The Bacta War (18 page)

Wedge knew the operation was chancy, but to refuse to go after the ships would mean that the Ashern’s effort had gone for naught. The risk of the operation had to be weighed against the good that could be done with the supplies of bacta the ships carried. Halanit could still use more, as could several other small settlements that found the Thyferran price prohibitively high. More important, Coruscant needed more bacta to supplement the rylca treatments for the Krytos virus.

He couldn’t discount the possibility of a trap entirely, but for the Imps to ambush him meant they would be leaving another of their convoys open. The freighters that were coming to him were from a small convoy that was being watched over by the
Victory II
-class Star Destroyer
Corrupter
. Though the smallest of the ships Isard had in her fleet, it carried two TIE squadrons, equaling his force, and bristled with enough weaponry to be able to lay siege to whole planets.

Complicating matters, Wedge knew less about its Captain Ait Convarion than he wished he did. Convarion was supposed to have served both at Derra IV and Hoth before being given the
Corrupter
and being sent off on suppression missions—government-sanctioned campaigns of terror against populated worlds on the Outer Rim. Convarion was
rumored to be calculating and cruel, with a penchant for quick action that had won battles despite the odds being against him. That was a combination that could cause a lot of trouble for the squadron.

If Convarion knows in advance of the defection, we could be in severe trouble. If he has to deal with having three missing ships from his convoy upon his arrival at the Rish system, he’ll be searching for an atom in a nebula. Depending on the reluctance of the freighter crews to follow us, we’ll need a maximum of an hour to move the convoy farther on. If we have been betrayed, we’ll have to jump back out of the system as fast as possible
 …

Wedge glanced at his primary monitor. “… and hope against hope that Isard hasn’t convinced any Interdictor cruisers to join her side.” He shook his head and sighed. He knew he was worrying about events that were very low on the scale of probability, but the chance of a problem still niggled at him. He knew he’d have felt better if he’d been in on planning the operation from the first, but he wasn’t in a position to refuse the help the Ashern offered.

“I’ll just make the best of this situation and hope Captain Convarion isn’t as sharp as rumors make him out to be.”

A pinpoint of black expanded up and engulfed the snubfighter as it reverted to realspace in a system with a red dwarf star surrounded by a dust disk. Three bacta freighters hung in space just above the plane of the disk. The captains had oriented the ships so their bellies pointed inward and the two dorsal turbolasers they sported overlapped their fields of fire.

Wedge opened a comm channel. “One and Two Squadrons, S-foils in attack position.” Both the X-wings and the Deathseeds responded to his order, causing their stabilizers to split and lock. The fighters spread out on their previously assigned approach vectors, but they held back from closing with the freighters.

He shifted the comm unit over to the frequency the Ashern indicated the Thyferrans used. “This is Wedge Antilles. I have two squadrons of fighters here. We intend to have
your cargo. If you cooperate you will be given a course, be able to drop your cargo, and then go back home unharmed.”

Nervous tremors shot back through the voice that answered him. “Antilles, we were told that if we went with you, we’d be destroyed. We have family back on Thyferra.”

That comment sent a chill down Wedge’s spine, but he fought against the ideas it planted in his head. “Your families will not be harmed. Isard can’t kill families of pilots and expect any more shipments of bacta to go out. It’s a bluff that I have to call. If you decide not to go back to Thyferra, I’ll help you get your people to safety. You’re going to lose your cargo, you might as well save yourself some pain.”

One of the tankers began to move away from the others. Mynock, Wedge’s R5 droid, tagged it as
Xucphra Rose
. “This is Bors Kenlin in the
Rose
. We’re yours, Antilles.”

“Kenlin, don’t go. You have a wife back on Thyferra.”

“Isard will be doing me a favor if she kills her.” The
Rose
drifted further from the other two ships. “Where am I going?”

“Stand by,
Rose.
” Wedge shifted his comm unit over to the squadron’s tactical frequency. “Nine, you and Ten and your two Deathseed friends will escort the
Rose
to Halanit. Isard has threatened dependents on Thyferra if the crew goes along with us, so find out who their people are so we can transmit the data to the Ashern and try to save them.”

Corran’s voice came back strong. “As ordered, sir.” Two X-wings broke from formation and made a quick flyby on the
Rose
. In the first pass they downloaded to the
Rose
’s navicomp the course for their run to Halanit. As they came back around, the
Rose
moved on the exit vector with them and two Deathseeds fell in behind. In the blink of an eye all five ships went to lightspeed and vanished.

Wedge looked back at his monitor again. The remaining ships were
Xucphra Alazhi
and
Xucphra Meander
. Wedge suspected the first voice he’d dealt with was on the
Alazhi
. Since the ship was named after a key component in bacta, he assumed the captain had seniority over the other two. Wedge shifted his comm unit back to the Thyferran frequency. “
Meander
, what is your decision?”

A woman’s voice answered him. “
Meander
is unconvinced the crew will be safe from Isard’s reprisals.”

“
Meander
, your cargo will be bound for Coruscant. If you can’t lose yourself there, you can obtain transport to anywhere you want to go from there. I guarantee you that your cargo will alleviate an incredible amount of suffering.”

Xucphra Meander
began to drift away from
Alazhi
. As it did so, the
Alazhi
began to roll to bring its turbolasers to bear on
Meander
.

Wedge shifted over to his tactical frequency. “Three and Four, neutralize
Alazhi
. Five and Six, pick up
Meander
and head to Coruscant.”

Gavin and Shiel broke their X-wings out of the formation and sprinted in at the
Alazhi
. They kept their fighters moving in a grand spiral, which made them very difficult to track, especially as they dipped below the turbolasers’ ability to depress sufficiently to shoot at them. Green laser bolts shot out in pairs at the incoming fighters, but they always came in above or. below the X-wings.

Coming up on a turn in the spiral, Gavin’s fighter rolled and spat laserfire at the freighter. One quad burst hit the ship’s hull right in front of the turbolaser battery, then two more caught the battery in the side. Fire tracked up the blocky battery, blasting away at the armor plates sheathing it. Molten globules of armor rocketed off through space, then an explosion filled the battery with fire and ripped it apart.

Shiel’s run on the aft battery proved just as effective, stripping the freighter of its offensive weaponry. The two fighters began to orbit the
Alazhi
, flashing past the cockpit one after another. Well away from them Rhysati, Inyri, and their two Twi’lek companions led the
Meander
off toward Coruscant.

Wedge adjusted his comm unit and tightened the beam to focus on
the Alazhi
. “
Alazhi
, you are defenseless.”

The man who had first answered him again spoke, but anger had replaced nervousness in his voice. “We can and will oppose you, Antilles. This is piracy. But we have a standoff here, because you only have fighters—you can’t board us. If you shoot us up, you or we will destroy the ship and you lose
the cargo. You got some of what you want. Go away. Leave us alone.”

He has a point—we can’t board the ship. I hadn’t expected Isard’s threat to the crew’s families. I’d thought, given that we harmed no one last time, that we would have cooperative crews
. Wedge thought for a moment, then forced an edge into his voice.

“Be advised,
Alazhi
, that the same software that allowed us to bring you here will, when the correct signal is sent, purge your ship of atmosphere and slave itself to our navicomp data. Your choice is not whether you come with us or not, but whether you do so alive or dead.”

He let that sink in for a moment or two.
If they call my bluff, I let them off so they can tell others that we didn’t kill them. It’ll win us some goodwill, perhaps
. “Your decision,
Alazhi
?”

Fear had returned to the captain’s voice. “You’d kill us just to get this bacta?”

“I’d kill you to get the bacta to those who need it. Isard unleashed a disease on Coruscant that kills ninety-five percent of the victims who go untreated. Which should I count as more valuable: the lives of a dozen freighter crewmen or the lives of billions?”

“You’ll help our families?”

“You have my word on it.”

Silence fell for several heartbeats, then the
Alazhi
’s captain spoke in a distant whisper. “I hope you know what you’re doing.
Alazhi
is yours.”

Wedge went back to the tactical frequency. “Gavin,
Alazhi
is yours to shepherd on her rounds.”

“I copy, Wedge. Transmitting data to
Alazhi
now. See you later.” Gavin’s X-wing swung out and around to head toward the exit vector. The two Twi’leks swooped in, taking up positions on either of the
Alazhi
’s flanks while the Shistavanen curled around and came up in the freighter’s wake.

As the
Alazhi
came about to starboard and began its run up to lightspeed, a vastly huge white dagger thrust itself through the fabric of space on a course that cut in at the freighter’s line of flight. Dread bubbled acid into Wedge’s
throat as the
Corrupter
reverted to realspace and opened up with its weaponry. Waves of green turbolaser energy washed down from the Star Destroyer’s port batteries. While not made for engaging snubfighters, firing at point-blank range the gunners could hardly miss. The flank Deathseeds evaporated in a cloud of green plasma. The turbolaser fire eroded all the sharp lines from Shiel’s X-wing, reducing it from a sleek fighter to a fluid blob that slammed into the aft end of the
Alazhi
.

A second volley of fire from the Star Destroyer focused itself on the bacta tanker. In an instant the entire ship glowed orange, then the bacta storage tanks exploded one after another. The superheated bacta sprayed out and instantly congealed into delicate sheets of ice that mocked the violence of their birth. Similarly the transparisteel and quadaniumtitanium alloy plates used in the freighter’s manufacture twisted and flowed, tearing away and exploding outward, before they congealed into a warped mockery of what the freighter had once been.

Of Gavin, Wedge saw nothing.

“Condition Critical. Exit the system now on Critical vectors. Go! Go!”

Asyr’s voice pounded into Wedge’s ears. “Wedge, what about …”

There’s nothing left of Gavin
. “Go, Asyr, go now. Waiting around is just going to get you killed.” Wedge hauled back on his stick and punched his throttle up to full. He glanced over to his left and saw Asyr’s X-wing hanging off his S-foil. “Three seconds to lightspeed.”

“I copy, Wedge.”

Wedge hit a button on his console and made the jump to lightspeed. The stars elongated, then sucked him into a tunnel of white light, but he felt as if he left his guts back in the system with the
Corrupter
. It had always been the plan to scatter and flee if
Corrupter
showed up, but to do that after taking losses made him feel horrible.
Four more are dead because of me
.

Part of him immediately rebelled at that thought, seeking to place blame elsewhere. If the
Alazhi
’s captain had not hesitated,
then everyone would have been out of the system before
Corrupter
arrived. If Isard had not threatened the crews with the safety of their families, everything would have gone well.
If Senator Palpatine hadn’t been greedy, this situation never would have existed
.

Wedge closed his eyes against the omnipresent light of hyperspace. “What happened back there is my responsibility. The operation had risks, but all operations have risks. Blaming myself for what happened isn’t going to do me any good. What I need to do is learn from the situation because Convarion is very good.”

He punched up a data request and got Mynock to break down the entry and exit vectors of the various ships, then had them overlaid on the system diagram. As the astromech did so, Wedge got his first glimmer of understanding. Corrupter’s
entry vector appeared very fortuitous because it angled in on
Alazhi’s
exit vector, but it really was the same entry vector the freighters used to arrive in the system
.

Wedge whistled slowly. What that bit of data told him was that Convarion had waited at the previous transit point, had tracked the exit vectors of all the ships in his convoy, then had his people do an analysis of them. The three ships that deviated from the planned course were discovered, their course plotted, and the
Corrupter
came after them.
Whether the freighters were hijacked or just had a poor navigator, Convarion came after them, intent on destroying them. His ship arrived in-system and shot immediately
.

A chill crept into Wedge’s body and puckered his flesh. “Iceheart has never been one for compassion, and now she has a ship’s captain who shares her contempt for it. We’re lucky we only lost four of our pilots. I had hoped this war would be quick—I knew it would be dirty. We’re going to have to be quicker and dirtier, and with Convarion and Iceheart opposing us, that’s not going to be an easy task.”