Solo Command (26 page)

“Nice shooting, Wraith Two. Thanks.” The comm unit identified the speaker as Ran Kether.

“Happy to oblige, Rogue Seven.”

Surely Face would now dive into the main body of the fight.

But he didn’t. He circled around the periphery of the battle. Frowning, Lara followed. She knew her duty, even when she didn’t understand it.

Tyria was in the flow of the moment. Even when she wasn’t looking at her sensor board, she had a grasp, a comprehension she’d never really enjoyed before, of where the fighters around her were in relation to her and to one another. She knew what they intended. A moment before they maneuvered, she knew which way they would turn.

Three pairs of starfighters—Corran Horn and Ooryl Qyrgg in the lead, two Kidriff TIE fighters behind them, gaining to optimal distance for a shot, and behind them, Donos and Tyria, unable to gain on the lead Rogues.

Ooryl fell a little behind and Horn swung ahead and slightly below him. The maneuver gave Horn a split second of advantage, since his pursuers couldn’t see the first signs of his next action. Suddenly he was behind Ooryl, losing ground to the TIEs so quickly that they overshot him. One TIE fighter, its pilot obviously experienced, banked to port. The other hung there in place for a moment, and Horn took his shot, a quad-linked laser barrage. Tyria couldn’t tell where it hit the TIE; the enemy starfighter blew so suddenly that she wasn’t able to register the impact.

Both Horn and Ooryl banked in the wake of the escaping TIE.

“How’d they do that?” Tyria asked, surprised. She hadn’t felt the trick maneuver coming, hadn’t predicted it. “That was too fast for them to have said anything.”

“Experience,” Donos said. “Less chatter, Wraith Four.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m hit!” The voice was young, a little panicky. “Losing shield power. Smoke in my cockpit. Lasers indicate malfunction.”

Lara checked her board. The transmission was from Rogue Eight, “Target” Nu, the Rodian. He was separated from his wingmate and had a pair of TIEs on his tail.

“I’m coming.” That was his wingmate, Kether. “I’m—I’m hung up here.”

“Rogue Eight, this is Wraith One.” Face’s voice. “Come to one-nine-four. I’ll head in straight toward you and head-to-head your pursuit. You pair up with Wraith Two out here and stay clear of the engagement.”

“Thanks, Wraith One.” The blip that was Rogue Eight vectored toward her and Face. Face headed straight toward it, leaving Lara hanging out in the void.

She didn’t object. She didn’t ask for orders. She knew what was required of her.

But she wondered, and her confusion gradually turned to cold worry in her stomach.

Seven fighters of the combined TIE pursuit force, including the one Face vaped on his head-to-head run into the center of the engagement zone, were destroyed before the pursuing squad leader ordered an evacuation. Donos decided that the man had to have been assuming the TIE fighters’s greater speed and maneuverability would give him all the advantage he needed against a numerically superior mixed force. But against the Rogues and Wraiths, he was wrong.

The surviving TIEs fled planetward, doubtless to form up with yet another flight group and come once again after the Rogues and Wraiths. But this time they wouldn’t catch up.

Donos responded to Wedge’s order that the group form up on the
Millennium Falsehood
. But on his sensor board, Wraith One and Wraith Two maintained their distance, paralleling the main group’s course a dozen kilometers out.

Lara could still hear a little high-pitched alarm in Rogue Eight’s voice, but that situation seemed to be under control. “I’m getting regular power fluxes but no serious drops. I’ve had to shut down one starboard engine but I can limp in on three.”

“Group, this is Leader. As soon as we have a little bit of moon horizon between us and the planet, the Drakes are going to separate and head on out to Rendezvous Point Beta. The rest of us will vector back into space the planetary sensors can scan, and will then make the jump to Rendezvous Point Alpha. Rogue Two, I want you to delay your jump thirty seconds to make sure all our damaged snubfighters make the transition to hyperspace.”

“Leader, Two. Understood.”

“Wraith One, Wraith Two, rejoin the group and prepare for jump.”

Face’s voice was next. “Leader, this is Wraith One. We need to jump from here and follow you in.”

“Explain that, Wraith One.”

“On a private channel, if you please, Leader.”

The worry in Lara’s stomach turned into fear. There were only so many reasons Face would refuse to let them return to the group. Most of them involved one or the other of them being a danger to the group, such as if one of their X-wings were threatening to blow up.

Face was protecting the group, or someone in the group. And Lara was certain she knew who. He was protecting Wedge.

From her.

Face’s voice was off the comm waves for a couple of minutes. Then he returned. “Wraith Two, have you double-checked your nav course?”

“No,” she said. “You know, don’t you, Face?” Her voice emerged as a choked whisper and she wondered if the comm unit would even pick it up.

“I know that you’re Gara Petothel,” he said. His voice was quieter, more gentle than she expected it to be.

She felt a snapping sensation in her chest, as though her breastbone had broken. And then there was the sensation of loss—of the sudden departure from her life of everything she considered important.

But it didn’t feel quite the way she expected it to. Pain there was, certainly, but she also felt a sudden relief, an absence of the weight she’d been carrying around since first she decided she no longer wanted to serve Zsinj, since she decided that her alliance with the Wraiths was fact, not fiction.

Like an animal in a hunter’s steel-jaw trap, she’d finally lost that part of her the trap held. The pain was indescribable. But there was freedom as well. And she knew that she didn’t need to cry anymore.

“I never betrayed you,” Lara said. She was surprised at how calm her voice sounded.

“I’m glad.”

“I tried so hard just to be Lara. But they wouldn’t let me. The whole universe wouldn’t let me.”

“Lara, I’m sorry,” Face said. “I have to place you under arrest pending investigation of this whole mess. Power your weapons systems down. Set your S-foils to cruise position. Don’t attempt any sudden maneuvers.”

“Understood, sir. I’m complying with your orders.”

•    •    •

Face felt sick to his stomach. He had wished, futilely, that he’d been wrong. But Lara had confirmed it.

A sudden fear struck him. He had been on a private communications channel with Lara, had switched to squadron channel to handle the Target Nu situation and then to respond to Wedge’s order that he move back to the formation, had switched to a private channel for his quick talk with Wedge—and then had gone back to his private channel with Lara. Hadn’t he?

He looked at his comm board. He was now set to squad frequency. He’d spoken last to Lara on an open channel.

His stomach suddenly got worse.

Donos heard the words but didn’t understand them. “I know that you’re Gara Petothel.” He knew that the name Gara Petothel meant something to him but he still couldn’t force his mind around the meaning of those words.

Ah, that was it. Naval officer Chyan Mezzine, a communications and intelligence specialist, had betrayed the New Republic by sending critical information to Admiral Apwar Trigit, a minion of Zsinj. Some of that information was what Trigit used to annihilate Talon Squadron—the X-wing unit commanded by Donos. Only he had survived. Then, later, the New Republic had put out a bulletin on her, indicating that her real name was Gara Petothel, that she was actually a deep-cover agent for Imperial Intelligence. Later, she had been declared dead, another victim of the destruction of Trigit’s Star Destroyer,
Implacable
.

But Lara Notsil
was
Gara Petothel.

Lara Notsil had destroyed his command. Had killed eleven pilots he had bound together.

Suddenly he was back there, in the smoky skies above the volcanoes of Gravan Seven, as ally after ally was ripped from the sky by Trigit’s pilots and their ambush. Again he felt the pain of their deaths. It was a selfish pain, part loss, part realization that he had failed them, part understanding that his life had changed in a way he could never set right.

The howl that escaped him was no animal noise. It was the
wail of a man who’d just lost everything dear to him … and who suddenly had the destroyer of his happiness in his sights.

In spite of comm distortion, the howl made Face’s skin crawl. He knew who it had to be, and a glance at his sensor board showed Wraith Three turning away from his course to the rendezvous point on an intercept course with Face and Lara.

Wedge’s voice did not sound amused. “Wraith Three, this is Leader. Return to your original heading.”

Donos did not deviate from his new course.

Face said, “Wraith Two, come to three-three-two and accelerate to full speed.” He himself did as he’d ordered, turning away from Donos and running before him. Lara stayed with him.

It’s happening again
.

The words were a wail of anguish inside Tyria’s mind.

Once again a fellow pilot was making an assault on a friendly target.

She turned in Donos’s wake and returned her S-foils to attack position.

Once again she had to put a fellow pilot in her weapon sights.

But this time her target was not just an ally but a friend. A squadmate. “Myn,” she said, “please don’t do this.”

Wraith Three came on inexorably but could not gain on Face’s and Lara’s X-wings. But he could fire a proton torpedo, which would cross the distance between them in seconds and could achieve a lock on Lara.

Face neatly sideslipped his X-wing behind Lara’s. “Wraith Three, hold your fire. If you fire, I’m your primary target.”

“Wraith Three, power down or I’ll be forced to fire.” The words were being choked out, the voice identifiable as Tyria’s.

“Wraith Four, this is Wraith One. Do not fire, whatever happens. This is not the same as the Jussafet situation. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged, sir.”

Lara, her voice raspy with pain, said, “Maybe you ought to let him shoot me, sir. Get out of the way.”

“Shut up, Two.”

Face’s sensor board howled, a new noise—the distinctive wail signifying a proton-torpedo launch. Donos had fired.

“Wraith Three, detonate your torp
now
.” Face made no effort to keep alarm out of his voice; that would have required concentration. He maintained his position immediately behind Lara’s X-wing and put all available power to his rear shields. He kept his free hand on his ejection lever. “Three, blow the torp, I’m your target.” From the moment of launch he had only a few seconds before the torpedo hit, and most of that time was already gone. “Detonate, dammit!”

The universe behind Face filled with bright blue fire. His stern shuddered as though he’d been rammed and his cockpit was suddenly filled with smoke, the howl of damage alert sirens, Vape’s mechanical shrieks of dismay, and the rumble and tremble of failing vehicle systems.

But he was still alive. Either the proton torpedo had detonated at the very outer edges of his rear shields, or Donos had detonated it prematurely—barely prematurely.

Bitter anger swelled within him. “Congratulations, Three,” he said. “I may be your newest kill.”

Donos jerked upright in his cockpit, confusion clearing from his mind like smoke sucked into hard vacuum. On his sensor screen, Wraith One was maneuvering erratically as Two continued on the straight-line course she’d been assigned. “Face—One. I’m sorry—” He tried to regain control of his voice, his thoughts. “Hold tight. I’m coming in for a flyover. I’ll check external damage.”

His astromech, Clink, shrieked at him and the shrill tone of an enemy targeting lock assailed his ears. That, and Tycho’s voice, hard and cold as Donos had ever heard it. “Abort that maneuver, Wraith Three.”

“But Captain, I’m closest, I have to see—”

“Deviate from your current course and I will blow you out
of space.” There was no questioning the deadly seriousness of Tycho’s tone. “Wraith Four, do a flyby on Wraith One and report signs of damage. Wraith One, do you copy?”

Face’s voice was nearly as cold as Tycho’s, but his words were harder to understand, drowned by the cockpit alarms from his damaged snubfighter. “I read, Rogue Two. My fighter’s holding together for the moment.”

“Good. Wraith Two, swing back around and form up with the group.”

There was a perceptible delay. Then Lara’s voice came back, strained, but not racked with pain as it had been moments ago. “I don’t think so, Rogue Two.”

“That’s an order, Wraith Two, a direct order.”

“I’ve already surrendered once,” she said, “and have subsequently been fired on by an officer of this group. I no longer have any faith that I’ll survive long enough to meet a court-martial.”

“Wraith Two, this is Rogue Leader. You know you’ll make it now. The situation is under control.”

It was true; Donos was maintaining straight-line flight under Tycho’s guns. He wasn’t sure he was capable of doing anything but following orders. It wasn’t fear of death at Tycho’s hands that kept him in line—it was shock at what he was certain he’d just done.

“What I know is that you don’t believe me,” Lara said. “You don’t believe that I’m a loyal Wraith. You don’t believe that I’ve never done anything to compromise this unit.”

Wedge abandoned the formality of call numbers. “Lara, if what you’re saying is the truth, the court will bear you out. I can confidently state that Nawara Ven will take your case. He’s the best.”

“But that’s it for me with the Wraiths. I’ll never be able to fly with you again. I’ll never be able to help you. To get you out of a jam. I can never undo what I’ve done. Never.”

“You’re probably right, Lara. That’s the way it is. Now come around.”

When her voice returned, it was not Wedge she addressed. “Wraith One? Can you hear me?”

Face’s voice was still strong, and this time was not accompanied by alarms—he’d obviously taken steps to quiet the sirens in his cockpit. “I read you, Two.”