Star Wars_ X-Wing 01_ Rogue Squadron - Michael A. Stackpole [102]
Corran rolled the X-wing up on the starboard stabilizers and started the long turn that would bring him in behind one of the squints. Whistler anxiously hooted a warning about another Interceptor moving to swing onto Corran’s tail, but the pilot did nothing to lose the fighter. He pressed his attack, sharpening the arc of his turn to trim distance from his target.
Whistler became more insistent and Corran smiled. “Kill thrust.” As the droid complied with that order, Corran punched the right rudder pedal with his foot. That swung the aft end of his ship up, a maneuver that further corrected his course for the ship in front of him. It also provided a tantalizing broadside shot for the squint following him.
“Counterthrust, now.”
Whistler brought the engines back up to power as the X-wing’s aft completed its 180-degree arc. The engines thrust against the line of the ship’s flight, effectively killing its momentum and, for a split second, freezing it in space. For the barest of moments it lay dead in the sights of the Interceptor.
But the Interceptor pilot had already begun his roll and turn to keep his guns trained on where the X-wing should have been. Corran feathered his left rudder pedal and tracked the nose of his fighter along the squint’s flight path. The quad lasers loosed two bursts of red darts that perforated the port wing and stabbed through the cockpit.
That Interceptor slowly spiraled out of control. More ion bursts from the planet coursed through the dogfight. The Emancipator took two more hits and the Mon Valle took another. Corran didn’t see any more fighters get hit, nor shuttles, but a string of green laser bolts slicing across his flight path distracted him.
“Ooryl hit!”
Corran punched the throttle and whipped the X-wing up and over in time to see his wingman’s ship break apart. “Ooryl!”
The X-wing disintegrated. The engine pods spun off in different directions and the cockpit canopy exploded into a million glittering fragments. He saw Ooryl float free of the stricken ship, and saw the Gand wave his arms. Corran hoped it was more than random reflex, then a piece of the fighter’s S-foils sliced through the pilot’s right arm, taking it off above the elbow. The body began to tumble through space, but it remained otherwise unmoving.
“Control, Ten is extra-vehicle. Get someone down here to get him.”
“Nine, Emancipator reports the zone is too hot for rescue operations.”
“Convince them, Control.”
Wedge’s voice came on to the frequency. “Control, I have Three and Eight EV. We need help here.”
“I’m on it, Rogue Leader. It’ll be done.”
Three and Eight, that’s Nawara and Erisi! Two dead and three more out of the fight.
A new voice came through Corran’s headset. “Control here, Rogues. Good news: Your rescue’s on the way. Bad news: We have two squadrons of squints coming in from planetary north. ETA two minutes. Shuttles are heading to hyperspace now.”
Corran watched as the assault shuttles started the runs to light speed. The Corulag had already vanished, as had the Y-wings, leading the way out of disaster. Two ion blasts caught the Mon Valle, stopping it dead in space. The Eridain was beginning to move and the Emancipator had begun to drift toward planetary north but, in doing so, oriented itself for entry into hyperspace as if Admiral Ragab could not decide whether he was going to run or fight.
Run. No reason to stick here.
A sharp whistle from his astromech made Corran invert his ship and dive. A pair of squints flashed past, then one exploded as Rogue Four shot by on its tail.
“Thanks, Four.”
“Thanks for playing bait, Nine.”
The remaining TIEs broke away and headed toward the incoming fighters flying over the planet’s polar cap. “Do we pursue, Rogue Leader?”
“Negative, screen our people until pickup.”
Corran keyed his comm. “Rogue Leader, two squadrons of squints against a half dozen of us is going to be