Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [45]
Captain Rhanken met his eyes unflinchingly. “I anticipate no problems. If my crew has done its customary good work.” He glanced at the communications officer. “Will there be a problem, Lieutenant?”
The communications officer, no master of concealing his emotions, went pale. “I d-d-don’t recall whether I called up the final inventory-match manifest or used last week’s projected manifest, sir.”
“Get the final manifest and give it to him. Just to be sure.”
“Yessir.” The officer bent to his task.
Interesting. Face had to work to keep both amusement and contempt from his expression. The captain wanted to play the unerring officer and was willing to let his subordinates assume responsibility for a tactic that had to be the captain’s own decision. Depending on the pirates involved, that could have led to the lesser officer’s death.
Long minutes passed while the officer brought up the correct manifest and Castin verified it by cutting through the computer’s defenses and slicing his way down to the original file. They matched and Face and Castin looked through their winnings while Phanan kept the bridge officers under guard.
“Look at this,” Face whispered. “Halmad Prime, shipped by the ton. Halmad’s best and most expensive grain alcohol. You can’t get it on-planet except through the black market; they ship it to other Imperial worlds as one of their major exports. Various medicines. Duracrete sprayers. Prefabricated shelters. We’ll take all the Halmad Prime and a cross section of the medicines; that’s about all we can load on Sungrass. See anything else we need?”
“TIE fighter and interceptor parts.”
“What? Where?”
Castin turned his datapad so Face could see the screen. It showed a different inventory list. “I pulled this off their computer when I was verifying the current manifest. It’s an estimated inventory from the second leg of their voyage. We could really use some spare parts and maintenance gear.”
“True, but our little raid here is bound to change their schedule for the rest of their mission.”
“But if we can figure out what they’ll change it to …”
“Good point.” Face straightened and glared at the captain. “Rhanken, have your cargo handlers assemble lots twenty-eight through one hundred twenty-seven and two hundred at your cargo bay. Two, call Sungrass and have them move in to accept delivery.”
“And then what?” asked Captain Rhanken.
“Then we leave.”
“Leaving us to drift, without communications, without enough power to limp into the system, to die out here?”
Face gave him a tight smile. “You have escape pods sufficient to get a message to your rescuers. But we’ll save you some time and call in an emergency signal. Wouldn’t want you to be inconvenienced. And you can tell your fellow captains, whom I’ll be meeting in the foreseeable future, that the Hawk-bats don’t kill. Unless we’re annoyed. Or become bored. They can take that under advisement.”
Colonel Atton Repness, leader of the Screaming Wookiee training squadron aboard the New Republic frigate Tedevium, pointed the device at Lara as though it were a miniature blaster.
She looked curiously at it. It was shaped like a standard cylindrical comlink, but that’s not what it was. She was sure of this because she’d examined the device inside and out, and done far more than that, when she’d broken into Repness’s quarters two days ago. “I’m sorry, sir. Should I be putting up my hands? Or making a speech?”
He smiled. “Very funny. This isn’t a weapon. It just ensures that we aren’t being recorded.”
“Who would want to record us?”
The colonel looked around, though he and Lara were the lightly furnished conference room’s only inhabitants. “You’d be surprised. I’ll just keep this on.”
“You’re the colonel.” But, inwardly, she smiled. He wasn’t speaking as a colonel; his mannerisms had shifted, probably without him realizing it, to those of