Part 3 (1/2)

She never did get to answer. Just then klaxons went off, sirens began to warble at deafening levels, and the public-address horns started paging her to the base's command post. Everywhere in the hangar, outlaw-techs dropped their tools in a ringing barrage and dashed off frantically for emergency stations. Jessa sprinted away instantly. Han took off after her, yelling back for Chewbacca to stay with their s.h.i.+p.

The two crossed the complex. Humans, nonhumans, and machines charged in every direction, necessitating a good deal of dodging and swerving. The command post was a simple bunker, but at the bottom of the steps leading to it, Jessa and Han entered a well-equipped, fully manned operations room. A giant holo-tank dominated the room with its phantom light, an a.n.a.logue of the solar system around them. Sun, planets, and other major astronomical bodies were picked out in keyed colors.

”Sensors have painted an unidentified blip, Jessa,” said one of the duty officers, pointing out a yellow speck at the edge of the system. ”We're awaiting positive ID.”

She bit her lip, eyes fastened to the tank along with those of all the others in the bunker. Han moved up next to her. The speck was moving toward the center of the holotank, which would be, Han knew, the planet on which he was standing, represented by a bead of white light. The bogie's speed decreased, and sensors painted a cl.u.s.ter of smaller blips breaking away from it. Then the original object accelerated, kept on accelerating, and faded from the tank a moment later.

”It was an Authority fleet s.h.i.+p, a corvette,” the officer said. ”It launched a flight of fighters, four of them, then ducked back into hypers.p.a.ce. It must've detected us and gone for help, leaving the fighters to hara.s.s and keep us busy until it can return. I don't see how they happened to be searching this system.”

Han realized the officer was looking directly at him. In fact, everybody in the command post was, and hands had gone to side arms. ”Whoa, Jess,” he protested, meeting her eyes, ”when did I ever stooge for the Espos?”

For a moment an expression of uncertainty crossed her face, but only for a moment. ”I guess if you'd tipped them you wouldn't have stuck around while they dropped in,” she admitted. ”Besides, they would have shown up in full strength if they'd known we were here. You've got to concede, though, Solo, it's some coincidence.”

He changed the subject. ”Why didn't the corvette just put through a hypers.p.a.ce transmission? They must be close enough to a base to call for support.”

”This area's full of stellar anomalies,” she said absently, focusing back on those ominous blips. ”It fouls up hypers.p.a.ce commo; that's why we picked it, partly. What's the fighters' estimated time of arrival?” she asked the officer.

”ETA less than twenty minutes,” was the reply.

She blew her breath out. ”And we haven't got anything combatworthy except fighters ourselves. No use ducking it; get ready to scramble. Order evacuation to start in the meantime.”

She looked to Han. ”Those are probably IRDs'; they'll eat up anything I can send up right now except for some old snubs I have here. I need to buy time, and I have almost n.o.body who's done any combat flying. Will you help?”

He saw all the grave faces still staring at him. He led Jessa to one side, caressed her cheek, but spoke in a low tone. ”My darling Jess, this definitely was not in our deal. I'm for the Old s.p.a.cemen's Home, remember? I have no intention of ever plunking my rear into one of those suicide sleds again.”

Her voice was eloquent. ”There are lives at stake! We can't evacuate in time, even if we leave everything behind. I'll send up inexperienced pilots if it comes to that, but they'll be cold meat for those Espo flyers. You've got more experience than all the rest of us put together!”

”All of which cries out to me that there's no percentage fighting the good fight,” he parried, but he burned from the look she gave him. He nearly spoke again but held his tongue, unable to untangle his own nagging ambiguities.

”Then go hide,” she said so low he could barely hear, ”but you can forget your precious Millennium Falcon, Solo, because there's no power in the universe that can make her s.p.a.ceworthy before those raiders. .h.i.t us and pin us down. And once their reinforcements arrive, they'll carve this base and everything in it to atoms!”

His s.h.i.+p, of course; that's what must have been biting at the back of my mind, Han told himself. Must have been. The turbo-laser cannon would never stop fast, evasive fighters, and the raiders would indeed take the base apart. He and Chewbacca might possibly escape with their lives, but without their s.h.i.+p they'd be just two nameless, homeless pieces of interstellar flotsam.

In the confusion of the command post, with the giving and receiving of frantic messages, she still heard his voice among all the others.

”Jess?” She stared, confused, at his lopsided smirk. ”Got a flight helmet for me?” He pretended not to see the sudden softening of her expression. ”Something sporty, in my size, Jess, with a hole in it to match the one in my head.”

IV.

HAN tagged after Jessa in another quick run across the base. They entered one of the lesser hangar domes where the air was filled with the whine of high-performance engines. Six fighters were parked there, their ground crews attending them, checking out power levels, armaments, deflectors, and control systems.

The fighters were primarily for interceptor service-or rather, Han corrected himself, had been a generation ago. They were early production snubs.h.i.+ps; Z-95 Headhunters; compact, twin-engined swing-wing craft. Their fuselages, wings and forked tails were daubed with the drab spots, smears, and spray-splotches of general camouflage coats. Their external hardpoints, where rockets and bomb pylons had once been mounted, were now bare.

Indicating the snubs, Han asked Jessa, ”What'd you do, knock over a museum?”

”Picked them up from a planetary constabulary; they were using them for antismuggling operations, matter of fact. We worked them over for resale, but hung on to them because they're the only combat craft we've got right now. And don't be so condescending, Solo; you've spent your share of time in snubs.”

That he had. Han dashed over to one of the Headhunters as a ground crewman finished fueling it. He took a high leap and chinned himself on the lip of the c.o.c.kpit to eyeball it. Most of its console panels had been removed in the course of years of repair, leaving linkages and wiring exposed. The c.o.c.kpit was just as cramped as he remembered.

But with that, the Z-95 Headhunter was still a good little s.h.i.+p, legendary for the amount of punishment it could soak up. Its pilot's seat-the ”easy chair,” in parlance-was set back at a thirty-degree angle to help offset gee-forces, the control stick built into its armrest. He let himself back down.

Several pilots had already gathered there, and another, a humanoid, showed up just then. There was little enough worry on their faces that Han concluded they hadn't flown combat before. Jessa came up beside him and pressed an old, l.u.s.terless bowl of a flight helmet into his hands.

”Who's flown one of these beasts before?” he asked as he tried the helmet on. It was a bad fit, too tight. He began pulling at the webbing adjustment tabs in its sweat-stained interior.

”We've all been up,” one pilot answered, ”to practice basic tactics.”

”Oh, fine,” he muttered, trying the helmet on again. ”We'll rip 'em apart up there.” The headgear was still too tight. With an impatient click of her tongue, Jessa took it from him and began working on it herself.

He addressed his temporary command. ”The Authority's got newer s.h.i.+ps; they can afford to buy whatever they want. That fighter spread coming in at us is probably made up of IRD s.h.i.+ps straight off the government inventory, maybe prototypes, maybe production models. And the guys flying those IRDs learned how at an academy. I suppose it'd be too much to hope that anybody here has ever been to one?”

It was. Han went on, raising his voice over the increasing engine noise. ”IRD fighters have an edge in speed, but these old Headhunters can make a tighter turn and take a real beating, which is why they're still around. IRDs aren't very aerodynamic, that's their nature. Their pilots hate to come down and lock horns in a planetary atmosphere; they call it goo. These boys'll have to, though, to hit the base, but we can't wait until they get down here to hit them, or some might get through.

”We've got six s.h.i.+ps. That's three two-s.h.i.+p elements. If you've got anything worth protecting with those flight helmets, you'll remember this: stay with your wing man. Without him, you're dead. Two s.h.i.+ps together are five times as effective as they would be alone, and they're ten times safer.”

The Z-95s were ready now, and the IRDs' arrival not far off. Han had a thousand things to tell these green flyers, but how could he give them a training course in minutes? He knew he couldn't.

”I'll make this simple. Keep your eyes open and make sure it's your guns, not your tail, that's pointed at the enemy. since we're protecting a ground installation, we'll have to ride our kills. That means if you're not sure whether the opposition is. .h.i.t or faking, you sit on his tail and make sure he goes down and stays down. Don't think just because he's nosediving and leaving a vapor trail that he's out of it. That's an old trick. If you get an explosion from him, fine. If you get a flamer, let him go; he's finished. But otherwise you ride your kill all the way down to the cellar. We've got too much to lose here.”

He made that last remark thinking of the Falcon, shutting out human factors, telling himself his s.h.i.+p was the reason he was about to hang his hide out in the air. Strictly business.

Jessa had thrust his helmet into his hands. He tried it on again; it was a perfect fit. He turned to say thanks and noticed for the first time that she was carrying a flight helmet, too.

”Jess, no. Absolutely not.”

She sniffed. ”They're my s.h.i.+ps, in the first place. Doc taught me everything; I've been flying since I was five. And who d'you think taught these others the basics? Besides, there's no one else even nearly qualified.”

”Training exercises are different!” Of all things, he didn't want to have to worry about her up there. ”I'll get Chewie; he's done some-”

”Oh, brilliant, Solo! We can just build a dormer onto the canopy bubble and that hyperthyroid dust-mop of yours can fly the s.h.i.+p with his kneecaps!”

Han resigned himself to the fact that she was the logical one to fly. She turned to her other pilots. ”Solo's right; this one'll be a toughie. We don't want to engage them out in s.p.a.ce, because all the advantages out there are theirs, but we don't want to let them get too close to the surface, either. Our ground defenses couldn't cope with a fighter spread. So somewhere in the middle we'll have to draw the line, depending on how they play it when they come at us. If we can buy time, the ground personnel will have a chance to complete evacuation.”

She turned to Han. ”Including the Falcon. I gave orders to finish her and close her up as soon as possible. I had to divert men to do it, but a deal's a deal. And I sent word to Chewie what's happened.”

She pulled her helmet on. ”Han's flight leader. I'll a.s.sign wing men. Let's move.”

With high screeches the six Z-95 Headhunters, like so many mottled arrowheads, sped off into the sky. Han pulled down and adjusted his tinted visor. He checked his weapons again, three blaster cannons in each wing. Satisfied, he maneuvered so that his wing man was above and behind him, relative to the plane of ascent. Seated in his sloped-back easy chair, situated high in the canopy bubble, he had something near 360-degrees' visibility, one of the things he liked most about these old Z-95s.

His wing man was a lanky, soft-spoken young man. Han hoped the guy wouldn't forget to stick close when The Show started.

He thought, The Show-fighter-pilot jargon. He'd never thought he'd be using it again, with his blood up and a million things to keep track of, including allies, enemies, and his own s.h.i.+p. And anything that went wrong could blow him out of The Show for good.

Besides, The Show was the province of youth. A fighter could hold only so much gee-compensation equipment, enough to lessen simple linear stress and get to a target or sc.r.a.p in a hurry, but not enough to offset the punishment of tight maneuvering and sudden acceleration. Dogfighting remained the testing ground of young reflexes, resilience, and coordination.