Knight Squadron - Origins Ch. 03

Later brevet Captain Hunt met with base commander Colonel Karsan Linn, a weather beaten man of Knorr.

"As I understand it Captain you want to form a new fighter squadron?"

"Yes sir."

"Are you aware Captain that supplies of fighters are very limited nowadays, especially way out here?"

"With respect sir, Admiral Raeder has already given me this speech." Linn raised his eyebrows a bit and Aiden squirmed a bit under his gaze.

"Well then I should warn you that we only have six star-fighters available for you. The others were given to Wolf and Strike Wing Scorpion."

"Scorpion?" said Aidan, his eyes snapping open, "Who's commanding?'

"I think that Commander Jacob Becker is in charge."

"They promoted Lieutenant Becker?' said Aidan, "I wonder..." he paused and Linn began to talk again.

"We have three unassigned trainees you can interview. Their names are John Walker, Sovich, a Saurian believe it or not, and Siku Sassik. If you want, I could take you to meet them in oh, half a standard hour. Is that understood?"

Aiden snapped out of his reverie.

"Yes sir," he said.

"Good. You may go," said the Colonel, "Oh and Captain? For the time being your squad will be designated as Strike Wing Green until you come up with a better name. Dismissed."

Aiden saluted and then walked out of the office. He broke into a run as soon as he cleared the threshold, racing to find a couple of long lost friends.

***

Although the hangar on Dravin Base was a perfect example of controlled chaos, it wasn't hard to find Strike Wing Scorpion. Twelve Valkyrie's with standard red stripes painted blue sat in the far corner of the hangar. As Aiden walked over to them, he saw her. She had her back to him, talking to some rookie. He sneaked up behind her and said, "I've got an eyeball on my tail Commander, I can't shake him!" Lieutenant Ru Laredo stopped talking and slowly turned around. When her eyes landed on Aiden, they lit up like twin stars. She gave a cry of delight and enfolded him in a fierce hug. Aiden smiled. Ru was exactly the way he remembered her. Tall, but not enough to be uncomfortable in a fighter, and with her short blond her cut in a military style that kept it short but didn't give it a buzzed look. As she pulled back, he got a close up profile of her dazzling blue eyes.

Attracted by the shout, Commander Jacob Becker, the short, lean-muscled commander of Strike Wing Scorpion trotted over and then Aiden had to endure a bone-crunching slap to the back.

"Rookie one!" said Becker, using Aiden's old nickname, "what in the world are you doing here?"

"Hey! How's life with Wolf?" asked Becker.

"I've been doing fine all around, but I need to talk to you guys about something. I've left Wolf..." However, he didn't get a chance to finish, because Becker and Ru Laredo began to talk almost at once.

"You did what?"

"Why?"

"What the hell did you want to do that for?"

"I thought you were happy serving with Commander Mueller!"

"Whoa, whoa, you didn't give me a chance to finish! I left Wolf to start my own squadron. I want your help with it." This came as a bit of a shock to the veteran pilots.

"What exactly did you want our help with?" asked Becker, noticing for the first time, the rank of brevet Captain on Aiden's flight-suit.

"That's the thing. You see there aren't that many rookies here at the base. I have you and Wolf Squadron to thank for that. I want you to temporarily join up with Strike Wing Green, train the rookies; fly a couple of missions, then you can go back to Blue. You do out rank me, so I can only ask." Ru and Becker looked at each other and walked over underneath the wing of Becker' Valkyrie to talk, while Aiden watched nervously. After a couple of minutes, they came back over.

"Here's the deal," said Becker, "Scorpion rookies are gonna be a whole lot of work before we can send 'em out. The days when we just made sure that they could fly the ships and then hurled them out into space... those days died with Torreon III and Dravin VII. We'll join up, and keep in mind that we're only doing this because you were our squad mate, but if you don't want people to think that we're in charge, you'll have to do all the talking. Is that clear Captain?"

"Sir, yes sir!" saluted Aiden. Then he realized what he was doing. "You made me do that on purpose didn't you?" he said. Becker grinned wickedly.

"Yeah," he said simply and walked off. Ru then planted a quick kiss on Becker's cheek.

"I'm glad you're back. Too many new faces in the squad and not enough old friends," she said, smiling widely, then walked after.

"Oh, the future's looking a whole lot better," Aiden muttered blushing furiously. He turned to walk away when he saw Weis, Lilana, and some new guy whistling and making smooching gestures towards him. Aiden glared, then grinned. He stopped a couple of passing mech-droids, whispered something to them, and then stepped back. The two droids took off across the hangar, screeching and spitting sparks from their arc welders. The grins were wiped off the three pilots faces as the droids charged towards them. Weis and Lilana ran in one direction and the rookie went another as pilots and techs roared with laughter. Jacen Kruger and a new recruit named Ty Sakar wandered over.

"What'd you say to make those droids do that?" asked Jacen.

"I told them something they wanted to hear," shrugged Aiden. He began to whistle a nonsense tune as he strode away."

The very next day Colonel Linn introduced Aiden, Becker, and Ru to the three remaining rookies on base. John Walker was a native of the out of the way planet Kurba. He was short and lanky with shoulders just wide enough for him to be comfortable in a star-fighter cockpit. He had light brown hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. The next pilot was Siku Sassik, formerly a slave girl to an Imperial captain, was in a simulator next to Walker. Sovich was a Saurian.

At the moment the rookies were running a sim of the Battle of Dravin, Aiden winced slightly and saw that Ru and Becker had fixed expressions. They had all been at Dravin with what remained of Strike Wing Scorpion, fending off waves of Defender's as Strike Wing Eagle made their last desperate run on the Khawarij's orbital weapons platform. Every pilot in the Luftwaffe could rattle off the names and designations of the Dravin survivors.

The three rookies stepped from the sim cockpits, covered in sweat and grime. Sovich and Siku had been in Warthogs and had died early on. Walker had been in a Valkyrie and had been able to torpedo the port, but had been shot by a pulse cannon on his way out.

"Excellent work Cadets. Although you all died, at least you destroyed the station and saved the Reich," said Linn as the rookies snapped to attention, "Unfortunately we won't be holding a ceremony for you Mr. Walker. Anyhow, I'm here to give you new orders cadets. This is Captain Aiden Hunt, commander of the new Valkyrie training squad, Strike Wing Green. You've been assigned to it. These will be your fellow officers, Commanders Jacob Becker and Ru Laredo. That is all."

"Welcome to Strike Wing Green," said Aiden.

***

Two weeks later Aiden sat at his desk and groaned. His new office, that he was provided because he was a squadron commander, was sparsely furnished with the basics and was very small. But Aiden was unhappy for another reason. The three rookies had been showing good scores and Green had been provided with the remaining six Valkyrie's on base. Then the five new guys arrived on base, and had been assigned to Green. Aiden groaned again as he remembered the pilot interviews earlier that day.

Hiro Yu, home world unknown, had been involved with a Reich Intelligence cell on an orbital colony above Sulis Vay. He had been sent to destroy an entire Khawarij base, and had actually succeeded, destroying it entirely by his own hand. The destruction had accidentally spread out to the city and some civilians had been killed. Perhaps that explained the young man's absolute lack of emotion. The entire interview had been a sort of question and answer session with Hiro speaking in a dull monotone. Aiden had decided that if the young man showed any odd tendencies in the sim, he would be gone by next week.

Duke Max was a native of Ark Royale and had built a Valkyrie for himself out of junk. He was a lot more emotional than Yu had been, maybe too much so, but he kept reasonably in line as long as anyone didn't make 'junk' jokes or talk about his unusual 2 foot braid.

Rowan Barton was unemotional as well, but not totally devoid of them. He was just a very quiet, reserved man, capable of keeping his cool in the most stressful scenarios.

Quarter Winn was the odd man out. He was from Korsica and according to his file he had had a serious argument with his father about the Khawarij Empire and the Reich. Promptly after that he joined the Khawarij Fleet Academy and then defected to the Reich. This had taken some doing as the Mabahith (Khawarij Royal Security Service) had cracked down on dissention in the ranks.

Wulf Jag was from the colony world Naugatuck. That world had had a record of being problematic for the Khawarij Empire and had been 'disciplined' many times over the years. There rumors that Naugatuck been one of the Khawarij's targets after it was supposed to have destroyed the Dravin VII base. Wulf was also reserved, but his record had shown that he could be insubordinate and could boil over into battle frenzy whenever the mood hit him.

Aiden groaned again. This was going to be a long day. A very long day indeed.

***

The next day all 11 Strike Wing Green pilots met in Dravin IV's cramped briefing room. Aiden stood up at the podium and gathered his courage.

"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Strike Wing Green. Until someone comes up with a better name, that will be our training designation for the time being. Let me introduce myself. My name is Captain Aiden Hunt and served with Strike Wing Scorpion, and yes, I was at Dravin, as were Commander Becker and Lieutenant Laredo here. After Dravin I served with Wolf Squadron up until the battle of Dravin VII. Admiral Raeder and I have a little understanding concerning this squadron. As you know, we are critically short of both fighters and pilots, so what I'm supposed to do is turn this training squad into an elite squad within three months."

Aiden was about to continue when John Walker's hand came up.

"Flight Officer?"

"Sir, just wondering sir. Will we be doing more sim work?"

"That's a good question. Sit down, we will be doing more sim work yes. Plus it also has to do with the fact that we currently only have 11 Valkyrie's. Now, for flight assignments. I will be Green Leader. Call me lead, Green 1, boss, chief; whatever's your peril. And don't call me sir, it makes me feel old," he said with a grin, "Lieutenant Laredo will be my executive officer and Green 2, with Commander Becker as Green 3. Hiro Yu and Duke Max will be Greens 4 and 5, with Rowan Barton and Wulf Jag will be Greens 6 and 7, you'll be Green 8 and Walker's, Green 9, wing-man until we get a twelfth pilot. Finally Sovich and Siku will be Greens 10 and 11. Any questions?" Siku raised her hand.

"Flight Officer?"

"Just wondering sir, when we'll get the Valkyrie's to fill out the squad?"

"Not for a long while. By the way, if any of you have an idea for a squadron name, I'd like to see it on my desk. The lucky submitter will be awarded a three-day leave pass. Okay, you've got an hour and then we hit the simulators."

As the group broke up, Becker pulled Aiden to one side.

"Are you sure you've organized the squad correctly?' he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you think either Ru or myself should be in charge of one of the other flights?"

"Well I just thought that if you and Ru were in the same flight, that you'd be able to spend more time training Scorpion's rookies."

"I thought you needed us here?"

"Well uh, I want, uh, I want the rookies to learn how to be leaders within the squad, so I figured I should put two of them in charge of the other two flights."

"Okay if that's what you want to do," shrugged Becker, and walked out of the briefing room.

Aiden now felt like he was betraying his old commander in some unfathomable way. He sighed and walked out of the briefing room.