Star Wars_ X-Wing 08_ Isard's Revenge - Michael A. Stackpole [81]
And allowed him to act.
He slapped his throttle down to zero, which stopped the port engines from pushing him around in a flat spin. Using the etheric rudder he managed to counter the spin. He got himself oriented, with the gas giant below him and the dogfight above, then keyed his comm device.
“Nine is hit, two engines gone. I have power, so if you bring someone in front of me, I’ll shoot them.”
No one acknowledged his call, but he knew all of them had more important things to do. As do I.
“Whistler, are you okay back there?”
The droid blatted harshly.
“No, I didn’t think they would have gotten you. Keep me informed if I have more missiles coming. I’m shifting power to shields now.” A glance at his monitors showed the shields greening up nicely, which meant he could survive two or three more runs by a squint before it took him down. It wasn’t much, but it was much better than being dead outright.
He reached beneath his command chair and pulled out a small metal box. He unlatched it and, from a compartment built into the lid, pulled out a thick duraplast panel. He brushed away the last traces of transparisteel from the broken panel, then slid the duraplast panel into place. It rattled around a bit, but a tube of sealant from the same kit provided a bead of foam that hardened to hold the panel in place.
Corran closed the box and returned it to its place beneath the seat. I don’t think those repairs were ever supposed to be managed in combat, but I’ve got nothing else to do at the moment. The duraplast panel was nowhere near as strong as the transparisteel one it replaced, but it was only meant to hold a single atmosphere in and make the cockpit airtight. It would never deal with laserfire as well as the transparisteel would, but having atmosphere and heat was an immediate concern for Corran.
“Whistler, give me more atmosphere and push the heat.”
When life-support indicators rose enough, Corran turned off the magcon device. Heat hit him solidly, but a shiver ran through his body anyway. “Two engines gone, I’m dead.”
Whistler’s keening tone sliced through his self-pity.
Corran glanced at his monitor and smiled. “You’re right, I still have torps and some lasers. Might be dead, but I can also be a nasty corpse. Get me a readout on the battle.”
The data dump Whistler provided stunned Corran. Three Flight had faced thirty-six TIEs, but that number had already been pared down to twenty-one. Corran had three confirmed kills. The same went for Ooryl and Inyri had four. Asyr had accounted for five and even as he studied the data, another one was toted up as a kill.
Corran ruddered the X-wing around to find her. Her X-wing flashed through the dogfight with a pair of TIEs hot on her tail. She had the X-wing dancing up and down and side to side, letting their lasers slash green bolts wide. In the distance some of the bolts hit other TIEs, and somewhere along her line of flight an eyeball or dupe would catch her quad laserfire. Asyr was flying as he’d never seen her fly before.
Asyr’s X-wing broke hard to port, then immediately rolled up onto its starboard S-foil and cut back along the way it had come. A roll back to port brought her ship back on the tails of the TIEs that had been following her and managed to overshoot her as she pulled the tight turns. A quartet of red laser bolts burned through one eyeball, letting loose a seething golden cloud of energy that devoured the ship.
A little rudder reoriented her ship and let her blast her second TIE. The shots evaporated the fighter’s starboard solar panel. It began a roll that took it high and out toward the gas giant. Asyr made no attempt to follow it or fire again. She rolled right and started a climb right back into the fight.
Which was when her X-wing collided with a dupe. At the speeds