Star Wars - X-Wing 8 - Isard's Revenge Page 13

  Tycho growled over the comm channel. "Running on the next one. Decap shot."

  Wedge nodded. "On your tail."

  Tycho brought his X-wing down in a dive, and then leveled out ten meters. Coming in at shoulder height on the walker, Tycho banked right to run from tail toward the head, and then snaprolled his ship level and hit right rudder. The X-wing's tail skidded toward the left, bringing its nose in line with the walker. Tycho's first cycle of shots vaporized armor on the walker's body, but the second quartet blasted away at the joint of the flexible neck and the body itself.

  Wedge marveled at Tycho's soft hand on the X-wing's stick. He followed him into the dive, but rolled out right and cut his throttle back. The walker had begun to turn to its right, so Wedge's roll put him on a direct line with the AT-AT's head. He nudged the aiming reticle over the walker's head and pulled the trigger.

  A stuttered quartet of bolts hit the walker. Two glanced off, leaving long scars on its forehead, but the other two pierced the transparisteel viewports on the pilot's compartment. Fire exploded back out, and the walker slowly started to sag forward. Its chin slammed into the ground, and then the body's weight snapped its neck.

  "Easier ways to decap it, Wedge."

  Wedge throttled up and banked starboard into a climb. "Sorry, didn't have time to consult with Ewoks to find out how they'd handle the situation." He glanced down at his chronometer. "No time to be fancy on the other two, just swarm them."

  Coming back in and down, Wedge kept his X-wing very low, cruising in at a sharp angle. Tipping his fighter up onto its port S-foil, he banked in toward the walker and switched Over to dual fire. One double burst missed, but the second caught the walker in the hip. Tycho's shots on the same one hit the body above the drive motor, and then the two of them climbed out, pulled a half-loop, inverted, and dove back down at their target.

  "Port rear leg is scraping the ferrocrete, Two."

  "I caught that, Lead." Tycho swooped his fighter through a run that pumped more hot light into the walker's hip. Black smoke began to issue from the joint. Wedge's attack followed Tycho's line and drilled four more bolts into the leg.

  Superheated metal sprayed out, and the walker began to list badly to the left. The AT-AT's leg bent, and then snapped off at the hip. The forward feet shuffled as the rear leg fell away, but the walker had already been seriously overbalanced.

  The rear end started to fall to the left, spinning the AT-AT around and pulling the front legs from the ground. The walker's body pounded the ferrocrete, pulverizing both it and the armor plates on which it landed. Black smoke started to issue from the walker's body, and escape hatches opened up and stormtroopers began to run, walk, or limp their way away from the broken machine.

  Lyyr and Hobbie made short work of the remaining walker. Several runs on it had left the armor in ruins, and Hobbie cruised up along its spine and triggered a quad burst at the head from point-blank range. The red bolts burned through the neck and dropped the head to the ground. The body, leaking smoke, froze in place, leaving the soldiers contained inside stranded ten meters from the ferrocrete.

  "Nice shot, Hobbie."

  "Thanks, Lead." Hobbie sighed. "We could have taken them with four proton torps. Would have been easier, you know."

  "Sure, but what if Krennel showed up with ships and we had to go hunting in the void again." Wedge shrugged. "Doing it the hard way worked."

  Wedge brought his X-wing down and routed power to the repulsorlift coils. He hovered a couple of meters above the ground and guided the ship over to position it between the burning walkers and the landing zone for the assault shuttles coming in. The stormtroopers on the snowy ferrocrete slowed and raised their hands. Those who had escaped with weapons dropped them and a few of the more injured individuals just collapsed.

  "Lead, I have a question for you."

  Wedge glanced over at where Tycho hovered his X-wing. "Go ahead, Two."

  "Wouldn't the AT-AT assault been more effective if they'd waited to launch it until the shuttles landed? Walkers are death on ground troops."

  "True, and stationing the stormies around the spaceport instead of inside those monsters would have been better,

  too." Wedge frowned. "These guys might look like stormtroopers, but they certainly aren't thinking that way."

  "And yet Intel said there were crack units here, but if not here, where? "

  Wedge's mouth soured. "The sector where Three Flight ran into trouble. You think Krennel is hiding something there? Save for the dam, that's a pretty remote area."

  "Where better to hide something you want to remain hidden?"

  The first of the assault shuttles landed and started to disgorge troops. A couple of squads moved forward to deal with the captured stormtroopers. The others fanned out, found cover, and established a perimeter on the ferrocrete. The second shuttle landed its troops closer to the hangars and a third dropped its troops near the main spaceport facility.

  A light blinked on Wedge's communications console. He punched it. "Rogue Leader here."

  "Commando One here." Kapp Dendo's voice came through strongly. "Thanks for vaping the stalkers. I wouldn't mind it if you want to strafe the approaches to the spaceport, just in case some local militia decides to hop a hoverbus here."

  "I copy, Commando One. I help you, you help me?"

  "What do you need, Wedge?"

  "I have a flier down at the dam in blue sector. Lots more activity there than here."

  "Search and rescue ops are a bit down in priority, Lead. I'll see what I can do." A grave tone ran through Kapp's words. "How hard did your boy go down?"

  "Under control, I'm told." Wedge smiled. "He can probably take care of himself, but if the stormies we were expecting to be here are actually there, for just how long I don't know."

  15

  I don't like the looks of this at all. Corran crouched in some brush overlooking a ravine with a small, ice-crusted stream-bed at the bottom of it. The ravine showed signs of flooding with seasonal runoff, but had a high-water mark far higher than he would have expected. Just north of his position lay the reason for the extraordinary high-water mark: A tunnel had been bored through the granite hillside and clearly, once upon a time, had been used to divert river water around the site of the dam.

  The tunnel mouth had been plugged with ferrocrete and two sets of durasteel security doors. The larger pair of doors would admit vehicles; the other was for personnel. Four stormtroopers stood guard outside the doors, but had moved from beneath the shadow cast by an outcropping to soak up the direct morning sun.

  Corran ran a hand over his mouth. This has to be what they were protecting with those chips-and a lucky shot meant they did more than just chip my hull. This place wasn't on any of the survey maps of the area, which means it's very new, or very secret or, worse, both. Getting in there and getting out again is clearly a job for a Jedi Knight.

  He fingered the lightsaber clipped to the left side of his belt. Unfortunately, there isn't one here.

  For an instant Corran regretted having rejected Luke Skywalker's generous invitation to train to be a Jedi Knight. Had he accepted it, he could have used Jedi powers to walk right past the stormtroopers without their noticing. He could use his lightsaber to deflect blaster bolts. He could find out what the facility was all about and likely neutralize it as well.

  That sense of regret died quickly, however, as Corran thought about what he'd have had to give up to become a Jedi Knight. He admired Luke Skywalker and wished him the best in his quest to reestablish the Jedi Order, but he also knew Luke was paying quite a cost. Corran had Mirax to spend the rest of his life with, but Luke had no one. Moreover, the fact that he was needed to solve problems all over the galaxy, and his never-ending quest for information about the Jedi, meant that he had become a wanderer. His quest killed any chance for a normal life, and a normal life wasn't something Corran wanted to surrender.

  My father would probably think me terribly selfish in making that decision.
He sighed and blew on his hands to warm them. He knew Whistler carried with him an encrypted message from Hal Horn about his Jedi heritage, but he couldn't bring himself to listen to it. He didn't want to be torn between his father's urging him to become a Jedi and his responsibilities to Mirax and their life together. He wished he had the courage to face that dilemma, but knowing he didn't, he sidestepped it entirely.

  Well, I may not be a Jedi, but I am a Rogue, and figuring out what's going on in there is going to be important. Getting in will be a trick, though. Corran backed away from the edge of the ravine and began to work his way to the west. He wanted the sun at his back as he moved, and once again was pleased that he wore a dark green flight suit, not the bright orange most of the squadron's other pilots wore. I'd stand out like a Hutt at an Ewok celebration. Of

  course, white stormtrooper armor isn't much better in a forest.

  The undergrowth made his passage very slow. Though he'd been raised in Coronet City on Corellia, he wasn't hopelessly unfamiliar with forests and how to move through them. He used the thick-boled trees to his advantage, and watched out for icy patches of ground that would bring him down. Moving from point to point, he avoided skylining himself at the crest of a hill, carefully surveyed the next leg of hisi journey before moving out, and listened for signs of the enemy, knowing he'd hear them before he ever saw them.

  Crouched in the shadow of a snow-capped fallen tree, he scouted his way along a little depression that headed to the southwest. It ran for approximately thirty meters and gradually sloped up into a thicket of thorny zureber bushes. He was looking for a way around them when two stormtroopers came over the depression's northern lip. They paused and looked around, sweeping the area with their blaster carbines, and then one started his way down into the depression.

  The lead stormtrooper caught his left toe on a root that had been hidden by snow and pitched forward. He landed flat on his face, bounced once, and then rolled to a stop at the bottom of the depression. His blaster carbine flew further south and landed on the depression's south slope. The other stormtrooper watched his comrade fall, and then came down the slope in a high-step gallop that sprayed snow and frozen leaves into the air.

  The second man bent over his partner and started laughing. The first stormtrooper rolled onto his back. "Huttspit! If the designer of these helmets ever had to use them in the field..."

  "Very funny. Maybe you should just learn to walk."

  "Oh, shut up." The fallen man sat up, and then pressed his right hand against the edge of his helmet. Corran heard a click and a buzz from a comlink. "No, Control, no problem. Just had an equipment failure. I'm going offline to fix it. Seven Six One out."

  The standing man cocked his head. "Equipment failure?"

  Seven Six One extended his left leg and ran his foot around in a little circle. "Twisted the ankle."

  "I can use the rest." The second man sat down and removed his helmet. The first stormtrooper did the same. Steam rose from both of their heads as the second one reached for the canteen on his equipment belt.

  Corran's first blue stunbolt dropped the canteen from the stormtrooper's hand. The second one hit the same man again, tensing his body for a second, and then slackening it. Two more bolts caught the first man as he made a dive for his blaster carbine. It took a third before he stayed down.

  Corran came up over the fallen log and slid down into the depression. He quickly crossed to the stormtroopers and stripped them of their weapons and equipment belts. He also removed their torso armor, and then dragged them through the snow to a tree at the southern edge of the depression. He tied them to the tree with the cord from their equipment belts. Using more of the cord, he fastened one of the carbines and his own blaster to a tree, and then ran cord from the triggers, back around another small tree, to the stprmies' bound feet. He set both blasters for stun and aimed them to catch the men in the stomach. If they move their legs, they get stunned again. Great way to keep them out.

  He decided against killing them for a couple of very good reasons. First and foremost, he didn't need to kill them. He knew of other New Republic soldiers who wouldn't have blinked an eye at killing helpless stormtroopers, but he considered doing that murder. As he'd learned in CorSec, no matter how much a criminal might deserve killing, it wasn't necessarily his place to pull the trigger.

  Second, and more important, the two downed storm- troopers were intelligence resources. While forensics might allow a dead man to tell some sort of tale-like Urlor-interrogating live stormies would be a lot more productive. Since no one in New Republic Intelligence even knew the installation near the dam existed, he assumed these men

  would have a wealth of information General Cracken would be very grateful for.

  Corran stripped his flight suit down to his waist and pulled on one of the stormtrooper's torso armor. He managed to get the flight suit on over the bulky armor, and zipped the flight suit back up nearly all the way, but not quickly enough to avoid getting chilled. He knew he looked ridiculous, but having something that would slow down blaster bolts meant he could live with his embarrassment and laugh about it later.

  He pulled the comlinks from the stormtroopers' helmets. Lowering the volume and input gain on one, he listened for a bit to the chatter going back and forth. He couldn't make much sense of the call signs, but he heard a number of people reporting on that comm channel. Station checks seemed to come on a regular schedule, but he had no idea when the two guards he'd put down would be seen as missing.

  He shut the comlinks off, and then looked at them and smiled. Using a last bit of the stormtroopers' cord, he swapped one of the comlinks end for end, putting the mike near the speaker on each, turned the volume and gain up to full on both, and then tied them tightly together. With a nod he hefted the remaining blaster carbine, took it off safe, and started north again.

  Not the best plan in the world, but one that will work. He got to the edge of the ravine and found himself twenty meters from the doors, at the top of a ten-meter-high scree slope from which the snow had long since melted. The quartet of stormtroopers he'd have to take out were another ten meters beyond the doors, putting them a fair distance away as far as a blaster shot went. Not going to be easy at all.

  He took a deep breath and let it flow out, taking his anxiety with it. In the calm clarity that followed, he realized two things. First, by taking down all the stormtroopers he could and causing as much trouble as he could, he would cut down the odds of another New Republic soldier getting killed. Second, he knew it was his responsibility to take care of the site. No one else was in position to take care of it-no one else knows it's even here-and hitting the Imperials before they prepared for any New Republic ground action was vital.

  With his right hand firmly around the blaster carbine's grip, he flicked the comlinks on with his left thumb. Because of the way they'd been tied together, an earsplitting feedback loop immediately built and injected itself into the comm channel. The four stormtroopers below clapped hands to their helmets and wrestled to pull them off as Corran ran, slid, and leaped down the scree slope.

  Once he hit the area outside the doors, he sprayed red blaster bolts over the distracted stormtroopers. His first shot took one man through the stomach, folding him up and pitching him back into a second man. Another shot spun a third man around, having caught him in a hip. A subsequent shot snapped his head back. The fourth stormtrooper tried to return fire, but before he could bring his carbine around to target Corran, a shot to his left thigh dropped him to the ground. A final spray of shots killed him and also slew the stormtrooper who had been knocked to the ground.

  Without pausing to check them for signs of life, Corran brought his grandfather's lightsaber to hand and thumbed the silvery blade to life. With one swipe he carved a line down through the man-sized door, and then kicked it in. He triggered a quick burst of blaster fire through the opening, and then ducked inside and dove to the right.

  A woman in a green Imperial army uniform had gon
e down with a smoking hole in her uniform over her stomach. She thrashed, clawing for a dropped blaster. Corran shot her twice more, and then rolled onto his back and slashed his lightsaber around in an arc through the doorway to his left. The silver blade slashed through the legs of a stormtrooper, toppling the man backward. The stormtrooper's carbine tracked a line of fire just past Corran's head and up toward the ceiling as he fell.

  Corran laid his own blaster carbine across his stomach and triggered off a burst that caught another stormtrooper in the chest. The trio of shots lifted the stormtrooper up and sent him tumbling back over a desk, scattering a glowlamp and a holoprojector plate.

  Corran hit the powerpack release with his right thumb, dumping the spent duraplast packet to the ground. Letting the lightsaber rest on the ground for a second, he slapped a new powerpack into the carbine and rolled to his knees. He recovered the lightsaber, turned it off, and clipped it again to his belt. Then he got to his feet and moved deeper into the installation.