Rogue Squadron (18 page)

“But, Booster used to smuggle glit …”

Wedge cut him off with a scowl. “He also helped me track down the pirates who destroyed the fueling station and killed my parents—pirates who destroyed it while fleeing Corellian Security and whom CorSec never caught.”

“And that makes it all right?”

“No, Lieutenant, it just puts things in perspective.” Wedge gave Mirax a hug around her shoulders. “Mirax isn’t her father. Ever since he retired, she’s been running a lot of supplies for the Alliance.” He then turned and gave her a hard stare. “And Corran isn’t his father, either. If he’d not made some last-minute adjustments to the course we were taking, we’d not have ended up in the Chorax system to save you.”

Mirax glanced down at the ground. The anger in her expression eased slightly, aided and abetted by the color rising to her cheeks. “You’re right, Wedge. I’m still bleeding off the stress of being jumped like that. The
Black Asp
came out of hyperspace right on my exit vector and gravved me in place. Someone sold me out.”

Corran snorted. “No honor among thieves.”

Wedge frowned at him. “More like Imperial
credits buying more loyalty than the promise of Alliance credits.”

Mirax shrugged her shoulders. “Some of us find those promises more safe than letting the Empire get their hooks into us.” She extended her hand to Corran. “I want to apologize for my behavior, Lieutenant.”

Corran shook her hand. “Apology accepted, and I apologize as well. I’m still rattled after getting fired upon by a cruiser. My R2 is down and I’m a bit worried …”

She smiled and some of the tension in his chest eased. “I understand. If I can help in any way.”

“I appreciate the offer.” Corran looked over at Wedge. “I should probably see to getting the X-wing unloaded and Whistler’s getting repaired.”

“In a moment, Lieutenant, I want to speak with you first.” He jerked a thumb at the
Pulsar Skate
. “Mirax, do you know where your shipment was going?”

“I was supposed to rendezvous with a ship for transfer or coordinates.” She shrugged. “According to the manifest it was a lot of basic stuff for setting up a base. You could probably use most of it here.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Wedge fished a cylindrical comlink from a pocket of his flight suit and flicked it on with his thumb. “Antilles to Emtrey.”

“Emtrey here, sir. I’ve been trying to reach you since we landed …”

Wedge rolled his eyes skyward. “I’m sure you have. No time to talk now. I need you to get a salvage crew with a lift crane over here to get Horn’s X-wing and R2 unit. You also need to get the ship’s manifest from the
Pulsar Skate
. Find out where that shipment of supplies was going and see if you can’t arrange for what we need to remain here.”

“Yes, sir. As I was saying, sir …”

“Antilles out.” Wedge turned the comlink off and shoved it deep into his pocket again. “Tycho said he didn’t have any trouble with the droid on the trip out here, but why not I can’t imagine.”

Mirax arched an eyebrow at Wedge. “So you send him out here to talk with me?”

“Believe me, he’s not the worst protocol droid on our side, not by a long shot.” Wedge winked at her. “Just give him the datacard, retreat to the
Skate
, and threaten to shoot him if he comes aboard.”

“Make sure you shoot twice.”

“I’ll remember that, Lieutenant.” Mirax sighed. “Wouldn’t it be easier if I just downloaded the manifest to your central computer?”

Wedge winced. “Right now he
is
our central computer.”

“True, this isn’t exactly Coruscant Rimward. It makes the Outlier worlds look civilized.”

“I’m glad you understand.” Wedge tossed her an abbreviated salute. “We will talk more later, Mirax. Lieutenant, if you’ll follow me.”

Corran fell in step with his commander. “You wanted to say something to me, sir?”

“It’s never again going to be quite like that first time.” Wedge smiled. “Taking on fighters is one thing, but fighting in the shadow of a capital ship, that’s enough to get to anyone.”

Maybe that was the difference between this time and the others
. “I appreciate the perspective, sir.”

“I also wanted to congratulate you for the way you recovered yourself out there. You were in a very difficult position and you got yourself out of it rather handily.”

“It was more luck than anything else, sir. If that second blast had caught me square on, I would have
been on that Interdictor and Talasea would be under assault.”

“Call it whatever you like, Mr. Horn, you did well.” Wedge shook his head. “Getting those two Interceptors after your systems were down was very impressive.”

“As I told Captain Celchu, he did the hard part, I just pulled the trigger. If they’d broken his lock, I would never have hit them.” The younger man frowned. “That brings me to a question, sir.”

“Yes?”

Corran stopped and grey mist swirled between the two of them. “Captain Celchu was able to get a torpedo lock on those two Interceptors. Why didn’t he shoot them himself?”

Wedge hesitated, instantly putting Corran on his guard. “The
Forbidden
is being modified for training purposes to simulate the profile of an assault gunboat. While it has the sensor package for concussion missiles, it doesn’t carry any and couldn’t shoot them if it did.”

“Then why didn’t he take them with his lasers?
Lambda-
class shuttles have lasers.”

Wedge’s reply came tight and laced with frustration. “The
Forbidden
does not.”

Corran glanced down at the ground. “Commander, I saw Alliance Security escorting Captain Celchu around on Folor. He’s never had fully powered weapons on his Z-95 Headhunter and you’re telling me his shuttle had the lasers removed despite our travel through contested sectors of the Core? What’s going on here?”

Wedge took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Have you told anyone else about the security escorts?”

“No, I …”

“Lieutenant, I want you to understand two
things: First, I have the utmost trust and confidence in Captain Celchu. I have no reservations—none—about him, his service, his skills, or his commitment to the Alliance. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Second, the matter to which you allude is a private one, concerning Captain Celchu alone. Because of it he has agreed to have limitations placed upon himself. Discussion of it is up to him, but both he and I believe bringing the issue up will only serve as a distraction to the squadron.”

As if not knowing will
not
distract me
. “Does this mean I can’t ask him about it?”

Wedge folded his arms across his chest. “Corran, you were a law enforcement officer, so suspicion comes easily to you and trust does not. Ask yourself this question—if you could trust him to help shoot those two Interceptors, don’t you think you can trust him all the way around? He didn’t have to save you, but he did, knowing full well he was as dead as you were if the Interceptors turned on him.”

“I see your point, sir.” Corran nodded slowly. “Doesn’t mean I may not ask, unless you order me not to, but I won’t tell anyone else about it. And if the Captain refuses to answer my questions, I’ll have to let it go, I guess. He saved my life. I owe him that much at least.”

“Good.”

“One more thing, sir.”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

Corran looked back toward the
Pulsar Skate
. “Back there you mentioned that Corellian Security never caught the pirates who destroyed the Gus Treta station and killed your parents. My father got that case and worked hard on it. He didn’t give up, he just didn’t have your connections on the other
side of the law.” He swallowed hard. “I think, if my father had known about Booster Terrik helping you find them, he’d have cut him some slack and Booster wouldn’t have done time in the spice mines.”

Wedge reached out and slapped Corran lightly on the shoulder. “Booster clearly wasn’t a Jedi, nor was he Sithspawn, and the time on Kessel got him out of the business. In a more candid moment, Mirax will probably admit the five years he spent in the dark was good for her father.”

“I doubt she and I will share many
candid moments
, sir.”

“Really? I think you two would get along quite well together.”

“Our fathers openly hated each other, sir. Not the best foundation for a lasting friendship.” Corran shook his head. “Besides, she’s your friend …”

“But
just
a friend. More like a sister, since she stayed with us when her father was on dangerous runs.”

Like a “sister” to the commanding officer, now
there’s
incentive to get to know her
. Corran smiled. “I’ll take that under advisement, sir.”

“Do that, Lieutenant. Having friends never hurts.”

“Sir, sir!”

Both men looked up as Emtrey materialized out of the Talasean fog.
His dark color on this dim world—I don’t envy the Commander trying to avoid dealing with the droid here
.

Wedge looked over at Corran and in an instant Corran knew they had been thinking the same thing. “Emtrey, good, I’ll leave you to discuss the condition of his X-wing with Lieutenant Horn. Find me after that.” Corran read an “if you can” in Wedge’s smile as the leader of Rogue Squadron turned and walked away.

“As you wish, sir.” The droid aborted a salute, then shuffled his feet around to face Corran. “About your X-wing. Sir, the damage is not that extensive.”

“What about Whistler?”

“Ah, your R2 unit.” The droid canted his clamshell head to the side ever so slightly. “Your Whistler will be fine. He shut himself down before the ion blast could do it—this by virtue of the near miss. I must say, sir, that I thought …”

“Yes, Emtrey, I appreciate that, but he’ll be fine?”

“I should think so, sir, though it was a near thing.”

“Near thing?” Corran asked, instantly regretting his invitation to Emtrey to explain.

“Well, sir, a power coupling was negatively polarized, precluding an auto-restart. Many would consider this a minor problem. The coupling will have to undergo thermo-reconditioning, but we have the facilities for that here since the colonists used to use agrodroids and this world has some fierce thunderstorms in the rainy season.”

“Fascinating, really, Emtrey.” Corran smiled easily. “You should ask Commander Antilles to let you brief the squadron on the climatology of this world.”
Use me to escape the droid, will you?
“Demand it, really.”

“Demand? Oh, my.”

“Insist absolutely. Fifteen or twenty minutes of reasoning with him should convince him of its necessity.” Corran nodded solemnly. “Now, about my X-wing. I blew a phi-inverted lateral stabilizer.”

“That is correct, sir.” Emtrey handed Corran a datapad. “I have downloaded the requisition forms for the part into this datapad. If you will fill them out, along with an incident report, I’ll get Captain Celchu to review the forms and get Commander
Antilles to sign off on them. We’ll relay the information back to General Salm. We should have the part in a month or two at the most.”

Corran’s jaw dropped. “A month or two?”

“Provided they have the part and you don’t get pushed back in the priority list.”

“Priority list?”

“Yes, sir. You brought your X-wing with you and have never formally signed it over to the Alliance. To prevent individuals from using the Alliance as a maintenance depot, regulation 119432, subsection 5, paragraph 3 states ‘Non-Alliance craft that are allied with or working under the command of an Alliance leader will be provided with parts and maintenance at the discretion of the commanding officer and/or the senior officer in charge of parts and supply for said craft. If said craft are damaged in any actions that were not planned or sanctioned in advance (see Sec. 12, para 7 for a list of exceptions), all damage is considered non-Alliance related and to be repaired only after authorized repairs to sanction-action-damaged craft have been completed.’ Now the exceptions …”

“Hold it, Emtrey.” Corran massaged his temples. “Is this the only way to get a new stabilizer?”

“Sir, I am conversant in the regulations of over six million different military and paramilitary organizations and there is nothing that …”

The pilot rapped a knuckle against the droid’s black breastplate and that stopped the litany. “Emtrey, there have to be more phi-inverted lateral stabilizers in existence than we have in all the Alliance ships and stores. Z-95 Headhunters and Incom T-47 Airspeeders both use the part. There’s probably a wrecked T-47 out here somewhere, in fact.”

“There might be, sir.” The droid rotated his
head around in a circle to scan the whole area. “I’ll prepare the forms requesting a general survey of the local sector.”

Dropping the datapad, Corran reached out and grabbed the droid’s head in both hands. He pulled Emtrey’s facial opening toward him. “You’re missing my point, Emtrey. Forms and requests will take time. Without that part, I can’t fly. If I can’t fly, I’ll be stuck in this fog and on the ground and that will make life miserable for me and I don’t want that. There are parts to be had …”

“And regulations to be observed.”

“Regulations be damned!”

The droid pulled back a step and the condensation on his head let him slip away. “Sir, of all the members of Rogue Squadron, I would have thought
you
would appreciate adherence to regulations!”

Corran sighed. “Regulations have their place, but not when they hurt. Can’t you just scrounge the part or something?”

The droid froze in position, the flashing light in his eyes being the only indication he was still working. The pilot luxuriated in the cessation of the droid’s chatter, but it went on far longer than he’d heard before in the droid’s presence. The eye-flashes became asynchronous, and this worried Corran a bit.

“Emtrey?”

The droid’s eyes went dark for a moment, then his limbs and head jerked as if he had been struck by lightning.

“Emtrey?”

The eyes lit up again and Corran would have sworn they were a bit brighter. “Scrounging protocol engaged, sir.” The droid bent down and smoothly retrieved the datapad. He glanced at the
datapad, then shook his head. “I’ll shoot a requisition up through channels, but I think I can find you something sooner than anything we get from Command. You’re a pilot, and my job is to keep you flying. Consider it done.”