Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [24]
Once. Han was by no means old, but he hadn’t been in this particular type of contest for a long time. The flight of Headhunters was pulling itself into two-ship elements, and he found his hands had steadied.
They drew their ships’ wings back to minimize drag, wing camber adjusting automatically, and rose at high boost. They would meet their opposition at the edge of space.
“Headhunter leader,” he announced over the commo net, “to Headhunter flight. Commo check.”
“Headhunter two to leader, in.” That was Han’s wing man.
“Headhunter three, check,” sang Jessa’s clear alto.
“Headhunter four, all correct.” That had been Jessa’s wing man, the gray-skinned humanoid from Lafra who, Han had noticed, had vestiges of soaring membranes, suggesting that he had superior flying instincts and a fine grasp of spacial relationships. The Lafrarian, it had turned out, had over four minutes’ actual combat time, which was a good sign. A good many fighter pilots were weeded out in the first minute or so of combat.
Headhunters five and six chimed in, two of Jessa’s grease slingers who were brothers to boot. It had been inevitable that they’d be wing men; they’d tend to stick together, and if paired with anyone else, would have been distracted anyway.
Ground control came up. “Headhunter flight, you should have a visual on your opposition within two minutes.”
Han had his flight tighten up their ragged formation. “Stay in pairs. If the bandits offer a head-on pass, take them up on it; you can pitch just as hard as they can.” He thought it better not to mention that the other side had a longer reach, however.
He had Five and Six, the brothers, drop far back to field any enemies that might break through. The two remaining elements spread out as much as they could without risking separation. Their sensors and those of the approaching ships identified one another, and complex countermeasures and distortion systems switched on. Han knew this engagement would be conducted on visual ranging; all the complicated sensor-warfare apparatus tended to cancel out, no longer to be trusted.
Short-range screens painted four blips. “Go to Heads-Up Displays,” Han ordered, and they all cut in their holographics. Transparent projections of their instrumentation hung before them in the canopy bubbles, freeing them of the need to divert their eyes and attention from the task of flying in order to take a reading.
“Here they come!” someone shouted. “At one-zero-slash-two-five!”
The enemy ships were IRD models all right, with bulbous fuselages and the distinctive engine package that characterized that latest military design. They were IRD prototypes. As Han watched, the raiders broke formation into two elements of two ships each in perfect precision.
“Elements break!” he called. “Take ’em!” He led his wing man off to starboard to face that brace of IRDs as Jessa and her humanoid wing man banked to port.
The net came alive with cries of warning. The Espo flyers had disdained evasionary tactics, coming head-on, meaning they were out to put some blood on the walls. Their orders, Han thought, must’ve been to hit the outlaw-techs as hard as they could.
The IRDs began firing from extreme range with yellow-green flashes of the energy cannon in their chin pods. Deflector shields were up. Han ground his teeth, his hand tight on the stick, disciplining himself not to fire until it could do some good. He fought the urge to rubberneck and see how his other element was doing; each two-ship pair was on its own for the moment. He could only hope everybody would hold together, because the pilot who became a straggler in a row like this seldom came out of it.
Han and the opposing wing leader squared off and bore in on each other. Their wing men, keeping out of the way, were too busy holding position and adapting to their leaders’ actions to do any shooting.
The IRD’s beams began to make hits, rocking the smaller Headhunter. Han came within