Recreational Area

Reading Room

POV: Dreams and Memories (II)

A voice from the past

By Michael Stauber

Dario glanced over the instruments of his A-Wing and made sure that all gauges where within safe limits and that all systems were operational. Then he tucked the checklist away and opened a channel to the hangar controls.

"This is White reconnaissance-flight of two. White 9 calling, White 3 has the lead. Ready for takeoff, requesting clearance."

A couple of seconds later he heard Zeppelin's familiar voice over the radio, who was sitting in at the launch desk.

"Reconn flight of two, you are cleared for takeoff. Tell Vyper to bring that A-Wing back in one piece. I'm sick and tired of those techies whining about all the work they have with his ride once he returns from his usual trip around the block."

"Will do!", Ibero chuckled and lifted his A-Wing carefully up and brought it's sleek bow into alignment with the hangar door. Ever so gently he pushed the throttle forward and slowly accelerated out of the hangar. Apparently Vyper was in a hurry, because he was already speeding past him and out into the cold void of space.

Ibero took a quick sensor reading, but except the two A-Wings and the Frigate close behind them nothing was nearby, which was no surprise. The Joan d'Arc's sensors would have picked up any threat a lot earlier than the sensors of the puny A-Wing, so it was time to relax a bit and to enjoy flying the hottest fighter in the arsenal of the Alliance.

Soon after launch they engaged their auto pilots and headed down the first leg of their long range patrol, which was leading them through four neighboring sectors. All of them lay close to the course that the Joan d'Arc was taking. It was just one of this boring patrols that they've had a lot of lately, while Alliance High Command had pulled them back from where the real action was. Of course somebody had to play the rear guard and monitor friendly trade and commerce, but Dario couldn't help but to wonder if there weren't any other reasons behind their orders.

Several uneventful hours later they reached their second waypoint and for the first time on their flight Dario heard Vyper’s voice over the radio: "I pick up a strange signal at the very edge of my sensor range and I'm going to check it out. I'll be back in a couple of minutes. Continue as planned, I'll catch up with you later."

He didn't wait for a reply and with a quick glance on his sensors Dario could see, that Vyper had transferred not only his laser energy, but also his shield energy into his engines. His sleek A-Wing was accelerating at the top of it's capabilities and already had gone past 120 MGLT. Dario glanced over his sensors and couldn't pick up anything unusual in the direction that his wingman was heading to. But then he remembered the look in Vyper's eyes back in the locker room and his worries came back. He knew that what Vyper just did was against normal procedures. And he also knew what he was expected to do. He should have informed the Joan d'Arc of what was going on, but then he said to himself: "What the hell ..."

He pulled the stick all the way to his lap and set his engines on full power, while he went into hot pursuit of the disappearing friendly A-Wing. His Shield and Laser-Recharge gauges were quickly fading back from Green to Red and then to dull Gray and it made Dario feel very vulnerable. But it was the only way to maintain the same speed and distance with Vyper's craft, which was already more than 9 klicks away and at the very outer edge of his sensor range. All the time Dario waited for an angry call from Vyper, ordering him back onto the racetrack pattern of their scheduled patrol. But the call never came. After several more minutes it was clear for Dario, that Vyper had lied to him, because there was nothing on their sensors that he could pick up and they already had passed the area, where any kind of distortion would have been. Not only that, it also looked like Dario's A-Wing had a slightly higher sensor range than Vyper's fighter and that Vyper didn't know that he was being followed. This wasn't unusual, because most of White Squadron's A-Wings had seen a lot of combat and the use of customized or tailored spare parts sometimes took it's toll on the combat readiness of several systems, including sensors.

Vyper was still flying in a straight and level line and Dario fired up his navigational computer to take a look where they were heading to. There was no registered space station or refueling point in the charts and the next habitable planet was more than four days of travel away. Course and heading didn't merge with this planet, so this couldn't be their destination anyway. But there was a rarely used trade route not that far away, mainly used by Ore Freighters coming out of Shobashiri III and heading for the more civilized areas of space.

"Who authorized this bullshit?", Commander Krenzel asked furiously, as she glanced over the flightplan. Her angry stare focused on Torpedo, while the communication tech behind his console did his best to mend himself into his surroundings, pretending to be invisible.

This wasn't an option for Torpedo, even though that he had seen it coming and that he right now preferred to be somewhere else. Playing for time he checked the flightplan in question by himself and seeing no useable way out he came out with the truth: "If you didn't, then I don't know. When Captain Vyper and Lieutenant Ibero launched I supposed they did so based upon your instructions. After all, to me it looked like the usual dawn patrol."

Shok's pressed a button on the console and called up a map, that had the Joan d'Arc in the center of it and showed the sector of space they were within right now. A thin green line showed the Frigate's present course, while a dotted blue line represented the flightpath of the sortie in question. This thin, dotted line was leading straight into Imperial held territory and extended by far more than their scheduled patrol area.

"As you can clearly see this flight is operating outside our assigned sector. It also leaves us without the coverage that the dawn patrol is supposed to represent and at least that should have raised your curiosity. Now they are already outside our communication range and we can't order them to return. Why the hell didn't you call me to confirm the authorization prior to launch?"

Slowly but surely Torpedo was getting upset under this onslaught and finally he crossed his arms before his chest.

"Look, if it were for me, he wouldn't have been allowed to fly anyway."

Commander Krenzel stemmed her fist onto her hip and with a firm voice she requested: "What do you mean by that? Explain!"

Torpedo returned her hard stare and said: "Ever heard the expression: Once a turncoat, always a turncoat?"

"Are you nuts?", Shok'wave screamed, not noticing that the tech behind his console had turned white as a piece of paper. But Torpedo didn't react and stayed impassive. After a couple of seconds he started to speak.

"Look, I'm just giving you options, that's what I'm paid for. As well as anybody else you noticed how much he has changed in the last couple of weeks and that is very, very odd. If I were you I'd at least consider this specific option and would make preparations along those lines."

Shok'wave studied Torpedo's facial expression for a while, while a lot of thoughts and mixed feelings tangled with each other inside of her. Finally she came to an verdict and said calmly: "OK, give orders to relocate the Joan two sectors corewards and change all patrol patters accordingly. Let's deploy a communication buoy at our present location with orders for Captain Vyper and Lieutenant Ibero to report in on a secure channel once they return to this location. This leaves them without knowledge of the Joan's present whereabouts and gives us room to react to any surprises."

Torpedo nodded and made two quick notes on his wrist-computer. Shok'wave could see that he was not overly pleased with those orders and that he had hoped for more. While she was not eager to give the orders, especially not when Torpedo (or anybody else for that matter) pressed her like that, but she knew she had to. Sooner or later she might have to, but not yet.

"Furthermore ready two A-Wings and two B-Wings for launch at tomorrow, eight o'clock. We give Vyper 24 hours to report in and if we don't hear from him or Dario by that time, then you get your chase."

She could tell that he was about to explain to her how far an A-Wing could get in 24 hours and that so many hours of lead could make a pursuit impossible, but her stern voice and expression told him to back off, which was more than fine with Commander Krenzel. She turned around and glanced through the viewport at the impressive scene of starts outside.

"Whatever you do, I hope it's worth the fuzz I'm going to raise when you get back!", she thought and smiled reluctantly.

Granite finished another cup of coffee while the fingers of his right hand impatiently danced across the keyboard of the onboard computer system. He was sure that by now one of the Wizards like Psycho or Dario would already have found what he was looking for, but then again, Dario wasn’t available and he couldn’t draw Psycho into this.

Finally the screen beeped and a big Alliance Crest appeared on the screen, followed by the two words "Personal Bureau". He was then prompted to enter his user name and password and by then he prayed that the Bothan he had paid for this information a long time ago was as honest as he had looked. The Caldanian pilot finished his input and with a lot of tension he pressed Enter. The screen beeped again and almost made him jump, but when the screen cleared and a big menu appeared he knew that he had made it. With a huge smile on his face he selected one of the options and requested a complete history of a specific Alliance pilot. The output filled at least twenty pages, but contained almost nothing that he didn’t already know about in general, but some details were new to him. Granite read it all and shook his head. Vyper had what they called a moved history, but so had most of White Squadron’s pilots. But there was something interesting on the last page, a reference that this individual was subject of monitoring by the Internal Security Division according to Alliance Regulation #24771/C. With a lot of curiosity Granite followed the link to the SD information and sighed heavily as the requested files appeared. It took him some time to read it all and he didn’t like most of it. As it looked nobody in High Command fully trusted pilots that had flown for the other side and once somebody turned over, he was thoroughly interrogated and debriefed by the SD. So far that was normal procedure. But what caught his disgust was, that Vyper had been subject of constant monitoring ever since then. They had checked his mail, searched through his personal belongings frequently and also followed him around once he was off duty. This spy activity had ceased once he had been transferred to White Squadron and it looked like Commander Krenzel had seen to that personally, as several filed protests of her proved. But still, the SD had continued to check all incoming and outgoing communications to and from Vyper. Granite requested a list of all activities and soon he had found what he had been looking for. When the replenishment freighter had arrived several weeks earlier, Vyper had received a small envelope with a printed message in it. That was so unusual that Granite followed the link further. Soon a photograph of the individual handwritten pages in question appeared on the screen and Granite cursed once he was halfway through the message, because he remembered that one of the names he had read in this handwriting had also appeared in the debriefing that Vyper had given once had had defected. Granite scrolled back to cross check that. Yes, there it was! Several years ago an Imperial Commando Team had invaded a small scientific outpost that had been maintained by the Alliance and in the process of it several members of the commando team had been killed, while two had been captured alive. One of the captured members had been killed while she tried to flee, the other female had fully cooperated with the Security Division. Granite tried to call up more information about her, but once he tried it, he was informed that this information was Top Secret, classified under Rainbow Eyes, the highest clearance level in existence that he knew about.

He sat back and thought about what he had just read and fell a decision. This was far bigger than he had expected and it was about time to get someone involved that knew more about this stuff than he did. The Caldanian pilot activated the intercom and called a specific cabin.

Psycho’s very tired face appeared on the screen and with a yawn he brushed the back of his hand over the shadow on his cheeks. Without introduction Granite came directly to the point and said smilingly: "Are you in the mood to do some surfing? I need information from a specific computer system and I can’t get in without your help."

Psycho yawned again and nodded. "Sure, where do you want to go today?"

Granite smiled reluctantly and told him what he had in mind. Psycho was instantly awake when his tired brain registered what his fellow pilot just had said and replied with: "You are a madman, aren’t you? We will get in serious trouble, you know that!"

The Caldanian shrugged it off and said: "We already are. Believe me, we definitely are, so get your butt into gear and come over!"

The unnerving high pitched noise of the twin Ion engines slowly ceased as they finally spun out as soon as the TIE Interceptor had settled down on it's resting place inside the huge hangar of the Imperial warship. Lieutenant Vyper sighed with relief as he undid his heavy flight helmet and stretched his aching shoulders. Another boring patrol had just ended and all he wanted was a hot shower, a cold drink and the ability to stretch his aching back on his bunk. But there was something he longed for even more and it had kept him going all the time. He was going to see her again - finally! Like on autopilot he jumped out of his craft, went through debriefing and hurried back to his cabin. All smiling he even greeted the patrolling Stormtrooper’s and rushed inside. In a hurry he unbuttoned his flightsuit and threw it onto the pile of dirty clothes in one corner. While he rushed to the bathroom he stopped dead in his tracks as he noticed the flashing red light on his personal communication console.

"A waiting message?", he asked himself and smiled. "Now that could be something!", he said and walked over to replay the recording. The screen came alive and the header told him that it had been recorded two hours earlier, at one of the consoles in the hangar's galley. That was odd. He had expected a message from Sandra's cabin, or from Special Operations where she had her desk. But then her lovely face appeared on the screen and his worries ceased as he looked into her sparkling blue eyes. She was smiling as usual and just the way she looked increased his blood pressure and filled his heart with warmth and lightness.

But then he noticed that something was different. Sandra had shouldered a backpack and was wearing her gray and black combat gear instead of her regular uniform. Then she began to speak:

"I'm sorry to leave you such a short message, but do you know where I'll be in twenty-four hours from now? There has been an opening in Field Operations and this assignment is very important. It's a big chance to get to places and I can hardly turn it down as you very well know. It's just a 90 day assignment, but very exciting and thrilling and after all that's what I always wanted. It's just too bad that I won't be around for the celebration of the successful completion of your advanced training."

For a short moment sadness appeared on her face, but then the smile returned and her eyes got this playful look like pure sin. "But I'll make up for it as soon as I get back."

She glanced around and nodded to somebody apparently standing further right to her.

"OK, I have to run, we're leaving in a few minutes. Don't be worried, it's just a hit and run mission and not really dangerous, which is about all I can safely say without compromising security." For a short moment she looked down and her shoulder long hair fell into her face, but despite that Vyper could see her smiling. When she looked up again Sandra's face had this special impression that Vyper would die for. With soft and gentle voice she said touchingly: "I love you."

Without warning the screen went dark and this darkness filled Michael with a whole set of mixed feelings. Never before he had witnessed so strong feelings for anybody and he was the most happiest man around, because this beautiful, intelligent and charming woman returned his feelings. As much as he loved her, as much as he longed for her, he knew that she wouldn't be his and his alone, because she simply couldn't, Michael admitted to himself as he sat down on his bed. Resting his head in the palms of his hands he kept staring at the steel plated walls of his empty cabin, which seemed by far less inviting and comforting as it had appealed to him five minutes ago.

There were other things in her live that mattered more or at least as much and one of those things was her desire to be in the forefront of action, where it really mattered. Just pushing papers at a desk, filling in requests and forms at a computer couldn't please her desire. That was something which he had to acknowledge and to arrange with, like this sudden outburst into the dangers of Field Operations. It had happened before and he remembered the despair and the loneliness that it had thrown him into, when she was so far away. God knew where! She had always come back and she would also this time. He didn't and couldn't question her love, her friendship and her sincere feelings for him, but this time he had a very odd feeling that he couldn't place. He hoped and prayed that this feeling had nothing to say but then again, her sudden announcement and departure had plunged a searing hot knife into his heart and filled him with more pain than he could bear. Something was different and out of place, but he didn’t know what ...

"Ninety days.", he mumbled as he laid back and covered his eyes with the back of one hand.

Those ninety days went by, each single second turning into an eternity and each minute into an eon. All this time he couldn't stop thinking of his beloved one and at night she haunted him in his dreams. Vyper performed his duty almost as if on auto pilot, but surprisingly he performed all his assigned tasks with such a good performance, that it catched his Squadron Commander's attention. Finally the ninety days had passed and Vyper was standing in the hangar, waiting for the Assault Transport Kimsecik to land. Contrary to his usual timeliness he had come in early to await the touchdown of the Special Operations Transport and he had a hard time standing still, while he inwardly was dancing with joy that he finally would see her again. There it came! Finally! The bulky hull of the spacecraft broke through the forcefield and slowly moved up until it hang between the roof of the bustling hangar and had very well cleared the Star Destroyers hangar gate. Then it's pilot skillfully rode the big spacecraft on it's suspension fields to the assigned landing area close to a row of parked TIE Bombers. With a loud hiss the landing gear was lowered and snapped into position as soon as the retracting armor plates had fully extended. Gently the transport touched down and it's engines unwound while they were powered down. Vyper hastened over to the landing area and positioned himself close to the main hatch on the starboard side, which was already opening. A slender figure appeared inside the dimly lightened hatch and stepped outside. The reddish hair told him that it was not Sandra and this master sergeant hurried past whim without a greeting. The next person came out, this time a bulky Private, who had his arm in a sling and then an entire stream of special operatives poured out of the transport. All of them looked very fatigued and showed signs of tremendous exhaustion. Not too few of them also had cuts, bruises and other injuries. Then the stream ebbed for a moment, as two stretchers were carefully carried outside the Kimsecik, where they were handed over to a group of doctors and medical orderlies. Vyper watched it with increasing worry and for a brief moment he had thought the woman on the second stretcher was Sandy, but fortunately she wasn't it. Finally the last group of people emerged from the Shuttle, accompanied by it's two pilots. Vyper knew one of them and so he quickly walked over, recognizing but ignoring that the pilot was in a conversation with one of his passengers, a very stern and grim looking Colonel. Commander Elliot, the pilot of the shuttle noticed him approaching and reluctantly looked him in the eyes. Without saying anything he slowly started shaking his head. The weight of the world collapsed on Vyper's shoulders and the hangar began to spin around before his eyes, as the realization of what that meant hit him like a hammer.

"He won’t come." The stern voice spoke this verdict the way that even the period at the end of the sentence was pronounced and in the dimly light cockpit of the modified Blastboat his faint smile expressed almost as much as sorrow about what he just had said.

"Oh, trust me, he will come, Malcolm.", the female answered and brushed her hair back with one hand while she kept staring out of the port window and with one hand on the controls.

The weapons controller gave her a curious look and insisted: "How can you be so sure?"

She bit her lip and remained silent for a while until she turned around to face him. "Because I asked him to come. If there is anything to depend on in this fucked up universe, then it’s just that. Believe me, Malcolm. He will show up and that’s the smallest of our problems."

Malcolm sighed heavily and flipped a couple of switches on his console. He knew that it would lead nowhere if he started to doubt her reasoning. What ever the source of her knowledge was, it apparently run deeper that he was willing to dig.

"Sensors show a slightly increased energy reading at starboard one-oh-five, but beyond detection range of the main sensor bank. Shields up to 125%, weapons on the ready. Could be him, Sandra. In a couple of minutes we’ll know."

She nodded solemnly an said with a firm tone in her voice: "What ever happens, open fire on my mark only and not earlier."

An odd sensation overcame Vyper as he noticed the blue blip on his sensors. A neutral craft in neutral space, nothing out of the ordinary, but he knew that this was what he was looking for. Despite his sense of homecoming he reset the recharge for shields and lasers to maximum to feed back power to the drained energy cells. He was almost slammed into his restraining belts when the speeding A-Wing dropped velocity rapidly, while most of it’s power plants output was used to regenerate it’s defensive and offensive capability. With the throttle still at full power, but now with less than half the previous speed he slowly approached the targeted craft. His sensors identified it as a GAT-12j Skipray Blastboat and that was quite odd. The Blastboat had an impressive armament and was just the kind of assault craft that could bring you into and out of trouble fast - depending on which of the cockpit windscreen you sat.

If it came to a fight, the he could for sure outrun and outmaneuver it, but his A-Wing would be easy prey to it’s the three ion cannons, two lasers and the combined might of the separate torpedo and concussion missile launchers if he decided to slug it out with the Blastboat.

Suddenly his sensors issued a warning sound and he noticed four, then six blips, which dropped out of hyperspace from different directions. After a few moments the new arrivals were classified as Assault Gunboats.

Vyper sighed heavily and said to himself: "If that’s a trap, then it just sprung. Surf City, here I come!" With that he reset his laser- and shield-recharge to gain best combat speed and locked on to the closest attacker. The distance decreased with a fast pace and a quick glance at the combat camera’s video-feed told him that this Gunboat was not after him - yet - and targeting the Blastboat instead. For a moment Vyper wished that he had brought some missiles along, but by now it was to late to worry about that. He made a quick course correction, gaining some lead on the first Gunboat and waited for the distance measurer to click down to 1.36 km, until his index finger pulled the trigger. Fiery blasts of lasers leashed out from his A-Wing and converged right in front of the leading Gunboat and after another small course correction the shots were dead on target. Vyper’s right hand moved the stick very gently and kept the fire on target, with more shots hitting than missing, quickly dropping the Gunboats shields. The enemy pilot started to react and rolled hard to the left to provide a smaller silhouette, then he pulled up and around until his fighter faced the approaching A-Wing. His wingman stayed with him through the entire maneuver, keeping almost the same distance between him and his leader, which showed Vyper clearly that this guys knew their job.

"Now this is going to get interesting!", he thought and fired another quick volley of shots at the leading Gunboat, before their combined return fire forced him to go defensive. Guided by instinct he pushed his right pedal, pulled up hard and went into a half loop, while he reduced his speed to increase his maneuverability. At the top of his loop he pushed his left pedal and reversed his maneuver to keep an eye on the closing Gunboats. The first two flights were now chasing him, while the remaining two were launching torpedoes at the Blastboat. Fortunately the second flight of Gunboats was still too far away to open fire, but it was clear to him that they’ll be in missile range quite soon.

"Time to finish the first two early!"

Looking up from his sensors he detected only one of the nearby GUN’s, the other one, the one which he already had attacked, was nowhere to be seen. Vyper cursed heavily as his A-Wing was rocking under the impact of dual laser fire from dead astern. Breaking hard while dropping even more speed he pulled up, eased the stick back to neutral, made a 180 degree half roll and rolled again. The chasing Gunboat was unable to follow him through this maneuver, but it got another chance to make one successful hit against his rear shields. Vyper equalized his shield-strength and transferred some energy from lasers to shields. A quick glance over his shoulder told him that the leading GUN was still trailing him, while it’s wingman was now trying to draw his fire. He checked angels and distance to his pursuer and leveled out for three, or four shots against the tempting target in front of him, then he had to break away to avoid being hit by the wingleader. On top of that his threat indicator started flashing in bright yellow, when the second group of Gunboats tried to acquire a missile lock on him.

"Somehow this doesn’t seem to be my day ...", he mumbled and decided that it was time for something drastic. He set his laser and shield recharge to maximum and cut back the throttle, forcing his pursuer to overshoot. As soon as the blocky shadow appeared over his canopy he opened fire while resetting his power configuration back to normal. Shot after shot he fired into the already weakened shields of the leading Gunboat, while he used the Gunboat as cover against it’s wingman, which was now stuck in a very unfavorable position. The wingman tried to steer clear so that his leader could open fire on Vyper’s chasing A-Wing, but they needed several vital seconds to coordinate their movement and that was more than enough for the A-Wing’s lasers to slice through the Gunboats shields and to cut off one of the main wings, just before a stray laser shot ignited it’s internal ammunition and blew it apart.

Suddenly the missile warning klaxon announced the approach of at least one flight of concussion missiles, but as soon as this warning appeared, as soon did it fade off. Something must have gotten the missiles right after their launch and that did raise Vyper’s curiosity.

"Whoever nailed the missiles, thanks!", he said on the open Guard frequency.

"De nada!", replied a familiar voice with the light musical accent for which the people from Iberya are know. "I thought you need someone to watch your back, you know. Looks like I’m right, eh?"

Vyper sighed as he leveled out behind the remaining Gunboat of the first flight and started pounding it. "I thought I had ordered you to stay behind, my friend."

Dario grunted in affirmation while he broke hard to avoid fire from the 2^nd flights last Gunboat, as it tried to avenge the sudden destruction of it’s wingman. "Oh, you did. I thought you also had orders not to detour from our assigned sector. I guess we’re both guilty as charged, now let them hang us together."

The former Imperial pilot chuckled as he finished off his last Gunboat and headed over to assist his friend, even though that the sensors told him that Dario was more than able to handle the single Gunboat which tried to mess with him. He had already reduced it’s shields to twenty-five percent and was slowing down for the kill. So instead of helping Dario, Vyper targeted the second next target, a Gunboat from flight three, which was in hot pursuit of the already lightly damaged Blastboat.

"You know, I’m glad to have you on my wing, but you don’t know what this is all about."

Dario quickly finished off his target and joined up on Vyper’s wing.

"Trouble. What else?", he said and gave him a quick thumbs up.

The two remaining Gunboats, now slightly outnumbered made the wisest choice they could come up with and fired up their hyperdrives. The Blastboat managed to fire one last missile at one of the GUN’s, but an eyeblink before impact both GUN’s picked up speed and elongated and made their jump towards the safety of hyperspace.

A female laughter, tickling like Champaign could be heard over the open frequency and Vyper said to himself: "Trouble ... indeed."

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