Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 07_ Fury - Aaron Allston [28]
But there were disturbing little signs in the comm transmissions. One rescue shuttle pilot reported, “Have retrieved six friendly ‘walkers.’” That meant six pilots who were extravehicular from having ejected before the destruction of their starfighters. But what were the odds that, randomly, the rescue pilot had run across only friendly pilots? Most rescue beacons were on common comm channels and unscrambled, with interplanetary rules of war dictating that forces of any side perform rescues. Had the shuttle pilot just ignored signals from enemy walkers? Had he fired upon enemy ejectees?
Oldathan didn’t know. What he did know was that he’d been hearing more and more of these communications in recent weeks. He knew that rumors of harsh treatment of enemy prisoners of war were increasing—both in GA camps and in Commenori camps. He knew that overtaxed Commenori personnel were, increasingly, channeling their anger and frustration into private activities: entertainments made specifically to cater to their changing tastes, such as underground bloodsports, or so rumor had it. This bothered Oldathan a lot. It was something his fellow pilots—sophisticated, educated men and women compared with many serving in the armed forces—had not done even at the height of the frustrations and terrors of the Yuuzhan Vong War.
The military leaders officially didn’t see any of this. Unofficially, they approved. Fewer pilots were cracking up—that meant more experience was staying in the cockpits. That was all that mattered.
Danen’s voice interrupted his musings. “I just saw a star disappear.”
“Sure you did.” Oldathan checked his sensor board again. He saw nothing but the five starfighters of his squadron. “If the Alliance can make whole stars disappear, we need to surrender now.”
“No, really. In the Jeweled Lizard. Second star from the end of the tail.”
Oldathan craned his neck to look upward, then brought the nose of the K-wing up so it would be easier for him to look. Sure enough, the tail of the familiar constellation had only four stars in it now, not five.
Then the missing star reappeared.
Almost holding his breath, Oldathan sent the K-wing into a spiraling climb toward that distant point in space, widening the pattern as he ascended. A moment later, the last star in the lizard’s tail vanished, then reappeared a few seconds afterward.
And there was still nothing on his sensors.
“Grayfeather One to squadron, Grayfeather One to Starfighter Control. We have an anomaly here, spaceward from my position, distance unknown, size unknown. Suspect it may be a cloaked capital vessel.” Starship cloaking mechanisms were rare due to the tremendous power drains they cost their host vehicles and, depending on the design, the usually fatal price of the vehicle controllers having no ability to detect anything outside their cloaking fields. But they did exist, and had been used within living memory.
“Grayfeather One, acknowledged.”
Oldathan switched to squadron frequency. “Two through Five, maintain your current patterns, but scan visually along the line I’m about to transmit.” He had Danen plot a missile-firing solution toward the anomaly zone and transmit it to the others. It appeared on the sensor boards as a line from his current position to the farthest reaches of the Commenor system, toward the end of the Jeweled Lizard’s tail.
A few moments later Grayfeather Four reported in. “I have it, sir.”
“Give me a plot.”
Seconds passed, and then another red line appeared on the sensor board. Together with Oldathan’s line, it formed two sides of a very long, narrow triangle. The third line, the triangle’s base, had it been drawn, would have been much shorter than the other two, and would have spanned only a fraction of Commenor’s diameter.
“Everybody, keep at it, update sightings on our sensor board. I’m heading up.” Oldathan