Star Wars - X-Wing - Iron Fist

by Aaron Allston

  Wedge and his temporary wingman, Face, were first through the magcon field separating pressurized hangar from depressurized space, first to see the reception party that awaited them in the one clear area tucked in among a sea of X-wings and shuttles. Wedge cut in his repulsors and reduced power to his main engines, settling into a slow glide forward, and was pleased to see Face mimicking his maneuver precisely. They settled onto the first pair of landing zones, facing the crowd that had gathered there, and brought their canopies up in unison.

  Rogue Squadron stood before them, arrayed as precisely as a firing squad. In front of the line of pilot s was General Han Solo, uncomfortable-looking in his New Republic uniform, his expres-sion a cocked smile that had to be from relief at seeing Wedge.

  Wedge climbed down from his cockpit and removed his helmet. He could feel as well as hear the repulsorlift whine of the other Wraiths' arriving, plus the distant metallic chatter of powered tools being used on repairs. That, and the smell of fuel and lubricants, of ozone coming off the magcon shield, made this hangar more comfortable and homey than any set of quar-ters Wedge had occupied.

  He approached Solo and threw a precise salute. "Com-mander Wedge Antilles and Wraith Squadron reporting for duty, sir."

  Solo's return salute was far less military. "Welcome

  aboard Mon Remonda. Let's get the rest of your pilots in... so

  I can get out of this torture suit,"

  Wedge affected surprise. "But, sir, I was just going to say how smart you looked in your uniform. I think we ought to stay here, in uniform, a couple of hours so the holographers can capture the image. You know, for the historians."

  Solo's grin didn't waver, but his expression was suddenly somehow different. Something like an animal backed into a corner. He kept his tone cheery. "Wedge, I think I'm going to have you killed."

  "Yes, sir. I trust you'll wear your dress uniform for an event like that."

  Han slumped in mock surrender. "You know, with my his-tory, I'd be the laughingstock of the New Republic if 1 ever brought one of my officers up on charges of insubordination."

  "Yes, sir, I was sort of counting on that."

  Once the other pilots had landed and their X-wings were

  shut down, it was handshakes all around. Wedge introduced Rogues to Wraiths, and met Captain Onoma, Mon Calamari master of the Mon Remonda.

  On the walk down from the hangar to the officers' quar-ters, through hallways that seemed more organic than con-structed with their smooth curves and eye-pleasing rather than industrial colors, Solo filled Wedge in on some pertinent facts. "Mon Remonda officially has four fighter squadrons assigned to her. The fighter squadrons are Rogue; Wraith; Polearm; an A-wing unit; and Nova, a B-wing squadron. Of course, you Wraiths are usually out on long patrols. In practice, of course, Rogue, Nova, and Polearm have been doing all the work while you Wraiths play pirate."

  "Is that irritation or envy in your voice?"

  "Envy. Want to trade?"

  "NO."

  "You could boss this whole anti-Zsinj task force. I could arrange for a generalship for you." "No."

  Solo sighed tolerantly. "Anyway, we've been cruising at the theoretical borders of so-called Zsinj-controlled space.

  When our scouting missions or Intelligence auxiliaries report a

  good target, we go in and blow it up. We also assemble data on

  probable movements of Iron Fist, hoping to determine her

  home port or predict her next destination. So far we're not

  having much luck on that front, though we're pursuing data and leads as aggressively as we can."

  "You might actually want to pursue leads a little less ag-

  gressively than that, if you get my drift."

  Solo led the parade of pilots into a large personnel turbo-lift, which carried them downward into the vessel's interior. "What do you mean?"

  "Zsinj uses a lot of intelligence-oriented techniques. If he's planting any of the leads you're following, he may be building up a profile of how Mon Remonda responds to leaked infor-mation. Once he has a reliable profile in place, he can drop the exact type and quantity of information to lead you into the kind of trap not even a cruiser like this comes out of."

  Solo whistled. "Good point. The data we've been getting

  has been so fragmentary, so difficult to piece together, that we

  haven't had any reason to believe any of it was fabricated. But

  if we assume that Zsinj demands a pretty high level of perfor-

  mance even of enemy analysts-"

  "He does. If you'd like, I can have my intelligence special-

  ist-Shalla Nelprin, you met her in the hangar-"

  "Yes."

  "I can have her analyze the data you've been getting

  and your responses to it to see if you're exhibiting any sort of pattern."

  "I'll have it sent to the terminal in her quarters." Solo now no longer looked uncomfortable. He looked serious and in-tent, and finally seemed the officer his uniform said he was.

  Face came out of the turbolift behind Dia and one of the Rogues, a Twi'!ek who had been introduced as Nawara Ven, and overheard the Rogue try to start up a conversation. Face didn't understand the words, assumed they were in Twi'leki, the language of Ryloth, homeworld of the Twi'leks.

  But Dia's response was not in the same tongue. Her voice was emotionless. "Speak Basic, please."

  Nawara Ven took a second to compose himself. "I'm sorry. I said, we must get together sometime at your conve-nience to talk."

  "About what?"

  "About home. About our experiences as Twi'leks in the armed forces."

  "Rylotb was where I was born, but then it spat me out, made me property of an Imperial crime-syndicate leader.

  Ryloth is not my home. I don't have a home. And I doubt our experiences have been similar. Unless you've been a slave."

  "Well, no, but-"

  "Then we've probably exhausted available topics of con-versation." She picked up the pace and moved up away from the Rogue.

  Nawara turned to the other Rogue Twi'lek pilot, a larger man with the upright, aggressive posture of a warrior. Face re-membered that he had been introduced as Tal'dira.

  Tal'dira shrugged and gave Nawara a little smile. "I think you lost that case, Counselor."

  "I don't think I was ever even in the courtroom."

  Face was just getting settled into the quarters he'd be sharing with Myn Donos when his comlink blipped. It was Wedge's voice "Lieutenant Loran, report to Commander Antilles."

  "Yes, sir."

  When he arrived in Wedge's quarters, his commander was

  seated behind a fold-down desk and scowling over a datapad. Face saluted. Wedge returned it absently and gestured for him to sit, all without looking up.

  Wedge said, "The Lara Notsil situation seems to be . . . resolved."

  Face felt a little coldness settle in his stomach. "That sounds pretty ominous, sir."

  Wedge finally met his eyes. "Well, not as ominous as all that. She appears to have dropped the heavy end of the ham-mer on Colonel Repness... without involving you or Phanan. Or indicating in any way that this was a setup." "Sir?"

  "I've just received her record, because she has put in appli-cations for transfer to Rogue Squadron or Wraith Squadron.

  According to this document, Repness attempted to recruit her

  to his unit of black-market thieves, she refused, he assaulted her and had her drugged out of commission, a prisoner in the infirmary... but a mystery code-slicer aboard Tedevium caught Repness's activities in recordings and forwarded them to Intel-ligence. They moved in and seized Repness before any further harm could come to her."

  Face thought that over. "But if she otherwise kept to the plan, then her scores would probably not let her graduate."

  "Right. According to this, when she was recuperating from Repness's attack on her, she told Tedevium's command-ing officer that deciding to oppose Repness had settled some problems she'd had
, some issues remaining from the destruc-tion of the colony where she'd grown up. She insisted on a chance to demonstrate those changes, and the training officers decided to give it to her. She went through an accelerated train-ing regimen and vaped it. Even averaging those results with her earlier scores let her graduate-and her efficiency profile puts her within the range suitable for inclusion in my units."

  "I'm glad to hear it."

  "Both Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron are at

  full pilot strength, so neither unit needs her. However, she has been assigned-and this is fitting-Colonel Repness's personal X-wing."

  Face snorted. "An act of revenge on the part of Tedevium's commander?"

  "Probably. Tedevium's new commander is General Crespin, from Folor Base, and that sounds just like his sense of humor. It's also possible that Repness's snubfighter was considered bad luck-you know how superstitious some pilots are. So, anyway, I'll be bringing her into Wraith Squadron to help boost our complement of snubfighters." "That's great news, sir."

  Wedge gave him a challenging look. "Your job, and Phanan's, is to make sure that it stays great news, Face."

  "Yes, sir."

  "You're awfully subdued, Face. Your sarcasm generator

  not getting any power?"

  "Something like that, sir."

  "Relieved that this whole Lara Notsil situation hasn't shot your career into a black hole or made an enemy of General Cracken?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, I'll inform the smartmouths in the Wraiths that

  you're temporarily easy pickings for them. Dismissed."

  8

  "She has just been assigned to Wraith Squadron, which is

  aboard Mon Remonda," said General Melvar.

  He and the warlord were alone in Iron Fist's officers' lounge. Yet the lounge was full of the noise of leisure and pleasure- pilots chatting, glasses clinking, drinks pouring-all part of an ambient-noise recording Zsinj usually played at such times.

  The warlord froze with his drink halfway to his mouth. Mel-var could smell the drink; it was a good Coruscant brandy. But Melvar knew that this had to be a synthesized substitute, alcohol-free; despite appearances, Zsinj never drank while in command of a ship. Yet he would knock down shot after shot of the synthesized stuff and allow his subordinates to believe that he was getting drunk, and his body language and speech would confirm that analysis.

  Zsinj said, "But that's perfect. Arrange for her to give us Mon Remonda's course and schedule. We'll destroy it, and General Solo, and those most annoying X-wing units. For a prize like that, I'll set Gara Petothel up for life and give her whatever position on Iron Fist she wants." "Other than mine, I hope."

  "Including yours." Zsinj smiled. "I'11 find something even better for you."

  "The problem is, we're not yet in contact with her. It took us some time to put together a visual image of her, and more time to compare it against and disqualify all current female pi-lots in Antilles's squadrons, and even more time to trace it to Lara Notsil, a pilot candidate in training. She'd extensively changed her appearance." "Wise of her."

  "And then she was on a training frigate at an unknown lo-cation, and then in custody there, and then in an advanced training program there under intense scrutiny. We've been able to follow her... but never approach her."

  Zsinj merely blinked at him. His expression said, How nice that you have a problem. Now solve it.

  "So we've found one of her relatives. The relative will make contact for us."

  "A relative of Gara Petothel?"

  "No, of Lara Notsil, the woman whose identity she took.

  The community where she grew up, New Oldtown-"

  Zsinj shuddered. "Surely you're joking about that name."

  "On Aidivy. It was blasted out of existence by Admiral

  Trigit when it refused to offer him supplies."

  "You're sure he didn't destroy it because of that name."

  "Since he's dead, I'll have trouble asking him. Anyway,

  one of the real Lara Notsil's siblings, from New Oldtown-"

  "Don't ever say that name again. It annoys me."

  "-returned home after spending months at a naval job under an assumed name. He was supposed to be serving time in a jail in his hometown-whose-name-is-nevermore-to-be-said."

  "So you recruited him."

  "I have an agent with him, teaching him to eat with imple-

  ments, wear shoes, and pretend that Gara Petothel is his sister. He'll be transmitting a message saying, 'I'm alive, understand you are the same.' With enough subtext that she'll have no problem figuring out what's going on."

  "Good. Be speedy with this, Melvar. I want Mon Re-monda off my trail as soon as possible. Its crew and pilots are too lucky and too efficient by far. Their continued existence threatens to be very expensive to me."

  The world shown on the briefing room's holoprojector was not a promising one. A medium-sized chunk of reddish-brown rock with a few dark seas thrown in for contrast, it circled around a yellow star notable only for its averageness.

  Wedge, on the dais, gestured to a tiny bright spot on the world's surface. "This is the world Lavisar, and this point is its chief port city, Syward. According to Lavisar's central library, the planet was once part of a much larger very-high-gravity world, one that was destroyed in a series of asteroid collisions;

  Lavisar was ejected. It's a world where heavy metals are abun-dant, with mining and refining industries to match, plus a strong economic base in shipbuilding."

  "Just the sort of world Zsinj loves," said Face. At a ques-tioning look from Rogue Squadron pilot Corran Horn, he ex-plained, "We stumbled across the edges of a financial empire belonging to Zsinj, one no one knew about previously. He likes fairly innocuous worlds that have strong economies, and he usually owns at least one business there under an assumed name-a different name with each world. It might be that he wants to have a fallback position in case these worlds decide to side with the New Republic-his business would still be able to help fund his military activities."

  Wedge continued, "And recent data supports the idea that Lavisar is one of these worlds. Although the world is just outside what we think of as Zsinj-occupied space, a recently captured transmission, which our Intelligence people have decrypted, indicates that there is a Raptor unit in Syward, set up in the main construction plant of Skyrung Manufacturing, a licensee builder of Lambda-class shuttles."

  The Raptors were Zsinj's elite enforcement units. Better trained and better equipped than Imperial stormtroopers, they were the most commonly seen and recognized symbol of Zsinj's power, much as the ubiquitous TIE fighter was the uni-versal symbol of Imperial domination.

  "So what is the plan?" asked Tal'dira, one of Rogue Squadron's Twi'lek pilots. "Aerial strike, commando strike, or a combination of the two?"

  "Maybe neither. Shalla, let's have your report."

  Shalla stood, apparently a little nervous under the scrutiny

  of the Rogues. "I did an analysis of the way Mon Remonda

  and her task force have been responding to various outside

  stimuli-captured transmissions, confessions of captured

  Zsinj personnel, that sort of thing-not including official or-

  ders from the New Republic. This was against the possibility

  that Zsinj has been leaking information to gauge our re-

  sponses. And although there is some variation in response

  time, this task force shows a pretty consistent set of responses. Each stimulus is graded as high priority, medium, low, and of possible interest-those are my terms, not those of the task force's officer corps-and a response is assigned according to grade. High priority, for example a response to a distress call from a New Republic ship that is nearby and under attack, will yield, without variation, an assault force of a size calculated to be marginally superior to the enemy force, sent in a straight-line path from Mon Remonda's current location to the site of the trouble. A stimulus like this one, the L
avisar signal, will in-evitably call for a ground team to confirm the signal source is a target, followed by an aerial strike." She shrugged as if in apology. "These responses have been predictable." She sat down and began fidgeting.

  "And predictability," said Corran Horn, "gets you killed."

  "Then what should we do?" That was Gavin Darklighter, the Rogues' pilot from Tatooine, a brown-haired young man whose innocent features and country-boy demeanor belied his combat experience. "Instead of an aerial strike, send flowers and sweets?"

  "It's better than going in as usual," Shalla said. "It would confuse them."

  Asyr, the Bothan flier, who sat beside Gavin with her arm upon his, shook her head, rippling her fur. "But at the first point we don't respond predictably, we tip Zsinj off that we're onto him."

  Wedge smiled at her, and it was a hard-edged smile. "Wel-

  come to the dilemmas of command. You're right. Now, let's

  make the situation even worse. After I received Shalla's-wait a moment." He took his comlink from its clip and spoke into it. "Yes?"

  The Rogues and Wraiths heard a murmur from the com-link's speaker but could not make out the words. Wedge said, "Yes, by all means. A good time for it." He returned the device to its clip. "After Shalla made her preliminary report on this matter to me this morning, General Solo, Captain Celchu, and I went over the data of Mort Remonda's mission so far. Intelli-gence reports are very sketchy, but indicate that in at least five of the sites this task force has attacked in recent sorties, Raptor movements have drastically increased and been quite public immediately after the sorties. Anyone want to hazard a guess ?"

  There was no immediate response. Then the Rogues' ex-ecutive officer, Nawara Ven, raised a hand. "Go ahead."

  "If Zsinj wants to lead us around and gauge our re-sponses, he has to do so by giving up targets for us to attack. Until a moment ago, I was assuming he was giving up targets he owned or occupied, places that weren't very important to him. But that wouldn't necessarily result in more public Rap-tor activity after the raids." He frowned in concentration. "But if he were planting evidence that sites that didn't belong to him actually did..."