Isard's Revenge (37 page)

She reached the hangar in no time and saw Lorrir’s Interceptor still sitting on the ferrocrete deck. She knew it was his because he’d painted red stripes on each wing, just as the 181st used to do. She thought it a pity that a man’s life should be so paltry that he had to cling to a hideous defeat as the high point of his existence.

The clone called a tech over and asked if he’d seen Lorrir. The man pointed toward the closed operations room door. She walked over to it, tried the handle, and found it was locked. Glancing at her chronometer, she mentally calculated the security override code for that quarter hour, punched it into the keypad, and entered the office.

She took immediate notice of the ozone stink in the air which, combined with Lorrir’s body lying on the floor, told her the man had been stunned with a blaster. She squatted down and batted one of Lorrir’s feet aside, then pulled a black glove from beneath it. The glove only had two fingers and had been fitted with metal parts to make it appear to be a prosthetic replacement.

“Colonel Roat.” If Roat’s hand had not been genuine, then neither had he. This meant he and his group of Defenders had been inserted into Ciutric, but for what purpose? They could do no good on Ciutric, she reasoned, unless …

Throughout the building and the entire city of Daplona, sirens began to squeal with a pulsating message of warning. Red lights strobed and out in the hangar techs began scurrying around.

She slapped Lorrir to wakefulness, then hauled him to his feet. “Come with me, I need you.”

“Madam Director!” The man blinked his eyes in surprise. “It was a traitor, it was …”

“Yes, yes, no time for that. You’re under my command now.”

“What?” Lorrir straightened up and smoothed the breast of his flight suit. “I’m a pilot.”

“So you are, and now you’ll be flying for me.”

“For you? Why?”

“Listen to the sirens, fool.” The clone smiled and nodded a salute toward the sky. “There is a military operation planned. It’s coming here. They don’t care about Krennel, they’re after me and my prisoners. We’ll have to see they end up very disappointed.”

The primary monitor on Wedge’s Defender flashed brightly for a moment as image after image of ships filled the screen in rapid sequence. He caught a glimpse of a Mon Calamari Cruiser on the scanner screen, then an Imperial Star Destroyer Mark II, which matched the
Reckoning
in firepower. After that came three Nebulon-B Frigates, a half-dozen Corellian Corvettes, and a couple of fast little freighters.
That’s pretty much the taskforce description I sent Admiral Ackbar, and it would have been more than sufficient for taking on
Reckoning
and
Binder.

The problem was that Krennel had called in
Emperor’s Wisdom
and
Decisive
, giving the Hegemony forces a hideous edge in firepower. The
Victory
-class Star Destroyer,
Emperor’s Wisdom
, had eighty concussion missile launch tubes on it. Any single salvo could bring down the Mon Cal cruiser’s shields, leaving it open for raking fire from the ship’s energy weapons.
Decisive
and
Reckoning
both could pound on
Emancipator
—an Impstar Deuce the New Republic had captured at Endor. While it could severely damage any of the opposing ships, it would be lost.

Wedge shivered, then punched up the squadron frequency. “You’ve all seen the scans, Rogues. It’s not going to be pleasant. One Flight, we take out the shield generators down
here, then we go to the spaceport and heist a freighter big enough to get the prisoners out of here. Two Flight, as planned, you neutralize prison defenses.”

“As ordered, Lead. How do we take the prison? I didn’t see Telik’s commandos or Vessery’s fighters in the mix.”

“I don’t know, Tycho. I hope they’re just late. First things first, then we do whatever we have to do.”

“On it, Lead. Two Flight on me. May the Force be with all of us.”

Wedge rolled his Defender up onto the port side and peeled off toward the south. As he leveled out, Hobbie appeared on his starboard wing, Gavin and Myn on his port. The Defender cockpit gave him a great view of the cityscape over which they flew. Bulbous tan buildings alternated with green belts and parks, the tall skyscrapers of the municipal center giving way to smaller residential buildings and individual homes. Out beyond the residential areas he saw the massive edifices of the factory district and right in the middle lay the shield generation facility.

“Three and Four, you have the towers on the east, Two, take the ones on the west. I’m going straight in.” Wedge thumbed his weapons-selector to concussion missiles. He set them for linked fire, then settled his crosshairs on the central dome. His rangefinder put him two kilometers out, with distance falling away fast.

The ion cannons mounted on towers around the facility had been cranked skyward. They pulsed out massive blue bolts that shot upward at the invading fleet, pouring out through momentary gaps opened in the shields by fire-control computers. Below them, on the same towers, turbo-laser cannons traversed their muzzles across the landscape. Three sets of four cannons had been stacked at twenty, forty, and sixty meters on the towers, with the ion cannons at the top. Bristling with weapons, the towers made formidable targets.

But targets nonetheless.
Myn and Gavin let fly with the concussion missiles. Four incandescent rockets shot out at
the eastern towers. Myn’s hit a second before Gavin’s, since Gavin’s traveled a bit further, but all four were on target. They nailed the lowest gunnery station, demolishing the turbolaser cannons in a brilliant flash of light and heat. The force of the explosion expanded outward and up, jetting superheated plasma up through the next gunnery station. The ferrocrete slabs forming the intervening section buckled, then burst outward. The tops of the towers wavered, then began a tortured fall to the ground. To the west the first tower Hobbie targeted likewise crumbled in flame and smoke.

Wedge’s targeting reticle went red, so he pulled the trigger and sent two concussion missiles flying toward the shield generator. The pink missiles bored through the ferrocrete dome, then detonated. Twin gouts of argent fire shot back out of the holes the missiles had made. The fire expanded and linked them into a single, larger hole, then proceeded to gnaw up into the dome until it collapsed in on itself. Windows and doors on the shield facility blew out and flaming debris rode a shockwave out to be scattered over the well-manicured landscape.

“Break port, Lead.”

Wedge immediately rolled his craft left and saw an ion bolt the size of a small freighter sizzle past. The only intact tower’s ion cannon had tracked him on his approach and had almost gotten him. Before he could apply some rudder and correct for an attack run, Gavin and Myn came in on a strafing run that pumped a pair of quaded-up laser bursts into the ion cannon.

The cannon exploded like an overripe fruit hit with a gaffi stick. A huge chunk of its armored shell fell away like a rind and collapsed a corner of the burning shield facility. Secondary explosions in the facility itself pitched the armor off onto shrubbery, which ignited when the hot metal touched it.

Wedge punched up a sensor scan just to confirm that the southern quadrant shield over Daplona was down. The city now lay open for Telik’s commandos.
If they ever get here.

He keyed his comlink. “Lead to Five, we’re clear here. What’s your status?”

“Busy, Lead, and could use some help. The guys on the ground won’t go away, and I’ve got a dozen TIEs inbound our position.” Tycho hesitated for a moment. “Better get here fast, or there may be no reason to come at all.”

34

Admiral Ackbar, on the bridge of the Mon Calamari cruiser
Home One
, glanced with one eye at the holographic display of the near-space sector, and with the other looked out the viewport at the array of ships Krennel had brought to the fight. Only the unconscious twitching of his barabels betrayed his surprise.
From the depths always comes amazement.

“Weapons, shields up and concentrate all fire on
Reckoning.
Fighter Command, deploy the A-wings and have them try to pick off the missiles that will be incoming from the Vic. After that, they’re free to go after the TIEs and Interceptors.”

“As ordered, Admiral.”

“Helm, reverse course. Start pulling us back out on our exit vector.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

Ackbar looked at the small brown Sullustan serving as his communications officer. “Lieutenant Quiv, tell
Emancipator
to withdraw, but concentrate fire on
Reckoning.
Tell
Peacemaker, Pride of Eiattu
, and
Thunderchild
to go after the Vic. Relay those same orders to all the Corvettes. I want an orderly withdrawal. Krennel has to know we didn’t expect this much strength here.”

The Sullustan cheebled his assent and relayed the orders.

The smaller ships in the taskforce all curled out and around from the two main ships and drove hard at the
Emperor’s Wisdom.
Ackbar knew that the Nebulon-B Frigates and the half-dozen Corvettes couldn’t do that much damage to their target, but he wanted the Vic’s gunners, especially those manning the concussion missile launchers, to have a lot of targets to deal with.

The Corvettes laced into the Vic first, taking care to come in at high and low angles that forced the Hegemony gunners to crank their weapons to their highest attitude or lowest depression to get off a good shot. The
Mantooine, Dantooine
, and
Ryloth
slashed in over the top of
Emperor’s Wisdom
, pumping double turbolaser cannon fire into the dorsal shield. The shield glowed pink for a moment, then began to tear apart like an algae cloud ripped by fast currents.

The Frigates exploited the gap opened in the shield, hammering the Vic with fire from their turbolaser batteries and laser cannons. Red-gold energy bolts splashed over the larger ship’s hull, vaporizing armor and occasionally exploding a weapons platform. Despite the fury of their attack, and of the
Chandrilla, Mrlsst
, and
Sullust
in taking down the port shield, the real damage done to
Emperor’s Wisdom
was minimal, leaving the ship more than capable of inflicting serious damage on the New Republic taskforce.

Ackbar’s attention shifted as
Reckoning
and
Decisive
split and began to move forward, their daggerish prows jutting toward the retreating fleet.
Decisive
came in high and off to port, leaving
Emancipator
between it and
Home One. Reckoning
hung back ever so slightly, but sought to insert itself between the two New Republic ships.
Binder
remained behind the both of them, and clouds of fighters swirled and broke like schools of fish in the void around the larger ships.

“Weapons reporting positive weapon locks on
Reckoning
, Admiral.”

Ackbar nodded to his weapons officer. “Fire at will, Lieutenant Colton. Make them all count.”

•   •   •

Corran banked his Defender to starboard, then ruddered around to port to line up for his run on the prison. He unlinked lasers, letting them fire in sequence, then swooped low and leveled out barely five meters above the wall he’d been assigned. His finger tightened on the trigger, pulsing out verdant energy darts. He walked the fire straight down the wall, exploding E-webs, igniting storm-troopers, and sending faster men leaping fifteen meters to the ground.

He held his ship on target on the northeast tower and sent two bolts boiling into the guardpost on top of it. The square little building exploded into a ball of flame, scattering men and equipment. Tugging back on the yoke, he brought the trip up through the fireball, banked to starboard, and started a long loop around the prison’s south end.

“Nine here. North wall is clear, northeast tower is gone.”

“I copy, Nine. Wall defenses seem to be down.”

“Six here, I see a lot of activity on the ground. Stormies and guards.”

Corran glanced down at the prison. He saw a lot of armored individuals milling around in the open area on the western edge of the rectangular compound. The main building ran from north to south, but between it and the southern wall were three smaller buildings which seemed to house plenty of guards. All four corner towers leaked black smoke, and the ruins of heavy blaster emplacements and E-webs on the walls burned, but without troops on the ground, there was nothing to prevent the guards from entering the main building and slaughtering the prisoners.

I promised Jan Dodonna I’d see him and the others freed. I’ve already failed Urlor. I’m not failing them.

“Five, set up strafing runs on the guards. Scatter them. I’m going in.”

“Nine, you can’t.”

“Colonel, I have to. Isard’s people are late or aren’t coming. Someone’s got to go in.”

Tycho remained silent for a moment. “Okay, take Ooryl and Nrin with you.”

“I’ll take Ooryl. Nrin will be more useful up in the sky.”

“You haven’t seen him in a firefight, Nine. He’s with you. Go!”

“Thanks, Five.”

Pulling back on his fighter’s yoke, he brought the Defender back around to the north wall. Swooping down to two meters above the ground, he ruddered around until the trip faced the towering metal doors in the front wall and locked his tractor beam on them. He reversed thrust, then pulsed the throttle to full. The doors bent in the middle and metal screamed as the hinges ripped loose. The doors flew at his ship until he cut the tractor beam, then they rolled across the ground, knocking over streetlamps, pulverizing ferrocrete walkways and curbs, and finally coming to rest on top of a couple of landspeeders that promptly exploded as the great weight compressed their fuel tanks.

Corran set the Defender down and switched the ship into a passworded standby mode. Freeing himself from his restraining belts, he left his command chair, then pulled up the seat, exposing the small storage compartment. He pulled out a blaster carbine and a belt of powerpacks for it, which he looped over his chest from right shoulder to left hip. He also pulled out a fire extinguisher canister, which he flipped over. He unscrewed the bottom and tipped it upright so his grandfather’s lightsaber slid out. He clipped that to his blaster belt at the small of his back, then opened the fighter’s egress hatch. He poked the blaster carbine out first, then pulled himself out of the fighter’s cockpit.