Rogue Squadron (31 page)

His tactical screen still showed nothing in terms of fighter opposition. The base’s shields were down. The operation seemed to be going better than expected and that realization started a cold chill working up Corran’s spine. He knew it was silly for him to feel fear when everything seemed normal, but part of him couldn’t accept the good fortune.

His left hand pressed unconsciously to the medallion he wore.
Things were going this perfectly when my father died. We anticipated trouble, found none, and I relaxed. He died because I relaxed—I watched it happen and I did nothing. I didn’t see it coming, but it did, just like it will here. What is wrong here?

The answer to the question came to him a nanosecond before the first azure ion bolt lanced up from the ground and hit the first assault shuttle. The blue energy snared the
Modaran
and enmeshed it in a web of electrical discharges. Flashes of silvery light marked explosions in the weapons system and engines. With smoke pouring from a dozen hatches, the shuttle began a slow rolling tumble through the atmosphere and the ground below.

It never hit the planet. A full kilometer above the ground it crashed into a renewed energy shield. The shuttle exploded. Bits of debris struck sparks from the shield as they skipped across its surface.

Whistler wailed out a warning. The tactical screen showed multiple fighter contacts heading up out of launch tunnels around the shield dome perimeter. It also reported that while the shield had grown no larger in diameter, its power level was two hundred
percent higher than before, easily half again more powerful than possible, given the power generation estimates in the briefings.
All that and ion cannons, too
.

“Control,” Wedge ordered, “pull the transports out, now!”

“Rogue Leader, you have multiple fighters. Two squadrons, eyeballs and squints.”

“Got them, Control. Rogue Squadron, keep the Imps off the shuttles.”

Corran shook his head. “Seven shuttles, two dozen Imps, and eleven X-wings. Piece of
ryshcate.
”

Whistler’s mournful keen matched Corran’s feelings more than his words. He keyed his comm. “Three Flight, hang together. Squints are coming our way.”

“Ooryl has them, Nine.”

Andoorni likewise reported in. “Twelve has acquired targets.”

Corran punched up a graph and had it overlaid on the track of the incoming Interceptors.
Coming at us rather obliquely. Their funeral
. “Three Flight, switch to proton torpedoes and lock a target in. If they want to play …”

A trio of ion blasts shot up from the planet’s surface. One sliced in at Three Flight, cutting through the vector the squints should have been using to engage the X-wings. The second hit the
Emancipator
and played out over it like a thunderstorm on a prairie. The third lanced up at one of the shuttles, but never reached its target. Corran saw the blast diffuse ever so slightly, as if it had hit a shield, but its dissipating ball left no debris behind.

“Two, report.”

Dead air answered Wedge’s call.

“Rogue Leader, we have no contact with Rogue Two.”

Damn, Peshk caught that one. He’s gone
.

“Full evasive, Rogues. Control, get the shuttles dancing.”

“Stay alert, Three Flight.” Corran’s aiming reticle went red and a target-lock tone filled his ears. He tightened on the trigger and launched a torpedo at an approaching Interceptor. Switching to lasers, he linked all four, then picked another target. As his torpedo hit the first, he flashed into range on the second and let it have a full burst of laser fire.

The glare of lasers against his shields hid the results of his shooting, but Whistler reported one Interceptor destroyed and another damaged. In seconds he shot past the line of Interceptors, then hauled back on his stick, rolled, and dove back in at them. The squints, reduced from eight to six, split up into flight elements and moved to engage single X-wings. As two started to circle around toward him, Corran inverted, dove, and came back up and around to go head-to-head with them.

He boosted power to his forward shields, then pulled a snap-roll that stood the X-wing on its port S-foil. That narrowed his profile and allowed the first volley of laser fire from the squints to pass on either side of himself. At the last second he selected a proton torpedo and let it fly at point-blank range. Even though it never got a solid target lock, it nailed the lead TIE dead on and tore it apart.

Corran nudged the stick and shot through the center of the fiery explosion. Clear on the other side he lost the Interceptor’s wingman, but a more immediate problem captured his attention. “Twelve, break to port, now!”

Andoorni’s X-wing juked left, but the squint riding her exhaust stayed with her.

“Break harder, Twelve. Climb.”

“Not do. Lateral stabilizer gone.”

“Weave, Twelve.”

The Rodian started her X-wing in the corkscrew maneuver and the Interceptor’s first shots went wide of their mark. Then the aft end of the ship came back around and the squint’s fire ripped up through the engines. Fire blossomed on the right side of the ship, shredding the S-foils. A second later the whole fighter shook and its skin split from the inside out. Argent flames burst free, converting the ship into a miniature sun, then the roiling ball of gas collapsed into its own black hole.

Bloodlessly Corran vaped Andoorni’s killer. Part of him wanted to cheer at having exacted revenge for her, but he overrode those emotions. He could no more allow himself to luxuriate in the death of an Imp than he could afford to mourn his comrade. There would be time for that later—
if there is a later
. Anything that distracted him from the job at hand would kill him, so he pushed it all away and concentrated on the battle around him.

“Three Flight, shuttle
Devonian
has four Interceptors inbound.”

“Ooryl copies, Control. Ooryl has them.”

“I’m on your back door, Ten.”

The Interceptors had re-formed into two flights and had selected one of the assault shuttles as a target. Ooryl brought his X-wing in behind the lead pair and throttled back to match their speed.

“Ooryl using torpedoes.”

“Shoot straight, Ten.”

The TIEs broke formation and split out in four directions. “Ten, go to lasers, they must have lock-threat warning systems.” A fighter with that equipment would provide the pilot with an indicator light when another ship had a torpedo lock on him. By jinking sharply it was possible to break the lock before the torpedo was launched. The Interceptor pilots
ahead of them clearly knew their business. Only very good pilots survive to become veterans in TIEs, making them far deadlier than the pilots the Rogues had yet faced.

Corran rolled the X-wing up on the starboard stabilizers and started the long turn that would bring him in behind one of the squints. Whistler anxiously hooted a warning about another Interceptor moving to swing onto Corran’s tail, but the pilot did nothing to lose the fighter. He pressed his attack, sharpening the arc of his turn to trim distance from his target.

Whistler became more insistent and Corran smiled. “Kill thrust.” As the droid complied with that order, Corran punched the right rudder pedal with his foot. That swung the aft end of his ship up, a maneuver that further corrected his course for the ship in front of him. It also provided a tantalizing broadside shot for the squint following him.

“Counterthrust, now.”

Whistler brought the engines back up to power as the X-wing’s aft completed its 180-degree arc. The engines thrust against the line of the ship’s flight, effectively killing its momentum and, for a split second, freezing it in space. For the barest of moments it lay dead in the sights of the Interceptor.

But the Interceptor pilot had already begun his roll and turn to keep his guns trained on where the X-wing
should
have been. Corran feathered his left rudder pedal and tracked the nose of his fighter along the squint’s flight path. The quad lasers loosed two bursts of red darts that perforated the port wing and stabbed through the cockpit.

That Interceptor slowly spiraled out of control. More ion bursts from the planet coursed through the dogfight. The
Emancipator
took two more hits and the
Mon Valle
took another. Corran didn’t see
any more fighters get hit, nor shuttles, but a string of green laser bolts slicing across his flight path distracted him.

“Ooryl hit!”

Corran punched the throttle and whipped the X-wing up and over in time to see his wingman’s ship break apart. “Ooryl!”

The X-wing disintegrated. The engine pods spun off in different directions and the cockpit canopy exploded into a million glittering fragments. He saw Ooryl float free of the stricken ship, and saw the Gand wave his arms. Corran hoped it was more than random reflex, then a piece of the fighter’s S-foils sliced through the pilot’s right arm, taking it off above the elbow. The body began to tumble through space, but it remained otherwise unmoving.

“Control, Ten is extra-vehicle. Get someone down here to get him.”

“Nine,
Emancipator
reports the zone is too hot for rescue operations.”

“Convince them, Control.”

Wedge’s voice came on to the frequency. “Control, I have Three and Eight EV. We need help here.”

“I’m on it, Rogue Leader. It’ll be done.”

Three and Eight, that’s Nawara and Erisi! Two dead and three more out of the fight
.

A new voice came through Corran’s headset. “Control here, Rogues. Good news: Your rescue’s on the way. Bad news: We have two squadrons of squints coming in from planetary north. ETA two minutes. Shuttles are heading to hyperspace now.”

Corran watched as the assault shuttles started the runs to light speed. The
Corulag
had already vanished, as had the Y-wings, leading the way out of disaster. Two ion blasts caught the
Mon Valle
, stopping it dead in space. The
Eridain
was beginning to move and the
Emancipator
had begun to drift toward
planetary north but, in doing so, oriented itself for entry into hyperspace as if Admiral Ragab could not decide whether he was going to run or fight.

Run. No reason to stick here
.

A sharp whistle from his astromech made Corran invert his ship and dive. A pair of squints flashed past, then one exploded as Rogue Four shot by on its tail.

“Thanks, Four.”

“Thanks for playing bait, Nine.”

The remaining TIEs broke away and headed toward the incoming fighters flying over the planet’s polar cap. “Do we pursue, Rogue Leader?”

“Negative, screen our people until pickup.”

Corran keyed his comm. “Rogue Leader, two squadrons of squints against a half dozen of us is going to be ugly.”

“Nine, if you can’t handle your four, I’ll take them.”

Corran ignored Bror’s jibe.

“Trim it, Rogues. We’re here protecting our own.” Wedge’s voice carried a confidence with it that buoyed Corran’s spirits. “Focus on your mission and let the rest take care of itself.”

“Control to Rogues. Squint ETA is thirty seconds. EV Three is recovered.”

Corran smiled and looked up. In the distance he could see the white triangular hull of the
Forbidden
motionless in space. The pilot had brought the ship in close to where Nawara Ven had been floating, then used a rescue tractor beam to pull the pilot inside the emergency hatch in the hull.

The Corellian brought his X-wing up and around, then flew toward where Ooryl hung in space. “Ten is here,
Forbidden
.”

“Thanks, Nine, I have the coordinates. On my way.”

Corran blinked.
That’s Tycho’s voice
. “Cap, is that you?”

“Guilty, Ten. You have four squints closing on your position. Deal with them before I get there, please.”

“You got it.” Corran shivered. The only thing he could think of that was more stupid than engaging four Interceptors with a single X-wing was flying an unarmed shuttle into a hot zone to pick up pilots. A smile slowly crept across his face.
It’s only stupid if we die doing it, otherwise it’s heroism
. “And I can be a hero today.”

Corran jumped his throttle full forward and shunted laser energy into his engines. That pushed his speed up toward maximum. Adjusting the stick and tapping the pedals he made his ship jump, cut, and dive. He flipped his weapons over to torpedoes and tried to get a lock on the lead squint, but it juked out of his sights. The others took shots at him, but his evasive maneuvers made them miss.

His fighter flew past them and two of the Interceptors started loops to come after him. Their turns took them high and away as they throttled up to match his speed. Increasing their speed meant their loops became wider than they might have preferred.
They outnumber us enough that being a bit sloppy can’t hurt
.

Corran chopped his throttle back to half and pulled his X-wing through a tight turn. “
Forbidden
, paint one with a missile lock.”

Punching the throttle full forward, Corran shot his ship back along the vector that had carried him through the squint formation. One of the Interceptors broke off on its run at the shuttle, so Corran concentrated on the other. He centered the ship in his aiming reticle and waited until he got a missile
lock. When the reticle turned red, he hit the trigger and sent a proton torpedo speeding out toward the Interceptor.

The Interceptor pilot juked up and starboard, which pulled him out of the shuttle’s forward firing arc. While that maneuver would have carried him away from any torpedo the shuttle had launched, Corran’s missile had to make little more than a minor course correction before it hit. The torpedo cored through the Interceptor’s ball and exploded, spitting shrapnel out in all directions from an incandescent cloud.

Knowing he was pushing his luck, Corran rolled the X-wing and dove after the first Interceptor the
Forbidden
had scared off. Throttling back he tightened a turn and came up inside the arc of the squint’s loop. With a flick of his thumb he snapped weapons control over to lasers. The squint began to juke and twist, but Corran stayed with him.