19

The Hawk-bats roared down toward the pursuing Vibroaxes with the Mauler’s TIE fighters in close pursuit. The Vibroaxes, with their awkward collection of jury-rigged weaponry, opened fire at just beyond their maximum effective weapons range, and the Hawk-bats and enemy TIEs plunged into that hail of destructive energy as if bent on suicide.

Wedge’s stomach felt like a refrigeration unit stuck on high. They’d been in less danger of death when flying into the teeth of their enemies than into the mass fire of these pirates, who theoretically could distinguish the Hawk-bats’ sensor blips from those of the others … but who obviously didn’t have the skills or accurate enough equipment to make the best of that distinction. Laser beams, red and green, the flashes of ion cannons, and the blue trails of proton torpedoes flashed between them, among them.

The Hawk-bats passed the leading edge of the Vibroaxe force and veered, three wing pairs turning to three different vectors. Some pursuing TIEs broke off to avoid the cloud of Uglies, others plunged into the cloud, others skirted along the leading edge of the cloud. Wedge’s TIE was rocked by the detonation of a torpedo nearby; he checked his sensor and found that Dia was still on his wing, still intact.

The comm waves were suddenly full, impossible to track: “Squad Two, continue on to primary target.” “Hawk-bat Five, this is Twelve, recommend you climb now.” “I’m hit I’m hit I’m—” “Can’t shake him.” “I’ve got him, Bantha.” “Archer, this is Vee Prime. Spray a pattern of torps back toward the baby, we have a whole squad cutting out to go after him.” “That—Emperor’s nose, that’s an Ewok! They’ve got an Ewok pilot!”

Wedge thumbed his comlink, still set up with Castin’s Ewok-voice modifications, and said, “Bleed and die, yub, yub,” then rolled to starboard and relative down as he caught sight of the squadron continuing on to the new Super Star Destroyer. It had skirted the engagement zone and its ten survivors were forming up. Even before clearing the screen of friendly and enemy fighters, he opened fire, hitting one TIE fighter in the engine pod with all four beams, a beautiful shot. The fighter went off like a fireworks display, its explosive cloud enveloping its wingman, but that TIE emerged from the cloud intact.

Dia’s complementary shot hit another TIE’s port solar array wing, but merely punched a clean hole through it without significantly damaging the vehicle. Together, he and Dia tore out of the engagement zone and continued after the nine remaining TIEs.

Shalla saw something ahead, movement just above the hull, and brought her interceptor down against a piece of space-station wreckage. She killed power instantly.

That dropped the new blips off her sensor screen, but she could see the source of the blips through the viewscreen. A half squadron of interceptors heading more or less in her direction, and as they came closer she could see that their solar wing arrays were decorated with the horizontal red stripes of the 181st Fighter Group—the deadly unit of Baron Soontir Fel. She stopped breathing.

The interceptors roared past her at a distance of less than a hundred meters. None varied its course to swoop closer to her; none hesitated. She relaxed. Doubtless they were doing a visual reconnaissance of the skin of Razor’s Kiss, making sure there was no substantial damage from the Destroyer’s violent departure from its berth.

She powered up again, ran through an abbreviated checklist, and brought her interceptor back into motion.

From here, she had to climb the hull to the Super Star Destroyer’s command tower. It was a more difficult approach, as the ship’s hull, which seemed comparatively smooth from a distance, was in the area of the command tower, a tricky terrain of graduated terraces.

Yet her terrain-following flying was fast and skilled, and within moments she settled neatly—and very delicately—into place between the deflector-shield domes atop the command tower.

She powered down all systems except her suit’s life support and the starfighter’s communications board. Then she changed the interceptor’s comm unit to broadcast across a range of frequencies, took a deep breath, and said three words: “Parasite Two, go.”

Of course, they’d probably detect that transmission. To account for it, she put as much of a masculine growl as she could manage into her voice and continued transmitting. “Kuat Central Authority, please acknowledge. This is Engineer’s Mate Vula aboard Razor’s Kiss. This vessel has been seized by Rebels or pirates. I think we’re under way. I’m requesting instructions.”

A hiss, then a static-blurred voice: “Vula, this is Mauler Control. We’re aware of the situation. Where are you?”

“I can’t say. This is an open transmission. They’re probably listening.”

“Then get to an escape pod and launch. You’ve done your duty.”

“Acknowledged. Out.” She sighed. Get to an escape pod. Odd to have an enemy repeat to her an order she’d already disobeyed. She hoped that the comm exchange had fooled Raslan’s crew, and tried to relax.

Dia had just vaped one of the fighters, battering the top of its hull with a barrage that popped open the access hatch, filled the interior with light, and cast the remains of its pilot adrift, when Wedge heard the transmission. “Parasite Two, go.”

Startled, he checked over his sensor board. That code meant that one of the Hawk-bats had successfully pretended to crash upon the hull of the second Super Star Destroyer and was in position to destroy its deflector-shield domes. But all the Hawk-bats still appeared on his screen.

The voice had been female. It had to be Shalla. Some of the chill in his stomach began to fade.

Good, that was good, and not just because it meant she’d survived her mission. Now they’d only have to try to stage the Parasite portion of their operation once. Twice, even if they could pull it off, would probably look suspicious.

Ahead, two of the TIE fighters looped around to come back at Wedge and Dia. A delaying tactic—the commander of that squadron knew his fighters couldn’t outfly interceptors, so he was sacrificing two pilots to allow the others to reach their objective, the Super Star Destroyer. The sacrificial TIEs looped out at a considerable distance before coming back in, so that if the Hawk-bats continued on their course, the fighters would be able to settle in neatly behind them.

Wedge said, “Four, stay with me, then break when we’re past them,” and vectored toward the incoming craft. Dia tucked in neatly to his aft and port.

The incoming TIEs sprayed fire as indiscriminately as if they were watering a garden. Wedge concentrated on evasive maneuvers, returning fire when his targeting brackets suggested they were about to manage a lock, but his beams still went wide. Then the two pairs of TIEs passed one another’s position and looped to come around again.

Wedge gritted his teeth and pulled the tightest, hardest loop he could manage. His gravitational compensator couldn’t quite compensate, and the maneuver slammed him back in his pilot’s couch, forcing blood into his head; he felt himself graying out and eased off. But his prey hadn’t tried a maneuver so ambitious, and Wedge found himself, half on instinct, tucked in behind the fighter. His prey wavered and veered off to shake him, but Wedge adhered to the fighter’s tail, sized up his shot, waited for the image of the target to jiggle in the targeting bracket, and fired. The fighter exploded in a rain of glowing gas and debris. Wedge twitched his yoke, a lateral drift, so he did not have to fly through the debris cloud.

He spotted Dia’s sensor signal on his screen and maneuvered around to get a look. She, too, was tucked in behind her foe, firing twin-linked lasers upon it, and her fire chewed away at the enemy’s twin ion engines and wing pylons. Wedge saw one pylon give way, reduced to molten slag, and one engine flame out.

That pilot shut the engine down and continued veering, trying to escape Dia.

She let him. She allowed the crippled TIE to vector off toward safety. She looped around and formed up with Wedge.

He brought them around toward their original objective and thought about that. The old Dia would have vaped that target without a second’s hesitation. The new one seemed satisfied with having the objective accomplished rather than scoring the kill. He hoped the change wouldn’t prove fatal to her. But all he said was, “Good flying, Four.”

“Yub, yub, One.”

Up ahead, toward the new Super Star Destroyer, Wedge caught flashes of light.

His sensor board showed that the six TIEs had become twelve—but the newcomers were blue dots, their transponders indicating they were friendlies from Iron Fist. The six red dots became five, then four, then two, then none. Wedge slowed his approach and Dia followed suit.

The newcomers continued in their direction.

Wedge opened his comlink. “Leader, what to do?”

“It’s still hairy here, One. Come back in.”

A new voice, clipped and martial accents: “Am I speaking to the Ewok pilot?” It was Fel’s voice, and Wedge’s gut chilled down to cryogenic levels again.

The sensor board showed the transmission coming from the oncoming TIE interceptors. Wedge said, “Yub, yub. Kettch here. Who talk?”

“My name Fel. Fel want to fly with Kettch.” The sophisticated voice and the simplified syntax just didn’t go together.

Wedge shook his head over that and brought his interceptor back toward the engagement zone. Dia followed suit, mercifully not intruding on this conversation. “Yes,” Wedge said. “Fly with. You see Kettch best pilot.”

“Well, best Ewok, certainly.”

“Kettch not really Ewok.”

“No?” There was surprise in Fel’s voice.

“Must not be. Ewoks dumb. Not under-stand astro-navigation. Not under-stand power-up check-list. Dumb.”

“Sad.” The six red-striped interceptors moved up alongside Wedge and Dia.

“Sad. Kettch not have mate. Ewok females too dumb.”

“Even sadder.”

“Fel have mate?” There it was, the question Wedge wanted to ask, had to ask. What was the fate of Fel’s wife, Wedge’s sister Syal?

“Oh, Fel have mate.”

“Smart mate?”

“Smart mate. Actress. You understand actress?”

“Like storyteller. She good mate?”

“Good mate.”

“Fly with you on big island ship?”

“No, she has her own projects. You understand projects?”

“Under-stand. Make bombs, fix star-fighters, stab humans.”

“Something like that.”

This brought them to the leading edge of the engagement zone. Wedge could see that the battle had not gone well for the Vibroaxes, who were down to six active combatants; they and the four Hawk-bats there were still facing fifteen TIEs.

Wedge said, “Stick with Kettch. Kettch teach good.” He rolled out and dove toward the thickest patch of the fight, where three pairs of TIEs were battling Face, Kell, and the Vibroaxe command vessel, a heavily reinforced combat shuttle.

“Fel doesn’t need Kettch to teach. Fel is best human pilot.”

“No. Other humans say other name is best.” Provoke him; maybe he’ll get angry and say something in an unguarded moment. Wedge held off from firing. The enemy TIEs hadn’t yet reacted to the new arrivals, and every second of approach improved his shot.

“Luke Skywalker, then. Rebel scum, but a good flier.”

Dia finally broke in, speaking in her silky Seku voice: “Actually, we’ve been telling him about Wedge Antilles and Rogue Squadron.”

An explosion of laughter from Fel. “Antilles? Oh, he’s luck incarnate, to be certain, but he really can’t fly worth a damn.”

Despite himself, Wedge felt a wash of anger. At optimum range, he opened fire on the nearest TIEs, the ones pursuing Kell.

Fel opened fire at the same instant. Their sudden strafe hit both TIEs, detonating them within milliseconds of one another.

Wedge veered off to approach the rear of Face’s opponent. Fel paced him. The two of them swooped in difficult circular patterns, like tiny planets orbiting an invisible sun, and fired upon Face’s enemies, annihilating them with similar merciless efficiency.

Antilles and Fel, brothers-in-law, flying together again for the first time in years, since Fel’s disappearance. But it wasn’t a cause for joy. Fel seemed at ease in his role as Zsinj’s ally, and had obviously lost all respect for Wedge in those intervening years.

They turned toward the Vibroaxe shuttle, but there were gas-and-shrapnel clouds near it, with Dia and Fel’s wingman on a course to rejoin them.

The sensor board showed the remaining enemy TIEs turning back toward another Imperial Star Destroyer. Not Mauler; that vessel had passed the engagement zone at a considerable distance, come within range of Iron Fist, and traded long-range blows with the larger vessel. Mauler was now in a slow, uncorrected spin along her long axis, flame venting from half a dozen spots along her hull. There were no escape pods launching; the ship’s commander doubtless thought he could bring the damage under control.

Mauler’s absence was cause for celebration … but a dozen or more Imperial Star Destroyers were still coming on toward them.

“Hawk-bats, Vibroaxe, One Eighty-first.” It was Melvar’s voice. “Fall back, fall back. We are nearing the launch zone.”

“Good flying with you, Kettch.” Fel abruptly veered away toward the rest of his unit. “We’ll do this again.”

“Yub, yub.” Wedge managed to convey more enthusiasm than he felt.

It sounded as though Fel was happy in Zsinj’s service. Perhaps irredeemable. That meant the next time they flew together Wedge might have to kill him.

Iron Fist, now trailing Razor’s Kiss by a considerable distance and acting as the center of her defensive screen, was under attack as the Hawk-bats approached Sungrass. The mighty Super Star Destroyer had taken some blast damage to its port side. The crippled Mauler and the presence, a few thousand kilometers behind Iron Fist’s escape vector, of the burning remains of the Imperial Star Destroyer Gilded Claw, gave mute testimony about the source of that damage. Iron Fist was still suffering the strafing runs from Gilded Claw’s TIE squadrons.

“Leader, Twelve. I don’t have enough kills.” Piggy, in his fighter, vectored toward Iron Fist.

Face took a deep breath. That was code, and Piggy was doing what the mission called for; this was the first opportunity any of them had had to get in close to Iron Fist without raising suspicion. Still, form dictated that he key his comlink. “Twelve, Leader. That’s a negative. Return to Sungrass.”

“Don’t hear you, Leader.”

“Twelve, blast it … Eleven, go with him.”

“Affirmative, Leader.” Tyria’s fighter zoomed off in Piggy’s wake.

Tense, Face divided his time between docking with Sungrass and monitoring his sensors and comm system. The sensors showed Piggy and Tyria pursuing a lone TIE fighter up the ever-higher decks of Iron Fist’s command tower. Their communications showed them in hot pursuit, then veering in different directions around the tower … and suddenly Piggy was in the lead, the fighter pursuing him, Tyria pursuing him.…

Face’s stomach became a wall of knotted muscle. That was as gutsy and insane a maneuver as he’d ever seen, Piggy deliberately exposing himself to fire to account for what they needed Iron Fist’s sensor crew to conclude. Piggy had to depend on Tyria’s firing skill in those brief seconds.

Shrieks over the comlink, Tyria modulating her voice between victorious cheer and horror in a single syllable, Piggy’s and the pursuing TIE’s signals winking out from the sensor screen.

Finally, Tyria’s voice, subdued and pained. “Leader, I have to report that Twelve is no more. Our friend Morrt is One with the universe.”

Morrt. A Gamorrean parasite. That had to mean that Piggy was alive and on-station, but officially dead, and Tyria was calling him by that name to inform the others without repeating the word “parasite.” Face let out a long sigh and suddenly felt ten years older and more tired. “I’m sorry, Eleven. You did the best you could. But you have less than a minute to dock before we launch. We’ll raise a cup to Morrt at this evening’s meal.”

Piggy lay on his side, restrained from dropping to the starboard side of the cockpit only by the harness on his pilot’s couch.

His crash against Iron Fist’s hull had only been half-simulated. His pursuer’s final laser blast had hit his cockpit somewhere between and above the twin ion engines, doing damage to the fighter’s electronics, and his damage diagnostics display had been lit up like a city’s festival-of-lights display before he’d powered down.

Ahead, just over the artificial hill of Iron Fist’s command tower, he could see the top of one of the ship’s shield projector domes.

But that would have to wait. For now, he began solving intricate astronautic formulae, beautiful numeric structures describing the relationship between real space and hyperspace.

The stars he could see in his disadvantaged position suddenly elongated as Zsinj’s fleet entered hyperspace.

In Iron Fist’s main hangar bay, Face emerged from Sungrass’s airlock.

Quite a reception awaited him and the representatives of the various pirate bands. Melvar was at the center of the largest open area, a phalanx of stormtroopers around him. He was shaking hands with motley-looking pilots and officers, occasionally handing out shiny new datapads to them.

As Face approached, one pirate in particular was haranguing Melvar, shaking a fist in his face, gesturing with an angry theatricality Face decided was not simulated. The man was a Devaronian, and one given much to decoration; the horns on his forehead were gilded, and his sharp teeth gleamed so brightly they had to have been augmented by some surface bonded to them. His clothes were similar to an Imperial admiral’s in cut, but made of red cloth and leather, with an eye-catching red-and-gold overcloak.

As Face drew near, he could hear the Devaronian’s voice; it was that of Vibroaxe Prime. “…  malicious lies. This is not the way allies collaborate, Melvar.”

Zsinj’s general shrugged. “The lie was a matter of security. I did not underrepresent the forces we would be facing.”

“Yes, you did! My fleet would have fared better against Y-wings and X-wings. We did simulator training against them that we could have spent against simulated TIEs. That was lost time. I’ve suffered eighty percent vehicle losses, nearly fifty percent pilot losses!”

Melvar’s voice became soothing. “And you’ll receive the bonuses we promised for those losses, in the second round of payments.”

“There will be no second round! I want it all now. And not accounts—materials, precious gems, cargo. None of your datapad treachery.”

Face shouldered his way to the front of the crowd and frowned. “What treachery, Melvar?”

“Ah, General Kargin.” Melvar extended a hand back and one of his aides handed him a datapad. “Twenty-eight percent losses and an impressive kill rate. You’re in for a bonus on that alone with the second round. For now, your initial payment, as promised.” He offered the datapad.

“What’s this? This isn’t Imperial credits.”

“It’s all the information you need to access a numbered account where your payment resides. On Halmad. We thought that would be convenient for you.”

“It would.” He looked dubiously at the datapad. “And if, like Vibroaxe here, I want material goods?”

“You’ll have them. Half the value of the payment we negotiated. If we’re inconvenienced enough to have to carry hard currency and goods, we take a substantial cut. No negotiation.”

Face shrugged and took the datapad. “I trust Zsinj,” he announced. “Simply because it’s not cost-effective for him to betray us. Word would spread to every pirate band in Imperial and Rebel space. He’d never get anything but blasters in the teeth from them afterward.”

Melvar smiled. “As ever, the Hawk-bats make the intelligent choice. You have my sympathies for your losses. The woman Qatya was of special help.”

“Her efforts will, I hope, be long remembered. Until the second payment, Melvar.” Face brought the datapad up to his brow in a mock salute and turned back toward Sungrass.

Behind him, Vibroaxe Prime and others of the pirate leaders, more subdued, began accepting the datapads or negotiating for the reduced fees in material goods.

Sungrass’s first hyperspace jump was straight toward Halmad, but only a light-year in length. Its second carried the cargo hauler straight to the deep-space rendezvous point where Mon Remonda waited.

Not just Mon Remonda. Other elements of General Solo’s fleet were in evidence, including a Nebulon-B-class frigate, a Quasar Fire-class cruiser refitted as a light starfighter carrier, and a somewhat decrepit-looking Marauder-class corvette, a class of fighting ship normally found in the Corporate Sector. Wedge decided that Han Solo had to have cobbled together his force from disparate and overtaxed sources.

When Wedge reached the bridge of the Mon Calamari cruiser, General Solo was waiting with a smile and a handshake.

“Any word from the Super Star Destroyer?” Wedge asked.

“Fine, thank you,” Solo said. “You?”

Wedge grinned. “Sorry. How are you?”

“No, no word.” Han gestured at the holoprojected starfield that dominated the center of the bridge. Around it, ship’s officers, chiefly Mon Calamari, ignored the humans and went about their business. “Don’t be so anxious. Your pilots could use a little time to rest.”

“Piggy’s fighter only carries so much air, even with the extra life-support units he’s carried aboard,” Wedge said. “When it runs down, he has a choice to make. Try to run to freedom—which does him no good if he’s in the middle of unoccupied space, since that TIE fighter won’t carry him very far, assuming he can even elude Iron Fist’s tractors and guns. Turn himself in—which is very bad, for the usual reasons and some other ones, too. Or maybe try to sneak aboard the destroyer, very tricky. And we have no idea what Shalla Nelprin’s status is. So even if our comm control program is planted correctly, the Parasite part of our plan is on a limited schedule.”

“Well … still. Stand down for a while. Iron Fist and the other Destroyer may be jumping around for a while, and it could be some time before they reenter normal space and fire up their hypercomm system. Assuming, of course, that your program is planted and operational—”

The Mon Calamari captain, Onoma, swung around in his command chair and sent it gliding toward Solo and Wedge on its armature. There was excitement in his gravelly voice. “Communications reports a signal from the Donn program,” he said. “We have a location on the target ship, only minutes old.”

“You know, I almost never get to be right,” Solo said quietly. He raised his voice: “Put that location up on the board.”

A blinking yellow glow appeared in the midst of the starfield projection.

Han, Wedge, and Onoma moved next to it. Solo said, “Looks like they took a course perpendicular to a straight run back into the areas of space he controls. And that’s good for us. Mon Remonda is the closest force to him.”

Wedge asked, “Are you planning on a jump straight to the broadcast position?”

Han shook his head. “No, I want a little dispersal. See if we can have ships on all his escape vectors. He’s out in deep space, away from any known gravity wells—he can jump back to hyperspace pretty quickly if we don’t finish him. You have any ideas on how he’ll behave in real space, before his next jump?”

“He’s going to spend some time where he is, having his technicians go over the new Destroyer’s hyperdrive engines.” Wedge considered. “Which means stopping dead or cruising. He kept moving after he made his first jump out of Kuat system, and he was moving in the same direction as the hyperspace jump.… Can you indicate his course from Kuat to his current position?”

A thin white line appeared, tracing from the blinking yellow dot to a star a couple of hand spans away.

“That’s my guess,” Wedge said. “He’ll be at cruising speed along the same course until it’s time to jump again.”

“Magnify it,” Han said, and the holoprojected image expanded until the white line representing Iron Fist’s hyperspace jump dominated most of the image; only a few dozen stars remained within the magnified area.

Han pointed just ahead of the Destroyers’ projected course. “All right. Calculate time to jump to this point. Compare it with Iron Fist’s normal cruising speed. Project its probable location based on that. That will be Mon Remonda’s arrival zone. Now, assuming he wants to run to his own space, we’ll figure out the two most likely courses for him to take and put Tedevium in front of one of them and the rest of this group in front of the other one.”

“Tedevium?” Appalled, Wedge glanced out the forward viewports to catch sight of the frigate. “That’s a training vessel, not a combat-ready frigate.”

Han shrugged—apparently not out of unconcern, but out of helplessness. “My fleet’s in three pieces, with strength balanced as closely as I could make it between them. We use what we have. Tedevium has a graduating class of Y-wing pilots and a commander who’s always good in a scrap.”

“True. Still—trainees.” Wedge suppressed a shudder.

Han put out a hand. “Good luck, Commander. Sorry you didn’t get that rest I was offering.”

Wedge took it. “Either way, I’m going to get it pretty soon.”