Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 01_ Outcast - Aaron Allston [112]
He followed the route indicated on his nav board, a dotted line that led him far away from the entry point. Each pilot would be doing the same, heading off to a distant start point widely separated from the others. Then each would begin an even more complicated route back, dropping a lethal demolition package in each cavern he or she visited. Pilots would be making rearming stops, too; Wedge's X-wing could only carry a total of six missiles, so he'd be making one or two such stops.
Wedge felt the old familiar tightening of his gut and shoulders. This wasn't a combat mission, but people could die … and if they failed, a world would perish.
Han and Leia, in the cockpit of the Falcon, watched the last starfighter, Nrin Vakil's A-wing, begin its descent. The Falcon would be up next. Han turned to look over his shoulder at Allana, who was in the rear seat. “All strapped in, kid?”
Allana nodded, solemn.
“As am I,” C-3PO assured him from beside Allana. “I assume your failure to ask the same of me means that you assumed I would be properly restrained.”
Han turned forward again. “You should always be properly restrained, Goldenrod.”
“I'm sorry, sir?”
Leia shot Han a reproachful look. “Han means you should always be safe, Threepio.”
“Obviously what I meant.” Han tapped a button on his comm board. “You secure, Artoo?”
An affirmative whistle emerged from the speakers. R2-D2 was back in the engineering space, ready to deal with any mechanical problems that might occur.
“Millennium Falcon, this is mission control. Report status.”
“We're having a party here,” Han reported, prompting a giggle from Allana. “How about you?”
“Wishing I were. You are cleared to go.”
Han eased forward, then began a careful descent. The hole dug for this purpose, spacious by starfighter standards, barely accommodated the Falcon or the two ships to follow. Han cautiously eyed the distance-to-obstacles readouts as he descended.
But soon enough he was at bottom level again and taking a route that would gradually lead the Falcon to the southeast.
* * *
The first several caverns went without incident for Wedge. He'd hovered in the entryway to a cavern, armed his proton torpedo system, taken careful aim at the explosives mound in the center, and fired. The missile, with its comparatively inexpensive thermal detonator warhead instead of an expensive, ship-crippling proton torpedo, had flashed across the intervening space and buried itself in the ground a few meters from the mound. Within moments, sparkly balls of light, bogeys, had arrived from floor or ceiling or distant banks of machinery. Wedge had turned away and kicked in his thrusters, and that was it.
Approaching his fifth cavern, Wedge saw its entrance tunnel alive with animals—centipedes especially, and one big crimson spider. They were fleeing, some of them attacking one another as they went. He nodded; one of the speeders with a sonic unit had recently been here and accomplished its mission. He approached this cavern cautiously; the speeder's presence might have stirred up bogeys here, and he'd hate to have one knock out his starfighter's systems, even temporarily. But as he reached the cavern entrance, there were no bogeys in sight, and only a couple showing up on the X-wing's sensors; they seemed to be at the cavern's far entrance.
Wedge hovered, fired his payload, and turned away.
There was a clunk from immediately above and Wedge jumped as a green centipede, a meter long, suddenly appeared on the canopy over his face. The creature coiled and struck, its tail-end stinger hammering the transparisteel.
It did not penetrate. Several cubic centimeters of black liquid that had to be venom oozed out over the canopy. The centipede struck again and again, the successive strikes accompanied by decreasing amounts of venom.