Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [141]
Though the Triumph’s difficulties heartened Ackbar, the Golan Space Defense platform off the port stern sickened him. It had engaged many of the smaller ships in the fleet and was hammering them mercilessly. The Commander on the platform had targeted ships with multiple proton torpedoes while saving his turbolasers for snubfighter defense. TIE fighters coming up from Coruscant seemed content to fight beneath the umbrella of his fire. The fact that the station could not move made it marginally less lethal than the Star Destroyers, but in the time it took for them to be taken out of action, a lot of smaller Rebel ships would die.
He looked up at the Quarren who had just appeared beside his command chair. “What is it, Commander Sirlul? Something about the station?”
“Perhaps …” A tremolo distorted her words as she pointed out the port side viewport. “The mirror is moving.”
“Why would it …?”
Before Sirlul could offer a possible answer to Ackbar’s question, the mirror’s panels swung and locked into reflective position. The whole structure contracted slightly, sharpening the solar beam. Though the reflected light remained all but invisible in space—only showing up where it shone upon and incinerated debris—its brilliant focal point could easily be seen. It appeared as a bright dot on the edge of the Golan III station.
Silvery lines, like cracks forming in ice or rootlets spreading through the earth, began to appear at the edges of the circle. Delicate and almost brittle, they snaked away from the station and drifted into space. The bright spotlight shifted right ever so slightly, leaving in its wake a black crescent. The argent rootlets clung to the crescent’s outer edge while opposite them some of the rootlets spun off into space.
The Quarren clasped her hands at the small of her back. “At its focal point the solar beam is approximately 12.5 meters in diameter. Roughly the length of an X-wing.”
The hole on the end of the station grew as the beam shifted slightly. Already half the turbolaser batteries had stopped firing. Ackbar could easily visualize the destruction as the beam pierced bulkhead after bulkhead, burning from one end of the station to another. A sheet of metal would glow red, then white, then evaporate. The solar beam would stab deeper, igniting whatever it touched, then begin on another bulkhead.
Ackbar looked up. “When the platform stops shooting send the Devonian and Ryloth over there. I want our people on that station to assess it and help those who have survived.”
“Sir, the Ryloth and Devonian have less than one hundred troopers on board. The station has over a thousand.”
“Not anymore, Commander.” Ackbar half closed his eyes as something near the center of the station exploded. “Those who are left aren’t going to be hostile. They’ll want to get off that thing and we will oblige them. Send them to the other Golan stations, let them tell the story of what happened to their station. It’ll give their Commanders a lot to think about and maybe, just maybe, save a lot of lives on both sides.”
45
Corran glanced at the fuel indicator on his command console. It showed he had another ten minutes of fuel. A return to Tycho’s base would only take two or three minutes and refueling would take a half hour or so. He wasn’t certain if with the fleet orbiting above the Palace district, Wedge and the others in the computer center would face danger from Imperial forces, but in many ways that question was moot given his fuel supply. He suspected the others were not in much better shape.
“Hunter Lead here, report with fuel status.”
Everyone else in the flight reported being in the same situation he was. “What we will do is this: Everyone take a long-range scan of the area. If we have no immediate things to worry