Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [47]
They could hear the remaining stormtroopers approaching from behind—walking up at a casual pace, joking, their voices relieved.
Then one of the TIE fighters dropped as though it were a puppet with its strings suddenly cut. The other rose a few meters and aimed over Lara’s head, off to the east—
There was a flash of blue light and the TIE fighter exploded.
The blast rained fiery bits of metal and transparisteel over the area. Lara felt a bite as a needle of glowing metal hit her forearm, then heat as the advance wave of the explosion reached her. She saw her Devaronian squadmate tumble to the ground, rolling across his dropped blaster as he did so, and come up on one knee already firing.
Lara dropped and scrambled for her blaster. As she swung it into line, she saw that one stormtrooper was already down, the other three aiming. Her shot took one of them in the knee, bringing him down flat on the roof, and her next shot hit the top of his head. He twitched for a moment.
She looked around. The other two stormtroopers were down. One had a burn mark on his gut. The other had a crater where his chest should be. And over on the roof across the street, Donos had his laser rifle in one hand and was waving with the other.
Lara heard the other TIE fighter zooming around out in the distance, but it had to be keeping nearly at street level. What had chased it off, destroyed the other? She looked to the east, but could see nothing in the darkness of the night sky.
“Good shot, Leader.”
“Thanks, Two,” Wedge said. It had, in fact, been a proficient proton torpedo shot. He’d brought up his targeting computer, gotten a targeting lock on one of the enemy TIEs, and fired, all in less than two seconds. Then he led Rogue Squadron on a dive down almost to rooftop level over Lurark, vectoring so that they weren’t aimed directly at the Binring complex. There was another TIE fighter out there, keeping buildings between it and the Rogues to stay off their sensor screens, and it didn’t pay to be predictable.
In less than a minute, they’d have more than one TIE to deal with. He took another look at his sensor board. There, at its limits, he could see a cloud of red targets tentatively identified as TIEs coming in from the south. The local Imperial air base, seeing the launch of Wedge’s X-wings, had dispatched at least a squadron to deal with them. This was going to be complicated.
“Leader, Seven.” That was Ran Kether, the new pilot from Chandrila, handling comm duties. “Signal from the Wraiths. They want us to blow up a specific location so they can get out from a tunnel they’re in. And to blow up the area bordered by the comm markers they’ve put up. They say it’s a festering pit of evil.”
Wedge laughed. “They shouldn’t let Wraith One on the comm like that. His language is too florid. All right, break by flights. One Flight, Three Flight, vector to the south and prepare to engage the incoming eyeballs. Two Flight, blow some stuff up for the Wraiths and get them safely out of there.”
He heard a groan, doubtless from Gavin Darklighter, who was part of Two Flight—and reduced to “baby-sitting,” as Gavin had feared he would be.
“Shrike Four to Shrike Leader, I read two incoming targets, class X-wing. They’re staying pretty close to building-top level. They’re searching for a lock with sensors.”
Shrike Leader, commander of the squad of TIE fighters defending Lurark, nodded. These were tactics he’d seen before. The incoming snubfighters had sent their squadmates on ahead, flanking right and left. The unseen X-wings would be coming back toward the center now, flying at street level to stay off the sensors, timing things so that just at the point the X-wings came within firing range, his TIEs would come within sight.
Shrike Leader knew better than to give them such an opportunity. “Reduce speed to two-thirds,” he said. That would throw off the enemy’s timing. The unseen X-wings would cross before them, having nothing to shoot