Fortuna
O Fortuna,
Velut luna
Statu variabilis...
-Carl Orff, Carmina Burana
Corran Horn walked down the slanting corridor, dressed for working out in shorts and a sleeveless tunic, a towel slung around his neck. He repressed a shiver as a faint chill worked its way up his spine. They could push the heat a little more, it's downright cold in here! Coming to an intersection, he hesitated for a second before turning right. They could have marked the corridors a little better, too. This place is as confusing to navigate as a Selonian warren. Corran grimaced to himself. Without a glowrod. I could have strangled that Selonian lifter when we finally caught up to her...
Shaking his head at the memory, one of many from his days with CorSec, Corran followed the hallway around a couple of turns and past more cross-passages, leading off to who-knows-where in the bowels of Outlook Base. I'm glad we're just stopping over here for a few days. It has to be a real pain to have to work in this place. Even more of a pain to have to live here. Approaching his destination, the base's gym, he grimaced again. They could use a lot more in the way of entertainment, too. Working out is not exactly at the top of my list of fun things to do, but... you take what you can get, I guess.
Entering the long, low-ceilinged room, Corran decided that working out was not very high on anyone else's list of fun things to do, either-the room was mostly empty. A few of the base's resident personnel were using the weight machines at the far end, but that was nearly it. The only other person in the room was much more familiar-Gavin Darklighter, holding his own against one of the punching-bags set along the right-hand wall, maybe a third of the way down the room from the door. Corran headed that way as Gavin paused for a second, leaning over with his hands on his thighs, breathing hard.
"I think you win, Gavin, it's not putting up much of a fight," Corran addressed the younger pilot as he approached, nodding toward the bag swinging its way down to stillness. Gavin looked up, only now noticing Corran's arrival, and smiled ruefully.
"Just trying to burn off some extra energy." Gavin lowered his voice, with a look toward the gym's other occupants, engaged in their own conversation across the room. "If I was stationed here, I think I'd go out of my mind with boredom."
Corran grinned, the Corellian standard-issue cocky lopsided grin. "I know what you mean. Though I've heard they get pretty frequent leave to go down to the planet, so all-in-all it's probably a fair trade-off."
Gavin grunted, starting in again on the punching bag. "Except we don't get enough leave-time to get to the planet, just enough to go crazy here not having anything to do. I'm starting to wish I'd volunteered for flying today."
"You had your turn already," Corran reminded him, deciding to hit one of the peddlars closer to the door. All he was really interested in doing was burning off extra energy as well, and this was probably the fastest way to do it.
"I wish I'd known we were ending up here, I'd have waited to take it now," came the answer back over the rhythmic pounding of the punching bag. "I'd rather be flying another training flight."
Corran grinned again as he sat down on the peddlar and punched up a vigorous program, swinging his feet up onto the machine's pedals. "I'd actually rather be catching up on my sleep."
Gavin threw him a wry grin in return. "So why aren't you? Ooryl's snoring keeping you up again?"
Corran laughed as he started the peddlar. Ooryl Qyrgg, Corran's Gand wingmate and roommate, couldn't possibly snore, as he didn't actually breathe. "No, I haven't even seen Ooryl for a couple of hours, don't know where he got to. It's just... I don't know. Just not tired enough, I guess."
Gavin shrugged. "Hey, did you ever catch any scores from the Coruscant Shockball semifinals?..."
Tycho Celchu cruised smoothly on repulsorlifts out of the gaping entrance of the main hangar, watching it fall away on his rear scope like the huge mouth of an ancient stone-creature, roaring silently at his escape. Keeping an eye on his range, he waited until he was a safe distance away before kicking in his main drives. Pulling up and away from the rugged surface, he soared into the deepening blue sky of early evening, which quickly darkened around him into the chill black of space. Checking his sensors, he headed for a Lambda-class shuttle with six X-wings flying in escort formation and keyed his comm. "Red Control, this is Lead, do you copy? Still awake over there?"
Nawara Ven's voice came back. "I read you loud and clear, Lead. It took you long enough to get here, though, I probably would have had time for a nap."
Tycho smiled ruefully. "That hangar's packed tighter than a crate of sardili-fish. Had to do a bit of maneuvering to get clear."
"I didn't have any problems, and I'm flying the shuttle. Perhaps we should switch places for this exercise, Lead."
"You were also parked right by the door, Control. I think that might have made the difference."
"That is true. Datafeeds from Reds Two, Four, and Six are already set up and ready to record."
"Thanks, Control." Switching to a different frequency, Tycho addressed the entire group. "Red Group, let's do some flying. Set course as directed by Red Control."
Swinging into formation with the shuttle, Tycho watched the half-squadron of fighters come about on course for Pershuin's other moon. He nodded to himself in satisfaction at the quiet skill with which even this simple maneuver was handled.
Of course, from three of those fighters he expected no less. But the other three, the point of this entire exercise, were what he was interested in watching.
Changing frequencies again, he continued. "Rogues, how do our candidates look so far?"
Asyr Sei'lar's voice came back first. "We haven't seen them do any real flying yet, Red Lead."
Tycho chuckled to himself at Asyr's stressing of his designation as Red Leader, rather than his normal callsign of Rogue Two. Rogue Squadron had been flying a couple of pilots short for some time, and now, while they were between assignments, Wedge was taking the opportunity to review candidates to fill the two open slots. So they were making the trip back to Coruscant in a series of hops, stopping en route to evaluate those candidates who were stationed more or less along the way. Tycho also suspected that High Command would be asking Wedge and himself for their professional opinions on the bases they were stopping over at, as well as on the squadrons stationed at them, but that could wait until they got home. For now, his concern was pilots; namely, the final three pilot candidates, flying in formation with three Rogue veterans, Asyr Sei'lar, Inyri Forge, and Myn Donos.
At each stop, Wedge and Tycho had asked for volunteers from among the Rogues to fly with the candidates, pairing one Rogue with each hopeful for a set of training exercises. Each candidate's astromech unit was instructed to set up a datalink to Rogue Squadron's shuttle, sending across the fighter's flight, sensor, and targeting data for later review. So far the evaluation process had gone very smoothly in every case, except for some confusion over callsigns at Brenshalli. The four candidates there had designations of Storm Four, Storm Five, R'gona Nine, and Blue Twelve. The Rogue volunteers had been Hobbie, Wes, Corran, and Ooryl-Rogues Four, Five, Nine, and Ten. Wes had paired up, probably intentionally, with Storm Four; Hobbie, probably also intentionally, had flown with Storm Five; and Corran, possibly intentionally, with R'gona Nine... Wedge had taken command of that group, and had done an admirable job of keeping everyone straight. Tycho hadn't envied him the task.
As a result of that potential fiasco, they'd taken to assigning their evaluation groups, Rogues and candidates alike, Red callsigns for the purposes of their evaluation flights. Hence, today he was flying as Red Leader, Asyr, Inyri, and Myn were Reds One, Three, and Five, and Nawara in the shuttle was Red Control. Though Tycho also liked the idea of reassigning callsigns for other reasons-it subtly underscored the point that, regardless of what the candidates had done with their current or former assignments, no preferential treatment or consideration would be given them; if they wanted to fly with Rogue Squadron, they had to prove themselves worthy of it. Also, the Red Group designation had historical roots in the squadron's past, a reminder to potential Rogues of what they would have to live up to... Yes, there were many reasons Tycho liked using the Red Group designation. His enthusiasm wasn't shared by all of the Rogues, however. Asyr, for one, thought it was a nuisance. Hence her insistence on using Red instead of Rogue-if Tycho was going to force her to change callsigns, as far as she was concerned he'd better damn well stick with them himself.
"Thank you for the reminder, Red One," he replied. "I meant what do you think of them outside their cockpits? I presume you introduced yourselves before we took off? As you were requested to do?"
"Don't mind her, Lead, she's just miffed at the kid," chimed in Inyri, normally Asyr's wingmate but today flying as Red Three. "He as much as told us he was a shoo-in for one of our open slots. Maybe even both of them," she added with a chuckle.
"Both of them? What do you mean by that, Three?"
"He thinks he's as good as any other two pilots put together, that's what she means, Lead," from Myn Donos, Red Five. "Maybe the kid flies like a whirlwind, but he's young, and still new at this. Hasn't found his limits yet. Hell, doesn't realize he has limits yet."
Tycho winced. The "kid" in question was Jarlon Relva, a 19-year-old hotshot from Commenor, who, according to his personnel file, had torn through all of the standard training sims like a tauntaun with its tail on fire. Relva was only two months into his first active-duty assignment, based out of the cruiser Mon Delindo, but already he was trying to transfer into the Rogues. Not a good sign, in Tycho's opinion; it suggested to him that Relva either wanted to fly for personal glory rather than the good of the Republic and its citizens, or that he was already having problems with his superior officers, or possibly both. And Wedge was leaning toward choosing more experienced pilots to fill his roster, anyway. But the kid's sim scores were high enough to warrant consideration, so here he was.
But first Relva had to prove himself to Tycho, and Tycho had plenty of experience dealing with hotshot pilots who didn't realize they had limits yet. "Sounds like a cross between Gavin and Bror Jace back when they both started with the squadron, doesn't it, Control?"
Nawara chuckled. "That's one way of putting it, Lead."
"All right. One, you and the kid can have the first run when we reach our target zone. I hope you're up to staying ahead of him."
"You can count on that, Lead," was Asyr's taut response. Tycho smirked to himself. The kid really had gotten to Asyr, hadn't he? Good, that meant she would be on top of her game. If Asyr had anything to do with it, Jarlon Relva was about to have a hard lesson about how good a pilot he really was, and how much he still had to learn.
"He's all yours, One. Don't play too rough, we may still want him for the squadron when you're through with him." Tycho glanced at his status display. "Seven minutes until we're over our target zone. I suggest you all check in with your wingmates before we get there."
Wedge Antilles trailed a hand along the rough stone wall as he made his way toward the small room that had been assigned to him as an office for the duration of his short stay at Outlook Base. How many bases just like this one have I been in, since I started flying for the Rebellion? And indeed, this base was a throwback to the old days. Situated on Pershuin IV's smaller moon, the base was entirely contained within a complex system of caves, hollowed out of a rugged mountain range. The moon was habitable, but barely, with a thin but breathable atmosphere and a landscape mostly consisting of bare rock and some very scrubby plant cover. The people of Pershuin had left it alone, there being nothing of any value up here to exploit. Wedge wasn't sure when the New Republic, or perhaps even the Rebel Alliance, had started a base here, but he was slightly surprised to find it still operating. At least under such primitive conditions. This sort of place used to be a luxury, but we usually manage to do a little better for our people now. I'll have to make a recommendation to High Command when we get back to Coruscant that Outlook Base undergo some much-needed renovation. He snorted to himself. Or that we just decommission it. I'm not sure we even need a base in this sector anymore. It's too small to support much anyway, three squadrons of fighters and a couple of frigates in orbit around Pershuin. We could easily cover that between Rel'k'eia Base and the 47th Sector Fleet, split our people here between the two and move off of this rock.
Reaching his office, Wedge keyed open his door and stepped inside. He grinned ruefully at the accommodations, which were again painfully familiar from his Rebel days. The office boasted a real desk, which was more than he'd had in some places, but the chair was an old ejection seat, stripped down and welded to some sort of scrounged base. Shaking his head, he seated himself and plugged his datapad into the holoprojector. If the setting was familiar, one important thing had changed-he had a lot more datawork to do now than he'd ever had to with the Rebellion.
Pulling up his personnel files, he reviewed his short-list of candidates to fill the two open slots in Rogue Squadron. He had his picks narrowed down to four, though the one kid Tycho was trying out now, Relva, was rumored to have a seriously hot hand with a fighter. He'd wait until he interviewed Relva himself and read Tycho's evaluation from today's flight before forming his own opinion, however. Leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest, he read again the file on his top choice, an Issori named Khe-Jeen Slee. Good scores in the sims, excellent recommendations from his former commanding officers, already achieved the rank of lieutenant. Wedge rubbed a hand along his jaw, then propped his chin on his knuckles, considering. His own evaluation of Slee was very similar to that of his other commanders. An excellent pilot. Honorable. Rational. Not one to let emotions run away with himself; Wedge gathered that was typical of the Issori in general. Wedge's eyes drifted away from the holoprojected file, staring into space. Choosing Slee... felt right. A firm believer in paying attention to gut-feelings, Wedge noted with some amusement that the longer his "gut" thought about it, the more it seemed to like Slee as one of his replacement pilots. He wouldn't make the official decision until he got back to Coruscant, but to himself Wedge admitted that Khe-Jeen Slee was practically a lock for one of his open slots.
Which left just one hole to fill. Wedge started to bring up the next pilot in line, then decided against it, instead opening some inventory lists. He'd wait until he reviewed the scores from today's flight exercises and read Tycho's report before thinking about it any more; no reason to bias himself against the pilots out flying now before they had a chance to really prove themselves. Plenty of time to think about that on the final hyperspace jump home in a couple of days. Stifling a yawn, he started reading down the long columns of numbers...
In the hangar, Wes Janson sat askew in the open cockpit of an X-wing, one leg bent and propped against the right-hand instrument panels, the other curled around the flightstick, one hand balancing a datapad against his knee and a half-eaten lura fruit in the other. Chewing, he glanced over at one of the banks of indicator lights. "Nope, it's still showing yellow."
Outside, and considerably less comfortable, Hobbie Klivian lay prone on the port upper s-foil, feet pointing towards the front edge, head hanging upside-down off the back. Growling at the pronouncement from Wes, he gripped the wing's edge and pulled himself back upright, setting the spanner in his hand down with a clank. "You have got to be kidding me. What else is left to check?" He stuck his head far enough under the canopy to confirm that, for once, Wes was not kidding. "Sithspawn! That's it, it's coming off." Before upending himself over the back of the foil again, he glared at Wes, who conveniently didn't notice him. "You could come out here and help, you know."
Wes threw a grin over his shoulder at his annoyed friend. "Hey, it could have waited till we got back to Coruscant. It was your idea to spend our hard-earned and well-deserved down-time sitting in the hangar banging on your ship." Taking another bite of the sweet lura, he continued with his mouth full, "X-wings don't fall apart from slightly malfunctioning power-flow sensors. What's the hurry?"
"It's driving me crazy, that's what's the hurry!" Hobbie snapped, popping his head up over the wing to glare at the back of Wes's head. "How long have I been asking Koyi to take a look at this? How long have I had this blasted yellow light blinking at me? How many hyperspace jumps have I nearly been hypnotized into missing the reversion to realspace? I'm sick of it. It's coming off, now." Throwing a look up at the R5 droid sitting in the astromech-slot, he instructed, "Shut everything down, Crash, I'm gonna pop this thing off and run it through the diagnostics computer."
The droid replied with a distinctly unhappy-sounding blat; Wes glanced at the main display to check the translation. "Oooh."
"What'd he say?" came the muffled question from underneath the s-foil.
"You don't want to know." Wes put down the datapad and wiggled around to sit against the opposite corner. Pulling both feet up, he stuck his legs out over the front of the cockpit, setting his boots down with a thump on the fuselage. Putting both hands behind his head and trying to get comfortable, he continued, "You know, maybe you have the right idea, Hobbie. I've never heard of a ship falling apart from a glitchy sensor, but, well, this is your ship, after all."
His only answer was an inarticulate snarl. Grinning, he continued. "I've seen stranger things happen to ships you've flown. Maybe that's why Koyi hasn't checked it for you yet. She was hoping that this time you'd finally jump yourself off into the unknown through hyperspace and she'd never have to worry about patching your ship up again. You never know."
A muffled curse and a couple of bangs was all the answer he got this time. Pulling in his feet, Wes leaned both arms on the left side of the fighter and propped his chin on top of them. Eyeing his friend speculatively, or as much of him as wasn't dangling backwards off the port wing, Wes decided he could push just a little farther. "Of course, she has to figure too that eventually you'll just wreck this one and get a new one, and then your troubles with the blinking yellow light will be over for good."
He quickly ducked as the spanner came flying over Hobbie's shoulder, aimed more or less at his head. It bounced off the ship's hull just forward of the cockpit and clattered its way to the floor. Wes's customary grin again fell into place. Yep, he could still call 'em. He watched as Hobbie struggled with the recalcitrant sensor, which was being just as difficult about coming out of the ship as it had been about working properly while it was in. Finally, with a vicious yank and an even more vicious curse, the sensor popped free, upsetting Hobbie's balance and nearly dropping him head-first towards the duracrete floor several meters below.
"Whoops!" Wes quickly grabbed one of Hobbie's flailing legs, giving him the chance to regain his balance and pull himself back on top of the s-foil. "Easy there, you'll have more problems than a blinking yellow light in a second. We'll be replacing all the sensors in your head, too." Wes propped his chin on his crossed arms again as Hobbie held up the sensor: an unassuming silver cylinder about the length of his hand, with a couple of wire-feeds coming out of either end. Hobbie glared at it, eyes practically spitting blaster bolts.
"All that work, for this." The disgruntled Ralltiirian turned his glare to the astromech. "This had better be the thing that was causing the malfunction."
As the droid squealed an indignant reply, Wes took the sensor and examined it. Tugging gently at the wires on one end to see if they were loose, he continued ribbing his friend. "You'd better hope you didn't bust the internal feeds when you ripped it out. Koyi's not going to be happy if you broke it when it wasn't really broke to begin with."
"Well then, Koyi should have checked it a long time ago," Hobbie muttered, taking the sensor back and shaking it gently next to his ear, listening for the faint ping of loose wires tapping on the inside of the cylinder.
"You know, you could still just crash the ship," Wes suggested helpfully as Hobbie tapped the sensor and listened again. "Then Koyi would never have to know you broke it. 'Course, she wouldn't be happy that you crashed the ship, either. We'll have to make it look like an accident."
With a disgusted sigh, Hobbie dropped lightly off the s-foils to the ground. "I'll run this over to diagnostics, see if I can figure out what's wrong with it."
Wes continued as Hobbie stalked off. "You wouldn't even have to be flying. We could arrange for something to happen to it on the ground. Like if the ceiling collapsed, it'd be buried under tons of rock. They'd never even notice that the sensor was broken then." Hobbie didn't reply, though he wasn't nearly out of earshot. Smirking, Wes watched him go, trekking diagonally across the hangar toward the banks of diagnostic computers and equipment.
And it was a long trek. Wes's eyes were drawn across to the far wall, where Hobbie was headed, and then upward towards the soaring roof of the huge natural cave, which had to be literally hundreds of meters overhead. Huge stalactites hung from the ceiling, ranging in size from squat lumps to thick pillars to long, delicate daggers of stone. The cavern was about two-thirds as wide as it was high, and a bit shorter again from the back wall to the huge gaping hole in the mountainside where a set of blast doors had been installed. The cavern was big enough to comfortably hold the base's three resident fighter squadrons, one of X-wings, one of Y-s, and one of B-s, with even a little room to spare. However, with Rogue Squadron's ten X-wings and shuttle, plus the three X-wings of the pilots who had come here hoping to join the Rogues, things were a bit cramped. Rogue Squadron's Three Flight and the three ships belonging to the Rogue candidates had been settled in the base's secondary, and much smaller, hangar, among shuttles and tugs and other such less-glamorous craft. Wes's eyes continued wandering, over to where Wedge's fighter sat along the wall, a recently-opened hole where Tycho's had been beside it. Wes smirked again, remembering the sight of Tycho delicately winding his way out from between a couple of cranes and a heavy lift a couple of minutes ago, on his way out for a training flight. The rest of the Rogues would have a much easier time of getting in and out; the shuttle and remaining four fighters had been parked in the middle of the hangar, squarely lined up with the huge flight doors. Wedge wasn't exactly happy about having his squadron scattered all over the base, but there hadn't been much choice; when the Rogues had arrived late the previous day, they had to take whatever space was available. At least it was only for a couple more days.
Wes settled back into Hobbie's ejection seat and picked up the datapad again. Faintly bored, he scanned through local news reports, looking for anything remotely interesting. Stopping on a story about recent civil unrest and rioting in Vesaaila, Pershuin's capital and largest city, he snorted to himself. "Riots... terrorist threat... what's there to get upset about on Pershuin?"
He'd made it halfway through the story when a thought struck him. Sitting bolt upright, he muttered, "Wait a second ... why didn't I think of that when he was still here?" Shaking his head at himself, he clambered over the edge of the cockpit and down the ladder pushed against the side of the ship. Looking around, he spotted Hobbie at a terminal near the exit to the rest of the base. Whistling to himself, he set off in that direction, dodging parked fighters, droids, and techs as he went.
"...What? You can't tell me you think that was a fair block! Iss'haa nearly took Mantin's head off!
Corran shrugged, pedaling hard. "Mantin shouldn't have been there."
"Yeah, but that was no reason to knock him out of the game and land him in a med center for a week!" An indignant Gavin stopped to glare at Corran, fists poised on hips.
Corran raised both hands in a conciliatory manner. "Hey, I'm not happy that Mantin was injured, but the fact is he should never have been in that zone. Iss'haa made a legal move. He couldn't exactly help that Mantin fell right in the way of his tail." Corran grinned at Gavin. "Besides, no blood, no foul, right? You should have seen how the CorSec intramural teams played shockball."
Gavin snorted and went back to beating the punching bag. "I think the bruise he got comes close enough. Did you see the med holos? The whole side of his head was purple!"
"No, I didn't see those." Corran chuckled quietly to himself. Gavin had turned into quite an avid shockball enthusiast over the past couple of years, since the All-Coruscant League had started up. Corran wasn't as passionate about the game as Gavin, but several of his friends back on Corellia had played, and he knew a fair bit about the ins and outs of the sport. At least, about the way that Corellians played it. As with so many things in the galaxy, Corellians had their own slant on the game of shockball. Corran had seen players get away with tricks that were a lot more underhanded than those Gavin was currently taking exception to. Not that it would do any good to tell Gavin that.
Corran was about to reply, when he heard a muffled thud from above, accompanied by a slight tremor. Frowning, he looked up at the ceiling. Isn't the hangar right above this?...
"Did you hear that?" Gavin was also looking upward, a look of concentration on his face as he listened. Corran swung quickly off the peddlar.
"Yeah, I heard it." Corran headed for the door at a quick jog. "C'mon, lets go-"
Three steps from the door, just as he was passing the last two exercise machines in the row, he was interrupted by a loud snap, and then-
Wedge was making a valiant attempt to stay awake in the face of inventory files put together by Emtrey, the squadron's military protocol and quartermaster droid, when the air was rent by a hair-raising wail. The base's general alarm. Wedge was instantly wide-awake; leaping to his feet and sending his chair flying back against the wall, he skidded around the corner of the desk and out the door at a flat run. Pulling out his comlink, he quickly thumbed it on. "Rogue Squadron, scramble, repeat, scramble." Remembering that their ships were scattered across the base between two separate hangars, he nearly cursed. "Everyone launch as soon as you're clear, we'll form up outside. Acknowledge."
"I copy, Rogue Lead," Tycho's voice answered, "Red Group on the way back. ETA two minutes."
Wedge waited for similar responses from the rest of his group, and was surprised to be met instead by silence. "Rogue Group, this is Rogue Leader. Everyone get to your ships, and get 'em in the air. Do you read me? Acknowledge."
He was still met by silence. Wedge felt a quick surge of anger. The base was under attack, and only half of his squadron was accounted for. The rest of them had better all have damn good reasons for not acknowledging his order, and they'd better get their ships up in a hurry, or he was personally going to take it out of all of their hides when this was over. Slipping his comlink back in his pocket, he kept running, dodging base personnel on the way to their own posts. He was tempted to curse again at the insane layout of this place as he wound his way through several turns, hoping he was remembering the right way to the hangar. Yes, this was it-left here, then a quick right, and then left again-
Wedge rounded the last turn into the long corridor leading up to the hangar and stopped short, blinking in shock at the sight in front of him...
Hobbie felt rather than heard the explosions.
Before his mind even registered what was happening, his body was in motion, running two steps and throwing himself behind one of the banks of terminals, which had been pulled out from the wall at one end to allow access to the circuitry panels in the back. Even as he landed among snarled nests of wires, the thunderclap of the explosion hammered his ears, followed closely by the shockwave of the blast.
Hobbie lay stunned for a second. Then, shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear the ringing in his ears, he struggled to his knees, just as another sound-an awful, rending crack-split the air, followed by a growing rumble that shook the entire cavern.
He ducked his head around the corner of the terminals, and instantly apprehended two things-
First, the sight of Wes, lying prone on the floor several meters away, not moving.
Second, the first great jagged pieces of stone falling with ponderous grace from the ceiling far overhead.
"Sithspit!" Hobbie lurched out from behind the terminals and raced toward Wes, as the thunderous roll of breaking stone grew still louder. Thankfully, even before he reached him, Hobbie saw Wes start to roll over onto his side; then, he was there. Dropping quickly to one knee, Hobbie yanked one of Wes's arms over his own shoulders, then grabbed the shorter, stockier pilot around the waist. With Hobbie's help, Wes struggled to his feet, staggering, and then they were in motion, stumbling for the exit as the first great boulders crashed down on the floor behind them, smashing starfighters and equipment and maybe techs and pilots and droids along with them. Smaller stone-chips flew everywhere with bruising force; Hobbie felt several of them pelt his back. Half carrying his friend, Hobbie watched the exit approach with agonizing slowness, willing the ceiling above them to wait just a few seconds more before falling to crush them both-the dubious safety of the corridor now only ten meters away, five-
And then he was dragging Wes out into the hallway, followed by a cloud of dust and smoke from the explosions that had brought the roof down, along with more noxious smoke from the secondary explosions of ruptured fuel tanks. Only when he judged they were a safe distance away did Hobbie stop and let Wes slump to the ground, and then let himself lean against the wall with one arm, trying to catch his breath. As the adrenaline racing through his system started to fade, he finally noticed a stinging pain across his back. Reaching back, he felt a tear in his flightsuit, and when he brought his hand back around there was blood on his fingertips. He wiped it off on his leg, also noticing that his limbs were starting to shake. He tried to stop them, only partly successfully.
A still dazed-looking Wes peered up at him and said something; he couldn't hear it past the ringing. Speaking with the overloud voice of someone who can't hear himself, he asked "What?"
"I didn't mean it," Wes's voice sounded shaky even though he was yelling. A thin trail of blood made its way down from his hairline at his temple, running past his eye and down his cheek. "About your ship. And the ceiling falling down. I wasn't serious." Hobbie couldn't tell if Wes was joking. Wes might not be sure himself if he was joking; he'd probably hit the ground hard enough to rattle his brain in his skull.
Hobbie looked back toward the hangar. Only a few people had come out and made their way past the two pilots, far fewer than there had been in the hangar when it collapsed. Between the distance and the smoke and dust hanging thick in the air at that end of the corridor, he couldn't see into the hangar, but for the moment at least he could no longer hear the crash of falling stone or the muffled bangs of exploding fuel tanks, and the floor had stopped trembling. The base's alarm started wailing as he turned back to Wes, looking him in the eye.
"You stay put, all right? Stay right here, I'll be back." Hoping Wes would, for once, just do as he was told, Hobbie turned and started back up the corridor at a fast trot. Wes stared after him for several seconds, before his brain finally caught up. Struggling to his feet, fighting off a sudden wave of nausea, he started off in Hobbie's wake as fast as he could, leaning against the wall to help keep his balance.
Hobbie had disappeared into the swirling, oily smoke by the time Wes approached the hangar entrance. But he quickly came back out, carrying a powerful worklamp and a smaller glowrod, holding an appropriated rag up to his face to filter some of the smoke out of the air before it reached his lungs. His eyes flashed in annoyance when he saw Wes had followed him, quickly changing to a sort of harried resignation. Handing the worklamp to Wes, he instructed, "Shine this in the door so I can find the way back out. And don't come after me."
"Hobbie! Don't-" But it was too late, Hobbie had already plunged back into the murk. Wes almost plunged in after him, but stopped himself with an effort, swaying on his feet. Leaning against the wall, he switched the lamp on and shone it through the doorway, making a slow sweep from left to right, eyes trying desperately to pierce the gloom. But even with the lamp on, he could only see a few meters in any direction, the black smoke turning a belligerent gray as the light swept across it. Even so, he kept it on and trained through the door, hoping that anyone who came this way would see it and find the way out, hoping that Hobbie would be one of them. Wes knew how toxic this ghastly smoke from the burning fighters was; anyone who breathed enough of it would quickly succumb to unconsciousness and suffocate. He could feel the air rasping harshly in his own lungs, even out here where the base's ventilation system was more successfully clearing the air. Anyone who didn't get out of the hangar soon was in big trouble. But with growing apprehension, listening to the wail of the base alarm and the muted roar of fires from the hangar's depths, another thought took shape in the back of his mind.
If something touched off the main refueling tanks at the other end of the hangar, getting out might become an academic exercise for all of them.
Corran woke in the dark.
For a long moment, he stared into nothingness, feeling very dazed and a bit frantic, trying to remember...
With a shock, he came fully aware, those last confused moments swimming up into his memory-the ceiling collapsing, diving for the sparse cover between two of the exercise machines, Gavin shouting...
Gavin!
Involuntarily, Corran reached out a hand in front of him, barking his knuckles on rough stone. He gasped, feeling a sudden wave of panic rise out of his stomach, threatening to overwhelm him.
He was buried alive.
Gavin might not even have his luck.
Clenching his jaw, balling his hands into tight fists, Corran forced himself to breathe, forced himself to be calm. To think. The thinking part wasn't working very well. He took stock of his condition. He was laying more or less on his right side, curled over slightly at the waist. There was a dull ache at the back of his head; working his left hand carefully up, he felt a wetness and a sharp jab of pain under his probing fingers. His right side was sore from throwing himself onto the hard stone floor, and his ribs on that side ached when he tried to take a deep breath. Nothing else seemed to be especially complaining, except-
He tried to move his right leg. A shooting, clawing pain shot up his body, trying to twist him in half. Fighting not to cry out, reflexive tears leaking out of his eyes, he again forced himself to be still, to breathe, to let the pain recede. As it reluctantly started to fade, he slowly, slowly tried to bend over, working his right hand down his thigh, almost but not quite able to reach his knee. He straightened again, instead bringing his left leg awkwardly up beside his right. And found what he was afraid of-his right calf was pinned to the floor by a jagged piece of stone.
Corran let his left leg drop back to the floor, panic again hovering at the edges of his mind. Get a grip on yourself, Horn! All right. All right. The rock pile he was under seemed stable enough, for the moment-he couldn't hear anything shifting, though maybe the thumping of his heart was drowning it out. The air seemed okay, he didn't smell anything toxic seeping in from whatever other spaces the gym had been opened to by the rending of the stone walls and ceiling. Not that that meant very much, if it was an odorless gas. And if he wasn't mistaken, looking down past his feet, he saw-
Corran's heart leaped. He saw the faintest glimmer of light from the direction where the doorway had been. He had been only a few meters away from the door when the ceiling fell, maybe there was enough space for him to squeeze out. To save himself, and maybe Gavin, and the couple of techs who had been at the far end of the room.
Corran felt carefully around himself, as far as he could reach. The entombing stone was perhaps half an arm's length in front of him, but he couldn't feel anything behind him. He only had a few centimeters of clearance above his left shoulder, but the "ceiling" seemed to slope upward behind him, as well. Maybe, just maybe, he had a chance. But first, the hard part.
Corran inched as far backwards as he could, feeling sharp twinges from his pinned right leg. Taking several deep breaths, he steeled himself, hoping he wasn't about to doom himself to an agonizing death. Then, with a convulsive effort, he wrenched his right leg from under the stone.
This time he couldn't keep himself from screaming.
Tycho flipped frequencies on his comm. "You heard him, Red Group, back to base." He led his group around in a hard turn, punching his throttle up to full and shrieking back towards the small moon.
"Do you know what's going on, Red Lead?" A youthful voice broke in, cutting off the rest of what Tycho was about to say. He suppressed a sigh.
"I know exactly as much as you do, Red Two. Everyone keep an eye on your scanners, we may have incoming hostiles. Control, do you see anything yet?" The shuttle's more powerful sensor package was likely to be the first to pick up attacking ships jumping into the system.
"Negative, Lead, I have several freighters and a passenger liner on the commercial lanes, but no traffic near the base, and no unknown or confirmed hostile ships."
"Acknowledged, Control, keep me posted."
"Lead, One, when do we resume our normal callsigns?" Asyr sounded just a tiny bit smug as she asked the question.
Tycho pressed his lips together for a second. This, of course, was another downside of reassigning callsigns. "For the moment, Reds, you are still under my command, and will keep your Red Group designations. When Rogue Leader resumes control of the full squadron, Rogues will revert to normal callsigns and rejoin your normal wingmates. Two, Four, Six, I'm going to ask you to keep flying with your Red designations, and form a fourth flight, also under Rogue Leader's command. Since you're a pilot short, the three of you together can act as wingmates. I think that's the simplest way to do this, and we have no room for confusion. Is that clear?"
Tycho's pilots responded affirmatively. Red Group stormed back toward Outlook Base, watching for the first signs of impending attack, unaware that the attack was already underway at their destination.
Intent on watching for any sign of life in the swirling gloom of the hangar, his ears still ringing from the initial blasts and his eyes trying to go out of focus, Wes didn't hear Wedge calling his name until he felt a hand on his shoulder. Jumping, he spun quickly around, almost losing his balance.
"Whoa! Easy, Wes, it's me," he dimly heard Wedge say, grabbing his arm to keep him from falling and then also quickly grabbing the worklamp before it slipped from his fingers. Wedge pushed him gently backwards a step to lean against the wall, eyeing him critically. "Wes, are you all right? What's going on, what happened?" Wes clutched at his head with both hands, wishing the base would stop spinning around him for just a second.
"Something exploded... ceiling fell down, knocked me over... Hobbie pulled me out, he went back... went back in, wouldn't let me go with him." Wes shook his head, blinking. "Have to keep the light on, light the way back out, before the... before the whole place goes up."
Wedge caught on quickly, despite Wes's somewhat less-than-coherent explanation of events. Aiming the light back through the hangar entrance, he threw a concerned look over his shoulder at the injured pilot. "All right, I'll take over here, why don't you head back down the corridor and..."
But Wes cut him off, pushing off the wall with a frantic look in his eyes. "No! Hobbie's still in there-I've gotta, gotta get Hobbie back out..."
Wedge again laid a steadying hand on Wes's shoulder, looking him in the eye. "Wes, listen to me. I'll find Hobbie. I'll get him out. But you get yourself back down this hallway before you fall over. D'you hear me?" But Wes still shook his head, looking past Wedge into the hangar. Wedge was about to try again when he heard a faint sound over the angry muttering of whatever fires still burned in the cavern's depths. He snapped the light up in that direction, eyes tracking for movement.
He couldn't see anything for a few seconds; then two figures resolved out of the shifting smoke, accompanied by the sound of harsh coughing. A couple more steps and the shapes turned into Hobbie, one hand held up to shade his eyes from the worklamp's glare, supporting a limping tech, the left leg and side of her overalls badly scorched and burned away in several places. Both of them were grimy from dust and smoke, and both were coughing fit to burst a lung. Wedge quickly moved to take Hobbie's place as they staggered out of the hangar entrance, helping the woman several meters farther down the corridor into clearer air. Hobbie followed, trying to catch his own breath. He tried to breathe a little too deeply, and a fresh spasm of coughing bent him nearly double, one arm braced against his leg to keep him from toppling over and the other hand pressed to his chest as he hacked and gasped for air.
Wedge cast an eye over the three of them, Wes, Hobbie, and the injured tech, assessing their conditions and not liking what he saw. "All right. Wes, Hobbie, take this woman down to the other end of the hallway and get her some medical help, on the double. I'll take over here."
But Hobbie quickly shook his head. Grabbing Wes's arm, he started down the corridor again, wheezing, "No, no time-quick, get back before-"
Before he could finish, with a heart-stopping BOOM, time ran out.
Well, at least my leg wasn't the only thing propping up this whole pile of rocks.
The thought flitted through Corran's mind almost glibly, a foreign thing in the midst of the agony shrieking through the rest of his body. Corran choked back the screams still trying to emerge, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists. He forced himself to take a deep breath, feeling the ache in his side as a welcome counterpoint to the fiery throbbing of his leg. He focused on that ache, trying to ignore everything else, taking another deep breath, and another, and another...
Eventually, unwillingly, the pain faded again towards the background, sinking to a level where he could deal with it, where it could no longer hold him immobile. Pain started to seem a thing apart from himself, something to be regarded warily like a wild and vicious animal, something that would leap up and tear him to pieces at the slightest provocation. Corran forced tight muscles to relax, loosening his hands, still breathing slowly and deeply. He wouldn't let Pain defeat him, wouldn't let it trap him here and kill him.
Slowly, very slowly, Corran rolled over onto his back. Pain snarled at him warningly. He reached out with his left arm, feeling for the other side of his tiny prison. Nothing, the stone on his other side was still out of reach. Slowly, very slowly, he started to roll over onto his left side. Pain leaped at him, worrying at his wounded leg. Corran hissed, and stopped for a second, again focusing on breathing, driving Pain back. He tried again, and this time made it onto his left side, his right leg laying awkwardly behind his left, Pain cackling gleefully as it sank its teeth into him. Corran lay limply for a moment, breathing hard, amazed at how difficult the simple task of turning over had been. And he still had a long way to go.
But even as he cursed the weakness of his injured body, he saw new reason to hope. Now that his eyes were better adjusted to the darkness, and now that the source of the faint light he had noticed was in front of him, he could see that the other side was still out of reach, perhaps a whole meter away. In fact, the other "wall" wasn't stone at all, but the base of the last exercise machine, the one nearest the door, which had been flipped over on its side by the falling stone and partly crushed. But it hadn't been completely flattened, had withstood the huge pressures bearing down on it, holding up the rock and probably saving Corran's life. Now it was up to him to finish saving himself.
Corran gathered his strength, and reached out with his right arm, rolling halfway over onto his chest. Placing his right palm on the floor, gritting his teeth, he hitched himself partly up onto his left arm, and shifted his body forward toward the overturned exercise machine, a few centimeters. Corran paused for a moment, and then hitched himself forward again, another couple of centimeters. The effort of moving aggravated the ache in his right side, awakening it from a dull pain to a sharper, more insistent jabbing, trying to steal his breath from his lungs. He made no effort to shift his legs, letting them drag behind him, pivoting around his heels as he bent himself forward toward the opposite side of the enclosed space. Corran kept working his way around until his head was almost touching the base of the machine, and then let himself rest for a few seconds, dropping onto his left side. He closed his eyes and let his head loll forward, forehead pressed to the gritty stone floor, trying to catch his breath past the complaints of his aching ribs. Maybe he'd hurt those worse than he realized.
Keep moving, some part of his mind insisted, and he reluctantly complied, opening his eyes and trying to spot the way out, the source of the faint light spilling into this claustrophobic hole. There was a small gap between the back end of the exercise machine and a sharp jut of stone, not much room but maybe enough to squeeze through. It looked like there might be more space on the other side, but it was hard to tell from this perspective. Nothing for it but to keep going and find out.
Corran continued to work himself around, forward and back in small stages, trying to be careful with his wounded leg but jarring it badly several times, until he had turned almost the whole way around, his head beside the small opening in the stone that was his only possible way out. Now that he was this close, he could see that the space did indeed widen beyond the initial opening. The light was quite a bit stronger outside, too; he could clearly see a sharp bend at the other end of the passage, light from the hallway falling on the gray stone. If he could just squeeze through this tiny, tiny space...
Corran slumped to the floor again, resting one last time before he made his break for freedom, as it seemed to him. His right leg was a howling agony of torment, and the ache in his ribs had grown into a fiery stabbing with each labored breath he drew. For the first time, he noticed that he was shivering, from cold and also possibly from shock. He also noticed for the first time the wailing of the base's alarm from the hallway, and wondered how long it had been shrilling its alert, how long it had been since he woke in the dark.
No time for that! Keep moving, or you won't make it! That part of his mind pleaded with him, and he knew it was right. Closing his eyes, he marshaled all the strength remaining to him. Slowly, very slowly, he rolled onto his stomach, and then onto his right side. He'd have to go in this way in order to make it around the bend at the other end of the passage. Unfortunately, this meant dragging his wounded right leg underneath his left, but it couldn't be helped. Reaching both arms over his head, he started pulling himself into the crack.
It was perhaps one of the hardest things Corran had ever had to do. With his arms stretched out straight above his head, he found little purchase to pull himself through with his hands. Using his right leg to shove himself forward was out of the question, and it was awkward to push with his left. Somehow, Corran wormed his way forward, agonizingly slowly, into the crack. His head cleared, but barely; his shoulders caught, and for a terrifying second Corran thought he was stuck. Clutching at the stone, he shoved off as hard as he could against the floor with his left leg, kicking his right leg painfully in the process. His tunic tore and he felt the sharp edge of stone scrape his back, but he popped through. Corran nearly fainted with relief. The stone was still tight around his chest, but if his shoulders fit the rest should follow. It was all downhill from here. I'm going to make it!
But just as this thought crossed his mind, he heard a sound which nearly froze his heart in his chest-another thud from above, even more pronounced, which shook the surrounding stone. Corran was seized once more by panic, which this time he had no hope of controlling. Oh no not again if the rock shifts now I'll be crushed oh no oh please not now not again...
It was obvious to Tycho as Red Group approached the base that something was wrong. An ugly plume of smoke reached skyward from the main hangar entrance, a black column against the darkening sky. There were no other fighters to be seen, either by looking out his canopy, or via the longer view of scanners. Tycho punched up the base's command frequency on his comm unit, and found nothing but static. Tycho frowned, and flipped to Rogue Squadron's normal tactical frequency. "Rogue Leader, this is Red Leader requesting a status update." Nothing. "Rogue Lead, do you copy? Any Rogue ships, this is Rogue Two, please respond." Still nothing. He also tried Wedge's personal comlink frequency, with the same results, before returning to Red Group's comm channel. "Control, do you have any sign of ships in the area, either ours or hostiles?"
"Negative, Lead, there has been no indication of any attacking ships since we received the alert. I have no friendly ships or squadrons, either."
Tycho considered, pursing his lips. The base alert hadn't been specific about what was going on, and neither had Wedge. It was possible that a fire in the hangar would be enough to spark a general alarm, though usually in such a case the initial alert would have said so. The requirements of fighting a fire were much different than those of preparing for an attack, of course, and the base staff needed to know what was happening in order to handle it. Wedge hadn't said what was wrong, either, but it was very possible that he hadn't known-his order to scramble the squadron had come so closely on the heels of the base alert that Wedge probably hadn't any idea himself what was going on yet. Even so, why hadn't they received any more specific information on the flight back, which had taken at least a couple of minutes? That was unusual, especially for Wedge, and somewhat troubling; even if it was just a fire in the hangar, it was possible, however farfetched, that it had been set deliberately as the precursor to a larger attack, a way to keep the squadrons bottled up inside while someone jumped into the system and either attacked the base, or went after commercial traffic or a target on the planet. Unless some of the base's pilots were planetside with their ships, Tycho's half-squadron of fighters might be all there was to fight off whatever or whoever might be trying to take advantage of the situation. And that would not be a good situation for the pilots in Tycho's group to be in.
"Control, contact the nearest Republic base, I believe it's Rel'k'eia. Ask them if they've been informed of the alert here at Outlook, if the base's long range communications are out they may not know anything about it. If they haven't heard, please apprise them of the situation and ask them to be prepared to send support if needed. Red One, on me, we're going in to take a closer look. Everyone else, keep your eyes open and your scanners tuned, let me know the second you see anything suspicious."
As the chorus of acknowledgements came in, Tycho started his approach to the base, Asyr settling off his port side. They cruised cautiously in toward the hangar entrance, still leaking ugly smoke which drifted torpidly upwards into the darkening sky. Tycho thought he saw the flicker of flames, but couldn't tell how bad it was. "One, what kind of readings are you getting on the hangar?"
"Not much, Lead. Thermal spikes are drowning a lot out, also the rock walls are shielding... Infrared is showing scattered hot spots. The whole place isn't on fire, but I can't tell much else from this range."
"That was my read too. Stay back here, I'm going in close."
"As ordered, Lead, be careful."
Asyr peeled away and started circling in a holding pattern as Tycho slowly approached. His sensor readings started to get a bit clearer; it seemed like there were only a few smaller fires burning inside the hangar, but they were scattered throughout. Tycho frowned again. How did that happen? It couldn't be one fire that spread, the whole place would be blazing; but why would...
With no warning, the dark hangar entrance turned bright as day. A huge fireball blossomed in front of him; Tycho snapped his stick to the left and pulled back hard, shoving his throttle up to full and arcing away from the hangar as fast as his drives would carry him. Within seconds, his fighter was rocked from behind by an enormous shockwave. Tycho hung on and rode out the turbulence, coming around in a wide loop back toward Asyr, and then slapped at his comm, which was buzzing with exclamations of surprise and dismay from the pilots in his command. "Trim it, Reds."
"Lead, are you all right?" Asyr's voice, calm but edged with tension, punched through as the rest of the chatter died away.
"I'm fine, One. What the hell was that?"
"My guess is the refueling tanks-nothing else would make that big an explosion. If everything wasn't burning before, it certainly is now, take a look."
Tycho checked his sensors again. Asyr was right, the whole place was showing white-hot on infrared. But the sensors were hardly necessary anymore; the angry blaze was clear to be seen through his canopy, a glowing heart of fire in the dark shadow of the mountain. It also looked like the blast had widened the hangar entrance, ripping through the wall to the left side of the cavern mouth, where Tycho knew the fuel tanks had been housed. "Control, did you get that?"
"Affirmative, Lead. I agree with One-sensor readouts are consistent with the fuel tanks exploding."
"Were you able to contact Rel'k'eia?"
"I was, they received no word of the alert here. They are now on standby alert, pending further events."
"Get back on the comm with them, give them an update and request they send help with all possible speed. I'm not sure we'll be able to get this under control otherwise. Also request extra fighter support, in case this is the precursor to a larger attack. And while you're at it, contact Pershuin Spaceport Control, see if they have anything they can send up to help." Tycho flipped back to Rogue Squadron's tactical frequency, trying not to focus on the fact that four Rogue ships had still been in that hangar, and that Wedge, Wes, Hobbie, and Gavin had therefore probably been in or near the place when it blew. "Rogue Lead, this is Red Leader, do you copy? Any Rogues, please respond, this is Rogue Two..."
Wedge levered himself up off of the floor where he had been thrown headlong by the blast, shaking his head. He looked back over his shoulder, towards the disaster which used to be a hangar. Well, so much for that idea. With a pang of regret, Wedge realized that even if he had the proper equipment to go walking into a blast furnace, it was doubtful there was anyone left alive in there to rescue. The main force of the explosion must have vented out the flight doors, or we'd all be done for too. Wedge felt the air whistling past his ears, being sucked down the corridor and in to feed the greedy flames, the heat of which rolled out and over him and his companions. All of whom were far too close to the raging inferno behind them.
Wedge clambered to the side of the injured woman, throwing a look towards his two pilots as he did so. "Hobbie! Wes!" he shouted to be heard over the fire, now roaring in earnest, hoping that neither of them had been knocked unconscious. They were in bad enough shape already, if either had been knocked out it would make it all the harder to get away before something else blew up or fell down or Force-knew what would happen next. Let alone if both of them had been knocked out. Wedge didn't even want to think about that possibility.
Wedge saw Hobbie slowly push himself up to his hands and knees, crawling to check on Wes, who was laying still by the wall. Wedge breathed a quick sigh of relief and turned his attention back to the tech, just as another figure crouched on her other side. He looked up, startled, to find that one more of his missing pilots was now accounted for. Ooryl didn't waste time trying to rouse the dazed woman, just lifted her straight off the floor and stood.
"Go help them," was all Ooryl said, before stalking off down the corridor with the woman in his arms. Wedge didn't waste any time either. He scrambled over to Hobbie and Wes, who was also awake, though looking even more stunned than he already had. Hobbie was helping him sit up as Wedge dropped into a crouch beside them.
"I think he bounced off the wall on the way down," Hobbie said tightly as Wedge grabbed Wes's other arm, and they pulled him to his feet.
"Great," Wedge muttered, as they started maneuvering him away from the hangar, one on either side, his arms slung across their shoulders. "Wes, do you hear me? How many fingers am I holding up?" He waved his free hand in front of Wes's face, three fingers held up straight.
"Three," Wes irritably mumbled, staggering like a drunken soldier on his first night's leave. "Don't dis'ract me, I'm tryin' to walk."
Wedge exchanged a worried look with Hobbie. Could be worse, much worse, but it could also be a lot better. "One foot in front of the other, Wes, we'll get there."
"I know that." Wes still sounded annoyed. At least he was aware enough to be offended that Wedge was patronizing him. "Where we goin' now?" They were finally gaining distance from the raging fires behind, and Wedge started to breathe a little easier.
"We're getting out of here."
"Good idea. 'Bout time," Wes grunted. No one spoke again until they reached the far end of the corridor, where Ooryl was waiting for them. The injured woman was laying by the wall, and a medical officer was starting to assess the extent of her injuries. Wedge and Hobbie carefully lowered Wes to the floor nearby, sitting with his back to the wall and his knees drawn up in front of him. Emergency crews were now racing past with equipment to battle the flames in the hangar-About time, Wedge thought scornfully, echoing Wes's comment. Though, to give them credit, it had only been a couple of minutes since he himself had run up this same corridor. He turned his attention to Ooryl, who had come to stand beside him.
"And where have you been? Why didn't you acknowledge my scramble order when the alarms went off?"
"I was doing what had to be done," Ooryl calmly answered, and Wedge noted his use of the pronoun I in reference to himself. Ooryl had been granted that right as a Gand janwuine, but he didn't always use it, especially if he had done something which he considered to have diminished his personal honor. And failing to acknowledge or obey an order was something that would normally fall into this category. Ooryl's use of the pronoun in this case indicated that he really believed what he had been doing was that important. Given that Ooryl was a competent and highly responsible officer, and that circumstances in this case were anything but normal, Wedge was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, though a fuller explanation was definitely in order.
It was not, however, forthcoming. "And now, you must come with me. There is more still that we must do," Ooryl continued, in the same calm and confident manner, as if telling his commanding officer what to do was a common, everyday occurrence.
Wedge eyed the taller pilot sharply. There was indeed more to do, a lot more; a thousand duties and responsibilities came to mind-getting the fire under control, finding out if other areas of the base had collapsed or been sabotaged, rescuing the injured, recovering bodies of those they were too late to save, maybe even evacuating the entire base if the cave system was unstable enough; Wedge needed to check in with the base's command staff, as well as with Tycho, outside with Red Group... But this train of thought was brought to a screeching halt by Ooryl's next words. "There is a chance we can still catch those responsible for this."
"What?"
"There is a chance we can catch them before they leave the base," Ooryl repeated. Wedge stared even harder at Ooryl, who returned his look evenly. Wedge waited again for an explanation, and again he was disappointed. Trying to hang onto his composure, he finally had to ask the obvious question.
"Well, where are they? And why didn't you call it in before this? We could have had them in custody by now-"
"No, we would not," Ooryl cut him off. "It was not yet the proper time. The time is now, and we must go, quickly."
Wedge blinked; the only thing that kept him from issuing a sharp reprimand was shock. This sort of behavior was most out of character for the Gand pilot. A niggling little voice in the back of his mind made him take note of this fact. Ooryl is not insubordinate. He knows exactly what he's doing, and how much trouble it could get him into, especially if he's wrong; he's serious about this. Before he could say anything, however, Ooryl drew himself up to his full height.
"General, I am janwuine, and Findsman. I know this is difficult for you to understand, or believe, but I can find the enemies who brought down the hangar. But time is most important, and there is no more time. I cannot wait for you any longer."
Wedge's tongue was again frozen momentarily by shock. Is he implying that if I don't go along with this, he's going on his own, even if I order him not to? Wedge's first impulse was to refuse, to give Ooryl that reprimand and order him to... to what? Wedge suddenly found that, despite the absurdity of Ooryl's claim, he did believe him. The reckless statement Ooryl had just made, strangely enough, decided him-it showed exactly how serious Ooryl really was. Wedge didn't pretend to know what it meant to be a Findsman, but... maybe he really could track down the saboteurs. Once again, as while reviewing his personnel files earlier, Wedge found himself listening to his gut, but this time the situation wasn't nearly so amusing.
Coming quickly to a decision, Wedge turned to Hobbie, who had crouched by Wes and was watching the exchange closely. "All right, I'm with Ooryl. Make sure Wes gets out of here and checked out by-"
But Ooryl cut him off again. "No. Hobbie must come with us. And there is no time to waste."
Wedge clenched his jaw for a second, biting back an angry retort. Even if he had decided to go along with Ooryl, his patience with this whole situation was wearing very thin. And the last thing he wanted to do was abandon Wes here in the hallway, especially disoriented as he was; someone had to make sure he got to the med bay and was treated for his injuries. He tried to tell Ooryl as much. "Ooryl, I'm not leaving Wes here alone-"
Ooryl cut him off a third time. "He is not alone, there is a doctor here. Wes will be taken care of. But we have to go now, and Hobbie must come with us."
Wedge dropped his head and closed his eyes for a second, stifling an exasperated sigh. If you're going to go along with him, may as well go all out. "Hobbie, you fit to travel?" he asked the lean pilot.
Hobbie stood stiffly. "Sure thing, boss." Wedge could tell that Hobbie was just as concerned about leaving Wes as he was. And in all truth, Hobbie needed to get checked out by the medical staff himself. He was standing straight, but barely, and he was breathing hard, albeit carefully, trying to avoid another coughing fit. To Wedge, he looked more ready to collapse in a heap beside Wes than to hunt down the people who had sabotaged the hangar. But he was still on his feet, and if Wedge needed him to go, he was game. Hobbie had to realize as well as Wedge the implications of Ooryl's claim to be able to catch the saboteurs before they made their escape. Once they made a clean getaway it would become infinitely harder to track them down. And if they were still on base, they were undoubtedly on the way out in a hurry. The chrono was ticking.
Hobbie bent to talk to Wes as Wedge turned and stepped toward the medic, who was carefully fitting a breath-mask over the woman's face. "Over here's an injured pilot, probable concussion, I'm not sure what else is wrong with him. Make sure he gets to the medical ward as soon as possible."
"Yes sir, we have stretchers on the way," the young doctor answered, throwing a look at both Wedge and Wes before returning his attention to the readout of the portable scanner in his hand.
Wedge turned back to his pilots, just in time to hear Hobbie telling Wes "This time, I mean it when I tell you to stay put."
"Yeah, I think I will," came Wes's groggy answer, as he lifted his head from his crossed arms, propped on his knees. Even now, even injured as he was, Wedge saw frustration in Wes's eyes, wanting to go with his squadronmates; but it was paired with a grudging acceptance, as Wes knew he was incapable of doing so. Hobbie clapped him lightly on the shoulder and straightened, looking to Wedge, who in turn looked at Ooryl.
"All right, let's move. Ooryl, you have lead."
Paralyzed with fear, scarcely able to breathe, Corran lay in the narrow crack and waited for the inevitable, for the rock shift that would kill him, hoping that it would be over quickly, terrified that it wouldn't. He waited... the sound from the hangar above faded... the vibrations stopped... and the rocks didn't move.
The rocks didn't move. He wasn't crushed. He was still alive, he was safe.
No you're NOT safe! The nagging corner of his mind screamed. This place could come down any time, you have to get out NOW!
It was right. He had to move. Frantically, Corran clawed at the rough stone, cutting his hands, trying to drag himself through. He wormed his way forward-now his chest was past the break, now his stomach, now his hips, and still he pulled his way through with manic strength, unable now to push with his left leg for lack of room. His thighs were through the tight space; his right calf caught on the jagged edge and he nearly screamed again...
And suddenly he was in almost-open space, with enough room to hitch himself up on his right arm and haul himself forward toward the corner, sobbing in pain and fear and relief all at once. The corner was just ahead; he reached around and found the lip of the doorway, grabbing onto it and pulling for all he was worth to get out into the hall. He finally hauled himself clear of the rubble, blinking at the bright corridor lights, and started crawling on his stomach, digging in with his elbows to pull himself along, dragging his legs behind him like so much dead weight, trying to get as far away as possible from the awful ruin of stone.
Corran managed to crawl almost three whole meters before his strength failed him. Very suddenly, with no warning, his arms collapsed under him, and he sprawled on the stone floor, gasping weakly. He tried desperately to push himself up again, to no avail. He couldn't do it. He couldn't go any farther; Gavin was doomed to die back in the hell the gym had become, because he wasn't strong enough. He'd come so far, and still failed in the end.
Corran laid his face down on the cold stone of the passageway, and wept.
Wedge jogged in Ooryl's wake, now passing through areas of the base he hadn't seen before-mostly storage areas, he decided, from the look of the rooms they passed and the general lack of activity. Everyone else was up in the command levels, trying to get things back under control. Wedge tried to keep track of the twists and turns of their course, wondering how Ooryl could possibly know the base so well in such a short period of time since the squadron had arrived-I doubt half the people stationed here know about that old service staircase he brought us down, Wedge thought bemusedly. He listened with a worried ear to Hobbie's labored breathing behind him, doubting once again the wisdom of dragging him along on what might, after all, turn out to be a wild-nek chase. They hadn't gotten more than a hundred meters away from the hangar before the battered pilot had started falling behind, and he'd stumbled and nearly fallen on that rough staircase; only a quick grab by Wedge had kept him from rolling the whole way to the bottom. Wedge would have turned around then and taken him straight to the medical ward, but Hobbie had insisted he could go on, and despite Wedge's concerns, they had. Wedge turned around again to check on him. Hobbie was still keeping pace, though his steps were a little uneven; one arm was wrapped tightly around his ribs, and Wedge could almost hear him wheezing even several paces away, but the taller pilot's eyes burned with determination not to slow them down. Wedge hoped he could hang in; he wasn't about to leave Hobbie behind, injured and completely alone in these lower levels, especially with the threat of enemies running loose. But if he couldn't keep up, Wedge also wasn't going to let Ooryl go on alone to hunt those same enemies down. They might be forced to either break off the search for the infiltrators, perhaps losing their best chance to catch them, or call for help and possibly tip them off if they were clever enough to monitor base communications. And given their success so far, they probably were. Wedge clenched his jaw a bit and kept following Ooryl. No easy answers. There never are any, are there?
Ooryl rounded yet another corner and broke into a run; Wedge, startled, almost called after him to wait, until he saw what had undoubtedly caused Ooryl to take off. Wedge started running himself then, toward the doorway choked with fallen stone and the crumpled figure laying on the floor at the far end of the passageway. He skidded to a stop behind Ooryl at the end of the hall, to find his fears confirmed, and another of his missing pilots now accounted for.
Corran was a real mess, laying face-down on the floor, battered, bruised, and covered with dirt. His tunic was shredded, and his back was scraped raw; the back of his head was also matted with blood. But those were nothing compared to...
Wedge's breath caught a little at the sight of Corran's twisted right leg, blood pooling beneath it, a trail of blood also leading back and into a narrow hole at the bottom of the blocked door. Wedge shook his head in disbelief. Corran had crawled-how far? How far had he dragged himself with these appalling injuries, how had he possibly managed to squeeze out from underneath that tumbled pile of rock?
"Wedge," Ooryl called him back to more pressing concerns. The Gand was kneeling on the floor beside his wingmate, a gentle hand on his shoulder, carefully avoiding the cuts that scored his back. Corran was, even more amazingly, awake, and trying to talk. Wedge knelt quickly beside Ooryl, as Hobbie came pounding up beside, gasping for breath and immediately starting to cough again. He sagged against the wall and slid down it to sit on the floor a couple of paces away from Corran, throwing apologetic looks toward his squadmates as he tried to stop coughing and get his breathing back under control.
Wedge closed his eyes, covering them briefly with one hand. Two pilots down. Now what? He turned his attention back to Corran, still struggling to form words. "Shh, Corran, don't try to talk. We'll get a med team down here right away and get you out of here. You're going to be all right, just keep still." But Corran weakly shook his head.
"No... " Corran's face was wracked with pain, dirt-smudged and tear-streaked, but his vivid green eyes locked onto Wedge's with a desperate intensity. "Ga... Gav'n..."
Ice trickled into Wedge's belly. He glanced quickly at Ooryl, who returned his look impassively. "Gavin? What about him, where is he? Is he still in there?"
Corran nodded slightly, closing his eyes and sagging with released tension. He dropped his head to rest on the floor, cheek pressed against the hard stone. "Y-yeah... we... we were b-both... gym..." Corran raised his head again and looked at Wedge, his eyes blazing with even greater intensity, if that were possible. "I h-had to get out, had to s-save them... Please... you got-gotta get... Don't... Don't let..."
Them? How many people were in there when it collapsed? Wedge shushed him again. "All right Corran, we'll get them, don't worry." Corran's eyes fluttered closed again, and Wedge couldn't tell if he was still conscious. Probably just as well if he wasn't, at least he wouldn't be feeling any pain for the moment. Wedge turned again to Ooryl. "See if there's anything we can do to stabilize his condition. I'll call for an emergency team to come pick him up and bring scanners and equipment to dig out the gym, if anyone's still in there."
Wedge pulled out his comlink, but Hobbie's hoarse voice stopped him. "No. I'll call it in, and stay here with Corran. You and Ooryl go on."
Wedge looked blankly at Hobbie for a second, surprised. Hobbie chuckled raspingly. "Don't you see, that's why I had to come along. Ask Ooryl. I can't keep up with you anymore, but I can look after Corran." He nearly choked on the last word, and again wrapped an arm around his middle, drawing very careful breaths to avoid yet another coughing fit.
Wedge looked to Ooryl, who nodded. But Wedge wasn't about to give in that easily, not this time. He turned back to Hobbie, frowning. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm not leaving the two of you here alone-"
Hobbie cut him off, speaking as harshly as Wedge had ever heard him. "Just because I feel like I've been run over by a repulsor-truck doesn't mean I'm completely helpless. And this place'll be crawling with people soon enough. Corran's running out of time, anyone who's still stuck in there is running out of time, and you're wasting time you should be using to track down the Hutt-slime who did this. Go on, get out of here!"
Hobbie's tirade brought Wedge up short. This was a side of Hobbie that didn't appear very often, but when it did, woe to anyone who didn't sit up and pay attention. Still, he couldn't help but to try one last time. "And if the Hutt-slime oozes this way, and decide they can't afford to leave any witnesses behind?"
Ooryl spoke from behind him. "They are not coming this way. They are leaving, and if we do not follow them quickly, we will lose them."
Hobbie spoke again, this time quietly. "Wedge, there's nothing you can do for Corran, the only thing that'll help him is bacta, and fast. But don't let them get away with this. Go."
Wedge looked at Hobbie for a long moment, a look which Hobbie returned evenly-Hobbie understood his dilemma, the conflict between taking care of his people, his friends, and fulfilling his duty. No easy answers. "All right, c'mon Ooryl. Hobbie, make sure he gets to the medical bay immediately, and try not to get run over by any more repulsor-trucks on the way there."
Hobbie smiled faintly. "I'll try to remember that." As Wedge and Ooryl started running back down the hall, he could hear Hobbie making the urgent call for an emergency medical crew and some repulsor-equipment to dig out the ruins of the gym. No, they're not going to get away with this, Hobbie, not by a long shot. Wedge drew his blaster and checked its charge. Not if I have anything to do with it. Ooryl plunged around a corner, and Wedge followed, right on his heels.
"...This is Red Leader, please come in. Any Rogues, this is Rogue Two, report."
Tycho stopped again to listen, with the same results. Still no response from any of the Rogues, or any other Outlook squadron or ship, or from the base command center. Tycho was trying hard to keep a dispassionate view of the situation. A lack of communications could be caused by any number of things. He knew that all external base comm signals were sent out through either of two transmitters; it was possible, if unlikely, that both were simply malfunctioning. Comlink signals directed outside the base were also boosted through the transmitters to reach ships at greater range. But even if the base transmitters were out, comlinks should still work, though over greatly reduced distances. And it was a bit of a stretch to believe that six separate comlinks were all malfunctioning at once, and none of the six Rogue pilots who were supposed to be down there had answered his signals. Of course, a much easier explanation was that they'd been in the hangar when the fuel tanks...
Tycho clamped down ruthlessly on that line of thought. He couldn't afford the luxury of worry. He was about to start in on his litany again, hoping that this time he would receive a response, when Nawara broke in on his comm.
"Lead, this is Control. Rel'k'eia has just confirmed the cruiser Mon Kalandra made the jump to lightspeed, estimated time to arrival eleven minutes. They apologize for the short delay in getting off, but their emergency-response team needed the extra time to load some specialized equipment."
Tycho breathed a faint sigh of relief. Rel'k'eia's emergency response unit would be invaluable in putting out the hangar fire and rescuing injured people throughout the base, if there were any. It was impossible to tell out here what other damage had been caused inside, either deliberately or collaterally, related to the hangar explosion. An explosion that size might easily have shaken loose equipment throughout the base, or even caused other parts of the cave system to collapse. "Thanks, Control. You heard him, Reds, help is on the way. Keep scanning for both incoming ships and signals from the base, and keep me informed if you see or hear anything."
"Lead, what's the use?" The young voice of Red Two cut in over Red Group's tactical frequency impatiently. "I mean, if anyone was trying to attack, they'd have been here by now! Why are we still circling around out here?"
Tycho dismissed the first response that came to mind as completely unprofessional and unbecoming for a commanding officer. It would not help the situation to take out his worry-not worry, can't afford to be worried-his concern on Relva. "Let me point out three things to you, Two. First, we are pilots of Starfighter Command. The base we are stationed on is under a state of alert, and it is our job to provide air/space cover until we are ordered to do otherwise or until the situation demands that we take other action. Second, it's been barely fifteen minutes since the alarm first went out. I don't think that's long enough to be sure another attack is not on the way. Third, you were not invited to offer an opinion on the situation. You are, however, required to follow your orders, which are to keep scanning for anything unusual, until I tell you otherwise. Is that understood?"
After a noticeable pause, Relva's surly voice came back. "Yes, sir."
"Do you have anything else to contribute, Two?"
"No, sir."
"Good." Tycho drew a deep breath. Relva was partially right about one thing; the more time passed, the less likely an attack from outside became. If the hangar explosion and any other damage which had been done inside had been the precursor to a larger attack, the time to take advantage of the situation would be as soon as possible, when the base was absorbed in a state of confusion. The more time they were given, the greater the chances that the forces at Outlook would come to grips with the situation, or that help would come in from elsewhere. Tycho wasn't yet ready to discount any chance that a bigger attack was on the way, but it was starting to look less likely. And there were other possibilities, of course. The damage that had already been done might be all there was; perhaps only a small team had somehow gotten in, without the resources to take the whole place out but intent on wreaking as much havoc as possible. Force knew the loss of the hangar, three and a half squadrons of fighters, and all the attendant equipment, not to mention any people who had been killed, was a heavy enough toll. Tycho considered a moment longer, and then made another decision. "All right, Reds, slight change of plans. Control, take up station farther north of the base, we might be getting interference on this side from the fire. Continue scanning for incoming ships and for comm signals from the base. One, Five, you're with me, the rest of you provide cover for the shuttle."
Tycho's group split, Asyr and Myn falling in beside him, one on either wing, while the rest of the fighters rearranged themselves around the shuttle and veered to the right, heading north. Tycho flipped to the comm channel the Rogue members of Red Group were using. "I want to take another look closer in, see if we can find anything unusual from outside. Not much chance, but I think it's worth a shot. We might have a better chance of picking up comlink signals closer in, too, maybe someone is calling and we're just not hearing it at this range. We'll make a circle around the base first and then start a large-pattern search grid. Let me know if you think you spot anything."
"As ordered, Lead."
"Right behind you."
Since he'd just sent the rest of his group north, Tycho turned south. He instructed his R5 to switch scanners to ground-search mode. As the droid warbled compliance, Tycho flipped back to Wedge's comlink frequency. "Rogue Leader, this is Red Leader, do you copy? What is your situation?"
Tycho paused, and then repeated, "Rogue Leader, this is Red Lead, do you copy?" This time he was almost surprised to finally receive a faint response, though it was too broken and full of static to understand. "Can you clean that up any?" he asked his astromech, and the droid again twittered in response, working to filter the signal. "Rogue Leader, you're breaking up, I can barely hear you. Please repeat, what is your situation?"
Nawara quickly broke in. "Lead, Control, I'm getting his signal a little more strongly on this side. Let me patch it through to you."
As Tycho continued his loop around to the south side of the base and away from the hangar, the bounced signal came in on his comm, and he could make out a little more of Wedge's words. "...se has been attac ... rt team, Ooryl an ... acking them. I think they're hea ... huttle to ge ... moon, probab ... ave somewh ... ase. Watch f ... hem to-"
Wedge's voice suddenly cut off with a yelp, and a sound suspiciously like blaster fire echoed in the background. Tycho leaned forward, heart suddenly pounding, staring at the mountain as if he could see straight through the rock and find out what was happening deep within. "Rogue Leader, come in, are you still there? Blast it, Wedge, come in! Do you read me?"
Wedge tripped over another unnoticed rock or crack in the floor and nearly sprawled on his face. He caught himself just in time, and managed to hold onto both his blaster and the tiny glowrod he carried in his other hand. Wedge stifled an exasperated sigh. If I had known this morning when I got up that by evening I'd be stumbling through caves chasing a team of covert agents who had just blown up the base, I think I'd never have crawled out of bed! Wedge had to marvel for a second at the hugely unexpected turn this day had taken, at how everything could flip upside down in the blink of an eye... He pushed those thoughts aside. No time for that, we still have unfinished business to take care of.
After they'd left Corran and Hobbie outside the wrecked gym, Ooryl had led Wedge on a short but tortuous course, ending at a wall where an unneeded passage had been sealed off, separating the base from the rest of the cave system. The infiltrators had simply cut a section out of the duraplast wall, and they were in. They had also replugged the hole behind them, but hastily, and it was not difficult for Wedge and Ooryl to break through. Wedge had once again shaken his head in disgust, this time over the scanty security of these lower levels. Even if they couldn't post guards on all of these dead-ends to make sure no one came in through the caves, you'd think they'd have at least rigged some sort of alarm when they built the wall, installed holocams, something...
On the other side of the wall, the rough but well-lit corridors of the base had immediately given way to the endless gloom of the deep caves. Ooryl had produced two small glowrods, barely large enough to light the ground before their feet. It was a risk carrying even these weak lights if the infiltrators were keeping a watch to their rear, but they didn't have any choice; neither Wedge nor Ooryl could see in complete darkness. The Gand had much better low-light vision, however, so he took the lead, heading off through the caves at a pace which had Wedge struggling to keep up, through uneven passages he could barely see as they passed through. They traveled up and down and sideways, squeezing through tiny cracks, crawling at one point, then crossing a cavern which had to rival the hangar in size, in which their miniscule lights had no hope of reaching the walls or ceiling. Hard as he tried, Wedge soon lost all sense of direction. He could almost feel the huge weight of stone above his head, weighing down on him in the airless, breathless darkness.
Suddenly, Ooryl stopped short, and Wedge nearly plowed into his back. Ooryl held up a hand for silence; as the faint echo of their footsteps faded away, Wedge heard an answering noise, an echo of footsteps not their own. Wedge felt a quick surge of adrenaline, pushing back the tiredness he felt and the oppressive atmosphere of the caves. Beyond all hope or reason, Ooryl had done it. They'd almost caught up; they still had a chance to catch the mynock-bait who had almost taken out Wes and Hobbie and Corran...
Forward again, they moved more slowly now, trying not to make a whisper of sound, hoping the noise of the other group's passage would cover their own steps, hoping their faint lights would go unseen until they had a chance to make their move. Whatever that would consist of; Wedge wasn't sure how the two of them on their own were going to manage to catch an unknown number of enemies ahead. Should have thought of that a little earlier... Rounding one corner at a time, Ooryl checked around each carefully to make sure the way was clear, and then on to the next corner, and the next-
All of a sudden Ooryl flung himself backwards, throwing one arm out to shove Wedge backwards as well. A scarlet bolt of energy split the air in front of them, flashing across their view and into the wall on the other side of the passageway, leaving an angry green afterimage behind on Wedge's vision. The noise of the shot sounded like thunder in the close confines of the cave. Wedge pressed himself back against the wall, adrenaline pumping, blaster held up and at the ready. Ooryl eased forward, dropped to one knee and ducked a quick look around the corner. Because he was kneeling, placing his head at a different height, the lookout's aim was thrown off, and Ooryl ducked back easily in time before the next shot burned a hole in the wall across from them. It was followed by several more, attempting to make them keep back, and then the darkness and silence closed in again.
Ooryl crept forward again, threw another quick look around the corner, and then took a longer look before waving Wedge forward to follow him. They dashed around the corner and forward perhaps thirty meters to the next bend before skidding to a halt and pressing close to the wall again; once more, Ooryl ducked his head around the corner, waved Wedge to follow him, and they ran on. They repeated this process twice more, each time expecting more hard light to come flying back at them, before Wedge was startled by something different. The twitter of his comlink as someone tried to contact him.
Wedge grabbed Ooryl's arm, keeping him from moving farther on, and yanked the comlink out of his pocket. He was surprised that it was even working this deeply into the mountain, unless their track had brought them out close to the surface again. Flicking it on, he heard the end of a message. "...der, this is Red Lead, do you copy?"
Tycho! "Red Leader, this is Rogue Lead, I hear you. Give me your status," Wedge answered, thinking furiously. If Tycho was still using his Red Lead designation, then he and his group were still in the air, probably circling around or near the base... they had to see the fire in the hangar, had to know something was wrong... if he was getting a signal from Tycho, he and Ooryl had to be close to the surface, or his comlink would never have picked it up... the saboteurs were on the way out, and the only way to get anywhere was by flying...
"Rogue Leader, you're breaking up, I can barely hear you. Please repeat, what is your situation?" Tycho's signal was fuzzy, even with the far-stronger comm gear on his X-wing. Wedge cranked the gain up on his comlink, hoping it would be enough to get his message out to Tycho. He spoke clearly but quietly, wincing as his voice still seemed to echo in the enclosed space. "Red Lead, the base has been attacked by a covert team, Ooryl and I are tracking them. I think they're headed for a shuttle to get off the moon, probably hidden in a cave somewhere near the base. Watch for them to-"
Wedge was cut off by more blaster fire out of the darkness; letting out a surprised yelp, he jerked backwards and almost dropped the comlink. This time there were at least two blasters, firing in earnest; stone chips flew from both the opposite wall and from the edge of the corner sheltering Wedge and Ooryl. Wedge gritted his teeth. They had to be close to the infiltrators' shuttle; the rear guard was holding Ooryl and himself off so the rest of the team could get aboard their ship and start preflight. As soon as they were ready to fly, they'd call the rest of their team in, and he and Ooryl would have no chance to catch them before they got off the ground.
But the X-wings of Red Group had a very good chance of catching them before they got too far. Tycho's voice was still coming through Wedge's comlink, though the whine of blaster fire was drowning out his words. Wedge yelled into the comlink, abandoning all attempts at secrecy. "Red Lead, can you hear me? Watch for a shuttle taking off from somewhere near the base! Do you copy?" But the next thing he heard was an ear-splitting squeal as the shuttle's crew initiated comm jamming. With a vicious flick of his wrist, he turned the comlink off. "Sithspit!"
"Red Lead, ... ou hear me? Watch for ... huttle taking off fr ... omewhere near ... ase! Do you ... opy?"
Wedge's voice came in over Tycho's comm, and he nearly slumped back into his seat from relief. But the feeling was short-lived; immediately Wedge was lost in a torrent of noise, as someone started jamming comm signals.
Tycho swore. This type of jamming would blank out comm traffic between the members of his own group, as well. And if he understood Wedge's broken message correctly, the people responsible for trashing the base were about to make their getaway attempt, but without communications he couldn't organize his people to watch for them and force them down when they were spotted.
Suddenly a flurry of half-understandable voices came over his comm, partly breaking through the jamming. It evidently wasn't strong enough to completely blank out the X-wings' comm equipment, though it was easily strong enough to cover Wedge's weaker comlink signal. Something was happening with the rest of his group on the other side of the mountain, and Tycho listened hard, struggling to figure out what.
"What is that ..." "... Lead, can you..." "... I don't hear..." "... trol, can you get a track o..." "Wait, what's... " "... see a ..." "...launching right below you..." "Stay here, I'll..." "I'm on hi ... ree..." "Two, what ... ou doing?"
Though he wasn't sure what was going on, Tycho suddenly felt a sense of dread. He yanked his stick to the right and pulled back, banking into a hard turn and rising straight over the mountain, trusting Asyr and Myn to follow his abrupt maneuver. In a few seconds he'd cleared the peak, and scanned frantically for the rest of his group in the near-complete darkness. There they were; he first saw the shuttle's running lights, and then picked out two X-wings hovering nearby; the glow of engines showed where a third fighter was dropping quickly toward the fourth, lining up on what looked like a small shuttle-
Tycho jabbed at his comm. "Red Group, do not fire on the shuttle taking off, try to force it down intact. Repeat, do not fire-"
Scarlet laser fire lanced out from the distant X-wing. Tycho could only watch as the shuttle was hit, immediately sending it spiraling out of control. It began a sharp descent, falling towards the steep eastern face of the mountain; the pilot tried to bring his nose up, tried to swing away from the bare rock face, giving himself more time to get the shuttle under control and set it down more or less intact on the flatter ground to the east, but... too late.
The shuttle slammed into the mountainside, instantly breaking up and scattering wreckage messily down the slope. Sparks found the drives and fuel tanks, creating a brief fiery explosion, a faint echo of the larger fire burning in the near distance. Tycho looked down a moment longer, his face setting into an expression as hard as the unforgiving rock slopes below. Relva, having flown by to confirm his obvious kill, was now soaring back upward towards the rest of his flight; his voice came over the comm, expressing triumph. Tycho waited a moment longer before turning onto an intercept course.
"Reds Three, Four, Six, reform with Red Control. Red Two, turn to heading nine-five, and maintain your present altitude. Do not attempt to rejoin the rest of the group." Tycho nudged his throttle forward, closing quickly with the young pilot's fighter.
"What? Didn't you see what I just did?" Relva started to come around toward Tycho, who was closing with him from the south, rather than taking the easterly heading Tycho had designated. "Why do I-"
Tycho let loose a dual-linked laser blast, which flashed less than a hundred meters in front of Relva's nose. Relva let out a startled squawk and his fighter jerked, as the young pilot reflexively tried to evade. "You will come about to a heading of nine-five degrees, Red Two, and you'll do it right now," Tycho spoke in a voice colder than any winter Hoth had ever seen.
Relva quickly swung around to the new course. Tycho continued. "Red One, Red Five, pace Red Two, give him instructions to land in front of the base and take him into custody when he does, until we can deliver him to the proper authorities."
Asyr and Myn acknowledged his command, and broke away towards Relva's fighter, now flying straight and level towards the east. Tycho flew to rejoin the rest of Red Group. He flipped to the Rogues' comm channel. "Control, Three, report. What happened?"
"Sorry, Lead," Inyri's subdued voice answered him. "I couldn't tell through the jamming what he was planning to do, and didn't get to him in time to stop him."
"Not your fault, Three, probably nothing you could have done."
Another signal flashed on Tycho's comm-Wedge's comlink, coming in strongly now that the jamming was gone. They'd probably made it to the cave opening the shuttle had launched from. He flipped to that channel. "...come in, do you copy? Red Lead, are you there? What happened, did you get them?"
Tycho looked back to where the flaming wreckage of the shuttle was scattered across the mountain, failure settling bitterly in his chest. He had a feeling he'd regret it even more when he heard the whole story behind this bizarre set of events. "Negative, Rogue Lead. We didn't catch them."
Epilogue
Wedge trailed a hand along the wall as he wearily made his way toward the small room that had been assigned to him as an office during his stay at Outlook Base. A stay, he reflected sourly, which had been cut even shorter than originally anticipated. Rogue Squadron was leaving the system within the hour on the cruiser Mon Kalandra, which had been sent in answer to Nawara's call for help to Rel'k'eia Base. With a third of the squadron's ships knocked out of commission by the hangar collapse, it wasn't possible for them to make the jump back to Coruscant on their own, as had been originally planned. And Corran had been rushed to the Kalandra's med bay for bacta treatment almost as soon as it had arrived in orbit, on the first shuttle-run down to pick up those most seriously injured. Wes and Hobbie had also been taken up for medical treatment, and the rest of the squadron had later flown up after them. The cruiser was only waiting for a few more pieces of equipment to be shuttled down to the base and a few more people to be shuttled up before leaving orbit and making the jump toward Coruscant, toward home.
Wedge had come back down to retrieve his datapad, datacards, and a few other items he'd left behind when the base alarm sounded, nearly ten hours ago. Since then he hadn't been anywhere near the office. As soon as he and Ooryl had made their way back to the base proper, he'd contacted the command center for a status update, and had been immediately swept into rescue efforts, trying to get to people trapped in other areas of the base which had caved in. Fortunately there hadn't been too many of those places, but even so they'd dug out 17 people, most of them with minor injuries, a few with wounds to rival Corran's leg. Wedge had later heard the last person he'd helped to rescue hadn't made it, the young man had lost too much blood before the medical team could patch him up and get him into bacta. His death, added to the rest who had either been crushed, killed by asphyxiation, or burned to death, brought the total up to 34. Another 31 had suffered injuries, bringing the total number of casualties up to 65.
The number haunted Wedge. Sixty-five people either dead or injured, and scarcely a shot fired in defense of the base, except for those from Relva that had taken down the saboteurs' shuttle. Relva was also on the Mon Kalandra, being held in custody before the official inquiry into his actions, an inquiry which Wedge suspected would end in court-martial and dishonorable discharge. Relva's story was that he'd never heard the order from Tycho not to fire through the shuttle's jamming-but the other members of Red Group all said they'd heard enough of it to understand, and that the jamming had actually cut out just as he'd repeated the order, as if the terrorists had seen Relva coming after them and had stopped jamming in order to try to talk their way out of being shot down. But even if Relva hadn't heard Tycho's order, there was no excuse for what he had done; according to the rules of engagement, he should not have fired on that shuttle until he was sure it was an immediate threat. He'd disobeyed a direct order and taken the law into his own hands, and had thereby made the coming investigation into the events at Outlook Base much more difficult.
No excuse. The phrase resonated hollowly in Wedge's stomach, leaving an empty feeling behind. No excuse. No reason any of this needed to happen. No reason thirty-four families would soon be receiving messages with the news their loved ones were gone. No reason thirty-one people had to be in pain or unconscious in bacta right now. No reason for Wes to have a serious concussion; no reason for Hobbie to have a set of damaged lungs; no reason for Corran...
Wedge sighed. A couple of hours earlier, he had flown Corran's ship up to the cruiser's hangar, settling it there with the rest of the squadron's surviving ships. Another of his pilots could have done it, or even one of the base's or cruiser's pilots, but he had taken it on himself. Partly, it just made sense-Wedge's own ship was still sitting in the ruins of the main base hangar, though surprisingly it was in relatively good shape; it hadn't been squashed by the falling ceiling, and had been on the far side of the hangar from the fuel tanks, so it hadn't been annihilated by the explosion. The twisted wreck of a Y-wing was sitting in the hole where Tycho's ship had been, not two meters away from Wedge's fighter, but his ship had suffered relatively minor damage compared to the rest. Still, it wasn't in any shape to fly anywhere, so Wedge would have needed a ride up to the cruiser anyway. Instead, he flew Corran's ship.
But there was more to it than that, though it had taken him a while to realize it. Unreasonable as he knew it was, Wedge was feeling guilty over leaving Corran behind when they'd found him-even though Hobbie had been there to look after him, even though he knew it had been his duty to chase down the saboteurs if he could, Wedge had hated turning his back on one of his pilots, one of his friends, who was badly in need of help. And he'd done it twice, no less, having first left Wes behind outside the hangar. Even if there wasn't anything he could do except be there with them, he felt he should at least have done that much. So he had flown Corran's ship up to the Kalandra, making sure both it and his astromech, Whistler, had been taken care of, as a small way to pay him back. Anything else would have to wait until he came out of bacta in a few days.
Wedge kicked at small pieces of stone as he walked, sending them skittering away up the corridor before him. This section of the base was in good shape compared to some of the rest, but even so the shocks of several explosions, especially the last one from the fuel tanks, had shaken pieces of stone loose from the walls and ceiling to litter the floor. He reached the door to his temporary office, keyed it open and stepped inside-
And stopped short. Expecting to see more of the same damage that was evidenced outside, he instead found nothing of the sort. His datapad was laying on the desk, turned on and plugged into the holoprojector; he hadn't put the projector on standby, so the inventory file he'd been perusing was still floating over his desk. An untidy stack of datacards rested beside his datapad, still standing despite the tremors which had shaken things to pieces elsewhere in the base. A few tiny stone-chips scattered across the floor were the only sign that anything out of the ordinary had happened; a single jagged shard lay on his desk, a few centimeters away from his datapad. Everything was exactly the way he had left it, as if waiting for him to sit back down and resume his work. As if nothing had happened.
Nothing had happened. Nothing, except for thirty-four unsuspecting people killed and another thirty-one injured. Nothing except for Corran in bacta, and Wes and Hobbie being treated for their injuries. Four of the squadron's fighters lost, as well as most of the base's own ships. A young pilot to bring up on charges of insubordination, and a promising career ruined. Millions of credits worth of lost and damaged equipment, and the near-complete ruin of a base. And the saboteurs who had caused it all shot down, ending more lives as well as their best chance to find out why. No excuse. No reason. Why? Why did any of this have to happen?
As the enormity of the past ten hours' events crashed in on him, Wedge stumbled back a pace to lean against the wall. Holding his head in his hands, he squeezed his eyes closed; on the desk, the holoprojector hummed faintly, waiting patiently for him to sit back down and continue reading, blissfully unaware of the vagaries of fate or of the narrow line it had walked between safety and devastation.
Hobbie lay stretched out on his side on a flotation bed in the Mon Kalandra's med bay. His right arm was flung up to cushion his head, and most of his face was obscured by a large breath-mask, which hissed faintly as he breathed. It felt immeasurably good to be lying down, and still. Just after he'd finished his call for an emergency crew and medical team for Corran, he'd been seized again by convulsive, choking coughs. This time he couldn't stop them, and when the med team had arrived on the scene, they'd found him kneeling on the floor, hunched over with his arms hugging his stomach, scarcely able to draw enough breath for the next fit of hacking. The medics had been a little surprised to find him there in this condition, and had been very skeptical when he had managed to gasp out that he'd come down from the hangar, but they'd fitted him with a small mask through which he breathed a chemical to get his lungs to relax. It was slow in working, however, and the doctors started to think perhaps he'd seriously damaged his lungs, perhaps to the point where one or both had partially collapsed. By that point, though, the base medical staff had been swamped with trauma cases coming in from collapsed sections of the base, so they'd increased the amount of oxygen in the mix he was breathing, and basically told him to hang on. Eventually he'd been shipped up to the Kalandra's med bay for a fuller diagnosis and treatment.
The Mon Kalandra medical staff had quickly determined that his lungs were not collapsed, just coated with residue from the smoke he'd inhaled. As a result, they were severely irritated, and the doctors also suspected a mild allergic reaction might be involved. They'd strapped him into another breath-mask, this time breathing a combination of medicines to make his lungs relax and to loosen the grime coating them, along with bacta. After an hour or so of this treatment, Hobbie was breathing fairly easily again, though his insides still ached. Matching the aches on his outside. He shifted on the bed, trying to find a more comfortable position, but there wasn't much comfort to be had around his new collection of bruises.
The lights in this section of the bay were dimmed, as it was full of resting or recovering patients, mostly people brought up from the base with less-severe injuries. From his position, Hobbie could see across the room to where Corran floated in bacta, the glow of the tank giving him an eerily clear view of the Corellian's still form, his right leg heavily bandaged. The Kalandra's docs had done a nice job of fixing his leg before they'd dropped him in the tank. They were expecting he would make a complete recovery, and with a little therapy would recover full use of the injured limb.
Hobbie watched Corran a little longer. The wounded pilot bobbed slightly in the tank, rising and falling as he breathed, swaying back and forth with the movements of the healing fluid. There was something hypnotic in the motion, and Hobbie's eyelids grew heavy as he looked on. Up and down, back and forth... drifting... drifting...
"You know, Hobbie, I really didn't know that the ceiling was going to fall down, or I wouldn't have joked about it. I would have joked about something else instead, like saying we could have crashed it into the sun and then they'd never find out it was broken cause it'd be obliterated. But then maybe the sun would have fallen down, and I don't know if we'd have gotten out from beneath that..."
Hobbie started awake, blinking, and then sighed behind his mask. In the next bed over, Wes was propped partly upright, his head swathed in bandages. The docs didn't want him sleeping quite yet, something about his concussion, but the pain medication they'd given him was making him a bit loopy. For the last couple of hours, Wes had been babbling off and on about Hobbie's ship. He wasn't making much sense, but Hobbie understood that he was feeling guilty over making jokes about dropping the ceiling on it, when the ceiling had, in fact, ended up falling on it. Hobbie chuckled quietly to himself. Of course, that was only because of the head injury. Tomorrow or in a few days, Wes's finely-honed sense of the ridiculous would reassert itself, and Hobbie would probably never quite hear the end of how his ship had been squashed right after Wes had predicted the early demise of yet another fighter. This time, at least, Hobbie would have a retort-Wes's ship had been squashed right along with his own.
But at least Wes would be around to tease him, and to take some ribbing in return. Hobbie had no idea what had possessed Wes to come after him when he did, but if he hadn't there was no chance he'd have gotten out of Hobbie's fighter and out from underneath the falling rock in time. He'd have been squashed right along with their ships and Hobbie's astromech, Crash. Hobbie sighed. He was sorry to see the little droid go. He'd named him Crash out of disgust after his last, well, crash. But that had been quite a while ago; despite the squadron's long-standing inside joke at his expense, it had been several years since he'd completely wrecked a fighter, and Crash had been with him in all of the intervening time. Crash hadn't taken well to the name at first, and they'd gotten off to a bit of a rough start as a result. Wes had said they were made for each other, that the droid's acerbic, petulant personality was a perfect foil for Hobbie's dour pessimism. In fact, he'd compared them to an old married couple. But Crash had in fact been a very practical and efficient droid, and once they'd gotten used to each other, Hobbie and Crash had made an effective team. But now he'd have to get a new droid, along with a new fighter. Hobbie smiled faintly behind the mask. He'd have to name the new one Crush.
Hobbie rolled onto his other side, away from Wes who was still murmuring to himself, wincing slightly as he rolled across the cuts on his back. Pillowing his head on his other arm, he closed his eyes and eventually drifted off to sleep.
Wedge was reaching to disconnect his datapad from the holoprojector when his comlink twittered. "Rogue Two to Lead, come in."
Wedge pulled out the comlink with his other hand. "Lead here, go ahead."
"You wanted to be informed right away-Gavin's just been released by the medical staff to his quarters. They're going to keep an eye on him for a few days, but he's fine."
Wedge smiled, for the first time in hours. "That's great news, Two." Unknown to Corran, the whole ceiling of the gym hadn't collapsed, only the end near the door. Gavin, who'd been farther from that side of the room, had thrown himself backwards and away from the falling stone, striking his head in the process and knocking himself out. The techs who'd been at the far end of the room had pulled him back, and he'd woken up a couple of minutes later. So apart from a lump on his head and a very slight concussion, Gavin was perfectly fine when the rescue team had dug them out. The irony of the situation was not lost on Wedge. Corran had pushed himself beyond what any being should have been able to endure, in order to save three people who he thought might be in worse shape than himself; when in fact those people had been completely in the clear, bare meters away, just waiting to be found and dug out. Wedge was still amazed by the amount of heart Corran had shown in what he did. Gavin, too, had been deeply touched when he heard that Corran had gone through so much pain and anguish for his sake. But he, too, would have to wait until Corran was out of bacta to express his appreciation. Wedge had a feeling Corran wouldn't be buying his own drinks for weeks.
Wedge unplugged the datapad from the projector. "Anything else?"
"A few things... the rest of the squadron's also been assigned quarters and settled in, and the cruiser's fighters are flying standard patrols. Coruscant has been informed of the situation, they're sending a team out to inspect the base and investigate what happened. They've been filled in on the rough details, but they want a full report from you within twenty-four hours." Wedge nodded to himself, scooping up the datacards as Tycho continued, his voice turning grim. "And the techs are back from their initial survey of the wreckage of that shuttle. It looks like it wasn't hyperdrive-equipped."
Wedge froze, halfway through the motion of dropping the datacards into a pocket. "They're sure?" he asked quietly, his eyes going cold and hard.
"Not completely, but according to them it's a very good guess. They found the drive section, but no sign of hyperspace-motivators. And no sign of any weapons, either."
Wedge ground his jaw. If the shuttle didn't have a hyperdrive or any weapons, there was no way it could have escaped. Even if it didn't have half a squadron of X-wings on its tail, the shuttle couldn't have flown farther than the planet, and without weapons it couldn't have fought its way past Red Group to even get off the moon. That was probably why the jamming had cut out right before it had been shot down. The saboteurs saw the fighter on their tail, knew they couldn't outrun it, and were about to either surrender or try to fast-talk their way out of the situation. Either way, Tycho's group would have had them nailed. The base's attackers would be the ones in custody on the Mon Kalandra right now, not one of Starfighter Command's own pilots. Wedge didn't know what had possessed the infiltrators to think they could get away in a non-hyperdrive-equipped shuttle, unless they were depending on the fact that they'd caught all of the fighters inside the hanger, and thought they would be able to slip away unnoticed in the confusion. Wedge also wanted to know how they'd managed to sneak the shuttle onto the moon in the first place, but because of Relva's stunt, they might never know anything for sure.
Wedge took a deep breath. There was no way to go back and change what had happened, all they could do was deal with the results. No use getting upset about it. He told himself that again, trying to believe it. He tucked away the datacards still in his hand as he continued. "What else, Two?"
"We've also been in contact with Pershuin authorities. They're pretty sure it was the same terrorist group who attacked the spaceport, though they're not exactly sure which splinter group that is yet. They're sending a team of their own up to inspect the wreckage, see if it gives them any clues to who it might have been. We've also received an official apology from the government of Pershuin that we got dragged into their sordid internal affairs. It was a little more diplomatically phrased, of course, but that was the gist."
Wedge snorted. "Oh, that's great. Thirty-four people dead and the base is a wreck, but hey, they're awfully sorry so now everything's okay again."
"You know how it works, Lead, the diplomatic dance. Not that they expect fighter-jocks to understand the finer points of politics, but these things have to-"
"You're right, I don't understand," Wedge broke in angrily. "What was the use, Tycho? Who gained anything from any of this? I can understand fighting when there's a cause I believe in, but at least make it a fair fight. Don't drop the ceiling on thirty-four people who weren't your enemy, and weren't responsible for your problems!"
Tycho was startled into silence for a long moment by Wedge's outburst. "Wedge, the-"
"They never had a chance. They never even saw it coming. One second doing their jobs, the next smashed into the floor and then burned to a crisp. What do we tell their families? Your sons and daughters and wives and husbands devoted their lives to us, to keeping order, keeping other people safe, and we couldn't protect them from a bunch of lunatics who decided their lives were better spent as political capital in some dispute on a backwater world they've never heard of?" Wedge's voice rose along with his temper, as he gave in to the anger and frustration he'd felt over the last ten hours.
"That's not your responsibility, Wedge-"
"Wes and Hobbie were almost numbers 35 and 36. They're my responsibility. Corran came too damn close to being 37. Gavin might just as easily have been 38. And I couldn't do anything, Tycho. I watched it all happen; watched Wes and Hobbie nearly get blown to pieces, left Corran behind, bleeding on the floor, couldn't stop the terrorists from getting off the base-I'd never even have found them without Ooryl, never even have known they were still here..." Wedge broke off, shaking his head. "It's bad enough to lose my people when they're flying, when they have an even chance or better to defend themselves, but to nearly lose them to something like this..."
Tycho was again silent, probably at a loss for words. "Fortunes of war, Wedge. We all know the risks," he finally replied, quietly.
Wedge barked a short, bitter laugh. "Fortune. Tell me, Tycho, whose side was Fortune on? Ours, losing thirty-four good people and getting chased out of our own base to make someone else's political point? Or the poor nerfs who got blown up in that shuttle, who'll never even know if their point was made, let alone if it will help anything?"
Tycho didn't respond. What, after all, could he say? Wedge squeezed his eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. Then he dropped his hand and straightened with a faint sigh. "I'll be on the next shuttle up, Two. Lead out."
Wedge flicked off the comlink, picked up his datapad, and left the office, killing the lights behind him.
O Fortuna / O Fortune
O Fortuna, / O Fortune,
velut luna / like the moon
statu variabilis, / you are changeable,
semper crescis / ever waxing
aut decrescis; / and waning;
vita detestabilis / hateful life
nunc obdurat / first oppresses
et tunc curat / and then soothes
ludo mentis aciem; / as fancy takes it;
egestatem, / poverty
potestatem, / and power
dissolvit ut glaciem. / it melts them like ice.