Star Wars - X-Wing - Iron Fist Page 6

  Creaky. Leaky. And instead of having a cargo bay full of your sophisticated metal brackets to hold our fighter craft, we'll be using a few crossbeams and netting-so we can quickly switch out X-wings for TIE fighters without having to reconfigure our brackets every time."

  Kell sat back, his expression suggesting he'd just swal-lowed a mouthful of hydraulic fluid.

  Phanan's hand shot up. "Do we get new snubfighters?"

  Wedge shook his head. "No. No new X-wings for the foreseeable future. We got lucky when we were putting the squadron together; when Rogue Squadron captured Ysanne Isard's facilities on Thyferra, we also seized a number of X-wings she'd been accumulating for various Intelligence mis-sions. That's where four of our snubfighters came from. But the New Republic hasn't had another windfall like that, and Incom is producing new X-wings as slowly and meticulously as ever. So we're stuck with what we have... and what we can seize. Dia Passik was transferred with her snubfighter, but we're still four short to make up a full squadron. However, the two TIE fighters we have remaining from the Implacable at-tack, the ones Wes and Piggy were flying, are assigned to us. And part of our assignment involves acquiring new fighter craft for our pirate identities... and that means stealing what-ever we can get our hands on. From the Imps and from the warlords, that is. Do any of you new pilots have TIE-fighter ex-perience? Simulated or real?"

  Both the women raised their hands. Castin Donn looked unhappy that he couldn't follow suit.

  "Excellent. Castin, Kell, Phanan, since you three lack X-wings and TIE experience, I recommend you spend time in the TIE-fighter simulators and checking out our small comple-ment of TIE fighters. Once we're at our new station, that is.

  For now, you have only a little while to pack and settle your af-

  fairs; the transport Borleias takes off for Halmad in three

  hours." He ignored the chorus of groans and cheers. "Dis-

  missed. Phanan, Face, can I see you for a minute?"

  As the others trickled out, he asked, "What is the news from what's-her-name, Notsil?"

  The two pilots exchanged glances. "Well," said Face, "Lara seemed reassured by what you offered. We helped her put together her application for fighter-pilot training, and both of us and Kell wrote recommendations for her. Face set up an account for her so she could afford some limited HoloNet ac-cess to us; we'll leave a router so she can reach us through Sivantlie Base. Things are in motion."

  "This had better work . . . or had better produce ab-solutely no results," Wedge said. "Because if there are any foul-ups, General Cracken will personally feed you, and me, into a food reprocessor."

  4

  He made no pretense at being fully human. He had probably been born human, but now mechanical limbs-obvious pros-thetics, shiny stainless metal arms and legs with crude-looking joints-replaced his original flesh, and his entire upper face was a shiny metal surface with a standard computer interface inset in the center of his forehead.

  He made no pretense at being friendly, either. He approached the booth where the big, good-looking businessman drank alone, and with neither threat nor comment he swung the wine bottle he held in his hands and brought it down on the businessman's head.

  The bottle shattered, spraying glass and red liquid all over the businessman. The man blinked, stood-demonstrating both a resilience and a physique others in the bar found admirable- and struck the cyborg, a blow that rocked the mostly mechani-cal man's head and staggered him back into the booth filled with carousing Imperial pilots.

  The pilots seated at the aisle shoved the cyborg forward, straight into the businessman's professional-looking right cross. The blow caught the cyborg across the jaw, spinning him around. The cyborg staggered back to fall across the laps of two of the pilots in the booth. His flailing arm caught their glasses and bottles, throwing wine and liquor across everyone.

  The pilots shoved him off to the floor and rose.

  "Don't do that," the bartender said. But his voice was a plea and he wasn't aiming a weapon. No one paid attention.

  Suddenly hard-faced, a formidable group of six, the pilots glowered at the businessman and the cyborg. Their leader, the shortest of them, a dark-haired man with a face craggy enough for tiny snubfighters to fly their famous Trench Run Defense across, said, "You two owe us for a round and two bottles of local press, and we'll take your booth and a hundred extra credits for our trouble."

  The businessman gave him a frosty smile. "With a hun-dred credits I could buy a pilot of your qualifications to lick my boots clean."

  "I'm calling the military police," the bartender said.

  The pilots surged toward the businessman. The first of

  them caught a knuckle punch in the solar plexus and dropped like a sackful of tubers. The second one was tripped up as the cyborg grabbed his knee and squeezed; the pilot's shriek was shrill enough to resonate on empty glasses throughout the bar. The other four slammed into the businessman and bore him to the floor.

  The bartender punched his emergency code into the com-link and began wailing to the distant listener.

  Two minutes later, it was all but over. Two tables had been smashed, their entertained patrons now occupying booths on the other side of the bar. Five pilots and one cyborg lay at inter-v21s across the floor, stretched out in various poses of very un-comfortable rest, often lying among broken glasses and platters of unhygienic appetizers. The businessman and the pilot leader were still standing, the latter glassy-eyed, barely responding to outside stimuli, while the former still occasionally swung inef-fectual blows against his stomach. Both were drenched with sweat and booze, staggering with every slight move they made.

  Then a half-dozen stormtroopers in the uniforms of mili-tary police poured into the bar. Some patrons-those who still had bets going on which of the fighters would win-groaned, but the bartender breathed a sigh of relief.

  With calm efficiency, the stormtroopers manacled the

  eight malefactors' hands behind their backs; the two men still

  standing put up no fight. Three of the downed pilots could not be brought back to consciousness, but one of the stormtroopers picked up two of them, slinging them with considerable ease over his shoulders, and a second picked up the last stubbornly unconscious pilot. The stormtroopers began to move out.

  "Wait," the bartender said. "Where do I sign?"

  Two of the stormtroopers exchanged a glance. "Why

  would you want to sign?" asked one, the ranking officer.

  "So I can put in a claim for damages!"

  The cyborg sighed. "Oh, just tally up the bill. I'll pay for

  the damages."

  The bartender rocked back, mollified. "Well, all right, then. Come back soon. We appreciate your patronage."

  As they swept out through the door, onto a rainy street of Halmad's capital city of Hullis, the ranking officer among the pilots, the one who'd taken so much abuse at the business-man's hands, gave the cyborg a dizzy but appreciative look. "Hey, you're not all bad."

  "I just like a good scrap now and then." The cyborg shrugged. Unfortunately for him, the motion put extra pres-sure on his shackles. They opened and dropped to the muddy ground behind him.

  The pilot leader stared. "Hey, what the-"

  "Fire," said the stormtrooper leader.

  Three of the stormtroopers obliged him. Stun beams hit

  the pilots' torsos. The pilots dropped into the mud.

  The stormtrooper leader looked around. There was no one to see, not much skimmer traffic this rainy evening, no one en-tering or coming out of the bar. He pulled off his helmet, reveal-ing the features of Wedge Antilles, and took an unencumbered view around. No sign of witnesses. "Let's hustle, people."

  The other troopers grabbed the three fallen pilots. They dragged and carried their prisoners around the corner of the building, then around behind, where their skimmer awaited in the darkness of a fallow field. It was no military skimmer, just a medium cargo carrier with a deep bed.

  While t
he others dumped the pilots into the rear and

  draped blankets and netting across them, Wedge stripped off

  his stormtrooper armor and threw it in after them. "Good

  work, Tainer, Phanan. Either of you hurt?"

  Kell shook his head and flexed, popping his unsealed manacles loose. "This suit's probably a loss."

  Phanan waggled his head. "Kell didn't do me any harm, but the bottle one of them hit my head with wasn't fake glass like mine was. It didn't even break. I hear ringing."

  "Sounds like a mild concussion. See our doctor about it."

  "Oh, I'm too important a doctor to see anyone as lowly as myself."

  Wedge waved at one of the ersatz stormtroopers. "Face, grab these pilots' wallets, money pouches, whatever they're carrying. I want every credit they have, hard currency only. How much damage did you two jokers do?" Kell and Phanan looked at one another.

  "Maybe a hundred," Kell said. "Counting everything."

  "All right," Wedge said. "If these pilots' personal fortunes don't add up to a hundred and fifty, we'll make up the differ-ence ourselves. Face, run the credits in to the bartender. Tell him the cyborg paid off, instant compensation for the damage, so sorry, he's a miserable old drunk whose only entertainment is causing trouble at bars."

  "Hey," said Phanan. "I resent the use of the word miserable."

  "Then get back here fast. We take off in three minutes."

  Wedge and Janson, still in stormtrooper armor but with their helmets off, lay atop a hill overlooking the nearby Imperial base. The optics Wedge held before his face made greenish day-light of the night. "Same as last night and the night before. I make four TIE fighters at the ready scramble-pad, under the watchful eye of half a stormtrooper squadron." "Not that we care," Janson said.

  "Not that we want those starfighters," Wedge corrected him. "But we may have to deal with them on the way out. Any-thing coming up the road ?"

  Janson cast a negligent eye the other way. Down at the

  base of the hill to his left, the other Wraiths, their prisoners, and their cargo skimmer waited. Down to the right was the main road into the base. "A distant set of lights," he said. "On-coming. Probably just another staff skimmer carrying an offi-cer home after a night on the town."

  "Castin Donn laid enough money down at enough cantinas, we're bound to get what we want."

  "You may be right. That thing's not maneuvering like a staff skimmer. It's big and sluggish."

  Wedge twisted to look at the oncoming vehicle through his optics. "Imperial Military Police. Signal Runt."

  Janson waved a handheld light down at the other Wraiths, flicking its beam three times across them. This close to an Im-perial base, Wedge preferred they not use comlinks, whose transmissions, even if coded or extremely short,. might be no-ticed. At the base of the hill, Runt would now be using a portable scanner on the distant vehicle ....

  From the Wraiths' position came an answering blink of light, a single pulse.

  "Runt signals yes. It's loaded with personnel," Janson said.

  "Move out."

  Wedge and Janson scrambled down the side of the hill, not directly toward the other Wraiths, but angling toward the right, an intercept course. By the time they reached the base of the hill-with Janson's armor now somewhat battered by a fall he'd taken during his descent-the other Wraiths were almost to the road.

  Wedge and Janson caught up to them and put their hel-mets back on.

  "Snap it up," Wedge said, "march formation. Left foot, right foot."

  And the Wraiths managed something like a proper forma-tion in spite of the loads they carried.

  Runt carried one of the unconscious pilots over his shoul-der, moving without difficulty. The Gamorrean Piggy could also have carried one of the pilots with fair ease, but could never have worn one of the sets of stormtrooper armor; he re-mained with the skimmer. Kell, now suited up as a storm-trooper, and Dia dragged an unconscious pilot between them;

  they held the pilot's arms over their shoulders so the man re-mained upright. Phanan, also in a set of stormtrooper armor, and Face also dragged one of the pilots, as did Castin and Shalla, with Donos and Tyria dragging the fifth. The sixth pi-lot, the ranking officer among them, remained with Piggy.

  It was several hundred meters to the gate into the base, but if Wedge calculated correctly, they wouldn't have to walk the entire distance.

  They heard the humming of the heavy skimmer behind them and Wedge turned to look. It was a large model, nearly identical to the one that had been part of the trap on Corus-cant It had an enclosure over the bed, and only the pilot and the guard assigned to his protection were exposed to the ele-ments. On the side was painted the stooping bird-of-prey in-signia of Victory Base; over that design were the crossed batons of the base's military police.

  The skimmer pulled alongside Wedge's troop of ersatz stormtroopers and prisoners. Its pilot called, "What happened to you?"

  "Skimmer broke down," Wedge said. "Repulsorlift fail-ure in the energy transference array." "Care for a lift?"

  "I'd put you up for a Hero of the Empire medal."

  The pilot tapped a button and a door in the rear enclosure opened; its hinge was at the bottom, allowing it to open down into a ramp. Wedge peered inside. The spacious enclosure held four stormtroopers and another pair of prisoners in the uni-forms of Imperial maintenance personnel. Both prisoners were awake, though apparently anesthetized by alcohol.

  Wedge's people hauled their unconscious prisoners up the ramp and settled them down on the padded benches against the enclosure walls. Wedge, at the rear of the line, stayed tense.

  The stormtrooper armor the Wraiths wore-seized from pris-

  oners during some of the countless clashes the Alliance had

  had with the Empire and brought as part of the squadron's

  gear-was authentic enough, but the military-police insignia

  the Wraiths had meticulously painted on the armor might not

  pass close inspection. Also, the officer in charge of these real

  military police should, if he kept strictly to procedure, demand

  to see Wedge's papers, and the forgeries Castin had put to-gether . . . well, Wedge just didn't know the new pilot well enough to rely unquestioningly on the man's work as he'd come to do with Grinder, the squadron's former computer expert.

  But the Wraiths all shuffled into the enclosed bed of the skimmer, Wedge followed, the door closed behind him, and the vehicle lurched into motion, all without an unwelcome de-mand for papers. Wedge smiled. If security was lax here, it might be just as lax within the base.

  "Hey, that's Lieutenant Cothron," one of the real storm-troopers said.

  Face nodded. "He's a pretty belligerent drunk."

  "Nice guy the rest of the time, though."

  "Oh, yeah."

  "Ever play sabacc with him?"

  "Sure, he took me for a week's pay once."

  "You're joking. He's the worst player I ever saw."

  There was the slightest of delays in Face's response as he

  adjusted his story in light of new information. "No, I think I'm the worst."

  "Really? You up for a game tonight?"

  "No, I've learned my lesson."

  The stormtrooper settled back, his posture one of

  disappointment.

  Moments later, the skimmer slowed. Wedge heard a verbal exchange between the pilot and what must have been the gate guards, but he couldn't make out the words. Then they were in motion again.

  It was a long minute before they slowed once more. Then the skimmer's repulsorlift depowered and the vehicle settled to a hard surface.

  The door beside Wedge opened. They appeared to be in a vehicle hangar, and a few steps away was a table where a uni-formed officer and another pair of stormtroopers waited. The officer, a man with graying hair and hard lines to his face, looked bored and irritable. "Move them out. It's time for in-stant justice."

  Wedge waved the real stormtroopers and
their prisoners to proceed while his people got their unconscious prisoners up.

  Then the Wraiths moved out. Wedge was the last one out of the vehicle.

  "Papers," said the officer in charge. Wedge tensed. But the stormtrooper he addressed handed him standard identity cards bearing the likenesses of the prisoners in his charge. Wedge glanced at Face, who discreetly held up the handful of identity cards taken from their own prisoners. Wedge turned away again.

  The officer looked over the identity cards. "Facts?"

  The stormtrooper in charge said, "Drunk and disorderly

  at Ola's."

  The officer grimaced. "You two idiots ought to find a bet-ter class of drinking establishment. Charges?"

  The stormtrooper in charge shook his head, the motion exaggerated by his helmet. "None."

  "Well, that's not too bad." The officer glanced up at the two prisoners. "You two are confined to base for six days."

  The prisoners looked relieved.

  "That's three days starting now," the officer continued,

  "and three days starting next payday." He ignored their ex-pressions of dismay and gestured for them to be on their way. "Next."

  Wedge stepped up. He reached over without looking. Face put the identity cards in his hand and he presented them to the officer. "Drunk and disorderly at Rojio's. Brawling with civilians."

  The officer gave him an I-don't-want-to-believe-you look.

  "They're all unconscious. They lost to civilians?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "How many?"

  "Two."

  The officer looked pained. "Five of them against two civil-ians, and they're too drunk to make a good accounting of them-selves. They'll pay for letting the unit down." He frowned. "Five. Say, these are Captain Wanatte's drinking buddies. Where's the captain ?"

  Face spoke up "Before he passed out the last time, Lieutenant Cothron said the captain had found some compan-ionship for the evening."