Rogue Squadron (32 page)

Whistler screeched a warning about the return of the other two Interceptors, but Corran ignored it. He triggered one burst of lasers and clipped one of the squint’s wings, but it sailed on. Pushing more power to his engines, Corran started to close with it, but the astromech whistled insistently at him.

The pair of Interceptors had closed to inside a kilometer and were firmly on his tail. “Nine here, I could use some help.”

“I’m on it, Nine. Ten on the way. Break to port on my mark.”

Ten? That’s Ooryl, but not his voice. What’s going on?

“Mark.”

Left rudder, then a snap-roll onto the port stabilizers pulled him wide out of his previous flight path. He saw blue bolts shoot back toward the ships
following him and for a half second Corran felt utterly disoriented. Blue beams meant ion cannon shots, but the planet had been behind him, not in front of him. And the ion cannons on the ground wouldn’t be shooting at TIEs in any event.

“You’re clear, Nine.”

Corran brought his ship around and suddenly everything became clearer. Defender Wing’s Y-wings dove and climbed through the dogfight, blasting away at Interceptors with wild abandon. What the slow ships lacked in grace they made up for in sheer firepower. Their entry into the fight destroyed or disabled a half-dozen Interceptors.

“They’re running!”

Salm’s voice came through the comm. “No celebrations. With them clear the ion cannons will open up again.”

“
Forbidden
to Control, I have all EV pilots.”

“
Forbidden
, you are clear to hyperspace.”

Four ion blasts from the planet stabbed up and again struck the
Mon Valle
. The modified bulk cruiser began to break apart. Escape pods shot out from around the bridge and away into space, while the rest of the ship began to slowly drift back down toward Blackmoon.

“I hope it hits the installation.”

“Control to all fighters, you are clear to hyperspace.”

“Control, does
Eridain
need cover for getting the escape pods?”

“Negative, Rogue Leader, they’re on our way out and the Interceptors are heading home.”

“Thanks, Control.” Wedge’s voice seemed filled with weariness. “Back to base for us, Rogues.”

“Got it, Rogue Leader.” Corran took one last look at Blackmoon, then pointed his fighter toward
the stars. “Back to base for
most
of us he means, Whistler. Two months of prep and in ten minutes the squadron is cut in half. Someone made some very bad mistakes here, and our friends paid for them. Never again.”

27

Corran stared out the window of the Noquivzor base recreation center. Rolling hills and treeless plains stretched out for kilometers in all directions from the building. Gentle and warm breezes washed in waves over the golden grasses and tickled the back of his neck.
If Erisi weren’t over in the med center floating in her family’s finest stock, I’d take her on a long walk out there and just enjoy the countryside. As beautiful as it is, though, it’s hard to think of enjoying anything right now
.

He forced himself to smile as a man in an infantry uniform set a mug of lum down on the table in front of him. “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

The man nodded. “Call me Page.”

Corran shoved the chair on the other side of the table out toward Page. “What’s the lum for?”

“Drinking usually.” Page sat. “Me and my people were on the
Devonian
. You and your wingman scattered the squints coming in our direction. We owe you.”

The pilot lifted the mug and drank a mouthful of the fiery ale and let it burn its way down his
throat. “I appreciate the drink, but you’ll have to buy one for Ooryl when he comes out of his bacta dip.”

Page nodded. “Gladly. How badly was he hit?”

“Lost half his right arm. The suit shut down around the wound so he didn’t suffocate, but he got very cold.” Corran put the frosted mug down and shivered. “Bacta is for exposure—all the EV pilots are getting a dunking, though none of them are as bad off as Ooryl. The Emdees don’t know about prosthetics for him—they’ve never done Gands before and don’t have appropriate limbs to use for replacements.”

“Rogue Squadron got hit hard.”

“Two pilots dead, three EV, and one was flying wounded.”

“I heard about him, the Shistavanen.”

“Very tough individual.” Corran nodded. “Shiel wasn’t going to report for medical care but Gavin forced him to go. Net result, we’re at two-thirds strength, but only if we can find X-wings to replace the ones we lost. If not, we’re below fifty percent.”

The infantry officer looked around the crowded, above-ground pavilion, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. “This mission was vape-bait from before Kre’fey ordered the Y-wings home.”

“No kidding.” The pilot glowered at the mug. “About a second before the cannons took the
Modaran
apart I realized that just because the cannons hadn’t shot didn’t mean they
couldn’t
shoot.”

“That occurred to all of us, I think, except for General Kre’fey. He was blind to that possibility.” Page shook his head. “We all knew he wanted Blackmoon so the Council would give him command of the Coruscant invasion. In three weeks the planet’s orbit takes it through an annual meteor shower. I wanted to use that as cover to bring my
commandos in to do a ground recon of the base. We would have taken the ion cannons down.”

“That makes sense. Why didn’t he approve it?”

“The world’s only moon—the Blackmoon that gave the system its codename—would be in our entry and exit vector. It would act as a natural Interdictor cruiser, which could make things a lot more dangerous.”

Corran shrugged. “The ion cannons made things dangerous enough, thanks.”

“No kidding.” Page smiled. “We would have taken them down.
And
we would have found the base for those squint squadrons that came in late to the fight.”

“The Bothans didn’t even know they were there.”

The infantryman winced. “And they should have. They’re very good at worming their way into Imperial networks.”

“So this time they failed.” Corran hesitated as an idea occurred to him. “Or records of those forces aren’t part of the official garrison.”

Page frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Working with CorSec I was involved in a sweep of a smuggler’s headquarters. She was very sharp and had always distanced herself from glitterstim stores, so we couldn’t pin anything on her. This one time, though, we found a couple of kilos of glitterstim in a warehouse she owned. She said she knew nothing about it and accused us of planting it. Turned out that she
didn’t
know anything about it. The glitterstim had been skimmed from shipments by one of her aides and hidden there until he could find a way to move it himself.”

“You’re saying the Empire doesn’t know those Interceptors were there?”

“A squadron is a rounding error for Imperial
bookkeepers.” Corran leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “And the Bothans didn’t know about whatever power source was used to boost the shields back up after we took them down. Whoever is in charge of wherever Blackmoon is might be running some operation his Imperial masters know nothing about.”

Page nodded slowly. “The data on the covert operation is kept away from the Imperials, so the Bothans had no way of discovering it.”

“Not without being on the ground.”

“We had intel on the vislight from the galaxy, but we got jumped by the IR and UV.” Page rapped his knuckles on the plasteel tabletop. “If we’d been given proper background on Blackmoon, we might have been able to guess at the kind of information we really needed.”

“I understand the need for operational security—but you can bet now the true location of Blackmoon won’t be declassified until we’re all dead and gone.”

Page nodded. “Still, the simulations of an assault are only as good as the databases from which they are constructed. Bad intel gets people killed.”

Corran ran a hand over his face. “Well, now we have an inkling of what we don’t know about Blackmoon. At least two squint squadrons and a power generator are hidden there somewhere—hidden from us
and
Imp officials.”

“The information in the official Imperial survey files is clearly useless.”

“Right. And that means …” The chirp of the comlink on the table cut off Corran’s comment. He picked it up and opened the channel. “Horn here.”

“Emtrey here, sir.”

“Something wrong with Ooryl?”

“No, sir.”

“Is Erisi coming out of the bacta?”

“No, sir.”

Corran frowned. “Then why did you call me?”

“Sir, Whistler asked me to inform you he has completed the calculations of the wind currents you requested.”

“Wind currents?”

“On Blackmoon, sir. He said he has found some very interesting things.”

“We’ll be there in a second. Horn out.” Corran looked up at Page. “It may be raising the shields after the base had been strafed, but I’m up for learning a little more about the world we just ran from. How about you?”

“I had friends on the
Modaran
. I didn’t like seeing them die.”

“Good, let’s go.” Corran shot him a smile. “Maybe, just maybe we can find a way to go back in and make the Imps pay.”

Wedge wasn’t certain he had heard General Salm correctly. “Did you just say it was just as well that we failed to take Blackmoon?”

Salm nodded slowly and pointed with a glass of pale blue Abrax cognac at the datapad on his desk. “Intelligence reports that the Imperial Star Destroyer-II
Eviscerator
left the Venjagga system on a course that would have put it in at Blackmoon within six hours after we launched our operation. Its six squadrons of TIEs would have matched our fighters and the
Eviscerator
would have pounded on the
Emancipator
. Chances are very good we would have lost our strike force
and
Blackmoon.”

The Corellian’s jaw dropped. “The mission was a go with a Impstar-Deuce within six hours of the target? How did that happen?”

“I don’t know. Iceheart has been shifting some
resources around, and some Admirals move them even further to avoid her control. It could be the
Eviscerator
was moved at random.”

Wedge frowned. “Or Iceheart anticipated where we were likely to strike.”

“Or”—Salm looked at Wedge over the rim of his glass—“someone told Iceheart where we were going to be.”

“Tycho was in the dark about our destination as the rest of us were—and he was out there without any lasers or torps pulling in EV pilots.”

Salm held up his open hand. “Easy, Commander, I wasn’t accusing your XO. I don’t trust him, but I know he was innocent this time.”

“You checked the monitor logs on him?”

“I checked the logs on
everyone
. There were more call-outs than I like, but nothing incriminating. Now
I
didn’t know where we were going before we pulled out, so I assume no one else did, but there are always leaks.” The General set his cognac on his desk, then walked over to the small bar in the corner of his quarters. “Would you like a drink, Commander Antilles?”

“I’d prefer it if you’d call me Wedge.”

The smaller man seemed to consider that for a moment, then he nodded. “Very well, Wedge. A drink?”

“How old is the Abrax?”

Salm smiled. “I don’t know. My aide obtained it from the black market so your guess is as good as mine. The bottle does have Old Republic tax holograms on it, though.”

Wedge shrugged. “I’ll chance it, then, thanks.”

The General poured him a generous dollop of the aquamarine liquid. “Please, be seated.”

The General’s quarters were as sparsely furnished as his own, with munition cases and old ejection
seats being about the best thing available to use as tables and chairs. Salm’s liquor cabinet had been built out of a plasteel helmet case with foam inserts to keep glasses and two bottles safe. Wedge appropriated one of the ejection seats and raised his glass of cognac. “Thank you for coming to our rescue out there.”

“Defender Wing pays its debts.”

Glasses clinked as they touched and both men drank. The liquor’s spicy vapors opened up all of Wedge’s nasal passages. He let the liquid pool on his tongue for a moment more, then swallowed it. A warmth started in his belly and pulsed out to ease some of the fatigue in his limbs.

The General hunched forward, cupping his glass in both hands. “I want to ask you what you intend to put in your report about what I did out there.”

Wedge made no effort to cover his surprise. “You saved my unit. I thought I might recommend review for the Corellian Cross. Since I’m not your commanding officer I can’t put you in for it, but …”

Salm shook his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“What, then?”

The man’s brow furrowed. “I disobeyed a direct order to leave the system.”

Wedge blinked in confusion. “If you had returned to the
Mon Valle
, your entire wing would have been killed.”

“We know that now, but we did not know that at the time the order was given.” Salm swirled the cognac around in his glass. “General Kre’fey and I had often been at odds with each other—you may have gathered that from the briefing. I felt, when he ordered me out, that he wanted to rob me of any credit for the operation. I started us on an outbound vector, but came in close to the
Emancipator
so I
could claim its mass prevented us from making the jump to light speed. I didn’t want to leave and closing with the Star Destroyer made for a convenient excuse, but datafeeds from the onboard computers will reveal the truth.”

“And so you were in position so the
Emancipator
could screen you from ground sensors
and
the incoming squints.” Wedge shrugged. “If I’d been given that order and thought of that trick to let me stick around, that’s what I would have done.”

“I know.” Salm stood and began to pace. “That’s the problem, Commander Antilles: What I did is
exactly
what you would have done.”