Star Wars_ X-Wing 05_ Wraith Squadron - Aaron Allston [91]
The troopers outside began firing on the skimmer before it began moving, before the door was completely open. Two blasts hit it, slagging the windscreen. Then Piggy’s timer ran down. The skimmer moved forward onto the ferrocrete landing pad, executed an abrupt right turn, and accelerated.
Almost immediately the Wraiths heard the distinctive sound of TIE fighter lasers joining the barrage of hand-laser fire. Kell called, “There, go!”
Falynn put the skiff into motion, slewing at the last moment to bring the craft into the proper orientation to leave the hangar. The Wraiths knelt, each gripping the rail hard with one hand, keeping a blaster pistol ready with the other.
Outside, fifty meters away, two TIE fighters were on the ground flanking a parked personnel skimmer. Men all over the ground and both starfighters were firing away at the ruins of the landskimmer. Some of the infantry noticed the skiff’s appearance, shouted, began firing on the Wraiths.
Falynn sent the skiff in a straight course toward the port-side TIE fighter. The Wraiths opened fire at the ground troops, keeping the troops pinned down.
The first TIE pilot apparently did not notice the skiff bearing down on him; the starfighter did not budge.
The skiff’s bow hit it just above the forward viewport. The impact rolled the starfighter backward on its solar wing arrays, and Falynn brought the skiff’s nose down as much as she could so the hull stayed in contact with the TIE’s bulb-shaped cockpit as the skiff passed over. The skiff shuddered from the contact, and a moment later the Wraiths looked back past the stern to see the still-rolling TIE bouncing along behind them.
Falynn banked to starboard, a move that slewed the skiff’s keel and nearly threw the port-side Wraiths over the rail. She brought the skiff in line with the second TIE.
This TIE fighter was already in motion, repulsorlifts kicking it up into the air, wheeling so it could bring its guns to bear on the skiff. Falynn gained altitude and kept the skiff’s turn tight, not approaching the TIE fighter head-on, angling to pass it port side to port side.
The TIE fighter fired, a snap-shot that passed the port rail and ignited some treetops forty meters away. Then the two vehicles were abreast, passing less than a meter apart.
Wedge, on the port side, activated the skiff’s port cargo loader and swung its armature out. The huge electromagnet hit the TIE fighter’s port solar array and snagged it, yanking the starfighter along beside the skiff. The skiff shuddered but did not slow.
Falynn dropped a few meters’ altitude and the TIE’s solar arrays hit the ferrocrete below, jarring the starfighter so that it looked to the Wraiths as though it were vibrating. Wedge could only imagine what was happening to the pilot within.
Falynn banked again, headed back toward the other TIE fighter. It lay on its back, one of the solar arrays bent so that it half covered the forward viewport. She glanced at Wedge.
“It still has repulsorlifts!” he shouted. “Take it!”
She nodded and came up alongside it, keeping to port of the half-wrecked fighter. Kell, on the starboard cargo loader, swung out his armature and grabbed the second TIE as they passed.
Falynn kept her altitude down—dragging the twin fighters so they jerked and vibrated from continued contact with the landing pad—and headed straight for the verge of trees due south. When the skiff’s prow was within twenty meters, she shouted, “Go go go,” then gained altitude and banked to starboard.
Wedge and Kell cut power to the two cargo lifters. The TIE fighters continued bouncing forward until they hit the screen of trees. Wedge saw the starboard wing pylon shear off his starfighter as it hit a tree; the other rolled to a stop and the twin ion engines in back lit off like one of Kell’s demolition charges.
A hundred meters along the verge of forest, Falynn brought the