Bror’s voice growled through the speakers. “You’re saying, Commander, we’re getting another shot at the squints who escaped us last time?”
I was under the impression we were the ones who escaped last time … “That’s about the size of it. And there will be friendlies in the area, but not in fighters and they’ll be mute. Our mission is to hit the conduit and get back out. The fuel limitations are exactly what they were in the simulator.” Wedge hit a button on his console. “Speed and coordinates for the jump to hyperspace sent now. We’ll be three hours to Borleias, so use the time to review the run.”
The squadron went to light speed and Wedge checked his fuel level. Given mission parameters, distance from the moon to target, and expected fuel consumption rates he was in fine shape. On the run from the moon to Borleias he would begin burning fuel directly from the belly pod and begin to use it to refill what little fuel the escape from Noquivzor and the hyperspace jumps had burned from his main tank. The double duty would allow him to drain the pod more quickly and jettison it shortly after the end of the run to the target. The others would be following the same procedure, though the second and third flights would ditch their pods before they began valley runs.
Wedge felt confident his people would succeed in destroying the tunnel. That would allow the commandos, who were arriving in the system from a different direction and at a different time, to get in and do their jobs before Defender Wing arrived. The exact timing of the commando operation had been kept from him, though Ackbar had said that if his people could help, it would be appreciated. He took that to mean the commandos and their arrival would overlap with Rogue Squadron’s operation, but the only help the Rogues could realistically offer would be to scatter the local fighters, and that was something he knew he could not possibly prevent his people from doing anyway.
“We’re good, we’re trained, and we know we have to succeed.” Wedge smiled and brought up a visual simulation of the valley run. “With a little luck and a lot of heart, there’s nothing that can stop us from succeeding.”
“But, Captain Celchu, you must tell me where they are.” Mirax waved a datapad at him. “I think the mission has been compromised.”
Tycho shook his head. “It’s impossible.”
She jerked a thumb at the door to his quarters. “Sure, and the Security officers standing guard over you told me it was impossible for me to speak with you, but I’m here aren’t I?”
“There are degrees of impossible, I guess.” Tycho raked fingers back through brown hair. “The thing of it is that I can’t tell you where they’re off to—I don’t know.”
“How’s that?” Mirax watched him carefully. “You’re the unit’s Executive Officer. You must know.”
“Sorry.”
“Who does know?”
“Here? Emtrey.”
“Get him here.”
“Ms. Terrik, I know you’re a friend of Commander Antilles, and I know he sets great store by you, but …”
Mirax held a hand up. “Look, I wouldn’t be here except that I think their mission has been compromised and they may be walking into a trap. Get the droid here, because I think he’s part of it. I’ll explain by the time he gets here, and if you don’t like the explanation, kick me out and send him on his way. Please. I don’t want your friends and mine to die.”
“All right. Please, sit down.” Tycho fished a comlink from his pocket. “Captain Celchu to Emtrey, please report to my quarters. This is urgent.”
“On my way, Captain.”
Mirax sat in a simple canvas campaign chair and cleared a stack of datacards from the proton torpedo crate Tycho used as a low table. She set her datapad down. “Do you have a holoplate to project data?”
He shook his head and scooped another pile of datacards from the table to the foot of his bed, then sat down beside them. “I’ve got a good imagination. What have you got?”
She glanced at the datapad and organized her thoughts. “Right after they jumped out of this system, I had my pilot pull a trade list from Emtrey. It has a lot of military items and some black market stuff. There were new additions to the normal list and all of those products were native to Alderaan. They’ve become quite rare over the last five years, but all had ridiculously low sell prices.”
Tycho’s blue eyes narrowed. “It’s not like they’re being made anymore.”
“Right.” She leaned forward for emphasis. “Get this—none of them had buy prices. I’ve seen enough people price their goods over the years that this pattern tells me Emtrey has uncovered a source for these materials that means he’s getting them for little or nothing. Now since no one in Rogue Squadron has mentioned finding or recovering some lost trove of Alderaanian goods, and this list is current, I’m thinking the droid is projecting the availability of products following this mission.”
Tycho sat back and scowled. “I can see how you made that assumption, but …”
“Couple it with this: There’s been a rumor floating around about a new source for Alderaanian goods, but the prices have been prohibitively high. I assumed the Empire was releasing stockpiles to soak up credits being held by Alderaanian expatriates, denying the Rebellion a source of needed money. If there is a source, be it an Imperial storehouse or something else, I think Rogue Squadron is headed toward it. And it doesn’t take much brains to see such a place would be a prime target for the Alliance, given how many Alderaanian nomads would love another piece of their world.”
“Count me among their number. Such a storehouse would be an inviting target for a raid, and a logical site for an Imperial trap.” Tycho rubbed his hands over his face and sighed heavily. “This doesn’t look good, does it?”
“I’ve arranged to take all of these items that Emtrey can provide, so the list is clear right now. No one else can get access to it. No one else knows of it, as nearly as I know, so the leak should have stopped there.”
“Still, there is a chance that the information could have gotten out.”
“Exactly.” Mirax popped up out of her chair as the door opened and Emtrey came in.
“Good morning, Captain Celchu, Ms. Terrik. How may I be of service?”
Mirax grabbed the droid’s left arm. “You have to tell me where Rogue Squadron is going.”
“I’m afraid, Ms. Terrik, that information is classified. Neither you nor Captain Celchu are authorized to know that information. To provide it to you would be to compromise …”
“Emtrey, that list you gave me this morning already compromises the location.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
Tycho boosted himself up off the bunk. “Where are you getting the Alderaanian goods you’re offering for sale?”
The droid twitched and the tone of his voice shifted slightly. “If I reveal my sources, you’ll cut in on my action. No way.”
Mirax stared incredulously at the droid, then turned back toward Tycho. “Can you believe this?”
“No, in fact, I can’t.”
“I’m just protecting my profit margin here.”
“Emtrey, this is a matter of life and death.”
“Sure it is, Ms. Terrik, the death of my business.”
Tycho stood abruptly. “Emtrey, shut up.”
The droid looked at him strangely, tilting his head. “I wasn’t saying anything, sir.”
“His voice has changed.”
“I notice.” Tycho’s eyes narrowed. “Shut up.”
“I beg your pardon, sir.”
“Shut up.”
The droid’s arms snapped to its sides so quickly that Mirax lost her grip on him. The clamshell head canted forward, making the droid bow its head until its chin touched its chest. At the top of its neck, previously hidden by the head, Mirax saw a glowing red button.
“What’s going on, Captain?”
Tycho half shrugged. “I’m not certain, really, but the droid is in a wait-state, it seems. I discovered this little trick when I was ferrying him to the Talasea system and
we came across your ship. We were in combat and he wouldn’t stop nattering. I ended up yelling at him to shut up and after the third time, this happened. He remains like this until roused. What’s important right now is that until we hit the red button and reset him, he’s little more than a remote with access to all Emtrey’s memories.”
“That’s dangerous for a droid doing military work.”
“It’s not a standard modification for obvious reasons. There are a number of things odd about this droid, not the least of which is the voice shift when you start to press him on requisitions. I can check that later, though. Right now this override should get us what you want. Emtrey, I require the name of the system in which Rogue Squadron will be operating.”
“Pyria system, Borleias, fourth planet, one moon, home to an Imperial fortress and various failed and abandoned industrial and agricultural ventures.” The voice changed slightly. “Location of agro-manufacturing facility for Alderaanian agricultural products with high covert trade value.”
Mirax’s blood ran cold. “Emtrey, the list of products available from that facility—how many people have had access to it?”
“Yours was the only access, Ms. Terrik.”
“Could a copy have been made by a slicer without your knowledge?”
The droid did not reply for a second or two. “Impossible to determine an answer to that question.”
Mirax looked over at Tycho. “The Empire could have been warned. We have to do something.”
“What? If we send a message out it could warn the Empire they’re coming as easily as it warns our people of an ambush.”
“So we go there. I can get us there fast. Maybe even before they arrive.”
“And have our presence tip the Empire about the raid?” Tycho shook his head. “Any comm message could be intercepted, even if we are in-system and try to tight-beam it to them. That’s no good.”
Mirax balled her fists and hammered them against her thighs. “We have to do something. We can’t just sit around and do nothing.”
“Yes, but what we do has to be the right thing.” Tycho slowly smiled and reached for the button on the back of Emtrey’s neck. “And I think I know what it is.”
34
When the squadron reverted to realspace, the dark craggy ball hanging in space before them reduced Borleias to a slender blue-green crescent streaked with white. The moon’s thin atmosphere blurred Borleias’s image, making it beautiful—which was definitely not how Corran had remembered it. Corran inverted his X-wing, then reached up with his right hand to hit the switch that brought his S-foils into attack position. Ahead of him Wedge’s X-wing similarly spread its wings, twisting around and bearing down on the moon.
The X-wings maintained comm silence as they leveled out and skimmed the black lunar surface. Corran brought his snubfighter in behind and to the left of Wedge’s fighter. With their scanners in passive mode to avoid detection, they’d only register threats that had scanners up and seeking targets. As a result visual scanning by pilots and astromech droids became the primary defense against ambush.
“Not that much should be here.” While the simulations had represented this run as threading their way through an asteroid ring around a planet to remain hidden, all the parameters used were taken from Borleias. As nearly as they knew the Imperials had not stationed fighters or remote detection units on the moon. Still, that possibility did exist, so the squadron did all it could to keep their presence a secret.
Volcanic glass teeth lined gaps in crater walls. They reflected scant little starlight, but strange shapes did appear in silhouette against the starfield. Whipping along at near maximum speed in the pitch-darkness of the moon’s nightside did seem reckless and foolish, but no more so than the rest of the mission. They raced through the blackness, heading toward a point on the ever-changing horizon.
When the horizon appeared as a white crown, Wedge’s X-wing pulled up and shot away from the moon. Down on Borleias the moon only appeared to be half full and the Rogues made their approach against the background of the moon’s dark side. They plunged down into Borleias’s gravity well. They let the planet draw them in, but before they hit the outer edges of the planet’s atmosphere, Corran brought his ship around in a looping turn to starboard and inverted to have Borleias’s dark face above him.
Pulling back on the stick, he eased the fighter’s nose into the atmosphere. The ablative shell Zraii had applied to his fighter began to glow red, then came apart in a shower of sparks that momentarily blanketed his cockpit canopy. Once the fiery cloud passed, he pulled back even more on the stick and started a sharper descent into Borleias’s night.
The ablative shell had given his ship the appearance of yet one more of the Versied meteors streaking through the night sky. Corran checked his scanners and had no indication of hostile sensors directed at him. Entry is clean. Glancing at his instruments, he came around to a heading and chopped his speed back so he would reach the rendezvous point exactly on time.
Flipping a switch, he engaged the fuel pod pump so it would start to refill his onboard fuel tank. A red-lined error message scrolled up on his main screen. “Whistler, the T65-AFP pump isn’t working. Is there anything you can do?”
A negative hoot replied to his question.
Corran shrugged. I have to run with the pod a little longer. No big deal.
Suddenly Nawara’s voice crackled over the helmet speakers. “Leader, twelve, repeat one-two, eyeballs coming in from the west, angels ten. On intercept for run. Patrol formation.”
Corran felt his stomach clench. Lucky bastards. He smiled. Or very unlucky.
“Two Flight, Three Flight, pounce on them. Nine, we’re to the deck and in. Are you ready?”
“Telemetry feed started, you are lead.” Corran tightened his grip on the stick and shoved the fighter over into a steep dive. “This is it, Whistler. Keep your domed head down and enjoy the ride.”
Wedge flipped his scanners into active mode and swooped his X-wing into the narrow end of the rift valley. The computer used muted greens to impose holographic highlights on the canopy that corresponded to the terrain outside. Nudging the stick to port and starboard he sliced his craft through the sleeping canyon. He rolled up on his port wing to slip through a narrow passage, then noted that behind him Corran had remained level to make the same run.
“No need to be fancy, Nine.”
“Yes, sir.” Corran’s voice drifted off for a second. “Lead, I have two hostiles coming in behind us.”
Wedge hit a switch on his console. “Power to rear deflector shields.”
“Done.”
“Mynock, bring up data on the trailers.” The monitor flashed images of two TIE starfighters. We should be faster than they are maneuvering through atmosphere here, but I’d rather they weren’t there.
Wedge keyed his comm. “Four, we have two down here. Can you help?”
Bror answered immediately. “Negative, Lead. Our plates are full, and long-range scans indicate squints coming in.”
“Copy, Four.” Wedge frowned. The intervention by Interceptors was not good. If both of the squadrons that showed up at the end of the last battle were to scramble against Rogue Squadron, no one would make it home. But that’s not the objective of this mission—blowing the conduit is.
“Nine, push your speed.”
“As ordered.”
The X-wings came out of the canyon leading into the rift valley. To the right grassy plains stretched out through the darkness. On the left a striated escarpment rose up nearly a thousand meters. Its craggy surface reflected enough moonlight to let Wedge see Corran’s X-wing in silhouette as the fighter drew almost parallel to his port stabilizer. Twenty-five kilometers farther on the valley narrowed again and five kilometers beyond that point lay their target.
Verdant laser bolts sizzled past, splitting the space between the Rebel fighters. Wedge juked up and to the starboard, while Corran’s ship sank out of sight on the left. Rolling his ship and letting it m
ove back toward the center of the valley, he saw one TIE dive, its lasers gouging up great chunks of the valley floor in front of Corran’s jinking X-wing.
Wedge hauled his throttle back to half power and pulled a hard turn to port. Punching the throttle forward again, he rolled the ship onto its right S-foil and yanked it back in another hard turn. Leveling out to the left, he slipped into the aft wash of the TIE that had been on his tail. His finger tightened down on the trigger and scarlet laser fire exploded the Imperial fighter.
“Nine, report.”
“Go, Lead, punch it. I’m coming behind.”
“Status.”
“I’ll be good to go in a second.”
Kicking the X-wing up on the starboard stabilizers, Wedge stabbed his fighter into the narrow northern end of the valley. A brilliant flash of light painted shadows against white rock with skeletal clarity. The X-wing bucked a bit as the explosion’s shock wave caught up with it, but Wedge’s steady hand kept the fighter clear of the canyon walls.
“Nine, what was that?”
“Fuel pod exploding.”
“One more time.”
“Misses on the deck kicked up debris that hit my belly pod and I had a slow leak. I jettisoned it. The tank exploded and the guy behind me got an eyeful.”
Wedge looked at his fuel indicators. His fuel pod was still a quarter full. “Fuel status.”
“I’m okay.”
“How much?”
“Three-quarters.” Anger in Corran’s voice transmuted into resolution. “Enough to do the job.”
“Copy.” One run, then you’re out of here, Corran. You’re into your reserve. Wedge clicked his weapons control over to proton torpedoes. “One klick, arming two.”