Star Wars_ X-Wing 09_ Starfighters of Adumar - Aaron Allston [37]
“Was she … a pilot? The woman last night?”
He considered that question, wondered just how far he was willing to answer her curiosity, and said, “No.”
Her face brightened. “No? No. No. I hope you fly well today. I mean, I know you will fly well today, but I hope others see. Remember to specify match numbers when you accept a challenge.”
Wedge nodded. He’d already learned about that protocol. If he didn’t “specify match numbers” when accepting a challenge, such as by saying “we accept four,” the attackers could bring as many pilots as they wanted against him. The usual protocol was to accept as many challengers as he had pilots in his own flight or squadron.
He watched as Cheriss, suddenly, mysteriously transformed into a happy young woman again, trotted up to the front of the transport and leaned over the rail into the wind.
He moved back to his pilots. “Any of you understand that? Her mood swing?”
Tycho said, “I think I’d shoot myself before getting involved in this conversation.”
Hobbie shrugged. “Not one of my languages, Wedge.”
Janson threw up his arms, tossing his cloak back over his shoulders. It was a practice move; he’d already done it forty times this morning. He drew the cloak back around him, where Wedge could see its flexible flatscreen panels in front, the moving images they showed of Janson on the receiving stand the other night, and he nodded. “I understood her, boss. But you don’t want to know. Trust me on this.”
“Anytime Janson says ‘you don’t want to know,’ ” Wedge said, “it’s like juggling thermal detonators. Each time you grab and throw, you know your thumb might hit the trigger …” He sighed and turned to Janson. “I want to know.”
“You asked for it … You told her your lady friend wasn’t a pilot, right? Cheriss also isn’t a pilot. Here, she can’t compete with pilots in prestige. But you saw a lady who wasn’t a pilot. You just told Cheriss, ‘Yes, you too have a chance with me.’ ”
Wedge stood there, contemplating, unconsciously rocking in place to compensate for the transport’s swaying motion across the ground. “Wes, you were right,” he said.
“You didn’t want to know.”
“I didn’t want to know.”
Janson grinned. “Boom.”
Wedge and Tycho flew a head-to-head pass against Janson and Hobbie. As the numbers on their range meters rolled toward zero, he watched the brackets on the lightboard as they surrounded the two “enemy” Blade-32s. At first, the brackets were fuzzy and indistinct; then they grew in solidity as the lightboard sensor technology gradually improved its lock on them. At the same time, his sensor board began emitting a deep, ominous, throbbing noise, warning of the enemy’s improving chance to target him.
The lightboard brackets went to full opacity at the same instant the throbbing warning hit its maximum volume. Wedge immediately rolled to port and dove, losing hundreds of meters of altitude in a matter of seconds, then came nose-up again, seeking Janson and Hobbie, who were similarly energetic in their attempt to elude a laser lock.
Wedge got the Blade-32 oriented toward his two targets, pleased with the way the starfighter increasingly felt natural to him. Visuals and his lightboard showed Janson breaking to starboard, Hobbie to port; he looped after the former and trusted Tycho to complement his action by going after the latter target.
He barely had Janson lined up in his weapon brackets when his target opened fire on him, stitching him with several blue pulses from his vehicle’s rear-firing lasers. Wedge growled at himself; unused to dueling with vehicles with rear weapons, he’d forgotten about them momentarily, while Janson, an experienced rear gunner, had utilized them from the start. But Wedge’s sensor board indicated that the simulated laser damage he’d sustained was not critical. Wedge began bobbing and sideslipping, attempts to keep Janson from achieving another targeting lock, and waited