[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(52)

Yes, the X-wing’s course was putting it into a lower and lower orbit, away from the GA fleet. Perhaps its pilot intended to join the battle against Skywalker’s squadron. Perhaps it had been on a reconnaissance run and was now taking important sensor data back to the Corellians. She shook her head. Either way, it wouldn’t get where its pilot intended to go.

She didn’t bother trying for a targeting lock yet. X-wings were tough, and her sensor board indicated that this pilot had already put his shield strength to double rear.

As her range finder indicated that she was at maximum effective range for her interceptor’s laser cannons, she swung her targeting brackets toward the X-wing. But the snubfighter suddenly jerked upward, sideways, to port and starboard, always in a direction opposed to her targeting bracket’s approach to it. She had the eerie sensation that the pilot knew exactly when she was going to begin aiming.

She didn’t know whether to curse or smile more broadly. This pilot was good. He jittered in her targeting brackets once, twice, three times, on each occasion long enough for her to pull the laser cannon trigger, but never long enough for the laser blasts to find a home in his fuselage. She missed with each shot, sometimes by only a few meters.

And suddenly he was going in reverse.

She overshot him, adrenaline jolting through her. It was a classic X-wing flying technique used against a faster pursuer, and it had been executed at exactly the moment she least expected it.

She pushed down on her control yoke, just long enough for her opponent to believe that she was going to dive and loop around, then she yanked back, coming up and into a port-side roll.

An inexperienced pilot would bite on that first, false-maneuver and dive to pursue. She’d be able to correct and dive after him. A more alert or experienced pilot would manage to stay on her tail, would have a few seconds of pursuit in which to obtain a target lock and fire lasers or even launch a proton torpedo at her starfighter, so much more fragile than the X-wing.

She heard no screech of a targeting lock alarm. She checked her sensor board. Her opponent hadn’t dived, hadn’t pursued. Apparently from the moment she made her evasive maneuver, he’d resumed his original course.

Lysa sat there in momentary shock. He hadn’t even taken a shot at her.

Her comm board crackled and its scanner indicated that the broadcast was coming in across a general GA military frequency-but very low-powered, so faint that only she was likely to pick it up.

“Nice interceptor roll-out,” her opponent said. “I’d swear you learned that from Tycho Celchu.”

Again, Lysa froze. She had learned that maneuver from General Celchu, the celebrated officer who had flown an A-wing into and out of the second Death Star more than thirty years ago.

And she knew the voice of her opponent, even as altered as it was by the low-powered transmission and standard comm distortion. “Daddy?” she said.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

She rolled again, sending her in a steep descent toward the X-wing. But her course wouldn’t bring her up behind it in proper dogfighting fashion; instead, eyeballing it, she chose an intercept course … and switched her targeting computer completely off.

Her vector brought her in toward the X-wing’s top side. She adjusted her course so they were parallel, her Eta-5 interceptor immediately above the X-wing. Then she rolled her starfighter over so they cruised canopy-to-canopy, a mere four meters separating them.

And she looked up into the face of her father, Wedge Antilles.

Corellia’s second most famous pilot flashed her a toothy smile and he offered her a thumbs-up. He was wearing a standard X-wing pilot’s helmet-not his own battered helmet with the distinctive wedges on it, but another, this one decorated with an arc of triangles along the rim.

“Daddy, you’re retired. Get out of the skies.” Lysa was suddenly aware of, and embarrassed by, the adolescent wail in her voice. But the realization that she’d fired on her own father made her feel drained, light-headed.

“I’ll do that, sweetheart.” Wedge waved an admonishing finger at her. “Don’t get hurt.”

“I won’t, Daddy.”

Wedge adjusted his course and was suddenly dropping more steeply away from her.

Lysa rolled back up to a more natural orientation, putting the planet beneath her keel, and pulled back on her control yoke, sending her higher. Slowly, she looped around back toward her squadron’s last known position.

She’d really never before run up against the mythological depths of her father’s reputation. Oh, yes, she’d grown up knowing of his fame, and it was a desire to have a career well out of the shadow of Wedge Antilles that had caused her to take academy training under the name of Lysa Dunter rather than that of Syal Antilles. She’d even chosen to train most in the high-speed, low-armor fighters such as the Eta-5 interceptor rather than the sturdy old X-wings her father loved, all in order to avoid invidious comparisons with him.