"Two, wait for the debriefing. In this unit, your wingman may get credit for your kills. But congratulations."
"Very funny, Five." Jesmin vectored toward a pair of oncoming Uglies at the far side of the formation. Abruptly they veered away at right angles to her flight path.
She rolled up perpendicular to the ground and followed. Nine stayed on her wing.
Janson smoked a double-hulled monstrosity that had been firing eight-way-linked laser cannons-firing them inaccurately, fortunately for Janson-and took a look around.
At the very center of the engagement, two X-wings were in trouble, juking and weaving their way through the heaviest fire, diving out of the path of one set of Uglies only to find themselves immediately in the path of another. Janson"s sensors identified the Wraiths. "Seven, Eight, how are you do-ing?"
Face"s voice: "Not good, Eleven."
"Seven, what are you doing here?"
"My job in the comm center was done. Do you mind? I can go back if you like-"
"Never mind. Hold tight. I"m coming in to help."
But help was even faster than that. The entire sky seemed to light up and one of the Uglies-a huge ball that seemed to be made up entirely of TIE fighter solar wings-evaporated, leaving behind only a glowing afterimage and tons of falling liquefied metal.
Janson leaned away from the painful brightness. "What the-" Then he caught sight of the vehicle that had scored the kill. "Good shooting, Night Caller."
Lieutenant Tabanne"s voice came back, "Can"t let you toy drivers score all the kills, Twelve. Hold tight." The oncoming Night Caller fired again, her laser cannons converging on a wingless TIE ball that had been firing concussion missiles indiscriminately. The spherical craft emerged from the beam intact, or so Janson thought at first; then it rotated and he saw that one half had been burned entirely away.
Half a pilot drifted out of the c.o.c.kpit and joined it in its plummet to the lunar surface.
Kell heard two more Ugly pilots surrender. His snubfighter roared over the moon"s surface, mere scores of meters above the irregular ground, occasionally dropping closer as he and Tyria headed over deep impact craters.
They skipped over the ridge that was a common border between two such craters and saw them-treaded vehicles peering just over the far rim. Even as large as this crater was, they were already in weapons range, only a couple of seconds away.
"Switching to torps," he said. "Firing."
"Firing," Tyria repeated.
Their proton torpedoes flashed almost instantly across the distance separating firer from target.
Almost instantly. The treaded vehicles also fired, lasers and concussion missiles, aiming at distant targets. Then the torpedoes caught up to them. Kell"s. .h.i.t the big one on the left, the too-tall construction body atop a military crawler"s treads, while Tyria"s. .h.i.t the smaller laser-cannon-armed crawler in the middle. All three vehicles were caught up in the dual blast. They dropped out of the bottom of the resulting ball of smoke and fire, tumbling down the crater"s slope, throwing off treads, doors, shreds of weapon components, chunks of armor, all charred and warped almost beyond recognition.
The comm crackled with Jesmin"s pained voice. "I"m hit."
Kell and Tyria cleared the crater a moment later and vectored in behind Jesmin and Donos.
The Mon Calamari pilot and her temporary wingman were still together, but both were hit, trailing smoke, and drifting apart.
Jesmin seemed to be the one damaged worst. Kell guessed that the blast had been one of a pulse barrage; nothing else was likely to have been able to knock down her shields and penetrate before the shields came back up. A laser blast had hit her on the port side of her c.o.c.kpit; from the angle and the deepening black score along the c.o.c.kpit"s flank, Kell gauged that the blast had done the majority of its damage just behind and below the pilot"s chair. Jesmin also could have caught some of the wash of damage.
Her X-wing was also standing on its starboard strike foils and was in an arc heading toward one of the nearest hills. "Jesmin, straighten up. Two, can you hear me?"
"Hear... you... Five..." If anything, her voice sounded worse than before.
"Level off, Two. Right now."
"Can"t... reach... stick..."
She was too badly hurt to reach the pilot"s yoke? That was bad, but-then he realized the truth. Her words, and the way she was struggling to say them, added up to one thing: her inertial compensator was shot. The device that made pilots immune to the centrifugal effect of fighter maneuvers was no longer working, and she was being crushed back into her seat by the high-speed arc she was performing.
She was seconds from hitting the hillside. He said, "Thirteen, instruct her R2 to cut her fighter"s thrust by half."
Thirteen"s answer came up immediately: HE CAN"T. HIS LINKS TO c.o.c.kPIT CONTROLS ARE GONE. HE SAYS GOOD-BYE.
"No! Jesmin, punch out!"
There was no answer.
There was other comm traffic going on. Kell ignored it. He was aware only of Jesmin"s dying X-wing meters in front of his own. Of the rapidly growing hillside beyond that.
He closed his strike foils into cruise position and goosed his thrusters until he was just to the side of and beneath Jesmin"s X-wing.
Janson"s voice: "What are you doing, Five?"
Wedge"s: "Let him go, Eleven. I see what he"s up to."
With his port wing a meter beneath Jesmin"s starboard wing, Kell rolled gently to starboard. His wing contacted hers with a sc.r.a.pe, putting a shudder through his snubfighter, checking and reversing her roll. He drifted to starboard and continued his roll until he nearly completed a three-sixty.
Now he stared at the bottom of Jesmin"s fighter, at the damage to her side and at cables trailing out of it. Because the impact of wing against wing had rolled her, her fighter had gone through nearly ninety degrees of a rotation to port. For the moment, her X-wing was angling away from the hillside, but the roll was continuing. As delicately as he could, Kell rose toward the underside of her fighter.
The hillside flashed below him and was gone. Jesmin"s roll brought her port wing down on top of Kell"s. The stick under his hands shuddered.
Behind him, Thirteen shrieked and Kell felt the b.u.mp of the R2 unit"s impact with the underside of Jesmin"s fighter.
As Jesmin"s rotation forced his port strike foils downward, Kell"s flight stick jerked and his fighter tried to roll to port. He fought it, trying to keep his fighter in line through sheer strength. If he could just bring Jesmin"s nose up, he might angle her out of the atmosphere, enable the Narra to catch up to her - He heard a crackle, felt his body tingle.
Thirteen made another noise of dismay.
His text display lit up with diagnostics reports: ETHERIC RUDDER NONFUNCTIONAL.
PORT FUSIAL THRUST ENGINES NONFUNCTIONAL.
STRIKE FOIL CONFIGURATION HYDRAULICS NONFUNCTIONAL.
REPAIRS COMMENCING.
Kell"s port-side engines whined and shut down. Jesmin"s X-wing, now headed in a long arc toward the ground, leaped out ahead of him.
"No! Five to Two, come in."
Nothing.
"Thirteen, can you query her pilot chair"s electronics?"
THEY REPORT LEVELS CONSISTENT WITH UNCONSCIOUSNESS IN MON CALAMARI.
"Night Caller, can you snag her with your tractor?"
"She"s out of our line of sight, Five. I"m sorry."
Jesmin had only ten or fifteen seconds to live unless he managed something. "Ten, where are you?"
"Five, this is Leader. Ten is with Nine. She can"t help you."
"But I"ve got-I"ve got-"
"I"m sorry, Five."
Jesmin"s fighter hit the lunar surface. It didn"t detonate; it shredded instantly into tons of shrapnel, rolling across the rocks and pockmarks of the moon below, coming to a rest in a swath of litter half a kilometer in length.
Kell wiped tears away from his cheeks. Then the real pain of his failure hit him.
"Nine, answer me." Tyria tried to keep her voice calm and level. Flying above and behind Donos, she could see that damage to his X-wing was minimal-unless she counted the charred crater that was what was left of his R2"s docking station. If there were any fragments of Donos"s astromech, Shiner, remaining, they would have to be dug out of a deep layer of slag and carbon scoring.
The dialogue between Kell, Jesmin, and Wedge was becoming more desperate.
She tried to ignore it, to keep it in the background of her mind. "Myn!
Answer me!"
There was a little burst of static that may have been a word.
Tyria pressed her helmet closer to the side of her head, hoping it would help her hear. "What did you say? "Gone"?"
It came again, Donos"s voice, still faint but understandable: "Gone."
She glanced at her sensors. Jesmin wasn"t gone yet, but it didn"t look as though there was much hope for her. Tyria started to correct Donos-then the import of what he was saying hit her.
She dialed her comm system down to minimum transmission power and hoped that her signal wouldn"t carry back to the other Wraiths. "Myn, do you mean Shiner?"
"He"s gone."
"Myn, d.a.m.n you, he"s only a droid! Jesmin Ackbar may die and all you"re worried about is a hunk of metal!"
There was no answer.
She accelerated and dropped down in front of Donos. "Wraith Nine, this is Wraith Ten. You"re my wing. Do exactly as I do."
Again, no answer. She sideslipped a little to starboard but Donos didn"t follow. Exasperated, she moved back in front of him.
Then she saw it, just as, minutes ago, she"d imagined the two flying Uglies leading Kell off to his death. "Talon Leader, this is Talon Two.
Do you read?"
There was a delay, then Donos"s voice came back strong and calm. "Two, this is Leader."
"Leader, you"re damaged. Injured. I"m going to lead you back to base.
You"re my wing. Do you copy?"
"I copy, Two, and thanks."
She slowly rolled up onto her starboard wing and came around in a gradual arc back toward Night Caller. Behind her, Donos skillfully duplicated her maneuver.
She wanted to feel relieved, but trying to imagine what must be going on in Donos"s mind made her shudder.
Then the dot designating Wraith Two winked out on the sensor board.
Wedge and Janson finished the tour of the bandit base in silence.
The base was an elderly, damaged Kuat Super Transport VI container ship.
With its engines in the shape they were, Wedge doubted the vessel would ever lift, even from the half-standard gravity of this moon. The engines were just barely functional enough to provide power for artificial gravity, life support, and communications. A smaller hauler, an aging Corellian bulk freighter, apparently served to haul half squads of Uglies through hypers.p.a.ce to whichever areas they chose to patrol. They had enough firepower to intimidate decent-sized cargo vessels, and their supplies of stores suggested the pirates had been doing quite well.
In the base"s filthy mess hall, the surviving pilots, eleven of them, plus about twenty support crewmen waited under guard. Falynn and Grinder, grim-faced, kept them under the cover of blaster rifles; the two Wraiths stood behind upended tables that would give them some quick cover if one of the pirates produced a holdout weapon the searchers had missed.
Wedge stood before the pirate captain, a beefy, black-bearded man who had admitted to the name of Arratan. "Stand," Wedge said.
Uneasy, the man stood. "We have a right to be here. We have a right to attack intruders."
"What right?"
"We"re colonists. This is an unclaimed system. There"s no law here."
Wedge sighed, suddenly made even more weary by the lie. "Very well.
You"re free to go."
The pirate chief blinked. "What?"
"You"re free to go."
The bearded man looked among his men and nodded, They slowly stood.
"Of course," Wedge said, "there"s no law here. So my pilots are free to shoot you if they want to."
The pirates sat again, all but Arratan.
"Furthermore, since there"s no law here, my crew and I are going to help ourselves to whatever supplies we need. Then we"re going to take off and blow a hole in your beloved Blood Nest, venting the atmosphere. Then we"ll inform the New Republic military that there"s a nice hard-vacuum warehouse here full of other stolen goods and a lot of depressurized bodies."
Arratan"s face twitched. "You can"t do that."
"Of course we can. There"s no law here. This is unclaimed territory.