Star Wars - Red Sky, Blue Flame by Elaine Cunningham

Author:Elaine Cunningham [Cunningham, Elaine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2001-12-17T22:39:31+00:00

Jag hauled himself onto the repair dock and regarded his clawcraft. The mechanics had added a coat of metallic silver-blue paint after one of his mishaps. This covered some of the scars but cast every dent into bright relief. He disengaged the locks on the cockpit. He had to shoulder-slam the rounded dome a couple of times before the mechanism fully turned over.

He climbed in and began to power up the repulsor lifts. The ship wheezed as its engines fired, and it rose from the dock with all the grace of a drunken Gamorrean, but at least it rose, and the controls showed that the weapons had been fully charged.

Jag eased through a broad passage and carefully maneuvered the ship into the hangar.

There was little left but rubble, but at least the invaders had moved on. The sky over the shattered dome still shone red with the laser barrage, but the enemy was now targeting other sectors of the dome.

Jag urged his clawcraft swiftly up toward the breeched dome. The hole was much larger than it had appeared from the ground. Huge panels of the thin, mirrored transparisteel hung from the edges. As Jag passed, one of them tore loose. It drifted down, looking nearly as weightless as a leaf in a soft breeze. Any sound of its impact was muted by the noise of Jag’s engine, and the continuing assault from above.

He rose up into the open sky, engaging the controls that spread four sweeping weapon arms into firing position. These framed the pod, splaying out in a formation similar to that of an X-wing’s S-foils. He wheeled the Blue Flame in a tight circle, surprised and pleased that so unreliable a ship could remain so maneuverable.

The three moons were in rare summer convergence. The forest moon was edging across the face of the large, primary moon. A small, more distant moon, glowing a faint blue against the distant nebular haze, closed in. As a result, the sky was nearly as bright as in twilight. Even with his lights dimmed, he would soon be noticed.

A passing X-wing changed course and veered sharply toward him. The pirate ship was painted in a garish red-and-black design. Jag punched the atmospheric engines to full power. His clawcraft darted away, barely evading a stream of crimson laser fire.

The enemy ship followed, dipping and swaying and it pursued the Blue Flame. Jag avoided it, but only barely.

He headed toward the main force: five old X-wing fighters surrounding a battered corvette. The pirates had seen the ruin of the Chiss fleet, Jag concluded, and they’d probably concluded, quite rightly, that since the Chiss hadn’t used any land-to-air missiles yet, they didn’t have any.

Even so, this battle meant one not-particularly-fast Chiss ship against several professional space pirates. They had every reason to expect his defeat.

Jag threw the Blue Flame into an erratic, zig-zagging pattern, firing seemingly at random. Nearly all his laser fire went ridiculously wild. He hoped that would convince the pirates to overlook his two proton torpedoes.

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