Kell nodded to Piggy, who slapped the wall control. The doors ground their way open. The two nearly identical maintenance skimmers faced each other a mere four meters apart.
The lead guard pointed to Kell’s skimmer. “As I told you.”
The driver of the other skimmer leaned out of his cockpit. “Hey! Who are you?”
“I’m Botkins.” Kell glanced again at the name stenciled on the gloves lying in the cockpit. “I’m standing in for Laramont.”
“Laramont’s in the cafeteria, waiting to start his shift!”
“Dammit! They told me he was sick. So he’s going to be servicing the shuttles?”
“No, I am!”
“Wrong. I just did.”
“Listen, scab, I’m not going to let you cost me my piece work for the night.” The mechanic clambered out of his cockpit. He was nearly as tall as Kell and had as much muscle, though a fair amount of it was swathed in fat. Tools swung on his belt as he straightened up.
Kell waited until the man reached the window of his cockpit. “Hey,” he said, “let’s do this like gentlemen. You know, I might not have done such a good job of gauging the hydraulics.”
The mechanic scowled at him. “So?”
“So, you scrub my work as not up to spec. You get credit for the whole job but only have to redo the work you don’t like. But you don’t formally log the complaint, so my record stays clean. That way, you get your pay and I still log the time, so I can keep working toward getting a permanent post here. What do you say?”
The mechanic considered it. “No. I’m just going to scrub your work as not up to spec … and report it that way. Right now.”
Kell glanced at Tyria. A call like that to Central would probably alert the spaceport operators to the unauthorized maintenance job they’d just done. He returned his attention to the mechanic and said, in an overly reasonable tone, “Well, now. That’s my job vaporized. My career at Revos Spaceport. If you’re going to take that from me, I think I ought to have something from you.”
The mechanic twisted his lip in an approximation of a contemptuous smile. “Such as what?”
“Such as about fifteen square centimeters of your skin, a liter of your blood, and whatever you have left of a reputation.” Kell threw open his cockpit door, catching the mechanic off guard and hurling him to the duracrete.
Kell stepped out over him, took a couple of steps to the side, and stretched. He caught the chief guard’s eye. “I say I break three of his bones before he gives up.”
24
The cargo skimmer swung around to the north of the TIE ready bunker, then angled in straight toward the building. It did not build up speed; it maintained a rate just over a walking pace.
Wedge, Atril, Falynn, and Face clustered at the bow of the thing, braced for the mild collision to come. “I forgot to ask,” Wedge said. “Have you ever done anything like this before? The surge at the end?”
Falynn grinned. “Sure. Tried it with a canyon jump back home.”
“How’d it turn out?”
“Broken collarbone.”
“Just checking.”
By now, the sensors in the TIE bunker would show the oncoming vehicle. Guards might even be leaving by the south entrance to come around and see what was happening. The timing had to be perfect.
They were thirty meters away, twenty, ten—then they hit the bunker wall, a bump that merely caused them to sway forward, momentarily off balance.
Falynn counted, “Three, two, one—”
The skimmer’s engines whined as they overrevved, and suddenly the craft bounced an extra two meters into the air.
The four jumped forward as they felt the skimmer drop from under them. They landed, awkward, on the bunker roof. Atril immediately twisted and started to fall back into the skimmer, but Wedge and Face caught her flailing arms and tugged her toward them.
Already there were the sounds of oncoming feet. The four flattened themselves as quietly as they could and hugged the roof.
Then there were voices: “You there! What do you think you’re doing?”
“Wait a second. There’s nobody in it.”
“Check under it.”
Laughter. “That’d be funny. Someone being squashed under a skimmer.”
The other voice became resentful. “You just think it’s funny because it’s never happened to you.”
“That’s right. Never has, never will. Smell that? It’s like an engine bearing has burned out.” The man’s voice changed. “Control Aleph-One, it’s a cargo skimmer. It’s unoccupied. It may be a drifter. Jotay’s checking out the autopilot.”
“I am?”
“You are.”
The other man sighed.
They were silent for a couple more minutes, then Jotay said, “It looks like it was slaved to another skimmer, part of a cargo convoy, and its memory was not correctly purged. It would have shot off as soon as it was activated. Maybe even still be receiving signals from the convoy master.”
“Well, flush the program and take it back where it belongs.”
“Why me?”
“Privilege of rank, sonny. I was hired three days before you.”
Wedge heard the skimmer power up and go gliding off, its driver still complaining. The other man wandered back toward the bunker’s south face, chuckling and muttering to himself.
Falynn chuckled, too. She whispered, “He’s going to have a fine time parking that thing with the brakes not working.”
Kell’s opponent stood, his face red, twisted with anger.
“I really ought to stop you,” the guard said.
“Well, you can do that, or you can get your bets down.” Then Kell twisted to avoid the mechanic’s charge. He swatted the man’s outstretched hand away, continued the twist into a full twirl, and gave the man a slap to the back of his head as he passed. The mechanic staggered, off balance from the extra momentum, and went to his knees.
The mechanic came up with a belt hydrospanner in his hand. This wasn’t a small, around-the-house tool, but a heavy metal implement two-thirds the length of a man’s arm.
Kell dropped his pose of aggressive amiability and assumed a proper fighting posture, left foot forward, hands up, weight balanced. He’d hoped that potentially deadly weapons wouldn’t enter the mix. He’d obviously hoped in vain.
The mechanic charged again, but something in his body language told Kell he was changing tactics. Instead of sidestepping, Kell held his pose, ready to stop-thrust or body-check the man. It was the mechanic, though, who stopped short, swinging the hydrospanner in a horizontal arc that would have connected solidly with Kell’s rib cage if he’d duplicated his earlier move.
Kell twisted aside—and the head of the spanner hit him a glancing blow, an impact that kicked the breath out of him and sent him staggering back. He thought he felt a rib give way.
The mechanic, confident now, followed up instantly with another swing.
Kell didn’t try to dodge this one. Despite the pain in his left side, he twisted, adding energy to the punch that connected with the mechanic’s wrist. Kell felt and heard something break in the wrist. The hydrospanner flew free, clanking into the side of Kell’s maintenance skimmer.
Kell followed through with a left that rocked the mechanic’s head, then spun around in a kick. He tried to make it look more awkward than it had to, but gave it full force when it connected against the mechanic’s jaw. The man uttered a grunt and fell hard to the duracrete.
Kell turned to the guard. “Call this in. He just assaulted me with intent to kill. My career here may be shot, but I’m taking his with me. Get me Central.” He suddenly felt drained and was having a hard time breathing.
The guard shrugged and moved to comply. Tyria took a breath, preparing to jump in with an objection, but the mechanic’s partner, who’d exited his skimmer during the fight, spoke up first. “Wait. Please.”
The guard paused.
Kell said, “Why?” He tried to bring his labored breathing u
nder control. It wasn’t working. Still, that added to his act, made it easy for him to simulate fury.
“He’s a good man. Just tense. Let him sleep this off, I’ll redo the servicing on the shuttles, nobody will report anything, you keep your job, he keeps his job—what do you say?”
Kell took a couple of breaths, as deep as he could bear, and turned to Tyria.
She shrugged. He could read worry for him in her eyes, but her tone was light. “Might as well. Fewer reports.”
The guard in charge said, “Fewer reports.” He made it sound like a goal of considerable merit.
Kell gave a reluctant nod. “Fewer reports. Sounds good.” He moved back to his cockpit door. “I’m doing him a favor, you know that?”
The mechanic’s partner, already struggling to pull the unconscious man upright, said, “Yeah, sure.” He could not have sounded less interested.
A moment later Plague Group’s maintenance skimmer was once again in motion.
Tyria asked, “Are you all right?”
“I want Phanan to tape me up as soon as possible. But I don’t think it’s anything serious. As long as I don’t do too much bending.”
“Well, you bought us the time we needed.”
Kell checked his chrono. Just give us thirty minutes, he thought. Then, it won’t matter how many reports they call in.
Runt’s attack came with such swiftness that even the Wraiths, who’d timed his arrival nearly to the last second, were caught off guard by it.
His X-wing was suddenly over the spaceport, its engines screaming like some mythical demon, its laser cannons blasting at unoccupied portions of duracrete. Men and women on the field ran in the direction of any cover. Some ran to dive into the shadow of refueling tanks. Wedge shook his head as he watched them.
A moment later the shrill keen of an Imperial air-raid alert filled the air. Bunkers all over the spaceport went dark as their occupants or central computers obeyed emergency blackout procedures.
Runt passed over the field, then turned around for another run. His lasers targeted a luggage skimmer and ignited its fuel cell, blowing bags and cases over a fifty-meter radius.
Wedge dimly heard a grinding alarm noise from below. Then the bunker’s top door motors whined and the doors began to retract.
He peered through the crack between them. He could see tiny lights below him: green, red, yellow, white, the myriad glows associated with computer gear. But the little TIE fighter hangar was otherwise dark, its occupants also observing normal blackout procedures.
As he’d expected. As he’d counted on.
He moved with the leading edge of the door. As soon as the doors were locked open, he placed his grappling hook where the door edge met the duracrete roof. A few meters over, Falynn would be doing the same at the other door.
With a chilling engine roar Wedge would always associate with the Empire, two of the TIE fighters below lit up their engines, silhouetting themselves with ionic engine wash, and then leaped up into the sky, not bothering with repulsorlifts for initial takeoff.
Wedge gripped the rope attached to his hook and rolled over into the darkness.
Before Runt could make his third pass over the spaceport, a circular slab of duracrete sixty meters from the Narra rose from the ground. Beneath it was a ball-shaped gun emplacement, an open-air metal framework with a gunner’s chair and a hemispherical durasteel shield from which protruded four linked laser cannons. The rig rose on a metal column, ten meters into the air, fifteen meters, then rotated to track Runt’s X-wing.
Kell, at the pilot’s seat of the Narra, swore and hit his comm. “Six, we have a ground emplacement setting up for your return. Leader reports the roof opening; you’re about to have company.” He flipped the switch to light up the shuttle’s engines and guns.
“We copy, Five.” Runt’s X-wing heeled over and headed west.
“If you do that,” Janson said, “we’re going to have to scramble out of here without our TIE fighter support.”
“What do you recommend? We sit back and watch them flame Runt?” All the shuttle’s occupants heard the roar of the TIE fighters leaving their bunker. “Since that emplacement is taller than the trees, Runt’s going to be within its line of sight for a couple of klicks at least—”
Janson shook his head. “Trust your squadmates, Kell.”
As if to punctuate his words, a brilliant needle of laser energy leaped from the top of the spaceport’s main terminal building and hit the gun emplacement. Kell saw the laser burn through the chair, through the gunner’s body. The gunner slumped and the emplacement continued its rotation, no longer tracking a target.
“Donos,” Kell said. “Sorry. I forgot.”
Two TIE fighters emerged from the target bunker and headed west in pursuit of Runt.
Tyria said, “I’m going out to cover Donos’s arrival.”
Janson nodded. “Be careful.”
Kell added, “Do what the man says.”
· · ·
The bunker’s doors clanged down into place. The crew chief on duty called out, “Back to normal,” and switched on the light.
Two black-clad commandos, a man and a woman, their faces covered in dark masks, stood in the hangar, covering the mechanics with blaster pistols. Another two were already going through the door into the office portion of the bunker—somehow they knew the gesture that told the movement sensor to open the door.
The male commando said, “Not exactly normal. Don’t make a move.”
Face entered the bunker’s command center, his pistol out and at the ready, Atril just behind him.
The officer on duty was turning away from a security monitor and drawing his blaster as they entered. Face snapped off a shot and missed. Atril’s shot was accurate—gruesomely accurate; it caught the man full in the face before he had a chance to fire. He dropped to the polished and waxed duracrete floor, his hair on fire.
Face gestured to the other person in the room, a gray-haired uniformed woman who was already raising her hands. “Put that out before it sets off the fire alarms.” He was annoyed to hear his voice try to crack.
Silent, she complied, taking a jacket from the back of a chair and using it to smother the smoky fire.
Face managed to put a little more authority into his voice. “Now. What’s the standard recall code for the TIE fighters who just left?”
The woman, her task complete, rose to her feet and put her hands up again. “I don’t know.”
Face glanced over his shoulder at Atril. “Kill her.” He saw her eyes widen and gave her the tiniest shake of his head.
The bunker officer said, “Sakira. S-A-K-I-R-A.” Her lip turned downward. “It’s his daughter’s name.”
Face moved to the main control board. Its primary monitor showed the red blip of Runt’s X-wing outbound, two blue blips of the TIE fighters closing rapidly upon it. He typed SAKIRA into the keypad and sent the code.
Almost immediately a man’s voice came over the comm speaker: “Sun Leader to Base, please confirm last transmission.”
Face waved the surviving bunker operator to the panel. She approached, stiff-legged, but her face twitched and she did not use the comm. “If I confirm the code, they’ll know it’s wrong,” she said, her tone sullen.
Face sighed, then keyed the comm. He kept his voice low, making it as bland as possible. “Confirm recall Sakira,” he said.
“Base, copy. Returning home. He had him, Base. Why the change?”
“New orders. Come on in.”
“Base, will comply.”
Face discovered he was sweating. Comm distortion would help a bit, but this was Imperial equipment; its distortion was less severe than New Republic comm gear. If that pilot had any suspicions, he could be calling the spaceport’s control center or another fighter base even now …
But the image on the sensor screen showed the TIE fighter blips looping around and returning.
Face keyed his comlink. “Six, they’re breaking off. Go to terrain
-following mode and ease your way back.”
“Eight, we copy.”
Atril led the female officer back into the hangar. Face sat at the main control board. For the few minutes, it was a waiting game.
Alarms sounded all over the spaceport. A detachment of guards reached the gun emplacement and used a remote to bring it down to ground level. They dragged the gunner’s remains out of the chair’s remains and another trooper took his place. Kell hurriedly powered down the Narra’s systems so a sensor sweep would not detect them.
More troopers were running around on the duracrete near the spaceport’s main terminal bunker. Looking for Donos, Kell knew. If the sniper was on top of his game, he’d have rappelled down the side of the bunker moments after killing the gunner. Tyria would know where he was, but he dared not use his comlink to reach her; he might interrupt her at a critical time.
Feet clattered up the shuttle’s ramp and abruptly Tyria and Donos were peering into the barrels of Janson’s and Kell’s ready weapons. “All clear,” Tyria said.
Kell sheathed his blaster and raised the ramp. “Anything from Joyride Group?”
Janson, in the copilot’s seat, shook his head.
The TIE fighters were slowing to hover over the open doors of the bunker when the comm board sounded again. “Control Aleph-One, this is Central. Why did you break off pursuit of Target X-3085?”
Face grimaced and activated his microphone. “Central, the target’s escape profile suggested an ambush. It was not in an escape posture. This indicated to me that it was leading our fighters toward a superior force.”
“You decided that on your own initiative, Aleph-One?”
‘That’s correct, sir.”
“Interesting choice, Aleph-One. You know it’s subject to review.”
“Yes, sir. I stand by it, sir.”
“Very well. Your men coming in safe?”
“Two eyeballs incoming hot and normal.”
“Two what?”
Face shut off his mike and swore to himself. Then he switched it back on. “Uh, eyeballs, sir. That’s Rebel talk. I thought you’d be amused.”
Star Wars: X-Wing V: Wraith Squadron Page 31