Star Wars_ Shatterpoint - Matthew Woodring Stover [141]
He was still wearing that same thoughtful frown when his cannon blasts shattered the starboard turret of the gunship below, then penetrated the inner hatch and blew the ship in half.
He said, "Wow." His calm vanished as quickly as it had come. "I mean, wowl Did you see that?"
Mace kicked the limping gunship out of its climb and into a steep power-dive away from the last one. Slowed by their missing turbojet, they swiftly lost their lead as it dived to pursue them, and cannonfire raked their stern. Mace worked the repulsorlifts madly, making the ship jerk, leap, and spring in random directions like a monkey-lizard on raw thyssel. Fire from above pounded them, but Mace's wild maneuvers were preventing it from laying in the multiple precision hits needed to blast through the Turbostorm's heavy armor.
The lock-on alert screamed, and Nick's voice almost matched it. "Missiles incoming!"
Mace didn't even bother to look. "Take care of them."
The perfect confidence in his tone steadied Nick instantly. He flashed his brilliant grin. "Don't mind if I do..."
As the turrets rotated to the rear and roared back to life, Mace scanned the jungle toward which his limping ship dived. It was hard to get a sense of scale-he might have been only hundreds of meters above it, or as many dozens of kilometers. Then the swarming gun-metal specks of the balance of the militia fleet that swarmed above the canopy snapped the scene into perspective.
There-a thousand meters below, maybe more, the distress strobes flashed on the repulsor-packs that Kar and Chalk wore. A single gun-ship streaked to intercept them, then slowed. And stopped, hovering.
And the minuscule figures of Chalk and Kar landed lightly on its roof.
A moment later its nose came up, angling straight for him. Mace nodded to himself and let the Force guide his dive into an interception course. He checked his screens. "Missiles?"
"Handled." Nick's tone was so like the Jedi Master's that it might have been deliberate mockery.
Mace didn't mind. "There won't be more. He won't endanger that friend of his coming at us."
"Urn, shouldn't we endanger that friend of his?"
"No need."
"How come?"
"That's not his friend."
Turret quads on the rising gunship blazed to life, and Mace gave the repulsorlifts a kick that jerked the Turbostorm a dozen meters above the line of dive so that the twin streams of particle-beam packets passed harmlessly beneath him to take the pursuing gunship full in the cockpit.
The explosion was impressive.
The rear two-thirds of the gunship trailed smoke on its way down to the jungle. The front third was the smoke the rear two-thirds trailed.
"That," said Mace Windu, "was shooting."
Nick made a face. "Oh, sure. Chalk. I told you she can handle the heavy stuff. But you should see her in a gun fight. Pathetic. Just pathetic."
"Get Depa's transponder code off your widescan, then get her on comm. We need to coordinate our next move."
"I'm just glad to hear you have a next move."
"How many friendlies do you count?"
"Scan count on the droid starfighters... Woo. Sure you really want to know?"
"Nick."
"Two hundred twenty-eight."
"Good."
"Good? Good?
"To the lower left of your widescan, you'll find a joystick the size of your thumb. That's your designator control. Start designating droid starfighters as targets for our missiles. One missile per star-fighter, and don't save any. Do not-repeat: DO NOT-light them up until I give the order. And do not designate anything other than a droid starfighter."
"Not even, say, one of those sixty-seven gunships in our zone of engagement?" Nick pointed to the swarm of "friendlies" in a different part of the screen. "Because they seem to be taking a little interest in us, if you know what I mean. They are coming at us. In a hurry."
"Sixty-seven? How many are on intercept vectors?"
"Was I not clear on