"There's a proper query to give a superior officer. It's not 'Well?' Something more like, 'Sir, a moment of your time, I wished to inquire about your recent interview with the subject under observation.' "
Melvar said, "I can phrase all such requests so as to waste a maximum amount of your time, of course."
Zsinj smiled. "Never mind." He told him of Lara's speculations, then said, "What I don't know is whether she. came to this conclusion honestly, or whether she was privy to some of their mission profile before she left Mon Remonda and is now presenting it as a sudden realization on her part."
"Either way, the information is valuable ... so long as she's not leading us into a trap."
"We'll find out. Dispatch half the ready fleet to lie in wait at Vahaba, and we'll take the other half personally to Comkin."
Donos lay waiting on the craft he had fabricated from rubbish.
Portions of the thing had begun their existence as the gravitational unit in a TIE fighter simulator. When coordinated with the simulator's computer, they would exert artificial gravity around the pilot, drawing him left, right, down, up, all in artful mimicry of the sort of g-forces the pilot would experience in sharp turns and other maneuvers.
But the simulator had grown old, had become too unreliable even for recreational use, and it had been dragged to a corridor outside a refuse chamber. There Donos, doing a tour of the unfrequented portions of Mon Remonda, a habit that had recently become part of his regular routine, had found it.
He'd liberated still-functioning portions of the gravitational unit. He'd installed computer gear to ensure that the unit would exert appropriate force downward even when the unit was tilting, would detect obstacles, would exert repulsorlift power against obstacles. To this he had added a padded layer that was part of the simulator's pilot's couch and a battery to supply power.
Now, in one of the ship's lonely cargo areas, he lay on his stomach atop the junk he had assembled. It hovered a half meter above the floor, humming, motionless.
Of course it was motionless. It had no engine, no motivation.
Except for him. And to set it into motion, to make it do what it was designed to do, would be to look stupid.
His legs extended off the back of his jury-rigged vehicle. He brought them down to gain purchase with the floor and kicked off, setting his craft into motion. He kicked again and again, building up speed as he floated between shelves of stored materials toward a distant bulkhead. Halfway down, he kicked once more, sideways, setting his craft into a spin, and drew himself into a ball atop it.
His floating sled spun haphazardly, coming within half a meter of a shelving unit before the sled's repulsor unit reacted to the proximity of the thing and bounced him back the other way. Like a ball, he careened from shelf to shelf across the open space in between, coming within handspans of impact but never quite hitting, while he floated toward the bulkhead wall.
Eventually, forward momentum almost spent, he floated to within a half meter of the bulkhead arid came to a stop.
"Well, that looked good."
Donos rolled onto his side to get a look at the speaker. Wes Janson stood a few meters away. He must have approached up the walkway that ran along the bulkhead wall.
"I'm amazed it held together," Donos said. "I expected to have the whole thing fail halfway through and toss me into a stack of crates."
"Is it fun?"
Donos nodded. "Pretty much."
"You don't look too amused."
"I imagine I did a moment ago." Donos rose to his feet, gripped his craft by its one handle, and depressed what had once been a pilot's yoke trigger. The craft dropped as it depowered; he hauled it upright. "But even fun isn't much fun. I keep wishing Lara were here."
Janson nodded, sympathy plain on his features. "Yeah. But you're about to get more people here than you probably want. We're doing some inventory here in a few minutes. You probably ought to try the main corridor down in Engineering. It's long enough, and I'm sure the engineers would be interested in seeing your kludge."
"Probably." Donos checked his chrono. "A little later, though. I have somewhere to be."
The moment Donos was out of sight, Wedge slipped out from a second-level shelf full of foodstuff packages. "Well, that was interesting."
"Wedge! Why don't you scare the other half of my life out of me? How long were you waiting there?"
"About fifteen minutes. During most of which, Donos just sat there, waiting to decide whether or not to play his game."
"Well, he did. A good sign."
"I hope so." Wedge reached behind the first row of stacked food crates and dragged another one up front. This one, like the others, was labeled bantha steak, dehydrated, 250 grams restored, individually packaged. But the top was ajar and the smell wafting from the crate, something like fruit and leaf compost, was not reminiscent of bantha meat. Wedge reached into the crate's top and drew out a bowl full of brownish lumps Janson couldn't identify. "Now, you've fed Kettch before, correct?"
"No. You and whatever crew you've been using haven't brought me in before now."
"That's right." Wedge led Janson toward the forward doors out of the cargo area. "There are still some security concerns, since Kettch was supposed to be a Hawk-bat, not a New Republic pilot. So we're limiting the personnel who see him. He gets one bowlful like this, three times a day. We have him set up near an officers' mess that General Solo isn't using, since he doesn't entertain. So you'll get water for Kettch from the mess."
"Right."
They passed through a small door into a secondary cargo area, this one much smaller than the one they'd left, its shelves full of crates labeled bulk cloth. From the rear, they approached a larger crate, one two meters by two meters by one and a half tall, which had been laid out in the aisle between rows of shelves.
"And now," Wedge said, as they got to the front of the crate, "you meet—uh-oh."
A door that had obviously been retrofitted onto the front of the crate lay on the floor, off its hinges. There was nothing within the crate but what looked like a bed of grass and cloth scraps.
"He's loose?" Janson said.
"He's loose." Wedge looked around. "But for how long? We've got to find him, keep to a minimum the number of crewmen who see him—"
There was a soft patter-patter of movement from the far end of the chamber, the bow end.
"We're in luck," Wedge said. "He's still in here." He extended the bowl of food. "Here, take some. Maybe we can lure him back."
Janson grimaced as he grabbed up a handful of the smelly Ewok food.
They headed forward, only to hear the forward door out of the chamber hiss open, followed by the patter-patter of bare feet and the door hissing closed again. Wedge headed forward at a dead run, Janson at his heels.
The door opened for them, revealing dimness beyond, then Wedge was skidding to a halt and Janson ran into him. They toppled over together, crashing into containers of some sort, and fluid, liters of it, splashed over them.
A sharp, poisonously clean smell forced its way into Jan-son's nose. "Sithspit, what's that?"
"Cleansing fluid of some sort. We must have hit a janitor droid's stash." Wedge sat up. Janson could see him wrinkling his nose even in the dim light. Somewhere else in the room, a door hissed open and closed again.
"Oh, this is no good," Wedge said. "He's running now because we're chasing him, and he's going to be able to smell us from kilometers away."
"So let's call in Kell and Tyria. They can hunt him down while we clean up."
"They're not part of our Kettch conspiracy." Wedge rose and moved away from the puddle. "Strip."
"What?"
"Get those clothes off. We'll rub some of the Ewok food over the parts of our skin that have the cleansing fluid on them. That should make it possible for us to get close to him." Wedge suited action to words, unzipping his jumpsuit.
"Oh, sure. Would you stand still if you were being approached by two naked
men with Ewok food smeared all over them?"
"No, but I'm not an Ewok. Just do it." Wedge nodded right and left. "Looks like there are two doors out of here. I don't know which one he took, but they'll both go into General Solo's mess. You take that one, I'll take this one."
"Wedge, this is the last time I'm feeding Kettch."
"Me, too."
The door opened for Janson and he crept through into the dimly lit room beyond.
Not three meters ahead stood an Ewok, wearing the traditional bonnet-style headgear of the species, his back to Janson.
Janson took a careful, silent step forward. The Ewok didn't react. One more step and he was in range—Janson lunged, grabbing the Ewok with his left hand, the one uncontaminated by Ewok food. "Got you!"
The Ewok didn't struggle. Nor did it weigh much. Janson looked at it. It wasn't a live Ewok; it was the stuffed toy the Wraiths had brought with them from Hawk-bat Base, the one they called Kettch. •
Then Janson realized that the room was full of people—all the other members of Wraith Squadron. In the dimness, they stood like statues, in poses suggesting they'd been in the middle of a social gathering, in conversational groups of twos and threes, and then had been flash-frozen.
No, not frozen, exactly. They still breathed. Some swayed a little where they stood.
And none of them looked at Janson.
Janson stood still for a long moment, waiting for some reaction from them, or for some realization to set in and inform him why they'd be standing stock-still in a dimly lit room. None came.
So he held the stuffed Ewok toy before him and backed to the door through which he'd entered.
His bare skin touched metal and he flinched. The door had closed and wasn't opening for him.
He scraped the Ewok food off his hand against the doorjamb. Slowly, silently, his sense of unreality mounting, he walked sideways toward the other door into this chamber. To get there, he'd have to pass close to Piggy, Shalla, and Elassar, who were grouped close to the wall. As he neared them, he paused and reached out to touch Piggy, the Wraith nearest him.
His fingers encountered real flight suit and solid flesh beneath. He jerked his hand back. Neither Piggy nor any of the others reacted.
It was a dream, it had to be. And by the rules of dreams, doubtless there was to be some bad result if he failed to escape before the Wraiths awoke. In case he could short-circuit the process, he pinched himself, hoping to awaken prematurely, but he had no such luck. The scene remained before him.
Moving with less caution, he made it to the other door and backed into it... and his bare rear once again contacted metal as the door failed to open.
Well, then. There was one more door out of this chamber, which should open up into a corridor—a corridor that he could, with luck, duck down unobserved and perhaps reach the pilots's ready room, where he had another uniform in his locker. He continued sideways along the wall, around the corner...
He reached the doorway and turned into it. The door whooshed open. And beyond was Wedge, fully uniformed, bellowing, "Attention!"
The room lights blazed into normal brightness and Janson heard the Wraiths behind him snapping to attention. He felt his cheeks burn as he realized they had to be facing his bare backside.
Wedge looked at Janson, then at the Ewok toy he held protectively before him. "Lieutenant, you're out of uniform. And you know, wearing an Ewok as a swimsuit is a felony on some worlds."
Janson nodded. He could not keep a rueful grin from forming on his lips. "I have been so set up," he said.
"Good analysis," Wedge said. "You're showing real leadership potential, among other things. Lieutenant Nelprin?"
Shalla approached, standing beside Janson so he could see her without turning. In her hands was a folded mass of orange cloth. She unfolded and displayed it before him. It was a cloak, in New Republic flight-suit orange, with the words "Yub, yub, Lieutenant" stenciled on the back in black. She swept it across his shoulders and fastened it around his neck. Then she leaned in close and whispered, "Nice rear, Lieutenant."
Janson felt his cheeks burning hotter. "Thank you for noticing, Lieutenant." He handed her the Ewok doll and draped the cloak in a more concealing fashion about himself. "I take it this is revenge for that bet about your not speaking Wookiee?"
Wedge stepped into the room and the door shut behind him. "Well, for that, and for your antics with Lieutenant Kettch here and at Hawk-bat Base."
Janson couldn't keep the surprise from his face. "You knew about that?"
"Well, not at first, of course. Not for sure." Wedge threw an arm over Janson's shoulders and turned him, leading him back into the room, into the midst of the grinning Wraiths. "But you didn't do much of a job of concealing your tracks. The doll showed up immediately after your return from Coruscant, which meant that it was probably you or someone else involved with that trip. Then, after it was obvious that the doll was wandering pretty much at will, I had a transmitter sewn into it."
Janson winced. "You tracked its movements. And knew it was me. And waited all this time for payback."
"So, do you still think revenge is beneath Wedge Antilles, Hero of the New Republic?"
"I'm not sure anything is beneath you anymore. Who was playing Kettch? Or Chulku, or whatever his name was supposed to be?"
Wedge grinned. "The first time, we had Squeaky in the box you saw. He speaks Ewok, of course." "Of course." Janson sighed.
Dia said, "I was the footsteps you were following a few minutes ago. And 1 was the one who splashed you with the bucket full of cleansers. Had to make sure you got plenty on you. We couldn't rely on you to fall correctly onto the buckets we'd placed."
Wedge accepted a small glass of amber-colored liquid from Kell, passed it to Janson. "A reward. You're taking it very well, Wes. Just remember that, when it comes to pranks, you have the necessary enthusiasm, you have the inventiveness, you have the experience ... I have the resources."
"Granted." Janson sipped at the glass, made an appreciative face. It was Whyren's Reserve, a Corellian brandy with a rich, smoky flavor. "But it's over now. No ongoing punishment forme. Right?"
Wedge's expression became serious. "Well, not after the holorecording of tonight's events has been circulated."
"Tell me you're kidding."
"What, and deny the universe the chance to see a rear end that the Wraiths have proclaimed so hologenic?"
Janson didn't even try to keep the dismay off his face. "Please tell me you're kidding."
"I'll decide tomorrow. Tonight we celebrate."
Donos leaned in. "And remember what a very wise man once told me. 'You can't look dignified when you're having fun.'"
"If I knew who that wise man was," Janson said, "I'd shoot him."
The next morning, the last pilot to enter the briefing amphitheater was Donos. He remained standing until Wedge noticed him. "Permission to sit in, sir?"
"Why? You're still off the active list."
"I'd like to volunteer for this mission."
Wedge looked momentarily baffled. "Did I misstate myself? You can't fly."
"I'm not volunteering as a pilot, sir. Nothing in my current reevaluation indicates that I'm unfit to handle a ship's guns. I'd like to volunteer as a crewman on the Millennium Falsehood. I'm a Corellian, I know the equipment, and I'm a good shot." That was understating it somewhat; though his greatest talent was with a sniper's rifle, Donos was marksman-rated with most sorts of blaster and laser weapons.
"Good point," Wedge said. "Yes, you can attend the briefing; I'll decide on your request later." He stood behind the lectern and turned to the assembled pilots.
"Today is a standard 'let them see the Falsehood then run' exercise. Our target is the Comkin system. Comkin's security measures are more extensive than some we've recently encountered, so we can't count on smuggling in our TIE interceptor escort. However, Chewbacca has temporarily attached plating to the surface of the Falsehood that gives it a
sensor echo much more like that of a YT-2400 freighter, and that plating will contain a bit of a surprise for Comkin's defenders. We have transponder data corresponding to that of a real YT-2400
mercenary trader, so we should be able to make it to the planet's surface; however, if we're identified on entry, we just evacuate and achieve our primary objective, another appearance by the Millennium Falcon.
"Another modification we've made to the Falsehood will allow for quicker response time by the support squadron when it's supposed to come in for rescue: we've installed a miniature holocomm unit worth more than the rest of the ship put together. Yes, Face?"
"Sir, is it a bad time to point out that a good shot of brandy is worth more than the rest of the ship put together?"
"Yes. Wraith Squadron will be our primary escort..."
Melvar appeared silently beside Lara's station. His mild words contrasted with the cruelty of his features. "Baron Fel would like to see you fly."
"Really." Lara made a face suggesting that she was surprised and pleased. "You mean, for real, not in a simulator."
"For real. Broadaxe Squadron will be supplementing the One Eighty-first, and they're a pilot light. Would you care to suit up and fly with them?"
"I'd be delighted."
"Report to their ready room at thirteen hundred." Melvar gave her a mirthless smile. "Don't do too well. We'd hate to lose you as an analyst."
"I'll keep it in mind. Thank you, sir."
When he was gone, she stared at her screen, seeing none of the data on it, and tried not to shake. She prayed that she'd been wrong in her initial assessment, that the next Mon Remonda strike would be on any system other than Comkin Five.
For if she'd been right, she might end up facing her former squadmates in mortal combat.
Comkin Five was a green-blue world circling a yellow star. As the Falsehood neared the planet's surface, blotches of color resolved themselves into blue sea, deep green tropics, and bands of cloud cover, with only the smallest patches of arctic ice.
"Pretty," Donos said. "What do we blow up first?"
Wedge, ahead of him in the pilot's chair, turned to glance at him. "Write that down," he said. "That ought to be the Wraith Squadron slogan."
Star Wars - X-Wing 07 - Solo Command Page 24