[Legacy Of The Force] - 07(24)

“One minute to contact, “he said. “Weapons check.”

“Lasers in the green.” That was the voice of Lieutenant Danen, his bombardier-gunner for this mission. He occupied the starboard cockpit or the vehicle’s dual-cockpit arrangement. “Bangers report operable.”

Bangers were, in Commenori military parlance, concussion missiles, and this K-wing’s hardpoint attachments were laden with them. Oldathan would have preferred boomers, or proton torpedoes-his starfighter’s primary mission was to prey on capital ships-but at this point in the conflict they were in short supply.

The next voice over the comm board was not Danen’s but that of their flight controller, operating from a sensor station on the ground. “Grayfeather Squadron, report.”

Oldathan frowned. “Grayfeather One here.”

“Divert to heading one-eight-oh immediately. We’re picking up an intermittent blip that suggests a vessel approaching on the night side, but we can’t get a fix on it. Coordinates should be on your sensor board now.”

Oldathan glanced at his sensor board and saw a broad green dot over equatorial Commenor a few thousand kilometers to the west, which marked the start of their new search zone. “Got it. Grayfeathers on the move. Out.” He took a moment to retransmit the coordinates to the other four K-wings in what was left of his squadron, then led them westward.

In atmosphere, the trip would have taken hours, but a high ballistic trajectory like this, outside of atmosphere, would be done in a fraction of the time. Still, Oldathan was twitchy with impatience. The battle zone, where his comrades were fighting and dying, was behind him. This was like running away.

Unless, of course, the phantom blip was indeed some sort of Alliance attack, not just another malfunction of Commenor’s overtaxed planetary defense sensor system.

When they reached the target zone, they found it empty of airborne traffic except for one ground-based courier shuttle sprinting off into space, its crew hoping to get clear of the planet’s gravity well and enter hyperspace before Alliance forces detected and intercepted it. Nothing else showed up on sensors.

Oldathan shook his head, annoyed. “Another monkey-lizard chase. All right. Two and Three, head spinward a hundred clicks. Four and Five, anti-spinward. Begin spiral patterns outward. I’ll stay here and do the same. Report all contacts instantly.”

He received four confirmations and saw the two wing pairs peel off to head toward their respective start zones. He felt no undue worry. The shovel-headed, thick-winged starfighters were not particularly fast or elegant, but he knew they could take care of themselves-they were more heavily armed than just about any comparable vehicles the enemy was likely to field.

As he began his own spiral pattern, he tuned in to the general fleet frequency to listen to the battle’s progress. Things weren’t going badly. One enemy frigate had been destroyed, one enemy cruiser had sustained enough damage that it had withdrawn. Starfighter losses were about even between the two sides.

But there were disturbing little signs in the comm transmissions. One rescue shuttle pilot reported, “Have retrieved six friendly ‘walkers.’ ” That meant six pilots who were extravehicular from having ejected before the destruction of their starfighters. But what were the odds that, randomly, the rescue pilot had run across only friendly pilots? Most rescue beacons were on common comm channels and unscrambled, with interplanetary rules of war dictating that forces of any side perform rescues. Had the shuttle pilot just ignored signals from enemy walkers? Had he fired upon enemy ejectees?

Oldathan didn’t know. What he did know was that he’d been hearing more and more of these communications in recent weeks. He knew that rumors of harsh treatment of enemy prisoners of war were increasing-both in GA camps and in Commenori camps. He knew that overtaxed Commenori personnel were, increasingly, channeling their anger and frustration into private activities: entertainments made specifically to cater to their changing tastes, such as underground bloodsports, or so rumor had it. This bothered Oldathan a lot. It was something his fellow pilots-sophisticated, educated men and women compared with many serving in the armed forces-had not done even at the height of the frustrations and terrors of the Yuuzhan Vong War.

The military leaders officially didn’t see any of this. Unofficially, they approved. Fewer pilots were cracking up-that meant more experience was staying in the cockpits. That was all that mattered.

Danen’s voice interrupted his musings. “I just saw a star disappear.”

“Sure you did.” Oldathan checked his sensor board again. He saw nothing but the five starfighters of his squadron. “If the Alliance can make whole stars disappear, we need to surrender now.”