Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [2]
“Whistler, see what you can do about boosting our sensors to pick up any anomalous readings from that freighter.”
The green and white R2 astromech blatted harshly at him.
“Yes, fine, there’s likely to be lots of things wrong with that freighter.” Corran frowned as he nudged his throttle forward and the X-wing started off toward the freighter. “I was thinking about inappropriate weapons or other odd things.”
As Corran’s fighter came in closer he began to get a visual feed on the ship. All of 150 meters long, it had the gentle curves of smaller ships, or the larger Mon Calamari warships. The bridge was a bulge on the top of the bow that tapered back and down into a slender midship. Two thirds of the way back toward the stern the ship’s body flared out again to accommodate the star drives. A communications array sat right behind the bridge, and quad laser turrets bristled off the bow and in a ring around the middle of the ship.
Whistler splashed a report on the ship onto Corran’s primary monitor. It was a Rendili Star Drive’s design, from the Dwarf Star-class of freighter. It shipped roughly fifteen hundred metric tons of equipment, ran with a crew of four hundred, and had nine quad lasers as well as one tractor beam that could be used to pull salvage into the belly storage area. The guns and carrying capacity made it a favorite for short-haul traders who were willing to work in areas of the galaxy where authority had broken down, or Imperial entanglements could be a problem.
“Champion Five here, Rogue Nine.”
“Go ahead, Five.”
“I challenged the Vengeance and it answered with a code that is good.”
That surprised Corran because he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with the ship. “Did they get it on the first try?”
Five’s comm unit didn’t filter the surprise out of his voice. “No, second pass. Why?”
“I’ll tell you later. Stay where you are, but get someone to lift from Borleias in an assault shuttle. You and Six be ready for trouble.”
“As ordered, Nine.”
Whistler chirped an inquiry at Corran.
“Yes, I think it’s exactly like the doubletaker case.” Back on Corellia he and his partner, Iella Wessiri, had investigated a series of burglaries where things had been stolen from houses, but there were no signs of forced entry. All of the security systems were manufactured by different companies, and installed and monitored by different agencies. The key to cracking the case was that the ROMs used in the security systems all came from the same manufacturer. An employee had sliced the code that got burned into the chips so when a particular password was used on the locks, the system would spit out the correct password. On the second try the thief would enter the correct code, get in, and rob the place.
The Y-wing fighters the Alliance used were old, but still vital, and most of them were a patchwork of new and old systems. Spare parts were not easy to come by, and whatever were available were used quickly to keep the fighters in service. It was conceivable that a sensor/comm unit integrator had been fitted with odd chips that gave away codes when checking them. Arranging for such things would not be beyond the Empire’s Director of Intelligence, Ysanne Isard, especially if it would help prevent the Rebel Alliance from taking Coruscant away from her.
Corran punched his comm unit over to the frequency the freighter was using. “Vengeance Derra IV, this is Lieutenant Corran Horn of Rogue Squadron. Stop now. Stand by for boarding.”
The freighter did not even slow, much less stop. “Is there a problem, Lieutenant?”
Corran shifted the targeting crosshairs of his heads-up display over to lead the freighter, then sent a quad burst of red laser fire across the ship’s bow. “Vengeance, stand by for boarding. There