[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(106)

Sal-Solo’s voice was richly mocking. “You almost make me want to live there.”

“At the moment, sir, it’s not a very good investment. Stage Two of this operation involves taking a couple of those Shriek-class bombers and flying them clean through the Terkury Housing Complex, then continuing on to the arts center and initiating its destruction.”

Sal-Solo cleared his throat, the electronically augmented sound echoing off the chamber’s walls. “Surely, given your reputation for military strategy, you’ve noticed that the housing complex you propose to fly through is enclosed within their shields.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you don’t see this as a problem.”

“No, sir.”

“And correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m familiar with the payload that a Shriek bomber can carry, and it seems to me that two of them would not be able to carry enough ordnance to punch through two rings of shields and then destroy the shield generators themselves.”

“That’s correct, sir. I’ve compensated for that factor by planning for the Shrieks to be carrying almost no ordnance at all.”

There was a long pause before Sal-Solo replied, and Han could imagine the man standing there, his expression pained, no words emerging. Finally Sal-Solo said, “You’re right on the verge of that street corner I was mentioning, Antilles.”

Wedge glanced over his shoulder up at Sal-Solo, an amused expression that all but said, You shouldn’t interrupt when grown-ups are talking. He raised his datapad and thumbed another button. The angle of the schematic changed, dropping the point of view until it was oriented mere meters over a broad thoroughfare; at the far end of the thoroughfare was the blinking green-and-yellow building.

“I mentioned,” Wedge said, “the housing complex’s broad underground hangar.” The hologram’s point of view went into motion, traveling toward the blinking building at a high rate of speed. “Here you can see a simulation of the Shriek bombers’ approach toward the housing complex. When they get to the distance of a few blocks, they release some of their ordnance-” Blue dotted lines leapt forward toward the blinking building, but dropped at the last moment to strike the thoroughfare just ahead of it. “-and blow a broad hole in the avenue, straight down into the hangar area. They fly through the hangar, blowing out an exit ahead of them, and emerge through that hole on the far side, then continue on to their target.

“As they approach their target, they release their payload of targeter droids, rather crude droids used by our armed forces to teach sharpshooting and ballistics. Those droids use laser range finders and other sensors to paint their target, defining not just the command center but a precise point on its shielding.”

“And then?” Finally, Sal-Solo sounded interested rather than mocking.

“And then the hundreds of missiles fired in the wake of the two Shrieks, following the telemetry sent by those targeter droids, come pouring out of the hangar bay, hit that point on the shields, overload them until they fail, and continue on to hit the command post, plus the vehicles and vessels on the ground, surgically eradicating them.”

“They could still overfly their target,” Admiral Karathas said.

Wedge nodded. “As surgical as we’d like for this operation to be, we can’t eliminate all risk of friendly-fire fatalities. Believe me, I’d love to. But one thing we can do is have the targeter droids make their target the summit of the enemy shields, then the summit of the command post building. We can program our missiles to go as high as possible once they exit the hangar, then dive on their target from above. The likelihood of them shooting past a target and hitting the side of an occupied building is thereby reduced.”

“Let me make sure I understand,” Sal-Solo said. “Your two Shriek bombers-they’ll be sustaining fire from any GA defenses not drawn off by our diversion.”

“Correct,” Wedge said.

“That means gunships, starfighters, antispacecraft gun emplacements, and who knows what else.”

“Correct.”

“How do they do this?”

“Well,” Wedge said, “first, the performance characteristics of the Shrieks are known to the GA government, but since the bombers aren’t in production yet, that information hasn’t been widely distributed. It’s not likely to be in the databases of the GA forces around Tralus. This means the defenders won’t know exactly what to expect from these machines. Second, the fact that the assault force seems inadequate to the task means the forces arrayed against the Shrieks will probably not be overwhelming. And third, I plan to choose-assuming I’m selected to implement this plan, otherwise I’ll just recommend-pilots who are especially well suited to this sort of mission. I don’t mean the pilots who’ve been testing the Shrieks, good men and women though they are. I mean canny old veterans who have decades of experience with YT-series spacecraft. Pilots familiar with terrain-following assaults and other seemingly suicidal flying techniques.”