NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 3898138" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 542: RodiaFor the first time in far too many months, Zephyr Squadron was flying with a full twelve. Six of the new pilots were as green as the fields of Naboo, but the three others had been transferred in from the Coruscant Defense Squadron. Apparently, they hadn’t seen any action, but they were at least expected to know what they were doing. While it was hard to be comforted by any of it, the very fact that there were twelve instead of three was enough to keep both Adria and Rea quiet.    “Isn’t this a bit quiet for a besieged planet?” Adria’s voice crackled through Rulae’s comm in his helmet.    Well, quiet about there only being three of them...but not so quiet in general.    Turning his head slightly, Rulae looked out the canopy of his new, XJ-X-Wing to Flight Two, with Adria’s X-Wing at the forefront. She had a point. Taking a hand off the controls of his starfighter, Rulae checked his sensors again. Nothing.    There should at least be something...    “Keep your eyes open, Zephyrs,” he said through the comm to the rest of the squadron, his own two large, crimson eyes moving ahead of him again to inspect the planet that nearly encompassed all of his view.    It was the green and blue mess of Rodia, a full sector away from where their fleet was supposed to be...Hutt Space. Despite the Rodians very often collaborating with the Hutts, they were in no way a part of the Hutt’s territory, and in fact were much closer to where many of the Hutts were reportedly running for refuge: Tatooine.    But Rodian had been attacked and swiftly invaded shortly before the Yuuzhan Vong had taken Hutt Space under their control. From the mission briefing Rulae had received, many of the fleet’s squadrons would be scouting outlying planets as the rest of the fleet made its way to their scouting mission in Hutt Space. The trip required a series of many, many short hyperspace jumps due to recent Vong mining of populated hyperspace routes. But the tactic of continually reverting to realspace to adjust course also made it much easier for a squadron to rendevous and another to be sent out on the way to their destination.    A slight crackle on his comm alerted Rulae to a voice about to speak, and so his attention shifted to that, “Sir, this is Six...I think I’ve got something.”    Zephyr Six was one of the transfers, Flight Officer Denan Rast, an older, for a pilot at least, human male that had been flying for as long as Rulae had, though he lacked a great deal of combat experience. What Rast did have, however, was a good amount of recon experience. And now, on their first flight as a full squadron again, that seemed to be paying off already.    Of course, the awkward silence presented one reason why he might not have advanced very far in the years. Ignoring that, though, Rulae asked, “What do you have, Six?”    Thankfully, Rast just seemed to need a little push to actually present the information. His slightly raspy voice sounded again in Rulae’s headset, “Sensors aren’t picking up anything, sir...but I believe I saw something moving near the surface of the nearest moon.”    Okay, so that could have been better.    Then again, it was better than nothing.    “Copy, Six,” Rulae glanced over to his starboard side where Six and the rest of Flight Two were, “Five, take Two Flight and do a quick pass over the moon.”    “On our way, sir,” Rea said quietly into her comm as her X-Wing peeled away from their large formation of fighters. A moment later, the three other X-Wings of Two Flight broke off with her and headed towards the nearest of Rodia’s two moons.    At that point, Rulae wished that he had another squadron with him. Twelve X-Wings, especially with so many recruits flying them, was in no way the best way to scout a supposedly-besieged and invaded planet. The current lack of anything, Vong or otherwise, in sight only made it worse. And if Rast had seen something and it was a trap...    “Twelve, take Three Flight and head for the moon, too,” Rulae said the words before the thought actually registered, but to him that just meant it was good instincts.     There was a very feint beep on the comm to tell him that someone had switched to a secure channel directly to him, and then Rulae heard Adria’s voice, “This feel wrong to you, too, then?”    “Just keep your eyes open and stay alert,” was all Rulae replied with.    To her credit, Adria followed orders well enough. But she reminded Rulae a great deal of Jyren, always questioning the orders the entire time. He wanted to blame it on humans as a whole, but so many didn’t complain at him the entire time that it seemed insulting...so Rulae just passed it off as certain personality types.    After Adria and Three Flight had broken away and began following Two Flight towards the moon, Rulae switched his comm channel back to the squadron’s frequency, “One Flight, form up on me. We’re going to drop towards Rodia and give it a quick pass.”    Instead of vocal responses, a series of double clicks sounded on his comm. All acknowledging the order like good recruits were taught to do. But Rulae hadn’t waited for that, having already banked towards Rodia for a rapid descent. The three other members of One Flight, all fresh recruits, stayed close like they were taught, though his maneuver, despite being simple, had surprised them enough that they now lagged behind him just a bit more.    It was a long, silent descent to Rodia’s upper atmosphere. The only sound Rulae could hear was the constant droning of his X-Wing’s engines and the low hum of the computers that surrounded him. But then, as blobs of green began to form into marshy-looking continents on the planet below, he heard something else. At first, he dismissed it as nothing, not even sure there had been anything at all to hear. But then, as his X-Wing descended a bit lower, Rulae could clearly hear a series of slight fizzling sounds as something was clearly hitting the shields.    “Sir...” Rulae didn’t recognize the voice, other than the fact that it was one of the new pilots and he was part of One Flight.    Before he was going to respond, though, Rulae needed to figure out what it was. His eyes deduced the source before the sensors, but they weren’t far behind. Against the slight haze created by Rodia’s atmosphere, Rulae could see small, shining objects that were definitely metal. Then it started to make sense.    “Pull up a bit, One Flight,” he said in a calm voice, considering what could have been very dangerous, “Its debris. There’s a few large pieces out here, but they’re too small for the sensors to pick up until you’re very close. We’ll have to do a sweep from higher up to be safe.”    The three others responded with the same comm clicks as before. Something about the silence was a bit unnerving, though. Rulae had gotten so used to telling kids like Adria and idiots like Jyren to shut up that it seemed odd to not have to do that. But, then again, the entire atmosphere, metaphorically at least, of the Rodian system was so tense due to the emptiness that Rulae couldn’t blame the kids. And now, to make them feel ever better, they were flying over wreckage from the battle to take the planet. There was no denying something was wrong, now. And it felt even more like a trap.    “One, this is Four,” the voice sounded odd, and was from one of the new pilots, a young Kel Dor by the name of Tar Ko. Like all of his species, Tar Ko could not breathe an Oxygen atmosphere and so war a breathing mask and goggles over his eyes...the former of which helped to alter his voice even more than the comm could do on its own.    “Go ahead, Four,” Rulae responded right away, noticing a tendency for all of the pilots to ask permission to speak without posing their statements as questions.    The doubly mechanized voice replied quickly enough, though, “I’m not picking up anything on the surface. I know our sensors aren’t the best but...shouldn’t we be able to at least see cities from here?”    Now, finally, Rulae had been backed into a corner. Since they’d all been brought to the squadron, Rulae had tried to keep them as protected from the reality of the war as he could. But, sadly, that couldn’t last. So it was time to finally be honest with them.    “Not if the Vong leveled them all, Four,” Rulae said softly. The worst part was, it was probably true. Reports weren’t exactly the best from this region, but the few they received told of a massive invasion simply coming down on Rodia like a giant fist. Rulae knew what they really needed was a closer look, because there had to be something down there...but one squadron couldn’t afford to do something like that. They needed to all be in a position to get out of the system as soon as possible.    No response came to his statement, and Rulae wasn’t surprised at all.    And then, what Rulae knew had to be coming happened.    The sensors went crazy all of a sudden, and a second later, so did the comm frequency.  The amount of yelling, mostly out of sheer surprise, meant that none of it could be distinguished at all, but what Rulae did know was that none of it was from One Flight.    Immediately, his head snapped up, looking straight up through his canopy to the moon. With his naked eye, Rulae couldn’t see the other two flights, but he could see that something had definitely changed. The rocky, brown surface of the moon was suddenly moving, like a swarm of bugs changing direction.    The yells and cries through the comm continued to the point where Rulae couldn’t hear anything else, but a second later, finally, the strong, heavy voice of Adria managed to get through, “Sir! We’ve got skips launching from the surface of the moon! Hundreds of them! It looks like they were...and at least another five cruiser analogs!”    Part of it was cut out by more yelling, but Rulae got the idea.    His voice hard and firm, Rulae snapped into the comm, “Zephyrs, stow it and get your tails out of the their! You know the orders, we’re not here for a fight! Stay with your Flight and head for the nearest jump vector...”    He had been about to say something else, but more alarms went off from the sensors. Rulae’s eyes went down to check them, but didn’t need to see it. Rising up from the planet below, he could see more ships. Large, cruisers definitely, some even bigger, all looking like oddly shaped asteroids of various sizes rising off of the surface of the planet. Not to mention the countless smaller ships that were undoubtedly Coralskippers.    “Incoming from Rodia’s surface!” Rulae called out, more to alert the two other Flights than his own, who would easily see what he could coming up after them, “ETA of about one minute!”    If that.    Opening his X-Wing’s S-Foils in preparation for the fight that was coming right for him from both directions, Rulae pulled his fighter up and away from the planet. The other pilots of his Flight stayed close as they followed suit, heading after him as fast as they could manage while still remaining prepared for the Skips that would overtake their slower fighters before they could make the jump to hyperspace.    In the back of his mind, while the rest of Rulae was acting on the sudden rush of adrenaline, Rulae couldn’t help but wonder if the other recon squadrons had to deal with this kind of insanity.</blockquote>

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