Omega should have known better.
She’d been careful, obviously she’d been careful. But she supposed she should have known better than to expect to fly up to an Imperial occupied planet and say, hi, I’m here to sign up for the Rebellion! Can you point me towards their pilots?
Not a small part of her wondered why they’d chosen this world for the rendezvous at all. Sure Lothal was out of the way (backwater by most of the Empire’s standards) but the thriving doonium mining operation already warranted a significant military presence, a presence which had only increased since the outbreak of a troublesome rebel cell there (Omega’s pickup without a doubt). Echo assured her that the person he’d arranged the coordinates with - someone named Agent Fulcrum, she was pretty sure - was sending Omega to their most trusted contact. “Well, other than me,” he’d added cheekily. Only the best for his little sister.
But it was still Imperial occupied. Which meant Imperial patrols.
Omega held her breath as a formation of TIE fighters zoomed overhead. She’d concealed the Marauder II as best she could behind a spiraling rock formation, but there was only so much it could do, and there was nothing else out here except grass, grass, and more grass. She thought it was far enough from the Capital that it wouldn’t be a problem, but clearly she was wrong. Was she near a flight base? Or had they increased the range of their patrols since the rebels had been attacking?
It didn’t matter. An unregistered, unmarked starship parked in the middle of nowhere behind a rock didn’t look good no matter what. She just had to hope the ship was hidden enough that the TIEs would pass right by…
“Unidentified vessel, you are trespassing in Imperial territory. Respond and present your credentials.”
Force-dammit.
It was in situations liked these that Omega tended to ask herself what her brothers would do. Wrecker would start blasting, no questions there. Hunter, stall for time before performing evasive maneuvers (he would shoot down a few of them anyway). Crosshair could probably scare them off with a couple sentences, and Echo would attempt to talk his way out even though he couldn’t lie worth bantha poodoo.
Fortunately, Omega was a sight better at scams than him, and by now she had learned to just ask what she would do.
“Imperial fighters, this is shuttle CX-99,” she responded, making up a registration number on the spot, “this is my family’s hunting ground. I’m not trespassing.”
“This is barren wasteland. What are you hunting?”
Double dammit. Omega didn’t know any native Lothal wildlife. Unless Loth-cats counted. Did the locals eat those? “I’m not currently hunting. My Loth-cat got out. I just want to find her.” The story made her heart ache for Batcher.
Omega waited a long, tense moment for the circling fighters to respond. When was her contact going to show up? They should have been here by now.
Finally, they answered, “we’re going to have to escort you back to base. Power up your ship and do not attempt to break formation or you will be fired upon.” It looked like she would have to do this the old-fashioned way.
“Roger that.” She started up the engines and rose gently up the level where the TIEs waited, trying to seem as complicit as possible. There were three of them, two to either and one behind her - perfect to blast her engines to pieces if she tried to escape. For most pilots, not great odds.
Good thing Omega had been taught by the best.
As soon as they had picked up enough speed (and she had psyched herself up) Omega fired the thrusters to full power and yanked the yoke back. The Marauder II swerved upwards faster than the TIEs could blink. They recovered quickly though (almost as if they expected it) and their ships were more maneuverable than Omega’s. They pulled up and spread out like very deadly blossoming flower petals, and the battle was on.
Omega curved into a backwards loop and leveled out again as the Imperials were moving to hem her in. The rearward TIE had shot forward when she flew out from in front of it and now found itself face-to-face with her forward guns. It jinked sideways right as she let loose. Her shot grazed one of its fins, but the damage wasn’t enough to take it out of commission. She started to chase after it, but a burst of laser fire forced her away.
Omega entered another climb - she needed as much altitude she could get. A series of zigzag motions threw off the TIE’s aim, but she was going to have to lose them soon. Though with nothing but open sky and endless miles of grassland between her and them, that would be harder than she thought.
She told Hunter she would be careful. He believed in her. All her brothers did. And here she was, barely a day out of Pabu, Imps already hot on her tail.
Omega grit her teeth and gripped the throttle in preparation for her next maneuver…
Then an explosion ripped through the sky and the TIEs scattered as their crippled companion went up in flames. A small gasped escaped her and she nearly spun around in the pilot’s seat as a new starship appeared and zipped overhead. A freighter of some kind, though it went by too fast for her to make out the exact type, and clearly tricked out as a Corellian smuggler’s.
The intercom crackled. “Sorry we’re late,” sounded a confident feminine voice, “we heard there were Imperial patrols in the area.”
A huge grin split Omega’s face. “Yeah, no kidding! You take the one on the left, I’ll take the one on the right!”
“You got it! And keep your eyes peeled, they’ll have called for reinforcements. Sabine, ready on the guns!”
Enthusiasm bolstered, Omega swung the Marauder II back around where the remaining enemies awaited. Her new ally had successfully herded the two apart, engaging their target in a breakneck game of cat-and-mouse. Omega found herself coming at hers headlong and wove to avoid blaster fire. She let off a quick burst of her own, but they both broke off at the last second, immediately swooping back for another pass.
Omega’s vision darted rapidly between the outside and her targeting system, channeling all of Crosshair’s lessons. The shots nearly landed this time, but again she was forced to divert. Executing a rapid series of sharp maneuvers, she attempted to get onto the TIE’s six, but to no avail. It was built to perform masterfully in space and atmo alike, giving it a major advantage over the Marauder II. She couldn’t keep this up for long.
Utilizing the altitude she had gained, Omega angled her ship into a dive, simultaneously diverting power to the rear deflector shields. The Imperial pilot instantly tailed her and they screamed towards the ground.
Fortunately, Omega knew there were ways to outmaneuver even a TIE fighter.
She counted the precious, agonizing seconds in her head as the g-forces built up, then slammed down on the right rudder. She cut the starboard engine, forcing the ship through an in no way structurally sound one-eighty, reactivating it as the Imperial fighter filled her vision. The startled pilot had no time nor room to recover. The last thing they saw was the red discharge of Omega’s cannons.
You just had to know your tricks.
Yet there was no time to take a breath. No sooner had Omega returned to a stable attitude than her proximity sensors blared. She quickly hailed the rebel ship. “Heads up, we got bogies!”
“Yup, we’re on them! What took you so long?” the other pilot responded.
Oh, so that was how it was going to be. Excellent. Omega loved a challenge.
The two starships powered into the dogfight with relish, flying together as if they’d done it a hundred times before. They wove around one another deftly, keeping enemy tails off of each other, setting each other up for prime shots, calling out warnings and encouragement.
“Target four o’clock high, watch out!”
“Coming in to help!”
“Yeah, nice shooting!”
Omega didn’t quite understand why, but something about the routine felt oddly familiar.
A shouted warning suddenly sounded from the rebel fighter, which had briefly broken away from Omega to chase a fleeing TIE. “Heading zero-seven-nine! There’s a whole bunch!”
Omega gasped as no less than four Imps suddenly dropped on her. She jerked the Marauder II away. Red lights flashed as emergency alerts blared and the ship rattled a little; they must have grazed the hull. The rebels were speeding back, but not quickly enough.
Omega had a better idea.
“New plan!” she announced into the radio, and dove again. They’d covered some ground during the skirmish: ahead lay a sprawling mass of those towering, conical rock formations. Why couldn’t they have set the rendezvous there in the first place? “Line up four klicks out, mark three-five-zero point one! I’m going to lead them to you!”
“Copy that!”
Omega opened the throttle, racing for the rocks. Green laser fire whizzed past her. The rebel freighter appeared in her line of sight, taking potshots at the Imps behind her.
It happened in the blink of an eye. The Marauder II cleared the rock formation, and again Omega stomped on the rudder, but this time, she killed both engines. She curved neatly around the spire before launching them again, unleashing a wide, sweeping curtain of blaster fire as she did. She took out two of the TIEs and avoided colliding with another by a hair. Her wingman, long since in position, blew the rest to splinters.
Omega let out a whistling breath and slumped in her seat. “That,” she said aloud, “was fun.”
Another transmission came in. “Well, that was about as much of a Ghost-crew welcome as it gets. Didn’t scare you off, did it?”
“No way,” she replied. After a pause, she added, “but for kriffs sake, make your connections more discreet!”
“We’re working on it,” a deeper voice grunted.
As the two ships settled into cruise flight side-by-side, the Ghost pilot asked, “so, care to introduce yourself, new rebel?”
“I’m Omega. My vod’e Echo sent me to you. Said you were the best - and if that flying was anything to judge by, he was right.”
The compliment went unacknowledged. Instead, the pilot said, “wait - Omega? As in… Clone Force 99?”
Omega drew in a sharp breath. No one had referred to them that way since…
“How do you know me?”
The rebel pilot’s laugh echoed through the comms. “You and your squad got me and my family out of a sticky situation once. It’s me, Omega - Hera. Hera Syndulla.”
The memory came back to her instantly, and her jaw hit the floor. “Hera?!”
She’d lost her Ryloth accent, but now Omega recognized her voice clear as day. And she remembered that mission - sneaking into the Imperial compound, stealing that shuttle and frightening the life out of Hunter - like it was yesterday. She laughed in delight. “I can’t believe it. No, scratch that - of course you would end up in the Rebellion.”
“Better believe it. It’s an honor to be fighting beside you again, Omega." A pause. "Chopper says hi, by the way.”
Omega grinned again even though they couldn’t see it. “You too. Your flying has definitely improved.”
Hera laughed. “Yours too. That was a pretty impression stunt you pulled back there.”
“Thanks.” Omega’s smiled turned sad. She bent down and reached under her seat, where a pair of broken goggles had fallen during the battle. She placed them back on their rightful spot on the dashboard.
“It’s called the Tech Turn.”
