"Acknowledged." He switched back to squadron frequency. "Wraiths, form up on me. We'll stay near Ten for the time being."
On the bridge of Iron Fist, the Warlord Zsinj stood on the command walkway above the crew pit. He did not stare out the forward viewports, which showed only starfield along his enemy's exit vector, but down into the screens of his bridge crew.
He was not a tall man, nor was he physically impressive. He was as round as any merchant gourmand, and his exaggerated bandit-style mustachios suggested that his self-image was quite different from the image he projected. The white grand admiral's uniform he wore suggested a rank he'd never earned in service to the Empire, and those who knew that fact could not help but attribute to him the sins of pride and self-deception.
Only he knew how many of these attributes were affectations. False clues to persuade his enemies—and superiors, and subordinates—to come to incorrect conclusions about him. To underestimate him. Sometimes to overestimate him—that could, on occasion, be as useful.
Beside him stood the man in charge of his ground troops and starfighter support, General Melvar. Zsinj was lucky to have found a kindred spirit in Melvar, a man who painted on the face of a dedicated sadist when confronting the outer world and then removed it, revealing features extraordinary only in their blandness, in the warlord's company. Melvar could blend with any crowd on any world with his natural features, and probably had many more alternative identities tucked away than the score or so Zsinj knew about.
"Mon Remonda and the rest of his fleet are still coming on at full speed," Melvar said. "But even with the two Carrack cruisers out and our maneuverability impaired, we should be able to give her a sustained broadside. If we concentrate on her power and engines, we'll trap her here. She'll never get far enough away from Levian Two to make hyperspace."
Zsinj nodded absently. "Time until Mon Remonda is un der our guns?"
A crewman shouted up, "Ships appearing ahead, a drop out of hyperspace. Three vessels, sir—a Mon Calamari cruiser, an Imperial-class Star Destroyer, and a Quasar Fire-class bulk cruiser."
Zsinj sighed, vexed. He looked forward through the view ports, but couldn't make out the new enemies. "I didn't realize Solo had more of his fleet within range. Not that it matters. Enhance the view."
A hologram appeared before a portion of the main viewport. On it were the three vessels his crewman had described. All three were turning to Zsinj's port, exposing their sides, ready to fire on the oncoming Super Star Destroyer.
"They're angling toward the escape vector Mon Remonda will take," Zsinj said. "Toward our weak flank, where the Carrack-class cruisers have been knocked out. They're going to line up so that we'll walk into the worst of their damage if we adjust to continue our prosecution of Mon Remonda. But we're not going to play their game."
Melvar smiled. "I somehow doubted we were."
Zsinj called down to his communications officer, "Send Red Gauntlet, Serpent's Smile and Reprisal on ahead. Punch a hole in the defensive screen they're throwing up, Bring the starfighters back to Iron Fist to act as our own screen." He turned to his weapons specialist. "Ready all guns. Tell them to fire on Mon Remonda as they bear."
"Yes, sir."
Zsinj straightened, smiling. "Solo really should have taken my call. He might even have survived for a while."
Face saw the shuttle towing Janson's X-wing disappear into one of Mon Remonda's bays. The Wraiths's three TIE intercep tor pilots followed him in. He knew from comm traffic that the group's A-wings were already aboard.
Then the leading edge of Mon Remonda came within gunnery range of Iron Fist. Turbolaser flashes by the hundreds lit space between the two capital ships. Far ahead, similar flashes illuminated the void between Solo's Group 2 and Zsinj's ad vance force.
Like a younger sea mammal sidling up beneath its mother, Mon Karren moved up below Mon Remonda, moving into the sea of turbolaser fire with her sister ship, her back to the larger vessel's belly.
Zsinj felt his shoulders sag as he witnessed Mon Karren's ma neuver. "We've lost Mon Remonda," he said.
Melvar offered one of his rare frowns. "They've just barely moved into our range."
"Correct. But they're collaborating to absorb our battery as saults, dividing the damage between them. And since I was foolish enough to bring back our starfighters to protect our engines—"
"They can concentrate their shields against us. We have nothing to batter their topsides with to keep them honest."
"Correct." Zsinj shook his head. "This isn't going to go down in the history annals as a loss for me, Melvar, but it is a loss. One little mistake and Solo slips through my fingers."
"Still, you haven't lost anything but the ammunition and power you've expended."
"True." He leaned down to face his weapons officer. "Con tinue with the barrage until they make the jump to hyperspace. Not your fault, Major. Mine."
"Thank you, sir."
Still pensive, Zsinj turned away and headed out of the bridge. The rest of this battle was going to be mop-up; his sub ordinates could handle that. He needed to rest and prepare for the next engagement.
Solo's fleet dropped out of hyperspace mere light-years from the Levian system and stayed in realspace just long enough to pick up the hyperspace-equipped starfighters and coordinate their next jump. Then they fled back into the comparative safety of faster-than-light speeds.
3
Tired but all present and accounted for—a rarity in full-scale space-navy engagements—the pilots of Wedge's command gradually collected in the pilot's lounge of Mon Remonda.
It was a large chamber with rounded corners, all the walls in antiseptic glossy white, all the furniture in white or blue or green. A fully stocked bar dominated one wall of the chamber, but its cabinets were, while the ship remained on alert status, all locked down, with only nonalcoholic drinks available to the pilots. The air was drier here than in the rest of the ship; none of the pilots of Mon Remonda's four fighter squadrons was a Mon Calamari or Quarren, so they tended to adjust the environment to be more comfortable to land dwellers.
Donos took a comfortable chair in one of the curves that served the lounge as corners and watched the other pilots with interest. The Wraith Squadron pilots were jubilant, especially with the scare involving Wes Janson, but those of the other squadrons exhibited less cheer.
One of the Rogues—a woman with long brown hair, a trim build, and an intense manner—sat in one of what the pilots called egg-chairs. These seats were shaped like white eggs a meter and a half tall, with one side scooped away so someone could sit within, mounted on a post next to a terminal niche in the wall so the pilot could turn his back to the room and do terminal work. Donos took a moment to recall her name: Inyri Forge.
The woman cupped her chin in her hand. Her brown eyes were glum. "Pie's changed the rules on us," she said. "We should have expected it."
Tyria said, "I'm not sure what you mean."
Forge gave her a look of evaluation, as though deciding whether to offer sarcasm or simple information, and settled on the latter course. "While you Wraiths were running around in disguise or doing your ground missions, we've been following Zsinj all over space. Into regions he controls, into New Republic regions he's assaulting, wherever we can find signs of his passage. We find little hints we can't afford to investigate, because many of them are false clues he's leaving to lead us into a trap or waste our time and resources. We also find the remains of full-scale assaults, where we always arrive too late—he's in and out before we can mount a response.
"But today, we get number two, and not only had he fig ured out our pattern of response times, but he was waiting around to hit us when we arrived."
"And," Hobbie said, "his fleet was huge. Something like twenty capital ships. More than we thought he could field. Our intelligence hasn't kept up with him."
"So," Forge concluded, "we have to change our tactics. To suit him. And that's not good."
>
Face Loran, from the little table he shared with Dia, said, "We don't need to alter our tactics. We need to alter bis. It looks like he hasn't been bringing Iron Fist into gravity wells, probably because of the beating we gave him the last time he did, until today—when he had an overwhelming force. If he can keep doing that, he's going to beat us."
Elassar Targon stood at the bar, drumming on the bar top with his knuckles. "We need to follow all the leads we've been getting. Even if some of them are traps. What about the rumor of the bacta hijacking being planned?"
Shalla reached an oversized couch and twirled as she fell onto it so she lay faceup. "Too obvious," she said. "Odds are a hundred to one that was one of Zsinj's planted leads. We follow that and we get ambushed again."
Elassar gave her a scornful look. "You've been doing all that analysis of leads, even before the Wraiths were back with Mon Remonda. Is that what you told the mission-planning staff?"
"It is."
"So you're the one who's keeping General Solo running scared."
Conversations subsided all over the pilot's lounge as fliers turned to follow this exchange.
Shalla pulled herself back and upright so that she leaned back against one of the couch arms. She did not look happy. "You know, you're wrong in so many ways it may take me a couple of days to straighten you out. First, I'm not the only one providing intelligence analysis to General Solo. I'm one of about thirty, and I'm a very distant link in that chain. Second, he's not running scared. He just has responsibilities to keep his subordinates alive long enough for them to get the job done, a concept that may be a little lofty for a school-aged thrillseeker like you."
Elassar's face set. "Are we still no decor?"
Pilot's parlance ... by custom, only pilots were admitted to this lounge, and once inside, designations of rank, sometimes disparagingly referred to as "decor," were largely ignored. Even so, it was sometimes a strain to maintain this custom when the most senior officers were present, which is why their visits to this lounge were infrequent and short.
Shalla nodded.
Elassar took a deep breath, apparently considering his words. When they emerged, they were more reasoned than the Wraiths and Rogues were used to hearing from him. "I'm not going to pretend I know more about Zsinj or about intelligence operations than you. I don't. What I do know is that a pilot's job is to fly and to vape the enemy. The advice you and the others are giving to our superiors is keeping us from doing that."
"You're right," Shalla said. "But pilots have other jobs. Such as not flying straight into the ground, straight into a star, or straight into a battle situation chosen and lovingly set up by an enemy. I don't question that you're brave, Elassar. But are you so brave that you're happy to die pointlessly?"
"So what do we do?" That was Dorset Konnair, an A-wing pilot of Polearm Squadron. She was a small woman of very pale skin and very dark hair, with a blue star-flare tattoo around her right eye. Her flight suit concealed her other tattoos, all of them in shades of blue. She was also very limber, as evidenced by the ease with which she sat, legs folded tailor-style, in her chair. Donos knew she was from Coruscant, which probably explained why she was quiet so often in pilot gatherings; Donos knew the kind of suspicion with which some New Republic veterans viewed Coruscant natives. "Either we keep running around gathering Zsinj's crumbs and getting nowhere, or we bite on the bait he's deliberately leaving and let him draw us in."
Forge said, "We have to regain the initiative. Bait our own trap. Offer him something he can't afford to refuse."
Donos snorted. "Such as what? Mon Remonda? Have her limp through Zsinj-controlled space like a wounded avian and hope he comes swooping in to finish her off?"
"No," Elassar said. He struck another swashbuckling pose. "Offer him Elassar Targon, master of the uni-"
"Sithspit, you're obnoxious." Forge fixed Elassar with an amused glance. "But you're on the right track. I was thinking we ought to offer him General Han Solo."
"Don't do that," said Hobbie from his stool at the bar. His voice was more mournful than ever. "If Zsinj kills Solo, Wedge might be appointed to fill the vacancy."
"Good point," Forge said. "But bear with me a minute. Kell, didn't you say that General Solo had gone gallivanting around in the Millennium Falcon two, three months ago, delivering some high-security messages for the Inner Council?"
Kell, sharing a couch with Tyria, nodded. "That's right."
"There was no secret to the fact that he was moving about. And you used his trip to pull a fast one on Admiral Trigit. To distract him from his primary objective over Commenor's moon. You made him think Solo was still around, a viable target."
"Show due respect," said Runt. A member of a species whose representatives were usually too tall to fit in a starfighter cockpit, Runt was, by their standards, a midget, though he and Kell were the tallest of the Wraiths. His hairy body, his elongated face with flaring nostrils and large, square teeth, and his wide-eyed look all suggested that his kind were closer to being draft animals than intelligent humanoids, but his squadmates had found him to be a wise and capable being.
And somewhat odd. "You speak," he continued, "of the only flight of Dinner Squadron. The one X-wing squadron with an undefeated record and no losses."
"Oh, I forgot." Forge smiled. "But what I'm saying is that we have a track record of General Solo occasionally embarking on special missions even while commanding the Zsinj task force, and if there's anyone Zsinj might change his plans to nab, it's Han Solo. A chance for revenge is a powerful motivator."
"I like it." The voice came from another of the egg-chairs against the wall. It was turned away from the room, so the other pilots present had presumed it was unoccupied or that anyone there was engrossed in his terminal.
Now the chair turned around to face the room. Its occu pant was Han Solo—not decked out in the uncomfortable- looking uniform that was apparently his bane, but wearing the comfortable trousers, shirt, and vest that were his preferred dress. His clothes were spotted with sweat stains; obviously he hadn't changed since his recent time on the bridge. But his expression was amused. "But there are two problems with this plan."
Forge cleared her throat, concealing any surprise she might have felt. "And what are they, sir?"
"No 'sir.' No decor, remember? Problem number one is that the Millennium Falcon is currently stowed on Princess Leia's flagship, the Rebel Dream, and there's no telling when I'll see her again."
Donos privately wondered which "her" he was referring to.
"Problem number two," Solo continued, "is that we still don't know what Zsinj is up to. And you Wraiths are largely to blame for that."
The pilots under his command looked around for some one bearing a mark of guilt.
"By which I mean," Solo said, "since you figured out that he was planning to steal a second Super Star Destroyer, Razor's Kiss, from Kuat, and since you figured out how to determine where it would be so we could all blow it up, you've forced Zsinj to revert to his backup plan. Which is what?"
Forge shook her head. "We don't know."
Face said, "Though we have one lead. Saffalore."
That was an Imperial-held world in the Corporate Sector, home to a large corporation called Binring Biomedical. It was there that Piggy had been altered—had, in a sense, been created. A manufacturing facility owned by Zsinj on another world had fabricated the exact sort of transparisteel cages Piggy had been reared within, suggesting that Binring, too, might have a surreptitious relationship with the warlord.
"I'm as tired as you are of chasing down vague hints and leads and only dropping in after Zsinj is long gone," Solo said. "So Mon Remonda is leaving the fleet for a while. Saffalore is our next port of call." He rose and walked toward the lounge's exit. "Still, I sort of like your idea of luring Zsinj out to come after me. I wouldn't mind personally leading to Zsinj's downfall." He offered a smile, almost sinister, back toward the assembled pilots. "Give that plan some more thought, too.
" Then he was gone.
"Never can tell when a Corellian will pop up," Donos said.
The pilots were diverted by a banging sound—Elassar hammering his head and horns against the top of the bar. His face a mask of tragedy, he suspended hammering to look at his fellow pilots. "Now I am done," he said. "I have performed the unluckiest deed possible. I've suggested that my commanding officer runs away from combat, and I've done so within his hearing."
"True," Shalla said. "To make it worse, you did it when we're still on alert status. Meaning you can't even blot out the memory with drink."
"Don't remind me. Shalla? Dear friend, kind lieutenant?"
"Yes?"
"Will you kill me? Please?"
"I don't think so."
Solo Command Page 5
