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.

The eastern sky had brightened only slightly the next morning when Darin jerked awake from something big and wet hitting his face. He flinched, automatically wiped his face with his sleeve and felt another big drop before he had even opened his eyes. He wiped his face again and sat up, this time feeling more drops hit the top of his head and his shoulders. No predawn stars were visible as the sky overhead was heavy with dark clouds, and it began to rain harder.

Darin grimaced and picked up his bedroll, then he walked over to Quiver, who likewise was not under substantial cover, and nudged him with his foot. “Hey, Quiv, get up. It’s raining.”

“That’s what blankets are for,” Quiver muttered groggily as he pulled his blanket up over his head.

Darin shrugged sleepily. “Suit yourself. Just don’t blame me when you get soaked.” He walked back to his X-wing, laid out his bedroll underneath one of the S-foils and had just begun trying to get back to sleep when he heard some commotion. Rolling onto his stomach and praying he was only dreaming it so he wouldn’t have to get up, he peered in the direction of the sound and saw Lt. Weas running between the squadron’s fighters and calling to the pilots asleep under the wings. Unfortunately, it was reality.

“Coronas, up, now! We’ve got a situation! Wake up!” The pilots started getting out of their bedrolls as Weas continued his rounds through the makeshift camp. “Up, everyone! Let’s go! Now! Three and Four, get ready, you’re launching in five minutes.”

Within one minute all of the Coronas had gathered around Mackin, and Chopper and Kalre were both donning their flight equipment. Mackin quickly met each of their gazes in turn to signal the need for their undivided attention, and Darin recognized the look in Mackin’s eyes that always seemed to transform him into someone else. The commander was a rather plain-looking man, about average height with a build that was a little on the stocky side. Normally, not much about his appearance really made a lasting impression; however, at certain times when he felt his squadron may be in danger due to either a known or potential threat, his face contained a look of such intensity that it actually made his pilots feel safer. He looked that way now, though the intensity was tempered by a healthy dose of what Darin assumed to be caution and an acknowledgment of a lack of solid information.

Mackin ran a hand through his black crew cut and started his impromptu briefing. “Sorry to get you all up early, especially since rainy mornings were just made for sleeping in, but about ten minutes ago we picked up a distress call from the scout team that had gone into the colony last night. It was cut off before we got any useful information, and we have been unable to contact anyone on the team since.

“Three and Four, because of the unknown situation you two will be escorting a Special Forces shuttle out to last night’s drop-off point. Make sure you do terrain-following flight so it’ll be harder for any sensors to pick you up. Once you reach that point, the second Special Forces team will be dropped off and will go in to try to find the first team. They’ll go most of the way on speeder bikes and then sneak into the colony on foot, just like before. You two will remain with the shuttle at the drop-off point as backup or until you hear otherwise. Everyone else, be ready to go. We’ve received no transmissions from Crescent Star yet saying she’s in-system, so at this point we have to assume she’s not. Any questions?” All of the Corona pilots shook their heads. “Let’s go then. I want us prepared to lift at a moment’s notice. Snap to it, everyone.”

Chopper and Kalre jogged to their X-wings as the other pilots hurriedly began packing up all the bedrolls and camouflage and putting on their flight equipment. A couple minutes later Chopper and Kalre lifted up, rendezvoused with one of the two Special Forces shuttles and headed toward the colony.

The eight remaining Corona Squadron pilots all sat under the S-foils of Mackin’s X-wing to get out of the rain as they listened for reports over the comm. All of their X-wings had been prepped as far as they could go on the checklists without starting the engines and all of their equipment was packed, so the pilots had nothing to do now but wait and listen for more news from their squadmates or either of the Special Forces teams.

The first minutes passed uneventfully aside from a gradual lightening of the sky as sunrise came but was blocked by the rain clouds; however, all of their ears perked up when they heard Kalre say over the squadron frequency before they had reached the drop-off point, “Three, you see that?”

“I see something, Four, but what–” Chopper stopped abruptly and paused, then his words rushed out. “No, that’s not possible! They said they only had a small amount of troops here! Lead, this is Three, come in!”

The pilots on the ground all looked worriedly at each other while Mackin answered, “What’s going on, Three?”

“We have a squadron of TIEs coming right for us, repeat, a squadron. We need help, now!”

The other Coronas didn’t even wait for Mackin’s orders before they jumped up and ran to their snubfighters. Each pilot climbed into his or her cockpit and finished the remaining items on the checklist in a hurry. When they patched their headsets into the communications system, they heard the tail end of Chopper’s conversation with Mackin.

“They just entered firing range, Lead. Tell Special Forces to get a faster shuttle next time!”

“Hold on, Three, we’re lifting now. Help is on the way.”

The eight pilots fired up their repulsorlifts and engines and climbed out of the canyon, flying full-throttle toward the fight. At the same time, Mackin coordinated some last-minute details with Lt. Col. Trainneer, who was aboard the remaining Special Forces shuttle back in the canyon.

It seemed to take forever for the Coronas to cover the distance, and during that time the situation did not improve. “We can’t hold them! There’s just too many! The shuttle’s getting hit hard, and so are we!” Kalre reported.

“Four, my shields are gone, I lo–” Chopper’s urgent voice was cut off.

“Three, punch out!” There was a pause before Kalre continued, “Lead, we just lost the shuttle and Three ejected right before his X-wing was destroyed. I think.”

“Get out of there, Four,” Mackin ordered. “We just entered visual range. We’ll cover you. Mark Three’s location.”

The Rebel reinforcements soon left the rain behind, though the sky remained thick with clouds. They could now make out the TIEs’ green lasers ahead and two black clouds of smoke sticking out against the dark grey clouds. Debris was leaving trails in the sky as it rained down from the dissipating black puffs like it was trying to mimic the storm clouds behind the X-wings. The clouds and haze blurred the reference line of the horizon, making the ground seem closer than it really was. In addition to that, the cloud ceiling above them seemed oppressive and solid, and the Rebel fighter pilots who were more accustomed to dogfights in outer space than anywhere else felt a couple uneasy flutters of claustrophobia momentarily in their stomachs.

Each affected pilot shook it off to the best of his or her ability and focused instead on the fight ahead that was rapidly approaching. At their maximum targeting range Mackin ordered the Coronas to set up for a simultaneous proton torpedo launch, and it was evident his pilots were doing as they were told when multiple TIEs broke off their attack runs on Kalre and started dancing around to break the targeting locks the Coronas had on them. With one word from Mackin, eight proton torpedoes streaked out from the X-wings, blazing a blue trail in the sky for the snubfighters to follow.

Most of the TIEs managed to break the locks before they were hit. The less nimble or less experienced ones, three in all, did not. The TIEs regrouped and came at the X-wings, setting up for a standard head-to-head run. They ignored Kalre for the time being, who was just about to reach the Coronas.

“After the first pass, we’re taking this higher,” said Mackin.

Most of the Coronas switched their lasers to dual-fire mode, and all of them strengthened their forward shields in preparation for the head-to-head. As the fighters converged, there was a blur of red and green crisscrossing lasers, a screech of fighters flying past each other, and explosions marking the deaths of two Imperial TIE pilots. Then they were separate again and moving away from each other before the more maneuverable TIEs made tight turns to try to settle in on the X-wings’ tails. The Coronas’ response to this standard Imperial tactic was to pull straight up and momentarily disappear from sight above the low-hanging clouds.

They only had an instant to recover before the TIE fighters tore through the clouds and were upon them again. Another six dots appeared on their scopes, coming from the direction of the colony. The blood red color tagged them as enemies, likely more TIE fighters.

“Heads up, everyone, we have more coming. We must be harder to kill than they thought. Break by pairs and fire at will,” ordered Mackin.

Mackin’s astromech, Bluehill, positively identified the incoming craft as TIEs, or eyeballs in Rebel pilot parlance. After accounting for all the kills to this point, the Coronas were still outnumbered eleven to nine. Nothing new.

But it would still be tricky.

Darin did his best to keep tabs on the different parts of the battle around him as he flew with Quiver and snapped off shot after shot.

Kalre’s damaged fighter didn’t last much longer. Since the destruction of Chopper’s X-wing had left him without a wingman, Kalre had joined up with Pellicer and CC, Coronas Five and Six respectively. At one point when they had been engaged with two TIEs and distracted, an eyeball came up unnoticed from behind and took some shots of opportunity at Kalre’s fighter. The X-wing couldn’t take anymore and it plummeted to the south, trailing black smoke before it was lost from sight under the clouds. Kalre reported ejecting.

That situation put CC and Pellicer in the middle of some nasty crossfire. Darin and Quiver tried to disengage from their current skirmish to go help, but before they could, a barrage of laser blasts hit Five and Six. Some desperate evasive maneuvers got Pellicer and CC out of immediate harm’s way, but the TIEs easily looped around and settled in behind them.

Quiver and Darin remained occupied with their TIE, which was flown by a dogged pilot who always seemed to have one of them in his crosshairs. While they worked at fighting that Imperial, Pellicer reported, “My hyperdrive is gone. Shields are failing. We’re trying to get clear.”

CC distractedly added, “Five, your X-wing is venting a white gas. Is that your life support?” Her words were laced with both static and worry, and cockpit alarms blared in the background of her transmission.

There was a pause, and then Pellicer responded, “No, the venting is coming from my hyperdrive. Six, what’s your status?”

Darin’s scope showed the pair of Mackin and Ikoa coming to help Pellicer and CC. The pair of Slurry and Weas were also heading that way from a different direction, each with a TIE gaining on them. The distraction resulted in Darin’s shields being weakened by the determined eyeball fighting him. He cursed at his lapse and threw his attention into evasive maneuvers.

CC’s troubled reply left little doubt as to how seriously her fighter was damaged. “Not good. I lost all–”

An explosion coincided with CC’s words being cut off. Its job done, a TIE flew past her as her X-wing bucked, belched sparks and smoke and started spinning, heading groundward at a shallow angle to the north. It was on a course to hit the ground not far from the beacon on their scopes marking Chopper’s location.

“Six?!” Pellicer and Quiver anxiously called at the same time.

“Six, eject! You hear me? Eject!” Pellicer continued. The only answer was a short burst of static.

Quiver finally shot down the TIE antagonizing him and Darin, freeing them to wheel around and look for CC’s X-wing. It wasn’t hard to spot with the black smoke erupting from it. They throttled up; their skirmish had taken them rather far from the rest of the fight.

Just before CC’s fighter plummeted beneath the lower cloud layer, a TIE turned to make a run at the mortally wounded fighter and finish it off. Pellicer immediately angled toward it and sent a quad-linked burst of red light in at the TIE to protect his wingman. His aim was true: the shot hit the bottom of the TIE’s spherical cockpit and went all the way through to the engines in back, one of which exploded and ripped the rest of the TIE apart. After that, a head-to-head run with Slurry and Weas relieved Pellicer of his pursuit while Pellicer simultaneously relieved the Bilgana of his.

Darin heard a transmission come over the Rebels’ tactical frequency just as he saw Mackin begin to follow the TIE chasing Weas. “Starsmoke to Corona Lead.” Starsmoke was the remaining Special Forces shuttle.

“This is Corona Lead,” responded Mackin. “Things are pretty hectic over here.”

“I know, Corona Lead,” Lt. Col. Trainneer replied. “That’s why we’re getting out. The Imperial forces here are much stronger than we anticipated. We’re temporarily aborting the mission. You and your pilots are to break off and head for Point Delta. Omega Signal. Acknowledge.”

“Omega Signal acknowledged,” Mackin answered to indicate he heard the retreat order. The TIE in his sights danced, trying to throw off Mackin’s aim. The Rebel danced with it. “Starsmoke, I have three pilots down and one with a damaged hyperdrive. We’ll send you their locations and move the fighting away from them before we disengage. I need you to come retrieve them so we can leave.” He fired and missed.

“Negative, Corona Lead. I said get out. Our last team member inside the colony managed to get one more report through before we lost contact completely, and he said more Imperial forces are on the way. Cut your losses. We’re leaving and so are you.”

“Starsmoke,” Mackin said in a quiet but dangerous voice the Coronas knew meant business, “I need you to get my downed pilots out. We can’t carry extra people in our fighters, so we can’t do it.” The next laser salvo coming from Mackin’s fighter actually seemed angry somehow. The TIE exploded, and Mackin twisted around, apparently looking for the next threat.

It came over the radio waves. “For the last time, Commander, we are not flying into that firefight and we are not coming back that way, especially with more Imperials coming. Get out of there now!” A few surprised, protesting voices were heard in the background inside Starsmoke before Trainneer closed the transmission.

Even in the midst of the dogfight there was a momentary shocked silence, then the Coronas’ squadron frequency erupted with angry questions.

“What the hell was that?!”

“Are they just abandoning us here? What kind of Special Forces team is that?!”

“We’re not leaving the others, are we?”

“Everyone, enough!” Mackin said, silencing them. “Listen up. My sensors show Starsmoke already well on its way to orbit and two TIEs going after it. Seven, Eight, you two go cover our friends. Make sure they send help down for us ASAP if they won’t do it themselves, or send a transmission to Star if you see her.”

Slurry and Weas acknowledged grimly and peeled off in the direction of the shuttle. The numerical odds had been turned to the Rebels’ favor now, but in exchange for considerable damage to the Coronas’ fighters as well as failing shields. As if to emphasize that, not ten seconds after Slurry and Weas had left, Pellicer’s fighter was hit again. “Damn it,” he hissed, “I just got some shields back, but now they took them out again along with my targeting and sensors!”

Pellicer wasn’t the only one with problems. “Ten,” Darin said to Quiver, “you’ve got one. I’ll be right there.”

Darin twisted his X-wing around and settled in behind a TIE chasing Quiver. No sooner had he done so than he heard Ikoa say, “Nine, on your six. Hold on.”

Trying to ignore his astromech squawking at him in warning, Darin chewed his lip in concentration and randomly sideslipped to avoid the shots coming from behind as he simultaneously shot at the TIE ahead of him. This situation wasn’t particularly new to him, as he often allowed TIEs to chase him so they’d be distracted while Quiver snuck up from behind and picked them off. The wingmates called it their “bait game,” and between Darin’s piloting skills and Quiver’s gunnery skills, it usually worked pretty well. In the back of Darin’s mind, however, it felt a bit odd to have Ikoa being the one going after his pursuer now instead of Quiver. Not that he didn’t trust Ikoa, it was just...different.

After a couple of shots from the Imperial fighter ahead impacted Quiver’s weakening shields, Darin finally connected with a blast and sheared off one of the TIE’s solar panel wings, an action which sent it out of control and doomed the TIE to a fate as a crater. Almost instantly after that Imperial was fatally wounded, the TIE behind Darin punched through the last of Darin’s shields and managed to get one more shot off before Lt. Fyndcap took care of him from behind. That last shot hit the starboard hull just below Darin’s cockpit canopy and would have been instantly fatal had it been direct, but since it was only a glancing blow, Darin lived to draw another breath.

As the laser energy hit his fighter, his side canopy window shattered and exploded inward like a vicious, bloodthirsty snowstorm before Darin could even begin to realize he was still alive. He flinched severely as he felt himself getting showered with the transparisteel fragments. He heard a lot hit off his helmet and visor, though thankfully most of the shards flew forward and hit his cockpit console instead of him. The sudden gust of cold air inside his fighter threw off his control momentarily, and the abrupt change in pressure made Thumper’s ears pop. Botch beeped urgently as Darin wrestled the controls for a second and managed to move out of the sights of another TIE fighter off to his starboard. He noticed Quiver and Ikoa moving off to deal with that one and give him cover. The exposed parts of his face and neck and even his covered right arm stung, and the air howling into his cockpit was deafening, forcing him to turn up his headset’s receiving volume to hear the other pilots.

“Nine?” Quiver called in concern.

“Stand by.” Above the noise, Darin yelled to his R5-D4 unit, “Botch, you okay?”

Botch beeped quickly in affirmation, then went back to work trying to restore their shields.

“Good.” Darin took half an instant to brush some of the fragments off of his flightsuit, and in doing so he noticed some larger transparisteel pieces had hit his flak vest, which had thankfully done its job and protected him. But his heart sank as he also saw that his chestbox hose had been cut halfway through by a shard and punctured in numerous other places, meaning that between his permanently open window and the damage to his suit’s emergency life support, he could not reach orbit. He’d suffocate as soon as the atmosphere thinned out enough, and if the magcon field generator inside his chestbox was also damaged then he could freeze to death or die from the decompression. Darin quickly forced himself to stop wondering which would happen first as he reported his status to Mackin.

A little bit later, Slurry and Weas returned just as Mackin shot down the last TIE fighter, the one that had hit Pellicer again. “Lead,” Weas reported, “Star is nowhere in sight and didn’t respond to our calls, and there’s a small Imperial fleet up there. Our sensor readings were still scrambled, but it looked like a Nebulon-B, a Victory Star Destroyer and maybe something else, like a Star Galleon or another ship. Our shuttle managed to hyper out, but we can’t be sure that the cruisers didn’t see us. There’s still interference from the solar storm, but they might be able to compensate for that.”

“Okay, we need to get our people, regroup, and then figure out what to do. Five can’t jump, Nine can’t reach orbit, and we’ve got three down on the surface. Eight, take Two Flight and go get Three and Six. One Flight, we’re getting Four. Meet at Point Alpha.”

“Yes, sir,” Weas responded. Mackin, Ikoa and Pellicer joined up and turned southward to go after Kalre while Weas, Slurry, Darin and Quiver came together to head north and find Chopper and CC.

“Here’s the deal,” Weas told his flight on the way. “I’ll land by Three and help him out. Nine and Ten, help Six. Seven, fly cover for us. All of you, think of ways to get them from here to the rendezvous point.”

“Yes, sir,” came the chorus of acknowledgments.

As they split slightly and headed to their respective destinations, Darin said, “Looking back, I think your nerf steak mission was safer, Ten.”

“What?” Quiver said loudly. “I can’t hear you! Too much wind noise on your transmission.”

“Never mind!” Darin yelled into his mic. He’d tell him later.

Slurry flew by overhead, but when he was a few klicks away something flashed brightly, and abruptly his X-wing headed down, out-of-control and trailing smoke. The initial airborne explosion was heard a second or two later. By that time and before the X-wing’s ground impact was heard, Darin had hit the combadge on his sleeve and told the squadron, “Seven is down, unknown cause!” There was nothing those two could immediately do for Slurry at that point, so they focused their attention on helping CC.

The scene right in front of them was horrible. CC’s X-wing was basically nothing but a long line of wreckage strewn about from the first place the snubfighter hit the ground a short distance away. The largest piece–the piece they were most focused on–consisted of one S-foil, one engine and a large part of the fuselage, including the cockpit. It was almost completely upside-down, and the nose had dug itself partway into the ground, leaving a short furrow in its wake. Ruby, CC’s R2 unit, wasn’t even visible and with the X-wing positioned that way, the droid was most likely crushed underneath beyond any hope of repair. CC hadn’t ejected and they could still see her inside the buckled and crumpled cockpit, strapped to her upside-down seat and not moving.

The bent and twisted metal of the fighter’s canopy that had been driven partially into the solid ground refused to cooperate as the two wingmates tried desperately to pry it apart. After a couple frantic minutes of pulling and pushing and digging away at the dirt underneath, they finally cracked it open a little bit. Quiver got down on his back, and with difficulty the lanky pilot squeezed partway inside to look up at CC and check for a pulse.

“Darin, she’s in really bad shape!” he called, nearly in a panic. “Alive, but unconscious and blood everywhere. Bad head wound and barely a pulse. We’ve got to get her out!”

“Let me run back to my X-wing and see if I can find anything to cut the canopy with. Hold–” Darin’s combadge beeped, cutting him off, and then a series of urgent-sounding beeps and whistles from Botch sounded over it. As Darin stood and moved away, he hit his combadge and asked, “Botch, what–”

Quiver couldn’t hear any more of the conversation and put it out of his mind. Let Darin handle it. He was too worried about CC.

Quiver took off CC’s helmet as gently as he could, and then part of Quiver’s right sleeve became a casualty as he tore it off and with shaking hands tried to make it into a bandage for the nasty wound on her temple. He had no medical training, but even he could tell CC was in serious trouble. Whatever had happened had been bad enough to even damage the edge of her helmet in that area and shatter her visor. “CC?” he asked in a low, frightened voice despite his attempts to remain calm. “Can you hear me?” Quiver’s voice started wavering, and he only partially succeeded at forcing it under control as he pleaded, “You need to stay with me! We have to play that prank on Darin we were planning, remember? We’ll get you out of here. You have to be–”

He was cut off as Darin suddenly shouted fearfully, “Quiver! Get out! Hurry!” Darin grabbed one of Quiver’s legs and pulled hard, but Quiver was wedged in the small space pretty well.

“Ow!” Quiver yelled. He didn’t have time for this. “Darin, I’m trying to bandage this! Just go–”

“Ten, there’s a TIE right on top of us! Get out!” Darin pulled again.

Quiver reacted that time. Feeling the color drain from his face, he worked his way out of the inverted cockpit as fast as he could. Darin hurriedly took his arm to pull him to his feet, and then the ground exploded twenty meters off to the side from a laser blast from the TIE fighter approaching. The Rebels instinctively ducked down and flattened themselves against the hull of CC’s fighter as the TIE flew overhead and began a slow turn to come back around.

The two Coronas’ X-wings were inaccessible with virtually nothing but an area of open field between the pilots and the snubfighters. They couldn’t cross the space before the TIE could fire at them. The Rebels were now exposed between the TIE and CC’s fuselage, so they ran behind a piece of wreckage a few steps away that was large enough to shield both of them from the eyeball when it turned. It realistically wouldn’t protect either of them from a TIE’s lasers, but the psychological aspect of having some sort of cover was at least a little comforting.

Darin and Quiver held their breaths as the TIE approached again. They flinched as it fired a lazy shot well short of them that hit the ground almost in the same place as the first one. Then it was past them with a shriek from its engines and a gust of chilly, damp wind, and it continued its figure-eight maneuver. They moved the few steps back to again be better protected by the hull of CC’s fighter.

Quiver anxiously looked back and forth between the TIE and CC’s cockpit. “It’s trying to pin us here,” he whispered.

“And it’s doing a damn good job at it, too,” Darin whispered back. “There’s no way we can make it to our fighters.”

The strain in Quiver’s voice was evident. “CC’s going to bleed to death if we don’t get her out of there and help her.” His last words were almost drowned out by another laser blast hitting the same spot. The pilots ducked behind the smaller cover again, and once the TIE was past them Quiver started climbing to his feet. “I’m going for my fighter.”

Darin immediately reached up and grabbed the bottom of Quiver’s flak vest, then yanked him back down to the ground behind their cover. “Ten, no! You won’t make it!”

“We have to do something!” Quiver retorted.

“I know, but–” Before Darin could finish his sentence, they noticed that the TIE was spiraling up high into the sky, straight above them, and then it disappeared into the clouds. This was the best chance they’d likely ever get, and Quiver was getting desperate. Even Darin seemed to recognize that, since he let go of Quiver’s flak vest and scrambled to his feet along with him. Maybe at least one of them would make it since their fighters were on opposite sides of CC’s crash site, and the TIE couldn’t fire at both of them at once.

Quiver was fully intent on sprinting to his fighter and began to do just that, but before he had even taken two steps, laser bolts from handheld blasters came in at them, and he heard Darin cry out in surprise. Quiver couldn’t reverse his momentum quickly enough to stop gracefully, so he altered its direction downward, essentially tripping himself to flop to the ground. He turned and scooted back behind their small cover as fast as he could.

Darin was already there. His eyes were wide, and he was breathing hard and fumbling for his blaster. Once he had his weapon, Darin hit his combadge but only got static from a jammer. Blaster bolts still came in, peppering CC’s hull behind them and the front of their small cover. Their situation had just gotten a whole lot worse.

Quiver had his blaster out as well, but Darin only grimaced when he saw it. “Please, let this be the day you actually hit something with that,” Darin whispered.

“I can use it just fine,” retorted Quiver. To prove the point, he stole a glance over the wreckage they were using as cover and fired off some wild shots before ducking back down. “Imperial biker scouts,” he reported. “With speeder bikes, but stopped now. Too many.”

“Hit any?”

“Next time.”

Darin threw him a brief, helpless look that suggested he was still trying to figure out how his wingman could be such a good shot in his fighter but so horrible with a blaster. Thumper awkwardly leaned slightly out from the left side of their cover, fired a couple of shots and pulled back when a fresh Imperial barrage came their way. “I think I hit one in the leg. They’re on foot and advancing on us quick. We don’t have much time.”

Quiver gritted his teeth and leaned out as little as possible past the opposite side of the wreckage, shooting so much that it looked like he was trying to lay down his own suppression fire. Maybe he could make a break for his fighter...

A shot, most likely from Darin’s blaster, hit a biker scout in his chest armor, and he went down.

Not more than a second later, Quiver gave a short yelp of pain and quickly moved back completely behind their cover. Darin did the same to check on him. Quiver gripped his right lower arm near his elbow where part of what remained of his sleeve was blackened and burned away. A nasty-looking burn on the skin beneath from a blaster graze was also partly visible.

“Ten, you okay?” Darin asked anxiously.

Darin’s only answer was the sight of Quiver resolutely gripping his blaster even harder in his right hand and shifting his weight to start firing again. They were fast running out of time and options.

Darin also turned to shoot again, but before either of them could do so a voice a little above them and immediately behind made Quiver’s heart skip a beat. “Freeze, Rebel scum. Drop the blasters. Hands on your heads.”

Both of them froze. Stealing a glance over his shoulder, Quiver saw that two biker scouts had circled around behind them and were on top of the hull of CC’s X-wing. From there, they were aiming their blaster pistols directly down at the two pilots. There was nothing between the Imperials and Rebels to stop a blaster bolt, and at point-blank range the biker scouts wouldn’t miss. Quiver’s heart sank even as it hammered in his chest, and he slowly laid his blaster on the ground and put his hands on his head. Darin did the same. Neither dared moving enough to even turn around and face the two scouts.

The Imperials they had been shooting at emerged from the other side of the Coronas’ small piece of cover. One biker scout limped up and took the Rebels’ blasters, and another two cuffed their wrists in front of them after removing the combadges from the pilots’ left sleeves. Then they grabbed the back of the pilots’ collars and roughly hauled them to their feet. “Come on,” ordered one.

Quiver and Darin exchanged a frightened look with each other as they were pushed about fifteen steps away from CC’s wreckage. A quick glance around showed three biker scouts guarding them and the other two from the firefight walking toward the nearest speeder bikes, possibly to secure the perimeter or provide high-speed backup if needed. Astride a stationary speeder bike was another Imperial, holding his helmet and his blackened armor chestplate. He had a bacta patch on his chest, but his injury didn’t appear to be life-threatening: he was alert and was merely keeping an eye on everything. Finally, there was one scout crouching beside CC’s cockpit and peering inside at her, and another scout approaching him.

The two prisoners were thrown down onto their knees. From there, they anxiously watched the biker scouts next to CC’s cockpit. The one that had been looking at her stood up to talk to the newcomer.

Quiver tensed and asked, “What’s he doing?”

“Shut up,” one of the guards said harshly. “No talking.”

Agitated, Quiver shifted his weight from knee to knee. He looked around, trying to keep the action subtle, and desperately began attempting to map out a strategy in his head. How could they get out of this? Where were the greatest threats? How could they deal with them? How could they rescue CC?

From the corner of his eye, he saw Darin glance at him, looking scared. Quiver didn’t blame him. Darin also looked worried, and Quiver knew he knew what Quiver was thinking. True, they probably wouldn’t survive more than twenty seconds after jumping the guards, but Quiver couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. There was a chance they could make it. It was a small one, but it existed...

The activity beside CC’s cockpit caught Quiver’s attention again. The Rebel strained to hear what was being said over there between the two scouts, but they must have been using internal communications because Quiver couldn’t hear anything despite their relative proximity. What he saw told him a lot, though. The Imperial who had looked at CC shook his head and pointed to his left temple where CC had been injured. There was a pause, and then he shook his head again. He spread his hands as if to imply helplessness or uncertainty, and firmly shook his head a final time.

The biker scout with whom he was speaking just nodded and then knelt down as if to look inside at the injured pilot. In one smooth motion, he pulled out his blaster pistol, stuck it inside the cockpit, aimed directly at CC and fired a few point-blank shots.

“Aaah!” Quiver and Darin cried out and jerked back violently in horror and shock. Their sudden movements jolted the guards into action, and after a split second of blurry chaos each pilot found himself on his back and pinned to the ground.

Darin futilely struggled to get free. “You killed her!” he yelled. “You–you–” He spat out a string of curses, worse ones than Quiver had realized he knew.

Beside him, Quiver was shell-shocked. He was pale and shaking, and all that his brain was able to do was worriedly watch his wingman as much as his position would allow. Darin had a tendency when he was upset to become impulsive and do things they’d later classify as stupid, and Quiver was terrified of that now as he helplessly watched him.

As if to prove that Quiver had every right to be afraid, the Imperial who had shot CC stepped up to Darin and calmly said,  “Keep that up and you’ll be two out of three very soon.”

It obviously took a considerable effort, but Darin stopped struggling for the most part. His tenseness remained as he glared venomously up at the scout.

“You should thank us. We did her a favor,” the scout added.

Darin struggled a little more at that and swore incoherently for another few seconds, but the scout ignored him and turned to the guard who had remained on his feet to cover the other two. He continued to use his external speaker as he said, “Call our pilot up there and tell him to clean that up once we’re a safe distance away. We don’t need any surprises. But if he so much as scratches the two operational fighters, he’s in for it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The leader nodded, looked down at the other two guards and said, “Let’s go.”

All the voices seemed detached to Quiver, like they came from far away. He felt faint and was having trouble breathing. He numbly stumbled along, unable to escape the horrible scene that kept replaying itself in his mind. He could see the flash of the blaster inside her cockpit, hear the whine of the TIE fighter that started this nightmare here...

With a start, Quiver realized that he actually was hearing a TIE fighter. He looked back and saw the TIE diving toward the ground, straight at CC’s crash site. He stopped dead in his tracks, and his throat tightened even more.

Beside him, Darin had stopped and was watching wide-eyed as well. “No,” Darin breathed. Quiver hardly even realized it when he and Darin started distractedly struggling to get back to CC’s fighter, though there was absolutely nothing they could do at that point.

Just before it leveled off, the TIE opened up with its lasers. It hit the remaining fusial engine on what was left of CC’s X-wing, and the sight was enough to paralyze the two Coronas in the midst of their struggles. They squeezed their eyes shut not even an instant later as her fighter immediately blossomed into a miniature sun in front of them that proclaimed its combined birth and death with a deafening noise. The light died away almost as quickly as it had come into being, and a wave of dissipating heat washed over the group, though they were too far away to feel more warmth than that made by a springtime sunbeam.

A few long seconds later, the Rebels pried their eyes open and saw only emptiness where CC’s fighter had been. The two friends stood there and stared, silently watching as debris rained down after being launched by the blast. A large piece fell on Quiver’s stationary X-wing and looked like it hit one of the upper engines.

There was a void in Quiver’s gut as big as the crater marking where CC and her fighter had once existed. Everything seemed unreal, like it was part of a horrible, horrible dream, and time was moving in slow motion. All at once the galaxy seemed a cold, bleak, hopeless place.

The Imperials punctuated that thought with a shove to get the prisoners moving again. The other biker scouts were on speeder bikes, and they were towing the empty bikes and the one with the wounded scout aboard. They joined up with the group on foot, and together the captors and captives alike all headed in the direction of where Lt. Weas had landed to help Chopper.

As the biker scouts and their two prisoners crested a small hill a short time later, they came upon the place where Chopper had presumably landed after bailing out. Weas’s X-wing was sitting serenely off to the side, under Imperial guard. Chopper and Weas were also under guard with their hands likewise bound in front of them. The two Rebels and the group of Imperial biker scouts all looked up as Darin’s and Quiver’s group approached.

The Rebels scrutinized each other in concern while Darin and Quiver came closer to the lieutenants. As far as Darin could tell, Weas didn’t look injured.. He and Chopper were sitting on the ground, but Chopper’s left leg was awkwardly sticking straight out in front of him, and he looked like he was trying to keep every bit of weight off of it. There was also blood all over half of his windburned face; he apparently had had a rough time landing after ejecting. The parts of Darin’s face and neck that hadn’t been covered by his helmet or visor were littered with cuts from the shards of his canopy window, and his right arm had some larger cuts from the same source. Aside from Chopper, Quiver probably looked the worst: he had a large burn on his right arm and blood all over his hands, his face and the top of his flightsuit from when he was trying to bandage CC.

Quiver and Darin were shoved down next to Chopper and Weas while some biker scouts conferred and others guarded the Rebels. Contemptuous remarks were muttered in the Rebels’ direction, and it looked to Darin like the guards were just waiting for the prisoners to slip up or make a move, anything to give the guards the excuse they needed to lay into them. Or maybe Darin was just paranoid now.

Weas ignored the Imperials’ comments and continued studying Quiver. “You okay, Ten?” he quietly asked.

His first answer was a sharp kick from the guard nearest him. “No talking!” the Imperial commanded.

The other three pilots stiffened, tense, but that one blow was all that came, and Weas looked to be all right. Once Weas collected himself again, he looked at Quiver and raised an expectant eyebrow.

After glancing at Quiver, seeing the blood and figuring that was why Weas thought he was badly injured, Darin paled once more and looked at the ground, trying to mercifully blank his mind and also biting his bottom lip hard. When he chanced a look back up, he saw Quiver staring at the blood on his hands and clothing. The lanky pilot was shaking again, and he looked like he was going to be sick. Finally Quiver started blinking hard, then he furiously wiped at his eyes, turned away from the others, brought his knees up to his chest and awkwardly buried his head in his arms.

Obviously confused at Quiver’s actions, Weas and Chopper turned to Darin for some explanation as to what was wrong with his wingman, but Darin wouldn’t meet their eyes. He guessed that Quiver’s behavior combined with his own averted, disconsolate gaze and colorless face tipped off Weas because in his peripheral vision Darin saw the horrified understanding, or at least the suspicion, dawn on the lieutenant. Weas knew they had gone to help CC, and he obviously didn’t see her there with them; from Darin’s and Quiver’s reactions he had to figure she was likely dead. Chopper still looked puzzled.

Quiver didn’t move from his position and Darin wouldn’t look the others in the eye for the entire time they sat there, but before long, activity began to pick up around them. The biker scout leader announced that he called for a transport from the colony to come pick them all up, then he pointed out a relatively flat field about a klick away and said the transport would have to land there because the terrain around them was too hilly for it. In response, most of the Imperials mounted speeder bikes, and the ones on foot who were guarding the Rebels roughly forced them to their feet and started herding them toward the field. The scouts on the bikes took up positions on the outer perimeter around the group of prisoners and their guards.

The going was slow because Chopper was only hobbling along, needing to lean heavily on Weas for balance since he’d broken his left leg. The handcuffs made it hard for Chopper to hold onto the other pilot, and it made them a strange sight to look at: Chopper was essentially resting a lot of his weight on Weas by draping his left arm over Weas’s right shoulder. Weas seemed to be helping him remain steady by holding onto Chopper’s left wrist near the binders as well as he could with one hand.

Once Darin thought he heard a muffled beep coming from their direction, and when he glanced at them he saw both Weas and Chopper looking a little guilty, like they were expecting to be caught. Their eyes darted around for a moment, but none of the guards had seemed to hear the small sound through their helmets. Darin couldn’t figure out what was happening until he saw Weas’s finger tapping almost imperceptibly on the combadge on Chopper’s sleeve at his left wrist. That’s what the beep had been, and Darin felt a surge of hope. Either that TIE had held the jammer, or the Imperials had decided they didn’t need it anymore and turned it off. They also must have missed Weas’s and Chopper’s combadges or figured they couldn’t reach them while handcuffed. Weas was covering most of Chopper’s combadge with his hand to hide it from view, and somehow he or Chopper had shifted Weas’s sleeve enough so that his own combadge was on the underside of his arm instead of on top.

They were about halfway to the field and still in the hills when a considerably louder beep sounded. Weas flinched just a little, hurriedly shut off the combadge and moved his hand away from it, but this time the guard next to Chopper heard the electronic sound.

“What was that?” the Imperial demanded. He called for everyone to stop and immediately moved in front of Weas and Chopper.

Weas looked so calm and unruffled that he could have been filling out a maintenance log for all Darin knew, but he’d always had trouble reading the XO. Snubber simply replied, “My elbow hit a button on my chestbox. That’s all.”

Darin tried not to fidget. He wondered if the scout troopers would believe Weas’s lie, or if they knew that the buttons on Rebel pilots’ emergency life support systems did not make noise.

The scout regarded Weas and said in a cool voice, “Do it again.”

Weas obligingly moved his arm and hit it against his chestbox. When he did so, Darin heard him make a noise in the back of his throat, something approximating the beep from earlier.

The biker scout wasn’t fooled. He abruptly pulled Weas away from Chopper, who almost lost his balance and had to hop backwards to hold onto Darin for support instead. Then the Imperial patted Weas down and stopped when he came to the pilot’s arm. “They still have their combadges!” he yelled over his external speaker. “What idiot didn’t take them off?!” He quickly relieved Weas and Chopper of their combadges and inspected them with a cursory glance.

No one admitted the mistake, but it didn’t matter because the guard didn’t press that issue. Instead, he angrily turned to the group’s leader and said, “Sarge, this isn’t worth it. They’re not worth it.” He jabbed a finger at the Rebels. “We’re damn lucky that warm-up beep sounded and we caught this before they managed to turn their combadges on and call for help.”

That conclusion surprised Darin, but he tried not to let it show since it worked in their favor. He knew the combadge had probably sounded as the result of receiving or transmitting a signal, and they didn’t beep when being turned on or off like this Imperial thought. Maybe Weas’s earlier comment about the chestboxes making noise had stuck in the scout trooper’s mind, and he just applied it to the combadges without realizing it. The Imperials, or at least this one, might not be thinking that Weas had transmitted anything. Darin hoped Weas had actually gotten a signal through before he’d needed to shut it off.

However, Darin’s relief was very short-lived as the Imperial continued, “It proves we’re just asking for trouble by keeping so many prisoners. At best they’re a drain on resources, and at worst they’ll have something else up their sleeves that could injure or kill us. Does Command really need four? Can’t we minimize the trouble?”

The biker scout sergeant held up a hand and silence followed, possibly due to another internal comm conversation with either the other biker scouts or with Command.

Weas obviously hadn’t expected this turn of events. “Wait, you can’t–”

“Shut up, scum. We’ll do what we want,” the guard said.

A minute or two later, the leader turned back to the group. “Command wants them all for various purposes,” he said. “Listen up. We’ll choose one to take back for questioning, and we’ll keep another to make that first one cooperate and talk. The third will also be brought back with us, and tomorrow he will be used to set an example for the colony, showing them exactly what happens to Rebels and their sympathizers. That will be done live and in public, and to warm everyone up for it we’ll be executing the fourth one now, broadcasting it in the colony and recording it for rebroadcast when they need a reminder. It’ll be beneficial for the colonists to see their supposed saviors powerless and helpless. Dead or alive, all of them can be bait for any others on-planet. We’ll use the stun settings on the Rebels’ blasters to knock out the first three. If they resist or cause trouble, we are authorized to shoot to kill. Although Command wants them, they won’t put us in undue danger, especially since these Rebels won’t be alive much longer anyway. They’re only useful for so long.”

Darin hadn’t thought that things could get any worse that morning, but he’d just been proven wrong. He went white at hearing the news regarding their fates and reflexively took a fearful step back, only to be grabbed by his guard. He simultaneously tried to fight both his panic and the Imperial, and in turn he was held in place much more securely. Chopper was pulled away from him, and the other pilots were also being held more tightly from behind. Weas’s desperate protests of the Imperials’ decision were falling on deaf ears.

The sergeant turned to study the group of prisoners, and then another biker scout came up and checked each pilot’s rank insignia plate under his flak vest. Darin and Quiver, the two flight officers, were quickly dismissed, but Lt. Forsgren and Lt. Weas were both pointed out. The sergeant seemed to look at Chopper’s injuries, and then he shook his head and pointed briefly to Lt. Weas. “You’re the lucky one who’ll get to meet our interrogator.”

Weas was pulled a few steps away from his squadmates. Completely ignoring the brown-haired pilot’s struggles and loud protests, the sergeant said, “TB-793, unpack the recording and transmitting equipment from your bike and set it up for the big event. Now,” he continued casually, turning back to the remaining three Coronas, “two of you will accompany your friend back with us to the colony, and the last will get to smile pretty for the transmitter. So which of you wants to be our holo star? How about...” He waved in Quiver’s direction. “You.”

Darin inhaled sharply, and his blood ran cold. “No!” he all but screamed. “Don’t!” He had to stop them. He couldn’t watch another best friend be shot right in front of him. A surge of panic and adrenaline made him redouble his efforts to get away from his guard, and it felt like he was getting close to breaking free.

Darin actually seemed more upset than Quiver did. In a shaky voice, Quiver yelled at him, “Damn it, Darin, stop!”

He barely heard Quiver and never heard Weas’s and Chopper’s urgent calls of “Nine! Ten!” Darin was too focused on getting to his wingman. Half an instant later, he was snapped out of it when his legs were kicked out from under him and he landed heavily on his knees. Darin didn’t even have time to recover before he was shoved face-first to the ground. He still fought for another second or two until his guard solidly pinned him down and Darin felt a blaster put to his head. Then he instinctively froze.

“You have a problem with our choice, little Rebel?” the sergeant said mockingly. “Fine, we can change it. If you’re that concerned, you can take his place.”

Now Quiver was the one starting to frantically yell and resist, at least until the sergeant turned up the volume on his external speakers and said to Darin’s guard, “If he or any of the others so much as blinks before the transmitter is set up, shoot him.”

Darin would have swallowed hard if his mouth hadn’t gone completely dry. He squeezed his eyes shut, and the back of his mind wished the biker scout would get off of him so he wasn’t lying on his chestbox: his ribs didn’t appreciate it. He could tell there were considerably fewer sounds of scuffling from the other pilots due to the threat.

“That’s better,” the sergeant said. “TB-855, bring one of the Rebels’ blasters here. Looks like we’ll have to stun the other three now. It’s getting too dangerous.” He directed his voice at Darin. “As for you, if you believe in an afterlife you’d best make amends for your despicable life quickly.”

Some blades of grass, which were still damp from dew or the early morning rain and also completely oblivious to Darin’s situation, were tickling his nose like they were trying to get him to giggle or sneeze. Irrationally upset at the grass and just plain overwhelmed, the pilot started silently cursing this planet, the planet where CC had died and where he and the others were going to die as well.

Darin’s heart and lungs seemed to be racing each other, and then his mind decided to join in the competition too. His thoughts tripped over themselves in their haste to be articulated. How much longer was he going to be alive? Darin had had some close calls in his time as a fighter pilot, and while he had previously believed that he’d come to terms with his mortality as a result of that career, he discovered now that he’d been wrong. It was one thing to look back and realize that he could have died in a particular part of a dogfight, and it was quite another to look ahead and realize that he was going to die and couldn’t prevent it. The fresh memory of CC’s death also coldly and bluntly reminded him that none of them were invincible and none of them were blaster-proof. Thumper squeezed his eyes shut harder, afraid that he’d lose it if he opened them and looked at his squadmates. His whole life was going to be wasted just so he could be a propaganda tool for the Imperials. His one and only consolation was that at least it wouldn’t be Quiver or any of the others just yet. But what if they didn’t–

A sonic boom sounded, startling him. If that grass wasn’t still tickling his nose in a most annoying fashion, he would have thought the boom was the sound of him getting shot and that he was now dead. Suddenly there were nearby thuds of impacts against something hard, and the air was filled with the sounds of shouts and running and chaos. Darin opened his eyes just in time to see a huge red laser blast hitting the ground about twenty meters away and sending dirt flying everywhere. The smell of smoke and singed vegetation filled the air soon after. It was an eerie recreation of the TIE’s initial attacks at CC’s crash site.

The welcome yet deafening engine noise of an X-wing sounded overhead with a tremendous gust of wind following in its wake as it passed. It was out of Darin’s field of view, but it sounded like it turned to come back around.

Handheld laser bolts shrieked through the air right above Darin. The blaster was taken away from his head and more shots sounded, but he couldn’t see what was happening since the scout was still holding him down at the base of his neck, and he effectively couldn’t move. All at once he heard one blaster bolt come extremely close and hit something, and then the weight keeping him down was suddenly gone. Sparing only one glance at his dead guard, Darin frantically scrambled on his stomach toward his squadmates a couple of meters away.

The three Coronas’ guards were on the ground around them, either dead or unconscious. Chopper was awkwardly holding a biker scout’s blaster pistol at the ready, and the pilots were lying flat on the ground for protection from the firefight around them. Darin joined them, wishing Chopper’s leg wasn’t broken so they could make a run for it.

The four captives watched for any Imperials trying to sneak up on them, but it looked like the scouts were fully occupied with the wobbly snubfighter flying overhead. The Imperials were scattering to escape the X-wing and find whatever cover they could, and a few brave or foolhardy souls were trying to fire at the X-wing with their speeder bikes and getting fired at in return. Some Imperial casualties littered the hillside, a few with armor that was blackened to a crisp and others lying near shallow craters and half-covered with dirt.

The Rebels started trying to crawl away, but they stopped and flattened themselves again when one of those brave or foolhardy scout troopers sped by on a bike, not much more than five meters away. The X-wing fired once at it; the laser missed the vehicle and rider but hit the ground almost directly beneath it. The speeder bike was launched into the air along with a geyser of dirt. The scout trooper was thrown off, and he landed, unmoving, on his back a short distance away. The speeder bike fell, and its repulsor field caught it before it impacted the ground. Its engine coughed and sputtered but did not cut out, and without input, the bike floated there, stationary and pacified.

What started out as an angry mutter from Weas about their squadmate firing so close to them became an amazed whisper at their potential luck, and his mouth quirked into a small smile. He briefly scoped out the firefight around them, and then he turned to the others with a gleam in his eye that seemed out of place for the strict officer. “Let’s go! Hurry!”

Darin and Quiver obeyed and helped pull Chopper up as fast as they could. There didn’t seem to be any Imperials in the immediate vicinity who noticed them; the X-wing still held their undivided attention.

Weas reached the liberated speeder bike before the others, and he jumped on and quickly checked it over and prepped it while Chopper hurriedly hopped over with Quiver and Darin assisting. Weas didn’t waste time. “Listen up! Because of these damn handcuffs we need everyone. I’ll take the right steering lever and the accelerator. Nine, sit behind me, you’ve got the left steering lever. Ten, behind him, brake pedals. Three, in back, you cover us with the blaster. Ten, hold onto him. Let’s go!”

In any other situation, Darin would have stared at his XO incredulously. If he was feeling exceptionally brave, he might have even asked how something that crazy was supposed to work. But in this situation, he never hesitated. In the midst of Weas’s urgent demands for haste, Darin and Quiver lifted Chopper onto the back of the speeder bike, and then those two climbed on with difficulty between the two lieutenants. They were squeezed together and even then they barely all fit, and Darin could feel the speeder bike sink considerably under their weight.

Darin reached forward around Weas and grabbed the left steering lever in a manacled hand. To put it mildly, this was going to be hard.

Luckily they got going before Darin had a chance to think about it too much. “Hold on!” Weas called. “Release brakes!” Weas turned the acceleration handgrip, and the speeder bike jumped forward with a labored jolt. The four orange-clad pilots on the speeder bike now were hard to miss, and they could tell they had attracted the attention of more than one Imperial as multiple blaster bolts came in at them.

Weas brought the bike around in a clumsy right turn and began heading away from the engagement. The bike had obviously been damaged by the X-wing; between that and the weight overload they weren’t going faster than two-thirds maximum speed even at full throttle, but it was still much faster than if they were running on foot.

And it was still more than fast enough to send waves of terror rippling through the Coronas as they tried to steer it out of the firefight.

“Left, left! Straighten out! No, too much! Brake! Okay, let go! To the right now! Now left! No brakes, no brakes! Wait, brake!” Weas frantically acted as the control coordinator, and the speeder bike jerked around the Imperials and obstacles in their way, jostling the pilots onboard. Even their straightaways weren’t exactly “straight:” the speeder bike weaved and wobbled like all four of its operators were drunk. There was nothing smooth or graceful about the bike’s flight by any stretch of the imagination, and Darin could hear and feel the bike’s protests when they accidentally gave it conflicting commands, but they were getting away. No one said it had to be pretty.

By the time they crested the first hill and left the scouts on foot behind, the Coronas were beginning to get the hang of the controls and were better anticipating each other’s actions. The turns to avoid the occasional tree were more coordinated, and the straight stretches had a smaller amplitude of oscillation about the centerline.

However, two urgent sentences from Chopper interrupted their concentration and almost made their tenuous control disappear. “Another speeder bike coming up fast from behind! He’s starting to fire!”

There was no way they could outrun the biker scout. “Hard right!” Weas jerked the bike to the right as he said it, Darin released all leftward steering pressure as quickly and as smoothly as he could, and Quiver applied differential braking to help them turn even more sharply. Chopper fired some shots behind them.

The X-wing appeared in the sky, looping around from the side. When it was ahead of them it turned toward them, positioning itself for a head-to-head run with the underclassed biker scout after the Coronas would pass by underneath. But the Coronas’ bike was still in front of the X-wing and dangerously close to the starfighter’s line of fire, and Darin prayed the X-wing wouldn’t shoot quite yet.

In the middle of an evasive “hard left,” a laser blast from the Imperial bike hit the back of the Coronas’ bike directly in its repulsor drive. Quiver must have instinctively hit the brakes, because the speeder bike slowed abruptly right before the back half of the repulsors cut out, sending the aft of the bike plummeting like an old-fashioned puppet whose string had been cut. The rear of the bike hit the ground with a bone-jarring impact, bounced, hit again and finally started digging a trench while the nose of the bike remained suspended in the air over a partially-functioning repulsorlift field and dragged the out-of-control bike forward. There was no way for the Coronas to hold onto anything, and Darin had never wished for restraint straps so fervently in his life. In one final act of defiance, the bike bucked once, sharply, bouncing the nose higher into the air and sending the pilots tumbling off backwards with startled cries.

Getting his bearings after the spill, Darin heard two sounds converging on them: the X-wing from ahead and the biker scout from behind. He looked over at the biker scout and saw him suddenly peel off, going back the way he had come as fast as he could. The X-wing fired a warning shot well behind the Imperial to discourage any thoughts he had about turning around, and then the X-wing circled back to the Coronas lying on the ground.

The snubfighter locked its S-foils into cruise configuration and landed right next to the escapees. As they painfully pushed themselves to their feet and helped Chopper up, they saw Ikoa urgently waving them forward from her cockpit. They hurried forward, desperate to get away once and for all, but when they reached the X-wing they stopped, unsure how to escape with her.

Suddenly Weas jerked his head and pulled Chopper over to the snubfighter’s front landing gear. He quickly made Chopper sit on the skid and hold onto the strut. Weas himself ducked below the X-wing’s nose above him and stood precariously on the other half of the skid, wrapped a leg and his bound arms around it as well as he could for balance, and grabbed onto Chopper to help keep him put.

Quiver and Darin each ran to a main landing gear strut and sat on the skids. Even while sitting, Darin and especially Quiver had to duck down a bit as there was very little room between the skid on the bottom of the strut and the engine housing right above their heads. They also held onto the struts as well as their handcuffed wrists would allow.

As soon as it seemed like they were all set, Darin yelled above the wind caused by the idling repulsorlifts and engines up to the astromech, “Rudder, go! And keep the gear down!”

Rudder, Ikoa’s R2 unit, beeped in acknowledgment and quickly relayed the message to his pilot. Ikoa gritted her teeth when she read the message and realized what her squadmates were doing. She lifted up as gingerly as she could and moved forward slowly at first, then gradually picked up some speed as she became more comfortable with trying to fly low to the hilly ground while babying a nose-heavy snubfighter with a broken stabilizer.

Darin couldn’t remember ever getting motion-sick before, but the wavy, unsteady motions of the X-wing to which he was much too tenuously secured seemed determined to change that. The wobbling, when coupled with such things as the sight of the ground speeding by mere meters below him, the stinging cuts on his arm and face, the headache he was getting from the engine noise and the acidic residue in his stomach from the intensity and turmoil of the morning left him feeling pretty rotten.

The noise from the engine above his head effectively consumed every other sound, and he decided that he didn’t like the view very much either. He couldn’t do anything about the noise, but it wasn’t long until he just shut his eyes to block out the wind and the rest of the galaxy while he tried to hold on more tightly.

What seemed like a very long time later, Ikoa began to slow down. Darin pried his eyes open and saw that they were flying low over some treetops. The X-wing suddenly and unexpectedly sideslipped a few more times like it had been doing, causing Darin to close his eyes again and bite his bottom lip. He swore his heart would explode since it seemed like it hadn’t stopped hammering since he’d first lifted off from the canyon that morning.

Finally the X-wing hovered over a very small clearing in a forest, and Ikoa began putting them down very cautiously beside two X-wings covered with their camouflage netting. At long last the pilots felt solid ground beneath them again, and the strut-riders shakily exhaled in relief as Ikoa powered down her fighter and popped her canopy open. She called over to Mackin, Slurry, Kalre and Pellicer, who were approaching. Kalre was cradling his right wrist, and Pellicer looked sunburned and a little woozy.

Carefully unwinding his legs from around the strut, Darin lay back onto the ground and slowly rolled out from under the X-wing. As soon as there was murky sky above him again, he stopped rolling, tiredly shut his eyes and simply lay on his back on the wet ground, relishing its stability and firmness. A cold drizzle was falling, but at the moment he didn’t care; it actually felt good on his face. Darin’s ears were ringing from the nearly constant wind noise since his canopy had been blown open, and it was worsened by the wind and engine noise of the hitchhike after that, so he didn’t hear Quiver approach; rather, he sensed someone watching him so he opened his eyes.

Quiver was there beside him, looking down at him worriedly. “You okay?” he asked more loudly than normal.

“Yeah,” Darin responded just as loudly as he awkwardly sat up. “Just never realized how comforting solid ground can be at times.”

Quiver nodded. “So how’d you like the flight over the canyon?”

“I wasn’t watching. We’re on the other side of it now?”

Quiver nodded again and pulled Darin to his feet, then they walked over to join the other Coronas underneath some tree cover. Slurry and Ikoa finished putting the camouflage netting on her fighter, then they joined the rest at the same time as Darin and Quiver.

“Interesting method of transportation,” Commander Mackin was saying as the stragglers approached the group. “Seemed to work better than ours did. We kind of shoved Kalre into my cockpit with me, and Slurry decided to sit on top of Lt. Pellicer’s X-wing and hold onto his astromech. With four arms, he can hold on to anything, or so he claims.”

“What happened to you?” Weas asked Slurry. “Why’d you go down?”

The Bilgana crossed his upper set of arms, a human mannerism he was fond of, then winced a bit and lifted his arms away from his torso. “After right you all landed, a TIE came out of nowhere and shot me blank point. I did have not even time to transmit anything about it before I had to eject,” Slurry answered.

Mackin suddenly seemed puzzled and slightly alarmed, and then he looked around at all his pilots like he was searching for something. “Where’s Six?” Mackin asked.

The world stopped again for Darin as the question brought back the burned-in memory all too clearly. Quiver flinched, and Darin felt hot anger and painful grief filling the void in his stomach. Neither of them spoke.

Mackin didn’t miss their reactions. After a glance at Weas plainly told him the XO didn’t know for certain what had happened to CC but knew it wasn’t good, Mackin turned back to Darin and Quiver. “Nine? Ten?” he asked in a slow, careful voice, like he knew he was prodding a tender wound but had no choice if he was to determine the amount of damage and try to fix it. “Where’s Six?”

Nothing was moving. Even the breeze had become still. Darin could see that he and Quiver now held the Coronas’ full attention. They all watched the pair intently, waiting for the wingmates to deny their worst fears...but as much as Darin and Quiver wanted to, they couldn’t.

Darin looked down, but he could still feel all of the pilots looking at him, a silent pressure he couldn’t deal with right now. He didn’t want to think about this, and he didn’t want to talk about this. Saying it just made it real. He clamped down on an angry outburst that would have told the galaxy in no uncertain terms to just leave him alone, and then Darin fought to control the wave of grief that came in its wake, the grief that coldly and heartlessly reminded him that it was real whether he said it or not. One sideways glance at Quiver confirmed that and proved the past events weren’t just in Darin’s imagination.

Quiver looked away from the other pilots, though his bleak, pain-filled gaze didn’t seem to be seeing anything at that moment anyway. “Dead, sir,” he said weakly, shattering both the tense silence and Darin’s last hope that he’d been wrong.

“What? Oh, no, no.” Ikoa looked as shaken and shocked as all the others, but she was the only one who immediately voiced the feelings. She quickly turned around and wiped at her face.

“When you got there?” Mackin asked. His voice was carefully controlled, but a flash of shock and pain on his face betrayed his emotions.

When Quiver didn’t answer, Darin looked over at him and could almost see Quiver struggling to keep his emotions in check. Thumper swallowed and quietly answered the question for him while he tried to control his own feelings. “No, sir. She was alive when we got there.”

“What happened?”

Quiver still made no move to answer and remained looking at the ground, so Darin started fidgeting and haltingly replied, “She was unconscious and hurt badly. She hadn’t ejected and was still in her fighter, but before we could get her out of the wreck, the Imperials captured us.” He raised his bound wrists a bit as if to offer proof. “They moved us away, looked at her for a minute and–” His voice broke, and he shifted his weight again. Finally he tried to slow down his breathing, and then he forced out the rest in a tone that was so quiet that he couldn’t hear himself say it over the ringing in his ears. “They shot her. A few times. Real close. Then they called in a TIE and completely destroyed her fighter with her still inside.”

Though he didn’t even hear his own voice, he could tell from the appalled looks on the faces of the other pilots that he had indeed said it out loud. Darin felt himself getting overwhelmed with the memory again as everyone stared at him, his story slowly sinking in. Then, almost simultaneously, a few pilots jerked their heads around to glare accusingly at Pellicer, some of them less subtly than others.

The former Imperial pilot who was usually so disciplined and sure of himself jumped a bit and seemed to shrink back from the looks directed at him; his courage quickly returned, however, in the form of defensive anger. Pellicer straightened up, and his eyes blazed as he said loudly, “What? How is this my fault? I didn’t do that! I didn’t kill my own wingman!”

“No one’s saying you did, Shaun,” Weas said in a low voice, looking hard at the other pilots and silently daring them to say something to prove him wrong.

“Like hell they aren’t, Lieutenant!” Pellicer responded hotly. “Look at them! I’m the Imperial scapegoat here, just because I used to be one. I’m sorry to break this to you all, but I did not blow up Alderaan. Just like I did not kill CC. I am not those troopers! I am not the Empire! I’m on your side!”

Weas was about to respond, but before he could say anything Chopper angrily blurted out, “Why would they kill her?! Why not just take her prisoner like the rest of us?”

“Think for a minute!” Pellicer retorted. “You don’t need me to translate! If you’re an Imperial and you already have four other prisoners–” He stopped abruptly, and for a moment he visibly forced himself to calm down. There was dead silence as the other pilots slowly began to realize what he was about to say. In a more controlled voice, Pellicer continued at a more deliberate rate, “If you’re an Imperial, and you already have four prisoners who are alive, conscious and at least partially mobile, why would you waste bacta on just another Rebel prisoner from the same group who’s out, badly hurt and might not make it anyway?” He crossed his arms tightly and looked at the ground. “Look, I’m sorry, but your everyday generic Rebels aren’t worth the skin they’re wearing to some Imperials. Well, more than some. It’s just one more difference between us,” he looked up defensively again, “and them.”

Pellicer paused and shook his head almost imperceptibly in disgust. “Maybe you’ve all forgotten one little detail: she was my wingman, and I did everything I could to protect her in battle. In that respect, this fight was no different. I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough. I wish I had been. She deserved a hell of a lot better.”

Then he narrowed his eyes a bit and continued, “She tried hard to make me feel included when I joined this squadron four months ago. But if you all still just see me as an Imperial instead of a squadmate, then I guess all her efforts were wasted.”

No one had anything to say to that.

A minute later Darin looked away and, as much to break the uncomfortable silence as anything else, said softly, “And now you don’t even have to be injured for the Imperials here to decide not to bother with you.”

Mackin looked at him in puzzlement. “Nine? What are you talking about?”

Chopper took over, just as angry as Pellicer had been a couple minutes ago. “If Two had gotten there any later, sir, you’d have four less pilots to worry about. After we managed to signal for help, they changed their minds about how many prisoners they wanted. They were going to keep Eight for questioning and use two of us to set examples for the colony about the consequences of being a Rebel. One of the two was going to be executed right then and there. At a minimum, the two ‘examples’ would have been dead by tomorrow and likely all four of us from the way they were talking. In any event, it would have been long before any rescue could have come. Between their intended executions and what they did to Six, it’s clear they’d rather have dead Rebels than live prisoners. We can’t just surrender and hope for the best.”

Mackin stood there and took all that in. Another long, uncomfortable silence followed until Weas quietly asked, “What’s our status, Commander?”

It took a moment for Mackin to answer. He drew in a deep breath and sounded much older when he said, “We have three X-wings: Two’s, Five’s and mine.” He indicated Ikoa and Pellicer respectively. “We’re about 150 klicks east of where the dogfight started, with the canyon between us and the colony. This patch of forest was the only place we found on short notice on this side of the canyon where we could try to conceal the X-wings while simultaneously being surrounded by plants and whatever animals are here to hide our life signs from their sensors.

“They’ll certainly pick up any transmissions and triangulate the signal, so no communications of any kind, understood? We need to find another way to contact any friendlies or rescue parties who will come for us, as well as avoid the Imperials who undoubtedly are trying to find us and may even now be on our trail. We didn’t go to great lengths to cover our tracks.

“The rations available in each remaining snubfighter’s survival kit means that with...nine of us, we’ll each have about three meals, plus whatever is left from last night. Keep your eyes out for food, since we’ll need some very soon. Eat sparingly, but keep your strength up. We may have to hunt.” Mackin gave a small, sad smile and quietly said almost to himself, “CC would have been appalled at killing cute little forest creatures.”

Sobering, he looked Chopper over. “I doubt we have enough medical supplies in the survival kits to get you better, but we’ll do what we can. Everyone else, if you need medical attention we’ll treat you now. If you’re okay and not helping with the medical treatments, keep watch and start passively scanning the comm frequencies for Imperial or Rebel transmissions. After we get everyone patched up, we’ll see if we can find a way to get those binders off you four. And everyone, go ahead and stow your chestboxes in my fighter’s hold. You don’t need that extra encumbrance unless you’re flying.”

The pilots somberly responded, “Yes, sir,” and quietly got to work.

Darin headed off past Ikoa’s X-wing, and Quiver jogged over to catch up with him. “Where you going?” Quiver asked.

“Keep watch, do a perimeter patrol. I can’t do too much else with my hands cuffed together.”

Quiver fell into step alongside his wingman. “Aren’t you going to get looked at?”

Darin shook his head. “No, I’m okay.”

“If your arm hurts at all like mine does, you’re lying. Besides, how much transparisteel do you figure is residing in your face right now?”

“If your arm hurts so much, why are you following me instead of getting treated?” Darin asked in reply.

“I figured I’d wait and see how many supplies we have left after Chopper and Kalre get looked at. They sure need it more than I do. Scoop didn’t seem very well either.”

Darin just shrugged. “There you go. Same reason.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” said Quiver in surrender. “I should have known better than to even ask you why. My head just isn’t working too well right now.”

For the first time Darin took his eyes off their surroundings and looked at his friend. “Are you okay, Quiver? I mean, will you be okay? When something awful like that happens to a really good friend...” He trailed off, not knowing what else to say.

Quiver took a very shaky breath. “I just can’t believe what they did to her. How can anyone shoot someone in cold blood like that? It’s horrible! And then they–” He stopped talking as his voice started wavering, and after another two steps he turned abruptly and angled off in another direction around their temporary camp.

Darin stopped and watched him go, unsure of what to do. He’d never seen Quiver so upset before. If CC was there, she would have known exactly what to do, and Darin’s own ignorance in this situation made him feel like a very bad friend just then. Finally he sighed and sadly continued walking around the camp’s perimeter, figuring Quiver would just want to be alone for a while.

“You sure you know what you’re doing, Trip?” Darin asked the R4 unit apprehensively.

From his droid socket on top of Pellicer’s snubfighter, Trip beeped confidently, then deployed his cutting wheel and turned it on.

Sitting there in front of the astromech, Darin just eyed the whirring blade uneasily for a moment, then nervously extended his arms toward Trip, pulling his hands apart as far as he could while the wrist binders were on. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away.

“Darin, stop pulling back,” Ikoa said from where she was sitting on the fighter’s port engine beside him.

He opened one eye, forced himself to stop subconsciously leaning farther and farther back and brought his wrists closer to Trip again. He saw the droid raise the cutting wheel and aim it at the connection point of the wrist binders before he closed his eyes again. He caught himself thinking that he couldn’t wait until someone with a lower rank joined the squadron: even though he had been with the Coronas for almost a year now, he was still the lowest-ranking member, and the “rookie-goes-first” commands, even if done in good fun, had a way of wearing thin at times, like now.

Trip waited a moment, calculating the best approach to get the blade in the almost-nonexistent gap between Darin’s wrists. Finally the droid slowly moved the cutting wheel forward, and as he heard it getting closer Darin started chewing his lower lip anxiously. Yes, he was quite surprised his heart hadn’t exploded yet.

He felt the cutting wheel contact the connection point, and then he felt Trip pressing the blade forward to cut through it. Darin pushed back a little to accelerate the cutting process while simultaneously trying to pull his wrists apart even more. Trip beeped low and then whistled in triumph when the cutting wheel severed the bands’ connector. Darin’s hands flew apart, almost causing him to hit Ikoa.

Darin grinned in relief as he shook out his arms. “Thanks, Trip.” Trip beeped happily.

Ikoa took Darin’s arm and inspected the metal band still around his wrist. She cautiously tested the cut connection point with a fingertip but stopped quickly. “Ow, that’s hot. You guys will want to be careful so that you don’t cut yourselves: this edge is pretty sharp. Too bad we can’t get the binders off completely.”

“Well, no offense to Trip, but there’s no way I’d let anyone try cutting these off my wrists with a cutting wheel. Getting them apart was bad enough. I’ll live with them until we get back,” Darin said.

He climbed down so Quiver could come up and sit in Darin’s spot. It didn’t take long for the other three pilots to get their binders cut apart, even after a brief argument about whether it would be easier to hoist Chopper up top or to lower and then lift Trip back up to put him back in the snubfighter. Once they were done, Ikoa grabbed Darin and Quiver and pulled them over to Mackin’s X-wing.

Quentell Mackin was sitting on top of his X-wing and helping his droid do a couple minor repairs through the camouflage netting when he noticed Ikoa dragging Quiver and Darin in his direction. He paused and watched them in concern, trying to gauge how those three were doing in the aftermath of CC’s death. Ikoa was by nature a gentle, compassionate person who took every death hard, and CC had been her roommate on top of that. And Quiver and Darin...well, it was Quiver and Darin. A Trio wasn’t a Trio without three.

“Everyone’s pushing us around today,” Quiver moaned as Ikoa brought them to a stop.

“Stow it,” Ikoa scolded. She got out some bacta bandages from the medpack in the X-wing’s hold. None of them even seemed to notice that Mack was there above them. “You two should have gotten looked at before.” She bandaged the wounds on their arms and cleaned the dried blood off Quiver’s face and hands while he protested in embarrassment the whole time about how Ikoa was not his mother. She just laughed a little at him, more sadly than normal, and after she was done she leaned in close to inspect the cuts on Darin’s face.

“Don’t even start that sadistic little ‘does this hurt?’ game of yours,” said Darin as he blocked her hand suddenly coming up toward his face.

Ikoa smirked at him as she lowered her arm. “Well then, tell me, does it?”

“Yes.”

“That wasn’t so hard, now was it?” She winked at Quiver. “See? I told you they could be trained. We’ve finally taught him to speak on command.” Normally they both would have laughed at the joke, but neither one gave so much as a chuckle. Ikoa tried to smile, but Mackin could tell it was forced.

Looking back at Darin, Ikoa sobered and said, “Unless you really want me to, I’d rather not try getting that all out. We don’t have the equipment, and I don’t have the skill. I doubt Mack does either.” Mackin had to agree with that assessment.

“That’s okay. I’ll live.”

“How’s your shoulder?” Quiver asked Ikoa as he tapped very lightly on her left shoulder. “I heard you banged it or jammed it pretty well during the dogfight somehow.”

“A hit from a TIE rocked my X-wing pretty hard,” she explained. “It’s fine as long as I don’t move it much, and getting it wrapped helped. I sure couldn’t pull any pretty barrel rolls or anything with it like this, though, since the seat restraint presses against it. I’m better off than Chopper and Kalre, anyway: Chopper broke his leg and hit his head, and Kalre sprained or broke his wrist. Scoop got some radiation sickness, probably a combination of a laser hit today and that solar storm we came in during yesterday, and Slurry bruised his ribs pretty badly. All in all, we’re in pretty bad shape. If the Imperials decide to chase us, we won’t be able to run very far or for very long.”

As if on cue, Slurry called out from Ikoa’s X-wing where he and Rudder were scanning the comm frequencies, “Commander Mackin, we got something on the comm! It’s not good, sir.”

Mackin frowned and jumped down. The pilots all made their way over to listen, leaving room for Mackin to go up front to hear it better.

The broadcast from the comm system in the X-wing buzzed sporadically with heavy static and was barely intelligible. “The cruis–...–stant arou–...–anet. Betwe–...–bital mi–...fighter pat–...–ve total cover–...–bels can’t get in or ou–...–ing them.”

“Orbital mines? And was that ‘fighter patrols’? They’ve got us blocked in! We’ll never get out now!” Darin whispered fearfully, fiddling with one of his wrist binders.

“Hold on, don’t panic,” Mackin said firmly. He couldn’t afford to let things get out of control. “What kind of transmission is this?” he asked Slurry.

“Well, sir, Rudder found it while he was scanning the airwaves, and he’s been working for the minutes ten last to decrypt it. According to him, the level encryption was about what he would expect for frequencies military Imperial general. He’s not done decrypting yet quite, which is why there’s static much so. And the range is short too for us to be receiving it from far very outside this system. The odds are good very that it came from the colony or orbit. I do believe not there are planets other any within range of this signal.”

Mackin thought that over as Chopper said, “And not only can we not get out, but no rescue can get in. Now what are we going to do?”

“We should’ve gotten some blasters from the dead guards,” Darin said in a small, distracted voice, still sounding nervous. “I never even thought of it. But we should’ve. At least everyone would have a weapon.”

“A couple blasters aren’t going to make the difference between getting caught or not when you have who-knows-how-many Imperials after you,” said Weas. “Besides, we had other things on our minds at the time, like the X-wing buzzing us.”

“You’re welcome,” Ikoa said.

“All right,” interrupted Mackin, “here’s what we’re going to do for now.”

The Coronas quieted and gave him their full attention. They looked at Mackin with steady gazes, the kind of gaze that said they were simply waiting for him to lead so they could follow.

In front of him was a squadron with a reputation for being so fiercely loyal to its own that some superiors accused them of not being team players with everyone else and called them unreliable and undisciplined. Quentell Mackin knew better. They were disciplined where it counted and for reasons that mattered. His squadron was made up of the most dedicated, most selfless people he knew, and he was proud of the team he had developed.

Not for the first time, Mackin had disobeyed a direct order in order to do what was best for the squadron as a whole, and the Coronas knew that and never questioned him. There was something to be said for that kind of trust. It was the solid ground that made up the foundation of this squadron, and he would not let them down. Even after the death of a squadmate–a good person and a good soldier for whom he had been responsible–they still looked to him. Even after an event like that had shown them that he couldn’t protect them all the time despite his best efforts...

Commander Mackin took a deep breath. He’d failed CC, but he wouldn’t–couldn’t–fail the others.

“If that’s the tactical frequency for the Imperials here, we’ll have a huge advantage by knowing where they are and what they’re doing,” Mackin told his pilots. “Slurry, you and Rudder keep working on the decryption. We’ll listen for a little while to see what we can learn, and see if that even is the right frequency.

“We’ll have to start moving soon, but that means we need to find more places to hide. I would like to wait until nightfall to start out, but that’s a long ways off yet, and if it sounds like they’re coming close before that then we won’t have a choice. If you’re injured, rest now. And everyone, take whatever sensor data our X-wings have of this area and try to find some potential places to move to. I’ve got a couple datapads I was using last night that you can work with. Remember we can’t go far in one stretch: we’ll be carrying people on the outside of our fighters so extended flights would be hard for them, and extended terrain-following flights are hard on the pilot in the cockpit. We also don’t have detailed sensor data of other areas of the planet, and I’d like to stay in this general area for now because one, this is the first place a rescue party will look for us, and two, the colony is the only place that has technological resources we could potentially use. In the best possible scenario, the hiding spot will be able to drown out our life signs and hide the X-wings. I would certainly like to keep the fighters, but that may not be possible.

“We also need a constant watch now. At least two people are to be awake at all times.”

The commander looked at his subordinates, making sure his words were sinking in. “Just be smart and be cautious. We’re going to get out of here, everyone. I’ve seen this squadron do amazing things before, against worse odds than this. We’ll make it through if we all stick together.”

Most of the Coronas nodded silently before they all started off to their assigned tasks. Mackin watched all his pilots go, and then he turned his gaze up to the overcast sky through the drizzle, wondering how he was going to get them off this planet.