Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [60]
ABOVE CORELLIA
Lysa ended her run along the length of the VibroSword/ attack fighter engagement. She would let her thrusters put her some distance away from the conflict before turning around for another run. She was certain that she’d scored some hits on Correllian attack fighters, but had flashed by so fast that she had no idea if any were debilitating, if any were kills.
Killing Corellians.
Eight was still on her tail, but sparks were shooting out and up from his port-side thruster. “Seven, I’m hit.”
“How’s it look?”
“Not good. It’s overheating. Venting it to space isn’t doing any good.”
“Shut it down and get back to Dodonna.”
“Will do.” Eight sounded regretful. “You’d better hook back up with the V-Swords and see if you can pick up a temporary wingmate.”
“You’re right.” Then Lysa’s eye was caught by something on her sensor board—a lone enemy blip, its course taking it near her position and down toward the planet. “After this,” she said.
“Lysa, don’t do it alone.”
“See you back at Dodonna.” She peeled off and looped around to follow in the new starfighter’s wake.
Her sensor board had it classified now—an X-wing. She was surprised; she didn’t think any of the Corellian units here were X-wing squadrons. But then, they hadn’t seen everything the Corellians had to offer them. She smiled, the competitive expression her trainers had sometimes described as feral, and roared up after her new prey.
Yes, the X-wing’s course was putting it into a lower and lower orbit, away from the GA fleet. Perhaps its pilot intended to join the battle against Skywalker’s squadron. Perhaps it had been on a reconnaissance run and was now taking important sensor data back to the Corellians. She shook her head. Either way, it wouldn’t get where its pilot intended to go.
She didn’t bother trying for a targeting lock yet. X-wings were tough, and her sensor board indicated that this pilot had already put his shield strength to double rear.
As her range finder indicated that she was at maximum effective range for her interceptor’s laser cannons, she swung her targeting brackets toward the X-wing. But the snubfighter suddenly jerked upward, sideways, to port and starboard, always in a direction opposed to her targeting bracket’s approach to it. She had the eerie sensation that the pilot knew exactly when she was going to begin aiming.
She didn’t know whether to curse or smile more broadly. This pilot was good. He jittered in her targeting brackets once, twice, three times, on each occasion long enough for her to pull the laser cannon trigger, but never long enough for the laser blasts to find a home in his fuselage. She missed with each shot, sometimes by only a few meters.
And suddenly he was going in reverse.
She overshot him, adrenaline jolting through her. It was a classic X-wing flying technique used against a faster pursuer, and it had been executed at exactly the moment she least expected it.
She pushed down on her control yoke, just long enough for her opponent to believe that she was going to dive and loop around, then she yanked back, coming up and into a port-side roll.
An inexperienced pilot would bite on that first, false-maneuver and dive to pursue. She’d be able to correct and dive after him. A more alert or experienced pilot would manage to stay on her tail, would have a few seconds of pursuit in which to obtain a target lock and fire lasers or even launch a proton torpedo at her starfighter, so much more fragile than the X-wing.
She heard no screech of a targeting lock alarm. She checked her sensor board. Her opponent hadn’t dived, hadn’t pursued. Apparently from the moment she made her evasive maneuver, he’d resumed his original course.
Lysa sat there in momentary shock. He hadn’t even taken a shot at her.
Her comm board crackled and its scanner indicated that the broadcast was coming in across a general GA military frequency—but very low-powered, so faint that only she was likely to pick