"They"ve got us. Our mission is scrubbed, and so are we, if we can"t figure out a way to get clear of them. Hold on a second. Runt, fire up the comm system and put all the power you can into our signal."
"Done."
"Five to One, do you read? Over."
His reply was a static hiss.
"Five to Eleven, do you read? Over"
"...leven, read-you. Sig-breaking up."
"Abort mission. Repeat, abort mission. Over."
"Neg...ve. Standing-your departure. Over."
"Do not stand by. This is a direct order. Abort mission. Acknowledge.
Over."
There was no reply.
"We have incoming starfighters from the capital ship," Runt said.
"Of course we do. Our day wouldn"t be complete without them, would it?"
Tyria"s voice came back, "Ack...ed. Aborting. Over." On the sensor screen, the blips representing her TIE fighter and Piggy"s veered off on an escape vector.
Kell took a deep breath. He wanted to make one final transmission. I love you. But he couldn"t give the enemy forces any clue, any extra information to help them pry into the Hawk-bats" ident.i.ties. He shut down the comm system. As he settled on his next course of action, he felt his body, his spirit, grow heavy.
Donos"s voice came over the intercom again. "What"s the plan, Five ?"
"Runt joins you in the shuttle. At a time of my choosing, probably when we"re as close as we"re going to get to that capital ship without being trapped inside, you launch and get a few seconds of acceleration before another tractor beam grabs you. In that time, I set off our explosive charges."
Runt"s eyes went wide. Kell saw them flicker, a sign that Runt was flipping between personalities, looking for the one with the most pertinent skills to add to the situation.
Donos"s voice came back. "Uh, you need to be aboard the shuttle to do that."
"Can"t do it, Nine. The transmitter I have and the one in the shuttle won"t be able to cut through their jamming."
"Then use a timer."
"Then we can"t count on it being precisely positioned to do the most damage to the capital ship."
"Use Bastion"s proximity sensors."
"Bastion"s proximity sensors, at anything under two klicks, are called human eyes, Nine. We"re lucky this crate had refreshers."
"Wait a second, I think Castin and I can work out something." Donos paused a moment. "Yes. I can set off the explosives at a distance."
"Without a comlink?"
"Without a comlink."
"How?"
"Because I"m special and you"re not. Now, I need you to set Bastion"s comm system to pick up tight-beam transmissions across the electromagnetic spectrum."
Kell felt the heaviness leave him as he grasped what Donos was planning.
"I read you. We"ll be right there."
"Break by groups." Face"s voice sounded strained even under distortion.
"Fire at will. And may..."
There was the slightest pause. Wedge knew Face had been about to say, May the Force be with you. A bad idea, a give-away. But Face recovered so quickly Wedge doubted anyone not familiar with him would have recognized the slight lapse.
"...we drink from the skulls of our enemies tonight!"
Wedge broke to port, where the ring of enemy TIEs was thinnest. Shalla and Lara smartly followed suit. Tactics. The enemy was relying on its superior numbers and was confident. Confidence, then, was what the Hawkbats needed to strafe first.
Of the handful of paired fighters winging in toward them, Wedge picked out the most dangerous-looking duo, two interceptors that moved with more sureness than their fellows. As they came on, visual sensors showed that their solar array wings wore the horizontal red bars of Baron Fel"s 181st Impe-rial Fighter Group. Wedge resisted the temptation to swear.
"Ten, Thirteen, take the target to port."
He began juking his interceptor around at three kilometers from his target. A small part of a second later, the closing distance crossed below two klicks and the enemy squints opened fire. Green laser beams flickered between Wedge and his wingmen.
His return fire grazed one of the oncoming interceptors, charring a portion of the hull near the upper viewport - and then they were past, with more forest and a more distant set of TIE fighters beyond.
Now the challenge would be to come around, trying to maneuver behind the enemies they"d just gone head-to-head with. But Wedge ignored conventional tactics, rolled to starboard, and dove toward a pair of fighters that were maneuvering to get a shot in on Janson and Dia. His first quad-linked shot was a brilliant one, hulling one fighter, turning it into a glowing cloud of orange and black, and that fighter"s wingmate exploded a second later under cycling paired laser fire from Wedge"s wingman to port.
Shalla? He spared a glance. No, it was Lara"s fighter, not Shalla"s interceptor there.
He rolled to starboard again. The interceptors whom they"d traded fire with initially were in pursuit, distant pursuit, but quickly catching up.
However, three TIE fighters were ahead and above, beginning a dive toward Wedge"s group.
He brought his interceptor up in a climb so rapid that it slammed him back into his seat. As the oncoming enemies dropped within the field of coverage of his targeting systems, one briefly jittered within his brackets. He fired out of reflex, was rewarded with seeing a TIE"s solar array wing explode under his lasers; that starfighter half rolled and began an uncontrolled descent.
Wedge continued his loop upward, a tight maneuver that kept him crushed to his chair even as he came upside down. In his mind"s eye, that put him and his group at the upper edge of the engagement, with no attacks possible from above for the moment.
Ahead and below, Wedge saw a paired interceptor and fighter the sensors flagged as friendlies; that had to be Face and Phanan. They were turning his way.
"Leader, Seven, this is One. I"m coming at you in a head-to-head. Two on my tail."
"One, Leader. We have them. You can have our tail as well."
Behind Face and Phanan, two pairs of TIE fighters were jockeying for position, firing shots that strayed for now but must inevitably connect with the Hawk-bats" sterns.
Wedge, Shalla, and Lara roared toward Face and Phanan. All five Hawk-bats opened fire, a deadly barrage of green lasers, but not at one another-at the fighters and interceptors pursuing each wing. Wedge saw his concentrated fire hit a solar wing pylon and shear it off at its base, sending the fighter spinning down toward the thick forest below. He directed his stream of fire against another TIE as the two lines converged. Then one of that fighter"s mates detonated and Wedge was momentarily blinded as he flew through the cloud of debris and shrapnel.
He heard metal pinging from his fighter"s hull and he repressed a wince; a heavy enough piece of shrapnel could take out a shieldless TIE interceptor.
Wes"s voice: "Six up, six down."
"What?"
"That little head-to-head you pulled. One hundred percent effective. Six up, six down."
Wedge glanced at his sensor screen. A moment ago, the screen had showed three dozen enemies, seven friendlies. Now it showed twenty-five enemies, seven friendlies. Wedge whistled.
"Leader, Three. I just flipped my sensors over to long-range. I show a capital ship clearing the horizon and heading this way."
"A cruiser?"
"A Star Destroyer. At least."
It was a Super Star Destroyer, by name Iron Fist. As Kell and Runt clattered up the boarding ramp and came forward into the c.o.c.kpit, its image, enhanced by the shuttle"s visual sensors, dominated the forward viewscreen. It was still well above them in orbit, but it seemed terrifyingly close. "We are so dead," Kell said.
Castin and Donos sat in the second row of seats, bent over a long weapon-Donos"s laser sniper rifle.
"We did not know you had brought that," Runt said.
Donos snorted. "I take it to parties, dining engagements, and the refresher. It was in the smuggling compartment. Kell, you have the detonation code ?"
Kell tapped the datapad in his chest pocket.
"Give it to Castin."
Runt took the pilot"s seat while Kell transmitted the code.
The image of Iron Fist wavered, its blue and white running lights blurring, as something pa.s.sed much closer to the shuttle. Runt killed the visual enhancers.
Their shuttle was docked with Bastion, its viewports oriented so its occupants had a view mostly of sky, with only a little of the tanker intruding on the view. And now that sky was full of TIE fighters buzzing back and forth. Kell forced back his rising surge of panic and counted blips on the sensors. Only six. Moving so fast, they seemed more numerous. This had to be nothing more than a show of dominance, since the enemy vessel had already tractored the tanker and was hauling it up to captivity.
"Keep calm," he said. "They"re not here to shoot."
"In your opinion," Donos said.
"It"s all I have to offer."
Wedge plotted the engagement on the sensors and in his mind"s eye. The engagement zone had spread out through a hemisphere about eight kilometers across. Now his group was at a high alt.i.tude in the southern portion. Janson and Dia were about a kilometer below them. None of them was actively engaged with an enemy. The TIE force had contracted a little, the nearest starfighters being about a kilometer to the north and not yet spinning out to engage them. Face and Phanan were in the northern quadrant, dogfighting with a pair of TIE fighters as a pair of interceptors headed toward them.
He checked the position of the sun and then rolled around to begin an approach out of the sun against Face"s and Phanan"s tails. But almost immediately he saw one of the pursuing TIE fighters" shots strike home, hitting the engines of one of the friendly TIEs. That starfighter rolled in a random fashion, briefly regained controlled flight, then dropped below the line of trees and was lost to sight. On the sensor board, Hawkbat Seven, Ton Phanan"s signal, faded to blackness.
"This isn"t going to work," Castin said. He was watching Iron Fist"s approach. "Our docking port is relative up. We"ll be taking off into their hangar bay."
"I"ll take care of it." Kell rose. "Runt, take the pilot"s seat, stand by to power up and launch without checklist." He charged back down the boarding ramp.
Once he was on the tanker"s small flight deck, he brought up the controls for the ship"s artificial gravity and repulsorlifts. It was a simple matter to scrub the identification of a large ma.s.s - Iron Fist - as that of a ship and instead identify it as a planetoid. Then he configured the gravity system to orient the ship so that its bottom descended toward the surface of the planetoid. Now, unless Iron Fist spent an unusual amount of tractor beam power and used a lot of fine control to reorient Bastion, its upper surface would rotate to face the planet below and not the Super Star Destroyer above.
The rotation had already begun by the time he reached Narra again. And Iron Fist was much closer. Kell took the copilot"s seat and strapped himself in. "You ready ?" he asked Donos.
The sniper shrugged. "If Castin here is any good, yes. Otherwise, we"re doomed."
"It"ll work," Castin said. "My code and patches always work."
The others turned to give him an arch expression.
Castin gave them the look of someone caught in a lie.
"Well, usually."
Wedge felt ice slash through his gut as the most likely scenario went through his mind. The Hawk-bats would circle around the fallen pilot, trying to determine whether Phanan was dead or alive, and would protect him from the strafing runs of the enemy TIEs until they, too, fell one by one. He keyed his comlink. "Hawk-bats, this is One. Recommend abort mission. Stormies." On some worlds, stormies was the panicked cry of bar patrons who"d detected a raid by stormtroopers, and it replaced Omega Signal as the evacuation command when the Wraiths were in their Hawk-bat ident.i.ties.
He steeled himself against a protest from Face. And Face"s voice came across immediately, but not with the words he expected: "Hawk-bats, Leader. Confirm stormies."
But Face"s interceptor dropped below the tree line, pursued by two fast-moving TIE fighters.
The half squadron of TIE fighters preceded Bastion into the Super Star Destroyer"s main landing bay. Kell waited until Bastion was brought into line directly below the bay. In a moment, the tanker would begin its ascent into the hands of Zsinj. He brought his comlink up. "Remember," he said into it, "we"ll have a handful of seconds from the time we launch to the time they get another tractor on us. Nine, that"s all the time you have."
Donos was now back in the emergency airlock, his pilot"s suit on and sealed against s.p.a.ce to give him a bare few moments of protection from the hard vacuum he would be experiencing. A last-minute change put him there instead of in the main compartment, as he"d realized that the phototropic shielding of the shuttle"s viewport, designed to give the vehicle some protection from incoming laser fire, would be even more effective against the lighter beam of Donos"s rifle.
Donos simply said, "Ready."
"Do it."
Runt hit the control to release the Narra from its dock with Bastion. He cut in the shuttle"s thrusters at full power, blasting away from the tanker, the shuttle"s thrusters burning and scarring Bastion"s hull in a manner that would invite retaliation from any ship"s master. Runt immediately put Narra into a climb, toward the surface of Halmad, then continued the loop so that the charred, antiquated black surface of Bastion, and the surrounding gleam of the Super Star Destroyer Iron Fist, came within sight.
There was a little flicker of light between Narra and Bastion.
Nothing happened.
Kell felt his stomach sink. It was too difficult a shot. Donos, as good as he was, was trying to fire a laser beam modified to carry data instead of a lethal intensity of power, and trying to hit Bastion"s communications array from a moving shuttle.
Donos fired again. No effect.
Narra shuddered with the characteristic trembling of a small craft in the grip of a tractor beam. Kell shook his head.
Donos fired again.
A bright orange glow appeared in the viewports and hatch seams of Bastion. Then the tanker vanished, replaced by a globe of yellow and orange destructive force, an expanding cloud that swelled up into the main landing bay, out across the lower surface of Iron Fist, and toward Narra.
Face dropped into the trees, one pursuer back about two hundred meters, the other - the one who"d shot down Phananm twice that distance away.
Here, Face"s superior speed would not help him; it was pure pilot skill and maneuverability that would allow survival in this obstacle-rich environment. The forest"s large trees were well s.p.a.ced; it was possible to maintain a high rate of speed here, jinking back and forth to arc around obstructions in his path.
His purser fired, a blast that incinerated a tree bole immediately to Face"s starboard. He cursed. He"d hoped that there wouldn"t be any immediate firing opportunities, but his pursuer was already gaining on him.