The Battle of Endor 3

3

Aidan marched down the corridor on Home One where his squadron’s quarters were located to tell them the news. He wondered how they’d react, although he was pretty sure he knew. But it wasn’t every day that you were going to tell your squad-mates that they were going to have to fight a Death Star. Strangely enough, three members of Knight Squadron had been at Yavin and assaulted the first Death Star. Himself, Commander Murleen and Commander Simms. At the time Aidan had been a member of X-Wing Blue Squadron, flying under the call sign Blue Three. Blue Squadron only had six fighters to fly in that engagement; Blue Six had been lost to turbolaser fire and Blue Five got downed by TIEs. He remembered that Capt. Simms had also had to pull out due to battle damage from a turbolaser blast. After that, Ru, Flight Officer Harris (Blue Four) and himself had flown Combat Aerospace Patrol so that Luke, Wedge and Biggs could make the last trench run unmolested. When Vader had swept back in, he’d claimed Harris and almost shot down Ru and Aidan as well. Thinking of that still gave Aidan chills.

Walking through the arched doorway into the Knights’ quarters Aidan saw that they had all gathered together to hear what he had to say about the briefing. He told them everything, about the Death Star and the almost suicidal plan to destroy it. After he finished there was long, tense silence. And then it was broken by, as Aidan had thought it would be, Duo Matting.

“Emperor’s Black Bones! Halin damn you, you were right! I owe you twenty!”

That brought a relieved smattering of laughter from the pilots and then Ru spoke up.

“Let me get this straight. They want us to actually fly inside the Death Star, navigate through its superstructure and then torpedo the main reactor and get out before it explodes?”

“That about sums it up Commander,” said Aidan.

“I don’t about you guys but I’m in. A merry chase through the Death Star sounds great,” chimed in Duo.

The other pilots cast Duo disparaging looks and a couple threw some paper cups at him. Aidan held out his hands to order silence.

“Quiet! Look, I’m not gonna give you some pretty, patriotic speech because frankly I’m not very good at them and I respect you all too much as pilots and friends to make you suffer that indignity. What I will say is that if it is my doom to have to make a suicide run into a moon-sized space station…” he paused looking around at the eleven other Knights solemnly, “then I could think of no finer group of pilots to be flying with. I’m very proud of you all. Over the last year we’ve helped to steal a Star Destroyer from the Empire and we helped put a stop to their Phantom Fighter program. You know, when I first put this squadron together back on Kollador Base, I sorta had this idea in my head that I could make a better fighter squadron than Rogue Squadron. Well, I’ve come to realize that… we’re Knight Squadron and we’ve built our own legacy.”

Over the clapping and cheering he said, “Okay speech over. Now General Solo’s commandos will be leaving in a few hours for their part of the mission. After that we’ll only have a few days before we have to go as well, so I suggest you all get your affairs in order and get some sim time in. Do whatever you need to make yourselves as ready as possible because I think that it would be very good for our legacy if Knight Squadron could add a Death Star silhouette to our hulls, don’t you think?” he said with a rakish grin.