Rogue Squadron (41 page)

“Hey, just asking.” Corran started his engines and shunted power to the weapons control. He armed two proton torpedoes. “Ready when you are.”

A countdown clock appeared on his console and slowly started running down. The squints continued their back and forth grid search pattern, moving ever closer to his position. From the second he saw what they were doing he asked Whistler to time the runs. They remained constant for speed and duration, which told Corran the pilots had done exactly what he would have—they programmed the search pattern into their navigational computers and let it run on autopilot.

Which means we know where they’ll be in thirty-five point three seconds
. He nodded grimly.
I’m dead, but you’ll be dead sooner, and that’s a bit of a victory, to be sure
.

It occurred to Corran that he was angry about dying. That emotion seemed, on the surface, to be rather logical, but emotions rarely were. Had someone described his current situation to him and asked him how he’d feel, he would have told them he’d have been scared out of his wits. The fact was, however, that the anger overshadowed the fear.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax.
Fear and anger aren’t right here
. He knew that going out to bring the Interceptors down just so he’d take more of them with him when he died was wrong. He didn’t know if the pilots were clones or volunteers or conscripts or mercenaries—and who they were didn’t really matter. The only reason he had for fighting against them was the same one he’d had for going after the squints down on Borleias.

I want to stop the Empire from taking lives. I’m not an avenger; I’m here to protect others
. He smiled. Somehow it seemed right that he, son and grandson of men who protected others in CorSec, had followed them into CorSec and had ended up here, with the Rebellion. His life, his father’s life, his grandfather’s life, had all been devoted to safeguarding
others.
And now the guys on the ground and Salm’s bomber jocks will get protected
.

The timer went to zero.

Corran hit the trigger.

Two proton torpedoes streaked out from the launch tubes on either side of the X-wing. Because they were programmed to reach a certain point at a certain time, Corran did not need a target lock on the pair of squints flying past. A kilometer separated them from the X-wing and the torpedoes went from launch to target in under half a second.

The first torpedo stabbed through the closest Interceptor and detonated. The explosion vaporized the squint, reducing it to its component molecules. The second torpedo actually overshot its target, but went off when it reached its programmed range. The blast crumpled the starboard wing. The Interceptor began to roll through a tight downward spiral, then slammed into a basalt monolith and exploded.

Shoving the throttle forward, Corran held the stick steady as his snubfighter shot from the lava tube. Once clear he hauled back on the stick and climbed. He saw other Interceptors break their search patterns, but none of them immediately moved after him.
Their sensors are still oriented toward the ground
.

He flipped his weapons controls over to lasers and set them on quad fire. It would slow his overall rate of fire, but a solid hit was a kill and he needed all the help he could get. Inverting the X-wing he took a quick look at the Interceptors as he flew past the volcano’s crater. Spotting a pair of targets moving toward where the first squints had gone down, he rolled the fighter up on the starboard S-foil and came around in a wide curve.

He dove and leveled out in a small valley between the volcano and a meteor crater. Climbing at
the last second, he rose up over the broad lunar plain and sent two bursts of laser fire into the belly of a squint. The starfighter obliged him by melting into a metallic fog that instantly condensed and rained down on the moon.

Whistler hooted proudly.

“Darned right, Horn pulls ahead of the bacta boy.” Corkscrewing his ship into a weave, Corran avoided the retribution of the squint’s wingman. He leveled out for a second, then cut the fighter hard right. Ninety degrees from his original track, he leveled out again, then climbed and did a wing-over to port that pointed him straight back at the Interceptor that had tried to stay on his tail. Corran rolled, shot, melted some armor from the squint, and broke hard right again.

He shook his head in response to Whistler’s question. “No, I didn’t think I killed it. Burned him a bit, though.”

Corran rolled the X-wing through inversion and hit the left rudder to again carry himself back across his own trail. Green spears of laser light crisscrossed through the moon’s thin air as the Interceptors converged on his ship. Whistler toted nine up on the monitor and made the closest ones flash red on the screen. Static hissed through Corran’s helmet as occasional hits weakened his shields, but energy shunted from lasers reinforced it quickly enough.

He glanced at his fuel indicator. “As much as we could teach them something about flying, it’s time we change some of the rules here.” He broke left and climbed, then came over, inverted, and pointed his fighter at the volcano’s cone. “We’ll see if these guys are such hot stuff in the place where hot stuff used to spew!”

The astromech droid splashed a message on console.

“Yes, inviting them into the caldera will be fine. The enclosed area will hurt them more than it does me, just like it hurt the TIEs that Wedge nailed on Rachuk.” Corran brought the fighter down into the crater and throttled back to zero thrust. He cut in the repulsorlift engines and powered them up so he hung suspended in the middle of the obsidian arena.

As he pointed the fighter’s nose toward the sky, he glanced at Whistler’s reply to his earlier statement. “Yeah, nine to one odds are hardly fair.”

The X-wing shook violently, as if a titanic child had grabbed it in an invisible fist. Whistler hooted anxiously and Corran felt his stomach turn inside out.
Tractor beam! It’s all over
.

The astromech droid wailed piteously.

Corran read the message on his console and shook his head. “Hey, it’s not your fault. Your telling me the odds isn’t why they evened them.” He brought his torpedo control up again as the first Interceptors streaked over the lip of the volcano’s crater.

“Sensors forward, Whistler. Time to remind them that trapping a Rogue doesn’t make him dead, just deadlier.”

38

Locked in the silence of hyperspace, Wedge glanced back over his shoulder and frowned. “Are you absolutely certain about the timing on this search pattern thing?”

Mynock spun his head around and bleated imploringly.

“Fine.” The droid’s numbers indicated that a standard Imperial square-klick search pattern would take two and a half standard hours to scour the dark side of the moon.
If Corran managed to stay ahead of them and slip over to the light side, then they’d have to search it, too. That means he could still be hiding from them. If not
 … Wedge glanced at his fighter’s chronometer.
If not, they found him a minimum of an hour and a half ago
.

Frustration balled Wedge’s hands into fists. He knew they’d done everything they could within mission parameters to help Corran. The first set of ten Interceptors had caught up with them because they had throttled back and waited. The five Rogues had easily dispatched their foes, but the dogfight took
them to critical fuel levels. They went to light speed, leaving a dozen squints to hunt for Corran.

At the first transit jump he’d ordered everyone to spend the trip into Noquivzor working up plans to go back and get Corran out. For the past three hours he’d put together a rescue operation and had figured out all sorts of contingencies depending upon what intelligence they could get from Borleias. Defender Wing would not yet have arrived at Borleias by the time the Rogues landed at Noquivzor, but there was an outside chance that Page’s people could have some news and have tapped into the Imperial holonet to deliver it.

That
was a long shot, but getting information from the holonet was not. Borleias would certainly have reported being under attack, and that report might contain details that would indicate Corran’s status. The second he reverted to realspace he’d have Emtrey search out the latest information from Borleias.
I need to know what to expect when we go back
.

His core plan was risky, and he knew Ackbar would never approve it. The mission risks had been pointed out in advance. Corran had volunteered to go. He would be missed, but jeopardizing other people to effect a rescue that probably would not work would be foolish.

As much as he knew Ackbar would be right in pointing all those things out, he also knew he couldn’t abandon one of his people.
I’ve lost too many friends to the Empire not to do everything I can to save others
. He knew his insistence on Tycho Celchu’s inclusion in Rogue Squadron was just such a rescue. He smiled wryly.
And saving him from Salm was tougher than pulling Corran out of Borleias ever will be
.

At Noquivzor the Rogues could be refueled and
head back out inside a half hour. He assumed their return trip would actually go off in an hour because he recalled that being the minimum amount of time techs needed to put the lasers back in the
Forbidden
. With Tycho flying the shuttle and the X-wings as escort, they’d be more than a match for the dozen Interceptors in the Borleias system.

Dozen? I’ll bet Corran will leave us half that number
.

Wedge sat back for a moment. He realized he thought of Corran as
Corran
, not Lieutenant Horn. The distance he had placed between himself and Corran had collapsed in on itself. He’d purposely chosen to distance himself from all the new recruits to maintain authority over them. As loose as Rogue Squadron was, that detachment was necessary if they were to follow him.

Even so, he suddenly realized, he had insulated himself from them for his own protection. Having lost so many friends, having felt the pain of their deaths, he had been reluctant to let anyone else get close. Not befriending them meant he could blunt the pain of seeing them die. He regretted Lujayne Forge, Andoorni Hui, and Peshk Vri’syk dying, but he had not been as deeply hurt by their deaths as he had when Biggs or Porkins or Dack had died.

Emotional distance is armor for the heart
. That armor was necessary because without it the overwhelming nature of the fight against the Empire would crush him. After seeing how many had been slain, it would have been easy to assume all was for naught.
But if we
did
assume that, the Death Stars would be ravaging planets and the Emperor would still rule the galaxy
.

Corran had earned the friendship Wedge felt for him, and not just through his skill in an X-wing. He had taken to heart the things Wedge had told him
about becoming part of the unit. Corran had clearly known that to go after the Interceptors closing on an assault shuttle was to be left behind. He had made that choice because it was really no choice at all.
The rest of the unit would have made the same choice, too
.

And they’ll want to go back to get Corran
. By jumping straight from Noquivzor to Borleias, without making a side jump first, they could reach the world in under three hours. Doing that would expose Noquivzor to discovery by Imperial forces, but Wedge expected Page’s people to be giving them other things to think about. Even so, a jump to the outer edge of the Borleias system and then another jump in closer would bring them out of hyperspace from a direction that would hide their point of origin.
I hope
.

A green button started blinking on the command console. Wedge punched it and hyperspace melted into the Noquivzor system. He immediately keyed his comm. “Rogue Leader to Emtrey.”

“Emtrey here, sir. I have an urgent message for Bror Jace.”

“It’s not as urgent as my orders, Emtrey. Get Zraii set up to refuel us and get techs mounting lasers on the
Forbidden
. An hour from now, at the most, we’re heading back out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And contact Intelligence. I want any holonet data coming out of Borleias.”

“Yes, sir.” The droid sounded agitated. “Sir, we do have some information from Borleias.”

“You do?” Wedge’s heart started to pound inside his chest. “What is it? Is it about Corran?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give it to me.”

“It’s a hologram.”

Wedge frowned. “Have the computer mash it to two dimensions and send it.”

“You may want to wait, sir.”

“Emtrey!”

“Transmitting now, sir, at your request.”

The monitor resolved itself into an image of Corran Horn. Wedge shook his head.
What?

“If you’re seeing this, Commander Antilles,” Corran said solemnly, “I know I was left behind …”

39

Corran popped one proton torpedo off and watched the lead Interceptor evaporate. Thumbing his weapons control over to lasers, he started to track the next TIE. The tractor beam limited his ship’s range of motion, but a heavy foot on a rudder pedal started turning him in the right direction.
Just a bit more …

The Interceptor exploded as red laser bolts ripped through the cockpit.

Corran looked down at his hand and couldn’t recall having hit the trigger.

More laser fire transformed another TIE into a fireball.
What in the Cloak of the Sith?

Whistler started hooting frantically.

Corran hesitated, not comprehending, then flipped his comm unit back on as his fighter began to rise through the volcano, picking up speed.

“…  repeat, is your hyperdrive still operational?”

He recognized the voice. “Mirax?”

“Yeah. You ready to get smuggled out of here?”

“Hyperdrive is a go.”

“Key it to my signal.”

“Whistler, do it.”

Corran didn’t afford himself the luxury of looking back at the ship that had tractored his fighter—the forward view had more than enough to entertain him. Borleias’s moon was receding quickly into the starfield, as were the squints. Green lancets of laser fire reached out toward him, but they splashed harmlessly against his shields. His return fire scattered the TIEs and one more fell prey to
Skate’
s gunner.