Reversion
"Rogues, ten minutes to reversion," Wedge Antilles' voice crackled over Corran's headset. He double-clicked his comm in acknowledgement.
Abruptly, his X-Wing began to shudder, and Whistler, his astromech, shrieked in alarm. The blue-white tunnel of hyperspace collapsed into starlines, then into whirling stars, as the fighter dropped back into realspace. Corran wrestled with the control yoke as his X-Wing tumbled wildly. "Nine to Lead, what happened?" His comm returned nothing but static.
"Whistler, what happened? Where are we?" he demanded as he finally brought the bucking starfighter under control. A quick visual scan showed that the rest of the Rogues were nowhere to be seen. Whistler hooted and squealed, and a dizzying array of diagnostics, coordinates, and complaints flashed over his screen. "Whoa, slow it down. Coordinates first, then try and figure out what the problem is."
Sudden dread made his fingers clutch the control yoke, and he ruddered hard to port as the droid shrilled a warning.
"I think we're in trouble, Whistler." The Victory-class Star Destroyer hung several hundred klicks away, too far for Corran to see the deadly swarm of fighters it vomited out of its launch bay, but the droid had no problem displaying the TIEs on Corran's screen. "Yes, we are definitely in trouble."
Whistler moaned in agreement.
"Maximum power to forward shields," Corran ordered, "and get me a torpedo lock on one of those TIEs." His targeting reticle turned from green to yellow, and finally to red as Whistler's steady tone told Corran he had a good lock. The X-Wing shivered slightly as he triggered a pair of torpedoes. They streaked through the spangled black of space toward the flock of distant, gleaming enemy fighters.
"I count five eyeballs and three squints," said Corran as he cycled through the targets onscreen. He knew the bent-winged TIE interceptors would be more trouble than the TIE fighters, because of the interceptors' increased speed and maneuverability--a good interceptor pilot could fly circles around even a speed-happy A-Wing.
One of the torpedoes found its mark a moment later, turning a TIE fighter into a short-lived, fiery blossom. Make that four eyeballs. The other torpedo streaked away on a random course, its computer brain counting down the remaining minutes of fuel before it, too would explode.
Corran evened his shields out fore and aft, and then he was in the midst of the TIEs, rolling and juking evasively as volley after volley of vicious green energy sought him. But as quickly as he had entered the maelstrom, he shot out the other side.
Reversing thrust, he flipped the fighter keel-over-cockpit and fired a quad burst of his lasers almost point-blank into an oncoming TIE fighter. One red laser flashed by harmlessly over the fighter's starboard wing, but two others drilled through the TIE's own laser cannons, and the fourth shattered the viewport and burned through the pilot's chest.
Wish Tycho were here to see that one, Corran thought as his X-Wing flew through the fireball, Whistler shrilling and squalling. "Hang on there, buddy, we're not out of this yet," he told the droid, for the remaining six enemy fighters were spiraling around to face him again from multiple angles.
One of the squints had maneuvered several klicks behind him, firing its lasers but hitting empty space, as Corran danced his fighter effortlessly. He thrust the yoke forward and dove, intending to come up behind the fighter tailing him, but the pilot wasn't fooled. The interceptor dove in turn after Corran's X-Wing, a second later performing the same flip that Corran had used to take out the Imp's wingmate. Green bolts skittered over Corran's forward shields, and he juked to port just in time to avoid a head-on collision.
Odds were that he could have survived such a collision--But what red-blooded Corellian ever cared for the odds?--though he'd have paid for the stunt with his shields, and then some. And if I die out here, he thought, Mirax will kill me.
His wife's black hair and green eyes flashed through Corran's mind, and he gritted his teeth in new determination. Whatever pulled me out of hyperspace, it wasn't an interdictor. At least then the rest of the Rogues would have been yanked out with me. But he had no time to wish for his squadron.
The interceptor was still on his tail, firing, but the pilot's hot hand in maneuvers didn't seem to translate into shooting skill. "Thank the Force for small favors," Corran said to himself. He vaped another TIE fighter when it made the mistake of drifting into his targeting range, but his momentary lapse in attention earned his shields a sizzling shot from the fighter behind him.
The two remaining TIE fighters edged around Corran's target range, while the faster interceptors buzzed through like flitnats among trundlebees. But the one squint still dogged him, and Corran's diminishing shields said the enemy pilot's aim was improving.
Corran stomped on the etheric rudder, flipping the X-Wing onto its starboard S-foils. He pulled the yoke up to his chest, and the interceptor flashed by so close that, save for his transparisteel canopy, he thought he could have reached out and touched the ship as it curved around. But instead of continuing in his loop to chase the squint's tail, he wheeled into a figure eight, and a moment later fed the squint four laser bolts through its octagonal viewport.
The force of the lasers blasted the fighter's top hatch clean off, ejecting the pilot's charred body into the icy blackness, and Corran rolled around to watch the interceptor continue past as it spiraled into a secondary, furious explosion.
Then his fighter slammed headfirst into a thunderous blue burst, and Corran let out a stream of bloody invectives that could have blistered his droid's green paint. That second torpedo hadn't yet exploded, he realized, and he'd been careless enough to fly straight into it.
I'm fighting without shields! he thought, but forced himself to stay calm. "Whistler, give me a damage report!" Sending his X-Wing into a blind roll, he scanned the screen. His upper port laser had been jarred out of alignment, and probably wouldn't fire, and his hull had gotten a good scorching--but his shields were down for the next few minutes at least, and that could be longer than this dogfight would last.
Could be longer than I'll last.
Shuddering green energy erupted around him, and he cast about frantically. "Sithspit! Those TIEs have herded us too close to that Star Destroyer!" he yelled, and tucked tail to flee out of range before its turbolasers finished what the stray torpedo had begun. He dodged and dove, the four remaining fighters chasing him relentlessly. A bolt clipped his fighter's belly, and Whistler screamed as the X-Wing shook. "Another one like that and we're cooked," he muttered. "Hey, Whistler? It's really, really important that you get those shields back up as quick as you can."
The droid responded with a sardonic blat.
Corran juked and rolled till he judged himself well out of the Star Destroyer's range, then circled around to try for a good bead on one of the four remaining fighters. If I'm going down, he thought in resignation, at least I'll go down fighting.
One of the two interceptors set itself up for a head-to-head run with the X-Wing, and Corran gave a predatory grin. "You want to see who blinks first?" he said, and let loose a single torpedo, which streaked straight into the interceptor before the pilot had a chance to dodge. It burst through the squint's cockpit and came out with the fighter's twin ion engines trailing behind. All three exploded at once, and the shock wave kicked the interceptor into an endless wheel into cold space.
Corran pulled up as the dead fighter passed beneath him. "How are those shields coming?" A mournful hooting answered him. "Don't worry, my friend. There's only three more. We can take them, right?"
Whistler shrieked in warning, but it was too late. The last interceptor had latched onto Corran's tail, and it pumped burst after livid burst of green energy into the X-Wing's fuselage. Corran felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as his screen flashed and went dark and his control yoke seized up. Only the blindest of luck had kept the fighter from breaking apart, but now he was dead in space.
Literally as well as figuratively, he said to himself. The squint screamed past him, then turned to make its final run, as if the pilot wanted Corran to know, for the last few seconds of his life, how dead he was. Corran let his mind dwell on Mirax again: the way her silky hair shimmered when he touched it; the way she would laugh carelessly every time her father leveled another joking insult at his son-in-law; the way she had smiled when he'd proposed to her.
The interceptor exploded.
"What?" Corran yelled. "Whistler, what happened?" The droid was shrilling and hooting exultantly, and for one confused second Corran wondered if there had been another torpedo out there, just waiting for the squint to run into it.
"Rogue Leader to Rogue Nine, do you read?" a familiar voice said.
"Uh--yeah--I mean, yes sir!" Corran smiled and wiped tears from his eyes as the last two TIE fighters disappeared into brief incandescence.
"Ten, do a flyby on Nine."
"Ooryl copies, Lead," said Ooryl Qrygg, Corran's Gand wingmate; and a moment later: "Ooryl can see a small, rectangular, metallic object which is attached to what is left of the fuselage. Qrygg is not a mechanic, but this object does not belong."
"Twenty credits says it's related to those hyperspace bombs that were bugging Wraith Squadron, Wedge," Tycho commented.
"Huh. No bet."
A beep from Whistler prompted Corran to check his screen. It flickered back to life, displaying a series of numbers.
"What's this?"
The droid's reply scrolled across the screen beneath the numbers: THOSE ARE THE COORDINATES YOU ASKED FOR.
"Uh, Whistler, isn't it a little late for that?"
I APOLOGIZE, CORRAN, BUT I HAVE BEEN A BIT BUSY.
And with a jerk and a thrum, the X-Wing's shields came back on.
End.