"Aaron Allston "Iron Fist" (STARWARS. X-Wing #6)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"Hey," said Phanan. "I resent the use of the word miserable."
"Then get back here fast. We take off in three minutes."
Wedge and Janson, still in stormtrooper armor but with their helmets off, lay atop a hill overlooking the nearby Imperial base. The optics Wedge held before his face made greenish day-light of the night. "Same as last night and the night before. I make four TIE fighters at the ready scramble-pad, under the watchful eye of half a stormtrooper squadron." "Not that we care," Janson said.
"Not that we want those starfighters," Wedge corrected him. "But we may have to deal with them on the way out. Any-thing coming up the road ?"
Janson cast a negligent eye the other way. Down at the



base of the hill to his left, the other Wraiths, their prisoners, and their cargo skimmer waited. Down to the right was the main road into the base. "A distant set of lights," he said. "On-coming. Probably just another staff skimmer carrying an offi-cer home after a night on the town."
"Castin Donn laid enough money down at enough cantinas, we're bound to get what we want."
"You may be right. That thing's not maneuvering like a staff skimmer. It's big and sluggish."
Wedge twisted to look at the oncoming vehicle through his optics. "Imperial Military Police. Signal Runt."
Janson waved a handheld light down at the other Wraiths, flicking its beam three times across them. This close to an Im-perial base, Wedge preferred they not use comlinks, whose transmissions, even if coded or extremely short,. might be no-ticed. At the base of the hill, Runt would now be using a portable scanner on the distant vehicle ....
From the Wraiths' position came an answering blink of light, a single pulse.
"Runt signals yes. It's loaded with personnel," Janson said.
"Move out."
Wedge and Janson scrambled down the side of the hill, not directly toward the other Wraiths, but angling toward the right, an intercept course. By the time they reached the base of the hill-with Janson's armor now somewhat battered by a fall he'd taken during his descent-the other Wraiths were almost to the road.
Wedge and Janson caught up to them and put their hel-mets back on.
"Snap it up," Wedge said, "march formation. Left foot, right foot."
And the Wraiths managed something like a proper forma-tion in spite of the loads they carried.
Runt carried one of the unconscious pilots over his shoul-der, moving without difficulty. The Gamorrean Piggy could also have carried one of the pilots with fair ease, but could never have worn one of the sets of stormtrooper armor; he re-mained with the skimmer. Kell, now suited up as a storm-trooper, and Dia dragged an unconscious pilot between them;
they held the pilot's arms over their shoulders so the man re-mained upright. Phanan, also in a set of stormtrooper armor, and Face also dragged one of the pilots, as did Castin and Shalla, with Donos and Tyria dragging the fifth. The sixth pi-lot, the ranking officer among them, remained with Piggy.
It was several hundred meters to the gate into the base, but if Wedge calculated correctly, they wouldn't have to walk the entire distance.
They heard the humming of the heavy skimmer behind them and Wedge turned to look. It was a large model, nearly identical to the one that had been part of the trap on Corus-cant: It had an enclosure over the bed, and only the pilot and the guard assigned to his protection were exposed to the ele-ments. On the side was painted the stooping bird-of-prey in-signia of Victory Base; over that design were the crossed batons of the base's military police.
The skimmer pulled alongside Wedge's troop of ersatz stormtroopers and prisoners. Its pilot called, "What happened to you?"
"Skimmer broke down," Wedge said. "Repulsorlift fail-ure in the energy transference array." "Care for a lift?"
"I'd put you up for a Hero of the Empire medal."
The pilot tapped a button and a door in the rear enclosure opened; its hinge was at the bottom, allowing it to open down into a ramp. Wedge peered inside. The spacious enclosure held four stormtroopers and another pair of prisoners in the uni-forms of Imperial maintenance personnel. Both prisoners were awake, though apparently anesthetized by alcohol.
Wedge's people hauled their unconscious prisoners up the ramp and settled them down on the padded benches against the enclosure walls. Wedge, at the rear of the line, stayed tense.
The stormtrooper armor the Wraiths wore-seized from pris-
oners during some of the countless clashes the Alliance had
had with the Empire and brought as part of the squadron's
gear-was authentic enough, but the military-police insignia
the Wraiths had meticulously painted on the armor might not
pass close inspection. Also, the officer in charge of these real
military police should, if he kept strictly to procedure, demand



to see Wedge's papers, and the forgeries Castin had put to-gether . . . well, Wedge just didn't know the new pilot well enough to rely unquestioningly on the man's work as he'd come to do with Grinder, the squadron's former computer expert.
But the Wraiths all shuffled into the enclosed bed of the skimmer, Wedge followed, the door closed behind him, and the vehicle lurched into motion, all without an unwelcome de-mand for papers. Wedge smiled. If security was lax here, it might be just as lax within the base.
"Hey, that's Lieutenant Cothron," one of the real storm-troopers said.
Face nodded. "He's a pretty belligerent drunk."
"Nice guy the rest of the time, though."
"Oh, yeah."
"Ever play sabacc with him?"
"Sure, he took me for a week's pay once."
"You're joking. He's the worst player I ever saw."
There was the slightest of delays in Face's response as he
adjusted his story in light of new information. "No, I think I'm the worst."