"Michael Stackpole "The Bacta War"" - читать интересную книгу автора

pulled the trigger. Sithspawn! What is that?
A ship the size of a Carrack-class light cruiser ranged up from the Graveyard,
cutting in past the Aggregator's stern and in at the Corrupter's bridge. The
ship's white nose was separated from the bloodred after portion by a big black
stripe slashed on the diagonal across it. Wedge realized he'd seen that color
scheme on a ship before, but he didn't connect it with Tycho's X-wing until the
cruiser opened up on the Corrupter with its weaponry.
Five heavy turbolasers and ten laser cannons poured scarlet energy into the
Destroyer's unshielded hull. The laser cannon shots skittered across the white
surface, stippling it with black marks and exploding turbolaser batteries. The
heavy turbolasers concentrated their fire on the Destroyer's tower, burning
through the hull on deck after deck.
Wedge kicked his thrust in at full and rolled his X-wing so he put the Graveyard
over his head and the Destroyer's hull beneath his fighter. Off his starboard
S-foils a silvery glow built as the first of the proton torpedoes hit. The
energy storm they created splashed up and around the edges of the shield. Wedge
pushed the X-wing lower, skimming it along the Destroyer's hull. Just like being
back in the trenches.
Wedge jinked the ship as turbolasers and the starfighter behind him tried to
target him, then hauled back on his stick. The aiming reticle for his proton
torpedoes had burned red for the entirety of his flight, but Wedge held back
until his true target sank down into the reticle. He saw one Imperial officer
standing in the middle of the bridge viewport and watched his mouth open in
surprise.
Wedge hit the trigger.
A pair of proton torpedoes stabbed through the trans-paristeel viewport, filling
the bridge with blue fire, then deto-nated. The bridge's blocky outline plumped
and softened for a second before the aft port corner blew out, vomiting golden
fire. Backblast sent smaller golden geysers back out through the forward
viewports, but Wedge pulled up between them, then rolled and dove past the
Destroyer's aft.
"Tycho, hit the cruiser!"
"I copy. On me, Rogues. Beginning my run now."
Coming up over the belly of the Destroyer Wedge got a
good look at the battle. Sporadic turbolaser and ion cannon fire came from the
Corrupter, but far more numerous were the escape pods exploding from its hull.
The Aggregator tried to shoot at the snubfighters, but most were using the dying
Destroyer as a shield as they approached, and the Aggrega-tor's commander seemed
reluctant to shoot in that direction.
The light cruiser came back around and made a run across the Aggregator's stern.
The ships exchanged fire, but the Interdictor Cruiser could only bring a few of
its weapons to bear on the other ship. Neither ship did significant damage to
the other, though the Aggregator's starboard shields did go down.
"On my mark, launch torpedoes. Mark."
On Tycho's command the X-wings launched their mis-siles. Blue pinpoints of fire
blossomed from various points around the Graveyard and shot in at the
Interdictor Cruiser. The red light on Wedge's console went out as the ship's
com-mander shunted power from the gravity well projectors to his shields. That's
the move to make, but did he do it in time?
Most of the proton torpedoes, beginning with the two Tycho launched, slammed