Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [74]
Donos’s voice came back. “Uh, you need to be aboard the shuttle to do that.”
“Can’t do it, Nine. The transmitter I have and the one in the shuttle won’t be able to cut through their jamming.”
“Then use a timer.”
“Then we can’t count on it being precisely positioned to do the most damage to the capital ship.”
“Use Bastion’s proximity sensors.”
“Bastion’s proximity sensors, at anything under two klicks, are called human eyes, Nine. We’re lucky this crate had refreshers.”
“Wait a second, I think Castin and I can work out something.” Donos paused a moment. “Yes. I can set off the explosives at a distance.”
“Without a comlink?”
“Without a comlink.”
“How?”
“Because I’m special and you’re not. Now, I need you to set Bastion’s comm system to pick up tight-beam transmissions across the electromagnetic spectrum.”
Kell felt the heaviness leave him as he grasped what Donos was planning. “I read you. We’ll be right there.”
“Break by groups.” Face’s voice sounded strained even under distortion. “Fire at will. And may—”
There was the slightest pause. Wedge knew Face had been about to say, May the Force be with you. A bad idea, a giveaway. But Face recovered so quickly Wedge doubted anyone not familiar with him would have recognized the slight lapse. “—we drink from the skulls of our enemies tonight!”
Wedge broke to port, where the ring of enemy TIEs was thinnest. Shalla and Lara smartly followed suit.
Tactics. The enemy was relying on its superior numbers and was confident. Confidence, then, was what the Hawk-bats needed to strafe first.
Of the handful of paired fighters winging in toward them, Wedge picked out the most dangerous-looking duo, two interceptors that moved with more sureness than their fellows. As they came on, visual sensors showed that their solar array wings wore the horizontal red bars of Baron Fel’s 181st Imperial Fighter Group. Wedge resisted the temptation to swear. “Ten, Thirteen, take the target to port.”
He began juking his interceptor around at three kilometers from his target. A small part of a second later, the closing distance crossed below two klicks and the enemy squints opened fire. Green laser beams flickered between Wedge and his wingmen.
His return fire grazed one of the oncoming interceptors, charring a portion of the hull near the upper viewport—and then they were past, with more forest and a more distant set of TIE fighters beyond.
Now the challenge would be to come around, trying to maneuver behind the enemies they’d just gone head-to-head with. But Wedge ignored conventional tactics, rolled to starboard, and dove toward a pair of fighters that were maneuvering to get a shot in on Janson and Dia. His first quad-linked shot was a brilliant one, hulling one fighter, turning it into a glowing cloud of orange and black, and that fighter’s wingmate exploded a second later under cycling paired laser fire from Wedge’s wingman to port. Shalla? He spared a glance. No, it was Lara’s fighter, not Shalla’s interceptor there.
He rolled to starboard again. The interceptors whom they’d traded fire with initially were in pursuit, distant pursuit, but quickly catching up. However, three TIE fighters were ahead and above, beginning a dive toward Wedge’s group.
He brought his interceptor up in a climb so rapid that it slammed him back into his seat. As the oncoming enemies dropped within the field of coverage of his targeting systems, one briefly jittered within his brackets. He fired out of reflex, was rewarded with seeing a TIE’s solar array wing explode under his lasers; that starfighter half rolled and began an uncontrolled descent.
Wedge continued his loop upward, a tight maneuver that kept him crushed to his chair even as he came upside down. In his mind’s eye, that put him and his group at the upper edge of the engagement, with no attacks possible from above for the moment.
Ahead and below, Wedge saw a paired interceptor and fighter the sensors flagged as friendlies; that had