James Luceno - Tarkin

“Retract the transfer tube and get us out of here,” he shouted toward the command cabin.

“Trouble?” Anora asked, leaping from her chair.

Teller shook his head while he peeled the scar from his cheek and the fake implant from his left eye. “That’s the problem. Everything went way too smoothly. The Phindian didn’t question anything, didn’t even ask about the ship or the special fuel cells.”

“You said yourself we’re just another corvette out here,” Anora said.

“Not up close we’re not.” Hearing the segmented umbilical retract into the hull, Teller hurried for the command cabin, Anora right on his heels.

“Easing us away,” Salikk said from the captain’s chair.

The corvette lurched slightly as maneuvering jets separated it from the tanker. Teller moved to the forward viewports to sweep his gaze over local space.

“What are you looking for?” Artoz asked from one of the other chairs.

“I won’t know till I see it,” Teller started to say when Cala cut him off.

“Ship reverting Rimward!” He paused to study the sensors. “Imperial escort carrier. On screen.”

Teller, Anora, Hask, and Artoz crowded behind Cala’s chair as an image resolved of a boxy vessel with a curved upper hull and a flat ventral one. Aft, the hull extended over the carrier’s engines.

“Transponder signature identifies it as the Goliath ,” Cala continued. “Capable of carrying a wing of starfighters. Armed with ten Taim and Bak H-eights and a Krupx missile delivery system. Not much in the way of shields—”

“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.