Free The Han Solo Adventures by Brian Daley Page A

pair of IRDs had split up as well, drawing her and her companion out of their pairing.
    Han sent his Headhunter into a maximum-performance climbing turn, trying to look everywhere at once, still yelling to his wing man, “Stick with me! They’re baiting you!” But he was ignored.
    The IRD leader he’d shot at hadn’t split-S. The raiders’ whole strategy of drawing the defenders out of formation was clear now, too late. The IRD leader had half rolled again, half looped, and come around onto the tail of Han’s wing man. The other IRD, the bait, was already racing on toward the backup element, Headhunters five and six. One of the IRDs Jessa had faced joined that one in a new two-ship element.
    The Espos had counted on the inexperienced outlaw-techs’ breaking formation, Han thought. If we’d stayed together we’d have mopped the floor with them. “Jess, dammit, we’ve been robbed,” he called as he came around, but Jessa had her own troubles. Because she and her wing mate had become separated, an IRD had found the opportunity to fasten itself on her tail.
    Han saw that his own wing man was in trouble, but just didn’t have the speed to intervene. The IRD leader had attached himself to the Headhunter in the kill position, and the lanky young outlaw-tech was pleading, “Help me, somebody! Get him off me!”
    Still way out of range, Han fired anyway, hoping to shake up the IRD leader’s concentration. But the enemy was steady and undistracted. He waited until he had the Headhunter perfectly set up and hit the firing button on his control grips in a brief burst. The Z-95 was caught by a yellow-green blast and vanished in a nimbus of white-hot gas and debris.
    What Han should have done was draw his remaining ships together in a weaving, mutually protective string or circle. But even as he breathed profanities to himself, he cut a course for the victorious IRD, his blood up, caution forgotten, thinking, Nobody gets into me for a wing man, pal. Nobody .
    It came to him that he didn’t even know that lanky boy’s name.
    Jessa’s wing man, the Lafrarian, shouted, “Scissor right, Headhunter three! Scissor!”
    Jessa broke right in a flurry of evasive maneuvers while lines of destruction probed for, her. She poured on all speed as her wing man came in at a sharp angle, decreasing his own velocity so that Jessa and her pursuer came across his vector. The Lafrarian settled calmly into the kill position, quickened up, and opened fire.
    Lines of red blaster-cannon fire broke from the trailing Headhunter’s wings. The raider ship shuddered as pieces of its fuselage were sheared off. There was an explosion, and the crippled IRD went into a helpless flutter, as if it were dragging a broken wing. It began its long fall toward the planet, sentenced to death by simple gravity.
    Far below, Headhunters five and six, the two brothers, had engaged the IRDs that had broken through. Off in the distance Han Solo and the IRD leader swept and wove through the permutations of close combat, making their statements in beams of devastation in red, in green.
    But Jessa knew where priorities lay, and Five and Six were her weakest flyers. Even now they were calling for help. She and her humanoid wing man closed and sped off to rejoin the fray.
    A raider was glued to Headhunter five’s tail, chopping at it and holding position through all the insane turns and evasions, refusing to be unseated. The outlaw-tech shoved his stick up into the corner for a pushover but was too slow. The IRD’s beams sliced through his ship, depressurizing it and severing him at the waist. The IRD turned toward the other brother, Headhunter six, as its companion raced on toward the planet and its outlaw base.
    Just then Jessa and her wing man arrived, calling for Headhunter six to come under their cover.
    “I can’t; I’m latched!” the man answered. The IRD that had remained behind had come out of a smooth barrel roll and attached itself to him. Jessa’s wing