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Author Topic: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, OT, completed 3/30
Thumper09  1057 posts
Registered: Dec '01
14731_X-Wings
Date Posted: 2/4/04 6:09pm Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, updated 2/3 - Date Edited: 2/4/04 6:11pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Thumper09
Welcome, Mjsullivan!

shock Wow. I honestly never expected to get a review like that. I don't really know what to say, except thank you!

I agree completely that Jedi and/or Sith are not required for a good SW story. They certainly have their own niche and are important to the SW universe in their own right, but it's simply hard for me to relate to them. Plus, I love the OT era the most, and there aren't exactly too many Jedi running around during that time so... wink Nah, give me a Rebel grunt any day.

I'm glad you liked that stargazing part. Astronomy is really a window to the past, and Darin thinks about the past so much that those seem like very natural thoughts for him to be thinking while looking at the night sky. I love astronomy, in case you couldn't tell. tongue One of the funniest things I ever heard was that since Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the light from that galaxy should just be reaching Earth now, so if you can find the correct galaxy in a telescope, you can watch the events of Episode III before it hits theaters. I wish I could remember where I first heard that. happy

Probably my favourite part was when you had Darin staring down the barrel of death for a while there.
When I read this, Darin made sure to remind me that that wasn't his favorite part. tongue

I'm also glad you enjoyed the speeder bike chase. That was a fun section to write. It's one of those scenes where I would pay a lot of money to see it in a theater or on TV. *sigh* Yeah, I can dream... tongue

Again, thanks for all your comments. happy Next post is coming on Tuesday.

-Katie
Thumper

Edit: Annoying formatting.

 

-----signature-----
"Like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method." -Karen Eiffel, _Stranger Than Fiction_
"Adamantine"--Rebel OC vig http://boards.theforce.net/the_saga/b10476/30390799
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Mjsullivan  622 posts
Registered: Dec '03
18202_TIE Interceptor
Date Posted: 2/5/04 2:00am Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, updated 2/3
looking forward to it, Thumper happy

And i've just found Corona Squadron's website.

grin grin grin

 

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Working in Darkness - On Hiatus :::::: http://boards.theforce.net/The_Saga/b10476/15283754/p1
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LumiKuningatar  820 posts
Registered: Nov '03
7719_Cordé
Date Posted: 2/5/04 8:19am Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, updated 2/3 - Date Edited: 2/5/04 8:19am (1 edits total) Edited By: LumiKuningatar
loved the post... you really can write beautifully...

I like how the characters are ordinary (well, almost ordinary) men and women who fight, not because they have super powers, but because they believe in what they fight. Usually in the books the characters are super-human and all-powerful people and they seem to be immortal.. I love your fanfic since you make the characters real, they can die and they don't have super powers..
And I don't hate you for killing CC because you did it tastefully, I usually don't like people who kill my favorite characters..; grin
I still hop eyou aren't going to kill any more people at least for a while since I'm already quite attached to the lot of them...
grin

 

-----signature-----
Tell a man there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you,
tell a man that a bench is wet and he'll have to touch it...
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis,
ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
It's a bird, no wait a plane.. damn.. it IS a b
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Wedgeatbarkura  103 posts
Registered: Aug '03
14536_Wedge Antilles
Date Posted: 2/6/04 10:48am Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, updated 2/3
YEAH, OUr dear heroes escape Imperial hands, into a wild enviro, Great Writing.... Keep it Up... UP

 

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Thumper09  1057 posts
Registered: Dec '01
14731_X-Wings
Date Posted: 2/10/04 5:33pm Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, updated 2/10
Thanks, all. Glad you're enjoying it, Wedge.

Lumi:
I love your fanfic since you make the characters real, they can die and they don't have super powers..
Thanks. But that also means I have to listen to Quiver constantly complain about his lack of super powers... tongue

I still hop eyou aren't going to kill any more people at least for a while since I'm already quite attached to the lot of them...
That's what the Coronas are hoping, too. wink

On with the show... (Another relatively long post)

*****

Chapter Five

Darin couldn't remember ever getting motion-sick before, but the wavy, unsteady motions of the X-wing to which he was much too tenuously secured seemed determined to change that. The wobbling, coupled with such things as the sight of the ground speeding by mere meters below him, the stinging cuts on his arm and face, the headache he was getting from the engine noise and the acidic residue in his stomach from the intensity and turmoil of the morning left him feeling pretty rotten.

The noise from the engine above his head effectively consumed every other sound, and he decided that he didn't like the view very much either. He couldn't do anything about the noise, but it wasn't long until he just shut his eyes to block out the wind and the rest of the world while he tried to hold on more tightly.

What seemed like a very long time later, Ikoa began to slow down. Darin pried his eyes open and saw that they were flying low over some treetops. The X-wing suddenly and unexpectedly sideslipped a few more times like it had been doing, causing Darin to close his eyes again and bite his bottom lip. He swore his heart would explode since it seemed like it hadn't stopped hammering since he'd first lifted off from the canyon that morning.

Finally the X-wing hovered over a very small clearing in a forest, and Ikoa began putting them down very cautiously beside two X-wings covered with their camouflage netting. At long last, the pilots felt solid ground beneath them again, and the strut-riders shakily exhaled in relief as Ikoa powered down her fighter and popped her canopy open. She called over to Mackin, Slurry, Kalre and Pellicer, who were approaching. Kalre was cradling his right wrist, and Pellicer looked sunburned and a little woozy.

Carefully unwinding his legs from around the strut, Darin lay back onto the ground and slowly rolled out from under the X-wing. As soon as there was murky sky above him again, he stopped rolling, tiredly shut his eyes and simply lay on his back on the wet ground, relishing its stability and firmness. A cold drizzle was falling, but at the moment he didn't care; it actually felt good on his face. Darin's ears were ringing from the nearly constant wind noise since his canopy had been blown open, and it was made worse by the wind and engine noise of the hitchhike after that, so he didn't hear Quiver approach; rather, he sensed someone watching him so he opened his eyes.

Quiver was there beside him, looking down at him worriedly. "You okay?" he asked more loudly than normal.

"Yeah," Darin responded just as loudly as he awkwardly sat up. "Just never realized how comforting solid ground can be at times."

Quiver nodded. "So how'd you like the flight over the canyon?"

Darin shrugged. "I wasn't watching. We're on the other side of it now?"

Quiver nodded again and pulled Darin to his feet, then they walked over to join the other Coronas underneath some tree cover. Slurry and Ikoa finished putting the camouflage netting on her fighter, then they joined the rest at the same time as Darin and Quiver.

"Interesting method of transportation," Commander Mackin was saying as the stragglers approached the group. "Seemed to work better than ours did. We kind of shoved Kalre into my cockpit with me, and Slurry decided to sit on top of Lt. Pellicer's X-wing and hold onto his astromech. But with four arms, he can hold on to anything, or so he claims."

"What happened to you?" Weas asked Slurry. "Why'd you go down?"

The Bilgana crossed his upper set of arms, a human mannerism he was fond of, then winced a bit and lifted his arms away from his torso so they wouldn't press against his ribs. "After right you all landed, a TIE came out of nowhere and shot me blank point. I did have not even time to transmit anything about it before I had to eject," Slurry answered.

Mackin suddenly looked puzzled, and then looked around at all his pilots like he was searching for something. "Where's Six?" Mackin asked.

The world stopped again for Quiver and Darin as the question brought back the burned-in memory all too clearly. Quiver flinched, and Darin felt hot anger and painful grief moving in to fill the void in his stomach. Neither of them spoke.

Mackin obviously didn't miss their reactions. After a glance at Weas plainly told him that the XO didn't know for certain what had happened to CC but he knew it wasn't good, Mackin turned back to Darin and Quiver. "Nine? Ten?" he asked in a slow, careful voice, like he knew he was prodding a tender wound but had no choice if he was to determine the amount of damage and try to fix it. "Where's Six?"

Nothing was moving. Even the breeze had become still. Darin could see that he and Quiver now held the Coronas' full attention. They all watching them intently, waiting for the wingmates to deny their worst fears...but as much as Thumper and Quiver wanted to, they couldn't.

Quiver looked away, though his bleak, pain-filled gaze didn't seem to be seeing anything at that moment. "Dead, sir," he said weakly.

"What? Oh, no, no." Ikoa looked as shaken and shocked as all the others, but she was the only one who immediately voiced the feelings. She quickly turned around and wiped at her face.

"When you got there?" Mackin asked. His voice was carefully controlled, but a flash of shock and pain on his face betrayed his emotions.

When Quiver didn't answer, Darin looked over at him and could almost see Quiver struggling to keep his emotions in check. Darin swallowed and quietly answered the question for him while he tried to control his own feelings. "No, sir. She was alive when we got there."

"What happened?"

Quiver still made no move to answer and remained looking at the ground, so Darin started fidgeting and haltingly replied, "She was unconscious and hurt badly. She hadn't ejected and was still in her fighter, but before we could get her out of the wreck, the Imperials captured us." He raised his bound wrists a bit as if to offer proof. "They moved us away, looked at her for a minute and–-" His voice broke, and he shifted his weight again. Finally he tried to slow down his breathing, and then he forced out the rest in a tone that was so quiet that he couldn't hear himself say it over the ringing in his ears. "They shot her. A few times. Real close. Then they called in a TIE and completely destroyed her fighter with her still inside."

Though he didn't even hear his own voice, he could tell from the appalled looks on the faces of the other pilots that he had indeed said it out loud. Darin felt himself getting overwhelmed with the memory again as everyone stared at him, his story slowly sinking in. Then, almost simultaneously, a few pilots jerked their heads around to glare accusingly at Pellicer, some of them less subtly than others.

The former Imperial pilot who was usually so disciplined and sure of himself jumped a bit and seemed to shrink back from the looks directed at him; his courage quickly returned, however, in the form of defensive anger. Pellicer straightened up, and his eyes blazed as he said loudly, "What? How is this my fault? I didn't do that! I didn't kill my own wingman!"

"No one's saying you did, Shaun," Weas said in a low voice, looking hard at the other pilots and silently daring them to say something to prove him wrong.

"Like hell they aren't, Lieutenant!" Pellicer responded hotly. "Look at them! I'm the Imperial scapegoat here, just because I used to be one. I'm sorry to break this to you all, but I did not blow up Alderaan. Just like I did not kill CC. I am not those troopers! I am not the Empire! I'm on your side!"

Weas was about to respond, but before he could say anything Chopper angrily blurted out, "Why would they kill her?! Why not just take her prisoner like the rest of us?"

"Think for a minute!" Pellicer retorted. "You don't need me to translate! If you're an Imperial and you already have four other prisoners–-" He stopped abruptly, and for a moment he visibly forced himself to calm down. There was dead silence as the other pilots slowly began to realize what he was about to say. In a more controlled voice, Pellicer continued at a more deliberate rate, "If you're an Imperial, and you already have four prisoners who are alive, conscious and at least partially mobile, why would you waste bacta on just another Rebel prisoner from the same group who's out, badly hurt and might not make it anyway?" He crossed his arms tightly and looked at the ground. "Look, I'm sorry, but your everyday generic Rebels aren't worth the skin they're wearing to some Imperials. Well, more than some. It's just one more difference between us," he looked up defensively again, "and them."

Pellicer paused and shook his head almost imperceptibly in disgust at the others. "Maybe you've all forgotten one little detail: she was my wingman, which meant I did everything I could to protect her in battle. In that respect, this fight was no different. I'm sorry I wasn't good enough. I wish I had been. She deserved a hell of a lot better."

Then he narrowed his eyes a bit and continued, "She tried hard to make me feel included when I joined this squadron four months ago. But if you all still just see me as an Imperial instead of a squadmate, then I guess all her efforts were wasted."

No one had anything to say to that.

A minute later Darin looked away, and as much to break the uncomfortable silence as anything else, said softly, "And now you don't even have to be injured for the Imperials here to decide not to bother with you."

Mackin looked at him in puzzlement. "Nine? What are you talking about?"

Chopper took over, just as angry as Pellicer had been a couple minutes ago. "If Two had gotten there any later, sir, you'd have four less pilots to worry about. After we managed to signal for help, they changed their minds about how many prisoners they wanted. They were going to keep Eight for questioning and use two of us to set examples for the colony about the consequences of being a Rebel. They were going to execute one of the two right then and there. At a minimum, the two 'examples' would have been dead by tomorrow, and likely all four of us from the way they were talking. In any event, it would have been long before any rescue could have come. Between their intended executions and what they did to Six, it's clear they'd rather have dead Rebels than live prisoners. We can't just surrender and hope for the best."

Mackin stood there and took all that in. Another long, uncomfortable silence followed until Weas quietly asked, "What's our status, Commander?"

It took a moment for Mackin to answer. He drew in a deep breath and sounded much older when he said, "We have three X-wings: Two's, Five's and mine." He indicated Ikoa and Pellicer respectively. "We're about 150 klicks east of where the dogfight started, with the canyon between us and the colony. This patch of forest was the only place we found on short notice on this side of the canyon where we could try to conceal the X-wings while simultaneously being surrounded by plants and whatever animals are here to hide our life signs from their sensors.

"They'll certainly pick up any transmissions and triangulate the signal, so no communications of any kind, understood? We need to find another way to contact any friendlies or rescue parties who will come for us, as well as avoid the Imperials who undoubtedly are trying to find us and may even now be on our trail. We didn't go to great lengths to cover our tracks.

"The rations available in each remaining snubfighter's survival kit means that with...nine of us, we'll each have about three meals, plus whatever is left from last night. Keep your eyes out for food, since we'll need some very soon. Eat sparingly, but keep your strength up. We may have to hunt." Mackin gave a small, sad smile and quietly said almost to himself, "CC would have been appalled at killing cute little forest creatures."

Sobering, he looked Chopper over. "I doubt we have enough medical supplies in the survival kits to get you better, but we'll do what we can. Everyone else, if you need medical attention we'll treat you now. If you're okay and not helping with the medical treatments, keep watch and start passively scanning the comm frequencies for Imperial or Rebel transmissions. After we get everyone patched up, we'll see if we can find a way to get those binders off you four. And everyone, go ahead and stow your chestboxes in my fighter's hold. You don't need that extra encumbrance unless you're flying."

The pilots somberly responded, "Yes, sir," and quietly got to work.

Darin headed off past Ikoa's X-wing, and when Quiver noticed him walking away he jogged over to catch up with him. "Where you going?"

"Keep watch, do a perimeter patrol. I can't do too much else with my hands cuffed together."

Quiver fell into step alongside his wingman. "Aren't you going to get looked at?"

Darin shook his head. "No, I'm okay."

"If your arm hurts at all like mine does, you're lying. Besides, how much transparisteel do you figure is residing in your face right now?"

"If your arm hurts so much, why are you following me instead of getting treated?" Darin asked in reply.

"I figured I'd wait and see how many supplies we have left after Chopper and Kalre get looked at. They sure need it more than I do. Scoop didn't seem very well either."

Darin just shrugged. "There you go. Same reason."

"Yeah, yeah, okay," said Quiver in surrender. "I should have known better than to even ask you why. My head just isn't working too well right now."

For the first time Darin took his eyes off the sky and looked at his friend. "Are you okay, Quiver? I mean, will you be okay? I know you two were really good friends and..." He trailed off, not knowing what else to say.

Quiver took a very shaky breath. "I just can't believe what they did to her. How can anyone shoot someone in cold blood like that? It's horrible! And then they–-" He stopped talking as his voice started wavering, and after another two steps he turned abruptly and quickly angled off in another direction around their temporary camp.

Darin stopped and watched him go, unsure of what to do. He'd never seen Quiver so upset before. If CC was there, she would have known exactly what to do, and Darin's own ignorance in this situation made him feel like a very bad friend just then. Finally he sighed and sadly continued walking around the camp's perimeter, figuring Quiver would just want to be alone for a while.

*****

"You sure you know what you're doing, Trip?" Darin asked the R4 unit apprehensively.

From his droid socket on the top of Pellicer's snubfighter, Trip beeped confidently, then deployed his cutting wheel and turned it on.

Sitting there in front of the astromech, Darin just eyed the whirring blade uneasily for a moment, then nervously extended his arms toward Trip, pulling his hands apart as far as he could while the wrist binders were on. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away.

"Darin, stop pulling back," Ikoa said from beside him, sitting on the fighter's port engine.

He opened one eye, forced himself to stop subconsciously leaning farther and farther back and brought his wrists closer to Trip again. He saw the droid raise the cutting wheel and aim it at the connection point of the wrist binders before he closed his eyes again. He caught himself thinking that he couldn't wait until someone with a lower rank joined the squadron: even though he had been with the Coronas for almost a year now, he was still the lowest-ranking member, and the "rookie-goes-first" commands, even if done in good fun, had a way of wearing thin at times, like now.

Trip waited a moment, calculating the best approach to get the blade in the almost-nonexistent gap between Darin's wrists. Finally the droid cautiously moved the cutting wheel forward, and as he heard it getting closer Darin started chewing his lower lip anxiously. Yes, he was quite surprised his heart hadn't exploded yet.

He felt the cutting wheel contact the connection point, and then he felt Trip pressing the blade forward to cut through it. Darin pushed back a little to accelerate the cutting process, at the same time trying to pull his wrists apart even more. Trip beeped low in concentration, then whistled in triumph when the wheel severed the bands' connector. Darin's hands flew apart, almost causing him to hit Ikoa.

Darin grinned in relief as he shook out his arms. "Thanks, Trip."

Trip beeped happily and then looked down at Quiver on the ground, who was waiting to go next. Ikoa took Darin's arm, lifting it to inspect the metal bands still around each wrist. She cautiously tested the cut connection point with a fingertip but stopped quickly. "Ow, that's hot. You guys will want to be careful so that you don't cut yourselves: this edge is pretty sharp. Too bad we can't get the binders off completely."

"Well, no offense to Trip, but there's no way I'd let anyone try cutting these off my wrists with a cutting wheel. Getting them apart was bad enough. I'll live with them until we get back," Darin said.

He climbed down so Quiver could come up and sit in Darin's spot. It didn't take long for the other three pilots to get their binders cut apart, even after a brief argument about whether it would be easier to hoist Chopper up top or to lower and then lift Trip back up if they had to put him back in the snubfighter. Once they were done, Ikoa grabbed Darin and Quiver and pulled them over to Mackin's X-wing.

*****

Quentell Mackin was sitting on top of his X-wing, helping his droid do a couple minor repairs through the camouflage netting when he noticed Ikoa dragging Quiver and Darin in his direction. He paused and watched them in concern, trying to gauge how those three were doing in the aftermath of CC's death. Ikoa was by nature a gentle, compassionate person who would take any death hard, and CC had been her roommate on top of that. And Quiver and Darin...well, it was Quiver and Darin. A Trio wasn't a Trio without three.

"Everyone's pushing us around today," Quiver moaned as Ikoa brought them to a stop.

"Stow it," Ikoa scolded. She got out some bacta bandages from the medpack in the X-wing's hold. None of them even seemed to notice that Mack was there above them. "You two should have gotten looked at before." She bandaged the wounds on their arms and cleaned the dried blood off Quiver's hands while he protested in embarrassment the whole time about how Ikoa was not his mother. She just laughed a little at him, more sadly than normal, and when she was done she leaned in close to inspect the cuts on Darin's face.

"Don't even start that sadistic little 'does this hurt?' game of yours," said Darin as he blocked her hand suddenly coming up toward his face.

Ikoa smirked at him as she lowered her arm. "Well then, tell me, does it?"

"Yes."

"That wasn't so hard, now was it?" She winked at Quiver. "See? I told you they could be trained. We've finally taught him to speak on command." Normally they both would have laughed at the joke, but neither one gave so much as a chuckle. Ikoa tried to smile, but Mackin could tell it was forced.

Looking back at Darin, Ikoa sobered and said, "Unless you really want me to, I'd rather not try getting that all out. We don't have the equipment, and I don't have the skill. I doubt Mack does either." Mackin had to silently agree with that assessment.

"That's okay. I'll live."

"How's your shoulder?" Quiver asked Ikoa as he tapped very lightly on her left shoulder. "I heard you banged it or jammed it pretty well during the dogfight somehow."

"A hit from a TIE rocked my X-wing pretty hard," she said by way of explanation. "It's fine as long as I don't move it much, and getting it wrapped helped. I sure couldn't pull any pretty barrel rolls or anything with it like this, though, since the seat restraint presses against it. I'm better off than Chopper and Kalre, anyway: Chopper broke his leg and hit his head, and Kalre sprained or broke his wrist. Scoop got some radiation sickness, probably a combination of a laser hit today and that solar storm we came in during yesterday, and Slurry bruised his ribs pretty badly. All in all, we're in pretty bad shape. If the Imperials decide to chase us, we won't be able to run very far or for very long."

As if on cue, Slurry called out from Ikoa's X-wing where he and Rudder were scanning the comm frequencies, "Commander Mackin, we got something on the comm! It's not good, sir."

Mackin frowned and jumped down. The pilots all made their way over to listen, leaving room for Mackin to go up front to hear it better.

The broadcast from the comm system in the X-wing buzzed sporadically with heavy static and was barely intelligible. "The cruis–-...-–stant arou–-...-–anet. Betwe–-...-–bital mi–-...fighter pat–-...-–ve total cover–-...-–bels can't get in or ou–-...-–ing them."

"Orbital mines? And was that 'fighter patrols'? They've got us blocked in! We'll never get out now!" Darin whispered fearfully, unconsciously fiddling with one of his wrist binders.

"Hold on, don't panic," Mackin said firmly. He couldn't afford to let things get out of control. "What kind of transmission is this?" he asked Slurry.

"Well, sir, Rudder found it while he was scanning the airwaves, and he's been working for the minutes ten last to decrypt it. According to him, the level encryption was about what he would expect for frequencies military Imperial general. He's not done decrypting yet quite, which is why there's static much so. And the range is short too for us to be receiving it from far very outside this system. The odds are good very that it came from the colony. I do believe not there are planets other any within range of this signal."

Mackin thought that over as Chopper said, "And not only can we not get out, but no rescue can get in. Now what are we going to do?"

"We should've gotten some blasters from the dead guards," Darin said in a small, distracted voice, still sounding nervous. "I never even thought of it. But we should've. At least everyone would have a weapon."

"A couple blasters aren't going to make the difference between getting caught or not when you have who-knows-how-many Imperials after you," said Weas. "Besides, we had other things on our minds at the time, like the X-wing buzzing us."

"You're welcome," Ikoa said.

"All right," interrupted Mackin, "here's what we're going to do for now."

The Coronas quieted and gave him their full attention. They looked at Mackin with steady gazes, the kind of gaze that said they were simply waiting for him to lead so they could follow.

In front of him was a squadron with a reputation for being so fiercely loyal to its own that some superiors accused them of not being team players with everyone else and called them unreliable and undisciplined. Quentell Mackin knew better. They were disciplined where it counted and for reasons that mattered. His squadron was made up of the most dedicated, most selfless people he knew, and he was proud of the team he had developed.

Not for the first time, Mackin had disobeyed a direct order in order to do what was best for the squadron as a whole, and the Coronas knew that and never questioned him. There was something to be said for that kind of trust. It was the solid ground that made up the foundation of this squadron, and he would not let them down. Even after the death of a squadmate–-a good person and a good soldier for whom he had been responsible–-they still looked to him. Even after an event like that had shown them that he couldn't protect them all the time despite his best efforts...

Commander Mackin took a deep breath. He'd failed CC, but he wouldn't-–couldn't-–fail the others.

"If that's the tactical frequency for the Imperials here, we'll have a huge advantage by knowing where they are and what they're doing," Mackin told his pilots. "Slurry, you and Rudder keep working on the decryption. We'll listen for a little while to see what we can learn, and see if that even is the right frequency.

"We'll have to start moving soon, but that means we need to find more places to hide. I would like to wait until nightfall to start out, but that's a long ways off yet, and if it sounds like they're coming close before that then we won't have a choice. If you're injured, rest now. And everyone, take whatever sensor data our X-wings have of this area and try to find some potential places to move to. I've got a couple datapads I was using last night that you can work with. Remember we can't go far in one stretch: we'll be carrying people on the outside of our fighters so extended flights would be hard for them, and extended terrain-following flights are hard on the pilot in the cockpit. We also don't have detailed sensor data of other areas of the planet, and I'd like to stay in this general area for now because one, this is the first place a rescue party will look for us, and two, the colony is the only place that has technological resources we could potentially use. In the best possible scenario, the hiding spot will be able to drown out our life signs and hide the X-wings. I would certainly like to keep the fighters, but that may not be possible.

"We also need a constant watch now. At least two people are to be awake at all times."

The commander looked at his subordinates, making sure his words were sinking in. "Just be smart and be cautious. We're going to get out of here, everyone. I've seen this squadron do amazing things before, against worse odds than this. We'll make it through if we all stick together."

Most of the Coronas nodded silently before they all started off to their assigned tasks. Mackin watched all his pilots go, and then he turned his gaze up to the overcast sky through the drizzle, wondering how he was going to get them off this planet.

*****

happy A little break from the intensity of the last few weeks.

-Katie

 

-----signature-----
"Like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method." -Karen Eiffel, _Stranger Than Fiction_
"Adamantine"--Rebel OC vig http://boards.theforce.net/the_saga/b10476/30390799
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LumiKuningatar  820 posts
Registered: Nov '03
7719_Cordé
Date Posted: 2/11/04 5:38am Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, OT-era, updated 2/10
Mackin suddenly looked puzzled, and then looked around at all his pilots like he was searching for something. "Where's Six?" Mackin asked.

The world stopped again for Quiver and Darin as the question brought back the burned-in memory all too clearly. Quiver flinched, and Darin felt hot anger and painful grief moving in to fill the void in his stomach. Neither of them spoke.


I still had tears in my eyes at that part...

 

-----signature-----
Tell a man there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you,
tell a man that a bench is wet and he'll have to touch it...
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis,
ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
It's a bird, no wait a plane.. damn.. it IS a b
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Thumper09  1057 posts
Registered: Dec '01
14731_X-Wings
Date Posted: 2/16/04 12:02pm Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, OT-era, updated 2/16
Lumi: happy

I know it's only Monday, but since I won't have Internet access from tomorrow until Friday night, I'm posting the next section now. wa hoo. happy

*****

Chapter Six

"We need to get out of here. Someone please tell me they've found a suitable hiding spot."

Pellicer looked up at Mackin from where he was working with Darin, Chopper and Ikoa, going over sensor logs. Scoop had thankfully seemed less angry with everyone since Ikoa had talked to him a while ago. "We think we might have a place, sir," Pellicer said. "Lots of plant and animal life readings, and it's not too far away. We're not sure of the exact terrain or the coverage, though."

"Is it our best option?"

"So far, yes."

"What direction?"

"Southeast."

Mackin nodded. "The Imperials are coming from the west. It'll do. Let's go. Nine, go get Eight and Ten. They're out on patrol."

"Yes, sir." Darin pocketed his datapad and jogged off to find them.

The Corona Squadron commander looked at the other three pilots. "The strut-riding, for better or for worse, seems to be the safest option we've come up with so far, if you can believe it. Eight will be flying your fighter until you feel better, Five. Two, figure out the strut-riding assignments, preferably putting a relatively healthy person on the same X-wing as someone who's injured. Balance things out as best you can." Ikoa nodded in reply.

She had the assignments figured out by the time Darin returned with Weas and Quiver a few minutes later. Pellicer gave the new location's coordinates to each person who would be flying, and soon they were ready to go. Weas, flying Pellicer's fighter, was carrying Kalre and Slurry each on a main strut, and Darin and Pellicer each had a main strut on Ikoa's ship.

Quiver shared the nose strut of Mackin's fighter with Chopper, and as he grabbed onto Chopper's flightsuit like Weas had done before, he remarked absently, "It should be easier without handcuffs." Chopper nodded in agreement.

The X-wings slowly lifted up and headed off to their new location, skimming the treetops. They mainly used repulsorlifts this time with minimal engine throttle to try to avoid letting the Imperials pick up any engine emissions. The noise caused by the wind was still loud, but nothing like it had been with an engine running with substantial throttle right above the strut-riders.

They traveled for a while and the ground below them began to change. The forest thinned out, but each individual tree got bigger. More and more ground was replaced with murky standing water that had a vast amount of small green plants floating on it rather unattractively.

The three X-wings eventually came to a floating stop above a place where a small area of ground showed and a whole lot of stagnant swamp water surrounded it. "You have got to be kidding," Kalre muttered to himself as he surveyed where the X-wings were obviously going to put down.

Mackin, Weas and Ikoa likewise assessed the area. They all opened their canopies, and Ikoa called to the other two, "There's not enough room to get all three of the X-wings completely on dry land."

"The important thing is to keep the engines out of the water," Weas called back. "Can we put our sixes to each other, land on the dry part with the main gear and let the noses sit in the water?"

"Probably. Let's give it a try," Mackin said. "Let me drop off Ten and Three first so I don't drown them." He settled to the ground and called down to them. They moved off the skid and out of the way, then Mackin lifted up again.

Ikoa, being the wobbliest and therefore needing the largest margin for error, set down first, keeping her main gear on the exposed ground almost at the edge of the water to leave room for the other snubfighters. Snubber headed down next and mimicked her positioning, and finally Mackin landed beside them the same way. It was a landing that would have impressed any precision flying group: the X-wings were packed so closely together that someone could step from one to the other easily. The fighters were powered down, the camouflage netting was again brought out, and then the pilots joined up together on top of Pellicer's X-wing.

*****

TB-061 called his commanding officer over. "Major, they were here," the biker scout said, pointing to some indentations in the wet ground of the forest clearing. "These are spaced correctly for an X-wing landing gear. It looks like they have three fighters, or at least one that landed in three different spots."

Major Wendessin nodded. "Are the guards posted at the other X-wings we've found as I ordered?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Go find out. The Rebels will go back to them sooner or later."

"Yes, sir."

The scout trooper walked away purposefully, and the Imperial officer continued to wait for his people to find some leads, some indications of where the Rebels went. It was more challenging since the Rebels had the X-wings and were not forced to travel on foot, and ever since the Rebels had thought to turn off their small fighters' transponders and energy-emitting shields, they had been very difficult to find.

But at the same time, it was just a matter of waiting them out. Wendessin was confident they could not get off the planet unseen, and three X-wings and the other scattered survivors were no match for the number of Imperial forces here under his command. Besides, if the Rebels could have left the planet, they would have done so already. They were his, so he could be patient. They could not afford to be, which meant it was only a matter of time until they slipped up. He would find them.

*****

Three hours later, the Corona pilots remained sitting sullenly on Pellicer's camouflaged fighter, swatting at insects that were constantly plaguing them. Most of them were going through sensor logs to find another place to go, trying to concentrate through the never-ending irritation of the bug bites. Ikoa's fighter hosted a flurry of activity as Rudder and Slurry monitored the comms from there and Kalre, Darin and Trip tried to fix Ikoa's stabilizer. Mackin's R2 unit, Bluehill, was sitting over in his snubfighter's droid compartment, watching the other astromechs and beeping softly to himself like he was feeling quite left out.

"Darin, hold this wire so Trip can fuse it," said Kalre, indicating a wire he was holding in place in the starfighter's bowels. "I need to go scrounge a piece out of another X-wing to use here."

Darin nodded and took hold of the wire, then Trip extended his arc welder and began working. Satisfied, the Rodian got up and went to have a brief discussion with Mackin. When those two began opening an access panel over on Mackin's X-wing, Ikoa casually walked up to Darin and joined him where he sat on her fighter's port S-foil.

"How's it coming?" she asked.

Darin shrugged and swatted at a bug on his neck. "Your command relay box to the stabilizer's automatic adjustment controls got fried. Kalre's trying a few tricks to patch it up and reroute stuff, but we won't know for sure if it'll work until you're in the air again. I think he went to go cannibalize a part from Mack's X-wing to use."

Ikoa nodded distractedly as if she only heard half of what Darin had said. Then she dropped her voice considerably and asked, "Is Quiver okay?"

Stealing a glance at his wingman who was sitting on top of Pellicer's X-wing with the others yet apart from them, Darin just as quietly told Ikoa, "I doubt it, but I don't know what to do about it. If I bring it up or try to get him to talk about it, it'll just remind him, and I don't want to do that. Besides, it's not something I want to think about either."

"None of us do. She was my roommate for over a year, Darin, and a good friend besides. Do you know how incredibly empty it's going to be without her around?"

"Yeah, I do." Darin forced his mind to stay on what Ikoa was saying and not wander back to the echoing hallways of his home after the Imperial occupation. He wasn't looking forward to living through that empty sorrow again now, and he felt selfish for thinking that way, but he couldn't help it.

"Sorry. Of course you do," Ikoa said a little more gently. "We all have to get through this, though. Scoop is taking it hard because she was his wingman, but I know Quiver's going to take it the hardest, and I don't want to see something happen down here because he can't deal with it. We at least have to let him know we're there for him. You know him best. Have any ideas?"

Darin sighed a bit and removed his hand from inside the X-wing when the R4 droid finished with the wire. "I'll try to figure something out. I'll talk to him."

Ikoa smiled. "Thanks, Thumper. And thanks for helping get my bird back in the air."

With a shrug, Darin answered, "Kalre's the one doing all the work. Besides, I have a vested interest in wanting you to fly level if I'm going to be strut-riding with you."

After Ikoa returned to where the others were going through the sensor logs and Kalre came back holding a coil of thick wire and an odd-looking tube, Darin took a closer look at Quiver. Before, he had been going through the sensor logs on a datapad like everyone else, but now he was just sitting there, staring ahead blankly and looking miserable.

"Do you need me for anything else right now?" Darin asked Kalre.

Kalre shook his head. "No, Trip and I can handle this next part. Hopefully we're almost done."

"Okay." Darin got up and slowly made his way over to Quiver, all the while wondering what he could possibly say to him. Quiver was the one that had the way with words, not him. What if he ended up making things worse?

When he reached Quiver, he tapped his wingmate on the shoulder, and when Quiver distractedly looked up, Darin motioned with his head over to Mackin's X-wing. Sighing, the lanky pilot reluctantly pushed himself to his feet and followed Darin.

Quiver also followed suit when Darin jumped down to the ground on the far side of Mackin's X-wing, with both of them just barely managing to stay on dry land and out of the swamp water. When they finally had a relative amount of privacy, Darin looked up at Quiver and asked softly, "Do you want to talk?"

Walls that Darin had never seen before immediately came up, and Quiver stared hard at him. "No. I don't. Leave me alone." He started to walk away, but Darin quickly stepped in front of him.

"I've never known you to not want to talk. Besides, you're the one always telling me not to keep stuff pent up."

"Ask me later."

Darin waited a heartbeat, and then asked, "How about now?"

"Stop it, Darin," Quiver warned in a low voice. "This won't help. Nothing will help now. She's gone, and there's nothing I can do about it."

Something in his voice during that last part caught Darin's attention. He studied Quiver more closely and finally asked, "You don't think it's your fault, do you?"

"How is it not?!" retorted Quiver. "I should have tried to get to my X-wing as soon as that TIE appeared. It would have given us the upper hand, and everything would have been different. And I should have resisted more instead of just meekly surrendering and giving them the chance to do whatever they wanted. Or if I'd gotten her out quicker, we would never have been caught. They would never have gotten to her!" Quiver's voice was now a mixture of grief, guilt and anger.

Darin shook his head a little. "Quiver, I was there too–-I know what was going on! That TIE would have cut you down the second you went for your fighter. Fighting that many Imperials once they had us was suicidal. And there was no way to get her canopy open. We tried. It wasn't possible to go any faster than we did."

"Yes it was! There had to be a way! You can't tell me she was supposed to die like that!"

That made Darin stop. "No, I can't," he said at last. "But I can tell you that it wasn't your fault that it happened. Nothing you could have done would have changed things for the better back there."

"Then what's the point of all this?" Quiver demanded weakly. "If I can't change anything, if I can't help the people I want to, then why am I even here? Might as well just give up."

"I didn't say you can't change anything. I said you couldn't change that. There was nothing we could have done differently. No one deserves to die like that, but if you give up, then the Empire just gets stronger and that will happen to more people. It's not your fault that she died. You did all you could. You have to understand that."

Quiver didn't say anything for a minute. Then he finally looked down at Darin, sniffled and said in a shaky voice, "I never lost someone that important to me before. Does it ever get easier?"

Returning his gaze somberly, Darin answered, "No. But it does get more bearable."

Quiver humorlessly laughed once as he shook his head and blinked fiercely. "That made no sense, Niner."

"Neither does this galaxy."

"Okay, I'll give you that."

"Nine! Ten!" Weas called at that moment. "Come on, we have to go."

"Think about it, Quiv," Darin said quietly as they ducked under an S-foil to join back up with the others who were jumping to the ground in the midst of the three snubfighters. "You can't blame yourself. It's not your fault. I hope you see that."

Quiver nodded half-heartedly, but Darin got the distinct impression he was just "telling" Darin what he wanted to hear. While Commander Mackin and Lt. Weas began organizing everyone to evacuate from the swamp, Darin realized just how alike he and Quiver were in some respects. Thumper's whole speech about not being able to do anything for CC really sounded good in his ears but had only been created and given for Quiver's benefit. Darin wished he could have convinced himself of those same points and lessened some of the survivor guilt in the pit of his stomach that honestly and silently agreed with Quiver. Already Darin had privately come up with a multitude of what-if scenarios that began with him doing something differently and ended with them getting CC out alive. He wondered if Quiver knew that Darin himself didn't even believe everything he'd just said.

Well, Darin thought, even if we occasionally lie to each other about stuff like this, maybe we at least know each other well enough to know what the other wants to hear at times. Or needs to.

*****

Major Wendessin looked around the small clearing in the disgusting swamp as his biker scout teams combed the area. TB-061 stepped up to him.

"They haven't been gone long, sir. We just missed them."

The Imperial officer nodded slowly. "Once again, they just manage to squeeze past. What, do they have a mind-reading Devaronian with them or something?" He looked around again. "We can play Jawa-and-droid all day, Sergeant. All month. Much longer than they can. Just tell me where they went, and we'll continue our pursuit."

"Yes, sir. We'll have a report to you as soon as we can, Major."

"Thank you, Sergeant. Sooner or later, they'll have to stop running."


Chapter Seven

"We can't keep running. We're getting nowhere," Kalre said.

With the exception of Pellicer and Ikoa who were out walking on patrol, the pilots were all gathered together in their new hiding spot, another forest clearing southwest of the swamp and south of the southernmost point of the canyon. It was dark out and the sky had partially clouded over, drowning out much of the starlight and turning the two moons into fuzzy blobs. The Coronas were obviously all exhausted, and Darin and Slurry were even starting to nod off.

"So what do you propose we do?" Quiver sullenly asked the Rodian. "Stop and fight?"

"No. We need to get away once and for all. Let's face it: there's no rescue coming. Special Forces didn't seem interested in helping when they just took off, and–-"

Chopper interrupted his wingman. "Yeah, that's what started this whole mess. Why did they just leave like they did? Seems to me they could have helped a little!"

"If it had been anyone else calling the shots, they probably would have helped," said Weas. "Special Forces is really good at that sort of operation. I just doubt Trainneer knows that: he just transferred in to Special Forces, and my impression from the little I've worked with him while this mission was in the planning phases was that this was the first SF mission he's commanded."

"Wonderful," Chopper muttered. "He's already written us off as 'acceptable losses' or something like that, remember? So as long as it's his say-so, no one will come for us. But then why didn't the other commandos say something at the time if they could help?"

"I think they tried," Mackin said. "I heard some protests in the shuttle when Trainneer was transmitting. His microphone picked them up in the background. But really, you don't go against a lieutenant colonel's orders."

"Why not?" asked Chopper. "You did, sir."

"And you let me worry about that, Lieutenant," Mackin said firmly. "I'm not trying to incite a breakdown of the chain of command. It's there for a reason."

Weas offered one of his rare smiles, a small, amused one. "Unless that reason interferes with protecting your squadron, sir. Then an admiral is no different from a private. And we do appreciate it."

When Mackin shot him a look that clearly said Weas wasn't helping matters, the XO's knowing smile got just a little bigger, but he relented, saying in a monotone, "But yes, I agree with the commander. The chain of command is the most important aspect of the Rebellion. Respect it, lest it smite you."

"Anyway, as I was saying," Kalre continued before anyone could respond to that, "Special Forces won't help, and for all the Rebellion knows, we're long dead by now or have been captured. If I was them, I sure wouldn't risk sending forces in through whatever the Imps have up there to rescue a single fighter squadron who's probably all dead."

"Why not? We'd rescue them," Darin mumbled, half-asleep.

This time, Kalre ignored the interruption. "It's also obvious that we can't escape on our own, not if we want to get everyone out. We should go to the colony and get help."

"The colony?!" Chopper looked at his wingman like he'd just sprouted polka-dotted tentacles. "The colony? The same colony that said there was only a platoon of stormtroopers here? The same colony that also failed to mention the TIE squadrons, the biker scouts, the cruisers and the rest of whatever Imperial fleet is parked in orbit overhead? That colony?"

Kalre stared back defiantly at Chopper. "Besides them, there's no one that can help us."

"Including them, there's no one that can help us," Chopper shot back.

"Hold on now," Mackin said. "We have to consider all options here. At the very least, maybe we could send a signal from there."

"We couldn't get within ten klicks of the colony without being spotted," Weas said. "Not with so many Imperials around."

"If you just want to send a message, send up one X-wing and transmit it. Maybe they'd even be able to escape and bring help," Chopper said.

Quiver shook his head. "Suicide against the forces we've seen so far. Then we'd be down another pilot and another fighter, all for nothing. And can we wait for someone to leave, gather help and get back?"

Chopper's expression turned stony. "Then we can't go forward, we can't go back, we can't stay in one spot and we can't go up. We're never going to get out of here."

Mackin looked at him sternly. "We will get out of here. We just have to figure out how. For now, let's wrap this up. Follow Seven's and Nine's examples and get some sleep."

Darin snapped awake. "I'm awake, sir, honest!" he said in a rush.

The pilots couldn't help but laugh a bit, and Quiver smirked at him faintly while saying, "This isn't a briefing: this is the one time you're allowed, even encouraged to be asleep. So cease and desist with the consciousness."

Darin looked at him in bewilderment, then seemed to get very tired again very quickly as the scare wore off. "Oh." He lay back down on the ground and was asleep in moments.

Mackin briefly chuckled at him before looking back at the pilots who were awake. "We'll give the last watch to Nine and Seven. I'll take first with Eight, and we'll wake up two more to relieve us in a couple of hours, okay? Whoever's awake, make sure you keep listening to the comm. Get some sleep, everyone."

The pilots dispersed a little to claim a place to sleep. As Cdr. Mackin and Lt. Weas walked off together to relieve Ikoa and Pellicer, Mackin looked at his Executive Officer and quietly said, "We need a plan, Steen. And we need it now."

*****

-Katie

 

-----signature-----
"Like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method." -Karen Eiffel, _Stranger Than Fiction_
"Adamantine"--Rebel OC vig http://boards.theforce.net/the_saga/b10476/30390799
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Mjsullivan  622 posts
Registered: Dec '03
18202_TIE Interceptor
Date Posted: 2/22/04 4:57am Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, OT-era, updated 2/16
up, Up, UP!

Not that i really need to know what happens next grin Love your work Thumper!

Come on guys, where have you all disappeared to? more posts, i say!

 

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Working in Darkness - On Hiatus :::::: http://boards.theforce.net/The_Saga/b10476/15283754/p1
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LumiKuningatar  820 posts
Registered: Nov '03
7719_Cordé
Date Posted: 2/22/04 8:52am Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, OT-era, updated 2/16
Thumper's whole speech about not being able to do anything for CC really sounded good in his ears but had only been created and given for Quiver's benefit. Darin wished he could have convinced himself of those same points and lessened some of the survivor guilt in the pit of his stomach that honestly and silently agreed with Quiver. Why do you always make me cry and feel sad for the poor guys? Not that it's a bad thing or anything but I don't want to be sad all the time... I really like your story... Will we have some more soon?

 

-----signature-----
Tell a man there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you,
tell a man that a bench is wet and he'll have to touch it...
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis,
ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
It's a bird, no wait a plane.. damn.. it IS a b
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Mjsullivan  622 posts
Registered: Dec '03
18202_TIE Interceptor
Date Posted: 2/23/04 3:04am Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, OT-era, updated 2/16
Thats the spirit, LumiKuningatar grin

The X-wing stories are always going to make people feel more attached to characters than any others, mainly because the characters are so REAL as opposed to supernatural warriors who are practically invincible (as with most Jedi fics *sigh*). Its one of the many reasons i love them happy the other is good OC's!

 

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Working in Darkness - On Hiatus :::::: http://boards.theforce.net/The_Saga/b10476/15283754/p1
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LumiKuningatar  820 posts
Registered: Nov '03
7719_Cordé
Date Posted: 2/23/04 4:57am Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, OT-era, updated 2/16 - Date Edited: 2/23/04 5:50am (1 edits total) Edited By: LumiKuningatar
I know... When I grow up I want to be a pilot... I don't think it's possible since I have a slight fear of hights... but being a pilot and being able to fly in the starry sky with no strings attached... that would be so cool... that's one reason why I love to read about pilots and these guys are already very dear to me and... grin well, y'know...

 

-----signature-----
Tell a man there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you,
tell a man that a bench is wet and he'll have to touch it...
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis,
ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
It's a bird, no wait a plane.. damn.. it IS a b
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Thumper09  1057 posts
Registered: Dec '01
14731_X-Wings
Date Posted: 2/23/04 9:10am Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, OT-era, updated 2/16
Sorry, Lumi, I didn't mean to make you sad! The end of the last post was the end of the day when everything happened, so Darin and Quiver are still really upset. It's hard to not get all angsty with something like this, though compared to what I could do, this is really toned down. wink But if it helps, there won't be any more introspective stuff until Chapter 10. happy

And I wouldn't let a slight fear of heights deter you from being a pilot, or at least looking into it. I know someone who is afraid of heights, yet he was a helicopter test pilot with Special Operations. I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but in the USA most flight schools will offer a one-time "introductory flight" where you go up with an instructor for an hour or so, and they're pretty inexpensive. That might be a good way to gauge how comfortable you'd be in a plane. (And nighttime flying is awesome.)

Thanks for the up, MJSullivan. happy I love the characters in the X-wing books. I haven't read a lot of other EU (Zahn Trilogy and a handful of others), but the X-wing characters were a lot more interesting and "real" to me. Like Myn Donos...but don't get me started on how much I love that character, because I'll never stop. tongue

Update tomorrow.

-Katie
Thumper

 

-----signature-----
"Like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method." -Karen Eiffel, _Stranger Than Fiction_
"Adamantine"--Rebel OC vig http://boards.theforce.net/the_saga/b10476/30390799
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LumiKuningatar  820 posts
Registered: Nov '03
7719_Cordé
Date Posted: 2/24/04 1:29am Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, OT-era, updated 2/16 - Date Edited: 2/24/04 6:00am (1 edits total) Edited By: LumiKuningatar
Oh maybe I'll try, still every time I get on a plane, even a jumbo jet, I feel like the plane is going to fall and I'll be one of the unfortunate ones who dies. Stupid really... But I'll try, it would be a dream come true, really...

And thank you for not making me cry like the Niagara... It's actually scary to think that if this is toned down, what you're capable of writing... grin I'm imagining quite something...

[Oliver] Can we have some more? [/Oliver]

 

-----signature-----
Tell a man there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you,
tell a man that a bench is wet and he'll have to touch it...
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis,
ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
It's a bird, no wait a plane.. damn.. it IS a b
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Thumper09  1057 posts
Registered: Dec '01
14731_X-Wings
Date Posted: 2/24/04 2:48pm Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, OT-era, updated 2/24
Lumi, I'm not sure if this would help what you described in your last post, but how familiar are you with basic aerodynamics and what keeps a plane in the air? That could help put your mind at ease. *shrug* Just a suggestion. I dunno. And I wouldn't say it's stupid...it's a valid feeling that many people share. happy It took me a long time to be comfortable on commercial airliners, though I think that was more of a feeling of lack of control on my part than anything else. But don't give up if it's something you're interested in.

I think I'll get off my soapbox now and post the next section... wink


*****

Kalre caught Quiver's yawn as they sat out on watch. The airwaves had been fairly quiet, matching the stillness of the night.

Suddenly a transmission broke through. The pilots' hearts sank as they listened to it: there was a group of Imperials heading right for them. The two squadmates looked bleakly at each other before quickly going to rouse the others.

*****

"Major Wendessin, we're closing on them," TB-045 reported not long afterward on a private channel. "We estimate they left this area not more than ten minutes ago."

Major Wendessin rubbed his eyes sleepily as he listened over the comlink to his subordinate's report in his quarters. He'd been asleep, but he wanted to know everything as it happened and was glad his troops were following his orders to report major findings the moment they had them.

These Rebels were getting frustrating. Even in the middle of the night, they managed to just barely escape from under the Imperials' noses. "Do you have any indication of the direction they went?"

"Not yet, sir, but we should have some leads soon."

Another frequency came in over the major's comlink, overriding the first. A different voice spoke up. "Major, we may have something."

*****

Commander Quentell Mackin listened intently to the Imperial's transmission on the tactical channel as they flew: "Major, we may have something."

"What is it?"

"We're picking up a slight trail of carbade ions, used in hyperdrives. It's not coming from any of our ships. It's possible that if one of the Rebel X-wings has a damaged hyperdrive, it could be leaking. We can follow it right to them and be on them very soon."

"Excellent work. Do so immediately."

Mackin sighed inaudibly. Losing one of their available fighters would cost them dearly, but they'd lose even more if the Imperials tracked them with it. From what it sounded like, they wouldn't have time to try to fix the leak, and Pellicer's hyperdrive had been written off earlier as a complete loss so no one had even thought to try to patch it up. They'd have to be more careful and better anticipate the risks those decisions brought.

He looked around for a place where Weas could land the X-wing. They'd been flying northwest and were now on the southwest side of the north/south elongated canyon, which was about fifteen klicks to the east. The forest was becoming thinner, and the terrain was opening up into hilly fields. A minute later he spotted a clearing, slowed and caught Weas's attention. They only had a limited number of hand signals for use during comm silence, but Weas understood the message and set the X-wing down.

Mack and Ikoa gently landed beside the leaking fighter while Weas quickly powered it down and secured it. The commander opened his canopy and called to Weas's strut-riders, "They're tracking the leaking hyperdrive on that fighter so we need to ditch it. You'll all have to strut-ride with me and Two. Come on, time's short."

Weas grabbed the survival kit from that fighter and followed Slurry and Kalre to the other two X-wings. Weas jumped onto Ikoa's nose gear where Darin and Pellicer held onto a main strut each, and Kalre and Slurry each took a main strut of Mackin's, joining Quiver and Chopper who remained on Mackin's nose gear. Once they were secure, the fighters moved up and quickly continued on their way, going north-northwest this time.


Chapter Eight

"Sir, we've found the X-wing with the leak. It's on the ground with no humanoid life signs within short-range, and it's powered down and secured," TB-045 reported.

Major Wendessin bit back a curse as he flew with TB-061 on a transport to inspect the last camp area the team had found. Once again, these Rebels seemed to have anticipated his actions. They were flying that X-wing just a short time ago–-what would cause them to abandon it? Now, no less?

He stopped as he thought of something, then thought harder, and the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. The Rebels had tipped their hand. He turned to TB-061 beside him. "Sergeant, do you get the feeling we're being eavesdropped on?"

The biker scout paused to think that over, then slowly nodded. "It makes sense, sir."

Major Wendessin took out a datapad and called up a map of the area. "Quickly, Sergeant. Indicate the Rebels' last known location, the location of the leaking X-wing, and finally the location of our largest amount of forces."

TB-061 immediately input the points, and after he had handed it back to Major Wendessin, his commanding officer smiled. "Excellent. So Group Gamma is to the west of where the Rebels seem to be going...Let's test this theory, shall we?" The major opened a private, encrypted transmission to TB-045. "Lieutenant, we have reason to believe the Rebels are listening in on the tactical frequency. I want you to use a more secure line to alert Group Gamma to expect the incoming hostiles. We're going to feed the Rebels enough false information over the tactical frequency to herd them in Group Gamma's direction. Understood?"

"Understood, sir."

Major Wendessin waited a minute to give TB-045 time to relay the message to Group Gamma, then he turned to the tactical frequency. "TB-045, I want our groups to the east and north of that leaking X-wing's general location to increase their search areas and be alert. Remember they may have two other X-wings."

"Yes, sir."

*****

Mackin frowned at the news. That last Imperial group was south of them at Pellicer's leaking X-wing, and if there were groups east and north of there, it sounded like they were flying directly into more. They had to fix that.

He slowed and motioned for Ikoa to come abeam his fighter. When she did, he tapped the side of his helmet, pointed straight ahead to the north and then over to the east. Ikoa nodded. Then Mackin pointed to the west and gave the signal for "Follow me." Ikoa nodded again, and the two of them gently turned westward.

After another five minutes' worth of flight, static suddenly filled their headsets, drowning out the Imperial frequency they were listening to. Just as suddenly, their tactical scopes lit up with numerous red dots.

Mackin and Ikoa inhaled sharply when they saw the indicators of the Imperial ground forces dead ahead of them. Acting on reflex and momentarily forgetting about their strut-riders, Mackin made a sharp turn back the way he had come, and Ikoa applied full air brakes before likewise starting to turn.

*****

The strut-riders had absolutely no warning of what was about to happen.

One minute Mackin's snubfighter was flying calmly along just above the ground, and the next the pilots riding on it felt like the fighter was trying to launch them like proton torpedoes. They were instantly pulled hard by the centrifugal forces from the turn that threatened to rip them from the X-wing, and if they hadn't entwined and locked their legs around the struts, or fastened their belt around it like Chopper had, they certainly would have been thrown off.

This point was illustrated by Quiver: he was the only one not sitting down on the skid because of the lack of room there beside Chopper, who was seated due to his broken leg. Only holding onto the strut with one leg and one arm, Quiver flew off during the sharpest part of the turn. He reflexively reached out to grab something, anything, and his right hand came up to where his left hand still had a hold for another half an instant on Chopper's flightsuit. Quiver's right hand somehow found Chopper's belt, and he grabbed on for dear life, though it felt like his arm was going to be wrenched from his body as his outward flight was abruptly stopped.

Ikoa's passengers, meanwhile, were experiencing similar events: her sudden brake after serenely flying straight-and-level for so long caught them all by complete surprise. Weas managed to remain on the skid since he was positioned behind the strut relative to their motion and was simply forced hard against it as the starfighter braked. Darin wasn't as lucky: he felt physics turn on him, and after a desperate, instinctive scramble he found himself dangling from the skid, only hanging on by his arms now wrapped around the bottom of the strut. But out of the corner of his eye in that split second, he saw Pellicer fly completely off the port main gear strut and head for the ground a few meters below.

Pellicer hit the ground hard and tried to roll to absorb some of the impact. He needn't have bothered, though, since the speed and shallow impact angle caused him to roll and bounce for a few more seconds. The X-wing flew by over him, still braking from its momentum. When he finally came to a stop, Pellicer winced and painfully forced himself to his feet. The X-wing made a 180-degree turn and headed back toward him a moment later. As Scoop glanced in the direction they had been going, he saw many dark silhouettes on the ground very close by, and then he saw green lasers from them begin to light up the sky in the Rebels' direction. His eyes widened as he realized what was going on, and in an instant he was running frantically to intercept the X-wing. The adrenaline pouring through him made a good painkiller.

Weas saw Pellicer up and running, and he also saw the Imperials' lasers coming in at them. They had to pick up Pellicer on this pass–-they wouldn't get another chance before the Imperials were on them. Just recovering from the g-forces from the 180, he shouted up to Ikoa's astromech, "Two, drop! Full brakes! Now!"

Rudder immediately relayed the message with an urgent whistle to get his pilot's attention. Seeing the message on her display, Ikoa suddenly remembered the strut-riders on her fighter but was too distracted with the threat of the oncoming Imperial forces to spend much time wondering what was going on with them. She did as Weas commanded without a second thought.

Already dangerously close to the ground in an attempt to avoid being detected on Imperial sensors, her X-wing lurched downward a meter or two just as it passed over Pellicer, and Ikoa started applying the air brakes. They began to slow down.

Dangling there while hugging the bottom of his strut and feeling its cold metal pressing against his cut cheek, Darin hadn't yet had a chance to try to climb back up on his skid. He realized that might ultimately be a good thing as he saw Pellicer below desperately gather himself while running and take the one chance he had in that last instant before the X-wing was gone.

Scoop jumped up and grabbed Darin around the waist, though his grip loosened a bit and he ended up slipping down to Darin's lower legs. Darin cried out from the wrenching pain caused by suddenly lifting the bigger pilot up at that speed, and he very nearly lost his grip on the strut. He held on by sheer force of will and fear of what would happen if he let go, but his suddenly sweaty palms definitely weren't helping. He knew if Ikoa hadn't slowed to the extent that she had, he couldn't have held on at all.

Ikoa felt the starboard side of her fighter dip a little. After Rudder relayed Weas's new message of "Okay, go! Go!" she increased her throttle to catch up with Mackin, desperately checking her sensors for a place to go while she tried to outrun the lasers of the Imperial ground forces right behind them. She couldn't effectively go evasive with the strut-riders on her X-wing, and that was enough to make any fighter pilot uneasy.

Over on Mackin's fighter, Chopper reached back with one arm, awkwardly grabbed hold of Quiver and pulled him in. Quiver managed to swing one of his legs up onto the skid, then he ungracefully began scrambling up, using Chopper's flightsuit for tenuous handholds with his left hand and relying on Chopper not to let go and drop him.

Finally Quiver clambered back up to the skid and sat on one of the small available areas, grimacing in pain as he wrapped his left arm around the strut; he figured that would also let him avoid seeing how badly he was shaking. He wanted to hold on with both arms, but he'd separated his right shoulder by grabbing onto Chopper, and that hurt too much to move.

Chopper noticed the shoulder's odd positioning and reached around the strut, yanking Quiver closer to him. With a sudden movement, he popped Quiver's shoulder back into place and even managed to keep Quiver from losing his balance when he yelled in pain and reflexively jerked back from the unexpectedness of it. The blond pilot exhaled shakily as the sharpest pain slowly began to subside, leaving an insistent ache and throbbing in its wake.

Darin, meanwhile, was struggling to maintain his hold on the strut. The fighter's engines had considerable throttle now, and the ground below was speeding by much, much too fast. "Scoop!" he called above the wind noise, on the verge of panicking. "I can't hold on!"

"Yes you can!" came Scoop's anxious response. "Don't think about anything else, just that!"

Thumper wanted to tell him that was a whole lot easier said than done, but instead he just bit his bottom lip and tried to concentrate on holding on, and not falling, and not hitting the ground, and...

He felt Pellicer shift his grip a little and then quickly reach up and grab Darin's belt with one hand. Pellicer pulled himself up until he was holding onto Darin around the knees, then the grip on Darin's belt abruptly shifted to the bottom side strap on his flak vest, reinforced with a handful of flightsuit. That helped Scoop pull himself up enough to grab Thumper around the waist, and from there he managed to grab the skid.

Using Darin's feet, knees and then hips like knots on a rope, Pellicer finally climbed onto the skid, just after Ikoa started to climb slightly to apparently clear some treetops. Pellicer locked his ankles together under the skid and reached down to pull Darin up, bracing his shoulder against the strut for balance as he did so. "Thanks, Thumper. I owe you one," Pellicer called over the wind as he helped Darin onto the other half of the skid, wincing with each movement. Darin could tell that Pellicer was really hurting; it took a lot for pain to leak through in his voice to the point where Darin could detect it like he could now.

For his part, Darin was shaking and had vowed to get a grip on the strut so tight that the Emperor himself couldn't pull him from it. In response to Pellicer, Darin could only manage a small nod as he resumed his death grip on the strut with a new intensity. His heart would explode any second now. He was sure of it.

*****

-Katie

 

-----signature-----
"Like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method." -Karen Eiffel, _Stranger Than Fiction_
"Adamantine"--Rebel OC vig http://boards.theforce.net/the_saga/b10476/30390799
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Thumper09  1057 posts
Registered: Dec '01
14731_X-Wings
Date Posted: 3/2/04 4:34pm Subject: RE: Solid Ground - X-wing squad fic, OCs, OT-era, updated 3/2
Hi, all. A couple notes to start off with.

First, this is a fairly short section.

Second, look for another update this Saturday. The reason for this is that I won't have Internet access next week, so Saturday's post will take the place of next Tuesday's post. Also, Lumi, I renumbered my chapters slightly so Saturday's post is the Chapter Ten introspective stuff I warned you about, even though it'll only be Chapter Nine. grin

Finally, one of the things I paid the most attention to when rewriting this story to post here on the boards was keeping a consistent point-of-view; however, due to the current POV discussion in the WR, I discovered that I needed to do a better job with this scene in that respect. So I fixed it...about an hour ago. wink Hopefully it's a little smoother now.

Anyway, on with the show...

*****

Mackin and Ikoa cleared the jamming region. All secrecy abandoned, Mack turned on his active sensors and got a good picture of the surrounding area, though it was barely visible in the dark. It looked to be mostly hilly fields, with a deep river valley far to the north that flowed south and eventually formed the canyon where they had originally landed. Right now, they were heading roughly northeast, back toward the canyon.

The Coronas' CO knew they wouldn't stay ahead of the Imperials forever. He decided to head to the valley in the hopes it would give them a place to hide and maybe even slow down the ground forces pursuing them. Mackin kept his fighter low to the ground and turned a bit to enter the river valley from the south where it opened into the north part of the canyon so the Imperials wouldn't have a straight line to follow to them. He saw Ikoa tucked in right on his wing.

The X-wings skimmed the planet's surface until the ground dropped out from under them to form one of the valley's walls at its narrow southern end. The fighters went into a shallow dive to bring them closer to the river and then gently turned north to go deeper into the valley. Shortly afterward, Mack noticed a huge waterfall ahead at the far end of the valley.

Mackin looked more closely at his sensor readouts. If he was reading them right, there was a cavern in the rock behind the middle of the waterfall that would be big enough for both of the fighters. It would be a perfect place if the sensors were correct: the rock would shield them from the Imperial scanners, and with both X-wings inside taking up so much space, it shouldn't scan like a big empty cavern to the Imperials, so they might not even notice it.

He motioned Ikoa abeam of him again. They didn't have hand signals that could communicate everything Mackin wanted to ask, but he tried to pantomime the rest to fill in the gaps.

Mackin saw Ikoa look at her sensors, then up at the waterfall. She said something to her droid and then bent her arm so that it stuck straight up from her elbow to her fingertips. She pointed to the middle of the vertical part of her arm, moved her hand behind and past it as if sending it through her arm, then stopped and made a fist with her pointer hand. She ended it all with a signal asking for Mackin's confirmation.

The commander sighed. They needed a larger hand signal vocabulary. He hoped they were on the same page, but they couldn't risk a transmission now that they were out of the Imperials' sight again. It seemed like his wingman understood his intentions and that her sensor readout was the same, so he confirmed. She nodded in reply and moved back to her standard position off Mackin's wing.

A moment later, the X-wings were aimed directly at the middle of the waterfall.

*****

The Corona pilots riding on the struts peered through the darkness as the X-wings leveled out of their shallow dive and then turned slightly. Ikoa's fighter moved forward for a few minutes, then moved back. They started climbing again.

Darin shook his head hard a minute later to clear away the ringing from the wind and engine noise. He had mostly calmed down now. "That sounds like a waterfall."

Pellicer listened intently, then nodded in agreement. "You're right. That sounds a lot like Wuitho Trifalls on Alderaan did."

At first Darin didn't think anything of the dull noise from the waterfall ahead, but after it became apparent that they were heading that direction he began to wonder what was over there to cause them to go that way. The waterfall was now visible in the darkness, looming up above them like a Star Destroyer standing on the tip of its bow. The valley walls narrowed considerably, converging to touch the edges of the huge waterfall and the turbulent water at its base, which then flowed out to become the relatively serene river they were now flying above.

With each passing second, Darin's curiosity started changing into nervousness and then anxiety as he watched the valley closing in around them while the X-wings unerringly flew straight for the middle of the waterfall.

"Um, Scoop? Are we going to turn? Or at least change course?" he asked uneasily.

Pellicer spared a glance back at him before concernedly returning his attention to the wall of water. Apparently his thoughts were paralleling Darin's. "I don't know."

Still the X-wings got closer. Now it was evident that the other strut-bound pilots noticed their course as well. They looked between each other and the waterfall ahead in distress, and Darin wondered if they too were itching to break comm silence over their combadges to demand to know exactly when Mackin and Ikoa had lost their minds. The situation couldn't be so bad that they were going to fly them into a cliff to avoid capture, could it?

From underneath Mackin's X-wing, Slurry yelled above the waterfall's increasing roar, "Bluehill, are they awake?!" The droid's affirmative beep came faintly back to them, forcing each Corona to decide how much he really trusted the two pilots flying the fighters.

The X-wings slowed gently, and Mackin's took the lead with Ikoa's settling in behind; however, Darin noticed with a sickening feeling that they were still moving forward. While he trusted Mackin and Ikoa with his life and would have let them put a loaded blaster to his head without a second thought, this situation was a bit much. Jumping off certainly didn't appeal to him either, and he was too afraid to let go of the strut anyway. Instead, he just bit his lip and turned away, muttering, "Any second now, any second now..."

*****

The nose of Mackin's fighter went cautiously into the falling water, and it immediately lurched downward as a ton of water hit it from above. Mackin punched in the throttle for just one instant to keep the whole craft from plummeting as he yanked his stick back, and his fighter jumped forward laboriously, the nose clearing the water just as the aft got hit downward. He pushed his stick down and suddenly, after a couple violent bucks, one of which caused the nose to pitch up and hit the ceiling of the cave, the X-wing was through the water and inside a large, pitch-black cavern in the cliffside. Mackin quickly applied his air brakes, wrestled control back to stabilize the ship, turned on his landing lights and moved in as far as he could go to give Ikoa room to come in and land.

*****

Ikoa took the lack of explosions as a good sign. She gritted her teeth and moved her X-wing forward into the vertical water where Mackin's had disappeared, a little faster than he had. After the same difficulties with physics that Mackin had encountered, she cleared the water, accidentally ran her X-wing's nose into the back of Mackin's snubfighter, then forced her X-wing under control as well. She backed up on the repulsorlifts to give herself room to land and settled her X-wing to the ground behind the commander's, effectively blocking his in.

*****

Slurry, Kalre, Chopper and Quiver had crawled out from under Mackin's X-wing after he landed, an action Darin envied when Ikoa's fighter came in and hit the other X-wing. Even though the impact wasn't that great, it still jolted Ikoa's strut-riders hard, and Darin figured anyone on Mackin's struts would have felt the hit just as badly if they'd still been sitting on the skids.

Once Ikoa landed, Mackin powered down his fighter and shut the landing lights off. As Ikoa likewise powered down her fighter in the darkness, Weas, Pellicer and Darin also crawled out and joined the others in collapsing on the uneven ground.

"This is not yet the worst day of my life, but it's getting very close very quickly," Darin mumbled weakly. His back felt strained, and he suspected he grew a few centimeters when Pellicer had grabbed onto him.

"Am I the one only who got just wet really?" Slurry asked over the echoing, almost deafening roar of the waterfall. Scattered murmurings from the other strut-riders assured him he wasn't alone.

Weas pushed himself to a sitting position when Mackin's cockpit opened with a hydraulic hiss, and then Mackin said, "I just lost one of my laser cannons. It got sheared off in the waterfall."

"One of my lower ones got bent downward. It's useless," Ikoa said. "And sorry for running into you, sir. I'll take a look at it and see how bad it is."

"You're not the only one who ran into something," Mackin replied. "I hit my fighter's nose on the way in. Bluehill, next time we power up, do a diagnostic on the sensors, all right? They might have been damaged by that."

"Next time," Lt. Weas interrupted in aggravation, "next time, when you decide to suddenly go the complete opposite way, remember that your lowly strut-riders don't have inertial compensators or enclosed cockpits or even restraints to keep them in place. And even if it means breaking comm silence on open frequencies, a quick little message to say, 'Hey, don't worry, we're not really going to ram into that cliff,' can go a long way for morale!"

"Next time?" Kalre said, just as upset. "There had better not be a 'next time'!"

"Sorry, Steen, but we couldn't risk it," Mackin said to his XO. "The Imperials were hot on our tail, and we just barely outran them. Hopefully this place will keep us safe for a while."

"Well, they sure shouldn't be able to see us in here," said Kalre. "I'm sitting here talking to you and I can't even see you!"

Turning to Kalre, Mackin sternly silenced that discussion. "The lighting should improve once the sun comes up, Flight Officer. Just concentrate on the fact that we're still alive. That's a lot we have going for us."

"Hey, Darin?" Chopper called softly. "Can you come over here?"

Darin draped an arm over his eyes in exhaustion. "Don't make me get up," he pleaded.

"Owww," Quiver moaned.

Darin reluctantly rolled over and pushed himself up, wincing as he did so. He carefully and blindly made his way over to where he had heard Chopper and Quiver. "You guys okay?" he asked as he sat down beside them.

Chopper's voice came through the darkness. "Quiver separated his shoulder. I got it back in, but he needs it wrapped and some painkillers would help a lot. And I could really, really, really use some painkillers for my leg. Can you go get them?"

"Sure." Darin climbed to his feet and slowly made his way over to Mackin's X-wing, trying not to step on anyone on the way. "Anyone else need medical stuff?" he asked.

"Yeah, I got pretty banged up," said Pellicer.

Darin reached the hold of Mackin's fighter and got out the little remaining medical equipment. Ikoa and Mackin helped divide it up, then Ikoa went to tend to Pellicer, apologizing to him the whole time, while Darin followed Mackin back to Quiver and Chopper.

While Darin held one of their emergency glowrods and helped the commander wrap Quiver's shoulder and put his arm in a sling, Mackin said to the squadron, "Okay, everyone, listen up. Seven and Nine, I want you two on watch. Keep listening to the frequencies, but we may no longer be able to completely trust them now. I don't know where that last Imperial force came from–-it sure wasn't announced on the tactical frequency. Also, keep your eyes peeled for anything living in this cave. Eight, I need to talk to you. The rest of you, get some sleep."

The pilots never even moved from where they had collapsed. Some of them wearily took off their flak vests and bundled them up to use as pillows. Slurry and Darin each took a blaster, and as they stayed on watch Darin paced along an open area of one wall while Slurry monitored the communications with Rudder.

*****

-Katie

 

-----signature-----
"Like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method." -Karen Eiffel, _Stranger Than Fiction_
"Adamantine"--Rebel OC vig http://boards.theforce.net/the_saga/b10476/30390799
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