Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [66]
“One day.” Piggy nodded. “If we assume that Tal’dira was a victim and not a conspirator, then he was brainwashed in less than a day. Surely such a treatment must leave evidence on the body of the victim. Signs of probes. Blood chemical imbalances from drug treatments. Neurological disorders. Something.”
“Unfortunately,” Wedge said, “we don’t have Tal’dira’s body to examine. Or Flight Officer Tualin’s. We might be able to put in a request to Admiral Ackbar to see if he can perform autopsies on his attacker and Mon Mothma’s. And the two Gotal shooters.”
“If only Doctor Gast had survived,” Piggy said. “I feel no sense of loss at her passing; in fact, I am met with relief. But in retrospect, I wish we had the knowledge she possessed.”
Wedge and Nawara Ven exchanged a glance. “We’ll have to do without,” Wedge said. “All right, let’s get to work on these theories of ours … and see whether we can have successful careers as prophets as well as pilots.”
It drifted off the bow of Mon Remonda, a saucerlike shape with two forward prongs signifying the bow and a small cockpit projecting from the starboard side to give the ship an off-balance look.
To Wedge’s eye, it looked just like the Millennium Falcon, except that its top-hull dish antenna was much smaller. A shuttle occupied by Donos, Corran Horn, and the Wraiths’s chief mechanic Cubber Daine, Corellians all, plus Emtrey, the Rogues’s quartermaster, had escorted the battered-looking freighter from a scrapyard in the Corellian system, where such craft were most common … and cheapest to acquire.
“Ugliest ship I think I’ve ever seen,” said Solo.
Captain Onoma, standing on the other side of Solo at the bridge’s new forward viewport, wrinkled his forehead in a fair approximation of a human frown. “It looks like the Falcon to me.”
“Nothing could look less like the Falcon,” Solo said. “You could slap a paint job on a desert skiff and it’d look more like the Falcon.” He sighed. “Still, with Chewie in charge of dressing her up, she might be able to fool Zsinj for a couple of minutes. What did our crew of Corellians pay for her?”
“They traded that hyperspace-enabled TIE interceptor Shalla Nelprin took off Razor’s Kiss.”
Solo looked at him, eyes wide. “That’s crazy. Trade a valuable combat-ready starfighter for that hunk of junk?”
“No. They traded a valuable combat-ready starfighter for a chance to blow Zsinj up.”
Solo’s features settled into calmer lines, though he still looked tired, stressed. “Oh. Well, that makes sense. She’ll never have the Falcon’s speed. Without a few years’s head start, Chewie won’t be able to make her insides work like the real thing.”
“We don’t want him to,” Wedge said.
“How so?”
“Because if they count on this new ship being the Falcon, our modifications can trip them up. For example, the Falcon isn’t packed with high explosives.”
Solo shuddered. “There’s a very good reason for that.”
“Right. But since the Falcon isn’t packed with explosives, you’d never send her into a crash dive into the side of a Super Star Destroyer. With this hunk of junk, you wouldn’t feel any such compunctions.”
“Except for not wanting to die.”
“Well, that’s what escape pods are for. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” Solo returned his attention to the Corellian YT-1300 transport hanging off the bow. “All right. Secure Bay Gamma One to authorized personnel only and direct this flying trash receptacle there. Let’s get to work.”
It drifted off the bow of Iron Fist, a nightmare vessel. Her bulk was an irregular oval of wreckage more than three kilometers long held together by thousands of kilometers of cabling. Around the wreckage was a superstructure—a cluster of engines at one end, a wedge-shaped bow at the other, a gigantic spar of metal connecting them and acting as a frame for the envelope of wreckage to hang upon. The name, barely visible on the bow, was Second Death.
“Ugliest ship I think I’ve ever seen,” said Zsinj. His face shone with admiration. “Melvar, you have done a magnificent job.”
The general gave him a little bow. “There