Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [147]
Red-gold blaster bolts lit my shields from starboard. I hit right rudder and swung the clutch’s tail out of the Headhunter’s line of attack. The next bolts streaked past on the port side, so I rolled to starboard, dove and curled up in a long loop. Rolling out to port I saw another Headhunter making a run on Caet. The pilot was intent on her, so I came in on an oblique angle and hit with my first shot. That took his aft shield down, so he rolled starboard to get away from me. I applied a lot of left rudder, swung my nose around and laced his port S-foil with another bolt.
His blaster on that side exploded and the ship started to roll, which told me vector jets on that side were also having trouble. I rolled to starboard and would have swooped in to finish him, but a glance at my tactical sensor screen showed me a Headhunter vectoring in on me, and I had a feeling that was the guy who’d tried to get me earlier. I held my roll slow and showed him my belly, then yanked back on my stick and started a dive. He rolled to set himself up to come after me and I knew I had him.
I cranked my throttle down to thirty percent, then reversed it, killing my momentum. I let it hang there for three seconds, then dialed thrust back up. As I did so, my Headhunter friend went streaking by me, and I dropped into his exhaust. My first shot nailed his rear shield. He broke right, so I climbed, inverted and ruddered my way back onto his tail.
Caet raced past and pumped two laser blasts into him. One collapsed the aft shield and the other holed his starboard S-foil. His roll slowed appreciably and became unstable as the vector jets in the damaged S-foil weren’t matching the output from the other side. The pilot just goosed his throttle forward to get away, since he couldn’t fly fancy any more. The Headhunter even had enough speed to outrun my clutch.
Outrunning an ion bolt, on the other hand, is a lot harder. My shot caught his ship dead on in the back. Little blue tendrils of electricity ran over the fighter like nightmare fingers, scratching out sparks and little puffs of vapor. The ship shut down immediately, continuing off on its course.
I saw Caet coming back around for another run on it, but I called her off. “Abort, Ten. He’s done.”
“Not dead.”
“Out of the battle. Leave him.” I triggered an ion blast that passed between her fighter and the stricken ship. “You can have the kill, but there’s no reason to kill a pilot just doing his job.”
“Right to kill is mine.” She snapped her words off as if in pain. “Do not deny me.”
“You owe me. I shucked the one on your butt.” I started my clutch forward, angling in on her. “He’s mine and I want him alive.”
I heard Nive’s voice come through on the tactical frequency. “All targets are neutralized. Stand down Flight Rock Three.”
“I copy,” I reported.
“Copy.” Caet’s snarl did not have me looking forward to talking with her after the mission returned home.
“Nine, go to Tactical Two and scramble.”
“As ordered, sir.” I switched the comm unit over to the secondary tactical frequency and hit the scramble switch. The encryption key, which had been uploaded to each fighter from the Backstab, would keep the conversation private between Nive and me. “Nine here, Captain.”
“Nice shooting, Nine. Why ion? You could have killed the Headhunters in one shot the way you fly, but you used ion and made it tougher.” Nive let a little anger drift into his voice. “Was this a game for you?”
“No, sir.” I paused for a moment, not so much to gather my thoughts as figuring out how to express them. “The Headhunter