Star Wars: X-Wing II: Wedge's Gamble

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Corran’s green eyes flared. “You’re my commanding officer. You don’t need to explain yourself to me, sir.” The hurt in his voice was unmistakable, but so was the implacability in his eyes. “I’m glad to see Captain Celchu was not killed at Noquivzor.”

  “Corran, I chose to keep Tycho’s presence here a secret to safeguard him and to give us a weapon the other side knew nothing about.”

  “Wedge, I saw him talking with Kirtan Loor at the Headquarters.”

  “Tycho said he was there meeting with a Duros gunrunner named Lai Nootka. He didn’t see you, but he wasn’t meeting any Imp agent, that’s for certain. Had he seen you and the trouble you were in, he would have helped.”

  “I bet.”

  Wedge grabbed Corran by the shoulders. “Look, he had instructions to contact you if something happened to me. You were going to be told, but only when it was necessary. It wasn’t necessary until now.”

  Corran’s head came up. “When Zekka Thyne was dying he said Kirtan Loor knew we were on Coruscant before he pressed Thyne into his service. There’s a lying snake among us.”

  “And you believe what he said?”

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  “Should you?” Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. “Why do you think Thyne said that to you?”

  Corran hesitated. “He wanted to hurt me, sure, but that doesn’t mean he was lying.”

  “No, but it also doesn’t mean he was telling the truth, either. He reported what Loor told him.” Wedge frowned. “We’ve not seen Aril Nunb since the warehouse. It is entirely possible she was interrogated before Loor confronted Thyne. Loor bluffed and Thyne believed him.”

  Corran slowly shook his head. “I worked with Loor for years and the one thing I never saw him do was bluff. The man’s got a memory retention rate that rivals Winter’s. Instead of letting a suspect guess at what he did or didn’t know, Loor just started reeling facts off. He’d overwhelm a suspect with detail, proving how smart he was, so it would seem obvious to the suspect that sooner rather than later the truth would be found out. No, if Loor told Thyne he knew we were here, he did. And, remember, at the point she was taken, Aril didn’t know anyone outside her group was here.”

  He has a point there, but he’s still inferring a great deal from a dying man’s last statement. “You think Tycho is the Imperial agent?”

  “You know his history. What do you think?”

  “I do know his history, but the whole of it.” Wedge pointed over to where Tycho and Winter sat in close conversation. “I’ve watched him go through countless missions against the enemy. He has a facility for being in the right place at the right time.”

  “A bonus for a spy.”

  “Or for a hero. He’s saved my life and he saved yours, as I recall, on numerous occasions for the both of us. I trust him absolutely. If there is a spy—and I don’t find a spiteful tale told by Zekka Thyne very reliable—I’d sooner believe it was any one of us than I would believe it is Tycho. More importantly, though, I need Tycho and everyone else if we’re going to bring the shields down tomorrow night.”

  Corran folded his arms across his chest. “So you’re telling me to leave it alone even though his presence might jeopardize whatever we do?”

  Wedge opened his hands. “Look, Corran, I respect your instincts, I really do, but I’ve been down here for fifteen hours more than you have. Our other caches have been hit by Imps. This is the only safe place for us. If Tycho had betrayed us, this place would have been hit, too. And, yes, the Imps could be holding off for some other reason, but I can’t think of one aside from their not knowing where we are. That may not seem like much to you, but it’s enough for me to hope we have a shot at accomplishing our mission here.”

  The younger man frowned heavily. “It isn’t much, but right now it’s more solid than anything I have. I’ll try to keep an open mind here, but if the least little thing gets screwed up, I’m going to find out who did what and there will be hell to pay.”

  “I’ll back you all the way.”

  “I guess that’s as good as it gets, given the circumstances.”

  Wedge brushed a droplet of water off his shoulder. “That’s not saying much here.” He led Corran over to an area with a table and chairs set up under an overhang. “If I could have everyone over here, we need to figure out what we’re going to be doing. Any and all suggestions are welcome.”

  The others gathered around the table. Aside from the members of Rogue Squadron the group included Iella, Winter, Mirax, Inyri, Portha, and Asyr. The Trandoshan and Shiel both remained on cots and did not join the meeting. Wedge could see both were sleeping, albeit fitfully in Shiel’s case, so he decided not to waken them. Better they rest now and are able to fight later.

  Wedge leaned forward on the table. “Our basic problem is the same as it’s always been: The shields on this rock have to come down. We took one shot at getting a computer override established, but that didn’t work. What do we do now?”

  Winter raised a hand. “Things are not exactly the same as they have always been. The loss of the memory cores means the central computer has begun to delegate jobs to the subsidiary systems to conserve memory media. The disks they’re using now are in sad shape—a lot more errors are creeping into things. They’ve got a construction droid building a new manufacturing plant as an adjunct to the computer center to bring the memory-core manufacture under Imperial control, but it won’t be able to turn out product for another two days.”

  Wedge shivered. He’d seen construction droids work before and found their efficiency as impressive as he did their potential for destruction. Vast, huge machines, they combined the whole of the manufacturing cycle in one highly mobile package. The front end used lasers and other tools to dissect a structure. Little ancillary droids—some as big as a gravtruck—sorted through the debris and fed the appropriate bits of material into the constructor’s gullet. There metal was resmelted, stone ground down to dust and reconstituted, then extruded in girders, blocks, sheets, and trim. The aft end of the construction droid then took the building blocks and, in accord with preprogrammed plans, created a new structure where the old one had been. Specialized subsidiary construction droids equipped with repulsorlift coils built the walkways that linked structures and worked on the delicate upper reaches of the highest towers on Coruscant.

  “It’s hard to believe that a factory can be built and running in three days, but that’s progress.”

  Asyr growled. “I hope they evicted the tenants of the building they destroyed to make the factory. They keep forgetting to do that when they have one of those monsters take a slice out of Invisec.”

  Corran frowned. “If I remember correctly, the subsidiary computer facilities are not as well guarded as the central computer. This makes them vulnerable to an attack, right?”

  “True, but using one of the computers to bring down the shields means we’re only going to get a small portion of the shields down.” Wedge shook his head. “This forces us to concentrate our assault teams in one place and allows the Empire to do the same with their defenses. This world is too well defended for the Alliance to take it by storm.”

  Gavin shot from his chair and clapped his hands together. “That’s it! We take the world by storm.”

  Only the dripping sound of water violated the silence that greeted Gavin’s remark. Everyone stared at him and Gavin blushed.

  Wedge nodded slowly. “What are you talking about, Gavin?”

  “I’m talking about the storms we’ve seen here before. A cloud comes up and a lightning storm hits.”

  Corran shook his head. “Conjuring a storm up isn’t that easy, Gavin.”

  “No, Corran, it is.” Gavin raked his fingers back through wet hair. “My uncle on Tatooine is a food magnate who has a virtual monopoly on water rights and moisture farms. He wants all the water he can get. Hundreds of people have come to him with schemes to bring rain to Tatooine, and probably ten times that number have come up with schemes they intend to
use to break Uncle Huff’s control of the water market. Most he ignores, but occasionally he pays someone off. One of the guys he paid off was someone who had a plan to seed the atmosphere with chemical crystals around which water would condense. The water would form clouds and the clouds would produce rain.”

  Wedge straightened up. “Doesn’t that presuppose there is sufficient water vapor already in the air? Aside from this place, Coruscant seems rather lacking in humidity.”

  “And when there is some, a storm forms almost instantly.” Pash nodded at Iella. “We saw one of those fast-forming storms when we were at the museum.”

  Corran smiled. “Perhaps we could get everyone in the Black Sun and Alien Combine to put a pot on to boil at the same time.”

  Everyone laughed except for Winter. “Boiling is a good idea, but we need a lot of water set to boil all at one time. That requires lots of water and lots of heat.”

  Corran opened his hands. “So, where do we get that much water?”

  Winter chewed on her lower lip for a second. “Water gets melted at the polar glaciers, then pumped through long aqueducts to pumping stations and deep reservoirs throughout the equatorial areas of the city. There’s plenty of water in any one of the reservoirs.”

  “But how do we vaporize it?” Wedge scratched at the back of his head. “Thermal detonators are too inefficient, and repeated strafing runs to use lasers on it would take too long. We need a lot of heat, but we need it delivered all at once.”

  “I’ve got it.” Asyr smiled proudly. “We use one of the orbital mirrors. They’re designed to concentrate sunlight and deliver it to the planet to warm up the colder regions. We redirect one of them to focus on a reservoir and it’ll vaporize the duracrete, transparisteel, and water in short order.”

  “The problem there, Asyr, is getting up to the mirror.” Corran shook his head. “We’d have to get through the shields we want to bring down first, and that’s not going to be easy, then we have to take the mirror. By the time we finished assaulting it, the Golan Space Defense stations would shoot it down or a TIE starfighter wing would come up and destroy it.”

  Iella looked over at Winter. “Are the mirrors crew-controlled or ground-controlled?”

  “Ground-controlled. Mirror duty is considered punishment. The crews that maintain the facilities go out to repair damage from strikes by debris, but that’s about it.”

  Wedge’s eyes narrowed. “Presumably you’re suggesting we take control of a ground station and redirect one of the orbital mirrors to vaporize a reservoir. That water vapor will condense into a monster storm that will strike with lightning all over the place, taking down the power grid. As the computers try to match power to demand, we should get a complete power grid collapse.”

  Iella smiled. “You got a better idea?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” Wedge frowned. “The weak link here, as I see it, is taking the control station.”

  “The orbital mirrors are controlled by the subsidiary computer centers.” Winter glanced at her datapad. “The nearest should be SCC Number Four, just south of the Imperial Palace.”

  “Do we have enough people to assault it and get us in fast enough that we can do what needs to be done without interference?” Wedge looked around the table and saw frowns or blank expressions except on one face. “Lieutenant Horn, you have an idea?”

  “Yeah, we evict folks from that center.”

  “What?”

  Corran leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “There’s a construction droid building a factory within a laser shot from that center, right? We get a crew in to take control of the factory and have it go rogue. It heads straight for the computer center. I don’t think anyone is going to remain on station while a Death Star’s little brother comes toward him gobbling up cityscape. It stops short of destroying the center, but our crew should be able to get in and get working on the orbital mirror. Moreover, we can have the construction droid spitting out a new central computer facility with some of our own code sliced into it. If we take the planet, we’ll be up and running even if the Imps blow the old center.”

  “And if the Imps manage to stop the construction droid before it hits the abandoned computer center, they’ll think they’ve muted our attack and thwarted us.” Wedge nodded. “I see it. Emtrey, do you know how to run a construction droid?”

  The droid’s head came up. “I have had some experience with smaller manufacturing systems, sir, so I believe I can determine what we need to do.”

  Mirax raised a hand. “I’ve used one of the small ones to fabricate some storage areas for my father. Count me in on that crew.”

  “Right.” Wedge felt a twinge of pain in his ribs. “With broken ribs I’m not flight ready, so I’ll go on that one, too. Iella?”

  “I’m with you.”

  “Good.” Wedge rubbed his hands together. “Winter, you’re the best slicer we’ve got here, so you’ve got to be going into the center. Tycho, Gavin, and Ooryl, you’ll round out that crew.”

  Corran looked up at Wedge. “What about the rest of us?”

  “You’re flying cover.”

  “Commander, I don’t think you’re going to fit the rest of us in the cockpit of a Headhunter.”

  “True, which is why Tycho has procured six of them.” Wedge smiled broadly. “Corran, you’ll fly with Erisi on your wing, Rhysati and Pash will fly together and …” He looked over at Shiel. “Hmmm, Nawara, you might have to fly alone.”

  Asyr raised her hand. “Commander Antilles, I’m combat-qualified in a Headhunter.”

  “Excuse me?”

  The Bothan looked down sheepishly. “You know me as Asyr Sei’lar, but what you don’t know is that I’m a graduate of the Bothan Martial Academy. I graduated a year behind Peshk Vri’syk. He was good enough to join Rogue Squadron last year, and I was his equal when we were trained. It’s been a while since I’ve flown, but I can handle the fighter.”

  Wedge raised an eyebrow. “What would a member of the Bothan military be doing here on Coruscant?”

  “I’d rather not say, sir.”

  “I can understand that.” Wedge nodded slowly. “Well, then, you’ve got number six with Nawara in five.”

  The Twi’lek shook his head and Wedge noticed his normally ash-colored flesh had taken on a creamy tone that, in some places, seemed translucent. “I think I’m coming down sick, sir. I’m not certain I’m flight capable. The ryll I’ve taken is helping a bit, but I’m still not feeling well enough to fly.”

  “I’m not formally qualified to fly, but I’ve done a lot of simming.” Inyri bit her lower lip. “Lujayne used to train against me. She was better than I was and beat me regularly, but not all the time.”

  Corran smiled. “I’ve seen her pilot a speeder bike and an airspeeder. She does well in the tight confines of these urban canyons.”

  Wedge was tempted to take her up on her offer, but he held back. “I believe what you’ve told me, Inyri, but I can’t take responsibility for your first starfighter combat taking place on Coruscant. What I’d rather have you do is deliver Winter and the others to the computer center. That will take some fancy airspeeder flying because we’ll be grinding a lot of stuff up in the area.”

  “Commander,” Erisi began, “if we have Asyr or Inyri bring in some more people for the ground teams, we could free up Gavin, Captain Celchu, or Ooryl and give us six pilots.”

  “No, we’re not bringing anyone else in.” Wedge leaned forward again on the table. “Corran has brought to my attention the potential for betrayal. Zekka Thyne informed the Imperials of our plans for the factory. We’re going to need all the time we have remaining to double- and triple-check our plans and equipment, then we’re going. No one here is going to communicate with anyone outside just to make sure the Imps have no inkling of what we’re going to do. This effort must succeed.”

  Gavin slowly shook his head. “Fourteen against a world. Those are long odds.”

  “Lieutenant Darklighter, I’m a Corellian.
I have no use for odds.” Wedge smiled broadly, putting as much confidence as he could into it. “No doubt the Imps have a sizable house edge here, but now the war has come to Coruscant, which means they’re playing our game, and that makes everything even all over again.”

  39

  Corran Horn tightened the straps on his life-support controller, adjusting the boxy device as he went to get it centered on his chest. He much preferred having the controller built into his command chair as it was on his CorSec X-wing, but the Z-95 was more primitive than that, so he had to wear it. He punched a button, putting the device through a self-check, then got a tone indicating everything was in good working order.

  Mirax smiled broadly as she came walking over and succeeded in forestalling the dread her black Imperial uniform sparked in him. “We’re getting ready to head out. Are you okay?”

  Corran nodded. “Yeah. We’ve gone over all the Headhunters from nose to stern and they check out.”

  “So I gather. I recall seeing you and Erisi in close conversation.”

  Corran felt hot color rise in his cheeks. “That was a prelude to a group discussion. We ended up adjusting the sensor packages and zeroing the blasters at 150 meters. We figured that dogfights would be close and shots of over 150 meters in the canyons here are going to be rare.”

  “Take care of yourself out there.”

  “Hey, my job is making sure to keep TIEs and others off you.” Corran reached out and tapped the tip of her nose with his finger. “Look, it will be crazy out there. In all likelihood Rogue Squadron will get a few more heroes inducted into its Hall of the Dead …”

  Mirax gave him a smirk. “Corran, if this is one of those ‘tomorrow we might die so we should be together tonight’ speeches, your timing is lousy since tomorrow is now and last night ended when this morning started.”

  “I know.” Corran laughed at the nervousness he felt. “I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Before Coruscant I found you interesting and attractive. Since we’ve been here I’ve gotten to know more about you, to see how you react under pressure and how effortlessly you seem to get along with others. I admire the qualities that I’ve seen in you and, well, if we both come out of this, I’d like the opportunity to get to know you even better.”