41
Gavin jammed his hands against the dashboard of the airspeeder as Inyri flew through the cloud of dust being raised by the construction droid. Even in the enclosed cab of the speeder he could hear the warning klaxons blaring at Subsidiary Computer Center Number Four. As they broke free of the grey cloud he got a good look at all the vehicles jetting away from the computer center and all the people fleeing across bridges to other towers.
Inyri sideslipped the speeder to center it on the balcony situated fifth-floor front. From information supplied originally by Black Sun, Winter had determined the control center they needed was located on the fifth floor. While they expected the whole facility to be abandoned, they assumed a general security lockdown would make entering at the first floor and working their way up difficult.
“Brace for impact.” Inyri cut power to the engine and began to slow the speeder, then let it sail straight over the balcony and into the office beyond it. The transparisteel wall disintegrated into one crystalline wave that washed up and over the speeder’s windscreen. A desk exploded at the front bumper’s casual caress and the room’s far walls buckled, letting the speeder skid to a stop in the waiting room attached to what had once been the CEO’s office.
Gavin slapped the quick release for his restraining belts and kicked his door open. He slid from the speeder and brought a blaster carbine up. The klaxons obliterated any sounds the opposition might have made and the dust curtain between him and the rest of the building hid possible foes. Hunkered down in the shadow of his opened door he could see nothing, but with each passing second he came to believe everyone had evacuated the building.
Tycho cut to the right, Gavin went left and advanced. Things appeared clear from his new vantage point, so he waved the others forward. Ooryl came up with Winter following close behind him. Inyri brought up the rear, constantly checking back toward the outside to make sure no one followed them in.
Winter was the key to their success because the datapad she held contained the code that would move an orbital mirror to target the nearest water distribution plant and reservoir. Once beyond the area of devastation created by Inyri’s entry, they were able to move along quickly. All the doors along the corridor to the control center were closed. Gavin tried to open all those on his side of the corridor but they were all locked tight. Tycho indicated the situation on the right was the same, but that is what they had been led to expect after the plant was abandoned.
They reached the door to the computer center without opposition. Gavin took a moment to glance through the transparisteel viewport in the heavy door. The room looked empty of life to him, though the computers themselves had lights flickering across their dark surfaces. Holographic streams of data scrolled up from desktop to oblivion above a dozen workstations. Aided by a thin mist hanging in the air, the light from them cast green and red shadows over the rest of the room, making the dimly lit room seem sinister.
Winter dropped to her knees and attached a cable from her datapad to a computer port on the doorjamb. “The sequencer programs I have will open the door in no time. First, though, I need to run a diagnostic and see what sort of combination I want.”
“Good luck.” Gavin dropped to a crouch and watched the corridor that led farther into the complex. He positioned himself so his body shielded Winter. He felt a twinge in his belly from an old blaster wound and hoped it was not some sort of ill omen for the future.
The datapad beeped and Winter swore. “Sithspawn.”
Tycho crouched at her shoulder. “What?”
“They’ve flooded the control room with gas. Looks like Fex-M3d.” Winter raised a fist but refrained from punching the door. “It’s in a diluted form so it won’t kill you if you get a lungful, but it’ll put you out.”
Gavin jerked a thumb at the door. “To the left, on the wall, there’s a clear case that has breather masks in it. If we could get in, we could get them.”
“That’s the big if. The case is coded, just like the door here. By the time a sequencer got it open, you’d have to breathe and you’d be down.” Winter shook her head. “Looks as if this system was installed within the last two weeks, after we were given the data we used to make our attack. There’s nothing we can do. We can’t get in. It’s over.”
His hand on the stick, the Z-95 Headhunter cruising through the duracrete canyons of Coruscant, Corran Horn felt more alive and free than all the soaring hawk-bats on the planet. He would have much preferred to be flying his X-wing, and he felt awkward flying into combat without Whistler backing him up, but flying again made him happy enough that he could forgive Whistler his absence. No place for him in this Headhunter anyway.
The Headhunter suffered in comparison with the X-wing. It lacked the maneuverability and speed of the X-wing, though the shields and hull had the same integrity. The Headhunter did not have hyperdrives and, consequently, did not need an R2 unit. The Headhunter’s triple blasters and concussion missiles were not the equal of the X-wing’s four laser cannons and proton torpedo launchers but they didn’t exactly leave him defenseless, either.
Against the Imperial starfighters he’d be facing the Headhunter had the potential to be troublesome—both for him and them. In atmosphere the TIEs lost some of their maneuverability. Their lack of shields made them vulnerable to his attacks, but the fact that they’d be swarming meant being able to stay with one long enough to kill it would be difficult. Locking in on one target would make him a target.
He glanced down at his sensor display. “Hunt Leader here. I have twelve, that is one-two, starfighters coming in on the droid. Time to engagement is thirty seconds. Shoot straight and call for help.”
Corran got a series of acknowledgments over the comm. Pulling back on his stick he started the Z-95 climbing. Pushing the throttle full forward he rocketed up like a ship intent on escaping the planet. A quartet of TIE starfighters came up after him but before they could close to range and start shooting, he rolled the Headhunter to starboard. The fighter came up and over, then dove back in the direction from which the TIEs had come.
Halfway through the dive, he pulled the fighter through a 180-degree snap-roll left, then swooped out in a long glide that brought him in over the construction droid and into the rest of the TIEs. He spitted the leader on his targeting crosshairs and gave it two bursts of blaster fire. The dozen energy darts stippled the eyeball with hits. It began a lazy roll that ended abruptly as it slammed into a tower and exploded.
The pilot of the next TIE followed his leader through the roll, clearly not realizing one of Corran’s shots had pierced the cockpit and killed the pilot. He tried to pull up and away at the last second. His hexagonal port wing clipped the corner of the tower and sent the TIE into a corkscrew spin that spiraled down into a fiery explosion deep in a dark canyon.
Standing the Headhunter on its port S-foils, Corran added enough left rudder to snap the ship into a dive past the construction droid. He pointed the fighter’s nose straight at the bottom of the urban trench and started down. He chopped his throttle back to zero and used the stick to roll his ship until the canyon stretched to infinity off each wing, but crowded him above and below.
Two TIEs dove after him and closed fast. Corran made minor adjustments on his position, forcing them to stick with him to target him. Their first shots missed, sending green energy lances down to flare brightly in the darkness, but they began to get better. Then they got close enough that they hit his aft shield, prompting him to take action.
He rolled the Headhunter ninety degrees to port, hemming himself in on either wing, then he pulled back on the stick. At the same time he punched all the power being generated by his engines into the repulsorlift drive. The Headhunter’s nose popped up, leveling him out a hundred meters above the canyon’s bottom. Momentum from the dive kept him going forward and away from the TIEs.
One eyeball pilot made a serious mistake by not rolling before he tried to follow the Headhunter. His maneuver was intended to bring the TIE around in a sharp, right-angle turn—a maneuver that would have worked in the vacuum of space and placed him right on Corran’s tail with a killing shot. In atmosphere, however, the maneuver brought his starboard wing around in direct opposition to his previous line of flight. The hexagonal panel snapped, with the top half sheering through the ship’s ball cockpit. Still going full out, the TIE fighter hammered the ground and exploded.
The second TIE pilot rolled first, then swooped in after Corran’s Headhunter. The speed of the dive forced the pilot into a wider turn than he clearly wanted. The lower edges of his wings struck sparks from the duracrete street. Fighting inertial forces, the pilot did everything he could to make his fighter climb. Finally the ship began to win in its battle with gravity and began to come up.
Up into one of the numerous walkways connecting one building with another. The TIE plowed into a central portion of the span, splintering the permacrete section it hit. The fighter exploded, shattering windows and sowing shrapnel throughout the area.
Reversing thrust and applying some rudder, Corran brought the fighter around in an end for end swap that left him looking at the fires burning in his wake. Not a bad start, four down, but it’s only a start. He eased the throttle forward and started a gentle climb to the unobstructed reaches of Coruscant’s atmosphere. He glanced at the shipboard chronometer and fuel gauge.
“Fifteen minutes to get the shields down and a half hour of flying time. That’s forever if we succeed and little more than a heartbeat if we do not.”
Wedge’s comlink buzzed at him. “Antilles here, go ahead.”
“Tycho here. We have a problem—gas in the computer center. We need Emtrey. Now.”
“I copy.” He looked up at Mirax. “Will this thing keep going by itself?”
She nodded. “The droid will stop at the outer edge of the computer center if”—she pointed at external view monitors showing TIEs on strafing runs—“they don’t stop it first.”
“If we can leave this thing alone, they need us in the computer center.”
Mirax held her hands up. “Let’s go.”
Iella led the way back into the entryway. She started to push the door open, then quickly ducked back. A spray of blaster bolts dotted the interior of the door with burn marks.
Wedge ran over to where she sat on the floor. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t see clearly but given the size of those burn marks I’d say some stormtroopers have an E-web heavy blaster set up on one of the nearby towers. They’ve got the door covered and covered well.” Iella shrugged. “Unless we get some help, we’re going to be stuck here for the rest of our lives.”