squadron should be able to hit it and get away well before Iceheart could mount
any sort of rescue operation.
Corran's uneasiness came from the fact that in this mission he was being asked
to do something against which he had fought ail his life. His father and
grandfather had fought against it all their lives. Even Nejaa Halcyon had
ventured out against pirates who preyed on, interstellar convoys. Corran, who
had once been an officer in the Corellian Security Force's antismuggling
division, had become a pirate.
Rationalizing and justifying what he was about to do was simple in the extreme.
Elscol Loro had said from the start
that getting Isard angry was important, and stealing a convoy of bacta certainly
would do that. It would also force her to devote some of her resources to
safeguarding future convoys. Even if Rogue Squadron never engaged any of Isard's
troops, the sheer volume of runs the destroyers would have to make would tax the
crew and the equipment, forcing her to obtain more supplies from the black
market at inflated prices.
All the while wearing her down for us.
The counter in the upper corner of his screen spun down to zero, then the white
tunnel outside his cockpit shattered into pinpoints of light that resolved
themselves into stars. Out ahead of him, the yellow sun at the heart of the
Chorax system took up a quarter of the sky, while the single large planet in
the system stood silhouetted against it like the pupil in some huge yellow eye.
Streaming away from the planet like tears, the ships of the bacta convoy headed
out, their exit vector identical to Rogue Squadron's entry vector. Though
closing fast with them, Corran could not make out any visual detail on the
Thyferran ships, yet Whistler flashed a schematic of them on his screen in short
order. Three hundred meters in length, from prow bridge to hyperdrives, the
bacta tankers had an almost insectoid feel about them. The ship's central
section had two parts, each of which held six cargo cylinders. In the various
systems where the convoy stopped, smaller ships would fly up to the convoy,
tease one of the cylinders free from the tanker's belly, then slip a return
cylinder into its place. The returned cylinder might be empty, but most of them
contained the world's native goods, to be sent back to Thyferra or traded yet
further along the line.
Corran keyed his comm unit. "Nine here, Rogue Leader. The convoy is right where
it is supposed to be. No hostiles yet."
"I copy, Nine. Stand by." Wedge's voice broke for a moment, then flooded
through the helmet speakers. "Bacta convoy, this is Wedge Antilles. Prepare to
alter course to coordinates I will supply you."
A new voice came back on the comm unit. "Antilles, this
is Thyferran Convoy Delta-Two-Niner. We do not recognize your authority to give
us orders."
"You will. Two flight, make a run."
"I copy, Rogue Leader." Confidence bubbled through Tycho's voice. "Eight, Nine,
and Ten on me. Lock S-foils into attack position."
"As ordered, sir." Corran nudged his stick to the left and pushed the throttle
forward to bring his X-wing up on Tycho's left. Nawara Ven, in Eight, dropped in
back and starboard of Tycho while Ooryl pulled his X-wing into the formation
to the port and in back of Corran. As a unit they sped on in at the long string
of tankers and tending vessels. The tenders will be the ones that are armed.
The boxy tenders, which really were just freighters hauling food and other
supplies for the convoy, quickly outstripped the tankers and positioned
themselves to make the fighters shy off their targets. The strategy of forming a
wall in front of the freighters might well have worked had the battle been
taking place on a planet with the Rogues in land-speeders, but in space the
tight grouping of the freighters just made eluding them all that much more easy.
Corran hit a key on his console. "Seven, I show six freighters in that block in
front of us, but there were eight originally. They're screening something."
"I copy, Nine. The two missing ones are the largest of them. Keep your eyes open
for something tricky."
Suddenly the freighter formation opened up like a flower blossoming and eight
snubfighters burst up through the opening at full attack speed. Led by four
Z-95 Headhunters with blasters blazing, the Thyferran fighters zeroed in on the
Rogue formation. Corran threw all shield power to the forward shields, dropped
his crosshairs on one of the speeding Headhunters and hit his trigger.
The quad burst of laser fire pierced the Headhunter's shields. The red beams
sliced into the joint where the port wing joined the fuselage, sheering it off.
The engine on that wing exploded and the ship itself whirled off in a flat spin.
Corran sideslipped to starboard to cut beneath its flight path,
then hauled back on his stick to loop up and onto the trail of the Thyferran
fighters.
Evening his shields out, he inverted the X-wing and dove onto the tail of the
second set of Thyferran fighters. It was a mixed group consisting of two TIE
fighters and two "Ug-lies"hybrid ships consisting of a TIE's ball cockpit
married to Y-wing engine nacelles.
"Ten, do you want the Die-wings, or shall I take them?"
"Ooryl would be pleased to take them."
"Ten, I have your wing." Corran smiled as Ooryl cruised up and broke to
starboard as the pair of Uglies veered away to shake them. While affordable and
effective for most convoy security duty, the Uglies were not well suited to
engagements against military-grade snubfighters. The Die-wing variantoften
referred to as TIE-wing among those who flew themsuffered from the deficits of
their component parts. They had a Y-wing's sloth mated with a TIE fighter's lack
of shields. Corran would have preferred to be handed a blaster and allowed to
float his way into a fight than pilot one of those things.
He kept an eye on the location of the TIE fighters as Ooryl went in after the
Uglies. Though the Gand's exoskeleton made him look blocky and clumsy on the
ground, his handling of an X-wing was nothing short of fluid and even delicate.
Whereas Corran's passing shot on the Headhunter had been lucky, Ooryl had a
facility for doing exactly that sort of damage on purpose. He shoots as if laser
bolts were being rationed.
Ooryl triggered a double burst of laser fire, sending two scarlet bolts lancing
through the lead Die-wing's ball cockpit. Nothing exploded, though leaking
atmosphere did combust and flare for a moment. The Die-wing hurtled on through
space, but began to level out from the looping climb in which it had been
engaged. That move invited a second shot, but the first had clearly killed the
pilot, leaving the ship to fly on with no intelligence at the controls.
Unfortunately for him, the Die-wing's wingman failed to realize his partner had
died. Flying in perfect formation, he began to level out, too. Ooryl's sideslip
dropped him square
on that fighter's aft. Before the pilot could begin to maneuver, Ooryl fired two
laser bursts at him. The first shredded the port nacelle, lacing it with fire
before ripping it apart. The second shot weakened the link between the remaining
nacelle and the cockpit. The engine ripped free, rocketing off toward Chorax's
sun, while the ball flew on out of control.
A small explosion wreathed the top of the cockpit with fire. A round plug shot
upward; then the pilot followed, riding a command couch backed by a rocket
booster. It carried the pilot clear of the doomed ship and out into space. The
command couch gave the pilot marginal control over his fatehe was no longer
bound for deep space in a runaway fighterbut without a pickup in a ship within
a half hour, he'd suffocate or freeze to death.
Corran keyed his comm unit. "We have one bad guy EV."
Whistler's urgent hooting overrode any reply. "Got it, WhistlerTIEs inbound.
Ten, you're my wing again."
"Ten complying with your order."
Corran shook his head as he brought the X-wing up on its port stabilizer and
pulled back on the stick. Any other pilot in the unit who had picked off the
Die-wings would have been ecstatic, or at least would have had his excitement
show up in his voice, but not Ooryl. The only way to tell if he was excited or
ashamed about something was to listen to how he referred to himself. Gands felt
it the height of arrogance to refer to themselves with a personal pronoun unless
it was felt by Gand leadership that the Gand in question had done something so
great that every Gand would be aware of who was being referred to. As a result,
when Ooryl was happy he referred to himself as Ooryl, when he was chagrined as
Qrygg, and when he was really mortified as Gand, allowing himself to sink in
anonymity as his shame grew greater.
Ms ego is fust as strong as any of the rest of ushe fust has a better grip on
it.
Corran inverted his X-wing and leveled out for a head-to-head pass with the
TIEs. The lead TIE broke off, but the following one began a corkscrew maneuver
that jumped him around enough to make him hard to target. Corran snapped a
shot at him, then climbed up and off after the fleeing TIE. He's the lesser of
two evils.
The TIE jinked high and low, but did very little side to side maneuvering. He's
a rookie and has been training in atmosphere. The TIE's octagonal solar panels
caused a lot of problems with maneuvering in atmosphere because of the
resistance they offered, though climbing and diving were no problem at all in a
TIE. In space there was no atmosphere to limit the TIE's maneuverability, but
the pilot he was chasing had not yet had a chance to learn that lesson.
And the lesson he's going to learn here is one of an entirely different nature.
Corran snap-rolled the X-wing up on the port S-foil. Whereas the up and down
juking had made the TIE difficult to hit before, Corran's roll left it trapped
between the X-wing's lasers. Corran's finger tightened up on the trigger,
spitting laser fire at his quarry.
The quad burst evaporated the port solar cell wing, letting the TIE trail
threadlike tendrils of congealing metal on its left side. Corran pushed his
stick forward to correct his aim, but before he could shoot again, the hiss of
laser fire hitting his aft shield filled his cockpit. Jamming the stick to the
left and shoving it forward, Corran kicked his fighter into a corkscrew dive
that took him well away from the wounded TIE.
A glance at his aft sensor readout showed the remaining TIE was staying with
him. This guy is really good. "Ten, I have one on my tail."
"Ten is shaking a lock."
"I copy, Ten." Corran frowned. "Whistler, find out what has a lock on Ten." He
knew it had to be one of the freighters that had a concussion missile battery or
proton torpedo launcher on board. Most freighters did not carry such weapons
systems just because of the space needed for storing the missies and the sensor
equipment, but those that did could be very effective against pirates, because
they could engage them at the missiles' longer range.
Whistler shrilled at him.
"Yes, I know I have a fighter on my, er, our, trail." Corran pulled up into a
climb, then rolled and shot off at right
angles to the line of his climb. "I'll take care of him, you just tell me what I
want to know."
The TIE stuck with him. This guy is very good. His fighter can match mine in
speed and maneuvering. He's not going to let me go head to head with him because
my shields give me an advantage in doing that. He has to stay in my aft arc and
keep nibbling away at my shields to get me, so that's what I'll let him do.
Corran switched his fire controls from lasers to proton torpedoes and prepped
the fighter to shoot them one at a time. He kept a loose hand on the stick and
jinked a bit, but allowed his pursuit to take a couple of shots at him. They
sizzled in on the aft shield, but didn't penetrate it.
This better work. Corran chopped his throttle back to zero, then yanked his
stick back to his breastbone. The X-wing's nose came up and over, pointing
straight back at the TIE. The TIE immediately shied to port, so Corran hit his
left etheric rudder pedal and tracked the X-wing's nose along the TIE's flight
path. The aiming reticle went from yellow to red, and Whistler screeched out a
solid tone indicating target lock.
Corran fired a missile.
The proton torpedo rode a jet of blue flame as it streaked out after the TIE. It
actually overshot its target when the TIE pilot rolled the fighter and pulled
the starboard solar panel out of the torpedo's range. The proximity sensors on
the proton torpedo caused it to detonate, filling the area around it with a
rapidly expanding cloud of shrapnel. Before the TIE pilot could react, tiny bits
of metal pierced the transparisteel cockpit canopy, shattering it into a million
razor-edged fragments, that proceeded to reduce everything in the cockpit to
debris.
Corran watched the TIE fighter begin to spin off lazily through space. When I
go, I hope it's that fast. No lingering tor me.
Whistler's mournful tone seemed to echo that sentiment.
"Nine here, I'm clear."
"Seven here, Nine. We're all clear."
Corran brought his ship around and saw two of the
freighters hanging in space with fires raging internally. "Order, sir?"
Tycho replied quickly. "Wedge has convinced the convoy that once it makes
delivery runs for us, it can go free. Form up with Ooryl, and take two tankers
for your run. They'll slave their navicomps to yours. Once the cargo has been
delivered, let them go and get back to base."
"As ordered, sir." Corran let a little chuckle roll from his throat. "Well,
Whistler, this isn't much of a blow to strike against Iceheart, but it's
something. I'll take it as a down payment on what she's going to get later."
II
A cloud of steam rolled toward Corran as the inner door of the thermal lock
opened. He and Ooryl stepped through quickly, anxious to be well away from
frigid conditions that existed back in the hangar. Corran pulled off his gloves,
blew some warmth into his hands, then smiled as a small, balding man approached
them. "You must be Farl Cort."
The smaller man nodded and
extended a hand to Corran. "I am. I want to thank you
for your mission here. When we put the word out, I had no reason to expect, you
know, such a generous response so quickly."
"Pleased to meet you, sir." Corran shook his hand, then jerked his head toward
Ooryl. "This is Ooryl Qrygg of Gand, I'm Corran Horn of Corellia."
Farl shook Ooryl's hand, then waved the both of them deeper into the rough-hewn
stone tunnel. "You'll forgive the lack of decoration and refinement, but Halanit
is a fairly small community that is still building to self-sufficiency, so we
have little time to devote to anything that is not utilitarian."
"Ooryl can understand this. You have chosen a difficult world to make your
home."
Corran shook his head at the Gand's understatement.
Halanit was a moon orbiting a gas giant. A thick coat of ice covered the planet,
but beneath the frozen crust, the hot heart of the world heated water and rock
enough to make life sus-tainable. The colonists began creating their community
during the final days of the Old Republic. They had weathered the Empire and
Rebellion all but unnoticed since the planet produced nothing of use and the
inhabitants numbered just over ten thousand. It was just one more curiosity in a
galaxy full of them, and it would have escaped Corran's notice except for an
urgent message sent to Coruscant to request shipments of bacta.
Farl led them from the tunnel to the edge of a huge chasm that reminded Corran
of Coruscant's artificial cany ons. A hundred meters or so above them a
double-walled transparisteel shield capped the chasm and spread over the area
the diffuse light glowing down through the glacier. On both sides of the chasm
lights shone through viewports carved in the stone and silhouetted the various
bridges across the gulf. In several places, water streamed down between and over
rocks to splash rather beautifully into the chasm's depths.
Corran raised an eyebrow. "This is a little more than simply utilitarian, I
think."
Farl smiled. "This grand vista is the one concession we make to beauty. Standing
here it is easy to see how our forefathers envisioned what Halanit would
become. In two generations we have accomplished much, but we are far from our
dream of making this world into a Utopia. And, as pretty as this is, it does