Cobalt Squadron

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  She knew that Paige was down there, waiting for Rose to join her again when the danger was past.

  See you then, Rose.

  It wasn’t a question of decision making. Rose couldn’t imagine flight without Paige.

  “This is an awkward time to demonstrate lack of moral fiber,” Fossil told Rose coolly. “It is the day before a mission in which you are a vital component.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Paige doesn’t know,” Rose apologized. “Couldn’t you swap her around, too, so we could fly together? You said when we joined the Resistance that you’d always let us fly in the same crew.”

  Fossil gazed down at Rose with unreadable wide crystalline silver eyes, bemused.

  Cat said suddenly, “I’ll go.”

  Rose and Fossil both turned to look at him. Cat gave Rose a smile. She remembered how he’d confessed his secret fear to her, his fear of being outside. He understood fear.

  “Sure, I’ll go,” Cat repeated. “Why not? I made a mistake today I’m not likely to make again. I know the circuit sequences for the power bafflers by heart now. I don’t need to adjust to the climate at all—this is my home. I’ll go with Wasp as their technician, and Rose can stay with her own crew.”

  Rose and Cat looked to Fossil for approval. Their commander shrugged.

  “Your cooperation as a unit, as always, moves and pleases me,” she said in her rumbling voice.

  She hadn’t said yes yet, though. Rose bit her lip, waiting for the final decision.

  The Old Lady nodded. “Sonar swallows indeed. No one has used that as an excuse before.”

  “Thank you,” Rose breathed. “Thank you, Fossil. Thank you, Cat.”

  “What a goof you are, Rose,” Paige told her fondly as they sat squeezed tight together in the lower gun turret during the next day’s hyperspace journey to Atterra for the second airlift bombing run. “Cute, but a goof.”

  “Shut up.” Rose felt self-conscious about her stubborn and childish insistence on flying with her big sister. Fossil hadn’t mentioned the request to the other crew members, but Cat had said something to Paige about Rose’s “sisterly devotion,” and Rose didn’t want to talk about it.

  Paige heard the tone of Rose’s voice, though, and she got it. She apologized.

  “You know I’m teasing. I’m a little jealous of how indispensable you are to this mission.”

  “You’re jealous of me?” said Rose, who felt that she would never be as multitalented, as calm, or as respected as her older sister. “Did you hit your head on one of those Atterra asteroids?”

  “I’m totally serious!” Paige assured her. “Everyone’s a little scared of those bafflers. And it’s not because they don’t trust them—it’s because they’re so impressed that you managed to scrape together such a complicated piece of equipment in such a short time. I was talking to Cutter and Hornet’s technicians about it in the cafeteria last night. They’re all worried they’ll make some dumb mistake like Cat did, and just knowing you’re there to talk to them makes them feel reassured. They’re very glad you’re here.”

  It was Rose’s turn to tease. “You’re always gossiping.”

  But she felt warm inside, and a little sick with the awful responsibility of being in charge of them all.

  “Got to get up to the flight deck for our return to realspace,” Rose added. “See you on the way back to Refnu.”

  Paige was calm as always. “See you then, Rose,” she answered.

  Four Cobalt Squadron heavy bombers, with two Crimson Squadron bombers supporting them, began to emerge from hyperspace on the outside of the Atterra Belt.

  It was quiet there. The complex space ahead of them loomed ominously, but the outer planetary orbit of the Atterra system seemed wholly empty. It was as peaceful as the limitless mottled blue of hyperspace.

  Rose, watching the monitors, saw the shape of Crimson Cutter first; then Cobalt Wasp and Scarab appeared on the screen, their unwieldy familiar bulky outlines reassuring. Hammer entered the asteroid maze just after Cobalt Hornet and Crimson Hailstorm emerged from hyperspace. As soon as the asteroids of the Atterra Belt blocked the other bombers from Hammer’s line of sight, they winked off the monitors. The power bafflers were all working.

  The bombers were on their own as they navigated the Atterra Belt—they’d regroup on the other side to enter Atterra Bravo’s orbit in formation.

  The Resistance bombers couldn’t see each other as they flew through the Atterra Belt, but they could talk to each other, and with each trip, they mapped more booby traps. They were beginning to be able to guess the size and nature of the asteroids likely to hide an automatic cannon. They were also getting better at gauging the perfect distance for avoiding laser fire while still being able to use the asteroids to hide behind.

  But Rose’s heart was hammering in her chest as they made their way between the asteroids. She was expecting an attack the whole way in; that one escaped TIE yesterday had surely reported them.

  But there was nothing. The belt was quiet.

  The attack came as they flew toward Atterra Bravo on the other side of the belt.

  Hammer took the initial fury of the enemy fire. Seconds after they emerged from the cover of the Atterra Belt, a squadron of TIE fighters came streaking straight after them.

  With the attack coming from behind, the bomber Hammer was lucky enough to be between the TIEs and the sun, and Finch immediately veered to take advantage of having the light at their back. He unleashed a blaze of laser fire from the forward cannons.

  As the clutch of TIEs shot back, Hammer’s shields held. The six TIEs went screaming away toward Atterra Bravo’s night before wheeling in for another attack. But now Spennie and Paige, in their rearward-facing gun turrets, were able to get a good shot at them.

  Hammer met the second attack with furious gunfire.

  Rose was in agony, though. Nix was remotely controlling the cannons in the dorsal turret from the bombardier’s computer pedestal. But there was absolutely nothing Rose herself could do to help the fight. She looked out over the pilot’s shoulder, trying not to get in Finch’s way. She could feel the ship shuddering as the TIEs fired on them from behind. Finch was tense, waiting for the attack to move around to the front. A split second later he was firing like fury again.

  Rose backed away into the windowless bulk of the fuselage. There was something suffocating about being able to see this attack without being able to fire back. It was worse than sitting in a gunner’s turret under fire herself.

  Then it occurred to Rose that there was something she could do: she could warn the other bombers so that they wouldn’t be taken by surprise when they came out of the protective camouflage of the Atterra Belt.

  Rose hit the general comm button fixed to her headset, the feature she now shared with the pilot so that she’d be able to talk to the technicians in the other bombers without having to be patched in.

  “There are TIE fighters inside the belt!” she yelled. “Alert your crew!”

  Crimson Cutter’s flight engineer reported from his station, where Rose knew he must have his eyes glued to the monitors.

  “I see them. Wasp is covering us. We’re coming to help you.”

  Another handful of white lights appeared on Rose’s monitor. Her heart sank.

  “Wasp and Cutter, defend yourselves, not us!” Rose cried. “Scarab, Hornet, Hailstorm—tell your gunners to look sharp!” She didn’t even think about the fact that she was shouting commands at flight crews she had no business being in charge of. It never occurred to her she had no authority to tell them how to fly their mission. She was just trying desperately to warn them, to save them from disaster.

  From the lower gun turret, Paige had seen the new clutch of TIEs, and called in a frantic warning cry for the rest of Cutter’s crew.

  “Bandits! Bandits! Beware, Cutter! TIE fighters on Crimson Cutter! Somebody tell ’em—there’s another clutch of TIEs coming for Cutter!”

  The Cutter technician’s voice then cam
e through sounding just as frantic, and Rose, staring at her own monitor, knew why.

  “I see four more squadrons inbound!” he cried. “The first must have sounded an alert when they found us, and called for reinforcements—”

  The monitor screens were dazzling with white sparks. They came in clustered handfuls from three directions at once, in addition to the individual fighters that were already focused on Hammer. The StarFortress shook with the impact of the shots against the blast shields, with the action of the gunners firing back, and with the movement of Finch’s evasive weaving.

  With swift and purposeful calculation, one of the approaching squadrons of fighters swarmed toward the incoming bomber Wasp. Another squadron went after Scarab. The third and fourth approaching squadron of TIEs held back—they were waiting for Hornet and Hailstorm. There was a whole squadron of TIE fighters ready to take on every one of the Resistance bombers.

  Another squadron arrived as Rose watched the screen.

  The bomber Hammer somehow continued to hold its own. Rose’s screen swarmed so thickly with the white traces of the TIEs that she couldn’t tell how many of them Hammer’s guns had managed to defeat. She thought that the shocks coming at the ship were not as frequent as they’d been. Unformed bolts of hope stabbed through her head: Last time we were okay—maybe if we just get the ones after us, maybe we can get through this first attack—

  That was when Wasp’s trace on the technical monitor suddenly vanished.

  There was no great burst of noise to announce the moment, no deafening roar of the blast that obliterated the ship as there would have been if it had happened inside a planet’s atmosphere. There was a dull crackle of static as Wasp’s comms went blank, and then silence in the space where the ship had been.

  At the same time, Paige and Spennie gave simultaneous wordless cries of anguish. They’d seen the explosion.

  The TIEs that had been surrounding Wasp swooped away, splitting off into twos, and each pair joined one of the squadrons attacking the remaining bombers.

  For a few moments Rose’s brain refused to believe it.

  Then: We’ve lost an entire ship.

  Cat’s ship. What had he said to her the night before?

  I hate being outside. I’d rather be sitting in a bomber that’s going up in flames than standing out here in the wind.

  She thought of his tall, bulky Refnian body crammed inside Wasp’s baffler, frantically struggling with the plugs—but no, there hadn’t been anything wrong with Wasp’s baffler. Cat would have been staring at the tech screens just as Rose was now, watching the storm of white sparks that were the TIE fighters dancing in and out among the slower shapes of the Resistance StarFortresses.

  Had the ship exploded so suddenly that Cat didn’t know what was happening? One minute feeling secure in an enclosed space, and the next…?

  He’d flown in her place.

  Fossil had asked Rose to fly on Wasp, and Cat had taken her place.

  Rose knew she couldn’t think about it—not now. She’d lost people before—crew members and family both. In the middle of a battle she couldn’t think about it.

  In the middle of a battle there were other things to think about.

  Three dozen TIE fighters.

  How many of that first squadron were still pursuing Hammer—joined now by two of the clutch that had blasted Wasp out of the sky? There were eight of the ferocious sparks drilling into Scarab’s outline on the screen now—

  “Finch,” Rose begged over the internal comm to Hammer’s pilot, “we should abort the mission.”

  She gulped in another breath, and hurried on: “We should turn back now. We can’t keep up a battle like this all the way to Bravo’s surface, and if we do, we’ll give away the position of our scheduled drops—you’ve got to give the command!”

  “I was going to anyway,” Finch gasped. “Just waiting for someone else to suggest it….”

  But he was too busy defending his own ship to give the order right away. Firing back at the attackers, he veered suddenly planetward.

  “You’re heading into the minefield!” Paige yelled.

  “I know—”

  The StarFortress couldn’t make a tight turn, but Finch suddenly threw on full power and soared in a different direction. Three of the TIEs, overenthusiastic in their pursuit and knowing they had superior maneuverability, flew straight into the minefield and exploded within seconds.

  The pilot didn’t waste a moment on triumph.

  “Cobalt Squadron, Crimson support, retreat,” Finch yelled as the other starfighters careened out of his reach for a moment. “All bombers retreat. Don’t wait—”

  The command came too late.

  Hornet had already emerged behind Scarab. One of the unoccupied squadrons of TIEs was ready for it. They came leaping out of their holding pattern to attack.

  They were picking off the Resistance heavy bombers like beads off a string—just waiting for them to appear and shooting them out of the sky as easily and predictably as a line of gaming targets.

  Finch had given the order to retreat, but he hadn’t shown any inclination to move Hammer out of the line of fire.

  “You getting out or not?” Nix called to Hammer’s pilot.

  The bombardier got no response at first. As before, Finch was firing at one of the approaching starfighters as it screamed back for another deadly, swooping pass. The explosion, when Finch hit the TIE, was close enough that for half a second it floodlit the entire interior of the bomber’s fuselage with a deep and flickering golden glow.

  “Got to see it through for the rest of ’em, I think,” Finch grunted. “I’m trying to stay close to Cutter so we can give them some cover….

  “We’re responsible,” he added, as he guided the StarFortress to dive away through the cloud of gleaming cinders that was all that was left of the TIE fighter he’d just destroyed. “Don’tcha think? You with me?”

  “Sure we are,” sighed Nix.

  “Here,” confirmed Paige briefly from the lower gun turret, and Spennie echoed, “Here.”

  Rose answered with more gloom than usual: “Ready for anything.”

  Finch began, “Because I think—”

  He didn’t finish his sentence. His words were cut off as the last of Scarab’s shields fell and the surrounding enemy starfighters moved in on the defenseless StarFortress to finish the job.

  The dreadful thing about Scarab’s destruction was that Rose and Finch, tuned in to common frequencies so they could communicate with the rest of the Resistance bombers, could hear the crew’s screams as the ship burned.

  For a terrible thirty seconds, in a fit of panic, Rose switched off her headset so she didn’t have to listen.

  It was the longest thirty seconds of her life.

  When there was nothing left on the screen where Scarab’s outline had been, Rose flipped her headset’s power back on.

  Finch was shouting: “Retreat! Retreat! RETREAT!”

  CUTTER HAD disappeared from Rose’s screen. She didn’t know if it was because they’d also been destroyed, or because they’d made it back into the shelter of the Atterra Belt and the line of sight was broken.

  “Crimson Cutter!” she called. “Cutter tech, can you hear me?”

  There was no answer.

  Hailstorm, the last of the heavy bombers to emerge from the maze of asteroids, had already changed direction. The TIEs that had lain in wait for it were streaking toward it but hadn’t reached it yet, and Hailstorm was traveling at top speed back toward the belt. Rose’s heart vaulted with a sudden overdose of hope and gladness—the adrenaline rush lasted about half a second, and then she stopped watching, because Hailstorm wasn’t her concern anymore. Nor was Cutter or Wasp or Scarab. Besides Hammer itself, there was only Hornet left.

  On the monitors, Hornet made a wide loop. Like Hammer, it didn’t have a very tight turning circle. The remaining TIE fighters whizzed back and forth around it like a flock of sonar swallows mobbing someone who stood singing a
t the top of her voice in the D’Qar forest—except the birds of D’Qar didn’t deliver deadly blasts of laser fire as they came flying close.

  Rose saw a few of the dazzling enemy images go dark as the Resistance gunners managed to destroy some of the TIE fighters.

  But there were too many for the heavy bombers to destroy them all. Their only hope now lay in escape.

  The bomber Hornet finished making its turn, and Finch put on a burst of speed to try to fly close behind the other StarFortress.

  “Safety in numbers—” Finch panted. “If any of those bandits come between us we’ll get them—aw, for the love of a loaded stun gun.”

  He broke off, cursing, as something solid hit the top of the cockpit.

  “Are the shields holding?” Spennie asked anxiously from the tail turret.

  “Just about,” Finch grunted, concentrating on flight.

  Rose could see the problem on the monitors. Pieces of the destroyed bombers were getting in their path. “The sky’s full of debris,” she told the crew. “But that’s not a bad thing—it’s helping us….”

  “Yeah, I saw a TIE collide with a chunk of scrap metal a second ago,” Paige confirmed.

  “Those TIEs are going so fast they can’t get out of the way,” said Finch. “We’re big enough it doesn’t hurt us, but what a mess—”

  He broke off suddenly and said in quiet defeat, “They got Hornet.”

  Hammer flew through the explosion. It helped keep the TIE fighters away from the bomber as Hammer made its lonely escape back through the asteroids and then, finally, to the quiet blue safety of hyperspace.

  When the bomber Hammer entered realspace just beyond Refnu, Rose was relieved to see that Hailstorm’s familiar shape was moving steadily ahead of them.

  Three Cobalt Squadron ships were never coming back, and there was no sign of the other Crimson bomber.

  No one spoke more than was required as they went through the landing sequence. The Hammer crew didn’t even speak to each other after they’d docked and were struggling into their weathersuits. Paige reached out to squeeze Rose’s hand; that was it.