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“Good point. Squeaky, record that.”

“If I must.”

Wedge’s attention was diverted by data on his sensor board. “We’ve just been tapped by planetary sensors. Now we find out if our camouflage fooled them.”

“I don’t see how it can,” Squeaky said, his voice even more petulant than usual. “On close examination, the extension off our starboard side just does not look genuine. And Chewbacca has failed to minimize the Falsehood’s forward mandibles, which are, if I’m not mistaken, characteristic of the YT-1300s but not the YT-2400s. We are, I think, probably dead.”

Donos frowned at the two-tone 3PO unit seated beside him. Squeaky looked absurd in his ill-fitting clothing, a New Republic general’s uniform. “Then why did you volunteer for this mission?”

“Habit?”

“No.”

“Because I thought my absence would doom the mission?”

“Although Emtrey could have substituted for you.”

Chewbacca grumbled something.

“Certainly not,” Squeaky said, his tone turning indignant. “This is not fun, and I wouldn’t miss you.”

Chewbacca grumbled again.

“No, you don’t keep having to remind me to belt in. I am firmly belted in. My belt is fixed with more finesse than that of any belt in this cockpit.”

Donos shook his head. Maybe he ought to set up at one of the gunport turrets now.

Lara sat in her cockpit, drenched in sweat and feeling miserable.

It wasn’t because the cockpit was more uncomfortable than usual, or because of the protracted amount of time she’d been in it.

She’d met the Broadaxe Squadron pilots and had been assigned a TIE interceptor and a wingman, the squadron commander. She’d gone through the routine power-up checklist and transferred, with the rest of the Broadaxes and the 181st, to another ship—a Dreadnaught, older than the Empire, named Reprisal. She remembered it from the Levian mission. Broad-axe Squadron occupied the Dreadnaught’s fighter bay, while the 181st was divided among officers’ bays and cargo bays. Lara shook her head over that; she’d have thought that the more prestigious unit would choose the more convenient bay.

She’d been among the last TIEs to land, and was positioned to be among the first to launch, her viewport a mere meter from the bay’s magcon shield. Her temporary commander had laughed at her zeal, but there was another reason she wanted this position: no one was likely to walk in front of her TIE and see what she was doing inside it. Since she’d settled in, she’d been hard at work.

She had started by coupling her personal comlink to a datapad she’d stolen from another Iron Fist crewman while they were in the officers’ mess. She didn’t steal equipment on the bridge; it might be too easy to track back to her.

She recorded a lengthy message, one that turned her thoughts gloomy. Then she pulled up a panel beneath her feet, one that gave technicians access to the vehicle’s laser power generators. She powered down all vehicle systems except the comm unit and exterior lights, which would allow her to pretend that the system was still fully powered—assuming no one ran a sensor scan on her, or that no one called, in the next few minutes, for immediate takeoff.

Leading from the power generators were power regulators, which could keep a fatal spike of power from frying vehicle systems in case the generators were hit or malfunctioned in combat. She opened one of the regulators, the one protecting the port-side laser cannons, and spliced in a set of cables. These she attached to the datapad’s computer coupler port.

She activated the datapad and packed it into the cavity with the laser power generators, taping it securely into place. She left one wire, terminating in a simple thumb switch, trailing into the cockpit; she closed the access hatch over it, then taped the thumb switch to her pilot’s yoke.

Finally, she recommenced power-up, hoping that her modification wouldn’t cause any of the vehicle systems to fail, that her modification wouldn’t activate any sensor she didn’t know about.

If this worked, she was one step closer to Iron Fist’s destruction. If it failed, but she was otherwise very