Star Wars_ X-Wing 05_ Wraith Squadron - Aaron Allston [136]
Face nodded.
“After the strike, we’ll jump to rejoin Night Caller. Simple, in theory. Questions?”
There were none.
“Let’s do it, then. We’ll begin deploying the satellites in two hours. Grinder, Piggy, get us some locations by then.”
Grinder was the first one out of the door, Wedge noticed. Eager to begin processing data for his extra assignment?
Grinder literally ran to the locker room adjacent to the Deck Three forward lounge. He took a look around to make sure no one was on hand to observe him, then he keyed in his locker combination. A moment later he palmed the small box he’d taken from the Scohar Xenohealth Institute. Its occupant began scratching at the pressboard sides of the box.
Grinder, increasingly nervous and watchful, headed forward the few steps it took him to reach the upper door into the bow hold. He peered into the hold, was reassured to note the absence of mechanics or pilots.
He pulled out his datapad and keyed in a code for it to transmit. Now, and for about five minutes, the cameras overlooking the hold would show a still image.
He descended to floor level and keyed in another command. When this one was transmitted, the canopy of one of the X-wings on the middle row hissed and opened.
Face’s snubfighter. Grinder smiled. It had taken him considerable effort to acquire the passwords and other special keys that gave him access to the fighters, lockers, and quarters of all the personnel aboard Night Caller, but it was worth it. It gave him lots of opportunities to enjoy himself.
He pried open the top of the box containing the insect and upended the box over Face’s control seat. Flecks of some nameless substance, perhaps insect food, drifted out. Then something black, not an insect, slid free, and he caught it as it fell.
A small, cheap datapad, the kind that was not programmable, with a memory unit only large enough to contain a little data. Its face read “Storini Glass Prowler, Care and Feeding.”
He shook the box again and the translucent insect slid out, dropped wriggling to the seat, and stood upright. It turned to look at Grinder as if evaluating him for a possible meal, then slowly looked around in a circle, analyzing its new surroundings.
Grinder issued another command through his datapad and Face’s canopy closed. Now Face would be in for a surprise. Grinder hoped the insect would be in an inobvious place when the pilot climbed aboard for his guard mission. Face should make some interesting noises when he discovered the weird little creature crawling all over him.
They set up the surveillance satellites without incident, and Face reported no insectile intruder when he and Phanan returned from their guard mission.
Surreptitiously, Grinder looked Face over, trying to find some sign that the pilot had accidentally squashed the insect, but there was no spot of fluid or crushed exoskeleton to suggest he had.
On his next opportunity, Grinder returned to the bow hold, opened the canopy of Face’s X-wing, and spent the next several minutes searching his cockpit, but the insect was nowhere to be found. He even searched the fighter’s small cargo bay, again without luck.
He sighed. A prank opportunity wasted. Ungrateful insect. Next time, he’d find a creature more noisy and aggressive, something sure to make Face want to eject in midmission.
Grinder woke that night sure that he’d heard something scratching at his door.
A dream, he thought. Then he heard it again: Scritch, scritch, scritch. The precise noise the Storini Glass Prowler had made in its box.
He rose and padded over to the door of his quarters, but the noise did not repeat itself. He opened the door, but there was nothing on the floor outside, just Phanan pausing outside his own door.
Grinder yawned, then asked, “Did you hear something?”
Phanan gave him a curious look. “Do you always come to your door naked in the middle of the