Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 06_ Vortex - Denning Troy [11]
“Activate suit support.” She grabbed her stick and began to right her tumble, bringing the starfighter under control gently, in case the superstructure had suffered any damage. “Give me a damage assessment.”
NOT BAD AS IT COULD BE, Rowdy reported. WE STILL HAVE TIME TO STOP THOSE LAST PIRATES—AS LONG AS WE SUFFER NO MORE LUCKY HITS.
Jaina surprised herself with a grin. “I like your style, Rowdy.” She glanced down and found the last shuttle highlighted on her tactical display, less than a kilometer behind the Rockhound and already starting to climb toward its belly. “But I was wrong. Those weren’t lucky hits.”
An inquiring beep sounded inside Jaina’s helmet.
“Their gunners have been using the Force.” Jaina swung around and accelerated so hard that her battered StealthX began to wobble and pitch. “That’s why they hit us every time I launch a shadow bomb—they can find me in the Force.”
PIRATES HAVE THE FORCE?
“These pirates do,” Jaina said. The last skiff came into view and began to swell, four tiny circles of blue arranged around a boxy gray stern. “Arm bomb six.”
Rowdy emitted a confirming tweedle, then scrolled a message across the cockpit display. IT HAS BEEN NICE FLYING WITH YOU, JEDI SOLO. THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME A SENSE OF HUMOR SO I WILL FIND THIS AMUSING.
“Relax, will you?” The hair on Jaina’s neck stood up, and a stream of cannon bolts began to fly back over the skiff’s stern. “They have a blind spot.”
Jaina pushed their nose down, and the stream began to fly past dozens of meters overhead. A moment later the skiff passed beneath the stern of the Rockhound and, dwarfed by the tug’s two-kilometer immensity, continued forward between the massive stabilizer legs.
Knowing what would happen the instant the gunners felt her reach for their craft in the Force, Jaina hung back half a kilometer, then said, “Launch bomb six.”
When she felt the charge of compressed air shove the shadow bomb free of its launch tube, she grasped it in the Force and pulled up hard. As she had expected, the skiff rolled on its back, trying to bring its weapons to bear before the bomb struck home. Jaina was already rising into its ion stream, nearly scraping her canopy on the Rockhound’s belly as she guided the bomb toward the four blue circles of the BDY’s thrust nozzles.
Rowdy issued a shrill alarm tweedle, no doubt warning her about the dangers of remaining inside the skiff’s ion tail. The friction alone would be pushing the StealthX’s skin toward the combustion point, and Jaina could feel for herself how the turbulence was straining the starfighter’s battered frame. Still, she remained inside the efflux, her attention fixed on the bright blue circles until they finally swelled into the silver flash of a detonating shadow bomb.
Half a second later the StealthX hit the bomb’s shock wave and Jaina slammed against her crash harness. The temperature inside her vac suit shot up so quickly, she thought her hair would burst into flames. The spatter of ricocheting debris rattled through the starfighter, and then there was nothing ahead but the dark-pocked sky of the Rockhound’s vast white belly.
Jaina brought the StealthX under control. The starfighter’s superstructure was showing through the nose in a couple of places, and its fuselage was vibrating so badly that she feared it was coming apart around her. She began to ease away from the Rockhound’s underside.
“Rowdy, how are you doing back there?” she asked. “Still with me?”
There followed a short silence, then a single fuzzy beep finally came over Jaina’s helmet speakers.
“Glad you made it,” she said. “What’s that mother ship doing?”
A blurred message scrolled across the cockpit’s main display. TO DETERMINE THAT,