Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [157]
Tycho Celchu had such a mind, but what impressed me about him was not the speed with which he thought, but the cool deliberation that defined the way he thought. When he picked me up as a target I didn’t feel the narrowing blade the way I had with Gavin. Instead Tycho had my ship all boxed up and, second by second, shrank that box, eliminating extraneous data, until my ship and a little box he had labeled target were one and the same.
More impressive than that, however, was the fact that the little target box had multiple appendages, each pointing off in the direction of all the maneuvers I could use to escape him. If I jinked right, he could pull me back into his targeting box. If I combined two moves or three, appendages flowed away from eliminated options and grew up to choke off new avenues of escape. His mind worked like the legendary Mon Calamari demonsquid, lashing me with arm after arm that sought to drag me back into the place where he could kill me.
The only way to beat him was to make him the hunted. I inverted and dove, then throttled back and came up through a tight loop that should have dropped me on his tail. He’d anticipated me, so he rolled out to port and I rolled right after him. I throttled back up and closed faster than I should have been able to, so I clipped off a shot that missed wide to port, then snap-rolled up on my port side and hauled the stick back. I held the climb for three seconds, then inverted and continued it around into a loop.
Tycho’s X-wing shot back across the front of my clutch, but I had no chance at a shot on him. From him I gained the impression of his enlarging the boxes in which he tried to trap me. He had to deal with the added problem of being a target as well, which gave him a variety of tactics to use against me. Only a few of them worked toward getting me back into the target box myself, and I did what I could to make those choices less than desirable.
“Rock Lead, this is Invidious. Rendezvous with the Invidious if you want a ride home.”
“I copy.” I relayed the message through to my squadron.
Caet came back. “Help, Lead?”
“Nope, I’m fine. Just get out of here.”
“Hurry.”
“As ordered.”
I rolled to starboard, then turned hard left and dialed my throttle down to tighten the turn. I applied thrust as I came out of the turn, eluding a quad laser burst from Tycho, then popped my throttle off, hit enough rudder to push me in his direction, and dropped the throttle back in. I snapped off a quick shot that laced his shields with azure lightning, then applied more rudder, inverted and dove after him. I got another shot off that hit and collapsed his aft shield.
In his situation I would have panicked, but I sensed no such thing from him. We just moved into a yet bigger box in which he twisted and tumbled his X-wing through a series of maneuvers I couldn’t have followed if I’d programmed them into my computer. Whenever he had a tactical choice he made it in a split-second, presenting himself with another choice. Branches seemed chosen at random, killing any ability to anticipate him, yet all worked back toward the targeting box.
I knew better than to stick around. I pulled myself into a wide turn that headed me back toward the Invidious. The Star Destroyer started laying down a defensive pattern of fire that swept out in waves to discourage pursuit. In theory our gunners were not shooting at the incoming fighters, but they placed their shots fairly close to discourage anyone coming after us. While the big ship’s shots weren’t likely to hit any of the fighters, the snubbie jocks had to worry about them nonetheless, which didn’t give them a free hand in tracking targets. And, if an incoming pilot was good enough, he could nudge his ship into the space turbolaser fire had just passed through, letting the big ship’s energy beams shield him from his pursuit.
Racing back through the main battlefield, I saw broken ships and EV pilots all over the place.