Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [136]
Winter’s fingers played quickly over the datapad’s input surface. The globe flattened out and golden pinpoints started to dot the resulting grid map. The image became localized to the Palace district and enlarged, but the strikes still bled together into a golden network. Wedge saw dark spaces fill in on the map with each staccato thunderclap from outside.
Tycho pointed to a solid cluster that appeared to be the hub from which many gold spokes spread. “That’s likely a substation. The whole purpose of this storm was to hit and knock out power stations. This one looks invulnerable to lightning. So much for our plan.”
Wedge shook his head. “The grounding that will protect it from lightning won’t help it against missiles. Winter, can you pinpoint that substation?”
“Done.”
Tycho looked over at Wedge. “You’re going to send someone in at that target with the storm raging above it?”
“The airspeeder I came in doesn’t have missiles or I’d go.”
“Yes, but you’re a Corellian. You have no respect for how truly hopeless some tasks really are.”
“Right.”
“So you’re sending Corran.”
“Right again.” Wedge slapped Tycho on the back. “There’s no pilot I know of for certain who can outfly lightning, but I’d sooner bet on Corran than against him.”
Corran brought his fighter around on the heading Winter gave him. “You want me to fly into that?” Six kilometers distant, the lightning strikes came in sheets, not individual bolts. “It’s very ugly over there.”
“I copy, Corran, but it’s got to be done. Take heart, the target is twice the size of the conduit on Borleias.”
“Oh, you should have said that from the start.” Corran nudged the throttle forward. “On an inbound vector.”
“You have four minutes.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Corran took the fighter into a dive and tried to sink as low as he could in the duracrete chasms. The storms had already begun to kick up high winds, but the buildings tended to break them up. He did hit some nasty sheers when he flew through intersections, but the worse of them occurred at the largest intersections, giving him plenty of time to recover.
He started to come up and out of the urban maze two kilometers away from his target. Rain immediately lashed his fighter. It beat so heavily on the cockpit canopy and shook the ship enough that it wasn’t until he saw his shield indicator go from green to yellow that he realized someone was shooting at him. A glance at his aft monitor showed two Interceptors coming up on his tail.
Corran rolled and started a dive that he aborted almost immediately. Rolling again violently, he righted his craft and kicked in power to the repulsorlift drives. The drives cut in on cue and bounced his fighter up over a crumbling skywalk between buildings. With power going down, they don’t have their little lights on.
Behind him something exploded and his aft sensor indicated he only had one squint on his tail. A pair of near misses, with green bolts shooting past his starboard S-foil, told him that the Imp pilot behind him was good. Coming up on his left wing, he pulled a hard turn around the corner of a building, then rolled 180 degrees and cut back around another. The figure-eight maneuver got rid of his pursuit for the moment, so he came back around and set up to make his run on the target.
The Headhunter sliced through the air amid a cacophony of thunder and a forest of lightning bolts. Corran knew there was no way to dodge a bolt—one second it would not be there and the next it would. The lightning strikes silhouetted darkened towers, helping him steer around trouble. In that way they proved more helpful than harmful, but he knew one solid strike and his controls would fry. They will fry, fighter won’t fly, and I will die.
Turbulence in the air began to bounce him around. The stick tried to pull itself out of his grasp, but he hung on firmly. Flying through rough air he had to strike a balance between becoming rigid, which would lock things up and