Star Wars_ X-Wing 01_ Rogue Squadron - Michael A. Stackpole [86]
The droid replied with a sharp, affirmative whistle.
“And at the Lancer, I want to invert and pull a tight loop scraping right over the top of its hull and down the other side. We should be going away at ninety degrees to our current line and back toward Vladet’s atmosphere.” Corran sighed. “If we make it that far.”
Whistler squawked reprovingly.
“Sorry to get you into this.” Corran punched the console button that enabled the droid’s ejection system. “Maybe your next pilot won’t be so stupid.”
The green light above the button went out.
Corran hit the button again. “And maybe your next ship won’t have shorts.”
The light died again.
The pilot turned and looked back at the droid. “You got a death wish?”
Whistler brayed derisively at him.
“I am not looking at taking all the glory for myself.” Corran swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Thanks for hanging in. My father died alone. Doing that doesn’t recommend itself.”
The droid gave him a scolding whoop.
“Okay, you do your part and I’ll make sure we don’t die.” Corran looked at his scanner. Sensors put him eighteen klicks out from the Lancer. “Whistler, check my math. At full power I’ll do six klicks in the time it takes the missiles to catch me. That means they have to shoot when I hit the six klick mark. They have to be inside fifteen klicks from the Lancer. Looks like we’re all lined up and ready to go.”
The droid chirped triumphantly and a countdown clock started in the upper corner of the sensor display. “Nine to Wardens, forty, four-oh, seconds to launch.”
“Whistler, cut in the randomizer when I hit two and a half klicks from the target.” The Lancer’s weaponry, because it was taken from TIE bombers, suffered the same range limitations as the fighters. “Also map how the towers are working and send that data back to Control and Rogue Leader. If the Lancer has any weak points, any guns that aren’t shooting well, they need to know.”
The timer counted down to ten seconds. Corran rubbed his medallion one more time, then settled his right hand on the stick and smiled. “Here goes Rogue Nine, following the unit’s tradition of accepting suicide missions with a smile. Wardens, on my mark. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark. Launch torpedoes!”
The comm came alive with fire reports. Corran couldn’t make sense of the babble, but as the clash of voices died, he did hear “Warden Three, torpedoes away.”
He glanced at the timer, which had started scrolling off seconds until impact. Two seconds late. Probably not a problem. “Whistler, you want to kill the volume on the missile lock warning siren? I am aware they’re incoming.”
The background noise in the cockpit died. He watched the seconds slowly count down. It seemed to take forever for him to pass from the launch point to halfway in on the Lancer. As his ship streaked in he could see strings of green laser bolts begin to stretch out toward him. They began to curve and curl as the gunners tried to track his ship. The closing speed made all of their initial shots go long.
Twelve and one-quarter seconds from impact, Whistler brought the randomizing program into play and Corran felt the stick begin to twitch. A tiny spark of fear ran through him as he imagined he had lost control of the ship. In its wake he found a calm that felt all too familiar from the last night on Talasea. Well, I didn’t die then. Maybe, just maybe …
Easing the stick back and to the left he tossed the X-wing into the weave. Wave after seemingly solid wave of green laser energy lashed out from the Lancer, yet his snubfighter sliced through the troughs and