'Are we there yet?' whined Twitch, in Rodian.
'Nope,' said Face, leading the way through the jungle.
'Are we there yet?' asked Ro'vena, the Twi'lek, playfully.
'No,' said Face patiently.
'Are we there yet?' asked Cora.
'No,' repeated Face.
Are we there yet?' asked Rana Madak, the female Duros twin.
'Yes,' said Face matter of factly. The other Nexu pilots following him all stopped short.
'Really?' said Luna, surprised.
'Really really,' said Face, and pointed to his left. 'It's just on the other side of that ridge.'
At once, several of the Nexus rushed to the ridge, kneeling and then finally lying on the ground when they reached the top, to look over the edge without being seen. Luna couldn't resist going with them, but when she looked, she could see nothing. 'There's nothing there,' she called back.
'Made you look,' came Face's gloating reply, and the pilots who fell for it grumbled and fell back into line. They had been hiking through the jungle for the last two hours, having left their speeder bikes hidden in a ravine, underneath a camouflage net. That march had come after a half a day of riding those bikes from their shuttle, itself hidden in a grove of Manoji trees several hundred kilometres to the west.
Getting to the planet was the culmination of a completely different trek. Nexu squadron had linked up with Poe Dameron and his Rapier squadron as they patrolled the Mirrin sector, and Face had tasked the mostly silent Fenn Tegmen, the communications specialist, and the eager to please Nautolan Zatt Fendy, their slicer, to work closely with Rapier squadron, combining intelligence resources to determine a likely home base.
'Just don't go in shooting,' Face warned Poe. 'I promise you can go in and destroy everything in sight - but after we get what we want.'
At the mention of destruction, Kai 'Me'sei perked up. 'Boom?' he said hopefully, his fur standing on end in excitement. The Bothan was their explosives expert, or as he liked to describe his job, 'make things go boom'.
'Boom,' Poe nodded in solemn agreement, then grinned, and punched Face on the arm. 'You got it, pal. Whatever you need is yours.'
Vix, the buff Devaronian, sidled up to him with a suggestive smile. 'Anything?'
Poe smiled and picked up his helmet. 'Time to hit the space lanes. Come on, BB-8.'
A cheerful chirrup sounded from where the BB-series ball droid was talking to Forlorn, a beat up old R4 droid that had a length of rope tied around its body, the other end of which was being held by Cora.
Afterwards, after every skirmish that Rapier squadron had with the local pirates, Nexu squadron had gone in and picked up the debris of the battle, broken up bits of Uglies - that's what the pirate ships were called, they soon found. Mashed together bits of old starfighters, rarely the same model. A-wings with Y-wing engines. X-wings with old Imperial TIE fighter solar panels. Once, they had even recovered a Clone War era Jedi starfighter with centuries-old wings from a starfighter that none of them could even identify. The Madak twins stripped down the starfighters, looking for clues in the parts they used, while Zatt combed through the flight data, and Fenn collated all the data, piecing together a picture of their movements, and finally Garik and Luna, the squadron's tactician, analysed the data until, finally, Face called them together for a briefing.
'We think they're in the Shumavar system,' he announced, 'in the Atravis sector.'
'Fantastic,' said Vix Horne, rubbing his heads together. 'When do we go in and smash some heads?'
Face shook his head. 'No smashing heads,' he said. 'At least not in the way you're thinking. We're going there to steal a ship.'
'No boom?' said Kai sadly.
'Not this time,' said Face, then hesitated. 'Maybe a little boom.' The Bothan's fur stood on end, making him look twice as big as he actually was.
'Good work, Fenn,' said Ka'iulani, giving the silent communications specialist a one armed hug. They continued to stare at the floor, but Luna was sure they were smiling.
It was the fifth planet that they'd checked when they finally found the base, Fenn picking up the errant comm traffic, and then triangulating the base's position. Nexu squadron landed at night, Cora piloting their shuttle on no power, gliding through the atmosphere until they were just a few hundred metres above the surface, powering up the engine and made a textbook silent landfall. The next day they began their trek to where they believed the pirates were encamped.
'Now,' said Face, satisfied, as he looked over the quiet town below him, half hidden in the dusk. 'Now we're here.'
