Star Wars - Rebel Force 03 - Firefight Read online

  Star Wars – 0 ABY

  Rebel Force #4

  Firefight

  by Alex Wheeler

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ten points of light shot through the midnight black, streaking toward the ground like falling stars.

  Make a wish.

  It was a woman's voice, soft and kind, fluttering up from a dark, buried place in his mind. Another man might have taken it as a long-forgotten voice from a long-forgotten past.

  But X-7 had no past.

  And these were no stars.

  He shook off the imagined voice, the echo of an echo of a memory. Long ago, in the beginning, he'd heard voices like this, closed his eyes and seen strangely familiar faces smiling down on him, breathed in a hint of fresh spiceloaf or the rich scent of overripe blumfruits floating on a warm breeze and felt that other life, that human life, nearly close enough to touch. There had been a time when he'd held tight to these memories that weren't memories, this evidence that he'd once been someone else. That he'd once been someone.

  But that had been before. He'd learned. His Commander had taught him. Memories were wrong; the past was dead. He wasn't someone; he was no one, and that was right. That was good. The Commander had relieved him of the burdens of the past, the pangs of memory, the frailties of emotion and human need. X-7 had only one need: to obey his Commander, and that, too, was right.

  That was good.

  Except he had failed. Luke Skywalker lived, though the Commander wanted him dead.

  And now X-7 had failed again.

  "Return to base for retraining," his master had commanded. But X-7 had disobeyed. X-7, who lived to serve, who had no life, no purpose, no will beyond the desires of his Commander, had defied the call, had fled to this lifeless moon on the fringes of the galaxy, had made a new plan.

  It was not disobedience, he told himself. It was not a fear of the retraining, with its long needles and neuronic whips and dark cells and pain. It was Skywalker. X-7 couldn't return to his master in failure and shame, not while Skywalker still breathed. X-7 never killed for fun or in rage; he killed only for his Commander. But there was something about the young Rebel, something that made X-7 boil. X-7 couldn't—wouldn't—return to his master until the mission was complete and Skywalker was dead.

  It was the right thing. It was the good thing.

  But then why were the voices of the past returning to haunt him? Why was the dead hollow inside him slowly filling with anger, with the need to see Skywalker dead?

  The Commander was right; X-7 knew that. Something inside him was wrong. There were impurities that needed to be scrubbed away. Erased. X-7 had tried to ignore that, and now he was being punished. I will go back. I will obey, he promised himself. As soon as Skywalker is dead.

  "Targets incoming," the perimeter alert system informed him. X-7 shook off his doubts. The time had come. Ten lights blipped across the target scope. Through the moon base's transparisteel roof, he watched the ships approach. Ten of the galaxy's most skilled, most determined, most ruthless pilots, all eager to carry out his wishes. He had taken his time composing the team, but the frustrating wait was nearly over. They had come to Iope, the third moon of Rinn, with the promise of a mysterious job and rewards beyond their wildest dreams if they accomplished the mission. Pilots like these didn't ask questions; they just chased the payoff.

  Some of them, the worthy ones, might even receive it.

  "I'll meet your ships at the landing site," he said to them, transmitting a set of coordinates. "Good luck." He shut down the comm before they could ask why they would need luck. They wouldn't. Only skill. The ones who had enough of it would have their answer soon. As for the ones who lacked it…they'd have their answer even sooner.

  He activated the laser-cannon targeting computer and zeroed in on the ten points of light. "Welcome to Iope," he said.

  Then he fired.

  "Blast it!" Slis Tieeer Dualli swung his CloakShape fighter hard to starboard. His insectoid compound eyes took in every inch of the battlefield at once while the eye on the back of his head scanned the radar screens erected behind him. A bolt of laserfire blazed past his cockpit, too close for comfort. He couldn't believe that the kriffing mudcrutch was firing at him!

  In his twenty-year career as a mercenary, Dualli had met his fair share of galactic scum. But it never failed to enrage him. He took their money, yes. He flew their missions. Smuggled their goods. Assassinated their enemies. And he waited. Waited for them to step over the line, to cross him one too many times, to make a mistake that couldn't be forgiven. Dualli was the best pilot in the Outer Rim; everyone knew that. And he was the best Kobok pilot in the galaxy. But few were bold enough to hire him.

  Probably because half of his employers ended up corpses.

  Dualli wasn't picky about his jobs. So when the mysterious human had lured him with the promise of a rich reward, he'd come eagerly. But he had also come prepared.

  He increased power to the deflector shields and armed a concussion missile. One direct hit would be enough to destroy his traitorous employer's base. And Dualli's modified launchers carried six missiles each. He could probably go a good ways toward destroying the moon itself. Either way, the human who'd made the mistake of firing on him would soon be in pieces. He just needed to approach close enough for a clear shot.

  In their original form, CloakShapes were known for their sluggish maneuvering abilities. But no one who knew anything about flying would be caught dead in an original CloakShape. Dualli's had been modified with a rear-mounted maneuvering fin and a turbocharged ion engine. They'd rescued him from plenty of tight spots—far tighter than this.

  The Kobok eased the ship into a shallow descent. A barrage of laserfire rained down on him, scorching the hull. Red light flickered on his monitor as the power generator caught a glancing blow. Whoever this human was, he was good. Too bad for him Dualli was better.

  The attacks intensified as Dualli neared the surface.

  His hands dancing across the control panel, he guided the ship through the hail of laser bolts. The dull, pitted plain of the moon came into view, a transparisteel-domed base rising at the edge of a long ravine. "Got you," Dualli muttered.

  The alert system screamed as a missile hurtled straight toward the CloakShape. Dualli veered away from the surface, nearly crashing into a Preybird flying just overhead. "Blast you!" Dualli screamed into the comm. "Get out of my flight path!" He yanked his controls to the left, and the ship peeled off hard to port, narrowly avoiding a collision—and taking him straight into the line of fire. A laser bolt sizzled into the ship's underbelly. The ship shuddered, and a moment later, the hyperdrive monitor shorted out. The shot had cooked his drive generator, which meant he was stuck in this blasted system until he could fix it—or acquire another ship.

  Dualli fixed his glare on the clumsy Preybird. Once he'd taken care of his traitorous employer, the incompetent pilot would be next.

  The near miss might have made another pilot more careful; it only made Dualli more impatient. He took the ship into a steep dive and sharply leveled out at one thousand meters. He increased power to his thrusters and adjusted his targeting computer. The base loomed in his scope. Then Dualli opened a comlink to the surface. He wanted the human to know that he was about to die—and that Dualli would be responsible.

  He would have preferred creeping up behind the enemy and jabbing a venomous claw into his neck. But payback from a distance would have to do. "This is Slis Tieeer Dualli," he announced. "Say good-bye, because this is your last moment to live."

  The answer came back in Dualli's native tongue. "Chsthiss, Slis Tieeer Dualli." Good-bye.

  Light blazed from the surfac
e of the planet, two klicks from the base Dualli had targeted. It took Dualli only a few seconds to process the situation and reorient his targeting computer. But a few seconds was one too many. The surface-to-air proton torpedo slammed the CloakShape fighter's deflector shield generator.

  The shields went down completely, laying Dualli bare to the enemy attack. He flicked a spindly yellow arm toward the escape pod activation switch, but nothing happened. Total system malfunction—the CloakShape was dying.

  Laserfire strafed the ship. Dualli glimpsed orange flickers with his third eye as flames licked at the cockpit.

  "Chsthiss," Dualli had time to whisper as another torpedo screamed toward him.

  The CloakShape exploded.

  The Leilana's Dagger bounced and shuddered in the rain of debris from the exploding CloakShape fighter. Jayn threw power to the front deflectors, praying that the ion-flux stabilizers would keep him from spinning out of control. A chunk of the CloakShape spiraled into the distance, disappearing in the black. I could be next, Jayn thought, trying to keep his hands from shaking. It wasn't like him to get rattled on the job, even in an ambush. But this time was different.

  Just one last job. That was what he'd told himself. For years Leilana had begged him to settle planetside, live a nice quiet life with her. A safe life. He'd put her off, again and again. Next year, he'd told her. Next job. But now Leilana was gone.

  He'd missed his chance to do the right thing by Leilana. One last job, one last payment, and he'd have enough to move them to Laressa, Phindar's capital city, where they could have the life they deserved. But the job wasn't exactly working out as he'd planned.

  Two of the other ships had already peeled out of orbit and winked into hyperdrive. Jayn decided to follow them. He could do without the credits. He would find a way to make things work in Laressa. He could find a nice, boring job ferrying rich guys to and from their rich homes. He could do anything if he could just maneuver out of here. He plotted a course out of orbit, zig-zagging through space to avoid the laserfire. Debris pummeled the shields, but the freighter could take it. As long as—

  "No!" Jayn shouted as a burst of laserfire took out his port ion engine. He increased power to the thrusters, but a plume of flame shot from his main drive nozzles. The ship vibrated beneath him, as if it were about to fly apart. He tried to pull up, to avoid an incoming blast, but the controls were nonresponsive: A torpedo blasted the reinforced hull. He heard an alarming metallic scream, and moments later a sizable chunk of his starboard wing floated past his cockpit. The Leilana's Dagger began to drift.

  "No," Jayn said again, slamming a fist into his useless control panel. "No. No. No!"

  The engines were toast. And according to the monitors, fires raged throughout the ship, causing multiple systems failures. Weapons. Navigation. Deflector shields. He was dead in the air. Laserfire pounded the defenseless ship. Acrid smoke billowed into the cockpit. I'm sorry, he thought, choking in the thick, foul air.

  Don't be sorry. It was Leilana's voice. At least now we can be together.

  He smiled. As the storm of fire consumed him, he searched for her face in the flames. But there was only light and pain.

  And then darkness.

  Div pulled his ship into a steep dive, dodging the whirling storm of flak. Laserfire streaked past the cockpit. He veered starboard, angling the ship away from the barrage of fire, but took a glancing hit on his port wing. The deflector shields were taking a beating. Another hit and he'd be cooked.

  Then it's simple, Div thought coolly. I won't let it happen again.

  Three of the other ships had exploded before his eyes. Two more had fled. If the job had paid any less, perhaps Div would have followed them. But he needed the credits—and he was more than a little interested in meeting the man who'd set him up.

  So he steered calmly through the laserfire and debris, letting his instincts take over. The ship dipped and rolled, spun and corkscrewed, tracing an intricate path of steep dives and hairpin turns. Nothing could touch him.

  His ship was hot off the assembly line, one of the first of KSE's revamped Firespray line. It had been a serious indulgence, but it had been worth it. With its rotating twin blaster cannons and rotating cockpit, it was easily the most graceful and powerful ship he'd ever flown. After only two months, it was like an extension of his own body, and he had no doubts that he could land it safely.

  Now! he thought suddenly, and without questioning the impulse, he pulled up into a steep ascent as another stream of laserfire sizzled through the space he'd just occupied.

  Div smiled. You want to kill me, you'll have to try a little harder, he thought.

  The domed transparisteel base was the obvious target. Too obvious. And the pilot of the CloakShape had fallen for it. Div didn't intend to suffer the same fate.

  The laserfire explosions bursting from the surface were clearly traceable to the base, even with the naked eye. To open fire from an undisguised and undefended surface base? It reeked of incompetence. And Div's gut told him that his would-be employer was far from incompetent.

  He keyed a new command into his computer, instructing it to triangulate the beams of laserfire, tracing them back to their point of origin. The calculations would have been difficult even if he were sitting still; speeding through space, navigating with wild gyrations to avoid the flak and fire, made them nearly impossible. But the near impossible was Div's specialty, and soon his suspicions were confirmed. The fire coming from the base was just a cover. The computer's triangulation directed him to an apparently empty spot two klicks from the moon base. A preliminary recon sweep indicated nothing but a rocky embankment. As Div drew the ship dangerously close to the surface, however, it became clear that the rocks were camouflaging a primary weapons embankment.

  The moon had no atmosphere, which meant no cloud cover to fog Div's view of the ground. Soon he'd drawn near enough to spot the laser cannons. Dodging and weaving through the streaking fire, he shut down his targeting computer. It could do the job, but sometimes Div preferred handling things himself. He liked the feel of the targeting controls in his hands, liked letting his instincts take over and guide him toward a sure hit. Liked, most of all, that moment of knowing, when the target was in position and he could fire.

  He took his time lining up the shots. It was as if a calm eye had opened up in the storm of laserfire, letting him aim in peace. But the calm was only an illusion. Div was still dancing between the beams, avoiding debris and sliding back and forth through crisscrossing webs of light. He moved as if the world had slowed to a crawl for him, as if the evasive maneuvers were beneath his notice. He saved his focus, his energy, for the shot.

  He lined up the first laser cannon with his sights.

  Fired.

  Direct hit.

  The laser cannon embankment exploded.

  Div squeezed the trigger a second time, then a third. And in an instant, the cannons were silenced, the skies clear. Smoke mushroomed from the ground. As it dissipated, a small figure emerged. Div was still too high up to make out any features, but he imagined that the man was gazing directly at him.

  The ground parted, revealing a wide manufactured cavern beneath the moon's surface. An underground hangar.

  Now that it was safe, the other four ships came in for a landing. Div waited until they were all on the ground before joining them. Their employer had gathered the best pilots in the galaxy, but now they would all know that Div was the best of the best. The one to whom they owed their lives.

  The moment his ship touched down in the hangar, Div grabbed his blaster. He hadn't made it through one ambush only to walk unarmed into another. But when he exited the ship, the other four pilots were assembled in a line, no weapons in sight. Two were humanoid males, one human and one Sorrusian, both grizzled and wearing identical hostile grimaces. The third was a Chistori, with beady black eyes and jagged teeth gnashing in his long, narrow snout. While the other pilots, like Div, draped themselves in simple, loose-fitting fabrics f
or easy maneuvering, the Chistori was in full body armor. It likely contained a temperature control system, Div decided. Chistori were cold-blooded; without accommodation, drastic temperature changes could be deadly for them.

  The final pilot, a human woman with short, spiky black hair and tattoos inked across her face, barely acknowledged his presence. Her eyes were riveted on the fifth figure, unmistakably the man in charge. He stood off to the side and appraised them all with an icy stare. As Div joined them, the man began to clap, a humorless smile on his face: "Nice work," he said, nodding toward the destroyed laser cannons.

  Div aimed his blaster. "You want to tell me why you just tried to blow me out of the sky?"

  The man's smile widened: It was a gruesome mockery of human emotion. "Merely a test to separate the quinto wheat from the chaff. I'm investing a significant amount of money into this mission. I had to ensure I'd chosen correctly. I assume you're still interested in my job offer?"

  Div holstered the weapon. He had no doubt that he had sharper reflexes than anyone there. If things went sour, he could protect himself. And he had the "significant amount of money" to consider. "I'm here, aren't I?"

  The man handed each of the pilots a datapad. "Gentlemen and lady, your target is a man named Luke Skywalker. He works with the Rebellion—"

  Div's hand inched toward his blaster. "This is an Imperial job?"

  The man shook his head. "Strictly freelance," he said. "The Empire may have its reasons for wanting Skywalker dead; I wouldn't know. I have my own."

  Div could usually tell when people were lying, but this man defied his instincts. His face was a blank, free of the almost imperceptible tells—tightened muscles, dilating pupils, twitching eyelids—that gave most liars away. Div chose to believe him. For now.

  "You want him dead so bad, why not kill him yourself?" Div asked.

  The man stiffened. "Because I choose to hire you to do it," he said tightly. "I suggest that be your last question."

  The other pilots glared at Div. Div glared back.