Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [130]
The datapad beeped and Winter swore. “Sithspawn.”
Tycho crouched at her shoulder. “What?”
“They’ve flooded the control room with gas. Looks like Fex-M3d.” Winter raised a fist but refrained from punching the door. “It’s in a diluted form so it won’t kill you if you get a lungful, but it’ll put you out.”
Gavin jerked a thumb at the door. “To the left, on the wall, there’s a clear case that has breather masks in it. If we could get in, we could get them.”
“That’s the big if. The case is coded, just like the door here. By the time a sequencer got it open, you’d have to breathe and you’d be down.” Winter shook her head. “Looks as if this system was installed within the last two weeks, after we were given the data we used to make our attack. There’s nothing we can do. We can’t get in. It’s over.”
His hand on the stick, the Z-95 Headhunter cruising through the duracrete canyons of Coruscant, Corran Horn felt more alive and free than all the soaring hawk-bats on the planet. He would have much preferred to be flying his X-wing, and he felt awkward flying into combat without Whistler backing him up, but flying again made him happy enough that he could forgive Whistler his absence. No place for him in this Headhunter anyway.
The Headhunter suffered in comparison with the X-wing. It lacked the maneuverability and speed of the X-wing, though the shields and hull had the same integrity. The Headhunter did not have hyperdrives and, consequently, did not need an R2 unit. The Headhunter’s triple blasters and concussion missiles were not the equal of the X-wing’s four laser cannons and proton torpedo launchers but they didn’t exactly leave him defenseless, either.
Against the Imperial starfighters he’d be facing the Headhunter had the potential to be troublesome—both for him and them. In atmosphere the TIEs lost some of their maneuverability. Their lack of shields made them vulnerable to his attacks, but the fact that they’d be swarming meant being able to stay with one long enough to kill it would be difficult. Locking in on one target would make him a target.
He glanced down at his sensor display. “Hunt Leader here. I have twelve, that is one-two, starfighters coming in on the droid. Time to engagement is thirty seconds. Shoot straight and call for help.”
Corran got a series of acknowledgments over the comm. Pulling back on his stick he started the Z-95 climbing. Pushing the throttle full forward he rocketed up like a ship intent on escaping the planet. A quartet of TIE starfighters came up after him but before they could close to range and start shooting, he rolled the Headhunter to starboard. The fighter came up and over, then dove back in the direction from which the TIEs had come.
Halfway through the dive, he pulled the fighter through a 180-degree snap-roll left, then swooped out in a long glide that brought him in over the construction droid and into the rest of the TIEs. He spitted the leader on his targeting crosshairs and gave it two bursts of blaster fire. The dozen energy darts stippled the eyeball with hits. It began a lazy roll that ended abruptly as it slammed into a tower and exploded.
The pilot of the next TIE followed his leader through the roll, clearly not realizing one of Corran’s shots had pierced the cockpit and killed the pilot. He tried to pull up and away at the last second. His hexagonal port wing clipped the corner of the tower and sent the TIE into a corkscrew spin that spiraled down into a fiery explosion deep in a dark canyon.
Standing the Headhunter on its port S-foils, Corran added enough left rudder to snap the ship into a dive past the construction droid. He pointed the fighter’s nose straight at the bottom of the urban trench and started down. He chopped his throttle back to zero and used the stick to roll his ship until the canyon stretched to infinity off each wing, but crowded him above and below.
Two TIEs dove after him and closed fast. Corran made minor adjustments on his position, forcing them to stick with him to target him. Their first shots missed, sending green energy