Isard's Revenge (29 page)

The instructor’s voice rose, but Corran didn’t turn around to look at him. “Your attitude, Captain Horn, is not really conducive to learning.”

Corran shrugged, then turned and dropped into a crouch beside Gavin. “Go on.”

The Imp sighed. “This first exercise will be a simple one. You’ll find the Sienar Fleet Systems TIE Defender is the fastest, best-equipped starfighter in the galaxy. Unlike other TIE designs, it incorporates shields, which provide the pilot with an improved survival profile. It has four lasers that can be fired singly, linked, or quadded, as well as two ion cannons. It carries eight concussion missiles or proton torpedoes depending upon mission profile, and has a tractor beam. It is very fast and highly maneuverable, both in space and atmosphere. Finally, it has hyperspace drive, which allows the ship to accomplish deep space missions without requiring a larger ship to deliver it to the target.”

Corran shifted his shoulders uneasily while Hobbie coughed into his hand. Had the Imperials managed to deliver
the TIE Defenders in sufficient quantities before the Emperor’s death, the Rebellion could have foundered. The shields alone would have allowed pilots to survive errors and learn from their mistakes, which would have made the Imperial Navy’s fighter corps much deadlier. While it still took a good pilot to get a fighter through combat in one piece, pilots only got good if they didn’t die; and the Defender would keep a lot more of them alive.

The instructor pointed a remote toward the dozen ball cockpit simulators and pressed a button. The round egress hatches on the tops hissed open and rose slowly. “Get into your fighters, seal up your flight suits, and initiate the engine start sequence. Once everyone is ready to go, we’ll begin.”

Corran climbed up on the cockpit. He pulled the hatch closed behind him, locked it down, and flipped the safety switches on the explosive release bolts. Dropping down onto the seat, he strapped himself in, then pulled on his helmet and sealed it against the flight suit’s high collar. He connected the hoses to the environmental control unit he wore on his chest, then stuck out his tongue and activated the comlink via a tongue switch.

“Red Nine online with communications.” Corran shook his head. He didn’t like the Rogues having to shift away from the Rogue designator. Wedge hadn’t liked it, either, which is why he’d chosen Red. As he’d explained out of earshot of the Imps, Red Squadron had been the designation for the group that destroyed the first Death Star, and that made the choice a bit more palatable to Corran.

He shrugged.
We’ll just have to use the Red designator as inspiration, I guess.
Corran punched up the ignition sequence and got console lights showing his engines were both running at 100 percent efficiency. He hit two other buttons that shunted energy into the shields and energy weapons. He brought his heads-up display to life, then reached out with his gloved hands and took hold of the fighter’s controls.

As with other TIEs, the Defender worked with a wheel and yoke control system. Pulling back and pushing forward
would make the fighter climb and dive respectively, just as the X-wing stick would do the same on that fighter. To get the ship to bank and turn, however, the pilot twisted the blocky panel mounted to the top of the yoke. As with a landspeeder’s controls, turning to the left would send the ship left and vice versa. The grips on either end of the panel had trigger switches to fire weapons, and between them lay an array of buttons and switches that controlled the throttle, weapon selection, target acquisition, data streaming to the primary monitor, and a variety of lesser functions. Each was manipulable with a flick of a thumb, and though Corran preferred the X-wing’s stick, he didn’t find this system that tough to work with.

Rudder pedals contracted and expanded maneuvering planes that vectored engine thrust, swinging the fighter’s tail around for quick course alterations. This contributed to the fighter’s added maneuverability which, along with the shields, would make the ship very hard to kill.

“Red Nine is good to go.” He glanced low left at the auxiliary monitor showing the status of his shields, then up at the lines of lights representing his weapons. Dead center in the weapons display bar were two counters indicating he was carrying eight concussion missiles.
This is a lot of firepower for a fighter—more than enough to fight a B-wing to a standstill.

The instructor’s voice filled his helmet. “The mission is simple: You will engage your hyperdrive on your current heading and drop out of hyperspace in thirty seconds. You will find a small space station and some freighter traffic around it. Approach the freighter and station closely enough to scan their cargoes. Expect possible Reb … 
pirate
activities in the area and deal with them as warranted.”

“Red Lead copies. Hyperdrive on my mark. Three, two, one, mark.”

The computer-generated display in the fighter’s various viewpoints became a shifting tunnel of light. Corran began to yawn and lifted his hand to cover it, but his hand bounced off his helmet. He growled mildly.
Having to wear these helmets is reason enough for any Imp pilot to come over to the Rebellion.

He watched the chronometer on his main display trickle down to zero, then his ship reverted to realspace. A space station with three wedge-shaped platforms grafted at regular angles to the middle of its long central spindle came into view. He dropped his crosshairs on it and called up a sensor scan. The computer designated it Yag-prime and a chill ran through Corran.
It’s the station at Yag’Dhul, the one we used as our base for ending Isard’s rule of Thyferra. Someone here is being very cute.

Corran brushed his right thumb over a targeting selection switch, toggling his way through the variety of ships in the system. One freighter came up as the
Pulsar Skate
, another as the
Last Chance
, and yet another as the
Millennium Falcon. They even have the
Star’s Delight
here, the freighter that took me off Garqi and brought me to the Rebellion. Isard’s tossing up here all the freighters I mentioned in my
Lusankya
interrogations, reminding me how much she’d gotten out of me.

He keyed his comlink. “They’re playing some games with us, Lead. Not a problem for me, but we need to stay sharp.”

“My thoughts, too, Nine.” Wedge’s voice faded for a moment. “Five, take Two Flight and head along two-four mark two-seven-three to check the two bulk freighters, then take a run by the station.”

“As ordered, Lead.” Tycho’s voice crackled along the comm frequency. “Two Flight on me.”

Corran rolled his trip to starboard, then leveled out and swooped in behind Tycho’s fighter. Inyri brought Red Six up on Tycho’s port side and Ooryl dropped Seven aft right of Corran’s fighter. Nrin cruised Eight into a high cover position to the formation’s aft. Their course brought them in below the
Falcon
and sensors reported it was hauling droids and weapons. Corran snorted, half expecting Isard to have filled the imaginary freighter’s hold with spice.

Next came the
Pulsar Skate
, but sensors showed it as
carrying passengers. Neither of the freighters reacted in any way to the fighter fly-by, but Corran kept watching them on his aft scope.
If the shields come up, they could be the backstop for an ambush.
He ruddered his fighter around to star-board, following the course correction Tycho made to bring the flight in on a long loop toward the station. Way out to port he could see flashes of One Flight lining up to do the same thing.

“Six has readings of ships powering up in the station.”

“Seven confirms. Profile is that of Defenders.”

Corran frowned as a dozen TIE Defenders came up out of the station. A red light began blinking on his HUD, indicating that something had a target lock on him, then a second burned to let him know a missile had been launched at him. “Nine has incoming missiles.”

“Evasive, all, now!”

Tycho’s fighter rolled hard to port, while Corran went starboard. He hesitated for a second, then began to thumb his way through the various threats in the system. He found the missile heading his way and turned his ship until it was coming straight in at his tail. He watched its range scroll down on the main display, and when it hit a hundred meters, he snaprolled to port, inverting his fighter, then he dove for a second.

The missile shot past and its momentum took it well beyond his ship. Reversing his roll, Corran brought the Defender’s nose back up and targeted the missile. He ruddered his ship around, keeping his fighter facing the missile as it cruised through the arc that would bring it back on target to him. When it oriented on him again, he hit the trigger under his right index finger. Two pairs of green laser bolts hissed out. The second pair hit the missile, melting it. The propellant combusted into a big ball of flame, and an explosion by the warhead a second later snuffed it.

Something inside of Corran kind of gave way as he glanced at his scopes. The Yag’Dhul station bristled with turbolaser batteries and was filling the space around it with lots of cohesive light. A dozen enemy trips twisted and spun through the system, while the Rogues scattered via evasive
maneuvers. Part of him realized it was only an exercise, and the fact that the Imps would ambush them just to show the cocky Rebels how good they were didn’t surprise him. He even allowed as how, in their boots, he’d have seriously contemplated the same thing. It probably was good for both groups of pilots.

Another part of him disagreed though. For these Imps, this simulator battle was redemption and justification. If they could beat the Rogues, then the Empire for which they worked, the Empire that had been their mentor and provider,
that
Empire suddenly had been lost only because
they
had not been employed in its defense. The frustration they felt at not having been present at Endor could be erased. In their minds the Emperor could have lived, his Empire could have continued, and Coruscant would never have fallen, if only they had been there to defeat the Rebels, to defeat Rogue Squadron.

But they weren’t there.
Corran snorted angrily.
Time to show them why it was just as well they weren’t.

Hitting switches on his control panel, he flipped his weapons over to concussion missiles and doubled them up. Then he dialed his throttle back to two-thirds of maximum. By hitting another switch, he shunted the energy stored in the energy weapon capacitors into the engines, bringing his speed back up to the maximum the fighter could do while fully recharging weapons and shields. Rolling to port and starting to climb, he oriented himself toward a pair of trips that were cruising in on Ooryl’s fighter. The Gand had his Defender dancing, making it tough for the Imps to do more than hit him with grazing shots.

“Seven, this is Nine. Move to two-four-oh mark ten, now. Break port on my mark.”

A double-click came back on the frequency to let him know Ooryl heard the order and would comply. The Defender leveled out and started off on the vector Corran had indicated. The Imps made course corrections to keep coming on Ooryl’s tail. Corran pointed his Defender at an intercept point, then kicked the throttle in at full.

His speed climbed, as did his closure rate with the two trips following Ooryl. “Seven, mark.”

Ooryl’s Defender rolled hard to port and the Imp trips trailed after him like hatchlings after a mother mynock. They cruised right across Corran’s crosshairs and his target acquisition system gave him a hard lock fast, since he’d closed to point-blank range faster than the Imps expected. He hit his trigger, drilling two concussion missiles into the first trip, then ruddered around and launched two more at the second one.

The first pair of missiles hit the Defender’s aft shield simultaneously and collapsed it, only expending half the energy released by their detonations. The rest of the burning plasma ball they created melted away the top fin and took with it the top of the cockpit. It also fused thrust louvers, whirling the Defender into a spin that sent it back toward the Yag’Dhul station.

The next pair of missiles hit their target in sequence. The first missile blast took down the aft shield, while the second missile flew straight into one of the two ion engines. Ion thrust flared into a silver-white cone, then the missile’s explosion blew the cockpit’s forward viewport out. The Defender ripped itself into huge pieces and Corran flew through the middle of the dying explosion.

He nodded grimly. Given the Defenders’ warning systems for target locks, any long-distance shots would give his prey the same chance to destroy the missile or begin to evade that he would have. Only by refusing to aim at them until the last second could he take them by surprise. The only true surprise he had to work with was the enemy’s failure to realize that he could manufacture strategies that would work with their equipment as well as they could, if not better.

Two of the enemy Defenders vectored in on his aft, so he rolled to starboard and began a weaving run in at the space station. Green laser bolts flashed past him from the rear, while curling lines of red bolts rose toward him from the station. Course correcting a bit to the right, he raced in at the station’s central spire. His flight path set him up to run a bit starboard of it, and on his rear scope he saw the Defenders split to pursue him as he came around.

As he came in tight he chopped his throttle back, then activated the Defender’s tractor beam. It latched hold of the space station, but since it massed far more than the star-fighter, it didn’t go anywhere. Instead the tractor beam acted like a line that shortened the arc of Corran’s turn. The pilot flicked the beam off again, then throttled up and hauled back on the yoke to climb.

His HUD went red as his crosshairs swept over one of the Defenders coming after him. He launched another pair of concussion missiles, which drilled into the trip and ripped it apart. Then the missile-lock warning light flashed on his display, prompting him to invert and dive. The concussion missile that had been coming at him shot past, but his dive carried him straight into a turbolaser salvo from the station.