Free Rogue Squadron by Michael A. Stackpole Page B

allowed him to spot anything that might be trouble before he got out into space—and that would save him a long cold wait for a rescue crew.
    More importantly than that, his taking a tour around his ship set a good example for the rest of Rogue Squadron. He wanted to fight the belief that because they were elite pilots they were above the mundane sort of duties all other pilots had to endure. Most of his people weren’t like that, but he didn’t want laziness by one person to slowly spread to the rest of the squadron. While they weren’t there to see him, he knew news of his inspection would get back to them. And if I do this right, they’ll be sorry they missed the show .
    He paused for a moment and looked at the rows of TIE fighters, bombers, and Interceptors painted on the side of the ship. Big Death Stars bracketed the collection of smaller ships on either side, and Ssi-ruuk fighters had started a new row, right at the top of the red stripe bisecting the fuselage. It has been a long fight. And will be longer still .
    Behind him Wedge heard some chittering that Emtrey translated. “Master Zraii apologizes for not being able to fit all your kills in the space allotted. The ships rendered in red are meant to represent a squadron worth of kills—meaning a dozen.”
    Wedge frowned as he turned to face the droid. “I have a vague idea how many ships there are in a squadron, you know.”
    “Yes, of course, sir. I know that, but given that the Verpine normally count in base six and humans use base ten, twelve, which to a Verpine is known as ‘four fists,’ the potential for confusion warranted explanation.”
    The human held his hands up in surrender. “Fine. Just tell him that he can group kills by dozens or gross lots. It makes no difference to me.”
    “Gross lots, sir?”
    “A dozen dozen, Emtrey.”
    “One hundred and forty-four? Four wings?”
    “Yes, forty-eight fists in Verpine.”
    Emtrey looked from Wedge to the brown insectoid trailing behind them. “Sir, if I knew you were fluent in Verpine …”
    “Enough, Trey. I’m not fluent in Verpine, but I have a head for figures. Let me finish this inspection.” Wedge took in a deep breath and slowly let it out again. I’m going to have to talk to Luke and find out how he puts up with his 3PO unit—wait, that won’t work. I don’t have a sister around here to foist the droid off on .
    He walked back to the starboard engines and inspected the cooling vanes and what little of the centrifugal debris extractor he could find. After looking over the engines he examined the lenses for the deflector shield projectors and saw new ones had been installed. Shields gave the X-wing its major advantage over TIE fighters and contributed to the X-wing’s reputation for being able to take a lot of damage before it went down. Even though the lasers were being powered down for the training exercises, seeing the deflector shield equipment in good repair pleased him.
    He paid very careful attention to the twin laser cannons mounted on the ends of the ship’s stabilizer foils. He pulled down on the bottom one and felt aslight shift before the unpowered actuator prohibited movement. That was good—more play than a couple of centimeters meant the lasers might shift out of alignment during use.
    “Emtrey, ask Zraii what range he zeroed these lasers at?”
    A click-buzz exchange took place between tech and droid. “He says he zeroed them at 250 meters, Commander.”
    “Good.” When they had flown against the Death Star the X-wings had been reconfigured so their zero—the point where the four beams converged—was nearly half a kilometer. That allowed them to be employed very effectively in knocking out stationary ground targets. In space combat, where ranges shrank and targets moved quite a bit, keeping the focal point closer increased the chances of scoring lethal hits on the enemy. While the lasers could still hit another fighter at a range of more than a kilometer,