Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [122]
“And can you do all that, General? And put a shine on your reputation while you’re at it?”
“I can. And put a shine on your reputation. Since you’re the military commander in chief approving an operation that might not rid the system of scores of thousands of loyal Corellians.”
Han saw Leia holding her breath. Wedge was playing a tricky game here—appealing to Sal-Solo’s political instincts of self-preservation, but still batting the man’s words back into his teeth. Perhaps Wedge was getting too tired to keep his politics soft-spoken and pleasing. Perhaps, like Han, he hated Sal-Solo so much that he simply couldn’t bear to accommodate the man.
“Let’s hear it,” Sal-Solo said. “If I like what I hear, you might not find yourself begging on a street corner come morning.”
Wedge turned his back on the man’s booth. From a breast pocket he removed a datapad. Looking around, he apparently spotted the room’s hologram input sensor; he pointed the datapad at it, and abruptly the hologram image overhead changed.
Once again it was the center of Rellidir, but a less realistic plotting of it; the spacescrapers were all simple gray rectangles, their windows, balconies, and decorations not represented. A moment after the hologram resolved into crisp detail, dome-like translucences in pink appeared to show the two sets of shields maintained by the Galactic Alliance occupiers.
“Same problem, different solution,” Wedge said. On the hologram, two flights of green blips—six blips per flight, two half squadrons—appeared at the edges of the displayed region, the first from one angle, and the second from an angle ninety degrees to that of the first. The first flight over-flew the shield-protected region; a moment later, the second flight followed suit. Now red dots appeared on the display, in numbers rapidly swelling from twenty to a hundred, and formed up to follow the green dots. Both the pursued and the pursuers exited the scene within moments.
“Stage One,” Wedge continued, “is a diversionary bombing run on the shields, standard operational procedure to overload shields and bring them down. Given that the GA occupiers have not only installed military power generators at the site but also commandeered city power generators and can feed them straight into their shields, the shields possess a lot of power. This run will fail, and the bombers will make a quick bounce up to orbit, drawing off a certain amount of pursuit.”
Wedge tapped another button on his datapad. Just barely within the outer perimeter of the shields, a massive gray building began to blink in color, alternating between green and yellow. “This is the Terkury Housing Complex, currently under construction, being built on the site of an old complex that had to be deconstructed for safety reasons. The new complex will be somewhat more upscale than many of the surrounding housing units, providing modern amenities and a broad underground hangar area for private skimmers, shuttles, and the like.”
Sal-Solo’s voice was richly mocking. “You almost make me want to live there.”
“At the moment, sir, it’s not a very good investment. Stage Two of this operation involves taking a couple of those Shriek-class bombers and flying them clean through the Terkury Housing Complex, then continuing on to the arts center and initiating its destruction.”
Sal-Solo cleared his throat, the electronically augmented sound echoing off the chamber’s walls. “Surely, given your reputation for military strategy, you’ve noticed that the housing complex you propose to fly through is enclosed within their shields.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you don’t see this as a problem.”
“No, sir.”