Imperial Entanglements

[Lucy Gray]

Kylie grinned and gunned the repulsorlifts of the shuttle. It quickly raised off the hangar deck and rotated to face the hangar door opening. Out in space, they could make out the shape of the ISD. Pinpricks of light indicated that a fight was already underway, but it hard to determine who was out there. The lack of X-Wings in the hangar meant that Rogue Squadron was already inbound.

Kylie took the shuttle out and lowered her wings. She banked towards the ISD, but didn’t make for it as fast as she could. Though the shuttle sported heavy duty shields and lasers, and the Ties she would go up against didn’t have shields, they were far faster and more agile. The fact that they were facing 6 to 1 odds already on the fighters made her hold back and not engage in the dog fight. Instead, she sent most of the energy to the lasers.

“Lazer's powered up. We should be within range of the Ties in 20 seconds. In range of ISD in 40.”

Unless the ISD Captain held back his fighters and screened them. There would be a range when the fighters would be outside the protection of the Decimator. That would be when Kylie would engage.

The sensors showed greater detail on the battle. The Berserker was in the aft of the ISD, targeting its engines. The Layla was underneath the ship, looking to fire on the ties as they emerged. Then Rogue squadron was engaging the fighters as well.

[Carré Inirial]

"Lucky coming in hot like this means he was followed, Fluffy...and by his reaction, not by something small, either." Carré replied over the comm, flicking a bit of humor at Sin in response to his own. It was one of the ways the two Alderaanian pilots had gotten used to one another. There was alot to be said for flying with someone from 'home', when that home had been disintegrated.

She'd have replied to Flipper if she could have, but the sight of the Decimator resolving in her viewport froze her voice in her throat. Emerald eyes narrowed as her fingers moved over the controls and Fiver chittered madly in her ear, only increasing his volume and pace when she didn't respond.

“Stay tight, Three Flight. The moment they drive a wedge between us-” Not pun intended, he thought, with a sharp glance at the Star Destroyer. “Is the moment we're space-dust.”

"You heard him, Echo...keep in tight and don't break the formation. We'll last longer if we stick together." she said crisply as soon as her voice would allow it. She didn't like their odds against the ISD and the complement of six squadrons they usually carried...but if it meant the convoy would get away, then odds be damned.

[Abarai Loki]

The cockpit flickered a brilliant green from the onslaught of laser fire, narrowly avoided as the Layla weaved and lurched like a persistant moth drawn ever closer to the flame. Loki shut it out and waited, each eye locked on the blank targeting screens, eager fingers coiling tight around the control sticks. Then, amidst the mighty barks of ventral turbolasers came a long haunting wail; the unmistakeable battle cry of the twin ion engines. And surely, if Loki were to cast a glance beyond the viewport they would be seen dipping from the main hangar two-by-two, a graceful prelude to this dreadful space ballet.

One of the screens came to life with an urgent beep-beep-beep, arrows in the corners of the targeting window edged inwards, closing in on a small red H which bobbed delicately and dared to flutter to the edge of the screen. The second computer flashed as another alien image swept into view. Loki paused for a fraction of a second and allowed a soft sigh to escape his lips. Then the controls sticks squeaked and groaned under sudden brute force and the meandering little blips swept back into the centre of each screen, neatly speared by four hungry arrows. He squeezed the triggers and both of the Layla's quad-canons thundered dangerously across the bow. One. Two. A red shimmer just beyond the viewport like the first hint of sunrise. Three. Four. A second burst of light, splashing crimson and gold into the cockpit. Five seconds, and Loki eased off the triggers.

And with two of their comrades already struck from the fight, the first wave of fighters dispersed in a panic, showing their backs to the Layla and the rest of the Rogues. It was only then, as he unleashed a second barrage of fire on the scattering eyeballs, that Loki noticed Akrabbim's presence behind him and it was only then that he realised just how thin his patience had worn. It seemed this time the lunatic had designs on stealing a Star Destroyer. His face twisted with utter annoyance.

"Then I recommend flushing yourself out the airlock! You will find, at this speed, you'll be onboard in no time!"

[Sanis Prent]

"Where'd you learn to shoot, kid? I'd hire you for a gunner if I could put up with you for more than a day!"

Layla banked away from the scattered swarm, followed closely behind by Three Flight, pushing as much advantage as they could from the chaos they caused by throttling into the TIE vanguard. With danger all around, Cirr re-angled the deflectors in more of a continuous protection pattern. Going that way again was going to be a lot harder the second time.

"Joker, we may get one more pass through their ranks, but it's gonna get thick real fast! Berserker's getting hammered, we gotta cut her loose if we can."

Layla bucked hard, as a squint raked a couple of shots across the deflectors. I endured a few bursts of Cizeri cursing from the voxcomm, as Cirr no-doubt had things to say about the quality of my piloting and the fact that my parents were never married.

"Screw the paint job you crybaby, we're coming out of this one ugly and we'll deal with it later!"

Screaming dangerously close to Decimator's ion reactor superstructure, I banked away as I headed for the edge of the engine wash, using the cavitation to give an extra push as I began a loop around. At Akrabbim's lunatic comment, I glared back at him the same as Loki.

"Why don't you up and miracle yourself on the ship then, you crazy wizard!"

[Rolth Wygraant]

"Captain Wygraant!"

Flight Commander Toth climbed the small spill of stairs up to the command catwalk, extending a datapad to the Star Destroyer skipper.

"Yes, Commander?"

"Fighter Squadron Auresh is taking heavy losses on point. You might want to see this."

The Captain looked at the datapad, and the image on it. Caught in freeze frame was the familiar hull of an X-Wing fighter. More important were the symbols and Aurabesh on it's hull plating.

"Rogue Squadron? The Rogue Squadron?"

Toth looked as baffled as his executive did.

"Unless this is a cosmic practical joke, it seems to be the case."

Wygraant passed the datapad back, stepping closer to the viewport on his bridge. What the hell was Rogue Squadron doing in this galactic backwater, with a light scout flotilla at best? The Imperial Captain wrung his hands in thought.

"Overwhelm them, Toth. They're only one squadron against our many."

He watched the battle go quite badly for Berserker, though the gunship did eventually manage to flank them.

"Nevermind the gunship, have the bombers finish that mess. Bring us within bombardment range of the Mon Calimari pocket carrier. I want it disabled. There's something damn peculiar about this fleet, and I want to get to the bottom of it."

Decimator trundled ahead in earnest, it's guns largely silent but for the occasional anti-starfighter battery as it moved upon Valiant

"What of the Action VI transport, Captain?"

One of his junior tactical officers made a minor faux pas in directing his curiosity directly to the top, but nevermind that. Captain Wygraant scoffed.

"It's a transport. No doubt some supplies or such. We'll deal with it in turn."

[Akrabbim]

He had forgotten how exhilarating it is to be in the midst of a fight. Pitting the mind and body against an equally equipped foe... there's nothing like it in the universe. Not that Akrabbim hadn't seen his fair share of battle on his icy hiding place, but... it just wasn't the same. The mindless beasts are too easy to distract, to out-think. His mind races with the possibilities as he stares, eyes wide, out the view screen. He hears the kid's sarcastic comments to his plan.

"Listen, punk, I don't wanna hear any more of your... "

Akrabbim's voice trails off into nothingness, eyes staring off into space as his mind starts cranking. He re-visits Loki's facetious suggestion, and begins to see possibilities. If nothing else, at least it's the last way someone would expect their ship to be infiltrated. All he would need is a suit. While invisible, it should be easy enough to slip inside the hangar. The mag shields only hold in atmosphere.

"You know, kid, you may actually be onto something there. Sanis... got a suit I could borrow?"

[Jason Na'moda]

Jason saw the gigantic wedge appear out of no where and witnessed the volleys of fire that erupted immediately from the scrambling defences. The convoy was on its way but they didn't look clear yet. Adjusting the Electrum headset around his forehead, he accelerated, deciding that he must have been ignored in the panic, although he still played the message on a minor channel if anyone felt like listening. He saw a squadron lead the charge, recognising their markings instantly. "R6, plot trajectories of friendly ships bearing on hyperspace, I'm not going to lose them now that I'm this close. And raise a channel to Rogue Squadron while you're at it." He didn't have time to check whether Rogue Leader was on the field but instead checked his instruments while the droid made some musical noises as it set to work and Jason's brow creased with concentration. They were gunning their engines directly into the TIE flock. Horrendous odds in fact.

With a bleep, R6 did better than just the Rogues and got him an open channel to the Layla as well. "Rogues and Layla, this is the Nexu, mind if I join your channel? I feel a bit left out." He commented drily, shifting the controls forward to overlap shields with Three flight. Concentrating, his thumb hovered over the missile launch trigger, waiting for that critical point where the force told him he would be able to save the lives of himself and the others around him with one critical strike. It twitched.

Jason launched a single Concussion Missile, which rocketed ahead of the group before smashing into a TIE defender. The resulting explosion took out the TIE and most of the ships around it. With that he used his lasers, deciding to save the others for use on the Impstar. He tried to remember the times he had looked over their schematics, wondering if this particular model had any blind spots he could sit in and use. He sprayed lasers from the cannons and watched several explosions of less competent pilots, the audio system compensating for the lack of sound in space. "So what's the plan?" He asked through gritted teeth, fighting slight particle drag as he was forced to barrel roll to avoid the flaming wreck of a TIE Interceptor.

[Sanis Prent]

"I've got one, what do you plan on doing? Walking there?"

The ship bucked again as I came about, flying even with Phoenix as Joker slipped to point position. Akrabbim was damaging my calm.

"In case you haven't noticed, we're in a pretty nasty brawl here. Not exactly time for a walk. You wanna help? Get down there and turn wrenches with Cirr!"

Another few flashes of light signaled a near-miss from a TIE-Int, coming the other way. We were headed back into the debarkation vector of those TIE squadrons, and this time they were pissed off. Another voice came in on my comm.

"Busy bit of sky over here...this is Rogue Thirteen, I catch your signal Nexu."

Who was this guy? I wasn't in the least bit interested in sparing the time to find out. Any help was good help. On my tactical display, a shuttle punched ahead, it's IFF transponder flicking to the same set that Spoon used.

"Spoon, Razor, we picked up a friend. Berserker's getting lit up, any chance you can run interference and bring our tagalong with you? My scope shows bombers on vector."

A few direct blasts hit us from above.

"Shit!"

Loki was hard at work swatting TIEs, no sense in blaming him for effort. But our cup was beginning to run over.

[Akrabbim]

Akrabbim blatantly ignores the giant firefight outside. He's never been that great of a pilot, and he's less than useless as a mechanic. He's a decent shot, but Loki seems to have that under control. Crazy though his plan may be, he's sure that he can be the most use on the inside of the enemy ship, not trapped here on this bucket.

"Sanis, look, I just need you to-"

He is cut off by various evasive maneuvers, near-misses, choice words from Sanis... frankly, Akrabbim is beginning to feel a bit ignored. He concentrates for a bit, summoning up a cloaking illusion for the ship. It's nothing fancy, but out in the middle of nowhere like this, a generic starry field motif is more than enough to render the ship basically invisible. He turns back to Sanis, nearly out of patience.

"There, sparky. Now you're covered. So sit still and listen! I've got a plan."

He pulls out a small device, which looks like an odd communicator. It's roughly the right shape, but has no apparent microphone.

"Check this out... I had it made a while back. You need to get me a message, send out a broad-band signal to no one in particular. It picks up on certain frequencies in the transmissions. That way, you can get a message to me without anyone knowing who's listening to it. I'll make sure to upload the various codes before I go."

He plops down in the seat next to Sanis, a gleam in his eye as he outlines the plan.

"Look, it's simple. All I need you to do is get near that great big lump and toss me out. I'll walk from wherever I land into the hangar. From there, it's open season on Imps! Trust me, I've a ton o' ideas as to how to get their panties in a knot. And if you need me, I'll be your ace in the hole. Otherwise, I'm just there to be the biggest nuisance I can be."

He pauses to let the idea sink in. And to allow Sanis the time to perform menial tasks, such as dodging fighters and trying not to die.

"Come on... what do you have to lose, other than a suit?"

[Lowrook]

Lowrook could feel the strain of the battle on the crew of the Berserker. He felt the death of Shalla, and he took it hard. He was close to everyone on the ship and the loss of each one was important to him.

So far the ISD was being distracted by the Berserker, the Layla, and Rogue Squadron, but that wouldn’t last long. Lowrook had to give them something else to deal with; either a bigger threat… or a bigger target. Taking a deep, he summoned more energy from the Force. Then he began to probe the mind of the Captain of the Decimator. Luckily, the Imperials still used mostly humans to crew their ships, so it was easier to create an illusion for one species than it was for several. He thought back to the images of the last battle at Endor that he had seen and began to conjure up images of the Mon Cal Cruisers that arrived. Concentrating, he began to project three of the cruisers arriving in a triangle around the Decimator.

Lowrook was now shaking, exerting more energy than he had in a long time. Still he had been trained in how to do illusions… he just hoped that they would stay around long enough for the ships of the Wheel to get away.

Out in front of the ISD Decimator… or so the bridge crew thought three Mon Cal Star Cruisers appeared. While they didn’t open fire immediately, they did move to intercept the Imperial warship.

[Iyar Thiled]

Things like what he was seeing were what made Iyar a bit nervous around the Jedi. Yeah they were important people, most of them nice enough, but when they could magically make the Layla vanish and somehow make a bunch of Mon Cal Cruises appear... well that was just weird. Not to mention when Rogue 13 had gone off visual but remained on radar it caused a temporary sense of panic, making Flipper and a few other pilots wonder if they'd all missed the telltale light show that meant the Layla and her crew hadn't quite lived up to their callsign.

"Hey Nexu, when you get back with your Jedi buddies, would you kindly tell them to start giving us a heads up before they pull that sort of thing? Freaking out the mortals, folks."

Flipper knew the statement came off far more aggravated than he normally would have spoken, but considering he was also in the process of turning another eyeball into space dust, he figured it could be forgiven.

"Ok, I'm not a Corellian so maybe I'm not seeing the fun here, but I think this grossly outnumbered thing is getting a wee bit old. That fleet ready to jump out of here yet or what?"

[Jamo Jakatta]

“Mother of pearl!”

Jamo swore, his eyes flicking between the star-scape ahead and his heads up display. In a matter of seconds, the battlefield had transformed... and yet, it had not. Rogue Thirteen had vanished from view, but Jakatta's targetting computer was still registering the freighters presence. Amidst the constant hail of blasterfire, the hows and the whys were too much for Joker to wrap his brain around, so he focused on what he could understand and – ultimately – what the squadron was trying to achieve.

“Valiant Actual, this is Joker, requesting sitrep. Do we have ETA for full fleet jump?”

[Rolth Wygraant]

Klaxons lit up the bridge as his pit officers were scrambling with new commscan data.

"Captain, enemy capital ships have broken into realspace, bearing zero-zero-nine mark zero-two-zero!"

Wygraant turned to see the threat, and was greeted with the sight of three Alliance MC-80 Star Cruisers. It seemed the Rebels had been heavily reinforced. He weighed his options, which had suddenly become sparse.

"Angle our approach against the pocket carrier, and adjust attack to starboard-side. Put the convoy between us and the Star Cruisers."

"We're not retreating, sir?"

Wygraant nearly bored a hole through his junior helmsman with an incredulous scowl.

"You gravely underestimate our chances. We may be outnumbered, but we're still all Star Destroyer men, Lieutenant. We're made of better stuff than to just retreat without giving them a good reminder of what we're capable of."

He stepped away to a holoprojector displaying the terms of the engagement as it was now understood. Decimator flattened its angle of approach against Valiant and the rest of the small Rebel scout flotilla, all the while being defended by TIE squadrons against what was allegedly Rogue Squadron. On their aft quarter, the gunship Berserker continued to harass their weak side to varying degrees of ineffectual results. Joining the Captain at the holoprojector was the Flight Commander.

"Commander, re-route your bomber squadron away from Berserker, under escort by Cresh squadron, to engage those Star Cruisers."

The Flight Commander frowned, an expression made more severe by his neatly-trimmed moustache.

"Their chances won't be great against three Star Cruisers, Captain."

"True, but good enough chances to delay the cruisers."

Wygrant pointed to the Action VI transport, Whaladon.

"With us closing distance on the scout flotilla, go ahead and divert Esk squadron to attack this freighter. We may be able to capture it outright before forced to withdraw."

[Abarai Loki]

Sometimes there was wisdom in ignorance. So Loki left Sanis to deal with the deranged illusionist while he poured his energy into blasting enemy ships out of the ether. He clung to the control sticks like lifelines and swayed in tandem with the spray of lasers, long lost to the relentless rythmn of battle. And yet, with every flight of fighters birthed from the Decimator, the engagement was fast becoming a desperate struggle for survival. The hornet's nest stirred and all they could do was swat blindly into the swarm.

On some level he was aware of the unnatural shroud hiding them from enemy eyes, the twinge at the back of his mind a by-product of the conjurer's magic, but it didn't take a Jedi to realise the turbulance was gone. In his wisdom, Sanis Prent chose to subtract power from the innertial dampeners to better serve shields and other, more critical, systems. Undoubtedly a wise decision given the circumstances but, despite his bristling disapproval of practically everything the illusionist has to say or do, even Loki couldn't deny his relief at being able to man the quad-canons without the Layla quaking from every glancing blow. Evidently, invisibility had its advantages.

Hunter's eyes zeroed in on an Interceptor rolling into position behind Joker and, righting his aim, Loki let loose the primary ventral canon. Under a torrent of laser fire, the enemy ship lost a solar panel, it spiralled wildly into the dark and forced an unsuspecting wingman off course. Sucking in a breath, the young Jedi watched as the second Interceptor banked hard to starboard, sending itself careening directly into the Layla's invisible path. He wrenched the control sticks and squeezed, quad-canons trumpeting doom as he chased his faceless foe to a fiery end.

And once the Layla punched through the blazing sphere, Loki dared to cast Sanis a knowing glance across when, instead, a single red light caught his attention. The cockpit buzzed in warning and Loki narrowed his eyes to catch words in the ominous crimson glow:

MISSILE LOCK

[Lowrook]

== Berserker ==
== Bridge ==

"Damages... Report!"

Captain Brandt was picking himself off the bridge floor again. This time, smoke was pouring out of several of the consoles and the forward bridge viewport was cracked. The last missile barrage from the Tie Bombers had punched through the shields and slammed into the starboard flank of the ship. It had ripped a hole in the side of the ship that an X-Wing could fly through. Weapons were down and even if they could fire, they didn't have enough to get through the more powerful shields of the Decimator.

No one answered Brandt. He looked around the bridge... everyone was dead. With the next pass the Berserker would be space dust. Stumbling down the ramp he stood over Shalla's body and looked at the controls. The hyperdrive was shot. There was no leaving. Grim determination filled Brandt. If he was captured, he would be tortured into revealing who was on the ships. He couldn't allow that. With one last act, he put all power into the engines and aimed toward the engines of the ISD. He felt Lowrook touch his mind, realizing what he was going to do.

The Berserker jumped forward, raging fires internally eating away at the containment field of the reactor. Brandt shut it the containment field. The more destruction, the better.

== Whaladon ==

Lowrook felt a sadness wash over him. A sadness of the loss of his crew and friends... and a sadness of what he was about to do to help save the Wheel.

He reached out with the Force, through the space and found the officer in charge of the shields. With the Force, he crushed the officer's throat, killing him. Then he used the Force to destroy the console.

While there were redundent systems, the shields would be down just enough to let the Berserker through. It should give the Wheel enough time to get out of here.

[Jaden Luka]

"Valiant Actual, this is Joker, requesting sitrep. Do we have ETA for full fleet jump?"

Teeth grated against teeth as his jaw clenched. The bridge of the Valiant was alive with frantic chatter, as officers scattered across the various consoles fired reports back and forth at each other. In the midsts of it all, Jaden stood, coordinating the Wheel's scant assortment of fighters in their battle against the Decimator, and it's numerically overwhelming fighters. Those numbers were shrinking, the Rogues and Valkyries doing a fantastic job of showing off the advantages of Rebel fighters over their Imperial counterparts; and hell, Razor and Spoon were in a frakking shuttle, and they were still handing slagged eyeballs back to the Imperials in clouds. But the numbers were against them, and though Jaden's Corellian blood was loathed to admit it, things weren't looking good.

ETA? He glanced at Leela, across on the other side of the bridge, wrestling to rally the rag-tag members of the Wheel into some semblance of order. She shook her head, a grim smile adorning her features; Jaden cursed under his breath in response. The Wheel was such an unwieldy beast; most of the ships were old, and without enough space on the Valiant or the Whaledon to land them, many were in a severe state of disrepair. Coordinating a mass jump to ensure that everyone would arrive in the right location, without crashing into each other was hard enough; managing to get half these ships to even jump in the first place - let alone within a few short minutes - made the task nigh impossible under the circumstances.

Good job we've got Rogue Squadron watching our backs, he mused. Impossible is our speciality.

Hand raising to his headset, he pushed the comlink control to respond to Jamo's query. "That's a negative, Joker," he muttered back. "Looks like we need all the time you can buy us."

[Sanis Prent]

"Missile lock?!"

I did the thing I was hard-wired to do in any circumstance that involved a lock, which was to kick Layla into the wildest evasive I could manage.

"Akrabbim you son of a bitch, how are they locking missiles on us!"

Of course, it occurred to me after the fact that even with us being visually shrouded, we were still plenty visible on sensors and IFF's.

"Joker, hang back, I got a tail on me."

I pushed hard again, driving Layla right into the thick of the debarking TIE squadrons, which were now starting to disperse and to fully engage Rogue and Valkyrie squadrons.

"Gonna get close and see if we can get one of those eyeballs to eat this missile in my engine wash. Either way, I think we're about to get our tailfeathers a little cooked, hang on!"

Diving through the swarming fighters really sucked this time. I cleared the lane with a few proton torpedoes, but even then, we were flying into the thick of it. Loki was furiously hammering away at the TIEs. The ship shook hard, nearly pitching us out of our seats, then an overhead console sparked, raining down a few embers as the lights dimmed.

"Just lost half of our rear deflector on that...but it looks like we missed the worst of that missile."

Flattening out our upwards ascent, I got us about as close to the Decimator's main hangar superstructure as I ever wanted to be. Even here, I half expected another flight of TIE's to vape me, or worse, to get pulled in by a tractor beam.

"Ak, you've got sixty seconds. I'm not waiting for sixty one."

[Jason Na'moda]

Jason kept pace with the others, holding formation and maintaining the kill zone in and around them. He smiled at the comment from Flipper and replied swiftly, sparing some focus from the task at hand. "I'll have a chat with them. Won't promise anything though." He felt a touch through the force and risked a glimpse back at the Whaladon, where the presence was emanating from. Interesting. Opening his mind to Lowrook, he focused again on flying, trying to get the sense of the Battle network the Jedi Master had set up through the force.

One look at his displays also told him that the Berserker was moving out of position and gathering speed, heading directly towards the Impstar. A glancing hit on his port wing shook the Nexu and forced Jason's mind back on the task. He responded quickly, blowing the viewport out of the offending TIE. "Rogues." He said, turning side on to avoid a laser. "I think the Berserker is throwing in the towel. And taking part of the Impstar with her. If we form up behind her then we've got some cover from the Star Destroyer." They were coming in close to the Destroyer now. The fact that they had survived this long was a testament to all their skills as pilots. Watching the blip on his monitor that was the Layla as Sanis took her through her paces. He considered flying down to join them, maybe put a couple of torps through the hanger while he was at it. Instead he remained in the flyby and angled his targeting computer, before launching two concussion missiles at the Star Destroyer's bridge. He felt a wave of sadness from Lowrook, but didn't have any time to pay it attention as attacks were coming from all sides and he was as hard pressed as the rest of Rogue Squadron.

[Jamo Jakatta]

Like a shoal of dagger-fish swimming with a single purpose, one of the TIE squadron's suddenly veered off-course and began a charge towards the Whaladon. At that moment, his commlink buzzed with chatter.

"That's a negative, Joker. Looks like we need all the time you can buy us."

"Joker, hang back, I got a tail on me."

"Rogues. I think the Berserker is throwing in the towel. And taking part of the Impstar with her. If we form up behind her then we've got some cover from the Star Destroyer."

The lines of battle shifted in Joker's minds eye. He didn't even register who the last voice was as he made a quick check of his display, relieved to see that at least Three Flight was intact. Now all they had to do was make sure that the Berseker, the Layla and the Whaladon didn't get blown to Stars' End.

Without warning, he threw Rogue Nine into a one-eighty end-over-end turn and gunned towards the Whaladon at maximum throttle. If they were quick off the mark, they could intercept Esk squadron before the TIEs made it within firing distance. Vaping an entire squadron wasn't beyond the capabilities of Three Flight but doing it before any of the TIEs could get off a shot at the virtually defenseless Whaladon? Well, that was where some of Rogue Squadron's fabled 'good luck' would come in handy.

[Iyar Thiled]

The chatter was almost as chaotic as the battlefield, everyone wanting something. Well, maybe not so much as wanting as needing. But when Joker moved, he made the decision for the rest of three flight. They were there to protect The Wheel, and that made stopping that group of TIEs headed for The Whaladon top priority.

Flipper followed suit, knowing that Phoenix and Echo wouldn't be too far behind. At least, he hoped they wouldn't be. The Layla would have to hold her own for now, hopefully the Nexu would lend a hand there rather than following Three Flight. The four rogues knew each other enough to be able to handle the squadron of TIEs, Flipper wasn't so sure how an unknown ship, though trying to help, might have factored into that.

"Never a dull moment! Can we do this every weekend?" The statement was emphasized as Three-Flight caught up with the stragglers from Esk and Flipper lit one up, sending it spiraling out of control for a moment before the TIE blew apart.