Author:
Rogue
Rogue was leaning against the railing, his arms folded as he watched on the display the current training session in the simulators. Currently, Blixus, Flattop and Moon were in a simulated duel against a squadron of TIE Fighters that had deployed from a Dreadnaught Heavy Cruiser. The twelve TIE fighters had a four to one advantage over the Alliance X-Wings. The X-Wings split and performed evasive maneuvers while the enemy fighters tried to reacquire the Alliance fighters.
"This takes me back to the old days." Gremlin said as she watched the display standing next to Rogue.
A half smile appeared on Rogue's face. "Yeah, it really was a numbers game back then, the Empire had the numbers, we didn't! Still we had shields and they didn't."
"True enough." Gremlin smiled. "We needed them, especially facing those sorts of odds."
"Looking at that, takes me back to Hoth." Rogue said.
Gremlin turned to look at Rogue. "I didn't know you were on Hoth. I never saw you there."
Still watching the display, Rogue answered. "Officially I wasn't, however, bad or good luck meant that Thumper and I had been diverted to Hoth just prior to the attack there."
Gremlin's eyes widened slightly. "Kriff, sounds like bad luck to me. Hoth was a slaughter for the Alliance." Gremlin shuddered thinking back to that dark day and how cold Hoth had been.
"Yeah, those guys that were based there got hit really bad, especially those fighting in the trenches." Rogue replied.
"So what happened? What did you and Thumper do?"
"Well this was when I was in Blue Squadron, Thumper and me had been escorting a GR-75 medium transport to another system, it had been full of food and medical supplies, I guess the brass felt that Hoth needed it more, so ordered us to escort the transport there. We had literally been on the ground for ten minutes when the Imperial fleet dropped out of Hyperspace."
"I remember, the alarm went up when those ships appeared. My legs still ache when I think about all the running I did arming the bombs." Gremlin replied.
Rogue smiled. "All available pilots were ordered to the main hangar, so me and Thumper ran as fast as we could. For some reason we'd taken our helmet's off, Thumper held his in his left hand and me in my right. We saw a group of pilots gathered near an X-Wing and headed for it, both of us ducking under the left laser cannons and ran straight into the briefing being given by Princess Leia!"
Gremlin's mouth hung open a little and her eyes went wide again. "Kriff, that briefing?"
"Yep." Rogue said with a smile. "So we listened to the quickest briefing I've ever had, then the deck officer simply told us to get to our stations, so we made our way back to our Y-Wings and the transporter. They'd offloaded some of the medical supplies, they figured that the troops might need some, plus they needed the space for the people evacuating. I remember watching the first transport heading off with the two X-Wings in close escort and then the Ion cannon firing soon after. We heard the announcement that the first transport had made it through and the cheer that went up. The Snow Speeders launched and then it all kicked off, there was a sense of panicked order by the people evacuating. You could hear the weapons fire getting louder, more frequent and closer. It wasn't long until you started feeling the explosions and the steady thuds of the approaching walkers!"
Gremlin suppressed a shudder at the thought of the giant Imperial walkers bearing down on the entrenched Alliance soldiers.
Rogue saw on the display Blixus's X-Wing kill a TIE Fighter. "By this time the Empire had entered the base and the Ion cannon had been overrun so it was no longer able to give cover. We were told that us and our transport would be going up next with three other transports and four X-Wings. Before I could start the take off sequence I saw the medics bringing a group of wounded soldiers out of the access tunnel, they were headed towards our transport as it was the closest and the others had already started their take off cycle. I got on the comms and told our transport to abort and get the wounded onboard, Thumper started trying to overrule me and pull rank, I made it clear to him, what I would do to him if he carried on, thankfully the transport Captain saw the wounded and lowered his boarding ramp. It took five agonising minutes to get the wounded onboard and secured. We were assigned to another group, this one only had two X-Wings guarding the three transports, so with us joining them their odds were slightly better. Thumper was still complaining about not leaving with our assigned group but I just ignored him. The ground controller gave us the same vector as the last group and we left Hoth like a droid being chased by a pack of Jawas!"
Gremlin let out a sigh. "You know something? I think I saw you guys leaving as I was heading to my X-Wing. I didn't realise that Thumper was such a Kriffwit though!"
"You live and learn." Rogue simply answered. "Anyway, we were almost about to clear the atmosphere when we heard the other group on the comms, they'd been ambushed by a squad of TIE Fighters and two squads of TIE Bombers. Not a single transport got through and two of the X-Wing's were taken out. If I hadn't insisted on staying for the wounded and the Captain of the transport also wanted to get the wounded onboard, I know that we probably would have been fragged along with our transport."
"So how did you make it out?" Gremlin asked.
On the display Rogue saw as Moon carried out a maneuver that not only spoiled the shot of the TIE Fighter that had been trying to kill her, but it also gave her the opportunity to take a snap shot at an Imperial Fighter that came into her weapon sights. "I ordered all of us to change our heading and put us on the vector that we had used when we arrived at Hoth, it was enough of a change that it meant there were no Imperial Capital ships or fighters directly ahead of us. As soon as we hit open space we made our jump out of the system and made our way to the rendezvous."
"Quick thinking." Gremlin said, as she watched Flattop destroy two TIE Fighters in quick succession.
"Yeah, well thankfully it paid off. We made it but a lot of good people didn't. Anyway, me and Thumper headed back to our Squadron but our friendship wasn't the same afterwards, he became closed off and withdrawn, even turning to some fringe religion and changing his callsign to Rev, it made my request to transfer to Red Squadron easier." Rogue unfolded his arms.
"Did you ever try reconnecting with him?" Gremlin asked.
"Nah, seemed pretty pointless to me, he'd changed beyond someone I would have as a friend, so I left things as they were. Some things can be fixed, others are past being repaired." Rogue flexed his fingers before folding his arms once more.
The display went black as the last enemy ship was destroyed and the simulation ended, the three pilots each stepping out once the canopies had opened.
Wolf spoke up so the rest of the squadron could hear him. "Alright, next three, you're up."
Gremlin looked at Rogue. "Ready?"
Rogue scooped up his helmet. "Let's do it."
