A New Beginning by TealKeeper

Part 3: Fortitude

Aramos sat in his third officer chair on the bridge of the UPA Flaming Cow. The past few days had brought probably the strangest turn of events he had ever seen. First, his commanding officer, Jarol Smyth, sacrificed his own life after revealing that he was a Jedi Knight. His life long friend, Marco Bruenner, came and took his place at his request, and it was discovered that Marco was a Jedi as well. A few hours passed without any unusual occurrences, as they met up with the UPA Tassadar and UPA Talon’s Reach, and then headed to meet the UPA Paradigm. Once they were there, and heading back to the UPA fleet, they hit a hyperspace anomaly and ended up on a forest covered planet, which was burning in many places. Upon landing there, Fenix discovered it was his homeworld, Aiur, which he had thought he would never see again. They had sent down a party to see what was up, and that was where Erai Nalkri joined us. He came along to see Jarol right after he died, and tagged along on our trip back to the UPA fleet. He was a Jedi as well, and he wasn’t really sure what he was doing. They ran into an unknown enemy, some vile insects called the Zerg, and fought a brief but successful skirmish against some weird looking flying creatures. Erai and Marco with their lightsabers held off a small ground attack as well. As they were leaving, Fenix decided he had to stay and defend his homeworld. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but he had to, because it was his job as a former Praetor. In what everyone thought an odd move, Fenix left all of his possessions to Erai, and he wasn’t even sure why he would. The fleet departed, swearing never to forget Fenix, and went to meet the main UPA fleet. All in a span of roughly thirty hours, they had enough adventures to last a year. Aramos looked up, and some new Pilot to UPA, Hobbie, was in there walking around as if looking for something, but then he left just as quick as he came in. Aramos sat, wondering why he would do that. He sat there until Marco and Erai came in, talking to each other about their place in the UPA now. It was rather obvious they were as confused as anyone else was by the events of the past couple days. Marco sat down in the captain’s chair, for the first time. Erai walked over to the XO station and sat down there, quickly looking to see what button did what. Fortunately the self-destruct system wasn’t on that console. Erai saw something beeping, and pressed it. He saw that there was an incoming holomessage. He addressed Marco. "Um, sir, someone’s paging you over the holonet. I think it’s some SC." Marco looked over at him and nodded. He pressed a button on the arm of his chair, and a holo of Farell flicked in front of him. "Greetings to you, new Rogue Leader. While I myself trust the judgements of Fenix and Jarol, and don’t think you need any further evaluations, the other members of the Supreme Council still feel that you should be put through some simulations to see how well you can fly. You, Aramos, Erai, and Igno will be flying together to see how effective your four-ship contingent can be in a larger scale battle. You’ll all be in B-Wings, part of a larger attack force consisting of a squadron of X-Wings, a squadron of A-Wings, and eight other B-Wings. You’ll be assaulting an Imperial force much larger than your own, and defending one Calamari Cruiser and two Modified Frigates from enemy bombers. Please be in the simulator complex in two hours and the SC will meet you there and start you up. Expect anything, which is all I can tell you. Panther Command, out." Marco nodded to him, threw a salute, and ended the transmission. Marco gathered the three other pilots needed for the simulation and headed down to the simulator complex.

* * *

Marco sat in the simulator complex, chatting with Jedi323, Igno, and Aramos, about 90 minutes later. The Supreme Council members would be arriving at any minute, he knew. He really had no clue what the SC was expecting them to do, he had a feeling it was going to be one of those lose-lose scenarios, where they judge you based on what you do. He was about to say something to Jedi when the door opened and Drewhead walked in, followed by the remaining four SC members. They took seats opposite the Rogue pilots, and Drewhead began briefing them on the mission. "I understand Farell has given you most of the briefing already. I would just like to add that your primary targets will be any enemy capital ships, the A-Wings primary task will be to intercept enemy bombers, and the X-Wings will be split between escorting you and helping the A-Wings. That is all, you will decide wings and such. Good luck." With that they turned and left the Rogues to plan. Marco was a master strategist and he turned and began to talk. "Alright, rather obviously this whole thing is going to go south, fast. I want to divide us up into a mini strike force. Aramos and Igno, you two go after the primary targets. Jedi and myself will escort you until missile range, and dump our loads then become interceptors. We know the SC is here to observe us, I want to give them a show. I’m taking advanced torpedoes, solely to wipe out support ships. Jedi is taking rockets to hit some of the heavier capitals. Igno, Aramos, you two take what you want based on that. One last thing, I have a feeling this is a lose-lose scenario. Let’s be the first to win it." The other three pilots echoed assents and they moved off into the simulator couches. Once they were all strapped in, Drewhead’s voice came into their helmets once again. "Okay pilots, commence scenario in one minute." The minute quickly became thirty seconds, then ten, five, and it began. The first thing Teal noticed was that there were no X-Wings escorting them like originally mentioned. He was going to say something, but didn’t bother. He knew the SC wanted it this way. "Rogue Two, looks like we’ll have to split off sooner than we thought. Target the nearest ship and let’s get moving." Jedi click-clicked in acknowledgement, and they broke off and started their runs. They made sure they still provided cover for Aramos and Igno. Teal scored first blood as he lined in on a hapless squadron of TIE bombers stranded far ahead of their escorts. He turned his lasers and ions on the twelve ships, reducing nine to slag and disabling the remaining three. He didn’t even look on his radar to see how many were left. He acquired the nearest target and vaped it bloodlessly, and continued in a lethal fashion. Meanwhile Jedi was thick in a group of TIE interceptors who were making runs on Aramos and Igno. He had wiped out eight of them on their way in but the rest were making him not have much luck killing any more. He put out a yell to Teal, who was about two klicks away still plowing through a cloud of TIE fighters attempting to destroy the shocked bombers. Teal gave him a click-click acknowledgement and moved over quickly. He was about a click off and starting to fire when six bombers seemingly appeared out of nowhere towards the cruisers and began launching warheads. Teal was forced to move and destroy them, since the A-Wings had been driven off. He dumped his shields into his engines, and leapt after them. Aramos and Igno, deciding to abort their runs temporarily, went and handled the interceptors harassing Jedi. Teal quickly engaged and finished off the bombers, who never knew what hit them. He smiled wickedly, even though he knew Drew couldn’t see him. Teal had twelve torpedoes. There were three Imperial Corvettes. He smiled again as he launched four warheads at each Corvette, and they began spitting flames and breaking into a million pieces. Things were going equally well with the other three B-Wings, who took the opportunity to knock out two Frigates and severely damage one Victory Star Destroyer with their rockets. They hopped back into formation, and an icy fist wrapped itself around Teal’s heart, as he saw four Imperial Star Destroyers exit hyperspace ten kilometers off and dump out three squadrons of TIE Fighters each. The surviving Frigate dumped out two squadrons of bombers, even though Teal could have sworn it had emptied itself of fighters already. Jedi came over the comm and talked to him. "Well, here’s the lose-lose part, eh? We engage, we die. We flee, we lose the capital ships. What do you want to do, Teal?" Teal replied "Well, you can do what you want, but I’m going down fighting. Just like Jarol did." He bit back his lip as his thoughts turned to his departed friend. He was determined to take as many of those bastards out as he could. Jedi felt compelled in the same way, to go fighting against incredible odds, as his friend Fenix had done. They sent Aramos and Igno off to deal with the bombers, and sunk in towards the fighters. Ordinary pilots, Teal and Jedi knew, would get spooked by two cocky fighters coming in facing fifty four to one odds, but these were computer controlled pilots. Nothing would deter them from killing Teal and Jedi.

* * *

"Well guys, that was impressive. The four of you amassed ninety kills, with forty-eight of them coming from Teal and Jedi’s rush into the fighter cloud there at the end. That was the most impressive fighting I’ve ever seen in a simulator. You just won the no-win scenario, and we even had to throw extra stuff at you. All of the friendly capital ships escaped, and your two wingmen made it off. Welcome to UPA, gentlemen." Drewhead finished his briefing of their performance. It was in the auditorium of the UPA One, with all of UPA in attendance. After Drew finished, first Aramos stood up and began applauding, then followed the rest of Rogue Squadron with a mini-ovation. Not long after, all of Panther Wing was on their feet, and pretty soon everybody was standing and applauding except Yoda, who drank too many Yoda Beers and couldn’t stand up. It was a great day to be alive, after all. Teal knew it was going to be a great adventure. It would start as soon as the operation to avenge Jarol ended. And he was going to kick some arse.