Starfighters of Adumar (24 page)

And now they were headed straight toward an enemy that was numerically superior and anxiously awaiting their arrival.

Each time they passed a flatscreen, Hobbie said, “Still the old stuff.” Then they were a block closer, just coming into visual range of the crowd at the gate, and men and women there began to notice their approach, to point.

Wedge felt his stomach tighten. “Come on, come on …”

“Maybe we did something wrong,” Hobbie said. “We might not have encoded the right security protocols or something. We probably failed to—oh, there it is.”

On the flatscreen of the next building before them appeared new images. Four human silhouettes were suddenly illuminated against the side of a building. Two threw back cloak hoods, revealing their faces—Wedge Antilles and Wes Janson, their expressions at first startled, then vengeful.

On the flatscreen view, Wes Janson threw back his cloak and then drew his blastsword. The view wavered as if the flatcam holder was trembling, and then the distance to the pilots increased as though the holder was backing quickly away.

But Janson ran forward, lunging with his blastsword, its tip leaving a light blue trace in the air. There was a blue flash offscreen to the left, then the world spun as the flatcam holder flailed around and crashed to the ground.

In a moment, the view settled on the front of the building—with its distinctive red riding-
farumme
above the main entryway—and became still. The pilots, still barely visible at the left edge of the flatscreen, rushed out of view.

Wedge nodded. It was a crude attempt, but if the people of Cartann didn’t take too much time to analyze it, it would withstand inspection—long enough to serve Wedge’s purposes.

The pilots had made the recording minutes go, standing before a very distinctive building a short distance from the air base. Hobbie had held the flatcam in one hand, a piece of brick-colored street cover in his other. The fourth silhouette in the flatcam view was actually Hobbie’s cloak, held up on the point of Tycho’s blastsword. When Janson had lunged, his blastsword had hit the street cover, resulting in the flash of light suggesting the flatcam holder had taken the blow instead.

Ahead, the crowd must be seeing the recording. A roar of anger and expectation rose from the men and women there. Within moments, most were in motion, heading straight toward the pilots’ transport—and beyond, Wedge hoped, to the building that had been their backdrop. “Get ready,” he said, and drew the shawllike garment closer about his face.

In seconds, the leading edges of the crowd reached them. Most ran past. One man, chest heaving from his exertions, pointed with his blastsword toward the building of the red
farumme
. “Did you see them?”

Wedge nodded and pointed the same direction.

Behind him arose a terrified, high-pitched wail. Wedge jerked around to look, but it was Hobbie, uttering a noise of panic and suffering toward the sky, tearing at the clothes over his chest as though he were in mortal dread. Wedge blinked at the display and turned around again to steer.

“Never fear,” panted the man who’d addressed them. “We will capture them, and rend them, and make them suffer for every—” Then the still-rolling transport was too far beyond him for his words to carry.

Moments later, the pilots were beyond the main
body of vengeful Adumari. “Good screaming, Hobbie,” Wedge said.

“I practice a lot,” Hobbie said, his voice hoarse. “Anytime Wes makes plans for the squadron, for example. Anytime a Corellian cooks for us.”

Janson and Wedge both turned to glare at him.

Ahead, perhaps thirty men and women remained before the gates. Many appeared to be watching the flatcams posted on the transparisteel walls to either side of the gates themselves, but quite a few still had their attention on the approaching transport. Beyond the gates, themselves transparisteel, were two guards in the black-and-gold livery of the air base.

“On the command ‘One,’ ” Wedge said, “fire on the gate locks. When I see them give, I’ll issue the command ‘Two.’ That means spray suppression fire toward the crowd. Over their heads unless return fire starts coming in. Understood?”

He heard three affirmatives.

As they neared, the closest members of the crowd began shouting: “Did you see them?” “Did they kill the camwielder?”

As if in answer, Wedge shouted, “One.” Then he drew and poured blaster fire into the locks on the gates.

Fire from the other three pilots joined his. One succession of blasts, probably Janson’s, chewed away with extraordinary accuracy at the mechanisms. The guards behind the gates threw themselves away and down.

In his peripheral vision, Wedge saw members of the crowd flinch away, then realize they weren’t being fired on. They began bringing blasters already in their hands to bear—

The locks weren’t yet clearly destroyed, but Wedge shouted, “Two!” He leaned to port and fired repeatedly, blowing holes in street cover, firing once, with reluctance, at a young man too daring or stupid to demonstrate any
self-preservative instincts; that man drew a careful bead on the transport and Wedge’s shot took him clean in the gut, folding him over, depositing him with a fatal wound on the street cover.

The transport crashed into the gates, shuddering from the impact—and the gates flew open. The transport rolled through. Janson, Hobbie, and Tycho continued pouring suppression fire out the back.

One of the guards stood, hands up, and ran after the transport. “Wait, wait!”

“Another madman,” Janson said. “Think I should shoot him?”

“If we shot every Adumari who was crazy, there’d be no one left,” Wedge said. “Let’s hear what he has to say.” He slowed the transport’s speed fractionally, allowing the guard to catch up.

“Cease fire, lord pilots,” said the man, “please. You’re upon air base grounds. You’re safe until you take off again.”

In fact, the crowd at the gate was no longer firing at the pilots. Nor were they entering the air base. Some were kicking the walls in frustration, shouting after the pilots.

An eerie wail bit into the air, rising and falling, its pitch and volume cutting at Wedge’s ears. He resisted the urge to clap his hands over his ears. “What’s that?”

The guard said, “Notification that you’re on base. Now the street hunters will go home and the air hunters will know it’s time to meet you. Your Blades are in the Lovely Carrion Flightknife hangar.”

“That’s somehow fitting.” Wedge patted the rail. “Come aboard and guide us to our starfighters.”

Liveried base personnel stood by at the hangar, ready with pilot’s suits, helmets, personal gear. The four Blade-32s standing ready were colored a glossy red rather than
black. “Seized from the pilots of the nation of Yedagon,” one of the hangar mechanics said, a touch of apology to his voice. “The palace wanted declared enemies to look like enemies.”

“Live weapons,” Wedge said, “instead of paint, this time, I trust.”

The mechanic nodded. Though he was a small man, his spadelike black beard made his face appear larger. “To sabotage your craft would be to sabotage your killers’ honor—and our own. Your vehicles are in exquisite condition.”

While Wedge and pilots ran through an abbreviated checklist, flight after flight of Blade-32s flew by the open hangar doors, close enough in to be seen easily.
Declaring their presence, announcing challenges we can’t refuse this time
, Wedge decided. “Keep personal comlinks on Red Flight frequencies,” Wedge said. “Tune Blade comm system defaults to the following frequencies:
Allegiance
, Rogue Squadron, Red Flight.”

He got four acknowledgments. He switched to
Allegiance
’s frequency. “Red Flight to
Allegiance
, come in. This is General Antilles, and this is a direct order.
Allegiance
, come in. Acknowledge our transmission.”

There was no answer. He hadn’t expected any. The pilots of Red Flight were on their own. He switched back to Red Flight frequency. “Announce readiness. Leader had two lit and in the green.”

“Two standing by, one hundred percent.”

“Three, ready for a furball.”

“Four is green-lighted.”

“Up on repulsors.” Wedge suited action to words by bringing his Blade-32 straight up two meters. Ahead of him, at the hangar exits, mechanics’ crews cheered, but whether it was for Red Flight’s success or merely for the fight to come, Wedge didn’t know.

“What’s our first order?” Wedge asked.

Tycho’s voice came back immediately: “ ‘Whatever they expect us to do, we don’t do.’ ”

“Correct, Two. Red Flight, come around one-eighty degrees.” He swung the nose of his Blade around until it was pointed directly toward the thin sheet-metal rear of the hangar. “Arm missile systems. On my command, fire your missiles and all speed forward. Ready—fire.”

Four missiles flashed instantaneously to the rear of the hangar and blew the sheet-metal panel into oblivion.

Wedge kicked his Blade-32 forward and began climbing as soon as he emerged through the hole.

His lightboard sensor data was confused, made erratic by the tremendous smoke cloud he was climbing through, but it clearly showed a half-dozen Blades hovering over the hangar, noses depressed, pointed toward the exit. Had Red Flight emerged the way they were supposed to, they would have done so right under the guns of this ambush party.

Wedge switched his weapons control to rear lasers—then switched them back again. “Red Flight, hold your fire until we’re clear.” He put his attention into climbing as fast as he could.

Had he fired and missed, had an ambusher Blade been hit and exploded, collateral damage would have punched through into the hangar, toward the front, just where the Lovely Carrion Flightknife mechanics waited.

His lightboard showed his pilots tucked in so close that he couldn’t detect them as individual signals. Below, the ambushers above the Lovely Carrion Flightknife hangar were breaking up, beginning their climb in Red Flight’s wake.

Other groups of flyers, circling at some distance, were turning in toward Red Flight. Two high-altitude formations began descents. Altogether, Wedge counted at least thirty enemy aircraft arrayed against Red Flight.

Thirty against four. In the past, he’d bullied his way
through such impossible odds, usually through use of stratagems set up well in advance. Here he had nothing like that working in his favor.

Red Flight was barely a thousand meters up when the first enemies, two separate half flightknives, neared attack range from overhead. “Loosen up the formation,” Wedge said. “Remember it’s me they’re likely to concentrate on. Tycho, stand off, we’re not in a normal wingman situation here. Fire at will.”

The dozen enemies screamed down at them with lasers blazing—eight or nine of them concentrating fire on Wedge. Wedge returned fire with his lasers but mostly concentrated on evasive maneuvering. He juked and jinked from side to side, set his Blade into an axial rotation to constantly change the image he offered to enemy lightboards, and fired by reflex as targets presented themselves.

He saw his lasers shear through one incoming Blade and stitch scoring marks on the fuselage of a second. He felt his own craft shudder as lasers hammered at his fuselage. Then he was past the diving wave of enemies, seeing them—seven, not twelve—turn in his wake and follow. Behind him, Reds Two, Three, and Four followed in very loose formation.

Ahead of his flight path at several thousand meters was another blip, diffusing into a new squad of foes. Below, the fighters who had intended to ambush Red Flight at the hangar were now joining the Blades who had just exchanged shots with them.

“I have an idea,” Wedge said. “Two, Three, Four, pull back and climb. Stay within a half kilometer of me. Set one missile each to detonate at a proximity of two hundred fifty meters. On my command, fire
at me
, then be prepared to prey on targets of opportunity.”

“Leader, this is Three. Are you crazy? Acknowledge.”

“Three, Leader. That’s affirmative.” Wedge put most of his attention on heading toward the new incoming
enemies, but kept track of two sets of range-to-target numbers: those for the Blades ahead and the ones for those behind.

When the two sets of numbers were approximately equal, and just out of standard weapons-lock range, Wedge fired one missile at the targets ahead and then pulled a tight vector to port. In doing so, he rotated axially to expose his belly to the enemies ahead, his top hull to the enemies coming on from behind.

He saw puffs of smoke, the beginnings of missile trails, from the enemies ahead. “Fire,” he said. He rotated again to narrow his cross section and climbed.

And his own pilots fired on him, as he’d instructed.

He felt a momentary chill of fear. What if the missiles malfunctioned? What if their proximity fuses ignited at a much closer distance than the quarter kilometer he’d dictated? He’d be dead before he felt the impact.

But three missiles detonated into huge clouds of opaque fire directly above and ahead of him. His Blade-32 rocked and shuddered as it met the overlapping shock waves from the explosions, and he heard countless metallic pings and clanks as shrapnel hit his hull.

A moment later, he was enveloped in fire and smoke. In his mind was a picture of the three explosions, placing him toward the westmost edge of one of the blasts; he snap-rolled, emerging belly-up from the cloud, then dove into it again. There was a moment of clear air as he crossed the open space between explosion clouds, then he was in fire and darkness again.

There was another detonation nearby, close enough to rattle his fighter and hurt his teeth. He heard equipment shattering within his Blade. Then he was in open air again. He glanced left and right, then at his lightboard, which now featured a crack across its crystal surface.

A moment ago, twenty-three Blades had been aimed at him. Now, only thirteen remained, their formations scattering, and the other members of Red Flight were
now diving upon them, loosing lasers and missiles as fast as fingers could pull triggers.

Wedge could see it in his mind’s eye, the way the opportunistic fighters had seen his lightbounce image improve to offer a target lock, the way they’d armed missiles and lasers and opened fire. He’d risen into friendly smoke clouds and the incoming missiles, deprived for a crucial second of their original target, sought out new ones … and found them in the oncoming friendly Blades. He looped after Tycho, dropping two missiles into the enemy formation before switching to lasers as he closed.