27
Corran stared out the window of the Noquivzor base recreation center. Rolling hills and treeless plains stretched out for kilometers in all directions from the building. Gentle and warm breezes washed in waves over the golden grasses and tickled the back of his neck. If Erisi weren’t over in the med center floating in her family’s finest stock, I’d take her on a long walk out there and just enjoy the countryside. As beautiful as it is, though, it’s hard to think of enjoying anything right now.
He forced himself to smile as a man in an infantry uniform set a mug of lum down on the table in front of him. “Thanks, Lieutenant.”
The man nodded. “Call me Page.”
Corran shoved the chair on the other side of the table out toward Page. “What’s the lum for?”
“Drinking usually.” Page sat. “Me and my people were on the Devonian. You and your wingman scattered the squints coming in our direction. We owe you.”
The pilot lifted the mug and drank a mouthful of the fiery ale and let it burn its way down his throat. “I appreciate the drink, but you’ll have to buy one for Ooryl when he comes out of his bacta dip.”
Page nodded. “Gladly. How badly was he hit?”
“Lost half his right arm. The suit shut down around the wound so he didn’t suffocate, but he got very cold.” Corran put the frosted mug down and shivered. “Bacta is for exposure—all the EV pilots are getting a dunking, though none of them are as bad off as Ooryl. The Emdees don’t know about prosthetics for him—they’ve never done Gands before and don’t have appropriate limbs to use for replacements.”
“Rogue Squadron got hit hard.”
“Two pilots dead, three EV, and one was flying wounded.”
“I heard about him, the Shistavanen.”
“Very tough individual.” Corran nodded. “Shiel wasn’t going to report for medical care but Gavin forced him to go. Net result, we’re at two-thirds strength, but only if we can find X-wings to replace the ones we lost. If not, we’re below fifty percent.”
The infantry officer looked around the crowded, above-ground pavilion, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. “This mission was vape-bait from before Kre’fey ordered the Y-wings home.”
“No kidding.” The pilot glowered at the mug. “About a second before the cannons took the Modaran apart I realized that just because the cannons hadn’t shot didn’t mean they couldn’t shoot.”
“That occurred to all of us, I think, except for General Kre’fey. He was blind to that possibility.” Page shook his head. “We all knew he wanted Blackmoon so the Council would give him command of the Coruscant invasion. In three weeks the planet’s orbit takes it through an annual meteor shower. I wanted to use that as cover to bring my commandos in to do a ground recon of the base. We would have taken the ion cannons down.”
“That makes sense. Why didn’t he approve it?”
“The world’s only moon—the Blackmoon that gave the system its codename—would be in our entry and exit vector. It would act as a natural Interdictor cruiser, which could make things a lot more dangerous.”
Corran shrugged. “The ion cannons made things dangerous enough, thanks.”
“No kidding.” Page smiled. “We would have taken them down. And we would have found the base for those squint squadrons that came in late to the fight.”
“The Bothans didn’t even know they were there.”
The infantryman winced. “And they should have. They’re very good at worming their way into Imperial networks.”
“So this time they failed.” Corran hesitated as an idea occurred to him. “Or records of those forces aren’t part of the official garrison.”
Page frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Working with CorSec I was involved in a sweep of a smuggler’s headquarters. She was very sharp and had always distanced herself from glitterstim stores, so we couldn’t pin anything on her. This one time, though, we found a couple of kilos of glitterstim in a warehouse she owned. She said she knew nothing about it and accused us of planting it. Turned out that she didn’t know anything about it. The glitterstim had been skimmed from shipments by one of her aides and hidden there until he could find a way to move it himself.”
“You’re saying the Empire doesn’t know those Interceptors were there?”
“A squadron is a rounding error for Imperial bookkeepers.” Corran leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “And the Bothans didn’t know about whatever power source was used to boost the shields back up after we took them down. Whoever is in charge of wherever Blackmoon is might be running some operation his Imperial masters know nothing about.”
Page nodded slowly. “The data on the covert operation is kept away from the Imperials, so the Bothans had no way of discovering it.”
“Not without being on the ground.”
“We had intel on the vislight from the galaxy, but we got jumped by the IR and UV.” Page rapped his knuckles on the plasteel tabletop. “If we’d been given proper background on Blackmoon, we might have been able to guess at the kind of information we really needed.”
“I understand the need for operational security—but you can bet now the true location of Blackmoon won’t be declassified until we’re all dead and gone.”
Page nodded. “Still, the simulations of an assault are only as good as the databases from which they are constructed. Bad intel gets people killed.”
Corran ran a hand over his face. “Well, now we have an inkling of what we don’t know about Blackmoon. At least two squint squadrons and a power generator are hidden there somewhere—hidden from us and Imp officials.”
“The information in the official Imperial survey files is clearly useless.”
“Right. And that means …” The chirp of the comlink on the table cut off Corran’s comment. He picked it up and opened the channel. “Horn here.”
“Emtrey here, sir.”
“Something wrong with Ooryl?”
“No, sir.”
“Is Erisi coming out of the bacta?”
“No, sir.”
Corran frowned. “Then why did you call me?”
“Sir, Whistler asked me to inform you he has completed the calculations of the wind currents you requested.”
“Wind currents?”
“On Blackmoon, sir. He said he has found some very interesting things.”
“We’ll be there in a second. Horn out.” Corran looked up at Page. “It may be raising the shields after the base had been strafed, but I’m up for learning a little more about the world we just ran from. How about you?”
“I had friends on the Modaran. I didn’t like seeing them die.”
“Good, let’s go.” Corran shot him a smile. “Maybe, just maybe we can find a way to go back in and make the Imps pay.”
Wedge wasn’t certain he had heard General Salm correctly. “Did you just say it was just as well that we failed to take Blackmoon?”
Salm nodded slowly and pointed with a glass of pale blue Abrax cognac at the datapad on his desk. “Intelligence reports that the Imperial Star Destroyer-II Eviscerator left the Venjagga system on a course that would have put it in at Blackmoon within six hours after we launched our operation. Its six squadrons of TIEs would have matched our fighters and the Eviscerator would have pounded on the Emancipator. Chances are very good we would have lost our strike force and Blackmoon.”
The Corellian’s jaw dropped. “The mission was a go with a Impstar-Deuce within six hours of the target? How did that happen?”
“I don’t know. Iceheart has been shifting some resources around, and some Admirals move them even further to avoid her control. It could be the Eviscerator was moved at random.”
Wedge frowned. “Or Iceheart anticipated where we were likely to strike.”
“Or”—Salm looked at Wedge over the rim of his glass—“someone told Iceheart where we were going to be.”
“Tycho was in the dark about our destination as the rest of us were—and he was out there without any lasers or torps pulling in EV pilots.”
Salm held up his open hand. “Easy, Commander, I wasn’t accusing your XO. I don’t trust him, but I know he was innocent this time.”
“You checked the monitor logs on him?”
“I checked the logs on everyone. There were more call-outs than I like, but nothing incriminating. Now I didn’t know where we were going before we pulled out, so I assume no one else did, but there are always leaks.” The General set his cognac on his desk, then walked over to the small bar in the corner of his quarters. “Would you like a drink, Commander Antilles?”
“I’d prefer it if you’d call me Wedge.”
The smaller man seemed to consider that for a moment, then he nodded. “Very well, Wedge. A drink?”
“How old is the Abrax?”
Salm smiled. “I don’t know. My aide obtained it from the black market so your guess is as good as mine. The bottle does have Old Republic tax holograms on it, though.”
Wedge shrugged. “I’ll chance it, then, thanks.”
The General poured him a generous dollop of the aquamarine liquid. “Please, be seated.”
The General’s quarters were as sparsely furnished as his own, with munition cases and old ejection seats being about the best thing available to use as tables and chairs. Salm’s liquor cabinet had been built out of a plasteel helmet case with foam inserts to keep glasses and two bottles safe. Wedge appropriated one of the ejection seats and raised his glass of cognac. “Thank you for coming to our rescue out there.”
“Defender Wing pays its debts.”
Glasses clinked as they touched and both men drank. The liquor’s spicy vapors opened up all of Wedge’s nasal passages. He let the liquid pool on his tongue for a moment more, then swallowed it. A warmth started in his belly and pulsed out to ease some of the fatigue in his limbs.
The General hunched forward, cupping his glass in both hands. “I want to ask you what you intend to put in your report about what I did out there.”
Wedge made no effort to cover his surprise. “You saved my unit. I thought I might recommend review for the Corellian Cross. Since I’m not your commanding officer I can’t put you in for it, but …”
Salm shook his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What, then?”
The man’s brow furrowed. “I disobeyed a direct order to leave the system.”
Wedge blinked in confusion. “If you had returned to the Mon Valle, your entire wing would have been killed.”
“We know that now, but we did not know that at the time the order was given.” Salm swirled the cognac around in his glass. “General Kre’fey and I had often been at odds with each other—you may have gathered that from the briefing. I felt, when he ordered me out, that he wanted to rob me of any credit for the operation. I started us on an outbound vector, but came in close to the Emancipator so I could claim its mass prevented us from making the jump to light speed. I didn’t want to leave and closing with the Star Destroyer made for a convenient excuse, but datafeeds from the onboard computers will reveal the truth.”
“And so you were in position so the Emancipator could screen you from ground sensors and the incoming squints.” Wedge shrugged. “If I’d been given that order and thought of that trick to let me stick around, that’s what I would have done.”
“I know.” Salm stood and began to pace. “That’s the problem, Commander Antilles: What I did is exactly what you would have done.”
“It worked.”
“It doesn’t matter that it worked. I’m not you. My people are not your people.” Salm’s face became a mask of frustration. “The only thing that keeps my people alive out there is rigid adherence to discipline, and this discipline is instilled through consciously constructed drills that build them into a unit. My people lack the native talent in your squadron, but we make up for it because we cover for one another and watch out for each other.”
“As you watched out for my people.”
“Yes, I did that, but only by disobeying an order from a superior officer. And you have to write it up that way.”
Wedge shook his head. “I don’t want to see you taking slugs for something that wasn’t wrong.”
“But that’s not up to you, Wedge. You can excuse something one of your pilots does, but only Ackbar and the High Command can forgive me for this mutiny.” Salm tossed off the last of his cognac. “So, don’t give the Admiral a single byte report—tell him what happened.”
“What, and pretend I understand it?” Wedge sat back in the padded chair. “Interceptors came out of nowhere and the base suddenly developed more power than even the worst case allowed. If the Eviscerator had showed up and dumped two wings’ worth of fighters into the battle, we would have lost all our ships. With the Star Destroyer-II in the area, of course, Blackmoon won’t fall.”
“You’re probably right, though the presence of an Impstar-Deuce is not insurmountable.” Salm splashed some more cognac into his glass. “Stripped of their fighters, they are vulnerable to TRD.”
Wedge waved away a refill and smiled. TRD was Alliance slang for Trench Run Disease, or the tactics that had destroyed the first Death Star. The Empire had developed Lancer-class frigates to prevent TRD from claiming any capital ships. While attacks by snubfighters had proved relatively insignificant in hurting Star Destroyers, TRD was something Imperial officers feared and took great pains to avoid.
“Fine, I’ll head out with my half-dozen pilots and we’ll vape the Eviscerator’s TIEs so you can waltz in and give it a dose of TRD.”
“It would be my pleasure, Commander, but High Command is going to want a lot of questions asked and answered about Blackmoon before more operations are conducted in that sector of space.”
A tone sounded at the door, but before Salm could say anything, the door retracted and Corran Horn rushed in, followed closely by an infantry Lieutenant. “Commander, you wouldn’t believe …” The enthused smile on Corran’s face died as he saw Salm.
Both men snapped to attention. “Begging the General’s pardon.”
“At ease, Lieutenant Page, Lieutenant Horn.” Salm clasped his own hands behind his back. “What’s the meaning of this?”
Corran’s gaze darted back and forth from Wedge to Salm. “Emtrey just said Commander Antilles was here, sir. He didn’t mention these were your quarters, sir.”
Salm looked at Wedge. “Your officers barge into your quarters uninvited?”
“Not so far. Perhaps, General Salm, I need to institute some of the discipline you were speaking about earlier.” Wedge stood and gave Corran a hard stare. “News of our compatriots in the medical unit?”
“No, sir.”
Wedge could see Corran was fit to burst. “This had better be good, Mr. Horn.”
“Yes, sir.” Corran looked at Salm. “With the General’s permission.”
Salm nodded. “Proceed.”
Corran’s smile blossomed again. “If we want Blackmoon, we’ve got it.”
“What?”
The junior officer nodded. “Whistler, my astromech, collected a lot of data while we were out there and has been running it through the programs he used to analyze smugglers’ bases so CorSec knew where to hit them.”
Salm’s face hardened. “This is an Imperial base, not some bandit’s hideout.”
Page shook his head. “Begging your pardon, sir, but the droid found a lot of parallels to smugglers’ bases, and that gives us some new options. Whistler also pinpointed Blackmoon from a star chart and is pulling up more data than we were given in our briefings. It can fall.”
Wedge shook his head. “Good work, gentlemen, but there’s an Imperial Star Destroyer Mark II we have to figure into the scenario. That changes everything.”
Salm held a hand up. “Perhaps not, Commander.”
“No?”
“Not entirely.” Salm folded his arms. “Who knows about this information you have?”
Horn thought for a second, then answered, “As nearly as I know, just Page, my R2, the unit’s 3PO, and me.”
“I want you to confirm that. You two are hereby sworn to secrecy. If any word about this gets out I’ll have you flying solo missions against Ssi-ruuk strongholds, got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Wedge smiled. “Being a bit lenient there, aren’t you, sir?”
“Perhaps I am, but I think they know I’m serious.” Salm smiled confidently. “Now let’s see what you have, gentlemen. Blackmoon was picked as our best, closest step to Coruscant yet. No reason we should abandon our quest if we don’t have to.”