Star Wars - X-Wing - Starfighters of Adumar

by Aaron Allston

  altitude, would not be high enough to climb over the rail of even the lowest

  balcony before them. It would probably slide in just beneath the balcony. "On

  my mark, prepare to abandon your posts, come forward, and jump."

  "Got it, boss," Tycho said. He traversed to the port side of the

  transport and began unloading fire on the new enemies there.

  In moments the balcony was mere meters ahead. On it were numerous ornate

  reclinersand several startled-looking Adumari nobles, brewglasses in hand.

  Wedge saw no flatscreens in their vicinity and supposed they were unaware of

  what was going on.

  "Come forward!" Wedge shouted. And as his pilots abandoned their

  positions and moved to join him, he locked the controls down and moved up to

  the transport's forward rail. As it came within two meters of the balcony, he

  stepped up on it and launched himself upward, grabbing the balcony rail,

  swinging himself over onto the balcony floor. His pilots landed beside him,

  one, two, three.

  He had his blaster pistol out before the balcony residents quite reached

  their feet. He wait ed a moment as the slow-moving transport crashed into the

  side of the building below, and said, "Don't move, we're just passing through.

  "

  He led his pilots through the sliding transparent door and into the

  nobles' main room. More people were here, adults, children, liveried servants.

  Wedge gestured with his pistol and they raised their hands.

  "Jackets and belts off," he said. "Too distinctive. You people get to

  keep them as souvenirs. You." He gestured at one of the servants. "Where's

  your cloakroom?"

  The man, his expression wavering somewhere between delight and alarm,

  pointed.

  Janson kept the occupants under guard while Wedge slid the cloakroom door

  opened. He grabbed four dark cloaks, handed them out as Hobbie and Tycho took

  up positions on either side of the double doors out into what should have been

  the building's main hall.

  Behind him, he could hear snatches of conversation from the nobles "That

  one's the diligent one." "Why, they're no taller than our pilots. I thought

  they would be giants." "Is this a custom from their world? I rather like it. I

  think we'll visit the ke Oleans this way."

  Wedge draped a cloak around Janson's shoulders and the last around his

  own, then the two of them also set up beside the doors. "Ready," he said, "go.

  "

  Janson pulled the door open, peered both ways. "Clear. Where to?"

  "Straight across," Wedge said. "Now."

  "Thank you for honoring our home," called one of the nobles.

  "Happy to oblige," Wedge said, and followed his pilots across the hall.

  He could hear shouting from the nearest stairwell, could even make out

  the words "We must be allowed entry with our weapons. You have intruders on

  the first floor up"

  Wedge grinned. For once he was benefiting from, rather than being

  inconvenienced by, the local security measures.

  Opposite was a big set of double doors, the main entrance into some other

  noble family's quarters. "The lock," Wedge said. "Fire."

  "Wait," Hobbie said. He reached for the door handle, twisted it, gave it

  a pull. The door swung open toward him.

  He shrugged, gave Wedge an apologetic look. "Worth trying, "he said.

  They charged into that set of quarters, surprising a trio of servants

  setting places at a long dinner table, and raced past them to the doors onto

  the balcony. It was unoccupied, though brewglasses were arrayed on the long

  bar to one side.

  Wedge peered over the rail. Below was ordinary street traffic, mostly

  pedestrian, with two wheeled transports in view. In the distance to his left

  he saw a rarity for a downtown Cartann avenuea pair of Adumari riding lizards

  and riders marching in stately fashion toward them. There were no maniacs

  waving blaster pistols to be seen.

  Moments later, all four pilots dropped to the street and merged into the

  pedestrian traffic. At the intersection, they ducked faces and pulled up cloak

  hoods as survivors of the shooters' crowd turned the corner and raced toward

  the part of the building from which they had dropped, their attention high,

  blasters at the ready.

  Wedge and his pilots passed through that crowd of amateur assassins and

  continued onward, forcing themselves to walk at a measured pace. "So far, so

  good," Wedge said, his voice low. "Keep your eyes on the flatscreens on the

  buildings. If we see ourselves on them in real-time, we know we're in trouble.

  "

  "What's the plan?" Tycho asked.

  "They know where we're going. And we do have to go there if we're going

  to get off-planet. I suppose we could try to find enough privately owned

  Blades on balconies... but then we'd be stuck there, trying to get through

  security measures we're not used to, while they have time to recognize us and

  come after us again." Wedge shook his head. "No, we've got to get to the air

  base.

  "They'll have people on the most obvious routes to the base, and probably

  a whole congregation at the base's main gates. So we go by side streets and

  back routes until we're near the base..." Wedge stopped, considering.

  "Getting into the base is the hard part," Janson said. "It has

  transparisteel walls eight meters high, higher than those blasted reduced-

  power repulsorlift transports can go. Easily guarded gates are our only entry

  points. Wish we had Page's commandos or the Wraiths and a couple of days to

  prepare."

  "We improvise," Wedge said. "We need a wheeled transport, one of the

  flatcam units our pursuers are carrying, and four sets of women's clothing."

  Hobbie looked crestfallen. "Boss, please tell me you're not putting us in

  women's clothing."

  "Very well," Wedge said. "I'm not putting us in women's clothing."

  10

  Half an hour later, the four of them sat, wearing Adumari women's

  clothing taken from a middle-class family's apartment, in a wheeled transport

  two blocks from the gates into Giltella Air Base. Hobbie stared with a hurt

  expression at Wedge, who ignored him.

  On this ill-lit section of street, running between warehouses serving the

  air base, the pilots were well concealed by darkness. This was not to be the

  case when they neared the air base's front gates, which were brilliantly

  illuminated by glow lamps atop tall poles. Even at this distance, the pilots

  could clearly see the crowd that awaited them at the gates.

  "You lied to me," Hobbie said.

  "I did," Wedge said. "With my brilliant achievements in the diplomatic

  profession has come the realization that lies can be powerful motivators."

  "My faith is shattered."

  "You knew, when I said we needed four sets of women's clothing, that we

  were going to end up in them.

  You knew. So any hopes you had to the contrary were just self-delusion."

  "I understand that. But I'd rather blame you than me."

  Wedge grinned. "Tycho, what are we facing?"

  "A hundred fifty, more like two hundred, easy," Tycho said. "So, fifty to

  one odds."

  "Not too bad," Janson said, and cracked his knuckles.
"So. Who's best-

  looking in women's dress? I vote for myself."

  "Quiet," Wedge said. "Tycho, do you have the broadcast figured out?"

  Tycho nodded. "I think so. But we're going to have to rely some on luck."

  "We are doomed," Hobbie said.

  Tycho gestured at the flatcam unit they'd taken from a man who now slept,

  with a bump the size of a comlink on his forehead, behind a stairwell in a

  residential building a few blocks from here. "I can't override the local

  flatcams," he said. "There's no equipment for that, no procedure. Just a

  specific broadcast protocol. My guess is that when we broadcast the recording,

  some manager at the local information distributor will decide whether or not

  to put it up on the flatscreens citywide."

  "Which they will," Wedge said. "Considering the subject matter. All

  right, start broadcasting." He set the wheeled transport into motion, heading

  straight toward the two hundred eager killers awaiting them at the airfield's

  gates. Tycho hit a set of buttons on the flatcam's side and then carefully

  placed the device out on the street. Within moments it was lost to sight

  behind them.

  The flatscreens on the buildings they passedscreens not so numerous as

  on the buildings in the richer quadrants of the cityshowed edited scenes from

  their escape from the perator's palace, and occasional glimpses of them in

  their stolen cloaks during their flight toward Giltella Air Base. They'd

  managed to avoid direct confrontations with the extraordinary numbers of

  shooters and flatcam wielders between there and here, even when breaking into

  a home to steal the women's clothing, though they'd had to lay down some long-

  distance suppression fire when eluding pursuit a time or two.

  And now they were headed straight toward an enemy that was numerically

  superior and anxiously awaiting their arrival.

  Each time they passed a flatscreen, Hobbie said, "Still the old stuff."

  Then they were a block closer, just coming into visual range of the crowd at

  the gate, and men and women there began to notice their approach, to point.

  Wedge felt his stomach tighten. "Come on, come on..."

  "Maybe we did something wrong," Hobbie said. "We might not have encoded

  the right security protocols or something. We probably failed tooh, there it

  is."

  On the flatscreen of the next building before them appeared new images.

  Four human silhouettes were suddenly illuminated against the side of a

  building. Two threw back cloak hoods, revealing their facesWedge Antilles and

  Wes Janson, their expressions at first startled, then vengeful.

  On the flatscreen view, Wes Janson threw back his cloak and then drew his

  blastsword. The view wavered as if the flatcam holder was trembling, and then

  the distance to the pilots increased as though the holder was backing quickly

  away.

  But Janson ran forward, lunging with his blastsword, its tip leaving a

  light blue trace in the air. There was a blue flash offscreen to the left,

  then the world spun as the flat-cam holder flailed around and crashed to the

  ground.

  In a moment, the view settled on the front of the buildingwith its

  distinctive red riding-farumme above the main entrywayand became still. The

  pilots, still barely visible at the left edge of the flatscreen, rushed out of

  view.

  Wedge nodded. It was a crude attempt, but if the people of Cartann didn't

  take too much time to analyze it, it would withstand inspectionlong enough to

  serve Wedge's purposes.

  The pilots had made the recording minutes go, standing before a very

  distinctive building a short distance from the air base . Hobbie had held the

  flatcam in one hand, a piece of brick-colored street cover in his other. The

  fourth silhouette in the flatcam view was actually Hobbie's cloak, held up on

  the point of Tycho's blast-sword. When Janson had lunged, his blastsword had

  hit the street cover, resulting in the flash of light suggesting the flatcam

  holder had taken the blow instead.

  Ahead, the crowd must be seeing the recording. A roar of anger and

  expectation rose from the men and women there. Within moments, most were in

  motion, heading straight toward the pilots' transportand beyond, Wedge hoped,

  to the building that had been their backdrop. "Get ready," he said, and drew

  the shawllike garment closer about his face.

  In seconds, the leading edges of the crowd reached them. Most ran past.

  One man, chest heaving from his exertions, pointed with his blastsword toward

  the building of the red farumme. "Did you see them?"

  Wedge nodded and pointed the same direction.

  Behind him arose a terrified, high-pitched wail. Wedge jerked around to

  look, but it was Hobbie, uttering a noise of panic and suffering toward the

  sky, tearing at the clothes over his chest as though he were in mortal dread.

  Wedge blinked at the display and turned around again to steer.

  "Never fear," panted the man who'd addressed them. "We will capture them,

  and rend them, and make them suffer for every" Then the still-rolling

  transport was too far beyond him for his words to carry.

  Moments later, the pilots were beyond the main body of vengeful Adumari.

  "Good screaming, Hobbie," Wedge said.

  "I practice a lot," Hobbie said, his voice hoarse. "Anytime Wes makes

  plans for the squadron, for example. Anytime a Corellian cooks for us."

  Janson and Wedge both turned to glare at him.

  Ahead, perhaps thirty men and women remained before the gates. Many

  appeared to be watching the flat-cams posted on the transparisteel walls to

  either side of the gates themselves, but quite a few still had their attention

  on the approaching transport. Beyond the gates, themselves transparisteel,

  were two guards in the black-and-gold livery of the air base.

  "On the command 'One,' " Wedge said, "fire on the gate locks. When I see

  them give, I'll issue the command Two.' That means spray suppression fire

  toward the crowd. Over their heads unless return fire starts coming in.

  Understood?"

  He heard three affirmatives.

  As they neared, the closest members of the crowd began shouting "Did you

  see them?" "Did they kill the camwielder?"

  As if in answer, Wedge shouted, "One." Then he drew and poured blaster

  fire into the locks on the gates.

  Fire from the other three pilots joined his. One succession of blasts,

  probably Janson's, chewed away with extraordinary accuracy at the mechanisms.

  The guards behind the gates threw themselves away and down.

  In his peripheral vision, Wedge saw members of the crowd flinch away,

  then realize they weren't being fired on. They began bringing blasters already

  in their hands to bear

  The locks weren't yet clearly destroyed, but Wedge shouted, "Two!" He

  leaned to port and fired repeatedly, blowing holes in street cover, firing

  once, with reluctance, at a young man too daring or stupid to demonstrate any

  self-preservative instincts; that man drew a careful bead on the transport and

  Wedge's shot took him clean in the gut, folding him over, depositing him with

  a fatal wound on the street cover.

  The transport crashed into
the gates, shuddering from the impactand the

  gates flew open. The transport rolled through. Janson, Hobbie, and Tycho

  continued pouring suppression fire out the back.

  One of the guards stood, hands up, and ran after the transport. "Wait,

  wait!"

  "Another madman," Janson said. "Think I should shoot him?"

  "If we shot every Adumari who was crazy, there'd be no one left," Wedge

  said. "Let's hear what he has to say." He slowed the transport's speed

  fractionally, allowing the guard to catch up.

  "Cease fire, lord pilots," said the man, "please. You're upon air base

  grounds. You're safe until you take off again."

  In fact, the crowd at the gate was no longer firing at the pilots. Nor

  were they entering the air base. Some were kicking the walls in frustration,

  shouting after the pilots.

  An eerie wail bit into the air, rising and falling, its pitch and volume

  cutting at Wedge's ears. He resisted the urge to clap his hands over his ears.

  "What's that?"

  The guard said, "Notification that you're on base. Now the street hunters

  will go home and the air hunters will know it's time to meet you. Your Blades

  are in the Lovely Carrion Flightknife hangar."

  "That's somehow fitting." Wedge patted the rail. "Come aboard and guide

  us to our starfighters."

  Liveried base personnel stood by at the hangar, ready with pilot's suits,

  helmets, personal gear. The four Blade-32s standing ready were colored a

  glossy red rather than black. "Seized from the pilots of the nation of

  Yedagon," one of the hangar mechanics said, a touch of apology to his voice.

  "The palace wanted declared enemies to look like enemies."

  "Live weapons," Wedge said, "instead of paint, this time, I trust."

  The mechanic nodded. Though he was a small man, his spadelike black beard

  made his face appear larger. "To sabotage your craft would be to sabotage your

  killers' honorand our own. Your vehicles are in exquisite condition."

  While Wedge and pilots ran through an abbreviated checklist, flight after

  flight of Blade-32s flew by the open hangar doors, close enough in to be seen

  easily. Declaring their presence, announcing challenges we can't refuse this

  time, Wedge decided. "Keep personal comlinks on Red Flight frequencies," Wedge

  said. "Tune Blade comm system defaults to the following frequencies

  Allegiance, Rogue Squadron, Red Flight."