Star Wars: X-Wing I: Rogue Squadron (10 page)

He switched his comm over to the tactical frequency he shared with Tycho. “Everyone green and running, Tycho?”

“Affirmative. Systems are go. There’s been some grumbling about feeding at the pig trough, however.”

“No surprise there. Shifting to Tac-One.”

“I copy.”

Flipping the comm over to the frequency shared by the rest of the squadron, Wedge caught the last of a comment by Rogue Nine, Corran Horn. “… blind, wallowing pigs, and slow.”

“I’m sure, Rogue Nine, your comrades who fly Y-wings will be pleased to know what you think of their ships.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Good.” The unit commander throttled back and fed his repulsorlift generators enough power to counter the moon’s gravity. The reference to
Y-wings, their slow speed and the underpowered nature of their sensors, had been heard in Rebel camps since the earliest days of the fight against the Empire. The B-wings had been developed to counter the flaws with the Y-wing and replace it in service, but production had yet to meet demand, so plenty of Y-wings still saw service.

Their reputation as “wallowing pigs” had led to the naming of the Folor gunnery and bombing range the “pig trough.” Alliance command had originally designated it the “Trench” as a memorial to the pilots who had died running the artificial canyon on the Death Star, but pilots saw no reason to stand on ceremony. Y-wings practiced their bombing runs in the twists and turns of the lunar canyon while fighter pilots preferred the rolling and looping demanded of them in the satellite field circling the moon.

“Today I want you all to do some basic work on the gunnery range. Laser targets have been set up to provide you a number of flying and targeting challenges. Your run will be graded for accuracy and speed, and if you get hit, you’ll lose points. If you suffer an equipment failure, pull out and you’ll get another run after things are fixed. We don’t want to lose you or the equipment, so try not to do anything stupid. Any questions?”

Horn’s voice squawked through the helmet headset. “Sir, our lasers are zeroed at 250 meters, which is a little short for ground attack missions.”

“I guess, then, you’ll have to be very good and very quick in shooting, won’t you, Mr. Horn?”

“Yes, sir.”

Wedge smiled. “Good, then perhaps you’d like to go first. Mr. Qrygg will fly your wing.”

“Yes, sir.” The enthusiasm in Horn’s voice
matched the energy in the roll and dive his X-wing executed. “Shifting to ground attack mode.”

“Good luck, Mr. Horn.” Wedge killed his comm unit. “Mynock, pull a sensor feed from Horn’s R2. Shoot it to Captain Celchu on Tac-Three.” He popped his comm over to Tac-Two. “Captain, you’ll be getting a datafeed from Rogue Nine.”

“It will be interesting to watch. He’s going in hot.”

“That he is, Tycho, very hot. He wants to set a mark the others can’t possibly hit.” Wedge nodded slowly. “I think he needs to get a different lesson today. Here’s what we’ll do …”

Corran pulled out of his dive and skimmed the surface of Folor. He aimed the nose of his snubfighter at the paired mountains that marked the opening of the pig trough. A line of red lights burned on and off in sequence, seeming to send the light from plains to the peaks of the grey mountains. Below him the rough rims of countless craters flashed past.

“Nine, should Ten shift shields forward?”

“Negative, Ten. Even them out. We’ll probably have targets at our backs.” Corran glanced at his datascreen. “Whistler, can you boost my forward sensors? Screen for background formations and pick out what’s anomalous. Yes, yes, take care of your communications link first, but just do it. Thanks.”

After a couple of seconds the astromech droid complied with the request and the image on the datascreen refined itself. The mountains appeared in a light shade of green and likely targets—in this case the lights on the mountains—were translated into red circles that began to blink when he had a clear shot at them. From past experience he knew Whistler
would turn the circles into diamonds if they proved to be hostile.

The fighter shot forward into the trench. Tall, jagged walls rose tall on either side of him. Unlike canyons carved through stone by the relentless flow of water, this one boasted sharp walls that would grind a fighter into dust.
It seems as if I’m flying between teeth, not stones
.

He guided the fighter up over a small rise and then down into a valley where two red circles became diamonds. His cannons tracked left and lit up the first target while laser fire from the Gand hit the second. “Nice shooting, Ten.”

“Ooryl was anxious. Ooryl will wait for clearance to fire in future.”

“Not at all. Two more targets. I’ve got them.” Corran let his fighter drift to the right. “Pick up what I drop.”

“As ordered.”

Corran pulled back on his stick and climbed sharply to get at the first target. He shot it before its laser could depress enough to shoot back at him. Rolling his ship to the left, he moved back to the center of the canyon, then finished the roll with an inside loop that brought him down to target the second diamond. It hit him once before he took it out, but the shot from the target did not penetrate his shields.

Climbing back up, Corran stood the fighter on its right S-foil and arced around a corner in the trench. Coming up to let his sensors read the valley beyond a steep rise, he took laser fire from two bunkers nearly a kilometer distant. He pushed the stick forward and brought the X-wing down to the deck, then worked his way back up to the rise. “I’ve got the one on the port side, you take starboard.”

A brief, high-pitched whistle came through the comm to signal Ooryl’s understanding of the order.

The X-wing streaked over the ridgeline and immediately started taking fire from the target on the left. Corran dipped below it, intending to repeat his steep-climb run from before when Whistler started wailing. A threat light burned in the aft position. “Full shields aft, Whistler!”

Laser bolts shot past the X-wing as Corran jinked to the left. He punched the right rudder pedal, vectoring thrust to kick the tail of his fighter into a bit of a skid to port. Doing that took him out of line with both guns, while allowing him to keep his nose on his intended target. He triggered four bursts of fire, hitting with the second and third.

He rolled the fighter to present its belly to the mountain wall that had housed the gun he’d silenced, then he cut in his repulsorlift generators. They created a field that bounced him off the wall and pushed him back toward the center of the canyon. Rolling back down to starboard, he killed the repulsorlift generators and dove to pick up a little speed. In doing so he came out beneath Ooryl and still had laser bolts popping past him.

Whistler shifted views of the canyon for a moment and showed Corran what had been happening in that section. An emplacement had been located on the reverse slope of the rise. Had Corran not ducked his ship back down when he took fire the first time, his sensors might have picked up its location.

I would have come up, looped, hit it, then rolled out and picked up the right side target. Ooryl could have nailed the left target and we’d have been set
. “Forward view again, Whistler.” Seeing the array of targets upcoming, Corran trimmed his speed back
to allow him more time on target. “It’s going to get busy.”

Whistler hooted something about understatement.

Targets came fast and seemed to get more accurate the deeper he ran into the trench. Corran tapped his lucky charm once, then forced himself to concentrate. He analyzed target locations and plotted angles of attack. Rolling his fighter, diving and climbing, he wove his way through the gunnery course. He didn’t get every target he shot at, but fewer of them hit him.

Two thirds of the way through the course Corran and Ooryl approached another ridge like the one that had hidden a gun position on its back slope. “Drop back, Ten. Let me draw fire from any back slope guns, then you can roll in and nail them.”

A squeal answered him. Corran sailed up over the rim prematurely and snapped a shot off at the guns to the left. Rolling wide to the right, he sideslipped out of fire from below. “Midslope down, Ten.” Without waiting for confirmation Corran corkscrewed his X-wing around and lased the starboard target. The port target still fired at him, but he dove below its line of bolts and cruised farther into the canyon.

“Ooryl got it, Nine.”

“Congrats, Ten.”

Coming around the last sweeping turn Corran saw a narrowing of the canyon down toward the deeper part of it. Above that crevasse four laser targets had a perfect field of fire for blowing any X-wing out of the sky, but they couldn’t shoot down into the split in the rocks. “Whistler, give me the width of the crevasse.”

The droid mournfully reported it was 15 meters
on average, 12.3 meters wide at the most narrow point.

“Good. The walls will cover me.” Behind him, anticipating him, Ooryl had already rolled his X-wing up on its starboard S-foil. Corran smiled and dipped toward the crevasse while keeping his wings parallel to the ground.

“Nine, you need to roll.”

“Negative, Ten. It’s wide enough—a meter to spare on each side.”

“If you go dead down the middle.”

“If I don’t I’ll be
dead
.” Taking a deep breath, Corran focused on an imaginary point about ten meters off the nose of his fighter. He kept his hand gentle on the stick and steered for that point. He kept it in the middle of the crevasse, floating left and right as sections of the wall jutted out from one side or the other.

The choke point closed with him.
Easy, easy
. He drifted to port for a half meter and suddenly the tight spot was behind him without his having left any paint on either side of it. The walls streaked by, black and grey blurred together. Corran found himself steering the ship almost effortlessly. He knew he could have handled the run at full throttle and not had a problem.

It almost feels as if I have kilometers off each S-foil, not a meter or two
. The bright line marking the end of the crevasse yawned open before him.
And now I’ve got targets
.

Swooping up and out of the rock slit, Corran’s X-wing spat fire. He started with the lowest target, hit it squarely with the first shot, then tracked his fire up and to the starboard with a roll and climb. He blasted the second target, then continued his roll until he was inverted. Firing two controlled bursts
got him the third gunnery station and Ooryl, threading Corran’s loop, tagged the last one.

Corran came down, around, and shot past Ooryl as they headed out of the range. Hauling back on the stick, he stood his X-wing on its tail and rocketed away from Folor. Rolling out into a long loop, he traded distance for time and pulled up on Ooryl’s wing as they both headed in toward where the rest of the squadron orbited.

Commander Antilles’s voice filled Corran’s helmet. “Very impressive flying, Mr. Horn. Your score is 3250 out of a possible 5000. Quite good.”

Corran smiled broadly. “Hear that, Whistler? Rogue Leader was impressed.” He activated his comm unit. “Thank you, sir.”

“You can head back to base now, Mr. Horn. Your participation in this exercise is at an end. Consider yourself at liberty for the rest of the day.”

“Yes, sir. Rogue Nine heading home.”

Yeah, I was at
liberty—
liberty to be humiliated
. Muscles bunched at the corners of Corran’s jaw as he ground his teeth. He’d waited in the hangar for the others to come back to base, hoping to hear his mark had stood through the rest of the exercise. He knew he was looking for congratulations on his great flying,
but not in the egotistical way Bror Jace would have been
. He didn’t want to lord it over the others, but he did want to know they thought he was good.

The others had come back in pairs and, for the most part, had tried to avoid him. Lujayne Forge and Andoorni Hui had been the first to return. As he saw their ships come in his smile became broad. He knew he had blown past any score they could set.
They’re good pilots, but I was really flying out there. They couldn’t touch me today
.

Andoorni had remained silent, possibly brooding—but who could tell with Rodians? Lujayne had been almost apologetic. “I got 3300, Corran. Andoorni hit 3750.”

“What?”

Lujayne hesitated, tucking a strand of brown hair behind her left ear. “It was just our day to fly well. You inspired us, really.”

“Inspiring, Horn.” The Rodian’s ears rotated toward him, then back again as Andoorni wandered away.

Lujayne gave him a sympathetic smile. “Want to head to DownTime and get something to eat?” The tone of her voice suggested strongly that he wanted to take her up on her offer to spare himself from what was headed in his direction.

Despite the unspoken warning, he’d shaken his head. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll see you at the tapcafe later.”

Corran continued to wait for the rest of the squadron to return. Peshk Vri’syk and Ooryl came back together. The ruddy-furred Bothan took great delight in reporting a score of 4200. The Gand had been very quiet and when he finally spoke he said, “Qrygg scored 4050.”

That answer told Corran something very strange was going on. In reverting to calling himself by his family name Ooryl had shown himself to be ashamed of his score, but Corran knew he should have been ecstatic about it instead. The fact that Ooryl clearly didn’t want to speak with Corran, and only relented after Corran insisted, meant that whatever Ooryl was ashamed of had to do with Corran.

The others in the squadron didn’t say much of anything except to report their scores. Each pilot had scored better than Corran and most had done so by over 1000 points. That didn’t seem possible to
Corran. He knew he had flown that course as best as he could
.
On subsequent runs I might score up in that range, but not first time out. That’s not possible. Unless …

Corran jogged over to where Whistler had plugged himself into a recharging outlet. “Whistler, at the start of our run, you set up a communications link with someone. Who?”

The droid’s holographic projector began to glow. A miniature image of Wedge Antilles floated between them.