Daily Stocking drabble for @jedifest December Drabbles event, December 20th. The prompt is “Wedge Antilles(/any), landing.”
Wedge clenches his teeth as he feels his X-wing shake around him. Everything about the way the ship is moving right now feels fundamentally wrong. The battle had done a number on her: astromech nonresponsive, shield generator gone, one engine down, two stabilizers fractured. He's lucky to be alive, he knows, and he's not out of the woods yet: he still needs to limp her back to base.
“How's it going, Red Two?” Luke's voice comes over the comm, anxious.
“I'm managing, Five,” Wedge bites back as he fights the controls. “Bit busy to chat, though.”
Luke falls silent, and Wedge tries not to let his sympathy distract him. He knows very well if their situations were reversed and he were already safe on the ground, he'd be worried, too.
A gust of wind buffets the fighter, and it dips abruptly to the right and down, in the direction of the more badly damaged stabilizer. “Oh, no you don't,” Wedge grunts, jerking the nose up again. “Come on, not much farther...”
Base One comes into view in the distance, and he breathes a quick sigh of relief before setting himself to his task again. He can already see where an easier landing area has been cleared for him, a pair of ground crewmen guiding him in with glowrods.
He eases back the throttle, flips on the repulsors – and is greeted with a warning tone and a red pulse on one of his displays. The lift engines are running at sub-optimal levels, but he can't afford to be picky about that now. He can't fix them in the air, and it's only a matter of time before his fuel runs dangerously low. A bumpy landing it is.
Wedge comms in the problem, instructs the ground crew to give him some space, and receive an acknowledgment. He braces himself, cuts his thrust as close to the landing field as he can, and eases the ship down, feeling it fall more quickly than it should as the reduced repulsor power struggles under the weight.
The entire ship jars as it gracelessly impacts the tarmac, skidding across the ground before finally coming to a stop, metal whining in protest all around. Wedge lets stiff fingers drop from the stick and allows himself to smile. His ship may be a mess, but he's still in one piece.
Before he can do much of anything else, there's a knock at his canopy and he looks up to see Luke Skywalker's pale face peering in at him as he gestures frantically for Wedge to remove the barrier. Wedge pops the canopy and an instant later has a lapful of fellow pilot and Jedi-in-training.
“That,” Luke exclaims as he pulls Wedge's helmet off and sets to punctuating each word with a kiss, “Was. Amazing. You are never going to do that again.”
Wedge laughs and gets his arms around Luke, pushing him back slightly. “There was no reason to be worried. I've done this sort of thing before.”
Luke glares at him, and Wedge can see that though he's trying to play it off as teasing, part of it is genuine. He was scared.
“I'm fine,” Wedge insists gently, pulling Luke in to rest sweaty foreheads together. “And I promise I won't do it again, as long I can help it.”
“You'd better not,” Luke mutters, hands fisting in Wedge's flight suit. “Or I'll kill you myself.”
