Omega Sqadron Black Knights
Chapter 7

Lainy Kal’Ten woke before the alarm shattered the morning. She lay for a moment, eyes closed, savouring Ary’s warm presence. Opening an eye she checked the time, smiling as she saw there was still another quarter of an hour before they had to drag themselves out of the bed. She turned over, snuggling into him, head on his chest, listening to the dull thud of his heart against her ear.

Funny how things turned out… Yesterday morning she had been Lieutenant Commander Lainy Kal’Ten and the only thing that had really meant anything to her had been Omega Squadron. And the stomach churning headache of a hangover. Then the bottom had all but fallen out of her world – busted back to Lieutenant and stripped of her place in the Squadron…

And yet, here she was, happier now than she had been in a long, long time. Not that she wasn’t scared, because she was. In fact she was damned terrified. She had always pushed any thought of romantic involvement away, backtracking fast as soon as someone wanted to get close to her. And then Ary had pushed his way into her life.

She smiled, remembering the events of the previous morning. Don’t make me strip you and dump you in the shower!

And then had turned up at the end of his shift to see how she was and they had ended up talking for hours – until she had put on another pot of kaffin and turned back to find him fast asleep in the chair. She’d woken him gently, telling him that he would be more comfortable lying on the bed and that she had stuff she needed to finish before handing it over to Xen. He had been asleep again almost before his head had hit the pillow, although he’d woken briefly when, almost an hour later, she had lain down beside him. And she had fallen asleep with his arm round her.

"Morning," he muttered sleepily.

She propped herself up on her elbow, looking down at him. "Good morning."

"What’s the time?"

She glanced over her shoulder, "Just after eight."

"Mmm," he grunted. Then he sat bolt upright, knocking her onto her back, "Hells! I’m late for duty!" He scrambled across her and she started laughing, grabbing his arm and pulling him back onto the bed as he tried to stand up. "Lainy!" he began, pulling away. Then stopped as she only laughed harder. He glanced across at the chronometer. Oh-seven-oh-three…

"Lainy Kal’Ten, goddess help me…!"

But she was lost to hysterics, tears streaming down her face, hands clenched against her sides. Ary smiled, coldly. Standing up he dragged her out of the bed. She tried to fight him off but she was laughing too hard to have any effect. "Ary…" she gasped through the laughter, "What… what are… you… doing…?"

"Exactly what I told you I’d do yesterday. Dumping you in the shower!"

~ * ~

"You’re up early."

Xen looked round, smiling at Kaz as she sat beside her, looking through the glass of the observation port to the hangar below. "My room was getting a little claustrophobic," she told Hawkspar, "so I decided to go for a wander. I didn’t want to risk the Deck Officer’s wrath by loitering around the hanger, so I decided this was the next best thing." She sensed the coiled nervous tension in her CO and asked, "So what’s your excuse?"

"Hobbie Gee-Em hasn’t arrived yet," Hawkspar told her. "And we launch in less than two hours…"

Xen swore. "My sentiments exactly!" Kaz agreed. She stood up, crossing her arms and gazing down into the hangar, deep in thought. After a long moment she looked back at Xen, "If he doesn’t arrive, I’m going to leave you here, Xen."

Edraa looked at her as if she’d gone mad, "What?"

"I’ve flown with triples before and they don’t work. It’s safer to work in pairs. And if we get jumped it’s not going to make much difference whether there’s seven of us or only six."

"Boss…" Xen began.

But Kaz silenced her, interrupting, "I know that shoulder’s still bothering you."

Xen opened her mouth, then closed it again, saying nothing. Hawkspar had made up her mind and Xen knew her well enough to know that nothing she could say would change it. Kaz sat down beside her, "I know how much you want to get back into an X-wing, Xen. And it’s probably all going to be academic - Hobbie’s going to come sailing into the hangar any time now. But I just thought I’d warn you… of the possibility."

"You’re the Boss," Edraa told her, unable to keep a tinge of recrimination from her voice.

"Yes," Kaz countered, pushing herself back to her feet, "I am." She turned, walking down the corridor towards the repulsor lift, hoping that there would be one there waiting. Damn, she thought, Damn! Hobbie, damn it, where the hells are you?

~ * ~

The alarm pierced the soft red lighting of Shei Redav’s quarters and she rose from her sleeping mat with feline grace, turning it off. Nervous tension itched at her fingers and the base of her spine. She was flying an X-wing today for the first time and as much as she would rather have been in her beloved A-wing, the thought of flying the snub-nosed fighter thrilled her more than she had expected. Also, she had found a most profound sense of excitement in the simulators at answering the order to "Lock S-foils in attack position!" A-wings, regrettably, did not have that capability.

She glanced at the chronometer. More than sufficient time until the briefing…

She discarded the idea of having breakfast, knowing that in her present tension she would throw up as soon as the food hit her stomach. Instead she sank back onto the sleeping mat, dropping her breathing towards meditation. She was not of a warrior clan. There had been no true warriors among her people since they had all been wiped out in the Past Time of which no-one spoke but all knew.

But her heart was of a warrior and deep inside she believed that the warrior clans’ Ancestors would not prevent the Great Spirit from guiding her. Deep inside she believed that the Ancestors were rejoicing at the new sons and daughters who had risen to the call when news of the Rebel Alliance had finally reached Tridactr… The Ancestors would welcome them all with open arms. Otherwise the Guiding Mentors would not have sent Their blessings with those who broke the age-old taboo and left Tridactr.

Beginning to run through the guiding mantras, she directed her thoughts outward to the Great Spirit and across the vast distance to her home planet.

~ * ~

Lori Enilra stood in the Deck Officer’s niche, gazing out at the silent hangar and brooding X-wings. Within half an hour the place would be swarming with engineers as they readied the fighters for the pilots, double-checking everything to make sure they had missed nothing. The bustle would finish with frenetic activity as the pilots arrived, climbing into the machines and following the Troubadour out into space.

And then would come the waiting. She hated that almost as much as she hated the Empire. While the X-wings were here she could do her job, while they were out there was nothing she could do except paperwork. And she could never keep her mind on that for very long, thoughts always drifting back to the fighters… Had that stabilator held? Had those guns jammed again?

She laughed at herself. Face it Lori, you’re a born worrier. If it wasn’t the fighters it would be something else.

But she still couldn’t get rid of the images of the twenty-four X-wings that had left this hanger less that a week before - and the only three to return. Now they were going back out again. She was no tactician, she had no idea of the mission parameters. But four pairs of fighters weren’t a lot by any reckoning. She knew that Wedge Antilles wasn’t exactly happy with the situation. And if he wasn’t happy then she wasn’t happy.

Kaz Hawkspar had said nothing, but the Commander would have done all her grousing to Command.

Lori took another mouthful of kaffin, then pulled a face as she swallowed the now-cold liquid. Why the hells do I drink this stuff? It’s awful!

~ * ~

Ettie Soosaan walked her rounds through the crowded Home Two medical section, checking in on those who were to leave in a few hours on the Valiant Heart, the medi-droids preparing them for the journey. Ideally she would have kept them all here. But the medical frigate they were being taken to was better equipped to deal with some of these injuries and the Home Two was already running low on medical supplies.

Like analgesics and Bacta. Not to mention dressings and rehydration packs. Notrahw had assured her that the supplies were on their way, but when she had checked the list she had been horrified to see how little they were getting. And she had told him so. But it was the same story throughout the Rebel Alliance. Food wasn’t a problem; munitions were more difficult; medical supplies were almost non-existent. Just like living, breathing doctors and nurses.

She pushed the thought away, checking the dressing on a young ground soldier, smiling at his infectious grin. In two days’ time he would have a new robotic arm and be ready to fight again. "Will they be as pretty as you at the place I’m going?" he flirted.

She laughed, shaking her head, "Probably not. The medical frigate’s mostly medical droids. And I’m sure that charm of yours won’t work just as well on them!"

"Then can I beg a kiss before you leave me to my fate?" He looked up at her through dark lashes, giving her a coy come-to-bed-look.

Soosaan laughed again, kissing him lightly on the cheek. "Behave," she warned him, pulling away and walking towards the door, "I’ve got other people to see."

~ * ~

Maggs Ronnoc checked the data again, trailing through it to see if there was anything that would change the mission parameters for Alpha flight and the freighters. There had been no recent reports of Imperials in the sector where the rendezvous was to take place, but that meant nothing. There had been no reports of any activity near the Hoth system or Leoonstra and both those bases had been devastated by a sudden Imperial attack.

Which was part of the reason that most Rebel land bases were being deserted. The new Imperial tactic of sending out seeker droids had proved too dangerous to remain in them. Hoth, at least, had had some warning. Leoonstra hadn’t been so lucky. And so the Alliance was pulling its people onto these Mon Cal cruisers and the few Corellian frigates they had. The Home Two had one more stop and then she would rendezvous with the rest of the fleet.

Maggs found nothing to make her anxious about today’s mission. The Coral and the Austen were both making good time and the Valiant and the Troubadour would soon be boarding passengers. She loaded the rendezvous co-ordinates into datapads and headed for the hangar. By the time the briefing was over, the astro-mech droids would be loaded and ready to go as would the freighters.

This was probably going to be the easiest mission Kaz Hawkspar had ever flown.

~ * ~

Martellon waited impatiently while the pilots filed into the briefing room. He had very little tolerance for those who arrived barely on time.

When they were all seated, he cleared his throat to ensure he had their full attention. "Each of you has been chosen for the way you handled yourselves during the simulator training missions over the last few days. We have need of good pilots, those who show initiative, and a will to win."

He paused to let the pilots glow in their own egos. It was rare that anyone got praise in the Imperial Navy.

"All of you," he began, "have been running similar training missions in the simulators over the past few days. The time to utilise that training is upon us. In the simulators, you have been attacking Rebel ships that have had a small fighter complement. It has come to our attention that numerous such supply ships have been making for the same destination, a common rendezvous point."

"If we can destroy these supply ships before they make this rendezvous, we can deny the Rebellion their fuel, medical supplies and machine parts that they must need by now with all the losses and damage they’ve been taking." Martellon allowed himself a rueful grin at this point, thinking back to the recent foray with Omega Squadron.

Martellon continued, "We would very much prefer that these supplies did not reach them. We have been inflicting continuous damage on them, and want that to continue. These losses will hurt even more."

He summed up by recounting what all the pilots had been told upon the creation of their new Zeta Flight, "This flight is intended to perform short, surgical strikes against the enemy. Ones that they will not be able to recover from, or defend against. Questions?"

One bold soul decided to raise his hand. "Sir?"

"Yes Lieutenant."

"Is there some reason why we’ve all been training in Interceptors? Sir."

"Very perceptive," Martellon replied. "The TIE fighters are too limited in capability for these kinds of missions. The absence of hyperdrive capability means that they are no good. I say this because you will not be operating from a ship. You will be kept stationed in Hyperspace, with refuel stops every so often, during which you will stand down."

"We know that the Rebels have forgone the use of ground bases, after Lord Vader’s exercise with the droids flushed them out of Hoth, we have them on the run. It is expected that they are attempting to form some kind of organised fleet at a common location in the galaxy."

"You will be operating a series of these attacks, over the next couple of weeks designed to disrupt this gathering as much as possible. Our researchers are also working on upgrades to your Interceptors to give you more advantage. The first of these upgrades is that each fighter will be equipped with two forward Proton Torpedo launchers. The new tactic you’ve all been practising in the simulators is designed to take advantage of this. All fighters will fire simultaneously, thus overloading the shields at a single point. If this point is above the engines, then the rest will be easy."

"Questions?"

No questions seemed forthcoming, so Martellon dismissed the flight, and all fourteen pilots filed back out of the room, knowing that their target co-ordinates and flight plans will have been pre-installed in their ships. They all made their way to the hangar and boarded their fighters. Within a few moments, they were all ready for takeoff.

~ * ~