Wedge's Gamble (39 page)

His hand on the stick, the Z-95 Headhunter cruising through the duracrete canyons of Coruscant, Corran Horn felt more alive and free than all the soaring hawk-bats on the planet. He would have much preferred to be flying his X-wing, and he felt awkward flying into combat without Whistler backing him up, but flying again made him happy enough that he could forgive Whistler his absence.
No place for him in this Headhunter anyway
.

The Headhunter suffered in comparison with the X-wing. It lacked the maneuverability and speed of the X-wing, though the shields and hull had the same integrity. The Headhunter did not have hyperdrives and, consequently, did not need an R2 unit. The Headhunter’s
triple blasters and concussion missiles were not the equal of the X-wing’s four laser cannons and proton torpedo launchers but they didn’t exactly leave him defenseless, either.

Against the Imperial starfighters he’d be facing the Headhunter had the potential to be troublesome—both for him and them. In atmosphere the TIEs lost some of their maneuverability. Their lack of shields made them vulnerable to his attacks, but the fact that they’d be swarming meant being able to stay with one long enough to kill it would be difficult. Locking in on one target would make him a target.

He glanced down at his sensor display. “Hunt Leader here. I have twelve, that is one-two, starfighters coming in on the droid. Time to engagement is thirty seconds. Shoot straight and call for help.”

Corran got a series of acknowledgments over the comm. Pulling back on his stick he started the Z-95 climbing. Pushing the throttle full forward he rocketed up like a ship intent on escaping the planet. A quartet of TIE starfighters came up after him but before they could close to range and start shooting, he rolled the Headhunter to starboard. The fighter came up and over, then dove back in the direction from which the TIEs had come.

Halfway through the dive, he pulled the fighter through a 180-degree snap-roll left, then swooped out in a long glide that brought him in over the construction droid and into the rest of the TIEs. He spitted the leader on his targeting crosshairs and gave it two bursts of blaster fire. The dozen energy darts stippled the eyeball with hits. It began a lazy roll that ended abruptly as it slammed into a tower and exploded.

The pilot of the next TIE followed his leader through the roll, clearly not realizing one of Corran’s shots had pierced the cockpit and killed the pilot. He tried to pull up and away at the last second. His hexagonal port wing clipped the corner of the tower and sent the TIE into a corkscrew spin that spiraled down into a fiery explosion deep in a dark canyon.

Standing the Headhunter on its port S-foils, Corran added enough left rudder to snap the ship into a dive past the construction droid. He pointed the fighter’s nose straight at the bottom of the urban trench and started down. He chopped his throttle back to zero and used the stick to roll his ship until the canyon stretched to infinity off each wing, but crowded him above and below.

Two TIEs dove after him and closed fast. Corran made minor adjustments on his position, forcing them to stick with him to target him. Their first shots missed, sending green energy lances down to flare brightly in the darkness, but they began to get better. Then they got close enough that they hit his aft shield, prompting him to take action.

He rolled the Headhunter ninety degrees to port, hemming himself in on either wing, then he pulled back on the stick. At the same time he punched all the power being generated by his engines into the repulsorlift drive. The Headhunter’s nose popped up, leveling him out a hundred meters above the canyon’s bottom. Momentum from the dive kept him going forward and away from the TIEs.

One eyeball pilot made a serious mistake by not rolling before he tried to follow the Headhunter. His maneuver was intended to bring the TIE around in a sharp, right-angle turn—a maneuver that would have worked in the vacuum of space and placed him right on Corran’s tail with a killing shot. In atmosphere, however, the maneuver brought his starboard wing around in direct opposition to his previous line of flight. The hexagonal panel snapped, with the top half sheering through the ship’s ball cockpit. Still going full out, the TIE fighter hammered the ground and exploded.

The second TIE pilot rolled first, then swooped in after Corran’s Headhunter. The speed of the dive forced the pilot into a wider turn than he clearly wanted. The lower edges of his wings struck sparks from the duracrete street. Fighting inertial forces, the pilot did everything he could
to make his fighter climb. Finally the ship began to win in its battle with gravity and began to come up.

Up into one of the numerous walkways connecting one building with another. The TIE plowed into a central portion of the span, splintering the permacrete section it hit. The fighter exploded, shattering windows and sowing shrapnel throughout the area.

Reversing thrust and applying some rudder, Corran brought the fighter around in an end for end swap that left him looking at the fires burning in his wake.
Not a bad start, four down, but it’s only a start
. He eased the throttle forward and started a gentle climb to the unobstructed reaches of Coruscant’s atmosphere. He glanced at the shipboard chronometer and fuel gauge.

“Fifteen minutes to get the shields down and a half hour of flying time. That’s forever if we succeed and little more than a heartbeat if we do not.”

Wedge’s comlink buzzed at him. “Antilles here, go ahead.”

“Tycho here. We have a problem—gas in the computer center. We need Emtrey. Now.”

“I copy.” He looked up at Mirax. “Will this thing keep going by itself?”

She nodded. “The droid will stop at the outer edge of the computer center if”—she pointed at external view monitors showing TIEs on strafing runs—“they don’t stop it first.”

“If we can leave this thing alone, they need us in the computer center.”

Mirax held her hands up. “Let’s go.”

Iella led the way back into the entryway. She started to push the door open, then quickly ducked back. A spray of blaster bolts dotted the interior of the door with burn marks.

Wedge ran over to where she sat on the floor. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“What was that?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t see clearly but given the size of those burn marks I’d say some stormtroopers have an E-web heavy blaster set up on one of the nearby towers. They’ve got the door covered and covered well.” Iella shrugged. “Unless we get some help, we’re going to be stuck here for the rest of our lives.”

42

Gavin’s stomach began to fold in on itself as he heard Wedge’s voice come out of the comlink. “Sorry, Tycho, we’re pinned down here. Unless we get some help, we’re going nowhere.”

“I copy, Wedge.” Tycho looked over at Gavin. “You and I will go see if we can help them out.”

Ooryl raised a three-fingered hand. “Ooryl …”

Tycho shook his head. “I want you here to help Inyri guard Winter. The kid and I will go.”

The Gand nodded, then his mouth parts snapped open. “Ooryl does not question your orders, Captain. Ooryl merely wants to know how this Fex-M3d works.”

Winter slowly straightened up. “You breathe it in, it gets into your bloodstream and binds to neuroreceptors, preventing nerves from passing information. If you get a strong enough dose your autonomie nervous system shuts down and you stop breathing. You suffocate.”

The Gand’s mouth parts closed again. “Ooryl understands. If you will all back down this hallway, Ooryl will open the door, open the interior case, and bring you back respirators.”

Gavin’s jaw shot open. “But you’ll die.”

The Gand shook his head. “Ooryl does not respire.”

Inyri blinked. “What?”

Ooryl tapped his chest. “Gands do not respire.”

“But you talk.”

“Yes, Inyri Forge, but respiration is not required for speech. Ooryl’s body has a muscular gas bladder that allows Ooryl to, among other things, draw in gases and expel them at a controlled rate through pieces of Gand exoskeleton that vibrate and approximate speech. Ooryl gets the metabolic ingredients Ooryl needs through ingestion, not respiration. Fex-M3d will not affect Ooryl.”

Tycho thought for a moment, then nodded. “Here’s what we’ll do. Ooryl will wait here until we retreat. Inyri, you’ll turn the airspeeder around and bring the engine up. Point the exhaust jets down this hallway and we can use them to push the freed Fex-M3d deeper into the building.”

“It will also point the airspeeder in the right direction for our escape.”

“Good point, Inyri.” Tycho looked over at Gavin. “Depending upon how many masks there are in the room, you and Inyri may have to wait outside. If there are enough, we all go down and hold the center.”

“Got it.”

Tycho slapped the Gand on the arm. “Wait until we get clear, then go.”

“Ooryl understands.”

Gavin retreated with the others. They sealed themselves inside the airspeeder. Inyri brought it up and around, giving Gavin a good view of the firefights going on outside. TIE fighters swooped and dove. Green laser bolts flashed through the sky thick and furious. Countless burn marks scored the flanks and front of the construction droid, yet it loomed ever larger as it came on toward them.

Winter twisted around in the seat. “He’s in.”

Gavin turned to look. The room’s door appeared open. A greenish-yellow mist rolled out and carpeted the hallway in haze. The airspeeder’s exhaust pushed it farther
down the hallway, but there always seemed to be more of it pouring from the computer center.

The sharp report of an explosion brought all eyes forward again. A pair of blurred Headhunters raced past, flying through a collapsing ball of fire and debris. More laser bolts poured in at the construction droid, but there was no sign they had any effect on the titanic machine. And as bad as things looked in the air outside it, the cold efficiency of the way the droid dismembered the building in front of it was even worse. Their vantage point let the Rogues peer into the construction droid’s maw and Gavin imagined what he saw to be the vision seen by billions of Alderaanians before their world exploded.

A thump on the hood of the airspeeder made Gavin jump and bang his head on the roof. He hunched down and rubbed his head. “Emperor’s bones!”

Outside the Gand looked surprised, then held up four masks. “Ooryl has been successful.”

Tycho reached forward from the back seat and patted Gavin on the shoulder. “Ready to go?”

“Sure. Maybe I can get a light dose of the gas and it’ll slow my heart.” Gavin got out of the airspeeder and pulled his mask on. It immediately felt hot on his face, but he tugged on the straps, fitting it tightly to his face. He took his comlink from his jacket lapel and snapped it into the receptacle near his right ear.

“I’m set, Tycho.”

The Alderaanian Captain gave him a nod. “Come on, then. Let’s go see if we can make it rain.”

As Corran’s Headhunter came up through the towers he caught Wedge’s message to Tycho. “Hunter Lead here, Commander. Got a problem?”

“Seems so, Corran. Tower east of us has an E-web trained on us.”

“Collateral targets?”

“Don’t know, but the building should be evacuated except for troops. Get them gone.”

“As ordered. Stand by.” Corran throttled the black and gold fighter up and aimed for the stars. Before he got there, but after he had left the towers of Coruscant behind, he came up on his starboard wing and started to circle. From up there it was relatively easy to spot the stream of fire coming from a nearby cylindrical tower and lancing out at the construction droid.

Corran extended his loop and let it take him over and around the computer center. He dove and leveled out, coming in on the tower while running parallel to the construction droid’s course. He shot past the droid and came up slightly. Heavy blaster fire lanced out at the construction droid from the tower. Corran let loose with a quick burst of fire, raking it across the side of the building.

His flight took him past his target, so he started to turn around again when fire came at him from the building. The blaster bolts splashed harmlessly against his rear shield, but Corran immediately rolled the Headhunter and turned back away from the side of the building he’d attacked. He leveled out, then dove and came around on a new attack vector. He switched his weapons’ control over to concussion missiles, linked two, then climbed up over the construction droid’s blocky outline.

His crosshairs settled on the genesis of the red stream directed against Wedge’s droid. He got no target lock—an E-web and stormtrooper crew didn’t conform to any target profile in the Headhunter’s combat computer. Regardless, when he hit the trigger, two blue missiles streaked out and hit dead on target.

An argent explosion blew through that floor of the cylinder. The silvery disk spread out through the entire level and beyond, incinerating most of what was in there and scattering the rest of it out over the city. Yet, even for all that violence, the concussion missiles failed to damage the structural supports, leaving the tower intact above and below the level where little fires burned brightly in the night.

Corran keyed his comm unit. “Will that do it for you, Commander?”

“Thanks, Corran. We’re leaving to see some friends.”

“I copy. Want an escort?”

“If you’ve got nothing better to do.”

Corran smiled. “At your leisure, sir, I live to serve.”

Gavin had positioned himself so he could watch the door and still see what Winter was doing from the corner of his eye. Once they’d gotten into the room she’d plugged her datapad into the computer console and very quickly had a representation of Coruscant floating above her workstation. Her fingers flew over the keys and suddenly small cubes appeared to float around the world arranged in three rings. One circled the equator while the other two split the distance between the equator and the poles.

Seeming as insectoid as a Verpine because of the mask she wore, Winter nodded to Tycho. “These are the Orbital Solar Energy Transfer Satellites.” She pointed to a glowing red dot riding just above the equator. “This is our target. It’s night here now, but several orbital mirrors are high enough to give us what we need.”