Corran’s right hand rose toward his throat and pressed itself against his chest. The shattered remains of his life support gear prevented him from touching his breastbone, but he knew something was missing, something that should have been laying against his flesh. He did not know what it was, but he knew he would draw comfort from it.
In its absence, despair flooded through him.
“I had thought you worthy, Nemesis One. You told me you were, didn’t you?”
Though he recalled no such declaration, he confirmed it. “I did. I am.”
“You are nothing unless I say you are something. Now I say you are nothing, nothing but a failure!” In the light he saw the silhouette of a tall, slender woman. The sight of her made him shiver more than her words. He knew he feared her, but he also wanted to please her. Pleasing her was very important to him, the only thing that was important in the world. “You have failed me and yourself.”
“Please,” he croaked, but her silhouette gave no indication she had heard him.
“One more chance, perhaps.”
“Yes, yes.”
“If you fail again…”
Corran shook his head adamantly. “I won’t, I won’t.”
“No, for your next failure will be your last, Nemesis One.” The silhouette folded its arms together. “Disappoint me again and what is left of your life will be spent in agonizing atonement, disgrace, and, after a long time, death.”
Chapter Seven
The reversion to realspace brought Wedge and the Rogues out into a situation that just seemed like another simulator run, with one minor variation. As he expected, Wedge saw the space station slowly revolving in a star-stained void. Way off toward the right, closer to the yellow star burning at the center of the solar system, sat Yag’Dhul. The planet’s grey cloud cover made it only slightly more colorful than the Givin who called it home.
The only variation from the opsims was the appearance of a flight of four TIE starfighters patrolling the area around the space station. Mynock, the R5 unit in Wedge’s X-wing, immediately screeched out a warning when he noticed them off to port. Wedge glanced at his monitor, noted how the TIEs moved into an attack formation, and smiled.
Action beats inaction every time. He keyed his comm unit. “One flight, on me. Rogue Twelve, take the Defenders in.”
“As ordered,” Aril Nunb replied.
Committing only one flight of fighters against an equal number of TIEs, especially when he could have had two dozen Y-wings and seven more X-wings join the fight, might have seemed the height of arrogance, though Wedge knew it was quite the opposite. While TIE pilots seldom managed to amass the experience of their Rebel counterparts, they were quite competent, and more than capable of killing in a dogfight. Warlord Zsinj’s pilots had proved to be good fighters in the past, and Wedge expected them to be nothing less in this engagement.
The reasons he only pulled one flight from his formation to deal with the TIEs were twofold. First, and most important, their operation demanded that the threat to the station caused it to scramble its fighters. The X- and Y-wings were to draw the TIEs out and away from the station to a point in the system where the B-wings would come in. The B-wings were in hyperspace, already on their way, so if surprise were to be achieved, Zsinj’s troops had to be lured into position in a timely manner.
The second reason to match forces with Zsinj was because having too many fighters involved in a battle tended to wreak havoc on the efficacy of the pilots. The difference between a good pilot and a bad one, all other things being equal, came down to situational awareness. A pilot who could handle more variables, and keep track of more ships in his mind would do better in combat than one who could only deal with less in the way of distractions. Wedge had seen statistical analyses that showed that kill ratios fell as the number of fighters in a dogfight increased; so by keeping the fight small, he made it easier for his people to grasp all the aspects of the fight.
“Three, you and Four have the trailers. Two, I have lead. Target the second TIE.”
“As ordered, Rogue Leader.” Rhysati Ynr led Erisi Dlarit in a dive and sweeping turn that brought them around toward the following pair of TIEs. Rhysati’s attack vector was intended to push the TIEs farther from the space station and the rest of the Rebel force. Wedge saw the TIEs begin to react to her maneuver, but they seemed content to let her dictate the direction of the fight.
Wedge flipped his weapon’s controls over to lasers and set them for dual-firing. He pumped his shields up to full and picked the lead eyeball as his target. They started to close, coming head to head, with their wingmen off starboard and hanging slightly back, each formation being the mirror image of the other. He smiled. Just where I want him.
“Rogue Two, do you have your target?”
“Confirmed, lead.” Asyr’s voice came through the comm unit cool and steady.
“Get ready. On my mark, I’m going to foul your target. Shoot immediately after that with a proton torpedo.”
“As ordered.”
“Three, two, one, mark!” Wedge rolled the X-wing up and over in a barrel-roll to port. His target did the same thing, sweeping his fighter across his wingman’s flight path. That momentarily blinded the second TIE and caused him to shy. Wedge glanced at his monitor and saw a report of a proton torpedo launch, then touched the starboard rudder pedal a second before inverting the X-wing and making his pass on the TIE fighter.
Before Wedge applied rudder, the two ships had been heading straight at each other. The rudder drifted the X-wing’s nose about ten degrees to starboard, pulling him out of line with the TIE. The inversion flopped the starfighter, bringing the nose back into line with the TIE. Before Zsinj’s pilot could react, Wedge’s fighter streaked in at him and started shooting.
The first pair of red laser-bolts missed low, but the next two pairs swept up and across the ball cockpit. One of the TIE’s lasers died in a cloud of duraplast mist. Wedge’s third shot lanced through the transparisteel viewport, igniting and melting all manner of components and equipment. The TIE starfighter rolled up on the starboard solar panel, then tightened down into a screw-spiral before exploding.
A second later a blue proton torpedo slammed into the port wing on the second TIE. The black solar panel closed around the torpedo like cloth around a thrown stone. The torpedo itself punched through the panel and penetrated the fighter’s hull before detonating. The blast ripped the back half off the cockpit pod, freeing the engines to soar further in-system while the shattered husk of a fighter tumbled on through the void.
“Nice shot, Deuce.”
“Thanks for the setup, lead.”
Wedge brought the X-wing up and around to the original heading and saw a proton torpedo from Erisi’s ship finish off a TIE. Farther along he saw streams of green laser-bolts spraying out from the space station. At the extremes of range the fire did not seriously threaten the incoming fighters, but it did keep them away long enough for the station to scramble its TIEs. Zsinj’s fliers boiled up and out from the station and rose on an intercept course with the Rebel fighters.
“Lead, I have a dozen Interceptors and eight starfighters.”
“I copy, Twelve.” That should be everything they have, unless they’re holding something back. Keeping ships in reserve made little or no sense to Wedge, but he’d long since learned that warfare and tactics seldom make a lot of sense to the opposition. I just hope our run away from the station looks believable.
Aril Nunb led the Rogues and Y-wings up and away from the station. The squints and eyeballs came on in pursuit, hot to thin the ranks of the Y-wings. The Interceptors opened a lead on the TIE starfighters and started to close fast with the Y-wings. Aril brought her X-wing over, and the rest of the Rogues followed her through a loop that.took them back toward the Interceptors while the Y-wings continued heading away from their pursuers.
As the X-wing and Interceptor formations began to spread out into clouds, the B-wings burst into realspace and shot straight i
nto the gap between the squints and the eyeballs from the station. Wedge marveled at how each cruciform ship flew with its wings and fuselage whirling around to keep the cockpit stable despite a wild series of maneuvers and course corrections. Having flown a B-wing a few times, he could appreciate the ship’s firepower, but the way it moved and flew made him feel less like a pilot than a driver.
The B-wings slashed in at the Interceptors. Half of them seemed content to attack using lasers or blasters, while the other half employed ion cannons to take the squints out of the fight without killing them. Blue ion-bolts caught Interceptors in full flight, sending electricity skitter-jagging over the hulls. Laser and blaster fire ripped into other Interceptors, burning holes through solar panels and cockpits.
The B-wing ambush scattered the Interceptors, but the X-wings coming in at them did not break off in pursuit. They left that to the B-wings. The Rogues pushed on through the crumbling Interceptor formation, shot past the B-wings and, as One Flight reunited with the squadron, sailed on in at the eyeball formation.
The first pass came head to head. Static hissed through the X-wing cockpit as TIE lasers stung his forward shields repeatedly. Wave after wave of green light washed over the shields, but Wedge ignored it. He concentrated instead on his monitor and shifted the X-wing a bit to starboard, trapping a TIE fighter in the center of his targeting crosshairs. He tightened down on the trigger, pulsing kilojoules of scarlet energy into an eyeball’s cockpit.
A roiling explosion shredded that ship. Wedge kicked the X-wing up onto the starboard S-foil, then climbed up and away from the expanding ball of gas. Letting his roll continue over the top, he dropped the X-wing into a dive, then rolled out to port and came around on an arc between the cloud of fighters and the station. He glanced off to starboard and saw Asyr still with him, which prompted him to toss her a salute. “Glad you stayed with me.”
“That’s my job.”
From his vantage point at the periphery of the battle he could see a number of things that impressed him. The Rogues had hit the eyeballs very hard, but Zsinj’s people regrouped in good order instead of scattering. Without shields, the TIE starfighters were really no match for the X-wings, but remaining together made them far more dangerous than individual ships fleeing. Whoever the leader of that squadron was, he was sharp enough to keep his people together and head them out and away from the fray.
“Rogue flights Two and Three, leave the flight of eyeballs alone and join the Y-wings. One flight, we’re watching the eyeballs.” Wedge hit two buttons on his flight console. “Mynock, see if you can get me a frequency for the comm unit communications between the eyeballs.”
The droid hooted his understanding of the order.
While Wedge waited for the droid to get him that information, he watched the B-wings finish off the squints and head in toward the station. Wedge’s monitor showed seven Interceptors hanging dead in space. That number was impressive, even in spite of the ambush, because blowing ships up was far easier than taking their electrical systems down. While he appreciated the fact that the pilots had not been killed when their ships had been stopped, he knew the choice to use ion cannons on them had been made for practical rather than altruistic reasons.
Each of those pilots will be debriefed, and what they know will be added to our store of information concerning Zsinj. It is entirely possible some or all of them served on the Iron Fist, and learning about the ship’s condition is of vital importance. It represents the core of Zsinj’s might, and will let us determine how truly dangerous he is.
The Rebel fighters all converged on the Empress-class space station with the Y-wings in the lead. While ungainly, the Y-wings were still not easy targets tó hit. The station’s weaponry sent energy beams shooting out at the attackers, but the incoming fighters supplied three targets for each weapon system, overwhelming the crews defending the station. Added to that was the ability of fighters to approach while using part of the station to shield them from many of the lasers. Using targeting data supplied by other ships, the fighters were able to pop from cover and fire at targets that had previously been unseen.
The swooping, diving, rolling, and climbing cloud of fighters boiled around the station like insects around a bright light. Direct hits on a fighter would make the craft break off and loop away until its shields were recharged, then head back in. The battle to defend the station was lost from the very start, but the fear Zsinj inspired in his people clearly kept them fighting long after it made sense for them to do so.
Mynock beeped, and Wedge saw a comm unit frequency come up on his monitor. He punched the number into his comm unit and keyed his microphone. “Starfighter flight, this is Commander Antilles of the New Republic Armed Forces. If you power down your weapons, we’ll consider you noncombatants. The same offer goes for the people on the station.”
“I copy, Antilles.” The voice coming back to Wedge through the comm unit had the metallic echo commonly injected in speech by Imperial equipment. “My flight is disarming itself. I’ll pass your message on to the station chief, Valsil Torr.”
“Obliged, starfighter.” Wedge checked his sensors for hostiles as he waited for a return message.
“Antilles, Torr has the message and is powering down his weapons. The station is yours. Be careful, though, he’s a wily old Twi’lek.”
Wedge smiled. Though the communications gear had robbed the voice of any humanity, it couldn’t kill the personality in it. He might have been amazed that someone who had just been shooting at him and his people would so quickly offer helpful advice, but he’d long since learned that warriors from all sides of any conflict had more in common than not. “I copy the advice. I appreciate it.”
“One thing, Antilles.”
“Yes?”
“If we surrender to you, will you haul us out of here?”
“Don’t want to be around when the Iron Fist gets here?”
“Not especially.”
No surprise, that. Unlike the starfighters the Rebellion used, the TIE fighters were not equipped with hyperdrives. TIEs traveled between battles in the bellies of ships like the Iron Fist. The flight of starfighters was trapped unless Wedge arranged transport for them out of the system. Zsinj had a reputation for being short-tempered, so leaving them behind was tantamount to murdering them, and Wedge had no desire to have their murders on his conscience.
“Starfighter, surrendering to me means you’ll lose your ship.”
“That’s a problem, Antilles. We’re all mercenaries. We lose our ships and we starve.” The TIE pilot fell silent for a moment, then continued. “Of course, no reason to eat and live if you can’t fly.”
“I understand, starfighter.” Wedge thought for a moment. “I have an idea. If you hire on as guards to fly cover for one of the freighters coming in, you can get out of here and be free.”
“Freighters?”
“Coming for the bacta.”
“Bacta. So that’s what we were guarding.”
“And you can continue guarding it all the way to Coruscant, where it’s needed. Give me your word you won’t fight against the New Republic in the future, and you’ve got a deal.”
“You have it, Antilles.”
Right on cue, a dozen and a half bulk freighters and specialty haulers started coming out of hyperspace and cruising in toward the space station. Most were blocky, squared-off craft that had seen better days, but a few were more elegant ships whose very designs were tributes to the romanticism of space travel. One, a converted Baudo-class yacht, glided through the void like a metal simulacrum of the Corellian sea creature that gave the ship her name.
“Starfighter, the Baudo-class yacht there is the Pulsar Skate. I’ll have the captain contact you on this frequency. Stand by.”
“I copy.”
Wedge opened a channel to the Skate. “Skate, this is Rogue Leader.”
“Mirax here, Wedge. We’re fourth in line to head in. What can I do for you?”
“We have a flight of f
our eyeballs orbiting. They’ve left Zsinj’s service and need a ride out of here. Will you?”
“Sure. Not the first time I’ve hauled a ship for you.”
No, the first one was Corran. “Thanks, Mirax. Mynock is sending you their comm unit frequency, so I’ll leave the arrangements to you.”
“It will give me something to do while I’m waiting.”
“I copy.” Wedge glanced at the Chronographie display in the corner of his monitor. “When we get back home, you and I will sit down and talk, yes?”
Weariness washed through Mirax’s voice. “I’ll have to offload the cargo first. Then maybe I can sleep. Haven’t been doing much of that lately. I will call you when I’m functional again.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
“And keep that promise, or I talk your father into coming out of retirement by telling him you’re moping over the death of his worst enemy’s son.”
“Oh, Wedge, that’s cruel.” Light static hissed in Wedge’s ears as Mirax’s voice broke. “There’s no reason I shouldn’t mourn for Corran.”
“Agreed, but you don’t have to do it alone. That’s a burden we all share, got it?”
“I copy.” Resignation tinged with relief flooded her words. “See you back on Coruscant.”
“I am counting on it.” Wedge looked out at the station and his squadron patrolling around it. And, miracle of miracles, it looks like everyone is going to make it back home again.
Chapter Eight
Corran knew that once again being in the cockpit of a fighter should have made him happy, but it did not. He could find no fault with the fighter nor with being given a patrol mission. He’d done enough of those to expect boredom, and yet even that wasn’t giving him a problem. Just to be flying again was enough to override boredom.