Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [61]
In fact, all the remaining TIE fighters—five of them—were outbound.
“Wraiths, Leader. Form up. Twelve, make your calculations and get us out of here. I make it less than a minute before they overtake us. Give me status reports by number.”
“This is Three. No kills. Minor damage to port topside fuzial engine. I’m shutting it down.”
“Four. Two kills. No damage.”
It was there, battering at her head as insistently as the switch housing swinging into her helmet, a thought that wouldn’t let her go. Zsinj is the same as Trigit. Why had she thought that?
Because it was true. Raptor forces had not risen against the Wraiths. Had this been a Zsinj-controlled planet, Raptors would have been the first forces up—they had to maintain their reputation for brutality and efficiency. So this world was independent and the intercepted Raptor transmission a false lead, as the Wraiths had said.
And since the forces of Lavisar weren’t set up for the Wraiths—else there would have been a lot more of them—this was just what Commander Antilles had said: a plan by Zsinj to have New Republic—
Rebel.
—Rebel forces hurt the planet’s defenses, maybe knock them down. So Zsinj could move in, either as a conqueror or a defending hero. Those two choices were the same: Zsinj in control.
She wanted to admire the plan, especially as it extended to the other worlds Mon Remonda had been assaulting. It was clever, efficient.
But those pilots, who’d just been sacrificed, who’d died to satisfy Zsinj’s sense of efficiency. It was like Admiral Trigit. And it wasn’t—
“Thirteen.”
—honorable. There was no honor in it.
And the last fifteen years of Gara Petothel’s life closed in around Lara Notsil like a coffin. Her parents’ work for Imperial Intelligence. Their arrest and execution for unspecified treason. How Gara had hated them, missed them. How she’d learned, so eagerly, and demonstrated such loyalty, so that nothing like that would ever happen to her.
“Thirteen.”
All her life, she’d known not to believe the Rebels and their simplistically optimistic propaganda. Now she could no longer put her faith in the forces that had taken her, trained her, shaped her. There was nothing for her.
Tonin’s irritable beeping finally caught her attention. LEADER WANTS TO KNOW IF YOU’RE HURT.
“Oh. Uh …” She keyed her comlink. “Sorry, Leader. Thirteen reporting—” She finally scanned her diagnostic board. “Forward shields down to forty-seven percent but climbing. I think I took a hit in that first head-to-head. Some gauges out.” She grabbed the S-foil switch where it hung and switched it. Her S-foils did not close up into cruise configuration. “S-foil actuator seems to be out. And I think I hit my head.”
“Drop your shield, you don’t need it. Don’t worry about your S-foils. Just acknowledge receipt of the new course and prepare to enter it on my mark.”
“Understood, Leader. Um, I’ve received the course and it checks out.”
“Three, I want you to engage hyperdrive five seconds after the rest of the squad launches, in case battle damage has knocked out anyone’s drive.”
“Got it, One.”
“On my mark, three, two, one … Jump.”
They returned to Mon Remonda’s port hangar much as they’d left it, a little more battered, with Piggy’s fuselage scored by a laser graze, with Lara’s S-foils unable to assume cruise position, but otherwise unhurt.
Lara climbed out into a chaotic sea of backslaps and embraces, handshakes and congratulations.
Everyone seemed to move in slow motion. Words were slowed, almost incomprehensible, and sounds were muted. Tyria’s blond ponytail swayed with the sinuous motion of a snake. Piggy’s reserved arm motions, as he described some complicated maneuver or another, seemed to be those of a Gamorrean in low gravity.
Yet the one thing Lara understood was the expressions turned on her. They were the eyes of a