"Michael Stackpole "Rogue Squadron"" - читать интересную книгу автора

1


You're good, Corran, but you're no Luke Skywalker. Corran Horn's cheeks still
burned at the memory of Commander Antilles's evaluation of his last simula-tor
exercise. The line had been a simple comment, not meant to be cruel nor
delivered that way, but it cut deep into Corran. I've never tried to suggest I'm
that good of a pilot.
He shook his head. No, you just wanted it to be self-evident and easily
recognized by everyone around you. Reaching out he flicked the starter switches
for the X-wing simulator's engines. "Green One has four starts and is go." All
around him in the cockpit various switches, buttons, and monitors flashed to
life. "Primary and secondary power is at full."
Ooryl Qrygg, his Gand wingman, reported sim-ilar start-up success in a
high-pitched voice. "Green Two is operational."
Green Three and Four checked in, then the ex-ternal screens came alive
projecting an empty starfield. "Whistler, have you finished the navigation
calculations?"
The green and white R2 unit seated behind Corran hooted, then the navdata
spilled out over Corran's main monitor. He punched a button send-ing the same
coordinates out to the other pilots in Green Flight. "Go to light speed and
rendezvous on the Redemption."
As Corran engaged the X-wing's hyperdrive, the stars elongated themselves into
white cylinders, then snapped back into pinpoints and began to revolve slowly,
transforming themselves into a tunnel of white light. Corran fought the urge to
use the stick to compensate for the roll. In space, and especially hyperspace,
up and down were relative. How his ship moved through hyperspace didn't really
matter-as long as it remained on the course Whis-tler had calculated and had
attained sufficient veloc-ity before entering hyperspace, he'd arrive intact.
Flying into a black hole would actually make this run easier. Every pilot
dreaded the Redemption run. The scenario was based on an Imperial attack on
evacuation ships back before the first Death Star had been destroyed. While the
Redemption waited for three Medevac shuttles and the corvette Korolev to dock
and off-load wounded, the Imperial frigate Warspite danced around the system and
dumped out TIE fighters and added bombers to the mix to do as much damage as
they could.
The bombers, with a full load of missiles, could do a lot of damage. All the
pilots called the Re-demption scenario by another name: the Requiem scenario.
The Warspite would only deploy four star fighters and a half-dozen bombers-known
in pilot slang as "eyeballs" and "dupes" respectively- but it would do so in a
pattern that made it all but impossible for the pilots to save the Korolev. The
corvette was just one big target, and the TIE
bombers had no trouble unloading all their missiles into it.
Stellar pinpoints elongated again as the fighter came out of hyperspace. Off to
the port side Corran saw the Redemption. Moments later Whistler re-ported that
the other fighters and all three Medevac shuttles had arrived. The fighters
checked in and the first shuttle began its docking maneuver with the Redemption.
"Green One, this is Green Four."
"Go ahead, Four."