Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [81]
Dalls Petothel.
Face felt his stomach sink.
“Dawn,” said Squeaky.
The one word, emerging out of blackness, jolted Wedge out of his light doze. He looked around but could still see no illumination other than the droid’s eyes. He rubbed his eyes and swung his booted feet down off the command console. “It doesn’t much look like dawn.”
“If you look straight up, you can see the sky brightening. All these trees and the buildings beyond keep the early-morning light from reaching us,” Squeaky said.
Chewbacca stretched, making loud tendon-popping noises, and rumbled something.
“Well, yes, since we don’t have any light in our eyes, I could have let you sleep a few more minutes,” Squeaky said. “But I was under the impression that the commander here wanted to know when dawn was. Because as soon as it’s day, the more likely it is we get seen. Or hadn’t that thought penetrated the mass of fur shielding your brain from outside stimulus?”
Grumble.
“Well, yes, technically, it is light rather than chronological markers for daytime that make it more likely we’ll be seen, but my point still holds—”
“Quiet,” Wedge said. “We may have something.”
On his sensor screen, a small blip had just crossed, in a straight line, a portion of this belt of forest about a kilometer to their south. It had looped around and was now crossing the same forest a hundred meters or so north of its last passage. As they watched, it completed this crossing and looped back again.
“A search grid?” Squeaky suggested.
“Yes. But it’s the only vehicle doing that in the area. So there’s not a concerted search going on.” Wedge read the text register on his sensor board. The vehicle was tentatively identified as a sort of high-altitude floater routinely used by police forces on Imperial worlds. “Probably just a routine flyover of his territory. He should be here in about fifteen minutes.” He dialed down the broadcast power of his comm unit and activated it. “Two?”
“I see it, Leader.”
“Just checking. Begin your preflight preparations. Out.” He brought the comm system up to full power and selected an encryption code, then transmitted one phrase: “In the green.”
A moment later, he received an answer, encrypted the same way. “Two lit.” Kell’s voice.
“Drake Squadron is getting ready,” Wedge said. “Now we wait for the locals to flush us.”
10
In the graying hour of dawn, the police floater heeled over so far that Wedge was certain that its pilot would tumble out of his seat if not for strap restraints and the vehicle’s bubble top. The pilot looked down at the Millennium Falsehood, reached for his control board as if to activate his comm system, then spotted Tycho’s X-wing.
Even with the distance between them, Wedge could read the shock on the pilot’s face. “Let’s go,” he said.
Rogue Two’s nose elevated until the X-wing was pointed almost straight up, and then Tycho kicked in his main thrusters, shooting the snubfighter into the air straight past the police floater. He missed the smaller vehicle by less than two meters. The police pilot unnecessarily slid sideways to get clear of the X-wing’s passage.
Wedge duplicated Tycho’s maneuver, putting the Falsehood into a steep climb. Above, he could see the glow of Tycho’s engines. “Chewie, the comm system is yours,” he said.
Chewbacca activated the comm unit. He grumbled and roared into it across an open channel. By agreement with Wedge, these would be insults and curses in the Wookiee’s language.
The Falsehood reached the altitude of the top of this sector’s highest buildings. Wedge leveled off, still traveling in Tycho’s wake, a sharp maneuver that brought a startled exclamation from Squeaky … followed by a clatter of metal on metal.
“Forget to strap in?” Wedge asked.
“I never forget anything, sir,” the 3PO unit said, his tone a bit miffed. “I merely failed to add ‘strapping in’ to my list of things to do. Could you hold her level for a moment?”
“No.” Wedge sideslipped to go around an aggressively tall skyscraper. There was another clash and scrape of metal from behind. Tycho rejoined