Wraith Squadron Page 8

  Finally Kell heard a sound from the far end of the hangar's exit tunnel: Its magnetic containment field hummed into life, and a moment later the heavy doors just beyond it rolled open. Outside, Kell could see dusty lunar surface, blast craters, the silhouettes of other surface buildings of the onetime mine, the distant lunar horizon, and stars.

  Then, a light dot in the distance, gradually growing as it approached. When it was several hundred meters from the tunnel entrance, it resolved itself into a shape Kell recognized. "Corellian YT-1300 Transport," he said. "Not just any YT-1300." Cubber had moved up beside him. "That's the Millennium Falcon."

  Kell gave the approaching ship a harder look. "Are you sure?"

  "Oh, yes. I was a year on Hoth, passing by that slab of rust and bad wiring every day. I never got to service her— Solo and his Wookiee friend hated for anyone but them to work on her. You can always recognize her by the specific pattern of corrosion."

  Kell heard a distant pop as the ship breached the magcon field, which obligingly permitted the ship through but held the tunnel's atmosphere within. The twin-pronged prow of the ship dipped a little as it finished navigating the tunnel and reached the hangar proper. The Falcon moved smoothly to the largest bare patch of hangar nearest the tunnel entrance, then rotated in place so the bow was facing back out the tunnel. Only then did it set down, its master displaying considerable skill with the repulsorlift landing engines.

  Its boarding ramp descended as Wedge Antilles approached. Down the ramp came General Solo, but not as Kell had seen him on holorecordings. Instead of being an uncomfortable-looking man in a New Republic general's uniform, Solo wore brown pants and vest and a light tunic much better suited to casual travel. He also wore a broad grin that did much for his craggy features.

  He and Wedge embraced, then turned toward the hangar exit. Kell caught a few of their words: ". . . flight in ... diplomatic functions . . . Zsinj." Then they were gone.

  Cubber clapped Kell on the back. "There's your brush with greatness, kid. You can tell your children, 'I saw Han Solo get off his ship once. He ignored me completely.' C'mon, let's get out of here."

  "Right." But Kell lingered and watched for a moment as a gigantic humanoid mass of hair, doubtless Solo's companion Chewbacca, descended the ramp. The famous Wookiee stood there a long moment, sniffing the air, then uttered a roar—not menacing, but low and resonant, perhaps just announcing his presence or claiming this part of the hangar as his territory. Then the Wookiee ascended the ramp and was gone.

  As Kell returned his attention to the X-wing he'd been working on, he heard a scuttling noise. He jumped, then spun around, looking for its source. The sound was what he'd ex- pect if an insect the size of a small floor-scrubbing droid were running around in the hangar. But he caught no sight of such a thing, and the sound ended as soon as he moved.

  Cubber was already dismissing the men and waving Kell to follow. "C'mon, kid. Remember sabacc?"

  "Right, right." Kell smoothed down the hair that had stood to attention on the back of his neck. He closed up the last of the X-wing's engine panels and followed.

  "How was your flight in?" asked Wedge.

  "Dull, what do you think?" said Han. "But not as bad as a night of diplomatic functions back on Coruscant. Sorry I missed you when you got back from Thyferra, but I was off on another pointless leg of the search for Zsinj."

  They passed through the archway leading into the main access corridor serving most of the hangar chambers.

  "You're not still doing that? I was under the impression that you were on the Mon Remonda and that the Millennium Falcon would be in storage until Zsinj was flushed out."

  Han grinned. It was the roguish grin he offered up when he was among friends and enemies, but never at official functions, never in the presence of holorecorders. "I escaped Coruscant and its endless diplomatic functions with the Mon Remonda mission, but we haven't had any luck on the Zsinj pursuit in the last few weeks, so it's all dull procedure and maintenance right now. You know how I feel about procedure and maintenance."

  "So you escaped your escape?"

  Han nodded. "Officially, I'm hand-carrying orders regarding the hunt for Zsinj. Unofficially, I'm here to compare and evaluate on-base gambling all over the Alliance." He sobered. "The orders are variations of the ones Coruscant has sent out recently. They supercede those orders. We're trying to see whether Zsinj and the other warlords have a tap in on those transmissions."

  "Meaning that if they set up patrols and ambushes that would be really efficient against the old orders but not as good against the new, you have a problem."

  "Right. I have to head out again tomorrow for my next destination—which leaves only tonight for recreation. So, what do you do around here for entertainment?"

  "Nothing." Wedge kept his face straight. "There are no women assigned to Folor Base. Because of the general's philosophical beliefs, there's no alcohol, no gambling, and we can't watch broadcasts from Commenor. This has led to a rather high suicide rate, but there's no getting around that. We do have some holorecordings of Coruscant diplomatic functions, if you'd like to see them."

  Han wore an expression of growing horror, then it became pure outrage. He pointed a finger at Wedge as though it were a blaster barrel. "You—you—"

  Wedge grinned. "I had you going. You believed every painful word. Come on, I'll introduce you to General Crespin, and then to DownTime, which has the moon's greatest supply of Corellian brandy. We'll see if we can put a dent in it."

  "I should never listen to you."

  "No, you shouldn't."

  "Even Leia finally realized that you're a liar."

  "Well, she's right."

  "She always is. But if you ever tell her I said that—"

  "I'll be vaped for sure. I know."

  7

  Four X-wings raced through the hangar tunnel and punched through the magcon field into the vacuum surrounding Folor.

  "Two Group, form up on me," said Kell. "Pack it in close. We're under the eye." The "eye" was another X-wing, Wedge's, already on station half a klick above their position.

  Runt, Phanan, and Face formed up smartly around him. This didn't do much to alleviate the tension that had clamped down on Kell as soon as he lit up the engines of the X-wing. Janson wasn't around to cause his concern; no, this was the old trouble, the tightness, the difficulty in breathing that came to haunt him whenever he was in charge of something. It wasn't the same in a simulator; now he was piloting a real snubfighter worth a fortune in a mission where sloppy aim or bad maneuver could cost his life or the life of a wingmate.

  He forced his shoulders to loosen, tried to bring himself under control. Maybe Wedge wasn't listening too closely to the comm, couldn't hear his labored breathing. Maybe no one was monitoring the biodata sensors that were sometimes wired into the chairs of novice pilots. Maybe no one would notice his trouble.

  He checked out the data currently reading on his naviga- tional computer—very simple data, as it didn't involve a hyperdrive jump or even extralunar travel. He transmitted the data to the others, then brought his snubfighter around toward the south. A visual scan showed the rest of Two Group maintaining their positions; sensors showed Wedge still on station and another blip, doubtless related to their objective, straight ahead klicks to the south.

  Wedge's voice broke over their comm systems. "Gentlemen, this is a simple strafing run exercise. The blip on your sensors is not your target. That's Lieutenant Janson in the Narra, our shuttle. With the shuttle's personnel retrieval tractor beam, Janson will be maneuvering a target, which will be about three hundred meters behind him. Five and Six will perform their run, then Seven and Eight thirty seconds later. Your orders are simple: Arm at two klicks, fire at a klick and a half, immediately disengage and return to base. There is now a governor on your comm systems; Five and Six will not be able to talk to Seven and Eight, and vice versa. If you hear 'Abort,' break off your attack and await orders; it probably means one of you jokers has take
n a target lock on the Narra. Any questions?"

  Kell said, "No, sir," and heard Runt repeat it.

  "Good hunting, then."

  Kell watched the numbers on the rangefinder spin down at a rapid pace, then saw the faintest shadow of a new blip begin to flicker in and out of existence a short distance behind the Narra. Moments later, he saw the Narra itself, a distant sliver of lightness against the backdrop of some of Folor's mountains, and saw the target: a sail of reflective cloth about the size of the shuttle when fully deployed. It was not fully deployed now; it twisted and curled in the shuttle's tractor beam.

  With its shape and size continually changing, it would be a challenging shot at one and a half klicks. He addressed the R5 unit situated behind his cockpit: "Reset proton torpedo one to a ten-meter proximity fuse. Communicate with Six's R2 and instruct him to do the same."

  The R5 beeped confirmation at him. Kell hadn't given a name to the shiny new droid; that was the privilege of the first pilot to be permanently assigned to this X-wing and its astromech.

  At two klicks, he called, "S-foils to attack position." He reached up and right to throw the appropriate switch, saw the strike foils to port and starboard part into the formation that gave the X-wings their unique profile.

  As soon as they locked into place, his heads-up display faded. Kell had a clear sensor view of the target . . . and no way to lock on to it with his weapons.

  "R5, what happened to my targeting?"

  The R5's confused whistle tweeted at him over the corn-link, and the data board read UNKNOWN.

  "Six, I have no targeting!"

  "Five, we have no weapons systems. We have a general failure."

  "Dammit, dammit . . ." Kell's guts were going cold so fast it was as though an overenthusiastic refrigeration unit had been installed there. He pointed his X-wing in as direct a path as he could toward the target, corrected to a couple of degrees port to account for the speed of the towing shuttle. With seconds remaining, he checked visually and by sensor to make sure that the torpedo wouldn't come anywhere near the Narra.

  The rangefinder's numbers rolled down to one and a half klicks. Kell fired, saw the torpedo flash toward the target, saw it miss by forty meters or more. As he pulled up and began the long loop around to orient him back toward Folor Base, he watched the torpedo continue on its ballistic path, eventually slamming into the side of one of the distant mountains, illuminating the mountain slope with a brief, brilliant flash.

  "Not too good, Five," Wedge said. "Seven, Eight, begin your run."

  "Seven, affirmative."

  "Eight, affirmative."

  Kell frowned. Suddenly he could hear Seven and Eight again. Doubtless, since he and Runt were through with the run, Wedge had reenabled their ability to do so. "R5, can you give me views through their telemetry? Seven's and Eight's?"

  The R5 unit hooted in the affirmative. A moment later two views of the distant target appeared side by side on Kell's main screen—views that were alike but not identical, so they appeared to be an unmerged stereoscopic image.

  "Seven, recommend we set the torps to a broader proximity fuse. That target's ugly."

  "Good point. Doing so. All right, Eight, strike foils to attack position, now."

  "Affirmative."

  A moment later one of the visual images went to gray. Kell grinned sourly. Seven and Eight were about to experience the same failure he had.

  "Eight, my weapons are gone. Some sort of system failure."

  "Seven, my targeting's shot."

  "Do you still have weapons?"

  "Yes."

  "Hold on, I'm transmitting my targeting information to you . . . wait for the lock . . . Got it!"

  "Firing, Seven. We have detonation . . . Looks like a kill. But I still don't have targeting sensors."

  "Mine show a clean kill. Good shot, Eight."

  "You did all the work, I just pulled the trigger. Kind of the way I like it."

  Wedge's voice crackled in: "Good work, you two. It's back to base so Three Group can do this. Do not inform anyone who hasn't gone through this exercise of its parameters. That's an order."

  "Yes, sir."

  "One out."

  Kell gritted his teeth. Once again, because of one of Wedge Antilles's oh-so-clever tricks, he had come out looking like an incompetent. He'd worked very hard to overcome that first score of zero in the simulators, worked hard enough to put him at the top of the pilots roster, and now it was starting all over again.

  The punching dummy was shaped like a man—that is, if you fed a man until he was so fat that his features half disap- peared in folds of flesh, then mounted him on a flexible rod in the Folor Base gymnasium. Kell shook his head; he certainly wouldn't want to be treated that way. Nor would he want to suffer the damage he was inflicting on the dummy.

  He started with a one-two combination that rocked the dummy's head, deforming it temporarily; in seconds, the puttylike memory material inside began to restore the head to its proper shape, but until then it bore the marks of Kell's fists. He switched to a knifelike blow with the edge of his hand to the thing's neck, stepped in for a forearm shot to the nose, stayed in close to bring his knee up into the dummy's rib cage twice. Both times, he heard cracking from within the dummy; it was constructed to feel like flesh, to give way like flesh and bone when the assaults were powerful enough, then return to its pristine state.

  He danced back, bobbing, weaving, threw a left-hand feint, followed up with a right hook that whipped the dummy's head partway around. Very satisfying . . . though not as gratifying as if it were the real Wedge, the real Janson.

  Kell knew he wasn't the best hand-to-hand fighter around. His instructor in the commandos was a woman half his weight, a head shorter than he. She could throw him around the mats at will and could hit harder than he ever could. But he was big, fast, and trained, so he figured he was in the top ten percent of unarmed combatants in the military. It was just something he was good at.

  Too bad it didn't help him on Folor Base. He spun, planted a powerful side kick to the dummy's sternum, watched the rig sway far back on its flexible pole and then snap upright.

  Just like his tenure here on Folor. If all his skills were as polished as his fighting, all his objectives here seemed as resilient as that dummy. He gave them everything he had and still they popped upright, unmoved, undamaged, unmarked.

  "Are you mad at the dummy? Or is this a mad mind?"

  Kell spun. Runt was seated on a balance bar, watching curiously, his brown eyes open wider than usual. The fur that covered his body was fluffed and disordered in places, patchy with moisture in others, clear signs of a recent shower and inadequate drying. "Uhhh ... I guess it's a mad mind," Kell said.

  "It seems to be a competent mind. You seem to be able to abandon it when you want. Else you would be attacking us."

  Kell smiled. He still couldn't quite work his mind around his wingmate's logic or figure out Runt's circuitous approaches to subjects of conversation. "I suppose so. This 'mind' works better if you can shut it off at will."

  "Yes. Our pilot mind is getting better that way. Have you noticed? You can cut through its haze sometimes. This is good."

  "I'm glad."

  "But you have another mind that worries us."

  "Us, as in all of Runt?"

  Runt shook his head, sending his ponytail swaying. "Us as in all the squadron. All who admit to worry, that is."

  Kell picked up his towel from the floor, threw it over his shoulders, and sat up on the bar beside Runt. "I don't get it."

  "You have a bad mind in you. You think we do not see it? It speaks to you when you fail, and lashes you with your failure."

  Kell turned away from him, looking back at the dummy. Its features restored to normalcy, it seemed to be grinning at him. Grinning with amused indifference. Or contempt. "There's nothing wrong with that. Identifying failure correctly is just part of analysis."

  "Then it keeps at you. For days. Weeks. Eating at you. Like som
e animal that has crawled into you and now wishes to chew its way out."

  "Call it my motivational mind."

  "No. It is not. It makes you think things that are not true. It is your enemy. I am your friend. I wish I could turn my guns on it."

  There was such bitterness in Runt's voice that Kell turned back to him, surprised. "Don't be ridiculous."

  "Falynn and Grinder also failed today's mission. Do you know where they are? In the cafeteria. Eating. Laughing. Looking forward to tomorrow's missions. They and others have settled in around Myn Donos and are trying to make him smile. Where are you? In the training room, punishing yourself and a dummy."

  "Is Tyria there?"

  Runt blinked at the sudden change of subject. "Yes."

  "Have they been there long?"

  "No."

  "Well, I haven't eaten. I think I'll take a quick shower and join them. You coming?"

  "I do not think you have heard what I have said."

  "Of course I have. I'll see you there in a few minutes."

  As he walked toward the showers, Kell heard Runt breathe a long sigh.

  It was as Runt had said. Most of Gray Squadron was at the longest table in the officers' cafeteria. Falynn and Jesmin had Donos pinned between them. They were laughing as Kell approached; Runt waved him toward a seat beside him, but Kell took the one beside Piggy, opposite Tyria and Phanan.

  Face was speaking. "So here I am stark naked, locked out of my quarters, running around the corridors looking for a towel, a rag, anything, and I turn a corner and bump right into the executive officer. He has about the same sense of humor as a Wookiee with a rash. So I throw my best salute and say, 'Major, I regret to report only partial success with the Personal Cloaking Device.''' The others burst out in laughter. Even Donos, slowly stirring some sweetener into his cup of caf, managed a faint smile. Falynn asked, "So, what did he do?"