Wedge finally did speak. "Narra, this is Wraith Leader. Place your package, then scram back to one of the big rocks and power down. Wraiths, observe communications silence. Piggy, good luck."

He watched as the Narra drifted to within a few meters of the insertion vehicle. The shuttle's airlock opened and Piggy pulled himself out, hampered by the bulky belt he wore and man-height pole he carried. He shoved off from the airlock with confidence and drifted over to the insertion vehicle, which he grabbed.

The impact of Piggy's ma.s.s sent both pilot and Lunatic drifting away from the wrecked X-wing and debris. But, as Piggy pulled open the compartment's door and began to squeeze in, the drift suddenly stopped.

Lunatic moved slowly back to its original position relative to the X-wing.

It hung there, rigidly unmoving in the grip of the shuttle's tractor beam, as Piggy hooked up his belt power generator to the compartment's electronic countermeasures, then pulled the compartment door shut.

Wedge breathed out a sigh. Now it was all in Piggy's hands.

The compartment interior was lit only by the glow from the datapad's screen. Piggy patted at the gut of his flight suit, a.s.suring himself that his blaster and the one Grinder had given him were still tucked away there, that the datacard containing the program that might force Implacable's computers to send out a rescue message was still in his pocket, that the suit's seal was still intact. Then he seized Lunatic's control datapad. "Status?" he said. His suit comlink was at minimal output power and set to the standard datapad channel.

Gadget's reply appeared as text on the datapad screen: OPERATIONAL. I CALCULATE A CHANCE THAT I WILL NOT REMAIN OPERATIONAL.

"I'll get you out alive, Gadget."

The words MOVEMENT DETECTED appeared. The screen switched from pure text to graphics on top, text at the bottom, and Piggy got a crude, monochrome view of the stars. From the way the starfield was moving, Piggy supposed that the Lunatic was now rotating slowly, and that Gadget was turning his hemispherical head to keep the camera within it aimed at his target.

A tiny white dot moved across the starfield and slowly began to grow.

More text appeared: THEY WILL DETECT THAT I AM OPERATIONAL.

"That's all right. They won't consider an astromech droid to be a threat.

R2s are built for hard-vacuum repairs, so many of you have survived the ejection of their pilots into s.p.a.ce."

The dot grew until Piggy could make out its shape. It was not the Implacable, nowhere near so formidable a vehicle: it was a Corellian corvette, a long, narrow vessel with a blocky engine housing at one end; at the other end, the bow looked like an ancient war-hammer head turned sideways.

Even at this distance and through the crude imager of the datapad, Piggy could see a bright vertical slit of light appear at the bow as the hold doors there were opened. Two large silhouettes emerged from the light and rapidly grew as they came closer.

They resolved themselves into TIE fighters.

The two starfighters roared past Phanan's X-wing and its debris cloud, close enough that Piggy imagined he could feel their wake. They looped and came back, then decelerated for a close view of the X-wing.

THEY ARE QUERYING ME.

"Respond truthfully, but only with data you have in your defaults. You don't know what happened to your pilot, you don't know how you came to be here." Piggy magnified the image of the corvette on his datapad screen, focusing in on the open bow hold. "What's our range to target?"

THREE HUNDRED METERS.

"Can we make that?"

THE VEHICLE IS COMING STRAIGHT AT US ON AN UNVARYING COURSE. IF WE MAKE.

NO MISTAKES, WE CAN.

Piggy took a deep breath and brought up the crude targeting brackets Grinder had added to his cobbled-together flight program. He set the brackets in the center of the open bow hold and hit the execute b.u.t.ton.

He felt faint pressure against his back as one or two of the Lunatic's top thrusters fired, orienting its "bow," Gadget, toward the corvette.

Then it was as though he were in a turbolift, sudden weight as the thrusters beneath his feet fired off, and the image of the corvette's open hold began to grow.

He was suddenly banged up, down, and sideways by thruster corrections and could no longer keep his attention on the datapad. Then gravity had him and he was standing on his head.

He heard a wild, musical shriek, Gadget emitting a sound of pure droid terror, and there was an impact. Something gave way under the blow. Piggy was slammed forward, banging his head, then slammed onto his back.

He had heard Gadget screech; they had to be within atmosphere. He popped the seal on his pilot suit and dragged out one of the blasters with his left hand, then kicked open the hatch of the smuggling compartment.

Bright light flowed in to blind him.

He couldn't wait for his eyes to adjust. He squeezed out of the compartment.

He was on his back on a metal floor. It was a miniature hangar s.p.a.ce, mostly filled with four gigantic metal racks situated side by side; the two end racks held TIE fighters upright. He was almost directly beneath the starboard-side TIE fighter. Forward was the open hold door framing starfield and the planet Xobome 6. He could not see the magnetic containment field holding in the hold's atmosphere, but if it were not there, he'd already be strangling on vacuum.

The sound of a laser blaster's discharge and the impact of the bolt on the metal bracket nearest him made him jerk. He rolled over onto his belly, dragging the chopped-down laser cannon out of the compartment after him, and aimed the blaster pistol.

Nothing directly ahead but metal stairs going up. But above them was a gray catwalk, and on it men in mechanics' overalls running toward an exit. And two men in standard stormtrooper armor, aiming rifles his way...

He snap-fired at one, hitting the wall behind the man, and tried to crawl backward from the smuggler's compartment and under the cover offered by the nearest TIE fighter. But as he crawled the Lunatic came after him. It wasn't as heavy as it should have been; he saw that Gadget was no longer attached, and the brackets that had held him there were bent and broken.

He swore to himself, a Gamorrean grunt, as he realized the power cable from his belt generator was still plugged in to the compartment's electronics. He got two fingers of his blaster hand on the cable and yanked it free; a blast from the second stormtrooper hit the compartment dead-on, chewing a head-sized hole in its metal side.

Piggy got back under the c.o.c.kpit of the TIE fighter. A marginal improvement; they couldn't see him, but he couldn't see them.

He felt the air pressure change, then a wash of heated gas rolled over him from behind. Shrapnel clattered across the TIE fighters and little pieces stung the back of his legs. Something had happened just outside the bow hold door, but he couldn't turn back to look.

Tactics. The stormtroopers would be separating on the catwalk, moving in either direction to bracket him with fire. He half stood and put his shoulder against the TIE fighter's wing.

The st.u.r.dy starfighter resisted his efforts, but some of the brackets holding it in place broke. The TIE fighter rotated, the remaining brackets acting as a pivot, and suddenly he could see the right-most stormtrooper. The trooper fired at him but the TIE fighter's solar wing, held before Piggy like a shield, absorbed the bolt. Piggy returned fire with the blaster pistol, saw black charring appear on the stormtrooper's chest, saw the trooper collapse to the catwalk, twitching.

He continued pushing against the wing, rotating the eyeball farther still, firing almost blindly as he went, until the second stormtrooper came under his gun. He hit the trooper twice. The trooper smashed back into the wall behind the catwalk, then stumbled forward and went over the rail.

A moment's breather. The hold crewmen had all escaped through the door.

Then there was also the open hold door leading to s.p.a.ce. These were the only ways out.

"Gadget?"

An irritable, nearly musical chittering from the far side of the hold rea.s.sured him that the R2 was functional.

Tactics. If he were the ship's captain, he'd shut the internal door and turn off the magcon field, venting the bay's atmosphere into s.p.a.ce and suffocating Piggy or launching him into the void. Well, he'd have to do something about that possibility.

Wedge saw both of the TIE fighters rotate, trying to track the Lunatic, but only one managed to maneuver fast enough to get off a shot. The shot missed the wildly rocking a.s.sembly of parts. Then, at full speed, the Lunatic shot into the open bay door.

Wedge realized his mouth was open. "I'll be d.a.m.ned. They did it." He hit his comm key. "Wraiths, power up and target those eyeb.a.l.l.s, lasers only, do not abandon your positions." He switched channels. "Attention, TIE fighter pilots. This is Commander Wedge Antilles of the New Republic. We have you under our guns. Surrender or be vaped."

The two TIE fighters ceased drifting. One came up to speed, heading toward the corvette, and the other spun back toward Phanan's X-wing. That eyeball fired, its green lasers shredding the derelict snubfighter.

Wedge grimaced. "Amateurs. Wraiths, open fire."

Not all the Wraiths had angles on the eyeb.a.l.l.s, but enough did. The fighter approaching the corvette was. .h.i.t by two quad-linked bursts, the one that had destroyed Phanan's craft by three. Both exploded.

His blaster pistol once again tucked away and the chopped-down laser cannon hanging from its power cable, Piggy climbed the TIE fighters'

landing brackets. He kept a strong grip on those brackets; if the atmosphere vented, he didn't want to be pulled out with it. He saw the door through which the hold crew had run begin to close.

At the top of the brackets, he was only three feet from the hold ceiling.

If he remembered the layout of Corellian corvettes from the training he'd received, there would be a floor of officer and guest quarters above the hold, and the ship's bridge would be immediately above that. If his cannon would chew holes in both ceilings and he could find a means to keep climbing, he could be in the bridge before anyone knew he was coming.

He dragged up the cannon, pointed it at the ceiling, averted his eyes, and fired.

The light produced by the shot was overwhelming, dazzling him even when reflected from the canopy of the TIE fighter below. The noise was incredible, a shriek of metal and displaced air. Melting metal sc.r.a.ps fell all around him-and on him, burning through his pilot's suit.

He ignored the pain. As his eyes cleared, he clambered up atop the bracket beams and leaped up through the hole he'd made - Into the bridge.

Around him, lying on the floor where they'd leaped for cover, running toward the exit, reaching toward holsters for blasters they'd never grasp, were the members of the bridge crew.

Where was the officers' quarters floor? It didn't matter. Piggy shouted, "Stop where you are! One move and I fire!"

And he aimed the still-smoking laser cannon toward the bow of the bridge, where metal walls and transparisteel windows were all that held in the chamber's atmosphere.

The bridge officers glanced at one another, then at an officer wearing the insignia of an Imperial naval lieutenant. The lieutenant nodded glumly and raised his hands.

Only when ash began to drift down from the ceiling did Piggy glance up, there to see what was left of another ship's officer.

"Captain Voort saBinring of the New Republic corvette Night Caller hailing Wraith Squadron. Wraith Squadron, come in."

Wedge couldn't restrain his grin. "Captain? That's a sudden promotion."

"A temporary promotion, sir. I am in command of this vessel. I thought a captaincy would be most appropriate."

"Oh, it is. Permission to come aboard?"

"Granted. And please hurry."

12.

Inconvenient as the planet's weather was, they brought Night Caller down to the surface of Xobome 6 to perform their examination. Jesmin Ackbar remained on station in orbit to alert them to any other enemy arrivals.

Wedge stayed on the bridge, acc.u.mulating information, while the Wraiths performed their duties as fast as possible. Wedge could see them, dim shapes moving among the rocking X-wings while the wind drove ice particles past the bridge windows and obscured his vision. He was careful to stay well away from the hole melted in the floor. The object fried to the ceiling above that hole, remains that had once been a man named Captain Zurel Darillian, had fallen free during the ship's landing and dropped into the TIE fighter hold; Falynn Sandskimmer, unperturbed by their grisly nature, was dealing with them.

Squeaky, just back from his initial tour of the ship, seemed fascinated by what he'd seen. "It's all so very clean, sir. The captain must have been quite a stickler for cleanliness."

Wedge gave him a rueful look. "Usually a sign of a diseased mind... What about the structural modifications?""It has been very heavily modified from the standard corvette, Commander. Where the Tantive IV had a luxury quarters deck beneath the bridge, Night Caller has eliminated the deck, I suspect to make extra room in the bow hold for the four TIE fighters. The bow has also been widened, the hull armor on the sides of the bow narrowed, electronic apparatus that should be between bulkheads there moved somewhere else. The topside hold has been converted into a skimmer hangar. There are no laboratories; that's where the luxury quarters are located."

Wedge nodded. "It appears that this was no retrofit job. It came out of the shipyards this way."

"I agree, Commander."

From the main weapons console, Janson said, "They've given up one of their bow turbolaser twin cannons and installed a tractor beam instead."

"Most ships this size have a tractor."

Janson grinned. "I mean a real tractor beam. Something suited to a frigate or larger war vessel, not just a beam suitable to drag a fighter around."

Grinder, bent over one of the bridge's data consoles, called, "Oh, Commander." He made the rank sound like part of a song. When he straightened and turned, Wedge could see the Bothan's teeth bared in a meat-eating smile.

"Yes?"

"Piggy got to the bridge so fast-oh, this is sweet. They didn't have time to shut down, to purge the memory, to activate the most basic security.

They have a state-of-the-art Imperial HoloNet system, a real luxury on a vessel this size, and it was hot, ready to go-and they didn't even get a message off. "

Wedge blinked at him. "Whatever fleet it came from is unaware it's in trouble?"

"Completely. I pulled up its mission profile, its standing orders, its schedule, everything."

"Tell me."

"It belongs to Zsinj-"

"No surprise."

"No surprise. But it's temporarily a.s.signed to Admiral Apwar Trigit. Its mission is to lay mines, Empion mines, a type I'm not familiar with-"

"Ask Kell about them. I think I had him redesign them in his head earlier today."

"Right. Anyway, it's supposed to plant them, to monitor their hypercomm frequency for alerts that they've been triggered, to inform Admiral Trigit of the results when they go off."

"Go on."

"I also got their schedule, mostly visiting unaligned planetary systems and demonstrating that Zsinj has muscle, also some routine meetings with refueling ships. A schedule they're supposed to return to once this minelaying is done."

"Show me."

Grinder brought up a list on-screen. Wedge read off the list of planets.

"Viamarr 4, Xartun, Belthu, M2398, Todirium, Obinipor, Fenion. Can you plot that for me?"

"I'm way ahead of you."