Solo Command

by Aaron Allston

  As if unsure as to which of the city's many offerings to choose, Kell led his group out over one of the sector's deeper forest tracts. As his pilots exchanged banal comm traffic about which sites would offer the most recreation, Kell scanned the forest floor for life. And when he'd chosen a spot that included a clearing large enough for the Falsehood but was so deep within heavy forest that it seemed humans did not frequent it, he transmitted that data back as well.

  They found a personal-vehicle landing zone near a district full of brilliantly lit entertainment businesses. They came to rest there and emerged from the top hatches of their interceptors.

  Kell pulled his helmet free, dropped it onto his pilot's couch, and began removing other pieces of piloting parapher­ nalia he wouldn't be needing. "Drake Two, Drake Four, keep all your gear on. You'll be staying with the interceptors."

  Shalla nodded. She slid down to the ground in full gear and stood at attention before her starfighter, a guard on duty.

  "Aw, no." Elassar sounded heartbroken. He clutched his chest as though someone had shot him. "Why me? I'm the youngest, I'm in the greatest need of fun."

  Dressed only in his black jumpsuit, Kell slid down to his wing pylon, then dropped to the ground. He clambered up Elassar's interceptor and leaned in close to the younger pilot. "Let me ask you something, Elassar."

  "Fire away, sir."

  "You go into one of these wonderfully diverting bars."

  "Yes."

  "You put down your credits."

  "Sounds good so far, sir."

  "You take off your helmet."

  "Well, I'd certainly want to at some point. Even if I were only getting a drink."

  "What do the other patrons see?"

  "Well, they see the galaxy's best-looking—oh."

  "Devaronian pilot."

  "Right, sir, I get it."

  "How many Devaronian TIE interceptor pilots do you suppose there are in the Empire?"

  "I understand, sir, I really do."

  Kell shook his head and dropped to the ground.

  Wedge set the Millennium Falsehood down so gently that not even he was fully aware of the transition between repulsorlift support and the settling of the hydraulic landing skids.

  Chewbacca rumbled something.

  Squeaky said, "Well, of course that was a good landing. He can't afford to set this flying trash heap down any harder. Pieces would fall off."

  Chewie's grumbling became louder, more eloquent.

  "What do you mean, this is a good ship? Just this morning you were calling her names that would peel new paint off a hull. You're disagreeing with me just to be disagreeable."

  "Captain's leaving the bridge," Wedge announced. "Chew­ bacca, the controls are yours."

  He trotted back to the top of the loading ramp and found his passengers gearing up, ready to leave. One man and one woman, both with dark hair and unmemorable, average fea­ tures, dressed in black pants and tunics decorated with daz­ zling bright zigzag stripes—this season's very definition of tourist in certain portions of the Empire.

  They'd never told Wedge their names. He thought of the man as Bland One, the woman as Bland Two.

  Bland One turned to him, extended a hand. "Thanks for a smooth flight. Much better than some insertions we've been through." Bland Two nodded; Wedge couldn't remember her saying a word.

  Wedge shook his hand, then activated the ramp control. The access ramp whined but did not budge.

  "I have one pilot," Wedge said, "who'd be certain that you jinxed it with the compliment." He stomped down on the nearest portion of ramp. The mechanism's whine increased in volume, then the ramp lowered. "Good luck."

  Then they were gone, and the ramp closed again with less complaint.

  By the time Wedge returned to the bridge, Tycho had de­ coupled from the top hull and his X-wing was settling to the ground just ahead of the Falsehood's cockpit. Then the X-wing appeared to vanish as its lights faded. Suddenly they were in darkness, the trees all around them acting as an impenetrable wall between them and the city lights. Their only illumination was the two spots of gold light marking Squeaky's eyes.

  "Well," said Squeaky, "what shall we do now? I know many mnemonic games. Compare Storerooms is a good one."

  Chewbacca rumbled something.

  "No, I don't know Droid-Crushers."

  Rumble.

  "What do you mean, you'd be happy to demonstrate? Oh, ha, ha."

  Wedge sighed. For such a short flight in, this was going to be a long mission.

  It was long after the Rogues and Wraiths settled into their parking orbit around Kidriff's moon that Face remembered his unread mail.

  "Vape, put that new storage through to my comm screen. In order of reception, please."

  First was a letter, text only, from his sister, now at school on Pantolomin. It was chatty, full of details of everyday life, much as Face remembered it. A bright bit of home to distract him from the bleak lunar scape that was his sole viewing plea­sure right now.

  The second, and last, item was from New Republic Intelli­ gence. He had to wade through screen after screen of standard admonishment that he was not to distribute this material, upon pain of trial and incarceration, before he got to the meat of the message and remembered what it was all about: his re­cent query concerning Lara Notsil and Edallia Monotheer, the name she'd been called by the old man on Coruscant.

  The enclosed material was all classified secret; nothing had a higher secrecy rating. He hoped the answers he was looking for weren't hiding behind a more stringent level of classification, a level he couldn't access.

  The file on Lara Notsil contained little information he didn't already know. Much of it she'd told him and the other Wraiths at one time or another. Born on a farm in Aldivy. De­cent grades in school. No indication of special aptitudes other than agriculture. Then, the data derived from her own ac­counts and a little independent verification: how her commu­nity refused to offer aid to the enemy by turning over stockpiles of grain and meats to a former Imperial admiral by the name of Trigit, how Trigit's ship Implacable had bombarded the town out of existence. How follow-up troops had found a survivor, Lara Notsil, arid taken her up to the ship. How Trigit, taken with the girl, had kept her half-comatose on a steady diet of drugs and made her his unwilling mistress. Until Wraith Squadron and allied troops had destroyed Implacable. Until Lara had es­caped in Trigit's personal evacuation pod.

  A rather sparse account. But colonists like the Aldivians, given to raising their crops and children, didn't devote a lot of time to more extensive personal records. On some colonies, they didn't even carry identification.

  Then the file on Edallia Monotheer. For all that she was born on Coruscant, a planet notable for the extent and quality of its citizen records, her account was scarcely longer than Notsil's. It had been reconstructed from interviews; all primary sources about her appeared to have been destroyed.

  Born about fifty years ago. Trained to be an actress. She'd caught the eye of Armand Isard, father of Ysanne Isard; he was the head of Intelligence throughout most of the reign of Emperor Palpatine. Monotheer had trained as an Intelligence agent and had executed many successful missions for her superiors.

  Then, according to this account, she had been arrested and convicted of treason, along with her husband. Both were executed for funneling information about Imperial Intelligence to anti-Imperial factions on Chandrila. An opinion annotated by some anonymous New Republic Intelligence analyst sug­gested that this was a standard technique to cause the death of a subordinate who had committed some less significant of­fense, and that Monotheer had had nothing to do with the Rebel Alliance.

  Husband. Face found the link to data on Monotheer's im­mediate family and brought it up.

  There was not much of interest there on her husband. He had a history similar to hers. There were rumors that the two of them had had a child, but there was no data on file about this.

  But far more interesting than the husband's hi
story was his name.

  Dalls Petothel.

  Face felt his stomach sink.

  "Dawn," said Squeaky.

  The one word, emerging out of blackness, jolted Wedge out of his light doze. He looked around but could still see no il­ lumination other than the droid's eyes. He rubbed his eyes and swung his booted feet down off the command console. "It doesn't much look like dawn."

  "If you look straight up, you can see the sky brightening. All these trees and the buildings beyond keep the early-morning light from reaching us," Squeaky said.

  Chewbacca stretched, making loud tendon-popping noises, and rumbled something.

  "Well, yes, since we don't have any light in our eyes, I could have let you sleep a few more minutes," Squeaky said. "But I was under the impression that the commander here wanted to know when dawn was. Because as soon as it's day, the more likely it is we get seen. Or hadn't that thought penetrated the mass of fur shielding your brain from outside stimulus?"

  Grumble.

  "Well, yes, technically, it is light rather than chronological markers for daytime that make it more likely we'll be seen, but my point still holds—"

  "Quiet," Wedge said. "We may have something."

  On his sensor screen, a small blip had just crossed, in a straight line, a portion of this belt of forest about a kilometer to their south. It had looped around and was now crossing the same forest a hundred meters or so north of its last passage. As they watched, it completed this crossing and looped back again.

  "A search grid?" Squeaky suggested.

  "Yes. But it's the only vehicle doing that in the area. So there's not a concerted search going on." Wedge read the text register on his sensor board. The vehicle was tentatively identi­fied as a sort of high-altitude floater routinely used by police forces on Imperial worlds. "Probably just a routine flyover of his territory. He should be here in about fifteen minutes." He dialed down the broadcast power of his comm unit and acti­vated it. "Two?" •

  "I see it, Leader."

  "Just checking. Begin your preflight preparations. Out." He brought the comm system up to full power and selected an encryption code, then transmitted one phrase: "In the green."

  A moment later, he received an answer, encrypted the same way. "Two lit." Kell's voice.

  "Drake Squadron is getting ready," Wedge said. "Now we wait for the locals to flush us."

  10

  In the graying hour of dawn, the police floater heeled over so far that Wedge was certain that its pilot would tumble out of his seat if not for strap restraints and the vehicle's bubble top. The pilot looked down at the Millennium Falsehood, reached for his control board as if to activate his comm system, then spotted Tycho's X-wing.

  Even with the distance between them, Wedge could read the shock on the pilot's face. "Let's go," he said.

  Rogue Two's nose elevated until the X-wing was pointed almost straight up, and then Tycho kicked in his main thrusters, shooting the snubfighter into the air straight past the police floater. He missed the smaller vehicle by less than two meters. The police pilot unnecessarily slid sideways to get clear of the X-wing's passage.

  Wedge duplicated Tycho's maneuver, putting the False­ hood into a steep climb. Above, he could see the glow of Ty­cho's engines. "Chewie, the comm system is yours," he said.

  Chewbacca activated the comm unit. He grumbled and roared into it across an open channel. By agreement with Wedge, these would be insults and curses in the Wookiee's language.

  The Falsehood reached the altitude of the top of this sector's highest buildings. Wedge leveled off, still traveling in Tycho's wake, a sharp maneuver that brought a startled exclamation from Squeaky ... followed by a clatter of metal on metal.

  "Forget to strap in?" Wedge asked.

  "I never forget anything, sir," the 3PO unit said, his tone a bit miffed. "I merely failed to add 'strapping in' to my list of things to do. Could you hold her level for a moment?"

  "No." Wedge sideslipped to go around an aggressively tall skyscraper. There was another clash and scrape of metal from behind. Tycho rejoined Wedge from the other side of the sky­scraper, his X-wing dancing around the Corellian freighter with the nimbleness only a starfighter could manage.

  Chewbacca grumbled something and indicated the sensor board. Wedge spared it a glance. It showed a lot of air traffic, most of it moving in what appeared to be patterns unrelated to the Falsehood's flight. One group of signals, their number inde­terminate because of their proximity to one another, followed in their wake at a distance of more than two kilometers; they faded in and out of the picture as they dipped down below the level of ground clutter and emerged at intervals. "That's Kell and the Drakes," Wedge said. "We still need to be sure we've been spotted by the world authority—"

  A strong signal, a blur representing six or more starfight­ ers, appeared to the north, closing fast.

  "There we go," Wedge said. "Let's bounce out."

  Tycho said, "Consider it bounced." His X-wing vectored straight for space.

  "Oh, no," Squeaky said.

  Wedge hauled back on the controls and the Falsehood followed.

  Kell saw Tycho and the Falsehood's sudden flight for space, and the signals from the distant pursuers just as abruptly showed altitude gains. He put his interceptor in an upward course—a near-intercept course aimed at a point not far behind the pur­suers of the Falsehood.

  As they climbed, he got a clearer look at the group behind the Falsehood. It was a full squadron, identified by the sensors as TIE fighters. They'd be on the top of Wedge and Tycho pretty soon, certainly before the Falsehood left the atmosphere.

  "Drake Squadron, this is Kidriff Primary Control. Please disengage pursuit of official government forces. This is an in­ternal matter."

  "Kay Pee See, this is Drake One. We've been hoping to evaluate your pilots. Rumor rates them pretty high. Shall I go back and tell the admiral that you wouldn't let us?"

  "That's affirmative, Drake One. Break off pursuit now or we'll have to view your action as a hostile one. We'll apologize very sweetly to the admiral and your survivors."

  Kell cursed. Not every aspect of Kidriff security was sloppy. He put all discretionary power to thrust and gained even faster on the Falsehood's pursuers.

  Just as the air thinned to the point that the stars shone with brilliant, unblinking clarity, the first laser blast sizzled past the Corellian freighter's port side. "A long-distance shot," Wedge said.

  Tycho's voice came back, "Easy to hit a flying bathtub like the one you're driving even with a long-distance shot. Permis­sion to engage?"

  "Not yet. Wait until it gets complicated." Wedge spared a moment to look at his sensors. The squadron of TIEs was only a kilometer back. Kell's Drakes were only half a klick behind them and closing fast. And a new signal was on the board—a second full squad of TIEs from the ground base. It was going to get complicated soon.

  Moments later, a shot hit the rear shields. On the sensors, Wedge saw two wingpairs of TIE fighters peel off and curve around toward Kell's group. "That's it," Wedge said. "Rogue Two, you are free to engage. Chewie, you have the controls." He unbelted and moved aft.

  "Sir?" said Squeaky. "You're not leaving this disagreeable ball of hair in charge of a whole ship? Sir?"

  Wedge clambered into the upper gunport turret and pow­ered up. His targeting grid immediately lit up with glows, most of them red—enemies. Two were out ahead of the others, firing as they came, probably aiming to overtake the freighter, turn, and fire from ahead, forcing Chewbacca to adjust the ship's shields on a constant basis.

  The first of the lead TIE fighters shot past, firing; a laser hit rocked the ship. Wedge let that one go, but timed its passage, then sent his gun turret swinging in its wake even before the sec­ond TIE reached him. That TIE flashed through his crosshairs and he fired.

  The TIE erupted in a ball of expanding gases. And abruptly Rogue Two was darting out from beneath the freighter, tucking into the lead TIE fighter's wake, firing q
uad-linked lasers. The TIE pilot, having lost sight of the X-wing on his sensor board, having assumed he was too far laterally for the Falsehood's guns to track him, wasn't maneuvering. Tycho's lasers chewed through his port solar wing and he tumbled—an uncontrolled roll that, if he were not rescued soon, might never end.

  Two down. Twenty-two to go. Wedge reset and waited.

  "Keep it slow," Kell said, "and keep it sluggish until we break. Remember, we're supposed to be hyperspace-equipped, less maneuverable—they'll already have been told what they're fac­ing." He sent his TIE interceptor into a comparatively gentle westward curve, drawing two of the fighters above into his wake, and was pleased to see Elassar mimicking his move. Janson and Shalla curved off eastward equally lazily.