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 18: Never Had a Chance
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Wedge led the Rogues on a weaving pattern through the outskirts of the asteroid belt. He hadn't communicated with the Nightwind and her escorts since they'd split. He hoped they'd made it there all right. Flying through an asteroid belt was no easy trick. Janson had led two flight through it when they'd done the first round of scanning, and Corran had led three flight in the time they'd been shot at. But other than that, they'd stuck to the outskirts of the belt.
He watched as small fragments careened into other small fragments, shattering on impact and sending debris every which way. Unbidden, his mind strayed back to the Hoth evacuation, and he wondered how much damage the Millennium Falcon had taken in their escape. And how much damage Jesina's Nightwind and the rest of the Rogues' fighters had sustained so far. He continued to stare straight ahead, watching one of the larger asteroids fragment as it collided with another, the pieces flying outward like missiles.
"It's like a shooting gallery." He heard Hobbie's voice over the comm, giving voice to the thoughts in his own mind.
"I think I'd rather be facing down twenty armed stormtroopers with a blaster with a drained power pack," Gavin interjected.
"Who wouldn't?" Inyri replied. "The asteroids probably have better aim."
Wedge chuckled despite himself. Inyri heard and keyed her comm unit to a private frequency with Hobbie. "Mission accomplished," she said and heard him laugh.
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Jesina carefully settled the Nightwind on the surface of the asteroid. The flight through the asteroid field had been relatively uneventful. Janson and Tycho had just narrowly made it through – some pretty fancy flying on their parts – and Teril's x-wing had a few new dents, as did the Nightwind, but they were all intact. And they would all be able to make it out.
As they'd drawn closer to their target she'd run another deep surface scan, seeking caves or other openings that might provide them entrance to the hollowed areas of the rock. She'd found several and chosen the one that looked most promising when examined against their prior scan results. She'd transmitted the coordinates to her Rogue escorts – designated Night seven through twelve for this little trip – but otherwise had maintained comm silence since they'd split from Rogue flight. She figured that whoever was on the asteroid would be able to detect their presence anyway, but there was no need to broadcast it.
She, Iella, and the rest of the Intel team – Malat Seko, Meryk Jaena, Tekha Ryn and Tera Sunrider – struggled into their vacuum suits as Night Flight, under Tycho's direction, landed around the Nightwind in perfect formation. The selection of the four Intel agents had been easy – they were the only ones who had any experience in zero-gravity or negative atmospheric conditions. She was a little worried about Iella, though, who had only negligible zero-g experience. Wedge had given her some direction, and Jesina hoped it would be enough.
Once mostly suited up, Jesina dug around in one of the supply crates for the durasteel thread cables they'd use to tether themselves to the ship and make their way down through the cave. She'd briefly entertained the idea of flying directly into the cave but didn't want their ability to leave in a hurry – should it be necessary, though she prayed to the Force it wouldn't – to be hindered in any way. Restricting themselves to an opening that the Nightwind only narrowly fit through would be asking for trouble.
Glancing outside, she saw most of the pilots on the ground. Switching on the comm unit she asked, "Night Seven, are you set?"
She saw Tycho raise a hand and wave to her, then heard his voice. "We're a go." He was using his comlink for the last time until they were off the asteroid. At least, she hoped it would be. From here on, they'd use line-of-sight transmitters built into the helmets of their vacuum suits.
She switched off the comm system and powered down the ship to a standby mode. Restarting from that status was nearly comparable to performing a cold start for a fighter that had been hit by an ion cannon, except that it always worked. If they needed to get out in a hurry, she wouldn't have to wait long and run through a full start up for the systems to come online. Then she looked over at Iella. "Ready to go?"
"Oh, yes," Iella muttered dryly. "Looking forward to it, really." She was an ex-cop and an NRI agent. Crawling around in low or zero gravity had never been one of her life's ambitions. She preferred to leave that to her old partner and her fiancé. "Let's get going."
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"No activity, no jamming," Hobbie said to Wedge over a private comm channel. "Makes me nervous."
"Hobbie, everything makes you nervous," Wedge murmured in reply. The truth was, though he didn't really want to admit it, he was concerned, too. He had complete faith in Tycho, Iella, and Jesina, but even so he didn't like being so cut off from his people. Especially when what he'd expected to happen wasn't happening. Sure, everything seemed to be going in their favor, but he'd learned long ago that appearances often meant nothing. Sometimes less than nothing.
Then he heard Ensa's voice. "You were saying, six?"
Wedge cast a quick glance in the general direction of the HUD, seeing several small blips appear out of nowhere. A moment later the system identified them as unknown, starfighter class. Uglies. A squadron of them, headed straight for the asteroid. They had to know that the Rogues were there but they gave no indication, never straying from their course in the slightest. He cursed under his breath.
"Looks like we were right, Lead," Gavin observed.
"Yeah," Hobbie cut in. "But didn't they head out of the field last time you saw them, twelve? Eleven?" Both Gavin and Inyri had been on the patrol that had come briefly under fire.
"Yeah, they did. They didn't give us a chance to see where they were coming from or where they were going," Gavin replied.
"Well, they don't seem to have any reservations about it now," Wedge muttered, knowing where Hobbie was headed with this. "Which means that they probably know that we know where they are."
"Which means that they probably know we have people on the ground," Inyri put in, bringing Wedge's thought to its logical conclusion.
"What do we do, Lead?" Duryll asked.
Wedge sighed. They had two options. They could engage – he had no doubt that the six of them could handle the twelve uglies. Even the galaxy's best pilots couldn't take them on in those junkyard rejects. And the galaxy's best wouldn't deign to fly those things. But he doubted that doing so would help Iella's team at all. It could even make things worse. And they had no way to communicate any warning to the others. "We let them go."
"Lead," Inyri started.
He cut her off. "We let them go."
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As they made their way deeper into the asteroid, keeping in pairs but with significant distance in between each, they – thankfully, as far as Iella was concerned – encountered ever-increasing gravity, making it easier to walk. The atmosphere, though present in the lower depths, wasn't breathable, polluted by gas fissures in the walls. There was, however, enough oxygen for their breathing masks to simply filter it so they didn't have to rely on stored oxygen. Ooryl, of course, could not have cared either way.
The first hour or so of their trek was uneventful – walking further and further into darkness with nothing to break the monotony. In fact, it was so uneventful, that Iella almost wished something would happen. Almost. Not quite. Slowly, though, she realized it was no longer as dark as it had been. Either her eyes had made a significant adjustment or…. She nudged Jesina. "Look."
She did. It looked as if they were about to come to an end of this particular tunnel. The passage they were in opened up a few meters ahead of them into an area that was as bright as day. Slowly, the two women approached the opening, Jesina pausing while Iella went on ahead to turn and motion Tycho forward. Nodding to her, he gestured for the others to hang back as he joined them at the tunnel's end.
They stood at the edge of a huge cavern. It might have been naturally occurring, though Tycho wouldn't have bet his life on that. Only a few centimeters beyond where Iella stood, the floor of the passage dropped off. It was, he guessed, about a hundred meters straight down. He let out a low whistle, distorted by the communications equipment. "Good thing we brought climbing gear along," he murmured.
Iella stepped forward, looking to see where, if anywhere, other passages fed into the cavern – and also to see if there was anyone at the bottom who might see them. As she put her foot down, though, the rock floor crumbled under her weight. As Iella's scream echoed in his ears, Tycho grabbed Jesina's arm, yanking her backward and falling to the ground with her as the floor they'd both been standing on fell way. He felt hands pulling them both away from the edge.
He never had a chance to reach for Iella, and the others – even those who'd pulled him and Jesina back – had been too far away to get to her in time. Gasping for breath, he saw Corran out of the corner of his eye, stretched along the floor, arms and torso dangling over the edge. Obviously, Horn had tried to get to his old partner in time but hadn't succeeded. Only Janson, who had him by his ankles, had kept him from following her.