Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [5]
Admiral Ackbar was struggling to rise. He was speaking. But suddenly Piggy couldn’t understand the words.
The Gamorrean fell over backwards as the heat and pain in his gut spread out to overwhelm him.
The two TIE interceptors banked, maneuvering in a wide circle as they scanned for enemies, and the lunar surface sped by beneath them.
To someone seeing them for the first time, these starfighters might have seemed comical. Their cockpits were unaerodynamic-looking spheres taller than a human. Projecting from either side of the cockpits were thick posts, the wing pylons, each about the length of the cockpit’s circumference. At the end of either pylon was a solar wing array, a curved, roughly oval wing with a deep notch cut out of the leading edge. Where normal TIE fighters were nicknamed eyeballs, for their spherical cockpits, in New Republic fighter slang, interceptors, with their narrower sight profiles, were called squints.
But no one seeing them maneuver or fight would continue to think them amusing. Agile and fast, armed with four lasers each capable of punching through starfighter armor, they were among the deadliest tools in the arsenal of the Empire.
Not that Imperial pilots flew these two.
“Rogue Two, this is Leader. Comm check.”
“I read you.”
“Two unknowns now showing on my sensor screen at two-eight-five. Follow me in.”
“I’m your wing.”
The lead interceptor veered toward the distant blip, the second following hard, their maneuvers tight and sure. Within moments, the enemy—two tiny bright spots near the horizon—came into view.
“Two, the computer gives a tentative ID as one interceptor, one X-wing.”
“I read it that way. The X-wing is leading. Shall we get some separation, make them split up to cover us both?”
“Ehhh … not yet. Stay with standard Imperial protocols at first to make this a proper test.”
“Right.”
As the range meter numbers scrolled down to firing range, the oncoming starfighters opened fire. Curiously, the enemy TIE interceptor held in close behind the X-wing, dropping just beneath to fire, rising above to fire again.
The two interceptors bobbed and juked, ducking fire as they returned laser blasts. Their return shots slammed into the X-wing’s forward shields, dissipating meters short of the X-wing fuselage.
“Hey, I get it,” Two said. “You use the—”
Red laser fire from the X-wing hit him low on the circular transparisteel viewport. Two exploded in a bright flash, and Leader’s interceptor rocked, hit by gases swelling from the detonation. The enemy interceptor and X-wing sped by.
Despite his demise, Two kept talking, his voice floating into his leader’s comm unit like transmissions from a land of the dead. “Whoops, sorry, Wedge.”
“No problem, Tycho.” Wedge Antilles heeled hard to port, coming up behind the two attackers.
Instead of splitting up, with the faster interceptor trying to come up behind Wedge, the attackers had remained together, though they’d changed their formation: the X-wing was now in the rear, with the interceptor bobbing around just in front of it. It was tight, economical flying, and Wedge nodded. On their approach, the enemy interceptor had used the X-wing as a barricade, staying behind its shields except for the bare seconds necessary to line up a shot. The X-wing must have had most or all of its shield energy forward on the approach. Now, as they retreated, the interceptor was still enjoying the X-wing’s protection, and that starfighter’s shield energy would all be concentrated to the rear.
Wedge accelerated toward the pair, rising until he was slightly above their plane of flight. They knew he wouldn’t overfly them; he’d tuck in behind and fire at their comparatively unprotected rears until they were destroyed. So their tactic had to be to break at some point. The X-wing wouldn’t be able to outmaneuver him, so it would be the interceptor trying to get in behind him. That meant they’d wait until he was engaged with the X-wing before breaking.
The