Corran keyed his comm unit. "Rogue Nine to Lead, we have engaged four squints, two down. We may be compromised."
"I copy, Nine."
Corran punched his throttle forward and pulled the X-wing's nose up as the remaining two Interceptors turned back around to engage them. He allowed his fighter to go vertical, and then he brought it over the top and rolled out to port. That gave the squints a clean line at his back, so he snapped the X-wing up on the port S-foil and pulled back on the stick, taking him out on a turn to the left.
The Interceptors started to adjust their course to come after him and Corran smiled. Behind them, Inyri's X-wing took to the air at full throttle. In seconds she cruised up behind the trailing Interceptor and laced it full of coherent light. Red bolts burned through the ion engine shielding, exploding the engines. Trailing gold fire, the Interceptor somersaulted through the air and finally bounced its way across the ground, sowing patches of fire in its wake.
The pilot coming in on Corran's tail kept a light hand on the yoke and juked his fighter around to spoil Inyri's aim. Corran likewise bounced his X-wing around, making his ship hard to hit. He shunted all shield power to the aft shields, so whenever one of the Interceptor's bolts did finally hit, it just struck sparks.
He's good he's very good. The Interceptor should have been at a maneuvering disadvantage in atmosphere, but even with the low altitude of the fight and the constraints of battling in a valley, the Interceptor proved very agile. I can't exploit my advantage and he's not about to fly straight enough for Inyri to nail him. Unless.
"Twelve, stay with him, but give him space. Aim high."
"As ordered, Nine."
Corran rolled his X-wing out to port, and then took it down to the deck. He came up on the starboard S-foil ever so slightly and began a long, gentle turn toward the pass heading north. As the X-wing lined up with it, he cut his throttle back but kept the fighter slipping left and right. Glancing at his rear sensor screen, Corran watched as the range between him and the Interceptor began to scroll down. Looking forward he saw the pass's narrow opening looming closer.
Whistler tootled a warning.
"Yes, I know how close we are. Trust me."
At the two-hundred-meter mark, Corran cut thrust to zero, rolled onto the starboard S-foil, and shunted full engine power to the repulsorlift: coils. He stomped on the starboard rudder pedal, swinging the fighter's aft to the right. In a heartbeat the fighter went from being level and headed north to having its nose pointed at the sky, its right S-foil pointed north, and momentum still carrying it in toward the pass.
Corran slammed the throttle up to full and snap rolled the fighter to the left. The X-wing leaped toward the sky, with the repulsorlift coils creating a gravity cushion that bounced the fighter back from the rocks at the mouth of the pass. The fighter rode a rocket of thrust toward the stars above.
The Interceptor pilot following him, as Inyri's gun holocam data would show later, had a split-second decision to make. At the speed he was traveling he could move into the pass, but that would bracket him and Inyri would blast him from the sky. His other choice was to try to execute the same maneuver Corran had, which he elected to do.
He only had two problems.
He started a second later than Corran had, which, at his speed, brought him closer still to the pass's narrow mouth.
And the Interceptor's design gave it serious yaw problems.
The pilot succeeded in rolling up onto the starboard wing, but as he tried to rudder around to vertical, air caught on the inside of the port wing. This kicked the Interceptor into a flat spin that brought it all the way around so the front end was pointing back along the path it had been traveling.
The aft end slammed into the rocks beside the pass's mouth. The Interceptor vanished in a scintillating ball of sparks, debris, and smoke as the engines exploded. A crumpled bit of the cockpit rolled back toward the south, trailing smoke, while fire flashed up the pass wall and ignited small plants. -
Inyri's X-wing pulled parallel with Corran's as he rolled out to port and pointed his ship north. "Nice kill, Nine."
"Not mine, Twelve, you were the one shooting him."
"He got himself."
"Works for me." Corran brought the X-wing back down to the deck. "Let's move, and hope we're not too late to help out if they need it."
8
"I copy, Nine. Four squints blinded." Wedge Antilles glanced at his rear sensors. "Gate, do we have anything else back there?"
Gate, Wedge's R5 astromech droid, swiveled its flowerpot head around, and then tootled negatively. The scopes showed nothing but the rest of the squadron following him. Wedge glanced at the chronometer on the command console. "Heads up, Rogues. Estimated time of arrival is thirty seconds. First pass; shoot at what shoots at us. One Flight will draw fire. Two, you lace them."
"As ordered, Lead," came Janson's terse reply.
Pulling back on his X-wing's stick, Wedge brought the nose up to crest the last line of hills between him and the target. The XV facility had been built on a small rise in the heart of a wide valley. In the distance Wedge could see a number of small communities, and scattered even further around were dimly lit homesteads in the middle of farmland. The Xenovet compound had been situated equidistant between client communities, which made the Rogues' mission much easier by cutting down the chances of collateral damage.
Wedge cruised his fighter down into the valley and began a low run at the site. He beefed up his forward shields and directed his fighter to over fly the large barn in the middle of the property. He saw nothing as he made his pass. Once beyond the barn, he rolled up on his starboard S-foil, cut his throttle, and pulled into a tight turn.
"Three is taking fire from the barn."
Janson confirmed the report. "E-web in the loft. Don't have a clean shot."
Wedge leveled the X-wing and hit some rudder. "Lead is on it."
As his X-wing came about, he killed the thrust and cut in his repulsorlift coils. The X-wing glided down to twenty meters of altitude and side slipped left to give Wedge a good look at the pair of soldiers operating the heavy blaster. Standing in the barn's loft, firing out of a feed-loading door, they were spraying green blaster bolts into the air, occasionally hitting shields on a passing fighter.
"Infantry weapons never work well on space fighter targets." Wedge shook his head and swung his crosshairs on their outline. "The reverse is not true."
The X-wing's lasers fired in sequence, peppering the barn's upper story with coherent light. Bolts burned through the thin metal walls and lanced out the far side. Two red energy darts drilled through the heavy blaster itself, even as the gunner tried to shift his aim and shoot back at Wedge. The weapon exploded, killing the gunner instantly and pitching the other man out of the barn to the ground below.
The man got up and started to limp toward the main building, but he never got very far. From the shadow of a smaller building a blue ion bolt flashed out and caught him in the chest. He pitched down, and then two figures in black converged to check him. Others, looking more like shadows than people, moved further in. One group closed in on the main building while a smaller knot moved toward the barn.
A small explosion flashed at the door to the barn, and then the doors cartwheeled aside. Two shadows moved forward, threw something, and then two more sharp explosions lit the barn's interior, casting light out through windows and the loft. Shadows sprinted into the interior and more blue strobes of ion blast light filled the darkness.
A similar series of explosions lit up the main building. Wedge saw a figure climb out of a second-story window and run along the terrace. The figure looked over and saw the X-wing, and then raised a blaster and triggered off two shots. Both of them hissed and sparked against the fighter's forward shield, prompting a smile from Wedge. "Nice shooting."
The figure ducked down behind the low wall that edged the terrace. Wedge dropped his crosshairs onto the wall and popped off a quick burst of laserfire. The qua
rtet of shots blasted into the brick and mortar, chewing great holes in it. He saw his quarry get up and start running, but bricks blown from the wall cut the figure's legs out from under him, and the running man went down hard.
Wedge switched his comm unit over to the ground tactical frequency. "Katarn leader, Rogue leader here. I have one man down on the main building's second floor."
"Anything left of him, Wedge?"
"Seems all in one piece, Page. I was gentle."
"I copy. I'll send someone up. Kapp reports the barn is clear, so the ground situation is stable. I'm calling in our pick-up crews. You might want to get down here, too."
"Got it. Incoming." Wedge flicked his comm unit back to the squadron's frequency. "Two, I'm going down there. Assign us some air cover and send Two Flight back to guide the transport in."
"As ordered, Lead."
Wedge guided his X-wing down to the midway point between barn and main building. He set it down gently and let the X-wing's landing gear sink a bit into the soft soil before popping the hatch and shutting the fighter down. He doffed his helmet, and then crawled out onto the edge of the cockpit and leaped down. He headed toward the main building, but a man dressed in black intercepted him.
"I can show you that stuff later, General." Captain
Page gave Wedge a grim smile and took his elbow to steer him around in the other direction. "Kapp suggested you'd want to look in the barn first."
"I've seen what an X-wing can do to an E-web, thanks."
"I know, but that's not what you'll be looking at."
The two men jogged across the compound to the barn and between the Ithorian and the Sullustan standing guard at the doorway. A little smoke from smoldering straw filled the air with a sour scent. Beyond that, Wedge caught a whiff of burned flesh. Someone had tossed a ragged blanket over a human outline that Wedge assumed was the E-web gunner.
Once deeper into the room, he realized why Kapp Dendo had wanted him to visit the barn first. The Devaronian, wearing blackened stormtrooper scout armor and a helmet cut to allow his horns to stick up through it, crouched beside the skeletal figure of a man. Wedge saw the rest of the commando team working in stalls meant for housing nerfs, freeing the people who had been shackled in the small enclosures. As gently as possible, the commandos were carrying the people to the barn's main floor.
The stench that came from the stalls nearly overwhelmed Wedge. These people have been forced to live in their own filth. The wrists of the man near Kapp were raw from where his manacles had cut into his flesh. The man's long nails were caked with dirt, as were the lines on his face. Bending down, Wedge thought he saw something moving in the man's gray beard and hair, but he didn't pull back.
A Twi'lek commando standing by a water spigot held up a small vial and swirled it around. The clear liquid turned blue. "Seems potable."
Kapp nodded. "Good. Fill me a flask and bring it over here. Get water to the rest of them." He glanced down at the man before him. "You'll be okay now."
The man reached out and clutched weakly at Wedge's flight-suit leg. "Am I dreaming? I know you."
Wedge crouched beside the man and patted his hand. "Could be. You were with the Rebellion?"
"Ground support. They got me at Hoth. I am Lag Mettier."
Wedge frowned. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. It was possible he knew the man from Hoth, but the picture that was coming up in his mind was of a much younger man, blond, with a booming laugh. "You knew Dack Ralter, right?"
"Dack, I knew Dack." Lag let Kapp ease him into a sitting position and accepted the flask of water the commando offered.
Kapp looked past him and addressed Wedge. "You know him?"
"Possibly. If so, he didn't look like this at the time."
The Devaronian nodded as he looked around at the people moaning and staggering in the barn. "They've all been sorely used here. I'm guessing they've not been cared for at all in the past couple of days. Maybe a week. We had minimal resistance."
Page dropped to his haunches and nodded in agreement. "The main house looks pretty well cleaned out. We have a forensics team coming in to get whatever there is to begotten."
Lag lowered the flask, water dripping silver from his beard. "It won't do any good. She'll have seen to that."
Wedge frowned. "What are you talking about?"
Lag let the flask slowly settle to his lap, as if he was too weak to hold it up to his mouth. "She said you'd eventually find this place, and she wanted to make sure it would be a dead end." A gray tongue played over cracked lips. "They took the others out of here and left us. She wanted you to find us dead. She told us that."
Wedge helped Lag raise the flask to his lips again. "This woman you speak of, who is she?"
Lag swallowed, and then shivered. "Iceheart."
Wedge's blood ran cold. "Ysanne Isard was here?"
"A week ago, maybe two."
"Are you sure?" Wedge dropped a hand to the man's shoulder. "We killed her on Thyferra almost two years ago."
"If you did, you didn't do a very good job." Lag cracked a smile. "She looked more alive than I do, and a whole bunch more deadly."
Prince-Admiral Krennel stalked into the darkened cavern of a room where Isard laired. Krennel knew that word was not really exact enough, but he couldn't think of Isard as living within the warrens described by the various computers and arcane equipment Glow panels hanging down from the roof barely lit the canyons of fiberplast crates, making negotiation of the labyrinth all but impossible.
He rounded a corner and found Isard seated in a huge chair at the heart of a small arena. Around her, monitors and holoprojectors danced with countless images. Her fingers flashed over keypads built into the chair's arms. With each keystroke another image changed, or the volume on one vignette rose to drown out all the others. She spun in the chair and the images were altered by the wave of her gaze sweeping past.
She came around to Krennel and stopped. His appearance seemed to surprise her, but then a casual grin curled her lips and she drew her legs up, shifting into a more comfortable position in her chair. Her gaze flicked to the datacard Krennel clutched in his artificial right hand. "I see you got my report."
Anger surged in Krennel, but he kept it in check. He casually tossed the datacard into the space between them, and then clasped his hands behind his back. "I got the report. I have read it. I do not approve of it. You cannot put your plan into effect."
Isard snorted a little laugh, and then punched a button on one of the keypads. The holoprojector to Krennel's right showed the image of a compound with several buildings, an X-wing parked amid them, and a number of individuals walking back and forth between the main buildings. The figures and the X-wing were rendered in reds and yellows, and Krennel assumed he was looking at an infrared cam feed.
"You've allowed them to hit your facility on Commenor."
Isard nodded. "This feed is six hours old. I had expected them to arrive in a week or so, not quite this soon. Chances are some of the prisoners I left there are still alive. Pity, but they were useless to me anyway. They know nothing of value-nothing beyond what I want them to know."
Krennel nodded his head once, curtly. "What they know could lead the New Republic to suspect that one of my worlds is the location of more of your Lusankya prisoners. That will be enough to bring the New Republic down on my neck."
"Oh, I expect so." Isard's smile broadened.
"This is unacceptable. I will not tolerate the loss of even one world of mine!" Krennel narrowed his eyes. "You have been here for two weeks, have requisitioned a fortune in equipment, have authorized payment to agents all over, and so far have only succeeded in losing personnel and turning prisoners over to the New Republic. This is no way to deal with our enemies."
Isard slowly shook her head. "I would have thought the lesson Grand Admiral Thrawn learned so recently would not have been lost upon you, Prince-Admiral."
The low, slow delivery of her comment sliced throug
h his anger. "Meaning?"
"Thrawn died because it was inconceivable to him that anyone could defeat him. While his string of victories made this attitude warranted, this belief also hampered him." She pressed her hands together. "Look at the New Republic. They killed the Emperor. They took Imperial Center. They destroyed Thrawn. Now they believe they are invincible. The fact is we will defeat them because they have this weakness."
Krennel snarled. "I have never believed in lulling an enemy into a false sense of security."
"Then believe this, Prince-Admiral: You will lose a world to the New Republic." Isard's voice took on an icy tone. "I know your strengths and I know their strengths. You cannot stop them; you can only force them to expend more resources than they want to take the world. Now the world I have chosen is a small one, a simple one, one of no value aside from being one bauble in the diadem you wear as Prince-Admiral. In choosing the battlefield, I can choose how the battle will go, and how we will make the New Republic pay for their victory."