The clock was ticking as the battle above Nuldarra raged on. As Poe Dameron had hoped, the appearance of the devastating fighters from the New Republic combined with his own squadrons had definitely levelled the playing field. The added firepower from the Ackbar itself had also given a tremendous boost to what their own cruisers had been able to deliver, creating a second breach in the hull of one of the enemy's bombers. Fighters from both sides were zooming all over the space around the capital ships in chaotic dances. Small explosions were everywhere along with debris from dozens of destroyed ships.
"The cruisers can keep pounding that wounded enemy bomber.", Poe barked into his headset. "Any of you New Republic hotshots wanna give us a hand with a run on the other one?"
His channel was flooded with affirmative responses in about six different alien languages and he quickly changed his trajectory to lead a squadron on a run to the second, undamaged enemy bomber.
"Gray squadron, follow my lead and let's give our friends here a nice escort.", he called to his own squadron. "We're gonna come up from underneath their flagship and stay out of the firing lines of our cruisers. They're doing a decent job of picking off fighters coming out of its hangar."
The remaining six Gray Squadron X-Wings all fell into a wedge shaped formation on their commander's orders and about a dozen of the New Republic fighters coalesced into a formation of their own, slightly above and behind Poe's group.
"Here we go.", he said as they all accelerated towards their target.
"We haven't seen any firing from the flagship so far, so let's try to really hug close to its hull as we approach.", Poe called out to the group as they approached. "Hopefully they don't have any turbolaser batteries on the underside so we can swing out from under it cleanly and surprise the bomber on its left."
"Get ready to throttle hard towards our target after we clear the underside.", he continued.
As they approached the flagship and readied a hard bank to skim as close to the hull as possible, Poe was horrified to see that he had been mistaken. Quite a few heretofore unused gun mounts not only existed on the lower exterior of the ship, but also lit up in a hail of laser blasts towards the approaching group of fighters. Two of his own squadron were instantly vaporized before he could even blink and four stealth fighters were also disintegrated.
"PULL UP…PULL UP-!", he screamed, realizing the gravity of his mistake.
In unison, all of the remaining craft banked hard to avoid getting a single centimeter closer to the guns. The fighters broke their tight formation and attempted to speed away towards their intended target without taking any more damage, but one more of the large flying wings was hit. It immediately tumbled out of control towards the flagship's hull, accelerating in a deadly spiral until it impacted violently near the ship's hangar opening. A huge explosion rocked the enemy vessel at the area of impact forming a giant fireball that quickly expanded outward.
Poe adjusted his course, briefly letting himself feel guilt for being overconfident and getting people killed. Self-pity would have to wait until the battle was won, however. He needed to re-focus on the mission. Nothing else mattered at this point.
