Publishing Date: 2009.03.11
Disclaimer: Don't own a single cred's worth, and I've got nothing to scrounge for either, so I'll just have to hope for the grace of Lucas.
Era: EU
Characters: New Republic Fighter Pilots
Rating: T for Teen

Summary: Cmdr. Ked Bazzok takes on a dangerous mission along with the rest of the Screaming Tauntauns.

A/N: Started off as a simple birthday fic for my favorite man in orange, and it has now turned into an adventure fic starring a bunch of my orange buddies. I hope you enjoy it!

"That's fragging impossible, Ked! There's just no way Pike Angeles is still breathing, let alone hiding deep within the KSC framework. That's a holovid tale, if ever I heard one!" Tall, and gesturing wildly to show his sincerity, Flight Officer Orin Mallix became the center of attention with his outburst. With everyone seated in the ship's galley, Ked and Chym relayed the information to the team. Everything was going well until they dropped the big bomb.

They both knew everyone would be resistant to the revelation, but Ked knew the truth better than he knew the controls of his own fighter. "You think that didn't cross my mind, Mallix? But I know exactly what I saw, and there's no way he faked a Cracken's Crew Coin."

"Doesn't mean he didn't take it off of one of the Red Moons after their last mission. They were all part of Cracken's underground crew." Master Sergeant Marina Jacyth was often the peacemaker in their unusual squadron. Her understanding nature and more than pleasant appearance helped to smooth over many a disagreement in the Screaming Tauntauns.

"Nah, I knew Pike." Chym did his best to allay everyone's fears. "I used to pilot some of those ships he was slipping out of the Imp bases during the Rebellion. And I've come up against him a time or two since then, as well. He's even got the scar on his neck from a close call we had on Ryloth." Chym looked around the room and sealed the deal with his last statement, "And that was just weeks before his funeral, but I bet you never saw that in any of the holovids, huh?"

"Still hard to believe," Sergeant Major Ray'e, always the skeptic, added her very dry two creds to the conversation.

Hof had the final word on the matter. "Ked, how sure are you that it's Pike?"

Ked answered with the one thing that told any pilot he was dead serious, "I'd bet my wings on it."

Nodding, Hof asked him to continue, "Good enough for me." Everyone else nodded in agreement. "So, what's the plan?"

"Well, it looks like they only transport out from Mos Espa. The real action is in another hole by the name of Anchorhead. Lots of trading in and out of that spaceport, and the Hutts don't control it, like they do Mos Espa and Mos Eisley, so they've got a higher profit margin trading out of there, and just paying berthing tributes in the other two." Ked brought up a holo-map of the three spaceports and then zoomed in on Anchorhead.

"Here's where it gets hairier than an overgrown Wookiee." Chym pointed to the big open spot at the south end of the port. "They keep everything underground. And I mean underground. See this depression over here?" He pointed to the dip in the landscape and then zoomed in a little closer.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Aneli was the first to spot the real problem. "That's worse than any canyon rim I've ever skipped through.

"Exactly." Ked tossed out a few snapshots of the area from his macrobinoculars. "You gotta have clearance before they open the mouth for the freighters to land. Otherwise, the only access is with skiffs and speeder bikes."

The squadron passed the pictures around and each was able to see the opened entrance. The next question came from the barrel-chested Sergeant Cilan Vae, "So, we've gotta have someone on the inside to key the entrance and allow the attack?"

"If only it was that easy." Ked dropped the next group of snapshots. "They unloaded a whole shipment of slaves from Ryloth while we reconned the site."

Standing up, Katsu Ma'roy, the squadron's intelligence officer, picked up the snapshots and declared, "Congratulations, boys and girls… We've just graduated from a strike and fade mission to a full blown rescue and destroy operation." The groans of frustration made their way around the room and the whole squadron knew things had just gotten very serious.

Hof stood up and ran a hand through his thick mane of hair. With a shake of the head, he explained, "Gaining the trust of Ryloth is paramount for the New Republic. Consider this an upgrade. So, I want everyone to triple check the gear and the ships." He turned to his seasoned mechanics and said, "Terrin, take Edge and Orin, and coordinate any remaining repairs to get these birds squared away ASAP." Moving to his right hand and wingman, "Marina, take Chael and police up as much ordinance as we can carry for this one. We're gonna need it. Requisition the other pilots as you see fit to get it all done."

Looking at his wing commanders, Hof nodded and pointed to his cabin. "Let's get this thing down to a science before we even attempt it. It has to be flawless this time, because I'm not about to train anymore pilots for this squadron. Everyone flies home, folks."

They all agreed, each with a firm fist on the tables and an echoing, "Whoooooop!"

Always the morale officer, Ree called back, "Screaming Tauntauns say what?"

Much louder than the first one, each one slammed their fist into a table and hollered out, "WHOOOOOOP!"

AGFFAAGFFAAGFFAAGFFAAGFFAAGF FAAGFFAAGFFAAGFFAAGFFAAGFFAA GFFA

With both hands fisted in his hair and his elbows pinned to the table in his quarters, Hof was beyond frustrated as they worked out the plans for their raid. For the third time, Ree tried to convince them that a straight assault was the only way to get in, and he had run out of ways to tell her otherwise.

Even bringing Chym in on the strategy meeting had proven fruitless. It was just getting louder. Finally, Hof reached the end of his patience. "Enough!" He slammed both hands on the tabletop to emphasize his aggravation. "We're getting nowhere, people!"

Ked stood up from his chair and wiped his hand from back to front over his shaved head and agreed, "Cap's right. We need to take a step back and look at this thing from a different angle."

Draining the last of the caf from her mug Aneli pushed away from the table. "No, we need to scrap everything and start over fresh. But we aren't going to get anywhere if we don't stop and take a break."

Chym nodded his head and joined the consensus. "She's right. Let's just take a breather and come back fresh. Maybe stretching our legs will give us all a new perspective."

Hof ran a hand through his hair again and then checked his chrono. "All right, everyone back here in thirty ticks?" The entire group agreed and broke out of the cabin with a resounding chorus of deep sighs.

AGFFAAGFFAAGFFAAGFFAAGFFAAGF FAAGFFAAGFFAAGFFAAGFFAAGFFAA GFFA

Dael Bellor was busy heating up some reconstituted dewback stew. The food was total drek, but it was still better than the anonymous Imperial Rations he had grown accustomed to as a Stormtrooper Medic in the Elrood Sector. As he tried to ignore the droning voice of the ship's resident slicer, he thought about his former life and longed for the order and discipline of the Remnant.

Sure, he was bored most of the time, because, really, how many wounded Stormtroopers were there? They rarely came back, and it left him a lot of room to think up ways to pass the time. Unfortunately for him, time was a killer for his career in the Imperial Remnant. Without his lifelong conscience there to remind him not to do something, Dael was free to dream up the most outrageous pranks to play on his fellow troopers. From glob racers in the buckets, to Kowakian itching powder mixed in the laundry soap, he had done it all. But when one of his pranks had the Moff cleaning bildog scales out of his private shuttle, Dael was done as an Imperial. The guy was so enraged by the incident, Dael had to leave the sector because of the price on his head.

Before his thoughts could travel down that dark road once more, Archaya's incessant blathering seeped into his consciousness again. "I don't know why they're all in such a snit about that blast door. It wouldn't take more than a second rate slicer to slip through the lax protocols those spacers always use. They totally forget about the tech when they work underground, that's why they get caught. It's not the spies, it's the slicers, you know. The war was won because of slicers, you remember that. If it weren't for slicers the whole Rebellion woulda fallen apart before the first salvo. Damn space jockeys think they won the war with their lucky shots. One slice, that's all it would take and I could have that door open for a blasted cruiser to land in it."

Shaking away the fog as the buzzer went off on the heating unit, Dael asked, "What are you going on about this time, Arch?"

"You know I'm right… If it wasn't for the techs, the whole blasted universe would crumble, but do we get any of the credit? No! Of course not! As long as the comm works and they get their holovids, who cares about the techs." Archaya was always trying to assert his opinion about his worth, no matter how many times Chym tried to console him, the kid was just angry at the universe, because he was just an undersized nerf, scanning the grid for juicy bytes of code to gobble up like mother's milk.

"What's that got to do with anything?" Dael carried his carton over to the table and took a little snort from his hip flask before sitting down to eat.

"Well, I was scanning the grid for something useful down on that dust rock, and I found some code transmissions. Played with them a little and found the secure signal for an entry port in Anchorhead. Backtraced it to the source and got the ship's ID transponder frequency, plus the receiver code on the blast door." Arch slipped the datapad to Dael as he pointed to the specs he had recorded, but it all looked like Huttese to him.

"Okay, but what can you do with that?" Dael shoveled the first bite into his mouth after his question.

"You give me five minutes on one of their terminals and I can have that slavers' den open wider than a Sarlacc at feeding time." Arch was always a little more confident in his skills than Dael thought he should be, but the kid continued to prove himself many times over.

"Say that again?" Ked Bazzok was standing in the doorway as Dael looked up from his food.

Archaya's confidence waned in the face of the imposing New Republic officer, but he managed to squeak out, "I can slice their codes and get the door open…" He swallowed hard once he realized what he was saying, "…if I was inside the den."

"I'll be a son of a Kuati!" Ked slapped his hand across his thigh as he swore. "That's brilliant!"

Dael couldn't allow the over anxious rebel to take this snip of a kid out on such a dangerous task. "No way! You ain't taking this kid into that rancor's pit! Who's gonna protect him? Surrounded by thugs and slave traders and-"

"Imperials." Chael followed Ked into the galley with his interjection. "Imperials still trade in slaves. We'd need someone to pose as an Imperial to get inside." Chael stared directly at his mirror image as Ked stood back to witness the exchange.

Dael ground his teeth the moment he realized just who his twin brother was referring to with his carefully chosen words. "And you expect me to save your sorry excuse for a squadron, why?"

"Squadron, be damned! Who's gonna save my butt?" Arch squealed like a small girl.

Dael reeled back and sneered at the young slicer, "Then don't let your mouth write cred slips, your rear can't honor, hot shot. I'm nobody's babysitter, least of all some loud mouth slicer with more tongue than neural cells."

"Can it, laser brain." Chym pushed his way into the galley to deal with the altercation. "You may not like it, but I didn't take you on for your smarts, Dael. Archaya needs muscle if he's gonna do this, and that's your job. So, find yourself a girdle and get back into those pristine Impie Grays of yours. It's spit and polish time, Buckethead."

Chym was the final word, and with that, he and Ked returned to Hof's cabin to lay out the rest of the plan, dragging Archaya along as they went.

The two brothers were left alone in the galley. Any passerby would have never known the brothers hadn't seen in each other in more than five standard years. They simply stared at one another as though the other was a serpent about to strike.

Chael was the one to finally break the stalemate. "Chann sends her best."

"You talk to her?" he replied in a gruff voice.

Shrugging his shoulders, Chael answered, "Once a month, at least, just like we promised. Why haven't you?"

"I send money…when I can." Dael returned his attention to his carton of food, trying to ignore his desire to take another pull from his flask.

"But you don't comm her?" Chael wasn't about to let his twin off so easily.

"Haven't had anything to say, is all," and he shoved another mouthful of food in.

Chael pulled out the chair opposite his brother and grabbed the carton of food from him as he tossed Dael a full flask. "Maybe this'll loosen your lips."

Dael caught the smooth metal flask and shook it. Without skipping a beat, Chael grabbed the fork and started eating as he answered, "Poached it from the L.T., probably Corellian whiskey knowing her."

And with that, two brothers were reunited over rehydrated lizard meat and stolen whiskey… Just like when they were kids.