"R5, what happened to my targeting?"

The R5's confused whistle tweeted at him over the corn-link, and the data board read UNKNOWN.

"Six, I have no targeting!"

"Five, we have no weapons systems. We have a general failure."

"Dammit, dammit..." Kell's guts were going cold so fast it was as though an overenthusiastic refrigeration unit had been installed there. He pointed his X-wing in as direct a path as he could toward the target, corrected to a couple of degrees port to account for the speed of the towing shuttle. With seconds remaining, he checked visually and by sensor to make sure that the torpedo wouldn't come anywhere near the Narra.

The rangefinder's numbers rolled down to one and a half klicks. Kell fired, saw the torpedo flash toward the target, saw it miss by forty meters or more. As he pulled up and began the long loop around to orient him back toward Folor Base, he watched the torpedo continue on its ballistic path, eventually slamming into the side of one of the distant mountains, illuminating the mountain slope with a brief, brilliant flash.

"Not too good, Five," Wedge said. "Seven, Eight, begin your run."

"Seven, affirmative."

"Eight, affirmative."

Kell frowned. Suddenly he could hear Seven and Eight again. Doubtless, since he and Runt were through with the run, Wedge had reenabled their ability to do so. "R5, can you give me views through their telemetry?

Seven's and Eight's?"

The R5 unit hooted in the affirmative. A moment later two views of the distant target appeared side by side on Kell's main screen-views that were alike but not identical, so they appeared to be an unmerged stereoscopic image.

"Seven, recommend we set the torps to a broader proximity fuse. That target's ugly."

"Good point. Doing so. All right, Eight, strike foils to attack position, now."

"Affirmative."

A moment later one of the visual images went to gray. Kell grinned sourly. Seven and Eight were about to experience the same failure he had.

"Eight, my weapons are gone. Some sort of system failure."

"Seven, my targeting's shot."

"Do you still have weapons?"

"Yes."

"Hold on, I'm transmitting my targeting information to you... wait for the lock... Got it!"

"Firing, Seven. We have detonation... Looks like a kill. But I still don't have targeting sensors."

"Mine show a clean kill. Good shot, Eight."

"You did all the work, I just pulled the trigger. Kind of the way I like it."

Wedge's voice crackled in: "Good work, you two. It's back to base so Three Group can do this. Do not inform anyone who hasn't gone through this exercise of its parameters. That's an order."

"Yes, sir."

"One out."

Kell gritted his teeth. Once again, because of one of Wedge Antilles's oh-so-clever tricks, he had come out looking like an incompetent. He'd worked very hard to overcome that first score of zero in the simulators, worked hard enough to put him at the top of the pilots roster, and now it was starting all over again.

The punching dummy was shaped like a man-that is, if you fed a man until he was so fat that his features half disap - peared in folds of flesh, then mounted him on a flexible rod in the Folor Base gymnasium. Kell shook his head; he certainly wouldn't want to be treated that way. Nor would he want to suffer the damage he was inflicting on the dummy.

He started with a one-two combination that rocked the dummy's head, deforming it temporarily; in seconds, the puttylike memory material inside began to restore the head to its proper shape, but until then it bore the marks of Kell's fists. He switched to a knifelike blow with the edge of his hand to the thing's neck, stepped in for a forearm shot to the nose, stayed in close to bring his knee up into the dummy's rib cage twice. Both times, he heard cracking from within the dummy; it was constructed to feel like flesh, to give way like flesh and bone when the a.s.saults were powerful enough, then return to its pristine state.

He danced back, bobbing, weaving, threw a left-hand feint, followed up with a right hook that whipped the dummy's head partway around. Very satisfying... though not as gratifying as if it were the real Wedge, the real Janson.

Kell knew he wasn't the best hand-to-hand fighter around. His instructor in the commandos was a woman half his weight, a head shorter than he. She could throw him around the mats at will and could hit harder than he ever could. But he was big, fast, and trained, so he figured he was in the top ten percent of unarmed combatants in the military. It was just something he was good at.

Too bad it didn't help him on Folor Base. He spun, planted a powerful side kick to the dummy's sternum, watched the rig sway far back on its flexible pole and then snap upright.

Just like his tenure here on Folor. If all his skills were as polished as his fighting, all his objectives here seemed as resilient as that dummy.

He gave them everything he had and still they popped upright, unmoved, undamaged, unmarked.

"Are you mad at the dummy? Or is this a mad mind?"

Kell spun. Runt was seated on a balance bar, watching curiously, his brown eyes open wider than usual. The fur that covered his body was fluffed and disordered in places, patchy with moisture in others, clear signs of a recent shower and inadequate drying. "Uhhh... I guess it's a mad mind," Kell said.

"It seems to be a competent mind. You seem to be able to abandon it when you want. Else you would be attacking us."

Kell smiled. He still couldn't quite work his mind around his wingmate's logic or figure out Runt's circuitous approaches to subjects of conversation. "I suppose so. This 'mind' works better if you can shut it off at will."

"Yes. Our pilot mind is getting better that way. Have you noticed? You can cut through its haze sometimes. This is good."

"I'm glad."

"But you have another mind that worries us."

"Us, as in all of Runt?"

Runt shook his head, sending his ponytail swaying. "Us as in all the squadron. All who admit to worry, that is."

Kell picked up his towel from the floor, threw it over his shoulders, and sat up on the bar beside Runt. "I don't get it."

"You have a bad mind in you. You think we do not see it? It speaks to you when you fail, and lashes you with your failure."

Kell turned away from him, looking back at the dummy. Its features restored to normalcy, it seemed to be grinning at him. Grinning with amused indifference. Or contempt. "There's nothing wrong with that.

Identifying failure correctly is just part of a.n.a.lysis."

"Then it keeps at you. For days. Weeks. Eating at you. Like some animal that has crawled into you and now wishes to chew its way out."

"Call it my motivational mind."

"No. It is not. It makes you think things that are not true. It is your enemy. I am your friend. I wish I could turn my guns on it."

There was such bitterness in Runt's voice that Kell turned back to him, surprised. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Falynn and Grinder also failed today's mission. Do you know where they are? In the cafeteria. Eating. Laughing. Looking forward to tomorrow's missions. They and others have settled in around Myn Donos and are trying to make him smile. Where are you? In the training room, punishing yourself and a dummy."

"Is Tyria there?"

Runt blinked at the sudden change of subject. "Yes."

"Have they been there long?"

"No."

"Well, I haven't eaten. I think I'll take a quick shower and join them.

You coming?"

"I do not think you have heard what I have said."

"Of course I have. I'll see you there in a few minutes."

As he walked toward the showers, Kell heard Runt breathe a long sigh.

It was as Runt had said. Most of Gray Squadron was at the longest table in the officers' cafeteria. Falynn and Jesmin had Donos pinned between them. They were laughing as Kell approached; Runt waved him toward a seat beside him, but Kell took the one beside Piggy, opposite Tyria and Phanan.

Face was speaking. "So here I am stark naked, locked out of my quarters, running around the corridors looking for a towel, a rag, anything, and I turn a corner and b.u.mp right into the executive officer. He has about the same sense of humor as a Wookiee with a rash. So I throw my best salute and say, 'Major, I regret to report only partial success with the Personal Cloaking Device.''' The others burst out in laughter. Even Donos, slowly stirring some sweetener into his cup of caf, managed a faint smile. Falynn asked, "So, what did he do?"

"He turned out to be all right. He made me hold salute for a while, looked me over, returned my salute, and said, 'It's obvious this project was a failure. I suggest you go and cover up its shortcomings.' So I did."

Falynn snickered, then asked, "What about the lieutenant?"

Face shrugged. "She had a sense of humor like mine. Probably why we got together, and certainly why we got apart just as fast. The next day, they found my clothes just in front of the intake door of the food reprocessing plant. There was a note on them saying, 'I cannot live with what I have done. Think of me whenever you have a bite to eat.' She signed my name, of course. I got away clean, so to speak, with the naked-in-the-halls thing, only to be written up for my 'practical joke.' I had to clean everyone's dress uniform boots for graduation."

Phanan said, "So, Lieutenant."

Donos looked up. "We're off-duty. You can call me Myn."

"So, Myn, do they do that sort of stuff in the Corellian armed forces?"

Donos nodded. "A long and honorable tradition. I'll tell you sometime about the dead gurrcat that wouldn't stay buried."

Grinder sniffed. "Practical jokes. A ridiculous waste of time."

The others looked at him. Face said, "You've never sliced into someone's secure files and changed them, left messages or something, just for your own amus.e.m.e.nt? Or to make them look stupid?"

"Certainly not."

"You're not like any code-slicer I've ever met."

The Bothan smiled. "I'm better."

Falynn turned away from him and back to Donos. "So, were you really a sniper?"

The lieutenant nodded.

"Did you ever have to... you know... I mean, don't answer if that's too personal."

"Did I ever shoot someone in cold blood? Without giving him a chance?"

She nodded, somber.

"Yes. Three times I did that. I didn't much care for it; if I did, I'd probably still be doing it. But better to have dead enemies than dead innocents." He glanced at his chrono. "Speaking of which, I need to suit up and get in some practice out on the range." Folor Base had an interior shooting gallery for blaster pistol practice, but the distances for which a laser sniper rifle was best suited were much greater. Donos and Janson had put together a target site on a hilltop outside, in hard vacuum; Donos would be sniping on it from several surrounding hills. "Ten, are you still going with me?"

Tyria nodded. "I'm certainly not going to let you wander around out there alone."

Jesmin said, "Please, let me. I need the vacuum suit practice." She rose.

Donos followed suit and, with a short nod for his squadmates, left with the Mon Calamari flyer.

"He certainly opened up," Phanan said. "It makes me feel all warm inside, seeing the barriers come down. I think we should get him a toy bantha to cuddle at night."

"Oh, shut up," said Falynn. "He is better. He talked, a little. He even smiled."

"Imagining Face naked would make anyone laugh."

Falynn glared at him. "Ton, would you die for Myn Donos?"

The cyborg chuckled. "Maybe some other day."

"Would he die for you?"

"I don't know."

"He would. I'm sure he'd die for any of us. He wanted to die for his last squadron, but his responsibility wouldn't let him. As far as I'm concerned, that makes him better than you. Ton, what's it like to be constantly making fun of people better than you?" She rose, not waiting for an answer, and stormed out of the cafeteria.

Phanan raised his eyebrow. "I say she's sweet on him." He turned to Face.

"Want to bet? I'll give you three to one."

"No, I'm betting your side."

Grinder leaned in. "I'll have some of that. I am an expert in human psychology. She is too independent and pragmatic to have romantic yearnings for him. She is merely responding to the pain of a hurt animal.

This is a human female instinct. She wants to nurse him back to health."

Phanan grinned. "Twenty creds?"

"Fifty."