Solo Command (25 page)

“If you look straight up, you can see the sky brightening. All these trees and the buildings beyond keep the early-morning light from reaching us,” Squeaky said.

Chewbacca stretched, making loud tendon-popping noises, and rumbled something.

“Well, yes, since we don’t have any light in our eyes, I could have let you sleep a few more minutes,” Squeaky said. “But I was under the impression that the commander here wanted to
know when dawn was. Because as soon as it’s day, the more likely it is we get seen. Or hadn’t that thought penetrated the mass of fur shielding your brain from outside stimulus?”

Grumble.

“Well, yes, technically, it is light rather than chronological markers for daytime that make it more likely we’ll be seen, but my point still holds—”

“Quiet,” Wedge said. “We may have something.”

On his sensor screen, a small blip had just crossed, in a straight line, a portion of this belt of forest about a kilometer to their south. It had looped around and was now crossing the same forest a hundred meters or so north of its last passage. As they watched, it completed this crossing and looped back again.

“A search grid?” Squeaky suggested.

“Yes. But it’s the only vehicle doing that in the area. So there’s not a concerted search going on.” Wedge read the text register on his sensor board. The vehicle was tentatively identified as a sort of high-altitude floater routinely used by police forces on Imperial worlds. “Probably just a routine flyover of his territory. He should be here in about fifteen minutes.” He dialed down the broadcast power of his comm unit and activated it. “Two?”

“I see it, Leader.”

“Just checking. Begin your preflight preparations. Out.” He brought the comm system up to full power and selected an encryption code, then transmitted one phrase: “In the green.”

A moment later, he received an answer, encrypted the same way. “Two lit.” Kell’s voice.

“Drake Squadron is getting ready,” Wedge said. “Now we wait for the locals to flush us.”

10

In the graying hour of dawn, the police floater heeled over so far that Wedge was certain that its pilot would tumble out of his seat if not for strap restraints and the vehicle’s bubble top. The pilot looked down at the
Millennium Falsehood
, reached for his control board as if to activate his comm system, then spotted Tycho’s X-wing.

Even with the distance between them, Wedge could read the shock on the pilot’s face. “Let’s go,” he said.

Rogue Two’s nose elevated until the X-wing was pointed almost straight up, and then Tycho kicked in his main thrusters, shooting the snubfighter into the air straight past the police floater. He missed the smaller vehicle by less than two meters. The police pilot unnecessarily slid sideways to get clear of the X-wing’s passage.

Wedge duplicated Tycho’s maneuver, putting the
Falsehood
into a steep climb. Above, he could see the glow of Tycho’s engines. “Chewie, the comm system is yours,” he said.

Chewbacca activated the comm unit. He grumbled and roared into it across an open channel. By agreement with Wedge, these would be insults and curses in the Wookiee’s language.

The
Falsehood
reached the altitude of the top of this sector’s highest buildings. Wedge leveled off, still traveling in Tycho’s
wake, a sharp maneuver that brought a startled exclamation from Squeaky … followed by a clatter of metal on metal.

“Forget to strap in?” Wedge asked.

“I never forget anything, sir,” the 3PO unit said, his tone a bit miffed. “I merely failed to add ‘strapping in’ to my list of things to do. Could you hold her level for a moment?”

“No.” Wedge sideslipped to go around an aggressively tall skyscraper. There was another clash and scrape of metal from behind. Tycho rejoined Wedge from the other side of the skyscraper, his X-wing dancing around the Corellian freighter with the nimbleness only a starfighter could manage.

Chewbacca grumbled something and indicated the sensor board. Wedge spared it a glance. It showed a lot of air traffic, most of it moving in what appeared to be patterns unrelated to the
Falsehood’
s flight. One group of signals, their number indeterminate because of their proximity to one another, followed in their wake at a distance of more than two kilometers; they faded in and out of the picture as they dipped down below the level of ground clutter and emerged at intervals. “That’s Kell and the Drakes,” Wedge said. “We still need to be sure we’ve been spotted by the world authority—”

A strong signal, a blur representing six or more starfighters, appeared to the north, closing fast.

“There we go,” Wedge said. “Let’s bounce out.”

Tycho said, “Consider it bounced.” His X-wing vectored straight for space.

“Oh, no,” Squeaky said.

Wedge hauled back on the controls and the
Falsehood
followed.

Kell saw Tycho and the
Falsehood’
s sudden flight for space, and the signals from the distant pursuers just as abruptly showed altitude gains. He put his interceptor in an upward course—a near-intercept course aimed at a point not far behind the pursuers of the
Falsehood
.

As they climbed, he got a clearer look at the group behind the
Falsehood
. It was a full squadron, identified by the sensors
as TIE fighters. They’d be on the top of Wedge and Tycho pretty soon, certainly before the
Falsehood
left the atmosphere.

“Drake Squadron, this is Kidriff Primary Control. Please disengage pursuit of official government forces. This is an internal matter.”

“Kay Pee See, this is Drake One. We’ve been hoping to evaluate your pilots. Rumor rates them pretty high. Shall I go back and tell the admiral that you wouldn’t let us?”

“That’s affirmative, Drake One. Break off pursuit now or we’ll have to view your action as a hostile one. We’ll apologize very sweetly to the admiral and your survivors.”

Kell cursed. Not every aspect of Kidriff security was sloppy. He put all discretionary power to thrust and gained even faster on the
Falsehood’
s pursuers.

Just as the air thinned to the point that the stars shone with brilliant, unblinking clarity, the first laser blast sizzled past the Corellian freighter’s port side. “A long-distance shot,” Wedge said.

Tycho’s voice came back, “Easy to hit a flying bathtub like the one you’re driving even with a long-distance shot. Permission to engage?”

“Not yet. Wait until it gets complicated.” Wedge spared a moment to look at his sensors. The squadron of TIEs was only a kilometer back. Kell’s Drakes were only half a klick behind them and closing fast. And a new signal was on the board—a second full squad of TIEs from the ground base. It was going to get complicated soon.

Moments later, a shot hit the rear shields. On the sensors, Wedge saw two wingpairs of TIE fighters peel off and curve around toward Kell’s group. “That’s it,” Wedge said. “Rogue Two, you are free to engage. Chewie, you have the controls.” He unbelted and moved aft.

“Sir?” said Squeaky. “You’re not leaving this disagreeable ball of hair in charge of a whole ship? Sir?”

Wedge clambered into the upper gunport turret and powered up. His targeting grid immediately lit up with glows, most
of them red—enemies. Two were out ahead of the others, firing as they came, probably aiming to overtake the freighter, turn, and fire from ahead, forcing Chewbacca to adjust the ship’s shields on a constant basis.

The first of the lead TIE fighters shot past, firing; a laser hit rocked the ship. Wedge let that one go, but timed its passage, then sent his gun turret swinging in its wake even before the second TIE reached him. That TIE flashed through his crosshairs and he fired.

The TIE erupted in a ball of expanding gases. And abruptly Rogue Two was darting out from beneath the freighter, tucking into the lead TIE fighter’s wake, firing quad-linked lasers. The TIE pilot, having lost sight of the X-wing on his sensor board, having assumed he was too far laterally for the
Falsehood’
s guns to track him, wasn’t maneuvering. Tycho’s lasers chewed through his port solar wing and he tumbled—an uncontrolled roll that, if he were not rescued soon, might never end.

Two down. Twenty-two to go. Wedge reset and waited.

“Keep it slow,” Kell said, “and keep it sluggish until we break. Remember, we’re supposed to be hyperspace-equipped, less maneuverable—they’ll already have been told what they’re facing.” He sent his TIE interceptor into a comparatively gentle westward curve, drawing two of the fighters above into his wake, and was pleased to see Elassar mimicking his move. Janson and Shalla curved off eastward equally lazily.

His sensor system shrilled, indicating an enemy laser lock, and he shouted “Now!” and cut hard to starboard. A green laser blast illuminated space where he’d been just a moment before, and two TIE fighters followed the blast, caught off guard. They began their turn, but Kell continued his ferocious maneuver, feeling his chest compress as the interceptor’s inertial compensator failed to keep up entirely with the g-forces he was generating.

His targets swung into view from the right side of his viewport. They, too, were now curving to starboard, but he’d caught them off guard, and had the advantage of a few seconds
of controlled maneuvering. The leftmost of them jittered in his targeting brackets. He let it go—that was the easier target, and that was for his wingman. The second TIE now crossed into his targeting bracket and jittered, sign of a laser lock.

He fired. His green lasers bit into the TIE’s fuselage where it glowed brightest.

Suddenly the TIE’s engines glowed much brighter. Smoke and sparks emerged. The fighter banked to port and down, toward the planet’s surface. As more and more sparks emerged, it looked like nothing so much as an artificial comet heading for its final resting place.

The second TIE was still intact. It continued looping around to starboard, cutting its maneuver more tightly than Kell could, and was now well out of his targeting brackets.

Then a barrage of lasers struck the fighter from Kell’s left. The shots tore through its left solar wing array, turning the wing into a mess of shrapnel, then marching across to the fuselage. The fighter detonated, hurling speeder bike-sized pieces of itself in Kell’s path. He juked around the closest of them and reswallowed his stomach.

Who’d fired that shot? He checked his sensors. “Drake Two? Where were you?”

“Sorry, Drake One.” Elassar’s voice was sheepish. “When you broke to starboard, I made a mistake and broke to port. I had to loop around to rejoin you.”

Kell shuddered. His wingman had been gone for those long seconds, and his rear had been unprotected. He’d talk to Elassar about it later. “Nice shooting, Drake Two. Let’s rejoin General Solo,” he added for the benefit of the planetary listeners who would someday soon crack this set of broadcast encryptions.

“Yes, sir.” Sensors showed Drake Two coming up in his wake, and Drake Three and Drake Four returning to the primary course with their targets now off the screen. But the second group of TIEs was much closer.

That trick, pretending to be heavily laden with hyper-drives, wouldn’t work a second time, Kell knew. But it had helped even the odds. That was good enough for now.

•    •    •

Another TIE had fallen victim to Wedge’s guns by the time the leader of the first TIE squadron got smart. The five remaining TIEs drifted out of the engagement zone and dropped back toward the intact squadron that was rapidly catching up.

Wedge deployed the Drakes behind him in two pairs and kept Tycho between them, giving him a five-pointed shield of fighters to his aft. They were well clear of the atmosphere now, outbound toward the planet’s primary moon, but the remaining squad and a half of TIEs was gaining rapidly. “Chewie? How are we doing?”

He received a long set of rumbling commentary in reply.

“Squeaky?”

“He says, in his almost preverbal fashion, that the shields are holding, but the relays that permit adjustment of the shields are, as he puts it, ‘twitchy.’ He thinks some of them may fail if he continues shunting power between them.”

“Wonderful. All right, Chewbacca, put them in their default settings. We go with fixed shields for now.”

Another long-range shot struck the
Falsehood
, rocking the freighter. Wedge heard mechanical crashes as something was jarred loose from a corridor housing. “Break and fire at will,” he said, and saw his escort move out and prepare to engage the enemy again.

Then there was a sensor signal from ahead of the
Falsehood
—a big, complicated signal. And red lasers flashed from ahead, all around the freighter, into the ranks of the pursuing TIE fighters.

Chewbacca rumbled something.

“He knows that, you walking dirt trap. It’s the Rogues and the Wraiths.”

On Lara’s sensor screen, the cloud of TIE fighters suddenly became bigger, more diffuse, then resolved itself into seven wingpairs and one trio of starfighters.

“Group, this is Rogue Nine.” She could almost recognize Corran Horn’s vocal characteristics in the comm-distorted words. “Remember not to fire on the interceptors. They’re
Wraiths, and they might cry. S-foils to attack position. Break by pairs and fire at will.”

Face immediately rose relative to the plane of their flight, heading up and away from the centerline of the conflict to come. He also decelerated, dropping behind the rest of the group. Confused, Lara stayed tucked in behind his starboard. “Wraith One? Two. What’s our tactic?”

Face was a moment in replying. “You’ll see,” he said.

The other Rogues and Wraiths fired, a column of red lasers that passed harmlessly around the
Falsehood
and her escort but with less delicacy through the oncoming TIEs. Lara saw one fighter ignite and blow apart.

But Face held his fire and so did she.

A moment later, she thought she understood. The screens of TIEs and X-wings crossed, with pairs of starfighters maneuvering wildly to get behind one another. A pair of X-wings shot out of the flurry of activity with a pair of TIEs in close pursuit. Face angled toward them and accelerated, diving opportunistically toward them, and opened fire. His shots caused the TIE fighter to spook and pull away from its prey, but Lara’s laser fire was more accurate—her concentrated fire punched through the TIE fighter’s top hatch. There was no explosion, but the thin atmosphere in the fighter vented and the starfighter went into straight-line flight, out and away from the engagement zone.