"Brian Daley "Han Solo at Stars' End"" - читать интересную книгу автора

"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 Head-hunters as a ground crewman finished fueling it. He took a high leap and chlnned 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 arm-rest. He let himself back down.
Several pilots had already gathered there, and an-other, 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 be-side him and pressed an old, lusterless bowl 6f 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 prac-tice 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 Au-thority's got newer ships; they can afford to buy what-ever they want. That fighter spread coming in at us is probably made up of IRD ships straight off the gov-ernment inventory, maybe prototypes, maybe produc-tion 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 even been to one?"
It was. Han went on, raising his voice over the in-creasing 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 geo. These boys'11 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 to-gether 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.
"rll 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 instal-lation, 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 taft 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 tamer, let him go; he's finished. But other-wise 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. Dec 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 differentl" 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 advan-tages 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 some-where in the middle we'll have to draw the line, de-pending 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 Hah. "Including the Falcon. I gave orders to finish her and close her up as soon as possi-ble. 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. "Hall'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. Hah 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, situ-ated 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 bow 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 sud-den acceleration. Dogfighting remained the testing ground of young reflexes, resilience, and coordination.
Once, Hah 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 blan-ket 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. Hah 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 corntoo net, "to Headhunter flight. Corntoo check."
"Headhunter two to leader, in." That was Hall'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 in-stincts 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 p'llots 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."
Hah had his flight tighten up their ragged forma-tion. "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 com-plex countermeasures and distortion systems switched on. Hah 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 in-strumentation hung before them in the canopy bub-bles, freeing them of the need to divert their eyes and attention from the task of flying in order to take a reading.
"Here they cornel" someone shouted. "At one-zero-
alash-two-fivel"
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 breakV' he called. "Take 'emI" 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. Hah 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, be-cause 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 adapt-ing 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 Hah 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 sus-pected, 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, 'Tm 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 Hah. He knew what that meant, too; the enemy was almost cer-tain to split-S, loop under, and try for a taft positionm the kill position. What Hah should have done with the slower Headhunter was to fire-wall 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.