Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [24]
With calm efficiency, the stormtroopers manacled the eight malefactors’ hands behind their backs; the two men still standing put up no fight. Three of the downed pilots could not be brought back to consciousness, but one of the stormtroopers picked up two of them, slinging them with considerable ease over his shoulders, and a second picked up the last stubbornly unconscious pilot. The stormtroopers began to move out.
“Wait,” the bartender said. “Where do I sign?”
Two of the stormtroopers exchanged a glance. “Why would you want to sign?” asked one, the ranking officer.
“So I can put in a claim for damages!”
The cyborg sighed. “Oh, just tally up the bill. I’ll pay for the damages.”
The bartender rocked back, mollified. “Well, all right, then. Come back soon. We appreciate your patronage.”
As they swept out through the door, onto a rainy street of Halmad’s capital city of Hullis, the ranking officer among the pilots, the one who’d taken so much abuse at the businessman’s hands, gave the cyborg a dizzy but appreciative look. “Hey, you’re not all bad.”
“I just like a good scrap now and then.” The cyborg shrugged. Unfortunately for him, the motion put extra pressure on his shackles. They opened and dropped to the muddy ground behind him.
The pilot leader stared. “Hey, what the—”
“Fire,” said the stormtrooper leader.
Three of the stormtroopers obliged him. Stun beams hit the pilots’ torsos. The pilots dropped into the mud.
The stormtrooper leader looked around. There was no one to see, not much skimmer traffic this rainy evening, no one entering or coming out of the bar. He pulled off his helmet, revealing the features of Wedge Antilles, and took an unencumbered view around. No sign of witnesses. “Let’s hustle, people.”
The other troopers grabbed the three fallen pilots. They dragged and carried their prisoners around the corner of the building, then around behind, where their skimmer awaited in the darkness of a fallow field. It was no military skimmer, just a medium cargo carrier with a deep bed.
While the others dumped the pilots into the rear and draped blankets and netting across them, Wedge stripped off his stormtrooper armor and threw it in after them. “Good work, Tainer, Phanan. Either of you hurt?”
Kell shook his head and flexed, popping his unsealed manacles loose. “This suit’s probably a loss.”
Phanan waggled his head. “Kell didn’t do me any harm, but the bottle one of them hit my head with wasn’t fake glass like mine was. It didn’t even break. I hear ringing.”
“Sounds like a mild concussion. See our doctor about it.”
“Oh, I’m too important a doctor to see anyone as lowly as myself.”
Wedge waved at one of the ersatz stormtroopers. “Face, grab these pilots’ wallets, money pouches, whatever they’re carrying. I want every credit they have, hard currency only. How much damage did you two jokers do?”
Kell and Phanan looked at one another.
“Maybe a hundred,” Kell said. “Counting everything.”
“All right,” Wedge said. “If these pilots’ personal fortunes don’t add up to a hundred and fifty, we’ll make up the difference ourselves. Face, run the credits in to the bartender. Tell him the cyborg paid off, instant compensation for the damage, so sorry, he’s a miserable old drunk whose only entertainment is causing trouble at bars.”
“Hey,” said Phanan. “I resent the use of the word miserable.”
“Then get back here fast. We take off in three minutes.”
Wedge and Janson, still in stormtrooper armor but with their helmets off, lay atop a hill overlooking the nearby Imperial base. The optics Wedge held before his face made greenish daylight of the night. “Same as last night and the night before. I make four TIE fighters at the ready scramble-pad, under the watchful eye of half a stormtrooper squadron.”
“Not that we care,” Janson said.
“Not that we want those starfighters,” Wedge corrected him. “But we may have to deal with them on the way out. Anything coming up the road?”
Janson cast a negligent eye the other way. Down