It had been about a year since Echo went into the portal that threatened to bring her home world's enemy to the Known galaxy. The Vex were learning machines, she'd told them, and had been proven right when reinforcements came that were resistant to the ion cannons that disabled the first scouting force. But that had been a year ago. A long year that seemed more permanent than any goodbye or transfer of command the hunter had taken when serving with the Rogues.
What a surprise it must have been when what looked like a knock-off headhunter with brilliant blue Vestial Hawk accents, glided over Coruscant and a familiar voice came over the comm lines.
"Tower one, this is Velocity-2, requestion permission to land."
With permission granted, the bootleg headhunter glided its way in, its pilot eager to see if her brothers were still around. -- Echo-17 - @mantleoflight
Two and a half years after Rogue Squadron was decommissioned, a ship of unknown make and origin snapped into real space at the edge of Coruscant and was hailed by the planetary security. The baffled security officer passed the request up the line and eventually, a voice returned and directed the ship to an open hanger. The planet was buzzing. There were health advisories, traffic advisories, security advisories, and horribly crowded snarls of air traffic everywhere.
Finally, the strange not-quite-headhunter slid into a hanger and found that despite all the horrible crowding elsewhere, here there was a strange emptiness. Crowds were gathering at the Palace, no longer home to the late Emperor but now the headquarters of the New Republic. There, a massive open landing space had been created, so large that despite that crush of the billions upon billions of sentients that lived on the city-planet, that clearing could still be seen even among the towering buildings surrounding it.
From the exo’s vantage point, the clearing was a smear on the horizon.
Overhead, air traffic suddenly cleared a lane. News droids, speeders, and tourists crowded along the lane as a cluster of dots appeared in the outer atmosphere. They approached quickly and resolved into a squadron worth of brightly-colored X-wings. A black ship with a green and gold checker pattern was in the lead, followed by a ship with a red and white martial slash across the fuselage. Behind them came a rather motley collection. Then, from the ground, twelve more X-wings rose to meet them, these ones painted a familiar light grey with red stripes.
When the two squadrons worth of ships met, the newcomers angled to meet them and formed up with the escorts into a parade formation. An impromptu air show was performed to the roars of a massive crowd before all the ships settled in the open space allotted for them in the Palace District.
