Star Squadron: Endor's Gate

[Greybok]

It wasn't a Malla-class starfighter that Greybok brought to the last mission in the Moddell sector, but the Starbird herself—the namesake of Star Squadron. The Wookiee's starfighter was back on Endor, having been recently damaged during the mission to the Monsua Nebula, awaiting to be transferred to Hoth once the mission was over. Despite this, Greybok wasn't the least bit concerned. It felt good to be back in the pilot's seat of his light freighter. It might not be as fast as the other fighters, but it's armament and modifications more than made up for that.

Plus, with his freighter in tow, Greybok also had a crew to help him. Twobee and BE-ET were in the cockpit; the Wookiee was only really happy to see the astromech, but, at least with Twobee present, there was no need to rely on a translator screen to talk for him. "Star Squadron, this is Star Two: your military liaison, 2B-83," the droid said. "We're coming out in the Endor's Gate system. We should come out of lightspeed far enough from the black hole, but Greybok here wants me to remind you all to stay together and don't stray, even once the fighting starts."

"Czerka's remaining slaver forces are massing here to escape and report back. We cannot allow them to do that. Word from their officers might reach the Empire, and we don't want the Sith sniffing around this sector. So, here's the battle plan. Our intel suggests that Czerka has about four snubfighters guarding five armored transports. The transports are empty, as far as we can tell, but they are armed with light laser cannons. Star Four and Star Five—our two bombers—you will stick with Star Leader and go after the transports. The rest of you engage the fighters and keep them off our backs."

Just then, the tunnel of starlight dissolved into a thousand pinpricks as the Starbird leaped into the Endor's Gate system. Greybok immediately spotted the black hole emanating red light that would never escape from a distance. The Czerka starfighters, and their armored transports, were visible as shadows in front of the distant black hole. Greybok set a course and began diverting power from his new military-class power core to shields and weapons. Then he punched his craft into an approach speed.

"Star Squadron," Twobee translated as Greybok barked over the comms. "This is Star Leader! Form up on us and check in! And get ready; our scans indicate they are already making the preparations for the jump to light speed! We need to end this fast!"

OOC - Your average shuttle takes 6 rounds on a Class 6.0 hyperdrive to jump to lightspeed, so that is the timelimit of this thread. We have just six rounds of posting to deal with the enemies—total elimination—or the survivors will jump away. Make me proud, Star Squadron! Dice roll thread is here!

@Wit, @Cazar, @Plebometer, @Lazy Swordsman, @Kayenta Moenkopi, and @Insalius

 

[Mig Cabra]

The bomber came out of hyperspace with a roar as the military-grade power core instantly came to life to prepare the shields and weapons. Medium deflectors were active. Weapons systems were online. Both turrets were manned with eager Gotal gunners and the explosive ordinance was loaded. The Antar's Fist was ready for combat. Mig was at the helm commanding the whole operation for the ship while taking communications from Greybok.

"Star Four heading in with Star Five! Cover us!" Mig said cheerfully as he and the all Gotal crew sped the bomber towards the targets.

They had limited time to do much about the transports before they jumped out. This would have to be done quickly. Turrets would have to wait a moment or so to be in range but the torpedoes could fire ahead easily enough. Mig lined up one of the transports on their escape vector, the one in front. He knew that destroying it might interrupt or delay them slightly if they had to move from the path. It was going to be a tough shot but maybe there were enough of them and enough luck to get the job done.

"Firing Torpedo!" Mig announced to Star Five and Star Leader over the comm system.

A wooshing sound that made the Gotals all giggle sounded as the locked on target signaled that it was time to fire. Mig followed the directions and pressed the fire button with hope. A torpedo launched with a nice red glow. All eyes in the ship followed it as it streaked across the vast open space in front of them. A seemingly harmonious 'oooOOOoooo' sound echoed through the ship as it ignited against the transport and broke it into tiny pieces. A successful first strike for the mission and the fully crewed Antar's Fist.

@Insalius @Malon

 

[Eisa Swan]

Breaking out if hyper space, the recently patched up and repaired Cygnet fell into formation, it's teenaged pilot feverishly running through the crafts diagnostics, making sure that the various repairs carried out folowing the strike upon Czerka slave transport freighter and then a small two flight patrol. The small unshielded fighter had taken a fair beating from the patrol crafts weapons fire.

The damage had resulted in a mixture of light cosmetic damage to her hull as well as some extensive damage to the power distribution relays, which would explain why she had lost the use of her weapons no sooner had she downed the attacking patrol craft. It was only by the skin of her teeth that she was able to switch over to Her concussion missile in time to fire jsd as thr target lock was about to drop off.

The realisation that things could have been so much worse, hit home hard whilst Eisa had started to perform the repairs on her own ship not much later after landing at the recently captured forward Base, thr squadron were using to launch thier attacks. Whether it was just how fine a near miss the teen was that had shaken her, or the culmination of the recent events with her father being executed, having found that she was to become a Jedi learner. It was hard to not see that perhaps, there was cause for concern over the fiery haired teens state of mind, whether she wanted to acknowledge it or not, Eisa was starting to get over wrought by the mental strain of it all.

Satisfied for the moment, that the diagnostics were good, the teen listened to the mission briefing be relayed over the comms channel by tge squadrons assigned liason officer. Before opening thr channel and readying to respond. "Star.. thre.... No umm Eisa... Umm star three acknowledged" the teen almost erratically blurted out over the channel, before internally cursing at herself for slipping up on such a simple response. Hell she had been sounding off her call sign with ease throughout the operation so far.

But before any once could comment over the comms, the Cygnet suddenly broke out from formation and veered outwards from the main group, the engines flaring up in white Hot light as tge throttle was fully open and the craft sped off. Looking at first as if she was about to abandon the attack. Before suddenly and sharply banking in and opening out of a strafing run towards the cluster of fighters. That were protecting the transport ships.

As soon as she had came into range the teen, opened fire, raining a torrent of Crimson hued laser fire down upon the escorting fighters, though it not only was purely laser fire that the teen had opened with, pulling on thr secondary fire trigger, Eisa had launched her first of three concussion missiles towards the center most of the patrol fighters. The resulting explosion, engulfed the targeted fighter within a large fireball, sending chunks of burning wreckage into the other fighters, two of which taking the brunt of the secondary damage, with the hull fragments tearing through the unshielded Fuselages, resulting in further explosions.

Swiftly and sharply the teen pulled her craft out of its attack run, so to avoid plowing head long into the wreckage of the three downed fighters. As she did so, Eisa could feel her breathing becoming heavy as she started to almost zone out of what was taking place around her. Her gaze and trajectory was directed away from where the battle was taking place. For a few unblinking moments the young firey haired teen just found herself staring at her diagnostics screen, her mind a complete blank as to what it was meant to be doing. After a few more moments had passed, Eisa snapped out of her trance like state before shaking her head. She was starting to become aware that she was reaching the peak of her mental exhaustiin, but fortunately for this moment she could hold herself together for just a little longer.

OOC: 3 of the 4 fighters downed

 

[Alysanne Drast]

As they reverted back to realtime, Alys took a moment to orient herself, taking a quick look at the sensor readout on the control panel before letting her eyes scan space outside her viewport and she took her fighter through a quick roll, brining it to a stop so that up for her was oriented the same as for the shuttle.

"Star One headed, copy." She replied to Grey's message, watching as Mig and Omnis peeled off to make an attack run, having to make a quick decision to follow and provide the bombers some cover or continue on her vector and head towards the other fighters. The decision was made for her when one of the fighters made a beeline straight for her.

"Alright." She said as she let go of her control stick to flex her fingers before gripping it once more, one hand grabbing the acceleration yoke and pushing it forward to pick up speed, "Let's see what you can do." asked, as much to the wookiee as to Aurora. Looked like they had found their builder, now all they needed to do was to convince him to work for them, and in secret. She quickly marked the fighter engaging her as Slave 1, a designation that popped up on the sensor readouts of everyone else in the squadron.

As the distance shrank between the two fighters, Alys sent her ship into another roll as Slave 1 began firing, managing to weave through the laser fire before shooting for a few seconds from her own laser, managing to land a couple of strong hits on the fighters. As the two fighters whizzed past each other, she say a trail of smoke left behind in the fighter's wake, and a few seconds later Slave 1's designator vanished from her screens as the ship exploded. But before she could celebrate, a warning beep came from her controls. Slave 1 had managed to land a shot on her as well, and by whatever stroke of luck, had managed to screw up her missile launcher, which was now jammed. She was not going to be bringing the fireworks today.

"Star 1 hit. Still combat worthy, but my missiles are jammed." Having updated the rest of the squadron, she performed as sharp a turn as she could and having drifted away from the combat zone, began shooting back towards the rest of the squadron.

 

[Omnis Waszylla]

"Star Ten, engaging a transport. May the Force be with us!" Acknowledging the orders, Omnis fired his thrusters and moved to aim at the second closest transport after noticing that Mig was going for the closest one. By now he was very comfortable flying in the Magnum, switching from lasers to his torpedoes as the HUD slowly brought the transport into aim. Instead of jumping at the first sign of the weapon lining up the shot, he took a deep breath and made sure to get a good trajectory for the torpedo. This paid off, as Omnis grinned when the proton weapon found it's mark and destroyed the target. So far things were going good, hopefully this would keep up.

 

[Aurelian Keth]

While still in Hyperspace Aurelian listened quietly to Greybok’s droid as it spoke over the comms. Busying himself with running diagnostics the scholar couldn’t help but sigh with annoyance. His new Malla-Class ship had suffered multiple malfunctions despite barely being scratched in the missions leading up to his one. Engines had cut out or misfired and his laser cannons had misfired and partially powered down when the capacitors lost their charge or something. Reboots had taken care of the mission but if he had been alone he would have been at the mercy of his attackers.

“I need to get the engineers to give this piece of junk a good look over.” he muttered grumpily. “Or better yet a ship with some actual bloody shields.”

Continuing his complaining despite the fact that no one could hear him he was shaken from his self-pity when his fighter give a slight shutter as it exploded out of hyperspace and transitioned back to realspace. He turned to see the Starbird had already arrived. It was a bit ridiculous to think of a light freighter being part of a fighter squadron but apparently Greybok’s ship had some rather… impressive upgrades. Besides it could be useful to have something with a little more durability to hide behind of the need came.

“Star Six acknowledged.” he said over the shared communications line.

The idea was for the fighters to handle the enemy fighters and the bombers to handle the shuttles however it seemed they greatly overestimated Czera… again. In short order Mig had taken down a shuttle, Eisa had took down three fighters and Alys took out the last one before Omnis handled another transport.

“Huh…” he frowned then shrugged and opening the comm lines again he spoke. “All visible fighters have been taken care of, making attack run of transports to support Star Four and Star Ten.”

Breaking off from the original vector the fighters had been following he spun his craft around to follow the shuttles. Gunning the Grey Ghost forward it accelerated rapidly towards the remaining armoured transports. Coming into range he tightened his finger on the firing trigger and his laser cannons made a whining sound as they began to prepare the firing sequence and then… nothing. Again. Cursing he rolled away as the transport’s cannon fired at him and clipped his wing.

Cursing he kept the targeting computer locked on the enemy and his thumb compressed the secondary fire button. Luckily the missile was far more accurate and struck true as it slammed into the rear of the Shuttle. The transport listed to the side as it’s engines cut off and it seemed to lose power.

“One transport disabled. Star Six falling out of formation due to weapon malfunction.”

With that Aurelian pulled off and put some distance between himself and the other ships as he circled away and began rebooting his laser cannons again. It had worked last time so why not try it again? As the capacitors began to recharge he swung back to begin returning to the Squadron.

Spoiler

OOC: No fighters left so going after shuttles. 1 Transport disabled.

 

[Ner Giza]

Shortly after arriving at the staging area Greybok began his transmission. Smiling as she listened to Twobee’s characteristic voice coming over the comm, she was freed from reading the Commander’s words on the view screen and let her eyes drift to the view the Starbird. She’d heard rumors that he had won the Ophanim-class starship at a game of pazaak and made a mental note never to gamble with the Wookie.

As Twobee began to get to the meat of the mission her focus shifted back on task and by the sounds of things they could end the Czerka’s slaving operation with this final strike. As such the whole squadron was assembled. If her time within the Galactic Alliance did nothing else but help to put an end to the despicable flesh trade she would die a happy woman.

Making the jump to hyperspace, she arrived on site only to learn they were playing against time. They couldn’t let the clock run out and risk even one getting away to bring word of their activities. Although it was a bit intimidating being in the vicinity of the black hole she would just stay beyond the range of its gravitational pull. Easy, right? ”Star Seven, acknowledged.”, she said as she took in the scene before her.

Moving her ship into formation with the squad, it was not too long before Greybok, Migs, and Omnis moved out to attack the armoured transport with herself following after the bombers to provide coverage during their run. She couldn’t help but 'oooOOOoooo' when the Antar's Fist took out one on their first run.

Eisa’s voice on the comm gave her a moment of concern but passed it off as nothing more than stage fright; Ner’Giza was not that comfortable with using the military lingo on the comm either. However the teen was dealing with her father’s public execution, it hadn’t seemed to hinder her fighting capabilities. Nera imagined it may have actually honed her fighter’s edge as she tried to make sense of her grief. It had been that way with herself, at any rate but now was the not the time to be thinking of her parents.

In the afterglow of the exploding fighters, the Twi’lek listened to the chatter on the comm while veering off to target the disabled transport. ”I got you covered Star Six, going in to finish off the transport.” Her mind was troubled though. First Aly and now Aurel? The squadron needed some serious down time to effect repairs and avoid further malfunctions. Unfortunately these slavers were not gonna twiddle their thumbs while they got all the kinks worked out.

Nera fired off her lasers at the disabled transport finishing it off but took a bit of shrapnel through her left laser clipping it clear and sending her spinning. It was a bit before she managed to stabilize and pull out of the erratic flight but when she did she was nearly upon a second transport. It was more from fright than anything that her thumb pressed the trigger for her missiles. The shot hit true though right through the power core exploding the transport. A bit shaken by the close call, she circled round to get clear of the debris.

Spoiler

disabled transport taken out. 1 additional transport destroyed.
I transport left

 

[Greybok]

The mission was shorter than expected. Already, the rest of the Squadron was eating up what meager forces were left of Czerka's slaving forces. By the time Greybok got in position to attack, only two ships remained: a starfighter and its accompanying shuttle. Greybok switched weapon controls over to proton torpedos and watched as the Starbird's main display painted yellow boxes around the two remaining ships. He closed the distance, watched as those boxes changed color to a vibrant green, then pushed the trigger, releasing two brilliant blue balls of energy at the offending ships. Both exploded magnificently, leaving Star Squadron alone at last at Endor's Gate.

Greybok leaned back in his chair and honked proudly over the comms. Twobee did the honor of translating for him. "This is Star Leader! Greybok says, 'Good work, everyone! That was fast and clean!' Honestly, I'm surprised it went so smoothly myself, considering you lots' reputation." Greybok hooted and began to make calculations for a micro-jump to Endor. Twobee continued to translate, "We'll all rendezvous over the moon of Endor and refuel before giving Commander Ion the all-clear signal. Then the rest of you are clear to return to Hoth. Greybok and I will remain here until rebel forces can arrive."

His orders given, Greybok pulled back on the lever that would send the ship on a small jump through hyperspace towards the aforementioned forest moon. Star Squadron's first mission as a completed unit was a rousing success. The Wookiee couldn't have been anymore proud of the people under his command, even given the setbacks at the Monusa Nebula. Their success meant the rebellion had one more safe-haven—one more security blanket when the real war with the Empire began. And Grey could feel it in his fur. That war was coming soon....

OOC - Well, that was quick lol Everyone is welcome to make their closing posts, but, with this post, the mission is over and all objectives have been met. Good work! @Wit, @Cazar, @Plebometer, @Lazy Swordsman, @Kayenta Moenkopi, and @Insalius

 

[Mig Cabra]

Mig never had any doubts for the team. Things worked out perfectly for them and it was a booming success as usual. The Gotal was always the optimist when it came to his friends. A happy bomber crew turned and began calculating their return trip. They were starting to get the hang of the Antar's Fist and making it their home. Star Squadron was really coming together and Mig was feeling confident about them. Someday he knew they would make a real difference in the war efforts.

"Star Four returning to ron... renda... reundo... to the meeting spot!" Mig said over the comms as he maneuvered the ship.

The Gotal wondered what would be coming next. Things were heating up and soon they'd have to move against their real enemies. Mig knew that the goal was to disrupt the Sith Empire. He knew they were to bring hope to the galaxy and defeat evil. Soon they'd have to begin. Mig would be ready for it. So would the crew of the Antar's Fist.

@Malon

 

[Aurelian Keth]

Aurelian let out a sigh of relief. Everything had moved quick and dangerous. As soon as they were in it was over and he couldn’t be more thankful. The Grey Ghost had sustained some light damage to its wing, more proof that he needed to get a ship with some damnable shielding. Worst was the engine and laser trouble he’d sustained along almost every step of this operation. He was going to have the maintenance crew at Star Base go over this ship piece by piece to discover what the underlying issue was before he went out in it again.

Listening to Greybok’s announcement, through Twobee of course, the Padawan smiled. Listening to the orders he punched in the co-ordinates for the Moon of Endor and opened his comm-channel. “Understood Star Leader. Star Six is heading to rendezvous co-ordinates.”

Powering down his weapon systems and sending power to the hyperdrive Aurelian began moving along the proper vectors for his planned destination. Pressing forward on the throttle he accelerated before jumping into hyperspace. It was only a short jump before his fighter transitioned back to realspace. Aurelian was genuinely glad that things had gone so well. He liked being a member of Star Squadron and an early success like this would do much to cement their place as a useful asset to the Alliance. Of course this was all just a warm up really. One day they’d have to engage their real enemies, the Empire, and he had no idea how well they’d do against a true military naval force such as they but someone had to do it.

 

[Ner Giza]

Circling round, their commander taking out the last transport, Ner'Giza was filled with the sense once more of how easily they had dominated their opposing forces. She had to feel good about stopping yet more slavers from making off with the innocents on yet another foreign world. Why then the feeling of emptiness within her stomachs? The answer was obvious as the view of the world before her; this was not Ryloth, this was not home.

Was it the right thing to do, being way out here working so hard and risking her life for the sake of others when her own people had needs of their own? One by one her squad mates flickered out into hyperspace and yet Ner’Giza stayed where she was struggling with the issue once again. While the woman admitted that she wasn’t a strategist, knowing the Alliance couldn’t afford to overreach themselves if they wished to survive long enough to help anyone, impatience filled her when it came to her own kind.

They had helped her people too hadn’t they? Aurel, Devrim…people she didn’t even know.

Blinking her eyes she thought of those here who would never know her, whose lives she had helped to save. At least for another fate than slavery.

A knot seemed to untie itself, tensions easing ever so slightly. Ner’Giza laughed before moving to cue up the coordinates for the rendezvous and it was not long before reality was bending on itself to bring her home; to Star Squadron, to Aurelian.

/exit thread