Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [26]
Far below, Headhunters five and six, the two brothers, had engaged the IRDs that had broken through. Off in the distance Han Solo and the IRD leader swept and wove through the permutations of close combat, making their statements in beams of devastation in red, in green.
But Jessa knew where priorities lay, and Five and Six were her weakest flyers. Even now they were calling for help. She and her humanoid wing man closed and sped off to rejoin the fray.
A raider was glued to Headhunter five’s tail, chopping at it and holding position through all the insane turns and evasions, refusing to be unseated. The outlaw-tech shoved his stick up into the corner for a pushover but was too slow. The IRD’s beams sliced through his ship, depressurizing it and severing him at the waist. The IRD turned toward the other brother, Headhunter six, as its companion raced on toward the planet and its outlaw base.
Just then Jessa and her wing man arrived, calling for Headhunter six to come under their cover.
“I can’t; I’m latched!” the man answered. The IRD that had remained behind had come out of a smooth barrel roll and attached itself to him. Jessa’s wing man threw himself in to help and she came right behind. The sliding, jockeying string of four ships plunged toward the planet’s surface.
The IRD made its kill a moment later. Headhunter six split apart in a blossom of fire and wreckage just as its killer came under Jessa’s wing man’s guns.
The Espo flyer applied more of his ship’s amazing speed to improve his lead and came up as if he were going into a loop, making the Lafrarian misjudge. The IRD flashed out of the maneuver instead, in a lightning-fast turn, banked, and managed to make a high deflection shot.
The IRD’s cannon scored, and her wing man’s Headhunter shook as Jessa raised her voice in alarm, sheering off as quickly as she could. She banked and sensed a shadow near. The IRD swooped past. She swerved and shot at it instinctively. The burst scored, penetrating the IRD’s shields. As the IRD dropped away in an emergency power dive, its pilot struggling to adjust his craft’s thrust bias and avert disaster, Jessa ignored Han’s dictum that she ride her kill. She returned to see what she could do for her wing mate.
Exactly nothing. The Lafrarian’s ship was damaged but not in danger of crashing. He’d put it into a shallow glide, extending his wings to their fullest.
“Can you make it?”
“Yes, Jessa. But at least one of the IRD has gotten through. The other may manage to rejoin him.”
“Nurse your ship back. I’ve got to get down there.”
“Good hunting, Jessa!”
She opened her ship’s engines in a power dive.
* * *
Han found out right away that the IRD leader was a good pilot. He discovered it by nearly getting his easy chair shot out from underneath him.
The Espo flyer was hot, accurate with his weaponry, deft with his maneuvers. He and Han quickly joined in circling, pouncing, cloverleaf battle, the upper hand alternating between them. Rolling, looping, doing their best to turn inside each other’s turns, sliding into and out of each other’s gun-sights over and over, they never let their sticks sit still for an instant.
For the third time Han shook the IRD off, playing on his Headhunter’s greater maneuverability against the IRD’s superior speed. He watched the Espo flyer try to pick him up again. “I guess you must be the local champ, huh?” The IRD came at him once more. “Have it your way, bozo, Let’s see what you’ve really got.”
He split-S down deeper into the planet’s atmosphere as the IRD sprang at his tail, gaining in the descent but unable to hold the Headhunter in his sights. Han pulled up sharply, twisted his ship into a half loop, flipped over, and went into a diving aileron roll with another loop thrown in, coming out of the combo in the opposite direction.
Cannon blasts streaked by over the canopy bubble, barely missing. Man, this Espo