Star Wars_ X-Wing 01_ Rogue Squadron - Michael A. Stackpole [49]
The first leg was to take them about an hour and had them flying along the plane of the galactic dish, moving against the swirl of the galaxy itself. The course brought them in ever so slightly toward the Core, which was good because the databases containing information about navigation hazards got progressively better as they headed toward the Core.
And Coruscant.
Corran knew the Imperial capital was not their intended target—at least not for this flight—but he felt certain they would get there eventually. His more immediate concern, however, was plotting the course for the third leg of the jump. While he had not been told their final destination, Commander Antilles had given him a list of twenty starting and ending points, and he had calculated the best courses he could see for making those jumps. The direction, speed, and duration of the first leg allowed him to eliminate all but two of the courses given to Rhysati for solution for the second leg and that narrowing down of ending points meant he only had two plans of his own to refine.
The first course of his, which would take the flight further along the disk and outside the most populated and advanced section of the galaxy, had been plotted pretty tightly. Several black hole clusters narrowed leeway as far as that course was concerned. He glanced at it again and decided it couldn’t be refined any more.
“Whistler, bring up the course for the Morobe system.”
The astromech droid hooted at him as numbers and graphics scrolled up on the screen.
“Yes, I know you did the best you could on this plotting. Freeze output there.” He tapped the glass on the monitor. “At the Chorax system you have us skirting it by .25 parsecs. There’s only one planetary mass in that system and the sun isn’t that big. Since the Chorax system comes up so early in our leg, if you pull us another tenth of a parsec closer we should come out of hyperspace close enough to Morobe’s habitable planets that we won’t need to make an in-system jump to find gravity if we need it.”
The astromech wailed at him.
Corran laughed. “You’re correct, the data you used to compute the course indicated giving the system a wider berth, but that’s because you’re using merchant data and they’re afraid of pirates and smugglers working the system. We’re a squadron of X-wings. We have nothing to worry about.”
With astronavigation and hyperspace jumping being so tricky a business, courses were plotted as often as not to brush by inhabited systems, even if they were inhabited by social misfits and undesirables. If a hyperdrive went out in midflight, or refused to engage after a course correction between jumps, being within hailing distance of worlds from which help could easily be summoned was a blessing. Trying to find a ship that had misjumped to some random location in the galaxy was next to impossible—as all those who hunted after the fabled Katana fleet had learned since its disappearance.
The first leg of the journey ended uneventfully. Two Flight, with Rhysati flying lead, took over from One Flight and brought the squadron around on its new heading. Just before they made the jump to light speed, Commander Antilles shot Corran the coordinates for the third jump.
“So, it’s Morobe after all.” Corran called the flight plan up for one last time, ignoring Whistler’s disgusted wail, and went over it. The course appeared as nearly perfect as possible, given the ships they were using. A ship capable of greater speed could have trimmed even more distance off the run by getting closer to the Chorax system. The greater speed would allow it to resist the influence of the star’s hyperspace mass shadow. Without the resistance the ship would be dragged back into realspace in the system