“He’s Luke Skywalker. He destroyed the Death Star and saved the Alliance.”
“Even heroes die, Lieutenant Commander. In fact, they die all the time. For whatever reason, we don’t have Skywalker. But we do have you. Wedge Antilles, who was first in his class at Skystrike. Who flew with Phoenix Squadron, and was one of two survivors of Red Squadron at Yavin.”
“Because I bailed out of the Death Star trench,” Wedge said. It was a memory that still made his insides knot with shame.
“Spare me. You had six kills above that battle station despite flying a T-65 the techs feared wouldn’t make orbit. You blew your hydraulics and couldn’t maneuver, so you got clear rather than endanger your fellow pilot. Once clear, you recharged your auxiliaries and tried to go back into that trench. Which would have killed you within seconds, but you did it anyway.”
“I was Luke’s wing and I left him. That’s the bottom line.”
“I doubt Skywalker sees it that way. We need your squadron, Antilles. And we need it now.”
Wedge thought about the faces he’d seen in the Hub and the duty rosters he’d scanned. There were enough experienced pilots for two flights of three T-65s each. But that was only half a squadron.
“If we’re staying put, why the urgency?” he asked. “Our capital ships can repel anything short of an Imperial task force.”
The Contessa tapped on her datapad, then passed it over.
“We’ve been using civilian cargo ships to resupply. Over the last thirty-six hours, two of them have failed to arrive. Turns out a pirate band’s stumbled onto our supply line.”
Wedge scanned the intel in dismay.
“I know we don’t have enough experienced pilots,” the Contessa said. “You’re going to create a few. You’re promoted to commander.”
“Luke is our—”
“We’ve covered that. I know you don’t think you’re ready, Antilles, but I need you to be. And the pilots you’re going to lead? They’ll need that a lot more. We can’t let a bunch of pirates starve us out or sell our location to the Empire. Before they can do either, you’re going to destroy them. As squadron leader.”
* * *
—
“Heck of a way to start a squadron,” Janson said.
The Hub was a little too public, so Wedge and Janson had retreated to one of the observation blisters that dotted Home One’s hull. That gave them privacy, but at the expense of comfort—they kept knocking knees as they sat facing each other, datapads on their laps.
“Seriously, how do two Mon Cals even fit in here?” Janson asked.
“Schooling instinct. You’ve noticed the way they maneuver in tandem, right?”
“No, I’ve never…wait. You made that up.”
“Possibly,” Wedge said.
“Did Wedge Antilles just make a joke? Wedge Antilles, the Great Stone Face of the Spaceways?”
“I make jokes.”
“Every six months?”
“You’ve usually got it covered. Now come on. You go first, then I go. We alternate till we’ve got a squadron.”
Janson blew out his breath in frustration. “There aren’t many candidates, boss. Even with this Contessa of yours giving us all the personnel records. And why can’t she fly with us?”
“The chancellor needs her to coordinate our overall starfighter defenses. And she’s got her own squadron to put back together.”
“Well, that makes the pickings even slimmer. I’d take Aron Polstak in a heartbeat, but Double-M’s got him on special assignment. At least there’s Will Scotian. He’s flown with us, which makes him a definite.”
“Scotian was my first choice, too. Done. I want Bela Elar.”
“Twi’lek pilot, right? I didn’t know she was here.”
“She just got towed in. Her T-65 blew its alluvial dampers, and she had to go extravehicular to fix them in deep space.”
Janson whistled. “So with your first pick you’ve found us a competent pilot and an engineering department. Guess that’s why you’re squadron leader and I’m general skytrash.”
Squadron leader. It still sounded wrong to Wedge. But he supposed he better get used to it.
“You’re not general skytrash, you’re my newly appointed executive officer,” he said.
“You say Princess Lay-a, I say Princess Lee-a. And I say Keyser Salm. He’s Horton’s little brother. I’ve flown recon with him. Green but teachable.”
“Done.”
Janson smiled. “Well. This is gonna be easy. Your turn, Commander.”
“Barlon Hightower,” Wedge said.
“On my list, too. Though he’s so green he makes Keyser look like an ace. My turn: Cinda Tarheel.”
“She’s got a temper like a scalded rancor. General Rieekan grounded her on Hoth because we all feared she’d fly her T-47 into the side of a mountain. Remember?”
“All too well,” Janson said. “Still, she can fly. We can teach her anger isn’t a superpower.”
Wedge sighed. “If she lives long enough to listen. But you’re right, she can fly.”
“You’re up, Commander.”
“Sila Kott.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“That’s because she flies troop transports. Commander Narra found her back when he made every pilot do simulator runs. He tried to recruit her for a squadron but she refused.”
Janson frowned. “She can fly but she doesn’t want to. Isn’t that disqualifying?”
“Normally, yes. But this isn’t normally. I’ll ask again. And if her answer is no, I know someone who won’t ask.”
“Fair enough. Ix Ixstra.”
Wedge scanned his datapad. “She spent two weeks at Echo Base in the brig for fighting.”
“Admirable combat spirit,” Janson said.
“She hit a Pathfinder over the head with a meal tray.”
“Experienced at ambush tactics.”
“A Pathfinder twice her size.”
“So her threat recognition needs some work. But if we start passing on the Ix Ixstras of the fleet, we’re going to be asking Double-M herself to climb into a cockpit.”
“Not how I want to go down in Alliance history. All right, fine. Grizz Frix.”
Janson sighed. “Another hothead. Still, he never brained a fellow rebel with a tray. And with that ringing endorsement, he’s part of the squadron. That’s ten pilots. My final pick is Penn Zowlie.”
“I have no flight record for him,” Wedge said.
“That’s because he’s never even simmed. He’s a med-droid assistant who kept pestering me back on Hoth, from some asteroid cluster on the edge of Wild Space. Spent his childhood jumping hoversleds and vac-skims from rock to rock.”
Wedge raised an eyebrow.
Janson grinned. “Bush pilot from the back of beyond? Big dreams, runs off to join the Alliance? I just found the next Luke Skywalker.”
“Or the forty millionth kid to get vaped on his first mission. But fine, we’ll hope you’re right. Because you’re really not going to like my last pick. Tomer Darpen. Don’t give me that look—he can fly.”
“Yeah, he’ll fly off to sell his T-65 for a crate of spice. How many times did we spot him doing shady stuff back in the day?”
“Daily. He can fly.”
“Within five years he’ll be a spicerunner or a pirate.”
“Then he’ll be someone else’s problem. He can fly.”
“All right, all right. But when the moment we both know is coming arrives, I get to stun him.”
“Agreed. So we’re done?”
“We’re done, Commander. Rogue Group is reborn. Or at least the name is.”
Wedge shook his head. “I think we should ground that name for a while. Too many losses.”
Janson’s eyes turned flinty. “S
o the Empire gets to take that from us, too?”
“It’s not that,” Wedge said. “It’s that there are call signs I’m not sure I could say in battle right now.”
Janson’s face fell and he stared out at the stars surrounding the observation blister.
“We’ll go back to Red Squadron,” Wedge suggested. “Maybe that name will motivate our new pilots.”
“Or we could go with reverse psychology and call ourselves Reject Squadron.”
Wedge sighed. “When we’re heroes, let’s remember to pretty this story up for the Alliance historians.”
“Absolutely. ‘Why, we had dozens of decorated pilots to choose from. Impossible decisions! Fortunately, we made our choices in a lavishly appointed conference room, assisted by fancy Alliance dignitaries. Oh, and when we got peckish, there was a fine repast.’ ”
“Is peckish even a word?”
“It’s what fancy Alliance dignitaries say when they mean ‘hungry.’ Which I am. Hub grub, Commander? Hey, that’s fun to say.”
“You sound like one of those stuffed toys with a comm chip.”
“Exactly the effect I was looking for. Hub grub, Commander. Hub grub.”
* * *
—
To Wedge’s surprise, things moved at a decidedly unbureaucratic pace. The Contessa approved his roster within an hour, and all the pilots agreed to his request—though he suspected they’d been told it wasn’t really a request.
But when he asked for a week of simulator time for the new Red Squadron, the Contessa shook her head even before the sentence was out of his mouth. He had two days.
Fortunately, Home One had a full suite of sim tanks, allowing all twelve members of the newborn squadron to fly at once.
Unfortunately, that first run-through showed Wedge how much his newborn squadron had to learn.
Scotian and Elar were solid pilots, and all of the newcomers were basically sound—even Zowlie, who as far as Wedge knew had never so much as simmed an X-wing’s controls.
The exception was Sila Kott, who could barely fly a simulated kilometer without accidentally lowering her shields or overcharging her acceleration compensators. That was bizarre, given her service record as a pilot, and Wedge spent the last hour of the first sim wondering why.
The exercise ended and the pilots emerged from their tanks, sweaty and shielding their eyes from the tactical suite’s bright lights.
“That was awesome!” crowed Zowlie. “You were flying fangs out, Lieutenant Janson! How many bandits did you splash?”
Janson put Zowlie in a headlock.
“Here’s your first demerit, kid—only one bit of pilot slang per conversation. More than that gives Uncle Wes a headache.”
“Okay, settle down,” Wedge said. “Red Group, that was a good first exercise. We’re back here at twenty-one hundred, so go get some Hub grub. Kott, stick around a minute.”
Kott was tall and thin, her hair cut short and ragged with what struck Wedge as almost deliberate indifference, and she had an odd habit of ducking her head against her shoulder, as if she wanted to appear smaller than she was.
“I figured you’d want to see me, Commander,” she said when they were alone. “I’m sorry.”
She looked embarrassed but also relieved. Wedge made himself count to five, then leapt.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “Just tell me why you deliberately sabotaged the exercise.”
“What? I didn’t…I’ve never flown a T-65 before, Commander, and…I don’t know why you’d…”
“You’re an experienced pilot. You know how not to lower your own shields, or any of the other inexplicably dumb things you did. And the rest of the time you were flying that bird like a natural. So what’s going on?”
Kott’s shoulders sagged.
“I don’t want to fly a starfighter. I never have.”
“Why not?”
Wedge watched her try to find the words. Then they all came spilling out.
“I’ve been in this Rebellion for years, but I’ve never killed anybody. It’s bad enough flying a transport, feeling like all those soldiers’ lives are in your hands. But taking someone’s life? I can’t do it. I won’t.”
“Walk with me, Sila,” Wedge said. “I was still just a kid when I made my first kill, flying an old starfighter I’d borrowed. The target was a gunboat, crewed by pirates. They’d…they’d taken people from me.”
“I’m sorry,” Kott said.
“I punched a hole in their aft deflector shields, settled in behind them at zero angle, and took the shot,” Wedge said, raising one hand and pantomiming the gesture. “A second later that gunboat was a cloud of vapor. When I flew through it, it felt good. For a few seconds. Then I didn’t feel anything. And that night I couldn’t stop throwing up.”
Kott’s face was unreadable.
“That was a lot of kills ago,” Wedge said. “I should know how many, but I don’t. But every time I pull the trigger, I hope it’s the last time. And I pray that I’m helping create a galaxy where no one has to do it. But that galaxy doesn’t exist yet, Sila. And it won’t exist without our help. Which means killing people. We find different words for it, but that’s what it means. You made it through years of service letting someone else do that killing, but your time’s run out. I need you. The Alliance needs you. And all the people in the galaxy who can’t protect themselves and their loved ones? They need you most of all.”
* * *
—
Two mornings later, the Contessa summoned him to the chancellor’s office.
“They’re not ready,” Wedge said before she asked. “And you’re going to tell me that doesn’t matter.”
“Two for two, Commander. But tell me how they aren’t ready. Even if it’s only for a minute, I’d like to imagine assembling this squadron the way it’s supposed to be assembled.”
Wedge looked at her curiously. Had that been a bit of humanity—vulnerability, even—breaking through the Contessa’s flinty exterior?
So he told her how Salm and Zowlie were having trouble flying in formation, and how Ixstra and Frix could do that but kept breaking formation to chase down targets. He left out how Kott was a natural pilot but had frozen and lost three kills, or how Janson was certain Darpen was running a smuggling ring from his simulator. They had troubles enough as it was.
“Given the lack of capable pilots, you’re in better shape than I expected,” the Contessa said. “Assuming you’re being honest and these are really all the problems we need to solve.”
Had any squadron commander ever been completely honest with a superior officer? Wedge doubted it.
“The real problem is you can’t sim adrenaline,” he said instead. “Once they’re actually out in vacuum and their hearts start pumping, all these issues will get magnified.”
“You’re right. Which means you also know the only solution is to fly them. The good ones will learn how to make the adrenaline an ally instead of an enemy.”
“And the bad ones will die.”
“I know.”
That exchange hung between them for a moment. Then the Contessa leaned forward.
“The chancellor fears our location has been compromised. She thinks we need to abandon the rendezvous point.”
“Without Skywalker and the princess?”
“She’s worried they’ve been captured or are dead.”
Wedge tried to imagine what the absence of Luke Skywalker would mean to the Alliance—and to himself. Luke was a galactic hero who commanded a power Wedge could barely understand, yet he was also a farm kid from Tatooine who’d become Wedge’s friend over dozens of missions.
It was impossible—just as it was impossible to think of the Rebellion without Leia Organa, the leader who embodied the reason they fought. But perhaps Hoth had been the border between the possible and
the impossible. Perhaps they were now across it, in a strange undiscovered country, but had yet to realize that.
Still, it felt wrong.
“If the Empire had Organa, it’d be all over the HoloNet by now,” Wedge said. “Which means she’s out there somewhere, and trying to reach us. And if she finally arrives and we’re gone…”
“She has the encrypted protocols for the backup muster point,” the Contessa said.
“Which might be no safer than this one. There’s nothing in the galaxy that could keep Leia Organa from her duty, or Luke Skywalker from his friends. We need to give them more time.”
“All right. And are you ready, Red Leader?”
“Yes,” Wedge said, without thinking. And to his surprise, he found he meant it.
* * *
—
“We’re doing fine, Arfive,” Wedge said for the sixth time in the last hour, or maybe it was the seventh. “Just keep scanning.”
His X-wing was moving straight as an arrow through streamers of ionized gas, high above a scree of ice and rock, stellar debris that had failed to gain enough mass to coalesce into a sphere. At least it was pretty—the ionized gases were an unlikely combination of magenta and blue, shot through with ribbons of silver and gold.
He was too far away to spot the pirates’ base or their ships, but the sensor gear attached to his starfighter saw them plain as day and was busy collating data. An hour after he returned to Home One, it would have a detailed picture of the enemy forces.
Assuming they didn’t spot him, of course. If that happened, the best-case scenario was that he’d escape after shedding the sensor gear and discarding most of that carefully collected intel. And the worst-case scenario? No more Wedge Antilles.
“Almost done with the sweep,” Wedge told his droid, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “Then two hours back to Home One. Open a private channel to Red Eleven.”
He winced at R5-G8’s answering squeal—apparently his request for a recalibrated signaler was still on some to-do list, along with fixing his T-65’s overenthusiastic heater.
“Janson? Time to go home. How are they flying?”
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