An hour later, they all met up in the hangar bay. They sat in one of the repair wells, a small, half-stair alcove that TIE fighters were sometimes parked on top of in order for mechanics to access their undersides better.
Talk was stilted, and over the next half hour none wanted to admit that they were nervous, none had eaten a full breakfast or eaten very little. They all checked their wristpads again and again, watching minutes crawl by to see if they were supposed to form up yet. They kept chatting about nearly meaningless topics- this instructor’s style, that cadet’s lack of sporting ability, all to distract themselves from the inevitable march of the minutes on their wrists and their appointments with the risk of doom, just as Porkins, S’Vip and Gaab had faced and found.
Unbeknownst to them, the five more experienced pilots watched them in their nervous tension. One or two of the older pilots smiled, recalling their own first missions flown when the Republic was still strong, the uniforms were different, and the aims of their masters weren’t in question or of concern. Other pilots either didn’t care, and one cynically wondered how many of them would die quickly in an actual firefight in space if things got truly ugly.
With three minutes to go, Dav stood and stretched, then looked at the four comrades he’d gotten closer to in the last few months than he’d gotten to any friends back home on Coruscant. He’d long ago realized that friends there were more for activities and convenience. Here, they were people you relied on and could tell just about anything to. In school, you chose your friends based upon how fun they were. Here, you chose your friends because they could save your life if things went bad.
With a minute to go, Dav walked to the piece of yellow line that may have been painted permanently on the deck a generation ago when the Adeptus was a state-of-the-art Star Destroyer. He snapped to attention, and then snapped his foot down and stood with his feet shoulder width apart, hands folded behind his back, and the now instinctive position of stomach-in, shoulders-back, chest-out, chin-up. Before he could get too comfortable, Hublin and Solo arrived. Dav wisely made room for Hublin to take his place as the right-marker, or corner position in the line, and Solo stood next to him.
In another few minutes, the five older pilots casually walked over to them and purposely stood in their own line in front of them.
Another long minute passed while they waited. Dav and his team stood at ease crisply, while the older pilots in front sagged a bit with the weight and tiniest amount of slack borne of lengthy experience.
“Squad, steady up!” shouted a voice, and they all snapped to attention. By now, most of them recognized the voice as Bast’s. Ironic, Dav thought. He and his team had seen more of the commander of their school in the last couple of days than probably anyone had in the last few months they’d been students there. And they were Four Flight, considered the least of the best, yet here they were ready to fly a genuine combat mission while One Flight slept soundly. While Freddik, top in the class, would be in a classroom this morning, they would be dropping real bombs on real enemies. Moreover, they…
“People,” Bast began, his voice louder and more commanding than they’d ever heard before, “today, you will go out and do this school, and the Empire, proud. You are going to dislodge a base that has been used for rebel scum to attack innocent citizens of the Empire. Remember your training, stay sharp, and do not lose focus. You, all of you, are the best of the best. Captain Grell will command his team under the name of Cresh wing, callsign Grey Leader, and Lieutenant Hublin will command his team under the name of Dorn wing, Callsign Black Leader. Collectively, you will all be incorporated under the 180th Black Sword Squadron, and have the callsigns Grey One through Grey Six, and Black One through Black Six, as will be listed in your on-board fighter computers. Any questions?”
Silence. They all stood at attention.
“Good. This mission should be routine. Remember, Dorn wing,” he said, looking at Hublin, who still stared to the front, “your mission is to drop bombs, not engage in firefights. The bombers are nowhere near as maneuverable as your fighters are. If your bombers engage a fighter, the likeliest statistical outcome is your death. Along with millions of credits worth of the Empire’s equipment, which is substantially worse, of course.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Now, get to your ships. You launch as soon as we come out of hyperspace. Cresh and Dorn wings, dismissed!”
They snapped to attention, counted silently, turned on their heels and walked towards their ships. Dav had been ready to run in order to look more efficient and eager for action, but when he saw that the other more experienced pilots had instead walked at a relaxed pace, he did so as well. Moreover, he realized that when he slowed down, the rest of his team had done so, too.
I’m the leader, he thought coolly to himself. They follow me. He remembered what Sportsmaster Tavin had said on his last day at school, that Tae-Jitsu boxing was Dav trying to be his own slingball team. He’d chided Dav for having leadership potential, but walking away from it to be a lone wolf.
Tavin knew me better than I did, Dav thought as he climbed into the cockpit. He looked up as they lowered the astromech droid into its socket on top of the bomber. When he heard the solid chunk! of the magnets releasing the R2 unit above, he knew the clock had begun ticking on his preflight check.
The Empire was nothing if not efficient, he’d heard again and again. He started going through the list of procedures, knowing that his performance from this point on would be analyzed and checked by at least a dozen computers. And, since they weren’t officially in wartime, he knew that a bored officer might just pore over Dav’s records, too. Best to be certain that everything was ship-shape and ready to roll out of the hangar, and that his record reflected the number of hours of practice he’d spent in the sims and with his datapad going over procedure after procedure involved in being a pilot for the Empire.
“Fuel level?” Dav spoke after he’d pulled his helmet on. His droid whistled in the affirmative. Jada had placed herself in the adjoining seat of the double-cockpitted craft, where she was having a simultaneous conversation with the droid about the bombs she was about to drop on the unsuspecting rebels.
“Clearance level Cresh?” Dav said next, ensuring that he wouldn’t be blasted to atoms by an automatic security system when he left the hangar. The droid gave another happy whistle.
Dav continued down the list. It was going to be a good day.
A good day for Rebels to die.
Bondo settled into the seat of his bomber and began his preflight check, after making sure that Norrin began his. Norrin’s job was to drop payloads if Dav and Jada were…
He couldn’t bring himself to say shot down. In his mind, the deaths of Porkins, Gaab and S’Vip were too fresh. He knew his job, though: Steer the ship as though it were like one of the larger transports back home, and get it to the destination and back again.
Norrin, feeling more than a little dwarfed in a seat that was just a shade too large for his skinny frame, started his check on his reading instruments. He would be the tech cadet for this mission, with the main job of analyzing anything that came their way, and advising Dav if anything were amiss. Stray asteroids would be easy for anyone to spot. Norrin had been studying up enough to know, say, if an asteroid was an ordinary rock, or if the readings on it were a warning that it was a harbinger of a comet, made of potentially explosive material, and the like.
Most important, Norrin could, after his many hours of study, check the energy output of a ship on his scope and correctly size up its threat level with a 97% accuracy, so far. No one had gotten a perfect score, but he knew he would be the first, if it were possible at all for a human.
A series of metallic chirps sounded through his helmet’s comlink, and Norrin smiled. “Hello, Rex. Good to know you’re there,” Norrin said.
Bondo smiled too. “I had a feeling that little droid would be joining us. You and him have a...something special, huh?”
Norrin just smiled. “I guess. I helped him out when we first got here, and he’s been lookin’ out for me ever since. Haven’t you, Rex?”
Rex whistled. The translation of his robotic language appeared on the screen.
“Yep,” said Bondo, “You’re right, little droid. We’ve got a pre-flight check to finish. Ready you?”
#
TO BE CONTINUED...