Part I: Good News at NoGnus

A small rag-tag fleet drifts through space. Nearby is the Outer-Rim planet of NoGnus. The planet itself is singularly unremarkable, as are its inhabitants: a form of alien herbivore that’s brown and furry with a beard and curly horns. A planet full of game and prey would normally attract hunters and predators, but the flesh of these creatures is so bland and tasteless that it’s deemed not worth the effort. Today, however, NoGnus is good news: the planet has an important role to play. It is the first checkpoint on the Great Space Coaster, a secret series of hyperspace lanes in the Aturi Cluster that will lead ships to the hidden Rebel base in the area, Seekrit Base.

The rag-tag fleet navigating past NoGnus is a small Rebel convoy of transports, freight haulers, and tankers protected by a corvette and some fighters. Being so rag-tag, the fleet is trying to sneak through the system with about the same success as an overweight ninja with a bellyful of bean burritos and hot sauce. Fortunately for them, this area is bereft of Imperial patrols, listening posts, bases, stations, and interest. Unfortunately for them, this is also where the Empire sends its troublesome Imperial Academy TIE pilots in the hopes that they’ll get lost, run out of fuel, crash into an asteroid, or otherwise meet their demise and fail to return. The Empire is a harsh mistress.

One such group of misfit pilots just happened to be in the area as the rag-tag fleet (henceforth RTF) was flatulating its way past NoGnus. Long range scanners on the RTF corvette, Danglybitz, alerted the crew to their presence.
“Sir!” shouted Matt the Radar Technician, startled out of his stupor by the incessant beeping of the scanner station.
“What is it?” inquired the captain of Danglybitz, Jean-Luc, in his deep gravelly lisp.
“There’s a small group of TIE Fighters at the edge of our sensor range, and they seem to be coming this way!” replied Matt the Radar Technician.
“There’s not supposed to be any TIE Fighters around here!” exclaimed a befuddled Jean-Luc. He thought hard for a moment. It gave him a migraine. “Scramble the fighters to intercept. Who is available?”
“Rainbow Squadron,” replied the Fighter Coordinator, Bruce.
“Say it’s not so,” muttered Jean-Luc under his breath, but of course everybody heard him. “Is there anyone else we can send?” he pleaded. “Skull Squadron, Wraith Squadron, Mauve Squadron, Men At Work Squadron?”
“No sir.”
“Crap. Well, at least Rainbow Dash can keep them in line and maybe damage one or two TIEs while we jump to hyperspace.”
Fighter Coordinator Bruce hated to crush Captain Jean-Luc’s hopes (no he didn’t), but he had to tell him. “Sir, Rainbow Dash can’t fly. Her A-Wing is undergoing an engine replacement and getting a new paint job after her latest Sonic Rainboom attempt.”
“Crap and a half.” Captain Jean-Luc paused for a moment. “Fine, send the rest of Rainbow Squadron after the TIEs. Hopefully the Imperials will be too busy laughing at them and killing them to notice us.”

Jean-Luc activated the comms unit at his station and selected the fleet channel. “Convoy, this is Captain Jean-Luc aboard Danglybitz. Imperial fighters are heading our way and it’s only a matter of time before they detect us. Fighters are on the way to intercept, but we need to jump out of here immediately. Let’s set a record for the fastest jump to hyperspace from a cold start!”
He wasn’t sure if his attempt at motivating the fleet was successful (everyone else on the bridge and in the fleet was sure: it wasn’t), but none of them liked the idea of being captured by the Empire and forced to work in their name-brand apparel sweatshops, and that was all the motivation they needed. Navicomputers were put to work, as were Navigators and their abacuses. It was a race to see which would complete the calculations first.

Fighter Coordinator Bruce switched comm frequencies to fighter control. “Rainbow Squadron: incoming Imperial Fighters. Intercept and destroy them before they can locate our convoy. Or at least give us time to hyper outta here!” Fighter Coordinator Bruce listened to the acknowledgements over the comms, then got a call from the hangar bay. After breaking the connection, he called for Captain Jean-Luc, who was busy polishing the Federation pin on his red and black uniform.
“Sir, Rainbow Dash is requesting another ship so she can join her squadron,” said Fighter Coordinator Bruce.
“We don’t have any more ships, she knows that!”
“She said there’s a few old Mark IIs still on the Galactica she can take.”
‘I really hate these universe crossovers,’ Jean-Luc thought to himself. “No time for that, dammit! Tell her to sit tight and she can go all ‘Sonic Rainboom’ on the next Imperials we encounter. We’re jumping outta here.”
'It’s a good thing this is Star Wars,’ thought Jean-Luc, ‘and that we have sound in space, else her whole Sonic Rainboom nonsense would be even more ridiculous than it already is.’

Nearby, in space, the three active ships of Rainbow Squadron were forming up (meaning they all ended up generally flying in the same direction and not colliding with each other). Planet NoGnus shrank rapidly in their rear windows as the fighters cruised toward the last known location of the TIE Fighters. Well, at least Gnimm, the Jawa, assumed the planet was shrinking in his rear window: he couldn’t see back there. He had a booster seat which raised him up enough to see over the front instrument panel of his Y-Wing, Ootini Express, but the seatback behind him still stuck up high over his head, blocking his view to the rear. It wasn’t long before they picked up the TIE Fighters on their scanners and they accelerated to attack speed. Rick James, the Bothan, and his astromech companion Charlie Murphy in their X-Wing, Five Fingers, flew in the center of the three ships with Buzz Lightweight flying Warty the Hog on the left and Ootini Express on the right. There was a pair of TIE Fighters directly ahead of them past a couple of asteroids, and another pair off to the left.

The TIE fighters all identified Rainbow Squadron at the same time and began to maneuver against them. This almost resulted in their destruction as all four nearly crashed into asteroids attempting to turn toward the Rebels. They were able to swerve to avoid any collisions, which split up the left-most pair and sent the other pair flying off to the right. Rainbow Squadron bored straight in at this last pair of TIEs. Buzz Lightweight was just close enough to target lock one of them, and shouting “To indecency and beyond!” he held down all his triggers, spraying a fusillade of crimson from his primary weapons and his twin laser turret. The range was great and the TIE evasive, but he managed to wing it much to everyone’s surprise.

In fact, the TIE fighters were so surprised they nearly flew into the invisible wall that surrounded this particular square battleground. It would have destroyed them, but they were able to swerve again back into the fight. The leftmost group of TIEs, numbers 3 and 4, had sorted themselves out and were flying straight at Buzz Lightweight ready to greet him with green death (as they liked to call it). TIEs 5 and 6 (6 was the now damaged one), set their sights on Ootini Express, unnerved by the tiny yellow glowing eyes they could see peeping just over the instrument panel in the Y-Wing's cockpit.

“Hang a left!” shouted Rick James as he banked his X-Wing in the stated direction. Warty the Hog followed his maneuver, ready to play chicken with TIEs 3 and 4.

Gnimm tried the same, but due to his booster seat shifting as he banked, he ended up turning a full 90 degrees right in front of TIEs 5 and 6. In a panic and now unable to see his assailants, he wildly spun his Ion Turret in their general direction and sprayed and prayed, his version of praying to be shouting, “Ootini!” from within his deep cowl. TIE 5 was even more surprised than before when he got hit by an Ion blast and his controls momentarily shorted out. His cannons still worked, however, and he blasted a shield off the offending Y-Wing.

Rick James was oblivious to this as he aimed his X-Wing straight at TIE 4. He shouted, "What does Five Fingers say to the TIE?" and let loose with a quad-linked shot from his wing-tip cannons. “KAPOW! I’m Rick James, b####!” he exclaimed as the unfortunate TIE was vaporized by three of the four bolts tearing through its hull. He then shouted “Charlie Murphy is here!” as he flew through the debris. The R2 unit obligingly tweeted in #approval and #bloodlust.

Next to him, Buzz Lightweight was frustrated that he couldn’t buzzsaw with his TLT this time since TIE 3 was so close, so he let loose with a consolation shot from his nose cannons. The bolts flew true, blasting through the TIE’s canopy and right through the embarrassed pilot’s eyes, killing him and exploding his ship. “To infinity and Beyonce!” crowed Buzz.

With the odds now in their favor, Rainbow Squadron prepared to finish off the last two TIEs. Rick James and Buzz Lightweight both K-turned to head back toward TIEs 5 and 6, while Gnimm tried to bank to the right and escape the arc of TIE 5 who was drifting lazily forward, ionized.

“I’m Rick James!” shouted, unsurprisingly, Rick James, as he fired at the two TIEs. They were close enough that he didn’t bother aiming at one in particular, expecting that if he missed one, he’d hit the other. He hit neither. Buzz Lightweight wasted no time in pulling all his triggers again sending a wild series of shots at the TIEs. He had more success than Rick James, which is not surprising considering he fired like three dozen more shots. Once again TIE 6 was shocked to be hit by such random fire, and was getting pretty unnerved by Buzz Lightweight’s exclamations, which this time went something like, “To indigestion and burritos!”

Gnimm, still unable to see the TIEs as they were still behind him, had to rely on his various custom side mirrors to aim his ion turret. “Ootini!” screeched across the spacewaves again. This time when the ion blast hit the already ionized TIE 5, it sent a jolt of electricity up the control column and into the pilot’s hands. The pilot had a brief seizure and wet himself, adding the aroma of recently-eaten asparagus to the cockpit already filled with the stench of ozone from the ion blasts and his cat Fluffy’s predilection for using the TIE as her litter box, rather than her actual litter box in their quarters.

It was just a day for surprises. In the middle of Rainbow Squadron’s growing sense of triumph, the iron-shod boot of reality stomped down upon their celebrations. A TIE Interceptor streaked out from behind an asteroid onto Warty the Hog’s tail and blasted the shields right off it exposing the bare ugly hull. Rick James and Buzz Lightweight tried to accelerate away, but it was too quick and stayed right behind Buzz. Gnimm was swinging Ootini Express around toward the Interceptor, ready to ionize it (he thinks he’s getting the hang of this thing now), but would he make it in time?

Gnimm was the first to fire, beating the Interceptor to the trigger! His ion shots flashed toward the enemy craft… and past it. He missed! Gnimm couldn’t believe his dimming, yellow, unblinking lights-for-eyes. He’s been routinely hitting TIE fighters up to this point using nothing but blind panic and rearview mirrors (the round, concave, fish-eye, distorting stick on kind that you see on minivan side mirrors), and this one time when he can actually aim directly he missed? Gnimm needed to change out his eye bulbs.

Buzz Lightweight was not aware of any of Gnimm’s discomfiture. He had plenty of his own, the flightsuit-seat-filling kind, as he could see with his own eyes that the Interceptor was settling on his tail, close enough to give it a big wet sloppy kiss. Before his eminent demise, though, Buzz was determined to shred one last TIE fighter, and lucky for him he could see two practically bumping into each other just in front of Rick James who was a little way ahead.

Yelling a defiant, “To immolation and buggery!” he mashed down on all his triggers sending red death at the TIEs. Except the TIEs didn’t die! They handily evaded the blasts aimed at them (to be fair, most shots went wild anyway, so it’s not like the TIEs really did anything remarkable). Warty the Hog seemed to be a particularly inaccurate TLT-toting BTL-A4 Warthog Y-Wing.

Buzz Lightweight didn’t have time to curse the fates, the force, Warty the Hog, life, the universe, or everything. The Interceptor licking his rear fired a quad blast from its wingtip cannons! Green light from the lasers filled the cockpit around Buzz as the bolts streaked at him… and flashed past! The TIE Interceptor pilot has positioned himself so close and perfectly behind Warty the Hog, and the Y-Wing was such a flat shape that the laser bolts flew harmlessly inches above and below the Y-Wing’s engine spars to dissipate in the distance.

Buzz let out an explosive breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and yanked his Y-Wing off to the right to get the hell out of Dodge, wherever and whatever Dodge was. He quickly started holding his breath again, though, because the air scrubbers in his cockpit were having a hard time removing the stench of suddenly voided bowels from the environment. The TIE Interceptor wasn’t quite ready to let him get away yet, and zoomed overhead ready to loop around for another try.

Rick James (b###h!) saw the flurry of red and green lasers out of the corner of his eye as he lined up his own shot on another TIE fighter behind the one Buzz had presumably targeted (though it was hard to tell because the shots were all over the place). He fired, but missed. What was going on with Rainbow Squadron’s aim?

The TIEs responded in kind. Their aim was true. Rick James lost his shields and Gnimm took a hit to his hull, his shields having been stripped previously thanks to those TIEs he couldn’t see but was shooting and hitting anyway.

Gnimm finished replacing his dimming yellow eye bulbs with daylight CFL eye bulbs, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Where there had been two TIE Fighters and an Interceptor swarming around Rick James and Buzz Lightweight (and taking potshots at Gnimm), there were now four TIE Fighters! Two more TIEs had seemingly materialized out of nowhere just this side of the invisible barrier that walled off this square section (with rounded corners) of space. One immediately took off after Buzz as he tried to accelerate out of the fight along with one of the original group of TIEs. The second new TIE tried to join in the gangbang forming up on Rick James. That didn’t work out so well for him, however.

The TIE Interceptor screamed past Rick James and flipped over in a K-Turn. Rick James was attempting his own K-Turn at the same time and while he managed to slide past the Interceptor, before he could loop around and end up on its tail one of the newly-arriving TIEs nearly collided with him. He was forced to abort the maneuver and roll out of the way of the TIE. The heavily damaged, repeatedly ionized TIE 5 was back under its pilot’s control and streaked off in the same direction as Buzz, also trying to get the hell away. His course took him straight at an asteroid! He managed to skim just over the surface and avoid becoming a crater on the rock, only to become an expanding cloud of gases and debris as Gnimm hit him with his ion turret.

Buzz Lightweight hadn’t gotten far enough away from the Interceptor, who fired at him again. And missed again! The Force, or something, was clearly with Buzz, and he felt as giddy as someone who just got a stay of execution and pardon as they were inserting the needle in his arm. Still, he could see two more TIE fighters coming up on his tail so he kept accelerating as best he could in a Y-Wing.

Rick James and the Interceptor started to dance, both making hard right turns. The Interceptor wanted to get on Rick James’ tail while Rick James wanted to go after one of the TIEs pursuing Buzz Lightweight. The Interceptor had to break off and pull away as Gnimm came barreling in hoping to ionize it. He was unsuccessful at ionizing and found himself close enough to one of the new TIEs that he could smell the pilot’s breath. Apparently the TIE pilot had pizza with anchovies and garlic just before climbing in the cockpit. ‘Didn’t he have an Altoid or anything?’ wondered Gnimm. But before the TIE could fire, Gnimm’s R7-T1 boosted him out of its fire arc.

Rick James completed his turn and got the TIE fighter in his sights at close range. Before he could fire, though, the TIE unleashed a hellish (if hell has green halogen lighting) barrage at Warty the Hog, punching holes through its hull and knocking off various bits and bobs kitbashed from other model kits during production. Nonetheless, a quad-linked blast from his X-Wing atomized the TIE and Buzz Lightweight was safe for now.

Buzz Lightweight, known for impetuousness, bravado, and little thought, K-Turned to get back into the fight. He was determined to go out in a blaze of glory. He even started humming that particular Bon Jovi song to himself. In a moment of rare wit, he thought of renaming his Y-Wing to The Holey Hog due to its current resemblance to half-burnt, months-old Swiss cheese. Then he got back to the serious business of staring Death in the face and kicking it in the nuts (or more likely having his own nuts kicked in). He could see Rick James also turning back toward the fight, slightly ahead of him.

Gnimm, meanwhile, found himself the center of attention for the remaining TIE and the Interceptor. The TIE did a short K-Turn to get him in arc, and R7-T1 couldn’t help him this time. Likewise, the Interceptor had extended and K-Turned. Luckily Gnimm was able to swoop around to the interceptor’s flank and avoid him. Suddenly he heard Rick James exclaim, "What does Five Fingers say to the TIE?" and watched as a pair of proton torpedoes rocketed at the Interceptor, having been fired by Rick James. “KABOOM! I’m RICK JAMES B###H!” was on the tip of Rick James’ tongue as he watched for the torpedoes to vaporize the Interceptor. What he actually ended up saying was, “Pfbldlefuuuu,” as the Interceptor threw itself into the wildest evasive maneuvers anyone had ever seen and managed to avoid the torpedoes! They detonated after sensing they had missed their target and the blast wave, combined with his wild maneuvers, gave the Interceptor pilot a concussion so he was unable to avoid a hit from Gnimm. Now ionized, the Interceptor lazily drifted forward.

“To inflammation and bondage!” shouted Buzz as he, once again, mashed down on his many triggers, firing at the last TIE Fighter that was about to lay into Gnimm. One of his nose cannons connected with the TIE, blowing off half a wing panel. Two more hits, from his twin laser turret, finished the job, blowing off the rest of the wing and blasting into the cockpit ball, disintegrating the TIE. Rick James was so surprised by this, he almost didn’t see the Interceptor firing at him.

Despite being concussed, embarrassed, flummoxed, ionized, and vexed the Interceptor aimed true, knocking out one of Rick James’ engines and blowing the dome off Charlie Murphy, his trusty R2-CM unit. “Charlie Murphy!!!” wailed Rick James when he heard the electronic pain-filled wail of the R2 losing its top. Gritting his teeth and with tears welling in his eyes, Rick James kicked in the afterburner on his remaining three engines and dared the Interceptor to play chicken. It didn’t have much of a choice, being ionized, so the two ships were heading straight for each other. They were just moments from collision when Buzz Lightweight uttered another nonsensical exclamation, did the trigger thing, and split the Interceptor in half. Rick James plowed through the debris and into clear space. There were no more Imperial ships to be seen.

The ships of Rainbow Squadron slowly swept through the area scanning for any more enemies and upon confirming there were none, they all burst into uncontrollable giggling. The hysterical kind of giggling that you normally encounter only when on a boat in the ocean and a great white shark leaps out of the water to bite your head off and only ends up with your $7 gas station sunglasses stuck in its teeth. This went on for a long time until they finally settled down and got themselves under control.

“I’m hungry,” said Buzz Lightweight.
“Ootini,” agreed Gnimm.
“I’m Rick James,” chimed in Guess Who.

With that, Rainbow Squadron turned and limped back toward the corvette Danglybitz, which had still not made the jump into hyperspace. Apparently navicomputers and navigators with abacuses just aren’t that quick at calculating the jump. Still, it was a victory for the RTF.

It was also a victory for the Empire, because the “problem” of several miscreant pilots had been “taken care of.”