Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [37]
Wedge, Janson, and Dia, more sure of their control over the vehicles, emerged next. On Wedge’s cue, they turned, orienting back toward the open hangar door, and fired, destroying the three interceptors remaining within. Then they turned up the lane and cut in their twin ion engines, accelerating far faster than their X-wings. Phanan and Kell fell into position behind them.
“Stay next to the ground,” Wedge ordered. “Keep repulsorlifts running at full until I give the word.” He glanced over his sensors. They showed his small squad of five interceptors running at just above ground level, plus another thirty-six TIE fighters, three squadrons’ worth, rapidly ascending toward presumed enemies.
One switch gave him access to the sensor data being broadcast by the base. It showed a sky crowded with enemies. Initial telemetry identified them as somewhat antiquated TIE fighters and some other Imperial-style support vehicles. Though they were Imperial vehicles, their sudden appearance, their aggressive pattern of approach, and their lack of response to normal hails had caused the base computer to flag them as probable unfriendlies. The three squadrons of base TIE fighters looked decidedly overmatched in numbers, but as Wedge watched, another two squadrons rose to join them.
As buildings flicked by right and left, Wedge locked down the broadcast sensor signal and transmitted its source to the others. “All right, Wraiths. We’re doing one pass, then we’re going home.” He pulled back on the stick, popped up over the rooftops, and angled toward the source of that signal. The others fell into formation behind him.
They came within firing range almost instantly. Wedge linked his four lasers for quad fire. The interceptor’s weapons screen initially had a little difficulty identifying the base’s command center, a huge, rounded bunker, as the intended target, but once it locked the target in, it managed to define the building, its bristling gun emplacements, and its numerous sensor emplacements as discrete targets. Wedge tagged the nearest set of sensors as his first target and said, “Fire.”
The interceptors roared toward the bunker, their twenty lasers acting as five channels of destruction, laying waste to the surface of the bunker, tearing through the sensor arrays and gun emplacements as though the metal were so much paper. Wraith Squadron screamed across the bunker, mere meters above its now nearly molten surface, and then banked off toward freedom.
There was now traffic on all the base’s lanes—skimmers carrying stormtroopers to ready areas, civilian workers running on foot, some of them only partially dressed, to their duty stations. But no one seemed inclined to question a well-disciplined group of five stormtroopers running with purpose.
Up ahead, two squads of stormtroopers, more than twenty, turned onto the Wraiths’ lane and headed toward them. “Stay alert,” Face said. “If they address us, respond on the run. If they challenge us, open fire and run harder.”
But a skimmer with an enclosed bed turned onto the same lane behind the dual squadron and accelerated into them, flattening some of the stormtroopers, knocking others hard out of the way. The skimmer accelerated toward the Wraiths. Runt said, “We think our ride has arrived.”
The skimmer pulled up and swerved as it settled, placing its port and rear sides between the Wraiths and the nest of angry stormtroopers. The door was already half down when the skimmer touched the ground.
“Good work, Ten,” Face said. “I’ll take gunner position. Everyone else in back.” Face slid into the seat beside Shalla; the rest trotted into the bed.
Face heard one of them, Donos from his voice, trip, fall, and swear. He glanced at Shalla. She shrugged. “I had to leave a couple of casualties back there,” she half explained. A moment later, the first of the blaster shots from the pursuing stormtroopers hit the vehicle’s rear and side armor, and Donos came over the comm: “Go go go!”
They exited