Star Wars_ X-Wing 03_ The Krytos Trap - Michael A. Stackpole [20]
The only relevant facts in his life were these: he was flying and, he knew, if he flew well enough he would be allowed to fly again. He had no idea how he knew his performance would be rewarded with more flight time—that fact seemed as fundamental to him as his need for air and food and sleep. His desire to continue flying blazed hot in his gut and burned from him the annoyance at the squint’s inefficient controls and sluggish reaction time.
“Nemesis One, report.”
It took Corran a moment to realize the comm unit call had been directed at him. He glanced at his scanner windows. “One is clear.”
“One, we have two eyeballs vectoring in on a heading of 239 degrees at a range of ten kilometers. They are hostiles. You are free to engage and terminate them.”
“I copy. Nemesis One outbound.” Corran hit the left rudder pedal and swung the ship around onto the proper heading. The starfield whirled around him, then froze in place again. He could recognize none of the constellations, but that did not concern him. His mission was to destroy the enemy, and that he would gladly do no matter where he found himself.
His breathing reverberated loudly in the full helmet he wore. The sound came rhythmically. It betrayed no nervousness. It was not the quickened breathing of prey, but the strong steady respiration of a predator on the hunt. He had already killed more TIE starfighters than he cared to remember; these would just be two more.
And yet, in the back of his mind, he knew he could not actually remember his previous kills, and this amnesia began to nibble away at his emotional well-being.
With a thumb he flicked the Interceptor’s quad lasers over to dual-fire mode, then pulled back on the steering yoke and brought the ship up in a slight climb. A quick starboard snaproll onto his head turned the climb into a dive, and suddenly he was upon the eyeballs. His index finger tightened on the trigger and a stream of verdant laser-bolts sliced through the lead eyeball.
Because of his angle of attack, the bolts scored black furrows in one wing, then pierced the ball cockpit from the top. On the other side they freed the wing, but the ship’s explosion shattered the hexagonal panel. It blasted debris into the flight path of the second TIE, causing it to roll to starboard and dive. The maneuver succeeded in saving the second ship from a collision with its dying wingman, but dropped it straight into Corran’s sights.
Corran cut the throttle back by a quarter, matching speed with his prey. The pilot he hunted juked right and left, but made none of the hard breaks and sharp turns needed to shuck Corran from his tail. Without remorse, but full of contempt, Corran flicked the squint’s lasers over to quad-fire, then impaled the TIE fighter on his crosshairs and hit the trigger with a delicate twitch of his finger.
The four green laser-bolts converged and merged into one a nanosecond before they burned the top from the cockpit, sheering it off just above the engine assembly. Corran imagined he could see the pilot’s blackened body in silhouette for a second, then the eyeball exploded and seared that image into his brain. Exultation at having been victorious swept through Corran, though in its wake came the feeling that those two pilots had been so inexperienced that he had not really fought them, but had just slaughtered them.
“Nemesis One, we have two uglies at five kilometers, heading 132 degrees. They are hostile. Engage and terminate.”
“As ordered.” Corran brought the squint up and around, then punched the throttle to full power. He wanted to close quickly so he would be able to get a look at the ships he faced. Uglies were hideous, hybrid spacefighters cobbled together from various salvage parts. Smugglers and pirates