Star Wars - X-Wing - Iron Fist

by Aaron Allston

  straight shaft notable only for its featurelessness. Now its two

  walls were lined with medium-sized locking cargo modules

  stacked three high and stretching for some distance down the shaft. Some had been outfitted as living quarters, some as re-freshers, others as conference chambers or communications of-rices or storage lockers. Roll-away staircases gave pilots easy access to the upper tiers of modules.

  Face had been the first to note that if you flew a toy X-wing down between the rows of modules, the shaft would look a little like one of the deadly surface trenches of the origi-nal Death Star. Then, a few days later, when returning from a scouting mission to the surface of Halmad, Wedge had discov-ered that some joker had painted the shaft's ceiling black, except for the lights, and had strung strings of miniature twin-kling lights here and there, creating an illusion of star-filled sky.

  Wedge had let the decoration stand. It was a bad idea to interfere with things his pilots did to make a gloomy place like this more inhabitable, or, so long as it didn't interfere with morale or efficiency, with things they did to make their lives happier.

  Yet he'd been ready to do just that a few moments ago, and he grew increasingly annoyed with himself because he couldn't figure out why.

  The main conference module was on the second tier of the left-hand bank of modules. He took the stairs up and found Runt still there, still sweeping bottles and wrappers from someone's impromptu meal into a bag. The long-faced alien gave him a salute before finishing up.

  Wedge settled into a seat beside the main table. "Runt."

  Runt straightened. His ponytail swayed. "Sir."

  "Do your minds ever confuse one another?"

  The alien grinned. At least, that was how Wedge and the others had learned to interpret it when Runt pulled his lips back over his enormous teeth in an expression that looked more like a prelude to a biting attack. "Yes, Commander.

  Often. If they were meant to be the same, and therefore easily comprehensible to one another, none of us would have more than one."

  "Right... What do you do when one acts in a confusing manner and its answers don't really explain why?"

  Runt sobered and thought about it for a moment, taking

  the opportunity to pick up one last piece of wrapping. "We have to remember that there are many paths to every answer. The thought path. The emotion path. The memory path. The biology path-we cannot rule out hormones and natural cy-cles. And every problem might be made up of combinations of those four things."

  "Good point." Wedge gave him a nod, his leave to depart.

  And Runt might be right. He couldn't think of a logical reason to protest Tyria's show of affection. Nor had witnessing a kiss ever caused him emotional turmoil in the past. He ruled out biology; he was not irritable with fever, had experienced nothing to unsettle him.

  That left emotion, and he already knew what emotion he'd felt.

  Or did he? He'd recognized irritation. Had it masked something else? He thought back over the incident, Tyria's un-thinking affection .... Jealousy.

  He shook his head, trying to dismiss the thought. Non-sense. There was nothing for him to be jealous of.

  He'd never entertained any notions about Tyria. She was, to be sure, physically attractive, but she was a very junior offi-cer under his command, and he preferred to steer clear of the extra complications a relationship like that might bring. Too, she was just not the type of woman he was drawn to; she was a little too unsure, too self-critical.

  Nor had he felt any jealousy when it became obvious that Kell and Tyria had fallen in love. If any time were the time to be jealous, that would have been it. So it wasn't jealousy.

  Except that was what he was feeling. A hard little knot of envy.

  Maybe it was just the fact that he had no one of his own.

  Every so often, he would indulge himself and wonder

  about the man he would have been had his parents not died in

  the mishap that had destroyed their refueling station. Who

  he'd be had he not turned first to smuggling, then to piloting

  fighter craft for the Alliance and discovered a tremendous apti-

  tude for it. Had he not dedicated himself to a cause that must

  inevitably kill him. This other Wedge Antilles was probably

  safe in the Corellian system, owner of a chain of refueling sta-tions, with personal wealth and a waistband measurement that expanded in relationship with one another, with a wife and who knows how many children. A happy man. That was the person Wedge was envious of.

  Not that the real Wedge was unhappy. He was content... but alone. Probably best if he kept it that way. He'd beaten the odds for so many years, years in which literally hundreds of pi-lots he'd known had died in battle around him, as though they were living shields for his X-wing. Someday his luck would run out and the deadly statistics would catch up to him.

  Yet marriage and family and some sort of normalcy could be his. All he had to do was accept Admiral Ackbar's offer of a generalship and a staff position.

  Angrily he pushed the idea away. That was a selfish thought. His life meant more as a pilot and squadron commander than it would as a deskbound planner. More citizens of the New Re-public were alive and more Imperial enemies were dead be-cause he was the master of a pilot's yoke instead of a datapad. So long as that remained the case, he didn't have the right to accommodate himself or pursue his own wishes. "Wraith Three to Wraith One."

  Wedge jolted out of his reverie and stared up into the face of Wes Janson. Behind Janson, Dia Passik stood at attention. Wes was grinning, and even Dia's stone face suggested amusement.

  There were drinks, still in the bottle, on the table, with con-densation collecting on their surfaces. Wedge hadn't even no-ticed whether it was Janson or Runt who had brought them in.

  Wedge cleared his throat to cover his momentary discom-fiture, then asked, "What's the word from Coruscant?"

  "Well, they're cracking down hard on officers caught nap-ping on the job." Wes handed over a sealed case. "Orders."

  Wedge popped the seal. From within the case he drew a datapad.

  Dia asked, "Should I leave, sir?"

  "No. Have a seat. You can be the pilots' official spy for the moment. If there's anything sensitive here, I'll discuss it with Lieutenant Janson later."

  Janson and Dia made themselves comfortable as Wedge scanned the text on the datapad. "Congratulations on the raid on the base at Halmad. They seem to think that five intercep-tors is a better haul than projections called for. Authorization to fund our continued operations from our pirate activities."

  Janson said, "Whoa. You don't see that very often."

  Dia's brow furrowed. "If I may ask, why is that so

  unusual ?"

  "It's the place where a lot of long-term secret operations go off course," Wedge said. "The mission commander sets up a private means of income and funds his operations with it. Then he begins reporting less income than he's actually taking in. He stashes the surplus away somewhere or uses it for missions not authorized by his control. Soon enough, he has some of his subordinates working with these unauthorized activities, and they're coming up with more effective means of generating money-such as spice smuggling-that will never get reported. Left long enough, an operation like this can become a full-fledged criminal syndicate within a few years. That's why the New Republic, particularly Intelligence, doesn't like doing that. They're putting a lot of faith in us."

  Janson glanced at Dia. "In us, he says. He actually deludes himself that anyone's reputation but Wedge Antilles's figured into that equation."

  She managed another cool little smile.

  Wedge returned his attention to the orders. "Authoriza-tion to conceive and execute missions against the Imperial and governmental forces in the Halmad system and other systems.

  In addition, we have a couple of missions here to perform as

  Wraith Squadron, strikes in collaboration with Rogue Squad-


  ron and the Mon Remonda. And no word on replacement

  X-wings." He shut down the datapad. "Pretty much as ex-

  pected. Passik, questions?"

  "No, sir. Thank you for letting me stay, sir."

  "I know all about the relative value of fresh news. Dis-

  missed."

  When she was gone, Janson said, "I've got some of the

  mad painters unloading the Narra. We came back with some

  entertainment holos, some luxury holos, some more ID sets squeezed out of Intelligence, an interceptor simulator module for the TIE-fighter simulator, and that passive sensor set you wanted to monitor the Imperial base." "Good."

  "Is everything all right?"

  Wedge nodded. "Just feeling my years. Speaking of which,

  I think 1'11 get in some simulator practice and beat up on the youngsters."

  "That'll make you feel better. It always does me."

  Wedge punched his personal code into the keypad located on the hatch of the TIE-fighter simulator. Illstead of being located atop the ball-shaped cockpit, where the standard hatch was on real interceptors, the simulator hatch was at the cockpit's stern, where the twin ion engines would normally be mounted.

  The hatch swung open. Beyond, a shadowy figure pointed a blaster at Wedge. Wedge dropped out of reflex, rolled to the side, came up on his knees with his own blaster in hand.

  But no enemy emerged to fire upon him. He kept his own aim on the hatch and reached for his comlink.

  "Is there a problem, Commander?" That was Face, lean-ing unconcerned against the X-wing simulator only a few me-ters away.

  "Get down, there's a hostile in there-"

  Face half ducked behind the corner of his simulator, then took another look. "I don't think so, sir." His mouth twitched, a partially successful effort to hide a smile.

  Wedge rose and came forward, leaned out far enough for a quick peek into the simulator cockpit, then leaned in again for a longer look.

  His intruder was an Ewok.

  Not even a living Ew0k. It was a stuffed toy the size and girth of a real Ewok, and designed to look just like one, but just a toy.

  It was dressed in a scaled-down version of a New Republic

  fighter pilot's uniform, down to the authentic-looking suit sys-

  tern control panel on his chest, helmet on his head, and blaster in his paw.

  In his other paw was a datapad. Wedge retrieved it and looked at the message. It read

  Lieutenant Kettch reporting for duO4, sir.

  Yub, yub, Commanded

  Wedge shook his head sorrowfully. "Sometimes I miss my sanity." He retrieved the toy and handed it to Face. "Deal with that."

  Face, who was working so hard to repress a laugh that he couldn't speak, simply threw a salute and escaped with the Ewok pilot.

  "Transferred to Colonel Repness's group?" Lara glanced again over her orders and feigned ignorance. "I don't understand. I haven't completed my basic training set in X-wings. I'm going to get advanced training now?"

  The student leader of her own group, a redheaded man, barely out of boyhood, whom she could outfly on the worst day of her life if she weren't shackled by the demands of the role she was playing, gave her a superior smile. "You don't understand. Repness handles the remedials. Including you. Notsil, you've washed out. All Repness is, he's a temporary re-prieve for you. This time next week, you're going to be an empty bunk."

  "Lowan, you're a stain."

  "I'll forget you said that. You'll be tossed out of here fast enough without my putting you on report."

  Lara stared after him as he departed, and pictured a target painted on his back, a blaster in her own hand, and a sudden improvement in the average merit of this class of candidates.

  But, no, that wouldn't be appropriate. Better still to make her way to Zsinj's company, return as a TIE-interceptor pilot, and flame Lowan in a dogfight.

  Then again, what if she came up against Lussatte, who was also not her equal as a pilot but was not the blemish Lowan was? A simple matter to vape her... but Lara had the uneasy feeling that such an action would cause her a lingering regret.

  She shook off the feeling. Transfer to another group meant transferring to another dormitory. It was time to pack.

  7

  If this is a reward, Face thought, I need to stop earning them.

  He sat in weightlessness, strapped securely into the con-trol seat of one of the captured interceptors, staring at stars and a tiny, distant sun through the starfighter's viewport. The image hadn't changed in an hour, and the music he was playing on the fighter's internal speakers was, on its eighth repetition, getting on his nerves. He resolved to carry more entertain-ments on missions, especially those where keeping corem si-lence was a priority.

  In a bar in Hullis, Face had been the one to spot the freighter navigator whose hand trembled with more than ea-gerness when the man reached for his first drink of the night. He'd been the one to get the man so drunk that discretion wasn't an option, and to listen to the fellow's rambling praise of his captain's intelligence.

  The ship the alcoholic navigator served on was the Barde-ria, and it hauled cargo on three-way runs out of Halmad with an admirable record for avoiding pirates. With enough liquor in him, the navigator told Face their secret for success. "Leave each system from a random point, enter each system at a ran-dom point. Your courses can't be plotted."

  "That makes for pretty complicated courses," Face had said.

  "Not really. On arrival in each system, you first drop out of hyperspace just outside the outer planet's orbit to sample the comm frequencies and get any pirate reports available, then make a course correction and jump in where you want to arrive."

  "Ah. And this first arrival, before you make your course correction, is to the same spot every time?" "That's what keeps things simple."

  Face was nice enough to make sure the man made it back to his ship when all the night's drinking was done and the navi-gator was too far gone to recognize surroundings, friends, or his own features. But first Face played a hunch and assumed that a man sloppy enough to reveal a crucial detail to a stranger might be sloppy in other ways. He copied the encrypted con-tents of the fellow's datapad to his own, and when back at Hawk-bat Base from this intelligence-gathering run, he handed that data over to Castin Donn. Castin cracked the code and the files yielded up no information about freighter routes... but did have a file of specific locations just outside a large number of planetary systems. It was a simple matter to find out to which planets Barderia's next cargo run would take her.

  The skin around Face's mouth itched, but he could not scratch it, even if he took his Imperial pilot helmet off. His whole face was crisscrossed with horrible puckering scars- artificial ones, created by painting a makeup chemical across his skin and letting it dry. His own genuine scar was not miss-ing; it was just incorporated into the design of false scar tissue.

  That real scar made things a little difficult. Every disguise he wore had to conceal it or incorporate it. A simple, if somewhat pricey, cosmetic skin abrasion and hacta treatment would elimi-nate it. But it was part of him now, a constant reminder of the debt he would never he able to pay off. As a child star of holo-dramas, he had unknowingly helped boost Imperial morale, promote Imperial projects, even improve Imperial military re-cruitment. Crimes he'd never be able to erase. The scar was the living sign of those crimes. Look at me. I know what I did.

  Regardless, all the extra scars, the false ones, made a good disguise, but they itched. And itched. While the same music played over and over again.

  His sensor board lit up as an eighth blip suddenly joined the seven waiting there in space. Barderia had arrived, within range of his guns, of Wedge's.

  His comm crackled as he reached for his yoke. "This is One, targeting engines. Shields still down. Firing!"

  As Face brought his interceptor around, he saw the bulk of Barderia, a boxy Corellian freighter about a hundred meters long, below him and
to his starboard. Green laser fire from a point in space nearly two klicks away was dancing across its stern. Face marveled at the speed of Wedge's response; the commander hadn't been any closer to or oriented any better toward the freighter's arrival.

  Face got his guns lined up on the freighter, saw a turreted turbolaser swinging around to aim in on Wedge. He gritted his teeth, but that was not the ship's most dangerous remaining system. He ignored the gun and targeted the ship's communi-cations array. He fired, his first shot scoring the ship's hull, the second turning the comm gear into molten metal and escaping gas in a minor explosion. Then, as he accelerated toward the vessel, he belatedly linked his lasers to quad fire and opened up on the turbolaser.

  This blast was larger and much more satisfying, eliminat-ing the turret completely. His interceptor and Wedge's crossed one another in flyovers of the crippled vessel as they visually surveiled the damage.

  "This is One. Engines out. No sign of atmosphere venting.

  Hull integrity seems to be fine."

  "This is Eight. Comm antenna down. Main weapon

  down. I'd call this definitely a strong negotiating position. I'm

  opening communica tions." He switched his comm frequency

  to a wide band including the range normally used by personal

  comlinks and jumped his power setting up so personal systems

  would be likely to receive him. He cleared his throat in a deep

  growl that was his mnemonic for this character's vocal man-

  nerism, then said, his voice a gravelly rumble, "Barderia, this is

  General Kargin of the ttawk-bat Independent Space Force. We

  are seizing your vessel. We are businessmen and will do no

  harm to surrendering crew members, to whom I guarantee safe

  passage into the hands of this system's rescue forces. But we are

  rather short-tempered businessmen and any crewmen offering resistance will be brought back to our base for a debriefing ses-sion they will never forget... much less survive. Surrender your vessel and prepare your docking ports for boarding... or prepare to breathe vacuum."