Star Wars - X-Wing 8 - Isard's Revenge Page 29

  Wedge closed the door, and then dialed down the opacity of the window, taking it all the way to black. "No, Colonel, I expect it cannot."

  "You have been given your orders and I expect you to follow them."

  Wedge nodded solemnly and looked at his chronometer for a second. "I am following orders, Colonel." He tugged the gloved construct off his right hand, and then flexed his fist.

  "What are you doing?" Lorrir blinked with surprise. "What is going on here?"

  "You remember you told me about Brentaal the other night at dinner. You told me how the Empire had been betrayed by Baron Pel?"

  "Yes."

  Wedge reached up and pulled off the prosthetic over his eye, and then peeled the piece off his throat. "Ah, much better. And you recall mentioning that you'd killed plenty of Rogue Squadron members on Brentaal, and that Wedge Antilles would be back."

  The man's voice quaked. "Y-yes?"

  "You were right. I'm Wedge Antilles. I'm back."

  The couple of seconds it took for Wedge's statement to blossom with all its import in Lorrir's brain proved to be about a second longer than it took for Wedge to draw his blaster and shoot the Hegemony officer. The blue stunbolt hit Lorrir dead center in the chest, pitching him backward over the desk. His helmet clattered against the floor and a metal chair skidded back beneath him and bounced off the room's rear wall.

  Wedge bolstered the blaster and pulled the desk back. He stooped down, found a strong pulse in Lorrir's neck, and then yanked Lorrir's right glove free of his hand. Wedge slid the glove on and picked up Lorrir's helmet. "I need a mask for a moment, so I'll keep this. You won't be able to go up without it, but then I won't have to shoot you down again. Sleep well."

  Donning the helmet, Wedge slipped from the office, locked the door, and closed it behind him. He walked sedately over to the rest of the Rogues, and then waggled his fingers at them.

  Tycho looked surprised. "Things didn't go well?"

  "Lorrir developed a new sense of irony. He found my revelations stunning." Wedge pointed to the Defenders. "Get in, get these things going. Fly in formation to the southern shield projector facility. We've got ten minutes for incoming and I want us ready to go."

  Everyone split to their machines and Wedge climbed into his. He brought the power up, and then locked the restraining straps in place. As the Defender cycled power to systems, his communications console lit up with positive check-ins from the rest of the squadron. The fleet frequency button flashed, so he punched it.

  "Colonel Roat here."

  "This is Reckoning Flight Control. When are your people going to report for loading?"

  "I understood we were to head up after Colonel Lorrir. His Interceptor is still here. Do you want me to find him?"

  "Negative, Colonel, just get your people airborne and headed this way. Someone else will deal with Lorrir."

  "As ordered, Control. On our way."

  The clone of Ysanne Isard did not realize she was a clone. She was possessed of all the original's memories, her entire life history up to a point just prior to the Lusankya's escape from Imperial Center. Along with these memories came the original's attitudes, which included a healthy dose of skeptical contempt for things mystical, including the Force.

  Yet, despite those prejudices, something struck her as very wrong about the message she'd gotten from Krennel. He asked her to dispatch someone to find Colonel Lorrir.

  She would have sent a subordinate, but she actually wanted to locate Lorrir for herself and pass on the message of Kren-nel's displeasure. In Lorrir she had seen a grasping man who was abrasive with his inferiors, and fawningly obsequious with his betters. Because she stood outside the military establishment, he had treated her with cautious courtesy, which she knew would be stripped away and replaced with subservience once he knew how much power she commanded.

  She reached the hangar in no time and saw Lorrir's Interceptor still sitting on the ferrocrete deck. She knew it was his because he'd painted red stripes on each wing, just as the 181st used to do. She thought it a pity that a man's life should be so paltry that he had to cling to a hideous defeat as the high point of his existence.

  The clone called a tech over and asked if he'd seen Lorrir. The man pointed toward the closed operations room door. She walked over to it, tried the handle, and found it was locked. Glancing at her chronometer, she mentally calculated the security override code for that quarter hour, punched it into the keypad, and entered the office.

  She took immediate notice of the ozone stink in the air which, combined with Lorrir's body lying on the floor, told her the man had been stunned with a blaster. She squatted down and batted one of Lorrir's feet aside, and then pulled a black glove from beneath it. The glove only had two fingers and had been fitted with metal parts to make it appear to be a prosthetic replacement.

  "Colonel Roat." If Roat's hand was not been genuine and then neither was he. This meant he and his group of Defenders had been inserted into Ciutric, but for what purpose? They could do no good on Ciutric, she reasoned, unless...

  Throughout the building and the entire city of Daplona, sirens began to squeal with a pulsating message of warning. Red lights strobed and out in the hangar techs began scurrying around.

  She slapped Lorrir to wakefulness, and then hauled him to his feet. "Come with me, I need you."

  "Madam Director!" The man blinked his eyes in surprise. "It was a traitor, it was..."

  "Yes, yes, no time for that. You're under my command now."

  "What?" Lorrir straightened up and smoothed the breast of his flight suit. "I'm a pilot."

  "So you are, and now you'll be flying for me."

  "For you? Why?"

  "Listen to the sirens, fool." The clone smiled and nodded a salute toward the sky. "There is a military operation planned. It's coming here. They don't care about Krennel; they're after me and my prisoners. We'll have to see they end up very disappointed."

  The primary monitor on Wedge's Defender flashed brightly for a moment as image after image of ships rilled the screen in rapid sequence. He caught a glimpse of a Mon Calamari Cruiser on the scanner screen, and then an Imperial Star Destroyer Mark II, which matched the Reckoning in firepower. After that came three Nebulon-B Frigates, a half-dozen Corellian Corvettes, and a couple of fast little freighters. That's pretty much the taskforce description sent Admiral Ackbar, and it would have been more than sufficient for taking on Reckoning and Binder.

  The problem was that Krennel had called in Emperor's Wisdom and Decisive, giving the Hegemony forces a hideous edge in firepower. The Victory-class Star Destroyer Emperor's Wisdom had eighty-concussion missile launch tubes on it. Any single salvo could bring down the Mon Cal cruiser's shields, leaving it open for raking fire from the ship's energy weapons. Decisive and Reckoning both could pound on Emancipator-an Impstar Deuce the New Republic had captured at Endor. While it could severely damage any of the opposing ships, it would be lost.

  Wedge shivered, and then punched up the squadron frequency, "You've all seen the scans, Rogues. It's not going to be pleasant. One Flight, we take out the shield generators down here, and then we go to the spaceport and heist a freighter big enough to get the prisoners out of here. Two Flight, as planned, you neutralize prison defenses."

  "As ordered, Lead. How do we take the prison? I didn't see Telik's commandos or Vessery's fighters in the mix."

  "I don't know, Tycho. I hope they're just late. First things first, and then we do whatever we have to do."

  "On it, Lead. Two Flight on me. May the Force be with all of us."

  Wedge rolled his Defender up onto the port side and peeled off toward the south. As he leveled out, Hobbie appeared on his starboard wing, Gavin and Myn on his port. The Defender cockpit gave him a great view of the cityscape over which they flew. Bulbous tan buildings alternated with green belts and parks, the tall skyscrapers of the municipal center giving way to smaller residential buildings and individual homes. Out beyond the residential areas he saw the m
assive edifices of the factory district and right in the middle lay the shield generation facility.

  "Three and Four, you have the towers on the east, Two, take the ones on the west. I'm going straight in." Wedge thumbed his weapons-selector to concussion missiles. He set them for linked fire, and then settled his crosshairs on the central dome. His rangefinder put him two kilometers out, with distance falling away fast.

  The ion cannons mounted on towers around the facility had been cranked skyward. They pulsed out massive blue bolts that shot upward at the invading fleet, pouring out through momentary gaps opened in the shields by fire-control computers. Below them, on the same towers, turbo-laser cannons traversed their muzzles across the landscape. Three sets of four cannons had been stacked at twenty, forty, and sixty meters on the towers, with the ion cannons at the top. Bristling with weapons, the towers made formidable targets.

  But targets nonetheless. Myn and Gavin let fly with the concussion missiles. Four incandescent rockets shot out at the eastern towers. Myn's hit a second before Gavin's, since Gavin's traveled a bit further, but all four were on target. They nailed the lowest gunnery station, demolishing the turbolaser cannons in a brilliant flash of light and heat. The force of the explosion expanded outward and up, jetting superheated plasma up through the next gunnery station. The ferrocrete slabs forming the intervening section buckled, and then burst outward. The tops of the towers wavered, and then began a tortured fall to the ground. To the west the first tower Hobbie targeted likewise crumbled in flame and smoke.

  Wedge's targeting reticle went red, so he pulled the trigger and sent two concussion missiles flying toward the shield generator. The pink missiles bored through the ferrocrete dome, and then detonated. Twin gouts of argent fire shot back out of the holes the missiles had made. The fire expanded and linked them into a single, larger hole, and then proceeded to gnaw up into the dome until it collapsed in on itself. Windows and doors on the shield facility blew out and flaming debris rode a shockwave out to be scattered over the well-manicured landscape.

  "Break port, Lead."

  Wedge immediately rolled his craft left and saw an ion bolt the size of a small freighter sizzle past. The only intact tower's ion cannon had tracked him on his approach and had almost gotten him. Before he could apply some rudder and correct for an attack run, Gavin and Myn came in on a strafing run that pumped a pair of quaded-up laser bursts into the ion cannon.

  The cannon exploded like an overripe fruit hit with a gaffi stick. A huge chunk of its armored shell fell away like a rind and collapsed a corner of the burning shield facility. Secondary explosions in the facility itself pitched the armor off onto shrubbery, which ignited when the hot metal touched it.

  Wedge punched up a sensor scan just to confirm that the southern quadrant shield over Daplona was down. The city now lay open for Telik's commandos. If they ever get here.

  He keyed his comlink. "Lead to Five, we're clear here What's your status?"

  "Busy, Lead, and could use some help. The guys on the ground won't go away, and I've got a dozen TIEs inbound our position." Tycho hesitated for a moment. "Better get here fast, or there may be no reason to come at all."

  34

  Admiral Ackbar, on the bridge of the Mon Calamari cruiser Home One, glanced with one eye at the holographic display of the near-space sector, and with the other looked out the viewport at the array of ships Krennel had brought to the fight. Only the unconscious twitching of his barabels betrayed his surprise. From the depths always comes amazement.

  "Weapons, shields up and concentrate all fire on Reckoning. Fighter Command, deploy the A-wings and have them try to pick off the missiles that will be incoming from the Vie. After that, they're free to go after the TIEs and Interceptors."

  "As ordered, Admiral."

  "Helm, reverse course. Start pulling us back out on our exit vector."

  "Yes, Admiral."

  Ackbar looked at the small brown Sullustan serving as his communications officer. "Lieutenant Quiv, tell Emancipator to withdraw, but concentrate fire on Reckoning. Tell Peacemaker, Pride ofEiattu, and Thunderchild to go after the Vie. Relay those same orders to all the Corvettes. I want an orderly withdrawal. Krennel has to know we didn't expect this much strength here."

  The Sullustan cheebled his assent and relayed the orders.

  The smaller ships in the taskforce all curled out and around from the two main ships and drove hard at the Emperor's Wisdom. Ackbar knew that the Nebulon-B Frigates and the half-dozen Corvettes couldn't do that much damage to their target, but he wanted the Vic's gunners, especially those manning the concussion missile launchers, to have a lot of targets to deal with.

  The Corvettes laced into the Vie first, taking care to come in at high and low angles that forced the Hegemony gunners to crank their weapons to their highest attitude or lowest depression to get off a good shot. The Mantooine, Dantooine, and Ryloth slashed in over the top of Emperor's Wisdom, pumping double turbolaser cannon fire into the dorsal shield. The shield glowed pink for a moment, and then began to tear apart like an algae cloud ripped by fast currents.

  The Frigates exploited the gap opened in the shield, hammering the Vie with fire from their turbolaser batteries and laser cannons. Red-gold energy bolts splashed over the larger ship's hull, vaporizing armor and occasionally exploding a weapons platform. Despite the fury of their attack, and of the Chandrilla, Mrlsst, and Sullust in taking down the port shield, the real damage done to Emperor's Wisdom was minimal, leaving the ship more than capable of inflicting serious damage on the New Republic taskforce.

  Ackbar's attention shifted as Reckoning and Decisive split and began to move forward, their daggerish prows jutting toward the retreating fleet. Decisive came in high and off to port, leaving Emancipator between it and Home One. Reckoning hung back ever so slightly, but sought to insert itself between the two New Republic ships. Binder remained behind the both of them, and clouds of fighters swirled and broke like schools of fish in the void around the larger ships.

  "Weapons reporting positive weapon locks on Reckoning, Admiral."

  Ackbar nodded to his weapons officer. "Fire at will, Lieutenant Colton. Make them all count."

  Corran banked his Defender to starboard, and then ruddered around to port to line up for his run on the prison. He unlinked lasers, letting them fire in sequence, and then swooped low and leveled out barely five meters above the wall he'd been assigned. His finger tightened on the trigger, pulsing out verdant energy darts. He walked the fire straight down the wall, exploding E-webs, igniting stormtroopers, and sending faster men leaping fifteen meters to the ground.

  He held his ship on target on the northeast tower and sent two bolts boiling into the guardpost on top of it. The square little building exploded into a ball of flame, scattering men and equipment. Tugging back on the yoke, he brought the trip up through the fireball, banked to starboard, and started a long loop around the prison's south end. "Nine here. North wall is clear, northeast tower is gone." "I copy, Nine. Wall defenses seem to be down." "Six here, I see a lot of activity on the ground. Stormies and guards."

  Corrari glanced down at the prison. He saw a lot of armored individuals milling around in the open area on the western edge of the rectangular compound. The main building ran from north to south, but between it and the southern wall were three smaller buildings, which seemed to house plenty of guards. All four corner towers leaked black smoke, and the ruins of heavy blaster emplacements and E-webs on the walls burned, but without troops on the ground, there was nothing to prevent the guards from entering the main building and slaughtering the prisoners.

  I promised Jan Dodonna I'd see him and the others freed. I've already failed Urlor. I'm not failing them.

  "Five, set up strafing runs on the guards. Scatter them. I'm going in."

  "Nine, you can't."

  "Colonel, I have to. Isard's people are late or aren't coming. Someone's got to go in."

  Tycho remained silent for a moment. "Okay, take Oory
l and Nrin with you."

  "I'll take Ooryl. Nrin will be more useful up in the sky."

  "You haven't seen him in a firefight, Nine. He's with you. Go!"

  "Thanks, Five."

  Pulling back on his fighter's yoke, he brought the Defender back around to the north wall. Swooping down to two meters above the ground, he ruddered around until the trip faced the towering metal doors in the front wall and locked his tractor beam on them. He reversed thrust, and then pulsed the throttle to full. The doors bent in the middle and metal screamed as the hinges ripped loose. The doors flew at his ship until he cut the tractor beam, and then they rolled across the ground, knocking over streetlamps, pulverizing ferrocrete walkways and curbs, and finally coming to rest on top of a couple of landspeeders that promptly exploded as the great weight compressed their fuel tanks.

  Corran set the Defender down and switched the ship into a passworded standby mode. Freeing himself from his restraining belts, he left his command chair, and then pulled up the seat, exposing the small storage compartment. He pulled out a blaster carbine and a belt of powerpacks for it, which he looped over his chest from right shoulder to left hip. He also pulled out a fire extinguisher canister, which he flipped over. He unscrewed the bottom and tipped it upright so his grandfather's lightsaber slid out. He clipped that to his blaster belt at the small of his back, and then opened the fighter's egress hatch. He poked the blaster carbine out first, and then pulled himself out of the fighter's cockpit.