Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [56]
Lara Notsil paused just inside the broad opening to Mon Remonda’s port hangar doors. Just stepping into the hangar was entering a different world.
The high-pitched whine of repulsorlift engines being tested cut into her. It was a welcome noise now, one she’d come to appreciate. Less welcome was the cold that accompanied it. The great doors at the hangar’s far end were open, the chamber’s atmosphere held in only by its magnetic containment field, and magcon was not an insulator—heat fled through the field into the vacuum of space. Outside the atmosphere, fighter hangars tended to be chilly places.
The hangar was occupied by twenty-one X-wings, and they’d been settled in tight to one another. Taking off without grazing an adjacent snubfighter would be a minor challenge. But that appeared to be characteristic of Commander Wedge Antilles—never letting his pilots grow complacent, even with such a simple task as taking off for a mission.
She headed toward her X-wing. As the last squadron pilot to land, she was in the rear of the packed formation, nearest the magcon shield, so she’d be among the first to take off. She waved at various Wraith and Rogue pilots, who acknowledged her with waves of their own, shouts of encouragement, or mock disparagement.
She didn’t know what to make of them or how they were reacting to this mission.
The mission itself made perfect sense. Go in, stage a failed assault, try not to kill anyone—but defend yourself with all necessary force—and then get out safely. Let Zsinj jump to the wrong conclusion, that they’d fouled up and been driven off.
What was different, what was wrong, was the lack of disappointment among the Wraiths. Admiral Trigit’s TIE-fighter pilots would have accepted such a mission with just as much discipline, but they would have been relentlessly unhappy about the restrictions against unnecessary elimination of the enemy. How can you reach the rank of ace, establish a name, gain fame as a fighter pilot, without killing the enemy? And the very prospect of leaving an armed enemy alive would have been repellent.
But these Rebel pilots took the restriction in good grace, and their relaxed attitude about it seemed to be genuine.
That, more than anything, bothered her about this unit. The Rebel pilots were supposed to be barely restrained mad dogs. Sure, she’d met several at the hospital on Borleias who didn’t match that profile, but those were men and women recuperating from injuries, anxious to have some rest and recreation. But these Wraiths and Rogues were gearing up for combat. Their desire to eliminate the enemy should have been strong in them.
Perhaps Imperial evaluations of Rebel pilots were simply wrong. Not even accidentally wrong—just distorted to provide the Imperial pilots with more and better motivation to fight fiercely. Imperial pilots were, in fact, kept at a honed edge of ferocity, held at a barely contained level of fury that sometimes boiled out into violence at inappropriate times—in their quarters, with their families, on leave. By comparison, these X-wing pilots seemed emotionally quite healthy.
She shook her head. That had been a treasonous thought, dangerous to a woman who would be once again working for Imperial forces in the near future. She tried to banish it.
She climbed the ladder to her snubfighter’s cockpit. A Mon Remonda mechanic was up there on the fuselage, making sure the R2 unit tucked in behind the cockpit was securely attached. “You’ve got a beauty here,” the man said.
The R2 unit emitted a chirpy series of musical notes, acknowledgment of the compliment.
She stepped up into the cockpit and settled into her pilot’s couch. “Brand-new from the factory.” It was true; Colonel Repness could requisition new gear whenever a shipment was delivered to his training squadron, and apparently