"Whistler, get me some readings on the storms on that gas giant." As he gave the order Corran tried to tell himself
it was because the information would be useful upon their return to Corvis Minor to destroy the Pulsar Station. The logic of that explanation faded both in the light of the data Nrin would be collecting and the fear beginning to trickle into Corran's guts. He stared up at the orange ball streaked with gray and shot through with lightning, fearing a vision of the Pulsar Station rising from the planet's misty depths.
He saw nothing and tried to relax.
Then Whistler hooted anxiously.
Corran glanced at his sensors, and then up at the gas giant. Black specs rose"up through the clouds, looking for a moment like insects trapped between two panes of transpari-steel. Though kilometers distant, he knew what they were: TIE fighters, Interceptors, and Bombers. He keyed his comm unit. "Lead, I have multiple contacts coming up out of CM-Five. Eyeballs, squints, and dupes, enough for a squadron of each."
"I copy, Nine. We've got contacts coming from Distna. Similar numbers."
Corran's mouth went dry. Six squadrons! Krennel had deployed a full fighter wing against the Rogues and their positioning meant two things. The first was that the whole Pulsar Station lab was nothing more than bait to lure the Rogues to this place and slaughter them. Corran realized such a conclusion was the height of paranoia, but that didn't shake his conviction that it was right. Everything he'd seen suggested that Krennel was the sort of commander who would stop at nothing to kill his enemies, and Rogue Squadron had made an enemy of Krennel long before Corran had ever joined it.
The second conclusion he came to was that Krennel had sources inside the New Republic that told him when the Rogue operation was going off. Spies had often plagued Rogue Squadron in the past. Corran had vaped one, Erisi Dlarit, but vaping everyone feeding information to Imperials and warlords would be a difficult task. And a task that would take far more time than we have left to us.
Because of the vast distances in space, the Rogues and their counterparts could see each other long before they could engage each other. Minutes would pass before they would close to effective fighting ranges. Having time to think about what was coming seldom did a warrior any good- and training was meant to take over when thought wasn't possible. You're leading Three Flight, Corran. Prep them for what's coming.
Corran reached out and switched his comm unit to Three Flight's tactical channel. "Okay, Rogues, this is how we do this. Whistler, designate each of the incoming Interceptors with a unique ID number and squirt three of them to each of us. We've got six proton torpedoes and we use them to burn the squints, got it? We engage them at range and pop them, hard. They're likely to be a bit out in front of the others because they'll be wanting kills."
He glanced at his monitor. "Next wave will be the eyeballs. We blow through them and go after the dupes. We want to pull the eyeballs away from our exit vector so Wedge and the others can get out, got it? We mix it up with the dupes and create a lot of targets out there. Call for help when you need it, and let's slag them."
"I copy, Nine." OoryPs voice came through calm and strong.
"As ordered, Nine." Inyri's voice betrayed no anxiety, but came through a bit subdued.
"Targets logged and firing solutions being prepped, Nine." Asyr's reply carried with it a hint of anger at the audacity of Krennel plotting the ambush. "After we finish our targets, we help the rest of the squadron, right?"
"Right, Eleven." Corran smiled, and then punched up the squadron tactical frequency. "Lead, Nine here. We're prepped to hold the door open."
"I copy, Nine. May the Force be with you. We're engaging now."
Corran glanced at his main monitor. "I copy, Lead. We have contact in two minutes."
Out in the distance, the flashes of light from the X-wings boiling into a dogfight could be seen as the flickerings of debris sparking against his shields. He punched up a request for data on Nrin's snoopscoot and saw that it had jettisoned its pods. Shields looked solid and the changing vector data on the ship suggested Nrin was dancing it in and out through the dogfight, offering himself as an elusive target for the enemy.
Whistler beeped as the last fifteen seconds to target scrolled down. Corran dropped his aiming reticle over the distant form of an Interceptor and watched the torpedo targeting box turn yellow. Whistler's beeping increased in intensity and frequency, and then became a solid tone as the box went red. Corran hit his trigger and launched a torpedo.
He immediately punched up his second target Interceptor, but that ship began juicing fiercely. He tried to get a lock on the third, but it bounced around too much as well. Either they have early warning systems, or they're just being cautious.
Other proton torpedoes streaked out from Three Flight and headed toward the incoming TIEs. Two Interceptors winked out of existence, but the rest boiled on undaunted. Corran rolled to port, and then pulled back on his stick for a climb that would take him perpendicular to their line of attack. He inverted, presenting his cockpit canopy to them, and then pulled back on the stick again and rolled onto a course that brought him in above their flight plane.
The squints began a climb to come up after him, so he barrel-rolled to port and cruised down toward them. He nudged his stick right, boxing one of the Interceptors. The box went red immediately, so Corran pulled the trigger. The proton torpedo shot out and slammed into the squint at point-blank range. It pierced the ball cockpit, and then exploded, blasting the Interceptor into a microfine hail of metal, flesh, and fabric.
Corran flew straight through the explosion, and then pulled his X-wing up into a tight loop. He chopped his throttle back to tighten the loop even more, and then targeted his last squint. The aiming reticle went red and he launched another torpedo. It jetted away on blue flame, and then curved up sharply after the Interceptor. The pilot twisted away at the last second, but the proximity fuse made the torpedo detonate.
As fast as the squint was, it wasn't faster than the torpedo's shrapnel. A metal storm shredded the starboard solar panels and continued on to hole the cockpit. The ship didn't explode, but it did begin a slow spiral that aimed it toward the gas giant. Its gravity well is so deep it will swallow that ship whole and pretty much anything else that's left out here.
An explosion shook Corran's X-wing and he immediately knew he was in serious trouble. One of the TIE Bombers had nailed him with a concussion missile. The fact that he actually felt the residual effects of the blast meant that his inertial compensator wasn't functioning right. His rear shield also showed damage, but before he could shift power around to reinforce it, a squint laced his rear shield with fire, collapsing the shield and pouring energy into his upper starboard S-foil.
Corran felt a weird vibration and heard a corresponding whine for a half second before the engine exploded. The squint's laserfire had melted part of the centrifugal debris extractor, which threw it out of balance and ripped it free of its supports. Parts of it sprayed back through the engine, shattering it and breaking that S-foil clean off. More debris shot out and peppered the starboard side of the fuselage. One huge chunk slammed into the fighter's transparisteel canopy, spalling off fragments. One of them lashed Corran's right cheek, cutting him along the bone, and then the atmospheric pressure within the cockpit blew the transparisteel panel and all debris out into space.
The personal magnetic containment bubble projector each pilot was issued clicked on immediately, cocooning Corran in a thin layer of breathable air. Even with a full power charge, Corran knew he'd only have a hour or so of breathable air, and the cold of space would kill him sooner than that. He would have expected such a realization would fill him with fear, but he found a calm inside that surprised him.
And allowed him to act.
He slapped his throttle down to zero, which stopped the port engines from pushing him around in a flat spin. Using the etheric rudder he managed to counter the spin. He got himself oriented, with the gas giant below him and the dogfi
ght above, and then keyed his comm device.
"Nine is hit, two engines gone. I have power, so if you bring someone in front of me, I'll shoot them."
No one acknowledged his call, but he knew all of them had more important things to do. As do I.
"Whistler, are you okay back there?"
The droid blatted harshly.
"No, I didn't think they would have gotten you. Keep me informed if. I have more missiles coming. I'm shifting power to shields now." A glance at his monitors showed the shields greening up nicely, which meant he could survive two or three more runs by a squint before it took him down. It wasn't much, but it was much better than being dead outright.
He reached beneath his command chair and pulled out a small metal box. He unlatched it and, from a compartment built into the lid, pulled out a thick duraplast panel. He brushed away the last traces of transparisteel from the broken panel, and then slid the duraplast panel into place. It rattled around a bit, but a tube of sealant from the same kit provided a bead of foam that hardened to hold the panel in place.
Corran closed the box and returned it to its place beneath the seat. I don't think those repairs were ever supposed to be managed in combat, but I've got nothing else to do at the moment. The duraplast panel was nowhere near as strong as the transparisteel one it replaced, but it was only meant to hold a single atmosphere in and make the cockpit airtight. It would never deal with laserfire as well as the transparisteel would, but having atmosphere and heat was an immediate concern for Corran.
"Whistler, give me more atmosphere and push the heat."
When life-support indicators rose enough, Corran turned off the magcon device. Heat hit him solidly, but ajj shiver ran through his body anyway. "Two engines gone! I'm dead."
Whistler's keening tone sliced through his self-pity.
Corran glanced at his monitor and smiled. "You're right, I still have torps and some lasers. Might be dead, but I can also be a nasty corpse. Get me a readout on the battle." The data dump Whistler provided stunned Corran. Three Flight had faced thirty-six TIEs, but that number had already been pared down to twenty-one. Corran had three confirmed kills. The same went for Ooryl and Inyri had four. Asyr had accounted for five and even as he studied the data, another one was toted up as a kill.
Corran ruddered the X-wing around to find her. Her X-wing flashed through the dogfight with a pair of TIEs hot on her tail. She had the X-wing dancing up and down and side to side, letting their lasers slash green bolts wide. In the distance some of the bolts hit other TIEs, and somewhere along her line of flight an eyeball or dupe would catch her quad laserfire. Asyr was flying as he'd never seen her fly before.
Asyr's X-wing broke hard to port, and then immediately rolled up onto its starboard S-foil and cut back along the way it had come. A roll back to port brought her ship back on the tails of the TIEs that had been following her arid managed to overshoot her as she pulled the tight turns. A quartet of red laser bolts burned through one eyeball, letting loose a seething golden cloud of energy that devoured the ship.
A little rudder reoriented her ship and let her blast her second TIE. The shots evaporated the fighter's starboard solar panel. It began a roll that took it high and out toward the gas giant. Asyr made no attempt to follow it or fire again. She rolled right and started a climb right back into the fight.
Which was when her X-wing collided with a dupe. At the speeds the two ships were traveling, there was no chance for avoidance. The shields in front of the X-wing sparked as they hit the dupe first, crumpling the starboard solar panel. They drove it back against the ball cockpit, and shattered the transparisteel viewport. At that point the X-wing's forward shield flashed opaquely, and then imploded.
The X-wing's nose stabbed into the dupe's cockpit and lodged deeply. The slender fighter's nose snapped off about a meter in front of the cockpit. Unspent proton torpedoes spilled out as the aft end of the fighter tumbled up and away from the Bomber. The broken Imp craft continued its flight toward the gas giant, while the remains of Asyr's rapidly disintegrating X-wing launched themselves up and away from the planet.
"Asyr, do you copy?" Corran dialed up the gain on his comm unit. "Asyr, repeat, do you copy?"
He got no-reply from her, but another message blared loud through fiis comm channel. "Rogues, Interloper and Stranger squadrons are friendlies. Don't make us defend ourselves."
"What in the shadows of Coruscant?" Corran looked down at his main monitor. It showed a dozen new contacts, which appeared as red specs on his monitor, indicating they were using Imperial ID codes. He selected one of them as a target and an image of the ship presented itself on his screen.
The fighter had a TIE's ball cockpit and an Interceptor's canted wings, but all in a very unusual configuration. The wings had been turned so they canted out, not in as they did on the Interceptor. There were also three of the wings, one mounted above the cockpit and the other two at angles that allowed them to cover low port and starboard. More important, the sensors indicated the ships were sporting shields and had enough power output to support hyper-space drives.
Whoever the new arrivals were, they fell on the remains of Krennel's pilots with a vengeance. Three Flight had all but evened the odds for the new fighters, which Corran choose to designate as "trips" for their triple wings. The trips let off a volley of proton torpedoes that savaged the remaining Bombers, and then they swooped in on the eyeballs. Quad bursts of green lasers melted TTEs ruthlessly. Within five minutes of their intervention, the trips had destroyed all of Krennel's forces.
Rogue Squadron regrouped on the exit vector, with Cor-ran's ship limping along. Wedge's voice filled the comm channel. "I appreciate the fact that you saved us, and I'm willing to accompany you out of here. I even understand the need for comm silence, but I can't leave without seeing to the pilots who are extra-vehicular."
"General Antilles, I understand your protest and have logged it." Colonel Vessery, the commander of what had been identified as two squadrons of TIE Defenders, spoke in strong, even tones. "We've made runs looking for survivors, but we find no traces. We have to leave now. Krennel will be sending reinforcements and you're in no shape to survive another fight."
The comm channel remained dead for a moment, and then Wedge replied, his voice weary. "You're right. It's just..."
"I know, General. It's always been said you were an honorable man." Vessery's voice carried compassion with it. "Eight and Twelve, if you will tractor your charges, we can head home."
A little shudder ran through Corran's fighter. A Defender latched on to his ship with a tractor beam and would accelerate him to the appropriate speed to make the jump to lightspeed. On only two engines Corran's ship wouldn't have made it, though those engines were enough to power his hyperdrive. He slaved his navigation to that of Interloper Eight.
It's just as well. I don't think I want to be flying right now. He sat back and shivered. Three Flight had lost Asyr, but the rest of the squadron lost three other pilots. Khe-Jeen Slee had been the first to die, followed by Lyyr Zatoq and then Wes Janson. Corran had a hard time believing Janson was dead, but a concussion missile had blown the back off his fighter and left his body floating in space. All three of the pilots had been people he thought of as friends, but already his memories of them were beginning to fade.
Corran punched up One Flight's tactical channel. "Lead, is it safe to be going with these guys?"
"I don't know, Nine. They invited us to travel, but they could compel it, too." Wedge sighed. "Still, they came along at the right time to keep us alive. Whoever they work for doesn't want us dead."
"Yet."
"Good point, Nine." Wedge grunted a chuckle out. "Let's hope we're in better shape to deal with them when they change their minds."
22
Prince-Admiral Delak Krennel reveled in the pain evident on Mon Mothma's face. The New Republic's leader stood only a meter and a half tall in holo and was being rebroad-cast to him by Isard, but he could still see how much
the woman ached as she spoke. The interviewing journalist's question had clearly caught her off guard, but the answer she gave spoke to her quick wits and the depth of her personal knowledge.
"The question asked was if the rumors of the destruction of Rogue Squadron in the Hegemony Theater are correct. As you know, we are prosecuting a war against Delak Krennel and his Hegemony and any comments about ongoing operations stand to jeopardize personnel involved in those operations. I'm certain that none of us here would like to cost the brave men and women of Rogue Squadron their lives, nor put into jeopardy the lives of anyone supporting them in their missions.
"Warfare, as all of us know, is seldom a clean business with crisp, clear results. Rogue Squadron and its leader, General Antilles, are well aware of this fact. Pending further investigation all I am willing to say is that Rogue Squadron was involved in a mission that resulted in an unforeseen set of circumstances. I know you all hope for the best for these brave fighters, and we will provide updates as information is forthcoming."