Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [68]
He couldn’t help but grin. He had only three years on Kendo; nevertheless, sometimes he felt more like thirty years older than the newbies. He made no reply, just hung zero and watched Kendo make a sharp and well-executed half roll as he lined up for his run. The kid could fly. But could he do what he was told?
Ahead, the six drones sailed serenely through the blackness. They were programmed to activate defensive weapons—low-powered beams that were enough to rattle your teeth if one hit your fighter, but not strong enough to cause any real damage. Anybody paying attention could avoid these, but it took practice. In the real world, even a freighter could get lucky and blow you out of the void, and that’s what training was for, to teach you how to avoid such mishaps. TIEs were fast, but they had neither life support nor shielding; a solid hit from any real weapon could crisp you like a mulch fritter.
Kendo accelerated—a hair faster than called for, but Vil held off calling him on it. Let’s see what you can do with it, kid …
The newbie zipped toward the target. Vil checked his Doppler-ping. Seven seconds. Six … five …
“Shoot,” Vil said.
No response.
“Kendo, shoot and pull up!”
But Kendo kept boring in, drawing closer to the lead drone.
The stupid mopak! He’s going for the pilot port!
“Pull up, Lieutenant! That’s an order! Pull up, now!”
The drone fired its port guns. The attenuated strobe hit Kendo’s fighter. It wasn’t enough to hurt him, but it must have been enough to startle him. He fired, flared to port—
Too late.
A quarter second sooner on the turn and he’d have missed, but as it was the TIE’s starboard solar array hit the drone’s nose. The impact tore the array from the fighter, the energy collection coils unraveling spasmodically, like a beheaded snake; the power lines sparked in cold vacuum as they were torn apart. The housing snapped and the impact spun the craft into a wild tumble.
Vil shoved the stick, feeling g-force slap him hard, knowing it was far too late to do anything but watch. “Kill the power! Kill the—!”
The fuel tank separated from the hull. The seal held, but the fuel line stretched, stretched … Vil could see it happen, slowly, as if time had stalled out …
The line snapped, spewing the radioactive gas in a sudden cloud toward the tumbling craft. Something—a shattered circuit board, perhaps—sparked. There was a soundless, eye-burning flash—
“Blast!” Vil shouted. “Blast, blast, blast!”
32
THE HARD HEART CANTINA, DECK 69, DEATH STAR
Ratua’s identification wasn’t bombproof, but short of a destructive analysis it would pass any casual scan by anybody—not, he marveled yet again, that anybody seemed to give a braz’s behind enough to bother to ask to see it. From the look of this station, it would, when finished, be impregnable from outside attack; nobody was going to be able to throw much of anything at it that was going to cause it any real problems. And yet here he was, walking around like it was his personal ship, ostensibly a contractor. Had he been a Rebel saboteur, he could have been busy causing a world of problems absolutely unchecked for weeks. How ironic was that?
Of course he wasn’t a Rebel of any kind. He didn’t have much use for politics, never had, couldn’t see that he ever would. For a man in his, ah, profession, whoever was in charge—Empire, Alliance, his dear old uncle Tunia—didn’t really matter. Unless Black Sun managed to take over, whoever ran the show would want to see Ratua stashed in a cell somewhere.
But he wasn’t in a cell now; in fact, he had it pretty cushy. Plenty of credits stashed here and there, a fake identity that nobody questioned, even a legitimate, semi-private room, courtesy of a bribe to a poor clerk with a slight gambling problem. Everything a man might want.
Okay, almost everything. He could use a little female companionship, and he was working