"This will be a standard stoop-and-shoot mission," Wedge told his pilots. "With one difference. We know we're going to be recorded. We know because we're setting out the spy satellites ourselves. So as long as we'll be giving Zsinj information, we want it to be the worst information possible.
"Cubber, I want you to repaint all the X-wings with Rogue Squadron's colors."
The mechanic looked unhappy. "If there's anything I hate worse than redoing a bad job—"
"It's redoing a good one. I know. And it gets worse, because immediately after the mission, you'll have to strip all that paint and reapply the Wraith Squadron colors." Wedge shrugged. "Or we can let Grinder do the repainting and put you in his cockpit for the mission."
"No, thanks. I'll paint."
Wedge continued, "So, we unload and situate the satellites. Piggy, I want you and Grinder to calculate the most likely point where an X-wing squadron would enter the system and what their most likely avenue of attack against the planet would be. We'll set up the satellites along that path and get the best possible images for Zsinj and Trigit. Since we'll be doing so much work in vacuum suits, I want Face and Phanan in X-wings flying cover, just in case of trouble. Phanan, you can use mine. As long as you treat it well."
"I'll try not to spill my lomin-ale all over it."
"How professional of you. Then, we load up the X-wings, activate the satellites, and jump out of system. The next day, we come back in the X-wings and perform our ground strike.
"So, spend some time today and tomorrow getting used to calling one another by Rogue call signs. And, Face, when addressing me, don't forget to call me Tycho once or twice. We'll be broadcasting in the clear, like most snubfighter units, instead of using Wraith Squadron's encryption."
Face nodded.
"After the strike, we'll jump to rejoin Night Caller. Simple, in theory. Questions?"
There were none.
"Let's do it, then. We'll begin deploying the satellites in two hours. Grinder, Piggy, get us some locations by then."
Grinder was the first one out of the door, Wedge noticed. Eager to begin processing data for his extra assignment?
Grinder literally ran to the locker room adjacent to the Deck Three forward lounge. He took a look around to make sure I no one was on hand to observe him, then he keyed in his locker combination. A moment later he palmed the small box he'd taken from the Scohar Xenohealth Institute. Its occupant began scratching at the pressboard sides of the box.
Grinder, increasingly nervous and watchful, headed forward the few steps it took him to reach the upper door into the bow hold. He peered into the hold, was reassured to note the absence of mechanics or pilots.
He pulled out his datapad and keyed in a code for it to transmit. Now, and for about five minutes, the cameras over-looking the hold would show a still image.
He descended to floor level and keyed in another command. When this one was transmitted, the canopy of one of the X-wings on the middle row hissed and opened.
Face's snubfighter. Grinder smiled. It had taken him considerable effort to acquire the passwords and other special keys that gave him access to the fighters, lockers, and quarters of all the personnel aboard Night Caller, but it was worth it. It gave him lots of opportunities to enjoy himself.
He pried open the top of the box containing the insect and upended the box over Face's control seat. Flecks of some nameless substance, perhaps insect food, drifted out. Then something black, not an insect, slid free, and he caught it as it fell.
A small, cheap datapad, the kind that was not programmable, with a memory unit only large enough to contain a little data. Its face read "Storini Glass Prowler, Care and Feeding."
He shook the box again and the translucent insect slid out, dropped wriggling to the seat, and stood upright. It turned to look at Grinder as if evaluating him for a possible meal, then slowly looked around in a circle, analyzing its new surroundings.
Grinder issued another command through his datapad and Face's canopy closed. Now Face would be in for a surprise. Grinder hoped the insect would be in an inobvious place when the pilot climbed aboard for his guard mission. Face should make some interesting noises when he discovered the weird little creature crawling all over him.
They set up the surveillance satellites without incident, and Face reported no insectile intruder when he and Phanan returned from their guard mission.
Surreptitiously, Grinder looked Face over, trying to find some sign that the pilot had accidentally squashed the insect, but there was no spot of fluid or crushed exoskeleton to suggest he had.
On his next opportunity, Grinder returned to the bow hold, opened the canopy of Face's X-wing, and spent the next several minutes searching his cockpit, but the insect was nowhere to be found. He even searched the fighter's small cargo bay, again without luck.
He sighed. A prank opportunity wasted. Ungrateful insect. Next time, he'd find a creature more noisy and aggressive, something sure to make Face want to eject in midmission.
Grinder woke that night sure that he'd heard something scratching at his door.
A dream, he thought. Then he heard it again: Scritch, scritch, scritch. The precise noise the Storini Glass Prowler had made in its box.
He rose and padded over to the door of his quarters, but the noise did not repeat itself. He opened the door, but there was nothing on the floor outside, just Phanan pausing outside his own door.
Grinder yawned, then asked, "Did you hear something?" Phanan gave him a curious look. "Do you always come to your door naked in the middle of the night to ask questions like that?"
"No, really. Did you hear anything odd a moment ago?" "Well, actually, yes. Some sort of skittering. Like something small running around."
Grinder looked suspiciously up and down the corridor, then carefully shut his door.
Eleven members of Wraith Squadron—all but Tyria, whose X-wing was again assigned to Phanan—dropped out of hyperspace in the Todirium system, as close to the mining planet as the hyperdrives would allow. They screamed down to the planet's surface a hundred kilometers from the colony's warehousing district, then looped around from an east-to-west heading to a north-to-south, flying in terrain-following mode to confound local sensors.
Thirty kilometers from their target, they overflew a small residential compound. They saw someone outside the compound, a humanoid figure in a blue environment suit, look up at them as they roared past.
Wedge said, "That may have cost us our element of surprise. Stay alert, people."
"Twenty kilometers," Janson said.
More roads, most of them still dirt tracks, crisscrossed the brown landscape beneath them.
"Ten kilometers," Janson said.
Wedge said, "Reduce speed," and throttled back. "S-foils to attack position."
They now crossed over some tilled fields, the crops a weird blue-green Wedge would not have thought belonged in nature, and irrigation canals. Some of the roads were paved.
"Five klicks," said Janson.
Gate, Wedge's R5 unit, shrieked a warning as his sensor board lit up with an alert—directional sensors seeking a lock.
"Break off by wings," Wedge said. "Deal with the threat first. Worry about the primary target later."
Four pairs of X-wings rolled away from Wedge, leaving him with his temporary wingman, Donos, in the middle of their new, broader formation.
Moments later the threat came into view. Just above the outskirts of the planet's primary settlement rose a line of repulsorlift craft: short, stubby vehicles half the length of X-wings, powerful-looking blaster cannons protruding from their rear sections, red and yellow paint jobs suggesting danger.
Janson said, "Ultra-Lights."
Wedge frowned. ULAVs, or Ultra-Light Assault Vehicles, were still in use—barely—by the New Republic and on backwater planets like this. Their repulsorlifts should not have been powerful enough to lift them to rooftop level; these vehicles had to have been retrofitted with much more powerful engine
s. "Five, Six, break left," Wedge said. "Eleven, Twelve, break right. Prepare to do crossing strafing runs on those targets. Everyone else, go evasive and continue on to primary target. Be careful: those rear guns are the real problems."
He heard their acknowledgments as he stood his X-wing up on its port wing, then continued into a rollover, maneuvering like a corkscrew on toward the target. Sensors showed Donos sticking close to his tail.
Lasers lit up the front ends of the ULAVs; two beams stopped dead twenty meters ahead of Wedge's nose, stopped clean by his forward shields.
Then he and Donos were past the line of attackers. The ULAVs were indeed floating ten meters up on what had to be improved repulsorlift engines, and immediately behind them and the buildings shielding them were artillery units, small self-propelled missile racks pointed back toward the Wraiths' direction of approach. The pilots of the artillery units watched the Wraiths fly over, their expressions startled; it looked as though the snubfighters' speed had caught them off guard.
Wedge continued his roll. The blaster cannons on the ULAVs' rears opened up, their emissions lighting up the sky behind him; one gunner was good enough to graze Wedge's rear shields.
He heard Piggy's voice: "Five, recommend you—"
Wedge spoke up fast, "Twelve, no personal comments." He couldn't have Piggy commencing his advisory comments, not if they were to bring off their imitation of Rogue Squadron.
"Yes, sir."
Face's voice: "Oh, lighten up, Tycho."
"Same order to you, Eight." Wedge grinned. Face had chosen a good point to insert his "mistake" of identifying his mission leader by name.
"Yes, sir."
"Leader, Eleven. Commencing strafing run."
Behind Wedge and Donos, the two wings of snubfighters crisscrossed above the line of ULAVs and missile artillery pieces, their lasers flashing down from the skies like red shears. The sky lit up again as one of the missile units detonated.
Wedge's distance-to-range was down to a klick. Ahead, he saw the tan warehouse Face had identified in his briefing recording. He targeted the building, saw his brackets go red almost instantly, and fired.
The proton torpedo flashed to the target faster than his eye could follow. The torpedo hit an upper-story window and was inside when it went off, blowing the roof from the building in an uncountable cloud of pieces. Moments later, torpedoes fired by the five Wraiths trailing him homed in on the disintegrating target. As Wedge pulled up, the warehouse became a cloud of smoke and bright light, one that swelled so fast that even his evasive course carried him partway through it.
He saw red glowing light, heard thumps as debris from the detonation rattled against his X-wing's skin, and then he was through the cloud, climbing. A quick check of his diagnostics told him the extinguisher system of one of his engines was reporting failure—which meant that shrapnel had penetrated the engine and might cause more trouble to come.
"AH units, report in," he said.
"Nine is fine. But you've got some new vents, Leader." "Let me know if anything comes pouring out, Nine." "Tych, this is Eleven. Their defensive line is gone. The missile units committed fratricide."
Wedge winced. That meant the missiles on one artillery unit had detonated, igniting the missiles on adjacent units, and so on up the line—probably taking the ULAVs with them, since they were so close. That defensive line was a bad, sloppy tactic, probably chosen in haste because of the speed of the Wraiths' approach. "Four is in the green."
"This is Three. I've lost a laser cannon and picked up some drag."
"Twelve is intact. Leader, the primary target is a crater." The rest of the acknowledgments rolled in, reports of minor damage, no injuries. Wedge said, "Good work, Rogues. Let's get out of here."
Falynn looked as though she'd just bitten into sour fruit. Her body language, as she kept her elbows on the conference-room table and propped her chin on her hands, also suggested irritation. "I thought I wouldn't mind. But it bothers me."
Wedge guessed that it wasn't too deep a grievance. "That Rogue Squadron gets credit for the raid on Todirium?"
"That's it."
"Well, they don't in the official report. And that will be declassified as soon as our current mission is done."
"Well, I have a complaint," Kell said. "I hit my artillery unit dead on and by the time I came around for a second pass, all the ULAVs were gone."
Wedge gave him a skeptical look. "That's hardly grounds for complaint."
"I still don't have an aerial kill! Three strike missions and a score of zero!"
The others laughed at him.
Face's comlink beeped. He activated it. "Yes?"
"Loran, this is the bridge. You have a HoloNet communication for Captain Darillian. It's Admiral Trigit."
"Night Caller," the admiral said, "will join the corvette Constrictor and the frigate Provocateur as our forward close support line. As soon as we drop out of hyperspace into the Morobe system, launch your TIE fighters to join theirs; they'll serve as our escort force."
"I understand," Face said. "And your own TIE fighters will be the primary attack force?"
"Correct." The hologram of Admiral Trigit leaned forward and his tone became more confidential. "Now, I have something further to ask. How might I persuade you to give me the details of your, shall we say, unrecorded adventures at each of your stops?"
Face froze. The admiral had guessed— No. Trigit had only learned something about Captain Darillian's private negotiations on behalf of Warlord Zsinj. If he had suspected the true identity of Night Caller's crew, he would never have given Face the plan of attack for Talasea. Face swallowed. "Sir . . . You can't." "I could make it well worth your while." "Sir, let me explain." Face tried to compose himself, to make his lines authentic. "First, if I sold you my honor, I could never buy it back. Second, I realize I may be displeasing you . . . but I want you to understand that I'll keep faith with the warlord until I die. People look at me, and see my little habits, and think I am a shallow man, but I am an honorable officer, and will not break faith with my commander." He gave Trigit his most intent stare, abandoning all of Darillian's florid mannerisms. "It may be, sir, that I will leave Zsinj's employ sometime in the future. It may be that I will enter yours. If I do, you will know from this encounter that I will always keep faith with you."
Trigit drew back. He did not seem to be angered. "Point taken, Captain."
"Thank you, sir. And may I say, I would be pleased to serve under you in any formal capacity. But until I do . . ."
"Until you do, let us make no more assaults, no matter how well intended, upon your honor." Trigit gave him a faint smile. "You surprise me, Captain Darillian."
"I intend to do so again, sir."
"Very well." Trigit gave him an uncommonly gracious half bow. "I'll see you at the rendezvous."
"I look forward to it."
Trigit winked out.
Face swiveled toward the comm center doorway, where Wedge stood waiting.
"We have him," Wedge said.
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
Grinder awoke with a start. There was the sound again, no dream, no hallucination, but an intermittent scratching.
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
He opened the door to the hall. There was nothing beyond it.
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
No, the sound was coming from up in the ceiling, just above his bed, beyond plates of durasteel. After another few moments, it stopped.
Grinder tore through his pile of personal possessions until he found the datapad that had come with the Storini Glass Prowler. He scrolled his way through the information. What to feed the creature. How many hours of light and dark it should endure each day. What its preferred temperature ranges were. How to tell male from female.
Nothing about how it could find its way out of an X-wing cockpit and come to a chamber it had never visited to find the man who had taken it from its homeworld.
He switched on the chamber's terminal t
o the ship's computer. It was not likely that the computer would contain information about the creature, but it was possible . . .
And the index popped up the name Storini Glass Prowler.
He brought the data up on his monitor.
Nothing much that he hadn't seen on the instructional datapad, except for a sophisticated hologram showing the creature's exterior; on-screen controls allowed Grinder to move his point of view into the creature's insides and look at its physical structure at a variety of magnifications.
But at the bottom of the entry was a link labeled, "See also Storini Crystal Deceiver." He activated it.
And read, in growing dismay, the description.
Often mistaken for its nearest relative, the Glass Prowler, the Storini Crystal Deceiver is far less common and far more dangerous.
He skipped down past the description of the creature's natural habitat.
The Crystal Deceiver's jaws secrete a poison that is dangerous both to the native life-forms of Storinal and to mammals from other worlds. The creature feeds on creatures that prey on the Glass Prowler. It simulates the Glass Prowler's movements, luring predators to it; only when they strike does it revert to its natural speed and ferocity, eluding all attacks and ferociously biting its attacker. Its poison is a powerful paralytic that keeps its enemies helpless while it literally eats them alive.
Crystal Deceivers are a particular danger to mammalian life-forms because of their unusual olfactory-based memory retention. A Crystal Deceiver encountering the scent of a mammal will remember it for the rest of its life and follow it whenever it encounters the scent. This unfortunate trait has led to many instances of Crystal Deceivers following wilder-ness observers from the wild into communities and attacking them in their residences.
The poison of these creatures is not dangerous to healthy individuals. The life of a victim of a Crystal Deceiver assault can be saved by medical treatment if the creature has not devoured an irreparable quantity of the victim's body mass. No. Grinder shook his head. The box had said Glass Prowler. Surely the corporation that had captured the insect for resale would not have made a mistake and boxed up a Crystal Deceiver instead.
Wraith Squadron Page 31
