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.

Pellicer looked up at Mackin from where he was working with Darin, Chopper and Ikoa on going over sensor logs. Scoop had thankfully seemed less angry with everyone since Ikoa had talked to him a while ago. “We think we might have a place, sir,” Pellicer said. “Lots of plant and animal life readings, and it’s not too far away. We’re not sure of the exact terrain or the coverage, though.”

“Is it our best option?”

“So far, yes.”

“What direction?”

“Southeast.”

Mackin nodded. “From the reports on the comm, the Imperials are coming from the west. It’ll do.” The Corona Squadron commander looked between the four pilots. “The strut-riding, for better or for worse, seems to be the safest option we’ve come up with so far, if you can believe it. Eight will be flying your fighter until you feel better, Five. Two, figure out the strut-riding assignments, preferably putting a relatively healthy person on the same X-wing as someone who’s injured. Balance things out as best you can.” Ikoa nodded in reply. “Nine, go get Eight and Ten. They’re out on patrol.”

“Yes, sir.” Darin pocketed his datapad and jogged off to find them.

Ikoa had the assignments figured out by the time Darin returned with Weas and Quiver a few minutes later. Pellicer gave the new location’s coordinates to each person who would be flying, and soon they were ready to go. Weas, flying Pellicer’s fighter, was carrying Kalre and Slurry each on a main strut, and Darin and Pellicer each had a main strut on Ikoa’s ship.

Quiver shared the nose strut of Mackin’s fighter with Chopper, and as he grabbed onto Chopper’s flightsuit like Weas had done before, Darin heard him remark, “It should be easier without handcuffs.” Chopper nodded in agreement.

The X-wings slowly lifted up and headed off to their new location, skimming the treetops. They mainly used repulsorlifts this time with low engine throttle to try to minimize any engine emissions the Imperials could detect. The noise caused by the wind was still loud, but nothing like it had been with an engine running with substantial throttle right above the strut-riders.

They traveled for a while and the ground below them began to change. The forest thinned out, but each individual tree got bigger. More and more ground was replaced with murky standing water that had a vast amount of small green plants floating on it rather unattractively.

The three X-wings eventually came to a floating stop above a place where a small area of ground showed and a whole lot of stagnant swamp water surrounded it. The stink of rotting plants hung heavily in the air. “You have got to be kidding,” Kalre muttered as he surveyed where the X-wings were obviously going to land.

Mackin, Weas and Ikoa likewise assessed the area. They all opened their canopies, and Ikoa called to the other two, “There’s not enough room to get all three of the X-wings completely on dry land.”

“The important thing is to keep the engines out of the water,” Weas called back. “Can we put our sixes to each other, land on the dry part with the main gear and let the noses sit in the water?”

“Probably. Let’s give it a try,” Mackin said. “Let me drop off Ten and Three first so I don’t drown them.” He settled to the ground and called down to them. They moved off the skid and out of the way, then Mackin lifted up again.

Ikoa, being the wobbliest and therefore needing the largest margin for error, set down first, keeping her main gear on the exposed ground almost at the edge of the water to leave room for the other snubfighters. Snubber headed down next and mimicked her positioning, and finally Mackin landed beside them the same way. It was a landing that would have impressed any precision flying group: the X-wings were packed so closely together that someone could step from one to the other easily. The fighters were powered down, the camouflage netting was again brought out, and then the pilots joined up together on top of Pellicer’s X-wing.

TB-061 called his commanding officer over. “Major, they were here,” the biker scout said, pointing to some indentations in the wet ground of the forest clearing. “These are spaced correctly for an X-wing landing gear. It looks like they have three fighters, or at least one that landed in three different spots.”

Major Wendessin nodded. “Are the guards posted at the other X-wings we’ve found as I ordered?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Go find out. The Rebels will go back to them sooner or later.”

“Yes, sir.”

The scout trooper walked away purposefully, and the Imperial officer continued to wait for his people to find some leads, some indications of where the Rebels went. It was more challenging since the Rebels had the X-wings and were not forced to travel on foot, and ever since the Rebels had thought to turn off their small fighters’ transponders, they had been very difficult to find.

But at the same time, it was just a matter of waiting them out. Wendessin was confident they could not get off the planet unseen, and three X-wings and the other scattered survivors were no match for the number of Imperial forces here under his command. Besides, if the Rebels could have left the planet, they would have done so already. They were his, so he could be patient. They could not afford to be, which meant it was only a matter of time until they slipped up. He would find them.

Three hours later, the Corona pilots remained sitting sullenly on Pellicer’s camouflaged fighter, swatting at the incessant insects. Most of them were going through sensor logs to find another place to go, trying to concentrate through the never-ending irritation of the bug bites. Ikoa’s fighter hosted a flurry of activity as Rudder and Slurry monitored the comms from there and Kalre, Darin and Trip tried to fix Ikoa’s stabilizer. Mackin’s R2 unit, Bluehill, was sitting over in his snubfighter’s droid compartment, watching the other astromechs and beeping softly to himself like he was feeling quite left out.

“Darin, hold this wire so Trip can fuse it,” said Kalre, indicating a wire he was holding in place in the starfighter’s bowels. “I need to go scrounge a piece out of another X-wing to use here.”

Darin nodded and took hold of the wire, then Trip extended his arc welder and began working. Satisfied, the Rodian got up and went to have a brief discussion with Mackin. When those two began opening an access panel over on Mackin’s X-wing, Ikoa casually walked up to Darin and joined him where he sat on her fighter’s port S-foil.

“How’s it coming?” she asked.

Darin shrugged and swatted at a bug on his neck. “Your command relay box to the stabilizer’s automatic adjustment controls got fried. Kalre’s trying a few tricks to patch it up and reroute stuff, but we won’t know for sure if it’ll work until you’re in the air again. He went to go cannibalize a part from Mack’s X-wing to use.”

Ikoa nodded distractedly as if she only heard half of what Darin had said. Then she dropped her voice considerably and asked, “Is Quiver okay?”

Stealing a glance at his wingman who was sitting on top of Pellicer’s X-wing with the others yet apart from them, Darin just as quietly told Ikoa, “I doubt it, but I don’t know what to do about it. If I bring it up or try to get him to talk about it, it’ll just remind him, and I don’t want to do that. Besides, it’s not something I want to think about either.”

“None of us do. She was my roommate for over a year, Darin, and a good friend besides. Do you know how incredibly empty it’s going to be without her around?”

“Yeah, I do.” Darin forced his mind to stay on what Ikoa was saying and not wander back to the echoing hallways of his home after the Imperial occupation. He wasn’t looking forward to living through that empty sorrow again now, and he felt selfish for thinking that way, but he couldn’t help it.

“Sorry. Of course you do,” Ikoa said a little more gently. “We all have to get through this, though. Scoop is taking it hard because she was his wingman, but I know Quiver’s going to take it the hardest, and I don’t want to see something happen down here because he can’t deal with it. We at least have to let him know we’re there for him. You know him best. Have any ideas?”

Darin sighed a bit and removed his hand from inside the X-wing when the R4 droid finished with the wire. “I’ll try to figure something out. I’ll talk to him.”

Ikoa smiled. “Thanks, Thumper. And thanks for helping get my bird back in the air.”

With a shrug, Darin answered, “Kalre’s the one doing all the work. Besides, I have a vested interest in wanting you to fly level if I’m going to be strut-riding with you.”

After Ikoa returned to where the others were going through the sensor logs and Kalre came back holding a coil of thick wire and an odd-looking tube, Darin took a closer look at Quiver. Before, he had been going through the sensor logs on a datapad like everyone else, but now he was just sitting there, staring ahead blankly and looking miserable.

“Do you need me for anything else right now?” Darin asked Kalre.

Kalre shook his head. “No, Trip and I can handle this next part. Hopefully we’re almost done.”

“Okay.” Darin got up and slowly made his way over to Quiver, all the while wondering what he could possibly say to him. Quiver was the one that had the way with words, not him. What if he ended up making things worse?

When he reached Quiver, he tapped his wingmate on the shoulder, and when Quiver distractedly looked up Darin motioned with his head over to Mackin’s X-wing. Sighing, the lanky pilot reluctantly pushed himself to his feet and followed Darin.

Quiver also followed suit when Darin jumped down to the ground on the far side of Mackin’s X-wing, with both of them just barely managing to stay on dry land and out of the swamp water. When they finally had a relative amount of privacy, Darin looked up at Quiver and asked softly, “Do you want to talk?”

Walls that Darin had never seen before immediately came up, and Quiver glared at him. “No. I don’t. Leave me alone.” He started to walk away, but Darin quickly stepped in front of him.

“I’ve never known you to not want to talk. Besides, you’re the one always telling me not to keep stuff pent up.”

“Ask me later.”

Darin waited a heartbeat, and then asked, “How about now?”

“Stop it, Darin,” Quiver warned in a low voice. “This won’t help. Nothing will help now. She’s gone, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Something in his voice caught Darin’s attention. He studied Quiver more closely and finally asked, “You don’t think it’s your fault, do you?”

“How is it not?!” retorted Quiver. “I should have tried to get to my X-wing as soon as that TIE appeared. It would have given us the upper hand, and everything would have been different. I should have resisted more instead of just meekly surrendering and giving them the chance to do whatever they wanted. Or if I’d gotten her out quicker, we would never have been caught. They would never have gotten to her!” Quiver’s voice was now a mixture of grief, guilt and anger.

Darin shook his head a little. “Quiver, I was there too–I know what was going on! That TIE would have cut you down the second you went for your fighter. Fighting that many Imperials once they had us was suicidal. And there was no way to get her canopy open. We tried. It wasn’t possible to go any faster than we did.”

“Yes it was! There had to be a way! You can’t tell me she was supposed to die like that!”

That made Darin stop. “No, I can’t,” he said at last. “But I can tell you that it wasn’t your fault that it happened. Nothing you could have done would have changed things for the better back there.”

“Then what’s the point of all this?” Quiver demanded weakly. “If I can’t change anything, if I can’t help the people I want to, then why am I even here? Might as well just give up.”

“I didn’t say you can’t change anything. I said you couldn’t change that. There was nothing we could have done differently. No one deserves to die like that, but if you give up, then the Empire just gets stronger and that will happen to more people. It’s not your fault that she died. You did all you could. You have to understand that.”

Quiver didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he finally looked down at Darin, sniffled and said in a shaky voice, “I never lost someone that important to me before. Does it ever get easier?”

Returning his gaze somberly, Darin answered, “No, but it does get more bearable.”

Quiver humorlessly laughed once as he shook his head and blinked fiercely. “That made no sense, Niner.”

“Neither does this galaxy.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that.”

“Nine! Ten!” Weas called at that moment. “Come on, we have to go.”

“Think about it, Quiv,” Darin said quietly as they ducked under an S-foil to join back up with the others who were jumping to the ground in the midst of the three snubfighters. “You can’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault. I hope you see that.”

Quiver nodded half-heartedly, but Darin got the distinct impression he was just “telling” Darin what he wanted to hear. While Commander Mackin and Lt. Weas began organizing everyone to evacuate from the swamp, Darin realized just how alike he and Quiver were in some respects. Thumper’s whole speech about not being able to do anything for CC really sounded good in his ears, but it had only been created and given for Quiver’s benefit. Darin wished he could have convinced himself of those same points and lessened some of the survivor guilt in the pit of his stomach that honestly and silently agreed with Quiver. Already Darin had privately come up with a multitude of what-if scenarios that began with him doing something differently and ended with them getting CC out alive. He wondered if Quiver knew that Darin himself didn’t even believe everything he’d just said.

Well, Darin thought, even if we occasionally lie to each other about stuff like this, maybe we at least know each other well enough to know what the other wants to hear at times...or needs to.

Major Wendessin looked around the small clearing in the disgusting swamp as his biker scout teams combed the area. TB-061 stepped up to him.

“They haven’t been gone long, sir. We just missed them.”

The Imperial officer nodded slowly. “Once again, they just manage to squeeze past. What, do they have a mind-reading Devaronian with them or something?” He looked around again. “We can play Jawa-and-droid all day, Sergeant. All month. Much longer than they can. Just tell me where they went, and we’ll continue our pursuit.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll have a report to you as soon as we can, Major.”

With the exception of Pellicer and Ikoa who were out walking on patrol, the pilots were all gathered together in their new hiding spot, another forest clearing southwest of the swamp and south of the southernmost point of the canyon. It was dark out and the sky had partially clouded over, drowning out much of the starlight and turning the two moons into fuzzy blobs. Mackin could tell his Coronas were all exhausted, and Darin and Slurry were even starting to nod off.

“So what do you propose we do?” Quiver sullenly asked the Rodian. “Stop and fight?”

“No. We need to get away once and for all. Let’s face it: there’s no rescue coming. Special Forces didn’t seem interested in helping when they just took off, and–”

Chopper interrupted his wingman. “Yeah, that’s what started this whole mess. Why did they just leave like they did? Seems to me they could have helped a little!”

“If it had been anyone else calling the shots, they probably would have helped,” said Weas. “Special Forces is really good at that sort of operation. I just doubt Trainneer knows that: he just transferred in to Special Forces, and my impression from the little I’ve worked with him while this mission was in the planning phases was that this was the first SpecOps mission he’s commanded.”

“Wonderful,” Chopper muttered. “He’s already written us off as ‘acceptable losses’ or something like that, remember? So as long as it’s his say-so, no one will come for us. But then why didn’t the other commandos say something at the time if they could help?”

“I think they tried,” Mackin said. “I heard some protests in the shuttle when Trainneer was transmitting. His microphone picked them up in the background. But really, you don’t go against a lieutenant colonel’s orders.”

“Why not?” asked Chopper. “You did, sir.”

“And you let me worry about that, Lieutenant,” Mackin said firmly. “I’m not trying to incite a breakdown of the chain of command. It’s there for a reason.”

Weas offered one of his rare smiles, a small, amused one. “Unless that reason interferes with protecting your squadron, sir. Then an admiral is no different from a private. And we do appreciate it.”

When Mackin shot him a look that clearly said Weas wasn’t helping matters, the XO’s knowing smile got just a little bigger, but he relented, saying in a monotone, “But yes, I agree with the commander. The chain of command is the most important aspect of the Rebellion. Respect it, lest it smite you.”

“Anyway, as I was saying,” Kalre continued before anyone could respond to that, “Special Forces won’t help, and for all the Rebellion knows, we’re long dead by now or have been captured. If I was them, I sure wouldn’t risk sending forces in through whatever the Imps have up there to rescue a single fighter squadron who’s probably all dead.”

“Why not? We’d rescue them,” Darin mumbled, half-asleep.

This time, Kalre ignored the interruption. “It’s also obvious that we can’t escape on our own, not if we want to get everyone out. We should go to the colony and get help.”

“The colony?!” Chopper looked at his wingman like he’d just sprouted polka-dotted tentacles. “The colony? The same colony that said there was only a platoon of stormtroopers here? The same colony that also failed to mention the TIE squadrons, the biker scouts, the cruisers and the rest of whatever Imperial fleet is parked in orbit overhead? That colony?”

Kalre stared defiantly at Chopper. “Besides them, there’s no one that can help us.”

“Including them, there’s no one that can help us,” Chopper shot back.

“Hold on now,” Mackin said. “We have to consider all options here. At the very least, maybe we could send a signal from there.”

“We couldn’t get within ten klicks of the colony without being spotted,” Weas said. “Not with so many Imperials around.”

“If you just want to send a message, send up one X-wing and transmit it. Maybe they’d even be able to escape and bring help,” Chopper said.

Quiver shook his head. “Suicide against the forces we’ve seen so far. Then we’d be down another pilot and another fighter, all for nothing. And can we wait for someone to leave, gather help and get back?”

Chopper’s expression turned stony. “Then we can’t go forward, we can’t go back, we can’t stay in one spot and we can’t go up. We’re never going to get out of here.”

Mackin looked at him sternly. “We will get out of here. We just have to figure out how. For now, let’s wrap this up. Follow Seven’s and Nine’s examples and get some sleep.”

Darin snapped awake. “I’m awake, sir, honest!” he said in a rush.

The pilots couldn’t help but laugh a bit, and Quiver smirked at him faintly while saying, “This isn’t a briefing: this is the one time you’re allowed, even encouraged to be asleep. So cease and desist with the consciousness.”

Darin looked at him in bewilderment, then seemed to get very tired again very quickly as the scare wore off. “Oh.” He lay back down on the ground and was asleep in moments.

Mackin briefly chuckled at him before looking back at the pilots who were awake. “We’ll give the last watch to Nine and Seven. I’ll take first with Eight, and we’ll wake up two more to relieve us in a couple of hours, okay? Whoever’s awake, make sure you keep listening to the comm. Get some sleep, everyone.”

The pilots dispersed a little to claim a place to sleep. As Cmdr. Mackin and Lt. Weas walked off together to relieve Ikoa and Pellicer, Mackin looked at his Executive Officer and quietly said, “We need a plan, Steen. And we need it now.”

Kalre caught Quiver’s yawn as they sat out on watch. The airwaves had been fairly quiet, matching the stillness of the night.

Suddenly a transmission broke through. Quiver’s heart sank as they listened to it: there was a group of Imperials heading right for them. The two squadmates looked bleakly at each other before quickly going to rouse the others.

“Major Wendessin, we’re closing on them,” TB-045 reported not long afterward on a private channel. “We estimate they left this area not more than ten minutes ago.”

In his quarters, Major Wendessin rubbed his eyes sleepily as he listened over the comlink to his subordinate’s report. He’d been asleep, but he wanted to know everything as it happened and was glad his troops were following his orders to report major findings the moment they had them.

These Rebels were getting frustrating. Even in the middle of the night, they managed to just barely escape from under the Imperials’ noses. “Do you have any indication of the direction they went?”

“Not yet, sir, but we should have some leads soon.”

Another frequency came in over the major’s comlink, overriding the first. A different voice spoke up. “Major, we may have something.”

Commander Quentell Mackin listened intently to the Imperial’s transmission on the tactical channel as they flew: “Major, we may have something.”

“What is it?”

“We’re picking up a slight trail of carbade ions, used in hyperdrives. It’s not coming from any of our ships. It’s possible that if one of the Rebel X-wings has a damaged hyperdrive, it could be leaking. We can follow it right to them and be on them very soon.”

“Excellent work. Do so immediately.”

Mackin sighed inaudibly. Losing one of their available fighters would cost them dearly, but they’d lose even more if the Imperials tracked them with it. From what it sounded like, they wouldn’t have time to try to fix the leak, and Pellicer’s hyperdrive had been written off earlier as a complete loss so no one had even thought to try to patch it up. They’d have to be more careful and better anticipate the risks those decisions brought.

He looked around for a place where Weas could land the X-wing. They’d been flying northwest and were now on the southwest side of the north/south elongated canyon, which was about fifteen klicks to the east. The forest was becoming thinner, and the terrain was opening up into hilly fields. A minute later he spotted a clearing, slowed and caught Weas’s attention. They only had a limited number of hand signals for use during comm silence, but Weas understood the message and set the X-wing down.

Mack and Ikoa gently landed beside the leaking fighter while Weas quickly powered it down and secured it. The commander opened his canopy and called to Weas’s strut-riders, “They’re tracking the leaking hyperdrive on that fighter so we need to ditch it. You’ll all have to strut-ride with me and Two. Come on, time’s short.”

Major Wendessin bit back a curse as he flew with TB-061 on a transport to inspect the last camp area the team had found. Once again, these Rebels seemed to have anticipated his actions. They were flying that X-wing just a short time ago–what would cause them to abandon it? Now, no less?

He stopped as he thought of something, then thought harder, and the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. The Rebels had tipped their hand. He turned to TB-061 beside him. “Sergeant, do you get the feeling we’re being eavesdropped on?”

The biker scout paused to think that over, then slowly nodded. “It makes sense, sir.”

Major Wendessin took out a datapad and called up a map of the area. “Quickly, Sergeant. Indicate the Rebels’ last known location, the location of the leaking X-wing, and finally the location of our largest amount of forces.”

TB-061 immediately input the points, and after he had handed it back to Major Wendessin, his commanding officer smiled. “Excellent. So Group Gamma is to the west of where the Rebels seem to be going...Let’s test this theory, shall we?” The major opened a private, encrypted transmission to TB-045. “Lieutenant, we have reason to believe the Rebels are listening in on the tactical frequency. I want you to use a more secure line to alert Group Gamma to expect the incoming hostiles. We’re going to feed the Rebels enough false information over the tactical frequency to herd them in Group Gamma’s direction. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

Major Wendessin waited a minute to give TB-045 time to relay the message to Group Gamma, then he turned to the tactical frequency. “TB-045, I want our groups to the east and north of that leaking X-wing’s general location to increase their search areas and be alert. Remember they may have two other X-wings.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mackin frowned at the news. That last Imperial group was south of them at Pellicer’s leaking X-wing, and if there were groups east and north of there, it sounded like they were flying directly into more. They had to fix that.

He slowed and motioned for Ikoa to come abeam his fighter. When she did, he tapped the side of his helmet, pointed straight ahead to the north and then over to the east. Ikoa nodded. Then Mackin pointed to the west and gave the signal for “Follow me.” Ikoa nodded again, and the two of them gently turned westward.

After another five minutes’ worth of flight, static suddenly filled their headsets, drowning out the Imperial frequency they were listening to. Just as abruptly, their tactical scopes lit up with numerous red dots.

Mackin inhaled sharply when he saw the indicators of the Imperial ground forces dead ahead of them. Acting on reflex and momentarily forgetting about the strut-riders, Mackin made a sharp turn back the way he had come, and Ikoa applied full air brakes before pitching up and rolling to loop back around.

The strut-riders had absolutely no warning of what was about to happen.

One minute Ikoa’s snubfighter was flying calmly along just above the ground, and the next Darin felt like the fighter was trying to launch the strut-riders like proton torpedoes.

Ikoa’s sudden brake after serenely flying straight-and-level for so long caught them all by complete surprise. Darin felt physics turn on him, and only a desperate and instinctive grab of the strut coupled with his belt strapping him in place behind the strut kept him from flying forward off the skid.

As suddenly as it began, the forward momentum was replaced with backward momentum. The abrupt jerking made Darin’s neck hurt, and then everything began to slow to a crawl. Only the black night sky was visible to his tunneling field of view now, though it was hard to distinguish one from the other.

The next thing Darin realized an indeterminate amount of time later was that he was no longer in contact with the skid, and the engine housing above him seemed to be getting closer. This seemed like a strange thing for it to do, and he tried to raise a hand to block it from coming at him but he couldn’t move his arms away from the strut. That might have been a good thing, since then they helped him hold on when everything started moving sideways.

Air no longer wanted to go into his lungs for some reason, and his limited, greying vision wasn’t cooperating much either. He dazedly felt like he was swimming in a dream, in the middle of oblivion with no reason for being where he was, wherever that was.

From far away he felt cool air rush into his lungs, and he jerked as his brain started processing information again. Darin almost lost his balance as a result, and a panicked scramble kept him on the skid, which he belatedly realized he was sitting on again like normal. He shook his head to get the cobwebs out and forced his eyes to focus. Luckily his peripheral vision was returning, and he saw that the world had righted itself. The X-wing (right, that’s where he was) was level now and flying after the blue glow of the other X-wing’s four engines ahead.

Weas was still on the nose skid ahead, but over on the other main landing skid, Pellicer was having major troubles. His belt must have broken off since it was obviously no longer holding him to the strut at the waist. Scoop was half off the skid, holding on by his arms and by one leg draped over it. Darin could only watch helplessly as Pellicer struggled to climb back up.

Every movement of Scoop’s was calculated and deliberate, exhibiting a control Darin knew he himself wouldn’t have had in that situation. Pellicer first worked at getting his other leg high enough and positioned correctly to slip the ejection harness loop around the end of the skid. Once he managed that, he tested it out by putting a little weight on it, and to Darin it looked like the strap acted fine as a sling and seemed strong enough to support him. Pellicer must have come to the same conclusion because he then put more weight on it, which allowed him to shift his grip enough to get a better one. Once he was stabilized, he pulled himself up little by little until at last he was again seated on the skid.

Darin exhaled in relief, but knowing Pellicer was safe didn’t stop his shaking. He never wanted to go through that again, and at that moment, Darin doubted the Emperor himself could pry his hands away from that landing gear.

Mackin and Ikoa cleared the jamming region. All secrecy abandoned, Mack turned on his active sensors and got a good picture of the surrounding area, though it was barely visible in the dark. It looked to be mostly hilly fields, with a deep river valley far to the north that flowed south and eventually formed the canyon where they had originally landed. Right now, they were heading roughly northeast, back toward the canyon.

The Coronas’ CO knew they wouldn’t stay ahead of the Imperials forever. He decided to head to the river valley in the hopes it would give them a place to hide and maybe even slow down the ground forces pursuing them. Mackin kept his fighter low to the ground and turned a bit to enter the river valley from the south where it opened into the north part of the canyon so the Imperials wouldn’t have a straight line to follow to them. He saw Ikoa tucked in right on his wing.

The X-wings skimmed the planet’s surface until the ground dropped out from under them to form one of the valley’s walls at its narrow southern end. The fighters went into a shallow dive to bring them closer to the river and then gently turned north to go deeper into the valley. Shortly afterward, Mack noticed a huge waterfall ahead at the far end of the valley.

Mackin looked more closely at his sensor readouts. If he was reading them right, there was a cavern in the rock behind the middle of the waterfall that would be big enough for both of the fighters. It would be a perfect place if the sensors were correct: the rock would shield them from the Imperial scanners, and with both X-wings inside taking up so much space, it shouldn’t scan like a big empty cavern to the Imperials, so they might not even notice it.

He motioned Ikoa abeam of him again. They didn’t have hand signals that could communicate everything Mackin wanted to ask, but he tried to pantomime the rest to fill in the gaps.

Mackin saw Ikoa look at her sensors, then up at the waterfall. She said something to her droid and then bent her arm so that it stuck straight up from her elbow to her fingertips. She pointed to the middle of the vertical part of her arm, moved her hand behind and past it as if sending it through her arm, then stopped and made a fist with her pointer hand. She ended it all with a signal asking for Mackin’s confirmation.

The commander sighed. They needed a larger hand signal vocabulary. He hoped they were on the same page, but they couldn’t risk a transmission now that they were out of the Imperials’ sight again. It seemed like his wingman understood his intentions and that her sensor readout was the same, so he confirmed. She nodded in reply and moved back to her standard position off Mackin’s wing.

A moment later, the X-wings were aimed directly at the middle of the waterfall.

The Corona pilots riding on the struts peered through the darkness as the X-wings leveled out of their shallow dive and then turned slightly. Ikoa’s fighter moved forward for a few minutes, then moved back. They started climbing again.

Darin shook his head hard to clear away the ringing from the wind and engine noise and try to distinguish the other low sound he thought he was hearing. He couldn’t be sure, so he called over to Pellicer, “Waterfall?”

Pellicer listened intently, then nodded in agreement. “Yeah,” he called back. “Sounds like Wuitho Trifalls on Alderaan did.”

At first Darin didn’t think anything more of the dull rumble from the waterfall ahead, but after it became apparent that they were heading that direction he began to wonder what was over there to cause them to go that way. The waterfall was now visible in the darkness, looming up above them like a Star Destroyer standing on its aft with the tip of its bow pointing to the sky. The valley walls narrowed considerably, converging to touch the edges of the huge waterfall and the turbulent water at its base, which then flowed out to become the relatively serene river they were now flying above.

With each passing second, Darin’s curiosity started changing into nervousness and then anxiety as he watched the valley closing in around them while the X-wings unerringly flew straight for the middle of the waterfall.

“Um, Scoop? Are we going to turn?” he called uneasily.

Pellicer spared a glance at him before concernedly returning his attention to the wall of water. Apparently his thoughts were paralleling Darin’s. “I don’t know.”

Still the X-wings got closer. Now it was evident that the other strut-bound pilots noticed their course as well. They looked between each other and the waterfall ahead in distress, and Darin wondered if they too were itching to break comm silence over their combadges to demand to know exactly when Mackin and Ikoa had lost their minds. The situation couldn’t be so bad that they were going to fly them into a cliff to avoid capture, could it?

From underneath Mackin’s X-wing, Slurry yelled above the waterfall’s increasing roar, “Bluehill, are they awake?!” The droid’s affirmative beep came faintly back to them.

The X-wings slowed gently, and Mackin’s took the lead with Ikoa’s settling in behind; however, Darin noticed with a sickening feeling that they were still moving forward. While he trusted Mackin and Ikoa with his life and would have let them put a loaded blaster to his head without a second thought, this situation was a bit much. Jumping off certainly didn’t appeal to him either, and he was too afraid to let go of the strut anyway; instead, he just bit his lip and turned away. His heart would explode any second now. He was sure of it.

The nose of Mackin’s fighter went cautiously into the falling water, and it immediately lurched downward as a ton of water hit it from above. Mackin punched in the throttle for just one instant to keep the whole craft from plummeting as he yanked his stick back, and his fighter jumped forward laboriously, the nose clearing the water just as the aft got hit downward. He pushed his stick down and suddenly, after a couple violent bucks, one of which caused the nose to pitch up and hit the ceiling of the cave, the X-wing was through the water and inside a large, pitch-black cavern in the cliffside. Mackin quickly applied his air brakes, wrestled control back to stabilize the ship, turned on his landing lights and moved in as far as he could go to give Ikoa room to come in and land.

Ikoa took the lack of explosions as a good sign. She gritted her teeth and moved her X-wing forward into the vertical water where Mackin’s had disappeared, a little faster than he had. After the same difficulties with physics that Mackin had encountered, she cleared the water, accidentally ran her X-wing’s nose into the back of Mackin’s snubfighter, then forced her X-wing under control as well. She backed up on the repulsorlifts to give herself room to land and settled her X-wing to the ground behind the commander’s, blocking his in.

Slurry, Kalre, Chopper and Quiver had crawled out from under Mackin’s X-wing after he landed, an action Darin envied when Ikoa’s fighter came in and hit the other X-wing. Even though the impact wasn’t that great, it still jolted Ikoa’s strut-riders.

Once Ikoa landed, Mackin powered down his fighter and shut the landing lights off. While Ikoa likewise powered down her fighter in the darkness, Weas, Pellicer and Darin also crawled out and joined the others in collapsing on the damp, uneven ground.

“This is not yet the worst day of my life, but it’s getting very close very quickly,” Darin mumbled weakly.

“Am I the one only who got just wet really?” Slurry asked over the echoing, almost deafening roar of the waterfall. Scattered murmurings from the other strut-riders assured him he wasn’t alone.

Weas pushed himself to a sitting position when Mackin’s cockpit opened with a hydraulic hiss, and then Mackin said, “I just lost one of my laser cannons. It got sheared off in the waterfall.”

“One of my lower ones got bent downward. It’s useless,” Ikoa said. “And sorry for running into you, sir. I’ll take a look at it and see how bad it is.”

“You’re not the only one who ran into something,” Mackin replied. “I hit my fighter’s nose on the way in. Bluehill, next time we power up, do a diagnostic on the sensors, all right? They might have been damaged by that.”

“Next time,” Lt. Weas interrupted in aggravation, “next time, when you decide to suddenly go the complete opposite way, remember that your lowly strut-riders don’t have inertial compensators or enclosed cockpits or even decent restraints to keep them in place. And even if it means breaking comm silence on open frequencies, a quick little message to say, ‘Hey, don’t worry, we’re not really going to ram into that cliff,’ can go a long way for morale!”

“Next time?” Kalre said, just as upset. “There had better not be a ‘next time’!”

“I’m sorry, guys,” Ikoa said, sounding genuinely troubled. “I didn’t mean to do that flip. Force of habit.”

“I’m sorry too, Steen, but we couldn’t risk the communication,” Mackin said to his XO.

“Given an opportunity, strut-riders can see hand signals too,” Weas countered.

Mackin sighed. “You’re right–I just didn’t think of that at the time. The Imperials were hot on our tail, and we just barely outran them. But hopefully this place will keep us safe for a while.”

“Well, they sure shouldn’t be able to see us in here,” said Kalre. “I’m sitting here talking to you and I can’t even see you!”

Turning to Kalre, Mackin sternly silenced that discussion. “The lighting should improve once the sun comes up, Flight Officer. Just concentrate on the fact that we’re still alive. That’s a lot we have going for us.”

“Hey, Darin?” Chopper called softly. “Can you come over here?”

Darin draped an arm over his eyes in exhaustion. “Don’t make me get up,” he pleaded.

“Owww,” Quiver moaned.

Darin reluctantly rolled over, pushed himself up, and carefully and blindly made his way over to where he had heard Chopper and Quiver. “You guys okay?” he asked as he sat down beside them. In this area of the cave, the air smelled even more like a combination of coolant liquid and the big rocks on the ocean shores back home that Darin used to play on as a kid.

Chopper’s voice came through the darkness. “Quiver separated his shoulder during that little sudden-turn fiasco. I got it back in, but he needs it wrapped and some painkillers would help a lot. And I could really, really, really use some painkillers for my leg. Can you go get them?”

“Sure.” Darin climbed to his feet and slowly made his way over to Mackin’s X-wing, trying not to step on anyone on the way. “Anyone else need medical stuff?” he asked.

“I need a drink. A strong one,” Kalre said.

Darin reached the hold of Mackin’s fighter and got out the little remaining medical equipment, then he followed Mackin back to Quiver and Chopper.

While Darin held one of their emergency glowrods and helped the commander wrap Quiver’s right shoulder and put his arm in a makeshift sling, Mackin said to the squadron, “Okay, everyone, listen up. Seven and Nine, I want you two on watch. Keep listening to the frequencies, but we may no longer be able to completely trust them now. I don’t know where that last Imperial force came from–it sure wasn’t announced on the tactical frequency. Also, keep your eyes peeled for anything living in this cave. Eight, I need to talk to you. The rest of you, get some sleep.”