[Short Stories] - Equipment (Matthew Stover), Star Wars - Books And Short Stories
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Star WarsShort Story CollectionEQUIPMENTby Matthew Stover###############################################################################A Personal Account of the Sub-orbital Action at Haruun Kal, as reported by Auxiliary Heavy-Weapons Specialist CT-6/774.We popped out of hyperspace above the plane of the ecliptic. Al'har's light was brilliant yellow. Haruun Kal was a bright blue-green crescent.Two asteroid belts sparkled yellow among the black-and-white starfield: one beyond Haruun Kal's orbit, vast and old, spreading toward the gas giants that swung through the outer system, and a smaller, younger belt in orbit around the planet itself: remnants of what once had been the planet's moon.I snugged my helmet and checked my armor's life-support parameters, then dogged the transparisteel hatch of the bubble turret.My helmet's speakers crackled softly. "Comm check," Lieutenant Four-One said.The Lieutenant's our pilot. The 2nd Lou, cl-33/890, handles nav. He checked in with a "Nav is go." I reported my turret as go, and my port-side partner, ct-014/783, did the same from his.The Halleck swung down out of interstellar space and inserted into planetary orbit almost halfway out to the moon-belt, more than ten thousand klicks from the surface. Intel had reported a rumor that Haruun Kal might have a small number of planetary-defense ion cannons, and a medium cruiser is a very large target.Just before we lit engines and lifted out of the Halleck's ship bay, I clicked my comm over to the dedicated turret-freq. "Take care of the equipment, Eight-Three." My partner answered the way he always does: "And the equipment will take care of us, Seven-Four."That's how we wish each other luck.The mag-screen de-powered. The ship bay's atmosphere gusted out toward the star in a billow of glittering ice crystals.Blue-white pinpoints fanned out before us: ion drives of our starfighter escort.The transparisteel of my bubble-turret hummed with sympathetic resonance as one of the Jadthu-class landers undocked and followed them, then it was our turn.Our flight leader took point. We sucked ions on left wing. Five gunships left the Halleck.None would come back.Take care of your equipment, and your equipment will take care of you.That's one of the first things they teach us in the creche-schools on Kamino.Even before we're awake. By the time we are brought to consciousness for skillsdevelopment, the knowledge pumps have drilled "Take care of your equipment" so deeply into our minds that it's more than instinct. It's practically natural law.We live or die by our equipment.I am a clone trooper in the Grand Army of the Republic.My designation is ct-6/774. I serve on a Republic close-assault gunship. I am the starboard bubble-turret gunner.I love my job. We all do; we're created for it.But my job is special. Because my partner-ct-014/783, the port bubble-turret gunner-and I are the ones who take care of the equipment.Our weapons platform, the RHE LAAT/i, is an infantry-support weapon. We soften up and harass the enemy; our targets are bunkers, armored vehicles, mobile artillery, and enemy footsoldiers. When our infantry brothers need to get to the enemy, we're the ones who blast down the door.The LAAT/i is designed for dropping troops into a hot fire-zone. We're not fast, but we can go anywhere. Our assault weapons are controlled through nav; the navigator runs all three antipersonnel turrets, the main missile launcher and two of the four main cannons. Our laser cannons can punch holes through medium armor, and the missile launchers take care of the heavy stuff; they're mass-driver launchers, so our loads can be customized for the mission. We carry he (high explosive), heap (high explosive armor-piercing) and apf (anti-personnel fragmentation) missiles; we stay away from baradium weapons-too unstable-but detonite and proton-core warheads can handle everything we're likely to come up against.Our job-me and Eight-Three, the bubble-turret gunners-is to handle everything that comes up against us. Each turret is a sphere of transparisteel that tracks along with our cannons; my partner and I also each control a launcher loaded with four short-range air-to-air rockets. If anything comes at us, we shoot it down.That's what I mean about taking care of the equipment.Let's say we're cracking a hardened bunker on a desert planet. We come in low over the dunes, pumping missiles and cannonfire against the target emplacement.Let's say you're operating an anti-aircraft cannon half a klick away, and you open fire on us. The pilot and the navigator don't even have to look up. Because I'm there.Go ahead and take your shot. You won't get two.Fire a missile at us. I'll blast it to scrap. Launch a proton grenade. I'll blow your head off. Make an attack run riding a speeder bike. But make out your will, first.Because if you attack us, I will take you out.That's what I do.I love my job, and I am very, very good at it.I have to be: because sometimes my gunship has to do things it's not designed for. That's how it goes when you're fighting a war.Like at Haruun Kal.We were assigned to the Republic medium cruiser Halleck, on station in the Ventran system. A regiment of heavy infantry, twenty Jadthu-class landers, an escort of six starfighters.And us: five rhe LAAT/i-s.We weren't supposed to know why we were there, naturally; just as naturally, we knew anyway. It was clear this would be a VIP extraction on a hostile planet.It wasn't hard to figure. Those Jadthu-class landers are basically just flying bunkers. They go in fast, land, then stand there and take a pounding until it's time to take off again. Nothing but armor, engines, two heavy laser turrets and an Arakyd Caltrop-5 chaff gun. They're plenty fast in a straight line, but they are the opposite of nimble. There is no evasive action in a Jadthu.The Halleck had twenty of them: that meant the landing-zone would be hot.Maybe very hot. Maybe nova-class. The starfighters were for orbital cover. Suborbital and atmospheric cover was our job.Ventran is on the Gevarno Loop, one of half a dozen systems linked by hyperspace lanes that run through Al'har. Haruun Kal is the only habitable planet in the Al'har system.Haruun Kal is Separatist.General Windu-that's Jedi Master Mace Windu, General of the Grand Army of the Republic and Senior Member of the Jedi Council-had gone dirtside on Haruun Kal, alone and undercover, tracking a rogue Jedi. Why had a General gone in personally? We didn't know. Why had he gone in alone? We didn't ask.We didn't care.It wasn't our business.This is what we knew: If nothing went wrong, we wouldn't have anything to do.We'd cruise our station in the Ventran system for a week or two, then jump back for reassignment.Something went wrong.Our business was to get General Windu out again.The moon-belt was where they were hiding. Waiting for us.The whole system was a trap.They must have been there for weeks, powered down, clamped to drifting asteroids.Undetectable. Waiting for a Republic ship to enter orbit.Which the Halleck had just done.Against the glittering weave of the belt, they were close enough to invisible that I couldn't pick them out until Lt. Nine-Oh muttered from nav: "Hostiles incoming.On intercept. But not for us, sir! They're after the Halleck!" Lt. One-Four: "How many, nav?""Calculating. No. Sorry, sir. No hard numbers available. Sensors keep picking up more.""How many so far? What are we looking at?""Acceleration and drive output profiles indicate starfighters. Droid starfighters, sir." Automated weapons systems directed by sophisticated droid brains."Probably Geonosian. So far, I'm reading sixty-four.""Sixty-four!""Strike that. Ninety-one. One-oh-five. One-twenty-eight, sir." One hundred and twenty-eight droid starfighters streaked toward us: a vast array of crescent sparks haloed by blue-white ion scatter. Faster, more maneuverable, and more heavily armed than anything in our little twelve-ship flotilla-and the droid brains piloting those starfighters have reflexes that operate at the speed of light.And the Halleck was directly in their path."Hear that, turrets? This will be hot space. Repeat: we are entering hot space.""Starboard reads, sir," I told him as I charged my cannon. "And I am go.""Port reads, sir. Go.""Signal from the Halleck, sir!" Nine-Oh said. "Recall: All ships abort. The Halleck is under attack-she's all alone back there, sir!""Not for long." Lt. Four-One spun our ship through a spiral that whipped us around and aimed us back toward the Halleck. The cruiser was a star-specked wedge of shadow transiting the grid of droid starfighter drive-streams. Now turbolasers started blasting out from that shadow toward the grid; from here the huge particle beams looked like hairlines of blue light. I worked my pedals and swung the fire-control yoke so that the turret's servo-boom angled my weapon to bear on the grid-formation of starfighters.I knew Eight-Three was doing exactly the same."Fire at will, turrets." They were still far beyond the effective range of my cannon. I squeezed the yoke anyway. Even through my armored gloves, the hum of the yoke buzzed up my arms as four arcs of electric blue energy joined in front of the cannon's oval reflector-shield, then flashed away through the vacuum. I held the triggers down. Concentrating on evading the Halleck's turbolasers, a droid starfighter might just blunder into one of my shots by accident. You never know.The grid formation began to break up as the droids took evasive action. Our own starfighters-all six of them-flashed past us in pairs ...
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]