Star Wars: The Snuggle Protocol

by Barrobroadcaster

Chapter 5: The Convoy

Bold Squadron's B-Wings flew up from Equestria, cutting through the blue of the upper atmosphere into the inky blackness of space. They flew with their s-foils closed, arcing up from the planet and banking around the back of the moon. The sleek profiles of the craft combined with their speed and and smooth maneuvers made them almost completely undetectable by sensor equipment. Any Imperial scanner was unlikely to pick up even the faintest trace of their passing. They flew around the moon, disappearing from Equestria's view into the darkness.

"All wings, report in."

"Bold-two, standing by."
"Bold-three, standing by."
"Bold-six, standing by."
"Bold-eight, standing by."
"Bold-nine, standing by."
"Bold-five, standing by."
"Bold-four, standing by."
"Bold-eleven, standing by."
"DINKLEBERG! Errr, I mean, Bold-ten is standing by."
"Bold-twelve, standing by."
"Bold-seven, ermm, um, standing by."

"You having trouble, Grex?"

"Uh, no, uh... just trying to figure out where everything is."

"Cut the chatter," Rena ordered from her cockpit. "Lock s-foils to attack position." The side wings of the rebel craft flipped outward and the entire ship's body rotated vertically.

"Wait, which button is for the s-foils again?" Grex asked.

"The toggle next to the throttle."

"The what? I thought I just hold down the R-trigger until it clicks."

"This isn't a Gamecube, Grex, now get set your s-foils," Rena ordered.

"I can't find the trigger, I've looked all over this throttle!"

"You're not looking for a trigger, you're looking for-" Avin tried to help but he was cutoff.

Rena sighed heavily. "Grex, just get clear. You can figure it out later, we have to complete the mission."

"But I-"

"Get clear and that's an order," Rena, his own girlfriend barked. "Everyone else, form up on me." The ten other members of her squad joined her in formation while Grex's B-Wing broke away, back towards the moon. They sped away from the moon in a wave, heading towards the Imperial convoy's position.

"So, where's our escort?" Brullen asked over the comms.

"Give them a second and... here they come!"

"Bold Squadron, this is Code Red Leader, we're linking up with you now."

"Copy, CR-one, good to have you with us," Rena replied. Twelve X-Wings flew up from the other side of the moon to join their formation. They rose up right in front of the B-Wings, matching their course and taking the lead as the ships assembled one large group. Each of the X-Wings covered one of the B-Wings, flying just in front of them in a display of support and expert maneuverability. Red Squadron, or Mountain Dew Code Red Squadron now, was showing off but they were also showing their support of their fellow pilots. Together, they flew out into open space, to where the convoy would be crossing.

Within seconds of joining up, Rena's sensors pinged with new blips. "Red Leader, I have the convoy on sensors bearing four-four-one mark seven." They were only the smallest of gray shapes against the background of the stars. Rena's scanner showed there were five capital ships: three bulky transports lined up and flanked by two Imperial light cruises. No TIE Fighter support; TIEs lacked hyperdrive so had to be deployed. They were probably at least a few inside the cruisers but for the moment, it didn't look like they were expecting company. The Rebels had the element of surprise.

"I copy, Bold Leader, how do you want to play this?"

Being a bombing mission, it was customary for the bomber pilots to decide on a course of attack and the fighter escorts' to decide on defense. "Hit those escort cruisers with everything you've got, we'll take out the first transport and block the rest of them."

"Understood. Red two-through-six on me! Concentrate all fire on that starboard cruiser! Seven-through-twelve, hit the port cruiser!"

"I copy, Red Leader!"

"Copy, Red Leader."

The twelve X-Wings shot away from the B-Wings, racing towards the Imperial convoy. The guns on the cruisers fired at the rebel ships even before they came into range, illuminating the space between them with green lines. But the nimble fighters of "Mountain Dew Code Red" Squadron were too agile for the Imperial gunners. They closed the distance between them without a scratch.

Red Leader opened fire on the cruiser the moment he was in range. The red lances of his X-Wing's lasers blasted the hull of the Imperial ship, punching through the shields and scorching the armor. He strafed the ship from the starboard side diagonally across up to the ship's bridge, hammering the hull. Behind him, the five others in his formation did the same, combining their firepower to overwhelm the cruiser's defenses and shields. The X-Wings repeated the same strafing maneuver one after the other, ripping into the Imperial ship and doing massive damage. By the time the last X-Wing strafed the ship, the cruisers were damaged and focusing only on the X-Wings, leaving the bombers to target the transports.

The transport ships were doing their best to stay between the cruisers, a defensive protocol. They were lined up bow-to-stern, waiting for the cruisers to pacify the threat. But it was already too late; Rena and her squadron, completely undetected, were already in position.

"Bold Squadron, Ion cannons only! Target the lead transport now!"

Blue bolts leapt from the B-Wings' ion cannons and struck the first transport. Ion energy impacted the transport and electricity erupted on the ship's hull, surging through the power systems of the bulky ship. The blue barrage disabled the transport, causing it to tumble forward as its engines failed. The transports behind it, two slow and still between the two cruisers, were momentarily trapped as they tried to adjust course around the helpless ship in front of them. Bold Squadron weaved in between the transports and cruisers, like smaller predatory fish circling their prey.

"Great work, everyone! Now onto the second transport, stay with me!" Rena said.

Grex, still more or less helpless, was forced to listen to his comrades as they engaged while he was recalled. "We could've done it just as easily in our Y-Wings," he grumbled.

Brullen chuckled over the comms. "Is that Clone Wars piece of junk the only thing you know how to fly, Grex? I thought Alliance pilots had to be able to fly anything."

"I could outfly you in something from the Mandalorian Wars, Brullen!" Grex yelled back.

"Cut the chatter!" Rena ordered. She led her squadron in a sharp U-turn back towards the rear of the formation, taking aim at the transport in the back. "Ion guns, open fire!" As she and her squadron disabled the next transport, Red Squadron kept up the assault on the cruisers. The two halves of the squadrons traded ships with Red Leader hitting the port-side cruiser now. The cruiser's hadn't been prepared for the move; their guns were still tracking the corresponding ships that had attacked them. The X-Wings strafed the cruisers again, this time from bridge to bow, tearing into the vessels' hull.

The cruisers were tough vessels and built to handle attacks from starfighters. But the X-Wings' assault withered them down, and the damage on them mounted. That wasn't why they were doing it, though; Red Squadron just needed the cruisers to focus on them and not the larger, slower B-Wings while they disabled the transports. Bold Squadron blasted through the middle of the formation again, back to front this time and pulled up and away from the Imperial ships.

"Doesn't look like they're launching any fighters," Jav Brishy, Red-eleven said.

"Maybe we got lucky and they departed without fighter escort," another Red Squadron pilot said.

"That'd be a first. Let's hit 'em again, one more time."

With both the lead and the rear transports disabled, the middle transport was boxed in. The bulkier ship wasn't made to make precise maneuvers with any haste and so had difficulty dealing with its tumbling comrade right in its flight path while the other ships forced it along its route. It pulled up and out of the formation, leaving itself exposed to all of the fighters in an effort to escape. Which is exactly what Rena had planned.

"Two down, one to go! Charge cannons to full-power!" Her squadron pulled around again, coming at the transport head-on from above. This was the riskiest move they'd made; diving back at the formation like this, the Imperial cruisers had a clear shot of all of the slower rebel ships. But the cruisers weren't aiming at the rebels because the X-Wings were too busy blasting them to pieces. After the third strafing run from both squad halves, the two warships were too damaged to fire back. Four out of five Imperial ships were listing, helpless prey for the Rebel fleet.

And Rena was about to make it five-for-five. "Gotcha." Her B-Wings unleashed a third volley of blue ion bolts. They pounded against the transport's bow, washing the whole ship in sparking blue energy. The ship's engines failed and it tumbled like the others, out of formation but just as helpless.

Rena smiled. "Great work, great work everybody."

"Wooooo-hoooo!"

"Yeah, that's the stuff!"

"Good job, Bold Squadron. With moves like that, you might just make the name Bold worth it!"

"Haha, thanks Red Leader. You boys were pretty good yourselves, we appreciate the escort."

"Any time, Bold Leader, any time."

Rena led her squadron in a circle around the convoy, keeping a safe distance away from the Imperial ships in case there were any surprises. Red Squadron did the same, the two squadrons making separate circles so their flight paths didn't intersect. This was the easiest part of the job, and the most boring: protecting their quarry before the GR-75 transports came to collect the supplies.

"We have an eta on our own transports, Red Leader?"

"They're waiting for the moon to cover their approach, they'll be along shortly."

"Copy that," Rena said. "We'll stay with you to keep the-" Her sensors suddenly lit up. "Hang on, new contact."

"We see it, too. Whatever it is, it's big."

"Could it be one of ours? Maybe fleet sent in a cruiser?"

"I don't think so- it's coming in from the wrong vector. What do you think it is?"

"Brace yourselves, we're about to find out!"

A massive, grey triangle-shaped ship jumped in. Bristling with turbolasers, point-defense cannons, heavy ion cannons and other weapons from is wedge-shaped bow to the pyramid-like formation at the stern that built up to the ship's bridge, they all knew what it was within a fraction of a second. There could be no clearer, more prominent symbol of Imperial power in the entire galaxy. And it was aimed right at them.

"Star Destroyer bearing point oh-five-two!"

"A Star Destroyer?!"

"Look at the size of that-"

"Cut the chatter!" Reena ordered. She focused on the Destroyer, an angry durasteel beast heading towards them. They would be in range of its guns within seconds. Most pilots would turn their ships and burn their thrusters until they saw lines. But Reena just gripped the stick and narrowed her eyes. "We're gonna take it out."

"What?!"

"Uh, didn't copy that, Bold Leader, say again."

"We're going to take out the Destroyer," she repeated, steel in her voice. "We've all run the sims, we know how hard they can hit. But we have two squadrons and we're not giving up those transports. This is what the B-Wing was made for, this is what we signed up to do. We can do this." There was a pause over the comm frequency. The Star Destroyer loomed. A cold feeling grew in her stomach; if she didn't back her up, if they all turned and fled, she could at least buy them time. She was resolved to make a stand. Fortunately, they all knew it.

"Copy, Bold Leader."

"Copy, Reena, we're with you!"

"Alright!" she said, audibly relieved, "Same as the convoy and the cruisers, just... a lot bigger this time. Red Squadron, keep their guns busy, Bold Squadron, on my wing. We're going to hit their bridge with everything we've got! Let's see what these new bombers can do! Grex! Tell base we need reinforcements!"

Only static answered her on the other end.

"He might be out of range," Sonders reminded her.

"Right, focus on the Destroyer! All wings, charge all cannons and stay tight on me! Red Squadron, sweep the top!"

"Aye, Bold Leader, we're on it!" The X-Wings raced forward again. Within seconds of coming in range of the Star Destroyer's cannons, their formation broke into twelve different vectors, throwing off the tracking gunners just as they fired. The space lit up with green lights as the guns fired wildly.

This was also part of the traditional Rebel Alliance strategy: the more guns a ship has, the more you had to split maneuvers to obfuscate them. The more Imperial guns tracked a single target, the better they were at leading it and the greater their odds of hitting it. So, the nimble Rebel ships split up just as they came in range: four ships to the top-port side, four to the top-starboard side and four underneath. They wove and danced patterns around the Imperial lasers, the result of careful training and lots of time in the simulators, firing on the Imperial warship as they did.

Unfortunately, the Star Destroyer was a lot more ship than a single cruiser. Even the combined firepower of twelve X-Wings couldn't penetrate the Destroyer's triple-redundant shields and extremely heavy, reinforced triple-durasteel armor. If they were alone, Red Squadron would have gone after the Destroyer's weak points- the two shield generators on the ship's bridge and the third on the ship's belly. After hammering all three with everything they had, they would make a run directly at the bridge, the most risky move they could make and try to destroy it. Knocking out the bridge of a Star Destroyer after all three of its shield generators had been taken out would cause a chain reaction, destroying the ship.

But unlike the cruisers, the Star Destroyer began launching TIEs almost the moment it jumped in. Fortunately, Red Squadron was ready for that as well.

"We got this! Light 'em up!" Javen Brasch, Red-Four, was a mechanic as well as a pilot. The brown-haired green-eyed X-Wing flier was also a bit of a neat-freak and took care of all of Red Squadron's ships, right down to the new Mountain Dew Code Red logos plastered on the wings. But he'd also modified the X-Wings so that they were more powerful, more accurate and could hit at longer distances.

Javen started weaving even before the TIE Fighters came into range to throw off early attempts to lock on or track him. Five TIE Fighters came at him in an X-shaped formation. He grinned, seeing easy pickings. Juking up just slightly, he blasted the top-left TIE Fighter to pieces and then pulled right to hit the top-right. Pulling downward, he opened fire on the middle and lower-right one before quickly pulling right and vaporizing the fifth on the bottom-left. In a series of bright flashes, the entire TIE formation had been destroyed and he was throttling past their debris.

But it was only the first group. More began pouring out of the Star Destroyer and he was beginning to get into range of their guns.

Javen throttled his X-Wing through the next formations of TIEs, ignoring the ones who came right at him. As his wingmen came in behind him, he spied a quartet of TIEs breaking away from the rest, going after the bombers. He throttled towards them and blasted the side solar panels off two of the TIE Fighters in a single sweep. He then pulled up slightly and blasted the third in the vertical-diamond formation. The fourth TIE banked around at first to try and get an angle on him, then dove rapidly to try and escape him. Javen came down from above and blasted the final TIE to pieces, pulling back up to take care of the rest of the TIEs.

It would have been difficult if Red Squadron was on their own. Every moment, the guns on the Star Destroyer got better at tracking each individual target, forcing Red Squadron to constantly change their attack patterns. This was where the designation of "Attack Pattern: Alpha" or "Attack Pattern: Bravo" or "Attack Pattern: Delta" came from. But, the X-Wings were not alone, and as they distracted the turrets, Bold Squadron went right for the bridge.

"Bold Squadron, open fire!!"

Y-Wings and B-Wings were capable of using their Ion cannons and heavy ordinance to pierce right through even the toughest enemy shields and armor, even that of Star Destroyers. Blue bolts launched from Bold Squadron's guns, blasting into the hull of the Destroyer. They needed all eleven of them to have an impact on the larger Imperial warship, and even after a single pass, it wasn't completely disabled. Lights along the destroyer's hull began to flicker out and there was more time in-between the lasers firing, an indication that at least some damage was being done to the systems.

Bold Squadron blasted past the Destroyer's bridge, a successful attack run. "We're making progress! Keep it up, Red Leader! We need another pass!"

"We got your back, Bold Leader!"

"Charge again, concentrate all fire on their engines this time!" Reena's B-Wings pulled around again. More blue streaks of ion energy leapt from the cannons and splashed against the trio of engines on the Destroyer's stern. Two of them hit hardest went out almost immediately, the other began to sputter and flare. The ship started to list to the starboard as its engines failed.

"One more time, one more!" Reena ordered, blasting past the bridge of the Destroyer with her squad close behind her. Most of the guns had stopped firing. She pulled back hard on the stick, pushing her B-Wing up in a sharp climb. "This is it, boys! All firepower right on the bridge!"

"Copy, Bold Leader!"

"Command's gonna shit a duracrete brick when they we bring them back a captured Star Destroyer!"

She allowed herself to grin. "It's not over yet, Avin, stay on me!" She felt just a split second of vertigo as she performed a U-turn, turning the climb into a straight dive. They all followed her motion but this time, they spread out along Reena's wing instead of remaining single-file. Together, they unleashed a barrage of ion fire. The Destroyer's bridge was engulfed in a storm of lightning as the bolts rained down upon it. The ionic energy cascaded through the ship's hull, shorting out lights, turrets and systems. The Star Destroyer stopped firing, completely adrift now.

"WE DID IT!! Haha, we did it!"

"WE FREAKING DID IT!!" The squad communications' erupted in cheers. Reena checked her scanners. The Star Destroyer, the transports and the cruisers all drifted helplessly, waiting for pickup by the next Rebel group that came along.

Reena laughed, relief flooding through her. "Great job, great job everyone."

"Let's get out of here before something else shows up!"

"Yeah!"

"Hold up, hold up. We need that transport to get here, right?" Reena reminded them. "Let's pull back and check on the-"

"New contact, new contact!"

"Oh, for Sith's sake!" Reena cursed. "What the hell is it now?"

"It's not jumping in- it's from the Destroyer! New fighter!"

Reena checked her sensors. "New fighters? More TIEs?"

"No, it's a new fighter, it's a new type of TIE-" Red-Eleven exploded in a flash of green. Another TIE Fighter flashed through the debris, racing high above them all. Reena looked up to see the new foe bearing down on them, a type of TIE Fighter she'd never seen before, that none of them had seen before. A pink TIE with horizontal heart-shaped wings. It raced towards them and opened fire.

Comments

[Xzrea]

Looks like Imperial cannoneers were learning in the same school as Imperial stormtroopers.

[Barrobroadcaster]

7990588 Cross-training.

[Barrobroadcaster]

7991324 National Broadcasting Corporation. They also broadcast other shows along with news, other programs. As a news network however, they're incredibly liberally biased and are guilty of mic and feed cutting during the previous election, along with CNN submitting stories to the Clinton campaign before airing them. Like most major news networks in the United States and around the world today, they are corrupt, they have their own agenda and they are ruthlessly enforcing it.

Fox News is almost the same thing but is conservatively-biased and they have done much to improve their credibility in recent years. CNN and MSNBC on the other hand are getting progressively worse. The least-biased and least-corrupt news source right now is ABC, which is also voted as trustworthy compared to the others. It could always change, though so you have to be alert. Never believe any source 100%, always question things rationally.

[Super Soldier]

7991595 You didn't answer my question.

[Barrobroadcaster]

7991719 I finished it for you. Multi System National Broadcasting Corporation

[Super Soldier]

7991805 Thank you.

[Admiral_Gravleos]

"DINKLEBERG! Errr, I mean, Bold-ten is standing by."