The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  Devlia leaned back. “Interesting, but circumstantial, as I am sure Agent Loor will agree.”

  “Circumstantial, yes, but persuasive.” Everything she had said about the squadron that attacked the Black Asp did seem to point to Rogue Squadron. Kirtan doubted any other unit in the Rebellion would sport Rogue call signs, and the crest data would have to be checked. Still and all it was not conclusive. It is, however, a start.

  “Captain, did your shuttle stay in-system and monitor the squadron for outbound vector and speed?”

  Iillor scowled. “No, and Lieutenant Potin has been reprimanded for fleeing when not threatened. I do have entry vector and velocity data, and it is triangulated with the data from the shuttle.”

  “That’s something, then.”

  “I will make certain you have it in time for your return to Imperial Center, Agent Loor.” Devlia stood. “Assuming you want nothing else here.”

  “I do want to speak to the pilots who flew against the X-wings as well as review any data recorded from the Interceptors that were destroyed.”

  “I’ll see the interviews are arranged right away.”

  “Take your time, Admiral. The next two or three days will be soon enough.”

  The old man’s expression soured. “Staying that long are you?”

  “Longer, I suspect.” Kirtan smiled broadly for the Admiral. “If Rogue Squadron is operating in this area, and I believe it is, I’ll leave only after we’ve found them and destroyed them, and not a moment sooner.”

  16

  In only two weeks, while the official request for a new phi-inverted lateral stabilizer languished in red-tape limbo, Emtrey found a pair of phi-inverted lateral stabilizers that the Pulsar Skate dropped off on its second run to Talasea. The Rogues’ Verpine tech used the new parts to replace the older, damaged parts. In synchronizing them, Zraii managed to smooth things out so Corran noticed a five percent increase in power at full throttle, with a three percent reduction in fuel consumption.

  Corran throttled back slightly, matching his speed to that of Ooryl. “Three Flight to lead—we’re all in formation, sir.”

  “I copy, Nine. Stand by.”

  “As ordered, Lead.” Corran smiled broadly in spite of himself. Back when he was with CorSec he had hated escort duty, but after two weeks on the ground he would have volunteered to go after Death Stars even if they were strung around a system like pearls on a necklace. Even during his time on the run from Corellia he’d managed to fly at least once a week, even though that was well outside the profile of the identity Gil Bastra had created for him.

  He turned and looked back at Whistler. “Has Emtrey come up with any information based on his analysis of the ID Gil made up for me?”

  A mournful hoot came in reply as the word “No” appeared on his display.

  “Yeah, I don’t like the idea of never seeing Gil again, either.” He glanced at his sensor monitor. “Twelve, trim it up a bit there, you’re slipping behind. Trouble?”

  “No difficulty. Compliance.”

  “Good. Keep close. This mission should be easy enough that a nerf-herder could do it, but the other side will be shooting back, so we have to be careful.”

  Despite the light tone in his voice he knew things could get nasty. Alliance operatives had been conducting surveys of Core worlds to assess the political climate and determine the strength of Imperial forces protecting them. On one run back toward their operations base—known to the pilots only as “Black Curs Base,” with no location specified for security reasons—they ran into the Strike cruiser Havoc. The Rebels went to ground on a small jungle planet in the Hensara system. They sank their ship, a modified Imperial Customs frigate, in a deep lake and lacked the equipment needed to repair damage that would allow them to move it again.

  The Havoc grounded an Imperial walker and two scouts along with two platoons of stormtroopers. While their reported progress in searching out the Rebels had been slow, they started relatively close to the lake, so the ship’s discovery was a matter of time. The Alliance had reconciled itself to the loss of the ship and had intended a covert extraction of the operatives, then the Havoc left the system, providing a window for repair and escape of the frigate Battle of Yavin.

  Wedge sent the squadron the coordinates for the trip to the Hensara system. To cover the location of their base, the journey would be undertaken in three parts. The first jump, a short one, would take them to their first transit point, an uninhabited star system not far from the Morobe system. From there they would jump back out Rimward to the second transit system and back in to the Hensara system.

  While the multiple jumps and changes of direction would add hours to the flight time, obscuring their point of origin was vital. The Alliance had learned that spreading out its forces meant it was all but impossible for the Empire to land a deathblow to the Rebellion. But for the efforts of a courageous few on Hoth, the Rebellion’s headquarters would have been destroyed and the Rebellion along with it. Without taking precautions, they would pinpoint the location of their base and invite retaliation.

  They made the first jump on Wedge’s mark and came out in the fringes of the transit system all in one piece. The X-wings maneuvered around to the exit vector quickly, then had to mark time as the Skate and the Corellian corvette Eridain came about. Corran nudged his throttle back a notch, shortening the gap between him and the Gand.

  The larger ships reported they were ready, so the whole convoy shot into hyperspace and came out in the second transit system intact. The course adjustment there was not as radical as the one from the first system, so they headed out quickly and arrived in the Hensara system just outside the gravitational tug of the third planet.

  Corran heard Tycho’s voice come through the comm. “Rogue Leader, Captain Afyon reports a clean scan of the system. You’re clear for your run.”

  “Copy, Control. Three Flight, you fly CAP. Two and One, on me.”

  Corran let a low snarl resound in his throat. Flying Combat Aerospace Patrol meant his flight would remain at the edge of Hensara Ill’s atmosphere against the possible incursion of any Imperial forces. The other eight fighters in the squadron were going to escort the Skate down and strafe the Imperial mudbugs and the durasteel dogs they had hunting Dirk Harkness and his compatriots on the planet. Strafing runs against ground troops—even stormtroopers—wasn’t much in the action department, but it was better than skipping across atmosphere, shooting at nothing.

  He shrugged. “Maybe slagging an AT-AT will sweeten Jace’s disposition.”

  Whistler gave a stuttered chirp that sounded as close as the droid could manage to a laugh.

  Corran matched it with some laughter of his own. “Jace clearly figures that because his name rhymes with ‘ace’ he should be one. He can’t understand why TIE pilots don’t just line up for him to vape them all in one pass.”

  Tycho’s urgent comm call cut off Whistler’s trilled comment. “Control to all Rogues. We have a Strike cruiser that just jumped in-system. Profile matches Havoc, but two fighter bays have been added. TIEs are launching.”

  “Three Flight, lock S-foils in attack position.” Corran glanced at his sensor display. “Come to a heading of 272 degrees.”

  “Control here. I have thirty-six, repeat, three-six TIEs launched. Six Interceptors, six bombers, and twenty-four, repeat, two-four starfighters. Eridain beginning evasive maneuvers. Wait. Confirm, bombers are heading to ground.”

  “We copy, Control.” Wedge’s voice came through strong despite being nibbled upon by static. “Rogues Three and Four, the bombers are yours. The rest are ours. Keep them off the Eridain.”

  “As ordered, Rogue Leader.” Corran shoved his throttle full forward. “Go all out, Three Flight. Into the middle, shoot at anything that isn’t an X-wing. Call if you need help.”

  Under normal circumstances Corran knew that flying into the teeth of an enemy formation would have been suicidal, but odds of thirty-to-four weren’t all that conducive to long-term su
rvival anyway. Since running wasn’t an option, doing what the enemy didn’t expect would buy him a second or two of surprise, and that would keep him alive just that much longer.

  Hauling back on his stick and canting it ever so slightly to the side, he brought the X-wing up into a lopsided corkscrew maneuver. While the jerky motion of the ship’s nose meant he didn’t have a flame’s chance on Hoth of hitting anything, he was that much harder to hit himself. He pumped more power into his shields, then shot through a flurry of laser bolts before he penetrated the Imperial formation.

  He hauled back on his stick, killing the weaving flight and arrowing his ship up into a flight of TIEs. He lined one starfighter up in his sights and let it have a quad blast of lasers. As the eyeball exploded, he cut the stick hard to starboard, then rolled out into a level line that continued his original course, with a half-kilometer cut to the right thrown in. As the TIE formation collapsed in after him, he cruised out the other side of it.

  Inverting his X-wing, he pulled the fighter into a loop that brought him around in the TIEs’ wake, though slightly below their formation. Keeping the nose up, he headed back in again. He picked up on a TIE Interceptor that had broken right while its wingmate had broken left. Ooryl continued on the tail of the latter squint. The other Interceptor tightened its turn into a teardrop loop designed to bring it onto the Gand’s aft.

  Corran’s quad lasers shredded the Interceptor’s starboard wing and blew apart one of the twin ion engines. The other, operating at full power, sent the squint spinning away. Corran winced in sympathy with the pilot, then drove into the middle of the TIE formation.

  The X-wings plunging and wheeling through the middle of the TIEs had an unanticipated advantage in that they had a very high target-to-comrade ratio to shoot at. Moreover, because the X-wings had shields, even a shot taken in haste at another Rogue would not likely prove fatal. The same could not be said of the TIEs—one burst from their lasers could cripple or kill a fellow pilot.

  Corran snapped a shot off at one starfighter and watched it disintegrate. A warning warble from Whistler and he mashed his right foot down on the etheric rudder pedal. The X-wing’s stern slew around to the left, swinging him out of an Interceptor’s line of fire while pointing his nose right at the ship as it sailed past him. He punched the X-wing over ninety degrees, hauled back on the stick, then completed the inversion and dove down onto the Interceptor’s tail. He sent kilojoules of scarlet energy into the ball cockpit and watched the craft explode.

  “Nine, break left.”

  Without thinking Corran slammed the stick hard to port and caught the green highlights of laser bolts shooting through where he had just been. More red laser fire chased back along those same lines and something exploded out there.

  “Thanks, Commander.”

  “No problem, Nine.”

  Corran eased his stick forward and dove down to stay clear of the mass of starfighters. With the arrival of the rest of the squadron he knew there was no way he could track all the ships and sort friend from foe. Even as he came back up he saw less laser fire permeating the cloud of fighters than there had been when the forces were less evenly matched. “So much twisting and turning going on in there, no one can find a target and stick with it long enough to dust it.”

  Pulling up to continue his loop around the fringe of the battle he saw one X-wing break free with a starfighter on its tail. His sensors told him Gavin was at the stick of the Alliance ship. Measuring Gavin’s line, Corran rolled his craft and looped down at a tangent to it. “Rogue Five, break hard right.”

  Gavin’s fighter rolled up on its starboard S-foil crisply and pulled away at an angle that cast doubt on the existence of inertia. The starfighter following him tried to imitate his maneuver, but neither the pilot nor craft were up to it. As the TIE rolled, Corran swooped and fired. His quad-lasers burst the spherical pod like a bubble, sending the hexagonal wings slicing off through space.

  Before he could even smile, his X-wing jolted forward. His instruments indicated heavy damage to his aft shield. “Whistler, get me a lock on that TIE.”

  Corran inverted and dove, then pulled back on the stick to power up through a teardrop and onto the TIE’s tail. Instead of being where he expected it, the TIE, an Interceptor, showed up off his port S-foil, going away at a right angle to his course. Corran stood on his left rudder, then did a snap-roll that gave him a view of the planet above his head and the Interceptor racing away from him.

  Just as he feared it was going to run far enough for Tycho or someone else on the Eridain to blast it, the Interceptor pulled its own loop planetward and started back at him. Head to head—he knows what he’s doing. As Wedge and Tycho had pointed out countless times in training, the majority of kills took place in head-to-head engagements. But so do I.

  “Watch our tail, Whistler.” Corran kicked his shields full forward and drove in straight at the Interceptor. The rangefinder on the targeting monitor scrolled numbers off with blurred speed. His crosshairs went green and he fired, but couldn’t see how much damage he’d done because of the light show produced by the Interceptor’s lasers eating away at his shields.

  Corran stabbed the right rudder pedal with his foot, swinging the ship around a full 180 degrees. Punching his throttle to full, he killed his momentum, then dropped the engines to zero thrust. With his thumb he popped his weapons control over to proton torpedoes and got a solid tone when he trapped the fleeing Interceptor in the targeting box. His finger tightened once on the trigger and a single torpedo shot away on a jet of blue flame.

  The torpedo caught up with the Interceptor quickly enough, but the TIE pilot, confirming his possession of the skill Corran had willingly granted him before, juked his Interceptor out of its path at the last second. Unfortunately for him, his maneuvering and run at Corran had taken him to the outer edge of Hensara’s atmosphere. While not particularly dense, impact with it at the speed the Interceptor was traveling proved devastating. The starboard wing shattered and the Interceptor ricocheted away in a wobbly somersault.

  “Control, this is Skate. We’re on our way back up. We have company that wants to go home.”

  “Good job, Skate. Rogue Leader, mission accomplished.”

  “I heard that, Control. Rogues, regroup for egress.”

  Corran smiled as he heard Gavin’s voice over the comm. “Leader, there are two getting away.”

  “Let them go, Five. Flight Leaders, check your flights.”

  “Whistler, give me feeds on my people.” A tracking chart replaced the targeting data on Corran’s screen. Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve. “Three Flight is all here.”

  “Control to Rogue Leader, I have a dozen X-wings in-system, two Interceptors on recovery vectors, and two deployed shuttles on pilot recovery missions.”

  Corran clapped his hands. “We didn’t lose anyone?”

  “Are you complaining, Nine?”

  “No, sir, Commander, not at all. It’s just …”

  “Yes, Nine?”

  “This is Rogue Squadron. I thought most of the pilots didn’t survive Rogue missions.”

  “That was when there was still an Emperor, Nine.” The grim tone in Wedge’s voice gave way to one somewhat lighter. “I guess that’s the difference. Let’s head home, Rogues. This is one victory we can celebrate without having to toast dead comrades and I, for one, like the change.”

  17

  Wedge sat with his back against the thick wall of the Grand Room in what had once been Talasea’s Planetary Governor’s Palace. The title sounded much more important than the building and room it described. Built with heavy beams made of the dark native wood and plaster slathered over wooden slats, it reminded him of the sorts of reconstructions he’d seen in museums on Corellia. This is about as primitive as it gets.

  The incongruity struck him as he watched his pilots sitting around a couple of central tables, using their hands to describe the twists and turns they went through in what they had taken to calling the Rout of
Hensara. They could have downloaded their sensor packets and played them out on the wide-screen holoviewer in the corner, but that device remained black. By telling the stories themselves they shared not only what they did—which the sensor data would have shown in exacting detail—but how they felt about it.

  And in doing that they’ll know they’re all the same. Wedge tipped his chair back against the wall. He glanced at two Alderaanians who shared his table with him. “They did a good job out there today.”

  Tycho smiled broadly. “They did better than good—they were spectacular. We recorded thirty-four kills out of a possible thirty-six with no losses. If I hadn’t been there, I’d think it was propaganda.”

  Afyon looked up from a barely touched tankard of the local lum equivalent. “You know as well as I do, gentlemen, they were awfully lucky. They may be the hottest pilots going, but vaping TIEs won’t Coruscant take. That’s going to take an operation that will need more than snubby jocks to make it go.”

  Wedge lowered his lum mug. “Captain, I’ve been in this Rebellion for as long as you have. I remember the fighting at Endor and I know the Eridain fought hard.”

  “I appreciate that, Commander Antilles, but it was you who got paraded around the New Republic as the hero who saved the Rebellion.”

  Tycho’s blue eyes narrowed. “He did blow the Death Star, you realize, and survived the previous Death Star run.”

  “I know, and I know you were there, too.” Afyon sat back and frowned. “Look, I’m not saying you don’t deserve your recognition, and I’m not saying your people don’t deserve their little party here. Strapping yourself into a fighter isn’t the easiest thing to do, and more fighter pilots die than do the folks I have crewing with me, but our contribution to this Rebellion is just as important as yours is.”

  Wedge nodded slowly. “I know that, Captain, and if the Eridain hadn’t been there today to make the Havoc think twice about closing with us, we would have been blind-jumping out of the system.”