Cobalt Squadron Page 6

  “Of course I’ve thought about it!”

  “And?”

  “I’m ready to leave after breakfast!”

  Paige laughed.

  “The thing is,” Rose said, “I wouldn’t do it alone. You might do it without me, but I wouldn’t do it without you. I’m not scared of ending up dead—I’d be just as dead if the TIE fighters had blown us up yesterday.” She used the babyish nickname she’d called her older sister when they were very little. “But Pae-Pae…” Rose gulped in a breath. “I’m scared of us not being a team anymore.”

  “You’re so cute.” Paige laughed.

  Rose rolled her eyes. “Don’t be embarrassing!”

  “I’m your big sister,” Paige said. “That’s my job. That, and keeping you alive.”

  “Why do you think Leia asked us?” Rose wondered. “She said it was our right. Why would we get the first shot at this mission?”

  “Well, there’s the obvious—we’ve proved we’re versatile,” Paige answered. “I’m a crack shot with a laser cannon, and I’m a reasonable pilot; you’ve become an expert at tinkering with quirky hyperdrives and auxiliary fuel systems.”

  Rose snorted. The sound was lost in the sudden drone of a small swarm of tiny golden dragonflies that whizzed past their heads. Rose ducked, and Paige laughed again.

  “You were the first person Leia came to when she wanted that power baffler for the last hop,” Paige said. “And we’ve been to Atterra already, so we know what to expect when we go back. But also…I think Leia’s counting on us wanting to do it together. She knows we’re a team.”

  “Well, then! We have to go together so you can keep me alive,” Rose said. “So let’s get ready for our unexpected spy mission.”

  “Reconnaissance,” Paige insisted. “Stop calling it a spy mission.”

  Then she added, “You know we won’t actually be alone. The pilot will go with us.”

  “What pilot?”

  “The Atterran pilot. Reeve Panzoro.”

  “Oh, you are kidding me. Please tell me you are kidding me.”

  “One of those Atterrans will have to stay here, as a sort of goodwill hostage, but we’re going to need a guide. A contact on the ground. Casca Panzoro wanted to go herself and leave her grandson here where he’s safe, but we’ll be safer with a good local pilot along in that rock storm of the Atterra Belt. And if anything goes wrong, Casca seems to be a more valuable hostage for the Resistance…or a more useful ally.”

  Rose let her doubts about Reeve Panzoro come to the surface.

  “Okay, I get that he’s a fabulous pilot, and I get why Casca would want to take him with her when she got out of Atterra. But do you trust him? And is Leia really going to make one of them stay here while the other goes back with a couple of strangers? Can you imagine if she did that to us?”

  “You know she wouldn’t,” said Paige. “Not if we didn’t agree to it. So it must be okay with them.”

  “You just said Casca was a potential hostage. I bet they didn’t get a choice.”

  Paige looked uncomfortable. “Well, maybe they didn’t. But it’s a different situation than ours.”

  Rose sighed. “Just great,” she grumbled. “A spy mission with someone who might not want to be there. We don’t have any idea if we can trust him. And he’s just so—” She struggled for the right word.

  “Young?” Paige suggested.

  “Scared,” Rose said.

  “Well, so are you. You said you’re scared all the time. You said it’s part of you, like wearing your Otomok medallion.”

  “Yes, but…” Rose didn’t really want to admit how much Reeve’s fearfulness scared her. She hoped her own fears were never so obvious to other people. “That’s just worrying about myself. Now I’m going to have to be responsible for someone else. I see what you mean about not wanting to go because you don’t want anything to happen to me—I don’t want anything terrible to happen to Reeve Panzoro and I don’t even know him!”

  Paige laughed. “That’s just what it feels like to be a big sister,” she said affectionately. “It doesn’t stop me.”

  “Well, it’s not going to stop me, either,” said Rose with determination.

  SCARCELY A day later, Paige, Rose, and Reeve were back in the Atterra system.

  Once all the preparations had been taken care of, the flight had been straightforward, thanks to a new version of Rose’s power baffler. They’d made it through the belt and the blockade and the minefield, and now they were skimming along the surface of an ominously yellow briny ocean on Atterra Bravo.

  Rose had been restless during the lightspeed jump. The cabin of the ship they were traveling in was too cramped for her to get comfortable enough to sleep. And she’d been worrying, worrying, worrying about whether her half-baked equipment was going to work. If any of it didn’t, they were all probably dead.

  Once they’d entered the Atterra system, they’d had to change course four times on their way in to Atterra Bravo to avoid a handful of lone hunters and one patrol.

  Now they’d made it to the planet’s surface undetected. But looking at the turbulent yellow sea that stretched endlessly away from them on all sides, and seeing no obvious place to land, Rose wondered if they weren’t all going to end up dead anyway.

  Paige was trying to be patient.

  “Would it help,” she asked Reeve Panzoro in her calmest of calm voices, “if we flew back out into orbit and then reentered Bravo’s atmosphere from different coordinates? Maybe you’d recognize where we’re going from higher up.”

  “Maybe…” Reeve answered uncertainly. “But I don’t think going back out will help. I don’t know any other coordinates. I’m not a human compass…I used the coordinates Ms. Casca told me to.”

  “Well, they’re not working, so we need a plan B,” Rose said.

  “What do you think, then, Rose?” Paige prompted.

  Rose was trying hard not to panic. She hated being lost; she hated having to trust Reeve to find the way; and above all she hated the feeling that it would be her fault if anything happened to him. She hated not knowing what to do.

  The ship’s a known factor, Rose reminded herself. What’s best for the ship?

  “The human compass is right,” Rose said grudgingly. “Going back into orbit isn’t going to do us any good. The extra power to get us out of the planet’s atmosphere will be too strong for the baffler to hide. It’s risky enough that we have to do it when we leave. If we do it more than once, someone’ll notice.”

  “I said I wasn’t a human compass,” Reeve grumbled.

  Paige’s shoulders rose and fell. She didn’t sigh aloud, but Rose knew it was a sigh.

  “Can you guys put a little less energy into your snappy comebacks and a bit more into figuring out where we are?” Paige requested, scanning the horizon for someplace to land.

  “All my energy is going into keeping this ship from going down,” Rose said.

  The Little Vixen was a very small, very battered civilian private transport they had been assigned for this mission, and it was a prized possession for the Resistance. The Vixen wasn’t big enough to carry any kind of freight. It was an outdated model of a ship that had never been popular. It didn’t appear to be armed (though it was, very lightly, with a single small laser cannon operated by the pilot); its realspace cruise speed was so slow it couldn’t outfly a landspeeder. It was so shabby and ordinary that it was very easily overlooked.

  It was perfect for reconnaissance.

  It could land anywhere. It had been fitted with a sophisticated Class 1 hyperdrive so that it traveled through hyperspace at the same rate as an X-wing. It also carried a tracking device that allowed the Resistance to monitor its movements when it reached an agreed-on destination. This was programmed to purge its files and self-destruct if anyone tried to interfere with it while it was operating. Essentially, if the ship were intercepted by an enemy, it would become a suicide device.

  In addition to these peculiarities, Rose had fitte
d the unassuming vehicle with another power baffler, a miniature version of the one she’d fixed up in Hammer. It took up the same amount of space as a passenger and a half, which reduced the available room considerably in an already cramped cabin that wasn’t actually designed for long-distance galactic travel.

  Under the circumstances, an uncomfortable journey was the least of their worries.

  The Atterran boy hadn’t had any trouble familiarizing himself with the Little Vixen’s flight characteristics. Rose had to admit he was a born pilot. All he’d needed was a few pointers from Paige and he was in control. He knew very little about setting the complex coordinates for hyperspace, and for security Paige hadn’t let him see where they were starting from anyway, but in the realspace of the Atterra system he was a secure and confident navigator. He’d known what he was doing when he’d guided them down to the surface of his home planet.

  He hadn’t gotten lost until they entered the atmosphere of Atterra Bravo.

  Now it seemed he didn’t have any idea where he was. He flew hesitantly, zigzagging over churning, steaming seas. It was obvious that he was growing more and more nervous.

  Paige asked next, “Can we do a float landing on this ocean and power down while we get our bearings?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Rose warned. “The ship’s telling me the sea’s too acidic to tolerate. Five minutes sitting on the surface will start to eat away its hull.”

  “Well, we’ve got ourselves flying in circles,” Paige said. “We can’t go on forever.”

  “I used the right coordinates,” Reeve said stubbornly. “This is where Ms. Casca told me to reenter the atmosphere for Firestone.” He added resentfully, “Maybe if you’d let her come along…”

  Sympathy and irritation warred inside Rose. She knew how he felt about being separated from his grandmother.

  “We weren’t given that option,” Paige reminded him. “Now I’m beat, and so are you. Haven’t you had enough already? Rose isn’t rated to fly this thing, and we can’t wander around down here on autopilot waiting for a blockade patrol to catch up with us. We’re going to have to land and get some sleep for a few hours. Find me an island that’s not poisonous or covered with acidic quicksand.”

  “He’s not a human compass,” Rose pointed out helpfully.

  Reeve didn’t answer. His eyes went narrow and angry, but he held his temper as he scanned the horizon. “I know where I am. I’m just not sure how to get home from here. The sea only boils north of the Firestone Islands, so we can’t be far.” He held his course. “Try that way.”

  Paige and Rose stared with tired eyes in the direction Reeve was pointing.

  A stubborn, worn volcanic cone broke the horizon, blue in the distance over a sea that now gleamed golden in the low sunlight. The mountain grew quickly—it was nearer than Rose had at first thought. Reeve powered back as the Little Vixen approached the land.

  The island couldn’t have been more than a kilometer wide and a couple of kilometers long. There were no beaches: it was a low mountainous outcrop whose glassy deep-blue slopes plunged directly into the acidic sea, which ate away at them until they became cliffs.

  Paige took a quick reading of the terrain. “There.” She pointed. “You see it?”

  “The second shelf? The one with the ledge like a bowl?”

  “It won’t give us much cover, but it’s flat.”

  “Paige,” Rose began, “maybe for the landing you should take over from the human—”

  “I can land,” said the boy fiercely.

  “He’s okay,” Paige said.

  He was, too. He was sulky, angry, defensive, lost, and scared, but he knew how to fly. As he was touching down the unfamiliar ship, featherlight on the narrow ledge, Paige murmured close to Rose’s ear, “Actually, he’s a better pilot than I am.”

  “He’s too nervous, though,” Rose muttered back. “He’s scaring me.”

  Paige didn’t answer, which made Rose think that Reeve must be scaring her a little, too.

  They were all utterly exhausted. They erected a pop-up shelter so that Paige and Reeve, the pilots, would be able to lie down.

  But Rose didn’t get the luxury of sleep. She stood on guard, watching the sky. It was the only way Paige could relax enough to get the rest she so desperately needed—knowing Rose would wake her if something happened.

  This was definitely not what Rose and Paige had meant when they’d made their childhood pact to travel the galaxy together.

  All the same, Rose couldn’t help feeling a little twist of excitement and anticipation as she breathed in this new, sharp, faintly rotten-egg air and watched Atterra’s countless asteroids grow brighter, too far away to be moons but bigger than stars. The sun set and a purple twilight began to fall.

  Rose always felt a small, guilty pleasure in any mission that took her to a new and unknown world.

  She fingered the pale gold medallion that had swung loose from where it was tucked into her collar. They were all wearing plain civilian work clothes, something that might blend in if they were seen. Rose’s medallion was engraved with the planetary system of Otomok, and Rose knew it would raise dangerous questions if she were caught by anyone. But she needed to keep it near her—a connection to her lost home, a reminder of the cause she was fighting for, and a physical link, always, to her big sister.

  She tucked the pendant back beneath her undertunic, where it lay safe against her skin. Rose looked again at the sky.

  It was absolutely the most beautiful sky she’d ever seen. It was even better from the planet’s surface than from space. The asteroids, beginning to glow as the sun sank lower, looked like tiny hanging lamps against pale blue silk.

  Then Rose noticed one of them growing brighter much faster than the others.

  At first she thought it was a meteor.

  But she wasn’t fooled for longer than a second.

  It was a ship, and it was heading straight for them.

  “Get up! Get up!” Rose started tearing down the pop-up shelter even before she’d evicted its sleeping inhabitants. “Paige! Paige! Reeve! Wake up—we’ve got to move!”

  Paige was awake instantly. She leaped past Rose, threw herself into the Vixen’s cockpit, and started powering up. Rose had to reach into the shelter to haul the still half-asleep Reeve out by his armpits so she could fully collapse the tent.

  “Hey,” he protested blearily, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  Rose threw the thinfoil pop-up package into the ship, considered giving Reeve a kick, and decided it wouldn’t help. She grabbed him by the arm again and bellowed in his ear, “We’ve been seen!”

  She wasn’t sure that was true yet, but it certainly would be in another minute or so. “Get back in the ship.”

  He scrambled, half crawling, up the small boarding ramp. Rose tumbled over him, slamming the hatch shut behind her. Paige took off before Rose had managed to pick herself up.

  Reeve was suddenly wide-awake and crouching over Paige’s shoulder, shouting panicked directions at her.

  “No, no, no, don’t head north! There’s nothing out there till you get to Rockland Plate! The Firestones are in the other—”

  “We’ll head back when we lose the guy behind us!” Paige snarled, losing her cool for once. “Spinning rockets, this thing is so slow. Rose, help me out here!”

  “How?” Rose cried.

  “I don’t know! Can’t the power baffler hide us somehow?”

  “It only disguises the power output. As long as they can see us, we can’t hide. Maybe when it’s dark—It’s nearly dark!” She looked east. “Head for the dark!”

  “But we’re so. Totally. Slow. If they’ve got a search beam, we’ll never shake them.”

  Reeve pointed over Paige’s shoulder. He and Rose cried in unison, “Keep going east!”

  “I don’t believe it,” Paige gasped. “You’re both human compasses.”

  “Ha ha ha.” Rose crouched anxiously at the rear porthole, watching the
bright light that was the other ship grow steadily, speedily closer.

  Maybe it’s friendly, she thought desperately. Maybe it’s one of those security ships Casca Panzoro was talking about….

  When she saw the searchlight beam probing out toward her, she knew in her bones that it wasn’t anyone friendly.

  If they were caught in the beam they wouldn’t even be able to hide in the dark.

  “Climb,” Rose cried. “Climb! Forget east. Get out of their path!”

  The boy suddenly leaped into life. “But wait till they get close!”

  His voice was unsteady, but his brain was obviously working. Rose remembered that he’d managed to outfly a squadron of TIE fighters. He was good at escaping.

  “If you slow down just when they think they’ve got us, it might take them by surprise,” Reeve gasped. “Then they’ll overtake us and have to double back. Head straight up while they’re turning.”

  “Kid’s better at flying than he is at directions,” Rose said grimly, and Paige answered just as grimly, “Shut up. Tell me when they get close.”

  Rose crouched, staring out the rear porthole, watching the other ship gain on them second by second.

  She winced, momentarily blinded, when the search beam caught them.

  Now the Little Vixen was illuminated like a dragonfly with sun on its wings.

  It was only seconds before the first blast of laser fire sizzled the air directly over their heads. They all cringed.

  “Hold on—hold on!” Rose yelled. “It was just a warning. They’d have hit us if they’d meant it. They can see us perfectly….”

  She couldn’t see them perfectly—the searchlight beam was blinding her. All she could tell was that their attacker was a lot bigger than they were.

  “They want to make us follow them, or tow us home as pets, or something. They’ll be right behind us in just a couple of seconds. Get ready to climb….”

  Rose forced herself to wait patiently for the exact right moment.

  “Three…two…”

  It felt like the longest countdown of her life.

  “ONE! Hit the sky!”

  Paige set the vertical thrust to full power, and the Little Vixen rocketed skyward out of the beam of light.