First Flight

[Malcolm Trippen]

"Three Flight, stay close." Malcolm was warey. He had no idea what to expect. The Dark Angels were nursemaiding Rear-Guard Squadron. With the situation at Bestine becoming more grave, it seemed as if Halo Force would be called into action before long. It was imperitive that the two X-Wing Squadrons were ready for combat. They were rookies, all of them, fresh from the Academy. They'd been assigned to Halo Force's carrier ship, the Asgard, merely as an escort force. But Halo had seen their greater potential. Now, they were undergoing intensive training to ensure that they would be able to go into battle when they were needed...and more importantly, come out of it alive, and victorious.

"Objective is ahead."

Malcolm glanced at his radar. A large, solitary asteroid floated there, a beacon attached to it to project an enemy signal. Its massive bulk showed up as a red blot on his radar. There would be fighters around too, but they were out of scanning range.

"One and Two Flights will scout ahead," the Squadron Leader ordered over the comm. "Nine...you and Three Flight are to lead Rear-Guard in for the assault against the primary target."

"Understood, Lead," Trip replied. Silently he cursed. He was being landed with the most boring mission. Three Flight would lead the way for the X-Wing assault. They'd done a training mission like this in the simulators before setting out. He knew exactly what to do.

Switching to Tac2, he began to issue his orders. "This is just like the practice run, guys. Rear-Guard, break by Flights. One will form up on Dark Angel Ten, Two on Angel Eleven, and Flight Three on Angel Twelve." He watched with satisfaction as the fifteen fighters under his command split, three quartets forming with a fifth fighter leading ahead of the others. "Three Flight, we will lead the assault. I will make a pass, and collect the telemetry we need. You will then follow, each of you leading your Flight in upon my command. Torpedoes and Missiles will be linked to dual fire, and will be launched when you hit half a klick from the target. As soon as you've fired, get your metal-clad butts out of the way. You don't want to be in the path of a Proton when it goes off."

"Understood, Nine."

Tightening his grip on the controls, Trip pushed his fighter forward, the speed of the A-Wing eating up the distance to his target ravenously. Eyes flicking between the starfield and his radar, he knew the exact position of each fighter the dots represented. Off in the distance to port and starboard, Flights One and Two flanked him, on the lookout for enemy fighters.

Trip frowned, squinting at his display, not at the target asteroid, but beyond it, in the distance. Several scattered yellow dots slowly resolved into red. His eyes shot to the universe outside. "Frell."

Slamming his fist into the comm unit, and slicing back his throttle to let his fighters catch up, he yelled an alert to his squadron-mates. "Code Red: hostile targets at 1.5 klicks! Repeat, hostiles at 1.5!"

Looking at his radar once more, he hoped with every ounce of his being that Starfighter training was better than it was made out to be.

[Travis North]

"Those dummies were to easy. How could any pilot consider that good training?" Flight Officer Tav Frenn said disappointedly.

"Quit your whining. We're lucky we even found this place. Patroling can get kind of dull... Hold up, starfighters just dropped out of hyperspace. It would appear the trainees have arrived. Cut your power and wait till they unload their missiles, and finish the asteroid. Go to full once they're in missile range. We'll give them some training they'll remember." The rusty voice of Flight Lieutenant Ket Janson crackled over the comm.

'Aye, sir.', 'Roger.' and double clicks of the comm were the replies of the TIE Defender squadron. The sleek model TIEs maneuvered into a staggered flight formation and cut power. The blue glow from the engines died and the group drifted slowly forward a few final fires from the reverse thrusters stopped all the craft. There they waited.

[Malcolm Trippen]

"What do you see, Trip?" asked his Squadron Leader, as Malcolm drifted in space ahead of the other fighters.

"I dunno," Malcolm replied warily, frowning. "I know I haven't done a training sim in a while, but I don't like the look of this." The dots of the fighters under his command closed in on him, the much faster A2s on the flanks edging in front.

The Squadron Leader chuckled. "You always get nervous on training missions. Trust me...everything will be fine. And Rear-Guard's got your six in case anything goes wrong. Thats 12 whole extra sets of shields." The Squadron Leader chuckled again, but it was a little forced. Despite his joking, his pilot-senses must have been tingling too. "Continue as planned, Nine. You are to close in and get the telemetry for your missiles. We'll deal with that drone wing."

"Wing, sir?" Malcolm frowned. "Don't you mean squadron? I only have 12 dots."

There was a pause. One of those long, awkward pauses. The kind of pause no one liked being involved in. After an age, the Squadron Leader's voice returned. "Proceed as planned, Trip...but be careful. Make sure you stay outside of laser range...they shouldn't have given us missile drones on this run."

Trip sighed, and nodded. "Understood, Lead." He edged his throttle forward again, and saw his pilots drop behind. With a flick of his hand, he loaded the first two of his concussion missiles - just in case. Then, hand gripping the controls tightly, he began his run, hoping against hope that some executive somewhere hadn't messed up. If they had, he was flying into the firing line of 12 missile-toating droid things. "At least they'd only be firing blanks," he muttered to himself.

[Travis North]

"Sir, they're targeting us with missiles. Should we get going?" Came the edgy voice of Flight Cadet Will J'Keth.

"No when they fire we fire taking out their warhead." Ket replied firmly. "Here they come. Take your targets."

As the fighters moved closer to the Defenders all the TIE pilots hearts started beating faster. They tighted their grip on their crafts' control sticks and got ready to power up the engines.

[Malcolm Trippen]

Subconciously, Malcolm braced himself as he entered missile range of the drones. Nothing happened. He heaved a sigh of relief. "Drones holding position," he reported. "I'm closing in on the..." He paused. Stared. His radar screen showed another target. He brought up the targetting controls. Scanned it. Enhanced the image. Had he been in an X-Wing, he'd have asked his Astromech to do the same. It was obvious the sensors were malfunctioning...what they showed couldn't be right.

"Was anyone using this run this morning, Lead?"

"Negative, Nine. They set it up, just for us."

"Then why am I looking at a shot-out drone?" Something wasn't right. He could feel it. He knew there was something wrong. There were drones missing...and this one looked like it had been attacked...

His attention returned to the 12 red dots on his scope. He swung the fighter round, flicked the shields forward, and picked the lead fighter.

"What are you doing, Nine?"

Malcolm's finger squeezed the trigger. "An experiment."

[Travis North]

"Sir we have a fighter moving to engage us. He's firing." Shouted Tav through the comm.

"That's our cue. Power up and open fire!" Ket ordered.

The battle had begun. The TIEs powered up and began firing at the enemy. Ket fired dual shots at the fighter that had launched the missile. The warhead was hit. It blew sending shards of casing all around. The vacuum of space was quick to react, as soon as the firy explosion had started it was out. Ket continued firing on the A-Wing. It was fast but not fast enough. Ket dropped shield power to zero increasing the output of his engines. He shunted a bit of laser power to shields to keep them up. He then increased laser power up a notch to keep them charged. The TIE moved swiftly.

The other Defenders began attacking the wingmates of the lead fighter. Soon the rest of the NR fighters would be alerted and attack them but before that would happen the big threat of the A-Wings would hopefully be gone.

[Malcolm Trippen]

A loud "Oh Frell" exploded from Malcolm's lips, as the missile of the TIE launched. Slamming his stick forward and left, and kicking the throttle to full, he rolled and dove, sweeping back on himself.

"Get over here now!" he yelled over the comm. "12 TIE Defenders. Rear-Guard..." He shoved the stick left, juking out of the TIEs line of fire. "Abort torpedo run...hold position for..." A foot landed on his right rudder pedal, throwing the A-Wing's backside across the stars. "...ranged assault on the hostiles."

The asteroid loomed in his viewscreen. The Defender had already chewed its way into laser range, and was closing fast. "How come I'm not in one of those A2's?" he muttered.

Eyes flicking quickly to his scope, he saw the two A2 flights slam into the Defender formation. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the glint of torpedo launches. Two hostiles had vanished from the fight, but nine were still there... "And the tenth is on my tail."

Flicking the comm again, he snapped his orders to Rear-Guard Squadron. "X-Wings...dogfight...A-Wings...help!" Then, scraping every ounce of energy he could into the engines, he hammered towards the asteroid.

[Travis North]

This guy is good Ket thought to himself. He pulled back on the controls and did a complete loop putting some distance between the A-Wing and himself. He switched to missiles and waited for a lock. The targeting scanner went red and he fired. Ket then broke off before he went in range of the X-Wings.

He rolled left and headed back to his squadron. He took a look at the his scanners. Two of his men were gone. An A-Wing had cut off Flight Cadet J'Keth and was in pursuit. Ket was to far away to move in and blast the fighter to bits, so he flipped his comm and ordered that he angle right and do a sharp turn around and head back toward him.

The rest of the squadron was in a battle royal with the other A-Wings. A mess of laser fire could be seen with fighters zig-zagging in and out. It resembles a bunch of birds swooping in and fighting over glowing bugs. Ket was impressed by the tenacity of both groups. He glanced back at his sensors J'Keth was coming in range and so was the A-Wing but then a blinking dot shot out from the green blip, a missile. Ket hit the comm and ordered J'Keth to do a loop again but it was to late. An explosion could be seen and all that came through the comm was static. Ket angled toward the incoming A-Wing that was now locking on to him but he was ahead a step he unleashed dual laser blasts on the A-Wing.

[Malcolm Trippen]

"Nine to Angel Leader!" Trip yelled over the comm. "I have a Headache on my six...repeat, Headache on my six!"

The Defender broke away. Now it was just him and the missile. All he could do now was run, and hope. But no fighter could outrun a projectile. Nothing could go fast enough...could it?

The words of an old friend filled his ears, one of his flight instructors from almost a decade ago. Your standard TIE can't outrun a missile, young Trippen. Nor can you. But when it catches up, you have something in the way.

"Shields fully aft!" he yelled, pouring every ounce of power from weapons, shields and engines into his aft shield arc. His ship stopped dead. Then it hit. A blinding white flash ripped through his cockpit. Trip thought it was the end. But it passed.

The cockpit vanished into darkness, his Fighter's power half-drained away. He punched in emergency batteries. A few systems flickered on. Ominous warning hung on a data screen. 'Shield Power = 0%' He sighed. "I'm naked in the dark," he muttered to himself. Faint comm chatter appeared in his ears, the emergency tranciever just managing to pick up the battle on its battery reserves. "At least I'm not deaf."

Staring at his radar display of the battle, he picked out the different squadrons. They'd been hit hard. X-Wings and A-Wings weren't any match for TIE Defenders. And without any kind of projectile weapons, the A2s could do very little to help. Who's stupid idea was that? he wondered. Three X-Wings were missing on his screen. The Squadron had graduated as a class. Though not the worst pilots in the NRSF by any means, they weren't the best, either. It looked to him like the Defenders had picked off the weakest pilots. No honour among Imps.

Then another light faded. Trip gulped. An A-Wing...an A2, in fact. His computer tagged it as Angel 5. "Five..." he croaked. "Please respond." But he got no answer. Dark Angel Five was no more. Trip glared at the Defender. A tag appeared. The same Fighter that had chased him. He growled. "You're mine."

* * *

Every ounce of availiable power was pumped into his engines. Hyperdrive, Repulsorlifts, Radio...everything he didn't need to exact revenge. His fighter roared through the vaccuum of space. He shot towards his target. Closing fast, he syphened off some power into his blasters, and primed two missiles. Then, with a loud battle-roar that he knew no one could hear, he let loose with everything he had, he swooped in on his prey, and fired.

[Travis North]

The alarms went off and that was all Ket heard before bieng scattered across the stars. Tav was in charge of the squadron now. With 6 fighters left and A-Wings and X-Wings closing a tough decision had to be made.
"All fighters pull out. We can't handle all these New Republic starfighters. Get a final lock on a fighter, duel fire a set of missiles and hyper out. We'll report this to command."

Double clicks came back and 12 missiles blasted toward the incoming enemy fighters. The TIE Defenders then formed up and preped for hyperjump. They all did except for two. Tav and another, Cadet Pax K'Tor. Their hyperdrives had been damaged during combat. So it was a long wait before systems could reroute power for a jump.

[Malcolm Trippen]

(Sorry it took me so long to reply...)

Two fighters were left behind, targets for what remained of Dark Angel and Rear-guard Squadrons. But they were too far away. Heading away as fast as their twin ions would carry them, the Defenders would be out of range and ready to jump before the others entered missile range. Malcolm, on the other hand, was between them and freedom.

Dropping his scope over the target, he aimed, and fired. His concussion tubes, set to fire one at a time, launched three missiles before he rolled his craft and aimed for the second. But it was gone. It had jumped to Hyperspace. He sighed, and returned his attention to the firework display that was the end of the other Defender. "One more Defender to paint on the hull," he muttered to himself. Swinging back towards the squadron, he sighed, and wondered who it was he'd just killed.

[Travis North]

Pax went unconsious when he entered hyperspace. The shock of just escaping death's grip had overwhelmed him. He awoke later in the medical bay of the Star Destroyer Pride. He jumped out of the bed. But was restrained by a nearby nurse.

"Calm down pilot. You've been out 3 days." She said.

"Where's Officer Frenn?" he asked.

"Who?" she paused, "I'm sorry but that person didn't return. Your squadron was hurt bad. There all off duty for the remainder of the week."

"Rebel scum. They'll pay." he mumbled, "When can I get out of here?"

"Shortly, you should go for a run in the gym. Get your muscles working." she replied.