Renegade Squadron: Chapter 17

[sharpiefan]

Title: Renegade Squadron
Fandom/Canon: Star Wars
Author: sharpiefan
Word count: ~ 2275
Rating: U
Spoilers:
Pairing/Characters: Wedge Antilles, Hobbie Klivian, original characters
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars or any of the canon characters who may show up in the course of this book.
Author's Note:
Summary: Commander Wedge Antilles won his Wraith Squadron bet. Now he has to take a shattered unit and forge them into something new and stronger than they were before, in preparation for taking on the command of his own snubfighter wing.

<- Chapter 16

It was the evening meal the day before the squadron was due to complete the second part of their astronavigation exercise and fly the route they'd planned. Vaine sat down across from Lieutenant Scotian, Will. It was nice, having someone look out for him, someone who he could talk to, who could show him how things were done for real – and who had previously been in a unit with Commander Antilles. He had hoped to make friends in whatever unit he got posted to, so to have Will there almost from the day they'd both arrived had been good.

Although of course, there was a slight shadow over everything because of the reason Will looked out for him, and probably the reason Commander Antilles had even looked twice at his application for this unit. It had taken a few weeks to get to this point but he was comfortable enough with things now that he could ask, "Could you tell me…What was Dad like? I mean, I know he's not a hero like the pilots killed at Yavin, but…"

"He's still a hero," Will said firmly. "And not just to you." He took a deep breath. "He saved lives at Hoth, you know, even though he was killed in the first phase of the battle."

"Tell me – I mean, I kind of know, but only the official story. Not from someone who was actually… there." Mealtime probably wasn't the best time for this conversation, on second thoughts, but he wanted to know and wasn't likely to get much of a better opportunity.

Will paused. "I thought you knew him?"

Vaine shrugged with a sigh. "I did, sort of. I was twelve when we heard about Hoth, though we didn't know much because of the Empire and everything, and he'd left us when I was really young to go fight, and the Empire destroyed Kestic Station when I was about eight – Ma had taken me down to the surface to see her folks, or we would've been there." He shrugged again; it was what it was, the Empire had done horrible things and a lot of innocent people had died, which was why people like Zev Senesca had joined the Rebel Alliance, as it was back then.

Will swallowed before nodding. "Sure. He was – he was good. He was the oldest of us – he didn't really talk about his family much, for security reasons, although he had holos up. He was a good pilot, and a good person to have on your side. I was serious when I said he'd saved lives, too."

Vaine himself swallowed. "Tell me?"

"I probably ought to start at the beginning, to be fair. I wasn't in Rogue Squadron when I met Zev, I was in Blue Squadron but the snowspeeders – T47 airspeeders, really, but converted for the cold – were two-man things, with a pilot and a gunner, so I ended up in Rogue Group because they needed the bodies. Your Dad was a Rogue properly, though, had been since a few months after Yavin. Good pilot, and the sort of man who'd do anything for anyone, to a point."

He was interrupted at this point by both Commander Antilles and Captain Klivian coming over to snag the two empty seats.

"Ah, Wedge! The kid – Vaine here, was just asking me what I remember about his dad, but you both knew Zev longer than I did."

Vaine felt the heat come into his face. He hadn't meant for Commander Antilles to be part of this, somehow, even though he'd known the commander had fought with his father.

Wedge got comfortable before meeting Vaine's eyes with a narrow smile on his face. "He was a good pilot, your dad. A good man to have at your back, or on your wing."

"You really think so?" Vaine's dinner sat in front of him, forgotten. "I mean, I know you wouldn't say it if you didn't mean it, sir, but…"

Wedge nodded. "I really think so." He paused, considering. "You know, I learned a lot about command from Old Man Senesca – Will's told you that he was older than the rest of us. He would've been nine or ten years older than me, and had far more experience than I did, back then. If he thought a plan was good, he'd say so, and if it was bad, he'd help make it into something good – although he'd even go over the good plans to make them better."

Vaine nodded; he knew enough about the early days of the Rebellion to know that things were more democratic in so many ways, in a way that they couldn't be now, with the political side and the military side no longer so intertwined as they had been. The Rebel Alliance had always sought to run along military lines but there had been an informality to it that just couldn't exist now that it was so much bigger and the military arm of a legitimate government. And there was even a proper military academy now, something that the Rebellion could never have had.

And his father had helped build the New Republic, even though he hadn't lived to see it take shape.

He felt a rush of pride at being the son of a man these pilots obviously had respected when they flew together – and still respected the memory of, judging by the warmth in their voices and the looks on their faces. It would be a lot to live up to.

"He was one of the original members of Rogue Flight, you know," Hobbie put in.

Vaine had known that, sort of, but it had been academic, which was a very different thing from hearing people who had been there, two of the actual founder members of Rogue Squadron, two of the pilots of the original Rogue Flight say so.

"He was the one who found Luke after he'd been out all night on Hoth," Will said.

This naturally piqued Vaine's interest. "Tell me?"

The three older men looked at one another, obviously sharing memories, before coming to a decision. Vaine didn't even see how the communication happened, but Hobbie took the lead. "OK. At the time we were on Hoth, we were hiding from the Empire – they were rather put out that Wedge here had had a hand in blowing up their Death Star -"

"Hey. Luke was the one who did it!"

"You were there, it counts." Hobbie got back to his story – how Luke had gone out on patrol and not reported back, the need to close the doors to stop everyone else from freezing in the easily minus forty temperatures, the waiting, the eventual dawn of a much brighter day, getting the speeders out…

"I don't know how long we'd been looking but eventually a call comes over the comms… 'This is Rogue Two, I've found them…. And someone else can pick them up, I can smell Commander Skywalker from here!'"

Vaine found himself joining in with the laughter.

"Luke already had a bit of a reputation by that point, to be fair."

"It's not like you ever had to share a room with him – I wasn't anywhere near him at the Yavin briefing and even I could smell the, uh, Parfum de Trash Compactor he was wearing then," Wedge said and intercepted another glare from Hobbie. "The tauntaun smell wasn't the last time he came back stinking of something horrible, I'll tell you about getting his X-wing back sometime."

Hobbie shook his head ruefully. "Anyway. We turned up to find Zev hovering upwind of a very dead and frozen stiff tauntaun, half its guts spilling into the snow, Luke more dead than alive. Flipped a credcoin to see who'd be the lucky one who didn't have to being him back to base and Zev lost that toss. He hadn't even cracked the canopy by the time we got there, just looking at the mess was enough to tell him how bad it smelled."

"It was Hoth. We all smelled like tauntaun and misery anyway," Wedge said, with a wry grin.

"He was practically green when we got back to Echo Base," Will put in. "Clashed horribly with his flight suit."

"That wasn't even the worst of it. We never got the smell out of that speeder and whoever was in the gunner's seat for the next week or so kept picking bits of tauntaun guts out of the thing – it was fine while they were frozen but of course they didn't stay frozen."

"We only had a week, in the end, not that we knew it then. But the Old Man did get his own back –"

"Probably best not to mention that, at least not now," Wedge put in at this point, cutting Will off.

He must have known the interruption was only going to spark Vaine's curiosity, but he wasn't about to push. "How did he die?" he asked instead. "We were told it was during the ground battle but… we weren't really given very much."

It was Wedge who answered, as Vaine had thought he might. "We were in snowspeeders – T47 airspeeders adapted for the cold. They didn't have shields, had very little in the way of armour, and the blasters they had were underpowered, completely ineffective against the armoured walkers the Empire had landed. Really, the only way we could effectively take them out was by tripping them with the tow cables, which took time. Your dad was piloting one of the speeders and was setting up for a shot when a couple of other walkers fired at his speeder. It would have been almost instantaneous."

"I… see." Vaine swallowed. "Thank you for telling me, sir." He poked at the food on his plate, managing one more bite and then came to a decision. "Excuse me."

He gathered his tray and set it in the rack before leaving the mess hall. They watched him go in silence, the mood more somber.

---

The base had been an Imperial base, and therefore it had an elevated landing platform overshadowing the sleeping quarters, hangar, offices and other personnel areas. Roughly two thirds of the way up between the buildings on the ground and the landing platform itself was a walkway with spurs, originally intended for AT-Ats to load and offload squads of troopers, but used by the New Republic personnel as a place to pause, take in some fresh air and generally get some space.

Vaine took the 'lift up to the walkway level. He had a lot to think about and there were likely to be people in the rec room or the bunkroom. The walkways were lit, with low-level forcefields to keep flying insects out, but at a low enough level that people could still lean on the railing to enjoy the cool night air.

He'd walked out along one of the spur walkways before realising that he wasn't alone. Lieutenant Vika Noswal was there, leaning on a railing, her hair in one of her complicated plaited styles, the sleeves of her dark blue jumpsuit tied around her waist, revealing the dark grey undershirt, colours that blended in with the dark twilight blues of the forest around them.

He must have made some kind of sound because she turned to look at him.

"I'm sorry," he said, awkwardly. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"It's fine." She turned back to her contemplation and Vaine crossed to the railing, leaning on it and looking out at the trees, listening to the sounds of the wind and the native wildlife. It wasn't quite like the seashore back home on Bestine, but it was close.

He shrugged and sat down, hugging a stanchion even as he let his legs dangle off the edge of the platform.

"Would you have figured the targeting exercise out, if your position and Will's had been switched?"

The question, from somewhere above his head, jolted him out of his reverie. "I don't know," he said, thinking back. Everything had happened so fast, and yet, he knew of Commander Antilles' tendency to break out in some unexpected direction, something they'd studied at the Academy, although nobody could really pin down how he did it, or why it usually worked. Some quirk of being Commander Antilles, probably. "I don't think so."

There was a sigh, and then Lieutenant Noswal joined him, sitting on the other side of the stanchion.

They shared the silence for some minutes, each lost in their own thoughts, until Vika broke the sounds of the humming lights and the forest below them.

"Why did you want to join Renegade Squadron?"

He let out a breath. "I wanted to be a pilot, like my dad was. He was killed at Hoth, you know, as part of Rogue Squadron. I would have liked to have joined Rogue Squadron, but they only take the really good pilots, and I'm not, not really. And Renegade's got a good history to it, it's the other squadron formed at the same time. You've all done things that… that I think anyone would be proud of, and I want to be part of that. I didn't know Commander Antilles had decided to take command here until my acceptance came through, honestly."

There was a slightly ragged sigh from his right.

"He wants his pilots to rely on each other, to be a team. And not to get rigid. There's more than one way to… to kill an AT-AT. If you don't have strong enough weapons, maybe tripping it up is all you can do. He's come out of the Rebellion, he's used to coming at problems from weird angles. Maybe we should, I don't know, try thinking sideways?"

"Sideways…" She sounded thoughtful, but she didn't add anything more.

Chapter 18 ->