A plume of black smoke marked the place where Thayer's X-wing came to rest on the desert rocks. It rose straight up in the still air, making a sharp contrast with the light colored sand and the pale blue sky. Higher it climbed as though reaching out to its three comrades still in the air, seeking their help, their attention, calling for them to think of the pilot who flew the craft moments before.
The three other pilots varied widely in their response to the silent call. To one it was the call of her sovereign, the savior of her country, and for not a single moment could she consider not answering it. To another it was an unfortunate way for a noble flame to be extinguished, but it held no curiosity. No way could a mortal life survive that crash. To the third, the pilot of the lead ship, it was nothing but an odd break in the unchanging landscape below, just another bit of flaming wreckage from a failed attempt to destroy his home.
The only flame that burned in that third mind was a desire to render those responsible into their constituent molecules, one molecule at a time.
"Grace Two, you'll stay airborne to give us air cover," Josh said to Noreh. "Ten and I are joining the ground team."
"What about Lord Atner?" Noreh replied.
Josh blinked. "What about him?"
"We can't just leave him down there!"
"Keep your mind on your job, Lieutenant. We don't have time for this."
It was a long moment before Noreh was able to respond. "How can you be so cold after all he's done for you?" she demanded.
In a part of his heart his mind could no longer reach, her words stirred a small feeling. It flared for the briefest of moments, but before the spark could become anything more, blazing hatred rushed in to suffocate it. The feeling died before he was even aware of it. "Just do it, Two."
"Yes sir," she replied. The two X-wings broke formation with the TIE Defender and set off toward where the Red Home was settling down to the ground. Josh watched her on his sensors as long as he could to be certain she remained on patrol. Only the chance to end this accursed mission pulled him away from ensuring his orders were carried out.
As soon as Josh's X-wing was on the ground, Noreh broke from her patrol pattern and headed directly to the black plume that marked Thayer's crash site. It took all her restraint to wait that long, but with the state Josh was in disobeying him might have earned her a spot on the ground next to Thayer. Until this moment she always respected the American pilot but no provocation she could imagine could explain his actions. What harm could it possibly do to let her fly over his crash site?
In her heart she couldn't accept that Thayer could be dead. A man who could flee his home in his teenage years only to return to liberate it from its long nightmare oppression couldn't possibly die so easily. Thayer was practically bullet proof. He couldn't die randomly in the Iraqi desert like this.
In an instant the TIE Defender flashed over the crashed X-wing, too fast to make out any detail but catching enough to see that the fighter came to rest mostly in one piece. That was a relief, at least. Thayer's chances were exponentially better than if his ship was scattered across several miles of desert. The black smoke came from the lower starboard engine, which seemed to have taken the brunt of the impact, and another fire burned around the nose cone.
Noreh rolled the Defender into a tight horizontal loop and then straightened up to approach the crash site from a different direction. She slowed the TIE dramatically and brought it in even lower than before, and this time had a much better look at the dictator's crashed ship. The canopy was still in place, so he didn't eject. That wasn't good. Through the canopy she could see the top of his helmet, his head drooping limply forward from the restraints that held his shoulders back. He was mostly in one piece, at least, but there was no sign of movement within the cockpit.
As she was reaching for the controls for the repulsorlifts that would allow her to land next to the crashed X-wing, a voice came over the radio. "Grace Two, this is the Red Home. We have an Iraqi ground unit moving in on our team. They're all yours."
Noreh nearly pretended not to hear the call. Surely bringing Thayer home, one way or another, was more important than saving those who failed to protect him.
Just as the Defender was about to come to rest on its lower wings she sighed deeply and shoved the throttle all the way forward. In the distance she could see the clouds of dust kicked up by the Iraqi vehicles approaching the Terra Group team. Not rescuing them would lead to questions for which she wouldn't have good answers.. The fire was spreading slowly enough that she would have time to eliminate the Iraqi forces and still make it back in time to get Thayer.
Josh strode through the bright sun between his fighter and the Red Home carrying his helmet by its chinstrap. Even with the details of his face and his form washed out by the bright light there was a menace about the way he carried himself. It wasn't his normal confident stride; it was something new, aggressive, unrelenting. When he came into the shadow of the Home's boarding ramp his blue eyes were cold and hard, gazing not at but seemingly into and through everything and everyone around him.
Everyone not already inside the shield complex was there, dressed in their black combat suits and scurrying between several large crates choosing weapons, ammunition, and explosives for what was to come. Sci straightened from dropping a piece of equipment into a thigh pocket when he saw Josh and Brad approach.
"You could have let her check on Thayer," he said without preamble.
Josh turned his penetrating gaze on his commander. "Major, we've already had this discussion of who's in command of this mission," he said as he flung his helmet into an empty crate. "My offer still stands. I want Noreh focused on the mission in case the Iraqis bring in their own air support."
"Not much chance of that," Brad said. "Your friends took care of that a few years ago."
Josh sat down on the edge of a crate and tugged at his boots. "We don't know that they didn't get more than shields and missiles from their new allies."
"If you believed that you would have more than one pilot up there."
"I was *supposed* to have two," Josh said, punctuating the reminder by dropping his second boot on the deck a little harder than necessary.
"If you two are done," Sci broke in, "we do have a job to do."
Brad disappeared into the ship with his combat suit in his hand. Josh unselfconsciously stripped off his flight gear there on the ramp until he wore only his undergarments and socks. He tossed his flightsuit into the crate with his helmet and removed his combat suit from another. Moments later he stood adjusting the suit and its integrated body armor to fit his body more comfortably before putting his boots back on. When Brad returned wearing his own combat suit, Josh was fully dressed and perusing the selection of weapons arrayed in the crates before him.
It was quite an arsenal. Beside the standard-issue blaster sidearms there were blaster rifles, sniper blasters, assault blasters, shotgun-like plasma blasters, and even light rocket launchers. The explosives ranged from thermal detonators to frag grenades to remote demolition charges to timed explosives. Mike and Brad were both filling backpacks with the more powerful charges as the rest of the group filled their pockets, pouches, and harnesses with extra clips for their weapons.
From one of the crates Josh removed a simple black nylon harness, looped his belt through it and strapped it to his right thigh. It was like a low-riding pistol holster except that it had only one long, round pouch and nowhere to store extra ammunition. He slid his lightsaber into the tactical holster, emitter end down, and wiggled it to make certain it was secure. It didn't budge or bounce when he walked. He nodded in satisfaction and checked his only other weapon, the black combat knife that had been with him much longer than any other piece of equipment he carried. Once he settled the compact communication and video unit in and over his ear he was ready to go.
When he turned to face the rest of the team he found them staring back at him. The crates were sealed and Raymond was using a portable repulsor unit to move them back inside the ship. "Everyone ready?" he asked. Mumbled agreement and nodded heads went around the assembled agents. "Let's go."
The Red Home rested a short distance from an auxiliary entrance to the shield complex, just outside the range of any firearms its guards might carry. It would take a few minutes to walk the distance in between. The group set out into the bright sunshine with Josh in the middle, Mike and Sci flanking him, and the rest of the group arrayed in a rough line to either side of them. Most of them held their weapons close or fingered them nervously. Sci held his compact blaster rifle still and ready, as though he were simply going for an afternoon at the firing range. Josh walked along empty handed, his back ramrod straight and his eyes fixed unblinkingly on their destination.
After a few minutes of walking, several of the group noticed a cloud of dust rising to their left. It was coming up fast and seemed to be growing as it came. "Ground vehicles," Sci said.
"If they already know we're out here we're in trouble," Mike said, peering into the dust cloud to try to make out individual shapes.
Josh didn't even spare the approaching threat a glance. "Probably headed for the ship."
"Either way, I'm having Noreh take them out," Sci said. "No point waiting to see where they're going." He spoke briefly to Zee aboard the Red Home and then fell silent again.
Seconds passed like long minutes and a minute passed like fifteen. The Iraqi vehicles still bore down on them and there was no sign of their air support. The enemy force was close enough to make out the individual vehicles leading the column, a motley collection of trucks, tanks, and armored personnel carriers.
"Noreh's taking her time," Mike remarked.
"She's found something more interesting," Josh said, still not looking away from the entrance to the shield complex.
Just then the howling whine of paired ion engines passed over their heads, headed toward the Iraqi ground force.
The force bearing down on the Red Home and the Terra Group ground team was no more impressive from the air than it was from the ground. The TIE Defender's sensors identified several tank models dating as far back as the Second World War, a few open-air trucks carrying infantry, and a handful of other armored vehicles built before Noreh was even born. Their current track seemed to take them more toward the Red Home than the ground team, which was unfortunate for them because the Home's laser turrets would make short work of them indeed. Still, if they passed too close to her friends on the ground - and the American Jedi - they could still change their course, and for the most part she didn't want to see her allies hurt.
With no missiles left this was going to be a turkey shoot - a turkey shoot with the turkeys penned so close together that one shot might kill three. From a couple of miles out Noreh dove her fighter at the Iraqi vehicles like a bird of prey swooping in for the kill. She squeezed and held down the trigger, sweeping the front of her ship back and forth across the loose formation. Brilliant green light tore into vehicles, weapons, and men indiscriminately, sending expanding fireballs and body parts flying into the air. Some of the men in the other vehicles - those who didn't run screaming in fear - raised their rifles to fire at the Defender. The few shots that actually found the ship as it dove bounced off the duranium alloy with a sound distinctly like the ship laughing at them.
Noreh pulled her ship out of the dive low enough to sweep desert sand into the eyes of the soldiers still left facing her on the ground. She went straight into a vertical loop followed by a snap roll to bring her back at the enemy column from the opposite direction. Chaos reigned on the ground, with men and vehicles that still functioned fleeing as fast as their legs, wheels, or tracks could take them. Only a few hardliners and those trapped by burning wrecks made any attempt to stand and fight. A second pass with the fighter rocking back and forth while spraying verdant energy beams across the formation either discouraged or destroyed them all. When Noreh began her third pass she found all enemy movement had reversed its direction. This time she stayed her hand, climbing the fighter back into the sky and turning once more towards Thayer's wrecked X-wing.
The team on the ground - even its leader - stopped to watch as the Defender tore through the Iraqi force. "We don't get this view very often," Mike said, and it was true. Watching coherent light blast into the ground like discolored lightning from a ship that was barely a speck in the sky was a new experience for them all. Explosions, dirt, and debris geysered up into the sky each time one of the green bolts leapt to the ground, and they fell thick and heavy as a summer rain. Wreckage came back to earth far from where it began its journey as a functional part of man or machine. Unidentifiable pieces of twisted metal and clumps of flash-fried meat showered the ground within a few dozen yards of the ground team, close enough that they could hear the muffled thump thump thump pitter-pattering across the desert.
As the hail of debris from Noreh's second pass trailed off, a flaming tire flung itself energetically past the Terra Group agents, bouncing high into the air and threatening to splatter anyone in its path. The dust cloud signaling the approach of the enemy force fell back to earth and became part of the endless desert once again.
Before the dust settled, Josh resumed his single minded, flint-eyed march to the shield complex. The rest of the team joined him, and they covered the remaining distance in silence. As they drew closer a single guard carrying an AK-47 and wearing the faded green of the Iraqi army stood beneath a rock outcropping that rose up to twice the man's height. Behind him was the black mouth of a cave that led down into the ground at a shallow angle. A simple guard station with glass windows and a telephone on the wall waited just inside the cave.
When they were fifty yards away, Mike raised his rifle to his shoulder and centered the guard in his sights. Josh reached out with one hand and pushed the rifle's barrel back down without taking his eyes off the guard. "He doesn't see us," he said. Mike looked at him in surprise.
With all the Force energy coursing through his body it was a simple matter for Josh to block the guard's perception of the group approaching him. Just days before it would have required a sharp focus to remove even a single person from a mind this way, but now he could hide a large group with barely an afterthought. With the rest of his mind he idly traced the systems and organs of the guard's body. It all lay there before him, every function, every reflex, and every sense.
With little more than a mental twitch he blocked the guard's brain from passing orders to the rest of his body, and withdrew the illusion that prevented him from seeing the approaching group. Shock and terror raced from the man's mind throughout his body when several heavily armed men suddenly appeared in front of him. It turned to sheer panic when he found he could not control his arms and legs. He could feel his feet aching in their boots and the weight of the rifle in his hands, but they simply refused to move. His heart hammered in his chest and his breath came in short, panicked spurts. Josh reveled in his fear, bathing in it and drawing its energy into himself to feed it back into the guard again.
He reached out through the Force and traced the intricate network of blood vessels in the guard's brain, and with a thought shredded them all. He released his grip on the guard and let him drop in a senseless heap to the ground, dead even before his heart stopped beating. As the team passed the guard's corpse, no one missed the scarlet trickle from his ear.
The stone tunnel led down into the earth at a steep angle. Artificial lights every ten meters showed smooth walls and a flat floor, suggesting the tunnel wasn't natural. No side tunnels branched off. The entire world as far ahead as the eye could see was gray stone with only the wall lights to mark distance. The team pressed onward through the dim light with no idea what lay ahead of them.
After several minutes another light appeared ahead of them and grew steadily as they closed in on it. Eventually the tunnel opened up into a cavern fifty meters across with a ceiling that soared out of sight above them. The middle of the cavern was blocked all the way around by guardrail, and on the other side of the railing a vast hole opened seemingly to the center of the earth. Around the perimeter four wide blast doors led out of the cavern and into the underground base.
One of the blast doors sprang open with a loud metallic clang. In an instant everyone had their weapons trained on the door, only to find themselves sighting down their barrels at Kristy, Becki, Cherris, and a pair of familiar actors.
"Don't shoot! It's us!" Kristy shouted, throwing her hands up in the air. The group from the Red Home lowered their weapons and Kristy lowered her arms while a look of relief spread across her face. "Boy am I glad to see you!"
"I'm glad to see you all looking so well," Sci replied as the two groups met and exchange greetings.
"What are *they* doing here?" Josh asked with a nod to the actors.
"Sahhar had them locked up," Becki said.
Josh sighed in exasperation. "Couldn't you have left them there?"
"That's not funny," Kristy said.
"I wasn't trying to be. Alright, you two, get out of here," he said, pointing at the tunnel that led back up to the surface.
"Oh no, we're involved now," Russell Crowe said. "I don't know how I keep getting tangled up in your problems, but I didn't run away last time and I won't this time either. Right, Vartan?"
"Uh...sure," said Vartan.
"Fine. Whatever. Let's get on with it then," Josh said. "Time to go blow something up."
"Which way, oh fearless leader?" Brad asked, looking at the four blast doors around them.
"Eeny, meeny, miney..." Josh muttered.
"Let's find this shield already," Sci said.
"Right." Mike took a hand scanner from a cargo pocket and slowly turned in a circle to scan the entire area. When he finished he grimaced and shook his head. "Strong energy readings in every direction. Looks like they've got heavy equipment all over this place."
"What a surprise," Josh said. "I guess we do this the old fashioned way, then. Mike, you come with me. Sci, take Kristy and check out the north tunnel. Cheriss, you and Becki take the west. Brad, take south. And you two can go." he said, looking at the actors, "wherever. I don't care. Everybody check in with me every ten minutes, and sooner if you find something. Let's go."