Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [15]
He grinned at Leia. “Now who’s in charge?”
She blew out her breath. “Was there ever any doubt?”
Han focused his attention on the two enemy craft. Over the long years, Yuuzhan Vong pilots faced with impossible odds had surrendered some of the suicidal resolve they had displayed during the early days of the war. Maybe word had come down from Supreme Overlord Shimrra or someone that discretion really was the better part of valor. Whatever the case, the pilots of the two skips Han was stalking apparently saw some advantage to fleeing rather than reengaging the ship their plasma missiles had failed to bring down. But Han wasn’t content to send them home with their tails tucked between their legs—especially not after they had killed an unarmed swoop pilot he had come halfway across the galaxy to rescue.
“Cakhmaim, listen up,” he said into his headset mike. “I’ll fire the belly gun from here. We’ll put ’em in the Money Lane and be done with them.”
Money Lane was Han’s term for the area where the quad lasers’ firing fields overlapped. In emergency situations, both cannons could be fired from the cockpit, but the present situation didn’t call for that. What’s more, Han wanted to give Cakhmaim the chance to hone his firing technique. All Han and Leia had to do was help line up the shots.
From the way the coralskippers reacted to the Falcon’s sudden turnabout, Han could almost believe that the enemy pilots had been eavesdropping on his communication with the Noghri. The first skip—the more battered of the pair, showing charred blotches and deep pockmarks—poured on all speed, separating from his wingmate at a sharp angle. Smaller and faster, and seemingly helmed by a better pilot, the second skip shed velocity in an attempt to trick the Falcon into coming across his vector.
That was the skip that had taken out the swoop, Han decided, sentencing the pilot to be the first to feel the Falcon’s wrath.
Leia guessed as much, and immediately plotted an intercept course.
Exposed, the skip pilot went evasive, moving into the gun-sights and out again, but with mounting panic as the Falcon settled calmly into kill position. The dorsal laser cannon was programmed to fire three-beam bursts that, all these years later, still had the ability to outwit the dovin basals of the older, perhaps more dim-witted coralskippers. While the enemy craft was quick to deploy a gravitic anomaly that engulfed the first and second beams, the third got through, blowing a huge chunk of yorik coral from the vessel’s fantail. Han tweaked the yoke to place the skip in the Money Lane, and his left hand tightened on the trigger of the belly gun’s remote firing mechanism. Sustained bursts from the twin cannons whittled the skip to half its size; then it blew, throwing pieces of coral wreckage in every direction.
“That’s for the swoop pilot,” Han said soberly. He turned his attention to the second skip, which, desperate to avoid a similar fate, was jinking and juking all over the sky.
Zipping through the showering remains of the first kill, the Falcon quickened up and pounced on the wildly maneuvering skip from above. The targeting reticle went red, and a target-lock tone filled the cockpit. Again the quad lasers rallied, catching the vessel with burst after burst until it disappeared in a nimbus of coral dust and white-hot gas.
Han and Leia hooted. “Nice shooting, Cakhmaim!” he said into the headset. “Score two more for the good guys.”
Leia watched him for a moment. “Happy now?”
Instead of replying, Han pushed the yoke away from him, dropping the Falcon to within meters of the surging waves. “Where’s the swoop?” he asked finally.
Leia was ready with the answer. “Come around sixty degrees, and it should be right in front of us.”
Han adjusted course, and the swoop came into view, streaking over the surface, bearing two seriously dissimilar riders. In pursuit, and just visible beneath the surface, moved an enormous