IV IVHAN 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 snubships; 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 cockpit to eyeball it. Most of its console panels had been removed in the course of years of repair, leaving linkages and wiring exposed. The cockpit was just as cramped as he remembered.
But with that, the Z-95 Headhunter was still a good little ship, 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, lusterless 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 ships; they can afford to buy whatever they want. That fighter spread coming in at us is probably made up of IRD ships 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 ships. That’s three two-ship 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 ships 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 hit 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 ship 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 ships, 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 ship 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 space, 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 assign 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 ship. 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 scrap 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.
Once, Han had lived, eaten, and slept high-speed flying. He’d trained under men who thought of little else. Even off-duty life had revolved around hand-eye skills, control, balance. Drunk, he’d stood on his head and played ring-toss, and been flung aloft from a blanket with a handful of darts to twist in midair and throw bull’s-eyes time and again. He’d flown ships like this one, and ships a good deal faster, through every conceivable maneuver.
Once. Han was by no means old, but he hadn’t been in this particular type of contest for a long time. The flight of Headhunters was pulling itself into two-ship elements, and he found his hands had steadied.
They drew their ships’ wings back to minimize drag, wing camber adjusting automatically, and rose at high boost. They would meet their opposition at the edge of space.
“Headhunter leader,” he announced over the commo net, “to Headhunter flight. Commo check.”
“Headhunter two to leader, in.” That was Han’s wing man.
“Headhunter three, check,” sang Jessa’s clear alto.
“Headhunter four, all correct.” That had been Jessa’s wing man, the gray-skinned humanoid from Lafra who, Han had noticed, had vestiges of soaring membranes, suggesting that he had superior flying instincts and a fine grasp of spacial relationships. The Lafrarian, it had turned out, had over four minutes’ actual combat time, which was a good sign. A good many fighter pilots were weeded out in the first minute or so of combat.
Headhunters five and six chimed in, two of Jessa’s grease slingers who were brothers to boot. It had been inevitable that they’d be wing men; they’d tend to stick together, and if paired with anyone else, would have been distracted anyway.
Ground control came up. “Headhunter flight, you should have a visual on your opposition within two minutes.”
Han had his flight tighten up their ragged formation. “Stay in pairs. If the bandits offer a head-on pass, take them up on it; you can pitch just as hard as they can.” He thought it better not to mention that the other side had a longer reach, however.
He had Five and Six, the brothers, drop far back to field any enemies that might break through. The two remaining elements spread out as much as they could without risking separation. Their sensors and those of the approaching ships identified one another, and complex countermeasures and distortion systems switched on. Han knew this engagement would be conducted on visual ranging; all the complicated sensor-warfare apparatus tended to cancel out, no longer to be trusted.
Short-range screens painted four blips. “Go to Heads-Up Displays,” Han ordered, and they all cut in their holographics. Transparent projections of their instrumentation hung before them in the canopy bubbles, freeing them of the need to divert their eyes and attention from the task of flying in order to take a reading.
“Here they come!” someone shouted. “At one-zero-slash-two-five!”
The enemy ships were IRD models all right, with bulbous fuselages and the distinctive engine package that characterized that latest military design. They were IRD prototypes. As Han watched, the raiders broke formation into two elements of two ships each in perfect precision.
“Elements break!” he called. “Take ’em!” He led his wing man off to starboard to face that brace of IRDs as Jessa and her humanoid wing man banked to port.
The net came alive with cries of warning. The Espo flyers had disdained evasionary tactics, coming head-on, meaning they were out to put some blood on the walls. Their orders, Han thought, must’ve been to hit the outlaw-techs as hard as they could.
The IRDs began firing from extreme range with yellow-green flashes of the energy cannon in their chin pods. Deflector shields were up. Han ground his teeth, his hand tight on the stick, disciplining himself not to fire until it could do some good. He fought the urge to rubberneck and see how his other element was doing; each two-ship pair was on its own for the moment. He could only hope everybody would hold together, because the pilot who became a straggler in a row like this seldom came out of it.
Han and the opposing wing leader squared off and bore in on each other. Their wing men, keeping out of the way, were too busy holding position and adapting to their leaders’ actions to do any shooting.
The IRD’s beams began to make hits, rocking the smaller Headhunter. Han came within range and still held his fire; he had a feeling about this one. The IRD pilot might not even be sure about the old Z-95’s reach, but Han suspected he knew what the man would do as soon as he returned fire. Riding the jolting Headhunter through the hail of incoming shots, he bided his time and hoped his shields would hold.
He played it for as long as he dared, only a matter of an extra moment or two, but precious time and vital distance. He let one quick burst go. As he’d suspected, the enemy never intended to face off to the very end. The IRD rolled onto its back, still firing, and Han had the snap shot he’d hoped for. But the IRD fighter was into his gunsight ring and out again like a wraith, so although he scored, Han knew he hadn’t done it any damage. The Authority ships were even faster than he’d thought.
Then all bets were off because, despite everything taught in classrooms, the IRDs split up, the wing man peeling away in an abrupt bank. Han’s wing man went after him, exclaiming excitedly, “I’m on him!” Han hollered for him to come back and not throw away the security of a two-ship element.
The IRD leader swept by underneath Han. He knew what that meant, too; the enemy was almost certain to split-S, loop under, and try for a tail position—the kill position. What Han should have done with the slower Headhunter was to firewall the throttle and go for clear space until he knew what was what. But the interchange of chatter between Jessa and her wing mate told him that the other pair of IRDs had split up as well, drawing her and her companion out of their pairing.
Han sent his Headhunter into a maximum-performance climbing turn, trying to look everywhere at once, still yelling to his wing man, “Stick with me! They’re baiting you!” But he was ignored.
The IRD leader he’d shot at hadn’t split-S. The raiders’ whole strategy of drawing the defenders out of formation was clear now, too late. The IRD leader had half rolled again, half looped, and come around onto the tail of Han’s wing man. The other IRD, the bait, was already racing on toward the backup element, Headhunters five and six. One of the IRDs Jessa had faced joined that one in a new two-ship element.
The Espos had counted on the inexperienced outlaw-techs’ breaking formation, Han thought. If we’d stayed together we’d have mopped the floor with them. “Jess, dammit, we’ve been robbed,” he called as he came around, but Jessa had her own troubles. Because she and her wing mate had become separated, an IRD had found the opportunity to fasten itself on her tail.
Han saw that his own wing man was in trouble, but just didn’t have the speed to intervene. The IRD leader had attached himself to the Headhunter in the kill position, and the lanky young outlaw-tech was pleading, “Help me, somebody! Get him off me!”
Still way out of range, Han fired anyway, hoping to shake up the IRD leader’s concentration. But the enemy was steady and undistracted. He waited until he had the Headhunter perfectly set up and hit the firing button on his control grips in a brief burst. The Z-95 was caught by a yellow-green blast and vanished in a nimbus of white-hot gas and debris.
What Han should have done was draw his remaining ships together in a weaving, mutually protective string or circle. But even as he breathed profanities to himself, he cut a course for the victorious IRD, his blood up, caution forgotten, thinking, Nobody gets into me for a wing man, pal. Nobody.
It came to him that he didn’t even know that lanky boy’s name.
Jessa’s wing man, the Lafrarian, shouted, “Scissor right, Headhunter three! Scissor!”
Jessa broke right in a flurry of evasive maneuvers while lines of destruction probed for, her. She poured on all speed as her wing man came in at a sharp angle, decreasing his own velocity so that Jessa and her pursuer came across his vector. The Lafrarian settled calmly into the kill position, quickened up, and opened fire.
Lines of red blaster-cannon fire broke from the trailing Headhunter’s wings. The raider ship shuddered as pieces of its fuselage were sheared off. There was an explosion, and the crippled IRD went into a helpless flutter, as if it were dragging a broken wing. It began its long fall toward the planet, sentenced to death by simple gravity.
Far below, Headhunters five and six, the two brothers, had engaged the IRDs that had broken through. Off in the distance Han Solo and the IRD leader swept and wove through the permutations of close combat, making their statements in beams of devastation in red, in green.
But Jessa knew where priorities lay, and Five and Six were her weakest flyers. Even now they were calling for help. She and her humanoid wing man closed and sped off to rejoin the fray.
A raider was glued to Headhunter five’s tail, chopping at it and holding position through all the insane turns and evasions, refusing to be unseated. The outlaw-tech shoved his stick up into the corner for a pushover but was too slow. The IRD’s beams sliced through his ship, depressurizing it and severing him at the waist. The IRD turned toward the other brother, Headhunter six, as its companion raced on toward the planet and its outlaw base.
Just then Jessa and her wing man arrived, calling for Headhunter six to come under their cover.
“I can’t; I’m latched!” the man answered. The IRD that had remained behind had come out of a smooth barrel roll and attached itself to him. Jessa’s wing man threw himself in to help and she came right behind. The sliding, jockeying string of four ships plunged toward the planet’s surface.
The IRD made its kill a moment later. Headhunter six split apart in a blossom of fire and wreckage just as its killer came under Jessa’s wing man’s guns.
The Espo flyer applied more of his ship’s amazing speed to improve his lead and came up as if he were going into a loop, making the Lafrarian misjudge. The IRD flashed out of the maneuver instead, in a lightning-fast turn, banked, and managed to make a high deflection shot.
The IRD’s cannon scored, and her wing man’s Headhunter shook as Jessa raised her voice in alarm, sheering off as quickly as she could. She banked and sensed a shadow near. The IRD swooped past. She swerved and shot at it instinctively. The burst scored, penetrating the IRD’s shields. As the IRD dropped away in an emergency power dive, its pilot struggling to adjust his craft’s thrust bias and avert disaster, Jessa ignored Han’s dictum that she ride her kill. She returned to see what she could do for her wing mate.
Exactly nothing. The Lafrarian’s ship was damaged but not in danger of crashing. He’d put it into a shallow glide, extending his wings to their fullest.
“Can you make it?”
“Yes, Jessa. But at least one of the IRD has gotten through. The other may manage to rejoin him.”
“Nurse your ship back. I’ve got to get down there.”
“Good hunting, Jessa!”
She opened her ship’s engines in a power dive.
* * *
Han found out right away that the IRD leader was a good pilot. He discovered it by nearly getting his easy chair shot out from underneath him.
The Espo flyer was hot, accurate with his weaponry, deft with his maneuvers. He and Han quickly joined in circling, pouncing, cloverleaf battle, the upper hand alternating between them. Rolling, looping, doing their best to turn inside each other’s turns, sliding into and out of each other’s gun-sights over and over, they never let their sticks sit still for an instant.
For the third time Han shook the IRD off, playing on his Headhunter’s greater maneuverability against the IRD’s superior speed. He watched the Espo flyer try to pick him up again. “I guess you must be the local champ, huh?” The IRD came at him once more. “Have it your way, bozo, Let’s see what you’ve really got.”
He split-S down deeper into the planet’s atmosphere as the IRD sprang at his tail, gaining in the descent but unable to hold the Headhunter in his sights. Han pulled up sharply, twisted his ship into a half loop, flipped over, and went into a diving aileron roll with another loop thrown in, coming out of the combo in the opposite direction.
Cannon blasts streaked by over the canopy bubble, barely missing. Man, this Espo can really latch, Han told himself. But he has a few things left to learn. School ain’t over yet.
He rammed the stick into the corner for a pushover and began a power dive. The IRD hung in but couldn’t quite draw a bead on him. Han pushed the Headhunter to its limits, ducking and slipping as the Espo pilot raked at him. The snub’s engines moaned, and every particle of her vibrated as if desiring to fly apart. Han jostled, watching his Heads-Up Display for the reading he wanted, The IRD’s shots ranged closer.
Then he had it. He began pulling out of his dive, nosing up slowly and dreading the shot from behind that would end all his problems and hopes.
But the IRD pilot held off, not wanting to waste the opportunity, waiting for the Headhunter to present a spread-eagled silhouette in his gunsight. Han thought, Sure, he wants this one to be the perfect kill.
He yanked into a turn as the IRD aligned itself trailing him into it and edging for a lead. Han cheated the turn tighter, and tighter yet. But the IRD pilot clung doggedly, to end the frustrating chase and prove who was the hotter pilot.
And then Han had the turn tighter than ninety degrees, the thing he’d been working toward all along. The Espo hadn’t paid enough attention to his altimeter, and now the thicker air was working against the IRD, cutting down on its performance. It couldn’t hold a turn this tight.
And just as the IRD broke off its run, Han, with the instincts that had given him a reputation for telepathy, threw his Headhunter into a vertical reversement. The IRD was close enough now. Han fired a sustained burst and the IRD became a cloud of light, throwing out glowing motes and bits of wreckage in every direction.
And as the Headhunter zipped past the showering remains of its opponent, Han crowed, “Happy graduation day, sucker!”
The fourth IRD had already made three strafing runs on the outlaw-tech base. The base’s defensive guns couldn’t keep up with it; they’d been set up for actions against large ships and mass assault, not agile, low-angle fighter attacks.
The raider had concentrated on flak suppression for his first runs. Now most of the gun emplacements were silent. Outlaws dead and dying lay in a base where several buildings were already holed or ablaze.
Then Jessa showed up. Maintaining the velocity she’d picked up in her dive, ignoring the fact that the wings might be ripped off her stubborn little Headhunter at any moment, she threw herself after the IRD just as it came out of its pass. Those people down there were hers, were suffering and perishing because they worked for her. She was absolutely adamant that no more runs would be made at them.
But as she was lining up on the IRD a volley of cannon fire sizzled down from above, nipping at the leading edge of her starboard wing. Another IRD flashed by with speed it had picked up in its own dive, the ship she had thought to be disabled. Its shots had penetrated her shields and come close to cleaving her wing.
But she held position, determined to get at least one of the raiders before they got her.
Then the second IRD itself became a target. Han had it in his sights for an instant in a side-on, high deflection shot. He jinxed the nose of his ship, laying out sleeper rounds ahead of the Espo, investing in the future. It paid off; the IRD vanished in an outlashing of force and shrapnel.
“You’re on the last one, Jess!” he informed her in a crackle of static. “Swat him!”
She was lined on the IRD again. She fired, but only her portside cannon worked; the damage to her starboard wing had knocked out its guns. Her target being slightly off to starboard, she missed.
The IRD began surging ahead, capitalizing on its raw ion power, slipping away to starboard. In another split second it would get away. Jessa snap-rolled, sliding to starboard belly-up, and fired again. Her remaining guns reached out with red fingers of destruction and hit. The IRD flared and flamed, breaking apart.
“Nice shooting, doll,” Han called over the net. Jessa’s Headhunter continued along, canopy lowermost, not far from the ground. He cut in full power and went after her, saying, “Jess, in aerospace circles, what we call what you are is upside down.”
“I can’t get back over!” There was desperation in her tone. “That damage I took must’ve started a burn-out creep-age. My controls are dead!”
He was about to instruct her to punch out but stopped himself. She was too close to the surface; her ejection seat would never have time to right itself. Her ship was losing altitude rapidly. Only seconds were left.
He swept in and matched speeds with her. “Jess, get ready to go when I give you the word.”
She was mystified. What could he mean? She was dead, crashing or ejecting. But she prepared to do as he said. Han eased the wing of his Headhunter under her overturned one. She saw his plan and her breath caught in her throat.
“On three,” he told her. “One!” On that count he brought his wing tip up under hers. “Two!” They both felt the jar of hazardous contact, knowing the most minuscule mistake would strew them both all over the flat landscape.
Han rolled left, and the ground that had been streaking by beneath Jessa’s dangling head seemed to rotate away as Han’s Headhunter imparted spin to hers. He finished his roll with additional force.
“Three! Punch out, Jess!” He himself was fighting to keep his jostled ship from going out of control.
But before he’d even said half of it, she’d gone, her canopy bubble propelled up and back by separator charges, her ejection seat—the easy chair—flung high and clear of her descending ship. The Headhunter plowed into the planet’s surface, making a long strip of fiery ruin along the ground, becoming the day’s final casualty.
Jessa watched from her ejection seat while its replusor units steadied and eased her down toward the ground on gusts of power. Off in the distance, she could see her Lafrarian wing man nursing his damaged craft in for a landing.
Han maneuvered his Headhunter through a long turn, coaxing with his retrothrusters until he was at a near stall. He brought his ship down nearby just as Jessa touched down.
The bubble popped up. He removed his helmet and jumped out of the aged fighter just as she slid free of her harness and threw her own helmet aside, feeling around and finding herself generally whole.
Han sauntered over, stripping off his flying gloves. “There’s room for two in my ship if we squeeze,” he leered.
“As I live and breathe,” she scoffed. “Have we finally seen Han Solo do something unselfish? Are you going soft? Who knows, you may even pick up a little morality one day, if you ever wake up and get wise to yourself.”
He stopped, his leer gone. He glared at her for a moment, then said, “I already know all about morality, Jess. A friend of mine made a decision once, thought he was doing the moral thing. Hell, he was. But he’d been conned. He lost his career, his girl, everything. This friend of mine, he ended up standing there while they ripped the rank and insignia off his tunic. The people who didn’t want him put up against a wall and shot were laughing at him. A whole planet. He shipped out of there and never went back.”
She watched his face become ugly. “Wouldn’t anyone testify for—your friend?” she asked softly.
He sniggered. “His commanding officer committed perjury against him. There was only one witness in his defense, and who’s going to believe a Wookiee?”
He fended off her next remark by glancing at the base. “Looks like they never touched the main hangar. You can have the Falcon finished in no time and still evacuate before the Espos show up. Then I’ll be on my way. We’ve both got things to do.”
She closed one eye, looking at him sidelong. “It’s lucky I know you’re a mercenary, Solo. It’s lucky I know you only flew that Headhunter to protect the Falcon, not to protect lives. And that you saved me so I could hold up my end of our bargain. It’s lucky you’ll probably never do a single selfless, decent thing in your life, and that everything that happened today fits in, in some crazy way, with that greedy, retarded behavioral pattern of yours.”
He stared at her quizzically. “Lucky?”
She started for his fighter, walking tiredly. “Lucky for me.” Jessa said over her shoulder.