Star Wars - X-Wing 8 - Isard's Revenge Page 31

  He leaped back as a flurry of shots burned up at him. The blaster bolts chewed flaming holes in the wall and scattered hot shards of ceramic tile all over. Corran felt a sting on his right cheek and his hand came away bloody. He fired another burst down the hole, and then pulled back and let the two freshly armed prisoners take over.

  Halfway between that hole and the other one, he met General Dodonna. The older man studied the situation for a moment, and then nodded. "One stairwell was put in to limit access of the prisoners here to any escape routes. If there was a riot, however, the guards probably would have come through the roof to deal with us. Your lightsaber can cut us an opening to get out, but what then ?"

  Corran shrugged, dousing his lightsaber and hooking it to his belt again. "I don't know. Let me ask." He keyed the comlink on his lapel. "Five, we have the prisoners, but can't get down the northwest stairwell. We're going to the roof. Can you get us off it?"

  "Negative, Nine. Things are hot up here. We've got a dozen TIEs inbound and there is ground traffic. Looks like the local answer to CorSec coming to contest your hold on the prison."

  "I'm not liking what you're saying, Five."

  "I'm not terribly keen on it myself, Nine." A certain amount of strain came through Tycho's voice. "Krennel's got us outgunned up-atmosphere, so you may well be in the best position of all."

  "Youch! I copy, Five. Let me know when help is available." Glancing over at General Dodonna, he shook his head. "If you have any ideas, General, I'm open to them. After all, you saved the Rebellion at Yavin. By comparison, this should be child's-play."

  Wedge smiled as he keyed his comlink. "Nine, he saved the Rebellion by putting pilots in the right place at the right time. One Flight is inbound. Standby." He flicked the comm unit over to the flight frequency. "Two, Three, and Four, join Five and Six tackling those TIEs. I'll take care of the incoming ground troops."

  "As ordered, Lead."

  The other three Defenders peeled off, breaking starboard to intercept the TIE formation closing fast on Tycho and Inyri. The Defenders launched a concussion missile each. The projectiles streaked through the sky and hit their targets hard. Three small explosions twinkled brightly and flaming debris fell from the comets that were the burning remains of three TIEs.

  Wedge flicked his targeting computer over to ground-search mode and immediately picked up flickering readings from a convoy of landspeeders, a couple of gravtrucks, and a Chariot light assault vehicle. The LAV was the most heavily armored transport in the convoy, but it might as well have been made of flimsiplast as far as its ability to deal with the Defenders' weapons was concerned. The commanders of the convoy are likely in that thing, and it looks as though they don't mind leading from the front. Right idea just wrong place and time.

  Wedge dialed his throttle back down and brought up the power in the repulsorlift coils. A little rudder straightened him out as his fighter drifted down into a canyon of tall ferrocrete buildings. Half a kilometer east, battering smaller landspeeders out of the way, the Chariot LAV came boiling down the center of the roadway. The wedge-shaped craft used its armored prow to push aside anything blocking the street. Given the slightly erratic path it made, sideslipping left and right down the road, the pilot clearly enjoyed tipping smaller speeders over, dumping them into sidewalks.

  Wedge centered his crosshairs over the LAV's outline and waited until it reached the closer end of an enclosed block before he opened fire with his lasers. The weapons fired sequentially, punching the first two bolts through the transparisteel windscreens, which blackened, and then exploded back out in a geyser of golden fire. A third bolt lanced through the starboard repulsorlift engines. They exploded, dropping the craft's right side to the ground, and then slewing it around to the left. The fourth bolt hit the broadsided vehicle in the middle, melting enough of the support structure to crack the Chariot and allow flames to shoot skyward through the gap.

  He kicked in a bit more throttle and brought the Defender up so he could shoot over the burning roadblock. He shifted from lasers to ion cannons and fired at the vehicle furthest back in the convoy. His initial shot fell short, but wreathed a gravtruck with blue lightning. It immediately grounded with sparks shooting from the undercarriage.

  The guards who had been in the back spilled out, most of them jerking and twitching with the energy. One guard's clothes were smoldering. He stumbled into the street and the landspeeder following the gravtruck hit him when it swerved to miss the dead truck. The guard pitched up and over the speeder and landed in the road behind it, while the speeder went out of control and slammed into a storefront.

  Wedge walked fire back down the convoy, hesitating a couple of times as guards leaped from their gravtrucks and sought shelter in doorways or behind ferrocrete benches or old monuments to Imperial glory. The ion blast would short out a vehicle's electronics, and wasn't much kinder to any living creature it hit. He continued to target vehicles, stopping the ones he hit, bottling up the ones he did not.

  A few of the men on the ground fired blasters at the Defender. Wedge scattered them with an ion blast and searched for more vehicles to shoot, but something moving through the sky caught his attention. He brought his sensors back into air-to-air mode and directed them at the object lifting from Daplona and heading out toward the prison.

  The sensors reported it was an Imperial Assault Shuttle, with shields at full, all four laser cannons charged, and concussion missile launchers in working order, with one lifeform on board. Bringing his throttle up, he punched in a request for a comm frequency scan of the ship and switched his comm unit over to the unscrambled one it was using.

  "This is General Wedge Antilles of the New Republic. You would be Ysanne Isard."

  There was momentary silence. "General Antilles? I thought you died at Distna."

  "I thought you died at Thyferra, so we're even."

  Pure venom poured through her voice. "If you think to make this the tiebreaker, you'll lose."

  Before Wedge could contradict her, fire blossomed in the shuttles concussion missile firing tubes. Two missiles jetted out and began a gently curved flight toward the prison's top floor "Corran Horn has returned to be with to be with those he escaped" She hissed, "now it's time for all of them to die."

  36

  Admiral Ackbar climbed back into his command chair. "Damage Control, report."

  A Twi'lek female turned in his direction. "Artificial gravity restored. Hull breaches forward, decks one and three. The Mrlsst is dead in space; Sullust and Mantooine are badly damaged. Peacemaker is also dead in space."

  The human at the sensor station raised a hand. "Admiral, Binder has brought its gravity well projectors up. Nothing is leaving the system."

  The Mon Calamari nodded slowly. "Signal the fleet. Begin the Thrawn Pincer."

  In waging his war against the New Republic, Grand Admiral Thrawn had proved himself to be a masterful martial tactician. Rumor had it that he credited the study of a people's art as being the key to understanding and defeating them. Ackbar didn't know if that were true or not, but what he did understand was that Thrawn had a superior command of how to utilize the tools of his trade. Thrawn had again and again used an Interdictor cruiser as the equivalent of a magnet. He sent it into systems to pull a fleet from hyperspace with more precision than most navigators could plot.

  Ackbar had learned well from him.

  While Ackbar's main battle group had jumped directly into the Ciutric system, arriving to the sun side of the planet, the second part of the taskforce had exited hyperspace deeper in the solar system. When the signal from Ackbar reached them, the two Victory-class Star Destroyers jumped in toward Ciutric and were dragged from space by Binder's presence.

  This brought the two ships out of hyperspace at Binder's aft. The second the crews oriented themselves, General Garm Bel Iblis issued orders to engage the enemy. They unloaded their beam weapons on the Emperor's Wisdom and launched their concussion missiles at Reckoning. They did this just after Re
ckoning completed its ninety-degree shift to starboard, presenting its undamaged side to Home One, and its unshielded flank to the newly arrived Selonian Fire and Corusca Fire.

  A terrifyingly beautiful garland of explosions rippled down Reckoning's right flank and on up the command tower. Heavy turbolaser batteries disintegrated, hull plates buckled, while even more missiles stabbed deep into the ship's interior to detonate and tear holes that breached multiple decks. Fires raged as the void of space sucked air out of the ships. Pieces of the hull broke away or twisted out of place, leaving the Impstar looking as if it had sideswiped an asteroid.

  One missile shot past the front of the command tower, and then course corrected and circled around to strike the forward viewport. The transparisteel resisted the impact at first, but the interior layer cracked and spalled off a hail of crystalline fragments that stormed through the bridge. They passed over the heads of those individuals at the action stations, but blew through Prince-Admiral Krennel so fast that they had exited his back without appreciably slowing down at all.

  Krennel looked down to see his white uniform covered with red dots slightly lighter than the scarlet trim on his cuffs and hem. Only his right forearm sleeve remained pristine. He got as far as realizing that it had not changed color because the arm underneath was purely mechanical, before blood running from his forehead dripped down into his eyes, blinding him.

  Then the concussion missile detonated.

  The comlink on Corran's lapel squawked loudly. "Concussion missiles incoming prison east!"

  "Everyone, down! Get down!" Corran screamed at them, waving hisarms at the ground. "Down, DOWN!"

  A missile slammed into the prison at the southeast corner of the fourth floor. Corran saw a brilliant light blossom in that direction and caught a fleeting glimpse of cracks appearing in the mortar between the building blocks that made up the isolation cells. Then the explosion's shock-wave hit him, blasting him off his feet and knocking him backward into the wall. He saw stars as his head hit, and then sputtered as dust from the tops of the hanging lights drifted down to choke him.

  He rolled to his feet and saw Nrin getting back up, too. The Quarren fired a short burst through the hole in the floor, and then backed off to feed another clip into his blaster rifle. Ooryl took over for him, firing off a long burst that brought weak return fire. Corran ran to the corner cut he'd made and triggered a burst through it. He heard a scream and a clatter, but wasn't certain who or what he'd hit. More distant sounds of sporadic firing came to him, but no hot light burned its way up toward his position, so he wasn't certain what to make of it.

  His comlink crackled again, this time with a voice he could not instantly place. "Nrin, please advise as to your situation."

  The Quarren frowned, and then keyed his comlink. "Fourth floor is secure. The isolation cells shielded us from the missile blast. We're holding off the guards, but are running low on power."

  "I copy. We're incoming."

  Corran keyed his comlink. "Who's 'we' and where are you incoming from?"

  "We've cleared the tower to the second floor. Team One is on the way up."

  Nrin laughed aloud. "Come fast, Kapp. We promise we won't shoot any Devaronians."

  "I like hearing that, Nrin." Kapp Dendo's voice pulsed confidently through the comlink. "Sit tight and we'll have you out of there in no time."

  Wedge punched up the Rogue comm frequency. "Concussion missiles incoming prison east!" Even as he shouted the warning, he ruddered his fighter's front to starboard and dropped the aiming reticle over the spark that was the first missile. He tightened up on the trigger and sent an ion bolt sizzling out after it. He cursed, switched to lasers, but by the time he tracked the second missile, it was too late.

  The ion bolt succeeded in hitting the first missile, surrounding it with a blue energy web. The missile corkscrewed into a spiral and climbed skyward before detonating. A sky-fall of burning sparks slowly descended at the base of smoky snakes, falling among parks and homes.

  The second missile slammed into the prison's top floor at the southeast corner. The resulting explosion ripped a hole in the building that extended down two floors and shot debris hundreds of meters into the air. Bodies hung from the hole, and then were pitched to the ground as prisoners from the second and third floors began a dash for freedom.

  Wedge punched up One Flight's tactical comm channel. "Gavin, Myn, Hobbie, give me full spectrum scans of the shuttle. Myn, Gavin, move to cut it off from the prison. Send the sensor data to me immediately, and take the shuttle with ion cannons if you can."

  Without waiting for a reply, Wedge rolled his Defender to port and came up, leveling out at the same altitude as the assault shuttle. His maneuver brought him in for a deflection shot that would hit the starboard aft section of the ship. The assault shuttle ruddered around to present its aft to him, and then sideslipped to port.

  Wedge switched to ion cannons and dropped his crosshairs on the shuttle. It juked up, and then sideslipped port again. The pilot made the ungainly craft dance with a surprisingly light hand on the stick. There has to be a targeting warning system in there. The moment my sensors pinpoint him, he gets a light on his HUD and jinks.

  Getting the shuttle wasn't going to be easy, but the evasive maneuvers had moved the shuttle away from the prison. Wedge keyed his comm unit. "Myn, stay ninety degrees off my position. Gavin, get above it. He's got an early warning system so we'll have to herd it."

  He then punched up the shuttle's comm channel. "Nice flying, Isard."

  "Coming from you, that's a compliment."

  "I appreciate my foes and their abilities." Wedge hesitated for a moment, and then spoke with a cold confidence in his voice. "Then again, I would hope a clone would be an improvement over the original."

  "What?"

  "You didn't know you were a clone? No, of course not. Isard wouldn't trust the dispersal of her prized captives to just anyone: She gave the job to herself. With you she could actually be in two places at one time."

  "That's insane."

  "So was she." Wedge triggered an ion bolt that laced aquamarine fire through the shuttle's aft shield. "Corran's escape and her evacuation of Coruscant broke her, but you were imprinted before then, so your brainwelds weren't loosened. You did your job and she had you shot. She expected you to die, but you didn't and here you are."

  The shuttle sideslipped starboard as gracefully as a hawkbat riding air currents in Coruscant's citified canyons. "No, not possible."

  "It's true." Wedge laughed aloud. "In fact, I can prove it."

  "It's a lie."

  "Oh, and then explain why, in a similar situation on Thyferra, Isard was using her shuttle to run and you, on the other hand, are still trying to deny us the Lusankya prisoners, as per her orders to vow?"

  He cut off her anguished scream by switching over to One Flight's tactical channel. "Myn, move into the shuttle's aft port. Gavin, set up for shots after a sideslip starboard." Wedge punched an inquiry into his tactical computer. "Take it down, now."

  The other two trips moved in for the kill like teopari on the hunt. Myn's Defender curled in past Wedge's fighter and snapped off a pair of ion bolts that took the shuttle in the aft. Electricity played through the aft shield, shrinking it to a tiny sphere that imploded in a brilliant flash.

  Thelshuttle, as predicted, sideslipped to the right. Gavin's two bolts shot down at it and caught the shuttle on the high dorsal stabilizer, gushing down as if a fluid. Sparks shot from shield projectors as they shorted out and smoke began to trail from the concussion missile launchers. The light in the engines died out as the ship's electrical system failed and a ship that had once been elegant in flight became a heavy construct of metal and ceramics suddenly unable to defy gravity.

  The left wing tip hit the ground first, gouging a furrow in a bridge roadway. Scattered speeders whirled, spun, and flipped away as huge chunks of ferrocrete decking dropped twenty meters to the shallow river below. Portions of the wing whipped through
the air as it hit the durasteel supports at the bridge's edge.

  The shuttle's flattening spin would have slammed it into the ground, crushing the pilot's compartment completely, but the river valley meant there was no ground for it to hit. The ship continued to spin and the right wing tip came down to splash through the water and strike riverbed. The wing lodged as firmly as if the riverbed were solid stone.

  Metal screamed and ferroceramic armor tiles snapped along the wing's joint with the ship's hull. Because the wings were meant to fold up for ease of storage in the belly of a ship, the joint was not nearly as strong as it would have been were the wings part of the basic hull. Hydraulic fluid sprayed out as the hinges parted and the wing tore completely off.