"Aaron Allston "Iron Fist" (STARWARS. X-Wing #6)" - читать интересную книгу автора

they were just archives. But I was able to patch the data into
their sensor net, as though it were data being received now, and
it triggered an automated response. Any second now-"
In the distance, two squadrons of TIE fighters lifted, rac-ing toward the sky and the presumed enemies waiting there. Instead of continuing his thought, Castin just pointed. Face said, "Six, do we have anything from Ten?"
"We have. She is coming. We have given her our vector."
"Coded, I hope."
"Coded." The Wraiths' code for this mission included a
very simple method for transmitting locations, in case their scramblers were decoded: Locations were given in standard Imperial grid format, but with the values reversed, south for north, east for west. It might take only one visual check by stormtroopers to confirm that the locations were incorrect, but the time tolerances for this mission were so tight that this might be all the help the Wraiths needed.
Kell and Phanan, the pilots least experienced with TIE
fighters-and experienced not at all with TIE interceptors,
even in simulators-were the first to emerge from the hangar. Running close to the ground on repulsorlifts, they crept out tentatively from the hangar's interior. Even with their caution, Phanan failed to decelerate correctly and slowly glided into the building across the lane, stopping with a bump.
Wedge, Janson, and Dia, more sure of their control over



the vehicles, emerged next. On Wedge's cue, they turned, ori-enting back toward the open hangar door, and fired, destroy-ing the three interceptors remaining within. Then they turned up the lane and cut in their twin ion engines, accelerating far faster than their X-wings. Phanan and Kell fell into position behind them.
"Stay next to the ground," Wedge ordered. "Keep repul-sorlifts running at full until I give the word." He glanced over his sensors. They showed his small squad of five interceptors running at just above ground level, plus another thirty-six TIE fighters, three squadrons' worth, rapidly ascending toward presumed enemies.
One switch gave him access to the sensor data being broadcast by the base. It showed a sky crowded with enemies. Initial telemetry identified them as somewhat antiquated TIE fighters and some other Imperial-style support vehicles. Though they were Imperial vehicles, their sudden appearance, their aggressive pattern of approach, and their lack of response to normal hails had caused the base computer to flag them as probable unfriendlies. The three squadrons of base TIE fight-ers looked decidedly overmatched in numbers, but as Wedge watched, another two squadrons rose to join them.
As buildings flicked by right and left, Wedge locked down the broadcast sensor signal and transmitted its source to the others. "All right, Wraiths. We're doing one pass, then we're going home." He pulled back on the stick, popped up over the rooftops, and angled toward the source of that signal. The oth-ers fell into formation behind him.
They came within firing range almost instantly. Wedge linked his four lasers for quad fire. The interceptor's weapons screen initially had a little difficulty identifying the base's com-mand center, a huge, rounded bunker, as the intended target, but once it locked the target in, it managed to define the build-ing, its bristling gun emplacements, and its numerous sensor emplacements as discrete targets. Wedge tagged the nearest set of sensors as his first target and said, "Fire."
The interceptors roared toward the bunker, their twenty
lasers acting as five channels of destruction, laying waste to the
surface of the bunker, tearing through the sensor arrays and gun emplacements as though the metal were so much paper. Wraith Squadron screamed across the bunker, mere meters above its now nearly molten surface, and then banked off toward freedom.
There was now traffic on all the base's lanes-skimmers carry-ing stormtroopers to ready areas, civilian workers running on foot, some of them only partially dressed, to their duty stations.
But no one seemed inclined to question a well-disciplined
group of five stormtroopers running with purpose.
Up ahead, two squads of stormtroopers, more than twenty, turned onto the Wraiths' lane and headed toward them. "Stay alert," Face said. "If they address us, respond on the run. If they challenge us, open fire and run harder."
But a skimmer with an enclosed bed turned onto the same lane behind the dual squadron and accelerated into them, flat-tening some of the stormtroopers, knocking others hard out of the way. The skimmer accelerated toward the Wraiths. Runt said, "We think our ride has arrived."
The skimmer pulled up and swerved as it settled, placing its port and rear sides between the Wraiths and the nest of an-gry stormtroopers. The door was already half down when the skimmer touched the ground.
"Good work, Ten," Face said. "I'11 take gunner position. Everyone else in back." Face slid into the seat beside Shalla; the rest trotted into the bed.
Face heard one of them, Donos from his voice, trip, fall, and swear. He glanced at Sha!la. She shrugged. "I had to leave a couple of casualties back there," she half explained. A mo-ment later, the first of the blaster shots from the pursuing stormtroopers hit the vehicle's rear and side armor, and Donos came over the corem: "Go go go!"
They exited via the same gate by which they'd entered. This time,
though, they didn't stop to get authorization or for the guards to



open the gates. As they approached at full speed, Face raked the guardhouse with blaster fire, forcing the officer on duty to duck, preventing him from activating the magnetic locks, magnetic containment fields, repulsor-activated land mines, or other traps the Imperials routinely had laid out for vehicles approaching or departing a base in an unfriendly fashion.
They hit the spare metal gates, slamming them open and off their hinges, and roared up the road out of the base.
But a mere half klick away, around the first of the bends in the road and sheltered from sight by the very hill Wedge had earlier used for reconnaissance, Shalla set the skimmer down again. The Wraiths scrambled out. Shalla keyed a code into the keypad on the control panel and the skimmer rose once more, winging off into the night toward the distant lights of the city.
"What course is it taking?" Face asked.
Shalla shook her head. "I wrecked most of its higher
processes when I destroyed the comm system. All I was able to do was give it a ballistic course toward the city."
"That should be enough. Let's get out of sight."
The Wraiths were in a ditch, helmets off, only the eyes and
the tops of their heads showing, when the three pursuit skim-mers flew by, following the skimmer's course.
A minute later, they were with Piggy at the site of the civil-ian skimmer that had brought them here. Captain Wanatte, still unconscious, was trussed up in back.
The Wraiths peeled out of their stormtrooper armor, leav-ing them in sweat-drenched street clothing appropriate to the world of Halmad. They quickly loaded all the armor compo-nents into a plastic crate in the back of the skimmer. Then they boarded. "Back to the spaceport," Face said. "Slowly. Sedately. As befits a bunch of tourists who've been off drinking and recreating all evening and are now too tired to twitch."
Shalla nodded. "Pretty close to an accurate description."
Hawk-bat Base was situated on a large spherical rock deep in the asteroid belt of the Halmad system.
Years before, it had been the Tonheld Mining Corpora-