Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [58]
“Great placement, Twelve.” Wedge’s voice again. “All right. We should have a five-to-ten-minute window before they can bring online any secondary sensor arrays worth worrying about. Remember, you’ll be aiming for a complex three times as long as wide, featuring sky-blue buildings—”
“Leader, this is Eight.” Face’s voice. “Visual sensors on the Syward military base show TIE fighters scrambling. I see two full squadrons mobilizing. They’re wearing planetary defense colors.”
“They can’t be coming after us, Eight. Their sensors—can you visually scan their main sensor station?”
“Working on it, Leader.”
Lara smiled. Though their transmissions were encrypted, she had to assume the Wraiths would be using a code sequence that had been in use for a while—one whose useful lifetime was nearing an end. If the planetary defenders recorded enough of these transmissions and could crack them, the Wraiths’ pre-scripted dialogue would sound perfectly normal for a botched mission in progress.
“Tonin, scan normal Imperial frequencies,” she said. “Send anything you hear that sounds like pilot traffic to my helmet comlink. When Wraith transmissions and Imperial transmissions conflict, continue recording the Imperial transmissions but let me hear only the Wraiths.”
The display unit set aside for communication with the astromech popped up with a quick reply: UNDERSTOOD.
And almost immediately she began to hear faint, fuzzy transmissions, garbled words: “—ming up. Deploy by fists—”.; “—file suggests still in approach vec—”
“Leader, Eight. Visual sensors show the ground sensor complex intact. There seems to be some scoring damage on the northeast wall and civilian crews there. It looks like our ground team fouled up.”
Even distorted by New Republic comm equipment, Wedge’s voice was hard. “They’re going to be sorry they got back to us. They’ll wish they only had Lavisar authorities to deal with. Wraiths, come about in formation. Twelve, confirm and then transmit our escape vector.”
“Twelve, understood.”
The Wraiths began a slow sweep, bringing them around toward deep space again, taking them back out the way they had come.
“—trol indicates enemy force is flee—”; “Stay in formation, we’re chasing them all the way—”; “—like banthas to the hunters. Stay tight.”
Lara frowned. That last transmission had not sounded right. “Tonin, can you plot the origins of the Imperial transmissions you’ve received so far?”
APPROXIMATELY.
“Do so. Put them up on my sensor board.”
Her sensor screen, which previously had shown only the two nearby planetary bodies and a single blue blip representing all the Wraiths, now added two fuzzy red fields—one at the planet’s surface, one near the nearest moon’s surface at a point not too distant from the Wraiths’ escape vector. The fields wavered as the astromech continuously recalculated probable points of origin and projected them onto the screen.
“Tonin, subtract the Lavisar transmissions from the image.”
DONE.
“Transmit the image to Wraith Leader’s R2 and ask him to put it on his sensor screen.”
DONE.
She activated her comm system. “Leader, this is Thirteen. I’m picking up indications that we have company ahead. Probably the garrison of a lunar station.”
“Understood, Thirteen. Good work. Wraiths, break to starboard on my lead. Twelve, give us a new escape course.”
“Twelve, understood.”
Wedge rolled out to starboard,