Star Wars - X-Wing - Iron Fist

by Aaron Allston

  With our complement of X-wings, up to five more of you can accompany me back and get in a little rest and recreation. Lieu-tenant Janson will remain here in command of the facility- because he got to go back last time and now it's his turn."

  Janson's expression turned glum. "Nobody is allowed to have any fun on Coruscant. If I find out that anyone has had any fun, he gets kitchen duty for a month."

  "We all promise to be miserable, Wes." Wedge noticed one of the pilots' hand raised. "Yes, Castin."

  "Sir, you remember the special mission I talked to you about? Sneaking a program into Iron Fist's communications system so that it will broadcast its location occasionally?"

  "I remember. I remember saying it was a good plan... but not for the initial contact mission."

  Castin waved as if to brush away the last part of Wedge's statement. "Sir, I finished the program."

  "You did?" Wedge nodded. "Excellent."

  "I finished it in time for this mission, sir. It still needs an experienced code-slicer to cut it into the system in question- otherwise it'd never get through the system's defenses-but it op-erates flawlessly on my Imperial-computer-system simulators."

  "It won't be for this mission, Castin. But we'll try to bring back an upgraded simulator from Coruscant to give you that much more of an edge."

  "Dammir, sir, this is the only opportunity we're certain we're going to have. We need to take it. You're being too cau-tious, and that's going to cost us."

  The other pilots looked between Castin and Wedge, all cheer draining from their faces.

  Wedge took a deep breath, giving himself a brief moment to calm himself. "Flight Officer Donn." "Yes, sir."

  "Flight Officer Donn."

  Suddenly uneasy, Castin looked around, then rose and stood at attention. "Sir."

  "Your tactical sense and gut feeling tell you that now is the time to implement your plan. Mine tell me that later will be better. All else being equal, whose do you think I am going to rank higher?"

  "Well, yours, sir." Castin looked very unhappy under this sudden scrutiny.

  "Now, think about this. If we do it my way and I'm right, we've saved lives. If we do it my way and I'm wrong, we'll have missed an opportunity-an opportunity we'll regain if the rest of the mission goes according to plan and the Hawk-bats begin doing work for Zsinj-and I'll have both learned something and suffered a slight blow to my reputation, both of which l can survive.

  "On the other hand, if we do it your way and you're right, we conceivably speed up the destruction of Zsinj. But if we do it your way and you're wrong, you get yourself and the whole team captured or killed, which you can't survive. Do you see the difference?"

  "Yes, sir, but-"

  "Save that thought. Now, imagine that you're a New Re-public pilot and you feel a need to criticize a superior officer's performance or thinking. All else being equal, should you do so in private or in a public forum?"

  Castin seemed visibly to sag. "In private, sir."

  "I'll give you some time to think about that. You'll be re-

  maining on Hawk-bat Station while your fellows return to Coruscant. Now, sit."

  Castin did, flushing red, looking miserable.

  Wedge looked among the other pilots. "Anything else?

  No? Prep for your missions, then. Dismissed."

  Face caught up with Castin out in the Trench. He asked, "What was that all about?"

  Castin shook his head, angry, and didn't slow his pace... though he was just walking up the middle of the stony shaft with no destination evident. "He's wrong, Face. He's just wrong."

  "Why?"

  "Because, I don't know, he's so concerned about preserv-ing our lives that he'll flinch from a tactic that could end this whole campaign in one stroke."

  "No. Castin, he hasn't hesitated to risk our lives, or his

  own, not in the time I've been with the Wraiths. But in spite of

  all the jokes about Corellians not caring about the odds, he

  does. And he knows more about resources and strategy than

  we do. So if he says your mission isn't worth the risk-"

  "He's right and I'm wrong."

  "Probably."

  "All right."

  "I want your promise that you won't try anything on your

  own."

  "I promise." Castin stopped suddenly and looked around. He and Face were now beside the kitchen and mess. "I'm hun-gry." He headed in that direction.

  "A good, brisk walk will do that to you," Face said. He did not follow the code-slicer-better not to put him on the defensive.

  There were two gray blurs, the X-wings of Lara and Donos, shooting up past the magcon field holding in the atmosphere of the Hawk-bats' hangar. Face, seated in the cockpit of the shut-tle Narra, watched them flash by. They were followed a mo-ment later by a stream of five more snubfighters-Wedge, Runt, Shalla, Tyria, and Piggy, off on their routine mission to Coruscant.

  He envied them. It wasn't just that they'd be getting a little rest and recreation, even just a few hours of it; the prospect of facing Warlord Zsinj was making him more than a little tense. He had no abnormal fear of the man-but ever since this mis-sion had been described to him, he'd harbored the fear that somewhere in the middle of a conversation with the warlord, a vision of Phanan would cross before his eyes and he'd be un-able to restrain himself from making an assault on Zsinj. Such an attack might hurt or kill Zsinj, but it was certain to be fatal to Face and his comrades. "Power," he said.

  "Ninety-seven percent, reserves one hundred percent."

  That was Dia, seated beside him, in the copilot's seat. But it wasn't the Dia he was used to. She was now in the guise of Seku, her Hawk-bats identity, and as dramatically different from her usual appearance as Face was when, as now, he wore his General Kargin scar makeup.

  Her normally bare brain tails-or Iekku, as they were known to the natives of Ryloth-were now decorated with an intricate pattern of black cuneiform marks, temporary tattoos that, in the Twi'lek language, told stories of the character and misdeeds of her fictitious identity. Instead of the gray TIE-style pilot's uniforms Face and Kell wore, she was dressed in a vest, trousers, and boots of black hide-lined, she had assured him, for comfort-all decorated with shiny metal replicas of animal teeth and claws, accoutrements she'd persuaded Cubber to lathe out during some of his infrequent off-duty hours. Face found her attractive under normal circumstances; this barbaric persona was even more visually appealing.

  "Ninety-seven? Why are we not at full?"

  She shrugged. "Cubber said something about the manhan-

  dling Narra sustained in Iron Fist's tractor beams causing some system problems. Nothing he can repair until the commander returns from Coruscant with some replacement parts."

  "Wonderful. What else did he say we can expect to go wrong?"

  Kell stuck his head up between the two seats. There was more to his head now; he wore a false mustache, beard, and absurdly long wig of fiery red hair. "Hull seals are a little more questionable. We had to repair some slow leaks when we got back. But she's in good shape. Assuming we don't have to take on another Star Destroyer, she'll do just fine."

  "Good. Remember your signature action."

  Kell's eyes slitted. With a slow and deliberate motion, he

  drew the hair hanging down his right shoulder to fall behind his back. As he turned to look at Face, he added an insolent lit-tle shake of the head that set his hair to swaying. It was an elaboration Face hadn't taught him, but it was perfect, making his persona even more obviously a victim of arrogance and self-love.

  Dia gave the two of them a hard smile. "He's loathsome."

  Face said, "That's the idea. All right, strap in and prep for space. We have an appointment to keep. No, wait a minute

  Kell, drag Castin out of the smuggling compartment and send him packing. We can't have any stowaways."

  Grinning, Kell moved aft, behind the seats, and tapped a complicated rhythm against the starboard bulkhead. A
portion of what had looked like seamless wall swung down on hinges and he reached inside. An expression of surprise crossed his face and he ducked down to look. "Hey, no Castin." "It's empty?"

  "I didn't say that." Kell retrieved something fairly large and furry from the compartment's interior and waved it at the others. It was the Ewok toy. "Say hello to Lieutenant Kettch."

  Face snorted. "You ever wonder how he gets around? I'm not sure he isn't alive."

  Kell peered inside the compartment again. "And some generous spirit has loaded this thing up with goodies. A couple of blasters, some preserved food, a couple of bottles of Halmad Prime-" "Hey, bring that up here."

  Kell replaced Kettch within the compartment and sealed it. "I don't think so."

  "It's every general's right to be uproariously drunk on diplomatic missions."

  Kell dropped into the seat behind Dia and began practic-ing his signature move. With every repetition it became more obnoxious. "I'm going to keep this up until you shut up about the Prime."

  "Ooh. You win, mutineer. Prepare for space."

  14

  Narra emerged from hyperspace at the appointed coordinates.

  This was deep space, nothing to see within a half-dozen light-years, but there was something awaiting them-a barrage of corem messages. They flooded the communications waves, repeating variations on the same message, overlapping one another.

  "Greetings Hawk-bats this is greetings Hawk-bats War-lord Zsinj not rebroadcast I welcome this is you prepare to receive them simply Warlord Zsinj a new set of I welcome fol-low them coordinates do not rebroadcast you prepare them simply soon we follow them to receive soon we will be will be a new dining in comfort and set of dining in coming to terms of coordinates do great mutual comfort and profit . . ." The words continued in that way, a ceaseless stream.

  Face shook his head. "That's a mess. Let's see if we can lock them down to a single transmission." His hands moved over the communications console. "All right. We have a small satellite dead ahead. One signal's stronger than the others. And that gives us..." He punched a button to isolate the signal.

  "Greetings, Hawk-bats. This is Warlord Zsinj. 1 welcome

  you. Prepare to receive a new set of coordinates. Do not re-

  broadcast them. Simply follow them. Soon we will be dining in

  comfort and coming to terms of great mutual profit." The mes-sage began to repeat.

  "We're getting a file on the same band," Dia said.

  "Don't bring it up," Kell said. "It might be the kind of program Castin likes to work up. Something that will give them more information about us than we'd like."

  Face nodded. "Good point. It's not a big file. I'll transmit it to my datapad and we can reenter the nav data by hand.

  What do you figure would happen if we did want to retransmit the file?"

  Dia said, "One of two things. That satellite will have an extra system. Either it's a weapons system, designed to destroy us, or it's a hypercomm system that will warn Zsinj before we get to him."

  Kell dragged his hair back over his shoulder again. "It'll be whichever system is cheaper."

  "Well, in either case, we won't be doing that." Face com-pared the navigational data on his datapad with that which he'd just typed into Narra's computer. It matched. He punched the execute button and nodded for Dia to bring the shuttle around to its new course. "All right, stage two."

  The two X-wings dropped out of hyperspace at the outer pe-riphery of the Aldivy system, well beyond the solar-gravity well that would prevent their reentering hyperspace.

  Lara immediately brought up her visual sensors and trained them on the planet of Aidivy. The picture that emerged, jittery and blurry, was of a blue-and-white globe with no fea-tures she could identify.

  She restrained herself from making a sour face. What she knew of Aidivy all came from Imperial surveys and publicly available data. She knew the map of the planet's surface, but from space, of course, cloud cover kept those easily recognized continental borders from sight.

  Her comlink crackled. "I can't detect any traffic on Imperial channels," Donos said. "Just some routine stuff on standard planetary and commercial channels. Pretty light, actually."

  "Aldivy isn't heavily settled," she said. "A couple of hundred

  communities. Not enough value there for the Imperials to pr0-tect it when they occupied it. At the height of Imperial occupa-tion, we had two TIE fighters and a shuttle protecting us."

  "In addition to your own planetary defense forces, I assume."

  "Um, yes." She wished he'd quit asking questions. Too much of this and he'd catch her out in a wrong answer. "Our police. Not much defense against assault forces, I'm afraid."

  "Is your home on the day side or night side right now?"

  "I'm trying to figure that out." Shut up. Just shut up. "I

  can't tell. I'll know when we're closer."

  The main doors to Iron Fist's false bridge rose with their cus-tomary startling speed and General Melvar entered. He stopped short at the sight of the dinner table now occupying the center of the command walkway. Zsinj was seated at the head chair of the bare table, his booted feet up on it. Behind him, at the bow end of the chamber, the holoscreens had been activated and were now a perfect match for the view from the real bridge's forward viewports; they framed Zsinj, making him the central feature of the galaxy they showed. Zsinj smiled at him. "What do you think?"

  "Perhaps your most ostentatious demonstration yet," Mel-var said as he approached. "Shouldn't you surround yourself with a nimbus of light to complete the effect?"

  "Not a bad idea. Maybe next time. What do you want?"

  "Sensors have reported a shuttle's appearance from the hyperspace course you provided to the Hawk-bats. They'll be here within minutes."

  Zsinj's feet hit the walkway surface and he stood. "Assem-ble the cast. Notify the galley. And get into makeup. This should be entertaining."

  As he watched Iron Fist growing in the forward viewport, Face

  willed his stomach to quit crawling around. "All right. Here's

  your last bit of advice. Remember, we're just as arrogant as

  they are but nowhere near as strong. So respond appropriately

  to bad manners-but not so appropriately that you get us

  killed."

  Kell mimed entering data on an imaginary datapad. "No get killed," he said. "I'11 try to remember."

  "I'd like to say leave all the talking to me, but that's not going to work-we're here to impress them with our indi-vidual skill and readiness. Just keep all your responses in char-acter, and refer any question about our unit strength, tactical readiness, that sort of thing, to me."

  "Understood, General," Dia said. Her voice was an insinu-ating purr, far different from the flat, sometimes emotionless tones he was used to from her. He glanced at her, and it was a stranger's face that looked back at him Dia's features with an-other woman behind them. Her eyes evaluated him with the steady regard of a half-tamed animal watching its owner for some sign of weakness. He looked away quickly, uneasily aware that he didn't know whether she was simply a natural ac-tress or this was a layer to her that he hadn't seen before.

  To his disappointment, the Iron Fist bridge crew in-structed the Hawk-bats to land in a secondary hangar well for-ward of the main hangar. He would have liked to have seen the damage done to the main hangar by Kell's tanker bomb, to have seen its state of repair.

  Dia brought the shuttle into the designated hangar. Within already were a pair of interceptors, another Lambda-class shuttle, and a larger Raptor transport shuttle-an ugly, boxy troop carrier known to be favored by Zsinj's forces.

  And a reception committee-an officer and a half-dozen stormtroopers. One of the troopers hand-guided Narra to a landing pad marked off by red paint. Dia set the shuttle down expertly.

  "Show time," Face said.

  They descended the boarding ramp in proper form, Face first, Dia and Kell to either side of and behind him. Face stopped directl
y before the officer. Neither that man nor any of the stormtroopers reacted visibly to Face's scar makeup, the first time he could remember such a lack of response.

  The officer before him was not what Face had expected.

  The man was tall and lean, with features that might have been

  bland had they not been twisted into such a predatory smile. He seemed to glow with an inner light, and Face suspected that it was a dangerous light. The man liked to win, or to kill, or to inflict pain-Face wasn't sure which, but he did know that this was a man to watch. The officer also, incongruously, had long and perfectly reflective fingernails; Face suspected they were metal and would not have been surprised to discover that they were very, very sharp.

  Face cleared his throat. "I am General Kargin, founder and leader of the Hawk-bat Independent Space Force." He put on an urbane smile and lowered his voice. "I believe I have an invitation."

  "Indeed you do. General Melvar. I am in charge of the warlord's assault forces, and I welcome you to Iron Fist." The general shook Face's hand. Firm grip, fast shake-he made no effort to conduct a contest of grip strength to demonstrate dominance. "Your associates ?"

  Face gestured first to Dia, then to Kell. "Captain Seku, my second-in-command. Lieutenant Dissek, my bodyguard."

  "Delighted. Before we continue, though, there is a bit of bureaucratic unpleasantness to accomplish." "Oh?"

  The general looked regretful. "Zsinj is a man with many enemies. For this reason, many policies surround him, policies that I do not let him overrule, for his own safety. One of them leads me to insist that you turn over all weapons to my men for the duration of your stay."

  Face shrugged. Then he drew his blaster pistol with such speed that the stormtroopers present were caught off guard, their weapons out of line; he could have shot Melvar and one or two others before they would have been able to react. But just as quickly he flipped the blaster in the air and caught it, then handed it, butt first, to the nearest stormtrooper. "I have no fear of treachery here," Face said. "Alive, I promise additional strength to Zsinj. Killed, I would cost him very dearly."