Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [152]
Even when the Survivors were sent out, Rock Squadron didn’t always go on the mission. Except when Tavira called for the Bolts specifically, Nive chose among us by lot. Rock Squadron got roughly one Invid mission per month. On our other missions we flew cover for smaller ships, much in the same way the Red Nova’s people had flown cover for the Booty Full. Rogue Squadron never jumped us, but on one of our Invid missions the Invidious vanished from the system shortly after arrival. We found ourselves fighting with a fighter group of Y-wings and homegrown Uglies in that engagement and lost two pilots from one flight, including Captain Kech.
If there had been New Republic capital ships waiting at the edge of the system, I saw no evidence of them, nor was there any trace in the sensor data I pulled from Backstab. After vanquishing the local fighters, we strafed a settlement and looted some warehouses, but even with a couple of bulging shuttles, the raid had hardly seemed worth it.
It was only later, when Rock Squadron elected me Captain, that I learned from Jacob Nive that the Invidious had headed out because another Invid operation had run into trouble and Tavira wanted to ambush the ambushers. The threat to us had not been dire enough to cause her to stick around, and I couldn’t disagree. In the other situation three New Republic corvettes had engaged some Invid freighters and fighters, then withdrawn when the Invidious showed up.
It took a couple of weeks, but I learned details on that other operation. Shala’s gang had been in position to take off a spice shipment in the Kessel system when the New Republic ships had appeared. They had a running lightfight for twenty minutes, during which one of Shala’s freighters took damage, lost maneuvering, and sailed off to be sucked into the Maw—the big black hole near Kessel. At roughly that point in the battle, the Invidious arrived and drove the New Republic ships away, all but killing the Freedom of Sullust.
This rescue increased the fame of the Invidious and general sense of immortality among the crews, but it sent a chill down my spine. It struck me as unlikely that the New Republic would send three corvettes into a system where they expected to run into the Invidious. Three corvettes wouldn’t be unusual for a patrol, especially with old Imps like Teradoc and Harssk or Admiral Daala still hyping around. My gut told me the corvettes had happened on Shala’s people by accident.
That’s not so terrifying, but the implication of the Invidious getting there in time to save Shala was. The flank speed time from the system where we were to Kessel was eighteen hours, and that was if the astrogator wanted to pull a Solo and skirt the fringes of the Maw. That meant that somehow Admiral Tavira knew of a chance meeting eighteen hours in advance and hustled her ship along to get her there. The fact that it would have been just as easy to open a HoloNet connection with Shala and warn him off the Kessel run meant that Tavira clearly liked the idea of a split second rescue. Her solution definitely enhanced her reputation among us, and had to have been that much more galling to the New Republic.
The question was, however, how did she know the trouble would be taking place eighteen hours in the future? There seemed only one answer to me: the advisor Exar Kun had showed me near her was adept in using the Force and warned her of Shala’s peril. I’d sensed no overt Force usage from the Invidious, but I was keeping myself as shut down on missions as I’d been when approaching Exar Kun’s temple, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that I wasn’t picking anything up.
Under my leadership, with Timmser heading up three flight and Caet in charge of two flight, Rock Squadron got good.