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Heeding the Call

"Sir, I've found something in this console!"

"What is it, Baker?" Jagged Fel stopped working on his own console, climbed down the ladder, and walked over to Baker's console to look at it. "Well?"

"They look like hyperjump co-ordinates, sir. See here?" The terminal flickered and Baker pointed at the first set of numbers. "My guess is that this is where we are..." He moved his finger to the second set of numbers. "And this is the destination."

"Well," Jagged said. "They certainly didn't do a good job of smashing the computers if we can recover this. Rebel sloppiness at its best, it seems."

"If I may say so, sir, the Rebels aren't always this sloppy."

"I know, Baker... It's just that they had plenty of time to wipe the logs between prisoner evac and our arrival. I can see how we took them by surprise here, but still..."

"Yes, sir," Baker said, "but I used a tool to recover deleted data from the terminal to get this info, rather than finding it just sitting around."

"That makes more sense. Careless trainee didn't secure-delete, perhaps." Jagged thought it out some more. "Okay, I'll go up to the navicomputer in the shuttle and see what it says. Keep looking."

"Aye, sir. Keeping scanners locked on target."

"Good work, Baker." Jagged turned the corner from the room and was gone.

"Whee, a recon mission!" Phantom's enthusiasm was obviously sarcastic.

"Cheer up. It could be a suicide mission." Steel was usually in a good mood when he got to fly, even a little.

"Okay, okay, you've got a point. Only, I was hoping to do some blowing up this time around." She picked her TIE helmet off the desk. "I always get recon missions, it feels like."

"My point about suicide missions still stands."

"Very well, very well. I'm going to the bar."

Laithlis handed out datapads to the Psi pilots as they entered the room. Once everyone was seated, he began to speak. "Good afternoon, pilots. I trust you are all over last night's hangovers...? Good. Let's go on."

The briefing screen illuminated, and Laithlis began to talk about the mission in earnest. "The Imperial Army recovered the co-ordinates to this space station early yesterday. Believing it to be the location of the Imperial prisoners we did not find before, we have pursued it and will be arriving in-system shortly."

He cleared his throat and continued. "We don't expect heavy resistance. This is a remote camp, and we suspect that the Rebels do not know that we are following. That said, keep your eyes open. It's far too easy to get killed on what should be a 'simple' mission.

"So, everyone got it? No questions? This is especially easy on me. Get going, then pilots. Good luck."

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