Here's the legal stuff again. It's pointless and has no real weight, but it's here anyway.

All non-original characters and locations are the properties of their respective copyright holders. Since no-one actually reads this, it's unlikely that I'm going to get sued over it, but please don't anyway.

Anyway…

Star Trek: Flight Line

Chapter Two: Retrieval

It had been three months since the war began. And it was going badly. The Ikari and other

vessels in the Second Fleet had been hit hard by Dominion counter-attacks and allied forces were being placed on a defensive footing. What was needed was something big to demonstrate they weren't finished yet. However, when the Seventh Fleet was almost annihilated in the Tyra system, things went from bad to worse.

Jon was sat in the locker room, reviewing a report he'd received earlier that day. The news wasn't good. He heard the door slide open and looked up as Taki came in. Like everyone else, she was showing signs of serious battle-fatigue. Her black hair stood in irregular spikes, rather than being flattened down as it usually was, and her ice-blue eyes seemed empty.
"Hey. What's up?" She seemed genuinely concerned.
"I received this this morning." He held up the PADD. "It's bad."
"How so?"
"The science vessel my brother's serving on was reported trapped behind enemy lines when the war started. Now it's been destroyed with all hands captured."
At that point, Mark put his head round the door.
"Hey. Get yourselves in here. We're being deployed again."

Commander Jeffreys was running through the latest briefing with the squadron.

"Starfleet Intelligence has identified a Dominion POW camp on Athos IV, within the Badlands. Therefore, at 0630 yesterday morning, Command gave the green light for a retrieval operation to take place, and a Marine Special Operations battalion infiltrated and secured the camp. However, it is possible that the camp garrison managed to send a distress call, so the extraction phase has been moved forward. Booster and Sakura, your flights will be responsible for securing the airspace over the camp so the extraction teams can do their job. Cypher, your flight will hold position at the return point and prevent any inbound hostiles from making it to the system."

Jon walked across the flight deck, geared up and helmet in hand, and found his attention drawn to the two black Danube-Class runabouts sat off to one side, and the heavily armed troops clustered round them. Each was dressed in a dark grey battle-dress uniform, with a black load-bearing harness. All carried a black helmet and a phaser rifle, along with a hand phaser holstered on the belt. Marine Spec-Ops, he guessed. He tried to ignore them, and climbed the ladder up to his cockpit, pausing to brush some soot off the nose art by the base of the canopy. It was a yellow boomerang, trailing what appeared to be pink leaves. Cherry blossoms, after his call-sign.

As the nine fighters and two runabouts entered the Badlands, three of them broke off and held position at the edge, while the rest carried on into the plasma storms.
"All craft, this is Booster. Standby to commence comm-out procedures until we reach the target. Go silent."
Jon tapped the flashing control on the panel, and heard a whirring noise as the communicator shut itself off. He then settled back and concentrated on following Booster as he navigated round the plasma columns toward the planet. It was the first time he'd been into the Badlands, and was almost in awe at the fact the space seemed to be on fire.

Athos IV was a world shrouded in fog, making it impossible to determine any terrain purely by eye.
"All craft, switch to thermal."
Jon hit a control on the panel, which swept a red line up over the canopy windows, allowing him to see through the fog. Up ahead, the beacon planted by the Marine unit already in the base pulsed gently on his HUD. Then he looked at his search sensor screen.
"Retrieval flight, this is Sakura. Proceed to the hold point until we can secure air superiority over the target. Current status is twelve-plus bandits in the vicinity, plus ground support."
"Understood. Good hunting."

The two flights accelerated as they closed with the enemy.
"Sak, drop you flight down to low altitude and deal with the guns. We'll take the fighters."
"Gotcha. Smash, Shunt, you heard Booster. Drop altitude to 5000, and watch out for the mountains." The last thing any of them needed was to smash into a rock face at several times the speed of sound. The ground turrets spotted them first, and soon they were dodging pillars of yellow and purple death, as well as the mountains.

"Sakura, Fox Two." The photon torpedo smashed one Anti-Air tank apart, the explosion scorching a fair bit of the immediate area. Jon then switched his comm from squad to open.
"Booster, this is Sakura. We're almost done clearing up down here, what's your status?"
"Hold on..." Mark's voice was strained, and Jon could see him struggling to shake off a lone Jem'Hadar fighter.
"I see your tail. Lead him down into the canyon, I'll give you support."
"Understood."

Jon watched Booster roll his fighter over and into the canyon, followed by the lone Jem'Hadar ship. He then yawed round to come up behind it, and chased the pair through the canyon as it twisted left and right.
"Come on... almost there..." The targeting sensor snapped onto the enemy. "Sakura, Fox Two." The torpedo lanced out and struck the starboard nacelle, knocking the craft off balance and sending it into the rock face. Booster pulled up and out of the canyon, and Jon followed.
"Rocker, Killjoy, status?"
"Sky's clear, but I don't know how long it'll stay that way."
"All right. Retrieval One, this is Booster. You're clear to land at the camp."
"Booster, this is Cypher. Make it quick, a Jem'Hadar patrol just entered the system. We can't intercept them without blowing the operation."

Jon watched the two runabouts touch down inside the camp perimeter. It seemed the Dominion merely re-purposed the old Maquis base on the planet as a prison.
"Two of the fighters just entered the atmosphere. Go dark." Going dark meant killing the engines on the runabouts and throwing up a jamming field. It made them undetectable to the patrol ships, but also meant that the fighters had no targeting capability if they had to intercept.
"Retrieval flight is good to go, just waiting on your green light."
"Hold up. The lead ship's running scans. All fighters, be ready to go loud."
Something on the lead runabout's panel beeped.
"Damn. They found us."
"Booster to all fighters. Go loud!"
The six fighters took off from various places round the camp and opened up on the two ships with a mass of phaser fire.
"Booster to Retrieval One, time to go. The Ikari will be waiting at the RV point."
"Understood."

The group cleared the atmosphere without incident. And then the contacts started appearing.
"Looks like we're going to have to fight our way out." Booster was being as hot-headed as ever. This might have explained his call-sign. That and the way he liked to fly almost everywhere on full burner.
"I'm not sure that's a good idea." Killjoy, Booster's No.3, was living up to his name.
"Killjoy's right. You wanna risk igniting the plasma streams?" Jon tried to play the voice of reason.
"Fine." Booster definitely sounded crushed. "We'll make a break for the RV point. Follow me."
The formation dodged round the plasma columns as they tried to make it to the edge and off to the carrier. But their pursuers weren't about to let them go that easily.
"Four... No, five ships closing fast at our six." Jon was getting frantic.
But no-one could have predicted what happened next.

Phaser fire lanced out of nowhere, as Cypher brought his flight round a plasma column.
"All right. Hit 'em again, and only take the shots you know will hit. Watch for the plasma."
The concentrated phaser blasts from all three fighters slowly tore the ships apart or drove them all over the place, the plasma streams doing more damage than their fire.

The Ikari sat just over the border, the only ship within a light-year. Which, really, was the point. That section of the border was chosen for their ingress precisely because it was so quiet. Eventually, the nine fighters and two runabouts crossed back over into Federation space, and alighted on the deck. The POWs all showed signs of major fatigue, most of them having been taken prisoner after escaping from ships in battle. Some less than others. More than a few vessels had been captured after being trapped behind the lines at the start of the war. Most of them were self-destructed by their captains to keep various pieces of intelligence, such as fleet positions, out of enemy hands.

Jon clambered out of his cockpit as fast as he possibly could, leaving his helmet on the seat behind him. Over to the side of the deck, the recovered POWs were being blood screened to make sure none of them was a Changeling infiltrator. But whoever he was looking for, wasn't there.

A few hours later, Jon was in the mess hall, staring out the window. Like all the other pilots he'd stopped wearing his regular uniform off the flight deck, if only so they could scramble that bit faster if the balloon went up.
"Hey, you OK?"
It was Taki. She'd managed to smooth the spikes out of her hair, although some of that may have been down to it being jammed under her flight helmet for several hours.
"Yeah, I guess."
"Thought your brother might have turned up in the group we helped rescue?"
"I suppose. But the more I think about it, the more I realise it was a bit foolish to think he'd be in the first camp we found."
"Well, maybe it gives you something to fight for?"
"You know what, maybe it does."