Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [23]
As the others trickled out, he asked, “What is the news from what’s-her-name, Notsil?”
The two pilots exchanged glances. “Well,” said Face, “Lara seemed reassured by what you offered. We helped her put together her application for fighter-pilot training, and both of us and Kell wrote recommendations for her. Face set up an account for her so she could afford some limited HoloNet access to us; we’ll leave a router so she can reach us through Sivantlie Base. Things are in motion.”
“This had better work … or had better produce absolutely no results,” Wedge said. “Because if there are any foul-ups, General Cracken will personally feed you, and me, into a food reprocessor.”
4
He made no pretense at being fully human. He had probably been born human, but now mechanical limbs—obvious prosthetics, shiny stainless metal arms and legs with crude-looking joints—replaced his original flesh, and his entire upper face was a shiny metal surface with a standard computer interface inset in the center of his forehead.
He made no pretense at being friendly, either. He approached the booth where the big, good-looking businessman drank alone, and with neither threat nor comment he swung the wine bottle he held in his hands and brought it down on the businessman’s head.
The bottle shattered, spraying glass and red liquid all over the businessman. The man blinked, stood—demonstrating both a resilience and a physique others in the bar found admirable—and struck the cyborg, a blow that rocked the mostly mechanical man’s head and staggered him back into the booth filled with carousing Imperial pilots.
The pilots seated at the aisle shoved the cyborg forward, straight into the businessman’s professional-looking right cross. The blow caught the cyborg across the jaw, spinning him around. The cyborg staggered back to fall across the laps of two of the pilots in the booth. His flailing arm caught their glasses and bottles, throwing wine and liquor across everyone.
The pilots shoved him off to the floor and rose.
“Don’t do that,” the bartender said. But his voice was a plea and he wasn’t aiming a weapon. No one paid attention.
Suddenly hard-faced, a formidable group of six, the pilots glowered at the businessman and the cyborg. Their leader, the shortest of them, a dark-haired man with a face craggy enough for tiny snubfighters to fly their famous Trench Run Defense across, said, “You two owe us for a round and two bottles of local press, and we’ll take your booth and a hundred extra credits for our trouble.”
The businessman gave him a frosty smile. “With a hundred credits I could buy a pilot of your qualifications to lick my boots clean.”
“I’m calling the military police,” the bartender said.
The pilots surged toward the businessman. The first of them caught a knuckle punch in the solar plexus and dropped like a sackful of tubers. The second one was tripped up as the cyborg grabbed his knee and squeezed; the pilot’s shriek was shrill enough to resonate on empty glasses throughout the bar. The other four slammed into the businessman and bore him to the floor.
The bartender punched his emergency code into the comlink and began wailing to the distant listener.
Two minutes later, it was all but over. Two tables had been smashed, their entertained patrons now occupying booths on the other side of the bar. Five pilots and one cyborg lay at intervals across the floor, stretched out in various poses of very uncomfortable rest, often lying among broken glasses and platters of unhygienic appetizers. The businessman and the pilot leader were still standing, the latter glassy-eyed, barely responding to outside stimuli, while the former still occasionally swung ineffectual blows against his stomach. Both were drenched with sweat and booze, staggering with every slight move they made.
Then a half-dozen stormtroopers in the uniforms of military police poured into the bar. Some patrons—those who still had bets