Rogue Squadron (22 page)

Even limiting the trip to the range of the X-wings gave each flight the capability of traveling a considerable distance. He further reduced the range by assuming the Rebels would keep sufficient fuel in the X-wings for a dogfight or rearguard action to allow the other ships to escape. This cut the range roughly in half, and when given a spherical plot on a map of the galaxy for each of the squadron’s sightings, the spheres intersected in a relatively small area of space.

Five hundred known systems existed in that overlapping slice of space. Kirtan discarded all truly loyal worlds from the list. He also removed the openly rebellious worlds because Intelligence had enough spies of their own in hotbeds of Rebel support to inform him if Rogue Squadron had been seen. While the Alliance was willing to draw volunteers
and support from such worlds, they chose not to jeopardize them by basing operations on them.

Inhospitable worlds were shuffled onto a secondary list. While the base on Hoth had shown the Rebels were willing to hide almost anywhere, post-invasion breakdowns and evaluations of the Hoth operation showed the Rebels had trouble modifying equipment to work there. In fact, had the Rebels not been reeling from the defeat at Derra IV, they probably would have bypassed Hoth altogether.

Being the opportunists they were, the Rebels did tend to prefer worlds that already had structures on them that could be converted into installations. It appeared that the more benign and abandoned the world seemed, the more likely the Rebellion was to choose it as a base. Kirtan doubted the Rebels themselves realized they had this predilection for taking over ruins for their own use, and he imagined it had to do with a subconscious desire to renew the Old Republic. The very thing that drove them against the Empire demanded they embrace things older than the Empire to give their movement a legitimacy it lacked itself.

The final list of primary worlds contained only ten names on it. Kirtan subjected this list to the final selection process—one that had come to him as inspiration upon waking from a dream that included visions of Ysanne Isard metamorphosing into a scarlet ghost of Darth Vader.

The X-wings, in arriving at Chorax, had not expected to be dragged out of hyperspace. That meant their entry vector, if drawn as a line through space, would point out their
intended
destination. Kirtan plotted that line through his data model and then asked the computer to sort the candidate worlds according to their proximity to any world on that line.

One world had a perfect correlation with that
line. Kirtan smiled. “Talasea, in the Morobe system.” He downloaded his result into his personal datapad and headed off for Admiral Devlia’s office. “We know where you are, Rogue Squadron. Now we will crush you.”

18

Corran’s eyes snapped open. He knew from the chill of the air and the deep darkness that it was still night. The fog drifting in through the window of the small cottage seemed to amplify the silence of the night. He knew that nothing, not light nor sound had awakened him, but he also knew something was wrong.

He glanced over at Ooryl’s cot and saw it was empty. That wasn’t much of a surprise. He’d learned that Gands needed only a fraction of the sleep humans did and appeared to be able to store it up for times when they could not sleep. He would have loved to know what set of evolutionary pressures had given the Gands this ability, but Ooryl remained decidedly private concerning his species and Corran hadn’t pressed for details.

Corran’s sense of unease didn’t center itself on Ooryl. It remained a feeling that something was wrong, and this sensation was one with which Corran had a lot of experience. He’d felt it when preparing for meetings with criminals or during undercover work when his cover had been blown and
enemies were waiting to hurt him. His father had nodded sagely when Corran told him about that feeling, and had encouraged him to heed it when it occurred.

He threw open his sleeping bag and shivered as the cold air hit his naked flesh.
Well, Father, I’ll “go with my gut.
” Corran pulled on his flight suit and discovered that its synthetic material retained the night’s chill better than his flesh retained heat. He stepped into boots that were also rather frigid. He would have run in place for a moment to warm himself up, but a wave of malignancy washed over him.

Corran crossed to the cottage’s open doorway and crouched in the shadows. He’d have given his right arm for a blaster, but he stored his personal sidearm in Talasea’s flight center, along with his helmet, gloves, and other equipment.
In my days with CorSec I wouldn’t have been caught dead without a gun of some sort. I don’t even have a vibroblade. Either I’m going to be very lucky here or very dead
.

Any advantage he might have came from the basic appearance of the cottage itself. With an open doorway, unglazed windows, and sagging roof, the cottage hardly looked like the sort of place anyone, let alone pilots, would choose to live in. Unfortunately Ooryl and Corran had no choice since a windstorm had knocked a local
kaha
tree through the wall of their room in the pilots’ wing of the flight center. Unpowered and barely visible from the center of the compound, the cottage might go unnoticed.

Unless someone is being
very
thorough
.

The unmistakable squish of mud beneath boot alerted Corran to the presence of someone just outside the cottage. Looking up he saw the snout of a blaster carbine poke through the doorway. A left leg encased in the slate-grey armor worn by stormtroopers
on commando missions followed it. The gun’s muzzle moved to the right, away from Corran, and began a slow sweep of the room.

Corran exploded up from his crouch and slammed his left fist into the stormtrooper’s throat. Using his own body as a weapon, the Corellian smashed the stormtrooper against the doorjamb. Hooking his right hand through the armpit of the soldier’s armor, Corran spun and flung the man into the center of the cottage. Taking one step forward, Corran leaped up and landed with both knees on the Imperial’s stomach.

The stormtrooper retched and vomit squirted from beneath his helmet. Corran pulled the man’s blaster pistol from his holster, tucked it up beneath the trooper’s chin, and pulled the trigger once. A muffled squeak accompanied the reddish light flashing through the helmet’s goggle-eyes, then the body beneath him went limp.

Corran winced.
He who carries a blaster set on
kill
dies by a blaster set on
kill. He tossed the blaster pistol to the floor beside the carbine, then slid off the dead man’s abdomen. He unbuckled the dead trooper’s ammo belt. Tugging it free of the body, he noticed, in addition to the erg-clips for the blasters, a number of pouches, half of which were bulging. Opening one of them he saw compact silver cylinders and a new shiver ran through him.

Explosive charges! Some must already have been set
.

A noise in the doorway made Corran spin. A stormtrooper stood there, staring down at him. Corran’s right hand groped for the blaster pistol, but he knew he’d never make it in time. Then he noticed the stormtrooper’s hands were empty and, more importantly, the man’s feet were two inches off the ground.

Ooryl cast the body aside and it crumpled to the floor. The Gand took a look at the stormtrooper on the ground, then nodded once. “Ooryl apologizes for having left you undefended. Ooryl was out walking when the presence of these interlopers became apparent.”

“How many?”

The Gand shook his head. “Two less. Ooryl saw four others at various points on the perimeter.”

“And our sentries?”

“Gone.”

“Not good. Stormtroopers travel in squads of nine—let’s figure two dozen with the crew of whatever brought them here.” Corran refastened the ammo belt and slung it across his body. Reholstering the blaster pistol he noticed that Ooryl had similarly appropriated his trooper’s weapons. “Is your boy dead?”

The Gand nodded and rolled his trooper onto his stomach. The trooper’s helmet had a blood-smeared hole in the back of it. The hole itself looked odd, and Corran knew that was because of its shape, not just the jagged outline from where the armor crumbled.
Kind of a diamond shape …

He looked up. “Did you hurt your hand?”

Ooryl folded his three fingers into a fist with the wound’s peculiar shape. “Ooryl is not impaired.”

“Well, I am, by the night and the fog. You’ll be in the lead. We have to assume the others are rigging the flight center to blow.”

“No alarm?”

Corran hesitated. By rights raising an alarm would be the smart thing to do, but there were no troops to fight against the stormtroopers. Waking everyone up would be inviting them to get slaughtered as they ran about unarmed. The pilots would
head toward their ships and the stormtroopers in the flight center would cut them down in seconds.

“Have to go silent on this one. We want to approach the flight center from the blind side.”

The Gand nodded and led Corran out into the misty darkness. Clutching the blaster carbine to his chest, a legion of conflicting thoughts and emotions flooded through him. With each step a new plan presented itself to him. There
had
to be better ways to handle the situation than slipping blindly through the night to go hunting stormtroopers. They had every advantage over him. Not only would their armor protect them, but the helmet enhanced their vision and the built-in comlink meant they could coordinate any efforts to hunt him down and kill him.

Thoughts shifted and ambition sparked dreams of glory. He saw himself as a hero of the Alliance for foiling the stormtrooper raid, yet that dream died quickly. As Biggs Darklighter and Jek Porkins had shown, most heroes of the Alliance were made heroes posthumously, and posthumous was the most likely outcome of the expedition. This did not suit Corran, but the sense of menace radiating out through the night made it hard to deny.

At the same time the knowledge that he was surely dead provided him with a sense of freedom. His goal shifted from staying alive to making sure his friends would stay alive. He wasn’t fighting for himself, he was fighting for them. He was the shield that would prevent the Empire’s evil from touching them. In this idea he found a haven from the sense of doom grinding in on him.

Ooryl stopped him with a hand pressed gently to his chest. The Gand held up one finger, then pointed straight ahead. He made a fist with his right hand, then signaled with his left in a looping motion.

Corran nodded and sighted the carbine along the line where Ooryl had pointed. The Gand slipped to the left and immediately disappeared in the fog. The Corellian waited, willing himself to be able to see through the fog to his target. He knew the chances of hitting anything were minimal, and he expected to aim at the source of any blaster fire he saw. Even so, he allowed himself to believe he could feel the soldier in a hard carapace standing twenty or so meters in front of him.

A wet crunch drifted to him through the fog. Corran moved forward, carefully pushing his way through the leafy plants and curtains of tendril-moss at the fringe of the compound. About where he had expected his target to be he found the Gand crouched over a prostrate stormtrooper. The helmet looked decidedly flattened on top and now rode low enough to hide the man’s throat.

Ooryl unfastened the last of the catches on the breast and stomach armor, then pulled it from the dead man’s body and handed it to Corran. “You shall have exoskeleton, too.”

The human pilot smiled. He removed his gunbelt and slipped the armor on. It was much too big for him, but he tightened the flank straps as much as he could and got a vaguely reasonable fit. Adding the trooper’s ammo belt to his own helped hold the armor in place, though the weight of two blasters—one on each hip—made him feel slow.

Ooryl hefted the other carbine in his free hand, then headed off into the night. Corran followed and quickly enough they came to the side of the flight center that faced away from the central compound. They made good use of the hole the
kaha
tree had made in the wall to slip back into the building. Light shone in beneath the edge of the door into the hallway and Corran took this as a good sign.

He pointed to it. “If the troopers were in this wing, they’d have killed the light because leaving it on means they’ll be silhouetted when they enter a darkened room. Gavin and Shiel are in the next room. Let’s get to them.”

The Gand nodded and opened the door a crack. He peered out, then waved Corran forward. Corran shut the door behind him and followed Ooryl through the next door down the hallway. The Gand crossed to where the Shistavanen lay while Corran approached Gavin’s bed. Shifting the carbine to his right hand, he crouched down and laid his left hand over Gavin’s mouth.

He felt the boy start. “Gavin, be quiet. It’s me, Corran. Be still.”

Shiel awoke with a low growl, but after taking a couple of healthy sniffs of the air, he stopped making any noise. He sat up, then slipped from the bed and crouched along with Corran and the Gand at Gavin’s bedside. “Troopers. Blood.”

Corran nodded. “We have stormies here in the base. They’re rigging it to explode—they’re in the hangar now, I think. We have three down and we’re guessing there were two dozen total.”

Ooryl handed the Shistavanen wolfman a carbine. “You know how to use this?”

Shiel’s whispered laugh sounded like a growl. “Death marks don’t come with the rain.”

Corran stripped off one of his gunbelts and shoved it at Gavin. “You can fire a blaster?”

The youth nodded, his face pale in the light from beneath the door. “Don’t know if I’ll hit anything, though.”

“Point and shoot. And shoot. And shoot.” Corran looked over at the two aliens. “Since you both can navigate in the dark, and since your coloration makes you hard to spot, I think you should
head out and around to the hangar.” He passed Shiel two of the spare clips from his belt. “We’ll work our way in through the center here and try to attract their attention. If you get a clue to where their ship is …”