Chapter 16
Wedge clenched his teeth, conscious of the slightly nervous presences of Luke and Corran just behind his pilot's seat, and sure that at least one of the strangely aloof and haughty In'ca Din'ca Jedi was standing imperiously at the rear of the cockpit. The angular numbers on the realspace countdown clock seemed to flicker by faster than ever: 10, 9, 8...
"Here we go," Wedge whispered to himself, and triggered the levers that brought the Skipray blastboat out of hyperdrive and into the already thickly-clustered space around the planet Coruscant.
The combined resistance and In'ca Din'ca battle fleet had emerged in a formation of staggered phalanxes, two spears of Mon Calamari battlecruisers and heavy In'ca Din'ca carriers driving hard at the planet, while another four formations of the In'ca Din'ca behemoths moved out to encircle the ten Imperial Star Destroyers orbiting this hemisphere of the planet.
"Strap into the turrets, people!" Wedge called out as he kicked the large assault ship's heavy ion engines into overdrive. The modified boosters shoved the bulky craft forward towards the thickest portion of the burgeoning firefight, where Thrawn's defense forces were backing into a cluster to share shield energy.
"Luke, get on the sensors and get me a lock on the Chimera!" Wedge ordered tersely as the first wave of TIEs boiled out of the Star Destroyers' hangar bays to meet the onrushing resistance starfighters. The In'ca Din'ca did not feel the need for as many starfighters as the resistance customarily used, and thus the few ships the resistance had left would be hard pressed to defend the large cruisers from the smaller assaults.
"On it!" Luke called back as he threw himself into the seat behind Wedge. "Corran, get the torpedoes ready and I'll dump you targeting data when I can!"
"I've only got six of the missiles, Luke!" Corran shouted as a near miss from a heavy turbolaser battery singed the shields and jolted the ship. "Make the shots count!"
Alarms screamed through the cockpit as the sensor boards lit up with a pulsing wave of red signals. "What the-?" Wedge exclaimed.
"Reinforcements!" Luke answered back. "Almost a hundred and fifty Star Destroyers with smaller support vessels! Came out right on our tails!"
"This complicates things a little," Wedge hissed as he fed as much energy into the engines as he dared. The decking was starting to vibrate with the stress put on the ship, and Wedge hoped that they actually would be faking their crash.
"TIEs coming up on our rear!" Corran warned.
A series of percussive thuds from overhead told Wedge that the rest of the infiltration crew had begun to get the laser cannons online and firing. However, the sheer amount of starfighters would make any effective resistance difficult.
"Luke?" Wedge called out. "Where is that flagship?"
"Got it!" the other called back. "Bearing 32 mark 65, IFF transponder 4435DDX9!"
Wedge glanced down at his monitors. The Chimera was less than four kilometers away, easy flying distance and at the heart of the biggest firefight Wedge had seen in years. With a strange sense of exhilaration, he pointed the bow of the Skipray at the roiling cloud of laser fire, and gunned the engines.
"Here we go, boys!" he crowed, and the assault ship outraced the TIEs who had been expecting evasive maneuvers and planned accordingly. By the time the starfighters recovered from their error, the Skipray was well beyond their reach.
"Reinforcements are here, Admiral," Pellaeon said, still shaking off the awe at the Grand Admiral's deadly accuracy once again. "Deploying to configuration Delta 5 now, sir."
"Excellent," Thrawn said. "Inform Planetary Defense that firing lanes 3,7, and 11 are now clear for Plan C, and then scramble all TIEs to make runs on the Rebel ships."
"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said.
Thrawn stared at the displays for another few moments, thinking silently. Then he stirred. "Captain, how many assault craft or troop ships are the Rebels displaying?"
"Uh," Pellaeon said, glancing at his board and keying in a quick status check. "At last count, 12."
"12..." Thrawn murmured. "Where are they all located?"
"Eleven of those were last seen near the Interdictors. Captain Brandei assumed they were making runs at his interdiction capability and is attempting to deal with them. The last..."
"The last is in the vicinity of the Chimera," Thrawn concluded quietly.
"What?" Pellaeon said, checking his board again. The Admiral was right. One mid-sized blip was dancing through the boiling crowd of starfighters that engulfed the battling cruisers of the two fleets. "Are they insane?"
"Obviously," Thrawn's eyes glittered. "I want that ship destroyed now."
The fizzle of sparks that burst from the overhead panels as the latest turbolaser graze shorted out systems started a flare in Wedge's hair, but he quickly shook his head to extinguish the spark and concentrated on steering the wounded Skipray closer to the Chimera's garbage port. The Star Destroyer and her starfighters had taken a huge interest in the assault ship all of a sudden, and the nearby Rebel ships were having a hard time diverting all of them.
"Almost there," Wedge gritted his teeth.
"Hand over the controls, Wedge!" Luke's muffled voice came, and he glanced sideways to see the rest of his team already clothed in their vacuum suits. "Time to get yours on!"
"Right!" Wedge said, sliding out of the seat as Luke grabbed the controls. "I only need another twenty seconds of flight, so get us as close as possible to the garbage chute!"
"Easy for you to say," Luke muttered to himself as he took the controls and stretched out with the Force. The soothing flow of energy helped calm his jangled nerves, but fear leaked into the edges of his forced calm. He shunted it away brutally.
A thousand pinpricks of emotion and sensation flooded his mind. The adrenaline rush of pilots chasing each other in circles through storms of laser fire, flashes of pain as craft disintegrated, and sometimes tense slivers of fear puncturing otherwise reckless minds.
The Skipray blastboat was a far cry from the fast, nimble X-wing he'd so famously destroyed the Death Star with, but then again, his Force- enhanced perceptions had also come a long way. The TIEs were no match for his reflexes, with their evasive maneuvers begun before the pilots started their attack runs.
Pulling out of a series of rolls, Luke punched the throttle when he saw the bridge tower line up with his viewports. Two turbolaser bolts burned their way across his rear shields, and Corran yelped as sparks sprayed out of the overhead panels. Luke fought for control as the compactor shutters loomed fast in his vision.
Slowing the damaged blastboat at the last instant, Luke smashed the assault craft lightly against the rear of the destroyer, detonating something deep within the craft at the same time as releasing the preset smoke clouds that would hopefully indicate their destruction. Furiously slapping at control panels, he shut down every last one of the ship's systems and ignited his saber to slice open the viewport as Wedge darted back into the cockpit.
The team followed the Jedi out onto the surface of the mighty warship.
The blip flickered once, right on top of the Chimera, and then disappeared from the board.
Pellaeon smiled. "The troopship is gone, Admiral," he called back to Thrawn's seat. "Reports from Delta Leader indicate that it crashed onto Chimera's engine area. The last turbolaser salvo crippled it."
"Indeed," Thrawn said quietly, not smiling or giving any hint of elation at this perceived dismissal of a threat. If anything, he frowned more severely.
The two stormtroopers at the end of the corridor fell smoking, rimmed in blaster fire, and Wedge breathed his probably tenth sigh of relief since his and Luke's party had separated to draw fire. Corran turned and gave him a shaky grin, and then sword softly and moved up to cover the In'ca Din'ca Jedi pair that had been assigned to guard their commando group.
One of the large aliens gestured quietly to a large door on the left side of the now-empty hallway, and the other nodded. Corran, Wedge, and the two other insertion troopers moved out to provide cover fire for the two Jedi to break down the door.
With a last look at his partner, the first Jedi thrust the purple lightsaber he bore into the doorframe, wrenching it through multiple control lines. The door slammed upwards in its tracks, and the team piled through.
The half squad of stormtroopers and the three officers inventorying the weapons stacked against the far wall had already picked up three of the heavy blasters and begun spraying hot light at the incoming Rebels. Only one bolt got through the blurred screen of the two Jedi's lightsabers, but Wedge felt the heat and heard a strangled grunt from behind him.
Wedge got off one shot, albeit one that stabbed into the far wall without making any appreciable contribution to the fight, before the Jedi had cut down every last one of the Imperials.
For several seconds, the three non-Jedi stared at the smoking corpses. Corran toed one nervously and whistled softly.
"You guys are fast," he murmured. Wedge nodded numbly in agreement. "Never seen anyone that good with a melee weapon of any kind."
"Excellent," said one of them. "Some of you will not again."
From his fingers leapt blurred streaks of lightning.
Wedge clenched his teeth, conscious of the slightly nervous presences of Luke and Corran just behind his pilot's seat, and sure that at least one of the strangely aloof and haughty In'ca Din'ca Jedi was standing imperiously at the rear of the cockpit. The angular numbers on the realspace countdown clock seemed to flicker by faster than ever: 10, 9, 8...
"Here we go," Wedge whispered to himself, and triggered the levers that brought the Skipray blastboat out of hyperdrive and into the already thickly-clustered space around the planet Coruscant.
The combined resistance and In'ca Din'ca battle fleet had emerged in a formation of staggered phalanxes, two spears of Mon Calamari battlecruisers and heavy In'ca Din'ca carriers driving hard at the planet, while another four formations of the In'ca Din'ca behemoths moved out to encircle the ten Imperial Star Destroyers orbiting this hemisphere of the planet.
"Strap into the turrets, people!" Wedge called out as he kicked the large assault ship's heavy ion engines into overdrive. The modified boosters shoved the bulky craft forward towards the thickest portion of the burgeoning firefight, where Thrawn's defense forces were backing into a cluster to share shield energy.
"Luke, get on the sensors and get me a lock on the Chimera!" Wedge ordered tersely as the first wave of TIEs boiled out of the Star Destroyers' hangar bays to meet the onrushing resistance starfighters. The In'ca Din'ca did not feel the need for as many starfighters as the resistance customarily used, and thus the few ships the resistance had left would be hard pressed to defend the large cruisers from the smaller assaults.
"On it!" Luke called back as he threw himself into the seat behind Wedge. "Corran, get the torpedoes ready and I'll dump you targeting data when I can!"
"I've only got six of the missiles, Luke!" Corran shouted as a near miss from a heavy turbolaser battery singed the shields and jolted the ship. "Make the shots count!"
Alarms screamed through the cockpit as the sensor boards lit up with a pulsing wave of red signals. "What the-?" Wedge exclaimed.
"Reinforcements!" Luke answered back. "Almost a hundred and fifty Star Destroyers with smaller support vessels! Came out right on our tails!"
"This complicates things a little," Wedge hissed as he fed as much energy into the engines as he dared. The decking was starting to vibrate with the stress put on the ship, and Wedge hoped that they actually would be faking their crash.
"TIEs coming up on our rear!" Corran warned.
A series of percussive thuds from overhead told Wedge that the rest of the infiltration crew had begun to get the laser cannons online and firing. However, the sheer amount of starfighters would make any effective resistance difficult.
"Luke?" Wedge called out. "Where is that flagship?"
"Got it!" the other called back. "Bearing 32 mark 65, IFF transponder 4435DDX9!"
Wedge glanced down at his monitors. The Chimera was less than four kilometers away, easy flying distance and at the heart of the biggest firefight Wedge had seen in years. With a strange sense of exhilaration, he pointed the bow of the Skipray at the roiling cloud of laser fire, and gunned the engines.
"Here we go, boys!" he crowed, and the assault ship outraced the TIEs who had been expecting evasive maneuvers and planned accordingly. By the time the starfighters recovered from their error, the Skipray was well beyond their reach.
"Reinforcements are here, Admiral," Pellaeon said, still shaking off the awe at the Grand Admiral's deadly accuracy once again. "Deploying to configuration Delta 5 now, sir."
"Excellent," Thrawn said. "Inform Planetary Defense that firing lanes 3,7, and 11 are now clear for Plan C, and then scramble all TIEs to make runs on the Rebel ships."
"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said.
Thrawn stared at the displays for another few moments, thinking silently. Then he stirred. "Captain, how many assault craft or troop ships are the Rebels displaying?"
"Uh," Pellaeon said, glancing at his board and keying in a quick status check. "At last count, 12."
"12..." Thrawn murmured. "Where are they all located?"
"Eleven of those were last seen near the Interdictors. Captain Brandei assumed they were making runs at his interdiction capability and is attempting to deal with them. The last..."
"The last is in the vicinity of the Chimera," Thrawn concluded quietly.
"What?" Pellaeon said, checking his board again. The Admiral was right. One mid-sized blip was dancing through the boiling crowd of starfighters that engulfed the battling cruisers of the two fleets. "Are they insane?"
"Obviously," Thrawn's eyes glittered. "I want that ship destroyed now."
The fizzle of sparks that burst from the overhead panels as the latest turbolaser graze shorted out systems started a flare in Wedge's hair, but he quickly shook his head to extinguish the spark and concentrated on steering the wounded Skipray closer to the Chimera's garbage port. The Star Destroyer and her starfighters had taken a huge interest in the assault ship all of a sudden, and the nearby Rebel ships were having a hard time diverting all of them.
"Almost there," Wedge gritted his teeth.
"Hand over the controls, Wedge!" Luke's muffled voice came, and he glanced sideways to see the rest of his team already clothed in their vacuum suits. "Time to get yours on!"
"Right!" Wedge said, sliding out of the seat as Luke grabbed the controls. "I only need another twenty seconds of flight, so get us as close as possible to the garbage chute!"
"Easy for you to say," Luke muttered to himself as he took the controls and stretched out with the Force. The soothing flow of energy helped calm his jangled nerves, but fear leaked into the edges of his forced calm. He shunted it away brutally.
A thousand pinpricks of emotion and sensation flooded his mind. The adrenaline rush of pilots chasing each other in circles through storms of laser fire, flashes of pain as craft disintegrated, and sometimes tense slivers of fear puncturing otherwise reckless minds.
The Skipray blastboat was a far cry from the fast, nimble X-wing he'd so famously destroyed the Death Star with, but then again, his Force- enhanced perceptions had also come a long way. The TIEs were no match for his reflexes, with their evasive maneuvers begun before the pilots started their attack runs.
Pulling out of a series of rolls, Luke punched the throttle when he saw the bridge tower line up with his viewports. Two turbolaser bolts burned their way across his rear shields, and Corran yelped as sparks sprayed out of the overhead panels. Luke fought for control as the compactor shutters loomed fast in his vision.
Slowing the damaged blastboat at the last instant, Luke smashed the assault craft lightly against the rear of the destroyer, detonating something deep within the craft at the same time as releasing the preset smoke clouds that would hopefully indicate their destruction. Furiously slapping at control panels, he shut down every last one of the ship's systems and ignited his saber to slice open the viewport as Wedge darted back into the cockpit.
The team followed the Jedi out onto the surface of the mighty warship.
The blip flickered once, right on top of the Chimera, and then disappeared from the board.
Pellaeon smiled. "The troopship is gone, Admiral," he called back to Thrawn's seat. "Reports from Delta Leader indicate that it crashed onto Chimera's engine area. The last turbolaser salvo crippled it."
"Indeed," Thrawn said quietly, not smiling or giving any hint of elation at this perceived dismissal of a threat. If anything, he frowned more severely.
The two stormtroopers at the end of the corridor fell smoking, rimmed in blaster fire, and Wedge breathed his probably tenth sigh of relief since his and Luke's party had separated to draw fire. Corran turned and gave him a shaky grin, and then sword softly and moved up to cover the In'ca Din'ca Jedi pair that had been assigned to guard their commando group.
One of the large aliens gestured quietly to a large door on the left side of the now-empty hallway, and the other nodded. Corran, Wedge, and the two other insertion troopers moved out to provide cover fire for the two Jedi to break down the door.
With a last look at his partner, the first Jedi thrust the purple lightsaber he bore into the doorframe, wrenching it through multiple control lines. The door slammed upwards in its tracks, and the team piled through.
The half squad of stormtroopers and the three officers inventorying the weapons stacked against the far wall had already picked up three of the heavy blasters and begun spraying hot light at the incoming Rebels. Only one bolt got through the blurred screen of the two Jedi's lightsabers, but Wedge felt the heat and heard a strangled grunt from behind him.
Wedge got off one shot, albeit one that stabbed into the far wall without making any appreciable contribution to the fight, before the Jedi had cut down every last one of the Imperials.
For several seconds, the three non-Jedi stared at the smoking corpses. Corran toed one nervously and whistled softly.
"You guys are fast," he murmured. Wedge nodded numbly in agreement. "Never seen anyone that good with a melee weapon of any kind."
"Excellent," said one of them. "Some of you will not again."
From his fingers leapt blurred streaks of lightning.