Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [11]
“While the E series’ weapons upgrades give the Double Sevens substantial point-defense capability, each of them will require a full squadron fighter screen, because we just don’t have adequate intel on target forces. We could find ourselves facing anything from a few dozen to several thousand of those TIE defenders; the records captured during the Spirana operation indicate that there are still over ten thousand verified-production defenders unaccounted for. Plus, of course, we can’t say for certain that the remaining loyalist territories contain no active production facilities. Not to mention that he might have interceptors or other non-FTL fighters based in-system.”
Captain Trent, commander of the Regulator, leaned closer. “And capital ships?”
“Shadowspawn’s forces have never employed capital ships.”
“Doesn’t mean he ain’t got any.”
“Yes, sir. But there are elements of the system that suggest we will be facing primarily starfighters. It’s just that there’s no way to guess how many.”
T’Chttrk chittered and clicked a question. Her D-series protocol droid, D-P4M, inclined its elegantly tungsten-coated head and murmured, “The commander respectfully requests to be informed of any good news.”
“Commander,” Thavish said, “that is the good news.” He manipulated his thumbstick again. “The bad news looks like this.”
The translucent clouds that had drifted through the simulation thickened as though they could become actually tangible. “These represent our best long-range scans of the debris field from the destruction of Taspan II. The Big Crush, as it is called, resulted from an accident at an Imperial testing facility for a new type of gravity-well projector. The planet was entirely pulverized, producing debris that ranges from pinhole micrometeors to asteroids several kilometers in diameter. This occurred only four Standard years ago; the debris has not yet settled into stable orbits. Worse, the planets were in conjunction at the time of the Big Crush, and Mindor was the inner planet of the two. So as the chunks of Taspan II spiral inward toward the star, Mindor’s own gravity has captured great masses of them into eccentric, unstable orbits around itself.”
Admiral Kalback leaned forward, chin palps twitching. “And there is no way to plot these orbits?”
“Commander, even if we could scan them all—which we can’t—no computer could reliably plot their paths; even the word orbit, I’m afraid, suggests a much more settled situation than we’ll be facing. They are constantly interacting with each other in every conceivable way, from gravitic effects to outright collision. If you’ll direct your attention to these figures—”
Each individual cloud now sported glowing numbers that drifted right along with them. The numbers slowly changed, creeping up or down; when clouds drifted together, the overlap zones produced numbers of their own—higher ones. “These numbers represent our best estimates of the material density of each major debris cloud. Each figure reflects the number of tactically significant objects per cubic kilometer. By tactically significant, we mean large enough to produce substantial damage to a fleet ship, in spite of defensive fire and particle shielding.”
Captain Patrell, the grizzled Corellian commander of the Wait a Minute, swore harshly enough that at least four of the other officers flinched. “Some of those numbers are in the hundreds!”
“Yes, sir.”
The captains exchanged grim looks. The prospect of bringing cruisers that were themselves a respectable fraction of a cubic kilometer into that kind of asteroid storm was bleak.
“Let me put this another way.” Another twist on the thumbstick produced new figures in the clouds. “These new numbers represent the estimated probability of catastrophic impact—one that results in significant degradation of combat