Star Wars: Scourge (45 page)

“Pardon me, but has anyone seen my wits?” Skids said in a squeaky voice. “I had them right here just a moment ago—”

Tuketu laughed. “That
was
fun, wasn’t it?”

“Fun?” Skids shook his head. “Fun like having a rancor sit on your lap is fun. Sir, I am afraid I must relieve you of command, effective immediately, on the grounds that you are clearly insane. Please surrender the controls and come along quietly.”

Smiling, Tuketu reached overhead and adjusted the trim thrusters. “We were a little late getting to the first ground check. I’m taking us up a couple of points. Check back there and make sure the others stay with us.”

“Copy, Tuke,” Skids said, twisting his head first to the left, then to the right. “By the jewel of Haarkan, you put that much ordnance on a K, and you get one mean-looking, chip-on-a-shoulder, fixing-for-trouble star kitty.”

“Let’s hope we don’t need all of it,” Tuketu said soberly, almost to himself.

According to reports Fleet Intelligence had provided to the Fifth’s planners, Bessimir’s hypervelocity gun fired at a rate of 120 slugs per minute, though rarely for more than ten seconds at a time. To avoid deflecting the superaccelerated projectiles, the particle shield protecting the gun was synchronized with the firing controller. The shield would open for each outbound slug when the gun was fired, while the ray shielding would remain in place throughout, protecting the emplacement from any long-range counterfire.

Open, close, open, close, like the winking eye of a shutter, like a tempting carnival game. Time the opening correctly and win the prize. That was why two of the three K-wings in each flight were configured as penetrators, carrying no energy weapons at all—just
ordinary slug cannon and an extraordinary number of fléchette missiles. If even one round, one explosive splinter, could slip through and find its target—

But to have even that slim chance, they had to get very close—and something had to coax the gunners into firing.

That something was the New Republic Star Destroyer
Resolve
. Specially outfitted with multiple shields into which were poured the full power of her engines, she came out of hyperspace nearly dead center in the gun’s field of fire. The K-wings were approaching the perimeter of the shield zone, hiding in the clutter, hugging every contour of the surface as they closed in.

A’baht watched nervously, his shoulder spines rippling. A few moments longer, and the approaching bombers would be spotted, the threat analyzed. “Fire,” he whispered. “Come on—take the bait.”

Esege Tuketu, watching his penetrators race toward the red line on his battle display, tensed himself for the high-G abort maneuver he expected them to have to execute.

A heartbeat stretched out to a lifetime.

On impulse, Tuketu thumbed his comm switch and broke comm silence. “Red Leader to Red Two, Red Three, stay on the tower, stay on it!”

“What are you doing?” Skids demanded.

Tuketu shook his head. “We have to get the game in before it rains.”

Red Three suddenly broke right, away from its target, trying to escape the invisible wall that lay ahead. But Red Two flew past the wave-off point and opened fire. Streams of silver missiles flashed from under its wings toward the stubby shield tower in their sights.

“Sorry, Tuke, too late, going around,” Red Three called.

At the same moment, the big gun roared, belching a staccato stream of slugs toward the
Resolve
.

Red Two broke left and up, its cannon tracking the shield tower and firing nonstop.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Tuketu said under his breath. “Make a hole for us.”

The leading edge of Red Two’s salvo reached the shield boundary as the gun was still firing. Most shattered without exploding, crushed like insects hurled against a cockpit canopy. A few exploded against nothingness, their triggers overwhelmed by a surging induction current as the particle shield cycled on and off. But two fléchette missiles slipped through. The hemispheric dome of the shield tower disappeared in a small but brilliant explosion that left the metal remnants burning.

“How did you know?” Skids said wonderingly.

Tuketu shook his head. “I didn’t,” he said, pushing the throttles forward. Ahead lay the aperture of the big gun.

Like a frantic animal fighting for its life, the hypergun fired on the
Resolve
without pause from the moment the particle shield vanished. The big cruiser wasn’t nimble enough to evade the barrage pattern thrown at it from the alpha moon, and Commander Syub Snunb wondered if it was tough enough to withstand the hits it was taking. Shells crashed against its invisible shields with such force that the ship itself shuddered and shook.

“Red Flight is inside the perimeter,” a lieutenant sang out.

Steadying himself against a bulkhead, Snunb acknowledged the report with a nod. “Then we’ve done our job. Keep tracking the incoming fire,” he said. “Navigator, turn and show them our heels. Keep us on an escape heading. If they give us any kind of break at all, drop the auxiliary shields and jump us out of here.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Just then the outermost shield buckled under a salvo of shells, the impacts sucking the field strength
from the protective bubble faster than the shield generators could restore it. An alarm sounded on the bridge as the shaking abruptly got worse.

“The D shield is down. The generators are slagged!”

Snunb shook his head. “I must remember to tell General A’baht that I do not much like being the bait tied outside the predator’s lair. How much longer?”

His first officer pointed to the tactical display. “Tuketu should be over the target in another few seconds.”

Another alarm sounded on the bridge of the
Resolve
. “I hope we have another few seconds to give him.”

The aperture of the hypergun was glowing brilliantly in the infrared on Tuketu’s targeting computer. “Let’s finish this on the first pass.”

“Arming Number One,” Skids sang out. “Arming Number Two. Taking attitude control, now.”

Tuketu lifted his hands from the stick and throttle. “All yours.”

The nose of the K-wing lifted skyward, and the bomber began to climb. “Range—mark. Number One away. Number Two away. Let’s not hang around, Tuke.”

As the lob bombs began to trace a clean, elegant ballistic arc, up and over the top of a gravitational hill, Tuketu hauled the nose of the bomber back and around to the left so sharply that he felt momentarily dizzy. While the broad bottom of the ship was facing the target, there was a dull roaring sound, a brilliant flash that cast long shadows on the surface, and a neck-snapping vertical translation, as though some mighty hand had shoved the K-wing from below.

“Too soon, too soon!” Skids cried in alarm. “Not ours.”

At that moment Black One flashed by overhead, and the comm speaker crackled to life with gleeful exultations. “Scratch one big gun,” drawled Black Leader. “My stars, that was a big splash. She was still
firin’ when we bracketed her—we must have jammed up a couple of shells in the barrel. Did you see it, Red Leader?”

“Negative, Black Leader.” The landscape lit up again with a double flash that was a pale echo of the first. “Sounds like you didn’t leave much for us, Hodo,” Tuketu said with a grin.

“That’ll teach you not to dawdle—sir.”

“This is Green Leader,” said a new voice. “I’ve made a verification pass and I confirm target destroyed.”

“This is the
Resolve
. We concur with Green Leader, target destroyed. Thank you, boys.”

“Copy, Green Leader. Copy,
Resolve
,” said Tuketu, turning his ship skyward, toward where the cruisers waited for them. “All ships, form up with me. We have a rendezvous to keep.”

Standing at a podium and wearing the uniform of the Joint Defense Operations Staff rather than the Mon Calamari battle dress in which he had earned his fame, Admiral Ackbar gestured with a large hand toward the display screen on his right.

“With the Fleet firmly in control of local space, it is now relatively safe for the gunships to begin opening a corridor to the surface,” Ackbar said, looking out at the small, select audience. “The tactics echo those used against the hypergun—to expose well-armored vessels to enemy fire in order to locate and destroy the defensive emplacements in the target sector. In this case, as you can see, the counterfire is coming from the heavy batteries of the vessels in orbit.”

The monitors in the conference hall at the New Republic Defense Force’s headquarters on Coruscant showed much the same images as those on
Intrepid
’s bridge, though lagging some seconds behind.

The signals were being relayed across fifteen parsecs by hyperspace transponder, then reviewed by military censors to make sure that what appeared on the displays was appropriate to the clearances of the audience
in the hall. That afternoon, little censorship was needed. The audience included all eight members of the Senate’s Council on the Common Defense, half a dozen senior Fleet officers, and Princess Leia Organa Solo, president of the Senate and commander-in-chief of the New Republic’s defense forces.

Ackbar went on, “The curvature of a planetary body limits the effectiveness of fixed emplacements with line-of-sight weapons. Destruction of only a few such emplacements creates a breach in the planetary defenses, and a corridor from space to the surface. You see here that the Fleet is close to opening such a corridor. The threat at this point would be from atmospheric fighters or ground-to-air missiles launched from over the horizon. But Bessimir has no such defenses. When the breach is fully opened, the invasion will begin.”

“Admiral Ackbar—a question,” Senator Tolik Yar called out. “How realistic a test is this for the Fleet? Is this anything more than a scripted performance?”

“It is as realistic as possible,” said Ackbar. “This is an operational readiness exercise, not a simulation. It is true that the Fleet is opposed only by battle drones and computer sims. But I can assure you that the defense team takes pride and pleasure in constructing a difficult problem for the Fleet tacticians.”

“Admiral Ackbar,” said Senator Cion Marook, rising from his seat and allowing the great, heavily veined air sacs on his back to fully inflate. “This has been a most impressive demonstration so far. But on behalf of my colleagues, and those we represent, I must wonder why command of the new task force was given to such a newcomer.”

“Senator, General Etahn A’baht is hardly a hatchling—he is easily twice my age, and I suspect he is senior to you as well.”

Marook bristled. “I did not say he was young, Senator, I said he was a newcomer. The commanders of the other fleets are all veterans of the Rebellion—
leaders who, like yourself, earned honor in the great battles at Yavin, Hoth, and Endor.”

Ackbar acknowledged the compliment with a nod.

“But this Dornean has worn our uniform for less than two standard years. The Fifth Fleet was authorized in no small part on your personal testimony and assurances, and built at great expense to the New Republic. I would be much happier if it were you on the bridge of the
Intrepid
and General A’baht were here waving a pointer in front of us.”

“But you ought not be, Senator,” Ackbar said sharply. “Though it was not part of the Rebel Alliance, Dornea has its own heroes from the fight against the Empire. General A’baht has a long and exemplary record as a fleet commander with the Dornean Navy. We are fortunate to be able to call upon his services.”

“The entire Dornean Navy numbers barely eighty vessels,” Senator Marook said with a grand gesture of contempt.

Standing by the back wall of the conference room, Princess Leia rolled her eyes and shook her head. It was wholly predictable that the complainant was Marook. Hrasskis society was built around a strict notion of succession by seniority, and the highest social value was waiting one’s turn. After five years in the Senate, he still had not embraced the notion of basing appointments on merit.

“And yet, the Dornean Navy successfully defended Dornea’s independence throughout the reign of Palpatine, against Imperial forces several times as large,” said Princess Leia, intervening in the hope of cutting the argument short. “Come now, Senator Marook—surely this is an inappropriate time to argue over command assignments. Let’s move on.”

Admiral Ackbar held up his broad hand. “Princess Leia, if you please—there is no better time to put this to rest. I have heard rumors of discontent in the Council for weeks, but this is the first time anyone has voiced such sentiments in my hearing. I would like the
chance to explain to Senator Marook exactly why he is so terribly wrong.”

Even offered in his measured tones, such a direct rebuke was out of character for Admiral Ackbar, and told Leia how angry her Calamari friend was. “Very well, Admiral,” she said, nodding and settling into a seat to listen.

Given the floor, Ackbar proceeded to ignore Senator Marook completely, addressing himself to the rest of the gathering. “You must understand that the problems of invading a planetary body from space, or defending one against an invasion, are quite different from the problems of destroying a planet, or blockading one, or laying siege to one.”

Ackbar moved out from behind the podium. “And it is a set of problems with which we have had very little experience. The veterans of the Alliance, whom Senator Marook so kindly praised, know all the secrets of fighting as an insurgent force—the roles of stealth, of mobility, of hit-and-run tactics, of disrupting the enemy’s lines of supply and communication.

“But a commando force cannot defend a homeworld, a system, a sector. A commando force cannot tie up its assets waiting to be attacked. A commando force cannot carry out an invasion. You should remind yourself that at no time in its history did the Alliance enjoy the resources to fight a conventional war. And the one time we were forced by circumstance to do so, at Hoth, we suffered a terrible defeat.

“That is why Etahn A’baht was selected to command the Fifth Fleet. He brings to that bridge all the hard-won expertise of the Dornea, an expertise which I cannot match. And it is his tactical plan which we are testing at Bessimir,” Ackbar said, pointing at the screens behind him.