39
Corran popped one proton torpedo off and watched the lead Interceptor evaporate. Thumbing his weapons control over to lasers, he started to track the next TIE. The tractor beam limited his ship’s range of motion, but a heavy foot on a rudder pedal started turning him in the right direction. Just a bit more …
The Interceptor exploded as red laser bolts ripped through the cockpit.
Corran looked down at his hand and couldn’t recall having hit the trigger.
More laser fire transformed another TIE into a fireball. What in the Cloak of the Sith?
Whistler started hooting frantically.
Corran hesitated, not comprehending, then flipped his comm unit back on as his fighter began to rise through the volcano, picking up speed.
“… repeat, is your hyperdrive still operational?”
He recognized the voice. “Mirax?”
“Yeah. You ready to get smuggled out of here?”
“Hyperdrive is a go.”
“Whistler, do it.”
Corran didn’t afford himself the luxury of looking back at the ship that had tractored his fighter—the forward view had more than enough to entertain him. Borleias’s moon was receding quickly into the starfield, as were the squints. Green lancets of laser fire reached out toward him, but they splashed harmlessly against his shields. His return fire scattered the TIEs and one more fell prey to Skate’s gunner.
Whistler piped a warning at him, then the starfield stretched into columns and they entered hyperspace. A second or two later they came back out again at a point well below the Pyria system’s elliptic plane.
“Corran, bring your fighter around and come up into the hold.”
“Gladly, Skate” He complied with the order and found his twelve-and-a-half-meter-long fighter fit snugly in the hold. He waited for Mirax to repressurize the hold after closing the loading bay doors, then he popped his cockpit canopy open and vaulted from the X-wing. He landed on the deck with a thump, then smiled as the hold hatch opened.
“Permission to come aboard, Captain Terrik.”
“Promise you won’t tell my father?” Mirax smiled and strode boldly across the deck to him. “He’d die if he could see an X-wing with CorSec markings in the belly of his ship.”
“And if my father hadn’t been killed years ago, having my ship here would have gotten him, too.” Corran enfolded Mirax in a hug. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“Likewise, Corran.”
He didn’t let his arms slacken until he felt her hug loosen first. “And I commend you on your shooting. You popped three Interceptors in no time.”
Mirax pulled away from him and pointed toward the hatchway. “He did it, not me.”
The silhouette in the hatchway shrugged. “The Skate is a fairly stable gunnery platform. And the squint pilots weren’t the Empire’s best.”
Pulling off the helmet, Corran crossed the hold and offered the man his hand. “Still and all, Captain Celchu, it was superior shooting.” With skills like that, I can’t imagine why you’re not flying with us. Commander Antilles said not to ask, and now is not the time, but I want to know the answer.
Mirax patted Corran on the back and let her hand linger there for a moment—a sensation he relished. “Come on up to the bridge. We’ll go to hyperspace and get back to Noquivzor before the others do.”
“We will?”
Mirax slapped the nearest bulkhead. “The Skate can push .6 past light speed—not as fast as the Falcon, but definitely better-looking. With our speed we can trim time off the trip back to Noquivzor and fly a course that’s shorter. We’ll beat them by an hour, just as we did getting here.”
Corran frowned. “But how could you get here since no one was supposed to know where here was? Commander Antilles didn’t tell the others until our second jump.”
The smuggler smiled sweetly at him. “Not my fault you talk in your sleep.”
Tycho laughed. “Mirax discovered a possible security breach. We arrived and went to ground on the dark side of the moon. We monitored Borleias control traffic and didn’t notice unusual activity down there, so we maintained comm silence when the squadron arrived.”
Corran sat down across from him. “If you told us you were there you might have alerted the Imperials.”
“Exactly.” Tycho followed Mirax into the Skate’s cockpit and dropped into one of the jumpseats. “Since the squadron was running with weak comm system transmissions, we couldn’t hear what Wedge had planned when he went sunside, but we figured things out from Imperial intercepts—the Verpine droid here has slicing skills that broke the Imp scrambling quite quickly. We stayed hidden when the squints started to search, assuming we’d break and run when they reached the volcano.”
Mirax looked back at Corran. “Then you arrived with them on your tail, we grabbed you and pulled you out.”
Corran chuckled as he strapped himself into the seat. “I thought I was dead.”
“I imagine that is what the rest of the squadron will be thinking when they reach Noquivzor.” Tycho slapped Corran on the knee. “Won’t they be surprised?”
“Yeah, I imagine they will.” Corran’s eyes narrowed. “And I’ve got an idea which means we can have some fun with them.”
Mirax tapped the console and smiled at her Sullustan pilot. “Get us going, Liat, and fast, too. The Pulsar Skate will be the first ship ever to smuggle a man back from the grave, and I mean for us to do it in record time at that.”