Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [129]
“Leader, Twelve. I don’t have enough kills.” Piggy, in his fighter, vectored toward Iron Fist.
Face took a deep breath. That was code, and Piggy was doing what the mission called for; this was the first opportunity any of them had had to get in close to Iron Fist without raising suspicion. Still, form dictated that he key his comlink. “Twelve, Leader. That’s a negative. Return to Sungrass.”
“Don’t hear you, Leader.”
“Twelve, blast it … Eleven, go with him.”
“Affirmative, Leader.” Tyria’s fighter zoomed off in Piggy’s wake.
Tense, Face divided his time between docking with Sungrass and monitoring his sensors and comm system. The sensors showed Piggy and Tyria pursuing a lone TIE fighter up the ever-higher decks of Iron Fist’s command tower. Their communications showed them in hot pursuit, then veering in different directions around the tower … and suddenly Piggy was in the lead, the fighter pursuing him, Tyria pursuing him.…
Face’s stomach became a wall of knotted muscle. That was as gutsy and insane a maneuver as he’d ever seen, Piggy deliberately exposing himself to fire to account for what they needed Iron Fist’s sensor crew to conclude. Piggy had to depend on Tyria’s firing skill in those brief seconds.
Shrieks over the comlink, Tyria modulating her voice between victorious cheer and horror in a single syllable, Piggy’s and the pursuing TIE’s signals winking out from the sensor screen.
Finally, Tyria’s voice, subdued and pained. “Leader, I have to report that Twelve is no more. Our friend Morrt is One with the universe.”
Morrt. A Gamorrean parasite. That had to mean that Piggy was alive and on-station, but officially dead, and Tyria was calling him by that name to inform the others without repeating the word “parasite.” Face let out a long sigh and suddenly felt ten years older and more tired. “I’m sorry, Eleven. You did the best you could. But you have less than a minute to dock before we launch. We’ll raise a cup to Morrt at this evening’s meal.”
Piggy lay on his side, restrained from dropping to the starboard side of the cockpit only by the harness on his pilot’s couch.
His crash against Iron Fist’s hull had only been half-simulated. His pursuer’s final laser blast had hit his cockpit somewhere between and above the twin ion engines, doing damage to the fighter’s electronics, and his damage diagnostics display had been lit up like a city’s festival-of-lights display before he’d powered down.
Ahead, just over the artificial hill of Iron Fist’s command tower, he could see the top of one of the ship’s shield projector domes.
But that would have to wait. For now, he began solving intricate astronautic formulae, beautiful numeric structures describing the relationship between real space and hyperspace.
The stars he could see in his disadvantaged position suddenly elongated as Zsinj’s fleet entered hyperspace.
In Iron Fist’s main hangar bay, Face emerged from Sungrass’s airlock.
Quite a reception awaited him and the representatives of the various pirate bands. Melvar was at the center of the largest open area, a phalanx of stormtroopers around him. He was shaking hands with motley-looking pilots and officers, occasionally handing out shiny new datapads to them.
As Face approached, one pirate in particular was haranguing Melvar, shaking a fist in his face, gesturing with an angry theatricality Face decided was not simulated. The man was a Devaronian, and one given much to decoration; the horns on his forehead were gilded, and his sharp teeth gleamed so brightly they had to have been augmented by some surface bonded to them. His clothes were similar to an Imperial admiral’s in cut, but made of red cloth and leather, with an eye-catching red-and-gold overcloak.
As Face drew near, he could hear the Devaronian’s voice;