Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [131]
“Well … still. Stand down for a while. Iron Fist and the other Destroyer may be jumping around for a while, and it could be some time before they reenter normal space and fire up their hypercomm system. Assuming, of course, that your program is planted and operational—”
The Mon Calamari captain, Onoma, swung around in his command chair and sent it gliding toward Solo and Wedge on its armature. There was excitement in his gravelly voice. “Communications reports a signal from the Donn program,” he said. “We have a location on the target ship, only minutes old.”
“You know, I almost never get to be right,” Solo said quietly. He raised his voice: “Put that location up on the board.”
A blinking yellow glow appeared in the midst of the starfield projection.
Han, Wedge, and Onoma moved next to it. Solo said, “Looks like they took a course perpendicular to a straight run back into the areas of space he controls. And that’s good for us. Mon Remonda is the closest force to him.”
Wedge asked, “Are you planning on a jump straight to the broadcast position?”
Han shook his head. “No, I want a little dispersal. See if we can have ships on all his escape vectors. He’s out in deep space, away from any known gravity wells—he can jump back to hyperspace pretty quickly if we don’t finish him. You have any ideas on how he’ll behave in real space, before his next jump?”
“He’s going to spend some time where he is, having his technicians go over the new Destroyer’s hyperdrive engines.” Wedge considered. “Which means stopping dead or cruising. He kept moving after he made his first jump out of Kuat system, and he was moving in the same direction as the hyperspace jump.… Can you indicate his course from Kuat to his current position?”
A thin white line appeared, tracing from the blinking yellow dot to a star a couple of hand spans away.
“That’s my guess,” Wedge said. “He’ll be at cruising speed along the same course until it’s time to jump again.”
“Magnify it,” Han said, and the holoprojected image expanded until the white line representing Iron Fist’s hyperspace jump dominated most of the image; only a few dozen stars remained within the magnified area.
Han pointed just ahead of the Destroyers’ projected course. “All right. Calculate time to jump to this point. Compare it with Iron Fist’s normal cruising speed. Project its probable location based on that. That will be Mon Remonda’s arrival zone. Now, assuming he wants to run to his own space, we’ll figure out the two most likely courses for him to take and put Tedevium in front of one of them and the rest of this group in front of the other one.”
“Tedevium?” Appalled, Wedge glanced out the forward viewports to catch sight of the frigate. “That’s a training vessel, not a combat-ready frigate.”
Han shrugged—apparently not out of unconcern, but out of helplessness. “My fleet’s in three pieces, with strength balanced as closely as I could make it between them. We use what we have. Tedevium has a graduating class of Y-wing pilots and a commander who’s always good in a scrap.”
“True. Still—trainees.” Wedge suppressed a shudder.
Han put out a hand. “Good luck, Commander. Sorry you didn’t get that rest I was offering.”
Wedge took it. “Either way, I’m going to get it pretty soon.”
20
“Accuracy was nearly ideal, sir,” said Captain Raslan—or, rather, his holographic image now wavering in the security foyer of Iron Fist’s bridge. “Efficiency, however, is another matter. The jump here used nearly three times as much energy as it optimally should.”
Zsinj kept any annoyance out of his face. This was not bad news. He’d gambled almost everything on the assumption that Razor’s Kiss actually was as complete as its builders claimed and had made it to safety with his new prize. All other considerations were minor ones. “What about damage?”
“It appears that, contrary to safety regulations, some of the Kuat workers had jammed an airlock open where the access armature attached from the station to Razor’s Kiss. When the ship blasted free, that section