Chapter 15
"Commander on deck!"
Forty eight pilots stood from their seats in Briefing Room 2 in an instant. I knew the same was happening on the four other Venators of the Ryloth Task Group as I approached the lectern. A quick double check of the computer display on it, confirmed that my holo image was indeed being captured and beamed to where it was supposed to be going. Nothing would be more embarrassing than having to repeat the briefing due to a minor technical glitch.
This would be the first time I would command not just a fighter squadron, but multiple squadrons at once, not to mention a new record for total number of people seeing and hearing me, in this life at least. My previous life's record was about over a thousand, speaking at a business conference. A few hundred now might seem like fiddlesticks in comparison, but I hadn't been going into battle then as their commander, I hadn't been leading those people to a high likelihood of their deaths.
My eyes roamed the room, searching for any oddity, but every clone pilot seemed like a statue as they held their attention pose.
"At ease, take your seats."
The pilots sat back down and had their respective data pads ready to take notes.
"As of a few hours ago, the ground forces of General Windu have successfully established their landing zones and the Acclamators are unloading their troops. We have made contact with the local twi'lek resistance forces, their intel, combined with our own scans, has made it clear that our job of securing the skies of Ryloth will not be an easy one."
I tapped on the screen of the lectern and a large spherical holo of the planet Ryloth was projected into the air behind me. The landing zone near the capital city was highlighted with a solid green dot and surrounding sphere.
"The Separatists have used their time here productively. We have identified three significant bases for their activities on the planet. The strongest is obviously centered in the capital but there is another here on the north-west continent of Distombe and in the southern island chains of Hirani. Both locations have significant strategic mineral deposits and the Separatists have been pulling out as much as they could get away with since the occupation began.
"While the GAR will be focused on liberating the capital and the capture of Wat Tambor, which could potentially mean being able to deactivate the entire droid army, we can't count on that possibility. Therefore we must mount an aerial attack on these bases, to keep them engaged and prevent them from potentially sending forces to assist in the battle for the capital. Doing so will force them to sortie their Vulture and Hyena fighters to face us or risk them being caught on the ground.
"It sounds straightforward, but the Seppies have made things complicated. Much like was faced at Nabbat, they have taken local twi'lek's as prisoners in their bases to use as shields to discourage us from simply bombing them into scrap. The plan to deal with this will require us, in the first phase of the attack, to simply act as a diversion, while local resistance forces mount surgical attacks on the bases to rescue the twi'lek. Once we get the all clear signal from the ground, we will be able to level those bases.
It was immediately apparent that there was a lot of unhappiness in the room, though the clone pilots kept their poker faces supremely well.
"Yes, that is far from ideal. It puts us out there to act as bait for however long the ground assault might take, but we need to destroy the Seppie aerospace forces on this planet for the main campaign to succeed. We do our part and that will happen."
I tapped on the lectern screen, "Specifics and flight assignments are being transmitted to your pads now, Shadow and Wraith squadrons from
Resolute, Blue and Acklay from
Defender will be taking on the Hirani base. Bordok and Giska from
Redeemer, Krayt and Lepi from
Collosus will attack Distombe base. Any further questions?"
A clone pilot from Wraith squadron raised his hand. "Commander, what about this new AA gun that the Seppies have. Will they also be guarding these bases?"
"Investigation is ongoing on the AA gun droid captured by General Kenobi. The weapon's official designation by the CIS are J-1 Proton cannons and preliminary indications are they are experimental weapons at this point. There were nine of them defending Nabbat and orbital scans have not revealed the presence of more. They give off a unique energy signature we can detect and unless the Seppies are hiding them underground, we should not have to deal with more of them. I will caution you though, that we can expect future campaigns will have to deal the J-1 as a permanent fixture of any Seppie held position on a planet."
The pilots looked at each other with grim expressions.
"Anything else?" I prompted but was only met with silence. "Very well, to your fighters, launch is in just under an hour. Let's get this done."
I emerged from the turbolift, now dressed in my armored flight suit with my 'Jetsons' helmet under my arm and onto the expansive hangar spaces of the
Resolute. The place was a mess of activity even more so than usual, given the mass launch of fighters we were about to do.
I was in a constant battle with my nerves and the butterflies in my stomach, using the Force to soothe and release the feelings. Identifying why I was feeling this way, given what I'd already done and survived in the war, was quite simple. This would be the first time I'd be flying solo in a fighter and there was no Anakin Skywalker with me this time. Yes, having him as my flight instructor with Force assisted learning and all the simulator time I'd clocked in the last month, combined with the basic padawan flight training I got at the Jedi Academy at least made me qualified to fly my fighter in combat. The real test was now coming.
It was the walk of a few minutes until I saw my new fighter and it never failed to take my breath away every time.
To the untrained eye, it seemed like just a standard 'clone' variant Z-95 Headhunter, painted in red and whites. That couldn't be farther from the truth, however. A pilot would look at it and spot the slightly enlarged lower hull which meant it had a hyperdrive, in this case the same Class 1.5 that was on the ARC fighters. The slits on either side along the nose housed an Ion Cannon on the left and Krup MG5 Concussion missile launcher on the right. The main armament on the wing tips were the Taim & Bak KX5 linked blaster cannons. The most obvious and visible improvement was a slot behind the pilot canopy for an astromech, which the clone Z-95 didn't feature and the hardpoints under the wings for carrying external ordnance, which currently held two boxes of cluster concussion missiles.
Looking at the whole beautiful, deadly package I couldn't help but feel I'd given the eggheads at Incom the idea for the future X-Wing already, when I'd sent through the requirements and specs for how I wanted my Z-95 modified.
The craft was currently being swarmed by the fighter service crew and Anakin, who had datapad in hand and was deep in thought. I approached the crew chief, who was giving the craft its final inspections.
"Chief, how's she looking?"
Chief Maintenance Officer CT-342111 or Chief Bolts as he preferred to be called, gave me a casual salute, "All systems in the green so far, Commander. Just going through the checklist."
"You comfy in there R3?" I addressed my shiny new personal astromech, who I had repainted with the fractal camouflage scheme of my ground armor.
"
All interface systems are nominal," the droid bleeped a sequence in binary at me from his slot behind the pilot canopy. It was too young to have any quirks or develop a personality yet, but I'd given the droid a thorough check-up as possible, hardware and software. My caution and paranoia demanded no less. The infiltration of Industrial Automation by the CIS to add droid spies among the ranks of astromechs used by the Republic was an issue, as demonstrated by R3-S6 in the original timeline. Reports of such sabotage done by R-series spies had come through earlier this year, but the problem had been resolved after Republic Intelligence had swooped upon the company and identified a CIS sympathizer working in the verbobrain progamming department.
"Master, problem?" I queried him mildly, there was definitely a bee in his bonnet.
"I really wish you'd just gone with the Aethersprite interceptor," he grumbled but the expression on his face showed he was only teasing. I only gave him a pointed eyebrow raise in return. It was his favorite fighter, but there was no reason I had to share that opinion.
My biggest problem with the Aethersprite was quite simple, its native lack of internal hyperdrive and the need for the separate hyperspace engine ring it docked with to remedy that. Then the only way it could land was to leave the ring in orbit of its destination, where it was just begging for someone to find and destroy. There was no way to make a hyperdrive small enough to squeeze into that tiny interceptor. Only its future spiritual successor, the bigger A-Wing, would find a way to combine the nimbleness factor of an interceptor with the strategic mobility a hyperdrive offered, to fit the hit-and-run doctrine the Rebel Alliance would adopt.
The second thing that killed it for me was the lack of any missile armament. Flying a fighter without missiles to me was like going to war without a rifle. Sure, we could strap them on externally, but the room for that was minimal. My previous life's knowledge of modern fighter combat sometimes really served to do my head in, as I tried to reconcile it with what was done in the Clone Wars and with what I knew was coming.
"All pilots, to your stations. All pilots, to your stations." Admiral Yularen's voice echoed through the hangars.
"Checklist complete, Commander," Bolts handed me his datapad.
I gave it a careful read through, signed off on it and returned it. Then began a walkaround of the Z95, surveying it and looking for any oddities, even employing my technometry to sense the internals.
When I had completed my own check and found nothing wrong, I handed my helmet off to the chief before climbing the small ladder to the cockpit.
A careful step with my left foot to the appropriate spot allowed me to move forward and I ensconced myself into the molded pilot seat.
"Snips," Anakin called.
"Yes, Master?"
"She's as good as can be, may the Force be with you."
I gave him a small smile and nodded, his worry and concern for me flowed across the bond clearly, "Thanks Skyguy, don't worry, I'll bring home plenty of kills… I can't wait for the day I pass you on the killboard."
He scoffed with a smile, "Dream on, my padawan."
I accepted my helmet back and slightly awkwardly got the thing on and secured it after tucking my lekku inside. Then focused and got my head in the game, starting the pre-flight sequence checklist.
A twenty-three item list later, I was ready to start my fighter. Much like anything so complex, this was not done with a single push of a button, but rather a whole series of systems I had to trigger in concert with R3. The first signs of life came as the fission engines whined into activity. I kept an eye out on the Master Function Display for any warnings, but the new fighter performed flawlessly so far.
A hand signal to the Chief from me, had the crew outside spring into action and detach umbilicals and fuel feed lines.
Only when my internal displays showed me operating on full internal power, did I give a salute to the chief and flick the switch to close my canopy.
A glance at the squadron status display showed that my own Wraith squadron was well on their way to launch readiness, while Shadow squadron had a few stragglers dealing with technical issues.
I keyed the squadron frequency on the comms, "Wraith One, squadron, comms check."
As the pilots reported in, Shadow squadron had fixed their issues and was sounding off in readiness also.
"Wraith One, reporting all squadrons ready."
"
Roger Wraith One, doors opening." replied Yularen.
The
Resolute's dorsal doors opened along its length, allowing sunlight from local star to stream in at an angle.
"All squadrons are cleared for launch."
I gave one last look to my left and right, verifying to my own eyes that the ranks of Torrent and ARC fighters were ready.
Feeling satisfied, I keyed my repulsors and the Z95 lifted itself off the deck. When I was certain I was in the air and steady, I pushed slightly on the throttle and the fighter smoothly edged itself forward and slipped through the containment field of the hangar and into the spine of the
Resolute. A quick turn and I was aligned before pushing further on the throttle…
My fighter powered steadily forward and emerged into open space, accelerating away from the
Resolute. As this wasn't an under threat launch there was no need to gun it, so I merely aligned the fighter on the course R3 was already projecting on the HUD. My rear scanner showed Wraith squadron had followed me out of the
Resolute with a fluid smoothness that only came from well practiced pilots and we immediately settled into the four-fighter flight divisions.
Shadow squadron in their ARC fighters launched next and joined the greater formation as we headed for the rendezvous with the squadrons launched from the other Venator's orbiting Ryloth.
The location of where the squadrons met was not just a random spot in orbital space though.
Ever since the Republic had achieved orbital supremacy, a constant electronic duel had begun between the ELINT divisions on the Venator destroyers and the ground based Seperatist scanners located in their major bases.
The orbiting Venators would jam as many frequencies as they could, until the enemy below managed to shift their scans far enough for the jamming to be ineffective. The ELINT divisions would hunt for the new scan frequency and jam it again… and so the duel continued.
We had timed our fighter launches when the
Resolute and her sister ships naturally orbited into the hemisphere where there was no scanner coverage, with only a single Venator kept in sight of the enemy to continue the electronic war.
Now the squadrons had to converge on the 'dark side' of scanner coverage and pilot a course to enter the atmosphere as close as possible to their respective targets while staying out of detection range. This was certainly possible, but meant a long atmospheric flight was ahead of us, with a lot of it spent flying as close to the surface terrain of Ryloth as possible to stay below the scanner horizon.
For all our subterfuge, however, we were only doing it to maintain strategic surprise.
We wanted the enemy to come up and meet us, not catch them flatfooted. They needed the distractions of preparing their response to us for the twi'lek rebels to eventually succeed.
It didn't take long to reach this rendezvous point, barely 14 minutes. Given the accelerations we could pull in these fighters, it was rather leisurely. Some technology of the Corusca galaxy never failed to privately impress me and the casual way you could just move around in orbit at will in a spacecraft always sent a thrill through me.
I took the moment while waiting for the other squadrons to arrive to just appreciate the view. Trying to capture that innocent feeling of amazement again, from my first time in space next to Master Plo Koon, seeing my homeworld of Shili from space. It was unfortunately elusive and it seemed the magic of that moment would never be held again.
A survey of my scanners and displays confirmed everything was now ready and I keyed the radio, "All squadrons, proceed with de-orbits and may the Force be with you."
R3 promptly changed the indicated course plots in my HUD and I manipulated the stick and throttle to follow. Wraith, Shadow, Blue and Acklay squadrons followed in my wake, while the rest gunned their engines to change orbits to bring them on the appropriate course to their respective target.
"Shields to atmo insertion profile," I ordered.
My Z-95's shield's changed to double front and a slightly different geometry, which allowed for the heat and plasma generated from encountering the ever thicker atmosphere of Ryloth at orbital speeds to be effectively shielded against. Technically speaking, the hull could certainly do the job as well, but it was a mess on the paint work and there was always a risk of something delicate, like the parallax correction gear on the guns in the wingtips getting wrecked or the external ordnance's physical shielding not holding.
Tongues of flame and plasma began to appear and I polarized my cockpit canopy to prevent the abrupt glare and brightness from blinding me. The fighter was smooth as silk through the insertion, the inertial dampeners keeping up easily with the deceleration. There wasn't any hint of noise as well from the fury of the flames writhing around me, which always disconcerted me. It felt like there should be some feedback from the violent forces around me but nothing got through the shields. I flew on instruments only for the next six minutes as the atmosphere of Ryloth worked to slow me down from orbital velocities.
Finally, my fighter emerged from the fire into the freezing upper atmosphere and I could depolarize to get my first low view of the planet we had planned to liberate for all these months. It was a place of dense jungles, mesas, valleys and volcanoes, most of which was nestled along fault lines in the oceans of the planet.
We normalized our shields, altering the geometry for atmospheric flight.
I turned the squadrons onto a south-easterly heading and continued to shed altitude until we were at our cruise speed of 800km per hour and 9000 meters high from the surface. Below us it was now all dark ocean, with a tapestry of darkness sprinkled with stars above us.
We settled in for the somewhat long flight ahead. It was about 2200 kilometers to the base and while simple math said we would reach it in less than three hours, it was much more complicated than just that.
My time in cruise was not idle, as I was also monitoring the squadrons on the way to Distombe base, checking live orbital scans from
Resolute that was being tight-beamed to me and flying my fighter. Sure, I could probably give the controls over to R3, but I was having a bad case of just feeling the pure joy and freedom that powered flight gave and being strapped to something as relatively powerful as the Z-95 was a heady experience.
It was maybe fifty minutes before I could bring myself to do the sensible thing and hand over the controls to the tireless R3 and relax, going through a few meditative exercises and refreshing my concentration.
When the mission clock reached one and a quarter hour, R3 blurted a warning at me.
"Wraith One, squadrons, waypoint one reached, prepare for descent to flight level 0030."
"Roger, Wraith One."
R3 helpfully threw me descent rates and vectors to my MFDs and HUD as I pulled back on the throttle and pushed forward on the stick.
Flying with an astromech was so awesome. I knew that quite a few fighter pilots in my previous life would've given their left nut to have a full blown AI co-pilot that you could relate to as a person.
"R3, do we have final numbers on their max scan range yet?"
The droid paused a few seconds, calculated and chirped an affirmative, throwing a horizontal scan distance of just over 823 kilometers.
Knowing the general publicly touted range of CIS scanning systems in an atmosphere was not enough, as several dynamic factors could change that range. From the amount of power their base could put into the scanning system, which was variable and regularly did change depending on what else they had to power, what was the specific dish gain, what specific frequency they were operating at, what was the size of the fighter cross sections and the minimum detectable signal of their gear, which depended on their manufacturing quality.
R3 had to make an estimate with some of the factors, but it was generally best to play it safe. I mentally amended it 900 kilometers and pushed our descent rate further down.
The altitude meter began ticking down much faster and only when we reached 1500 meters did I relax the rate and pull back on the stick, using the shield geometry as air brakes to shed the gained speed.
Our descent finally leveled off and now we could easily see the blurry, roiling ocean below, with the local moon's light reflected off it.
"R3, are we getting any scanner signals on passive yet?"
"Negative," it chirped.
"Keep a lookout."
I changed the MFD to show me a map overlay and kept an eye on it as the range ticked down.
As it hit 852 kilometers R3 blurted a warning, "
Signal detected, low strength, energy reflection on fighter, below enemy detection threshold, recommend lower altitude."
"Shit," I mumbled, keying the radio, "Wraith One to squadron, drop to altitude 0020."
"Roger Wraith One, altitude 0020."
I carefully feathered the stick with as little input as I could get away with and inched the nose of the fighter down, making sure to keep my situational awareness, as it was all too easy to hyperfocus on that altimeter in the situation.
"R3, how are we doing now?"
"Enemy scanning signal at nominal, no fluctuations or refocus, no reflection."
I breathed a sigh of relief and eyed the ocean below. I knew my eyes were playing tricks on me, but it seemed much closer than twenty meters. Very few species in the galaxy were aeroforms and as such didn't evolve eyes that dealt well with looking down from height.
Another complication of flight unique to my species, which I had to learn to deal with during padawan flight school, was the isolation of one of my primary senses, my montral hearing and echolocation, which was functionally useless encased in the bubble helmet of my flight suit. It was the human equivalent of stuffing your ears with cotton and snaking an earbud through it, so you could still listen to the radio.
Not so bad for a human, but togruta also partially based their sense of balance on information gained from the montrals.
I stuffed the memories of those awful lessons into the background and put my focus fully back on flying.
That lasted for only a few minutes as the Force shifted, drawing my mental eye towards the future. I blinked as a probability line unfolded and I followed it. Just over twelve minutes from now, just after local sunrise, our squadron would encounter the first islands of the Hirani archipelago and there was a Seperatist droid presence on it. Why they hadn't been detected from orbit I had no idea… but the results were clear.
"Wraith One to squadrons, turn to heading 139, now."
"
Roger Wraith One, vector 139."
Clone discipline and conditioning meant that they wouldn't question my orders, even though I was now essentially taking us on a longer course. I tapped the MFD display, altering our approach course. That done, I plunged into the future again.
I swore in English, Togrutan, Twi'leki and Huttese. Now our attack was too delayed! I saw a nervous young resistance fighter jumping the gun, getting himself killed and causing the entire ground force to be routed.
Taking a deep breath I channeled that frustration, reciting the Litany and applying it even as I accepted the bitter pill. "Wraith One, squadrons, correction… original heading 134."
"
Roger Wraith One."
We turned back on the old path and my thoughts raced to find a solution. The future was turned into a shifting mess, a mosaic of possibilities, but I powered through it…
There was one chance perhaps, maybe, but it meant…
"R3, we will be approaching an island soon. I want you to focus all passive sensors on it, and generate a firing solution for the port missile pod."
"
Calculating, solutions obtained. Passive sensors are giving minimal returns."
"Any conclusions?"
"Not enough data. Are you intending to strike the island ahead? Why?"
"There is an enemy presence on the island, they will alert our target early."
R3's tone indicated his first 'emotion' so to speak, he was astonished, "You have received extrasensory data?"
That was his way of talking about the Force. One of the first things I did with my droid was educate it in some aspects of my abilities, just so it didn't question things and potentially waste critical time arguing with me.
"Yes. Wraith One to Resolute, I need a priority scan of the island at co-ordinates 232 053 directly in our approach path."
"Roger Wraith One, stand by."
"Wraith One," Anakin's voice crackled suddenly through the radio,
"We read at least a company of B1 and B2s accompanied by a tactical droid, transmitting live coordinates."
What went unsaid was any sort of explanation of how it could've been missed. Now was not the time for it. Destroying the droid company would at least prevent our force composition from being transmitted, but the fact that an entire company had suddenly vanished from the CIS control network would be a major red flag to the enemy base that something was coming.
"Roger Resolute, Wraith One out. You getting that R3?"
"
Receiving." I tapped a few commands into the targeting computer, which R3 rolled with and refined.
"Target passively locked."
I waited as the range counter ticked down to the maximum atmospheric range of the Krupx concussion missile, which varied depending on the atmosphere you were flying in, but for Ryloth was estimated to be about 90 kilometers.
Giving it some margin for safety, at 85 kilometers I flicked up the trigger guard on the control stick, "Wraith One launching," and mashed the button.
The port pod dropped from the Z-95's wing and less than a second later, five concussion missiles blasted themselves free and zoomed into the distance on trails of blue and white tinged exhaust. Their speed quickly ramped up to over 5100 kilometers per hour.
R3 helpfully showed me the feed from the lead missile in the MFD and it was very cool seeing something moving that fast. Although speeds and accelerations in space were difficult to wrap one's head around, achieving high speed in an atmosphere was something that the Corusca galaxy had never really needed to develop. There was no SR-71 Blackbird equivalent or any 'hypersonic' research. It wasn't really needed when you had ships that hopped in and out of orbit so easily and were a spacefaring FTL capable civilization. That said, it would've been nice to reconfigure my fighter's shields to mimic an SR71 profile and leave droid fighters eating my exhaust. While I could draw the general profile and shape from memory, that just wasn't good enough when it came to practical application. I'd have to put it in front of an Incom egghead to figure out the math and programming. Then there were all the butterflies that could result… and it just wasn't worth it… yet.
55 seconds later the missiles abruptly shot up into the air for their terminal attack phase and I got a brief hyper-color night vision view of a patrolling droid company before the screen abruptly blanked out.
"
Resolute, Wraith One, we read the target destroyed," Anakin called.
"Roger Resolute," I confirmed.
Seven minutes later the sun had started to peek over the horizon and the island came into view. It wasn't particularly large, maybe only housing about a few thousand twi'lek in total. Our course didn't take us over the site of the missile strike, but we could see quite a few twi'lek out in the open outside their houses, cheering and waving at us. I sensed only happiness and joy below mixed with a bitter tang of sadness. They had clearly suffered, but their liberation meant the world to them.
"Wraith One to squadrons, thirty minutes to the next waypoint. Resolute, any activity change from the target?"
"
No aerospace launched, only ground activity so far," Anakin reported.
"Please only think the twi'lek resistance got lucky," I mumbled to myself. Then plunged into the future probability lines and for once things seemed to be holding steady. As Yoda said, the future is always in motion, it's just when you narrowed things down enough and eliminated enough variables you pretty much locked it in.
"Wraith One to squadrons, I want you as rested as possible before we do this, hand over controls to your astromechs or go on autopilot and take a twenty minute break, eat something, relax, speak to your co-pilots on private channels, that's an order."
"Roger, Wraith One…"
The sun was now fully in the sky and the Hirani CIS base just under 400 kilometers away. A quick glance at my MFD showed that the squadrons approaching the Distombe base had also made good time with a completely uneventful covert approach flight. I tapped on the fighter's radio, pushing it to the correct frequency, sending a text only message in code to the twi'lek resistance fighters.
The reply came quickly,
Ready to begin attack, good luck Wraith.
"Wraith One to squadrons, we have a go. Accelerate to 950, climb to flight level 7000. Let's open the door."
"Roger that, Wraith One."
I pushed forward on my throttle and pulled back on the stick, initiating a hard climb.
"
Scans, energy reflection, we have been detected," R3 chirped.
"Knock, knock," I mumbled with a smile.
We were now just under 25 minutes from contact with the enemy base.
It took less than a minute for the first enemy fighter contacts to appear on our forward scopes. That was the one benefit of the Vulture and Hyena droid's variable geometry, they could cling like ticks onto their carriers and launch in a mass or on planets, launching in an instant into the air from just ambling around on a base. They still needed to be fueled though, which was why only two ready squadrons of enemy fighters were detected.
They instantly increased to their own maximum atmospheric speed, which was just under Mach 1.
It took barely another six minutes for another launch, this time of forty-eight fighters.
My MFD pinged with an incoming message from the twi'lek resistance, '
Beginning attack.'
"Wraith One to squadrons, attack on the ground is green. Enemy intercept imminent. I want a missile barrage. Lock your targets and fire as soon as you get a solution. One pod only."
"
Roger Wraith One."
R3 had very thoughtfully already done the work for me and the instant the enemy was in range, I depressed the firing stud on the control stick.
My starboard missile pod dropped and with a burst of noise and light, five concussion missiles raced into the morning sky. They were quickly joined by 235 other missiles shooting ahead at four times the general speed of sound. Though that varied from planet to planet, on Ryloth it was actually higher than normal due to a slightly denser atmosphere from standard.
Thirty seconds later though, a further
twelve squadrons of enemy fighters, mostly Vulture droids, appeared on our scanners.
Despite foreseeing it, being in the moment was ten times worse. It was clear that the CIS ground commanders had learned from the battle in orbit and prepared. Whether it was a tactical droid or a neimoidian commander, they had deduced a key problem with the missile pods. They were cheap and disposable, much cheaper to make than the missiles they housed. They were shotguns, in essence. Meant to deal with the massed droid fighter clouds the Separatists liked to throw at the Republic. You couldn't fire an individual missile from the pod at will, doing so would make the system naturally more complex and expensive, preventing their mass use needed to counter the large numbers of fighter droids.
Now the CIS commander had instead launched his fighters in staggered formations over time.
The first fighter waves were used as a disposable shield and missile bait.
There was no choice unfortunately. Not firing the missile pods and allowing the fighter droids into dogfight range with the pods still on our wings was not an option. Which was why I ordered each Republic fighter to only fire one pod and not both. Jokes about overkill aside, it would just be a waste of a good missile.
Our missiles reached their terminal attack phases and the enemy droids began throwing ECM, countermeasures and frantically firing on them with computer levels of accuracy.
Only the latter was effective, but the droids only had two forward facing blaster cannons with a rate of fire totally inadequate for the task. Nevertheless, 113 missiles managed to reach their targets and detonate, turning the 72 targets they had been attacking to scrap that rained out of the sky and plunged into the ocean below.
Now we had to deal with the 144 Vulture and Hyena droids still barreling down on us.
"Wraith One to squadrons, lock targets and fire your remaining pod."
For this volley I could only contribute two concussion missiles from the internal launcher of the Z-95, the remainder I had to reserve for dogfighting purposes.
The missile storm landed on the droids a mere twenty seconds later.
Here we saw something new, the Vulture fighters fired their own missiles at the
Republic missiles, then detonated them milliseconds before impact, filling the air with mass numbers of tiny buzz droids. The astromechs tried their best to steer the missiles under their control through the mass, but in most cases there was just not enough reaction time, even for droids and computers.
Only 57 concussion missiles reached their targets as a result.
"Wraith One to squadrons, accelerate to attack speed, break and attack!"
Eighty-seven droid fighters now barreled down on us and the battle was joined.
I had to immediately contend with a missile warning as a Hyena droid sent a concussion missile at me.
"Wraith Two, Three, Four, on me, defensive."
"
Roger Wraith One."
The missile approached head on, using a magnetometric scanner as most CIS combat systems did. Submerging myself in the Force, I waited until the last possible moment before abruptly pulling up with max speed, throwing chaff from the rear launcher in my wake. The missile mistook the chaff for its target and detonated.
I continued my climb, then turned the fighter to port in a wingover maneuver that turned into a dive right down onto a flight of five enemy Vulture fighters that were blasting away at other Republic fighters.
I found a target and for the first time my fighter's blaster cannons fired in anger. Blue plasma bolts raced down and destroyed two Vulture droids, while my wingmates each scored a kill.
I spotted another flight of Vultures trying to slip onto our tail.
"Wraith, high yo-yo."
"Roger, Wraith One."
The clone pilots didn't know why I called the maneuver by this name, but it did somehow seem to just stick in their heads.
I banked into a turn, pulling back on the stick, reducing the angle and bringing my fighter to a new flight level and plane. The Vultures turned into their own bank, to try and bring their guns to bear. I abruptly rolled the fighter into a steeper pitch turn, managing to climb above the Vultures, then turned down into a dive. Using repulsor bursts to act as thrust vectoring, that abruptly turned my fighter and allowed me to line up my cannons. Blue plasma bolt after bolt streaked through the air and I walked my fire across the aft sections of three Vultures, which blew up with very satisfying explosions.
The two remaining Vultures broke off into evasive action, causing the shots from my wingmen to miss unfortunately.
"Break and pursue."
Wraith Two and myself turned left, Three and Four followed the other.
Wraith Two triggered his Torrent's cannons and turned our target to explosive debris, whilst I managed to snag a Hyena that had strayed into our battle with a snap-shot from my cannons.
"Reform!"
It was so easy to lose situational awareness in a dogfight like this. The fighter formations of the two opposing sides were now well and truly entangled in combat.
The Force screamed a warning and I threw my shields into double-back mode.
Just in time to absorb the cannon hits from a Vulture droid that had come at us out of the early morning sun.
I jinked my fighter hard, triggering my repulsors to throw it further around and made a snapshot that nailed the attacking droid fighter with bursts from my Ion cannon as it passed the formation.
Its power flickered and then died, leaving it for gravity to eagerly reclaim as it coasted sideways briefly on its momentum before falling out of sight.
I normalized my shields, leaving them at an overall two-thirds strength that would slowly recharge.
Right, time to stop being a middling fighter pilot and instead be a Jedi.
The Force opened to me fully, showing me reality as only a trained Jedi could perceive, my prescience thundered into my senses, threatening to rob me of the present moment, but my anchor held.
"Wraith flight, whatever I do, follow."
"
Roger Wraith One."
I perceived a three strong flight of enemy fighters eight hundred meters below and behind me. A grouping of five Hyena bombers, firing off concussion missiles, about a kilometer further distant. Two Vultures were on the tail of an ARC fighter from Acklay squadron, two kilometers to port…
The moment was not yet here…
One with the Force, the Force is with me…
The interplay of elements, probability, shifted and then… coalesced.
I slammed my control stick over, flaring my repulsors to turn and dive, pushing my fission engines to max.
R3 already had a target lock for me. '
Clever droid.'
I let loose a missile and a moment later triggered my blaster cannons.
The concussion missile homed unerringly on the first Vulture, exploding and tearing it to pieces. The explosion's shockwave knocked its wingm- wingdroid? off course, enough to fly right into the cannon blasts. Its rear was smashed to pieces and with the further stress on its frame, it tore itself apart. Wraith Two triggered his cannons and gained a kill, finishing off that flight of droids.
I pulled up and turned to port. R3 again got me a missile lock.
Another missile leaped from my Headhunter's internal launcher. The Hyena bomber died an instant later, whilst my blaster and Ion cannons fired alternately catching a second bomber.
Wraith Two, Three and Four contributed and finished off the remaining three.
I pulled up, flaring my repulsors and the world seemed to spin around me, now seemingly above my head, then rolled, performing an Immelman maneuver that got me a sightline on two Vulture droids.
The ARC fighter's rear gunner was frantically trying to defend his craft, not helped by the pilot also doing his best to evade the gun sights of the Vultures.
The range for an accurate cannon shot from my flight was not there… to an ordinary pilot.
My hands worked the parallax gear on my targeting computer, disengaging it, before I aligned my fighter and started shooting.
Ion cannon bolts streaked out into the sky at first, followed by blaster shots from my wing cannons, in alternate shot mode.
The Vulture turned, trying to line up its guns and was about to fire… only to be nailed by an ion bolt in a deflection shot. It didn't even have time to fall, as two blaster bolts slammed into it and reduced it to an exploding wreckage.
Its partner died similarly.
"Holy Shavit!" Wraith Four exclaimed in amazement.
"Cut the chatter, Four." Two growled, even though I could feel his own astonishment.
The battle continued and despite my best efforts, I couldn't be everywhere. The ARC fighters were really showing their biggest drawback when fighting the Vulture droid, their maneuverability sucked, especially in an atmosphere.
The Torrent squadrons and myself had to be seemingly everywhere to pull the ARCs out of trouble, but the inevitable casualties started to mount.
The battle for aerospace supremacy over Hirani would end with the last missile from my launcher downing a Hyena bomber that had just killed a Torrent from Wraith squadron with a missile barrage.
I surveyed the scanner scopes and tallied what was left of my command.
Twenty-nine fighters.
Third flight from Wraith squadron were all gone.
A further twelve ARC fighters and three Torrents were now just debris drifting to the bottom of the ocean floor or vaporized entirely.
Despite trying to be prepared, it hit me like a punch in the gut.
Any military analyst looking at the numbers would be completely elated at the results and declare it a victory. The enemy had thrown more than four times our number at us and we suffered only a 39% casualty rate.
Fuck that.
Treacherous tears managed to sneak from my eyes before I could muster the Force to control and stop it. I blinked and squeezed my eyes shut briefly, pulling away the moisture from my face with the tiniest hint of TK, sending it down my neck to be absorbed by the lining there.
I coughed and cleared my throat forcefully, then keyed the radio, "All wings, all squadrons, form up as best you can. We still have an enemy base to take care of, ETA eight minutes."
"Roger Wraith One."
R3 bleeped at me that a message had come through from the twi'lek resistance halfway through the air battle, '
Prisoners rescued, way is clear, thank you.'
Anakin paused outside the door to his padawan's small quarters in officer country on the
Resolute. Carefully and passively feeling along their bond for her mood and state of mind. He had been listening to the entire battle from the bridge, with the squadron's status displayed as a holo from the command chair. It had been an interminable experience to say the least.
Everything had indicated that she was ready for this and she had performed as best as could be expected in the circumstances. The Mirani and Distombe CIS bases were smoking holes in the ground, their fighter complements destroyed and would not threaten the ground campaign going forward. Mission success. She should be elated. She had shot down more than a dozen fighter droids.
It didn't feel that way to Ahsoka though and it didn't help that his own feelings were screaming at him that he should have also been down there with her in his own fighter, watching her back.
He didn't get much from the bond though, she was keeping herself locked up for the moment.
An abrupt flex of the Force with telekinesis from inside and the door opened.
"Come in, Skyguy," she invited.
He took the offer promptly and closed the door. Taking a moment to survey her private domain. He had been here before of course, but not in the last month and the planning for the Ryloth campaign had caused some changes in the space. A lot of the wall space which had been empty was now filled with reproduced flimsiplast maps and star charts. Not to mention the big artistic poster reproduction of a swooping Z-95 dramatically flying with an idyllic planet in the backdrop, now mounted above her bed.
Ahsoka herself was seated at her work desk, only dressed in her tight pants she used in the gym with a support wrap around her chest.
She was holding four small, thin objects in her left hand that blinked oddly in the lighting of her quarters. It was only as he ambled closer in curiosity that he saw what they were.
Clone pilot ID tags.
Clones were generally ID'd by a tiny implant in their bodies, which allowed for easy identification when the kaminoans came round to pick up the dead. Clone pilots on the other hand, still used an external ID tag, which they handed in to the quartermaster before they left on a mission. It was done so, simply because in many cases, there wasn't much left of a pilot when their fighter was shot out from under them and in some cases, there was absolutely nothing left when a vaporization happened due to a reactor breach.
"Those the four you lost?"
She nodded and pointed to the first tag, "CP-30933, Sniper Princess."
Anakin blinked, not sure he heard correctly, "Sniper Princess?" He knew some clones adopted weird nicknames but that was very odd.
She laughed, "Yeah, he didn't like that one, but eventually owned it, made it his own. Force help you if you mocked him over it. His marksmanship in a Torrent was best of the squadron."
She pointed to the next tag, "CP-63410, Skull Crusher. Clone pilots are generally not the most muscle bound guys in the GAR, but he clearly didn't get the memo. He often beat Rex at arm wrestling contests.
"CP-54011, Ghost. I really think he should've been a Republic Commando with the way he could sneak around and his marksmanship was just behind Sniper Princess and CP-41170, Boomblaster, best flier of the squadron, you could only keep up with him with the aid of the Force." She closed her hand on the tags, squeezing them together. "Yet they all died nevertheless, to soulless unfeeling machines." He stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. "You've lost pilots from Shadow Squadron before… men you knew, trained with, how did you do it? How did you cope?"
"I can only say, don't get too close to them Ahsoka. This will eat you up inside if you let it."
She closed her eyes briefly, then looked up, seemingly staring through the walls of her quarters. "That's true and wise I suppose, something to do out of necessity. Yet another trap of the enemy."
Anakin felt a spike of alarm shoot through his spine at her words. "What do you mean?"
"At first, the Jedi would do as Jedi do or as sentients do when faced with dire threat on a battlefield, we'd connect with our troops, we fight with them, and we even die with them. Then in the face of the loss we feel when they inevitably die in this war, we choose to disconnect or not connect at all, to spare ourselves that pain, thinking it will only lead to the Dark Side." She idly wiped a tear from her right eye. "Then we come to see them as mere pawns, tools or simply means to achieve our objectives. We weigh their lives in a terrible calculus and begin to see them as numbers, statistics, cost and benefit. We become accountants of life." She snorted with a grim laugh. "He turns us into mockeries of the Sith Lords during the Old Republic. The only difference being that we don't throw sorcery and lightning from our hands and the heavens, we don't orbitally bombard planets."
She picked up a small microdrill and arranged the clone tags in her other hand to form a rectangular cube, then carefully drilled through all four in the corner. The drill was put down, then she looped a thick length of thread through it. She took the thread, the tags clinking together and pushed aside her lekku, then tied it around her neck.
The new necklace of tags fell onto her chest near her heart.
"This is my talisman, my reminder, to never fall into the trap that
bahko togna'ki has set us."
Anakin internally winced, he spoke a lot of languages and while his Togruti wasn't the best, he knew that what she had just called the Sith Lord was one of the worst insults a togrutan could give you and was not used in idle jest at all. Among those togruta who lived on Shili in the more traditional manner of their ancestors, more at one with nature and who used very little technology, that insult was used on the lowest of the low, just before you'd stab and gut them for the crime they committed. The best translation in Basic was 'sick snake'.
It lost a lot in translation, but gained a lot more meaning when you studied a bit of Togruta culture. Now while Ahsoka hadn't really been raised fully in the culture of her species, she had retained enough from her own young childhood before Plo Koon had found her and had received the tutelage from other togruta in the Jedi Order in her people's customs.
Togruta were fierce, cunning hunters by nature and intensely social. Their local species of 'snake' or a snake-like creature, was
the most despised creature on Shili. Not only because the creature was also an opportunistic hunter that competed with the ancient togrutas for food, it would also sneak up on the dead animal prey of togruta after their own hunt, and bite it's venom into the carcass, ruining the meat and if any togruta was unlucky enough to eat that meat… death would usually result.
He briefly squeezed her shoulder before letting go, nodding at her that he understood, the meaning going even further as she opened the bond again.
The first step in avoiding a trap was to know it was there. She had just shown him one and he would be damned before he'd step in it himself.
"What makes it worse was that I could've probably saved more of them, but I was forced to make a choice between all bad options."
"Your prescience?" Anakin queried gently. All Jedi could see the future to varying degrees, it was just his luck that he would have a padawan uniquely gifted in that department.
"If I had kept my port pod, if I had diverted the squadrons around that island. Our arrival would've been delayed. The twi'lek resistance has a lot of young, inexperienced recruits and one of them would have not been able to take the prolonged stress of waiting, he does something which results in their early discovery, they're forced to attack early and get overwhelmed in a Seperatist counter-attack. In this aborted future, we were forced to retreat with the Mirani base intact. There was also someone very important to the future among those twi'lek resistance fighters, if that someone died… I would need years to parse the consequences but it was nevertheless extremely bad."
Anakin nodded in understanding. His padawan's own lectures to him on probability theory and something she called 'Chaos theory,' had left him with his brain going in bewildered circles, but it was something he eventually got a tentative handle on.
"Do you know who this important person was?"
"Just a hint, one of the future offspring of these fighters will be a great leader, who will in turn be crucial to the future of the galaxy. I can't be more specific. So in the end, I had to weigh the future galaxy against the lives of four or more cloned men. Not much of a choice in retrospect, is it?"
"It's still your choice Ahsoka, it matters to you, it weighs on
you."
"I suppose this pain that we feel, this care we have, is what in the end, separates us from the enemy," she mused.
Anakin nodded, "Now make sure you get some rest, there's still a lot of planet to liberate."
"Yes, Master."
A/N: Thanks to my patrons for making this chapter happen and a warm welcome to the new ones who joined this week. For early access to chapters (on other stories as well), artwork, and more coming soon, visit my
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EDIT: Corrected R7 to R3 series droid.
