Star Wars: X-Wing VI: Iron Fist

by Aaron Allston

  The front of the hangar was well lit by two overhead sources of light, both attached to the building’s front wall. The center of the wall was dominated by a large sliding door in two sections; one section would slide right, the other left. The duracrete leading up to the door was decorated with many thin scorch marks, sign of numberless too-hasty departures by TIE fighters shooting out of the hangar and angling immediately for the sky. That suggested the pilots on-base considered themselves hotshots and had a commander who encouraged such behavior, also not a good thing for the Wraiths.

  On either side of the door, perhaps twenty meters apart, were guards in stormtrooper armor. Their stances were angled in toward the door, and each had the other plus most of the front of the building in sight. They might have been chatting over a private channel on their helmet comlinks, but otherwise they were very much on duty.

  Wedge dismissed the simplest of tactics for such situations, the make-a-noise-and-one-of-them-will-come gambit. Guards like these, professionally on duty even when out of sight of their officers and fellows, would certainly investigate, but first they’d call in the anomaly. If the investigating guard didn’t report back continuously to his fellow, the other one would call that fact in, too. Within moments the place would be swarming with stormtroopers. Wedge and the Wraiths needed some considerable uninterrupted time with the vehicles inside—perhaps as much as half an hour.

  There was another door on the building front, immediately left of the leftmost guard, but it was securely shut and looked like an armored door—quite defensible if someone inside wanted to make a stand of it.

  Wedge switched places with Janson again and let the man act as guard. In a whisper, he explained the situation to the others and asked, “Ideas?”

  Castin said, “I might be able to slice into the base’s main computer and have them relieved of duty; we just march two of us in and dismiss them or blast them.”

  Wedge considered it. “That could work, but you’d have to maintain the computer breach or execute another one just a few minutes later when we sort out our escape vector.”

  “True.”

  Dia said, “I vote we wait until we can be sure there’s no cross traffic nearby and no one observing them—”

  “Which means waiting until we also know they’re not in communication with someone else over their headsets,” Kell said.

  “—and just step out and shoot them. Two shooters, no waiting. Run out, grab them and haul them back beside the building, substitute a couple of us for them. Then take as long as we need to get their access keys and codes and go in.”

  Wedge shook his head. “Sounds too simple.” Then he reconsidered. “On the other hand, that’s probably a virtue. All right, we’ll do it that way. But first, Runt, can you find out whether those two are broadcasting? Search nonstandard frequencies in the Imperial ranges and look for low-powered signals; if they’re just chatting, they’re not going to be on the usual bands.”

  Runt nodded and, from a belt pouch, brought out the field dispatcher’s comlink that was among the latest toys the New Republic had given him when he volunteered to be the squadron’s new communications specialist. The item looked like a slightly bulkier datapad. It had nowhere near the range of features of the field communications unit their former comm specialist, Jasmin Ackbar, used to carry, but it was the biggest comm unit they could carry inconspicuously while in stormtrooper armor.

  Runt tapped through a series of functions, grew impatient with the device, and traded places with Wes. There, he could set the device on the ground and protrude its nose just beyond the building corner. Finally he nodded. “We have it,” he whispered back at the others. “Their signal sounds like dispatch information, but it is confusing. Set your comlinks to oh-three-oh-seven-four if you want to hear.”

  Wedge did so, and immediately picked up the two guards’ traffic.

  One of them, his voice a mellow bass, said, “Light assault vehicle twelve to block alpha two.”

  The other, whose hoarse voice probably started in the baritone range, replied, “TIE four to block delta sixteen.”

  “That’s outside your range.”

  “It is not.”

  “So you’re crossing through the plasma wall and exploding? Nice of you to concede a piece that way.”

  “Uh … make that TIE four to block delta twelve.”

  “Heavy emplacement one fires on TIE four. Scratch TIE four.”

  “Damn. Target-paint heavy emplacement one.”

  Wedge switched off the channel and looked at the others. “Anyone recognize that traffic?”

  Dia nodded. Wedge imagined that she had to be quite uncomfortable with her brain tails stuffed up in her stormtrooper helmet, but she hadn’t made a noise of complaint. She said, “It’s called Quadrant. It’s a game out of the Imperial Academy. An old game, but it has recently become all the rage.”

  Wedge asked, “Runt, is there a data transmission accompanying that vocal signal?”

  Runt shook his head.

  Wedge snorted. “They’re playing just by visualization. Wonderful. We get the hangar guarded by intellectuals. All right, here’s how we play our game. Wes, Donos, you’re our shooters. Wes, march around to the far front corner and situate yourself. We’re not going to use a comlink signal—it might be picked up. We’ll time it. You two set your blasters to stun. Sync your chronos and fire at three minutes from sync … unless you hear or see anything anomalous, in which case you duck under cover and try again at six minutes. If no opportunity presents itself by six minutes, scrub the mission and get back here. Tainer, you go with Wes to haul off the other guard; Phanan, you take the place of the other guard. Runt, at this end you’ll haul off the unconscious guard; Face, you’ll take his place.”

  It was a long three minutes. Halfway through it, a flatbed skimmer hauling two stormtroopers and some sort of laser artillery piece cruised by the hangar. Wedge and the others flattened themselves against the building wall, but the skimmer’s occupants didn’t even glance in their direction.

  Wedge saw Donos keeping a close eye on his chrono. At twenty seconds of three minutes, Donos pulled his helmet off. At fifteen seconds, he checked his blaster rifle to make sure it was switched to stun and ready to fire. At ten seconds, he peeked around the corner, and did so again at five seconds. Then, precisely on cue, he stepped around the corner.

  The sound of the stun blast was impossibly loud; Wedge was sure it could be heard off in the city of Hullis. Wedge stayed flat against the wall while Runt and Face ran past him. Only then did he peek around the corner, his own blaster ready in case his squadmates needed cover.

  Runt almost tripped as he skidded to a halt over the unconscious form of his target; he picked the man up with inhuman ease, slung him over his shoulder, and came charging back toward Wedge. Beyond him, Kell arrived from the far corner, repeated his action with less speed and less pure strength, but was still swift. He arrived mere seconds behind Runt, his unconscious cargo bouncing painfully across his shoulder.

  Now there were just two guards in front of the hangar, angled toward one another, at attention. Wedge checked his chrono. Fifteen seconds had passed, and the world was, cosmetically at least, the same as it had been at the start of those brief seconds.

  “Castin,” he said.

  “I’m way ahead of you,” his computer and security expert informed him. “Helmets off, no traffic from their control, I’m checking now for their orders and passcards. No passcards. That means a transmitted or spoken password. Let’s hope it’s transmitted. Hmm …”

  Shalla stayed in a crouch behind a self-powered tool cart. Not four steps away was the doorway into the motor-pool office. Two stormtroopers—she suspected they were the ones who’d been in charge of the vehicle she’d ridden in—were within, one seated, both with helmets off. One, tall and fair-skinned, stood by the door, holding a glass with blue liquid on the inside and condensation on the outside. The other, apparently of average height and with skin as dark a
s Shalla’s, was seated at the main terminal, dictating in a bored tone. Shalla could catch most of his words. It sounded like a routine report, which made him the ranking officer. “… without struggle. No charges expended. Net expenditure: skimmer fuel, total of seventy-eight klicks.”

  The other said something Shalla didn’t catch. The seated man nodded, then continued, “On return, about half a klick from base, stopped to offer aid to patrol of Sergeant—what was his name?”

  The other one shrugged.

  “I’ll put a placeholder there for now. Sergeant Placeholder, whose skimmer had broken down; gave him, his squadron, and his prisoners, including Lieutenant Cothron, transportation to base. Additional expenditure: fuel of hauling mass of five extra prisoners and ten additional stormtroopers—”

  “Eleven,” said the other man.

  “Ten.” The seated man thought about it. “Well, you were paying attention and I wasn’t. Eleven additional stormtroopers, distance of two kilometers.” He frowned, then shook his head. “End of report. Let me go through and edit out redundancies and program that placeholder to fetch the name of that squad leader, and we’re done for the night.” But he didn’t reach for the keyboard yet. “You’re sure about the eleven thing.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Shalla stood and walked, as confidently as though she were the base commander, to the door. She shouldered aside the man standing there and tapped the door switch. The office door dropped into place with the disconcerting suddenness of Imperial engineering.

  Both men looked at her. The man she’d shoved aside said, “You know, it’s been a long time since I taught a nerf-herder like you some manners.”

  “It’s going to be a while longer,” she said, and swung the butt of her blaster into his jaw. The man dropped, splashing his glass of blue ale across the floor.

  The ranking officer was halfway out of his seat before she shot him. The blaster shot took him in the chest, burning through the armor and dropping him to the floor.

  She froze. She thought she had set the weapon to stun.

  Then she was hit from the side as her first target slammed into her, barely slowed by the blow she’d dealt him. His rush propelled her and bent her sideways over a desk. If not for her armor, she’d have been impaled on the collection of trays, spikes, and knickknacks littering its surface; instead, the force with which she hit the top of the desk smashed them flat.

  Instead of struggling to get free, instead of wrestling with him for control of her blaster, which his big hand now gripped, she braced herself with a free hand on one edge of the desk, extended one leg as far as she could, and then swept with it with all her strength. Her kick caught her assailant behind his knees and knocked his legs out from under him. He crashed to the floor, dragging her on top of him.

  With his free hand, he reached for her throat. She abandoned her grip on her blaster, swept aside his hand, and, her striking hand formed into the flattest, tightest fist she could manage, struck at his throat.

  Her blow was hard and true. She felt his windpipe give way under it. Her opponent’s eyes grew wide in sudden shock and he, too, released her blaster, clutching at his throat with both hands.

  She grabbed her weapon and stood away from him to watch him die. He made strangling noises as he tried to draw breath through a channel no longer capable of conveying it. He cast an imploring look her way, but she shook her head; this injury was beyond anything she could repair.

  A sudden wave of trembling swept her. She knew it wasn’t all the aftereffects of adrenaline. Two men dead because she’d fouled up. Killing didn’t bother her unduly; it was the act required of a warrior in wartime. But killing because of a lapse in judgment … well, her father would not be proud of her.

  She shook her head, willing away the unwanted vision of the old man’s stern features, and tried to force the trembling to stop. She stepped around the dying stormtrooper and hit the light switch on the wall. Now the other hangar residents, if they looked over, would see a dark and presumably unoccupied office.

  She made a quick checklist of things to do, and found that it had lengthened considerably because of her mistake. Move the two bodies into the bed of the skimmer she’d come in on. Clean up this office so the next person in didn’t wonder about the spilled fluid and ravaged desk. File that stormtrooper’s report. Repair her helmet comm system with components from one of these troopers’ helmets. Choose a skimmer, perhaps the one she came in on, mark it out of service if possible, disconnect its comm system so that it couldn’t be used to trace the skimmer or override its controls. And then stand by. All within hearing of the men working, or playing cards, or doing whatever they were doing at the back of the motor-pool building … unless she chose to assault them, too.

  She sighed. It was going to be a long several hours’ work … packed neatly into half an hour or less of available time.

  It took Castin another agonizing five-minute wait before he cracked the guards’ code. One of the two guards had thirty-two classic Quadrant games recorded on his datapad—every move the games’ master-level players had made, plus commentary by analysts who were far too serious about the game. Thirty-two was also, Castin pointed out, the number of days in the local monthly calendar. He transmitted the name of the match whose number corresponded to the day of the month, and the front personnel door opened right up.

  Wraith Squadron marched into the hangar in formation … a formation they lost as soon as they saw the hangar’s contents. “Boss,” Tainer said, “we have hit the jackpot.”

  Wedge was, for once, grateful for the stormtrooper helmet. It concealed his openmouthed surprise.

  In the hangar was not a complement of TIE fighters, but eight far more formidable, far faster TIE interceptors.

  Wedge took a moment to find his voice. “Even better. It’s the pirate’s life for us, and these are better pirate vehicles. Come on, people, Phase Three, snap it up.”

  Castin found the hangar’s main computer terminal at the back of the building. He brought up the main menu and began looking at what was available to him. The others, once they were sure that the roof-mounted holocams observing the hangar were positioned to view only the vehicles, clustered around him.

  Castin leaned back from his keyboard. “Good news and bad news, Commander.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “I can get into this pretty easily, do everything I’m supposed to do from here.”

  “But?”

  “But, security seems to be based on flag counting. For every anomaly in routine the computer registers a marker, or flag, that it keeps track of. When flags grow too numerous at any one site, the computer raises an alarm. It might send a routine query, in which case an incorrect response would raise more flags; it might just send investigators out. If this system works like other, similar Imperial systems, flags have greater or lesser ‘weight’ depending on just how anomalous they are. For example, a storage-room door being unlocked at the wrong time will raise a little flag, while the door into a hangar full of valuable interceptors being unlocked at the wrong time will raise a big one.”

  Wedge nodded. “Have we dropped any flags yet?”

  “Probably not. We did open a door, but the guards outside have to have regular access to the refresher, so I doubt that’s a flag.”

  “Very well.” Wedge considered. They had to ready six of the interceptors for departure, disconnect any tracer comm units functioning within them, sabotage the other two vehicles and perhaps the hangar, exit the hangar, and cover the separate escapes of the interceptor hijackers and the Wraiths who would be departing on foot. “I assume, then, that a change in maintenance schedules would raise a smaller flag than the holocams observing a bunch of anomalous pirates moving around their hangar.”

  “That’s a fair assumption.”

  “Then get into the base scheduler. Forge a request for immediate maintenance of this hangar’s interceptors. Time-stamp it an hour or so ago. Assign it to a fictitious work crew, or
, if you can get into the personnel listings, a crew that’s off-duty. Follow this up with an acknowledgment of the arrival of the work crew a few minutes ago. Then do the same thing with a request for servicing of the hangar’s holocam system. Time-stamp that one earlier today, lower priority, also with an acknowledgement of arrival in the last few minutes.”

  Castin managed the task within a few minutes, then switched off the hangar holocams. The Wraiths got to work.

  Castin stayed at the computer terminal and began working on their escape distraction.

  Wedge, Janson, Kell, Runt, and Dia checked out the eight interceptors. All but Runt had some experience flying TIE fighters; Runt, as communications specialist, used what gear he had to find and disable slave circuitry that might enable the base commanders to seize control of the interceptors remotely, then disabled automatic tracer systems built into the comm units.

  Tyria and Donos had what the others enviously referred to as “vandalism duty.” With the hangar mechanics’ own industrial cutters, metal-shearing tools utilizing a tight, focused form of the same destructive energy that made blasters formidable weapons, they burned messages across the interior walls of the hangar: HAWK-BATS NEEDED THESE MORE THAN YOU! KNEEL TO THE HAWK-BATS, WORMS. GET OUT OR BE SORRY; THIS PLANET IS NOW OUR PROPERTY. Then there were some choice epithets, and Donos’s fairly artistic rendering of a hawk-bat, one of the tenacious flying predators of the duracrete canyons of Coruscant. Tyria added some creative misspellings to her efforts.

  When they were done, they looked over their handiwork. Donos nodded. “Pretty close to the work of ego-ridden, semi-literate pirates,” he decided.

  Tyria smiled. “As a former counterinsurgent, are you offended?”

  He managed a wry grin. But he was saved from answering by a sound—a warning pop across the comm channel the Wraiths were using.