Star Wars_ X-Wing 08_ Isard's Revenge - Michael A. Stackpole [85]
A slight tremor ran through the Reckoning as the Interdictor’s gravity wells powered up. Their power was sufficient to momentarily override the inertial compensators built into the larger ship. With all four gravity wells online, the Binder now projected a hyperspace mass shadow roughly equivalent to a good-sized planet. Any ships moving through hyperspace in the area would automatically revert to realspace, since the alternative was to smash into whatever was creating the shadow.
Interdictor cruisers often accompanied larger ships on missions because they prevented enemy ships from escaping into hyperspace. Any course laid through hyperspace had to avoid gravitic anomalies, so transit routes were plotted out with precision and, depending upon where bodies were in their orbits around a star, a system could be wide open, or only have a narrowly defined route through it. The advantages of flying through or near systems came if a ship suffered damage, since out in deep space the chance of being rescued was slender. An Interdictor’s presence in a system changed the system profile, requiring new escape routes to be plotted and ships to head far enough away from the Interdictor to escape its gravity well and make it into hyperspace.
Krennel was not interested in the escape of ships in the system, but with the transit through it. The routes that connected Liinade III with worlds outside the Hegemony were few in number. The system in which he waited sat astride one of the routes and didn’t even rate a name: Imperial surveyors had only designated it M2934738. While it did not provide the most direct path from the New Republic to Liinade III, it did allow for a quicker transit than many of the other routes.
The only problem the New Republic had with taking Liinade III was in supplying it and the troops on it. Even before hostilities had ceased, New Republic supply ships began ferrying in a variety of necessities, from medicine to munitions, spare parts to food. The New Republic clearly intended to use Liinade III as a staging area for further operations in the Hegemony, so the buildup continued.
Continued until now. Isard had been correct in noting that a victory against the New Republic would create even more opposition to the war against the Hegemony. A direct assault on Liinade III would prove very costly in men and materials. Cutting the supply line to Liinade III would weaken the garrison and provide him his victory, so, using information from Isard’s sources within the New Republic, Krennel laid his ambush.
The New Republic supply convoy came out of hyperspace in the middle of M2934738. It consisted of a dozen freighters, a Nebulon-B-class Frigate, and two Corellian Corvettes. The two smaller warships drove hard toward the Reckoning, their double turbolaser cannons blazing away, but the Imperial Star Destroyer Mark II’s shields and hull absorbed the damage without significant difficulty. The Nebulon-B Frigate made a run at the Interdictor, with the freighters scattering in its wake.
Krennel’s forward gunners targeted the lead Corvette, a ship called Pride of Selonia. Heavy turbolaser fire crushed the ship’s forward shields, then burned tattered, black furrows along the ship’s hull. Debris and bodies vented into space, expelled by flaming gouts of superheated atmosphere. Heavy turbolaser cannons scattered shots over the bridge and back along the ship’s spine, destroying its communications array. In one terrible swift salvo, the Pride of Selonia went from being a warship crewed by brave individuals to a floating charnel ship trailing webs of congealed metal.
The Frigate Intrepid fired its turbolaser batteries and laser cannons at Binder, but the Interdictor’s shields deflected their fury. Instead of firing back at the Intrepid, Binder’s gunners shot at two freighters, each one making a run toward one of the exit vectors the Interdictor had been told to control. Quad