Mara found Skywalker inside the Gallofree. He’d already changed into what she suspected were local clothes: dark, loose-fitting trousers, a light-colored and loose-fitting tunic, mostly covered with a poncho. He had a helmet tucked under his arm; it was not his X-wing helmet, but a leather contraption more fitting for swoop racing. His service blaster was holstered and on his hip, but his lightsaber was conspicuous by absence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What are we doing, Commander?” she asked, trying to keep discomfort out of her voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Supply run to Mos Entha. We need some equipment.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mara frowned. “Equipment? For what? We just got here.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Skywalker shook his head and jerked a thumb toward a deeper compartment in the ship. “There’s some civilian clothing in there to help us blend in. Go ahead and find something and change.” He studied her for a second, and she couldn’t read his expression as he considered his next words. “You probably need to do something about your hair,” he said at last. “It’s…” he hesitated again, “…too memorable.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She rolled her eyes. “Of course. What are you going to be doing?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Getting our ride ready. Go get changed.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She nodded and headed deeper into the transport. A handful of maintenance droids were moving through the freight hauler, but she ignored them, and none of the other Rogues intruded. It didn’t take Mara long to find the stash of civilian clothing, and she riffled through it quickly. Men’s and women’s. Some of this would fit either me or Karie, I think. Or close enough. Skywalker and Wedge were planning ahead.<\/em> Style wasn’t of any real concern to her, and she quickly settled on a set of leggings, a comfortable, white blouse, and an oversized poncho similar to the one she’d seen Skywalker wearing. A shawl, light to the touch but opaque, worked well to wrap her head and conceal her red-gold hair, already matted with sweat in the oppressive heat. He’s probably right. On a backwater like this, any locals would probably notice the color. Best to be unmemorable.<\/em> She had to dig around to find another swoop racer’s helmet, then headed back toward the aft of the ship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker was already down the ramp with a speeder bike that had clearly seen better days. Mara eyed it warily. Aratech 712-AvA. Engine sounds okay, not great. Repulsors seem to be balanced okay. They’re supposed to be generally reliable but a headache to fix when they do break.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n The commander caught her looking and fished in his belt pouch for something, hand coming out a moment later with a pair of goggles. He tossed them to her before pulling out a second pair for himself. “It’s not fun to catch a bug in the eye at a few hundred kay-pee-aitch,” he said dryly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara raised an eyebrow. “You’ve done that before?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Once was plenty.” He swung onto the speederbike and jerked his head toward the seat behind him. “Come on.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n She hesitated again, feeling like a trap had been baited. “Why me?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Because you’re the best mechanic in the Rogues, straight-up,” he said with no trace of deception in his voice. “If there’s something wrong with the gear we’re buying, you’ll find it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grimacing, Mara finally relented and climbed on the speederbike behind him, wrapping her arms loosely around him for balance. “Don’t get us killed, Skywalker.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n She could hear the grin in his voice. “No promises.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n They quickly accelerated away from the Rogues’ landing site, and in seconds it had completely vanished behind them. Skywalker navigated the bike a few hundred meters away from the canyon before turning and setting course straight into the desert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Less than two minutes later, Mara was fighting down her panic. I’m completely lost. How is he navigating? There are no landmarks. If something happened to Skywalker right now, I don’t think I could find my way back.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n But Skywalker seemed to be enjoying himself. Now that they were away from camp, with no one around, he opened the throttle up, and wind ripped at them as the speeder bike screamed across the desert, dust billowing in their wake. She forced herself to focus, first watching the terrain, trying to pick out distinctive rock formations, before quickly giving up. The moment I think one looks unique, we change angles, and it looks like something else entirely.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead she focused on Skywalker’s piloting, and found more of interest there. He was clearly in his element, effortlessly picking a route through the seemingly endless sand dunes with the same sort of complete confidence he demonstrated in his X-wing. He seemed to know exactly where the bike needed to be at any given time, slipping past softer patches of sand that would slow the bike’s propulsion, or swinging clear of magnetic deposits that could interfere with repulsorlifts. Occasionally, a concealed mineral band would cause the repulsors to whine in protest, but then he sideslipped the bike easily with a practiced lean, never allowing their forward momentum to break. He’s very good<\/em>, she admitted reluctantly. I wonder where he learned to navigate like this?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n She settled into her seat more firmly, forcing herself to relax. This could be a very long ride.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cesi found the work of setting up the fusion generators simple enough to preoccupy herself with watching the Rogues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She settled the second unit in place next to the three shelters Captain Antilles had designated for barracks and started snaking power feeds to each of them. The temporary shelters had built-in comfort units, designed to either cool or warm the structures as needed. She shook her head as she plugged in each one in turn, keeping an eye on Wes and Puck as they stretched camo netting over another X-wing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I know security is a concern, but it’s a crime against civilization to hide starfighters this beautiful,” Wes waxed poetically, though Cesi was pretty sure he wasn’t serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We could paint the netting,” Puck suggested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I already checked. No paint on the transport. Or if it is, it’s locked up somewhere I couldn’t find it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I bet Jade has some packed.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wes shook his head theatrically. “Then it’s unobtainable. Unless you’re blaster-proof.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Puck snorted. “She’s not that<\/em> scary.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’m amazed you survived this long with instincts that poor,” Wes riposted. “And I’m not even talking about General Syndulla.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The conversation was loud, entertaining, and distracting all within earshot. Cesi plugged in the third feed and stopped to glance at the two jokers as they finished with the eighth X-wing. The camo was stretched tight, anchors driven into the hardpack (though Cesi had concerns about Puck Naeco and a giant hammer), and Wes was cutting off the roll. The process left a meter-wide strip to be trimmed, which Wes did neatly and efficiently with a vibroknife, all while trading comments with Naeco about the dangers of the youngest Rogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then he rolled up the trimmed strip into a tight bundle and handed it to Puck, who slipped it under his loose outer layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interesting<\/em>, Cesi thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She returned to the Gallofree, passing the construction team hauling another prefab shelter, and retrieved a fuel core. The Twi’lek checked the capacity reading, nodded, and headed back out into the Tatooine sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the Rogues were clearly suffering in the heat, though Commander Skywalker had seemed oddly unbothered. Cesi, on the other hand, had been born on Ryloth. While it had been years since she’d stepped foot on her homeworld, the tidally locked world was brutally hot and brutally cold, and while Tatooine was far less hospitable than Chandrila, where she’d earned her doctorate, it reminded her oddly of home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whistling cheerfully to herself, she inserted the fuel core into the fusion generator and powered the device up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She glanced at Wes and Puck again, their conversation now shifted to a debate about which member of Rogue Squadron had the highest Imperial reward. A lek twitched involuntarily. Those two idiots are far more dangerous than they look.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Judging by the position of the twin suns, Mara guessed it was after local noon when they finally reached Mos Entha. Never been a planet with two suns before<\/em>, she thought. Probably because they’re all as bad as this one. Or worse.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker finally eased off the throttle as the speeder bike reached the outskirts of the city and buildings, small, one-story huts of sun-baked stone, began to cluster around them, the buildings getting larger and more numerous and closer together as the city proper grew around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara was unimpressed. Not really any different than any city I saw after joining the Spectres. Or before that. <\/em>Local materials, haphazard city layouts, streets that could generously be described as winding, wealth close to the city center and only trickling to the outskirts were the common denominator of little spaceports on thousands of Outer Rim worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their destination was far enough into the city that the streets began to crowd with traffic: local riding animals, larger landspeeders better-suited for carrying cargo than the Aratech speeder bike, and pedestrians. Whatever Skywalker wants to buy, it must be small<\/em>, she thought. Unless we’re renting a big speeder to transport it back. But what would we get <\/em>here that we couldn’t have brought from the <\/em>Independence? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker finally nosed the bike out of the main thoroughfare and into a small lot before shutting the engine down entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara pulled her goggles off and climbed off the bike, patting her clothes as she did so. Clouds of dust rose and tickled her nose, threatening a sneeze. She coughed instead, wishing she’d left the goggles on a moment longer as her eyes watered. Karabast. Blasted desert.<\/em> She straightened and looked around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “An…airspeeder dealer?” she said dubiously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker pulled his own goggles off. “Yes,” he said, voice low. “Incom T-16 Skyhoppers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Skyhoppers,” she repeated, keeping her own tone down to prevent anyone from overhearing. “Commander, we flew X-wings here. What do we need Skyhoppers for?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Training. Our starfighters are just that, starfighters<\/em>. If we’re going to train, we need to fly sorties, multiple a day. Wedge ran the numbers on the necessary maintenance. The parts upkeep, fuel, and hours we’d need to spend on every X-wing would mean we would’ve needed three transports and a full mechanic team. Wear-and-tear would keep at least half of our fighters on the ground after the first few weeks.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara frowned. “So little airspeeders?” she asked skeptically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You haven’t flown one,” Skywalker said dryly. “I practically lived in one when I was old enough to fly. They’re Incom-built with the Incom-standard control layout. I could put you in one right now and you could fly it nearly as well as your X-wing. But they’re airspeeders, not starfighters, so they’re a lot cheaper to keep flying and are built for the sort of abuse atmospheric training is going to put them through. They’re not as fast as a T-65, but they sip fuel, they’re agile, and we can build the muscle memory and reflexes everyone needs to learn.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Skyhoppers,” Mara repeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Incom’s entire line is built on transferring skills,” he pointed out. “The old Z-95 Headhunters they built with Subpro, the X-wing, every one of their airspeeder designs built between the Clone Wars and now are designed on the same philosophies. These are perfect for our needs, if we can get enough of them. Cheap to fly, easy to maintain, and trivial to keep fueled.” He was about to add something when an older man, most of his hair gone, came out the front of the shop and raised a hand. Skywalker returned the wave and glanced back at Mara. “I see six Skyhoppers. I want you to go over them while I do the haggling. See what looks good and what doesn’t. We don’t need a Skyhopper we can’t fly.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara nodded and returned to the speeder bike. In one of the saddlebags she was unsurprised to find Skywalker had packed in a toolkit. He and Wedge planned every step of this<\/em>, she thought, annoyed. Would’ve been nice to actually get briefed on it before I’m appointed airspeeder inspector.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n She followed Skywalker toward the apparent proprietor. Let’s see if any of these Skyhoppers are in better shape than the city.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Luke wasn’t joking when he said it got hotter in the afternoon.<\/em> Wedge wiped sweat from his forehead before it could run down into his eyes. Of course, the heat was a little detail he glossed over when we were planning the training.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Even with the comfort unit running at full capacity, the heat seemed to soak through the walls of the temporary shelter. He stepped out of the smallest barracks unit, the one he and Luke were sharing, and stopped dead for a moment. A flimsiplast sign was space taped to his door, written in deliberately blocky letters to try to obscure the author. CAUTION: CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE AND MAY EXPLODE.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n “True,” Wedge muttered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He blinked for a moment and then shook his head again. “Janson. Naeco.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Sir!” they both echoed from nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wedge stared at the camp. Camo netting had been expertly anchored over each of the X-wings and the Gallofree. And over each of the shelters. And over the generators. And wrapped around the EG-6 power droid they’d brought as a self-portable power generation unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He turned, slowly. “You two realize that the netting is designed for concealment from a distance<\/em>, don’t you?” Wedge asked, bemused. “It doesn’t do much at close range.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pile of netting half-buried in the sand between the officer barracks and the next barracks twitched. “He can’t see us,” Wes stage-whispered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Kitchen duty. Both of you. And if supper rations are camouflaged, too, I’ll add latrine duty.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I thought we weren’t digging a latrine,” Puck said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’ll make an exception.” Wedge walked back into his barracks and closed the door, then shook his head and allowed the amused smirk where no one could see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can’t believe I let you talk me into this, Luke.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara realized, partway through her evaluation of the first Skyhopper, she’d made a tactical mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker and the proprietor were standing near the main building. She’d chosen the further Skyhopper to start on, and as a result, she couldn’t overhear the entire conversation. Instead, she was only catching snippets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “…condolences,” the old man was saying. “When…about…farm, we…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara strained to hear, even as she jotted notes on her datapad about a poorly-repaired control linkage that would absolutely fail when the Rogues started abusing it in training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “…thank you,” Skywalker said. “…been…time…here.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Owen…and Whitesun. Thought you…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara frowned as she closed the panel on the side of the T-16 and considered the implications of what she was hearing. That doesn’t sound like idle banter. That sounds like the shop owner <\/em>knows Skywalker. <\/em>She started slotting the pieces together, and then almost kicked herself for not seeing it before. This is his home planet. I bet half the Rogues know and I never asked. I thought this was mostly Wedge’s plan. I bet it was actually Skywalker’s.<\/em> She shook her head and moved to the second Skyhopper. I hope he knows what he’s doing. At some point he’s going to be on the Empire’s most-wanted list, I’d bet.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Visibility is death, Mara.<\/em> She shook her head, pushing away the reflexive thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It took Mara over two hours to evaluate the airspeeders. The six Skyhoppers were both better and worse than they looked. Every one of them was technically flyable right now, which was a minor miracle; two of them looked like a rancor had used them as clubs, and the other four were battered and scraped by what Mara suspected was airborne grit. All of them needed at least minor maintenance. Three of them she’d deemed mechanically sound with no caveats, a fourth needed its primary power couplings replaced within the next few hours of flight time, the fifth needed control recalibrations, and the sixth had a cracked ion manifold that was two hard banks away from completely disintegrating and a subsequent nose-first crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More annoyingly, by the time she got close enough to actually hear their conversation, they were discussing very local topics: the moisture harvest, water taxes, Imperial inspectors, Hutt shakedowns, and Mos Entha gossip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When she’d finished, she handed her datapad of notes – both detailed and summarized – to Skywalker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He glanced over the summary, frowned, then looked at the detailed notes, seemingly absorbing most of it in a glance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What do you need for all six?” Skywalker asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Forty-five is very fair,” the proprietor said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker rolled his eyes. “Forty-five would be fair if they were factory-new. Not one of these is ready to go, Kessik. Twenty.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The old man snorted. “Just because I offered you sympathy doesn’t mean I’m going to let the Lars boy rob me. Forty.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If I paid you forty and then died flying that Skyhopper with the cracked ion manifold, I’m sure you’d offer sympathy, too. Twenty-five.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You wound me. It’s a simple job for anyone good with a spanner. Thirty-eight.” Kessik nodded at Mara. “She’s good at it. Better than you?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “That’s why I brought her. And you know I spent years keeping my own flying. Thirty.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara felt an unexpected flush of pride at the offhand compliment, and crushed it down immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Thirty-six is the least I can do.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “At six thousand apiece, we don’t want the worst one,” Mara inserted. “It’s only good for spare parts, and there isn’t more than five hundred credits worth of usable parts we could salvage off it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kessik stared at her. “I thought I was negotiating with him, not you.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker laughed. “She’s been watching my back for a while. And my wallet. I’m at thirty for all six.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The old man grumbled a bit. “You negotiate like Owen did,” he grumbled. “Probably why the only people who liked dealing with him were the Jawas. Fine, thirty.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You know you’re not going to get another buyer at that price anytime soon,” Skywalker said cheerfully, extracting a pouch of credit coins from under his tunic. “Most of these have been here at least three seasons.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Don’t rub it in.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the transaction completed, Mara moved over to stand behind him. “Command…Luke<\/em>,” she said, the name feeling foreign on her tongue but realizing ranks probably weren’t the best for operational security, “I have a question.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What’s that?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “How are we going to get six Skyhoppers back to camp with just the two of us?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara was clearly unimpressed with his explanation, even if she was also grateful for the reprieve from the heat. The sunken cantina was cool and dimly-lit, though there was still enough light to catch a few strands of her red-gold hair that had worked loose from the shawl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Luke took another sip from his cup. “I mean, we did it before.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You flew six Skyhoppers on a ferry-link?” she asked skeptically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Not six,” he conceded. “Just Deak’s, because he wasn’t safe to fly his own.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara snorted. “Teenage farmboy antics probably shouldn’t be the basis for any squadron plans.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The idea is sound,” Luke countered. “X-wings don’t have ferry-links because they use astromechs. If a ground crew needs an X-wing or Y-wing moved, they use an astromech droid to do it for them. But airspeeders don’t have droids, so Incom builds them with an encrypted ferry-link to allow a central computer to move units around. They get used at big dealerships and in mechanic shops.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The two datapads we have between us don’t really translate to a central computer, Skywalker.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “No. But we can use the ferry-link to broadcast nav data from the lead Skyhopper.” He leaned forward, finishing his water. “Skyhoppers can fit two people. So I fly one, you ride copilot and handle keeping the ferry-link stable on the short-range comm. We transmit nav data as offsets, in a chain, so each Skyhopper gets the same data with offset for its position. Essentially, I’m flying all six from one set of controls.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Even if we can get it working, there’s going to be differences in trim and acceleration,” she pointed out. “I’ve been through all six of the Skyhoppers. Some of those engines are much better tuned than others.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Which is why I need you making the adjustments we’ll need on the fly to keep the Skyhoppers together. And this way we get all six of the T-16s back in one attempt. If we make multiple runs to Mos Entha, we’re more likely to draw attention.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara pursed her lips. “You really think we can do this?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Five, sure,” Luke said off-handedly. “That sixth Skyhopper might get exciting.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n It took them most of the afternoon to rig the ferry-links. Luke ended up paying Kessik an extra five hundred credits to replace missing components for the ferry-link system on two of the Skyhoppers, and Mara threatened to take the speeder bike back to the Rogues’ hidden training camp (though Luke was fairly certain she wouldn’t be able to find it in the Jundland Wastes), but with less than an hour left before the twin suns would set, they were ready to test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Links green,” Mara said, studying her datapad and the comm panel in turn. “Wait, I’ve got jitter on four. It’s smoothing. Now we’re stable.” She glanced over at Skywalker, shoulder-to-shoulder with her in the cramped cockpit. “Go ahead.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker held the starter button in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Skyhopper’s ion engine thrummed to life. Mara returned her eyes to her datapad, watching as the rest of the Skyhoppers reported back, in sequence, successful engine ignition. “Five successful starts,” she said. “Ready for stage two.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wordlessly, Skywalker cut in the repulsorlifts. The Skyhopper rose a meter, two meters off the ground. She turned in the cockpit, looking out to see the nearest linked airspeeder follow suit. Then she returned her attention to her datapad and frowned. “Jitter on four again,” she said. “There it is. Comm seems a bit flaky on it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Kessik doesn’t have any more parts,” Skywalker said offhandedly. “We’ll have to make do.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You’re sure he wasn’t shorting you?” Mara asked skeptically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “He likes credits.” He eased power to the thruster and a bit more to the repulsorlifts, the Skyhopper slowly gliding forward and gaining an extra meter of altitude. One by one, each of the Skyhoppers followed in turn. “This looks good.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Now we just have to fly across hundreds of kilometers of desert at a reasonable speed without turning any of these airspeeders into a crater,” she said dryly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker was already shaking his head. “Tomorrow.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Tomorrow?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n He nodded. “It’s too close to dark.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Don’t tell me the farmboy hero of the Rebellion is scared of the dark.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker snorted at that. “Too dangerous to fly at night over the desert. The Sandpeople don’t need an excuse to shoot at us in the dark. It’s better to wait until morning.” He began descending again, the chain of Skyhoppers following behind him. “When I went back to Kessik for parts for the ferry-link, I asked him about a room for the night. He gave me the access code for his garage.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara realized, belatedly, that Skywalker’s descent was taking them neatly into an enclosed lot with a small building – presumably the aforementioned garage. “Wonderful,” she muttered. “Well, it won’t be the worst place I’ve ever slept.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker glanced over at her and apparently decided not to ask.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mara found Skywalker inside the Gallofree. He’d already changed into what she suspected were local clothes: dark, loose-fitting trousers, a light-colored and loose-fitting tunic, mostly covered with a poncho. He had a helmet tucked under his arm; it was not … Continue reading
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