Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [160]
Six enemy starfighters, oversized silver balls trailing narrowing twin thruster pods, flashed by from right to left, pursued by a flight of Corellian attack fighters. In the distance to the left, the enemy craft began a slow turn back toward the fight.
Han blinked. “What the fierfek are those?”
“Sienar Aleph-class starfighters,” Wedge said. “Originally nicknamed Pondskippers because they were to be countermeasures to coralskippers. The current nickname is Twees. They’re out of prototype and in limited production.”
“Great. I hit mine with a good quad-linked punch and it didn’t even shudder.”
“Yeah, they’re supposed to be like shooting solid metal ball bearings.” Wedge switched over to the squadron frequency. “Nebula Flight, Panthers are making our break. Good luck.”
“Panther One, this is Nebula Leader. Blow something up for us.”
Han anticipated Wedge and broke first from formation, a dive that took him down, still eastward, toward the start of their approach to Rellidir’s downtown district. Wedge slipped neatly into his wake.
BATTLE CARRIER DODONNA, ABOVE TRALUS
The starfighter control chamber was an exercise in controlled chaos—a sight familiar to Leia, who’d helped coordinate many starfighter skirmishes, starting with the Battle of Yavin.
Aboard Dodonna, they had bells and whistles she’d never enjoyed in the control room at Yavin. The entire battle was being reproduced via holograms over their heads, the skirmishes not exactly to scale but with each individual starfighter or vessel shown in a wire-frame form color-coded to whichever side the fighting vehicle represented. The GA forces were blue; Corellian forces, red; unknowns—including several vehicles, probably civilian, above Rellidir and heading away from that endangered city—in yellow. As they moved around, firing, sustaining damage, disappearing, the disconcerting combination of colorful icons and event noises made the whole display seem like an oversized console game experiencing delirium tremens.
Equipped with a specialized datapad handed to her by the chamber’s coordinator, a black-furred Bothan colonel by the name of Moyan, Leia could gather all sorts of data about the various forces. By pointing the datapad at any vessel or vehicle and tagging it with a beam of light from the device, she could display information about the target on the datapad screen.
For example, the fighter that had just winked out in the fight above Rellidir was designated Nebula Eleven, its pilot Gorvan Peel. The Corellian vessels were equipped with ejectors, and a moment after the fighter vanished, Leia’s screen was updated: EJECT SUCCESS, LIFE SIGNS OPTIMAL, QUEUE RESCUE #37.
As several of the coordinators in the chamber were doing, she pointed at one of the “mystery bombers” descending on Rellidir and sampled its information:
F/F: ENEMY
CLASS: CEC YT-VARIANT (UNKNOWN), EST. BOMBER
PILOT: UNKNOWN
Information on the other Shriek was identical.
Leia spoke quietly into her datapad, allowing its speech-to-text translator to add a notation to the data on the bomber: “Believed damaged, as it is turning away from GA targets. Recommend concentration on fighter escort.” She tapped the screen to send that datum to Dodonna’s database.
A flash of guilt washed across her. She was pretending to be helping the GA forces, and instead she was protecting her husband as he bombed them. She shook her head, trying to force the emotion away from her. No matter what she did during this fight, she’d be coping with guilt, and not keeping an eye on Han’s back would be worst of all…especially if he was hurt.
She turned her attention to the Alephs skirmishing with Han’s fighter escort.
CORUSCANT
His head filled with a baffling mix of emotions and images, Luke sat up in bed. He spared Mara a glance, saw that she was still asleep, and rose.
So pounded was he by