Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [142]
“Fel, is that you?”
“Antilles,” came the familiar voice. “So good to see you at last. Again at last.”
“Iron Fist isn’t doing so well. You can save yourself some trouble by surrendering.”
The interceptors came on straight at them. The range meter dropped below two kilometers and the interceptors fired. Wedge sideslipped, sending his X-wing into a defensive dance, and pressed his own laser’s trigger.
Then the TIEs were past, roaring back the way Wedge and Tycho had come. Oddly, they didn’t immediately loop around to gain an advantageous position on the X-wings’s tails. They continued their run eastward, then looped around south, headed once again toward the coastline.
Wedge and Tycho turned to pursue. The maneuver was made a little more difficult by a ferocious crosswind that threatened to drive them eastward. “Fel, let’s not do this. You’ve been a Rogue. I really don’t want to kill you.”
“Why ever not, Wedge? I don’t share any such sentiment about you.”
Wedge gritted his teeth. Because you haven’t yet told me where my sister is. Tell me that, and I may lose all compunction about vaping you where you fly.
Kell and Elassar veered in opposite directions, the Devaronian to rejoin Face, his regular wingman. Kell swung around and came up behind Runt’s X-wing.
“Welcome back,” Runt said.
“Good to be home. Let’s get ’em.”
They turned toward a new pair of interceptors. The 181st seemed to have abandoned their defensive, scurrying tactics; now they seemed eager for runs against the Rogues and Wraiths. A pair veered toward Kell and Runt, accelerating.
Kell dropped behind Runt, constantly adjusting his position to keep the X-wing between him and the oncoming interceptors. As the range closed to nearly two kilometers, he popped up above Runt for a snap shot against the rear interceptor, then dropped below his wingman for sustained fire against the lead TIE. Incoming laser fire hammered against Runt’s forward shields, diffusing to a pastel green as it failed to penetrate.
Kell’s sustained fire finally tracked on the ball of the interceptor. He saw the green of his own lasers stitch the fuselage. There was no visible change to the interceptor’s exterior, but the lead enemy dropped on a ballistic course toward the ground below. His wingman veered off at an angle seemingly impossible even for a TIE and headed back toward the colony center.
• • •
“He’s running away,” Onoma said.
Beyond the forward viewport, they could see wave after wave of TIE fighters making suicidal runs against Mon Remonda. Three had already come within tens of meters of crashing into the cruiser’s side; only brilliant gunnery by the turbolaser handlers had prevented collisions. Solo’s TIEs were helping, but they were outnumbered by the enemy force, which had been bolstered by squadrons diverted from the other engagement zone.
And Zsinj’s choice of a battlefield was proving to be a good one for the warlord. Solo’s Y-wings, tough as they were, weren’t nimble enough to handle the debris field at dogfighting speeds—report after report came in of pilot loss because of an injudicious turn into the path of an asteroid. Between the speed Mon Remonda had to make to catch up to the destroyer and the necessity of diverting most of the gun batteries to anti-starfighter use, the cruiser didn’t have enough laser power to clear the path ahead entirely of asteroids; every few moments, stones, some the size of R2 units and some the size of X-wings, would hammer into the cruiser’s shields or penetrate and crash into her hull.
Though Mon Karren and Mon Delindo followed in Mon Remonda’s wake, Solo knew they had to be suffering worse. Their shields and hull were not up to Mon Remonda’s specs.
“We’re in range,” said the sensor officer.
“Bow batteries, open fire on Iron Fist.” Solo breathed a sigh of relief. At last they were in contact.
The topside stern of the destroyer lit up under Mon Remonda’s barrage. But Iron Fist’s own batteries opened fire and suddenly space before the forward viewport was