Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [158]
Even before Whistler could hoot a warning, the hiss of lasers splashing themselves over his aft shields caught Corran’s full attention. His secondary monitor showed the Interceptor dropping in on his tail. Must have throttled back and hovered near the engines, waiting. This guy is good.
Pumping more energy into his shields, Corran rolled the X-wing right, up onto the S-foil. He pulled back on the stick to start a loop and held it for three seconds, then cut his throttle back and inverted. Pulling back harder on the stick, he completed a fast loop, then throttled up through the end of it and rolled out right.
As his fighter’s nose came to point at the Interceptor, the Imp pilot rolled his craft and dove away from Corran. The Corellian pilot started down after him, but cut back to 75 percent of his speed. As he anticipated, the Imp cut his speed as well, hoping Corran would race past him. Instead Corran triggered one quick burst of fire that hit high on the Imp’s port wing, burning a black hole through the red stripe. He then stood on his right rudder pedal, keeping his guns on the squint, and poured another quad burst of laserfire into the Interceptor.
All four ruby darts drilled through the port wing, then stabbed deep into the cockpit. A bright light flashed through the hole the lasers had opened, and Corran expected the ship to explode, but it didn’t. Instead it began to come apart, with bits and pieces of it whirling away as if the bright flash had disintegrated all the rivets and welds used in its manufacture.
Corran looped his X-wing away from the dying squint, but before he could vector in on another Interceptor, he heard Commander Wedge Antilles coming through on the squadron’s tactical channel. “All Rogues, come about on a heading of one-two-five, mark one-seven. That Golan Space Defense Station is designated Green One. It’s ours.”
“Ours, Commander?” The same surprise Corran felt in his chest came flooding through Gavin Darklighter’s voice. “That’s a pretty tough target.”
“We’ll just have to be tougher than it is, won’t we, Six?” Wedge’s reply came loaded with grim irony. “If we can get into the shipyard, the Imps will have to think about more than just pounding our fleet. Besides, we have friends coming out. One Flight is on me. Five, you have Two Flight. Nine, you have Three.”
“As ordered, Lead.” Corran brought his fighter around on the appropriate heading and locked the target into his computer. “Estimated time of arrival at missile range is forty seconds. Let’s move, Three Flight.”
Ooryl pulled his X-wing up on Corran’s starboard wing. Inyri Forge brought Rogue Twelve up on Corran’s port wing and Asyr Sei’lar, in Rogue Eleven, hung back off Inyri’s port wing. Corran goosed his ship a bit forward and shifted his attention toward their target, trusting the others to keep him informed if Imps were vectoring in on them from behind.
Not likely, though, since they’ve got plenty to keep them busy. Throughout the bowl into which the New Republic’s fleet moved, massive salvos of energy shot up and down and side to side, filling the area with a dazzling light show. Corran would have been more than content to watch the turbolaser bursts flow back and forth, but the fact that they were lethal was more than enough to keep him from finding much beauty in them. Behind the squadron, Y-wings, A-wings, and B-wings mixed it up with Interceptors, TIE fighters, and Bombers, punctuating the light show with brilliant explosions.
The larger ships, when hit hard, didn’t explode as quickly. Instead their fire-blackened bulks drifted through the battlefield, atmosphere burning off as it leaked out of broken hulls. Some turbolaser blasts were enough to peel back armor plates and reduce them to floating metal globules that hardened in the vacuum of space. In other places the shots holed the ships through and through or vaporized things that should have been there, like superstructures