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That little factoid combined with the spectacular kill ratio led him to believe Rogue Squadron had been at Hensara. Visuals were of generally poor quality, but crests and fighters appeared to match those images recorded by the Black Asp, confirming the squadron’s presence at Chorax as well. He had no objective confirmation about the squadron being Rogue Squadron, but one communications intercept had included the name “Wedge” and Kirtan thought he heard some faint trace of Corran Horn’s voice in other messages. The end-for-end swapping maneuver that led to the damaging of one Interceptor had been vintage Horn, providing Loor all the evidence he needed to label the X-wings as Rogue Squadron.

Admiral Devlia had not been convinced, but he had agreed to send units out to find the squadron’s base, if Kirtan could isolate it. Admiral Devlia had made the offer in a voice that suggested providing such information would be impossible.

It should have been impossible, and for most people it would have been. However, Kirtan Loor remembered a wealth of things that might be trivia to others, but proved to be useful to the search for the Rogues’ base. He had to make a few assumptions about them and the force they arrived with, but his calculations could be run with a number of variables factored in, then all that data could be correlated with known system locations and Rebel preferences for bases.

Because several of the X-wings entered the atmosphere of Hensara III, they left significant traces of ionized fuel in the atmosphere. Spectral analysis of those trails provided an amount of thrust that gave Kirtan an indication of the quantity of fuel used per second of operation with sublight engines. This proved consistent with the known specifications of the X-wing. Since the performance of sublight engines had not been modified, he assumed the hyperspace engines were similarly standard.

The forces on the ground on Hensara provided some basic entry vector and velocity data for the Rebel force. Back-plotting was not terribly difficult and suggested to Kirtan that the force had begun their last jump from the Darek system. Using the fuel consumption figures for an X-wing’s hyperspace engine, he was able to subtract from the weight of the ship the appropriate amount of fuel.

Thrust output, vector, and velocity data provided him with changing weights for the X-wings as they burned up fuel in their flight. The ending weight and fuel consumption seemed consistent for known performance profiles. Precluding refueling stops along the way, the amount of fuel he calculated for them determined the range to their base.

He had to assume, of course, that they had started with a full load of fuel, and the same had to be assumed for the Pulsar Skate and Eridain, as well as the Lambda-class shuttle at Chorax. Working out the fuel consumption and range limits for those ships had shown them to be far more fit for distance travel than the X-wings, as would be expected of larger ships, but few ships like to travel beyond range of their escorts.

Even limiting the trip to the range of the X-wings gave each flight the capability of traveling a considerable distance. He further reduced the range by assuming the Rebels would keep sufficient fuel in the X-wings for a dogfight or rearguard action to allow the other ships to escape. This cut the range roughly in half, and when given a spherical plot on a map of the galaxy for each of the squadron’s sightings, the spheres intersected in a relatively small area of space.

Five hundred known systems existed in that overlapping slice of space. Kirtan discarded all truly loyal worlds from the list. He also removed the openly rebellious worlds because Intelligence had enough spies of their own in hotbeds of Rebel support to inform him if Rogue Squadron had been seen. While the Alliance was willing to draw volunteers and support from such worlds, they chose not to jeopardize them by basing operations on them.

Inhospitable worlds were shuffled onto a secondary list.