reinforcing my shields or keeping the gravjectors operational. I made the former
choice, recovered five Interceptors, and went to light speed."
Devlia leaned forward. "They were waiting for the Black Asp. They came out of
hyperspace right on top of her."
Kirtan stroked his chin. "I don't see that one thing establishes the other. I
see no evidence of an ambush."
Iillor's head came up. "That's what I've been telling the Admiral."
"You're both blind."
"I think, sir, with all due respect, you are making unwarranted assumptions."
Kirtan began to pace around the edge of the table, passing behind the Admiral
and back again. "Interdictor cruisers are designed to pull ships out of
hyperspace. Of course, only where the route is known in advance can they be
positioned in such a way that doing that is possible. In this case, since the
Black Asp was in the Chorax system specifically to prevent a ship from entering
hyperspace, you have chosen to discard one of its primary functions."
"Preposterous!"
Which is precisely the kind of mistake I would have made previously. Kirtan
allowed himself a slight smile. "Check your thinking. If you chose to ambush an
Interdictor cruiser, would you do so with a single squadron of X-wings?"
Devlia's face reddened. "Perhaps / would not, but I have training most Rebel
officers do not."
"Granted, sir, yet the Rebels are not without wise leadership." Kirtan left
allusions to Yavin and Endor unvoiced, but he saw by Devlia's expression the man
had caught them anyway. "I might ask why the Rebels would waste their time
attacking an Interdictor cruiser at all? No disrespect intended to you, Captain
lillor, or your ship, but the action of Interdictors is hardly crippling to the
Rebellion. Our main battle fleets are garrisoning key worlds, like Corellia and
Kuat, so even predation on Interdictors is unlikely to draw them out."
lillor did not smile, but her nod was not as stiff as before. "My assumption was
that we had suffered the misfortune of pulling a convoy out of hyperspace, but
the Admiral found such coincidence unlikely."
Kirtan smiled. "The Admiral, despite this mis-judgment, is formidable enough
that I should think the Rebels utter fools to operate in his command sector."
Devlia had opened his mouth to protest the first half of Kirtan's statement. The
second half, which Kirtan had added as a sop to the man's vanity, killed the
Admiral's comment and clicked his jaw shut.
The Intelligence agent again focused on Captain lillor. "How did you identify
them as Rogue Squadron?"
"Communication intercepts used 'Rogue' call
signs. Visual data is not very good, but there is a unique unit crest painted on
the S-foils. Preliminary searches correlate it with a crest said to be that of
Rogue Squadron. Also the Pulsar Skate is a ship with Corellian connections, just
like Wedge Antilles. And the pilots were hotthey took off seven of my
Interceptors, with the last two falling to an X-wing that was dead."
Devlia leaned back. "Interesting, but circumstantial, as I am sure Agent Loor
will agree."
"Circumstantial, yes, but persuasive." Everything she had said about the
squadron that attacked the Black Asp did seem to point to Rogue Squadron. Kirtan
doubted any other unit in the Rebellion would sport Rogue call signs, and the
crest data would have to be checked. Still and all it was not conclusive. It is,
however, a start.
"Captain, did your shuttle stay in-system and monitor the squadron for outbound
vector and speed?"
lillor scowled. "No, and Lieutenant Potin has been reprimanded for fleeing when
not threatened. I do have entry vector and velocity data, and it is
triangulated with the data from the shuttle."
"That's something, then."
"I will make certain you have it in time for your return to Imperial Center,
Agent Loor." Devlia stood. "Assuming you want nothing else here."
"I do want to speak to the pilots who flew against the X-wings as well as review
any data recorded from the Interceptors that were destroyed."
"I'll see the interviews are arranged right away."
The old man's expression soured. "Staying that long are you?"
"Longer, I suspect." Kirtan smiled broadly for the Admiral. "If Rogue Squadron
is operating in this area, and I believe it is, I'll leave only after we've
found them and destroyed them, and not a moment sooner."
16
In only two weeks, while the official request for a new phi-inverted lateral
stabilizer languished in red-tape limbo, Emtrey found a pair of phi-inverted
lateral stabilizers that the Pulsar Skate dropped off on its second run to
Talasea. The Rogues' Verpine tech used the new parts to replace the older,
damaged parts. In synchronizing them, Zraii managed to smooth things out so
Corran noticed a five percent increase in power at full throttle, with a three
percent reduction in fuel consumption.
Corran throttled back slightly, matching his speed to that of Ooryl. "Three
Flight to leadwe're all in formation, sir."
"I copy, Nine. Stand by."
"As ordered, Lead." Corran smiled broadly in spite of himself. Back when he was
with CorSec he had hated escort duty, but after two weeks on the ground he would
have volunteered to go after Death Stars even if they were strung around a
system like pearls on a necklace. Even during his time on the run from Corellia
he'd managed to fly at least once
a week, even though that was well outside the profile of the identity Gil
Bastra had created for him.
He turned and looked back at Whistler. "Has Emtrey come up with any information
based on his analysis of the ID Gil made up for me?"
A mournful hoot came in reply as the word "No" appeared on his display.
"Yeah, I don't like the idea of never seeing Gil again, either." He glanced at
his sensor monitor. "Twelve, trim it up a bit there, you're slipping behind.
Trouble?"
"No difficulty. Compliance."
"Good. Keep close. This mission should be easy enough that a nerf-herder could
do it, but the other side will be shooting back, so we have to be careful."
Despite the light tone in his voice he knew things could get nasty. Alliance
operatives had been conducting surveys of Core worlds to assess the political
climate and determine the strength of Imperial forces protecting them. On one
run back toward their operations baseknown to the pilots only as "Black Curs
Base," with no location specified for security reasonsthey ran into the Strike
cruiser Havoc. The Rebels went to ground on a small jungle planet in the Hensara
system. They sank their ship, a modified Imperial Customs frigate, in a deep
lake and lacked the equipment needed to repair damage that would allow them to
move it again.
The Havoc grounded an Imperial walker and two scouts along with two platoons of
stormtroopers. While their reported progress in searching out the Rebels had
been slow, they started relatively close to the lake, so the ship's discovery
was a matter of time. The Alliance had reconciled i
tself to the loss of the
ship and had intended a covert extraction of the operatives, then the Havoc left
the system.
providing a window for repair and escape of the frigate Battle of Yavin.
Wedge sent the squadron the coordinates for the trip to the Hensara system. To
cover the location of their base, the journey would be undertaken in three
parts. The first jump, a short one, would take them to their first transit
point, an uninhabited star system not far from the Morobe system. From there
they would jump back out Rimward to the second transit system and back in to the
Hensara system.
While the multiple jumps and changes of direction would add hours to the flight
time, obscuring their point of origin was vital. The Alliance had learned that
spreading out its forces meant it was all but impossible for the Empire to land
a deathblow to the Rebellion. But for the efforts of a courageous few on Hoth,
the Rebellion's headquarters would have been destroyed and the Rebellion along
with it. Without taking precautions, they would pinpoint the location of their
base and invite retaliation.
They made the first jump on Wedge's mark and came out in the fringes of the
transit system all in one piece. The X-wings maneuvered around to the exit
vector quickly, then had to mark time as the Skate and the Corellian corvette
Eridain came about. Corran nudged his throttle back a notch, shortening the gap
between him and the Gand.
The larger ships reported they were ready, so the whole convoy shot into
hyperspace and came out in the second transit system intact. The course
adjustment there was not as radical as the one from the first system, so they
headed out quickly and arrived in the Hensara system just outside the
gravitational tug of the third planet.
Corran heard Tycho's voice come through the comm. "Rogue Leader, Captain Afyon
reports a clean scan of the system. You're clear for your run."
I
"Copy, Control. Three Flight, you fly CAP. Two and One, on me."
Corran let a low snarl resound in his throat. Flying Combat Aerospace Patrol
meant his flight would remain at the edge of Hensara Ill's atmosphere against
the possible incursion of any Imperial forces. The other eight fighters in the
squadron were going to escort the Skate down and strafe the Imperial mudbugs and
the durasteel dogs they had hunting Dirk Harkness and his compatriots on the
planet. Strafing runs against ground troopseven stormtrooperswasn't much in
the action department, but it was better than skipping across atmosphere,
shooting at nothing.
He shrugged. "Maybe slagging an AT-AT will sweeten Jace's disposition."
Whistler gave a stuttered chirp that sounded as close as the droid could manage
to a laugh.
Corran matched it with some laughter of his own. "Jace clearly figures that
because his name rhymes with 'ace' he should be one. He can't understand why
TIE pilots don't just line up for him to vape them all in one pass."
Tycho's urgent comm call cut off Whistler's trilled comment. "Control to all
Rogues. We have a Strike cruiser that just jumped in-system. Profile matches
Havoc, but two fighter bays have been added. TIEs are launching."
"Three Flight, lock S-foils in attack position." Corran glanced at his sensor
display. "Come to a heading of 272 degrees."
"Control here. I have thirty-six, repeat, three-six TIEs launched. Six
Interceptors, six bombers, and twenty-four, repeat, two-four starfighters.
Eridain beginning evasive maneuvers. Wait. Confirm, bombers are heading to
ground."
"We copy, Control." Wedge's voice came
through strong despite being nibbled upon by static. "Rogues Three and Four, the
bombers are yours. The rest are ours. Keep them off the Eridain"
"As ordered, Rogue Leader." Corran shoved his throttle full forward. "Go all
out, Three Flight. Into the middle, shoot at anything that isn't an X-wing. Call
if you need help."
Under normal circumstances Corran knew that flying into the teeth of an enemy
formation would have been suicidal, but odds of thirty-to-four weren't all that
conducive to long-term survival anyway. Since running wasn't an option, doing
what the enemy didn't expect would buy him a second or two of surprise, and that
would keep him alive just that much longer.
Hauling back on his stick and canting it ever so slightly to the side, he
brought the X-wing up into a lopsided corkscrew maneuver. While the jerky
motion of the ship's nose meant he didn't have a flame's chance on Hoth of
hitting anything, he was that much harder to hit himself. He pumped more power
into his shields, then shot through a flurry of laser bolts before he penetrated
the Imperial formation.
He hauled back on his stick, killing the weaving flight and arrowing his ship up
into a flight of TIEs. He lined one starfighter up in his sights and let it have
a quad blast of lasers. As the eyeball exploded, he cut the stick hard to
starboard, then rolled out into a level line that continued his original course,
with a half-kilometer cut to the right thrown in. As the TIE formation collapsed
in after him, he cruised out the other side of it.
Inverting his X-wing, he pulled the fighter into a loop that brought him around
in the TIEs' wake, though slightly below their formation. Keeping the nose up,
he headed back in again. He picked up on a TIE Interceptor that had broken right
while its
wingmate had broken left. Ooryl continued on the tail of the latter squint. The
other Interceptor tightened its turn into a teardrop loop designed to bring it
onto the Gand's aft.
Corran's quad lasers shredded the Interceptor's starboard wing and blew apart
one of the twin ion engines. The other, operating at full power, sent the squint
spinning away. Corran winced in sympathy with the pilot, then drove into the
middle of the TIE formation.
The X-wings plunging and wheeling through the middle of the TIEs had an
unanticipated advantage in that they had a very high target-to-comrade ratio to
shoot at. Moreover, because the X-wings had shields, even a shot taken in haste
at another Rogue would not likely prove fatal. The same could not be said of the
TIEsone burst from their lasers could cripple or kill a fellow pilot.
Corran snapped a shot off at one starfighter and watched it disintegrate. A
warning warble from Whistler and he mashed his right foot down on the etheric
rudder pedal. The X-wing's stern slew around to the left, swinging him out of an
Interceptor's line of fire while pointing his nose right at the ship as it
sailed past him. He punched the X-wing over ninety degrees, hauled back on the
stick, then completed the inversion and dove down onto the Interceptor's tail.
He sent kilojoules of scarlet energy into the ball cockpit and watched the craft
explode.
"Nine, break left."
Without thinking Corran slammed the stick hard to port and caught the green
highlights of laser bolts shooting through where he had just been. More red
laser fire chased back along those same lines and something exploded out there.
"Thanks, Commander."
"
No problem, Nine."
Corran eased his stick forward and dove down to stay clear of the mass of
starfighters. With the arrival of the rest of the squadron he knew there was no
way he could track all the ships and sort friend from foe. Even as he came back
up he saw less laser fire permeating the cloud of fighters than there had been
when the forces were less evenly matched. "So much twisting and turning going on
in there, no one can find a target and stick with it long enough to dust it."
Pulling up to continue his loop around the fringe of the battle he saw one
X-wing break free with a starfighter on its tail. His sensors told him Gavin was
at the stick of the Alliance ship. Measuring Gavin's line, Corran rolled his
craft and looped down at a tangent to it. "Rogue Five, break hard right."
Gavin's fighter rolled up on its starboard S-foil crisply and pulled away at an
angle that cast doubt on the existence of inertia. The starfighter following him
tried to imitate his maneuver, but neither the pilot nor craft were up to it.
As the TIE rolled, Corran swooped and fired. His quad-lasers burst the
spherical pod like a bubble, sending the hexagonal wings slicing off through
space.
Before he could even smile, his X-wing jolted forward. His instruments indicated
heavy damage to his aft shield. "Whistler, get me a lock on that TIE."
Corran inverted and dove, then pulled back on the stick to power up through a
teardrop and onto the TIE's tail. Instead of being where he expected it, the
lit, an Interceptor, showed up off his port S-foil, going away at a right angle
to his course. Corran stood on his left rudder, then did a snap-roll that gave
him a view of the planet above his head and the Interceptor racing away from
him.
Just as he feared it was going to run far enough
for Tycho or someone else on the Eridain to blast it, the Interceptor pulled its
own loop planetward and started back at him. Head to headhe knows what he's
doing. As Wedge and Tycho had pointed out countless times in training, the
majority of kills took place in head-to-head engagements. But so do I.
"Watch our tail, Whistler." Corran kicked his shields full forward and drove in
straight at the Interceptor. The rangefinder on the targeting monitor scrolled
numbers off with blurred speed. His crosshairs went green and he fired, but