Star Wars_ X-Wing 05_ Wraith Squadron - Aaron Allston [60]
“That’s crazy, Mr. Tainer.”
“With all due respect, no it’s not, sir. It’s merely desperate. Speaking of which, the sniper rifle may not be rated to hard vacuum and the cold of space. It might freeze up. And we can give our intruder a much better weapon anyway.”
“Such as what?”
“Well, if we’re using a battery to keep the smuggling compartment powered, we might as well use the 04–7 power generator off Ton’s X-wing. And if we have that much power available, we could pull the guts out of one of the laser cannons, cable it to the power generator, and rig it with a trigger. That’d give our intruder a few shots with something powerful enough to cut through bulkheads, much less through stormtroopers.”
“A laser cannon is nine meters long, Five.”
“Not the essential components and housing, sir. Strip out all the computerized aiming and synchronization equipment, the diagnostics, the flashback suppressor, I think we could chop it down to a meter and a half, two meters.”
The canopy on the X-wing came up and Phanan clambered out, surrounded by the distinctive glow of a personal magcon field. He immediately began to drift away from the craft. Kell saw from Phanan’s expression that cold was already eating its way through the atmosphere around his compromised suit. Kell and Cubber closed on him, each grabbing one of his arms, and began to maneuver him toward the Narra’s emergency airlock.
Wedge took a long time to answer. “Face, Kell, that’s the craziest idea I’ve heard in a long time.”
Face said, “Maybe, sir, but we’ve answered all your objections. We can do this.”
“Let’s say you’re right. We have one pilot with a powerful, crude, prone-to-failure weapons rig, and he’s in a hangar on an Imperial Star Destroyer. What then?”
“Leader, Eleven. A couple of ideas. If he could get to a computer interlock, he might be able to load in a program that would broadcast a distress to the New Republic. The rest of the pilots might be able to hide out until rescue. Or it may not be Implacable. It could be one of their support vessels, and we might be able to take it.”
“You, too, Wes?”
“Yes, sir. I think this plan is marginally better than dying of asphyxiation or starvation out in empty space, and it has the virtue of novelty. Implacable couldn’t anticipate we’d do it. Only crazy people could anticipate we’d do it.”
“True.” Wedge’s voice sounded resigned. “Cubber, your professional opinion: Can you do this? Patch this aberration together in an hour or two at most and make it work?”
Cubber shut the airlock hatch on Ton Phanan as he answered. “With the kid’s help … yes, sir.”
“The chrono’s running, gentlemen. Do it. And may the Force be with you. You need it.”
Face said, “I have some Force here in my pocket. Kell, Cubber, you can have it if you need it. Oops, no, it’s gone. Maybe it’s in my cargo.”
“Eight?”
“Yes, Leader?”
“Be quiet.”
Weary, Wedge sat back in his pilot’s chair. He switched the comlink over to his private connection with Janson. “Wes?”
“Here.”
“They’re doing it to me again.”
“That’s right.”
“I haven’t reached my thirtieth birthday, Wes. And once again I feel like the conservative old man in charge of a new generation of insane young pilots.”
“That about sums it up.”
“Thanks for the moral support, Wes.”
11
They had to tell Squeaky and Phanan to squeeze into the shuttle’s tiny airlock—fortunately, both were thin—then depressurize the Narra’s interior and open its main boarding ramp. Cubber and Kell could then enter and disassemble the mounting concealing the smuggling compartment. As soon as they had the compartment unplugged and towed back out into space, they saw where their plan couldn’t succeed.
“It’s not big enough,” Cubber said. “These suits, with all the thrusters and life support, are too damned bulky to fit into the compartment. And