• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Experience,” Donos said. “Less chatter, Wraith Four.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m hit!” The voice was young, a little panicky. “Losing shield power. Smoke in my cockpit. Lasers indicate malfunction.”

Lara checked her board. The transmission was from Rogue Eight, “Target” Nu, the Rodian. He was separated from his wingmate and had a pair of TIEs on his tail.

“I’m coming.” That was his wingmate, Kether. “I’m—I’m hung up here.”

“Rogue Eight, this is Wraith One.” Face’s voice. “Come to one-nine-four. I’ll head in straight toward you and head-to-head your pursuit. You pair up with Wraith Two out here and stay clear of the engagement.”

“Thanks, Wraith One.” The blip that was Rogue Eight vectored toward her and Face. Face headed straight toward it, leaving Lara hanging out in the void.

She didn’t object. She didn’t ask for orders. She knew what was required of her.

But she wondered, and her confusion gradually turned to cold worry in her stomach.

Seven fighters of the combined TIE pursuit force, including the one Face vaped on his head-to-head run into the center of the engagement zone, were destroyed before the pursuing squad leader ordered an evacuation. Donos decided that the man had to have been assuming the TIE fighters’s greater speed and maneuverability would give him all the advantage he needed against a numerically superior mixed force. But against the Rogues and Wraiths, he was wrong.

The surviving TIEs fled planetward, doubtless to form up with yet another flight group and come once again after the Rogues and Wraiths. But this time they wouldn’t catch up.

Donos responded to Wedge’s order that the group form up on the Millennium Falsehood. But on his sensor board, Wraith One and Wraith Two maintained their distance, paralleling the main group’s course a dozen kilometers out.

Lara could still hear a little high-pitched alarm in Rogue Eight’s voice, but that situation seemed to be under control. “I’m getting regular power fluxes but no serious drops. I’ve had to shut down one starboard engine but I can limp in on three.”

“Group, this is Leader. As soon as we have a little bit of moon horizon between us and the planet, the Drakes are going to separate and head on out to Rendezvous Point Beta. The rest of us will vector back into space the planetary sensors can scan, and will then make the jump to Rendezvous Point Alpha. Rogue Two, I want you to delay your jump thirty seconds to make sure all our damaged snubfighters make the transition to hyperspace.”

“Leader, Two. Understood.”

“Wraith One, Wraith Two, rejoin the group and prepare for jump.”

Face’s voice was next. “Leader, this is Wraith One. We need to jump from here and follow you in.”

“Explain that, Wraith One.”

“On a private channel, if you please, Leader.”

The worry in Lara’s stomach turned into fear. There were only so many reasons Face would refuse to let them return to the group. Most of them involved one or the other of them being a danger to the group, such as if one of their X-wings were threatening to blow up.

Face was protecting the group, or someone in the group. And Lara was certain she knew who. He was protecting Wedge.

From her.

Face’s voice was off the comm waves for a couple of minutes. Then he returned. “Wraith Two, have you double-checked your nav course?”

“No,” she said. “You know, don’t you, Face?” Her voice emerged as a choked whisper and she wondered if the comm unit would even pick it up.

“I know that you’re Gara Petothel,” he said. His voice was quieter, more gentle than she expected it to be.

She felt a snapping sensation in her chest, as though her breastbone had broken. And then there was the sensation of loss—of the sudden departure from her life of everything she considered important.

But it didn’t feel quite the way she expected it to. Pain there was, certainly, but she also felt a sudden relief, an absence of the weight she’d been carrying around since first she decided she no longer wanted to serve Zsinj, since she decided that her alliance with the Wraiths was fact,