Pilot Archive
Thread: X-Wing: The Nalera Conflict
JoKen_Jash wrote:
LeaphChausew wrote:
Julak wrote:
Can you jsut vape and get it over with? And what heppend to your upgraded Z-95? Oh yea and when do I the egotistical Imp pilot come in and get vaped or vape Leaph? JOKING
Why is everybody suddenly getting dillusions of granduer by thinking it is remotely possible to vape me?JOKING!
Seriously. Halyn and I together couldn't even take him out. Of course after he vaped Leaph he and I spent 20 minutes swirving around each other before he finally got a lucky shot in.
you mean, after he vaped Halyn?
. How can I vape myself?
. That was certainly one of the best duels I ever had.Message Edited by LeaphChausew on 10-14-2005 08:39 PM
Hmm, sorry guys, I havn't posted on this in a couple of days. Just let me fetch my Halyn ass whooping gloves...
/Pitchfork
/Bonfire
/Petrol for the above bonfire
/marshmallows
/Angry villagers
/Some chicken legs
/Beer
/Additional Angry villagers from the neighbouring village (they've had time to wander over).
we DEMAND mOrE!!!!!
We need to get Leaph into therapy.
By the time A'Lerris arrived at the squadron's briefing room, Halyn was wrapping up a HoloNet transmission to his contact, Jash.
"This is our best chance at getting the ore," Halyn protested. "And it's relatively cheap."
Jash was less than impressed. "You're proposing to trade a squadron of X-wings for a couple shipments of rocks? Captain, I'd expect better of you."
"This is long-term security for us," the Zabrak argued. "Let me put it htis way. If we don't give them these X-wings, they won't be able to defend themselves from the Zynt'aia. Whether I'd get a contract for credits would then be a moot point, because there wouldn't be any Nalerans around to deliver on it." He shook his head. "Please. This is the best way."
The human on the other end sighed. "Alright. I'll send an intelligence agent to meet with you in Mos Eisley on Tatooine's surface. I'll let you two hammer out the details." He glanced at a display out of the range of the holocam. "I'm transmitting contact information to you now. If she approves the deal you work out, I'll live with it, I guess." He glared at the pilot. "Don't screw this up any more than you already have, Lance."
"What are you talking about?"
"I thought you mentioned..."
"The Nalerans don't know."
Jash looked surprised. "I thought you said Sanshir was on the station, too."
"He is."
"And Verata still doesn't know?"
"No." Halyn glanced up and saw A'Lerris giving him a curious look. "Gotta go, I'll talk to your agent on Tatooine." He palmed the datacard the terminal spit out and slid it in a pocket on his flight suit. "Captain Lance out."
"Jash out."
"Are you ready to join us?" A'Lerris asked.
Halyn smiled and nodded.
"Thank you." She sighed. "The Council has approved an attack plan against the Zynt'aia." A murmur of surprise rippled around the room. The two new pilots A'Lerris had recruited into the security force paled. The security chief raised a hand for silence. "I know what you're all thinking: what happens when we run into a group of IRDs again in open space?" She smiled warmly. "I assure you, we're being extremely careful about how we're attacking."
She touched a button on a control palmed in her hand. An image of the Tatoo system shimmered into existence. "Since Prefect Talmont has rebuffed all our requests for help, we're going to do this all ourselves."
The map zoomed further in."You all know the Tatoo system better than you know your own faces, so I shouldn't have to familiarize you with the basic geography of the system."
Four small areas of the map colored themselves red. "We're going to strike these four locations. They are known hotspots for Zynt'aia Order activity. Our mining ships have witnessed them patrolling, refueling, reloading, and so forth. More importantly, these spots have visible but weak Zynt'aia activity--lone or paired snubfighters, all out-of-date."
Why do I get the scary readers? 
A'Lerris found Halyn running a preflight checklist on the Z-95 Headhunter he was going to fly for the mission. His astromech, supervising the droids loading concussion missiles into the snubfighter, whistled at her approach. Halyn looked up, then immediately looked back down at his displays as he ran tests on the ship's systems.
"What are your thoughts on the mission, Captain Lance?"
Hal shrugged, eyes never leaving his combat multi-view display. "It's a mission."
A'Lerris watched the Zabrak nervously, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "Do you have any suggestions?"
The Rebel shrugged again. "Make sure your pilots aren't afraid to use the missiles you're giving them. Oh, and scrub the mission."
The security chief shook her head. "You know why I can't do that."
"No," the other said bluntly, "I don't. This is absolutely ridiculous. Even if we manage to pull this off without losses--which I doubt--you're playing kick-the-rancor here."
"'Kick-the-rancor'?"
"It's a term popular among high-ranking Imperials, but I've heard it other places, too. Basically, it means doing anything that can be classified as stupid. Even if you pull it off, the gains don't even come close to measuring up to the risks you took."
"We have to do this," A'Lerris insisted.
"Why?"
"Because the Council didn't believe you that our fighters won't stand up against the Zynt'aia."
Halyn finally looked up. "So are you planning on sacrificing pilots?" he asked, devoid of any trace of emotion. "Let the Zynt'aia kill a few security pilots off so the Council will admit they need the X-wings? Who's disposable? Me? Those two new pilots you brought in?"
"That's not what I'm planning," A'Lerris shot back, exasperated. "Dammit, Lance. I want to bring the Zynt'aia down on us, but give us enough breathing room to escape. To demonstrate to the Council that even eight security pilots aren't capable of standing up to concentrated efforts by the Zynt'aia. I have to prove it."
"What happens when something goes wrong?" Halyn asked, voice rising with his anger. "What happens when only half your pilots come back? Is it still justified? Are those X-wings important enough to you to watch pilots you've known for years die?"
A'Lerris stared. "I thought you wanted the trade to succeed--ore for X-wings. Don't you?"
"Not at the cost of lives," Hal snarled. "There's already enough blood shed between the Alliance and the Empire--there's no need for your pilots to fight a battle they can't win. Don't do this, A'Lerris."
The red-haired woman shook her head sadly. "I have to, Halyn. You know as well as I do that this is the only way."
"No." The other's answer was firm and resolute. "There has to be another way."
"You don't know anyone's going to die doing this, either," the security chief insisted, anger of her own finally starting to show. "You're so kriffing smart, aren't you? You've got everything figured out from all the angles. And I suppose Elle was an added bonus to the whole deal, too, or was she planned from the beginning, too?"
Halyn shook his head. "Nothing happened between us," he said. "Nothing. I sent her away."
"Yeah, tell it to someone who believes you," A'Lerris growled. "Just make sure you're ready to go in forty minutes."
The Rebel pilot watched the woman stalk away. How did we wind up in an argument? he wondered. Women. Doesn't matter what species--I'll never understand them. That doesn't change the fact, though, that this is a bad idea. I know the plan seems solid, and I don't see any major flaws, but it isn't flexible enough. If something goes wrong, we're going to get hammered out there. Maybe if I'm good enough, I can keep them alive--the Zynt'aia aren't any better than these security pilots, they're just better equipped. He slumped in his cockpit. I just have a bad feeling about this whole thing.
He watched several other pilots, including the two new recruits whose names he hadn't learned yet, begin their own preflight checklists on their Headhunters. I wonder how many of them have any idea what's actually going on here. Argus probably does. Maybe that Bothan. I doubt Elle or Tarisa does. Maybe the Rodian. Certainly not the two new pilots.
The Rebel was interrupted from his reveire by a knocking along his snubfighter's hull. Startled, he looked up and saw Argus's dark-skinned face looking up at him. "Can I do something for you, Sanshir?" he asked evenly.
"When are you going to tell them?"
Halyn shrugged. "I don't know," he said quietly. "Are you going to tell them?"
Argus studied the other Zabrak. "Maybe. I don't know, either." He sighed. "When you came here, I was angry at you--now, I'm not sure. I don't really trust you, but--well, it's hard to let go of some things."
"I'm not sure I've let go of them myself," Halyn murmured.
"That's what scares me."
Argus turned and began to walk away. "Argus?" the Rebel asked. The lieutenant stopped and looked back. "Watch your back up there." They exchanged nods of respect, and Halyn returned to his checklist.
Yet another thing that could go bad at the wrong time. Argus knows too damned much...not that there's anything I can do about it right now. Not like I can shoot him with a blaster. He quirked a smile. Not in plain sight, anyways.
"Deuce?" he called. The R2 whistled from the hanger deck. "I want to record a private message, to be released to A'Lerris or Argus on the event of my death. I've also got information about who to contact in the Alliance about the X-wings if something happens to me." Gripping the edge of the canopy tightly, he vaulted out of the cockpit and hung for a moment before dropping to the deck. Kneeling, he nodded at the astromech. "I'm ready."
The astromech keened another low whistle, and a light began flashing beside the R2's holocam. "If you're watching this, I guess something went wrong with the mission against the Zynt'aia..."