Summary: Rogue Squadron heads back to Hoth to defend an Intelligence Unit. But they get more than they bargained for.
Disclaimer: Star Wars, Rogue Squadron, and the rest are not mine. I write this for my own amusement. Jesina is my own, original creation.
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Chapter 16: Reminiscent of Smuggler's Run
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Wedge had been waiting in the hangar for Two flight to come in. They'd done their first surveying run, accompanying Jesina's ship – still the Nightwind, though a far cry from what it had been the last time they'd seen it – through the asteroid field. He wanted to know if they'd found anything in the three that they'd scanned today. But there was something else he wanted to know, and it was a more pressing concern for him.
He fell into step beside Wes. "How did he do?" he asked softly.
Wes glanced surreptitiously at Hobbie and then back to his CO. "Fine. No hesitation, no distraction. No problems at all. Or, at least, nothing I could see. Of course, we weren't flying over snow either. Or in speeders."
"True," Wedge admitted. "But you started out that way," he pointed out. "No problems?"
Wes shook his head. "Nothing. I think he's going to be fine."
Wedge nodded, satisfied, and raised his voice back to a normal speaking level. "Find anything?"
"Maybe. Jes is downloading the data from the Nightwind's systems to her datapad now."
Wedge was pleased to hear Wes refer to her that way. He'd been calling her by her full name – and, on occasion, her last name – the whole time they'd been here. Using her nickname was a sign that things might be edging closer to getting back to normal between the two of them. Normalcy was always a good thing. Especially considering that what was going on here was about as far from normal as you could get.
"I'm going to talk to Tycho," he replied. "Tell Jes to set herself up in the main briefing room. I want…get everyone there, all right?"
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Wedge walked into the briefing room with Tycho a step behind him. And froze. There, at the front of the room next to the holoprojector, was the one…being…Wedge truly had no desire to see. Lieutenant Kettch.
He looked from the stuffed Ewok to the assembled pilots, focusing on each face in turn before moving on to the next. To their credit, each kept a straight face. As he looked them all over, he realized that there were two people conspicuously absent. Janson and Hobbie.
Who arrived a second later. "Uh, boss?" he heard Wes' voice from behind him. "Are you planning on running this meeting from the doorway? Or do you want to go inside?" When Wedge didn't move or respond, he asked, "Or, can we at least go in?"
Wedge stepped aside. "By all means," he said, motioning for them to go by.
Wes stepped inside and stopped short. Hobbie, right behind him, walked into the other man's back and stepped back out quickly. "Where the—?" Wes spun around to look at Wedge, who merely arched an eyebrow at him. "I didn't—" Wes started to say, but Wedge shook his head.
"Don't." He sighed heavily as laughter rippled through the room. He was glad that morale seemed to be slightly higher than it had been, though not a little sore that it was once again at his expense. He stopped before the table and looked at the stuffed creature.
"Well, Lieutenant," he finally said, "Welcome to Hoth. I might have expected to find you here." He picked up the Ewok doll and continued, "I'm sure Major Janson would enjoy showing you around, during the time he isn't assigned KP duty. Though I'm afraid that time will be few and far between."
He then strode over to Wes, now sitting in the back row in the seat nearest the door, and deposited Kettch into the pilot's lap. "Enjoy your stay." He walked back up to the front of the room as they all dissolved into laughter. Wes opened his mouth to protest but apparently thought better of it and kept silent. That was probably due, at least in part, to the look Wedge shot him when he reached the front.
"Now, Jesina, what do you have for us?"
She hit a few keys and an image of Hoth appeared over the holoprojector, complete with the asteroid belt, their primary object of interest. Another tap of a key and three of the larger asteroids became the focal point of the image. Wedge wondered absently if one of these three had been the rock that had hidden the Millennium Falcon during Han and Leia's escape from Hoth so long ago.
"These are the three we scanned today. There are at least fifteen other possibilities, but we may not have to consider those. We came up empty on these two," she gestured to the largest of the three. "But we found something on this one."
"I've sent to your datapads the life-form readings we picked up. There's nothing big there, but there's something. Admittedly, it's something pretty small, but the readings are compatible with a small human settlement. The problem is, these asteroids have been known to be habitats for non-sentient life. We could just as easily have stumbled across something else."
"Like giant space worms?" Wes asked.
Wedge actually laughed now. He'd heard that story more than once from Leia and Han, and while he supposed it hadn't been funny at the time, it was amusing to think about now. Tycho chuckled too, as did Hobbie. But the others looked lost. Wedge waved a hand dismissively. "It's an inside joke." He would have to warn them about the possibility of encountering those creatures. But that could wait until later. "Go on, Jesina."
She frowned at him but nodded. "There is something that leads me to believe we've found what we're looking for." She turned to Wedge. "Take a look at the composition readings we came away with."
He raised an eyebrow, but looked down at the file she'd transmitted to him. Scrolling through until he reached the section she'd called his attention too, he let out a low whistle. "Yeah, I'd say that there's something there." He looked up. "Corran, take a look."
The Corellian already had. "Looks pretty familiar," he said. His face told Wedge he knew what it meant, too.
Wes frowned at them. "Anyone want to fill us in?" Wedge noticed that Kettch was seated next to him on the floor, leaning against the chair.
"Go ahead, Jes," Tycho said.
"If you look below that chart, you'll see similar readings for one of the asteroids in Smuggler's Run. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Run, it's a group of hollowed out asteroids that used to be controlled by the Hutts. Any number of crime lords have set up operations there, deep inside the asteroids. And, from the looks of, the same thing has been done here."
"Is there a possibility that we're dealing with smugglers here?" Corran asked.
"I doubt it," Wedge replied. "The Empire would have the same technology, so we have no reason to believe we are. Besides, if there was any chance it was just smugglers or pirates, Kaarde would know about it."
"What if he doesn't want to tell us?" Hobbie asked. He knew Wedge – and most of the others – relied on Karrde, but he still didn't trust the man.
"Mara would. Especially since we know there's a Force-user involved. Plus," Wedge shrugged, "Booster would probably know too. And if he knew, Mirax would. And she'd tell us. My credits are on the Empire."
"So what do we do now?" Inyri asked.
Wedge noted that the bruising had gone down, though it was still visible. He also noticed that Hobbie was studiously avoiding looking at her, though she kept glancing in his direction. For that matter, Hobbie was also avoiding looking at him. Or Wes, Tycho, and Gavin. Something was up.
"We need to land on the asteroid," Tycho said, frowning slightly at Wedge's apparent distraction.
"Who gets that job?" Wes asked.
Wedge exhaled. "That's what we need to figure out. This is, technically, NRI's show. We're just here in a support capacity. But this involves extraterrestrial activity, and I'm not planning on letting Iella send her people up there alone. No matter how long she argues with me." He shot Tycho a pained expression and the other man smiled.
"I can take any team Iella wants to send in the Nightwind," Jesina said. "And you could send up as many of your people as you want, Wedge, in the Z-95s or your own fighters. We have enough hard-vacuum suits for all of you. Cracken insisted we take them. I didn't know why, at the time, but I'm glad now."
"We can send everyone up," Tycho suggested. "And have six fly as air support and six land and go with the Intel team."
"All right," Wedge said after a moment, his stomach flip-flopping at the thought of going into hard vacuum. Iella's comments about his own fears seemed almost prophetic now. "I need to talk to Iella before I make any plans. But why don't we make a few practice runs in hard vacuum? And then we can work with whoever Iella decides to send." He paused. "Dismissed."
Jesina approached Wedge and Tycho after the rest of the squadron had left – Wes taking Kettch with him – and handed him her datapad. "I got a response to my application to Starfighter Command."