“I’m not interested in testing its mettle,” Teller said.
“It could be here simply to refuel,” Artoz said, sounding unconvinced.
Abruptly, the escort vanished from the screen.
“Where’d it go?” Anora asked.
And just as abruptly the escort reappeared — now visible through the forward viewports.
“Microjump!” Cala said. “And deploying starfighters!”
Teller watched as starfighters dropped from the escort’s deployment chute. “V-wings, led by an Eta-Two Actis.”
“Bets on who’s piloting the black one?” Hask said.
Anora was shaking her head in dismay. “How did they know?”
Teller’s dark eyes were wide with surprise. “Tarkin may have figured if he could scare us away from Gromas by sending ships, we’d come to Phindar.”
“Or he hedged his bet,” Artoz said. “Capital ships at Gromas, he and Vader here.”
Teller shook himself alert. “Doesn’t much matter now.” He turned to Cala. “How much time do we have?”
“A quarter hour,” the Koorivar told him.
“Marking that,” Artoz said.
“How far to the nearest jump point?”
Salikk swung to the navicomputer. “We need to get out of the way of Phindar and the principal moon.”
“Then you’ve got some fancy flying to do first,” Teller said. “Keep us as close to the tanker as possible and protect the hyperdrive generator at all costs. A couple of errant beams and everything’s toast.”
“Don’t we know it,” Cala said.
Salikk laughed shortly and madly. “If you think that’ll keep Vader and Tarkin from firing, you’re your own worst enemies.”
Teller ignored the remark and looked at Anora. “Get your cams ready.”
“Stay on my left wing,” Vader told Tarkin over the tactical net as they fairly fell out of the escort, five additional pairs of V-wings at their backs.
The mammoth cylindrical tanker was straight ahead of them, profiled against the planet and with the Carrion Spike just beginning to drop beneath it, the shipjackers intent on putting the tanker between themselves and the approaching starfighters. With the corvette all but wedded bow-to-stern to the tanker, there was little point in enabling the ship’s stealth system.
Schematics of the Carrion Spike’s airframe and hyperdrive generator had been uploaded into the targeting computer of each starfighter and astromech, as well as into the fire-control systems of the Goliath, a precise strike from whose larger guns could be enough to immobilize the corvette.
The squadron pilots reported in by call signs — Yellows Three through Twelve — as they formed up on Vader’s black starfighter and accelerated toward the tanker.
“Our goal is to force the corvette to lower its deflector shields before we return fire,” Tarkin said through his helmet headset. “Once we’ve done so, our priority will be to target the hyperdrive generator, which is aft of the main guns along the corvette’s spine.”
A chorus of distorted voices acknowledged the directives.
“Affirmative, Yellow Two.”
Tarkin’s right hand nudged the joystick while his left made adjustments to the instruments. Little more than a single-pilot fuselage pod sitting on vertically stacked ion engines and flanked by deployable heat-radiating stability foils, the V-wing had been designed for speed and nimbleness, at the expense of a reliable life-support system or hyperdrive. Twin ion cannons bracketed the long, wedge-shaped prow. It had been years since he had piloted one, and despite the spaciousness of the cockpit and the broad view through the paned transparisteel canopy, he felt claustrophobic, strapped into the seat by safety webbing and encumbered by gloves, flight boots, and helmet. With the hinged targeting computer intruding on his port-side view, the cockpit seemed more suitable to a double-jointed Geonosian. The old Delta-7 Aethersprite was roomy by comparison, the ARC-170 luxurious. Things could have been worse, however. The Goliath could have been carrying a squadron of the new — and seemingly disposable — TIE fighters.
“Commencing attack run,” Vader said.
With the astromech chirping commands to the inertial compensator, Tarkin fed more power to the engines to stay abreast of and slightly behind Vader, and plummeted toward the tanker. Immediately he realized that the shipjackers were not simply attempting to hide; they were executing what amounted to a slow roll that was keeping the vulnerable dorsal surface of the Carrion Spike facing the curved hull of the much larger vessel. As the corvette disappeared behind the port side, Vader climbed, determined to fall on the ship, only to find when he and Tarkin arrived that the Carrion Spike was showing them her belly rather than her spine. They unleashed a hail of ion cannon fire regardless and came about for another rapacious run, the corvette upside down on top of the tanker by then and beginning to arc down along the vessel’s starboard hull, her positioning jets flaring.
Descending, the Carrion Spike fell prey to four starfighters, which unloaded on her, taxing the resiliency of her powerful shields but emerging from the confrontation unscathed. Not until the corvette was tucked safely beneath the tanker once more did she reply, with powerful volleys from the lateral laser cannons that caught Yellows Seven and Eight and disintegrated them.
Jinking at the outer edge of the field of fire, Vader and Tarkin followed the ship into her second revolution, hammering away at her as she crawled out from beneath the tanker, but with no tangible results.
With Tarkin still clinging to the Eta-2’s left wing, Vader powered out of his dive, rolled over, and rushed to re-engage, coming dangerously close to the tanker in an effort to squeeze himself between it and the ascending Carrion Spike and forcing Tarkin to decelerate into a tandem position. Fire from Vader’s ion cannons coruscated across the corvette from bow to stern, but the shields continued to hold, strengthened, Tarkin guessed, by rerouting power from the cannons and sublight maneuvering jets.
The Carrion Spike slowed considerably as she reached the crest of her tortuous loop, but once arrived the ship delivered a triple barrage of laserfire that forced four of the starfighters to diverge, one of them shearing away a piece of the tanker’s elevated aft bridge before spinning out of control and exploding.
Vader’s voice boomed through the net. “Yellows Three and Four, Ten and Twelve, form up on Yellow Two and follow our attack run. Direct continuous fire at the corvette’s command center.”
Tarkin mimicked Vader’s evasive maneuvers while the four starfighters raced in to join them; then the half dozen banked as one to begin their runs. Maintaining fire discipline, Tarkin tightened his hand on the joystick and swooped in, the astromech transmitting targeting data to the cockpit’s display screen. Beams began to find their way through the shields and pock the corvette’s gleaming hull. One after the next, the starfighters harried the larger ship, drenching the shields with ion fire as she dropped under the lightly armored hull of the tanker for a third time.
“They can’t hide inside those shields for much longer,” Vader said over the net. “Echelon formation on Yellow Two, and re-engage.”
They launched their attack as the Carrion Spike was drifting up alongside the tanker’s starboard side. Tarkin’s targeting reticle went red and a laser-lock tone filled the cockpit. He dived and was going for a kill-shot when proximity alarms began to blare, and he glanced up in time to see six ARC-170s spring from one of the tanker’s forward bays. Leaning on the joystick, he slued hard to starboard, his shots going wide of their mark as the tactical net grew cacophonous with shouts of caution. Vader’s Eta-2 and the rest of the V-wings fanned out in search of clear space as the ARC-170s reeled into their midst, narrowly avoiding collisions.