Solid Ground 

by Katie Zajdel
thumper [a] coronasquadron.com

All characters are mine, but the universe and all its toys belong to Lucasfilm. Also, many, many thanks go out to all the people who have helped me with this story, my characters and writing in general. That list is longer than normal for this story in particular, and if I were to name everyone individually I’d soon reach my time limit and someone would come and drag me offstage, but you know who you are, and I’m most appreciative of your help.

From down the corridor drifted fragments of the heated words two people were saying to one another as they hurried to the meeting room. “...Told...spy...”

“...Know...could...contact them?”

“...Bet...fighter...I–Hey, boss!” The man called out the last part.

The leader looked a bit confused as he stood and walked to the doorway. “What is it?”

The two locals appeared and stopped. “Something’s wrong,” one said firmly. The other narrowed his eyes at Mackin.

The three men moved out of sight into the corridor, and Mackin strained to hear what they were saying but they were now talking too quietly. However, at one point Mackin could clearly hear the leader curse and say, “Sound the evacuation alarm. Get everyone out through the tunnels.” That couldn’t be good.

Two sets of footsteps ran off, and the leader ducked back into the meeting room. “There are Imperials heading right for us. If you want to get out with that X-wing of yours, you’d better do it now.”

“Are you sure they’re coming here? How far away are they? How many?” Mackin demanded, jumping to his feet.

“They’re coming straight at this location and there’s nothing else out here, so yes, I’d say they’re coming here. Maybe two minutes out, looks like a squad on the ground and a few TIEs.”

“How are all of you getting out? And what about the team?”

“There are emergency evacuation tunnels for the workers in case the mine collapsed. We’re using those. We’ll try to contact the team once we have a few seconds to spare. Now if you want to get out with your fighter, go!” Without waiting for anything else, the man left the room and ran down the corridor. The Quarren who had remained in the room this whole time was right on his heels.

An old siren began to wail, coughing and sputtering with each strained howl. Mackin cursed to himself and also ran out of the building toward his X-wing. Everyone else was going through some secret escape tunnels; he was the only one who had to go out through all the Imperial forces. Plus, he was going out into those enemy forces blind. Anything could be waiting for him at the top of that mine shaft. The thought crossed his mind that this was all an elaborate set-up from the beginning, but his common sense began to fight back against that one. The locals had passed up numerous perfect opportunities to kill or stun them so far, so why would they go to this much trouble to do it?

“Rudder!” Mack called as soon as he was close enough. The musings and paranoia would have to wait. The droid beeped in reply, and Mack called again, “Get ‘er prepped now!”

After another beep, the droid quickly set to work. The pilot clambered up onto the S-foils, scrambled over the canopy to the nose, opened the canopy and jumped down into the seat. He went through his portion of the pre-flight checklist as fast as he could while asking, “Rudder, did anyone or anything come near the X-wing while I was gone?”

The R2 blatted a negative, and Mack felt a bit more relieved. “Okay, we’ve got an Imperial welcoming party heading our way. This could get nasty. Ready?”

Despite the droid’s uncertain whistle, Mackin lifted up, raised his shields and took off up the mining shaft.

The transition from darkened mining shaft to planetside nighttime was so subtle that Mackin might have missed his exit from one and entry into the other if his altitude indicator hadn’t suddenly turned from negative to positive. The sight of a few stars above and red blips of TIEs on his scope confirmed it. His sensor readouts flickered, showed another cluster of red ground-based blips near the coordinates where he had first met the locals, and then flickered again to show nothing.

The four TIE fighters were flying high cover for the ground vehicles, and all at once, Mackin discovered he had attracted a lot of attention. A Hoverscout beside the ground troop carriers fired a concussion missile at him, and the TIEs dove downward, screaming.

Mackin threw his fighter into a hard turn to escape the missile. He managed to dodge it before it got a lock on him, and then he tried to set himself up in the most advantageous way to meet the TIEs. Hopefully the Hoverscout wouldn’t risk sending more missiles his way while he was tangling with the TIEs. It seemed like he had become the recipient of all of the Imperials’ firepower and attention here. Maybe they were only after him, and not the locals.

The commander set his jaw and fired at the incoming TIEs. He couldn’t risk a head-to-head against four fighters, and the more maneuverable TIE fighters could intercept him before he got a good run against the ground vehicles, so he took a few snap shots at the eyeballs and opted for as much altitude as he could get before the TIEs got him firmly in their targeting reticles. This was definitely not going to be a quick fight.

He checked his sensors, looking for any reading of the mine where the Imperials were holding the X-wings and where Darin was going with the team, but the sensor readout continued to flicker and provide unreliable and unusable results. In short, he didn’t have a clue where the facility was. “Rudder!” said Mack, twisting out of the way of some incoming TIE laser blasts. “I don’t know where Nine is. Contact him on his combadge and send this message using our emergency code.” I only hope he remembers it, Mackin thought. We should have gone over it again in the last couple of days to refresh everyone’s memory. “‘Base invaded. Send location. Send status.’ End message. Repeat it once.”

The astromech whistled in compliance, and a moment later Mackin’s communications panel showed Rudder had opened the appropriate frequency and was sending the coded beeps to Darin. Then Mackin’s attention was once again fully captured by the TIE he was targeting.

Darin had expected to ride right up to the Imperials’ mine and go down one of the large mine shafts like before, and as a result had spent most of the time on the speeder bike ride over wondering how they could sneak past the Imperial guards and get inside. So he’d been a little surprised and puzzled when the locals brought the speeder bikes to a stop at the base of a small wooded hill in the middle of nowhere. They got off the bikes and quickly shooed him off as well. Darin eyed them uneasily. Maybe they were going to shoot him dead right here where no one would ever find him.

He was even more surprised when one of the men reached down into the grass at the base of the hill, searched for a moment and ended up grasping a large metal ring seemingly attached to the ground. He pulled on it, revealing a doorway literally opening into the hillside and resounding with creaks and groans taught to the hinges by years of disuse.

Darin stared into the darkness beyond the door. “What is that? Where’s it go?” he whispered.

“It’s the exit point for one of the escape tunnels from the Imperials’ mine,” the Quarren answered. “When the mine was in use there was always a danger of a cave-in, so there were numerous escape tunnels built for the miners in an emergency. The newer mines have a better design and better supports, so these escape tunnels are somewhat obsolete. Not everyone in the colony even knows about them, and I sincerely doubt the Imperials do. We can take it a’ the way down into the mining area where your starfighters would be, and we can even keep the speeder bikes inside this top little room to keep them out of sight.”

The two men were already halfway done with that particular stashing activity by the time the Quarren mentioned it. “Yeah, yeah, come on, let’s go,” said the man with the gruff voice Darin had first met out in the woods. After herding them all into the room within the hillside, that large, brown-haired man closed the hidden door behind them and then lit a glowrod.

The beam of light pointed to a rough staircase leading down and illuminated the glinting, chaotically-dancing dust disturbed by the people’s movements. Darin coughed a little from the dust and stale air, prompting the man to say mockingly, “City Boy’s not used to the wild outdoors and the deep, dark mines, huh? Want some bottled oxygen?”

“I’m not from the city,” Darin grumbled after one final cough.

They started down the narrow staircase, and as they walked, Darin was presented with something of a challenge. The tunnel contained stairways, straight corridors, turns and slopes, and the floor had loose rocks and ill-fitting floorboards, further testaments to the lack of cleaning and maintenance over the years. As if navigating around these obstacles wasn’t enough of a test, Darin also had to navigate almost by memory. The gruff man holding the glowrod was understandably in the front of the group, and Darin was third. This meant that several seconds passed between the time the light shone on a particular spot on the ground and the time Darin passed that spot. Needing to remember where the obstacles were and reacting to them on a time delay while also constantly watching the light ahead to detect future obstacles was an activity that took all of the concentration which Darin wasn’t already allocating to balancing on the narrow, rickety stairs.

For that reason, he was glad they were on a straight, downhill slope very close to their destination when his combadge beeped and startled him enough to make him jump. He frantically slapped a hand over it before quickly turning the volume down.

“What the hell was that?” the first man hissed, shining the light on Darin.

“My combadge,” Thumper answered softly while squinting.

“We’re nearly on top of the Imperials and you decide to attract them with a loud noise?”

“No, I–” A series of beeps was sounding on the combadge, considerably more quietly now. “Hold on.” Darin raised the sleeve combadge to his ear and gave it his full attention. The first string was one he recognized, one that served solely as an indication that the following message was going to be delivered in the emergency code and it was coming from Mackin. His eyes widened a bit. Blast it, when was the last time he’d used the code? Did he remember any of the words? What would he do if he couldn’t decrypt this?

“What is it?” the Quarren asked.

“Shhh,” Darin replied. “It’s a message from my commander.” He listened intently to the beeps, racking his brain to come up with the translations for the different lengths, pitches and speeds of the series. With relief, he found he recognized the first word. Base... he thought as he listened to the rest. What was the next one? Attacked? Overrun? Invaded? Base invaded? “Base invaded,” he whispered absently, fairly certain the second word was correct too.

He was concentrating too much on his combadge to notice the three locals’ reactions to his news. Next phrase. Send...? Darin frowned at the beeps. Was that right?

Before he could become certain, a movement in his peripheral vision made him look up. The first man was advancing toward Darin with his hand on his holstered blaster and wearing a menacing look. “What did you say?” he demanded, shining the glow rod beam in Darin’s eyes.

Darin involuntarily took a step backwards and had to blink hard against the light. “It sounds like the base was invaded.” He could just barely hear the fourth word: location. Send location. A little busy right now, sir, he thought.

“By who?” The other man had spoken up now, and his hard, suspicious glare was obvious enough for Darin to see even while half-blinded. This was going sour very fast.

“I don’t know. Maybe the rest of the message will say.”

The gruff man came up, pushed Darin into the wall and held him there. “Did you and your buddy contact the Imperials and tip them off?! Is that it?! I told everyone you were spies!”

Darin had more pressing issues to deal with now than trying to decode the next word. “Wait, hold on, we didn’t do that!”

“Sure you didn’t. Are the Imperials going to come for us here in the tunnel where we’re trapped, or do we have a welcoming party waiting for us on the other side of the tunnel entrance?”

“We’re not working with the Imperials!” Darin insisted, growing angry now. “We’re just trying to get out of here alive!”

“Did you make a deal with them? They look the other way and let you escape if you turn all of us over to them?”

The Quarren wheezed something that sounded like a sigh and said, “Blast it, Choon, let him go. He’s not working for them.”

The gruff man, presumably “Choon,” pressed Darin into the wall harder, making Darin wish yet again for only one chestbox, and turned to the Quarren. “How do you know?”

“If you’d look closely, you’d see he’s still wearing the remains of Imperial wrist binders. Awfully realistic detail to fake, wouldn’t you say? That alone should tell you that he escaped from the Imperials without their blessing.”

Luckily the message was repeating.

Choon grabbed one of Darin’s wrists and held it close for inspection. He studied the binder half for a few moments, grabbed Darin’s other wrist to make sure the binder halves fit together properly, and then released him. “Fine,” Choon muttered unhappily to the Quarren. “But you’d better be right. Just because he escaped without their blessing doesn’t mean he didn’t get it later on.”

“Try to comm the boss while we cover the last twenty meters or so to the cavern opening. If the Imperials really have attacked our hideout, we need to finish this as quickly as we can and then get back to help the others. Now let’s get going.” The Quarren took the glowrod and the lead.

Darin didn’t miss the dirty look Choon gave him as they all started walking again. He tried to put it out of his mind and focused on hearing the last part of the message: “Send...” An unknown word and then the end signal came.

He thought hard for a minute and desperately tried to remember what that last word was supposed to be, but the only thing he got for his efforts was a headache. He supposed it was time to answer and hoped that word wasn’t too critical. They didn’t have an emergency code for “mine” and Darin couldn’t remember the code for “facility”, so he figured “base” would do. He started tapping out a coded reply on his combadge: Location: in base. He’d leave out the part about getting attacked by the crazy local for now. Not acknowledged. Darin wondered what Mackin’s situation was and wanted to ask, but he couldn’t remember how, just like he couldn’t remember how to properly say a message was not understood. He hoped Mack would figure that out from the words “not acknowledged,” which was the closest phrase he could recall.

Blast, but he wanted to get out of there.

At long last, a coded response came back from Darin. Mackin had his hands full at the moment with evading two of the TIEs after him, so he let Rudder decrypt and display it on a screen. As soon as he broke free of the TIEs’ sights, he skimmed over the reply, looking for where to go to assist Darin.

The answer provided made him stop and stare incredulously. “What?! ‘In base’?! What kind of answer is that? I need coordinates, or at least a direction and distance!”

Rudder beeped helplessly, then squawked as a TIE streaked in. Mackin spun out of the line of fire and again opted for altitude. “Rudder,” he said, “see if you can get a better answer out of him.” If that didn’t work, maybe he could spot the location of the Imperials’ mining complex from above...somehow.

Darin rejoined the others at the entranceway to the emergency tunnel in the mine and crouched down to remain hidden. He had just picked up another transmission from Mackin and had moved away to listen to it. The only coded word he’d been able to understand, though, was “base.” He couldn’t remember the others for the life of him, and that failure and uncertainty about what he was missing as a result made him extremely uneasy. The response he sent was the same as before: Not acknowledged. All he really knew was that if the hideout had been attacked and Mackin was trying to get in touch with him, then combat here was likely imminent and it required him to get his fighter that much faster.

The four missing Corona Squadron X-wings sat together in the mine’s cavern before them. Scattered Imperial soldiers rushed about, and Darin guessed they were on alert, likely because of the discovery of the resistance’s base nearby.

Darin hunkered down farther and prayed the Imperials wouldn’t see the four of them peeking out from the emergency tunnel doorway set into the wall about three meters above the cavern floor. From there, he could perform a decent survey of the area. This mine’s layout was basically the same as the other one, with the same sturdy buildings along the side of the complex opposite them and two large mine shafts leading up to the surface, one to Darin’s right and another to his left. This mine had considerably more lighting, though. Across the cavern and at the base of the left-hand mine shaft was a flimsy-looking comm antenna the Imperials had set up, probably for temporary signal amplification. In the open area of the mine relatively close to the buildings were two Imperial landspeeders, a stack of storage crates, a soldier guarding the four powered-down astromechs gathered together on the ground, and finally four guards ringing the group of X-wings.

The pilot’s gaze drifted back to the droids; this presented a different problem. “I need to get my astromech on top of my fighter,” Darin said as quietly as he could.

Choon looked sideways at him. “Can’t you just go without it?” he hissed back.

“Not if I want to jump to hyperspace, I can’t.”

Choon grumbled something unintelligible, and the Quarren turned to Darin. “I think we can lift it up if we have enough time. Now how are we going to do this?”

Darin looked at him in surprise. He’d assumed the locals had a plan since they’d gotten him this far and knew the mine, but now they were all obviously waiting for Darin’s “expertise.” He blinked and turned back to the scene before them while a sinking feeling enveloped his stomach. “Um...”

The other man, thinner than Choon and sporting a mop of black hair, reached into his backpack and drew out a small silver ball that had a short rod attached at one end. He handed it to Darin and said, “Here, don’t know what this is, but it might help. Got it off that commando along with the comlink.”

Darin took it and looked it over with wide eyes. “This is a stun grenade. Got any more?”

“Nope, that’s the only one.”

One was definitely a whole lot better than nothing. Darin started to give it back while absently saying, “Well, here. I’m not too familiar with these.”

However, the man wouldn’t accept it. “And you think we are?”

That was a good point: they hadn’t even known what it was. Darin felt a bit foolish for forgetting, and he reluctantly kept it and said, “The blast radius on these things is pretty small. We’ll only be able to stun one of the guards because of how far apart they’re standing, and I don’t know how many other Imperials there are nearby. We’ll be in a firefight with the rest as soon as this goes off.” He stashed it in a pocket.

“We have the element of surprise. Using that, can we get enough of the guards to give us enough time to get your droid in your fighter?” the Quarren asked.

Darin had no clue. “Maybe. Depends on how good of a shot all of you are.” And if there’s not a platoon of reinforcement soldiers inside the control buildings, he added silently.

Thumper looked back out at the signal amplifier, remembering Chopper’s comments back during the “third pilot” discussion about how they couldn’t afford to let the Imperials know the second X-wing was different from the same one they had previously seen. He thought things over for another moment, then asked, “Are you getting out the same way we came in?”

“Yeah.”

“Then here’s what we’ll do. First, be sure to have a backup route in mind. I’ll sneak down as close as I can and shoot that comm antenna. That should hopefully prevent them from reporting this and getting reinforcements immediately, and it’ll also be a nice distraction. I’ll go for the cover of the storage crates when everyone’s attention is on the antenna.”

“That kind of stuff only works in holovids,” Choon interrupted.

Darin ignored him and continued, “Once I have some cover, I’ll use the stun grenade and my blaster to take out as many guards as I can. After that’s under control, I’ll get my astromech and try to get into my fighter. If I can power it up, I’ll use it to cover you while you come and get my astromech up. Then I’ll cover you as you get out, and right after that I’m blasting my way out of here up the shaft. All right?”

Choon shook his head. “This’ll never work. You’re gonna get killed and take us down with you. If this is the kind of plans you a’ come up with, no wonder the Rebels are losing this war.”

“Have a better idea?” Darin asked defensively.

“How about something not quite so stupid?”

“Choon, enough,” the Quarren said sternly. Turning back to Darin, he said, “We’ll follow your lead.”

“The X-wing with the broken canopy window there is mine,” Darin replied, even as that particular problem came to the forefront of his mind again. He pushed it aside–no time for that now. Besides, he had two operational chestboxes now.

“This just keeps getting better and better,”grumbled Choon under his breath.

The Quarren only nodded in response to Darin’s words. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll make it out of here fine. Good luck.”

Darin managed a small smile. “Thanks for your help.”

The Quarren nodded again, and Darin turned the volume on his combadge all the way down, took a deep breath and looked around. When it seemed like no one was watching, he slipped out of the entranceway. The wall beside the tunnel’s opening was rough and full of crags from digging equipment, and those allowed Darin to climb down relatively easily. Once on the cavern floor, he began crawling through the darkness toward the comm antenna.

Only one-third of the mine was not lit, and the shadows were the only cover available. Darin’s feeling of being exposed, something he was becoming very familiar with on this mission, just got worse, especially after he quickly learned that crawling over hard rock was not something that could be accomplished quietly with his front chestbox being drug across it. The time needed to unbuckle one side of his flak vest, cover the chestbox with it and rebuckle it to prevent the dragging meant a longer time in no-man’s land.

At long last he stopped near the edge of the light, not willing to go farther. With any luck, he could hit the antenna at this distance. Darin pulled out his blaster and was taking careful aim when he faintly heard from the direction of the X-wings, “Hey, what is that over there?”

Darin’s eyes snapped open wide, and a quick glance showed that one of the X-wing guards was looking in his direction and had a weapon raised. Darin only had time for one silent curse before reflexively pulling his trigger and sending a few bolts of energy at the antenna.

Parts of the antenna dish were blown apart at the same time an Imperial blaster bolt hit the ground near Darin. A split-second lull in incoming fire after the antenna’s explosion was all Darin needed to push himself up using arms and legs full of adrenaline. While he sprinted for all he was worth toward the group of storage crates, he fired off a few wild shots in the direction of the guards to further discourage their attempts to kill him.

The guards didn’t stay discouraged long, however. A few incoming rounds sailed harmlessly by. Darin was mere meters away from the storage crates and was just about to dive for cover when one shot hit him at an angle on his chest. The flash and the burst of searing heat surprised him so much that he tripped at the start of his dive and ended up hitting the ground hard in a facedown heap behind the crates.

His throbbing head pounded even harder when the pungent odor of burnt electronics slapped him in the face. Wincing at the smell, he untangled himself and pushed himself to his hands and knees to do a quick damage assessment. What Darin saw was a scorched hole in his flak vest and a portion of his chestbox melted away and burned where the laser shot had hit. The laser’s residual energy had burned a few spots on his flightsuit, and the skin in that area didn’t feel so great, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle when he had more important things to worry about, like living.

Darin grabbed his blaster again, then thought better of it and took out the stun grenade instead. He was certain the Imperials were quickly maneuvering closer, and he was running out of time.

He peeked over the crates and managed to get a glimpse of the situation before more shots forced him down. Three guards were fairly close together at that moment, but it looked like they were beginning to split up while they advanced. Thumper hit the button on the stun grenade and threw it at that group.

He couldn’t watch the throw since he immediately ducked back down, but it had felt like it should be relatively accurate when it had left his hand. Strangely enough, the throw made him think of his Economics teacher back home who had said playing donri all the time would never benefit him at all. Unfortunately, a blaster bolt impacting the front of the crate he was hiding behind cut short his feelings of self-righteousness.

The stun grenade’s blue flash came at the same time a shout and more blaster bolts flew in. Darin returned fire and was relieved to find that two soldiers had been knocked out by the grenade, leaving three guards to deal with. All of them seemed to have their own cover now as well.

More shouts came from various places and echoed through the cavern as the Imperials and the Rebel exchanged a few more shots. The only things that seemed to be missing were a TIE flying overhead and a wingman shooting wildly from beside him.

A couple of blaster bolts flew from the locals’ direction and hit one of the guards. The assistance was welcome, but that meant the locals had now revealed their presence to the Imperials. Darin cursed under his breath; he had at least hoped to have reached Botch by now, not be trading energy bolts with the first of many opposing soldiers. He tried to lean out a bit from behind his cover but was quickly forced back by a fresh barrage from the guards.

Desperation tightened his chest. If the locals were where he thought they were, there was no cover to protect them from the Imperials’ attention. He gritted his teeth and fired as much as he could at the guards, if only to keep their fire focused on him. Darin was rewarded with the sight of one guard falling under his bombardment and, moments later, another falling to the crossfire from the locals. The remaining guard looked a bit shaken and unsure where to go for protection. He started to move to another area, but as soon as Darin had a clear shot, the pilot took it. The first bolt hit the Imperial’s arm, causing him to spin partway around. Darin’s next bolt hit the Imperial in the chest, and he fell.

“Finally!” Darin muttered breathlessly. He got up to move, and then some of the smaller crates on top of the pile caught his eye. Something clicked in the back of his brain: the lids had to be close to the right size...maybe they could work, somehow. He grabbed two of the flat lids and then heedlessly sprinted over to where Botch sat with the other astromechs. He could hear yelling coming from the buildings.

Thumper skidded to a stop, using the astromechs as cover. He hit Botch’s power button, then as an afterthought hit those of the other astromechs as well. Darin peeked out from behind Botch and saw that a small new group of Imperials was coming out of a building. This was as clear as it was ever going to get. “Botch, let’s go!” he said urgently and began moving forward.

The pilot was quickly halted, however, by a pitiful wail from Botch. Turning around, Darin saw a restraining bolt on his droid. He paused just long enough to aim carefully and shoot it off, and then he hastily repeated that action with the other droids. He felt bad for having to leave them, but he didn’t have any choice. “Sorry, guys. Get out if you can. Botch, let’s go!” This time the astromech happily followed, his gears whirring in overdrive.

By the time the pair made it to Darin’s fighter, the handful of soldiers near the buildings were beginning to fire at him. A main gear strut and the two storage crate lids serving as makeshift body shields were the only protection Darin had.

Never before had his cockpit seemed so far away.

A blaster bolt hit one of the crate lids. The Imperials were starting to get more aggressive. They knew what was going to happen, and they could focus all their energy on Darin.

Thumper had reached the point where true desperation made any idea seem like a good one. He disconnected the damaged chestbox’s hose from his suit and tore the connector socket off of the end of the hose. The small metal piece fit comfortably in his hand, and Darin jumped to his feet beside the X-wing, reared back and threw it with all his strength at the largest group of Imperials.

News of the stun grenade must have made the rounds, and the sight of another small object being thrown at them made the Imperials momentarily scatter. That disruption was all Darin needed; he grabbed the lids and scrambled over to his port S-foil, where he pulled himself up as fast as he could go.

He barely managed to dive inside the cockpit before the Imperials realized the projectile wasn’t a grenade and opened up on him with renewed vigor. Darin ducked as far down as possible and blindly punched at the spots where he knew the buttons were to begin powering his weapons. One blast from one powered-up laser cannon was all he found he needed to make the Imperials change their minds about advancing on foot.

After the incoming storm of blaster bolts had died out as a result, Darin cautiously straightened up a little bit to operate his controls better. It felt so good to be on the inside of the snubfighter again, and he was irrationally happy to be in the familiar confines of his own fighter, even with certain problems like a broken canopy window.

Darin saw the locals run up beside his fighter soon after. The pilot motioned them back a couple steps, lifted up on his repulsors, retracted his gear, and then set his fighter down as gently as he could in his hurry. Now it was only a step up to the top of his S-foils, not a climb, and the locals could more easily lift Botch up.

Not long later, the cockpit display that Botch used to communicate with him came to life, and then the Quarren appeared next to Darin. “Your droid’s secure,” he said hastily.

After working with the astromechs so much, Darin could truly appreciate how strong the locals must be in order to lift an astromech up like that, even with the decreased distance without the landing gear. He didn’t have time to say that, though, only, “I can give you guys one minute.”

The Quarren nodded once, quickly, then pulled the other two into a sprint back to the shadows near the tunnel entrance. From the looks of things, Choon was pointing at the landspeeders nearby and trying to get the Quarren to go for them instead, but the amphibian wasn’t agreeing. They were soon out of sight.

Thumper closed his canopy, finished powering up and tossed the lids behind his seat with his damaged chestbox. It only took a second to put Chopper’s chestbox on properly and hook it up. His helmet was sitting near the rudder pedals; he grabbed it, shoved it on, fingered the yoke’s trigger and stayed put for as long as he dared to give the locals time to escape. When he could stand it no longer, he fastened his seat restraints, gave his repulsors power and kicked in his engines.

Darin was halfway up the lit mine shaft when he finally realized what his sensors were telling him: the large doors at the end of the mine shaft were closed, turning the shaft into a literal dead end. He didn’t think he could turn around in here, and needing to carefully back out would give the Imperials way too much time to decide how to blow him up at the bottom. Corona Nine chewed on his bottom lip, narrowed his eyes a bit, and hoped that a powered-up laser cannon or two would be all he needed in this situation as well.

It was.

Major Wendessin listened closely to the reports coming in from the various C&C stations. He’d been right: there had been Rebel activity associated with those coordinates. The X-wing his forces had engaged at the supposedly empty trilithide mine was proof of that–that mine was too close to the location of the coordinates for it all to be a coincidence.

From the sounds of it, though, this Rebel was putting up a nasty fight. One TIE fighter had been lost by the time the ground forces reported going into the mine to flush out any Rebels inside, and another TIE pilot was killed soon after.

That wasn’t the only damper on things. In spite of being right about the activity, Wendessin frowned. He didn’t like this. Something wasn’t right. If they’d truly caught the Rebels by surprise, their reaction should have been to get both fighters in the air immediately, and yet there was still only the one. He was missing something. Had they split up?

“Tell all forces in the field to be on the lookout for another X-wing,” Wendessin ordered. “They had two at last count. Find the other one. Make sure this isn’t a diversion for something else in another location.”

“Yes, sir,” the comm officer replied and went to work relaying the instructions. A few minutes later, the Imperial spoke up again. “Sir, we’ve just lost another TIE. The remaining pilot is reporting a second X-wing on sensors.”

“Excellent. We’ve found them both,” Wendessin said, half to himself. More loudly, he then said, “Scramble the TIEs here in the colony. Have them intercept those Rebels before we lose them again.”

“Sir, the TIE pilots here just came off of all-day patrol duty–”

“They’ll have more than enough time to sleep after these Rebels are taken care of once and for all,” the major snapped. “Now pass along the order.”

“Yes, sir.”

If Commander Mackin’s sensor readings were to be believed, then there was an X-wing in flight about ten klicks away. Of course, the sensors also said that there were ten stationary TIEs around him when there was really only the extremely mobile one on his tail and a handful of ground vehicles remaining.

Luckily, that first sensor reading was confirmed by a low strength, tight-beam transmission over the squadron frequency saying, “Lead, Nine.”

Mack let out a sigh of relief. He returned the favor with the frequency settings and replied, “Nine, Lead. You mind getting this eyeball off my tail?”

“Be right there, sir.” Darin’s words were loud, nearly shouted, but still were almost drowned out by the noise caused by his broken window.

Together, the two Coronas made short work of the last few Imperial ground and space vehicles. Once they were clear, Mackin said, “Next time, Nine, give me a little more to go on than the fact that you’re inside the facility. Things were starting to go bad, and I had no clue where you were.”

There was a small hesitation before Darin answered, “Sorry, sir.”

Mackin just had one question for his pilot. “Everything go all right?”

“As well as to be expected, sir. Despite the Imps’ efforts, I’m still in one piece.”

Mackin sighed again, with his face contorting into something between a hopeless grimace and a relieved laugh. “Glad you’re okay, Nine. You’re my wing. Let’s do this.”

“Right with you, Lead.”

The two X-wings sped as fast as they could in terrain-following flight toward the colony.

Quiver couldn’t even begin to guess how many laps he’d made around the cavern before all of the remaining Corona Squadron pilots finally heard traffic on the squadron frequency, which Mackin and Darin would be using in wide-beam after discovery so the others could hear what was happening. All of their heads jerked up, and the comm system suddenly became the single most important thing on the planet.

“Nine, we have fighters approaching.”

“Copy, Lead. I see them.”

Snubber turned to Quiver and raised an eyebrow, but Quiver was too intent on listening to the transmission to react. After Mackin’s calm transmission, it was something of a start to suddenly hear Darin yelling into his mic over the wind noise in his cockpit, but Quiver smiled grimly for a brief moment nonetheless; at least that meant that he was in his own fighter and partnered with Botch. Darin’s odds just got a little better: he worked better with Botch than with any other astromech, and that could potentially mean the difference between life and death in a dogfight, especially one where the odds were so skewed.

“They’ve seen us, Nine. Turn on your IFF: I need to be able to see you. I’ll do the same. S-foils to attack formation.”

“Yes, sir.”

The grounded pilots listened as Mackin and Darin entered the dogfight. In no time at all, it seemed, they began using the code phrases to indicate they were starting their plan.

“Nine, I just lost three of my engines! I can’t hold it!” “Three engines” meant Mackin had found a suitable place to “crash.” “Not being able to hold it” meant he was about to stage the impact.

“Lead, no! Eject! Eject!” Following the script, the double command to eject indicated that Darin knew Mackin was okay and was not really in trouble.

“I can’t, I–” Mackin’s voice was cut off.

The Corona pilots looked at each other uneasily. Even though they knew it was fake, it was still eerie to listen to.

A second later they heard Darin call out in distress, “Lead, no! Not you too! Why didn’t you eject?! Why?!” The rhetorical question about ejecting meant that Darin had seen the explosion from Mackin’s torpedo on the ground and they were each on their own, which was further evidenced when the next transmission that came through the Coronas’ comm system was on the emergency channel. “Mayday, mayday! To any Alliance ships in range! This is Corona Nine. I’m–” He broke off for a moment, then resumed. “I’m on the planet Lokinha. My fighter is damaged, everyone in my squadron is dead and–” Another pause. “And I have six TIEs after me. I have vital information that I must bring back! Any Alliance ships, please respond!”

Ikoa glanced at Quiver, and she must have seen his pained expression because she quietly came over and squeezed his left shoulder. She tried to smile up at him. “He’ll be okay.”

Quiver worriedly looked down at the small woman, his eyes dull. “I’m going to lose them both, Ikoa. First CC, now him.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I wish I could convince myself that the fear in his voice was just from him being a good actor, giving the Imps a good performance to make it sound realistic, but I know it’s not.” He looked back toward the comm system. “He must honestly mean it because he’s a horrible actor, especially when he’s nervous.”

“Maybe you can give him some lessons when we get back,” Ikoa suggested gently.

Quiver nodded absently, barely hearing her. His attention was once again focused on the comm traffic.

It was the first thing that had gone right on the mission since they’d landed two days ago.

It hadn’t started out that way, though. While he and Darin were dogfighting, Commander Mackin had gotten his first good visual look of the colony and surrounding terrain, or at least as good as it could be at night. At first he had thought the plan was over before it even started: while the colony was in the hills, he hadn’t seen a suitable out-of-sight landing spot near enough to the colony to get him and Rudder inside in any short amount of time. In this plan, time was his enemy, and it had had him surrounded and at blasterpoint.

Then finally, their luck changed. Mack spotted a processing plant on the far outskirts of the colony, one that used hazardous materials so there was a safety buffer of building-free land around it. He could get there quickly since it was so isolated and buried deep in the hills. He smiled a small, grateful smile and began setting up to “crash.”

Now just a short time later, Mack was crouched beside Rudder and trying to stay out of sight. He felt much too obvious in his bright orange flightsuit. “Come on, Rudder,” he hissed impatiently.

The R2 unit swivelled its domed head to flash a few lights at the pilot in annoyance while it continued trying to override the lock on the side door to the plant’s shipping and receiving bay. Finally the little droid beeped softly in triumph, and the door opened. Mackin slipped inside, ducked behind a cargo container and looked around.

There was a row of small landspeeders, possibly the workers’ personal vehicles. Against the wall nearest the bay doors were what Mackin was looking for: a few small space transports with cargo containers stacked beside them, waiting to be loaded.

There was something else in the bay as well: a group of workers all standing at a window and talking amongst themselves about the huge explosion they’d seen, heard and felt nearby. They were making guesses at what it was and telling those who hadn’t seen it how it had lit up the night when a supervisor came over and ordered them all back to work.

Mackin could tell that some of them were uneasy at how close the “fireball” had come to hitting them, and he decided to use that to his advantage. He crept as quickly as he could to the nearest alarm station on the wall. He needed the dock emptied fast so he wouldn’t be seen, and nothing was faster than an emergency evacuation of a hazardous materials handling plant whose workers were already skittish about their surroundings.

The dock was vacated moments later, and the alarms covered up the sound of Mackin’s footfalls as he ran to the nearest transport that he recognized as having a hyperdrive.

Rudder was just rolling up the loading ramp when Mackin finished powering up the transport and bringing its systems online. The pilot sealed the doors and double-checked the fuel quantity gauges while the droid queried the ship’s computer to learn how to open the bay doors.

A minute after that, the transport disappeared into the night.

“Major, only one X-wing is left. We’re picking up a distress signal from it.” The comm officer obligingly played the transmission.

Wendessin nodded absently as he listened. This little game was finally almost over. “Poor little Rebel. Too bad no one else is going to hear your call for help.”

Minutes passed, and Wendessin grew more irritated with each one. “Haven’t those TIE pilots taken care of him yet? What are they waiting for?”

“The squad leader reports that the X-wing’s maneuvers approach suicidal at times, sir, and–”

“We have a clear and–I thought–overwhelming advantage in numbers. That should be more than enough. Hasn’t anyone in the 165^th Squadron ever heard of a thing called ‘tactics’?” Wendessin demanded.

Before the comm officer could reply, the sensor officer suddenly became very busy at his station. “Major,” he said while hurriedly scrolling through data on numerous datapads and cross-referencing it with the display on his scope. “There’s a transport–small freighter or shuttle from the looks–leaving the vicinity of the colony, heading east at full speed. Bypassed the checkpoint completely. I can’t find any authorizations for this flight.”

Wendessin opened his mouth to issue his orders, but before he could, he was cut off by the Imperial who was acting as liasion between the ground-based C&C and the ships in orbit. “Major–”

The commander of Corona Squadron flew as fast as he could back toward the river valley. He met no immediate resistance and figured Darin had done a good job of leading most of the Imperial air forces away. While they might have been able to sneak out of the valley before while the Imperials were occupied with their tight-beam searches, he doubted he could sneak back in with the Imperials certainly on the alert now after the dogfight with him and Darin. He turned to the scrambled squadron frequency so he could call Lt. Weas and tell him to be ready to provide cover as he came in, and he told Rudder to plug into the console and encrypt his transmission.

Mackin was surprised to hear traffic already coming over the channel. As he tried to make out the decrypted, static-filled words, he saw on his scope the blinking dots of Imperial vehicles moving toward him from around the river valley. Someone must have detected him peeling out of the colony without clearance, or more likely, one of the evacuated workers had seen the ship leave (it would have been hard to miss) and reported it. He wondered if he could bluff his way through whatever he might be asked by the Imperials about his intentions, or if they would just skip that and go straight to forcing him down. Given the circumstances, it wouldn’t be hard for them to assume he was a Rebel, and they would take precautions.

He looked over the crude sensor display of the transport, but the sketchy data it was supplying only worsened the bad feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. These weren’t TIEs. The only things Mack was coming up with based on the data were that the vehicles coming to meet him were a HAVr A9 Floating Fortress and two Hoverscouts. They were probably part of the forces who had been looking for the Rebels’ lost trail in the river valley.

Mack quickly started running through even halfway-plausible excuses for the transport’s unauthorized flight while Rudder cleared up the squadron frequency’s signal. “–peat, th–...–ke L–...Coro–...–nel, plea–”

The pilot’s brow furrowed as he began to make out pieces of the words. “Rudder, can you clean that up any more? And hurry?” The Floating Fortress’s targeting search beams were stabbing through the darkness and beginning to home in on the transport. Mack eased the transport away from them, hoping the maneuver didn’t look too guilty.

The droid beeped, and an instant later Mackin heard the voice again, still distorted but much more clear this time. “Quake Leader to any Corona Squadron personnel, respond.”

Mackin hesitated a brief moment but then hit the transmit button. He knew there was a chance it was a fake transmission, a lure, but the voice sounded enough like Commander Unirt, the Quake Squadron CO, for Mackin to decide to take the risk and respond. He felt his hopes rising–if this was legitimate, they just might get out of this yet. “This is Corona One, Quake Lead. We could sure use some help down here.”

“That’s what we’re here for, One. The fleet’s overhead occupying the Imp ships up there and allowing us to come down for you. We’re coming in above a transport heading to the north side of the valley. What’s your situation?”

“I’m in the transport, and very soon now I’ll be coming come face-to-face with what looks like a Floating Fortress and two Hoverscouts. If you can clear them and any other hostiles in the valley out for me, I’d be most appreciative. And I have another pilot, Corona Nine, out alone beyond the colony somewhere or possibly in orbit by now. Can you spare some help for him if you can find him?”

“Affirmative, One, we’ll do what we can.” The lights on the Y-wings were now visible off Mackin’s starboard side, and as they angled in to intercept the Imperial assault vehicles two Quakes peeled away and went back in the direction Mackin was coming from.

Unirt’s voice came through again. “We were at the edge of the system trying to get intel before coming in when we picked up parts of a distress call saying the whole squadron was dead. Are you two the only survivors?”

“Negative, I’m going in for my pilots now, Quake Lead. I’ll explain later.”

“Copy, Corona One.”

“Corona Eight to Corona Lead, what’s going on?” Weas asked over the comm. “Do we have a rescue here for us?”

“Affirmative, Eight, we’ve got help.” Mackin looked around as he entered the valley, but as far as he could tell the Quake Squadron pilots had engaged all of the Imperial forces. “Is everyone ready? I’ll be there in a second.”

“We’re waiting hot for you, Lead.”

Weas, in Mackin’s fighter, was floating on repulsorlifts outside next to the transport and was keeping a sharp lookout for any enemies. Another laser cannon had been broken off by the waterfall on the fighter’s way out of the cave. Meanwhile, Mackin struggled to keep the small transport in place as he hovered against the cavern opening, with the waterfall pounding down mercilessly on the ship from above. After an initial amazed hesitation at seeing the ship, the rest of the Coronas started cautiously jumping into the open hatch as the deployed loading ramp banged up and down against the ground. It was a challenge getting Chopper aboard with his broken leg, but they managed it at the cost of some colorful curses from him.

Slurry poked his head into the transport’s cockpit a minute later. “I was the one last. We’re clear.”

Mackin nodded. “Hold on, everyone,” he called. He pulled away from the waterfall and flew off, followed by Weas in the X-wing a moment later. “Quake Leader, I have my pilots and we’re on our way out.”

“Copy, Corona Lead. We’re picking up some fighters coming down from orbit; give us a few minutes to deal with them and the orbital mines.”

“Copy, we’ll wait.” Mackin began using the time to try contacting Darin on the squadron frequency, the Rebellion’s tactical frequency and even his combadge, but he got no response.

He stopped when Quiver and Ikoa made their way up front to join him. Quiver looked at the transport’s scope briefly. “Are we clear?”

“There’s another batch coming in from orbit, but the Quakes will deal with them,” Mack answered. “They want us to hang back while they clear a path for us.”

“I want my X-wing, sir,” Quiver said suddenly.

Stunned, Mackin looked up at him. “What?”

“I want to go back for my X-wing. We have a bit of time now. Just drop me off there, and I’ll fly out in it.”

“Ten, are you out of your mind?”

“Sir, this squadron now has one, maybe two X-wings. There’s no way we can operate with that few, and it will take forever to get that many replacements. We have a couple good fighters down there, and the Quakes are buying us some time. You said they don’t even want us to follow yet. At full throttle, our fighters aren’t far.”

“The Imperials moved them to an underground cavern. Darin had to go in and get his.”

If Quiver was surprised at hearing about Darin’s additional duty, he didn’t show it. “Are all the fighters together then, sir? That would make it even easier. If Darin could get in and out, we can too.”

“Commander,” Ikoa said, “he’s making a good point. If you know where the fighters are and if we can get in, we should get them. I’ll fly Snubber’s. Scoop’s hyperdrive can be replaced or repaired later if he can jump out on another ship. It would more than double what we have now and give us added protection on the way out. Plus the Imperials wouldn’t still have them after we leave.”

Weas led the way into the mine with the X-wing, and the remaining threats down there didn’t last long after that. At first glance, the mine didn’t look like a particularly easy place from which to steal an X-wing, and Quiver wondered how Darin had managed it. Ahead, the X-wings belonging to Quiver, Pellicer and Snubber all waited patiently for them in the cavern, bathed in flashing red emergency lights all around and assaulted by a horrible screeching siren alerting the mine’s previous occupants to danger.

Quiver started out as soon as Mackin stopped the transport next to the fighters and opened the door, but Mackin grabbed his arm first and pulled him back into the ship. “Listen to me, Ten,” Mackin said in a low, firm voice once he had Quiver’s attention. “I only want one thing in your mind: as soon as your fighter is powered up, you will go straight up to orbit with the rest of us.”

“Yessir,” Quiver offhandedly replied, already on his way out of the transport again.

The next few minutes were an exercise in finding their astromechs and loading them into the fighters. The first part wasn’t too hard, since the three droids claimed they had been hiding together until they saw the Rebels arrive, at which point they had come to meet them, but the next part proved to be a challenge. Finally the pilots had to quickly rig up a few makeshift ramps out of storage crates and crate lids to allow the droids to roll from the ground up to the top of the X-wings with a lot of assistance from the Coronas. Ikoa climbed into Weas’s fighter, Pellicer and Quiver each got in their own X-wings, and a few quick preps later, the three missing fighters lifted up and followed Weas and the transport out.

Quiver’s first actions once he was out of the mine shaft and in open air again, even though he discovered that indeed only three of his engines worked, were to climb steeply for altitude and leave the group behind. After leveling off, he then tried contacting Darin and looked for him on sensors, but came up empty on both counts.

The only response he got on his comm, in fact, was a sharp warning from Mackin. “Ten, regroup with us immediately.”

“Just give me a minute, sir. I only want to check for Nine quick.”

“Negative, Ten. There are two Quakes out there who are doing their best to find him. Let them do their job.”

“I can help.”

“No, Ten, you won’t be helping. The Quakes will detect an X-wing–yours–and think it’s Nine, and it’ll interfere with their search. Regroup with us immediately.”

The last thing Quiver wanted to hear was logic. He stubbornly turned his fighter toward the colony, the last general area where he had known Darin to be.

“Ten, if you don’t turn around now, I’ll have a Quake pilot ion you and then I’ll tow you out of here with this transport’s tractor beam.”

Quiver hesitated for the briefest of instants, trying to discern from Mackin’s voice and mood if he would (or could) actually do that or not. He was just about to push in his throttle and call Mackin’s bluff when four red-lit X-wing engine exhaust nacelles rose directly in front of him from below. He reflexively pulled back on the yoke and braked hard to avoid a collision, and once his heart had stopped hammering from the fright, he looked out his window to determine which pilot was deserving of a piece of his mind. Probably Snubber, he figured..

But what he saw was Ikoa, right beside him and starting to turn her fighter toward his and forcing him to turn the same way. Quiver cursed and said to her, “Blast it, Two, what are you thinking?!”

“I could ask you the same thing, but I know what your answer would be,” Ikoa replied on a private channel.

She had turned him almost all the way around to point back toward the group now, but Quiver kept pulling his flight yoke the same way, intending to circle inside her and go back on his original course after another 180 degrees. Ikoa spiraled over him, cut him off again and herded him into a turn in the other direction to keep him on track.

“Why is this such a big deal to everyone?!” Quiver demanded of her. “I’ll be right back! Why won’t anyone let me at least try to look for him?”

“I’m glad you asked,” said Ikoa. “Picture this scenario: Corona Ten, with less-than-nominal abilities due to an injury, a completely useless emergency life support system and a damaged, less-than-capable fighter, goes looking for his wingman, who was last heard tangling with numerous TIE fighters. Corona Ten encounters resistance–maybe from the colony, maybe from those same TIEs–and in his disadvantaged state, is shot down or damaged and stranded in a place where we can’t get to him. It’s too dangerous for you, Ten, and we don’t want to lose you.”

There was that damn logic again. “You don’t want to lose me, but you’ll accept losing Nine?! Is that it?!” he retorted, pulling away yet again from Ikoa’s herding attempts. It annoyed him to no end to realize she was winning and was maneuvering him farther from the colony no matter what he did to counter it.

“If you think I’ve accepted that, then you really aren’t thinking clearly,” Ikoa shot back. “But as long as you brought up Nine, let’s explore that route. He’s risking his life to give you–and all of us–a chance to escape alive. That’s how much it means to him. If you don’t acknowledge that, accept it and leave when you have the chance, which is right now, then he’s risking his life for nothing. I can’t think of a worse waste of life than that.”

“But he–”

“Besides, for all we know, Nine could already be in orbit or out of the system. If that’s true and you go off looking for him here, what would he think if the rest of us show up without you? I am not about to play this herding game again to prevent another shot-up pilot from coming back here looking for his wingman.”

Quiver fell silent; he hadn’t thought about it that way. How would his actions affect Darin’s? What if he had escaped already and was waiting for them elsewhere? Could looking for him now actually make things worse for Darin later? He couldn’t be responsible for putting his friend in more danger. Now Quiver didn’t know what to do, so for the moment he settled for silently cursing again.

Also, thinking back over Ikoa’s first argument, Quiver came to another realization: Ikoa had spent way too much time around CC. Before now, CC had been the only person able to reduce Quiver to a guilt-induced speechlessness.

Remembering CC just made things worse and confused him more. Ikoa wasn’t going to let Quiver search, but Darin had demonstrated a few times while on this planet just how much loyalty meant to him. How could Quiver just turn his back and leave without at least attempting to return the favor, especially in light of what had happened to CC? “I have to do this for him,” Quiver said, stumbling over his words.

“For him or for you?”

“For him!” Quiver immediately snapped, then he started faltering again. “I–he–apparently he’s the only one who gives a damn about anyone else now, so for him!”

“If you want to do something for him, the thing that will mean the most to him, then come with us. Get out of here safe and sound like he wants you to. Please, Quiver, let’s go.” Ikoa’s voice had shifted to a much softer tone.

She forced his fighter into another turn back toward the others, and this time Quiver didn’t try to veer back toward the colony. He didn’t know what to think anymore, and it was almost easier to let Ikoa think for him. He wondered, while she was at it, if she could decide for him whether or not to believe Darin would ever forgive him for leaving him behind. Quiver’s gut felt hollow, a feeling he had only felt once before when...

Darin had never flown so recklessly in his life...but then again, he’d never been trying to escape from four TIEs while alone before, either. It had been six to begin with, but he’d managed to down two of them somewhere along the way.

He spun and twisted and dove so much that there were times he thought he’d make himself sick even with the inertial compensators. He’d actually lasted longer than he had expected to, but another hit from behind, which brought his shields down to a mere 14%, reminded him that he wasn’t out of the proverbial asteroid field yet.

Thumper pulled into a steep climb to put more distance between his fighter and the darkness-hidden ground. As he leveled out, a laser blast hit his lower port S-foil from beneath, rocking his fighter violently. More diagnostics went from green or yellow to red. Darin mentally added the lower port laser cannon to the list of things damaged into nonoperation along with his sensors, communications, IFF, repulsors and landing gear deployment. He was also out of torpedoes.

“Botch, we need those shields!”

His R5 blatted at him as if to say, “You do your job, I’ll do mine.” Darin didn’t bother to read the display of Botch’s words and instead dove over into the bottom half of an inverted loop, which caused the ground to fill his forward windows. He snapped a few shots at one of the TIEs that ended up in his sights as a result.

Rolling out of the loop and leveling off, Darin spotted one of the raised aqueducts coming from the more hilly terrain in the west to a place southwest of the colony. He hadn’t realized he’d gone so far from the colony, and he could barely see the colony’s lights anymore when looking back, but he had more important things to worry about. He chewed on his lip as he throttled up toward the aqueduct.

The TIEs stayed on his tail. Darin slowed as much as he dared, judged the distance between the aqueduct’s support pillars and started to randomly slalom between them, praying he wouldn’t miss seeing one in the darkness.

The first Imperial fighter tried to follow, but its wing clipped a pillar and sent the TIE out of control. Finally it exploded upon impact with the ground, and the light from that fireball momentarily illuminated the other TIE fighter that successfully began to follow the Rebel. The last two TIEs, which had been farther back to begin with, evidently weren’t going to be pulled in as easily. Instead of following in the slalom, they flew directly above the aqueduct. One began firing at the aqueduct immediately in front of and above Darin.

“Blast it, I can’t get away!” Darin said, fighting the urge to panic. He’d been out there alone for a long time, and his nerves were wearing thin from the pressure. He pulled sharply out from under the crumbling structure before it could rain down on him and shot off, trying to outrun the TIEs overhead that had now turned to come after him. The other TIE came out of the slalom and followed as well.

Darin was managing to evade the majority of the shots, but every ten successes seemed worthless next to a single failure. Another hit brought his shields down to next-to-nothing, and he knew he couldn’t hold out any longer: sticking around would mean certain death. Hoping he had bought Mackin enough time, he transferred all the laser power to his engines and corkscrewed full-throttle toward orbit. Thumper prayed he could stay ahead of the Imperials long enough to jump to hyperspace, but it wasn’t more than five seconds later when two more shots punched through his faltering shields, taking out his targeting computer, another laser cannon and most of his weapons controls as well as causing him to lose power to one of his engines.

“No! Come on, don’t die on me!” he begged his fighter as it involuntarily slowed. Cockpit alarms were blaring loudly. Darin shut them off, hastily told Botch to isolate the damaged systems, and then put all of his efforts into randomly jinking and juking while trying to look in all directions at once to spot the TIEs. Without his sensors or targeting scope he was blind, and visually finding dark-colored fighters against a night sky was practically impossible unless they were firing, but given those options, he preferred their invisibility. Botch patched through his own sensor readings to the X-wing’s computer, and while the droid’s sketchy, somewhat-delayed readings weren’t nearly as good as the snubfighter’s, they were at least something. Darin felt a little better.

However, that heartened feeling only lasted another second until he looked at his engine diagnostics. Then, his racing heart and a sinking feeling in his stomach accompanied the realization that he now could not outrun or outfly the Imperials, so he put some power back to his lasers and hoped he still had enough control over his weapons systems to fire, though he wasn’t sure how much good that could ultimately do him. He couldn’t run and he couldn’t effectively fight so he tried thinking of something else to do, but the same four unbidden, unhelpful options kept coming to mind: he could eject and be captured, surrender and be captured, be blown up and die, or crash and either be captured or die. A laser bolt narrowly missed his cockpit. He desperately tried to think of a fifth option.

Suddenly Botch beeped excitedly at him and patched through a transmission that the droid’s own very-short-range comm was picking up. “Quake Six to Corona Nine, come in. You read?”

Darin’s breath caught in his throat as he heard the unexpected Option Five. He responded without a second thought. “This is Corona Nine. I need help!” He had a feeling he would have yelled that even if he didn’t need to shout above the wind noise in his cockpit.

“Hold on, we’ll be right there.”

“Where are you?” Darin asked as he jerked aside to avoid another salvo of laser bolts. “A lot of my systems are down–I have no readouts!”

“We’re straight ahead of you, coming your way. Be there in four seconds.”

Three seconds later, Darin saw the lights on the two Y-wings heading right for him before they turned slightly to pass him on either side. The wishbones’ red lasers flew past, impacting the TIE fighters that had been trailing him and had broken off to meet this new threat.

After a few more swarming passes, Quake Six contacted him again. “You’re all clear, Corona Nine. Sorry for the delay, but it took us a while to find you. Lucky we did, though–we had already stayed longer than we were allowed to, so you saved us from getting in trouble when we get back. We’ll escort you up and clear a path through those mines for you.”

Feeling overwhelmed with the suddenness at which he went from being about to die to having a solid prospect of escape, Darin said, “Thanks, Quake Six. You two and your gunners can have as many drinks as you want on me.”

He opened his mouth to ask about the other Coronas but stopped. Could he mention them? What if the wrong people were listening to the frequency and overheard? After all this, he couldn’t risk compromising his squadmates. But these were the Quakes, their shipmates–even if an Imperial overheard, the Quakes would help them all get out, assuming they knew the other Coronas were still here, and they might not know that. Besides, it was killing Darin to not know if they were okay, especially now that help had arrived. He couldn’t just leave without them...like he was supposed to. The conflict grew in him again as he began wondering what the repercussions would be if he deviated from his part of the plan, the “lone survivor” role. Would he end up hurting something he wasn’t aware of, something Mackin was counting on to get them all out alive?

All of that ran through his mind in a split second, and he still didn’t know what to do when he heard Quake Six chuckle and say, “Hey, Five, maybe we should save the Coronas more often if we get drinks out of the deal.”

“Careful, Nine, if the other Quakes catch wind of that offer you’ll have them following you around like lovesick mynocks,” said Quake Five. “But enough chatting. Let’s go. Your squadmates are probably wondering where you are.”

That caught Darin’s attention, and the desperation to confirm what he had just heard made him forget his caution. He responded without thinking. “My squadmates? You mean...they’re okay?”

“As far as I know. They’ve already jumped out of the system with the fleet and the other Quakes.”

Darin hadn’t thought it was possible to feel more relieved than he had after the Quakes saved him, but he did. He actually laughed out loud in pure joy and almost missed Quake Five’s next words of, “You’re pretty shot up. Can you make it out?”

Thumper gave an elated, shaky sigh to bring his voice under control. “I think so, Five. I’ll be going just on emergency life support up there, so I can’t stay very long. But–” Darin suddenly remembered the storage crate lids he had stashed behind his seat. “Wait, that’s right, I might be able to cover my window enough to partially pressurize my cockpit. Mind keeping an eye out for me while I land and patch it up?”

“No problem.”

A screen in front of Darin lit up with a text message from Botch reminding him he couldn’t land without repulsors and a landing gear. Darin’s smile disappeared, and he cursed to himself. Why wasn’t anything ever easy? Out loud he said, “Blast it, I forgot I can’t land. Botch, take the controls and just fly us in circles for now. I’ll have to try boarding up my window up here.”

“Copy, Corona Nine,” Quake Six replied. “We’ll fly cover while you do that. Just don’t take too long.”

“Don’t worry, I have no desire to stick around any longer than I absolutely have to.”

“How long have you been alone out here?”

Darin exhaled as he awkwardly pulled the lids out. He could actually feel the tension inside him dissipating. “Way too long, Five. Way too long.”