Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [3]
The guards fired, their blasters converging on the cyborg’s chest, charring it black. Steam and the smell of scorched flesh rose from the wound. Wedge shoved the fatally wounded cyborg into the guards, continued pushing, bowled them over—and saw one guard’s blaster go skidding across the duracrete of the sidewalk. He dove after it.
Noises he knew well: the whuff Piggy the Gamorrean made whenever he struck at someone in practice, followed by the impossibly loud, meaty noise his fist always made when it hit. Two blaster shots in quick succession. A howl from Runt. The man with the broken leg still screaming. Shrieks from passersby and the clatter of their feet as they retreated from the danger zone.
Wedge got his hand on the blaster, swung around, snapped off a quick shot that took his other guardsman, now rising, in the throat and threw him back to the grimy duracrete. That gave Wedge a clear view of the impromptu battlefield, Wraiths struggling with military policemen.
“Nobody move!” That was Ton Phanan, miraculously unharmed, holding the blaster rifle previously owned by one of their captors—that man, Wedge saw, was staggering away, his eyes glassy, his hands clutching his own throat, trying futilely to arrest the tide of blood seeping between and around his fingers.
The MPs paused, saw the gun aimed at them … and, one by one, relaxed to drop their arms or ceased struggling with the Wraiths.
Face Loran, his voice in a reasonable tone Wedge knew to be forced, answered, “He didn’t walk like a Corellian.”
They were now in a debriefing room in Starfighter Command Headquarters, a room as spotlessly white and clean as the bar and street had been filthy. A colonel Wedge didn’t know was conducting the interview, but Admiral Ackbar, commander-in-chief of New Republic military operations, was also seated at the interrogators’ table. Though Ackbar was a Mon Calamari, a species with huge, rubbery features that seemed more fishlike than humanlike, he was a friendly presence in Wedge’s estimation.
“That’s not enough justification to attack someone with proper credentials,” the colonel said.
Face stiffened. “Respectfully, sir, it is when I’m correct.”
“Don’t be preposterous. You can’t classify a man’s homeworld just by looking at him.”
“Yes, I can, sir.”
The colonel, a middle-aged man with a face creased by too many years of waging war against the Empire, looked dubious. But without speaking, he stood, walked backward from the table, and then walked back and forth a half-dozen paces.
“Hard to say,” Face said. “If you had any distinctive walking mannerism from your homeworld, you erased it with military training. At Vogel Seven, if I’m not mistaken. I’d say that you were injured at some time in the past and had to learn to walk again—or maybe it was a disfigurement at birth, corrected by surgery? I can’t really tell.”
The colonel resumed his seat. Surprise was evident on his face. “Correct on both counts. How do you do that?”
“Well, I was an actor. On top of that, I’m trained to recognize, analyze, and assume physical mannerisms—just as I am with vocal mannerisms and a dozen other things. More importantly, I lived several years on Lorrd, where my family is originally from. The Lorrdians practically invented the art of conscious communication through body language.”
Ackbar finally spoke up, his voice a not-quite-human rumble. “You admit, Colonel, that Lieutenant Loran is capable of recognizing when someone’s physical mannerisms do not match his professed planet of origin?”
The colonel considered. “Well, it’s low for a statistical sampling, but I’d say he demonstrates considerable skill in that regard.”
“Between that,” Face said, “and the speed with which the MPs reached the bar—which, I remind you, is close to bedrock level, and not a place sensible New Republic military personnel are usually near—I concluded that it was a deception. The cyborg was trotted out to start the trouble and make an MP arrest look legitimate;