Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [60]
Her breath became ragged again as something, a fog that thoughts couldn’t quite penetrate, closed down over her brain. Defend your wingman. Can’t kill Imperial pilots. The price on Wedge Antilles’s head means years of security. Zsinj is the same as Trigit.
She switched her lasers to single fire, fast cycle, which would allow her to fire an almost continuous stream of low-powered blasts, and brought up her targeting computer. Immediately the system’s yellow brackets settled in a jittery fashion around one of the oncoming TIE fighters and turned green, indicating a lock. The cockpit audio system howled in confirmation.
Reflexively, she fired. Her red laser streaked past the oncoming TIE fighter, but she held the stick down and the system cycled, blast after blast emerging. She shook the yoke in her hand, spraying fire around as though using a nozzle to water a patch of grass, and saw one of the beams strike home, charring a hole in the starfighter’s port solar array wing.
It was so close—she tried to keep her spray of fire concentrated on it, and then there was a tremendous bang and her X-wing shook from bow to stern. The module holding the S-foil configuration switch popped out of its housing and dropped before her eyes, swaying there, held to the upper bank of controls by wires.
She swatted it out of the way, tried to look out the viewports, at the diagnostic display, at the sensor display all at the same time. The viewport snowed Wedge rolling out up and to port. She gave up on the viewscreens and followed. “Tonin, give me a loud beep if we’re badly hit.”
No beep.
“Good job, Thirteen.” That was Three, she thought. “That’s a confirmed kill.”
“Thanks, Three.” His words hovered outside the shield of stray thoughts that seemed to be insulating her brain.
Behind—the enemy would be coming up behind. She looked back, saw only the top of Tonin’s dome head, and checked the sensors again. Yes, two TIE fighters were coming around fast, trying to take up positions behind her. But they were making a broad loop to do it, perhaps intimidated by the firepower they’d just come through. She could try to cut hard to starboard and might be in position for another head-to-head by the time they got their guns fixed on her—
No. Her job was to follow her wingman. Protect him.
Wedge cut hard to starboard. She followed, her turn not quite as precise. The maneuver was too much for the X-wing’s inertial compensator and the metal box holding the S-foil configuration switch swung on its wires, slamming into the side of her helmet. She ignored it, tried to stay with her leader, and held to his port rear quarter, though space opened up between them. A glance out her own port viewport showed Face there, struggling to maintain formation.
A green laser blast appeared, blindingly bright, between her and Face. Wedge finished his maneuver, firing already at the two oncoming TIE fighters. Lara tried to place her targeting brackets on one of the two, couldn’t manage it—the starfighter was too maneuverable, jittering out of the way. She fired anyway, her spray of single-shot lasers slicing through vacuum near the TIE fighter’s starboard wing.
The TIE pilot jerked away from the bombardment of red fire, drifted to port … straight into Wedge Antilles’s quad-linked blast. The quartet of lasers sliced cleanly through the fighter’s spherical cockpit. The TIE fighter disappeared in a glorious explosion of red, orange, and yellow, and Lara heard clanks and pings as her X-wing sliced through the cloud.
There were also the echoes of a scream. Lara shook her head. She couldn’t have heard the pilot.
Unless he was transmitting. “Tonin, cut my reception of Imperial comm traffic at once.”
DONE.
“Two for Leader, one for Thirteen.” That was Two again. Lara swatted at his