A series of metallic chirps sounded through his helmet’s comlink, and Norrin smiled. “Hello, Rex. Good to know you’re there,” Norrin said.
Bondo smiled too. “I had a feeling that little droid would be joining us. You and him have a...something special, huh?”
Norrin just smiled. “I guess. I helped him out when we first got here, and he’s been lookin’ out for me ever since. Haven’t you, Rex?”
Rex whistled. The translation of his robotic language appeared on the screen.
“Yep,” said Bondo, “You’re right, little droid. We’ve got a pre-flight check to finish. Ready you?”
“Ready, me, big guy!” Norrin said. “Hey wanna see what else I got going on?”
“Norrin, nothing that’ll get us in trouble, I hope?”
“Naw. I showed this to Dav, Slak and Jada already. See this?”
Norrin held up a cobbled together bundle of wires and hastily soldered metal parts, wrapped around a circuit board and ending in a single plug.
“Wussis?” Bondo asked.
“This, my slightly loquaciously challenged friend, is a secure channel. I plug this into the comm panel, and- boom! Now, you, me, and even Slak in his fighter or Dav and Jada in their bomber, we can all talk to each other without Solo or Hublin hearing anything we say.”
Bondo paused. “You sure about that?”
“Sure? Watch. Put on your headphones. Hey, Bondo! Slak! Dav and Jada! Didja hear about Lieutenant Hublin? They found out his father was a womp-rat, and his mother smells of bilaberrys!”
Bondo’s mouth became an O of horror at first, worrying about what punishments awaited him for the insult. But instead, he heard Dav and Slak laughing, And Jada telling them to steady up.
“See, Bondo?” Norrin said. “You never know when you might need to have a conversation like this.”
“I- I see, Norrin. I hope we don’t get in-”
“Trouble? C’mon, Bondo. When have I ever gotten in trouble for the things I did?”
“You keep playing Sabbac, one day? You’ll get bad cards.”
“Not today, Bondo. Not today!”
Slak settled into the seat of his TIE fighter, getting ready for his preflight check as he finished chuckling about Norrin’s techno-prank. He wasn’t sure if he should feel relieved or insulted that he wasn’t going to be flying one of the big bus-like bombers like Dav and Jada and Norrin and Bondo. He ran through his preflight quickly as he could. Unsurprisingly, everything checked out. With far less in a lone single fighter ready than in a great, big bomber with shields, photon torpedoes and, yes, bombs, he had a short bit of time to think.
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Why, Slak thought, would anyone be so stupid as to take on the Empire? It would be like a little child with a stick or a slingshot trying to beat a hovertank. One person going crazy and engaging in such a venture could be believed in its own, weird way- Slak had seen his share of crazy people in the Blue Zone, shuffling from bullying to building and muttering gibberish to themselves while either looking for handouts or trying to start a fight.
But this wasn’t really insanity, not as Slak knew the word. Someone went to a lot of trouble to procure some very expensive X-Wing fighters for that last little run they’d made at Slak and his crew. And Slak had stolen enough land speeders and aircars to know that machines didn’t just take care of themselves, either. Before they’d ever fitted out a squadron of fighters, someone had to have established a base from those ships to fly out of. Rebels would need a place to repair, refuel and shelter the pilots. Beyond a ground crew, they’d need food, a water supply…basics not always in ready supply in the cold empty vacuum of space. So much would be necessary to launch an attack that’d only result in their deaths, or perhaps a little bought time before the Empire’s hammer came crashing down on their heads.
Why would they do it? So much work, and so pointless in the end.
Slak shrugged his shoulders. He needed to focus. He was going on his first genuine combat mission, any way you looked at it. This was what he’d trained for.
He stopped. He now realized something about himself:
He’d joined to get three meals a day, a warm bed each night, and security from being harmed on the street. And to chase pretty girls.
Now, he’d gotten…some of those things. There were so few pretty girls here that a fellow with only half a face like himself didn’t have a wifa-rat’s chance in a supernova at landing a girlfriend. And while he’d been given food and shelter, it had just truly impacted him what he’d been trained to do.
He’d been trained to kill.
Slak was now a weapon.
His job was to kill, and keep killing until the enemy stopped coming, or until Slak himself was dead.
He wasn’t any safer in space than he was on the street, really. In both places, an enemy could come out of anywhere, at any time. On the street he used his peripheral vision and instincts, in space he used his console instruments. On the ground his cyber-eye could help him. But overall the situation would be the same: death could conceivably come at any moment, from any quarter. And he was expected to deal death as well, and be a good investment for the Empire. So long as he killed two rebels before he died, he guessed the Empire would be happy with their investment.
“Sounds good to me,” he said, leaning back and waiting for the order to rev up his engines and start escorting Dav and Jada, and Bondo and Norrin.
#
Commodore Bast watched the hangar, his knees shaking only a little this time. His uniform was crisply pressed, his buttons and boots were polished, and his record thus far as commander of the Adeptus was spotless, unless someone wanted to blame him for that foolish little cadet who’d tried to turn rebel.
No, what made Bast nervous wasn’t the potential spot on his record, but the dark, semi-mechanical creature that stood behind him, watching the proceedings with a level of interest that unnerved Bast like nothing else in a long, long time..
“They are ready,” the thing’s voice said through his breathing mask. It was a statement, not a question.
“I sincerely hope so, Vader,” said Bast, resentment suddenly making him blurt out his private thoughts while he kept his back to the dark lord. “I know your record, and I know that you’re a favorite of the Emperor. But putting largely untrained children on a mission like this, even escorted by veterans, isn’t just unwise. It’s wasteful. Were I of the more sensitive temperament, I’d say it was tantamount to child murder.”
Vader stayed silent, regarding the older man who’d just spoken so insolently to him. “You have doubts regarding the training of your cadets, Commodore? Perhaps a different commander here might have a more enlightened view.”
Bast turned to face Vader. “My cadets have been trained to Empire specifications, Lord Vader. Anyone who would question that need only see them in a sim or in the air. Sending them on a combat mission into an asteroid field with the small amount of data we have on our adversaries is the unwise decision. It brings into question the judgment of the one who sends them, not the one who trains them.”
#
TO BE CONTINUED...