Star Wars: X-Wing V: Wraith Squadron Page 5

  “So what happened?”

  “The first part of the mission went as planned. But as the freighter came in, we saw that the TIE fighter escort was twice as big as advertised. And one of our pilots, a former freighter pilot from Alderaan, Kissek Doran, had a panic attack and took off in his Y-wing. Piggy and I were sent out to bring him back … or shoot him down.”

  “And you did?”

  The words exploded out of Janson: “Wedge, I had to! If he communicated on any standard frequency, if he crossed into the base’s sensor range, if he bounced high enough that the moon’s horizon no longer concealed him; if any of these things happened, we were compromised and the unit might have been slaughtered. Porkins tried to crowd him down to land, but he couldn’t, and I—” The words stuck in his throat for a moment. “I shot him down. I had to use lasers. Couldn’t risk the ion cannon; its energy pulse might have been detected. The blast cracked his cockpit; vacuum killed him. His scrounged flight suit wasn’t up to it.”

  “It sounds as though you did everything you could to keep him alive.”

  “Yes, until I killed him. I knew he had a wife and two or three kids back on Alderaan. I figured they’d died when the first Death Star destroyed the planet.”

  Wedge took up Janson’s datapad and scanned Kell’s record. “It doesn’t say anything here about Alderaan or the Doran family.”

  “They must have changed their family name, falsified records. The unit commander went to visit them, not long after he’d sent them the official notification of Kissek’s death. The story he was going to give her, supporting the one in the notification, was that he died in battle … but Kissek’s wife had already heard the truth from someone. Accused the Tierfon Yellow Aces not only of killing her husband but of ruining the family name. Maybe she tried to fix things by changing their name and moving away.”

  Wedge sighed over the datapad. “Look at this. Tainer was a fighter-craft mechanic on Sluis Van. When he came to the Alliance, he trained as a demolitions expert. Served with Lieutenant Page’s commandos, then demonstrated a native talent for fighting in re-creational simulators and got permission to train in the real thing. Have you ever met Page?”

  “No.”

  “A good man. Teaches his people well. Wes, we really need Tainer … if we can persuade him to stay.”

  Janson gave him a look that was all mock cheer. “Oh, wonderful. I killed his father. He hates me. He knows how to make bombs. Come on, Wedge, how does this story end?”

  “If he’s an honorable man, you’re in no danger.”

  “So he gets to the boiling point, and then he pops like the cork on bad Tatooine wine.”

  “All Tatooine wine is bad.”

  “Don’t change the subject. Anyway, keep reading.”

  Wedge returned his attention to the datapad. “In training, one Headhunter crashed. One X-wing set down hard enough that it took a lot of damage. He claimed unresponsive controls both times?”

  Janson nodded. “Typical response from someone who can’t accept responsibility for his failures.”

  Wedge looked up and gave his fellow pilot a piercing stare. “So, back when you were hot to add him to our roster, how were you going to convince me to overlook this little crash-landing problem?”

  “Wedge …”

  “Answer the question.”

  Janson looked unhappy. “I was going to point out that he could have been correct. The two crashes aren’t consistent with his skill index. He’s good, and I mean brilliant, in the simulators.”

  Wedge considered the information on the datapad for long moments. “Well, I’ll accept your explanation. I want us to try him out. If he doesn’t work out, I’ll scrub him. If he does work out and yet the two of you can’t work together …”

  “In the long run, you actually need him in this unit more than you need me.” Janson’s voice was weary. “In that case, with your permission, I’d transfer back to the Rogues. I can swap with Hobbie.”

  Wedge nodded, solemn. “Thanks, Wes.”

  · · ·

  Janson let Wedge do all the talking. Wedge imagined that it felt better not to have Kell Tainer turn any attention toward him whatsoever.

  Wedge explained the situation in a few words, then asked, “Tainer, are you an honorable man?”

  The pilot, his back once again locked into correct but overtense military posture, said, “I am.”

  “Do you think Lieutenant Janson is any less honorable?”

  Tainer took his time in replying. “No, sir.” The words sounded as though they were being ground out of him.

  “You took an oath to serve the New Republic, and you have to understand that we need your precise skills more than you need to avoid reminders of what happened to your father. Janson took the same oath, though in his case it was to the Alliance to restore the Republic, back when you were still playing with toys. And he understands that we need his skills more than he needs to be free of the dislike you have for him … or of the memory of doing something he didn’t want to do. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So I’m going to ask you to stay. For now. If you two can’t work together, we’ll make arrangements. But I have to warn you, with your record, placement in any other unit means you’re not likely ever to fly a fighter again. You’ll probably end up back in the commandos.”

  “I liked the commandos.”

  “Yes, but you’ll never be able to repair your father’s name there. You’ll never show the galaxy that the name ‘Doran’ doesn’t translate as ‘pilot and coward.’ ”

  Tainer’s head snapped down and he finally met Wedge’s gaze. His eyes were as full of rage as any Wedge had ever seen; Wedge resisted the temptation to take a step backward. “How dare you—”

  Wedge kept his own voice low. “Attention.” He waited three long beats, until Tainer again assumed the proper pose and returned his attention to the wall above Wedge’s head. Then Wedge continued, “I dare, if that’s the word, because it’s the truth. I’ll bet you’ve had this dream, a dream of being a pilot and restoring the honor to your family’s name, since you were back on Alderaan. Well, you’ve yet to fly a combat mission and you’re already about to wash out of the pilot ranks. Here’s your last chance. So, do you stay or do you go?”

  Tainer’s jaw worked for several moments, but he made no sound. Then: “I stay. Sir.” His voice suggested that he was speaking in spite of a deep stab wound.

  “Good. Dismissed.”

  When Tainer was gone, Janson let out a low whistle. “Wedge, I’m not criticizing … but that was the coldest maneuver I’ve seen in a long time.”

  “You fly through vacuum, you sometimes need cold-space lubricants instead of blood.” Wedge slumped wearily back in his chair. Suddenly he felt impossibly tired, and wondered how many pilots would regularly bring him problems like these.

  Kell strapped himself into his seat, an effort made a little difficult because the cockpit was so tight around him, and flipped the four switches igniting his X-wing’s fusial thrust engines—actually, igniting the ersatz engines on this X-wing simulator. Simulators being as sophisticated and realistic as they were, it was sometimes an effort to distinguish them from reality; they even used gravitational compensators to simulate zero gee during deep-space mission simulations.

  Around him, in the viewscreens that simulated the X-wing’s transparisteel canopy, he saw a fighter launch bay; he knew the real one was actually half a klick above him, much closer to the lunar surface.

  His board indicated that all four engines were live and performing at near-optimal levels. “Gold One has four starts and is ready. Primary and secondary power at full. All diagnostics in the green.”

  His comm system crackled. “Gold Two, identical report. Ready to fly.”

  Kell didn’t know who Gold Two was; the other pilots in this Gold group mission had been sealed into their simulators already by the time Kell had arrived for the mission. He wondered if they’d been getting in a fe
w minutes extra practice before the exercise. He wondered if he should have been doing the same.

  Gold Two’s voice, distorted through the comm system, was not deep but seemed to be male; odd pronunciation suggested that Basic was not his native tongue.

  “Gold Three, everything is nominal. Ready to go.” Those were the mechanical tones of Piggy, the Gamorrean. Kell was interested in seeing how that pilot flew; Piggy was the one candidate trainee who was physically even broader than Kell, even more uncomfortable in the standard X-wing cockpit.

  “Gold Four, everything nominal, ready to go.” A female voice. Kell had met several female candidates trying out for places in this squadron, but comm distortion kept him from being able to match this voice to anyone he’d met.

  Lieutenant Janson’s voice crackled in his ear, not distorted at all; Kell stiffened. “Launch in sixty,” Janson said. “We have incoming spacecraft, eyeballs and squints, screening a capital ship. Engage and hold them ten klicks from base. Your job is to keep them off us long enough to launch our transports. You fail, we die. Training protocol one-seven-nine is in effect. Control out.”

  Kell tried to force his shoulder muscles to relax. He switched the comm over to a direct channel to his wingman. “Gold Two, what’s training protocol one-seven-nine?”

  “We don’t know, One.”

  “We? Who’s we?”

  “Gold Two, One.”

  Kell opened his mouth to ask for a clarification, saw that the chrono was down to ten seconds, and decided to wait.

  At five seconds he activated his repulsorlift engines and rose a few meters into the air. At one second he nudged the stick forward, made sure he was aligned perfectly with the tunnel exit from the hangar, and kicked in the thrusters. A visual check showed the other members of his group doing the same.

  His X-wing punched out through the magnetic containment field at the end of the tunnel, into hard vacuum—

  Straight into the incoming fire from a group of four TIE bombers, dupes already so close he could clearly see them with the naked eye.

  Kell snapped up on his starboard wing, put all shields forward, bracketed one of the oncoming dupes and pulled the trigger even before the brackets could glow with the green of a laser lock, and pulled up in an arc that carried him to starboard and away from the lunar surface. He saw the rear edges of his control surfaces brighten with the glow of an explosion behind him. Communication from his R2 unit scrolled over his data screen: CONFIRM ONE KILL GOLD ONE.

  Panicky, incomprehensible chatter came over his comm system; Kell shouted it down. “Quiet! Strike foils to attack position! Intelligence was wrong, the intruders are already all over the base. Two, stay with me, we’re going up after our original objective. Three, Four, do a fly-by over the base and report damage.”

  He heard a chorus of subdued acknowledgments and saw Gold Two pull up to his port rear quarter. Then he tried the comm again: “Control, come in. Gold One to Control.”

  No answer.

  His sensor unit showed three remaining TIE dupes below, at just above ground level—then two, as Gold Three scored a kill. But ahead and above, now at a distance of four klicks and closing, were thirty-six TIE fighter blips: three full squadrons. They maintained separation, were not converging on Gold One and Two.

  Gold Four’s voice crackled over the comm system. “One, the launch tunnels are down, all of them. They’ve been bombed out of existence.”

  “Even the main tube? The transport exit? That’s the only one that concerns us.”

  “A hundred meters of collapsed rubble, One. Nobody’s coming out of that.” Four’s voice sounded upset even across comm distortion. Kell wanted to tell her, Calm down, it’s only a simulator run. Nobody real is dead.

  But he had other problems. Control had given him a clear set of mission goals … and then had changed the mission parameters and invalidated all of them. What should he do now? And what was that damned training protocol Control had cited just before they launched?

  “One Group, our mission is scrubbed,” he said. “Our status is omega. Three, Four, get to us and we’ll punch a hole out of here.”

  Three and Four acknowledged just as the range-to-target indicator dropped below two klicks. This meant the oncoming enemy was within their weapon range … and that Gold One and Gold Two were within range of the enemy’s targeting.

  They could either bug out and suffer long-range potshots of the enemy on their way back to Gold Three and Four, or try to punch their way through, get back a little of their own, and loop back to their comrades, hoping that their attack might leave the enemy in some disarray. The latter course was potentially suicidal. Kell said, “Gold Two, let’s get out of here—”

  Gold Two’s reply was a weird, warbling yell. His X-wing headed straight toward the oncoming squadron. Little needles of green Imperial laser fire came lancing in, none too close to him.

  “Gold Two, return to formation. Gold Two …” Kell cursed. Had Two’s comm unit malfunctioned? That would be in keeping with the foul-up nature of this mission. “All right, Gold Two, I’m your wing.” He continued in pursuit of Two and prepared to cover him.

  Two’s course carried him straight toward the center of the port squadron. The enemy’s laser fire now flashed thick around him, and Kell saw some of it dissipating meters ahead of Two’s fighter, stopped by its shields. Two was performing the most dangerous and most effective sort of fighter maneuver, the head-on approach, but against an entire squadron … and twelve-to-one odds made it likely he’d end up being vaped.

  Time to change those odds. Kell lost a little relative altitude so that Gold Two would be less likely to wander across his field of fire, then switched his lasers over to dual-fire, giving him less punch but a much higher rate of fire. He hit the etheric rudder, slewing his bow to port while maintaining his current course, then traversed his bow back to starboard—and as fast as his targeting brackets panned across the line of TIE fighters and went green to indicate laser lock, he fired, sending streaks of destructive red light toward the enemy. The musical tones of successive laser locks filled his cockpit.

  He saw distant light flares indicating he and Two had managed at least to graze some targets. His data screen showed one kill and a graze for Kell, just a graze for Two. He returned more incoming fire and juked as the oncoming TIEs were suddenly on them, then past them—

  Time to come around in a tight loop and hit the rear guard if the TIEs had one, fall upon the TIEs from the rear if they didn’t. But, dammit, he wasn’t lead fighter, the erratic Two was. He found Two visually and on the sensors; the pilot was rolling out and coming around in a tight starboard loop. Kell kept with him.

  Sensors showed four TIE fighters coming around to engage them; the other fighters were continuing on toward their objective. Closer to the lunar surface, Gold Three and Four were approaching that remaining line of seven TIEs in the weakened squadron. Good; they were obviously going to plow through the weakest link in the attackers’ chain. There were no blips remaining from the four TIE bombers; Three and Four must have finished them.

  Two was lining up for another head-on run, but Kell saw the four TIE fighters spreading out in box formation. “Two, break off. They’re setting up for you. Follow me in; I’m lead now.”

  Two ignored him, accelerating even faster and replying with another wavering war cry.

  Kell gritted his teeth. All right. Let’s see if I can save him in spite of himself. He let Gold Two continue to increase the distance between them. He switched over to proton torpedoes.

  The oncoming fighters were arrayed like the corners of a two-dimensional box, and Two was headed straight for the lower-left corner. All four TIE fighters began spraying laser fire at him.

  Kell pointed his nose up, caught the upper-left eyeball in his brackets. They immediately went red, indicating torpedo lock, and he fired. At this range, the TIE fighter had plenty of time to dodge or range the torpedo … but in so doing, he’d have to break off his own attack agai
nst Two. Kell rolled up on his starboard strike foil, targeted the upper-right corner the same way, and fired again.

  The two TIEs he’d targeted broke off their approach, going to evasive maneuvers in order to elude the torps. The other two continued firing. Kell rolled over to bring the lower-right eyeball into position. That fighter must have had a sensor unit that could detect torpedo locks; it immediately began evasive maneuvers.

  He heard comm chatter that reassured him: “You vaped him, Three. I’m your wing.” “Got it, Four. There’s one coming up on my tail—” “He’s mine.”

  Then Two’s X-wing, invisible against the blackness of space, suddenly flared back into Kell’s vision. It exploded, an expanding ball of orange and yellow.

  A dull weight settled into Kell’s stomach. He knew the real Gold Two was unhurt, probably now emerging from his simulator … but Control would probably blame Kell for failing to save him. Failing to save him in spite of himself.

  He flipped weapons control back to lasers, linking them for quad fire. His target momentarily ceased evasive maneuvers, probably thinking he’d broken Kell’s torpedo lock and was out of danger. As soon as his laser brackets went green, Kell fired. His lasers shredded the eyeball, one lancing beam slicing the port wing clean off at the pylon and two others punching through the cockpit. The TIE fighter didn’t blow up, but it did explosively vent its cockpit atmosphere and sailed past Kell on a ballistic trajectory that would end on the simulated surface of Folor.

  That left Kell with three immediate foes. No, two: One of his torpedoes caught its luckless target, turning him into a rapidly expanding cloud of gas and shrapnel. But his other intended torpedo victim had eluded the explosive device, and that TIE fighter and Two’s original target were now wingmates looping around to get behind him.