 |
 Reading Room |
|
|
Reading Room |
|
Foxfire glanced at her mission timer as the four A-wings shot through hyperspace...seconds left to reversion and yet another skirmish with the Imperials. She waited impatiently for the computer to count down, wanting to have the intercom link available again for a last-minute briefing - not that anyone really needed it, but the mission plan was a bit unusual and she wanted to make sure it was down firmly.
The jump indicator flickered green and her A-Wing dropped into real space. The rest of her group, other three fighters, had dropped in beside her, and immediately broke left and right in groups of two, making room for the B-wings that came in just behind them.
"All right, folks, the defenses here are nothing but gunboats and turbolasers, so we're switching roles for today. The B-wings will cover us while we go for the big target - we have to take out all the turrets on the sunward side of the station, and we don't have long to do it before the transports show up. Got it?"
"Right," Iceman said promptly. Vyper, never particularly talkative in flight, just double-clicked his mike. Torpedo, commanding the B- Wings flight, acknowledged with an "Aye, aye", followed by the rest of his group, Granite, Blitz and Sparks. She was still missing one, though... Foxfire frowned and looked over her right shoulder to catch a glimpse of the missing A-wing. Somehow I'm not surprised...
"Got it, Nik?"
"Yes ma'am, got it, can I turn my stereo back up now?"
"Do it and I'll stick you in the brig for a month." She smiled, knowing that Hardrive was just joking. Or at least that was what she hoped. Suddenly her computer emitted a warning tone and her forward scanner started to show red shots.
"This is gonna be fun," Foxfire muttered to herself, looking as a flight of six Gunboats rose from the comm station and spread out to engage them. With Hardrive still in formation on her wing, she ducked under the wave of oncoming Gunboats, leaving them for the B- wings with no particular remorse. Four of the Alliance heavy bombers could handle the opposition without much trouble - besides, she was going to have her hands full with the turbolaser barrage from the station.
"OK, Nik, split up and watch your back!"
"Don't worry, they haven't made the Gunboat yet that could catch up with me." Hardrive's A-wing broke away from hers with a cheerful wing-waggle.
Foxfire threw her fighter into an irregular corkscrew course, scanning the perimeter of the comm station for turbolaser turrets. This was worse than mineracing... A quick glance behind her showed all the Gunboats safely engaged with Torpedo's B-wings, and she targeted the nearest turret and dove for it.
I hate turbolasers! she thought.
Biting her lip in concentration, Foxfire wove around a near-continuous stream of green fire, then ducked away with a quick flurry of lasers. A satisfying shower of sparks behind her let her know that her attack run had succeeded. Just fifteen or so left now...
She glanced at her sensors and found about what she'd expected - Vyper and Iceman had staked out one quarter of the comm station as their own and were methodically strafing their way across it, and Hardrive was careening through wild course changes that had to be leaving the Imperial gunners motion-sick. As long as everything blew up on schedule, she wouldn't complain - they had only a few seconds left before the transports dropped in, and she had several squadmates on the first transport. Moose, Ibero and Joker were all hitching rides on one of the commando ships, and she wanted to leave them a clear path in.
The station spun dizzily over her as she slammed the A-wing sideways to avoid a turbolaser bolt. She hated charging an installation like this - you could out-think another pilot, but with a wall of gunners it came down to brute force. And that was something an A-wing was notoriously short on.
"Foxy, we've got forty-five seconds till the transports revert," Torpedo said over the comm-link. "You got it cleared out for them?"
"Almost-" Foxfire dumb-fired two missiles into her current target and yanked her stick back for a wrenching turn that sent her skimming over the comm-station walls. "Vyper, you two done over there?"
"Working on it..." The Intelligence Officer sounded about as distracted as Foxfire was herself.
"Personally, I'm right about 'well-done'." Iceman's A-wing angled away from the comm station, trailing sparks from one winglet. Out of the corner of her eye, Foxfire saw Hardrive give up on the subtle approach and charge the last gun turret in a storm of lasers. "OK, we're done," he reported smugly.
Foxfire relaxed slightly. "All right, good work, fall back and-"
"Fox, we're in trouble." Vyper shut her off abruptly. "Four more Gunboats and six squints - they had them hiding in the station's sensor shadow, Probably trying to catch us in an ambush."
Foxfire diverted all the shield power she could spare to her engines. "OK, back in formation and accelerate to attack speed. Torpedo?"
"Yes, boss, we're on our way. Granite, follow me. Sparks, Blitz, hang back and cover the transports. They may have another surprise or two waiting."
"Let them try," Granite said angrily. The Caldanian
pilot would have preferred to be with the commando team, but Moose had
explicitly forbidden him to board any of the transports. "Sometimes I just
can't understand him..." he muttered through his clenched teeth.
Hardrive dropped into position on Foxfire's wing as she arced over the disarmed wall of the station and back into the zone of fire of the active turbolasers. Complicating matters further were the Imperial fighters racing toward them - thankfully, most of them were unshielded Interceptors. But that turn of speed plus quad-lasers would still shred the approaching transports...
"Flight leader, this is Sparks. Transports have arrived."
Foxfire winced. "Tell them to make their docking as fast as they can - we've got problems."
"And this is supposed to be news, right?"
Ibero looked through the nearest viewscreen. They had arrived in the estimated time, but judging from their comrades' activity out there, things were not as quiet as all of them would like. A unnerving rhythmical "tap-tap" had not ceased sounding inside the armoured transport for the last ten minutes. Neither Moose nor any of the commandoes seemed to be as annoyed as he was by the noise, so he decided it was time to do something about it.
"Joker, please, would you be so kind as to stop hitting the floor with your boot?"
"No," she replied without stopping. "I'm nervous, and when I nervous I do this to relax myself."
"And it works?"
"Try it."
"All right, here I go." Ibero started to tap the floor too. Briefly. At the fifth hit he felt a powerful grip on his knee and couldn't continue.
"Ibero, please," Moose said politely. "I've got enough to handle with just her." The look he launched at Joker was enough to make her consider stopping her own tapping, too. After barely a second of iimmobility, Joker started to drum her fingers nervously on her knee, eyeing Moose occasionally to see if the Training Officer was going to object to that. A few years' experience in Imperial Intelligence didn't exactly mean she was comfortable in a back-door infantry asssault like this...on the other hand, it probably beat the second shift in the Bomb Shelter, and was less dangerous to boot.
The corners of her mouth twitched upward as she remembered Granite's reaction to hearing her part of the mission... "Aye lass, give me a moment and I'll have yae a Combat Mop ready to go." I'll give HIM mops, she thought, more than a little vindictively. She wondered if Granite had found anything...unusual in his quarters yet, but if not, he'd find it when he got back from this mission. Namely, lots and lots of hastily-scrounged mopheads, neatly bonded to the teeth of his chainsaw...all things considered, it was probably just as well that she was out here and not back on the Joan when the Caldanian had a chance to see her handiwork.
Ibero turned towards her with a questioning look in his eyes.
"What are you laughing at now?"
"Forget it. It's just... watch out!!!!"
The transport lurched heavily as the pilot saw the two TIE Interceptors approaching them up ahead and instinctively ducked into an evasive pattern. "Moose, can I drive?" Joker asked looking apprehensively at the space spinning around them. "You said yourself I needed the practice."
"Joker, be quiet or I'll sit on you," he growled back.
She hushed...mostly because the transport's evasive manuevers were coming close to catapulting her into the opposite wall. An A- wing changed directions a lot faster and harder, but there wasn't nearly as much room to bounce around in. A moment later, however, the transport's flight leveled back out as the White pilots reported they were free from their pursuers. Joker noticed the boarding troops, who'd been perfectly relaxed during their pilot's wild manuevering, tense imperceptibly. At an order of their sergeant they all adjusted their facial plates, so their expressions couldn't be seen any more. Their dark blue armors made them look more like some kind of killer droid than like living creatures, especially the two-and-a-half-meter Wookie holding the E-Web.
"I had always thought they needed at least two strong guys to carry one of them." Joker whispered.
"Or half a Wookie." Ibero answered.
The transport set down with a loud grating noise, and Joker and Ibero both flattened themselves against the wall as the troopers rushed past them. Moose brought up the rear, festooned with so much weaponry that he resembled a ship in for repairs and covreed with dry-dock scaffolding. Ibero looked at him curiously. "Hey, Diana, do you think he's enjoying this too much?"
"Not this, no. Now watching me clean the Bomb Shelter, that he enjoys too much."
Moose ducked, rolled, and flattened himself against the side of the troop transport as a stormtrooper's blaster shot came perilously close. He hoped the smell of scorched fabric was only his imagination...
"You two, keep your heads as low as possible, ok?" he said towards the two pilots still on board the transport. They limited their answer to a quick nod, Joker staring intensely at Moose's smoking left shoulder. It IS scorched fabric...
He had a good angle of fire here - it would just be helpful to have a few less targets to shoot at. Instead of the stealth attack he'd been expecting, the commander of the infantry unit had simply opted to trigger the intruder alarm in the landing bay. Moose had been more than a bit surprised at that, until he'd seen the first wave of stormtroopers rushing into the bay. The big open bay, with little or nothing in the way of cover, and which the stormtroopers very obligingly spread themselves across. After Hoth and Tenn'see IV, he had no trouble at all shooting any stormtrooper he saw. He lifted the blaster rifle to his shoulder, aimed-
-and spun as a hand slapped his shoulder from behind.
Ander Malak, the infantry team's Exec, leaned in so Moose could hear him
over the roar of blaster fire. "Captain, we've got a problem!
Bring those two pilots of yours and follow me."
Foxfire glared at her targeting computer, which was telling her more than she wanted to know about how much trouble she was in, and rolled right to line up on the T/I that Hardrive had caught in a loop engagement. "Hold him for me just a second, Nik..." she said under her breath.
The Interceptor broke up under Foxfire's lasers just as far too many green bolts shot over her canopy. She dove instinctively, letting the defensive fire from the station drive the pursuing fighter off her six. That was a trick that wouldn't last for long, though, not once the Imps got their bearings back and started coordinating.
"One down," Vyper said calmly over the comm-link;
Foxfire glanced backward and saw him luring an Gunboat into range of their
squad-mates' torpedoes. With any luck, the assault troops had finished
docking by now...
Moose, Joker, Ibero and two infantry troopers huddled behind their transport, in the closest thing there currently was to a safe place. The other trooper, who Joker identified as the lean, dark woman who had made the trip in front of her, was watching all their backs while Malak explained the situation. "The Imps have figured out what we're here after - one of my people just saw four stormtroopers go tearing off for the command station. We shouldn't have any trouble securing the landing bay and proceeding with a conventional operation, but we've got to catch up with the stormtroopers, or they'll slag the comm equipment and all this will be useless."
"If they're headed for the center of the station, we can catch up with them - we can intercept them if we're lucky," Joker said with a smug look. "One of my first assignments with Imperial Intelligence was planting listening devices through a station like that one, and I still have the stupid floor plan memorized."
Malak looked at her, seemingly thoughtful for a moment,
then nodded back at Joker. "Lead on, Flight Officer."
Foxfire pulled hard right onto the trail of a Gunboat that was racing straight away from the comm station. If the pilot made it into hyperspace with word of their presence, they were finished.
"T-Six, Two. Little help here?"
"Right." Two of Blitz's remaining torpedoes slammed into the GUN's starboard wing as Foxfire's lasers stripped the armor off the back. The Imperial bomber spun out of control and back toward Foxfire, who said something completely unsuitable for an officer or a lady. A rain of sparks fountained from her console at the glancing impact of one wing, and she pulled back hard on the stick. The A-wing started to climb, but only sluggishly.
"Avery, watch your tail!"
She glanced back to see a T/I descending on her. "I give up, they can smell blood," she muttered to herself. But the Interceptor veered away from her six before she even had time to pull up. If Vyper hadn't been around, that ship could have finished her off, but the Imperial fighter was now spinning beyond the station with a solar panel or two the less.
"Are you all right?" Blitz asked, placing his B-Wing beside Foxfire's fighter. He shook his head watching the damage on the small ship's hull. "For a moment I thought he had you..."
"I can fly, but the techs on the Joan are going to kill me."
"Well, that was the last one." Vyper said. "Let's hope the reinforcements take their time getting here."
"No arguments here."
Malak and the pilots squeezed single-file through the narrow access tunnel that ran up the center of the station, trusting Joker to keep them on track among the multiple crawlways that branched off to every part of the station. The sounds of the battle taking place behind them filled the place with deathly echoes. "Damn it" Moose muttered. He had gotten a backache after about five steps - not surprisingly, the Empire hadn't been terribly concerned about the comfort of its techs when it built this place. Ibero looked back and noticed the Training Officer's problems with walking through the tunnel and smiled.
"At times like this, I'm happy to not be that tall." He got an angry groan and a little push as answer.
After much more climbing than Moose had really enjoyed, Joker paused, tilted her head to listen, and then ushered Malak toward a harrow hatchway with a mock-ceremonious gesture and a smug grin. "It's all yours," she said to Malak, then glanced over her shoulder at Moose. "And you can probably shoot something too if you want, boss."
"You're too kind," he muttered back.
The hatchway opened out between two consoles, a narrow space that could fit only one person at a time. Malak solved his problem by rolling forward and out of the way, bringing his rifle to bear on the cluster of stormtroopers in the middle of the room. Moose followed hard on his heels, taking in the situation just as he would have done in the cockpit. Civilian personnel frozen at their stations, an electronic alarm shrieking somewhere, and a knot of stormtroopers, just startled out of their "guard" stance, just ahead.
He grabbed for some of the heavier weaponry he'd brought along - they had to get this over with quickly, before the civilians scattered around the room panicked altogether and complicated things. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ibero slipping around the room's perimeter, but he ignored the other pilot to concentrate on the stormtroopers, who had barricaded themselves behind overturned chairs and consoles.
But in the end, that was the least of their problems. Moose's (non- standard) mortar gun left the barricade - to say nothing of whatever was behind it - irrelevant, and Malak's marksmanship took care of the rest. A few of the more dedicated - or frightened - station personnel had made as if to join the fight, but Joker and Ibero had rounded them up and were quietly shepherding them toward the waiting New Republic boarders.
Ibero holstered his sidearm, took a look at the general chaos, and just shook his head before unceremoniously opening up the access panel on the main communications console. Joker followed him a moment later, picking her way through debris, overturned furniture, and spent casings from some of Moose's more unusual weapons. "So, you think we should tell 'em we're here?"
"Ssssshhhh, be quiet for a second, Diana." Ibero said without quitting his eyes from the console.
"Everybody is telling me to be quiet today!" she exclaimed. "Just because you're a Lieutenant and I'm not, that doesn't mean that..." She interrupted herself realizing that her partner was not hearing. He was completely concentrated on what he was doing, his fingers flying over the personal keyboard he had brought with him and connected directly to the computer's hardware - the access device was the first thing the stormtroopers had destroyed before to being caught in the battle in - Joker observed that he had exited the main interface and was searching into the computer databanks directly from the operating system, but she couldn't completely understand what Ibero was doing.
"Have you found out anything?" she asked, her previous exasperation completely forgotten.
"Not yet, but I may be close."
"Why aren't you using the computer's interface software to do whatever you're doing?"
"They must have locked the main functions with passcodes and we don't exactly have the time to interrogate all those people." He glanced at Moose, who was looming menacingly at the nearest technician.
"Captain Gregory." Malak said. "I'm being reported that my men have taken control of the main hangar, but the fight is far from being ended. We're losing people." His last sentence hung on the air.
"You've got five minutes, Ibero." Moose said. "And not a single second more."
"Ahah..." Ibero acknowledged semi-absorted.
"And then, what are you trying to do instead?" Joker asked, returning to her previous point.
"I'm looking for a back door, a way to force the communications platform programs change to trace level, something the programmers might have left to allow them to obtain a quick diagnostic when something goes wrong."
"I see. And what if there is nothing like that?"
"There is something, I promise," he said, his fingers never leaving as he tried one command after another. without ceasing trying a command after another, most of the times obtaining messages like "Code not found", "Unrecognizable word" or "Not enough privileges". "We all the people who make... or made this kind of software always want to keep a way to access our own code and knowing what's happening, just preventing a moment when we may be called because something doesn't work..."
"What?" Joker asked, noticing that Ibero had stopped typing.
"Hey Dario, what?" she repeated. There were two words blinking on the screen.
Hola, viejo!
"I just can't believe this." Ibero said leaning back
on the seat, his face a mask of astonishment.
Foxfire circled nervously above the Imperial comm station, keeping a wary eye on her sensors. She didn't think the Imps had time to call for help, but if they had, the White pilots would have to cover the transports and pull out fast. Maybe Admiral Garil's right after all, she thought sardonically. At this point, a suicide run to Coruscant looks pretty straightforward...
She cycled through her targets again, wishing that she knew something about what was happening on board that station. She hated covering boarding operations in any case, and it was worse when her squad-mates were involved in the fighting.... She heard a crackling on her headphones before a familiar voice filled her with relief. "Foxfire, this is Moose. We're in."
"Glad to hear you! Is everybody OK?"
"No, not everybody. We've suffered some losses among the commandos, but the rest of us are in one piece." Foxfire sighed. She couldn't help it, but she felt relieved when she learned that her friends had not suffered any harm during the assault, although other people had lost their life in the attempt.
But she realized that Moose still was talking. "...ou should hear what Ibero has found out."
"Of course. What's going on, Dario?"
The intercom cracked again and then she heard Ibero's unmistakable Iberian accent.
"Hi there... What I've got is this: the core of this software was made by my old company, more precisely by my friend Edu and me!"
"Wow..." She couldn't help but smile when she remembered the first time she saw Ibero and his friend, in their tourist clothes, descending from a crippled Y-Wing that had survived the battle of Yavin. "Does this mean what I think it does?"
"I may need some help from Joker to interpretate a couple of things the Imperials have added, but basically, tell me where you want that Corvette to hear and we'll send them the co-ordinates as if they came from Coruscant itself!"
"Good news!" And about time, too.
