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  “For me, it was never about the Empire. It was about me. My fortune. My boys and girls. I’ve been taking ships since the conspiracy started, before there was any chance of it being uncovered.”

  “That’s crazy.” Voort forced a little contempt into his voice. “Senator Treen of Kuat was an Empire loyalist. She would never have helped you set up HyperTech just to steal cargo vessels.”

  “She thought I was doing something else. She thought … She thought …” Turman wavered. He passed a hand over his eyes, then straightened. He turned an apologetic look on Voort. “I’m sorry. I’ve lost the character.”

  “No, no, you did great.” Voort heaved himself to his feet. “It makes sense. They aren’t scattering across the galaxy. Thaal would lose most of his power if they did. They’re going to set up as a unit together somewhere. To run their fleet, maybe as pirates, maybe as legitimate shippers.”

  Sharr cleared his throat. “Turman, it’s not necessarily such a good idea to get that deep in the enemy’s mind. Take it from one who knows.”

  “But what …” Voort looked among the others. “What was HyperTech doing? Do we have to relocate to Kuat and raid them next?”

  “No.” Thaymes’s face lit up. “I know what they were doing.”

  They were interrupted by a shout from above, Drikall’s voice. “Something’s happening!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Voort reached the top of the stairs at Apex Level and trotted out to the Weather Walk. Most of the other Wraiths were out there already, heads low, peering out across the grain fields. Voort moved beside Scut and knelt.

  Out in the fields, a different artillery unit had taken position beside the burned wreckage that Wran had caused. It fired just as Voort looked at it, and moments later an explosion sounded on the mountain slope dozens of meters above Voort’s head. Stones, some of them the size of airspeeders, rained down past the Weather Walk. Pop-Dog snipers continued to fire occasionally from behind airspeeders, their blasters braced against the vehicles’ sides.

  But some of the Pop-Dogs were standing, looking off to the east.

  Once the last of the boulders clattered past, Voort heard what the Pop-Dogs had to be hearing: a distant, thunderlike rumble, deep and constant.

  Wran, to Voort’s immediate right, gave him a curious look.

  “Incoming craft.” Voort leaned farther forward so he could stare to the east. There was nothing to be seen yet. “Not airspeeders. That’s a lot of thrust, but they’re moving subsonic. I suspect atmospheric fighters.”

  Wran sighed. “Probably some of those Tee-sixteen skyhoppers the Pop-Dogs use.”

  Voort nodded. “Those are definitely Incom four-jay-fours. We are in for a pasting.”

  Then he saw them. They must have been traveling at just a few meters above the ground, but now they vectored skyward, two of them, black silhouettes with their wings in a split-X configuration.

  Voort yanked himself back and looked at Trey. “Do the Pop-Dogs have X-wings at Fey’lya?”

  Trey shook his head. “I don’t think so. Skyhoppers here and at most of their bases, E-wings at a couple of their bases.”

  Voort raised his voice so everyone on the walk could hear. “Pack up, we’re about to move out.” He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. “We’re going to do it, Bhindi. We’re going to get out of here.”

  The black X-wings rose to a few hundred meters, leveled off, began a new descent, and opened fire with their quad-linked laser cannons. Red lances of light spattered down on the artillery unit on the field below.

  The lead X-wing struck the target with its first salvo, only a handful of laser bursts missing the artillery piece. The unit detonated, leaping into the air, bending in the middle like a quadruped attempting to buck off a rider. Pop-Dogs all around were slammed to the ground by the detonation. Those nearest the artillery unit caught fire, as did the yellow-white grain for meters in every direction.

  The wingmate’s salvos were less concentrated. They sprayed along the line of smaller vehicles, chewing through airspeeders, vaporizing speeder bikes. Voort didn’t think a single vehicle along a two-hundred-meter stretch escaped being hit.

  The X-wings flashed by, black profiles at almost exactly the altitude of the Weather Walk. Then they were diminishing dots off to the west, banking to the left for a new strafing run.

  Voort forced himself to stop bouncing. “Myri came through. Those are StealthXs.”

  Scut shot him a confused look. “Jedi stealth X-wings? But we heard them coming.”

  Sharr, rising, kept his voice patient. “The pilots are running at full throttle and with baffles off. They’re doing it to panic the enemy. Psychological warfare.”

  Voort caught sight of a third flying craft off to the east, a Lambda-class shuttle with its wings down and locked. It was white, but there was a large irregular blotch of sky blue along its port fuselage, doubtless obscuring its registry number and other identifiable details. “A hundred credits says that’s our extraction vehicle. Trey, gather up every gram of explosives we have. When that’s done, Sharr, you lead the others down to the plain. Keep your eyes open for Pop-Dogs hiding in the grain. Trey, rig up a deadman switch, a detonator for the explosives. Then you and Scut come with me.”

  The StealthX fighters looped around Mount Lyss again and again. The artillery units were all gone by the end of their first orbit—Voort heard each of them detonate. Subsequent passes eliminated every speeder on the ground and scattered Pop-Dogs in every direction. Scores of fires burned brightly and began spreading across the grain fields.

  A kilometer out from the line of destruction, Myri and Jesmin—rumpled, dirty, and flecked with bits of grain—stood.

  Myri glanced at her comlink-equipped datapad. “Jamming’s stopped. Call the shuttle to our location, would you?”

  “I’m on it.”

  Myri triggered her own comlink. “Three to Leader, Three to Leader. I’m pinging you our location. We’re extracting here.”

  Thaymes’s voice came back. “I’m Three. And message received. We’re on our way. Who the hell did you call for help, anyway?”

  Myri paused while the StealthXs screamed by overhead and a succession of laser hits blanketed all other noise. Then she smiled and answered, a considerable quantity of little girl in her voice. “I called Daddy.” She flipped the datapad shut and looked at Jesmin. “When you’ve lost everything else, you can always count on Daddy.”

  Jesmin nodded. “I know that.”

  Then Myri frowned. “Why didn’t Bhindi answer?”

  Up in the Observatory, Voort knelt beside Bhindi and carefully drew the cloak off her. He stared down into her lifeless face.

  His true voice was hoarse. His throat implant ignored the fact, and the Basic words that emerged from his mouth were in an incongruously pleasant tone. “Bhindi, I have to ask one last favor of you. I don’t know where we’re going from here. Taking you along might lead to some of the Wraiths being captured. Leaving you here will mean you’ll be identified and all our identities will eventually be known. Our families would be endangered. I know you understand. I just wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

  Voort waited a moment, as if for an answer, but there was none. He rubbed a tear from his eye and looked up at Scut. “Put it on her.”

  Scut, features expressionless, leaned over and carefully fitted his smiling neoglith masquer onto Bhindi’s head, tucking her hair up beneath it. He straightened when he was done. Bhindi was now a study in contrasts—a human with a fleshy man’s face and a slender woman’s body, eyes closed as if in sleep but lips upturned in an active smile.

  Voort turned his attention to Trey. “Your turn.”

  Trey knelt on the other side of the body from Voort. He held a black backpack in both hands. His improvised deadman switch was wired atop it. “This is set for one second.”

  Voort nodded.

  “My point is, this is kind of chancy. One slip and this whole mountaintop goes up way premature
ly. I think you two had better head on downhill while I finish here.”

  Voort shook his head. “Scut can go if he wants.”

  “I do not.”

  Trey depressed the activator button on the deadman switch and held it down with his thumb. “We’re armed. Please lift her.”

  Carefully, even tenderly, Voort took Bhindi by both shoulders and lifted, bringing her back up off the floor.

  Trey slid the pack beneath her. “Lower her.”

  Voort did, releasing her completely only when her full weight was on the floor, the pack, and Trey’s hands.

  Trey slowly, carefully slid one hand and then the other from beneath Bhindi. He raised both as if surrendering.

  Voort stood and carefully spread Wran’s cloak once again over the upper half of Bhindi’s body. Then he looked at Trey and Scut. “Let’s go.”

  The shuttle, its wings rising to their vertical locked position, and the lead X-wing, its S-foils closing, descended to land mere meters apart. The wingmate’s fighter stayed circling at altitude.

  The lead X-wing’s pilot popped his canopy, nimbly climbed out of the cockpit, and swung over the edge to drop to the ground. Myri rushed over to embrace him. “You came fast.”

  Retired general Wedge Antilles, veteran of both Galactic civil wars and every New Republic or Galactic Alliance war in between, pulled his helmet free and returned the embrace. A lean man, not tall, he had graying hair just slightly shaggier than a military cut. Instead of a traditional orange jumpsuit with black-and-white accessories, he wore an all-black pilot’s suit more appropriate for these X-wings.

  He smiled down into his daughter’s face. “It felt like forever. You try borrowing two war machines, a shuttle, and two crazy pilots on short notice. I had to cash in some serious markers.”

  She beamed up at him. “It’s not that hard. I just did it.”

  “Braggart.” He kissed her, then donned the helmet again and snapped its visor down into place. “I’ve got to get airborne again. Can’t leave Tycho up there all by himself. He gets lonely.”

  Myri’s voice turned wistful. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Wedge gripped the lip of his cockpit, pulled, and sprang up onto the S-foil, then rapidly climbed back in. “Write your mother.”

  Voort, arriving on the heels of Trey and Scut at the extraction site, was twenty meters from the StealthX and the shuttle when he recognized who the departing pilot was. He threw an informal salute. He got an answering wave; then the starfighter’s canopy came down and the fighter began its rise into the air.

  Voort lumbered up the boarding ramp of the shuttle behind Scut. He was the last Wraith to board. The others were already strapping themselves into seats. The faces of Jesmin and Myri were rigid with shock. Obviously they’d just learned about Bhindi.

  From his seat, Sharr caught Voort’s eye. “I don’t know our pilot.”

  “If Wedge Antilles chose him, I’m sure he’s fine, if not great.” But Voort headed forward to the cockpit.

  The cockpit door was open, and there was a little patch of red hair to be glimpsed just above the back of the pilot’s seat. No one sat in the copilot’s seat.

  “Captain, I’m Voort, and I’m rated on these shuttles.” He leaned over the back of the copilot’s seat and turned to look at the pilot. “So if you need any cockpit help …”

  The woman who turned toward him was fine-boned, with delicate features that had been beautiful, as Voort understood human beauty, nearly forty years before and were beautiful still. In fact, laugh lines humanized looks that had once been a little chilly and impersonal. She wore her hair long, with one swaying curl that half obscured her left eye. “Piggy, get your rear end in that seat and strap down.”

  “Kirney!” Voort scrambled to comply.

  Kirney Slane flipped a switch, and the cockpit and passenger cabin were filled with the whine of the boarding ramp rising. “If you’re on Corellia and you want the best shuttles, the best pilots, and the best prices, who do you comm?”

  Voort’s reply was automatic—he’d seen those advertisements. “Donoslane Excursions.”

  “Kriffing right you do. We’re lifting without a full preflight, so keep one eye on the diagnostics readouts and the other on the sensor board. Tell me about anything incoming.” She increased power to the repulsors. There was a sudden lurch and they were airborne, the shuttle’s wings gracefully lowering into flight position. “You put the team back together.”

  “I didn’t. But … yes. It was done.”

  “I saw faces back there I recognize, young faces.” Kirney smoothly transitioned every bit of power toward the thrusters and tilted the shuttle’s nose spaceward. “Piggy, you will not recruit from my children.”

  Voort saw the sensor board light up with activity. “Four blips incoming. Sensor returns and speed suggest starfighters or atmospheric fighters. Our escorts are turning to meet them.”

  “Skyhoppers out of Fey’lya Base.” Kirney sniffed, a noise of contempt. “What did I just tell you?”

  “I do not recruit from your children. This cockpit smells like fur.”

  “Shut up. What did I tell you?”

  “I do not recruit from your children. How’s Myn?” On the sensor board, the four incoming fighters closed with Wedge and Tycho and suddenly became two.

  “Grinning from ear to ear. You know why? Because we have a very profitable business and all our children are alive. What did I tell you?”

  “I do not—”

  General Stavin Thaal—burly, his hair in a military cut and durasteel gray, his skin burned brown by a lifetime of exposure to summertime drill yards under myriad suns, his blue uniform pressed and crisp—leaned over his field coordinator’s chair, staring over her shoulder at the bank of monitors before her. He sensed her tensing at his proximity—her brown-clad shoulders and the Pop-Dog collar of her shirt rose half a centimeter.

  Some monitors showed the ruined fields before Mount Lyss and its meteorological station, fires still burning, artillery units still burning, bodies draped in improvised shrouds. Other monitors, their images bouncing because they were receiving helmet holocam views, showed the points of view of Pop-Dogs ascending the mountain’s stairs.

  Thaal spoke into his officer’s ear. “Reorder these views by proximity to the station.”

  “Yes, sir.” She hesitated a moment, then blanked one monitor, replacing its images with text. With a series of commands, she brought up the planetary positioning system, then brought up the comlink-transmitted positions of everyone within a klick of the mountain, arranging those names and ranks into a list. She fed in the exact location of the station and sorted the list by proximity to those coordinates. Then she flicked the top twelve results to the right hand of the screen; as she did so, a corresponding holocam view appeared on a different monitor screen.

  Thaal nodded. “Not bad. But not perfect. Now figure out how to make the system constantly update the views, reordering them as new signals get closer than old ones.”

  “Yes, sir. Shall I subtract overlapping views? So you don’t end up with twelve angles on the same location as troopers congregate there?”

  “Good thinking, Lieutenant. Not this time, I want multiple views of where those insurgents were holed up, but figure out how to do it either way.”

  Thaal felt some of the tension leave the lieutenant’s shoulders.

  On the lead views, the topmost row of monitors, Thaal could see troopers reaching a stony walkway that looked out over the burning plain. They approached a doorway cut into natural stone. A moment later they were through, into a narrow, long chamber, its floor littered with debris doubtless shaken from the ceiling during the artillery pounding.

  There was also a body on the floor, slender, its upper portions concealed under a black hip-cloak that would have looked good on General Lando Calrissian.

  Several holocam views approached the body. Flicking his attention from monitor to monitor, Thaal could see that six troopers now half surrounded it,
five with their rifles trained on it, one reaching to remove the cloak.

  This revealed the face of a human man, eyes closed, mouth upturned in a cheerful smile.

  Something about that smile sent a chill down Thaal’s spine. He jabbed a finger toward one of the monitors. “Patch me through to that sergeant.”

  The lieutenant reached for her keyboard. One of the troopers at the scene prodded the smiling man’s body with a toe, rocking it to one side.

  “I have him—” Then the lieutenant fell silent as all twelve monitor views went to static.

  Quiet settled on the command center. Officers at nearby consoles stopped what they were doing to look over at the main bank of monitors.

  A second later, one by one, the monitor images began to be replaced by new ones, points of view from troopers farther down the mountainside and some down on the plain.

  All those holocams were now turned toward the meteorological station, which was obscured by massive clouds of black, red, orange, and yellow, a massive explosion venting from every possible gap in the stone.

  And then the rockslides began to hit the leading edge of troopers climbing the stairs. Their points of view suddenly became confused swirls of stone, flesh, and blood. Some of those views winked out as comlinks were destroyed. The surviving views, some of them just showing the blackness viewed by corpses buried in stone, marched toward the top row of monitors and were replaced by views from surviving troopers farther away.

  Thaal felt that chill in his spine creep through his entire body.

  Aware of the eyes of the Pop-Dog officers in the command center trained on him, he forced himself to speak. “Lieutenant, get more medical resources out there. Rossin, I want that telemetry on the shuttle and the X-wings now. Argast, get me an update on the cosmetic work at Glitterby.” It was hard to talk. A lump had formed in his throat. All those brave, loyal boys and girls …

  He received a chorus of Yes, sirs in reply.

  Her task done, the lieutenant spoke. “Sir? What are we facing here?”

  By rote, the general turned the answer into another exercise. “What do you think we’re facing?”