by Steve Miller
“Flight Leader, help! I can’t keep doing this! I’m not good enough without the droid!”
“Oh no!” Echo Eight suddenly shouted. “Oh no!”
Echo Four let out a panicked cry.
Essara switched to the general frequency. “Echo Three, report.”
“Echo Five! Get him off my tail!”
“Flight Leader,” Echo One wailed. The girl was now sobbing. Dren had established a firm lock on her, but Essara had still not managed to maintain one on Dren. Essara knew was not going to save this girl.
The droid beeped again.
“If you’re not going to be useful, shut up,” she hissed at it. And what about Echo Flight? Based on what she was seeing on her tactical screen, Echo Flight was coping with Headhunters-the number of enemies had been cut in half. So what was causing such panic over there? Was she losing more than just Dren’s victims? And where had those two mystery craft gotten to?
Essara’s fighter was rocked by a sudden impact. A shower of sparks burst from the control panel as her command screen went black. The cockpit filled with the smell of overheating wires, and all her power system indicators were spiking into their red zones. Her shields were overloading, suggesting that she’d either been hit by an energy torpedo or a turbo-laser blast.
Three of the unclassified fighters have maneuvered behind us. I tried to tell you. Now, please pay attention before we are both damaged beyond repair.
Essara cursed. There were three blips on her tail. She had been so preoccupied with Dren that she hadn’t noticed. Her fighter shuddered as it was struck again.
“Adjust the shields before we lose everything!” Essara cried.
“Drop the laser recharge rate to 60 percent. See if you can’t get the power grid back to full efficiency.”
If someone had been paying attention to me, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
“I’m hit! I can’t shake him!” Echo One shrieked hysterically.
“Listen to her,” Dren said contemptuously. “She isn’t cut out for this, not like you and me. Tell them to power down their ships. You do the same, no one will die, and I’ll explain everything to you in detail.”
“You’re asking me to betray Naboo,” Essara hissed, trying to shake those mysterious fighters. All she could do was bank left and right, shooting wildly at Dren. He easily evaded her fire.
“There’s no winning this one, Essara. Stand down before it’s too late.” Dren continued to pursue Echo One. Even while dodging Essara’s continued barrages of fire, he managed to remain on the less experienced pilot’s tail.
Echo One continued to scream and wail. Other voices would occasionally cut in, but Essara couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Dren launched his torpedoes and banked right.
“Ell-one, target Bravo Eight’s torpedoes!” Essara yelled, letting Dren escape for now. The droid obeyed instantly, and flashing brackets appeared around the triangular icons on her screen that represented the missiles. She steadied her course, briefly letting the droid starfighter pummel her rear shields with its lasers. She pressed the trigger on her cannon and kept it down, holding her breath as the missiles and the brilliant arc of laser blasts crossed paths. One torpedo exploded harmlessly, but then her cannon stopped firing. She glanced at the power gauge. The laser was drained. The 60 percent recharge rate! I forgot about it!
Dren’s second torpedo struck the Police Cruiser. The explosion spread across the energy barrier like colored water poured onto a stone. Then, a secondary explosion ripped through the fighter’s hull as its shield generator overloaded. The remains of the shattered astromech unit were ejected through the loading hatch as the fighter’s secondary systems started to malfunction.
“Cut all power, Echo One,” Essara said. “Stop that cascade overload before it gets out of hand!”
Echo One’s only response was a ragged sob, but the girl followed Essara’s order. The blue glow of her ion engines winked out, and the Police Cruiser’s icon turned into an outline on Essara’s tactical display.
“Tap your maneuvering thrusters to stop that forward momentum,” Essara said, swinging her fighter right to maintain her pursuit of Dren. “We’ll get you out of there soon enough.”
“Echo Ten to Flight Leader,” a harried voice came. “Those tiny fighters are cutting us to ribbons!”
“Echo Flight, ignore the rest of the Z-95s for now,” Essara said. “Take out those fast fighters.”
“If you pups you want to live, power down like Echo One did,” Dren said.
“Says the guy who killed Echo Two!” Echo Eight’s voice had an edge to it that hadn’t been there before.
“Yeah,” Echo Five chimed in. “What about Bravo Eight, Flight Leader?”
“Dren’s mine. You have your orders,” Essara replied. Switching to the tight-beam channel, she said, “Tell those droid ships to get off my tail and then you and I can settle this, one on one.”
“I think not,” Dren said. “You’re a better dogfighter than I am. Surrender, now.”
Shields at 100 percent. Resetting laser recharge to full. I’ve got a pair of torpedoes loaded. Locking onto Bravo Eight.
“All I need is a split second,” Essara said.
Target acquired.
Essara pushed the launch button. Two torpedoes streaked toward Dren.
Dren cursed, and his voice was drowned out by a burst of overlapping signals as Echo Flight’s pilots once again began talking over one another. Essara stole a quick glance at her command telemetry display and found that it was still offline. “Ell-one, can you fix my command monitor?”
She looked over her shoulder and, with perverse anticipation, watched the torpedoes streak toward Dren’s ship. But then a stream of laser fire poured over her canopy and detonated both torpedoes. Another burst pelted her shields.
Shields at 69 percent and recharging, the droid said. Reducing laser recharge rate to 90 percent.
“How can such tiny fighters carry so much firepower and be so fast?”
If they are droid starfighters, the power that would normally be allocated to life support can go into weapons, and the space reserved for the pilot can be used for weapons or propulsion.
“Those fighters won’t stop until all of Echo Flight is dead or disabled,” Dren said once the urgent babble from Echo Flight subsided. Dren had confirmed Essara’s worst fear. “Check your telemetry if you don’t believe me.”
“Just tell me why,” Essara said as she threw her fighter into an upward corkscrew, hoping to lose her pursuers. She was in serious trouble if she didn’t deal with them somehow. Droids never got tired or distracted. She needed to focus all her wits and dismiss the confused, angry thoughts that tumbled through her mind regarding Dren. The anger that had consumed her was starting to give way to fear.
“My employer is dedicated to building a strong planetary defense force in the system he governs,” Dren said. “A cutting edge defense force. The Naboo starfighters are the cutting edge he’s looking for. All the governor wants are two or three N-1s and a couple of Police Cruisers in working condition so his engineers can build their own version.”
“All this just to steal some fighters?!”
“Not just fighters, N-1 fighters. These ships really are greater than the sum of their parts. I told my employer that even if he could convince the Nubians to trade with him, he still wouldn’t be able to build fighters that even came close to the Naboo starfighter... unless he had some working ships to study. He thought I might be exaggerating the N-1’s capabilities, so he wanted a demonstration. The second carrier launching its fighters was the sign that he liked what he saw.”
“Two carriers to capture a pair of N-1s?”
Dren sighed. “No, but he wanted to have numbers so overwhelming that only an idiot would put up a fight.”
“I guess I’m an idiot then,” Essara said. The fear of the starfighters on her tail was being burned away by anger at herself and hatred for Dren. How could she have read him
so wrong? How could she have been so obtuse? How could she have let him into her dreams? Another barrage struck her shields.
Shields at 75 percent and recharging. Laser cannon recharge rate at 85 percent.
“There’s no running from them,” Essara said. “Load torpedoes. Reduce laser recharge to 20 percent and redirect all power to the forward shields.”
The droid squealed with alarm. Essara pushed her throttle to maximum and threw her fighter into an overhead loop.
The tiny fighters slowed as Essara performed a wing-over and put herself directly in one of their paths. Ell-one established a target lock for her. The tiny enemy fighters started to accelerate again, and the lock was again lost as they reached speeds that were beyond the targeting sensor’s ability to track them. Essara had expected this, however.
Torpedoes ready. Unable to reacquire target lock.
“I know.”
The droid starfighter element jogged to the right. Essara matched the movement, holding the nose-to-nose approach with her chosen target.
We’re going to collide!
“I know.”
The droid starfighter fired its lasers. Essara held her course as Ell-one beeped urgently and her fighter rocked. Essara bit her lower lip, struggling to steady her nerves and to stick with her desperate plan. The droid starfighter changed course again, attempting to avoid collision. She put herself in its path again. A collision alert chimed. She spotted a scratch on the fighter’s left fin, and she could see the muzzles on both of its lasers glowing. She fired her torpedoes and banked sharply left. Her gamble paid off-the enemy didn’t have time to avoid the torpedoes, and they impacted squarely on its fuselage.
Nice trick. One destroyed, two damaged. We can outrun them now. Our shields are at 45 percent and recharging.
Essara eased the throttle back to standard attack speed as fragments of the blasted droid starfighter scattered into space. She would have to get Ric to authorize a complete download of Ell-one’s memory banks and scans so she could analyze the attack pattern of that tiny starfighter. She would hate to think of anyone facing one of them without being adequately prepared. But first, she was going to deal with Dren. “Locate Bravo Eight.”
He’s engaging the remaining Echo Flight ships.
Until that moment, she hadn’t realized that the shouts of Echo Flight had completely died out. They had been calling, but now they were silent. Essara felt another chill, but then realized that her long-range communication system had shorted out. Her tactical display showed her that Echo Flight was still in the fight, but how many and whom she couldn’t tell because her telemetry display was still down. “Start repairing the damaged systems,” she told the astromech. “Blast!”
Another trio of droid fighters was coming in fast on her right. Essara threw the throttle forward and sent her fighter sharply into a tailspin. She caught a brief glimpse of TFP-9 and the distant glimmer of Echo Flight and the other tiny starfighters exchanging fire. Then she was spinning into the blackness of space.
Laser volleys streaked harmlessly past her, but her starfighter jerked with the impact of missiles and then shuddered under the impact of another shower of laser fire. Her astromech issued a series of trilling whistles. She didn’t catch what the droid said before the translator shorted out, but her systems monitor told her what she needed to know anyway. She had just lost shields.
“Concentrate on getting the shields back online!” she shouted.
Essara twisted the fighter sharply to the right, then threw it into a partial barrel roll before changing directions into another sharp downward dive. Blaster bolts streaked by the cockpit.
The fighter creaked and groaned. Ell-one squealed in a panic.
“I know the engine housing is threatening to tear itself loose! Get those shields back up, and I’ll stop testing the ship’s tolerance limits!”
Essara continued to whip her fighter back and forth, drawing her breath in sharp intakes whenever she heard its stabilizers groan and whenever another warning light blinked to life on her instrument panel.
Without warning, her long-range communications were restored. “Get him off my tail!” she heard a Echo Four scream.
“Shields!” Essara snapped to the droid. “Get me shields.”
Ell-one beeped and hooted. Essara had no idea what it was saying, but it didn’t sound polite.
Echo Four continued his desperate plea. “Someone, please-”
The transmission ended in a burst of static.
“Echo Flight,” Essara said, her voice clear and commanding. “This is Bravo Leader. Keep it together, people. Cover your wingman. We can win this. Who’s still with me?”
“Echo Six here,” a voice came. “Battered but still moving.”
“Echo Two reporting,” came a weak voice.
“Kerl!” several pilots cried.
“I’m hurt bad, Flight Leader. And my fighter’s in pieces.”
“Hang on,” Essara said. “We’ll get you out of there.”
“Echo One here, but my fighter’s disabled and my astromech droid was taken out when Bravo Seven attacked us.”
“Echo Five here. I’ve taken a couple of hits, but the ship’s holding together and my astromech’s doing repairs. Bravo Eight just disabled Echo Eight and Echo Seven, Flight Leader. I don’t know if Keela’s still alive or not. Eleven and Twelve were both destroyed by one of those fast fighters, and I’m not sure about anyone else.”
Three active fighters left. Echo Four, Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve confirmed dead. The rest disabled, some of the pilots possibly dying. They had neither the numbers nor the skill to deal with the droid starfighters. If those Z-95s decided to rejoin the battle, they would be able to overwhelm the battered remains of Echo Flight.
The battle had turned into butchery. She had to stop it.
“Power down your ships, Echo Flight,” she said. “We’re surrendering.”
To be continued...
The story concludes on the LucasArts official site.
If you'd like the whole story, check out Star Wars Gamer #1, on newsstands in December!
Welcome to the third and final segment of “The Starfighter Trap”. Part One is being hosted by StarWars.com and Part Two by Wizards of the Coast.
Following the traitorous act of her wingman, Essra fights a barrage of lighting quick droid starfighters and weighs the cost of continuing the battle as her squadron falls prey to the enemy. “Power down your ships, Echo Flight, “ she said. “We’re surrendering.”
And now, the conclusion of “The Starfighter Trap”...
Part Three
“WHAT?” ECHO FIVE CRIED.
“I gave you an order!” Essara gritted her teeth as she barely managed to dodge another volley from the droid starfighter on her tail. “There’s nothing glorious about a pointless death. Power down your ships and surrender.”
“Wise call, Essara,” Dren said triumphantly.
But I’m taking you down, you treacherous grank, she thought.
Her astromech issues a series of familiar whoops and whistles. It was asking if it should initiate the shutdown sequence.
“No. I’m going to keep fighting until we get Bravo Eight.”
The droid offered an affirmative chirp. Her shields came back online. They were recharging. The power indicator was not as precise as the astromech droid, but she could tell they were at least at 50 percent strength.
She glanced at her tactical display. Her flight from the droid starfighter had taken her in the direction of the first carrier. A desperate idea popped into her head. She banked sharply to the left.
“Arm torpedoes,” she told the astromech droid. “We’re taking on the carrier.”
The droid issued a panicked flurry of sounds.
“You’re going to help me avoid their defensive fire. If we’re lucky, maybe a stray shot from the carrier will soften up the droid starfighters for us.”
“Essara, what are you doing?” Dren asked.
The tra
nslation screen came on just in time for her to see Ell-one say, We can’t get Dren if we’re dead.
“And we’re dead if we don’t something about those droid starfighters,” she snapped back.
The torpedoes loaded. Essara targeted the bump near the center of the carrier’s bulk: its primary bridge. She took its captain and gunners by surprise, because their point defense weapons didn’t start firing until four seconds after her torpedoes had launched.
“Help me get as close to the carrier as possible, Ell-one,” she said, diving the fighter sharply down toward the hull. She felt the astromech droid adjust the ship’s attitude, starting to pull out of the dive a second before she was planning to.
The torpedoes passed through the flak and with the astromech droid’s help, Essara wove safely through what seemed like the solid wall of superheated plasma bolts that rose from the carrier.
Once Essara was under the carrier’s defensive barrage, the capital ship’s matte-gray hull spread out before her like a vast desert. Its weapons spewed death like erupting volcanoes, but she flew too close for most of the weapons to target her.
The torpedoes impacted on the carrier as she started firing wildly across its hull. “Load another couple of torpedoes!”
Two droid starfighters are still pursuing. Another was taken out by friendly fire.
The astromech continued to beep and trill, but Essara didn’t dare look at the translation screen long enough to get the rest. Even with Ell-one’s assistance, she needed to concentrate on piloting. Flying this close to a capital ship, traveling at the speed she was going, was almost certain suicide even without a mechanized killer in pursuit.
A gun emplacement seemed to materialize directly in her path, its barrels swinging to fire at her. Essara’s conscious mind had barely registered its presence, but she was already firing on instinct. The emplacement burst into hundreds of metal shards that ricocheted off her shields.
One droid got knocked out by the explosion. Carrier’s shields at 44 percent. Our shields at 34 percent and holding.