41: How To Wreck A Death Star, pt. 2

Paqs Patra did not have much experience with large-scale space battles; their was a lonely occupation as far as vacuum was concerned. Their extend of comparison stopped with the disastrous skirmish, if it could be called that, over Dagobah. Now they had been assigned to the Rebel's motly blue squadron, composed of eight pilots they did not know, a Bothan leader named Dan Ten'dla, and Blue Two, the trench-runner that rumor said was one of their youngest spacers.

The Death Star was backdrop to a hundred battles. TIE fighters chased X-Wings ripping a the aether. X-Wings twisted almost back over themselves, dodging and sending biting lasers back at the flood of opposition. Freighters and retrofitted passenger ships flirted with the two remaining Star Destroyers' turbolaser banks. No one knew whether the Death Star would fire on Hoth, and the question hung over all their heads.

Millenium Falcon had fallen up into the battle with a vengence, and after the minimal of traded quips Han and Patra had been serious, almost stoic. Patra knew that the Corellian felt something deep for his Jedi friend--something not everyone got out of the elusive smuggler. The Falcon could be seen as one of the hardiest dealers in death that space-splashed afternoon.

Orion swung around the Death Star's equator in close company with Blue Leader and Blue Two, all scopes keeping their winged body's mind digesting strategy and chance. They were clear of enemies for now because Patra, unofficial second-in-command, had assigned the rest of Blue Squadron to guard.

The horizon flattened out, and the two battered X-Wings dipped into the trench now whipping past Patra as they made for their first goal; destruction of the two largest anti-strafing lasers along the midpoint of the trench. A TIE fighter spun into the black textured surface of the death Star and an X-Wing plowed into the resultant fireball after it, chanced in turn by a TIE Interceptor intent on chewing up the Rebel's aft shields with red laser. Fear gripped Patra's larger brain--fight companions in danger!--even as the winged mind used their hands to align targeting reticules over the gun turrets Orion was swinging toward. But the Interceptor was the one that followed its wingmate into the battle station's surface and the X-Wing cleared the metal trailing fire, and soared back into the sterile chaos of space.

It was Sidi Driss's first battle, though he knew his X-Wing's controls like the back of his hand. Better, because it seemed that every day the back of his hand, not to mention the rest of him, got another scar. His skin had paled since Tatooine.

Luke Skywalker had called him aside a few days before this morning's fighter-scrambling, when the young near-human had stood in line for assignation, nervous, dressed in uniformish orange, his dented and repainted helmet under his right arm.

"Sidi." said the Jedi.

"Sir?" He hadn't known Skywalker knew he existed.

"I want you to take point on the trench run."
Sidi gaped. "Me? Commander Jedi, I'm a rookie--"

"And I have chosen you. The Force is with you, Sidi Driss. Trust it." A smile hovered around Skywalker's scarred face. "Then you will be the success of all of us." Skywalker turned away, and Sidi put on a brave face because he had no idea what to say.

He stammered, "An' may the Force be with you, sir."

Skywalker bowed his head and came up with a brilliant smile. "It is, Sidi."

It had been an honor and a thrill, and now as the numbers counted down meters that fairly flew, confidence ran in his veins. Meanwhile, the less adrenaline-fueled parts of his brain said that there was no way he could do this without the Force or a miracle, and no Jedi hero had granted him a miracle. Already one of his wingmates had had to save him from a being more than 'battered' by a trio of TIEs.

Metal-patterned walls flashed around him.

"Steady up." Blue Leader's voice came. Sidi's hands tightened on the sticks. 41095. Gunbursts flew from ships outside the trench and his wingmates rose to take out turrets along the sheer edges. 32718. He had never been so nervous, not so determined that determination became a clarity, a grim tensing.

Why me? he felt young, and growing older every moment. 30005.

Because I'm supposed to be able to use the Force.

So he tried to sort of...think of how to think into another dimension. In no way did it work.

"Good luck, Two." The pilot of the Orion, only non-X-Wing craft of the squadron, peeled off from his protecting position above the trench. 25701.

Sidi felt sweat under the targeting interface arm next to his temple, felt it in his shades-of-brown hair. His thought ran generally thus; I can't do this. Shoulder's stayed home on the dunes. 20035. I don't use the Force.

And there came a voice, ethereal, almost inside him, something like a mix of Commander Skywalker's voice and his own; "No. Let the Force use you."

17223...He thought he might have felt a...everything.

Commchatter broke the white noise of dogfights careening overhead and console readings beeping. "Coming up..."

"Steady..."

"Izzat reinforcements, Leader?"

"Can't be. Not ours."

11380...

The numbers blurred. Sidi could tell when he coupled with a power, a force, that with him retracted the targeting computer and fired proton torpedoes away that with the X-Wing's slightest angling dove into the targeted shaft. It stayed with him in the full-forward tile that rocketed him away from the Death Star. It left him to sigh enormously, slap his hands again his thighs, close his eyes, think Thank the Force!. Momentary shock when the ship jolted, then he saw the tractor beam from the Orion had caught him and some of his squadmates and pulled them out into space, while further away below--

The Death Star magnificently, neatly, exploded. The station became yellow vapor, white sparks and boiling flame and a fiery particulate ring. Shouts and whoops burst into the Rebel comms, and Sidi joined them. In blue reflective light they flew toward home.