Star Wars_ X-Wing 05_ Wraith Squadron - Aaron Allston [56]
Kell pulled off his flight suit gloves, then reached under the instrument panel, unhooked latches there, and swung the whole panel up. Here was the source of some of the smoke, several wires burned and semiconductors fried—all delicate diagnostics circuitry, it appeared.
The wiring and circuitry associated with his restart system seemed intact, so he swung the instrument panel back into place and dogged it down. Then he reached past his left shoulder, pried open a small, innocuous panel there, and depressed the red button beneath it. He held down the button there until he heard the comforting, familiar whine of a snubfighter trying to bring itself back on-line.
Immediately words appeared on his data screen: R2-D609 IS ACTIVE. HOW MAY I SERVE YOU?
Kell frowned. “R2-D609, what’s your name?”
The R2 unit beeped irritably at this simple test, I AM R2-D609.
“Can you give me a random number?”
13.
“Dammit.” Thirteen’s temporary memory was gone; it had returned to its default memory and settings, the ones burned permanently into its circuits.
They’d been hit by some sort of ionization bomb, he was sure of it; in his experience, only an ion cannon could scramble all a snubfighter’s electronics this way. But what had hit them was more powerful, and ion cannons couldn’t cause a ship in hyperspace to pop back into real space prematurely.
His communications board lit up and immediately he had voices: “—is just drifting. I have one engine coming up; I’ll try to maneuver over to him.” “Do that, Three. Is anyone else active?”
“Five here,” said Kell. “I’m in the middle of a cold start.”
“Four.”
“Eleven.”
There was a noise over the comm, something like an animal grunt.
“Twelve, this is Eleven. Was that you?”
Another grunt.
“Piggy, is your translator burned out? Once for yes, twice for no.”
One grunt, a short, irritable one.
“Are you injured? Has it done any damage to your throat?”
Two short grunts.
“Good. Stand by.”
“Sir?”
“This is Leader. Who’s speaking?”
“Sir, Shiner isn’t responding.” Shiner was Donos’s R2.
“Nine, is that you?”
“Sir, Shiner isn’t responding.”
“I read you, Nine. Are you injured?”
“No, sir. But Shiner—”
“Isn’t responding. I understand. Let him be for the time being.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kell frowned. Donos didn’t sound like himself. He did sound like someone suffering a concussion or other injury.
Within the next couple of minutes, the remaining Wraiths had reported in, all but Runt, Phanan, and Grinder. Most also reported electronics system damage, some of it trivial, though several engine units and a couple of astromechs were not coming on-line.
Everyone reported total electronic memory loss—from the X-wings’ configuration choices to the astromechs’ full memory banks to the contents of the pilots’ datapads and chronos. That meant their nav course to Doldrums was erased. Even a return to Commenor system was impossible.
Wedge doggedly worked his way through their options. They didn’t have enough fuel to go looking for a safe landing zone in another system; the X-wings were running close to dry.
The Narra had nearly a full load of fuel. The Wraiths could improvise a fuel transfer between the shuttle and the X-wings, but under these conditions this would take hours. If, as Wedge suspected, this attack would result in pursuit by their enemies, such a tactic would doom them.
Or the shuttle could dump all its cargo, the pilots could assemble on board, and they could jump around until they reached a system where they could reacquire navigational data. That would bring them to safety … but would cost them twelve X-wings, eight of them new. That would probably be the death knell of Wraith Squadron.
On the other hand, if he had the Narra use its personnel retrieval tractor to drag the inoperable snubfighters to available cover, where they could be repaired, the energy-expensive effort would burn off enough of the shuttle’s fuel to make the squadron’s escape impossible. But they would be operable and perhaps able to take out the pursuit vessels.
Finally Wedge