Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [146]
On that flight I realized how much I actually missed Whistler. I know people aren’t supposed to get sentimental about astromech droids, but I’d had him for years. He used to get the usual memory wipes and programming upgrades back then, but I think he found a way to download chunks of his personality into the CorSec mainframe and recover it later. Whistler was sneaky and independently minded that way, which was good for me. If not for him I’d have been dead a dozen times over.
On long flights Whistler and I would discuss various things—like fatherhood—and I could count on him as being a good sounding board. Actually, he was very much a mirror in the sense of my father’s old saying. When I started getting out of line, Whistler would call me on it and, more times than not, he was right. Of those few times he was not, well, I’m sure there were times when he was not right.
The Backstab reverted to realspace right on top of Chance. Flights one and two deployed, taking slashing runs at the corvette. Rock Four exploded when she caught a direct hit from one of the ship’s double turbolaser cannons. The green energy bolts just peeled the cockpit back like the petals of a flower bud, shredding it and casting long jagged tendrils of armor into space. The clutch’s ion engine exploded, letting the craft’s three fins spin away through space. The rest of the Chance’s cannons filled space with a lot of energy, but Rock Four was the only thing Chance’s gunners hit before we slagged their guns.
The six TIE-wing fighters flying sentry duty around Chance should have run as soon as we arrived. The TIE-wing consists of a TIE fighter ball cockpit married to the engine nacelles from a Y-wing fighter. It truly lives up to the name Ugly, and in Rogue Squadron we used to refer to them as “Die-wings.” Sluggish and ungainly, they looked like wildernerfs being hit by a pride of taopari. All six lasted no more than five minutes. I found watching the dogfight frustrating because my squadron-mates missed shots that should have ended it all much sooner, and two of them paid for their lousy marksmanship with their lives.
The Skipray that had come with us, Vibroblade, started over toward Chance when another ship—a private yacht—entered the system on our entry vector. That wasn’t a surprise—I didn’t know where we were, but there were enough planetary bodies in the area that routes in and out had to be severely limited. What was a surprise was the half-dozen, hyperdrive-fitted Headhunters flying cover for the yacht. They clearly didn’t like seeing us there, so while the yacht came about and headed away again, the Headhunters came in on us hard with enough triple-blasters blazing.
I didn’t wait for an order releasing me. “Ten, on me,” I snapped through the comm and engaged my throttle. The clutch lurched forward. I rolled and dove toward the Headhunters and two came up at me. With my thumb I flicked the weapon selector over to ion cannon, hit a little rudder to flash the incoming pilots my flank, then straightened the clutch out and pulled the trigger.
The blue ion bolt nailed the lead Headhunter’s left S-foil. Azure lightning played across the forward shield, boiling it away. The shield didn’t collapse, but the lightning storm on the shield made it tough for the pilot to see me. His return shots went wide on either side, then we were past each other before he could get another shot.
Caet shot at the second Headhunter. Her twin laser blasts caught the Headhunter on the nose, piercing the shield and causing a brief flash of light. Even without Whistler present to let me know what happened, I knew from the location that the Headhunter had lost its combat sensor package. The pilot would be blind in space and, in a dogfight situation, that meant he was as good as dead.
I snapped a quick shot off