THE SKIES ABOVE CORUSCANT, 40 YEARS ABE:
As starships and proton torpedoes exploded all around, Rogues Eleven and Twelve stuck tight on one another's s-foils despite the irregular stream of sparks and smoke that poured from the port fuselage of the trailing ship. The white and green BB-8 unit that labored to repair the damaged stabilizer screeched and warbled unhappily as her pilot twirled their X-Wing in a tight spiral. Green lasers flashed past.
"We're almost through," Jaen reassured his astromech, "just hold it together."
Breha squeezed the trigger, unleashing a torrent of hot red lasers. Her X-Wing shuddered under the impact of the TIE Interceptor's glancing shots as the two ships screamed toward each other (literally, in the case of the TIE) across the battlefield. Sweat stung Breha's eyes but she didn't dare take her hands from the controls to wipe it away.
Her shots finally churned their way through the Interceptor's hull and the dark ship exploded in a burst of superheated gas bright enough to dazzle Breha's eyes. She plowed through the center of the blaze-being too close now to turn aside-and emerged, slightly scorched, with her astromech screaming.
"That got him!" a cheerful voice exclaimed. "Good shooting, Elev-" A burst of static devoured the rest of Rogue Six's words as his X-Wing exploded even more spectacularly than the Interceptor. Two TIEs came tearing through the fiery space where he had been, their lasers cycling fast.
Breha swore and rolled her ship away in the nick of time. The potshot she took on the way went wide, glancing off the omnipresent backdrop of the Super Star Destroyer's shields.
"Rogues, report!" Commander Dameron's voice cut-off Breha's muttered curses. "Who's left?"
"Rogue Nine here, commander! I've got Four with me, her comms are out and we've both lost our wings-"
"Rogue Five still here, sir, but my hyperdrive is toast. Got some nasty fuel spill-over into my sublights, too big for the droid to fix. I'm not going anywhere in this tub, sir."
"Head planetside then, Five," Poe ordered, absently dropping his X-Wing into a barrel roll to avoid a swath of turbolaser fire from one of the capital ships. His wingmate followed without comment, sticking so close to his stern that the nose of her X-Wing reddened in the thruster wash. "Take your wing with you, he can-"
"Six is dead, sir." Rogue Five's voice rasps harshly with the effort of maintaining control. "And I'm not running away."
"You're no good to us without a hyperdrive, Five-"
"I can do plenty of damage up here on sublights, sir."
"Kriffing he-fine . Form-up with-"
"Negative, sir," Five interrupted again. "With the way these drives are overheating, I'm a floating thermal detonator. Better if none of you get too close, sir."
"Then throttle back and head dirtside, dammit," Poe said briskly, seemingly unbothered by the tight spin he had thrown his X-Wing into. Leeso mirrored his actions a ship-length behind, the two of them cleaving through a pair of TIEs who scattered like startled birds. Jaen snapped off a quick shot that burned a hole through one solar array as their ships passed but the damage was only superficial; the TIE made one of those impossibly-quick turns that no X-Wing pilot could replicate and flipped over, coming back to return the favor, and flew directly into Breha's lasers. The Imperial snubfighter spun away, one side on fire.
Breha spared a glance for the rest of the squadron and was in time to hear Five say, "Sorry sir." His voice was suddenly bright and cheery. "Looks like there's something wrong with my comm, too. You're not coming through clearly. Did you say, take as many of the bastards with you as you can?"
"Five, I order you to-"
But whatever Commander Dameron was going to say next, Five would never know. He dove directly for a squadron of Interceptors. The TIEs scattered like a still pool under assault from a boulder, but enough of them fired as they turned that the X-Wing was quickly reduced to slag. Without telemetry from the astromech there was no way to know whether the damaged engines had overheated or whether one of the TIEs' shots had struck something sensitive, but suddenly the beleaguered fighter went up in a blast like a miniature nova. At least a half-dozen TIEs went with it, if not more.
There was no time to mourn; Nine's husky voice came over the comm, saying, "Commander, I think Four is following his lead. It looks like she's setting up for a final run on the bridge of that Destroyer."
"Negative!" Poe cried. "Negative, Four, do you hear me? Do you-"
But whether Four heard or not, she didn't listen; trailing smoke from one engine and with nothing but a crater where her astromech used to be, her muted X-Wing careened in a sharp arc toward the portmost Star Destroyer. TIEs scrambled after her, recognizing the suicidal intent; the ship's gunners, seeing the same danger, concentrated their fire along Four's path, inadvertently vaping a number of their own TIEs in their desperate attempt to destroy the New Republic snubfighter before it reached their bridge.
They succeeded.
Four's ship blew apart mere meters from the transparisteel viewport. Bits of burning X-Wing clattered against the hull, leaving scorch marks and rents in the heavy armor, but not penetrating deep enough to do more than cosmetic damage.
Breha flew mechanically, unaware of the tears trickling out beneath her helmet's visor.
Poe was swearing a blue streak. "Has anyone made it out yet?" he interrupted himself to ask.
"Three might have-" Nine began, but was interrupted by a harsh negative from Two.
"He didn't. I saw it."
"Sithspit," Poe cursed. "Come on, people, the New Republic is depending on us. We have to get word to the fleet." The commander sounded more desperate than Breha had ever heard him, almost panicky.
"For kriff's sake, we're Rogue Squadron. If anyone can do this…"
Poe's voice trailed away. They didn't need him to finish the statement; if anyone could do this, it was the Rogues. The problem was, against odds like this, maybe no one could.
"No," Breha said softly, more to herself than anyone else. "No, they don't win that easily. Come on, Twelve." She banked hard to port, exposing her belly to the turbolasers of the Star Destroyer below but only for an instant; at top speed she blew along the length of the long capital ship so quickly the gunners couldn't react fast enough to track her with their sights. Jaen stuck tight on her tail.
"I see our exit route," Breha shouted into the comm, barreling away from the Star Destroyer and toward the knot of support ships clustered behind it. "Right through those shuttles-"
"Fly between them?" Jaen yelped. "Are you crazy?"
"As a Rogue!" Breha retorted, laughing. "Come on, we'll shake half these TIEs when they bank-off to avoid crashing into their buddies. Like an Ackbar Slash with collisions instead of crossfire. It's genius."
"Provided we don't end up smeared on someone's viewport too," Jaen muttered.
Breha ignored him. "Start calculating our hypserspace route," she ordered her own astromech. "We'll jump as soon as we get through." The droid warbled an affirmative and one of the many screens on Breha's cockpit began to flicker and glow as numbers scrolled past too fast to read.
The two X-Wings bobbed and juked their way through the crowded cluster of shuttles and dreadnoughts and other assorted support vehicles. Breha noticed several blocky troop transport ships and grimaced at the thought of regiments of stormtroopers marching up Coruscant's wide lanes. She pushed the image away; now was no time to let herself get distracted. A moment's inattention here would leave her snubfigher as nothing but a rapidly-cooling ball of gas and debris, and her with it.
The fact that whatever Imperial ship she hit would also likewise be vaporized, or at least severely crippled, by the collision was small consolation.
The explosions as various TIE fighters-hampered by their blockier profiles and wide solar wings, as well as by their pilots' no doubt inferior flying abilities-failed to avoid those collisions themselves in their attempts to pursue the two fleeing X-Wings was much more encouraging, although it still wouldn't do the New Republic any good if at least one Rogue couldn't manage to get away from this fight to summon help.
"It's working!" Jaen exclaimed as the crowded space-lanes in front of them began to open up into empty void. "It's actually working!"
"Don't get cocky," Breha scolded her wingmate. "More room to fly in just means they have more room to shoot us."
"Copy, Eleven," Jaen grumbled. He juked his snubfighter to port in time to avoid a barrage of turbolaser fire from one of the passing ships. A moment later he said, "Calculations finalizing. Ready to jump in twenty."
Breha nodded an affirmative and squeezed the trigger as her target screen locked on a troop transport. Her last two proton torpedoes flashed out in a streak of blue and turned the blocky transport ship into an explosion large enough to rattle her X-Wing. The feeling of all those lives snuffed-out reverberated through the Force with even more intensity, making Breha shiver, but she gritted her teeth and let the burst of anguish pour through her like water through a sieve. It's for the greater good , she told her wailing heart. The fewer stormtroopers who lived to make it to the surface, the fewer Coruscanti citizens who would die at their hands.
The massive explosion had the added benefit of knocking the last two TIEs chasing them out of the battle: one catching a piece of debris through his viewport that added his ship to the conflagration and the other spiraling into an evasive barrel roll that ended when her ship collided with the engines of a Lambda-shuttle that had gotten a little too close to the action.
"Nice shot!" Jaen crowed, and Breha swallowed hard.
She resisted the urge to snarl at him-Jaen had no more connection to the Force than did Breha's father, or the rest of their squadronmates; he couldn't feel the Imperials die-and said instead, "Break to point 0.2 and lock in final coordin-wait-! "
A premonition in the Force that had nothing to do with her own immediate danger gripped Breha and she raked her eyes across the battle readout in front of her. Something was wrong…
"Eleven? What is it?"
Jaen's voice penetrated her fog and Breha shook her head.
"It's nothing," she lied. "Get ready to jump."
Jaen reached forward to flick the switches that would close his s-foils and switch his engines from sublight to hyperdrive. A few meters away, Breha started to do the same and hesitated. "Did you see if any of the others made it yet?" Jaen was asking.
"No idea," Breha replied, distracted. She was still staring at the readout, searching for the root of her concern. There was something...over there...
"Breha!" Jaen's shout barely made her twitch. "What's wrong? Are your s-foils damaged?"
"No," Breha said, shaking her head again. Her ship was starting to pull away from Jaen's almost without her needing to steer it. "No, I'm fine. I just have something to take care of first."
"What are you talking-?"
"Make the jump. I'll be right behind you." Breha pulled on her piloting yoke, looping her X-Wing into a long curve back toward the battle.
"Wait, I'll come with-"
"No!" Breha barked. "That's an order. Get word to the fleet."
"Where are you going?"
"To stop the commander from doing something stupid."
"Breha-!"
"Go, ensign!" Breha shouted. A moment later, Jaen's ship elongated and winked-out. Breha didn't see it; she was already spinning her X-Wing in a tight, rolling dive toward the malevolent wedge of the enormous Super Star Destroyer.
