Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [146]
“So your only job was to lure me out and kill me.”
Cowall smiled. “And it worked.”
“Not exactly.”
Cowall pointed eastward. Wedge sidestepped to be sure he could keep the actor under his gun while he looked.
In the distance, two or three kilometers off, TIE fighters, their outlines unusual, were looping around from east to south, obviously intending to turn northward near or at the shoreline.
“TIE Raptors,” Cowall said. “New design, nice to fly. They’ll be on us in a few seconds. And you can’t get into the air by then. You’re dead, Wedge Antilles.”
For a quarter second, Wedge debated shooting the man, then sheathed the blaster and made a sprint for his X-wing. He heard the actor laugh behind him.
Cowall was right, of course. He could hear the distant shriek of the TIEs. They’d be in firing position about the time he was sliding into his cockpit.
He reached his X-wing, leaped up to swing himself in, dropped into his chair.
There were three incoming TIEs, and they were of a type he’d never seen before. They had the standard TIE ball cockpit, but lacked wing pylons. Instead, four trapezoidal wings, smaller than half the size of a regular TIE fighter’s wings, protruded from the cockpit at even intervals. They rolled to port to line up along the straight section of beach and came on, their engines shrill, a second from firing.
Then Wedge saw something blue flash over his head from behind and the center TIE exploded. The other two broke left and right, momentarily abandoning their run.
Wedge finished shutting his canopy and got his X-wing up on repulsorlifts. He had his S-foils locked into attack position before he’d drifted ten meters forward.
Another X-wing flashed by mere meters overhead. It was painted in the darker gray of Wraith Squadron and had no astromech. Wedge put power to acceleration and checked his sensor board. The X-wing wasn’t returning a transponder signal.
The X-wing looped in pursuit of one of the alien-looking TIEs, climbing in its wake. Wedge turned in the direction of the other, coaxing his X-wing up to speed. “Lara, is that you?”
“Sorry I was late.” She was banking hard, trying to get her X-wing around at an angle that could fire on her target. “Had to hit one of these weird TIEs that was trying to strafe a downed Rogue.”
“Tycho—is he—”
“He’s under cover now. Hopping mad, I think.”
“When you come around north, you may get crosswinds. He’ll get them worse. They may blow him back across your path. Hold tight.” Wedge turned after his target TIE Raptor, saw that the unusual vehicle was now looping around to get behind Lara. “I owe you, one,” he said.
“I owe you” she said. “I—there!”
The Raptor pilot hit a bad patch of crosswind and was tumbled eastward. Lara fired, her lasers creasing the rear of the TIE.
A plume of smoke emerged from her target. The starfighter dropped tumbling into the sea, hitting with enough force to turn anything within it into something resembling jelly.
But the last Raptor dropped in behind Lara and began stitching her rear with laser fire. Wedge put all discretionary energy into acceleration, hurtling toward the engagement.
The TIE Raptor fired again. This was no laser—a concussion missile detonated just below Lara’s X-wing. Wedge saw her stern leap up, and then the X-wing was tumbling, unaerodynamic, slinging components in all directions as it dropped.
“Punch out, punch out,” Wedge said, but had no time to watch. He turned after the TIE Raptor.
That pilot tried an immediate roll to port, diving toward the water, a frantic effort to shake Wedge from his tail. Wedge flicked his targeting