Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [36]
The stormtrooper at the door was Wedge; his shout was distinctive. “Two, get the hangar doors open and lock them that way; we can’t afford for the central computer to lock them closed. Do you have a distraction ready?”
“My number two distraction is ready. My best one will take a couple of minutes more.”
“Go with the number two. Then join Six, Eight, Nine, and Eleven, get out of here on foot—”
Castin’s voice rose in something like a whine. “But I was going to fly one of the interceptors!”
“Pipe down. We only have five. Move out in any direction but the one those stormtroopers took, running in Imperial formation, and get in contact with Ten for whatever transport she can provide. The rest of you, to your interceptors.”
“They have the hangar door open,” reported the skimmer pilot, now standing at the corner of a building not far away. “I can hear ion engines inside firing off. I’ve got my men scattering to firing positions. I—”
His next words were lost in the wail that rose all around him. It was the anguished cry of some long-forgotten god, a moan that rattled his bones despite his armor; he saw transparisteel viewports on the buildings around him vibrate under the fury of that sound.
It was, in fact, the base’s air-raid siren system, an antiquated measure to inform every person on base and anyone within several klicks that enemies were coming by air. In the days when this base was first built, those enemies were the Empire; after the Empire took over, the base operators maintained the system. Just in case.
And now the impossible had happened, someone was attacking the base from the sky. The stormtrooper saw columns of light crisscross the sky in search of targets, then heard and saw the base’s huge automated turbocannons begin firing at targets high up in the air. He couldn’t see the targets … but if the big guns were firing, they were up there.
Distracted by the aerial show, the stormtrooper did not see the first of the interceptors emerge from the hangar.
Face broke formation to draw abreast of Castin as they trotted. He had to shout to be heard over the siren wail. “Two, what did you do?”
Two’s body language momentarily suggested an aw-shucks embarrassment. “I found some of their old wargame projections about Imperial raids. They weren’t under much security; they were just archives. But I was able to patch the data into their sensor net, as though it were data being received now, and it triggered an automated response. Any second now—”
In the distance, two squadrons of TIE fighters lifted, racing toward the sky and the presumed enemies waiting there. Instead of continuing his thought, Castin just pointed.
Face said, “Six, do we have anything from Ten?”
“We have. She is coming. We have given her our vector.”
“Coded, I hope.”
“Coded.” The Wraiths’ code for this mission included a very simple method for transmitting locations, in case their scramblers were decoded: Locations were given in standard Imperial grid format, but with the values reversed, south for north, east for west. It might take only one visual check by stormtroopers to confirm that the locations were incorrect, but the time tolerances for this mission were so tight that this might be all the help the Wraiths needed.
Kell and Phanan, the pilots least experienced with TIE fighters—and experienced not at all with TIE interceptors, even in simulators—were the first to emerge from the hangar. Running close to the ground on repulsorlifts, they crept out tentatively from the hangar’s interior. Even with their caution, Phanan