Dawn Comes
Airspace above Empress Teta
Close proximity to the capital, Cinnagar
Close proximity to the capital, Cinnagar
The X-Wings engines had been pushing red for minutes. That they hadn't exploded could only be described as a miracle.
Another volley of green laser fire shot past the transparisteel windows toward Teta's horizon. Bernard didn't even regard them, too preoccupied with the missile alerts aggressively blaring incoming. He shoved the control stick forward, sending the starfighter into a hard descent and on a collision course with the enemy patrol boat.
The cockpit lit up with green light as the view ahead was fileld with spirals of green point-defence cannon fire. Every battery this side of the gunboat had him locked, and any TIEs still chasing kept their own volleys coming. Shots from every angle barely missed the X-Wing dancing towards the patrol boat's hull through a web of laser fire that was quickly closing around his approach vector. And that damned missile alert continued beeping.
Bernard held the X-Wing's course. He fipped several controls, diverting energy from the shields to the already whining engines. He only needed a little more power.
The patrol boat's hull blocked out the view from the cockpit, as the distance between it and the starfighter closed more and more. Individual shots from pursuing TIEs impacted the patrol boat's shields, blue ripples flaring at the impact points. The radar showed several of the TIEs breaking off their pursuit as their firing lines intersected with the allied ship. Bernard's plan panned out. His pursuers had been eliminated, but the gun boat now had a clear shot as his starfighter dipped into the killing field of its point-defence cannons.
Bernard yanked the control stick sideways, putting the X-Wing into a spin, and green bolts passed between S-foils as the craft barely escaped an explosive end.
A collision warning added to the cacophony of missile warnings and other caution signals in the cockpit. Proximity sensors read a hundred, ninety, eighty, seventy meters, continually dropping as the starfighter continued on its path directly toward the patrol boat's hull. The laser fire suddenly stopped, point-defence cannons reaching the limit for safe firing solutions.
Bernard flipped every break switch he could think of and pulled up, hard.
The engine readout dropped into the greens as the starfighter stalled. Its nose barely avoided grazing the patrol boat's particle shields. The missiles chasing the X-Wing didn't manage the turn in time, and slammed straight through. A large explosion lit up the cockpit, and the resulting shockwave rattled the starfighter as it levelled out its path along the length of the patrol boat. The rear display showed a large wound in the ship's hull. Blue shields flickered as they failed to contain the damage.
Bernard broke off from the patrol boat right as he passed its engines, exploiting what he hoped to be a deadzone for its point-defence lasers. Using that moment of peace, he took stock of his situation. For all intents and purposes, his X-Wing was shot. Damage reports indicated an imminent engine-matrix collapse. Exceeding the safe operating conditions had all but fried the electronics. More importantly, the half-decade old electronics all around the cockpit had suffered considerably under the strain of his stunt. As energy levels returned to normal readings, more and more systems blinked out as the fuses simply burned up. The last warning of enemy weapon's lock came as a dying whine that quickly faded into silence.
Green lines whizzed past the cockpit. Bernard pulled the control stick left and right, but the X-Wing's responses came delayed and with only a fraction of the desired effect. In none of Corellia's nine hells would he win a dogfight with his starfighter in this condition.
The laser fire kept closing in, shaving off meters between their trajectories and their intended target.
Bernard grimaced as he muttered a curse under his breath. If he couldn't beat his pursuers, the only option would be to lose them. In a quickly-fading X-Wing, he saw only one viable plan. More a gambit than a plan, if he was honest with himself.
Another green bolt flew past, nearly grazing the left-side S-foils. Bernard exhaled sharply, bracing himself as he rerouted all remaining power to the air brakes and pulled at the control stick to bring the X-Wing almost perpendicular with its flight path.
The starfighter's velocity readout dropped by almost half in an instant. The S-foils bent and buckled under the strain as the entirety of the X-Wing's wingspan suddenly had to struggle against the oncoming winds with its flat sides. Metal groaned and whined under the pressure, but the manoeuver worked. The TIEs shot past the starfighter, shots going wide. During the time they would need to realign to get a killshot, Bernard could safely get the X-Wing into the treelines in a controlled landing.
Except, one TIE hadn't missed. A lone green bolt slammed into the right-side S-foils. The impact broke the wing in two, and sent the X-Wing spiralling into an uncontrollable descent toward the treeline below. All Bernard managed as his insides were completely spun upside down in the chaos of the fighter's chaotic path toward the surface, was to flip on the distress beacon. It broadcast its signal for all of a minute before the X-Wing became a scattering of scrap metal on the countryside of Cinnagar's outskirts.
Heinrich Faust
