trying to crack our comm traffic, them knowing that I'm still here could still
cause them to wonder why." He gave her a conciliatory look. "I'll be along. I
have a shuttle standing by."
"Come on."
"You go. Now. Don't force me to make an order of it."
Married long enough to know where duty absolutely defined Wedge's actions,
lella gave an exasperated shake of her head. She came over for one last kiss.
"Don't get hurt."
"You, either."
"I want you to be able to retire again."
"You, too."
"I love you."
He kissed her a second time. "I love you, too. And I plan to prove it over
and over again." He smiled against the sick feeling that suddenly roiled within
him, the fear that there would be no over and over again, that this was the last
time she would see him. "Now go."
She went.
He returned to the sensor board and forced the conversation, the sensation
out of his mind. Whether it was a valid premonition or just ordinary fear, he
had a job to do.
He watched as the biotics complex's starfighter defenses continued to
crumble, as Yuuzhan Vong air and ground forces continued their approach.
Charat Kraal led his squadron around toward Domain Hul. His villip had just
told him that Lusankya was coming... and that Jaina Solo's squadron was among
those escorting her.
He was confused. He didn't like being confused. No Yuuzhan Vong warrior
ever endured being confused.
The only appropriate response was to kill something.
The elite squadrons guarding Lusankya fought with tremendous skill.
Czulkang Lah made sure that the patterns flown by the blaze bugs, showing the
development of that conflict, would be seared into the memory of the worldship's
brain. He knew he would enjoy watching it again and again.
Coralskipper squadrons entering that combat zone emerged depleted,
tattered... when they emerged at all.
Reports of his sensor advisers indicated that the coral-skipper assaults
were taking their roll. New Republic pilots were falling. And Lusankya was being
taken to pieces. Despite the fact that an unusual amount of power was being
directed into her shields, the ship's weapons batteries were silent, and great
chunks of metal were said to be tearing free of the superstructure under the
constant pounding from coralskippers and capital ships that ventured close
enough to strike.
Wedge charged out of the operations center. The bi-otics building shook
with the pounding it received from distant plasma cannons, impacts so loud that
he couldn't hear his own boots on the duracrete floor. Chunks of the ceiling
rained down; he threw his arms over his head for protection, catching a blow on
his right wrist from descending debris.
He made it up the staircase to the ground level without seeing any other
personnel. That gave him a grim satisfaction. No one had managed to outstubborn
him, to defy his orders in order to make sure that Wedge had company on his
escape. It was a little comforting, but the thought that he might be the last
member of the New Republic standing on Borleias was oddly unsettling.
Through the transparisteel in the doors at the end of the main hall he
could see distant flashes, narrow red streaks heading one way at the speed of
light, more wobbly orange-red streaks headed the other, clear evidence that
Wedge's last forces were still fighting their delaying action. Then he slammed
through the doors, emerging onto the kill zone, and could see that the
engagement was continuing at every degree of the compass. The kill zone itself
was full of craters and destroyed vehicles. Everything that had been fit to fly
was up in space now; the vehicles too wrecked to lift off had been destroyed by
Wedge's engineers, standard operating procedure, though the Yuuzhan Vong were
not in the habit of studying captured technology. Some of them had been
additionally hit by distant plasma cannon fire aimed at the biotics building.
There were no functional vehicles to be seen.
No functional vehicles. Where was his shuttle? Then he recognized it, a
heap of burning metal whose shape suggested it had once been a Lambda-class
shuttle. Wedge grimaced. A pilot had died waiting for him. It was another tally
mark for the list-the list he'd once hoped he'd retired; the one he carried in
his heart.
He shoved the thought to one side. He'd join that list in a minute if he
didn't act. Punctuating his thought, a plasma cannon projectile hit the biotics
building far over his head, plowing through ferrocrete and transparisteel,
sending sharp, lethal chunks down toward him.
Wedge sprinted away from the building's face. There was no purpose in going
into the main docking bay, except perhaps to hide; it was open, and he could see
from here that nothing more useful than a small cargo lifter was left within it.
The special operations docking bay was almost intact, though, and still
closed. Wedge hoped they hadn't booby-trapped it. He reached the main door,
tapped his authorization code into the keypad, and then flinched as he heard the
biotics building take a hit from something big.
The force of the explosion, though weakened by distance, pushed him into
the door. He spun to look and watched as the building folded over like a fighter
punched once too often in the midsection; the top portion at the center tumbled
down onto the kill zone where he'd been standing just seconds before.
The docking bay door ground open. He backed in and spun, eyes trying to
pierce the darkness of the interior even as the overhead lights began to flicker
on.
The special operations crew had left behind a land-speeder that looked as
though it had been slow-roasted for the eating pleasure of some alien giant.
Nearby was a half-finished pipefighter, one they'd been assembling in case any
of the others failed during their bogus tests. And then Wedge's heart soared-off
to the right, near the still-opening door, where the lights were last to come to
full brightness, was an X-wing, There was no astromech waiting beside it or
tucked in place behind the cockpit, but otherwise it looked intact, its cockpit
raised as if in greeting.
The vehicle's surface was scratched and burned everywhere, but there were a
dozen shiny patches in place on the hull, not yet painted to match the
snubfighter's color scheme, and the canopy was gleaming, unmarred, obviously
brand-new.
Wedge raced to it and climbed up into the cockpit, adrenaline letting him
move like a man half his age. He'd commenced the emergency power-start procedure
before gravity had quite settled him into the pilot's couch, and brought up the
vehicle's assignment and diagnostics before lowering the canopy and buckling in.
The text board on his control panel swam into letters before it was even at
full brightness:
INCOM T65-J "X-WING" IDENTIFIER NUMBER 103430
CURRENT PILOT: FLIGHT OFFICER KORIL BEKAM CURRENT DESIGNATION: BLACKMOON 11
CURRENT ASTROMECH: R2-Z13 "PLUG"
"Too bad you're not along for the ride, Plug." Without an astromech, Wedge
wo
uld be able to perform only the most basic insystem navigation; he wouldn't be
able to plot any interstellar routes. But if he could get up to his forces in
this vehicle, accept a broadcast nav course or land aboard one of the capital
ships, he'd be fine.
He triggered a command on his datapad, sending an authorization code to the
X-wing.
CODE NOT RECOGNIZED. AUTHORIZATION FAILED.
The diagnostics board was now up. Power, shield, weapon, and thruster
systems seemed to be fine, but the board showed unrepaired damage to the
snubfighter's computer and communications systems. Wedge swore. The time
pressures that had forced the mechanics to abandon this vehicle before it was
quite repaired might have doomed him. That point was accentuated by a new sound-
the whumbf some large craft making an awkward landing near the special ops
docking bay. No, it was adjacent to the docking bay-Wedge saw the back wall of
the building, hardy sheet metal, bow in from the displaced air.
Wedge scrolled down in his datapad to personnel records, called up the
details of Flight Officer Koril Bekam, and transmitted his authorization code.
AUTHORIZATION ACCEPTED. Power-up of the remainder of vehicle systems
commenced.
The docking bay door was now fully open, spilling sunlight across Wedge and
the X-wing. Wedge saw a detachment of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, twenty or more of
them, pass by the bay, headed toward the biotics building.
The data board indicated that two engines were up, three, four, then
thrusters and repulsors reported ready. Lasers came online, and the bar
indicating shield readiness struggled to become a solid green.
A Yuuzhan Vong warrior skidded around the corner of the special ops docking
bay and halted, facing the X-wing, his posture suggesting surprise. A moment
later, nine or ten more raced up behind him and turned toward Wedge.
Wedge gave them a smile-humorless, feral. He flicked his lasers over to
stutterfire and sprayed the crowd of enemy warriors, saw some of them dive back
the way they'd come, saw others caught in the beams.
Even set on stutterfire, where each beam was fired at the lowest useful
intensity available to an X-wing weapon, the lasers were meant for vehicles, not
individuals. Striking the Yuuzhan Vong, the beams superheated flesh past the
point of cooking, past the point of boiling, straight to the state of gas or
even plasma. Warriors hit by the beams simply exploded, torsos reduced to
nothingness, limbs hurled in all directions.
Wedge grimaced, then fired up his repulsors and thrusters. In a smooth
motion, his X-wing lifted, sideslipped out from under the docking bay roof, and
turned the direction opposite that from which the warriors had come. He kicked
his thrusters over to full and raced at maximum acceleration away from the
docking bay and crumbling biotics building. Over his shoulder, he could see the
Yuuzhan Vong troop carrier, an egg-shaped thing, towering over the docking hay,
squadron after squadron of warriors emerging from it at a dead run. The troop
carrier opened up on his X-wing, sending glowing plasma balls after him, but
Wedge twitched the vehicle to port and the flood of burning material fell into
the jungle beneath him.
There wouldn't be time for a checklist, even an abbreviated one. He had to
get up into space and rejoin his forces. He switched his X-wing comm unit over
to command frequency. "Blackmoon Eleven to Mon Motbma, Rlackmoon Eleven to Mow
Mothma come in."
The unit came alive with comm traffic. Wedge recognized the voice of Tycho,
directing starfighter squadrons, of Jaina issuing commands to the Twin Suns, of
many other officers under his command. But no one responded. He put on a little
altitude, preparatory to making the run to space. "Blackmoon Eleven to anyone.
Please respond." Nothing.
He growled. He'd have to rely on his own sensors and instincts to choose
the best course offworld, and could easily blunder into squadrons of incoming
coralskippers. Well, those were the breaks. He could either complain or prepare.
He pulled back on his yoke-and then flashed past a small Corellian freighter, a
scarred sky-blue YT-2400. He knew the ship, which was far newer than the similar
Millennium Falcon, but still a rickety thing held together by wire and meanness.
In the glimpse he had of it before leaving it behind, he thought that it
looked mostly intact, despite smoke pouring out of one of the engine housings,
and believed he'd seen people outside it, moving. He began to loop around.
"Blackmoon Eleven, this is Ammuud Swooper. Come in, please."
Wedge frowned. How did they know his designation? Then it made sense. He
couldn't broadcast voice, but his transponder must still be working, must still
be sending out this X-wing's identifier code for friend-or-foe sensor
recognition. "Ammuud Swooper, you have Blackmoon Eleven. Go."
"Blackmoon Eleven, come in. This is Ammuud Swooper. Please reply."
Wedge passed over the downed freighter again, this time at reduced
velocity. He could see men and women atop the freighter, illuminated by the
sparks and glow of welding torches.
At this range-he pulled his comlink out of his breast pocket and thumbed it
on. "Ammuud Swooper, this is Blackmoon Eleven. Are you receiving me now?"
"Barely, but we have you. We were downed by plasma cannon fire but we've
almost got a patch ready on our engines. We can lift in a couple of minutes...
but the unit that shot us down is pretty close, north-northwest. Can you hold
them back for us?"
"I'll give you your two minutes. Maybe more. My comm board is shot, so if I
don't respond to further communications, don't take it personally. Blackmoon
Eleven out."
"Thanks, Eleven. Ammuud Swooper out."
Wedge reduced his speed still further, then looped around to pass over the
freighter on a north-northwest course. In seconds he saw the enemy unit Ammuud
Swooper had spoken of, approaching through a patch of thick grasses surrounded
by jungle; there were a dozen Yuuzhan Vong infantry, two dozen reptoid slave-
warriors, one coralskipper, and what appeared to be an unwounded rakamat, this
one tall and lean rather than mountainous, and with only half the armament of a
full-sized version, but still plenty against a lightly armed freighter.
Or an X-wing, for that matter.
Even as he calculated their numbers, Wedge switched over to stutterfire and
sprayed lasers across their position. Warriors and reptoids went down and grass
ignited in front of the rakamat as he fired. Then he flashed over their
position, plasma fire from the rakamat following, and saw on his sensor board as
the coralskipper rose in pursuit. He put all discretionary vehicle power into
his rear shields for a moment, heard thumps over his audio as his sensors
informed him that plasma ejecta had hit the shields and been stopped.
It had taken six X-wings and a hidden cache of explosives to kill the last
rakamat they'd fought against. This one might be only half as powerful as the
last, but Wedge was a third as powerful as the previous force. The odds were
bad.
On the other hand
, Han Solo had made a generation of people think that
Corellians ignored the odds, no matter how long, and Wedge was as Corellian as
Solo was.
Then the idea hit him, and Wedge managed another humorless grin.
The coralskipper hot on his tail, Wedge looped around until he was
approaching the rakamat and its covering troops from a cross-angle to its path.
He fired again, spraying lasers indiscriminately into the grasses to the left of
the rakamat, scattering the Yuuzhan Vong warriors and reptoids there. From here,
he could see the rakamat's legs as it moved stolidly toward the freighter, could
time them in their steady, docile motions.
Plasma rained toward him from the rakamat, from the coraiskipper behind.
Wedge sideslipped and continued to fire into the grasses, setting them ablaze,
kicking up gouts of dirt and steam. Now his vision was useless, but his sensors
still showed the huge mass of the rakamat, distorted by the heat from the fire.
Wedge dropped to grasstop level, heard scrapes and thumps as his lower hull
was grazed by foliage-perhaps even by irregularities in the terrain. Ahead, he
could see the very top of the rakamat, as its plasma cannons elevated, preparing
to catch his underside as he popped up over them.
He flipped an overhead switch and his S-foils closed from the X-shaped
firing position to cruise position. And as he entered the zone where the grasses
were blazing, he twitched his yoke down, then up.
He had the barest flash of rakamat legs to his left and right, a looming
shadow over him, and then he was
For a bare moment, no plasma came streaking after him. In going under the
rakamat, in emerging low from the wrong side, he'd thrown the creature into
confusion. He switched his S-foils back into firing position as he climbed.
In that moment, the pursuing coralskipper roared through the fire and saw
the rakamat immediately before it. The pilot must have panicked. Over his
shoulder, Wedge saw the bow of the coralskipper wobble as the pilot was torn
between following Wedge under or bouncing over, and that moment of hesitation
doomed him. The skip's bow rose and, at several hundred kilometers per hour, the
skip plowed into the flank of the rakamat.
Rebel Stand Page 29
