THE SKIES ABOVE CORUSCANT, 40 YEARS ABE:
The red laserbolt that streaked alongside the Imperial shuttle came close enough to make its shields glow as it glanced off. The shuttle juked sideways, dodging as the two pursuing snubfighters unleashed a fresh hail of turbolasers through the empty space where it had been flying moments before.
The pursuers were X-Wings, their paint worn but the blue streaks on their sides vibrant against the void.
The port fighter was being flown by Jaen Vao, his injured arm now freed of its sling but still encased in a narrow bacta cast that prevented him from wearing the sturdy gloves usually donned by snubfighter pilots. He seemed at home in his cockpit nonetheless, his bare blue fingers tight on his piloting yoke as he spun his ship up on its side for a better shot at his target-or a better shot at the empty space right next to his target, anyway. His knobby hairless brows drew low over his eyes in concentration as he squeezed the firing trigger again, narrowly missing the stolen shuttle.
It might have seemed counterintuitive, but any trained pilot knew that not shooting a target was more difficult than hitting it. There was always a certain amount of luck involved in snubfighter combat and in order to hit what you were aiming at, you only had to be lucky once. When trying not to hit something at which you were shooting, you had to be lucky with every shot because missing could be deadly for the people whom your missed shot hit.
In order to convince the Imperials towards whom they were chasing the Lambda-shuttle that the vessel and its crew were trustworthy, Jaen and his wingman had to make it look like they really were trying to shoot it down. Jaen just hoped they didn't try a little too hard, and convince everyone via a fatal explosion.
"I hope you know what you're doing, Bail," he muttered into the silent void between them.
The other X-Wing flipped itself into a barrel roll and strafed the shuttle with a glancing hail of shots. Most of them flickered off the shields, but one or two struck home enough to sear thick black scorch marks across the armored plating beneath.
Jaen winced. "Careful," he muttered, the admonishment slipping out before he could stop it.
"Don't worry," the voice of the other X-Wing pilot came back cheerful through the comm, "I've shot enough Lambda-shuttles down to know how not to do it."
"Yessir," Jaen said, and flicked the tip of one lekku in reluctant agreement, but he couldn't keep the grimace off his face as he watched the shuttle buck and twitch under the hail of mostly-near-miss blasterfire. He took a deep breath and made himself squeeze his own firing trigger again and again, shots lancing past or skittering off the shuttle's shields.
Ahead of them, the Imperial Fleet was on full display. It was a smaller force than it had been when Jaen had fled from it barely a day ago, bearing the news of the Empire's treachery to the rest of the New Republic. Only a few TIEs and light cruisers criss-crossed the edges of Coruscant's atmosphere, most of them congregating near the four clusters of freighters and other supply transports that funneled goods to the city-planet beneath the Imperials' watchful eyes. Only three Star Destroyers remained in orbit, spread out now around the planet. Where the other two were, Jaen shuddered to think-but he didn't dwell on it. Most of what little attention he could spare from the target he was trying not to shoot was consumed by the ominous sight of the Super Star Destroyer towards which he flew.
Beyond the juking, careening hull of the shuttle and the bloodred hail of his own laser fire, he could see two full squadrons of TIEs come pouring out of the Super Star Destroyer's hanger and swarm up towards them. Turbolaser emplacements, still out of range, swiveled in preparation as the X-Wings and their prey rocketed closer to the gray behemoth.
The amount of laserfire creasing the shuttle abruptly halved as Jaen's wingmate switched from scattered single fire to the slower, but more powerful and more accurate, quad-linked fire. While Jaen continued to pepper a wide spread of weak blasts from his own cannons across the shuttle's shields, he watched anxiously as his wingmate loosed three powerful shots towards the shuttle's engines. The first two were repelled by the failing shields but the third hit metal, scouring a divot in the ship's armor before terminating in a small explosion that obliterated the shuttle's protected underbelly communications array.
Jaen cringed at the detonation, then felt his jaw drop as he realized what had been hit. Bail and whomever else was on that ship would have transmitted whatever clearance codes they'd managed to maintain the moment they came within comm-range of the Super Star Destroyer, of course, but with their communications now knocked-out and two clearly-hostile snubfighters pursuing them, they were effectively free to make an emergency landing in whatever hanger they chose rather than being expected to adhere to instructions that they were now incapable of receiving.
"Good shot, Janson," Jaen said, awed.
"That's what they pay me for, kid," the jolly-faced human pilot replied. "Now let's get out of here before those TIEs come over here and start screaming at us for mama."
As the Super Star Destroyer's turbolasers opened fire at the edge of their range, the two X-Wings peeled away from their ostensible target, making for the safety of deep space. The TIEs chasing them pursued despite knowing that they stood no chance of closing to effective attack range before the X-Wings could jump to hyperspace.
Behind them, the shuttle they'd been shooting at folded itself forward into the belly of the beast.