A-wing recon, Mummified Giants

            I dreamed I was flying through a heavily forested area in an A-Wing, following a river. I was looking for intruders. There had been an invasion of sorts and the invaders were finally making their moves. The mission profile was essentially a recon; draw fire and use return force only to the extent needed to make your way out.

            The head's up display in the cockpit added a grey flag to any suspected structure or emplacement. At one point I flew across the open river bed under an arched canopy of tall trees. The head's up display sprang to life with literally dozens of flags. Soon I was taking small arms fire from several emplacements along the river bank. We started the sensor recordings, (we being myself and the astromech droid) and I made for the lower branches of the trees.

            There was barely enough space for me to fly through the lower branches. I was able to shake a couple of pursuers by doing so. The pursuers were some sort of bandaged being mounted on a giant insect with jet turbines attached. I'm fairly certain the insects were not just machines designed to look like insects. I just out flew them rather than dogfight them. (I suspect that I would not have been able to out maneuver them at all, but I was much faster.)

            I pulled out of the trees at the first opportunity and armed my concussion missiles. I could feel the loaders switching out the load of sensor drones in the missile bays on either side of the craft. I also started fully charging my lasers and shields. There were now hundreds of little grey flags superimposed over the landscape. I headed for one of the larger conglomerations.

            In a clearing I spotted several dozen aliens working on a giant mummy. I don't know what they were using for raw materials, but it looked like meat and bones, flesh and blood. The mummies were laid out between high-tech looking shelters and the tools and equipment being used to piece the automatons together looked very Star Wars modern but well used. I jetted over, taking close sensor readings. Again, I started to draw small arms fire.

            A giant mummy stood up directly in my path. It looked quite a bit like Radiment from the Diablo II game. Beams flashed from its eyes.

            I opened up with the cannons, but the laser blasts seemed to have no effect. Its wrappings seemed to absorb the damage. I fired two missiles into its face without a weapon lock, (the computer didn't seem to register it as a valid target.) The missiles struck a couple of seconds before I flew over the mummy. It toppled behind me. I spun the A-wing around in a flat spin, firing the remaining half load of concussion missiles behind me at the insects rising from the ground.

            Even though the A-Wing is aerodynamic, it is still an anti-grav science fiction fighter. What a cool maneuver. I was however slowing down as I couldn't thrust as hard in reverse.

            I transferred power to the engines and spun back around. The loaders chunked and I fired the last few sensor drones out in a spiral away from my path, spraying them in all directions. I accelerated at the edge of the inertial compensator's ability to keep me conscious. I fired the remaining energy stored in the laser batteries ahead of my path to clear an escape route. I stayed close to the ground until I was out of the grey flag territory, then doubled the rear deflector (I was still taking some fire from a large ground based turbo laser) and angled myself for the sky. I wove up into the clouds to avoid taking any more damage from the big guns. The Astromech gave the system an all clear and I micro jumped to orbital distance and began downloading my sensor data to a nearby frigate.

            The Frigate signaled me to report to a nearby cruiser rather than land at home. It looked like I was going to get to escort some B-Wings on a "recon in force." The rest of my squadron was already in transit to the cruiser, they were in old X-wings. I'd hoped they would have at least sent the other 3 recon A-wings; we could really use the speed against the insect "ships" of the enemy.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF