"Grace One to Terra Eight. Another round?"
Josh groaned. HE ALMOST WON THE LAST ROUND, Hyper interjected helpfully. They'd been at this all afternoon. Actually, they'd been at this for most of the last year. Thayer was no slouch of a pilot when Josh arrived in Mendellia, and their frequent training sessions in both the X-wings and some of Mendellia's more common jet powered fighters had improved both their skills. Serious training had long ago given way to stress relieving games of tag above the Pacific. Though Josh usually won, Thayer had been giving him a run for his money today. He was flying with more energy and reckless abandon than usual.
Josh glanced over his starboard laser cannons at Thayer in the cockpit of his X-wing. "One more, One. If we keep this up much longer I'm going to slip up and accidentally let you win," Josh said with a smile. Before Thayer could reply Josh pulled back on his stick and threw his throttle forward. He broke away and shot upwards at a steep angle before Thayer could react. The Mendellian dictator turned to follow as quickly as he could, but his opponent was already out of laser range. This was a familiar stalemate. All five of Terra Group's brand new and well maintained X-wings had the same engine power, so once a pilot in one escaped another, the pursuer had little hope of catching up in a straight chase. Thayer had actually run afoul of Colombian airspace several months earlier during one such engagement. Only his X-wing's speed saved Mendellia from having to make some very awkward explanations that day.
HE'S BEHIND US.
"No! You think?" Josh shot back at the droid. The X-wing's threat board showed Thayer flying behind and slightly below Josh and, oddly enough, gaining rather quickly. In a matter of moments all the ground he'd gained with his sudden split would be lost. He bumped his throttle to make sure it was at maximum. It was, but the starfighter wasn't accelerating as it usually did. For that matter, the engines didn't sound quite right somehow.
Thayer couldn't resist rubbing it in. "Has Terra Four not been changing the oil in your fighter regularly, Eight? It seems a bit sluggish."
Josh groaned again, loudly. "Hyper! What's wrong with this thing?"
I WAS JUST HAVING A GO AT YOU. FULL POWER RESTORED.
The X-wing suddenly leaped forward, slamming her pilot further into his seat and bouncing his head off the headrest. "Hyper, I swear you're getting a memory wipe when we get back," Josh hissed.
YOU WOULDN'T.
"Don't push your luck." Josh glanced over his shoulder at Thayer. Though he was no longer gaining ground, he was well within laser range. Josh jinked wildly back and forth and up and down to keep from getting his tail shot off. He spotted a large cloud bank a short distance away and was suddenly struck by an idea. "One shot at redemption, Hyper. On my mark, drop ten flares in his face as fast as you can. Got it?"
UNDERSTOOD.
"Ready…NOW!" A bundle of flares dropped out the back of the X-wing, momentarily blinding the pursuing pilot. Josh twisted his fighter through a half snap roll and dove sharply toward the cloud bank. Within moments he was inside, and the world outside his canopy was an unrelenting white. The sensors showed Thayer behind him again, but this time he wasn't gaining any ground. Josh tightened his grip on the throttle and stick. He knew that if Thayer just watched the steering cues on the HUD, and didn't glance down at the threat display, what he was planning would probably work. Don't look down, don't look down, don't look down.... he chanted silently in his mind.
Josh chopped his engine thrust almost to idle and threw his X-wing into a tight, horizontal half loop that would have snapped his neck in a fighter without an acceleration compensator. Within seconds he was racing back in the direction he'd just come – and straight at Thayer.
Don't look down, don't look down....
He closed his eyes and reached out with the Force to find Thayer ahead of him and approaching fast. Without a moment to spare he pointed the nose of his fighter in the direction that felt right and squeezed the trigger. He held it for a moment, listening to the depowered cannon blasts coming from his wingtips.
Feeling a sudden sense of alarm, Josh let off the trigger and jinked sharply down. Hyper let out a sudden shriek, and he opened his eyes just in time to see Thayer's X-wing pass barely three meters above him.
SPLASH ONE X-WING, Hyper reported. THAT WAS A LITTLE CLOSE.
"Tell me about it," Josh muttered.
IT WOULD LIKELY HELP IF YOU WOULD FLY WITH YOUR EYES OPEN.
"I wouldn't have to fly like that if you wouldn't screw with the engines!" Hyper didn't have a response for that. Josh clicked the communications button on his throttle. "Terra Eight to Grace One. That's another one for me. Have you had enough for one day?"
"Affirmative. Let's head home."
Both fighters made a quick approach and a slow landing in the Terra Group starfighter hangar below the Mendellian High Palace. The hangar opening was cut out of solid rock just above the level of the Pacific at high tide. It was hidden from prying eyes by a rock overhang, making it impossible to see the opening from above. The only way to spot it was in a boat on the water, and these were the most closely guarded of Mendellian waters. This hangar was only meant for small craft. A much larger and less secret hangar had been added to the Palace itself in the last year to handle the larger ships used by Terra Group and the Mendellian government.
Josh sat his X-wing down gently next to Thayer's in the crowded hangar. There were two other single-seat X-wings in the hangar, and the two seat trainer model he'd been using to teach the other group members to fly. Two brand new T-47 airspeeders, which Josh had taken to calling "seaspeeders," sat off to the side. The back corner was taken up with an aircraft the rest of the team affectionately called "FranK": a Harrier jump jet the Royal Mendellian Air Force had acquired recently and Josh was refitting with laser cannons, repulsorlifts, and modern sensors. Modern now being a relative term to him; what he considered modern these days was still science fiction to the rest of the world.
A droid crane attached to the high stone ceiling lifted Hyper and Thayer's astromech out of their sockets as Josh and Thayer climbed out of their cockpits. Tireless maintenance droids rushed out to both fighters to check them over as their pilots greeted each other.
"Congratulations, as usual," Thayer said with a friendly smile on his face as Josh shook his hand.
Josh smiled back at the Dictator. "You very nearly had me a few times there. Is it just my imagination, or did you blow off a little more steam than usual out there today?"
Thayer sighed as the two headed off towards the locker room. "It wasn't your imagination," he said. "Things have not gotten any easier lately."
"Still haven't talked to her?" Josh asked as they found their lockers and started pulling off their X-wing flight gear.
"No," Thayer said, throwing his life support harness rather forcefully against the back wall of his locker. "Not a word in months."
"I'm sure you'll be hearing from her soon, now that her student teaching is over," said Josh as he peeled off his sweat-soaked flightsuit and reached into his locker for a clean one.
"I would hope so."
Thayer lapsed into silence, but during the last year Josh had learned that the look on his face meant that he hadn't said all he was thinking. "But that's not the only thing, of course..." he prompted.
"No. My mother still hasn't spoken to me. She disapproves of my choice and takes the silence as confirmation of her opinion. And these silly games she insists on playing about it!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands up in frustration. "If I wanted to marry a girl from one of the Mendellian noble families, doesn't she think I would have?"
Josh chuckled at Thayer's frustration. "There's no accounting for the whims of royalty. Maybe you should marry a Mendellian girl to make Llessur happy, and just keep Becki around on the side. Sorta like John Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe." At the distressed look on Thayer's face, Josh broke out into open laughter. "I'm kidding! And Becki would kill me if she'd heard me say that."
Thayer shook his head and smiled softly. "I'm considering it myself. Can't you at least take one of these insufferable ladies-in-waiting off my hands?"
"Thayer, where I come from, we have a word for girls like that. Besides, if you don't want them, what makes you think I do?"
"As a Mendellian citizen, you'd be doing the Crown a great service," Thayer said with an exaggerated bow.
Now it was Josh's turn to sigh unhappily. "A Mendellian citizen. I still can't get used to that."
Thayer smiled sympathetically. "I know what it's like to be separated from your homeland."
"It might help if I were a bit more separated from it. I think that going to Atlanta in September just made it worse. At the time it was like oxygen for a drowning man, but now..."
"Now it's more of a curse than a blessing. I remember the feeling from when I was exiled during Eugor's reign."
"I was so close to home, and still so far. I wish now I'd taken the risk of going to see my parents while I was back in the country. Getting to breathe Texas air one more time."
"We are both still young men. Who knows what the future may hold. You may be there many more times."
Josh smiled weakly. "I hope you're right."
"And in the mean time, you should get out of the palace more! You've been spending entirely too much time in the kitchen with Rich lately."
"And yet I still can't make tiramisu..."
"It'll come out right when you have someone to make it for. Which is why you should really consider my offer. I'm fairly sure there're a half dozen ladies-in-waiting by now." Thayer smiled mischievously.
Josh finished clipping his belt around his waist and the holster strap around his thigh, and turned to glower mock-dangerously at Thayer. "Thayer, I'm warning you-" At that moment his comlink beeped for attention. "Eight here."
"Lieutenant, this is Z-3PO," came the voice of the unit's protocol droid from the comlink.
It was a mighty effort for Josh not to sigh. He settled for rolling his eyes instead. "Yes Zee?"
"I have a priority transmission from Coruscant, sir. Amabassador Kerr asked me to call you to the communications center."
"Be right there," Josh promised before shutting the comlink off.
"I wonder what that's about?" said Thayer, now dressed in a more stately well-tailored suit and tie.
"Don't know, but it's only happened a few times before. Always before a mission. The last time was just before Atlanta."
A light briefly flared in Thayer's eyes and a smile on his lips at the mention of a Terra Group mission, but both quickly faded again. "Mind if I come along to find out?" he asked.
Josh shrugged. "Hey, it's your castle."
The communications center was the part of Terra Group's subterranean headquarters that reminded Josh most of the Batcave for which the entire complex had been nicknamed. Computers and all sorts of electronic equipment he still couldn't identify occupied every available inch from floor to ceiling. On one wall a massive display showed a map of the entire planet, with the location of each Terra Group member's comlink pinpointed. The upper portion of the back wall was taken up with a large communications screen. It was in front of this that Josh and Thayer found the bronze protocol droid, Z-3PO, and the Terran ambassador to the New Republic, Sharon Kerr, talking to a distinguished looking man wearing the uniform of a New Republic Intelligence General.
"General Cracken," Josh said, nodding a greeting to his superior officer.
"Lieutenant Cochran, good to see you again. How are the Jedi studies going?"
"Quite well, thank you. Just a little while ago I convinced Lord Atner not to look at his threat display long enough for me to shoot him down."
Cracken chuckled and Thayer stiffened at the comment. Josh smiled apologetically at Thayer before turning back to Cracken. "Lieutenant, I need you to recall Sci, and be prepared to recall the rest of your staff as well. As you may have guessed, I have a mission for you. I see in your files that you, Lieutenant Bush, and Captain Boyd all speak a Terran language known as French."
Josh nodded. "With varying degrees of fluency, yes sir. What's going on, sir?"
"I can't tell you that yet. Recall your staff. Have Sci contact me when he arrives, and schedule a mission briefing with all eleven of your people for tomorrow afternoon."
"Actually, we're down to ten now, sir. Dr. Dilli retired a few weeks ago after her graduation to pursue research."
Cracken frowned. "And you still haven't replaced Ms. Sky or McEwok. I'll talk to Sci about replacements when he contacts me. Gather the staff, Lieutenant. I'll speak to you again tomorrow."
Cracken cut off the connection on his end. Josh turned to call Sci and found Thayer standing in front of him, looking up at him with a rather serious look on his face. "Just wait until I get my hands on an ysalamiri..." he said before turning to leave the room.
Josh sighed. This is going to be one of those weeks.