Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [58]
It was rugged.
This went deeper than the combat defenses loaded onto this model; it was a feature of quality construction and attention to detail, and it meant that the X-wing could survive certain physical stresses that would rip the collector panels off a TIE. Like, for example, the extreme tidal stress created by a very close pass through a very steep gravity well.
Which was why each new wave of interceptors found itself under fire from flights of X-wings whipping out from around the gravity-station planetoids a great deal faster than X-wings were supposed to be able to whip. Rogue Squadron had the point, and their path between the planetoids became a looping chain of gravity-assisted slingshots that could, with no more than a twitch of the controls, send them toward whichever one or two or three of the five Slash-Es the Imps had decided to concentrate on.
Even with all these advantages, the overwhelming odds took their toll. Some X-wings were lost to friendly fire, as they were traveling too fast for the Slash-E gunners—or even their own superb reflexes—to react as they swept through the quad turrets’ fields of fire. Some were lost to simple collisions, flying at near-relativistic speeds through very, very crowded space. Almost half of the Twenty-third’s Green Squadron was taken out by a mass of asteroids that didn’t cohere into a planetoid as quickly as the navicomps had predicted.
They didn’t have anything like a count on the enemy fighters they’d destroyed; the TIEs just kept coming. “These guys never stop!” Wes Janson groaned through his teeth during the far side of his twentieth or thirtieth bruising way-too-tight slingshot. “It’s like all these beggars want to die!”
“They’re already dead,” Hobbie said from two hundred meters off Janson’s starboard wing. “Think about it, Janson—no shields. No hyperdrive. They can’t hide and they can’t run. All they’ve got is the chance to take us all with ’em.”
That stopped Janson cold. For a moment, he had no words at all. Then he set his jaw and rolled his starfighter starboard.
“I’ve got it!” he said, pointing his X-wing toward a TIE flight and holding down his triggers. “I know exactly what we need.”
“Yeah?” Hobbie said. “What’s that?”
“A miracle.”
“Seal that chatter!” Wedge snapped from the point. “And check your midrange scans.”
When Janson did, he discovered that a brand-spanking-new Mon Cal–designed Republic battle cruiser had just dropped out of hyperspace through that half-opened mass-shadow window, and was currently disgorging what appeared to be a full starfighter wing.
“Hot staggering—” For the second time in a few moments, Janson found himself entirely at a loss for words. “Where in eight Stalbringion hells did that come from?”
The comm crackled with the voice of the current director of Special Operations, General Lando Calrissian. “Did somebody order a miracle?”
THE CAVERN HAN HAD BEEN DIRECTED TO BY THE REDHEAD was roomy, looked acceptably dry in the bleached glare from the Falcon’s exterior lights, and was deep enough within a mountain that Han didn’t have to worry about being detected. That didn’t stop him from worrying, though.
First, he didn’t like having a hold full of armed strangers, no matter how much they might hate the Empire. Second, this mountain looked way too much like a dormant volcano. And third … well, he just didn’t much like parking in caves. Call him superstitious. Somehow landing his ship inside a big hole in a rock never seemed to work out that well.
On the other hand, the Mindorese might have brought along something to eat.
He keyed the intercom.