Chapter 4

Eight sleek starfighters, followed closely by the massive axe-shape of a Nebulon-B frigate, appeared in a section of space that had been vacant moments before. Their arrival was immediately noted by the Imperial assault gunboats that swarmed like hornets around their hive. As their commander barked orders, the patrolling craft swung around to intercept the intruders.

Flying point, Rapier peered at his A-wing's sensors. "Red Leader, I count… looks like nine GUNs coming our way." He glanced briefly over his right shoulder at his wingman. This would be Ranger's first taste of real combat, and he hoped for both their sakes he was up to it.

"Copy, Red 3. Okay, people; lock your S-foils in position and accelerate to attack speed. Watch out for the gunboats, but remember what we came for." Spectre adjusted his ELS settings, charging the lasers even as he dumped power to the shields. "Kyp, we'll keep them off your backs while you go for the corvettes."

"Copy that. We're on it." Kyp's voice was calm as he addressed the other pilots in his flight. "Corran, you take the one on the left; Redjed, you take the right." He lined his own crosshairs up on a third corvette and set his torpedoes to dual fire. The targeting scope swung out from behind his seat and locked in place. He adjusted it slightly as the range reeled down.

As Kyp's group began their torpedo run, the A-wings were coming into range of the gunboats. The LOCK light at the top of Ranger's console began to pulse warningly. He gulped and tried to stay calm, to remember his training. Even shields double-front wouldn't save him from multiple concussion missiles; his only hope lay in using his fighter's superior speed and maneuverability to evade them.

The light went a steady red, and seconds later a horn sounded in the small cockpit of the A-wing. Ranger flinched but held his course. He could see the orange dot of the incoming missiles, as well as the tiny points of light that were the enemy, drifting against the starfield. He forced himself to look down at the CMD instead. At the last second before impact Ranger yanked the stick to one side, throwing the fighter into a hard turn. The missile whipped past and tried to come around, but the little interceptor was too quick.

Before he had time to relax or congratulate himself, the nearest pair of gunboats released a storm of green laser fire at him. Ranger fell into the rhythm he'd practiced in the simulator, bobbing and weaving around the worst of it as he tried to get on someone's tail to return the favor.

Formations dissolved into the chaos of combat as the two sides met. Spectre's flight broke in three different directions, trying to distract the defending heavy fighters. The two A-wings were already zooming in and out of the dogfight, making slashing attacks with their lasers as they passed. Meanwhile, Kyp's flight cruised almost serenely through the melee.

"I've got tone…" announced Corran, peering into his scope. His finger tightened on the trigger and a slight shudder passed through the X-wing. "Red 9, torpedoes running!" Moments later he felt the 'clunk' of the next pair of torpedoes dropping into the launch tubes and sent them after the first two.

Kyp fired two torpedoes as well, then had to evade as a gunboat's lasers sought him. He tried to get back on target, but the imperial pilot was persistent and his fire was starting to score hits. Snarling in frustration, Kyp was finally forced to break off and turn to engage. For a moment he entertained the idea of lobbing a single unguided torpedo into the enemy's belly as he swept by, but reason prevailed and he flipped the selector switch back to lasers.

Spectre took a moment to survey the battle as his first opponent became a ball of plasma and metal shards. A number of blue streaks were receding rapidly into the distance, headed for the corvette group. Most of his pilots were locked in duels with gunboats. A concussion missile flew across his flight path and slammed into the back of a gunboats, punching through the shields and sending it into a fatal tumble. Then, throbbing of his LOCK indicator told him he'd watched for long enough Spectre pulled up hard, searching for the foe that was taking aim at him.

"Yeah!" gloated Corran as the last of his torpedoes struck his target corvette amidships, setting off a few secondary explosions that were quickly consumed in the larger fireball of the reactor going critical. "That one's from Rainman!"

"Watch it, Wildcat, you've picked one up!"

Wildcat threw his stick back and forth but the GUN clung doggedly to his six, a series of shots hammering at his rear shields. He was forced to empty his laser capacitors entirely to reinforce them. The jolting abruptly stopped, and he risked a glance backward: his attacker was breaking off and swooping away as red bolts came at it from different angles. "Thanks, guys."

The Imperial pilots were good, many of them aces. But the odds were even, now that Redjed and Corran had fired all of their torpedoes and joined the fray, and the superiority of the Rebel fighters was beginning to tell. The A-wings harried the slow gunboats while the X-wing went toe to toe with them. Soon the flight leader decided to call for reinforcements.

Kyp's R2 chirped as three new blips appeared on his sensors. He peered at his CMD and announced, "More gunboats, coming in. Three at 210 mark 4."

"I see them," Spectre confirmed. "Anyone with torpedoes left, close with the corvettes and finish them. The rest of us will cover you."

"Copy, Red Leader."

"Copy that."

The dogfight began to drift in the direction of the corvettes, as gunboats chased after the X-wings that had broken off and the rest of Red Squadron pursued them in turn.

"Someone get this guy off me," Zoom complained as he waggled the nose of his X-wing through a figure-8, trying to stay lined up on a corvette despite the fire coming at him from behind.

"Zoom, break right!"

Zoom did as he was told, giving up his torpedo lock, as the blunt arrowhead of an A-wing flashed by his left wing with lasers firing. Rapier grinned savagely as he bore down on the gunboat, switching to missiles and dumb-firing a pair of them right at the cockpit, then pitching down sharply. The gunboat exploded as he swept underneath with a few meters to spare.

"Thanks, Rapier."

"Nice one, Red 3."

"Shields are down on this corvette… Wildcat, form on my wing and we'll finish it with lasers."

"You got it, Red Leader. Attacking your target."

Quad laser burned deep trenches in the unprotected hull of the corvette, damaging vital systems. The hull was breached in several places. Escape pods scattered like seeds as the corvette lost helm control and began to roll over. Finally the engines overloaded and blew the whole stern off. Debris pinged harmlessly off the shields of the X-wings.

The mission clock read 7:02 when, with typical Imperial punctuality, everyone's hyperspace alarms went off. The massive wedge of an Imperial Star Destroyer loomed to the rear, coasting into position near the remain of the staging area. Both sides redoubled their efforts: the gunboats encouraged by the arrival of reinforcements, the Rebels determined to finish the job and get out.

Without turbolasers installed, the final corvette was defenseless against the strafing runs of the Rebel starfighters. They circled and pounced like wolves. The end came soon enough, as the ship was struck by multiple dumb-fired proton torpedoes and ceased to exist with a flash that made canopies darken for an instant.

Spectre allowed himself a tight smile as the corvette blew, that immediately became a frown as Eddie, his R2 droid, reported that the ISD had launched a group of TIE Interceptors. Someone there had figured out what was going on. "Time for us to be going, gentlemen. Someone take out those comm-sats and we'll be done."

"I'm on it!" Zoom piped up. He turned away from the gunboat he'd been chasing and lined up on the white blips, going full throttle. His former target tried to drop on his tail, but was destroyed by the combined fire of Ranger and Corran.

Zoom was so intent on destroying the comm sats that he didn't pay attention to his high rate of closure. His wing lasers spat red-orange beams at the tight cluster of satellites. Two exploded in quick succession. Nice of the Empire to place them so close together, he thought.

He was less than a klick away now and his R2 was hooting insistently, but he couldn't spare the time to look down at his console. Another comm sat blew up and Zoom wondered if he'd gotten them all. Then the flash from the destroyed satellite's small fuel cell faded and, in a moment of perfect clarity, he saw the last one coming right at his canopy.

If not for his doubled shields, Zoom might have bought the farm right there. As it was, there was a horrible jolt as the X-wing slammed into the comm sat, not unlike the feeling of running into a brick wall. Zoom had instinctively thrown up his arm to save himself,; the gesture, while mostly futile, did protect him from a shower of sparks as his ELS panel shorted out. His R2 unit wailed.

"Zoom! Kelly, are you okay?"

Zoom realized that if he was hearing Spectre's voice over the radio, he probably wasn't dead. He opened his eyes and blinked. His forward shields were completely gone, but the X-wing itself seemed mostly intact, if a bit scorched. His hand mechanically went through the familiar task of rebalancing the shields and dumping all his laser power to them.

"Yeah… I'm here, I'm all right."

"That's it, you got them all! See you at the rendezvous point." Spectre brought his craft around in a wide loop and picked off a gunboat that had dropped in on Redjed's six. "Red Leader to Red Group, all fighters disengage and jump to lightspeed."

Kyp stayed latched to a gunboat's tail, hammering at it with a steady stream of fire. "Jeff, I'd like to hang around a moment and finish off these GUNs…" His target came apart, the explosion sending the wings spinning off into the void.

Spectre considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "Too risky now that the Star Destroyer's launching fighters." He jinked as a few green bolts shot past his canopy. "We've completed the mission objectives. Let's go home."

Kyp frowned but double-clicked his mike, acknowledging Spectre's order. He broke free of the fight and headed for clear space.

One by one the members of Red Squadron fled, streaking into the distance and vanishing. Spectre was the last; he flipped the switch to close his S-foils, waited a few seconds for them to lock in position, and pulled the lever. The stars rushed toward him and he was gone.

[Aboard the Imperial Star Destroyer]

Captain Treyvas Gant paced the bridge of his ship, the ISD Terrible, and fumed. They had arrived at Outpost A-56 a few minutes ago as part of their regular patrol schedule, only to find Rebel starfighters shooting up the place. Worse, the Rebels and their command frigate had gotten away clean after completely destroying the staging area.

A lieutenant approached timidly, having no desire to be the target of his commander's wrath. "Sir, we've recovered the last of our fighters and several escape pods. The surviving gunboats have returned to base."

"Of course," Gant confirmed bitterly. "There's nothing left here for them to defend." He turned. "Detail a shuttle to place a new comm sat and lay a small minefield around it. I doubt the Rebels will return here, but best to be sure." The junior officer nodded and hurried to obey.

Gant returned to his restless pacing. He wanted to know who had done this to an outpost under his protection. "Any word from communications?"

One of the pit crew put a hand to his headset as he spoke. "Yes, sir. They've completed the analysis of the transmission picked up during the battle. There are several reference to 'red'… almost certainly Red Squadron, sir."

"Red Squadron," the captain gritted. Outside the bridge widows, the skeletal remains of one of the destroyed corvettes drifted by.

"Get me Sector Command. Those rebels will pay for this."

Rainman was sitting up in bed reading, a clean bandage wrapped around his shoulder, when the small group of pilots entered the medical bay. Corran was in the lead, followed by Zoom and Rapier, with Kyp bringing up the rear. All were smiling.

"Hey Brennan! How're you doing?"

Rainman looked up. "Oh, hi guys… the shoulder's still a little sore, but the 2-1B says I can get out of this bed tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be back on the flight line pretty soon. So what's up?"

"We just gave the Empire some payback, that's what," crowed Corran. "Four corvettes, ten assault gunboats and a bloody nose. Wish you could've been there, man."

Rainman chuckled. "Thanks. Everyone get back okay?"

Kyp nodded. "Though I thought Pappy might kill Zoom when he saw how he'd banged up his X-wing."

The other pilots chuckled while Zoom flushed with embarrassment. "It wasn't that bad… I just got a little excited."

Rapier patted Zoom on the shoulder. "We know. Just remember, ramming is not recommended as a tactic, not even against mines or comm sats."

"I know. I'll be more careful next time, honest."

"Glad to hear it." Rapier took on a more serious tone. "We've been lucky so far; non of you youngsters have ever lost a wingman. But luck can't last, and being reckless can get you killed out there."

Everyone was quiet for a moment as they considered Rapier's words. "But sometimes, you have to take risks to win," Corran finally observed.

Rapier smiled and nodded. "Risk is our business. Three to ones odds, for starters. Some risks are necessary, while others are just stupid. Unfortunately, we can't really teach the difference in the sims."

"Getting all philosophical in your old age, Steve?" jibed Kyp. "Next you'll be telling us how it was when you were Red Leader…"

Rapier chuckled. "Well, as a former Red Leader, I know that Spectre doesn't want to fill out any KIA forms. So be careful and do unto Imps before they do unto you, okay?"

Further conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the medical droid. It cocked its roughly humanoid head at the visitors and said, "Excuse me, sirs. You'll have to leave now; Captain Roth needs to rest."

"I guess I do go on." Rapier shook his head as Kyp began herding the other pilots out of the med-bay. "Get well soon, Rainman. We miss you."

"Thank you, sir."

Two days later, Red Squadron was again assembled in one of the Regis's briefing rooms. Spectre stood at the front, next to the large wall-screen. As the last of the pilots filed in and sat down, he began to speak.

"This war is heating up, folks. We have reports of ground fighting and uprisings on several planets in the last few weeks. The bad news is, this means lots of casualties and wounded. Alliance stocks of bacta and other vital medical supplies are critically low. Normally the Alliance would buy these things on the black market, but one of our major suppliers had recently been shut down and we haven't had time to arrange a new shipment."

There was a murmuring among the pilots. "What about what we have here on the Regis?" asked Bryan "Fox" Haynes, Red 5.

"A shuttle left this morning with whatever we could spare, which wasn't much. Other posts are doing the same. But it won't be enough if this fighting continues... and we have every reason to think it will."

"High Command has ruled out theft of the items we need from civilian organizations. The Alliance needs friends almost as desperately as it needs these supplies. Stealing from a hospital or the Bacta Cartel would endanger many innocent lives and cost us much goodwill. It's just not the sort of thing we do."

For the first time in the breiefing, a smile crept onto Spectre's face. "So we're going to steal from the Empire instead."

He turned to the wall screen, which came on as the lights dimmed automatically. The screen showed a double column of red icons representing bulk freighters, ten in all. Near the top of the screen was a nav buoy, identified by a forgettable code number. At the bottom, trailing the convoy, was the red dumbbell of an Imperial frigate.

"Eleven hours from now, an Imperial Navy convoy will be passing through this sector on its way to resupply a garrison in the Outer Rim. The convoy is being escorted by the FRG Sentinel, with a full complement of starfighters. What makes this convoy so attractive to us is that one of the freighters is known to be carrying a full load of the medical supplies we need."

The map grid shifted, and two green starfighter icons appeared off to one side. " Our plan is to arrive shortly before the convoy drops out of hyperspace to change course for its next leg. Two X-wings will handle the fighter cover while two Y-wings identify and disable the target freighter." Another icon blinked into existence beside the Rebel fighters: a green transport. "Once the freighter has been disabled, TRN Brick will arrive to board and capture it. Protect the freighter until it hypers out, then return home."

Spectre turned back to the seated pilots. "Questions?"

"What about the other freighters?" asked Corran. "Do we just let them go?"

Spectre nodded. "Capturing the freighter carrying the meds is our primary objective. Leave the other freighters alone once you've located the target. Definitely don't disable them; you might confuse the boarding party."

"Anything else? All right. I'll be flying the lead X-wing. Rapier, I want you on my wing for this one."

Rapier nodded. "Sure thing, Jeff."

Spectre returned the nod, then scanned the rest of the group. "I'll also need two pilots to fly the Y-wings."

Zoom made a sour face, but his neighbor, Wildcat, raised a hand. "I've always felt a good pilot can excel in any craft. Count me in." He grinned back at Zoom, who just looked more disgusted.

"Okay, who else?"

A hand went up from the back row. "How about me?" asked Yves "Carcajou" Vermette. "Seems like forever since I went on a mission. I could use some action."

"I think we can arrange that." Spectre chuckled. "See you three in the hangar at 1500, then. Dismissed."