Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [83]
Two down. Twenty-two to go. Wedge reset and waited.
“Keep it slow,” Kell said, “and keep it sluggish until we break. Remember, we’re supposed to be hyperspace-equipped, less maneuverable—they’ll already have been told what they’re facing.” He sent his TIE interceptor into a comparatively gentle westward curve, drawing two of the fighters above into his wake, and was pleased to see Elassar mimicking his move. Janson and Shalla curved off eastward equally lazily.
His sensor system shrilled, indicating an enemy laser lock, and he shouted “Now!” and cut hard to starboard. A green laser blast illuminated space where he’d been just a moment before, and two TIE fighters followed the blast, caught off guard. They began their turn, but Kell continued his ferocious maneuver, feeling his chest compress as the interceptor’s inertial compensator failed to keep up entirely with the g-forces he was generating.
His targets swung into view from the right side of his viewport. They, too, were now curving to starboard, but he’d caught them off guard, and had the advantage of a few seconds of controlled maneuvering. The leftmost of them jittered in his targeting brackets. He let it go—that was the easier target, and that was for his wingman. The second TIE now crossed into his targeting bracket and jittered, sign of a laser lock.
He fired. His green lasers bit into the TIE’s fuselage where it glowed brightest.
Suddenly the TIE’s engines glowed much brighter. Smoke and sparks emerged. The fighter banked to port and down, toward the planet’s surface. As more and more sparks emerged, it looked like nothing so much as an artificial comet heading for its final resting place.
The second TIE was still intact. It continued looping around to starboard, cutting its maneuver more tightly than Kell could, and was now well out of his targeting brackets.
Then a barrage of lasers struck the fighter from Kell’s left. The shots tore through its left solar wing array, turning the wing into a mess of shrapnel, then marching across to the fuselage. The fighter detonated, hurling speeder bike-sized pieces of itself in Kell’s path. He juked around the closest of them and reswallowed his stomach.
Who’d fired that shot? He checked his sensors. “Drake Two? Where were you?”
“Sorry, Drake One.” Elassar’s voice was sheepish. “When you broke to starboard, I made a mistake and broke to port. I had to loop around to rejoin you.”
Kell shuddered. His wingman had been gone for those long seconds, and his rear had been unprotected. He’d talk to Elassar about it later. “Nice shooting, Drake Two. Let’s rejoin General Solo,” he added for the benefit of the planetary listeners who would someday soon crack this set of broadcast encryptions.
“Yes, sir.” Sensors showed Drake Two coming up in his wake, and Drake Three and Drake Four returning to the primary course with their targets now off the screen. But the second group of TIEs was much closer.
That trick, pretending to be heavily laden with hyper-drives, wouldn’t work a second time, Kell knew. But it had helped even the odds. That was good enough for now.
• • •
Another TIE had fallen victim to Wedge’s guns by the time the leader of the first TIE squadron got smart. The five remaining TIEs drifted out of the engagement zone and dropped back toward the intact squadron that was rapidly catching up.
Wedge deployed the Drakes behind him in two pairs and kept Tycho between them, giving him a five-pointed shield of fighters to his aft. They were well clear of the atmosphere now, outbound toward the planet’s primary moon, but the remaining squad and a half of TIEs was gaining rapidly. “Chewie? How are we doing?”
He received a long set of rumbling commentary in reply.
“Squeaky?”
“He says, in his almost preverbal fashion, that the shields are holding, but the relays that permit adjustment