Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [147]
So he fired directly over the TIE Raptor’s hull, immediately above its top viewport.
The pilot dodged out of reflex.
Straight down.
The leading edges of its odd wings dipped into the surf. The TIE rolled forward, its wings breaking free and being flung into the air with more speed and violence than anything coming off Lara’s X-wing.
Wedge looped around, looking for Lara.
He found her X-wing fifty meters offshore. It was a twisted, broken thing, slowly rolling over from its belly onto its side.
He cruised over it at a slow rate of speed, running on repulsorlifts, and looked into the cockpit. Then he shook his head and banked back toward Tycho and the colony.
“On my command,” Piggy said, “Wraith Nine and Ten, begin straight-line flight but maintain evasive maneuvering. Rogue Three and Four, climb at a thirty-degree angle, target their pursuit, and fire. Ready … now.”
Two kilometers below him, Shalla and Janson discontinued their efforts to get around behind the unusual TIEs pursuing them. They accelerated into straightforward flight toward the west. Their pursuit accelerated, swinging into firing position behind them.
A kilometer below that, Pedna Scotian and Hobbie Klivian rose toward the engagement now passing above them. Piggy could tell the exact moment they acquired targeting locks: both pursuing TIEs suddenly wobbled in flight as their pilots were alerted to the danger they were in.
But it was too late. Both Rogues fired. Hobbie’s lasers sheared through the lower portion of one TIE’s forward viewport and continued cycling against that target. A moment later, Piggy saw his lasers emerge from above the TIE’s engines. The TIE hurtled forward ballistically for half a kilometer, then detonated.
Scotian’s lasers missed the second TIE. It veered abruptly upward. Shalla and Janson looped around in tight maneuvers and gave pursuit.
Piggy turned away from that engagement, looked again at the swirling colored dots on his sensor board. Flight vectors, acceleration rates, probabilities ran through his mind like unregulated data streams. He saw the blip designated Rogue One returning. That would begin to figure into his calculations in two minutes. He saw another blip, yellow for unknown, descend from low lunar orbit toward Wedge’s earlier engagement zone. He dismissed it. It wouldn’t factor into his equations until it came closer to his current engagement zone.
His comm system lit up, indicating reception of a recorded message. He glanced at the data portion of the screen. It was a lengthy message, flagged as low priority, going to all vehicles on New Republic frequencies. He dismissed it from his mind.
Numbers and formulae clicked into place in his mind. “Wraith Seven, two targets will be crossing over your space from the east in six-point-four seconds.” Dia, her fuzial thrust engines malfunctioning, was now running on repulsorlifts only; Face had directed her to stay under cover, and she now hovered within a half-ruined colony dome, able to swivel her guns toward any one of three large holes in the dome. “Wraith Five, please make your course due east and come up to full speed. You should pull two of the new intruders … yes, you have.” Kell veered as Piggy had requested, momentarily abandoning his slower-moving wingman, and both new TIEs that had been lining up for a run on Wraiths Five and Six opted to pursue him. Kell blasted across Dia’s position and the lead TIE pursuing him was suddenly illuminated from the dome, painted and then penetrated by Dia’s lasers. It rolled, a deceptively pretty corkscrew, and then hit rubble that had once been a duracrete street.
Piggy started to speak again, then saw Kell’s TIE interceptor vector back at a sharp angle toward Runt’s position. Kell and Runt closed on one another as though they planned a head-to-head, but when Runt fired, it was Kell’s pursuit he hit. The unusual TIE fired, too, its concussion missile flashing past Kell and hitting a ruined wall, before Runt’s lasers punched through the TIE’s hull. It became, to