trans_9 | A little too close a call [OPEN]

Trudy walked down the corridors with her general wide stride, her dogtags jingling and her rifle bouncing against her back. She'd slung it on the other side from her healing rib - which was also why she wasn't moving really fast. Of course, she was on her way to visit the ship that had kept her alive. She had to see what all those near-misses had done. At least scratched the paint, maybe more. She thought a shot had skimmed her astromech, and then there had been the blast that had crippled the Dart.

The hanger, unsuprisingly, was fairly busy. She figured she'd run into at least a couple of the squadron's mechanics, and probably even more of the squadron. It would be good to see the guys - and she especially wanted to talk to the General.

As she crossed over to her X-wing, she passed her Samson and paused. It was still in the same state it had been before she started training with Rogue Squadron. It took up a big chunk of her time, and getting caught up in the media library on her ship's specs took up the rest of it. "Sorry bebe," she said under her breath. "Guess I've left you after all."

She walked over to the X-wing, trailing her hand along its underside. It definitely showed that it had been in a firefight. There were a couple of blaster marks hellishly close to her engines, that made her start grinning like a fool. "Guess it could have been a whole hell of a lot worse," she said, tapping the cross around her neck. "Good on you, big man."

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He frowned a little at the injuries, but if she was up and about he wasn't going to fuss over her. Besides they needed as many hands right now as they could get. That, and she was a pilot so she'd just ignore him anyway. "I'm managing alright. I'll talk to Wedge about getting everyone flightsuits. We should have enough material from the shopping to cover everyone."

Trudy's face went blank, like it always did when she was trying to hide something from someone, and then she kind of gave in with a half-shrug. It wasn't like Kyle was her superior officer or something, even if he did know the General from before Stacy. "They came with the X-wings," she said. "In the cockpits of the ships - I was just in too damn big of a hurry to shuck it on before I went up. Seconds count, you know." She gave him a lopsided grin. "I know better for next time."

Kyle was just concerned for his fellow soldiers. He'd always been that way. One of the reasons he'd worked alone for so long. Easier than dealing with all the worry. Thankfully he'd learned otherwise since then. "I'm just glad everyone made it back in one piece. It looked pretty bad there for a bit."

Trudy was quiet again for a second before she nodded. "Thought we were going to lose Shinn for a little while there," she said. "And Silver got himself sucked out into space, thank God he was wearing a suit."

Those had been harrowing moments, where the adrenaline went down her spine in jolts. "Nobody dead, though. Have to say I'm surprised."

"I was worried about Arha myself. Glad she pulled through. I actually thought we might lose her, and Asuka both."

"I wish I could say I wasn't, but I am too. We had a lot of good fortune out there mixed in with the bad." Loss of a couple of vehicles of course being minor compared to losing any of the pilots. Still it had been far too close for a few of them.

Trudy grunted an affirmative - dwelling on how close it had been for a few of them wasn't the best way to make sure nobody got dead the next time, but it was a necessary step. "How'd you think we did overall? I mean, I'm not a fighter pilot, but I have my own evaluation - think it was a sloppy mess, think some people got stuck planetside that should have been in the air."

"Of course things were sloppy. It was a surprise attack, and we all had our guards down from the shore leave. We still managed to scramble pretty well considering. There was nothing we could do about the people caught on the surface. It was more of a communications failure. The bridge team should have been sending us priority targets, and telling us where the evacuation ships were. As it was we were just busting things up the best we could. I guess it was enough to give those ships some cover, but it shouldn't have been like that." Maybe his critique was a bit harsh on the folks that weren't Rogues, but that was his honest assessment. The Squadron had done well despite flying mostly blind into a total ball of chaos.

"Sounded to me like command is where it broke down," Trudy said with a nod. "Pilots should've been priority with the kids and noncombatants." She shrugged a little. "Sooner we get in the air, the more good we can do. We're not so much use to anyone stuck on the ground right now - although that's one thing I'm gonna put a bug in the General's ear about."

"We should have. At least we learned some lessons without losing a bunch of good people." Cheaper price than was usually paid for something like that. "I'm not sure how command above Wedge is going to be sorted out. It's a bit above my pay grade at the moment, but we can at least work on our own teamwork in the meantime. I know those mobile suits threw in an element I'm not used to working with."

"You and me both," Trudy said with a grin, but then again, she was gunning for a promotion and not exactly being subtle about it. Then her grin grew at the mention of the suits - "They're a treat to fly with, I tell you what," she said. "Like mobile anti-aircraft cover, and they pack a pretty heavy payload on top of it. Problem is they're kind of slow right now, but that's up to engineering to sort out."

"Hopefully we'll be able to fully integrate their use into the squadrons tactics quickly. I'm rather curious how they'd do in a support role for ground forces." Considering they were completely lacking in artillery having something mobile like to that advance with the troops would be incredibly valuable.

"It's an idea - we might have a couple mecha that aren't space-worthy, so bringing those pilots into the fold wouldn't be a bad plan." Trudy wasn't suited to tactics, to tell the truth. She'd leave that to people who were better at it.

She reached up and patted the hull of her X-wing, glancing over the ships neatly lined up in the hangar. "I'd like for engineering to figure out how to build more of these. We're going to need 'em worse than pilots at this rate."

"It would be nice if we could," he said glancing up at the fighter. "I don't think we're going to have the capability any time soon though. That's assuming we even have access to the needed materials. Still it would be nice to have a few more. Maybe they'll be able to fabricate some of the spare parts in time. Not perfect, but we could keep these buckets in the air at least."

A little too close a call [OPEN]

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