Mara had never been in the large briefing room in Pilot Country.
At least sixty sentients in flightsuits sat in tiered chairs ringing a central holoprojector. Humans were most represented, but there were others: Twi’leks, Zabraks, two Togruta, a single Rodian, and three near-humans that Mara couldn’t properly identify. It was the entirety of the Independence‘s air wing and Rogue Squadron.
The Rogues sat clustered together nearest the door, with only Skywalker near the holoprojector instead of seated. The air wing isn’t exactly avoiding us, but we’re clearly not part of them, either, she noted a bit uneasily.
Down in the middle, Skywalker was engaged in an intense conversation with Colonel S’man and a short, balding man who Mara hadn’t met. General Rieekan was fiddling with something on the big holoprojector alongside a man dressed in a Rebel officer’s uniform with no insignia. I wonder if that’s the defector we pulled off Corellia?
Puck leaned in close. “You ever feel like you’re sitting somewhere you’re not wanted?” he murmured.
Mara spared him a glance. “I’d think you’d be used to that, Naeco.”
The other pilot didn’t smile at the jibe but straightened back up, looking troubled.
Rieekan cleared his throat and the lights began to dim in the briefing room. Conversations began to die down. The general waited a few moments for silence before he began to speak. A hologram shimmered into existence, just a wireframe of a planet.
“This is Gerrard V,” he began. “And the target of our next operation. Local resistance cells are in an open revolt and are attempting to throw off Imperial shackles.”
Gerrard Five. Why do I know that name? Mara began to run through her mental operational files. A mission with the Ghost crew? Maybe? Doesn’t feel right.
Rieekan continued. “The governor is looting his own planet and preparing to make his escape. If he succeeds, he’ll be stealing the wealth the planet is going to need to defend itself against Imperial reprisal. We’re going to intervene.” He turned and nodded at Colonel S’man.
The big man’s baritone was surprisingly calm. Then again, I don’t think I’ve heard him when he’s not angry at something Rogue Squadron has been doing.
“Our window of opportunity is very short,” S’man said. “The initial intelligence for this operation got to us late, and we’ve used most of our slack time to run reconnaissance and ensure this isn’t a trap. We’re fairly certain there are no Imperial task forces lurking nearby waiting to pounce, so our mission profile will be higher risk than we usually allow.” The hologram animated; a wireframe Mon Calamari cruiser appeared in orbit around the planet. “We’re leaving most of the task force on the edge of the system, but the Independence will be jumping directly into the orbital plane. Our A-wing and X-wing units will deploy and take up defensive positions against any unexpected counterattack.” Icons for the appropriate squadrons appeared next to the Independence. “Half of our bomber squadron will also remain in orbit. The air wing will have two objectives. Primarily, ensure the safety of the Independence. Secondary will be to stop any Imperial freighters, yachts, shuttles, or other ships big enough to carry looted goods from making a run to hyperspace.”
Mara considered that tactical picture. The last time I know of a Mon Cal cruiser committed into a gravity well outside of quick-jump capability was the Profundity at Scarif. And that didn’t end well. This is not a small risk.
S’man’s expression hardened and he nodded at Skywalker.
The hologram changed, the Independence and the planet disappearing to be replaced by a hologram of a city on the edge of an ocean.
Mara’s gut twisted. I know that city. Why do I know that city? She tried to shake off her unease and focused on the briefing.
“This is Harazod,” Skywalker said. “Governor Dannal has been staging his loot here. Rogue Squadron and the other half of Commander Salm’s Sentinel Squadron are going down into atmosphere to disable Dannal’s ships before they can escape. Given the number of small ships he’s likely using, if we try to stop them all in orbit we’ll miss some. The Y-wings will be targeting anything that looks likely to carry stolen goods with their ion cannons; Rogue Squadron provides cover. Our goal is to make sure the people on Gerrard V get their own valuables back. Atmospheric insertion will put us a hundred kilometers west of Harazod, and then we’ll come in over the ocean at low altitude to let the curve of the planet hide our exact approach vector.”
Commander Salm, the balding man, cleared his throat. “There are no orbital defenses to speak of, but Harazod itself has a number of turbolasers, missile batteries, local light armor, and a squadron of TIE fighters. Those defenses are the only reason Dannal’s held his position long enough to loot the planet. They’re substantial, but they should be no danger to our bombers if Rogue Squadron does its job.”
Rieekan stepped to the center again. “The Independence is already on its final approach to Gerrard V. We’re launching in less than two hours. If you have any questions, address them to your squadron leaders. Otherwise, to your fighters.”
The assembled pilots, Rogue and air wing alike, began to rise from their seats.
Mara swallowed down her unease. Why do I know this planet?
The Rogues stood opposite the twelve members of Commander Salm’s squadron.
Always an uphill battle, Wedge thought ruefully. After the briefing, he and Luke had quickly put together assignments for the mission: Luke’s One Flight would be the spearhead, cracking the ring of turbolasers and missile batteries to create a safe gap for the bombers. Zev’s Three Flight would split, with each two-ship element escorting a three-ship section of Y-wings. Wedge’s Two Flight would be on high cover, watching for any unexpected interlopers and swinging to support either One Flight or Three Flight, depending on how the mission unfolded. It was a simple plan, one the Rogues could execute without running simulations they simply didn’t have time to fly. Salm’s Y-wings were two-seat bombers, with the gunner providing some defense from the top-side turret; between that capability and the X-wings, it should have been adequate.
Unfortunately, Commander Salm had concerns.
“This really doesn’t look like a sufficient escort, Skywalker,” Salm said. “Four X-wings to cover six of my Y-wings?”
“Two elements of X-wings to cover your two sections of Y-wings,” Luke corrected. “And that’s the close escort. The rest of Rogue Squadron will be nearby and can offer additional support if anything goes wrong.”
Salm pursed his lips. “When I heard about the new combat doctrine your squadron was working on, I was interested. I didn’t think I’d be depending on it firsthand.”
“We’re the most flexible and capable squadron you’ve ever had run escort,” Wedge said, attempting to reassure the other man.
Salm wasn’t reassured. “I saw the after-action report from Barkhesh. But that wasn’t a close escort mission.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Luke agreed, “but we’ve been simming these scenarios and we’re ready to fly it.”
Ready to fly it might be a stretch. Wedge took a surreptitious look around at the Rogues. We really needed more recovery time after Corellia. Six hours of rack time, a bite to eat, then straight to briefing and now cockpits. We’re all tired, even if some of us haven’t realized it.
“As long as you don’t expect us to change our attack patterns,” Salm said, “I’ll trust you to do your part.”
“We’re not asking anyone to change their squadrons on our behalf,” Luke agreed. “You do your part, we’ll do ours, and we accomplish the mission.”
Salm snorted, but he seemed amused. “You Rogues aren’t quite what S’man described. From how he talked, I thought one of you would have pointed a blaster at me by now.”
Mara did not look ashamed.
“I’m willing to give it a try,” Salm continued. “Not that we have much choice. We’ll see you in the air, Commander.”
Luke’s breathing steadied as he dropped into the cockpit of his X-wing. “Snugged down, Artoo?” he asked his astromech as he began strapping in.
The droid warbled an affirmative.
He pulled his flight helmet on. “Good. Let’s get through preflight.”
Pilot and droid began running through the pre-flight checklist. It demanded concentration, and Luke put aside his unease about the hasty mission to focus on the task at hand. Get your fighter ready to fly. You’ve prepared your people the best you can. The mission will take care of itself.
“Fully fueled. Six proton torpedoes loaded, configured to fire one at a time. All four cannons show good diagnostics, and we’re firing offset pairs.” He frowned. “What’s our zero range?” he asked, referencing the point where the fire from all four laser cannons would converge on a single point.
Artoo warbled.
“Yes, seven hundred and fifty meters is what I wanted for this. We’re going to be taking longer shots at ground targets.” He checked the comm board. “Comm channels configured for Flight, Squadron, and Fleet.” He clicked on the flight channel. “Rogue Two, comm check,” he called.
There was an eight-second pause before Mara answered. “Comm is five by five, Leader.”
Something struck him as wrong. She looked uneasy in the briefing, too. I thought it was the mission. “Two, are you okay?”
There was another pause before she answered. “Fit to fly, Lead.”
I don’t like that answer from Mara. “Are you sure?”
“Just nerves.”
“Copy.” Luke grimaced. It’s not just nerves. But there’s a mission in front of us and we have almost no time left. He clicked the comm off, leaving him alone with Artoo in the cockpit. “Inertial compensator set at zero point nine. Shield generators are reading green on diagnostic and ready to power up when we’re off the deck. Sensors passed self-test. Auxiliary power cells are charged. Light the engines, Artoo.”
The X-wing’s four Incom 4L4 fusial thrust engines thrummed to life, felt as much as heard at low power.
Luke frowned. “Artoo, did the number two engine show an amber light on the diagnostic panel for a second? I’ve never seen that before.”
The astromech whistled, paused, then warbled a lower tone.
“Shut the engine down and restart it. Let’s see if it does it again.”
The light remained green through the restart procedure.
“Again.”
Solid green light without so much as a flicker.
“Suggestions, Artoo?” Luke asked. The droid whistled a reply, and Luke read the translation. “Yeah, we can’t scrub the mission. Do you think it’s safe to fly?” After another series of chirps in Binary, Luke shook his head. “Engine response curve is normal, power is normal, and it’s checking out fine. Okay. We fly the mission and afterward we tell the maintenance crew to rebuild that engine before we fly this bird again.”
Artoo whistled an agreement, and they returned to the checklist.
Too many worries piling up. Breathe, Luke.
“Rogue Group, we’re under five minutes from reversion,” Wedge’s warning crackled in his ear. “Report readiness to flight leaders.”
“Rogue Three, ready to fly,” Hobbie said immediately.
“Rogue Four, ready,” Puck said, uncharacteristically clipped.
Luke waited for several seconds. “Rogue Two?”
“Four lit and ready,” Mara said.
Luke clicked over to broadcast on the squadron channel. “One Flight, ready to launch.”
“Three Flight, ready,” Zev answered.
“Two Flight, ready,” Wedge echoed.
Outside the magcon field protecting Aux Two from vacuum, the mottled blur of hyperspace collapsed into the dark of stars. “Rogue Leader to Flight Control, requesting clearance to launch.”
“Flight Control, Rogue Leader. Clearance granted. Good hunting, Rogues.”
May the Force be with us, he thought as he fed power to the repulsorlifts.
The Independence poured squadrons of starfighters into space.
Mara frowned as she followed Skywalker through a gentle arcing curve over the warship’s hull. She looks strange without her support ships. Exposed.
And then Gerrard V came into view.
A shiver of wrongness ran down her spine. Something’s not right. What am I missing?
Six Y-wings were out ahead of Rogue Squadron, already diving toward atmosphere. Skywalker accelerated and she followed.
“Three Flight, form up on the Y-wings,” he said. “One Flight, on me. Two Flight, be ready to pounce if something goes wrong. Just as we briefed.”
Fire began to lick at the nose of her X-wing as she followed Skywalker’s dive into atmosphere. The fighter shuddered, bounced a bit by turbulence. Mara kept her hand loose on the stick, allowing the fighter to self-correct instead of wrestling its alignment. She drifted further off Skywalker’s wing than she normally allowed herself, waiting for the initial insertion to pass so she could tighten up again.
She spared a glance at her rear scopes. The air wing’s X-wings and A-wings had spread out into a cloud, sections of fighters taking up patrol lanes to protect the warship – and intercept any strays that fled past the strike group heading down into atmosphere.
The fighter steadied as the atmosphere grew thicker, and she tightened her grip on the controls. Focus, she told herself, pushing down the unease that kept creeping up. The mission. Do the mission. There are people counting on me.
Skywalker tore through a bank of clouds as they approached the ocean; Mara glanced back to ensure Hobbie was properly offset before following him in.
Rain. Why do I smell rain? “Miss,” she called, an abbreviation of her astromech’s R4-MS designation, “check environmental controls.”
OPTIMAL. The word flashed on her monitor.
“We’re still sealed? I think we’re getting bleed-through from the atmosphere.”
NO BREACH DETECTED. SEALS INTACT.
Skywalker leveled off, skimming a hundred meters above the ocean. Mara followed, half consciously and half reflexively. “Check again,” she said, fighting down the unease yet again. It threatened to erupt as full-fledged fear. What’s wrong with this picture?
SEALS INTACT, her droid repeated.
She shivered, felt goosebumps rise on her skin under her flight suit. The Force? she dared ask herself.
Don’t reach out. Don’t flare. Don’t listen. Visibility is death, Mara. She touched her own walls. No. I’m not reaching. Not listening. Not the Force.
Mara shivered again. Why am I so cold?
And…afraid?
“One Flight, s-foils to attack position,” Skywalker called calmly. Ahead, she saw his wings split open.
Lightning flashed, and she blinked. The sky was clear. What? What was that?
“Two?” Skywalker asked, and Mara registered the concern in his voice.
“Here, Lead.”
“S-foils?”
Mara blinked and glanced out her cockpit. Her wings were still locked together in transit configuration. She shook her head, reached up, and flicked the s-foil actuator. “Locked, Lead.”
“Are you okay, Two?”
“Flying, Lead.”
“City is coming up, One Flight,” Skywalker said, his voice shifting from concern to professional. “Switch your targeting computers to ground-attack mode. Three and Four, fall back half a kilometer and get ready to spike anything that goes after me and Two.”
Acknowledgements echoed in Mara’s ear. She wasn’t sure if her own voice was among them.
Harazod rose on the horizon as the X-wings skimmed the waves. Buildings ranged from three stories to twenty, much taller than almost anything on Tatooine. Luke glanced at his scopes one more time. Two Flight is twenty kilometers back. Three Flight and the Y-wings are another twenty behind them. That’s enough time for us to open the way.
“Artoo, paint me targets,” he said. “Transmit complementary targets to Mara’s droid. Let’s see how much damage we can do while staying in range to cover each other.” He clicked for transmission. “Here we go,” he said. “Three, watch our backs.”
His comm didn’t require an answer from Mara, but her lack of response bothered him.
A tall Taim & Bak XX-10 turbolaser tower was the nearest target. The barrels were upright and the weapon was clearly powered, but the crew manning it was clearly unprepared for the sudden arrival of the X-wings. Luke started firing at eight hundred meters, beyond his weapon convergence point, and kept pumping fire into the tower until it exploded.
Off his port wing, Mara was firing at a tower three hundred meters north of his target. Her lasers were firing in quad-mode, each pull of the trigger loosing a blast from all four cannons together.
Her first two bursts missed. The third and fourth hulled the tower; the fifth set off the tower’s stored Tibanna gas reserves, and a fireball erupted.
She missed an unopposed shot. Luke was already banking on his next target, a ground-to-air concussion missile battery. He held the trigger, pouring fire at the target; it launched a missile back at him but was foiled by a laser blast setting off the warhead long before it could reach the X-wing. Mara missed a shot at a static target before the Empire started shooting back.
Something is wrong.
He left the missile battery burning, saw another XX-10 on fire, oriented his nose on the next target Artoo had already fed his targeting computer. “Two,” he said. “Two, are you okay?”
Mara was maneuvering, her nose coming around on a target. “Flying here, boss,” she said, two heartbeats too slow.
“Boss, heads-up,” Hobbie broke in. “A concealed turbolaser just broke cover. They’re tracking you.”
“Spike it,” Luke ordered. “Two, are you with me?” He jammed his stick forward, losing altitude again to force the Imperial gunners to shoot at him with their own buildings as a backstop.
Except they’re abandoning the planet, Luke reminded himself as a turbolaser blast scorched past close enough to light up his shields and hulled a five-story building, setting it ablaze.
“With you,” Mara finally echoed.
“Garrison TIEs are launching,” Wedge’s voice cut in. “Line fighters, as expected. Moving to intercept.”
“Copy. One Flight, stay on the defenses. Three Flight?”
“We’ll be over the city in another thirty seconds,” Zev said.
The concealed turbolaser that had taken a shot at him exploded, victim of a proton torpedo fired by Hobbie.
“Negative on torpedoes if you’re shooting at anything on the deck,” Luke called, wincing. “We want to minimize collateral damage to civilians.”
Overhead, Two Flight flashed past, engaging the first section of TIEs the Empire had scrambled. Luke pulled back on the stick to climb, looking around at the battlefield.
Multiple fires were already burning around Harazod. Most of them were turbolasers or missile batteries, and even as he watched, Puck threaded laserfire into another ground emplacement and set it ablaze. He’s very good at ground attack, Luke observed distantly. The city’s defenses were compromised but hardly destroyed, and the TIE scramble was uncoordinated. Two of the first five TIEs spiraled back down to the ground and crashed, victims of Rogues who had no interest in letting them get up to combat speed.
And Mara was lagging off his wing.
“Two?” he asked.
Three heartbeats. “On your wing, Leader.”
He fired almost absentmindedly, picking off another turbolaser emplacement with a neat blast, then made a snap decision as the Y-wings approached. “Two, with me. Eleven, Twelve, we’re taking over your escort slot. Switch to ground attack. We’ve got the bombers.”
“Copy, Leader,” Cesi’s voice called, uncertain and confused. “Twelve, on me.”
Luke glanced past his wing at Mara’s X-wing, pacing him but not crisply. “Two, we’ve got the second Y-wing section.”
Four heartbeats. “Copy.”
“Lead,” Wedge’s voice crackled with static and concern. “We’ve got TIE Interceptors inbound. Ninety seconds. They’re coming in even faster than we did and just as low.”
“Interceptors?” Zev asked. “I missed that in the briefing.”
“They weren’t in the briefing,” Wedge said. “They’re broadcasting IFF codes openly. They’re the 128th TIE Interceptor group. Luke, that’s an elite unit, and they weren’t part of the intel package or our plan.”
“Rogues,” Luke said grimly, “finish your targets fast. We’re going to have company real soon.” He flicked the comm channel back to One Flight. “Two? Are you with me?”
Dead air answered his call.