Wedge continued his loop upward, a tight maneuver that kept him crushed to his chair even as he came upside down. In his mind’s eye, that put him and his group at the upper edge of the engagement, with no attacks possible from above for the moment.
Ahead and below, Wedge saw a paired interceptor and fighter the sensors flagged as friendlies; that had to be Face and Phanan. They were turning his way.
“Leader, Seven, this is One. I’m coming at you in a head-to-head. Two on my tail.”
“One, Leader. We have them. You can have our tail as well.” Behind Face and Phanan, two pairs of TIE fighters were jockeying for position, firing shots that strayed for now but must inevitably connect with the Hawk-bats’ sterns.
Wedge, Shalla, and Lara roared toward Face and Phanan. All five Hawk-bats opened fire, a deadly barrage of green lasers, but not at one another—at the fighters and interceptors pursuing each wing. Wedge saw his concentrated fire hit a solar wing pylon and shear it off at its base, sending the fighter spinning down toward the thick forest below. He directed his stream of fire against another TIE as the two lines converged. Then one of that fighter’s mates detonated and Wedge was momentarily blinded as he flew through the cloud of debris and shrapnel. He heard metal pinging from his fighter’s hull and he repressed a wince; a heavy enough piece of shrapnel could take out a shieldless TIE interceptor.
Wes’s voice: “Six up, six down.”
“What?”
“That little head-to-head you pulled. One hundred percent effective. Six up, six down.”
Wedge glanced at his sensor screen. A moment ago, the screen had showed three dozen enemies, seven friendlies. Now it showed twenty-five enemies, seven friendlies. Wedge whistled.
“Leader, Three. I just flipped my sensors over to long-range. I show a capital ship clearing the horizon and heading this way.”
“A cruiser?”
“A Star Destroyer. At least.”
It was a Super Star Destroyer, by name Iron Fist. As Kell and Runt clattered up the boarding ramp and came forward into the cockpit, its image, enhanced by the shuttle’s visual sensors, dominated the forward viewscreen. It was still well above them in orbit, but it seemed terrifyingly close.
“We are so dead,” Kell said.
Castin and Donos sat in the second row of seats, bent over a long weapon—Donos’s laser sniper rifle. “We did not know you had brought that,” Runt said.
Donos snorted. “I take it to parties, dining engagements, and the refresher. It was in the smuggling compartment. Kell, you have the detonation code?”
Kell tapped the datapad in his chest pocket.
“Give it to Castin.”
Runt took the pilot’s seat while Kell transmitted the code.
The image of Iron Fist wavered, its blue and white running lights blurring, as something passed much closer to the shuttle. Runt killed the visual enhancers.
Their shuttle was docked with Bastion, its viewports oriented so its occupants had a view mostly of sky, with only a little of the tanker intruding on the view. And now that sky was full of TIE fighters buzzing back and forth.
Kell forced back his rising surge of panic and counted blips on the sensors. Only six. Moving so fast, they seemed more numerous. This had to be nothing more than a show of dominance, since the enemy vessel had already tractored the tanker and was hauling it up to captivity. “Keep calm,” he said. “They’re not here to shoot.”
“In your opinion,” Donos said.
“It’s all I have to offer.”
Wedge plotted the engagement on the sensors and in his mind’s eye. The engagement zone had spread out through a hemisphere about eight kilometers across. Now his group was at a high altitude in the southern portion. Janson and Dia were about a kilometer below them. None of them was actively engaged with an enemy. The TIE force had contracted a little, the nearest starfighters being about a kilometer to the north and not yet spinning out to engage them. Face and Phanan were in the northern quadrant, dogfighting with a pair of TIE fighters as a pair of interceptors headed toward them.
He checked the position of the sun and then rolled around to begin an approach out of the sun against Face’s and Phanan’s tails. But almost immediately he saw one of the pursuing TIE fighters’ shots strike home, hitting the engines of one of the friendly TIEs. That starfighter rolled in a random fashion, briefly regained controlled flight, then dropped below the line of trees and was lost to sight.
On the sensor board, Hawk-bat Seven, Ton Phanan’s signal, faded to blackness.
• • •
“This isn’t going to work,” Castin said. He was watching Iron Fist’s approach. “Our docking port is relative up. We’ll be taking off into their hangar bay.”
“I’ll take care of it.” Kell rose. “Runt, take the pilot’s seat, stand by to power up and launch without checklist.” He charged back down the boarding ramp.
Once he was on the tanker’s small flight deck, he brought up the controls for the ship’s artificial gravity and repulsorlifts. It was a simple matter to scrub the identification of a large mass—Iron Fist—as that of a ship and instead identify it as a planetoid. Then he configured the gravity system to orient the ship so that its bottom descended toward the surface of the planetoid. Now, unless Iron Fist spent an unusual amount of tractor beam power and used a lot of fine control to reorient Bastion, its upper surface would rotate to face the planet below and not the Super Star Destroyer above.
The rotation had already begun by the time he reached Narra again. And Iron Fist was much closer. Kell took the copilot’s seat and strapped himself in. “You ready?” he asked Donos.
The sniper shrugged. “If Castin here is any good, yes. Otherwise, we’re doomed.”
“It’ll work,” Castin said. “My code and patches always work.”
The others turned to give him an arch expression.
Castin gave them the look of someone caught in a lie. “Well, usually.”
Wedge felt ice slash through his gut as the most likely scenario went through his mind. The Hawk-bats would circle around the fallen pilot, trying to determine whether Phanan was dead or alive, and would protect him from the strafing runs of the enemy TIEs until they, too, fell one by one.
He keyed his comlink. “Hawk-bats, this is One. Recommend abort mission. Stormies.” On some worlds, stormies was the panicked cry of bar patrons who’d detected a raid by stormtroopers, and it replaced Omega Signal as the evacuation command when the Wraiths were in their Hawk-bat identities.
He steeled himself against a protest from Face. And Face’s voice came across immediately, but not with the words he expected: “Hawk-bats, Leader. Confirm stormies.”
But Face’s interceptor dropped below the tree line, pursued by two fast-moving TIE fighters.
The half squadron of TIE fighters preceded Bastion into the Super Star Destroyer’s main landing bay. Kell waited until Bastion was brought into line directly below the bay. In a moment, the tanker would begin its ascent into the hands of Zsinj. He brought his comlink up. “Remember,” he said into it, “we’ll have a handful of seconds from the time we launch to the time they get another tractor on us. Nine, that’s all the time you have.”
Donos was now back in the emergency airlock, his pilot’s suit on and sealed against space to give him a bare few moments of protection from the hard vacuum he would be experiencing. A last-minute change put him there instead of in the main compartment, as he’d realized that the phototropic shielding of the shuttle’s viewport, designed to give the vehicle some protection from incoming laser fire, would be even more effective against the lighter beam of Donos’s rifle.
Donos simply said, “Ready.”
“Do it.”
Runt hit the control to release the Narra from its dock with Bastion. He cut in the shuttle’s thrusters at full power, blasting away from the tanker, the shuttle’s thrusters burning and scarring Bastion’s hull in a manner that would invite retaliation from any ship’s master.
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Runt immediately put Narra into a climb, toward the surface of Halmad, then continued the loop so that the charred, antiquated black surface of Bastion, and the surrounding gleam of the Super Star Destroyer Iron Fist, came within sight.
There was a little flicker of light between Narra and Bastion.
Nothing happened.
Kell felt his stomach sink. It was too difficult a shot. Donos, as good as he was, was trying to fire a laser beam modified to carry data instead of a lethal intensity of power, and trying to hit Bastion’s communications array from a moving shuttle.
Donos fired again. No effect.
Narra shuddered with the characteristic trembling of a small craft in the grip of a tractor beam. Kell shook his head.
Donos fired again.
A bright orange glow appeared in the viewports and hatch seams of Bastion. Then the tanker vanished, replaced by a globe of yellow and orange destructive force, an expanding cloud that swelled up into the main landing bay, out across the lower surface of Iron Fist, and toward Narra.
Face dropped into the trees, one pursuer back about two hundred meters, the other—the one who’d shot down Phanan—twice that distance away. Here, Face’s superior speed would not help him; it was pure pilot skill and maneuverability that would allow survival in this obstacle-rich environment. The forest’s large trees were well spaced; it was possible to maintain a high rate of speed here, jinking back and forth to arc around obstructions in his path.
His purser fired, a blast that incinerated a tree bole immediately to Face’s starboard. He cursed. He’d hoped that there wouldn’t be any immediate firing opportunities, but his pursuer was already gaining on him.
Suddenly the trees were gone and there was water below him—he’d emerged over a lake. No cover, but it gave him an opportunity. He curved around to starboard, rotating up on his starboard wing, the ferocity of his maneuver crushing him back into his seat. Through his topside viewport, he could see as his first pursuer screamed out of the forest and immediately followed his loop.
Face couldn’t see the second pursuer, but his timing sense said the pilot was mere fractions of a second from emerging from the trees—if he were following his wingman. Face opened up with his lasers.
And the second pursuer emerged right into his stream of laser fire. Face was rewarded with the brief vision of that TIE fighter’s starboard wing evaporating under the blast, its cockpit punctured and detonating.
Ahead was the tree line again. Face rolled level and shot into the trees at a ninety-degree angle to his original course. The other TIE fighter followed.
Face instinctively ducked as a half squad of TIE fighters roared by overhead, a kilometer up, obviously searching for him. They didn’t turn back to pursue him—they must have missed him.
He twitched his pilot’s yoke, resisting the urge to become frantic, as tree after tree appeared in his path. Then there was a brief break as he was over another lake, this one much smaller and covered in huge green leaf-shaded pads that floated atop the water, and beyond he was in trees again.
They were becoming denser. Harder to veer back and forth to find the gaps that would accommodate his starfighter. His pursuer hadn’t been able to fire on him in several seconds—that was good, but sooner or later the increasingly difficult terrain would stop protecting him and would kill him.
Unless—he remembered Shalla’s tactic in her Coruscant simulator runs. And the next time he had to vector to find a safe gap, he chose one so narrow that his stomach tightened up. It was too narrow, too narrow—but he rolled up on his port wing array and shot through, the slightly thinner profile of the TIE interceptor making the maneuver possible. He heard his wings shred through leaves and twigs.
His pursuer tried to stay on his tail, then realized too late that such a tactic was fatal. Face heard the explosion a mere second after he cleared the too-narrow gap.
He slowed and came around. Off in the distance to his right, a section of forest was burning, ignited by his pursuer’s detonation.
All right. Sensors showed that the rest of the Hawk-bats were spacebound, most of the TIE force pursuing them, while the half squad he’d seen mere moments ago were now a couple of kilometers to the west and breaking up to search for him.
He had a window. He could make a break for space.
No, he couldn’t. Not with Phanan still out there. He might not be dead. There had been no explosion when his TIE fighter fell into the forest.
By memory, by luck, Face found the small lake with the leaf pads in it and dropped as swiftly as he dared into the water near shore. Before the lake water was halfway up his forward viewports, his descent was arrested by the lake’s muddy floor.
He goosed the repulsorlifts, driving him forward, and the lake water rose. He continued, shoving his interceptor forward, until the water rose to the height of the top of his front viewport.
He used the emergency power switch to power down, then manually cranked his access hatch open and clambered halfway out.
There was a lot of splashing going on in the lake, and he got half visions of large amphibious things entering the water. Not his problem now.
One of the huge leaf pads was within reach. He leaned over and grabbed its veined surface, then dragged it across the top of his interceptor.
Then he settled back into his cockpit to wait.
Either their sensors would pick him up, or they’d be baffled by the presence of other life-forms, by the shielding effects of the water, by the fact that his interceptor was completely powered down. Either way, he’d know soon.
The expanding cloud of fiery gas enveloped Narra and shook her harder than the tractor beam ever had.
Runt let out an exultant whoop. “We are free.”
“Punch it. Get us out of here,” Kell said. He was jarred as something heavy and metallic slammed into the shuttle’s rear. “Nine, are you all right?”
No answer.
Kell grabbed at the buckle on his harness and started to pull it free, but thought better of it. As much as he wanted to get back and see how Donos was doing, this explosive turbulence would take him off his feet and perhaps pound him to death. He had to wait until they were clear of it. “Nine, acknowledge.”
His comlink crackled. “Nine here. Dogging the hatch closed. I’m a little toasty.”
“Great shot, Nine. Stay where you are until the ride is smooth.”
“Acknowledged.”
They shot out of the explosive cloud like a proton torpedo leaving an X-wing. Behind them, visual sensors showed Iron Fist’s keel enveloped in black-and-orange-glowing debris.
Kell kept his eye on that image even as it got smaller. “Come on, come on, give us a present—break up!”
But the eight-kilometer-long capital ship stayed sturdily in one piece.
“No tractors, no pursuit,” Runt said.
“Let’s hope it stays that way. Castin, plot us an escape vector and hyperspace jump, any direction.”
“Already working on it, Chief.”
12
Face could see the sky brighten through the leaf pad above. As time passed, his cockpit grew warm and humid, and he could hear the distant moan of TIE fighters overhead. He sweated and waited.
Then there was nothing but the sound of wildlife, musical tweets he ascribed to some sort of birdlike creatures, coughing grunts he couldn’t associate with any animal he knew, splashes that seemed consistent with the human-sized amphibians he’d seen earlier.
Blaster in hand, he emerged through his hatch and dogged it closed, all the while keeping the leaf pad in place atop him, and then slid off the dome of his interceptor and into the water. The shore was a few dozen meters away, a challenging swim in his pilot’s suit.
He’d marked the sensor location of Phanan’s crash and compared it with his own landing position. He was certain he could find Phanan’s TIE fighter. He was certain he would cut down anything that tried to keep him from reaching it.
They were a gloomy g
roup, gathered in the conference module at Hawk-bat Base.
No injuries among them, except for something like a sunburn on Donos’s face. Yet they wore the expression of defeated soldiers.
Wedge said, “We’re all concerned about Face and Phanan, and we have to face the possibilities that they didn’t make it. But I want you all to understand this. It’s very important. Today, tactically, was a victory, a tremendous one. We cost them far more than they cost us. We also led them into this situation, and if the Hawk-bat identities remain uncompromised, we can continue with our plan. If we’re going to have any perspective on what this has cost us, we have to remember that.”
Tyria said, “What are we going to do about finding them?”
“We’ll put a team on the ground as soon as it’s feasible. First we have to get as much information as possible. About the movements of our enemies in the region where they went down.” He glanced at Castin Donn. “You were going to get us information from your satellite account.”
Castin nodded. “I couldn’t.”
“Explain.”
“The account had been shut down. When I accessed it, I got nothing but a pointer to two files. One was a brief, anonymous letter saying that the client, that’s me, didn’t have authorization for such a high-level data stream. The other was a big file, full holo, from Warlord Zsinj.”
There were startled noises from the other pilots, but Wedge waved them down. “You’ve viewed the file?”
Castin nodded. “I didn’t know it was Zsinj until I did view it. It’s a letter from him to the Hawk-bats.”
“Put it on.”
Castin leaned forward to tap a command into the controls of the room’s small holoviewer.
Above the table appeared Warlord Zsinj in all his white finery, about a meter high. Castin adjusted the image’s orientation so that it faced directly at Wedge.
Star Wars: X-Wing VI: Iron Fist Page 18
