Star Wars_ Rebel Force 04_ Firefight - Alex Wheeler [3]
Now! he thought suddenly, and without questioning the impulse, he pulled up into a steep ascent as another stream of laserfire sizzled through the space he'd just occupied.
Div smiled. You want to kill me, you'll have to try a little harder, he thought.
The domed transparisteel base was the obvious target. Too obvious. And the pilot of the CloakShape had fallen for it. Div didn't intend to suffer the same fate.
The laserfire explosions bursting from the surface were clearly traceable to the base, even with the naked eye. To open fire from an undisguised and undefended surface base?
It reeked of incompetence. And Div's gut told him that his would-be employer was far from incompetent.
He keyed a new command into his computer, instructing it to triangulate the beams of laserfire, tracing them back to their point of origin. The calculations would have been difficult even if he were sitting still; speeding through space, navigating with wild gyrations to avoid the flak and fire, made them nearly impossible. But the near impossible was Div's specialty, and soon his suspicions were confirmed. The fire coming from the base was just a cover. The computer's triangulation directed him to an apparently empty spot two klicks from the moon base. A preliminary recon sweep indicated nothing but a rocky embankment. As Div drew the ship dangerously close to the surface, however, it became clear that the rocks were camouflaging a primary weapons embankment.
The moon had no atmosphere, which meant no cloud cover to fog Div's view of the ground. Soon he'd drawn near enough to spot the laser cannons. Dodging and weaving through the streaking fire, he shut down his targeting computer. It could do the job, but sometimes Div preferred handling things himself. He liked the feel of the targeting controls in his hands, liked letting his instincts take over and guide him toward a sure hit. Liked, most of all, that moment of knowing, when the target was in position and he could fire.
He took his time lining up the shots. It was as if a calm eye had opened up in the storm of laserfire, letting him aim in peace. But the calm was only an illusion. Div was still dancing between the beams, avoiding debris and sliding back and forth through crisscrossing webs of light. He moved as if the world had slowed to a crawl for him, as if the evasive maneuvers were beneath his notice. He saved his focus, his energy, for the shot.
He lined up the first laser cannon with his sights.
Fired.
Direct hit.
The laser cannon embankment exploded.
Div squeezed the trigger a second time, then a third. And in an instant, the cannons were silenced, the skies clear. Smoke mushroomed from the ground. As it dissipated, a small figure emerged. Div was still too high up to make out any features, but he imagined that the man was gazing directly at him.
The ground parted, revealing a wide manufactured cavern beneath the moon's surface.
An underground hangar.
Now that it was safe, the other four ships came in for a landing. Div waited until they were all on the ground before joining them. Their employer had gathered the best pilots in the galaxy, but now they would all know that Div was the best of the best. The one to whom they owed their lives.
The moment his ship touched down in the hangar, Div grabbed his blaster. He hadn't made it through one ambush only to walk unarmed into another. But when he exited the ship, the other four pilots were assembled in a line, no weapons in sight. Two were humanoid males, one human and one Sorrusian, both grizzled and wearing identical hostile grimaces. The third was a Chistori, with beady black eyes and jagged teeth gnashing in his long, narrow snout. While the other pilots, like Div, draped themselves in simple, loose-fitting fabrics for easy maneuvering, the Chistori was in full body armor. It likely contained a temperature