Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [75]
“Leader, Seven, this is One. I’m coming at you in a head-to-head. Two on my tail.”
“One, Leader. We have them. You can have our tail as well.” Behind Face and Phanan, two pairs of TIE fighters were jockeying for position, firing shots that strayed for now but must inevitably connect with the Hawk-bats’ sterns.
Wedge, Shalla, and Lara roared toward Face and Phanan. All five Hawk-bats opened fire, a deadly barrage of green lasers, but not at one another—at the fighters and interceptors pursuing each wing. Wedge saw his concentrated fire hit a solar wing pylon and shear it off at its base, sending the fighter spinning down toward the thick forest below. He directed his stream of fire against another TIE as the two lines converged. Then one of that fighter’s mates detonated and Wedge was momentarily blinded as he flew through the cloud of debris and shrapnel. He heard metal pinging from his fighter’s hull and he repressed a wince; a heavy enough piece of shrapnel could take out a shieldless TIE interceptor.
Wes’s voice: “Six up, six down.”
“What?”
“That little head-to-head you pulled. One hundred percent effective. Six up, six down.”
Wedge glanced at his sensor screen. A moment ago, the screen had showed three dozen enemies, seven friendlies. Now it showed twenty-five enemies, seven friendlies. Wedge whistled.
“Leader, Three. I just flipped my sensors over to long-range. I show a capital ship clearing the horizon and heading this way.”
“A cruiser?”
“A Star Destroyer. At least.”
It was a Super Star Destroyer, by name Iron Fist. As Kell and Runt clattered up the boarding ramp and came forward into the cockpit, its image, enhanced by the shuttle’s visual sensors, dominated the forward viewscreen. It was still well above them in orbit, but it seemed terrifyingly close.
“We are so dead,” Kell said.
Castin and Donos sat in the second row of seats, bent over a long weapon—Donos’s laser sniper rifle. “We did not know you had brought that,” Runt said.
Donos snorted. “I take it to parties, dining engagements, and the refresher. It was in the smuggling compartment. Kell, you have the detonation code?”
Kell tapped the datapad in his chest pocket.
“Give it to Castin.”
Runt took the pilot’s seat while Kell transmitted the code.
The image of Iron Fist wavered, its blue and white running lights blurring, as something passed much closer to the shuttle. Runt killed the visual enhancers.
Their shuttle was docked with Bastion, its viewports oriented so its occupants had a view mostly of sky, with only a little of the tanker intruding on the view. And now that sky was full of TIE fighters buzzing back and forth.
Kell forced back his rising surge of panic and counted blips on the sensors. Only six. Moving so fast, they seemed more numerous. This had to be nothing more than a show of dominance, since the enemy vessel had already tractored the tanker and was hauling it up to captivity. “Keep calm,” he said. “They’re not here to shoot.”
“In your opinion,” Donos said.
“It’s all I have to offer.”
Wedge plotted the engagement on the sensors and in his mind’s eye. The engagement zone had spread out through a hemisphere about eight kilometers across. Now his group was at a high altitude in the southern portion. Janson and Dia were about a kilometer below them. None of them was actively engaged with an enemy. The TIE force had contracted a little, the nearest starfighters being about a kilometer to the north and not yet spinning out to engage them. Face and Phanan were in the northern quadrant, dogfighting with a pair of TIE fighters as a pair of interceptors headed toward them.
He checked the position of the sun and then rolled around to begin an approach out of the sun against Face’s and Phanan’s tails. But almost immediately he saw one of the pursuing TIE fighters’ shots strike home, hitting the engines of one of the friendly TIEs. That starfighter rolled in a random fashion, briefly regained controlled flight, then dropped below the line of trees and was lost to sight.
On the sensor