Star Wars_ X-Wing 09_ Starfighters of Adumar - Aaron Allston [113]
“Allegiance’s sensors show the enemy TIE squadrons issuing from the Star Destroyers,” Wedge said. “Fighters escorting bombers—a lot of bombers. They expect us to try to intercept with our fighters. Here’s how we’re going to play it instead.
“Our advance screen is Red Flight, High Flight Squadron, Lightflash Squad, and Contender and Skylight Squadrons.” That put the X-wings, A-wings, and TIE fighters at the fore of Wedge’s group. “The rest of you hang back in formation until we’re fully engaged and you can calculate where the action is thickest—and where the enemy is less likely to be able to break away to engage you. Approach by those vectors and unload everything you have on Agonizer.” That put the B-wings of Solar Wind Squadron, Y-wings of Remember Derra Squadron, and Blades of the Ice Edge, Frozen Death, and Sunwhip Flightknives behind on missiling duty. “You Blades remember to fire on the command of your flightknife commanders, in unison; your missiles lack the punch of proton torpedoes, so you’re going to have to land precisely timed mass fire if you’re going to do any harm to a Star Destroyer. Understood?”
He was answered by confirmations from each of the squadron commanders.
“All right. Let’s go.” He transmitted the intercept course to the group and vectored to lead the way to the enemy.
As his group formed up on him, he switched the comm board over to the main Adumari broadcast frequency. The two-dimensional image that was the continuous flatscreen broadcast filled his main screen. It showed an older man, a patch over one eye not quite concealing the scar that both rose and descended from his eye socket, addressing the flatcam.
“… continues to hold out against Adumari Union forces,” the man said. “Despite reports that Pekaelic’s forces decline in number every day, assaults by units of his informal force continue to occupy Union attention and slow the Union efforts to bring peace to Adumar. At sunrise, Yedagon time, this morning, units of the Cartannese Lords of Dismay Flightknife, now allied with the former perator, escorted a bombing raid that destroyed six residential blocks in Yedagon’s prestigious Accolux Township …”
Wedge switched it off. This was the third day of broadcasts that were, in essence, all lies. Scripted by Hallis Saper with the input of the Adumari Union’s military advisors, the broadcasts told the tale of the former perator, Pekaelic ke Teldan, still mounting a mighty struggle against the conquering Adumari Union, keeping war raging across all the civilized nations of Adumar. The public followed the news accounts keenly. The guerrilla warfare always took place in communities that could be, and were, shut off from the outer world by military occupation … meaning that Imperial Intelligence agents on the ground would have a hard time disproving them.
Meanwhile, the true Pekaelic rested in the Cartannese township his son had chosen for his exile, barely aware of the events that were being attributed to him. All he knew was that he had a broadcast to make and a script to follow when instructed to do so.
If all went as it was supposed to, the Empire’s Intelligence team or Adumar would have been recording all these transmissions for the last three days, analyzing them and interpreting them, but not discovering that they were all lies. Even now, they’d be transmitting their findings to the Imperial task force headed toward the planet. With luck, the task force would believe the accounts of a world still at war, its military might scattered.
Well before Wedge’s group spotted the enemy Star Destroyers, Allegiance reported that elements of the 181st Imperial Fighter Group, escorting numerous squadrons of TIE bombers, was descending into Cartann airspace. Blips representing other Imperial fighter units were