Star Wars_ X-Wing 04_ The Bacta War - Michael A. Stackpole [65]
To everyone’s surprise, including her own, Iella agreed to join the group of a dozen Ashern commandos volunteering for the operation. Elscol, Sixtus, and three of his Imp Special Naval Operations comrades formed the core of the group. Iella, two Vratix, and four humans—all four of them Zaltin refugees—filled out the rest of the team. Each commando was issued a blaster, a blaster carbine, dark clothing, a comlink, and a light armored vest with armored plates that covered them from throat to groin, front and back. Iella knew the armor would be almost useless for stopping a blaster bolt, but even deflecting it from the body’s midline meant the wound might be survivable.
Iella hunkered down behind the bole of a huge akonije tree. The humidity in the air helped retain the day’s heat, and the vest made her none too comfortable. Even so, the slight whisper of a breeze helped cool her. But it also hides some noises and creates others, keeping me on edge. She blew a wisp of her light brown hair back out of her face and peered ahead into the darkness.
Barely visible as hulking shadows, Sixtus and his companions worked their way forward through the rain forest that sheltered the Dlarit estate. The estate itself was set on a small knoll at the foot of high mountains that had once been part of an extinct volcano. Holograms of the estate taken in daytime looked incredibly beautiful, with the natural stone building rising up out of the surrounding jungle like a small volcano itself. Huge waterfalls cascading down the mountainous backdrop added the last element to transform the estate into a paradise.
They also provided the means for entering the estate. Most travel to and from the estate took place by airspeeder. Forty-five kilometers of a twisting, single-lane track connected the estate to the main throughway to the south, but several gates interdicted it, and a number of narrow passes between natural rock outcroppings made for perfect ambush points if an invasion were attempted along it. Likewise, a ring of well-hidden Comar Tritracker Air Defense batteries meant approaching the estate in an airspeeder without authorization could be suicidal. Various sensor arrays positioned around the estate also monitored likely avenues of approach through the rain forest.
Slicing into the planetary computers and making use of Zaltin surveillance satellites, the Ashern team had pulled down realtime holograms of the estate and the thermal images of the guards on their rounds. They also found the placement of the sensor devices in the rain forest and noted the human patrols tended to concentrate on the side of the estate facing the mountains and the waterfalls. After studying the specifications for the sensors in use around the estate, they realized that the sensors on the mountain side of the estate had been muted so the movement of water and the sound from the falls wouldn’t constantly be triggering alarms.
Entering the estate, they made their approach from the far side of the mountain and ascended to the summit by dusk. Once darkness fell, they descended, keeping as close to the waterfalls as they could. They sped their descent by rappelling down beneath one of the longer falls, letting the curtain of water hide them from the estate’s sensors. Once at the base of the mountains, they moved in along the fringes of the sensors’ range, cutting a labyrinthine path through the jungle.
The SpecNav troops led the way. Though they were as big as stormtroopers, Sixtus’s men were deceptively swift and deathly quiet. Iella was more than happy they were on her side. As scary as facing stormtroopers might have been, fighting against these men would have been worse. At one point