Isard's Revenge Page 18

  “I was just thinking that I knew a heck of a lot less about parenting than I did smuggling, but did better at parenting than I would have ever imagined.”

  Mirax smiled. “Just like you to take credit for the quality of the cargo when all you did was haul it around.”

  Booster withdrew, a mock look of shock on his face. “Surly children are never pleasant.”

  “That’s all well and good, Booster, but we have other problems to deal with.” Iella held up a datacard. “Before we got taken we copied an encrypted file onto this datacard. I need to slice it open and run it down, now. In addition, we have the identification cards for all the men Baz burned down. We need to check them to see if we can determine who they were and who they worked for.”

  Booster nodded. “Not a problem, we can get started after I treat all of you to dinner here on the Diamond level. After all you’ve been through, you must want something to eat.”

  “We’re hungry, yes, Father.” Mirax nodded, then moved over beside Iella and headed toward her father’s office. “We also have work to do, important work. That datacard will confirm for us whether or not someone is setting a big trap for Rogue Squadron. No matter how good the meal, I’m not interested in delaying our work.”

  Booster turned, flung his arms wide, and settled around the shoulders of both women. “No, no indeed, no delay will be acceptable. Come, ladies, the resources of the Errant Venture are at your disposal, and I am at your service. Whatever you want or need you shall have, and anyone looking to ambush Wedge and his friends will have more trouble than they could ever expect.”

  Mirax stared at the data readout hovering in the air above the desk Iella had been given. Her father had provided them a suite of rooms on the level above the Diamond level. It was not as opulent as the luxury level below it, but it was quiet and traffic was restricted. I didn’t even know it existed, but most of the other times I’ve been here I’ve been passing through or with Corran. That her father would keep a level hidden from her husband rather amused her.

  The data did not. “Okay, let me see if I have all of this stuff straight. The financial records from Wooter’s office indicate that payments were made through financial institutions located in the Corvis Minor system.”

  Iella swept a lock of golden brown hair behind an ear. “That’s what it comes down to. The files your father has on this ship—both old Imp intel files and new stuff that he buys—make it look like the payments were part of an intel op, which would make sense. The money was being paid to house prisoners from the Lusankya, so it must have come from some resources Isard had hidden away.”

  “Okay, I’m with you there.” Mirax pointed at a second set of data. “Now here you’ve matched dust samples laminated on the identification cards of the men in the alley with traces of mineral content from the bones of the prisoners dug up on Commenor.”

  “Not exactly. The forensics tech worked up a profile of soil composition needed to accomplish the decay and leave the correct trace elements on the bones. It matches the dust on the ID cards. Those two samples also match a planetoid in the Corvis Minor system: Distna, a moon orbiting the fifth planet in that system.”

  “Which is where you think the Lusankya prisoners are being housed.”

  Iella shook her head. “That’s where I think someone—Isard—wants us to believe they’re being housed. I think they’re bait to get Rogue Squadron there and into a trap.”

  Mirax stood, a chill running through her. “We have to tell them.”

  “I tried. I tried the direct route and sending information through New Republic Intelligence. No reply.” Iella hit a key on her datapad, killing the holographic datafeed. “I also spoke with your father, and that’s why we entered hyperspace.”

  Mirax’s comlink squawked. “Mirax, this is your father. Please join me on the bridge.”

  “On my way. Iella is coming, too.”

  “Good.”

  The two of them raced to the turbolift and ascended to the bridge. The lift opened and they stalked out to join Booster where he stood before the large viewport. Below the catwalk a variety of ship’s officers carried out their duties. Beyond Booster the Errant Venture’s bow sailed through a white tunnel of light.

  Booster’s expression appeared as grave as Mirax could ever remember seeing it. “Getting into Corvis Minor around the fifth planet will be difficult for a ship our size. Had we not been coming from Commenor, the trip would have taken another twelve hours. As it is, we will arrive at twenty-two hundred hours local time in a pole-to-pole orbit over the gas giant. My helmsman, Hassla’tak, says Distna will be in our forward arc for fifteen minutes if we do nothing.”

  Iella glanced at one of the duty stations down below. “Are all your guns operational?”

  “Enough are. I have a squadron of uglies and two assault gunboats to keep us safe, and we do have an exit vector within five minutes of our arrival. I’m not worried.”

  I am. Mirax reached out with both hands, grabbing her father’s shoulder and Iella’s hand. “The fact that we got here so easily from Commenor, does that suggest even more strongly we’re looking at a trap?”

  Booster snorted. “Sure, but the sort of trap that would catch a squadron isn’t the kind that will get the Errant Venture.”

  “Ten seconds to reversion.” The Twi’lek, Hassla’tak, twitched his lekku in time with his countdown. “Three, two, one…”

  The white tunnel shattered into white needles that quickly resolved themselves into stars. Above the ship appeared the big gray-orange ball that was Corvis Minor V. Lightning played through the clouds in long jagged strings. Directly ahead lay Distna, a dark, rocky ball that looked completely devoid of life.

  “Sithspawn!” Mirax stumbled forward to the transparisteel viewport and pressed her hands against it. “We’re too late.”

  Some pieces spinning fast, others floating placidly, debris filled the space between the Errant Venture and Distna. Mirax recognized the blown-out ball cockpits of TIE fighters, and their octagonal wings. Melted and twisted twin hulls of TIE Bombers and fragments of Interceptors’ canted wings also hung there. Among them drifted black-clad bodies, some intact, others in pieces, of the pilots who had flown those craft.

  She also spotted the shattered hulks of at least two X-wings, and two bodies in the orange flight suits the Rogues wore. As she scanned space for other pieces, she saw debris flare in the distance as it slipped into the gas giant’s atmosphere.

  Then one piece of debris slowly tumbled toward the Errant Venture. When she caught sight of it her knees buckled and she slid to the decking. “No, Emperor’s Black Bones, no!”

  The S-foil had been painted green, and bore the distinctive markings that left little doubt it belonged to her husband’s X-wing.

  She felt Iella’s hands on her shoulders and heard her father’s gruff voice fill the bridge.

  “Get recovery teams out there, now!” Booster snapped at his crew. “I want every piece of debris, every body, everything. If there’s a survivor he’s worth a hundred thousand credits. Get it all, now. Reports come to me alone.”

  Above Mirax’s outline, Booster’s reflection filled the viewport. “I want to know what happened, who was responsible, then we make them pay.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As his newly repaired X-wing reverted to realspace and the white tunnel of light came apart all around him, Corran Horn finally recalled the first mention he’d ever seen of the Corvis Minor system. It had taken him a while, but he’d had good reason to remember that little detail. Back when escaping from the Lusankya, he’d found a small holdout blaster in a box that was supposed to hold the datacards for a history of the system. I remember thinking then that if a blaster represented the system’s history, it wasn’t a vacation spot.

  The uneasiness that memory brought him did not drain away. He checked his sensors and found Three Flight formed up around him. Wedge’s One Flight had the lead and Janson’s Two Flight had swung slow toward Distna. Nr
in Vakil’s snoopscoot flew to the rear of Two Flight.

  The recon X-wing slowly started to play out a pair of sensor pods connected to the ship by thick cables. They gathered up data to be sorted and stored in computer equipment that occupied all the space that normally would have housed an X-wing’s proton torpedo launchers. The recon ship also did without lasers because the charging coils leaked enough energy to overpower the sensitive probes the ship trailed.

  If Nrin gets into trouble he can jettison the pods and run, but that’s about it. Corran keyed his comm unit. “Nine here. Three Flight in and running. Rear scopes clear.”

  “Alpha operational. Pods locked in position. Commencing initial run now. Range to target, one thousand kilometers.”

  Nrin cruised the snoopscoot past Two Flight and flew it with a very gentle hand on the stick. Corran marveled at how the Quarren pilot put the ship through gentle turns and slow rolls that kept the pods spaced evenly apart. Though the pods were not that large—not much larger than spare fuel pods, in fact—trailing them out behind the fighter like that created all sorts of problems by altering the flight characteristics of the X-wing. While fighter jocks considered themselves the elite—and Nrin had ample kills in his history qualifying him as such—his adept handling of the recon ship showed how skilled a pilot he truly was.

  “Alpha here, Lead.”

  “Go ahead, Alpha.”

  “I am negative for activity from Distna on first pass.” Nrin hesitated for a moment. “I would like permission to come in at five hundred klicks. Storm activity in the gas giant may be masking energy readings from the moon’s interior.”

  Tycho’s voice came on the comm channel. “Lead, that close a run will move Alpha and escorts out of quick escape range.”

  “I copy, Two. Nine, please take Three Flight up to guarantee our exit vector.”

  “As ordered, Lead.” Corran rolled starboard and pointed his fighter toward the gas giant. “Three Flight, we’re holding the door open.”

  A series of double clicks on the comm channel confirmed his pilots’ understanding of his orders. They spread out a bit and locked their S-foils into attack position. Ooryl remained in Corran’s port rear quarter, while Inyri dropped into Asyr’s starboard rear quarter.

  “Whistler, get me some readings on the storms on that gas giant.” As he gave the order Corran tried to tell himself it was because the information would be useful upon their return to Corvis Minor to destroy the Pulsar Station. The logic of that explanation faded both in the light of the data Nrin would be collecting and the fear beginning to trickle into Corran’s guts. He stared up at the orange ball streaked with gray and shot through with lightning, fearing a vision of the Pulsar Station rising from the planet’s misty depths.

  He saw nothing and tried to relax.

  Then Whistler hooted anxiously.

  Corran glanced at his sensors, then up at the gas giant. Black specs rose up through the clouds, looking for a moment like insects trapped between two panes of transparisteel. Though kilometers distant, he knew what they were: TIE fighters, Interceptors, and Bombers. He keyed his comm unit. “Lead, I have multiple contacts coming up out of CM-Five. Eyeballs, squints, and dupes, enough for a squadron of each.”

  “I copy, Nine. We’ve got contacts coming from Distna. Similar numbers.”

  Corran’s mouth went dry. Six squadrons! Krennel had deployed a full fighter wing against the Rogues and their positioning meant two things. The first was that the whole Pulsar Station lab was nothing more than bait to lure the Rogues to this place and slaughter them. Corran realized such a conclusion was the height of paranoia, but that didn’t shake his conviction that it was right. Everything he’d seen suggested that Krennel was the sort of commander who would stop at nothing to kill his enemies, and Rogue Squadron had made an enemy of Krennel long before Corran had ever joined it.

  The second conclusion he came to was that Krennel had sources inside the New Republic that told him when the Rogue operation was going off. Spies had often plagued Rogue Squadron in the past. Corran had vaped one, Erisi Dlarit, but vaping everyone feeding information to Imperials and warlords would be a difficult task. And a task that would take far more time than we have left to us.

  Because of the vast distances in space, the Rogues and their counterparts could see each other long before they could engage each other. Minutes would pass before they would close to effective fighting ranges. Having time to think about what was coming seldom did a warrior any good—and training was meant to take over when thought wasn’t possible. You’re leading Three Flight, Corran. Prep them for what’s coming.

  Corran reached out and switched his comm unit to Three Flight’s tactical channel. “Okay, Rogues, this is how we do this. Whistler, designate each of the incoming Interceptors with a unique ID number and squirt three of them to each of us. We’ve got six proton torpedoes and we use them to burn the squints, got it? We engage them at range and pop them, hard. They’re likely to be a bit out in front of the others because they’ll be wanting kills.”

  He glanced at his monitor. “Next wave will be the eyeballs. We blow through them and go after the dupes. We want to pull the eyeballs away from our exit vector so Wedge and the others can get out, got it? We mix it up with the dupes and create a lot of targets out there. Call for help when you need it, and let’s slag them.”

  “I copy, Nine.” Ooryl’s voice came through calm and strong.

  “As ordered, Nine.” Inyri’s voice betrayed no anxiety, but came through a bit subdued.

  “Targets logged and firing solutions being prepped, Nine.” Asyr’s reply carried with it a hint of anger at the audacity of Krennel plotting the ambush. “After we finish our targets, we help the rest of the squadron, right?”

  “Right, Eleven.” Corran smiled, then punched up the squadron tactical frequency. “Lead, Nine here. We’re prepped to hold the door open.”

  “I copy, Nine. May the Force be with you. We’re engaging now.”

  Corran glanced at his main monitor. “I copy, Lead. We have contact in two minutes.”

  Out in the distance, the flashes of light from the X-wings boiling into a dogfight could be seen as the flickerings of debris sparking against his shields. He punched up a request for data on Nrin’s snoopscoot and saw that it had jettisoned its pods. Shields looked solid and the changing vector data on the ship suggested Nrin was dancing it in and out through the dogfight, offering himself as an elusive target for the enemy.

  Whistler beeped as the last fifteen seconds to target scrolled down. Corran dropped his aiming reticle over the distant form of an Interceptor and watched the torpedo targeting box turn yellow. Whistler’s beeping increased in intensity and frequency, then became a solid tone as the box went red. Corran hit his trigger and launched a torpedo.

  He immediately punched up his second target Interceptor, but that ship began juking fiercely. He tried to get a lock on the third, but it bounced around too much as well. Either they have early warning systems, or they’re just being cautious.

  Other proton torpedoes streaked out from Three Flight and headed toward the incoming TIEs. Two Interceptors winked out of existence, but the rest boiled on undaunted. Corran rolled to port, then pulled back on his stick for a climb that would take him perpendicular to their line of attack. He inverted, presenting his cockpit canopy to them, then pulled back on the stick again and rolled onto a course that brought him in above their flight plane.

  The squints began a climb to come up after him, so he barrel-rolled to port and cruised down toward them. He nudged his stick right, boxing one of the Interceptors. The box went red immediately, so Corran pulled the trigger. The proton torpedo shot out and slammed into the squint at point-blank range. It pierced the ball cockpit, then exploded, blasting the Interceptor into a microfine hail of metal, flesh, and fabric.

  Corran flew straight through the explosion, then pulled his X-wing up into a tight loop. He chopped his throttle back to tighten the loop even more, then tar
geted his last squint. The aiming reticle went red and he launched another torpedo. It jetted away on blue flame, then curved up sharply after the Interceptor. The pilot twisted away at the last second, but the proximity fuse made the torpedo detonate.

  As fast as the squint was, it wasn’t faster than the torpedo’s shrapnel. A metal storm shredded the starboard solar panels and continued on to hole the cockpit. The ship didn’t explode, but it did begin a slow spiral that aimed it toward the gas giant. Its gravity well is so deep it will swallow that ship whole and pretty much anything else that’s left out here.

  An explosion shook Corran’s X-wing and he immediately knew he was in serious trouble. One of the TIE Bombers had nailed him with a concussion missile. The fact that he actually felt the residual effects of the blast meant that his inertial compensator wasn’t functioning right. His rear shield also showed damage, but before he could shift power around to reinforce it, a squint laced his rear shield with fire, collapsing the shield and pouring energy into his upper starboard S-foil.

  Corran felt a weird vibration and heard a corresponding whine for a half second before the engine exploded. The squint’s laserfire had melted part of the centrifugal debris extractor, which threw it out of balance and ripped it free of its supports. Parts of it sprayed back through the engine, shattering it and breaking that S-foil clean off. More debris shot out and peppered the starboard side of the fuselage. One huge chunk slammed into the fighter’s transparisteel canopy, spalling off fragments. One of them lashed Corran’s right cheek, cutting him along the bone, then the atmospheric pressure within the cockpit blew the transparisteel panel and all debris out into space.

  The personal magnetic containment bubble projector each pilot was issued clicked on immediately, cocooning Corran in a thin layer of breathable air. Even with a full power charge, Corran knew he’d only have a hour or so of breathable air, and the cold of space would kill him sooner than that. He would have expected such a realization would fill him with fear, but he found a calm inside that surprised him.