Starfighters of Adumar (28 page)

Tycho gestured at various units as he spoke. “Squadrons of Blades.
Scythe
-class bombers.
Meteor
-class Aerial Forts.
Cutting Lens
-class reconnaissance/intelligence craft.
Farumme
-class haulers configured as troop transports. The numbers are continuously updating on the main board as we get word of new units being added to our resources. Cartann’s forces are similar to ours in composition—just superior in numbers and age.

“Here’s Yedagon City.” Tycho gestured at the grayish blob on the map indicating their current location. “If history is any judge, the forces of Cartann will be heading
here and to the capitals and other major cities of all ‘rebellious’ nations. The
perator
of Cartann has demonstrated that he has a pretty limited agenda and consistent deployment tactics. A screen of fighters to engage enemy fighters, plus fighters acting as support for his bombers. The fighter engagements are the ones that get all the attention, but it’s the bomber usage that does the real damage. He starts by bombing military bases and any area that has demonstrated high comm traffic within the most recent observation period. Then he graduates to government buildings and the homes of higher-ranking nobles.”

“What sort of bombs?”

“They’re officially named Broadcaps, for the shape of the cloud that results, but they’re commonly called Punch-and-Pops. They hit the ground and penetrate several meters—the idea being that they can get into underground chambers like this one—before detonating. A single one can level several city blocks.”

“Charming,” Wedge said. “All right. What’s your plan?”

“The
perator
of Cartann likes noontime assaults. They look very nice on the recordings, and a lot of his pilots enjoy diving down at their targets with the sun at their backs. We can expect his attack on Yedagon City perhaps as early as noon tomorrow … so we’re not going to give him the opportunity. We’ll be launching before dawn to be in Cartann airspace at sunrise.”

Wedge nodded. Getting the hard-living, hard-drinking Cartann pilots out of their bunks a mere handful of hours after they reached them would provide the allied forces with one more desperately needed advantage. “Go on.”

“From there, our first tactic is to deny them their strength by busting up their chain of command wherever possible. The standard assault group of several fighter squadrons and associated bombers and fortresses will analyze the approach of Cartann forces. When they know which portion of the formation is the Cartann target—the
‘center’—that portion will slow its approach and mill. The outer edges will swing out farther and increase speed, forming horns to either side of the Cartann formation and at a lower altitude, at distances that put our horns out of range of one another’s weapons—but keep the Cartann forces within range of both sets of weapons. Since our firing plane is below the target plane, misses by missiles will not endanger our own forces—they’ll just reach their programmed range limits and detonate themselves. Meanwhile, the Cartann forces will have to suffer an initial barrage in which we can concentrate fire and they have to diffuse theirs, and then will have to choose to maintain their original plan or break up to assault the diverse elements of our formation. Once they’ve committed themselves, we can choose whether to collapse our formation and pin them there, or send the horns—with their bombers—on to their primary objectives, the air bases and communications centers.”

“Good,” Wedge said. “Let me ask a few questions. On Adumari lightboards, a squadron tends to be a single signal until it’s close enough to be perceived as individual fighter-craft. How many Blades return the same-sized signal, at distance, as
Scythe
-class and
Meteor
-class vehicles?”

Tycho looked up at one of the uniformed officers standing by. “General ya Sethes?”

The officer, a gray-haired woman built like a champion wrestler, answered without hesitation. “Four for Scythes, six for Meteors. Unless the squadron is Blade-Twenty-eights or earlier, in which case five and eight.”

“I want every bomber and aerial fortress transponder programmed to issue a false response,” Wedge said. “When queried by a lightbounce signal, instead of responding with its true name and other information, it sends back that it’s one Blade in a squadron. Three Scythes end up looking like one squadron, and two Meteors likewise, until they’re close enough.”

“So their projections on our composition are thrown
off just when it’s time to mix it up,” Tycho said. “I like that.”

“That’s not all. I want us to assemble a list of, oh, the thirty most prestigious pilots flying in our united force. I want the transponders of at least two Blades in each fighter squadron to be able to toggle between returning their correct data and the data for one of those pilots. Likewise, I want the real pilots on that list to be able to toggle to return the data for a novice pilot. Nobody’s to switch to deceptive transponder data until the furball is under way, and only when they’re not under weapons lock by an enemy.”

General ya Sethes looked dubious. “If we wait until the fighters are all engaged, yes, then the deception will be harder to recognize. But what’s the point?”

Wedge smiled at her. “The point is, within a single squadron’s engagement, the pilots can tend to affect which of them is to be the focus of enemy assaults. Put someone who has good evasive skills up under the name of, say, Major Janson. The enemies will flock to him, possibly allowing the best shooters in his squadron an unanswered salvo or two. Then, if our ersatz Janson gets clear of weapons locks for a moment, he can take off his mask—switch his transponder back to his real identity—and confuse participants scanning for him. Any confusion we can sow in the enemy helps us, hurts them.”

The general still looked unconvinced, but said, “If nothing else, this should be simple to program. I’ll see to it.”

“Thank you.” Wedge turned back to the map. “Are Cartann’s military responses predictable enough that we can map out where our forces will engage theirs?”

“Only if their squadron response drills are good indications.” Tycho shrugged. “Hard to say, since those drills are non-weapon exercises and the Cartann flyers hate that. But my guess is, yes.”

“So we send out one squadron an hour or two ahead
of each major formation. Pilots skilled at terrain-following flying. They fly beneath the altitude at which lightbounce sensors start to be active and set up in deep cover beneath the projected engagement zone. Because, until they break up to pursue enemies, Cartann squadrons tend to fly in pretty close formations—”

“So our advance units can fire their missiles up at their squadrons passing overhead,” Janson said. “Perhaps taking out multiple fighters per missile in those first few seconds.”

“Ooh,” Hobbie said. “I volunteer. I want that. Let me do that. Please.” Though his expression was, as usual, somber, he was practically hopping from foot to foot in his excitement.

Wedge and Tycho looked at one another. Wedge asked, “Have you ever seen behavior like this?”

Tycho shook his head. “Only when he really, really needs to run to the refresher. Hobbie, why?”

“Because I am
sick
of it,” Hobbie said. “I’m sick to death of ‘Hello, I’m so-and-so and I’ve killed this many enemies, and I challenge you, and we bow and go by the rules and say cute things to one another, and isn’t it nice that we’re all dead now?’ Tycho, I want to
shoot
something. I want to blow something up. No apologies. No advance warning. Just lethal efficiency. Before frustration
kills
me.”

“More words that he’s strung together at once since I’ve known him,” Tycho said. “All right, Hobbie. You’ll be in charge of the advance squadron for lead group.”

“I don’t think he’s entirely sane right now,” Janson said. “I’d better stay with him.”

“Good idea,” Wedge said. “Anyway, Tycho, that’s all the modifications I had to recommend for your plan. I do want to address the pilots, either directly or by recording, and lay down some rules. I want them flying New Republic-style. I see a pilot flying for glory instead of victory, I’ll be happy to shoot him down myself.”

“Done,” said General ya Sethes.

Wedge caught Cheriss’s eye. “Cheriss, will you be staying here?”

She shook her head. “I’m being flown in hours early, with a special ground unit. I could not bring myself to fire upon my city, or tell others where to drop the bombs … but I
can
help find your X-wings.”

“I appreciate that. It might prove to be vital if Turr Phennir and his pilots are in their TIE Interceptors. Thanks.” He turned to Hallis. “What about you? Staying here, I hope?”

“Are you crazy?” She frowned. “Let me rephrase that. Haven’t you been paying attention? I’m a documentarian. They’ve granted me a place on one of the Meteors. I’ll be recording all the way in, all the way out.”

Wedge considered his responses, but knew he had no way to persuade her not to come. He could issue orders preventing her … but to do so would suggest, accurately, that he had no respect for her right to choose her own destiny. “Good luck,” he said, and turned to Iella. “If you haven’t already chosen something suicidal, I have a mission for you.”

“Name it.”

“I want you to go up to
Allegiance
, and beg, bribe, and bully your way aboard, and get a copy of our Tomer Darpen recording into their hands.”

“Did that already.”

“What
?”

Heads raised all across the room at Wedge’s shout. He waved people’s attention away, then took Iella’s arm and led her a few steps from the table. “How is that again?”

She smiled at him, her enjoyment at his discomposure very evident. “While you were sleeping. I asked Escalion for a spaceworthy Blade and a pilot. She flew me up to
Allegiance
.”

“I wish you’d waited.”

“For you to ask me to do exactly what I was going to do? What I was obliged by my duties as an Intelligence officer to do?”

“That’s right.” He grinned. “All right, so it’s illogical. How did it go?”

“Strange,” she said.
“Allegiance
’s officers, I found out later, were
not
happy with the no-communications order from Tomer. All we knew is that the ship wouldn’t respond to our hails. So, very carefully and slowly, we flew up to her and into the main starfighter bay. There were a lot of soldiers there, a lot of blaster rifles there pointed at us … but things relaxed a lot when I identified myself, and I spoke with Captain Salaban. He’s as frantic and resentful as a fighter pilot in a tractor beam with the orders he’s under.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Well, it was obvious that he intended to obey his orders no matter how hateful they were to him. Which is nothing more than what I expected. And even if I’d told him the whole story, it would have been my word—and a juicy bit of corroborating recorded evidence—against anything Tomer Darpen told him, just enough to cause Salaban distress but not enough to cause him to violate his orders, in my opinion. So I decided not to hang him on the hook of that dilemma. I told him about the war that was brewing, and how it came about—not including Tomer Darpen’s role in it. I gave him a copy of the recording with a request that he forward it to General Cracken’s office at the point the communications blackout was lifted. I also left a copy mislabeled as my will, and broadcast encrypted copies with a time-based decryption order to the R5 and R2 units of the X-wing squadron aboard.”

“I would say you’ve done more than I could ask you to.” He added, a growl to his voice, “Other than helpfully being out of harm’s way when the shooting starts.”

“I’m going to be in one of their reconnaissance craft,”
she said. “Doing unit coordination. Well away from the battlefront.”

“Battlefronts tend not to have fixed lines, and missiles don’t acknowledge what lines there are.”

“That’s the best you’re going to get, Wedge. Don’t push.”

He sighed, exasperated. “Were you always this way?”

“No,” she said. “I was pretty stubborn when I was younger.”

“Just don’t feel you have to stay close if things go bad,” he said. “Our chances are still pretty low, even with all those new people and resources flooding in …” His voice trailed off as a new thought occurred to him.

“What is it?”

“I’ve commanded large forces before. The
Lusankya
has more combined firepower than the entire force I’ll be leading today. But until now all the forces I’ve led have been assigned to me, routine unit assignments, with a healthy dose of volunteers. This is the first time that such a large group, so many recruits, have come in just on the strength of my name. It’s disconcerting.”

“Don’t let it go to your head, Wedge. You won’t be able to fit into your helmet.”

“Thanks for the reassurance.” He swung her back toward the planning table. “Back to work.”

In the hours before dawn, Wedge stood on the ladder to his Blade’s cockpit, a spotlight on him, a comlink on his collar to broadcast his words, and prepared to address the troops.

He’d never really understood the pre-mission pep talk—or, rather, had never shared the psychology of the pilots and soldiers who needed and expected one. He never flew a mission without becoming, at some point
before the first laser was fired, completely committed to it; that was the only way to achieve the objective and maybe stay alive while doing it.

But since inheriting command of Rogue Squadron from Luke Skywalker a decade ago, he’d learned the hard fact that he often saved lives with the right words. He wondered if he had the right words with him now. He thumbed on the comlink and looked out over the vista before him—what seemed like an endless stretch of duracrete thick with fighter-craft, pilots, crewmen, mechanics. Most common were the dark red jumpsuits worn by Yedagon Confederacy pilots and workers; each person’s was decorated by scarves, medals, piping, or other expressions of individuality. Jumpsuits of other colors, representing other nations, were in evidence. Wedge himself wore the garish orange of the New Republic starfighter pilot; Hallis had told the Yedagonians what to look for and they had obligingly equipped Red Flight with the familiar colors.