Star Wars_ X-Wing 05_ Wraith Squadron - Aaron Allston [85]
“Nine remains on station here as our long-distance spotter and sniper.” Donos nodded. “The rest follow in a group until we get to the bunker’s rear door. Eleven, you’ll set up at that door as our secondary spotter.” Janson gave a brief nod.
“Inside, Three will choose one vehicle for our escape; I recommend the cargo skiff, but you’re the expert on the condition of these crafts, so make your choice at your own discretion. Disable the rest. Twelve, you’ll stay with her as her guard and ears.” Falynn gave him a thumbs-up; Piggy nodded.
“The rest of us will enter, acquire all the data we can, plant the charges, and get out. Questions? No one? All right. Move out.”
Wedge, trailing Tyria at a distance of eight or ten meters, marveled at the way she moved.
Hers was not a steady progress. She stopped to listen to animal noises, stray crackings of twigs or other unexplained sounds, and when there was no noise at all. But when the wind stirred the trees, she glided forward at a steady pace, the wind completely blanketing whatever noise she might have made.
Wedge tried to follow her example. After so many ground missions in the last few years, his own intrusion skills were not inconsiderable. On the other hand, he hadn’t needed them to survive day after day for years as she had; it was hardly embarrassing to discover she was better at them.
They skirted the forest edge alongside the ferrocrete landing pad until they reached the closest approach to the bunker. Keeping low, they moved across open ground until they reached the bunker’s shadow, then hugged the bunker wall all the way to the door. Tyria nodded and Wedge clicked his comlink twice to indicate success. The two of them crouched, motionless, blasters in hand, and covered the approach of the next team.
Within a minute Kell and Grinder joined them. “So far, so good,” Kell whispered. “Minimal security.”
“On the outside, anyway,” Tyria amended.
Kell clicked his comlink twice, then nodded to Grinder.
The Bothan held a small light in his mouth and looked at the access panel beside the door to the hangar. “Standard model,” he mumbled around the light.
Kell snorted. “With Zsinj involved? Don’t believe it.”
“I don’t.” Grinder brought out a small sensor and ran it around the join where the access panel was sealed shut. “Ooh,” he said. “Standard keypad. Underneath, simplified circuits. Behind that, a denser circuit panel. Not standard.”
“What’s that mean?” asked Wedge.
“False layer to trip up …” Drool ran out of Grinder’s mouth around the penlight and he shut up, scowling.
“If you open up the panel,” Kell said, “you’ll probably get something that looks like the standard wiring you find in these panels. Odds are good you can even patch into it to run a bypass and get these doors open. But it’s a fake, and the circuitry beneath it will be busy alerting every guard on this hemisphere of the planet. The trick is to open both top layers at once and not trip the security, which is really tough—”
Grinder popped open the access hatch. A panel of dense circuitry in a pattern unfamiliar to Wedge glinted at them. Grinder turned to smirk at Kell.
“All right,” Kell said, “maybe not so tough.”
Wedge had to work to keep a smile off his face. The Wraiths were still surprising one another with what they could accomplish. A good sign. He just wished Kell were not so tense, so rigid; he’d been that way ever since Wedge had announced Kell was leading this mission. Not a good sign.
The others moved up fairly quietly behind them. “All accounted for,” whispered Janson.
Grinder plugged wires and bypass circuitry into the access hatch’s naked circuitry, then flipped a tiny toggle on an equally tiny capacitance charge. The hangar door groaned and slid open before them. It was pitch-black beyond, and the moons, still arising on the far side of the bunker, offered no light.
Tyria pulled her night-sight gear