14

General Wedge Antilles leveled his X-wing out and glanced at the range indicator to his target. Fifty kilometers, we’ll be on it in no time. I wonder what they’ve got waiting for us there.

He punched up the flight’s tactical channel. “Okay, Rogues, Three Flight ran into trouble in blue sector. Ground fire damaged one. They think it was from chip missiles, so keep your shields strong and eyes open.”

The rest of the flight acknowledged his message, then followed Wedge down onto the deck for the final run at the Valleyport spaceport facility. Located in a river valley to the east of the mountains where Corran had gone down, Valleyport was by no means the largest city on the continent. In fact, it was relatively small, but it sat astride the main ground transportation route through the mountains and likewise was a communications nexus. The spaceport facility, while underutilized by local traffic, was more than sufficient for bringing in ground troops who would take the planet.

Below him the landscape changed. Forests gave way to vast tracts of treeless land covered by a thin blanket of snow that let the stubble of harvested grain stalks poke up through it. Houses dotted the landscape and, since it was midmorning, some people were out and about in the fields, directing the droids tending to livestock. Wedge knew that any of them could use a comlink to alert Valleyport officials that fighters were incoming, but by the time the report got through, the Rogues would be over their target.

The city of Valleyport came into view, obscured by a brown haze. A few tall buildings rose above the haze, but most sprawled within it. The haze covered both sides of the river and spread out onto the plains above. The spaceport’s towers showed up clearly on the northern side of the river, against a mountain backdrop toward the west. Wedge let his X-wing sideslip to port, then flashed across the river and set his lasers for single fire.

Already E-webs and a couple of P-towers started filling the early morning air with sizzling bolts of coherent light, but tracking an X-wing running in at full throttle proved more difficult than the gunners would have liked. A stray bolt hissed against Wedge’s shields and in return he clipped off a cycle of four shots—one from each of the X-wing’s laser cannons—then pulled his fighter’s nose off onto another target.

His laserfire tracked bolts across icy ferrocrete decking and up the sides of buildings. Misses left little black stains centered on a guttering flame. Hits blew chunks out of the enemy’s mounted blasters and antivehicular weapons. One bolt caught a stormtrooper in the chest, ablating his armor away in an eyeblink and continuing on unabated. The man’s burning corpse slammed into a wall, then rebounded and pitched forward over the balcony railing he had tried to take cover behind.

“Lead, I’m getting fire from the west, coming from within those hangars.”

“On it, Hobbie.” Wedge hit some right rudder and chopped back his throttle, shortening a turn to port. A line of large hangars formed the western perimeter of the spaceport and the red-gold bolts from a pair of heavy laser cannons sprayed out at the X-wings. Seeing a line of fire begin to track his fighter, Wedge goosed the throttle back to full and began a port spiral to get some altitude.

Out of the hangars trotted a quartet of AT-ATs, the Imperial walker units that had wrought so much havoc at Hoth. They moved quickly, not looking as cumbersome and slow in the light snow as they had on Hoth’s icefields. Back then we were in airspeeders—undergunned and overmatched. A smile slowly twisted his lips. Not the case this time.

“On them, Rogues. The groundpounders are incoming and we need to get rid of the walkers. Be careful.”

“Starting a run on the first one.” Lyyr Zatoq, the Quarren, rolled her X-wing out to port, then let it swoop down in a glide that brought it in on a diagonal slashing course on the last of the walkers. The machine’s head slowly swung to the left to try to track her fighter, but she blasted away at it with her lasers at point-blank range, then climbed hard and pulled out to the left, too fast and too tight for the walker to target her.

Hobbie, her wingman, came in on a crossing path that gave him a clean shot at the tail. Lyyr’s shots had slagged armor on the mechanical beast’s flank, but hadn’t done any serious damage. Hobbie’s attack ran from below the AT-AT’s body on up the back, and at least one shot holed the fuel tank. Flaming fluid streamed down like a tail, then an explosion ripped the walker’s back end open. The blast pitched the walker up into the air and through a somersault that landed it on its back. The massive legs telescoped down into the body, then tore free. The walker’s armored head slammed into the snow-covered ground, cracking armor plates, and started leaking smoke.

Tycho growled over the comm channel. “Running on the next one. Decap shot.”

Wedge nodded. “On your tail.”

Tycho brought his X-wing down in a dive, then leveled out ten meters. Coming in at shoulder height on the walker, Tycho banked right to run from tail toward the head, then snaprolled his ship level and hit right rudder. The X-wing’s tail skidded toward the left, bringing its nose in line with the walker. Tycho’s first cycle of shots vaporized armor on the walker’s body, but the second quartet blasted away at the joint of the flexible neck and the body itself.

Wedge marveled at Tycho’s soft hand on the X-wing’s stick. He followed him into the dive, but rolled out right and cut his throttle back. The walker had begun to turn to its right, so Wedge’s roll put him on a direct line with the AT-AT’s head. He nudged the aiming reticle over the walker’s head and pulled the trigger.

A stuttered quartet of bolts hit the walker. Two glanced off, leaving long scars on its forehead, but the other two pierced the transparisteel viewports on the pilot’s compartment. Fire exploded back out, and the walker slowly started to sag forward. Its chin slammed into the ground, then the body’s weight snapped its neck.

“Easier ways to decap it, Wedge.”

Wedge throttled up and banked starboard into a climb. “Sorry, didn’t have time to consult with Ewoks to find out how they’d handle the situation.” He glanced down at his chronometer. “No time to be fancy on the other two, just swarm them.”

Coming back in and down, Wedge kept his X-wing very low, cruising in at a sharp angle. Tipping his fighter up onto its port S-foil, he banked in toward the walker and switched over to dual fire. One double burst missed, but the second caught the walker in the hip. Tycho’s shots on the same one hit the body above the drive motor, then the two of them climbed out, pulled a half-loop, inverted, and dove back down at their target.

“Port rear leg is scraping the ferrocrete, Two.”

“I caught that, Lead.” Tycho swooped his fighter through a run that pumped more hot light into the walker’s hip. Black smoke began to issue from the joint. Wedge’s attack followed Tycho’s line and drilled four more bolts into the leg.

Superheated metal sprayed out, and the walker began to list badly to the left. The AT-AT’s leg bent, then snapped off at the hip. The forward feet shuffled as the rear leg fell away, but the walker had already been seriously overbalanced. The rear end started to fall to the left, spinning the AT-AT around and pulling the front legs from the ground. The walker’s body pounded the ferrocrete, pulverizing both it and the armor plates on which it landed. Black smoke started to issue from the walker’s body, and escape hatches opened up and stormtroopers began to run, walk, or limp their way away from the broken machine.

Lyyr and Hobbie made short work of the remaining walker. Several runs on it had left the armor in ruins, and Hobbie cruised up along its spine and triggered a quad burst at the head from point-blank range. The red bolts burned through the neck and dropped the head to the ground. The body, leaking smoke, froze in place, leaving the soldiers contained inside stranded ten meters from the ferrocrete.

“Nice shot, Hobbie.”

“Thanks, Lead.” Hobbie sighed. “We could have taken them with four proton torps. Would have been easier, you know.”

“Sure, but what if Krennel showed up with ships and we had to go hunting in the void again.” Wedge shrugged. “Doing it the hard way worked.”

Wedge brought his X-wing down and routed power to the repulsorlift coils. He hovered a couple of meters above the ground and guided the ship over to position it between the burning walkers and the landing zone for the assault shuttles coming in. The stormtroopers on the snowy ferrocrete slowed and raised their hands. Those who had escaped with weapons dropped them and a few of the more injured individuals just collapsed.

“Lead, I have a question for you.”

Wedge glanced over at where Tycho hovered his X-wing. “Go ahead, Two.”

“Wouldn’t the AT-AT assault been more effective if they’d waited to launch it until the shuttles landed? Walkers are death on ground troops.”

“True, and stationing the stormies around the spaceport instead of inside those monsters would have been better, too.” Wedge frowned. “These guys might look like stormtroopers, but they certainly aren’t thinking that way.”

“And yet Intel said there were crack units here, but if not here, where?”

Wedge’s mouth soured. “The sector where Three Flight ran into trouble. You think Krennel is hiding something there? Save for the dam, that’s a pretty remote area.”

“Where better to hide something you want to remain hidden?”

The first of the assault shuttles landed and started to disgorge troops. A couple of squads moved forward to deal with the captured stormtroopers. The others fanned out, found cover, and established a perimeter on the ferrocrete. The second shuttle landed its troops closer to the hangars and a third dropped its troops near the main spaceport facility.

A light blinked on Wedge’s communications console. He punched it. “Rogue Leader here.”

“Commando One here.” Kapp Dendo’s voice came through strongly. “Thanks for vaping the stalkers. I wouldn’t mind it if you want to strafe the approaches to the spaceport, just in case some local militia decides to hop a hoverbus here.”

“I copy, Commando One. I help you, you help me?”

“What do you need, Wedge?”

“I have a flier down at the dam in blue sector. Lots more activity there than here.”

“Search and rescue ops are a bit down in priority, Lead. I’ll see what I can do.” A grave tone ran through Kapp’s words. “How hard did your boy go down?”

“Under control, I’m told.” Wedge smiled. “He can probably take care of himself, but if the stormies we were expecting to be here are actually there, for just how long I don’t know.”