The droid complied and Corran caught a flash of something moving back there. Whatever it was, it managed to use terrain features to mask itself fairly well. A shiver ran down Corran’s spine.
Even though this mission is off all screens back in the New Republic, is it possible we’ve been betrayed?
Corran keyed his comm unit. “Okay, Rogues, throttle up. We’re going to half power and going to bounce over that ridge. Ten and Eleven, keep going to the target. Twelve, we reverse throttle on the other side, drop to ground, and watch to see what’s coming after us. We’ll burn it if we need to.”
“As ordered, Nine.”
The quartet of fighters picked up speed and climbed up the far ridgeline and then over. Corran chopped his thrust back, then reversed it and killed his forward momentum. The X-wing began to drop from the sky, so he cut in his repulsor-lift coils and bounced to a stop a meter and a half above the
ground. He nudged the fighter over into a small gully and saw Inyri’s fighter go to ground about twenty meters to his port side. In the distance he saw Ooryl and Asyr cruising along and down into a pass that would take them north.
Then, from back over the ridgeline, came four TIE Interceptors. They screamed past nearly fifteen meters overhead, correcting to follow the two X-wings into the pass. Corran saw no markings on them, and the scanner data didn’t identify them as hostile.
For all I know those are a bunch of kids out flying around in surplus Interceptors.
Then one of the Interceptors burned a green laser bolt through the air at Ooryl’s vanishing X-wing.
I guess that settles that.
Corran immediately dropped his crosshairs on one of the Interceptors and thumbed his weapons-control over to proton torpedoes. On the heads-up display a green box surrounded the Interceptor, then it went yellow. Whistler’s piping picked up speed as the droid sought a targeting solution for the torpedo. When he finally got it his tone became constant and the box went red.
Corran goosed the throttle forward, brought up the fighter’s nose, and launched a proton torpedo. The missile leaped up, riding a brilliant blue flame that scorched a Fijisi tree as it went past. The torpedo spiraled up into the air, then curled down as the Interceptor tried to evade it. The pilot’s efforts proved partially successful: The torpedo did not hit it, but overshot and exploded when proximity sensors reported it had missed.
The force of the missile blast crumpled the Interceptor’s port wing and tore most of it away from the stubby stanchion that connected the wing to the ship’s ball cockpit. Shrapnel from the missile itself blew through the transpari-steel viewport. Lethal shards of the transparent metal whirled through the cockpit, stabbing deep into equipment and slicing clean through the pilot. Spinning wildly, the Interceptor slammed into the ground and exploded in a golden fireball.
Inyri likewise shot a proton torpedo at one of the Interceptors. Her missile hit dead on target, lancing up through
the bottom of the ball cockpit and out through the starboard side before exploding. The torpedo’s impact did enough structural damage to the ship that the twin ion engines ripped free and blasted out through the front of the ship, then arced down to smash into the ground. The missile’s detonation shredded the rest of the Interceptor, sparking a hot metal rain that started a constellation of small fires burning across the landscape.
Corran keyed his comm unit. “Rogue Nine to Lead, we have engaged four squints, two down. We may be compromised.”
“I copy, Nine.”
Corran punched his throttle forward and pulled the X-wing’s nose up as the remaining two Interceptors turned back around to engage them. He allowed his fighter to go vertical, then he brought it over the top and rolled out to port. That gave the squints a clean line at his back, so he snapped the X-wing up on the port S-foil and pulled back on the stick, taking him out on a turn to the left.
The Interceptors started to adjust their course to come after him and Corran smiled. Behind them, Inyri’s X-wing took to the air at full throttle. In seconds she cruised up behind the trailing Interceptor and laced it full of coherent light. Red bolts burned through the ion engine shielding, exploding the engines. Trailing gold fire, the Interceptor somersaulted through the air and finally bounced its way across the ground, sowing patches of fire in its wake.
The pilot coming in on Corran’s tail kept a light hand on the yoke and juked his fighter around to spoil Inyri’s aim. Corran likewise bounced his X-wing around, making his ship hard to hit. He shunted all shield power to the aft shields, so whenever one of the Interceptor’s bolts did finally hit, it just struck sparks.
He’s good, he’s very good.
The Interceptor should have been at a maneuvering disadvantage in atmosphere, but even with the low altitude of the fight and the constraints of battling in a valley, the Interceptor proved very agile.
I can’t exploit my advantage and he’s not about to fly straight enough for Inyri to nail him. Unless.
“Twelve, stay with him, but give him space. Aim high.”
“As ordered, Nine.”
Corran rolled his X-wing out to port, then took it down to the deck. He came up on the starboard S-foil ever so slightly and began a long, gentle turn toward the pass heading north. As the X-wing lined up with it, he cut his throttle back but kept the fighter slipping left and right. Glancing at his rear sensor screen, Corran watched as the range between him and the Interceptor began to scroll down. Looking forward he saw the pass’s narrow opening looming closer.
Whistler tootled a warning.
“Yes, I know how close we are. Trust me.”
At the two-hundred-meter mark, Corran cut thrust to zero, rolled onto the starboard S-foil, and shunted full engine power to the repulsorlift coils. He stomped on the starboard rudder pedal, swinging the fighter’s aft to the right. In a heartbeat the fighter went from being level and headed north to having its nose pointed at the sky, its right S-foil pointed north, and momentum still carrying it in toward the pass.
Corran slammed the throttle up to full and snaprolled the fighter to the left. The X-wing leaped toward the sky, with the repulsorlift coils creating a gravity cushion that bounced the fighter back from the rocks at the mouth of the pass. The fighter rode a rocket of thrust toward the stars above.
The Interceptor pilot following him, as Inyri’s gun holocam data would show later, had a split-second decision to make. At the speed he was traveling he could move into the pass, but that would bracket him and Inyri would blast him from the sky. His other choice was to try to execute the same maneuver Corran had, which he elected to do.
He only had two problems.
He started a second later than Corran had, which, at his speed, brought him closer still to the pass’s narrow mouth.
And the Interceptor’s design gave it serious yaw problems.
The pilot succeeded in rolling up onto the starboard
wing, but as he tried to rudder around to vertical, air caught on the inside of the port wing. This kicked the Interceptor into a flat spin that brought it all the way around so the front end was pointing back along the path it had been traveling.
The aft end slammed into the rocks beside the pass’s mouth. The Interceptor vanished in a scintillating ball of sparks, debris, and smoke as the engines exploded. A crumpled bit of the cockpit rolled back toward the south, trailing smoke, while fire flashed up the pass wall and ignited small plants.
Inyri’s X-wing pulled parallel with Corran’s as he rolled out to port and pointed his ship north. “Nice kill, Nine.”
“Not mine, Twelve, you were the one shooting him.”
“He got himself.”
“Works for me.” Corran brought the X-wing back down to the deck. “Let’s move, and hope we’re not too late to help out if they need it.”
8
“I copy, Nine. Four squints blinded.” Wedge Antilles glanced at his rear sensors. “Gate, do we have anything else back there?”
Gate, Wedge’s R5 astromech droid, swiveled its flowerpot head around, then tootled negatively. The scopes showed nothing but the rest of the squadron following him. Wedge glanced at the chronometer on the command console. “Heads up, Rogues. Estimated time of arrival is thirty seconds. First pass, shoot at what shoots at us. One Flight will draw fire. Two, you lace them.”
“As ordered, Lead,” came Janson’s terse reply.
Pulling back on his X-wing’s stick, Wedge brought the nose up to crest the last line of hills between him and the target. The XV facility had been built on a small rise in the heart of a wide valley. In the distance Wedge could see a number of small communities, and scattered even further around were dimly lit homesteads in the middle of farmland. The Xenovet compound had been situated equidistant between client communities, which made the Rogues’ mission much easier by cutting down the chances of collateral damage.
Wedge cruised his fighter down into the valley and began
a low run at the site. He beefed up his forward shields and directed his fighter to overfly the large barn in the middle of the property. He saw nothing as he made his pass. Once beyond the barn, he rolled up on his starboard S-foil, cut his throttle, and pulled into a tight turn.
“Three is taking fire from the barn.”
Janson confirmed the report. “E-web in the loft. Don’t have a clean shot.”
Wedge leveled the X-wing and hit some rudder. “Lead is on it.”
As his X-wing came about, he killed the thrust and cut in his repulsorlift coils. The X-wing glided down to twenty meters of altitude and sideslipped left to give Wedge a good look at the pair of soldiers operating the heavy blaster. Standing in the barn’s loft, firing out of a feed-loading door, they were spraying green blaster bolts into the air, occasionally hitting shields on a passing fighter.
“Infantry weapons never work well on spacefighter targets.” Wedge shook his head and swung his crosshairs on their outline. “The reverse is not true.”
The X-wing’s lasers fired in sequence, peppering the barn’s upper story with coherent light. Bolts burned through the thin metal walls and lanced out the far side. Two red energy darts drilled through the heavy blaster itself, even as the gunner tried to shift his aim and shoot back at Wedge. The weapon exploded, killing the gunner instantly and pitching the other man out of the barn to the ground below.
The man got up and started to limp toward the main building, but he never got very far. From the shadow of a smaller building a blue ion bolt flashed out and caught him in the chest. He pitched down, then two figures in black converged to check him. Others, looking more like shadows than people, moved further in. One group closed in on the main building while a smaller knot moved toward the barn.
A small explosion flashed at the door to the barn, then the doors cartwheeled aside. Two shadows moved forward, threw something, then two more sharp explosions lit the
barn’s interior, casting light out through windows and the loft. Shadows sprinted into the interior and more blue strobes of ion blast light filled the darkness.
A similar series of explosions lit up the main building. Wedge saw a figure climb out of a second-story window and run along the terrace. The figure looked over and saw the X-wing, then raised a blaster and triggered off two shots. Both of them hissed and sparked against the fighter’s forward shield, prompting a smile from Wedge. “Nice shooting.”
The figure ducked down behind the low wall that edged the terrace. Wedge dropped his crosshairs onto the wall and popped off a quick burst of laserfire. The quartet of shots blasted into the brick and mortar, chewing great holes in it. He saw his quarry get up and start running, but bricks blown from the wall cut the figure’s legs out from under him, and the running man went down hard.
Wedge switched his comm unit over to the ground tactical frequency. “Katarn leader, Rogue leader here. I have one man down on the main building’s second floor.”
“Anything left of him, Wedge?”
“Seems all in one piece, Page. I was gentle.”
“I copy. I’ll send someone up. Kapp reports the barn is clear, so the ground situation is stable. I’m calling in our pick-up crews. You might want to get down here, too.”
“Got it. Incoming.” Wedge flicked his comm unit back to the squadron’s frequency. “Two, I’m going down there. Assign us some air cover and send Two Flight back to guide the transport in.”
“As ordered, Lead.”
Wedge guided his X-wing down to the midway point between barn and main building. He set it down gently and let the X-wing’s landing gear sink a bit into the soft soil before popping the hatch and shutting the fighter down. He doffed his helmet, then crawled out onto the edge of the cockpit and leaped down. He headed toward the main building, but a man dressed in black intercepted him.
“I can show you that stuff later, General.” Captain
Page gave Wedge a grim smile and took his elbow to steer him around in the other direction. “Kapp suggested you’d want to look in the barn first.”
“I’ve seen what an X-wing can do to an E-web, thanks.”
“I know, but that’s not what you’ll be looking at.”
The two men jogged across the compound to the barn and between the Ithorian and the Sullustan standing guard at the doorway. A little smoke from smoldering straw filled the air with a sour scent. Beyond that, Wedge caught a whiff of burned flesh. Someone had tossed a ragged blanket over a human outline that Wedge assumed was the E-web gunner.
Once deeper into the room, he realized why Kapp Dendo had wanted him to visit the barn first. The Devaronian, wearing blackened stormtrooper scout armor and a helmet cut to allow his horns to stick up through it, crouched beside the skeletal figure of a man. Wedge saw the rest of the commando team working in stalls meant for housing nerfs, freeing the people who had been shackled in the small enclosures. As gently as possible, the commandos were carrying the people to the barn’s main floor.
The stench that came from the stalls nearly over-whelmed Wedge.
These people have been forced to live in their own filth.
The wrists of the man near Kapp were raw from where his manacles had cut into his flesh. The man’s long nails were caked with dirt, as were the lines on his face. Bending down, Wedge thought he saw something moving in the man’s gray beard and hair, but he didn’t pull back.