Star Wars: X-Wing VI: Iron Fist

by Aaron Allston

  Face got his guns lined up on the freighter, saw a turreted turbolaser swinging around to aim in on Wedge. He gritted his teeth, but that was not the ship’s most dangerous remaining system. He ignored the gun and targeted the ship’s communications array. He fired, his first shot scoring the ship’s hull, the second turning the comm gear into molten metal and escaping gas in a minor explosion. Then, as he accelerated toward the vessel, he belatedly linked his lasers to quad fire and opened up on the turbolaser.

  This blast was larger and much more satisfying, eliminating the turret completely. His interceptor and Wedge’s crossed one another in flyovers of the crippled vessel as they visually surveiled the damage.

  “This is One. Engines out. No sign of atmosphere venting. Hull integrity seems to be fine.”

  “This is Eight. Comm antenna down. Main weapon down. I’d call this definitely a strong negotiating position. I’m opening communications.” He switched his comm frequency to a wide band including the range normally used by personal comlinks and jumped his power setting up so personal systems would be likely to receive him. He cleared his throat in a deep growl that was his mnemonic for this character’s vocal mannerism, then said, his voice a gravelly rumble, “Barderia, this is General Kargin of the Hawk-bat Independent Space Force. We are seizing your vessel. We are businessmen and will do no harm to surrendering crew members, to whom I guarantee safe passage into the hands of this system’s rescue forces. But we are rather short-tempered businessmen and any crewmen offering resistance will be brought back to our base for a debriefing session they will never forget … much less survive. Surrender your vessel and prepare your docking ports for boarding … or prepare to breathe vacuum.”

  His response was not long in coming. A man’s voice, raspy and dismayed, replied, “This is Captain Rhanken of the independent cargo vessel Barderia. I surrender my vessel. Port and starboard docking ports standing by.”

  It seemed like such a small boarding party. Face, Castin, and Phanan, wearing only gray versions of the standard TIE-fighter pilot’s uniform, arrayed against whatever forces occupied the cargo ship. But five sets of starfighter guns in the hands of the other Wraiths kept Barderia in their sights, and the freighter, lacking engines to power its shields, stardrive, and weapons, would be easy prey to any one of them.

  The Wraiths, led by a visibly trembling navigation and communications officer, the very man who had inadvertently given Face the information he’d needed for this act of piracy, entered the freighter’s spotless bridge. Waiting there were other members of the bridge crew: the captain, a middle-aged, graying man with the look of a former Imperial officer about him, and a younger chief pilot whose hard look and demeanor suggested that he was also the ship’s master at arms and would like nothing more than to eradicate the pirates.

  Face took off his helmet, revealing his gloriously horrible makeup job, and was rewarded with sudden intakes of breath from the two younger officers. “I am,” he said, “the glorious General Kargin, founder and leader of the Hawk-bats.” He kept his voice low, gravelly. “Captain?”

  The freighter’s master did not salute, but he straightened with pained formality. “Captain Rhanken of the Barderia.”

  “Captain?” Face injected a note of menace into his voice.

  “And I am obliged to surrender this ship to you.”

  Face extended a hand. “Cargo manifest?”

  The communications officer, jolted into action by the demand, searched his uniform pockets increasingly frantically until he found the object he was searching for—a datapad, which he handed to Face.

  Face handed it in turn to Castin. “Two, slice into their master computer and find the cargo manifest there. If it does not agree one hundred percent with this list, we execute them all.” Face turned his gaze back to the captain. “Though I can be forgiving. If you anticipate any errors in your list, you can tell me about them now and avoid unpleasantness.”

  Captain Rhanken met his eyes unflinchingly. “I anticipate no problems. If my crew has done its customary good work.” He glanced at the communications officer. “Will there be a problem, Lieutenant?”

  The communications officer, no master of concealing his emotions, went pale. “I d-d-don’t recall whether I called up the final inventory-match manifest or used last week’s projected manifest, sir.”

  “Get the final manifest and give it to him. Just to be sure.”

  “Yessir.” The officer bent to his task.

  Interesting. Face had to work to keep both amusement and contempt from his expression. The captain wanted to play the unerring officer and was willing to let his subordinates assume responsibility for a tactic that had to be the captain’s own decision. Depending on the pirates involved, that could have led to the lesser officer’s death.

  Long minutes passed while the officer brought up the correct manifest and Castin verified it by cutting through the computer’s defenses and slicing his way down to the original file. They matched and Face and Castin looked through their winnings while Phanan kept the bridge officers under guard.

  “Look at this,” Face whispered. “Halmad Prime, shipped by the ton. Halmad’s best and most expensive grain alcohol. You can’t get it on-planet except through the black market; they ship it to other Imperial worlds as one of their major exports. Various medicines. Duracrete sprayers. Prefabricated shelters. We’ll take all the Halmad Prime and a cross section of the medicines; that’s about all we can load on Sungrass. See anything else we need?”

  “TIE fighter and interceptor parts.”

  “What? Where?”

  Castin turned his datapad so Face could see the screen. It showed a different inventory list. “I pulled this off their computer when I was verifying the current manifest. It’s an estimated inventory from the second leg of their voyage. We could really use some spare parts and maintenance gear.”

  “True, but our little raid here is bound to change their schedule for the rest of their mission.”

  “But if we can figure out what they’ll change it to …”

  “Good point.” Face straightened and glared at the captain. “Rhanken, have your cargo handlers assemble lots twenty-eight through one hundred twenty-seven and two hundred at your cargo bay. Two, call Sungrass and have them move in to accept delivery.”

  “And then what?” asked Captain Rhanken.

  “Then we leave.”

  “Leaving us to drift, without communications, without enough power to limp into the system, to die out here?”

  Face gave him a tight smile. “You have escape pods sufficient to get a message to your rescuers. But we’ll save you some time and call in an emergency signal. Wouldn’t want you to be inconvenienced. And you can tell your fellow captains, whom I’ll be meeting in the foreseeable future, that the Hawk-bats don’t kill. Unless we’re annoyed. Or become bored. They can take that under advisement.”

  Colonel Atton Repness, leader of the Screaming Wookiee training squadron aboard the New Republic frigate Tedevium, pointed the device at Lara as though it were a miniature blaster.

  She looked curiously at it. It was shaped like a standard cylindrical comlink, but that’s not what it was. She was sure of this because she’d examined the device inside and out, and done far more than that, when she’d broken into Repness’s quarters two days ago. “I’m sorry, sir. Should I be putting up my hands? Or making a speech?”

  He smiled. “Very funny. This isn’t a weapon. It just ensures that we aren’t being recorded.”

  “Who would want to record us?”

  The colonel looked around, though he and Lara were the lightly furnished conference room’s only inhabitants. “You’d be surprised. I’ll just keep this on.”

  “You’re the colonel.” But, inwardly, she smiled. He wasn’t speaking as a colonel; his mannerisms had shifted, probably without him realizing it, to those of a friend. Or conspirator.

  “You’re aware that your scores have come up since transferring to the Screaming Wookiees.�
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  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, this is in part from improvement in your skills.”

  “Only in part?” She affected surprise.

  “Only in part.” Repness pulled a datapad from a pocket and slid it over to her.

  The file it displayed was her training record. But the scores from after her transfer were shown in two columns, labeled “True” and “Adjusted.”

  She gave him a troubled look. “I don’t understand, sir. The ‘True’ column would indicate that I’m still failing. Just barely failing. What are the adjustments from the other column?”

  “Oh, I merely wanted your scores to be higher.”

  She let her features go slack, as if caught so far by surprise that she didn’t know how to react or what to say.

  “You see,” he said, “I think you have the potential to become a good pilot. So I’ve temporarily adjusted things to keep you from being booted. But I don’t think you can do this without help. It will take a team effort … and you haven’t been a team player, have you?”

  “Well, I’d … like to be. I just don’t know how. Things are so different here.”

  “Excellent! We could use you on my team. Working on my team calls for some extra effort on your part … but it comes with rewards you can’t get from any other unit.”

  And then he told her of a mission. It would be a milk-run training mission within the atmosphere of the nearest uninhabited planet in an A-wing. Her control boards would register a critical failure of the engines, which would overheat and threaten detonation. She’d be ordered by Repness to eject, which she would—well after the trouble-free A-wing was safely on the ground. An ion bomb detonated in the atmosphere would give investigators the evidence they needed to corroborate the fighter’s utter destruction, and a rescue crew would pick her up well after Repness’s crew ferried the expensive fighter away for sale in some distant black-market port.

  Lara listened, bored, to the whole inevitable deal, feigning puzzlement, shock, indignation, futile resistance, and finally pained acceptance as the hopeless nature of her situation was made clear to her.

  And she knew, with a growing glee that was hard to conceal, that every word she and Repness said was being sent, by the very device he thought was a transmission-detecting sweeper, to a file under a forged pilot account on the frigate’s main computer.

  Contact Wraith Squadron for help when matters with Repness came to a head? Why bother, when she could engineer his destruction and her own career’s salvation with far more panache than those pilots could ever manage?

  It was a different star system—the Halmad system, well outside the orbit of its outermost planet—but the situation was very familiar.

  Captain Rhanken could not maintain an expression of imperturbability the second time the Hawk-bats boarded his freighter. His voice was one of pure despair: “How did you know where we’d be?”

  “We asked the right people,” Face said. “Your trade guild has a security breach in it I could pilot a Death Star through.”

  It was a lie, a big one. Castin Donn had downloaded a number of the cargo ship’s records the last time they were aboard, and covered his tracks. The records didn’t say how Barderia’s master would adjust his schedule to account for the act of piracy committed upon him … but they did show how he’d reacted in the past to such situations. And now the Hawk-bats had taken him a second time, on his return leg home.

  If the analysts of the trade guild didn’t believe the lie, that was all right; nothing would change. But if they did, they might institute a sweeping change in the guild’s standards for secure transmissions and information flow. Eventually that would be an impediment to the Hawk-bats’ piracy, but in the short term, possibly as long as the Hawk-bats were to exist as a pirate band, it would cause disruption and confusion in the guild, changes that New Republic Intelligence had a couple of agents ready to examine and take advantage of.

  It was a good time to be a pirate.

  Face said, “Rhanken, have your cargo handlers deposit lots forty-three through seventy-nine at your cargo door. Then we’ll be on our way. Good doing business with you again.”

  When Lara Notsil examined the file containing the recording of Colonel Repness’s offer to her, it seemed much larger than their conversation should have accounted for. Perhaps, she thought, he’s been using his transmission-detecting sweeper in conversations with others.

  He had. In the file were her conversation with Repness, plus the colonel’s subsequent discussions with one of his “team” subordinates, an instructor captain named Teprimal; in their talk, they noted details of their plan for the hiding and subsequent sale of the A-wing.

  And there was more. Lara discovered, with glee mixed with a measure of professional horror, that Repness tended to turn on his sweeper whenever doing his most private work at his computer terminal. His paranoia about unseen listeners was his undoing, because he tended to mumble to himself, verbalizing his passwords and secret computer account names when working this way.

  Within minutes of listening to the recording, Lara could access all of the man’s recordings that concerned his lucrative side business. It was a black-market business, well entrenched on Coruscant but just getting under way on the training frigate Tedevium, in which cargo was diverted from its intended destination—not even making it onto incoming-supplies manifests—and sold, profits making their way into the pockets of Repness and his team.

  She found records of her own scores as a pilot trainee, plus those of a dozen other pilots Repness had subverted or tried to subvert this way. Some, like Wraith Squadron’s Tyria Sarkin, had refused to steal for him … but had been blackmailed into keeping silent. Others had joined his team. The records didn’t indicate whether they had been willing or reluctant. Still others, pilot trainees Lara knew, were going through the ensnaring process even now.

  There was no sign that Repness had any allies in the Intelligence division of the armed forces, or in the Inspector-General’s office. She wrote a letter to both General Cracken of Intelligence and to the latter military division. It read,

  i am the unseen, the unknowable, the unstoppable.

  no computer can stand before me. gates open for me. back doors are revealed to me. knowledge willingly spools itself out for my inspection, i am the jedi of the electronic world.

  i have found evil aboard tedevium. i have found corruption, like the jedi, i shall cut it down.

  examine these files, test them for integrity. you will find they are the truth.

  go where these files lead you.

  do what you must do, as i do what i must do.

  signed, white lancer

  She went back in and inserted some random misspellings and some painful grammatical errors. When it was done, it was, she decided, a note typical of code-slicers who performed anonymous sabotage on computer systems. The true extent of her computer skills were not known on Tedevium, and those of many other crewmen and pilot candidates were; many of them would be suspected of this act, and in order to boost their reputations, some would probably allow the investigators to believe that they were, in fact, the secretive White Lancer.

  To the letter, she attached Repness’s recordings and all the passwords and account names she had so far uncovered.

  Then there were the files demonstrating how Repness had ensnared other pilots. She paused over those.

  Best to expose all those pilots, she decided. Their careers would be ruined, at tremendous training cost to the New Republic—that is, the Rebels—and this would help deplete the Empire’s enemy of skilled pilots. Besides, if they became pilots, most of them would eventually die in action against Imperial pilots. They were better off having their careers torpedoed. If they knew she’d done it to them, someday they’d thank her for it.

  Still her hands paused over the keyboard. As a child, she’d hoped to be a starfighter pilot. When she’d followed her parents’ career path instead, going into Imperial Intelligence, she’d demonstrate
d skills necessary to become a pilot and had undergone basic pilot training, which her controllers had decided would be a valuable side skill … and there she’d discovered a genuine love for flying. But her request for permanent transfer to the pilot corps was denied. Her intelligence-related skills were better and rarer than her pilot’s skills, so against her wishes she’d been obliged to stay in Intelligence. Believe us, it’s better this way, her instructors had told her. Someday, you’ll thank us for this.

  It came before her, the face of pilot candidate Bickey, in her class under Repness. He’d been transferred to the remedial training unit just days after Lara had. If Repness kept true to form, in just a few days, Bickey would be approached on some similar scheme of theft. He was such a young, eager, boyish pilot, anxious to demonstrate his skill and bravery. He had once said he’d prefer to die young, in battle against his enemies, than old and content on a farm somewhere. No, he’d never thank her for what she was about to do.

  Uneasy, Lara attached her own file of scores to the letter she was sending General Cracken, then systematically destroyed the original and backup files implicating other pilots and pilot candidates now serving. Let them die as they choose, she told herself. Let them die as pilots.

  She arranged for the package of letter and files to make its way through secret routes to the offices of General Cracken. It would be at his headquarters office and under the eyes of one of his subordinates by day’s end.

  Which left her one thing to do today.

  • • •

  She looked at the sweeper in Repness’s hand and let an expression of contempt cross her face. “Careful as always, aren’t we, Atton?”

  The colonel looked around, concealing nervousness, though the classroom was empty of other personnel. “You’ll address me as Colonel Repness and show respect.”

  “I’ll address you as Colonel Bantha Sweat and show you whatever I want.”