world. "You have failed me and yourself."
"Please," he croaked, but her silhouette gave no indica-
tion she had heard him.
"One more chance, perhaps."
"Yes, yes."
"If you fail again . . ."
Corran shook his head adamantly. "I won't, I won't."
"No, for your next failure will be your last, Nemesis
One." The silhouette folded its arms together. "Disappoint
me again and what is left of your life will be spent in agoniz-
ing atonement, disgrace, and, after a long time, death."
7
The reversion to realspace brought Wedge and the Rogues
out into a situation that just seemed like another simulator
run, with one minor variation. As he expected, Wedge saw
the space station slowly revolving in a star-stained void. Way
off toward the right, closer to the yellow star burning at the
center of the solar system, sat Yag'Dhul. The planet's grey
cloud cover made it only slightly more colorful than the
Givin who called it home.
The only variation from the opsims was the appearance
of a flight of four TIE starfighters patrolling the area around
the space station. Mynock, the R5 unit in Wedge's X-wing,
immediately screeched out a warning when he noticed them
off to port. Wedge glanced at his monitor, noted how the
TIEs moved into an attack formation, and smiled.
Action beats inaction every time. He keyed his corem
unit. "One flight, on me. Rogue Twelve, take the Defenders
in."
"As ordered," Aril Nunb replied.
Committing only one flight of fighters against an equal
number of TIEs, especially when he could have had two
dozen Y-wings and seven more X-wings join the fight, might
have seemed the height of arrogance, though Wedge knew it
was quite the opposite. While TIE pilots seldom managed to
amass the experience of their Rebel counterparts, they were
quite competent, and more than capable of killing in a dog-
fight. Warlord Zsinj's pilots had proved to be good fighters in
the past, and Wedge expected them to be nothing less in this
engagement.
The reasons he only pulled one flight from his formation
to deal with the TIEs were twofold. First, and most impor-
tant, their operation demanded that the threat to the station
caused it to scramble its fighters. The X- and Y-wings were
to draw the TIEs out and away from the station to a point in
the system where the B-wings would come in. The B-wings
were in hyperspace, already on their way, so if surprise were
to be achieved, Zsinj's troops had to be lured into position in
a timely manner.
The second reason to match forces with Zsinj was be-
cause having too many fighters involved in a battle tended to
wreak havoc on the efficacy of the pilots. The difference be-
tween a good pilot and a bad one, all other things being
equal, came down to situational awareness. A pilot who
could handle more variables, and keep track of more ships in
his mind would do better in combat than one who could only
deal with less in the way of distractions. Wedge had seen
statistical analyses that showed that kill ratios fell as the
number of fighters in a dogfight increased; so by keeping
the fight small, he made it easier for his people to grasp all
the aspects of the fight.
"Three, you and Four have the trailers. Two, I have lead.
Target the second TIE."
"As ordered, Rogue Leader." Rhysati Ynr led Erisi
Dlarit in a dive and sweeping turn that brought them around
toward the following pair of TIEs. Rhysati's attack vector
was intended to push the TIEs farther from the space station
and the rest of the Rebel force. Wedge saw the TIEs begin to
react to her maneuver, but they seemed content to let her
dictate the direction of the fight.
Wedge flipped his weapon's controls over to lasers and
set them for dual-firing. He pumped his shields up to full and
picked the lead eyeball as his target. They started to close,
coming head to head, with their wingmen off starboard and
hanging slightly back, each formation being the mirror image
of the other. He smiled. Just where I want him. "Rogue Two, do you have your target?"
"Confirmed, lead." Asyr's voice came through the
comm unit cool and steady.
"Get ready. On my mark, I'm going to foul your target.
Shoot immediately after that with a proton torpedo."
"As ordered."
"Three, two, one, mark!" Wedge rolled the X-wing up
and over in a barrel-roll to port. His target did the same
thing, sweeping his fighter across his wingman's flight path.
That momentarily blinded the second TIE and caused him to
shy. Wedge glanced at his monitor and saw a report of a
proton torpedo launch, then touched the starboard rudder
pedal a second before inver ting the X-wing and making his
pass on the TIE fighter.
Before Wedge applied rudder, the two ships had been
heading straight at each other. The rudder drifted the
X-wing's nose about ten degrees to starboard, pulling him
out of line with the TIE. The inversion flopped the
starfighter, bringing the nose back into line with the TIE.
Before Zsinj's pilot could react, Wedge's fighter streaked in
at him and started shooting.
The first pair of red laser-bolts missed low, but the next
two pairs swept up and across the ball cockpit. One of the
TIE's lasers died in a cloud of duraplast mist. Wedge's third
shot lanced through the transparisteel viewport, igniting and
melting all manner of components and equipment. The TIE
starfighter rolled up on the starboard solar panel, then tight-
ened down into a screw-spiral before exploding.
A second later a blue proton torpedo slammed into the
port wing on the second TIE. The black solar panel closed
around the torpedo like cloth around a thrown stone. The
torpedo itself punched through the panel and penetrated the
fighter's hull before detonating. The blast ripped the back
half off the cockpit pod, freeing the engines to soar further
in-system while the shattered husk of a fighter tumbled on
through the void.
"Nice shot, Deuce."
"Thanks for the setup, lead."
Wedge brought the X-wing up and around to the origi-
nal heading and saw a proton torpedo from Erisi's ship
finish off a TIE. Farther along he saw streams of green
laser-bolts spraying out from the space station. At the ex-
tremes of range the fire did not seriously threaten the incom-
ing fighters, but it did keep them away long enough for the
station to scramble its TIEs. Zsinj's fliers boiled up and out
from the station and rose on an intercept course with the
Rebel fighters.
"Lead, I have a dozen Interceptors and eight starfight-
ers."
"I copy, Twelve." That should be everything they have,
unless they're holding something back. Keeping ships in re-
serve made little or no sense to Wedge, but he'd long since
learned that warfare and tactics seldom make a lot of sense
to the opposition. I just hope our run away from the station
looks believable.
Aril Nunb led the Rogues and Y-wings up and away
from the station. The squints and eyeballs came on in pur-
suit, hot to thin the ranks of the Y-wings. The Interceptors
opened a lead on the TIE starfighters and started to close fast
with the Y-wings. Aril brought her X-wing over, and the rest
of the Rogues followed her through a loop that took them
back toward the Interceptors while the Y-wings continued
heading away from their pursuers.
As the X-wing and Interceptor formations began to
spread out into clouds, the B-wings burst into realspace and
shot straight into the gap between the squints and the eye-
balls from the station. Wedge marveled at how each cruci-
form ship flew with its wings and fuselage whirling around
to keep the cockpit stable despite a wild series of maneuvers
and course corrections. Having flown a B-wing a few times,
he could appreciate the ship's firepower, but the way it
moved and flew made him feel less like a pilot than a driver.
The B-wings slashed in at the Interceptors. Half of them
seemed content to attack using lasers or blasters, while the
other half employed ion cannons to take the squints out of
the fight without killing them. Blue ion-bolts caught In-
terceptors in full flight, sending electricity skitter-jagging
over the hulls. Laser and blaster fire ripped into other In-
terceptors, burning holes through solar panels and cockpits.
The B-wing ambush scattered the Interceptors, but the
X-wings coming in at them did not break off ill pursuit. They
left that to the B-wings. The Rogues pushed on through the
crumbling Interceptor formation, shot past the B-wings and,
as One Flight reunited with the squadron, sailed on in at the
eyeball formation.
The first pass came head to head. Static hissed through
the X-wing cockpit as TIE lasers stung his forward shields
repeatedly. Wave after wave of green light washed over the
shields, but Wedge ignored it. He concentrated instead on his
monitor and shifted the X-wing a bit to starboard, trapping a
TIE fighter in the center of his targeting crosshairs. He tight-
ened down on the trigger, pulsing kilojoules of scarlet energy
into an eyebali's cockpit.
A roiling explosion shredded that ship. Wedge kicked
the X-wing up onto the starboard S-foil, then climbed up and
away from the expanding ball of gas. Letting his roll con-
tinue over the top, he dropped the X-wing into a dive, then
rolled out to port and came around on an arc between the
cloud of fighters and the station. He glanced off to starboard
and saw Asyr still with him, which prompted him to toss her
a salute. "Glad you stayed with me." "That's my job."
From his vantage point at the periphery of the battle he
could see a number of things that impressed him. The
Rogues had hit the eyeballs very hard, but Zsinj's people
regrouped in good order instead of scattering. Without
shields, the TIE starfighters were really no match for the
X-wings, but remaining together made them far more dan-
gerous than individual ships fleeing. Whoever the leader of
that squadron was, he was sharp enough to keep his people
together and head them out and away from the fray.
"Rogue flights Two and Three, leave the flight of eye-
balls alone and join the Y-wings. One flight, we're watching
the eyeballs." Wedge hit two buttons on his flight console.
"Mynock, see if you can get me a frequency for the comm
unit communications between the eyeballs."
The droid hooted his understanding of the order.
While Wedge waited for the droid to get him that infor-
mation, he watched the B-wings finish off the squints and
head in toward the station. Wedge's monitor showed seven
Interceptors hanging dead in space. That number was im-
pressive, even in spite of the ambush, because blowing ships
up was far easier than taking their electrical systems down.
While he appreciated the fact that the pilots had not been
killed when their ships had been stopped, he knew the choice
to use ion cannons on them had been made for practical
rather than altruistic reasons.
Each of those pilots will be debriefed, and what they
know will be added to our store of inlrmation concerning
Zsinj. It is entirely possible some or all of them served on the
Iron Fist, and learning about the ship's condition is of vital
importance. It represents the core of Zsinj's might, and will
let us determine how truly dangerous he is.
]'he Rebel fighters all converged on the Empress-class
space station with the Y-wings in the lead. While ungainly,
the Y-wings were still not easy targets to hit. The station's
weaponry sent energy beams shooting out at the attackers,
but the incoming fighters supplied three targets for each
weapon system, overwhelming the crews defending the sta-
tion. Added to that was the ability of fighters to approach
while using part of the station to shield them from many of
the lasers. Using targeting data supplied by other ships, the
fighters were able to pop from cover and fire at targets that
had previously been unseen.
The swooping, diving, rolling, and climbing cloud of
fighters boiled around the station like insects around a bright
light. Direct hits on a fighter would make the craft break off
and loop away until its shields were recharged, then head
back in. The battle to defend the station was lost from the
kept them fighting long after it made sense for them to do so.
Mynock beeped, and Wedge saw a corem unit frequency
come up on his monitor. He punched the number into his
comm unit and keyed his microphone. "Starfighter flight,
this is Commander Antilles of the New Republic Armed
Forces. If you power down your weapons, we'll consider you
noncombatants. The same offer goes for the people on the
station."
"I copy, Antilles." The voice coming back to Wedge
through the comm unit had the metallic echo commonly in-
jected in speech by Imperial equipment. "My flight is disarm-
ing itself. I'll pass your message on to the station chief, Valsil
Torr."
"Obliged, starfighter." Wedge checked his sensors for
hostiles as he waited for a return message.
"Antilles, Torr has the message and is powering down
his weapons. The station is yours. Be careful, though, he's a
wily old Twi'lek."
Wedge smiled. Though the communications gear had
robbed the voice of any humanity, it couldn't kill the person-
ality in it. He might have been amazed that someone who
had just been shooting at him and his people would so
quickly offer helpful advice, but he'd long since learned that
warriors from all sides of any conflict had more in common
than not. "I copy the advice. I appreciate it."
"One thing, Antilles."
"Yes?"
"If we surrender to you, will you haul us out of here?"
"Don't want to be around when the Iron Fist gets here?"
"Not especially."
No surprise, that. Unlike the starfighters the Rebellion
used, the TIE fighters were not equipped with hyperdrives.
TIEs traveled between battles in the bellies of ships like the
Iron Fist. The flight of starfighters was trapped unless Wedge
arranged transport for them out of the system. Zsinj had a
reputation for being short-tempered, so leaving them behind
was tantamount to murdering them, and Wedge had no de-
sire to have their murders on his conscience.
"Starfighter, surrendering to me means you'll lose your
ship."
"That's a problem, Antilles. We're all mercenaries. We
lose our ships and we starve." The TIE pilot fell silent for a
moment, then continued. "Of course, no reason to eat and
live if you can't fly."
"I understand, starfighter." Wedge thought for a mo-
ment. "I have an idea. If you hire on as guards to fly cover
for one of the freighters coming in, you can get out of here
and be free."
"Freighters?"
"Coming for the bacta."
"Bacta. So that's what we were guarding."
"And you can continue guarding it all the way to Corus-
cant, where it's needed. Give me your word you won't fight
against the New Republic in the future, and you've got a
deal."
"You have it, Antilles."
Right on cue, a dozen and 'a half bulk freighters and
specialty haulers started coming out of hyperspace and cruis-
ing in toward the space station. Most were blocky, squared-
off craft that had seen better days, but a few were more
elegant ships whose very designs were tributes to the roman-
ticism of space travel. One, a converted Baudo-class yacht,
glided through the void like a metal simulacrum of the Corel-
lian sea creature that gave the ship her name.
"Starfighter, the Baudo-class yacht there is the Pulsar
Skate. I'll have the captain contact you on this frequency.
Stand by."
"I copy."
Wedge opened a channel to the Skate. "Skate, this is
Rogue Leader."
"Mirax here, Wedge. We're fourth in line to head in.