Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [118]
He dropped back to give his personal comlink a better chance to reach the ship. “Blackmoon Eleven to Swooper, do you have an exit path?”
“We do, Eleven. Can you receive it?”
“I’ve been patching my comlink and datapad into what’s left of the computer on this battered baby. Just transmit me the directional and I’ll escort you out.”
“Will do, Eleven. Many thanks.”
Wedge waited until the numbers appeared on his datapad screen, then reoriented to Ammuud Swooper’s outbound course. He could only estimate, based on what he remembered of Borleias’s current position in orbit around the star Pyria, but he believed that the course would take Ammuud Swooper in the general direction of the Deep Core worlds. Doubtless the freighter would only take a short hyperspace jump, a few light-years, and then correct to take them toward the rendezvous point.
The starfighter’s sensor board beeped with a new contact. Wedge took in the new information and bit back a curse. A squadron of coralskippers was headed their way, and would intercept Wedge and the freighter long before they were clear of Borleias’s mass shadow.
Charat Kraal poured plasma cannon fire into his opponent, saw some of it flitting around the edges of his target’s void and chewing into its hull.
As he’d suspected, the only kind of pilot foolish enough to disobey orders like that, to seek personal glory at the expense of duty, was a green pilot, one fresh from teaching. He might have gloriously fast reflexes, but he didn’t have the experience or will to defeat someone like Charat Kraal.
His target waggled side to side, signaling that he was quitting an exercise, the only way he had to communicate that he was surrending. He brought his voids around from his stern to his bow, symbolically baring his stomach, further sign that he was giving up this fight.
Charat Kraal fired again, pouring damage into his target’s stern, and, as he gained altitude relative to the other coralskipper, into its canopy. He saw the canopy crack and then explode outward from the atmospheric pressure within, saw one of his plasma projectiles hit and burn entirely through the torso of the pilot. That coralskipper continued in straight-line flight, a flight that might never end.
“Disobedience is death,” Charat Kraal said aloud, as though the spirit of his enemy might hear him. “Unless you win. And you cannot win by surrendering.” He looped back around toward the portion of the minefield where his pilots and Jaina Solo were.
And he frowned. The cognition hood showed him the locations of all those fighters, but there were four fewer coralskipper glows than there should have been, even counting the pilot he’d just killed.
Jaina Solo was whittling down the numbers of her pursuers. Charat Kraal shook his head and accelerated toward the action.
Luke’s X-wing blasted through a cloud of flame and vapor spilling out of a dying blastboat analog. He tensed against the impacts that would come if there was solid matter in the cloud, but emerged on the far side without hitting anything. He fired the instant he was free of the cloud, his quad-linked lasers barely missing Mara’s oncoming E-wing and ripping into the nose of the coralskipper chasing her. His shot missed the dovin basal housing at the bow but tore into the yorik coral beneath it before a void moved into place to intercept the rest of the damage.
The coralskipper, its pilot doubtless spooked by Luke’s magical arrival from within a cloud of flames, banked away from Mara, breaking off pursuit. Luke looped around to roar up in his wife’s wake. “Oh, there you are.”
Her voice, across the comm board, sounded amused. “Afraid I was running out on you?”
“You know what a jealous, possessive man I am.”
“Starfighter Command to Blackmoon Squadron, Yellow Aces.” The voice was Tycho’s. “We’re seeing increased defense at the worldship. Break off stern defense and move