Star Wars_ X-Wing 09_ Starfighters of Adumar - Aaron Allston [103]
Only once were they threatened by fighters. A pair of older Blade-28s, classic machines lovingly maintained by their owners, dropped down behind Red Flight and opened up with lasers. Hobbie and Janson destroyed them with sustained rear laser fire. The ruins of their Blade-28s, burning, arced down to crash into the streets. They slid to smash into building fronts. “Old men,” Janson reported, a catch in his voice. “Old men wearing big smiles.”
As they reached the royal and governmental quadrant of Cartann City, the defenses become more capable and more numerous. Laser batteries arose from pods within building tops and could swivel to target enemies from the skies to the streets below. Reluctantly, Wedge rose to rooftop level again so as to see the pop-up batteries before they could target him. Red Flight fired upon and were fired upon by twenty of the installations before he lost count, and Wedge’s Blade, though not even grazed, was so badly rocked by shock waves from laser blasts that he could hear mechanisms shattering within the craft.
Then it was before him, the gray, innocuous building beyond which was the perator’s palace. Laser batteries atop the palace tried to target him, but on this final portion of the run Wedge stayed down at street level, allowing the target building to shield him. Ahead, he saw hangar-style doors grinding open on the gray building, saw flashes of laser fire as men and women in dark, innocuous garments were fired upon by defenders within it.
A pair of laser batteries rose with breathtaking speed from within the gray building, turned to target Red Flight. All four Blades fired, three at the battery to port, Hobbie at the battery to starboard. The port battery exploded in a shower of sparks and fire. The starboard battery, though chewed and blackened by Hobbie’s lasers, continued to sweep around and orient toward them; Hobbie launched a missile instead and the installation detonated, leaving behind only rubble and smoke.
Now they only had small-arms fire to contend with; shooters atop the gray building and clustered on balconies all around poured blaster fire into the four Blades. The impacts rang like off-key musical notes; Wedge felt as though a brigade of mechanics were hammering on his hull with hydrospanners, but the armored fuselage held up against the barrage. Still, there was an ominous new signal on the lightboard, a swarm of fighters and a pair of larger vehicles following them.
He descended on repulsorlifts to the duracrete just outside the hangar doors, intending to whirl around and present his missiles to their pursuers, but his comm unit kicked in with Cheriss’s voice. “Holdout to Red Flight, please come into the hangar.”
“We have incoming—”
“They’re ours. We need you in here.”
Wedge glided forward. As he crossed into the comparative darkness of the hangar, his goggles depolarized and he could see the building’s contents.
It was a spacious hangar, the duracrete floor meticulously clean, completely absent of the sort of lubricant spills he associated with a hangar that saw real use. He would have rated it as being spacious enough for two and a half to three squadrons of Blades, but there were only eight vehicles present: the four X-wings clustered against the back wall, toward the center, three Blade-32s lined up for quick departure to the left, and a brilliant gold Blade-28 all alone to the right.
The hangar’s living occupants included at least a dozen men and women in unmemorable dark clothing. There were dead occupants, too, six guards in the livery of the perator’s palace, lying motionless on the duracrete. The members of the Holdout invasion