TIE Fighter: Command Decisions

Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I disclaim any ownership of Star Wars. Who do you think I am, George Lucas?

***

Thelea watched the surface of the planet recede beneath the Z-95, the sky darkening from cerulean to navy to cobalt to the inky black of deep space, and she wished fervently that she could have come up with another plan, any plan, that was better than this. The Headhunters handled like packing crates with wings, though to give their designer the benefit of the doubt that practice run was in atmosphere. Lack of a hyperdrive in the modified racers they were flying wasn't something that bothered her particularly, used as she was to a capship-dependant Interceptor, but this was not the fast, maneuverable SFS fighter. The shields it was carrying were nothing compared to those on the new TIE Defenders, or even on the Rebels' most antiquated Ys. One or two lucky shots from a laser-or one burst from whatever energy weapon had fried her Interceptor and they'd be so much space junk. And her flight suit was far too bulky for the cockpit, though it had the small comfort of being self-contained if they did end up being vented.

"At least we have concussion missiles," and she mimicked Dallen Torak's condescending tone.

"What was that, Lead? I didn't copy." She looked out her cockpit to her right, where Rurik's Headhunter was flying parallel to hers.

"Nothing, Two. You didn't hear that." They'd had to fight to rig up a "squadron frequency" for the two Headhunters that excluded the six TIE/Ins following them up. The pilots were mostly older, semi-retired types who had looked forward to an uneventful tour on Telamara followed by retirement. To them, surrender in the face of insurmountable odds had seemed like a perfectly acceptable solution, no matter what these alleged hotshots from the Executor were suggesting. A short lecture from Governor Rothan, backed up by a silent glare from Colonel Torak, had silenced any more of that talk, but Thelea knew the kind of looks they'd given her too well. They weren't happy taking orders from an alien.

"Copy that. Or rather not. Any sign of activity from the blockade yet?" The sensors on the swing-wing fighters weren't exactly state-of-the-art, either, but they should, at least, let them know if anything was getting too close.

"Not so far." She checked on the position of the bulk freighter that was being sent up, slaved to ground-based computers, as their decoy. The sluggish crate was behind the TIEs, laboriously lifting itself out of the grav well. The more cynical part of Thelea's mind, which was, she had to admit, the majority of it, was wondering if the alien ships in the blockade would be at all convinced this was really an escaping refugee ship. She understood their not wanting to waste one of the few decent transports they had, but looks were going to be important here.

For a moment, she couldn't pick out the oddly-shaped black ships against the starfield. Then, something moved. On her sensors it read as "unidentified," but looking out through the cockpit canopy she recognized the odd, asymmetrical shape of the ship, or one like it, that had destroyed the Aris Val. Farther off in the opposite direction was another, and even the Headhunter's sensor package was picking up those farther off-not so much as ships, but distortions. "There they are," she muttered, before switching to the wide-band frequency. "Gamma group, this is Alpha One." It felt oddly comforting to be using their old designation for the two Headhunters. "Stay in formation unless fired upon. Alpha Two and I have point."

"Thanks for reminding me, Lead."

"Let's try to stay focused, Two." At least he was still in a mood to banter. When Rurik wasn't kidding around was when it was time to worry. "I'm going to make a shallow turn towards the nearest capship. Stay on my wing, and stay sharp, but try not to look like you're too interested in him."

"Right. So, casual, but not too casual, and ready to fire but don't like I'm ready to fire. Shall I stand on my head and sing the "Hymn to Palpatine" while I'm at it?"

She had to bite down on her lip to keep from laughing and she hated him for it. "Two, I'm warning you-"

"Right, right. On your wing." His fighter banked away from hers, falling back a little to match her turn. She shook her head and forced herself to concentrate on flying.

And it was taking more concentration than usual. In vacuum, the wing design should not have made any difference, but the placement of the engines and maneuvering thrusters did. The control yoke required a great deal more pressure than that on an Interceptor, and her arc ended up being wider than she'd intended. She was still too far out for them to use that EMP that had short-circuited her Interceptor, or at least she thought she was, but she was willing to bet that wasn't their only defense.

From the activity near the ship, she was right. A mass had detached itself from the side of the destroyer, or whatever that ship was, and was drifting towards the fighter group. Gamma Three's voice crackled over the comm, around what sounded like the start of jamming. "What's that, Lead?"

"We're checking it out," Thelea replied, kicking the thrusters up a notch. She couldn't afford too much speed-right now she did not want to drain the lasers unless she had to. According to her sensors and what little she could see out the cockpit, it was a single, solid, mass, but something didn't feel right. She steepened her turn and started the beginning of an evasive roll-

-as the object split into at least a dozen pieces, that immediately developed trajectories of their own, with what looked suspiciously like ion trails behind them. "Fighters coming in, break and engage!" She tried to snap the fighter into a tight roll and felt the throttle tremble in protest. Cursing the creaky maneuvering jets she jinked left, with Rurik passing beneath her. Three of the TIEs shot past, aiming to engage the little fighters, or drones, or whatever the black ships were. Circling back around for another pass, she got a better look at them. They were made of the same black stuff-it somehow didn't look quite like metal-as the larger ships, but with a strange two-pronged front and a rounded, almost organic-looking aft end. At least, from the ion trails, she assumed that end was aft. They didn't move like fighters, but in vacuum that was somewhat irrelevant-unless of course you were trying to get a targeting lock on them.

"Three closing on us, Lead." Rurik's voice had lost all the easy bantering from a moment ago.

"I see them. Head straight in at them and be ready to break on my mark." She punched up the engines as high as she could get them without draining the lasers and aimed straight for the point ship of the three incoming. They weren't firing yet, but out of the corner of her eyes she caught flashes of white light. Not like turbolasers, then, but why should that surprise her. The proximity alert on her targeting computer warbled a collision warning. "On my mark, scissor right. I'll take the leaders. Ready-mark!"

Rurik's fighter spun right, out of her line of sight, while she pulled back on the yoke and pitched, shooting straight up while the three attackers tore through the space where her fighter had been nanoseconds before. Twisting back into a dive she came around and down behind them, wishing futilely for her Interceptor with its vastly superior handling. This thing had the turning radius of an intoxicated space slug by comparison. One of the black fighters swung out of their loose formation to follow Rurik while the other two turned together, trying to loop back towards her. She wondered again if they were piloted-splitting up would have made more sense, instead of giving her a neat single target.

"Thank the gods stupidity is the universal constant." She lead them, and as they crossed in front of her she made the targeting lock. The concussion missile closed the distance rapidly and tore the closer of the two fighters apart. The white-hot debris from the first and the force of the explosion took part of the laser mount on the second, and it spun out of control, sparks dancing over the black skin. Thelea fired a couple laser blasts into it and saw more sparks. Deciding it was disabled, she starting to loop back around-this course was taking her dangerously close to the destroyer.

"Nice shooting, Lead, but you've picked one up. I'm on it." She caught a flash of motion as Rurik shot by above her, and then the red threat indicator on her targeting computer indicating a pursuit vehicle vanished.

"Thanks, Two." The other enemy fighters were engaged with the TIEs, so Thelea took a chance to see where the capships were. To her surprise, they didn't seem interested in the fighters at all. The nearest was rotating slowly, but her sensors didn't show any power spikes suggesting they were preparing to fire. A quick scan told her much the same was true of the other two destroyers in close range, except they had also launched those pods or whatever the fighters came out of. The single blips on her targeting computer fanned out into at least two dozen of the little fighters. Searching for the freighter she found that the fighters were ignoring it in favor of the other fighters.

"Two, I'm going to see if I can get that destroyer's attention. Watch my back and try to pick off anyone who gets too close, all right?"

"That's what I'm here for, Lead." If he was being sarcastic she couldn't tell. "Looks to me like it and the other two are closing on the freighter."

"I know, but I want to be sure before I send the signal to Giriad." Giriad, in the Infiltrator, was waiting, still inside the atmosphere, for the signal to make a run for it. Part of Thelea still felt a little guilty, but then she remembered that the Infiltrator, antiquated and stripped though it was, was still faster and better-armed than a Headhunter. She aimed for the destroyer, and the abruptly changed course, turning to run at the freighter. She heard Rurik curse as he adjusted course and she smiled to herself. Good to see she could still annoy him.

The freighter swept by beneath them-an optical illusion; it was their speed, not the slow-moving freighter's. Thelea noted that when they crossed into the freighter's range the few fighters in pursuit veered off. Abruptly, Rurik pulled up. "Four above us, tracking you, Lead. I'm on them."

"Negative, that's too many." She scanned the area and saw a couple more heading in to help. "Let me circle around-"

"Power surge from the destroyers," Rurik cut her off. "Get clear, I can handle this. Lead." He added the title as if in afterthought.

Thelea punched the transmit button and sent the signal to Giriad before spinning her fighter into a roll that carried her away from the freighter. She saw something on the front end of the destroyers flickering, and patterns of light danced across the big ships' skins. Her targeting computer briefly registered one signal, then two, racing up out of the atmosphere towards the edge of the planet's gravity well. Her computer blinked as the distance on the first suddenly increased and then vanished as the Infiltrator made the jump into hyperspace. The second blip was still there, however, and she sent her fighter towards the gap between the second and third destroyers towards the source of the second signal. She had just enough time for her computer to register the craft as a lambda-class shuttle when it flickered and vanished into hyperspace. She'd worry about that later, though. "All fighters, package is away, repeat, package is away. Break off and return to base." She got three acknowledgments from the TIEs-they'd lost a few, obviously. Then she looked for the other Headhunter.

"Lead, got a problem here." Rurik's voice was taut.

Thelea brought her fighter around in time to see Rurik caught in a tangle of the black fighters-his evasive maneuver had carried him away from the freighter but into a knot of the enemy ships. One fired, a steady stream of white light, and as he spun his fighter clear of that threat a second fired a different kind of weapon-a web of energy tendrils that collided with the wing of his Headhunter, the force of the blow knocking his fighter sideways, exposing the underbelly to a third of the enemy's guns. "I'm on my way!"

"Negative, there's a surge from the destroyers. I can get out of this. Don't risk getting caught in the explosion. Shouldn't be too hard to sneak around here." From her vantage point she couldn't quite see how he did it, only that he'd flipped the fighter tail-over-head and was diving between his three attackers towards the underside of the freighter.

At that moment her view was abruptly cut off by a blinding flare from the two ships to either side of her. The bleed from the energy surge overloaded her sensors and they went into emergency shutdown. At the same moment the first of the capships fired as well, and the three beams of energy struck the freighter. She sent her fighter into a dive for the atmosphere and saw similar runs from the surviving TIEs, though one looked too badly damaged to survive reentry. Then again, she'd developed new appreciation for Sienar's quality control lately.

The freighter seemed to crack and then, as the energy bursts struck the engines, it exploded. She saw the three fighters who'd been chasing Rurik caught in the flame and incinerated, and found herself hoping, pilot to pilot, that they'd been drones. Pilot-she punched at the buttons, but her computer's circuits were still overloaded, and as her visual scan became more desperate as she realized she didn't see the other Headhunter. "Two, respond. Lead, Two, please respond. Rurik?" Her voice scaled up in a way that, were she not so worried, might have bothered her. "Rurik, please respond!"

There was a flash of motion inside the debris and the second Headhunter burst out of the cloud of gas and particles. "Sorry, Lead, a bit tied up there."

The surge of relief competed with a wave of fury, and she had to bite down an urge to scream at him. "Back to the ground, now, before they notice we're still here."

"Copy that, Lead," and he sounded somewhat chagrined. "On my way down." She kicked her throttle to full and didn't reply, watching the skin of the Headhunter's nose heat up as reentry cut off communications.

Rurik popped the cockpit canopy and climbed out, stretching in some relief. The Z-95 wasn't really that much more cramped than a TIE, but he never really liked sitting in those for two long, either. Stripping off his helmet and gloves he dropped them into the cockpit and turned to where the other were landing.

He turned right into Thelea, who'd also stripped off her gloves and helmet, and he was brought up short by the fury flashing in those red eyes. "Of all the reckless, stupid, dangerous-don't you ever do anything like that again, you hear me? What were you-oh, you make me so mad I could just . . . ." She ground her teeth, looking for the appropriate threat and failing to find it. "If you ever come so close to getting yourself killed again I'll strangle you!"

He couldn't help it-he laughed. "Why, Thelea, I didn't know you cared!"

To his surprise, she caught him up in a fierce hug. He was almost too startled to take advantage of the situation, but not quite. Her face was pressed into his shoulder, and he almost didn't hear what she mumbled. "We're having far too many near-death experiences lately."

He nodded, though the strange sensation of having Thelea pressed this close against him, even with several layers of flight suit between them, was making a reasonable response hard to formulate. "At least help is on the way. We shouldn't have to do this again."

"I hope." She sighed, and her death grip on him relaxed just a bit. She made no move to step away, her arms settling around his waist and her head resting against his shoulder. "I wonder who the second ship was. I know I didn't imagine it."

Rurik shrugged. "I'm sure someone will tell us. What I'm curious about is what we're going to do with the information we just got on those ships. You did have your flight recorder turned on, didn't you?" He found he was stroking her hair absently, fingering the tendrils that had worked loose from her braid.

"Standard procedure." She sounded offended at the suggestion, but she still didn't pull away. "But that second shuttle . . . ."

There was a quiet cough from the entrance to the hanger. "If you don't mind an interruption, I can shed a little light on that." Dallen Torak was standing at the door, an amused smirk on his face.

Thelea stepped hastily away from Rurik, fussing with her flight suit and trying desperately not to feel as if she'd been caught doing something wicked. "What was that? I thought we'd agreed only the Infiltrator would go."

He was holding something in his hand, and as he approached Rurik could see it was a data chip. Torak held it out to Thelea, and as she took it said, "Someone apparently failed to tell your friend. They've no idea how she did it-no one remembers seeing her around the hangers, or has any idea how she got the codes, but she apparently snuck aboard one of the shuttles, and the data chip was all she left. I'm afraid she's abandoned us."

The data chip slipped from Thelea's fingers and clattered to the deck.