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

scrapped in favor of a concussion missile launching sys-tem with a six-missile
magazine, then a hyperdrive motivator
and shield generators had been added. Two lasers completed their weapons array.
While the Gand bombers were still slow, the shields were strong; and Wedge found
the ships preferable to Y-wings for the long-range raid they were making.
He had not intended to have the Gands come along on the mission, but Ooryl had
insisted they would anyway since they were ruetsavii-and what exactly that meant
Wedge was as yet uncertain. In the preliminary and simulator runs they made on
the mission, the Gands had proved very competent and skillful, though Wedge
thought Ooryl could outfly all of them.
Wedge checked the chronographic readout on his main screen, then glanced up at
the horizon. The mountains are right where they're supposed to be. Over the rise
and the valley should take us right in on target. Pulling back on the X-wing's
stick, he brought his fighter up so the sun rising at his back could illuminate
his X-wing. He reached up with his right hand, flicking the switch that brought
the S-foils into attack position, the keyed his comm unit. "Rogues, we go in.
Chir'daki, stand by."
Tugging his stick to the right, he kicked the X-wing into a barrel roll to
starboard, then leveled out and began his run through the valley. The mountains
rose up off both S-foils but were far enough away that Wedge didn't feel as
cramped as he did on the Death Star trench run or even the conduit mis-sion on
Borleias. His onboard computer matched the terrain to the mission map it had in
memory, sounded a mild drift alarm and Wedge corrected the problem almost
uncon-sciously.
Wedge thumbed the controls over to proton torpedoes and linked the fire of both
launch tubes. He kept his hand easy on the stick, nudging the craft this way and
that, then
shot out over the edge of a three-hundred-meter-tall cliff. As
he rolled, he saw a black valley dotted with lights and
brought his fighter around on a heading for a large dark
block with flashing red and yellow lights on each of its cor-
ners. His targeting crosshairs dropped into the shadowed outline and he pulled
the trigger.
Two proton torpedoes shot out on tongues of blue flame
and streaked away at the building. They hit barely nanosec-onds apart and
detonated just after punching through the ferrocrete wall. Their subsequent
explosions vomited argent fire out through their entry holes, then through the
roof and out the windows on the upper three floors. The roof collapsed in on
itself, leaving the fire on the building's interior lighting up the night like
magma in a volcano's heart.
With a flick of his thumb Wedge shifted the X-wing over to laser fire and left
it firing single shots in sequence. Trigger-ing a burst of fire, he sent a hail
of red laser bolts burning through the night. His shots tracked over the main
refinery building and down through the darkness. Something he hit exploded
brilliantly, sending a red-gold fireball into the air. It imploded but still
bumped him around as he flew through where it had been, then he was over the bay
and starting a long loop over Qretu 5's largest ocean.
As he came around he got a chance to look back at the Q5A7 plant and felt his
stomach fold in on itself. The cliff wall and the waters of the bay reflected
the light from the burning refinery, magnifying it and spreading it all over the