Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [25]
He played it for as long as he dared, only a matter of an extra moment or two, but precious time and vital distance. He let one quick burst go. As he’d suspected, the enemy never intended to face off to the very end. The IRD rolled onto its back, still firing, and Han had the snap shot he’d hoped for. But the IRD fighter was into his gunsight ring and out again like a wraith, so although he scored, Han knew he hadn’t done it any damage. The Authority ships were even faster than he’d thought.
Then all bets were off because, despite everything taught in classrooms, the IRDs split up, the wing man peeling away in an abrupt bank. Han’s wing man went after him, exclaiming excitedly, “I’m on him!” Han hollered for him to come back and not throw away the security of a two-ship element.
The IRD leader swept by underneath Han. He knew what that meant, too; the enemy was almost certain to split-S, loop under, and try for a tail position—the kill position. What Han should have done with the slower Headhunter was to firewall the throttle and go for clear space until he knew what was what. But the interchange of chatter between Jessa and her wing mate told him that the other pair of IRDs had split up as well, drawing her and her companion out of their pairing.
Han sent his Headhunter into a maximum-performance climbing turn, trying to look everywhere at once, still yelling to his wing man, “Stick with me! They’re baiting you!” But he was ignored.
The IRD leader he’d shot at hadn’t split-S. The raiders’ whole strategy of drawing the defenders out of formation was clear now, too late. The IRD leader had half rolled again, half looped, and come around onto the tail of Han’s wing man. The other IRD, the bait, was already racing on toward the backup element, Headhunters five and six. One of the IRDs Jessa had faced joined that one in a new two-ship element.
The Espos had counted on the inexperienced outlaw-techs’ breaking formation, Han thought. If we’d stayed together we’d have mopped the floor with them. “Jess, dammit, we’ve been robbed,” he called as he came around, but Jessa had her own troubles. Because she and her wing mate had become separated, an IRD had found the opportunity to fasten itself on her tail.
Han saw that his own wing man was in trouble, but just didn’t have the speed to intervene. The IRD leader had attached himself to the Headhunter in the kill position, and the lanky young outlaw-tech was pleading, “Help me, somebody! Get him off me!”
Still way out of range, Han fired anyway, hoping to shake up the IRD leader’s concentration. But the enemy was steady and undistracted. He waited until he had the Headhunter perfectly set up and hit the firing button on his control grips in a brief burst. The Z-95 was caught by a yellow-green blast and vanished in a nimbus of white-hot gas and debris.
What Han should have done was draw his remaining ships together in a weaving, mutually protective string or circle. But even as he breathed profanities to himself, he cut a course for the victorious IRD, his blood up, caution forgotten, thinking, Nobody gets into me for a wing man, pal. Nobody.
It came to him that he didn’t even know that lanky boy’s name.
Jessa’s wing man, the Lafrarian, shouted, “Scissor right, Headhunter three! Scissor!”
Jessa broke right in a flurry of evasive maneuvers while lines of destruction probed for, her. She poured on all speed as her wing man came in at a sharp angle, decreasing his own velocity so that Jessa and her pursuer came across his vector. The Lafrarian settled calmly into the kill position, quickened up, and opened fire.
Lines of red blaster-cannon fire broke from the trailing Headhunter’s wings. The raider ship shuddered as pieces of its fuselage were sheared off. There