you’re Zsinj-Two. Face, you’re Zsinj-Three. Choose your teams and confine yourselves, as much as possible, to research resources available here at headquarters. Questions?”

  Janson’s hand went up. “Are we going to be working with Rogue Squadron on this?”

  Wedge nodded. “Once we’re off-planet, yes, but not in the theoretical phase. The Rogues are being assigned to General Solo on the Mon Remonda to look for Zsinj; once we get out into the field, we’ll work with them as circumstances demand.”

  Tyria was next. “Have they found out whether it was Zsinj who arranged the ambush on us?”

  Wedge managed a sour smile. “The survivors of that little operation have been free with their information. But none of them knew who they were working for except the organizer, who assembled them as a team, trained them for this operation, and led the mission. He was the one whose throat Phanan cut.”

  Phanan didn’t look abashed. “Oops.”

  “General Cracken’s field investigators are trying to backtrack their expend
itures and movements; maybe that will turn up some leads for them. Not our problem. Anything else? No? Dismissed.”

  In the organizational chaos that followed, Runt chose Kell and Tyria as his partners; Face took Phanan and Janson; and Piggy chose Myn, and rounded out his group by adding Squeaky, the unit’s 3PO quartermaster, to his roster. By silent agreement, each of the three virtual Zsinjes took one of the new squadron members: Runt took Shalla, Piggy chose Castin, and Face took the Twi’lek Dia.

  “And may the best Zsinj win,” Face said. “Until he runs into Wraith Squadron, that is.”

  2

  Gara Petothel rechecked the code for the last time, her attention skipping back and forth across screens of data, then sent the command to compile the ungainly-looking mess into what she hoped would be the final version of her program.

  A work of art, it was. It would transfer a number of packets of encrypted data from her terminal deep in the low-rent warrens of the city-planet of Coruscant to public computer repositories, disguising the data as ancient archives of accounting data. Then, once the trail back to Gara’s terminal was cold, it would transmit the data out across the New Republic HoloNet, to HoloNet addresses Gara had committed to memory weeks before … addresses that would lead eventually to the communications station of the warlord Zsinj.

  If he’s a smart man, she thought, and by all accounts he is, within a few weeks I’ll have gainful employment again. Away from this cesspool and away from the Rebel police and Intelligence agents—

  A heavy knock fell on the door. She jumped. Sign of a guilty conscience, she thought, and tried to school her features back into an expression of innocent curiosity. She switched off power to her terminal’s screen.

  As she rose to answer the door, she looked into the mirror to make sure she looked the part she was supposed to be playing. Her downy white-blond hair, cut very close, still seemed odd to her, as was the absence of a mole she’d carried on her cheek since childhood—a mole she had secretly had removed when preparing this identity. No, this identity shared only a certain delicacy of features with Gara Petothel, and hair and makeup were sufficiently different that no one should recognize her in the time it would take her to leave.