24
In the Lap of the Gods (Revisited)

That was one hell of a fight. We'd been sent to the Round Table to flank and distract the Alliance and Empire during the second fight at Kalbe. For a few minutes there, the fight was in our favor. We outnumbered and outgunned the Empire's response force. Victory was all but certain until those two came. The infinity ribbon and the red wing, Antilles and Skywalker. When we heard that they'd entered the field, I knew that even if we won, any victory above the Round Table would be pyrrhic. I'd heard the stories, seen the holos of their early days. But we outnumbered them, five craft to two X-wings. I underestimated them and my men paid the price for it. My gunner died of his shrapnel wounds soon after ejecting. I don't begrudge them, though. Antilles and Skywalker are true aces, the best damn pilots I'd ever seen. Not many pilots in this galaxy can claim to have walked away from a dance with those two. When I was finally picked up by allied forces and carted back to base, I tried to get in another starfighter despite my own injuries just for another chance to fight them. -Cmdr. Gareth Uran, 12th Experimental Fighter Squadron, Maw Irregular Fleet

'Six more of our fighters just got shot down! Who took them out?'

'I can't see any new bandits on sensors. Where are they?'

'They're stealth fighters. Boost power to all sensor gear, they're there.'

Luke and Wedge cut through the Maw's fighter formations, scything through pirate craft and the Maw's TIEs with casual skill and precision. Rolling and diving, the two StealthX fighters pounced on a flight of enemy Y-wings setting a course for the Empire's carrier. Before the turret gunners could even line up a firing solution, Wedge led his target with his crosshairs. With the way these amateurs were maneuvering, he didn't need to close to laser lock range. He calmed his breathing, moved the stick a hair to port, fired, then reacquired, then fired again. Two cockpit shots. Luke bagged the other two Y-wings a split second later, sending them down in flames.

'Gamma Leader,' said one of the Imperial pilots, 'looks like support has arrived. Any ID on them?'

'Roger that, Gamma Nine. It's General Antilles and Master Skywalker. I say again, allied support elements are Skywalker and Antilles. Mark them on IFF as Red Leader and Red Five.'

'Just two craft?'

'Two X-wings are all you'll need, Gamma,' Luke said smoothly. 'We'll help clear out the enemy's starfighters. Have your Avenger squadrons save their ordnance for the enemy capital.'

'Roger that, Reds. Good hunting.'

To demonstrate Luke's point, the two Reds climbed then dove again into the thickest of the fighting, lasers cycling as fast as they could. With each pass, Luke and Wedge added flight upon flight of enemy starfighters to the ancient wreckage below. It was flying at its finest, the two StealthX fighters dancing and weaving through the melee with ease born of both Incom engineering and decades of experience. With each minute, a dozen more enemy signatures blinked off Wedge and Luke's sensors until finally, they punched a hole in the enemy's fighter screen, opening the way for the allied TIE Avengers to begin their attack runs on the Maw's capital ship.

The Maw had a Republic-class cruiser in the air. Cheap, easy to produce, and highly modular, the Republic was a common sight in military fleets, quickly establishing itself as the successor to the old Strike Cruiser design. Almost any military, private or national, could afford to purchase and arm one. Though it was often left in its stock configuration, one could expand its hangars by stripping out some of the turbolasers and associated components, allowing it to serve as a small-scale carrier at the cost of some of its heavy guns. But that was a target best left for the Empire's Avengers and their missiles and torpedoes.

'Hostile fighters approaching, eleven o'clock high.'

'I see them, Wedge.'

It was a team of TIE Bombers. Wedge and Luke heard their missile warning alarms almost immediately as the Bombers fired a volley of extended-range concussion missiles. The X-wings broke at the last second, pulling hard to the sides to throw off the concussion missiles coming at them, before arcing back toward the dupes. They were adopting sniper tactics, or the closest thing that could be called such in starfighter combat, no doubt to compensate for the TIE Bombers' relatively poor maneuverability and durability. That likely meant the Bombers also had proximity mines loaded or deployed to deter any close-range attackers. A frontal attack would be suicide.

Wedge noted that Luke was thinking the same thing, and they both cut their frontal approach short to flank the Bombers. As they closed to medium range, Wedge boosted power to thermal sensors on his visor display. In a gravity well, proximity mines relied on repulsorlifts to remain afloat, and the heat they generated from that made them easy to pick out. He saw one of the mines already deployed, a yellow elliptical blob on thermals. He fired, setting off the explosives, the blast damaging one TIE who had flown a bit too close to it. Wedge followed it up with a kill shot a second after. He switched to torps, acquiring a lock on one of the other Bombers and firing, then pulling up to lead the target as he tried to climb in an effort to dodge the missile. He needn't have bothered. Gate, his astromech, listed that TIE on his kill feed a moment later. Judging from two other explosions in the distance, Luke had vaped the other two.

'Wedge, my sensors are on the fritz. The display's turned into a solid mass of green. Anything on yours?'

Wedge steadied his fighter and glanced at his instrument panel. Nothing. His view was perfectly clear.

'Things seem fine from here. Looks like either an equipment failure or a jammer.'

As Luke formed back up on Wedge's wing, his display cleared up. 'Definitely a jammer craft.' He switched to the Imperial comm channel. 'Red Five to all units, be advised that the enemy has deployed at least one E-war craft in the area. We're taking a short break from the furball to hunt for it.'

'Gamma Leader here, we'll hold. Many thanks, Reds. Now it's our turn.'

Luke and Wedge banked and climbed, taking their fighters up into the clouds. There was no sense in deploying anything ground-based at the Round Table, which meant that the enemy ship was somewhere up high, distant from the fighting. As they rose, Wedge and Luke began to hear static on their comms, a sign they were getting closer. And then, as the static reached its loudest, Wedge thought he could hear a voice on the open channel.

'-Geist L-der-ft-d-red to -ge.'

Lock warnings. Luke and Wedge broke to port and starboard reflexively as they spotted a brief shimmer in front of them. A volley of laser fire passed through the space their StealthXs once occupied. TIE Phantoms. This made things a whole lot more interesting.

Four TIE Phantoms flickered through the clouds above the Round Table, their cloaking fields active and at full power. Their squadron's fifth craft was a Lambda shuttle, modified to fit an array of jamming and targeting assistance equipment. Unlike the two X-wings, their comms were working perfectly.

'Geist Leader to all craft. Enemy spotted. You're cleared to engage.'

'This is Geist Two, roger.'

They formed up on their leader, cannons fully charged. They had a lock.

'Good night,' the lead Phantom's gunner said. Twenty laser cannons, five per Phantom. No starfighter could stand up to that sort of firepower. The gunner fired on the nearest X-wing, the fighter with an infinity ribbon on the side, the sign that marked it as Antilles' fighter. The gunner blinked. Suddenly, the X-wing was gone. No debris cloud, no smoke, no flames. Where the hell-

There was an explosion to the side. One of the other Phantoms had already been vaped. How?

'That red wing!' yelled one of the Geist Team pilots. 'It's Skywalker. They have a Jedi.'

'Geist Team, break and engage. We still outnumber and outgun them. We'll make a name for ourselves as the men who shot down Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles.'

A Jedi and the Ace of Aces. This was going to be fun.

Over the years, Luke had been forced to divide his time up among family, the Jedi Order, and diplomacy. He'd had little time to indulge in the sheer joy of flying, unlike Wedge and the Rogues, who had spent more time in the cockpit than on the ground. He had to admit that he'd gotten a little bit rusty over the years, but unlike Wedge, he had the Force to guide him. Channeling its power, Luke focused on his senses, using the Force to improve his spatial and visual perception. To the naked eye, a fully powered TIE Phantom cloak was almost impossible to detect, but with the Force, he could see the telltale trails of their passage: a disturbance in the clouds, the slight refraction of a passing laser bolt as it passed behind a shimmering cloak.

There you are, he thought.

One of the Phantoms had broken to starboard, attempting to tail Wedge. He couldn't fix a lock on a cloaked Phantom, but then again, one couldn't lock on a womp rat in Beggar's Canyon, either.

'I see you,' he muttered as he pulled the trigger. His quad-linked shot wasn't an instant kill, but it did burn out its cloaking device. Judging by the way its shield bubble flickered and sparked, he had to guess that he'd tagged its shield generator as well. The Phantom was too fast and too slippery for him to line up a quick coup de grace, so Luke broke off his pursuit to hunt for the others, leaving the vulnerable TIE to Wedge.

He found the Lambda first. Easy kill. With most of its weapons replaced by electronics, the shuttle was a bulky, toothless, slow-moving target. In other words, torpedo bait. The green fuzz on his sensor display disappeared instantly. He could see everything now, and he and Wedge could communicate without needing to use the Force or yelling.

Artoo beeped happily, his message coming up translated on Luke's HUD: NOW TO MOP UP THE REST.

'Easy pickings,' Luke said.

He turned his craft ninety degrees clockwise and pitched it back towards the fight, which had come down to Wedge and one last Phantom. He could see on the kill feed that Wedge had vaped both the hamstrung TIE and one of its other wingmen already. Though the Phantom's extended cloaking time had overheated its thermal sinks, the craft remained supremely maneuverable, the pilot sideslipping and rolling, occasionally dipping back into cloak mode for a second or two when it cooled off enough to do so. This guy was good.

Suddenly, the Phantom dove down beneath the clouds and towards the furball down below. Luke and Wedge followed suit, struggling to keep the agile fighter in their sights. The other pilots had been skilled amateurs at best, but this TIE's pilot flew his Phantom like a natural, abusing its amazing maneuverability to the fullest. It pulled low over the Maw's pocket carrier as the Empire made its attack runs on the ship. Evidently, the Interceptors of Gamma Squadron had kept the enemy's fighter squadrons at bay, and now the Avengers were sowing missiles and torpedoes into the vessel's hull. Skimming just above the hull, the Phantom slipped and slithered behind turrets, shield generator domes, and other irregularities on the ship's exterior, using them for cover from the two X-wings' attacks.

'Luke, ordnance check,' Wedge said suddenly.

'Two left. You?'

'None. If I know my ship schematics correctly, we should be coming up on a sensor blister in a second. Torp that as soon as you see it.'

'I see it. Launching torpedoes!'

A pair of bright red darts lanced out from the StealthX's internal launch bays, detonating on a bulbous protrusion housing the cruiser's main sensor array. The concussion and shrapnel buffeted the TIE Phantom as it prepared to duck behind the sensor bulb, shattering its shields and tearing off a solar wing panel. Its engines flared once before flickering out. Before the Phantom crashed, Wedge saw two ejection seats launch from the cockpit.

'Alliance pilots,' coughed Geist Leader, 'good shooting.'

Wedge bobbed his wings once in acknowledgement of the Phantom pilot's skill.

'Antilles to Kynala Star and Gamma Leader, enemy elites and jammer craft down. We're out of ordnance, though, so we won't be much help with the carrier.'

'Star to Reds, shit-hot job with the furball. We'll finish things up here, General. Thank you for your support.'

'Any time, Star. Red Leader out.'

Luke and Wedge broke away from the fighting and turned their fighters' noses up, setting a course back to the stars. Luke steadied his breathing. He was drenched in sweat and his heart hammered in his chest, but he had to admit, that was the most fun he'd had in ages. Actually, no, the "most fun" honor went to Mara's first night on the Claw. But still, this was a close second. He opened a comm channel to Wedge.

'Hey, buddy, still alive?'