[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(146)

No time to think, now she was traversing toward the buildings to port, and the droid was still looking at her. Gently she corrected her course, noting absently that the bomber had gained scores of meters on her.

“Great flying, Gray Four.” The voice was male, unknown to her, the accent Coruscanti.

Syal couldn’t risk taking her attention from the avenue ahead long enough to consult her comm board. “Who’s that?”

“You’ve got Ax Three as your wing.”

“Ax, you tear him up while I get my life in order here.”

“Will do. Be advised, I’m picking up a huge pursuit squadron on our tail, and it’s not ours.”

Zueb unbuckled and leaned forward. With his fist, he pounded on the inside of Syal’s viewport. The droid outside turned its head to look at him, and this change in its aerodynamics was apparently enough-the Aleph lurched and the droid was suddenly gone, whipped away by the altered air flow across its surface.

“Thanks,” Syal said.

“No problem.” The Sullustan eased back into his gunner’s seat and rebuckled. “Right turret is jammed. Ax Three correct, huge cloud of incoming vehicles on our tail.”

Syal gave the control yoke a tentative adjustment. The Aleph moved back to the center of the avenue, responding correctly. Only then did she check her sensor board.

It showed the E-wing high overhead, and in her peripheral vision she could see red lasers from the fast-moving starfighter hammering the bomber ahead of her. Far behind was an immense cloud of vessels moving up at tremendous speed-it would be on her in thirty seconds or less, and the sensor board still couldn’t tell her what the individual vehicles in it were.

And up ahead, beyond the first of the bombers but too close, was the end of the avenue, a huge, newly constructed housing building.

Syal looked up and her eyes widened. If she pulled up into a climb right now she might-might-be able to clear the tops of the surrounding buildings. But the foremost bomber was so close to the building there was no way it could avoid a collision

She saw that bomber fire missiles ahead and downward. The street just before the big building erupted in smoke and dust. And in the split second before it was swallowed by the dust cloud, she would have sworn she saw the bomber dive toward the street.

The second bomber, the one she’d been harassing, lost altitude. Its pilot had no distractions-Ax Three was now climbing away from the engagement, ascending to safety.

Syal became aware that Zueb was screaming at her, something about climbing, about continuing to live. She ignored him and glanced at her sensors. The zone where the missiles had hit was still only partly realized on the screen, but it was a big hole, and the first bomber was gone. It wasn’t hitting the building, wasn’t veering right or left in a futile attempt to get free of the surrounding construction-it was just gone.

Into the hole.

Syal aimed her Aleph along the second bomber’s wake.

Zueb was shouting something about insanity and destruction. She ignored him. She took the control yoke in both hands.

The second bomber disappeared into the smoke cloud. On the sensor board, it dropped into the hole in the street.

As Syal reached that point, she slammed downward on the yoke, compressing it for a fraction of a second. Her top-mounted vents fired, jolting the Aleph downward.

It didn’t hit anything. Through the viewports there was only smoke and darkness. On the sensor screen was the tail end of that chewed-up bomber blasting forward between banks of heavy-looking columns. There was debris, heavy dust and particulate matter, ahead of it. It rose toward the debris.

As her Aleph reached the point where the bomber began its rise, she jerked upward on her yoke and the bottom-mounted vents fired. She added some repulsorlift kick. The Aleph jolted upward, compressing her backbone and cutting off Zueb’s shrieks, and suddenly they were in sunlight again.

Green parklands and the shimmering dome of a military energy shield lay ahead. The first bomber was circling to port around the shield, the second bomber to starboard. Both were dropping their bomb loads-spotter droids floating to the ground, their descents slowed by the sort of short-use repulsorlift plates used by airdrop commando troops. Above circled squadrons of X-wings, Eta-5 interceptors, E-wings-the complete ground complement of the Rellidir garrison.

Zueb was shrieking something about great flying and having children and holodramas. Syal ignored him. Something was adding up in her head, cold numbers and facts.

She slammed on the reverse thrusters to slow the Aleph, jerking Zueb forward in his seat, and switched her comm board over to the general fleet frequency. “This is Gray Four to all GA forces,” she said. She felt curiously emotionless, but she knew that she had merely contained her emotion, not eliminated it. “Incoming enemy squadrons traveling east to west toward Rellidir central are missiles, and they have an unobstructed path to the interior shield. Be ready.” She switched back to squadron frequency. As the front end of the Aleph swung around and the building they’d just flown beneath was framed by their viewports, she brought the Aleph to a dead halt in the air. “Zueb, fire missiles. Bring that building down. Hit the base first.”