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

by Michael A. Stackpole

"Negative, Rogue Squadron. Prepare for targeting run on Alpha target dirtside."

  "I copy, Control." Wedge punched up the squadron's tactical frequency. "Form up on me, we're being cleared to go to ground."

  "There's more targets up here, Lead."

  "Really?" Wedge smiled. "You mean Asyr left a few?"

  The Bothan's voice came on the comm channel. "I didn't think I had."

  No, you were on a crusade, Asyr. I wonder why? Wedge shook his head. "Punch up your ground attack data. We need to be ready to go as soon as it comes time to ferry troops down."

  Tycho asked a question. "'Swift Liberty doesn't want help with the Dreadnaught?"

  "They seem to think they have that situation under control, Tycho."

  Even as Wedge made that observation, he looked up through his canopy and saw the capital ship battle still underway. The Direption had begun to come about to starboard, swinging its shieldless port side away from Moonshadow. Moonshadow was coming up and turning to port, its port-side batteries firing against Direption's aft shields. Red and blue laser and ion cannon fire pumped terajoules of energy into the shields, but somehow they stayed up.

  Probably shunting energy from the port side shield projectors into the aft shields. Wedge watched as Swift Liberty cut inside Moonshadow's maneuver and cruised beneath Direption. As Swift Liberty's gunners got target locks, they blazed away at the larger ship's naked left side, further compounding the damage done by the Moonshadow's assault.

  In Swift Liberty's wake came the Dreadnaught. It continued to target the Victory-class ship's aft shields, finally collapsing them. Red-gold turbolaser blasts scored armor around the Swift Liberty's engines, but Wedge saw no secondary explosions. Even so, that sort of pounding will eat a ship up if it continues.

  But continue it won't.

  Captain Sair Yonka's Freedom knifed its way from hyperspace and into the battle on a course that drove it beneath Direption and straight at the Dreadnaught. Yonka's ship had come in perpendicular to Direption's keel and raked it with shots from all its starboard guns, running from bow to stern as it passed. Heavy turbolaser batteries played shots over the Hegemony ship's unprotected port side, burning great black pits in the ship's white hull. Flames exploded and curled away as superheated atmosphere blew out through weakened hull plates. Ion cannons sent blue lightning skittering and leaping across the ship's hull, with several bolts joining like ivy to grow up over the bridge. In yet more spots more laserfire burned straight through the hull. Wedge could see space through the stricken ship.

  Freedom's port gunners had no intention of being cheated of their chance to wreak havoc on the enemy. As Freedom drove forward, guns started firing on the Dreadnaught as they came into range. The sheer volume of fire filled the smaller ship's shields with color and seemed to stop the Dreadnaught in mid-flight. Then the shields collapsed and Freedom's precision fire started burrowing in on the Dreadnaught, right beyond the forward superstructure of the bridge. Hull plates, all twisted and half melted, flew off as secondary explosions racked the vessel. What started with fire-blackened armor became a glowing metal pit that drilled deep into the ship's interior. Finally one huge explosion shook the ship, and all the lights in the forward section winked out.

  Seconds later Wedge watched as the Dreadnaught broke into two at the point of the assault. In the cold silence of space, the bridge began to drift away from the aft, one piece twisting toward the planet and the other toward space. Fires burned at the point of the break, but quickly died as they exhausted the available oxygen.

  Direption pulled its nose up and began to make a run deeper into the system. Moonshadow and Swift Liberty both fired full salvos at it and collapsed both the aft and starboard shields. Outgunned and already weakened, Direption didn't stand a chance of escaping. Despite its troubles, it could still inflict a great deal of damage, so Freedom maneuvered into position to slag it if necessary.

  Direption's running lights blinked on and off four times in rapid succession, and then stayed off. "Control, this is Rogue Leader. What is the status up there?"

  "Standing by, Rogue Leader. Looks like Direption's commander may be reasonable. New orders just flashed for you, Rogue Lead. Freedom is deploying troop carriers and assault shuttles. Head to your assigned ground targets. May the Force be with you."

  Corran nodded and punched up his target zone. "Three Flight copies, Lead. We're on blue sector." He switched over to the flight's tactical frequency. "We're clear to blue sector. Think you can stay with us, this time, Eleven?"

  Asyr answered in a voice that wasn't quite as subdued as Corran wanted to hear. "I copy, Nine. I'll work on it."

  "Stay sharp down there. We don't know what they have, but it could be decidedly nasty." Corran rolled out to port and started the atmospheric insertion. He felt a slight bump as they entered Liinade Ill's atmosphere and he had to keep his hand steady on the controls. Despite the more difficult flying, he felt a bit of tension flow from him. At least we can breathe this atmosphere, which makes survival here more likely than out in space.

  As the X-wing broke through cloud cover he saw a lush green planet spread out before him. Three Flight was coming in over the southern continent, which featured a prominent spine of mountains dusted with snow running up the west side. The target for Three Flight was a hydroelectric powerplant that supplied most of the electricity for the large city on the plains to the east of the mountains. The

  mission goal was for the X-wings to eliminate any fighter cover around the powerplant and suppress opposition as a shuttle full of commandos came in and secured the place.

  Corran caught the flash of sunlight off a slender ribbon of water running through a canyon and dropped down toward it. "This should be the outflow from the dam, right, Whistler?" White water churned through the canyon and a small flotilla of boats made its way down through the perilous watercourse.

  They have to be freezing down there-there's snow on the ground. What some folks think of as fun I just don't understand. He shook his head, and then keyed his comm unit. "Target is two klicks out. Ten, with me. Eleven and Twelve, fly high cover."

  Corran brought his fighter down on the deck and Ooryl's X-wing came in behind him. Corran kicked the X-wing up on its starboard S-foil and tugged back on the stick to curve to the right, and then rolled back to port and sailed around to the left. The inertial compensator's adjustment allowed him to feel the twists and turns he put the fighter through and just for a second he felt the absolute joy and freedom flying had always given him.

  Then he came around a bend and saw the dam.

  In the simulations they'd run on this mission the dam had always been tall, but seeing the solid edifice of ferrocrete, with spots where moss had grown along seep lines, and seeing the great rush of water pouring from the sluicegates, that he'd not expected. Evergreen trees and bushes grew thickly through the riparian area along the riverbanks, but thinned a bit up on the hillsides in the canyon. Everything, save the twin Atgar 1.4 FD P-tower units built atop the dam, looked peaceful and sedate.

  The antivehicular artillery units, with a laser cannon centered in a round dish, looked decidedly hostile, but they came as no surprise. A single stormtrooper crewed each weapon and the Rogues had known about them going in. Corran tugged back on his stick a bit and ran his throttle down as he dropped the aiming reticle over the outline of the leftmost weapon. "I've got port. Ten, you take starboard."

  "As ordered, Nine."

  With the flick of a thumb Corran shunted power from his rear shields to his forward ones. Staggered red bolts from the P-tower hissed as they splashed harmlessly over his reinforced shields. Corran stroked his trigger once, sending a quad burst of laserfire to burn through the P-tower, but even before it exploded, an overwhelming sense of dread pounded him.

  Unthinking, he jerked the X-wing stick to the left and saw a small projectile sizzle past him from behind at an angle in from the right. It flew on and impacted to the left of the dam. The warhead exploded, spraying dirty s
now and launching a tall evergreen into the air. Other trees sagged and fell on the forested hillside.

  "Abort, they've got missiles. Ten, pull out."

  Before Corran could punch the throttle forward, something hit his low port stabilizer and detonated. Whistler's high-pitched shrilling matched the warning buzzers in the cockpit. Corran saw a whole bank of red lights start to burn amid curls of smoke. Power level indicators showed a quarter of the X-wing's power lost immediately, and the fighter's nose began to swing around to the right.

  Corran stomped on the left rudder to stop the flat spin, and then dove toward the river to pick up some airspeed. Pulling back on the stick, he started a climb, and then inverted and flew toward the small fire the other missile had started. Rolling again, he righted his craft and carried it over the canyon's ridge.

  "Ten, I've been hit. I've lost port-two engine."

  "Nine, that S-foil is gone."

  "What was it?"

  "Ooryl doesn't know. Ground-launched and didn't scan."

  Corran nodded. "Probably stormies with Merr-Sonn PLX-2Ms."

  "A chip shouldn't have taken off an S-foil. Shouldn't have gotten through your shields."

  "I shifted power forward and they caught me in an engine." Another warning light started to burn on his command console. "Ten, I'm losing engine coolant and will lose

  my other engines if I don't do something soon. I've got to set down. You've got the flight. Warn Control about the chips here. There must be something else of value here, too, otherwise they wouldn't have guarded it that way."

  "I copy. We'll fly cover for you until they pull you out."

  "No, get out of here, all of you. They might have other weapons to take an X-wing down. Leave, but promise me you'll be back with help."

  "As fast as Ooryl is able." The faint clicking of the Gand's mandible came through the comm channel. "May the Force be with you."

  "Thanks, I'm going to need it. Nine out."

  Corran rolled the X-wing once to give himself a quick look at the terrain below, and then pushed his fighter over another ridge about three kilometers away from the dam. He would have liked to have gotten further away, but the heat indicators on his engines were spiking enough that the computer reported the numbers in blinking red numbers.

  Gotta get down now. "Hang on, Whistler, this isn't going to be much fun."

  He picked a spot uphill of a rocky outcropping and clipped off a series of laser shots at it. The red bolts scythed through the underbrush, melted snow, and exploded venerable evergreens. Smoke from a small fire obscured the landing zone, but he nosed the craft toward it nonetheless. He shifted power into his repulsorlift coils, lowered the landing gear, and slowly, awkwardly settled the fighter into place. The aft port landing gear ended up planted on the stump of a tree, making the craft list heavily to starboard, but Corran shut down the engines rather than risk a total meltdown to shift the X-wing to another position.

  A chill settled over Corran as he hit the release on his restraining straps. "Think it's over for this fighter, Whistler? We've seen a lot of action together."

  The droid mewed weakly.

  Corran cracked the cockpit canopy, and then swung himself out and under the cockpit lip. He moved up to the fuselage and crouched on the back end of the canopy. The chip missile's blast had peppered the left side of the fighter with engine

  shrapnel and Whistler had caught a chunk in his left shoulder joint. Corran reached out to touch it, but Whistler squawked sharply at him.

  "Okay, okay, I won't touch it. No, I don't want to do more damage." He shook his head slowly and felt his stomach begin to knot up. "I'll get you out of here somehow, Whistler. Not a problem."

  The R2 unit piped bravely.

  "Thanks." Corran returned to the cockpit and pulled the small survival kit from the compartment beneath his seat. He opened it and transferred a couple of spare power-packs for his blaster to the gunbelt pouch over his right hip. He stuffed some survival ration bars into his green flight suit's pockets, though he thought of them as fairly lethal weapons. If only I could get stormies to eat them.

  He looked up and was going to share that thought with Whistler, but he saw the little droid's lights blinking painfully slowly. His throat immediately thickened.

  "I will get you out of here, my friend." Corran brandished the lightsaber he pulled from the survival kit. "We'll teach these Imp-wannabes that by grounding me they haven't made me switch from hunter to hunted, just switched the direction I'll be coming at them from."

  14

  General Wedge Antilles leveled his X-wing out and glanced at the range indicator to his target. Fifty kilometers, we'll be on it in no time. I wonder what they've got waiting for us there.

  He punched up 'the flight's tactical channel. "Okay, Rogues, Three Flight ran into trouble in blue sector. Ground fire damaged one. They think it was from chip missiles, so keep your shields strong and eyes open."

  The rest of the flight acknowledged his message, and then followed Wedge down onto the deck for the final run at the Valleyport spaceport facility. Located in a river valley to the east of the mountains where Corran had gone down, Valley-port was by no means the largest city on the continent. In fact, it was relatively small, but it sat astride the main ground transportation route through the mountains and likewise was a communications nexus. The spaceport facility, while underutilized by local traffic, was more than sufficient for bringing in ground troops who would take the planet.

  Below him the landscape changed. Forests gave way to vast tracts of treeless land covered by a thin blanket of snow

  that let the stubble of harvested grain stalks poke up through it. Houses dotted the landscape and, since it was midmorning, some people were out and about in the fields, directing the droids tending to livestock. Wedge knew that any of them could use a comlink to alert Valleyport officials that fighters were incoming, but by the time the report got through, the Rogues would be over their target.

  The city of Valleyport came into view, obscured by a brown haze. A few tall buildings rose above the haze, but most sprawled within it. The haze covered both sides of the river and spread out onto the plains above. The spaceport's towers showed up clearly on the northern side of the river, against a mountain backdrop toward the west. Wedge let his X-wing sideslip to port, and then flashed across the river and set his lasers for single fire.

  Already E-webs and a couple of P-towers started filling the early morning air with sizzling bolts of coherent light, but tracking an X-wing running in at full throttle proved more difficult than the gunners would have liked. A stray bolt hissed against Wedge's shields and in return he clipped off a cycle of four shots-one from each of the X-wing's laser cannons-then pulled his fighter's nose off onto another target.

  His laserfire tracked bolts across icy ferrocrete decking and up the sides of buildings. Misses left little black stains centered on a guttering flame. Hits blew chunks out of the enemy's mounted blasters and antivehicular weapons. One bolt caught a stormtrooper in the chest, ablating his armor away in an eyeblink and continuing on unabated. The man's burning corpse slammed into a wall, and then rebounded and pitched forward over the balcony railing he had tried to take cover behind.

  "Lead, I'm getting fire from the west, coming from within those hangars."

  "On it, Hobbie." Wedge hit some right rudder and chopped back his throttle, shortening a turn to port. A line of large hangars formed the western perimeter of the spaceport and the red-gold bolts from a pair of heavy laser

  cannons sprayed out at the X-wings. Seeing a line of fire begin to track his fighter, Wedge goosed the throttle back to full and began a port spiral to get some altitude.

  Out of the hangars trotted a quartet of AT-ATs, the Imperial walker units that had wrought so much havoc at Hoth. They moved quickly, not looking as cumbersome and slow in the light snow as they had on Hoth's icefields. Back then we were in airspeeders-undergunned and overmatched. A smile slowly twisted his lips. Not the case thi
s time.

  "On them, Rogues. The groundpounders are incoming and we need to get rid of the walkers. Be careful."

  "Starting a run on the first one." Lyyr Zatoq, the Quarren, rolled her X-wing out to port, and then let it swoop down in a glide that brought it in on a diagonal slashing course on the last of the walkers. The machine's head slowly swung to the left to try to track her fighter, but she blasted away at it with her lasers at point-blank range, and then climbed hard and pulled out to the left, too fast and too tight for the walker to target her.

  Hobbie, her wingman, came in on a crossing path that gave him a clean shot at the tail. Lyyr's shots had slagged armor on the mechanical beast's flank, but hadn't done any serious damage. Robbie's attack ran from below the AT-AT's body on up the back, and at least one shot holed the fuel tank. Flaming fluid streamed down like a tail, and then an explosion ripped the walker's back end open. The blast pitched the walker up into the air and through a somersault that landed it on its back. The massive legs telescoped down into the body, and then tore free. The walker's armored head slammed into the snow-covered ground, cracking armor plates, and started leaking smoke.