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

valley. The X-wings that had come in behind him had simi-larly launched proton
torpedoes at ground targets. The mis-siles, which were powerful enough to put
quite a dent in an Imperial Star Destroyer, blasted apart unarmored buildings.
Lasers filled the night like lightning strikes, melting roads, setting trees on
fire and exploding anything even vaguely in-cendiary when they hit.
Though the targets they had specified had been strictly industrial, collateral
damage was inescapable. At least one bright fire burned in what should have been
a residential complex for plant workers-clearly one of the proton torpe-does had
overshot its mark-and Wedge didn't know if the ground target his lasers had
destroyed had been droid-driven or if it contained innocent bystanders. Coming
in prior to dawn had been an attempt to minimize the presence of in-nocents in
the target zones, but even minimal involvement of noncombatants meant some of
them would die.
Part of Wedge didn't want to care because the raid was meant to make Isard pay
for Halanit's destruction. That raid
had been collateral damage through and through, but mur-dering Thyferrans,
Vratix, and assorted resident alien work-ers would hardly make Isard atone for
what she had done. The only pain she would feel would be the loss of bacta and
her ability to produce it. To her, those we kill are reason enough for
continuing her predations, whereas those in-nocents she kills are just
punishment for our misdeeds.
Another part of Wedge wanted to abort the Twi'leks' run on the valley. The
damage done had been rather ample. The Deathseeds would only be able to strafe
the ground, sowing more terror in the populace, but probably not doing much to
further cripple the refinery. What has already been done should be enough, but I
know it isn't. He keyed his comm unit. "Chir'daki, you are good to go."
He got a double-click acknowledgment from Tal'dira, then Corran's voice broke
in. "Lead, I have multiple eyeball contacts coming up off the deck to the
north."
"I copy, Nine. Seven, you have command of the ground op. Two, Nine, and Ten, on
me to deal with the intruders." Wedge hauled back on his stick and brought the
X-wing up in a loop. Rolling out to port, he saw Asyr pull up on his star-board
S-foil while Corran and Ooryl joined him to the left. "How many, Nine?"
"Eight, sir."
"I copy. Engage at will, but save your last two torpe-does." Standing off and
shooting the TIE fighters down with proton torpedoes would be the safest means
of defeating them, but Wedge wanted to save some torpedoes in case they
ran into a heavy ship as they tried to get away. As nearly as I
can tell all of Isard's capital ships are five hours or more
distant from here, but if one shows up I want to give it a
barage that will keep it off us long enough for us to escape.
The intervention of Thyferran Home Defense Corps pi-
lots had been anticipated. Their intelligence reports about
qretu 5 had indicated the placement of such troops on the
world, though after Gavin had described burning three of them down on Halanit,
there was open debate as to whether or not the THDC pilots would dare come up
and fight. Eight starfighters were enough to discourage someone from bring-
ing their own freighter into Qretu 5's spaceport and demand-ing it be filled
with bacta or to protect freighters going out to or coming back in from a
convoy.