Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [118]
“We’ve spent two years helping a colonel in charge of the ship’s landing parties build himself up a lucrative little smuggling operation. He doesn’t know ‘we’ means Zsinj, though he’ll find out when they court-martial him, if not before. Anyway, to facilitate his trading and dealing, he had to arrange for ways by which his people could bypass several layers of Kuat Drive Yards defense, and by monitoring him very closely we found out what those means were.
“This crew of specialists will be taking a standard shuttle in to the officers’ landing bay under access codes he uses for his little side operation. That will get you onto Razor’s Kiss … but no farther, I’m afraid.
“The crew will advance from the landing bay to the bridge and seize it, then enter programming that will allow you to operate the ship in limited capacity solely from the bridge. A false leak alert should clear everyone out of the engineering section and auxiliary bridge, at which point you’ll lock them out to prevent sabotage. Finally, a hypercomm signal to us will alert the fleet that it’s time to jump in and Razor’s Kiss can move out on its escape vector. Any questions?”
The faces of the other members of the team showed clearly they were all fully briefed on the situation. Shalla said, “I take it that I’m to be some sort of lure?”
Melvar nodded. “You’ll take point through much of the team’s advance through the ship. It’s inevitable that the team will run across crewmen we haven’t accounted for. Your job is very specific: Distract them, delay them for the others to get in position, but most importantly, don’t let them get off any sort of signal. Any comlink notification of the bridge can ruin the whole plan.”
Shalla nodded. “Except for stormtroopers, with their comlinks built into their helmets, it shouldn’t be too hard. And even with them, just striking fast and hard enough should solve the problem.”
In looking over the other team members, she’d noticed that the only other female member of the team, though rather plain in her current guise, could, with a little makeup and attention to detail, have been quite attractive. Shalla said to her, “You were originally supposed to have my job.”
The woman, whose name, if Shalla remembered correctly, was Bradan, nodded. “The general thought that a smaller woman would be less suspicious, less intimidating to the security forces aboard Razor’s Kiss.”
“He’s probably right.” Shalla shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
Bradan gave her a searching look. “You bring this mission off and we’ll all be covered in glory. Do it and I’ll forgive you.”
“Done.”
18
“The sign of a perfect mission,” said Captain Raslan, “is that it’s boring.”
Shalla nodded. The mission had been boring so far. They’d taken a dirty, creaky wreck of a first-generation Lambda shuttle from Iron Fist, made the hyperspace jump into the Kuat system, made an approach vector on the planet, transmitted passcodes that were apparently accepted, and now the shuttle was finishing its first orbit so that it could continue on to the shipbuilding station from a proper approach vector.
“When it’s not boring,” the captain continued, “you know that you’ve failed.”
“You’re obviously unused to failure,” Shalla said.
“You have that right.” Raslan turned his attention back to the shuttle’s controls. “We’re getting the automated turn-back message. I’m transmitting our passcode.”
Bradan leaned forward to speak in Shalla’s ear. “If this works, we won’t even get a voice acknowledgment. Just several minutes of silence as we approach.”
“Thus,” Shalla said, “more boring, thus even better.”
“That’s right.” Bradan leaned back.
Shalla had to consider that. It was so contrary to Face’s analysis of Iron Fist’s officer corps, with their rough, piratical behavior on the bridge during the dinner with Zsinj. It was, in fact, more logical, more in line with the kind of success Zsinj enjoyed. But, of course,