Whittle down

On either side of the Falcon two segments of the smuggler fleet peeled off like the skin from a rustle snake: one prong led by Kithra in her Headhunter, the other headed by Shana in an angular blockade runner, a clunkier forerunner of the Falcon’s light-freighter design.

The smuggler ships drove in, energy cannons blazing, drawing a deadly tracery of fire across the superstructures and girders of the enormous sphere.

Han launched three proton torpedoes into the labyrinth of cross beams and supports as they charged toward the enormous construction. A few reinforced girders glowed molten as projectiles and energy beams hit.

“It’s going to take us a year to chop away at this thing,” Han said, firing from the Falcon’s forward weaponry.
“I never claimed this was going to be easy,” Mara said.


---

Tol Sivron’s head-tails twitched. He squinted his black beady eyes at the oncoming small ships. They appeared so trivial, their weapons systems so minor. “I can’t believe they’re attacking us,” he said. “What do they think they’re going to accomplish?”

At the tactical station the stormtrooper captain spoke through his white helmet. “If I might point out, Director, this battle station is for proof-of-concept only. It was never designed to defend itself against multiple small threats. In fact, the Death Star was meant to house over seven thousand TIE fighters, not to mention thousands of surface turbolasers and ion cannons and an escort of several Imperial-class Star Destroyers. We have none of these.

“Individually, those Rebel ships may be only a minor threat, but together they can harry us for an extended period and, if we are unlucky, cause significant structural damage.”

“You mean we don’t have any fighters of our own?” Tol Sivron said with stern disapproval. “That was poor planning. Who wrote that section of the procedure? I want to know right now.”

(...)

“Did you see that?” Doxin said with obvious pleasure. “We hit one!”
“Hooray,” Golanda said sourly from her seat. Her voice carried absolutely no enthusiasm. “Only about forty more to go, and you can’t even fire the superlaser again for fifteen minutes.”

***

Champions of the Force Chapter 32