Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [67]
31
HALF A LIGHT-SECOND FROM DOCK ONE-A, EQUATORIAL TRENCH, DEATH STAR
“Pull up, Kendo!” Vil Dance said. He waited for the acknowledgment, but none seemed to be forthcoming. “Lieutenant Kendo, have you gone deaf?”
Vil’s own TIE vibrated as he leaned into the sharp turn, port and “up,” accelerating hard to avoid the robotic target drones grouped in a tight formation only six hundred klicks ahead of him.
“Pulling up, sir,” Kendo finally said. Through the comm-set, the man’s voice sounded—what? Laconic?
No, more like … bored.
Vil watched Kendo’s ship peel away from the course that would have smashed him into the drones in another two heartbeats. A sliver is as good as a parsec, the old pilots’ saying went, and while that might be true, following orders was more important.
A fact that new recruit Lieutenant Nond Kendo badly needed to learn.
The rest of the squad hung back a few hundred klicks, watching the newbie Kendo and the veteran Dance as they made their first warm-up run at the targets. They kept the chatter down, because it didn’t take a petahertz processor to see that their squadron leader was ready to bite somebody’s head off and spit it halfway to the Core, given this newbie’s performance.
They all thought they were the hottest pilots to ever lay hands on a stick when they first arrived, every one of them. Vil had felt the same way. But he had learned pretty quickly that when the squad leader told you to do something there were reasons, and if you decided you knew more about flying than he did, it could cost you. Severely.
There was no way he was going to have anything less than perfect performances on his first few weeks at his new assignment. He’d shipped over from the Steel Talon to the Death Star only a couple of weeks before, and he wanted to make sure that the brass had no reason to rethink their decision.
This was a simple training exercise; each of the squad members got solo runs at the target drones, with Lieutenant Commander Dance behind them, looking over their shoulders. The first pass was to check range and distance. On the second, it was targeting lasers only—you painted the target, got the kill electronically, and the squad leader rated your run. Only on the third pass did you get to shoot for real. The drones—old freighters refitted for naval exercises—were heavily armored, and it would take a lot more than a blast from a single TIE to seriously damage them, so a dozen squads could hit them before they had to be repaired; the Imperial Navy thus saved a few credits. Where you put your shot was important, and you learned how to do it by full-speed runs and full-power guns—but only in steps and by the numbers.
Vil had seen Kendo’s targeting lasers sparkle on the lead drone, and the practice shot had been pretty good to his eyes. He checked his ship recorder on the second run’s completion, and it confirmed his opinion as they curved around for the third and final run.
Okay, fine, the kid could shoot. Which got him no slice at all in Vil’s eyes—he was still a potential supercritical reaction.
“Listen up, Kendo, and pay close attention. You fire five seconds out, target the aft sensor array, and break off immediately, you copy?”
There was a two-second pause, then: “Ah, copy, Squad Leader. Request permission to target the aft pilot port. I can hit either gun—you call it.”
“I am sure you can, Lieutenant, but that’s not the assignment I just gave you, is it?”
Another pause. “No, sir.”
“Good. You’re teachable, at least. Now bring it around and let’s run it by the book.”
“Copy.”
That last word had an unmistakable ring of contempt. It was as if all the