37

Corran suppressed a laugh. “Only two more flights, Lead? I count five, including one of squints.”

“Agreed, Nine, but there is a two-minute gap between three and four, and another two minutes between five and the squints. I thought we could use that time to down the Lusankya. With your permission.”

“Granted, Lead.”

Corran hauled back on his stick as the second TIE flight came in, then barrel-rolled to starboard and came over the top. The X-wing pointed itself straight at a pair of TIEs that broke to follow his climb, but his inversion brought him in below their flight arc. One of them tried to pull a quick loop to bear down in on him while the other tried to force his TIE fighter down into a dive to spot Corran again.

Corran triggered two quad bursts of fire at the diving TIE. Two of the four laser bolts in the first shot missed, but the other two seared scars along the bottom of the starboard hexagonal wing. The second burst struck the bottom of the ball cockpit, slicing off the bottom third of it and severely warping the fighter’s structural elements. The twin ion engines ripped free of their supports and blew through the cockpit canopy, then exploded.

Corran rolled away to port to escape the blast, then hit the right rudder pedal and brought the X-wing’s nose around to starboard. The looping TIE came out of its maneuver and spitted itself on his aiming reticle. It went red, and Corran triggered a shot at it. All four laser bolts converged on its starboard solar panel and punched through to the cockpit. Corran saw a brief flash of light, then the TIE started a corkscrew down toward Thyferra.

“Ten has the next flight, Nine.”

Corran tucked his X-wing back in behind and to port of Ooryl’s fighter. The Gand rolled his X-wing up on the port stabilizers, presenting the incoming TIEs with a very narrow profile to shoot at. Corran aped his maneuver and watched as four TIEs separated themselves from the rest of the formation to come after Ooryl. He glanced at his sensors.

“Whistler, why didn’t you say we were getting ahead of the rest?”

The droid hooted a quick response.

“I would too have listened to you.” Corran keyed his comm unit. “Ten, we’re all alone here for a bit.”

“Ooryl understands, Nine.” Corran caught an edge to Ooryl’s voice he couldn’t recall hearing before. “Ooryl has them.”

Ooryl has them? That sounds like something Jace or I would say.

Ahead of him, Ooryl triggered a quick burst of quad fire that hit a TIE in the cockpit canopy and blew the engines out the back of it. A little etheric rudder shifted his aim point to port, then a second shot disintegrated another TIE’s port solar panel. Ooryl rolled out to port, then dove below the remaining TIEs.

Sithspawn, that’s great flying! Corran inverted his X-wing and pulled back on the stick to follow Ooryl’s dive, but by then the Gand had started his fighter around in a grand loop. Corran rolled again to follow, but a sharp bleat from Whistler made him glance at his aft monitor. “Ten, your playmates are on my tail.”

“Ooryl copies, Nine. Continue on your arc.”

“Continue? They’re coming up fast.”

“No longer.”

Up ahead Corran saw Ooryl’s X-wing tighten its arc impossibly quick, swapping nose for tail in the space of two hundred meters. The ship remained inverted, so Corran couldn’t see the cockpit, but he could imagine the Gand’s mouthparts moving apart in his imitation of a smile. “Ready to break on your mark, Ten.”

“Go to port, Nine. Mark.”

Corran rolled to port, then, as Ooryl had done, he reversed his thrust. Instead of looping the ship, Corran applied rudder until his nose swung back along the path he had just traveled. He came about just in time to see Ooryl melt the wing off another TIE.

Its wingman dove abruptly away from the Gand’s trap.

“Great shooting, Ten. You’ve got a hot hand.”

“Thank you, Nine.”

“Three flight, want to tighten it up here?”

“As ordered, Lead.” Corran started his thrust pushing his fighter forward. “Come on, Ooryl. We’ve got a big target now.”

Captain Drysso watched the holopad’s display of the battle. “Helm, Freedom is trying to slash over the top of us. Roll us so we can track her.”

“Captain, if you do that, we’ll expose our ventral surface to the snubfighters.”

“I know that, Helm.” Drysso looked over at the beefy man heading up his gunnery command. “Guns, use our ion cannons on Freedom. I want that ship.”

“Captain, Guns copies your order, but requests you reconsider.”

Drysso’s eyes narrowed. “We have more ion cannons than that ship has guns, Lieutenant Gorev. I want it, and you’ll give it to me. I don’t want to destroy it unless necessary. Antilles got one of our Impstars, now we’ll have one of his.”

“What about the snubfighters and the War Cruiser?”

“Use our concussion missiles. Use all our turbolasers and heavy turbolaser batteries.”

“The snubs are too small for turbolasers to track them. The War Cruiser is in our aft, so my missiles are having difficulty finding firing solutions.”

“By all that’s Imperial, you’ll find solutions, Lieutenant Gorev, or someone else will be in your position, do you understand?” Drysso’s hand rose with his voice. “Understand me, people. This is a Super Star Destroyer. A handful of snubfighters and a ship a tenth of our size cannot hurt us. Do what you are told and victory will be ours!”

Fliry Vorru had seen the TIE Interceptors flash past the viewports of his office and knew the time to make his escape from Thyferra had come. My shuttle is hyperspace capable. I run suborbital to the far side of the planet, wend my way clear of obstructions, and vanish. He collected a fistful of datacards and tucked them inside his tunic.

He reached the door to his office and found it wouldn’t open. He quickly punched a security override code into the locking mechanism, and it opened. In his outer office he found two stormtroopers and his secretary trying to open the door to the hallway.

“Stand back. Elicia, please do yourself a favor and duck behind your desk. When they come for you, tell them horrible stories about me, and they will protect you.” As the blonde did as she was told, the stormtroopers came to attention. “You two will conduct me to my shuttle hangar in the east tower.”

Vorru punched a security override code into the lock, and it opened as well. Stepping into the hallway, he pointed out the security holocams at either end of the hallway. “Destroy them.”

With a volley of shots his guards complied with his order and Vorru realized they were just Home Defense Corps personnel. Of course, the amount of clattering their armor makes could have told me that. He waved them on after him and quickly worked his way toward the east end of the building, shooting holocams as they went. “Since the locks only respond to security override codes, we have to assume the Ashern are in the building. They will control the turbolifts, so we’ll be using stairs.”

Vorru ignored the grumbles from his escort and got them to the east tower without meeting any resistance. So far, very good. He forced one of them to precede him up the stairs and had the other one follow, but the precaution proved unnecessary as they saw no one and nothing while they climbed up two floors. They emerged from the stairwell on the hangar level. “Down around the corner, to the right. Hurry, I hear the engines powering up.”

This did not please Vorru, since he had intended to pilot the shuttle himself—primarily because he was the only pilot he wanted to know his final destination. The fact that the shuttle had already begun to power up meant someone else had decided to use his means of escape, which created a huge set of complications to be dealt with. Vorru’s displeasure with the situation bled into his words, causing his guards to sprint on ahead of him and around the corner to the hangar.

A volley of scarlet blaster bolts sent the armored guards tumbling back down the hallway. They slammed into the wall and rebounded, but were hit by a half dozen more shots before they landed on the floor. One laser carbine came spinning across the floor to trip Vorru up. He crashed down hard, but bit back a curse and thereby saved his own life.

From the ground he had a narrow view of the hangar and the cloaked forms of two of Isard’s Royal Guards walking from the doorway over toward his shuttle. Isard! She’s using my shuttle to escape. How dare she!

Vorru snatched up the blaster that had tripped him, then sprinted into the hangar. At point-blank range he shot both of the men in scarlet armor in the back, then dove for cover as the shuttle’s laser cannons sprayed the hangar with bolts. He felt the hot backblast of the shuttle’s maneuvering jets as it lifted off, then emptied the blaster’s power cell by pumping shot after shot into the vanishing shuttle’s shields.

Vorru tossed the useless blaster aside and rose from the floor. “She probably thinks I’m stuck here, but I’d have been as stupid as she is if I only had one bolt hole.” He toed one of the Royal Guards, then flipped the body over and pulled the blaster carbine it had been lying on from the floor. “I will survive this, Ysanne Isard, if for no other reason than to make you pay for the trouble you’ve given me.”

As Corran’s X-wing raced in on the Lusankya, the Super Star Destroyer began to roll. “Lead, what do we do?”

“Stay on target. We may not be edge-on anymore, but we can hit the guns from below. Commence weave, thirty seconds to firing position.”

Corran rolled his fighter to starboard, opening up some room between himself and Ooryl. He pulled back on his stick and nudged it to port, throwing the X-wing into a spiral the pilots referred to as a weave. The fighter’s movements were not wholly regular, making it all but impossible for the Lusankya’s gunners to get a good shot at them. Of course, one good shot with those heavy turbolasers and all the bacta in the galaxy couldn’t help me.

The Lusankya’s heavy weapons filled the void with countless bolts of green laser energy. The shots spiraled out as crews tried in vain to target the incoming snubfighters. Corran studied the bases of the cones, mentally recording the location of each battery. Those are what make this mountain of metal dangerous. Destroy them and it’s just a big box in space.

Despite the spiral, getting a target lock on the Lusankya was not hard at all. Corran shifted his weapon’s-control over to proton torpedoes and linked them for dual-fire. The box at the center of his head-up display went red immediately and Whistler sounded a constant tone indicating target lock. “Good, Whistler, good.” He punched a button on his communication console that started green, then quickly shifted to red.

“Nine has double-lock. I’m firing.”

“Launch, Nine, then get clear.”

“As ordered, Lead.” Corran pulled the trigger on his stick and watched two proton torpedoes streak away at their target. “Pull the Lusankya’s fangs and hope we don’t get gummed to death on the way out.”