Star Wars_ X-Wing 05_ Wraith Squadron - Aaron Allston [159]
She brought up her targeting sensor, zoomed it in on the Implacable’s bridge a klick and a half away, and fired.
Kell activated his targeting computer, bracketed Implacable’s hull halfway between her solar ionization reactor and her stern. He shouted, “Fire fire fire!” and triggered his proton torpedoes.
The sensors officer in the crew pit waved to get the admiral’s attention. “Sir, we have multiple weapons locks below—”
Another shouted, “Admiral, we have laser painting on our bridge—”
Admiral Trigit shouted down to them, “All shields on full!”
The weapons officer reached for his shielding controls.
The main bow viewport made a noise as though a rancor’s fist had hit it. It darkened to near-complete opacity as its phototropic shielding held the first laser blast at bay. A split second later a second blast hit it.
The viewport blew in, raining shards of transparisteel among them, shards that reversed direction and immediately fled into space as the bridge atmosphere vented over Ession’s moon.
29
The air screamed from the bridge, flooding into the vacuum. An alarm klaxon sounded, muted by the roar of the wind.
Admiral Trigit turned and tried to force himself against the wind toward the security foyer due aft of the bridge. He saw one of the foyer’s stormtroopers, buffeted by the flow of air, stagger forward and fall headlong into the crew pit.
Ahead, the blast doors separating bridge from security foyer began to close. Trigit gave up all pretense at dignity and dropped flat, elbow crawling with the speed of a much younger man. He scrambled into the foyer moments ahead of the door closing and was helped up by a stormtrooper.
He looked around. The foyer’s communications crew was mostly intact, though wild-eyed and windblown. The turbolift doors opened and Gara Petothel and a few other officers who had been stationed in the crew pit emerged, similarly rattled.
Trigit pointed at the chief communications officer. “Get the auxiliary bridge to transfer bridge functions to the consoles here.” The deck shuddered faintly under his feet. “Are our shields up?”
“Checking.” The officer brought up a diagnostics readout. He winced. “Sir, they took out the shield generator domes when they hit the bridge.”
Trigit hissed in vexation. “Take your positions. We’re going to spend some time trading body blows.”
“Five away!”
“Four’s away!”
“Six are on your tail!”
Wedge listened to the Wraiths’ launch announcements, silently begging them to get clear faster. He continued to raise the bow of Night Caller until the ship was pointed straight upward. He felt a shudder in the keel as the ship’s repulsors were called upon to hold a position they were not designed to assume; only the moon’s four-tenths of a standard gravity permitted the maneuver at all.
“Wraith Nine away.”
“Ten is clear.”
He triggered a switch on the console’s underside. Up swung a piloting yoke, a lightweight version of the sort of control found in fighters. Night Caller was not supposed to go through the sorts of precise, intricate maneuvers that would normally call for such a control, but Corellian engineers knew it happened sometimes. He powered up the yoke. “Ready on tractors?”
“Ready.”
“On zero. Three, two, one, zero!” He hit Night Caller’s thrusters.
The corvette jerked and her engines moaned. She rose a few meters more above the moon’s surface—then hovered, thrusters blasting away, tethered to the moon by her own tractor beam.
The thrust emission kicked lunar dust and stones up in a billowing cloud all around the corvette. In moments, Wedge lost sight of the Star Destroyer above them. But it was still on sensors, distorted but not completely screened by the distant dish emissions. “Bow guns, fire at will,” he said.
“Narra is launching.” Cubber, in the shuttle, was under orders to hang well away from the conflict but offer help to pilots if they went extravehicular.
“Wraith Seven gone, and I’m coughing up dust!