* * *
—
She left the droid more troubled than when the checkup had started. You’re a mediocre torture droid, she thought, but you’re a bad therapist. The IT-O unit had insisted she return the next day, and she’d agreed out of obligation.
That night, she listened to Adan’s latest package of intercepted communications in her bunk. With her head on her pillow and a heavyset Houk wheezing in the bed above her, she stared at the blinking mechanical light of a door control panel and absorbed month-old evacuation orders and calls to arms.
She was nearly asleep when a voice roused her—one lacking the forced dignity of the other recordings. A man’s voice, husky and rough, in conversation with a woman. Quell recognized neither speaker, but without the formality and bombast she’d grown accustomed to they seemed intimately present.
Cut me off, the man said. End the transmission.
What?
What I’m about to say won’t benefit you. Cut me off. Request new orders from Admiral Malvor or Moff Senchiko, if they’re alive. Say you couldn’t reach me.
I already know about the Messenger.
The operation? You know—
I want to hear it from you. What did it say?
The man didn’t answer. The woman spoke again.
What was the Emperor’s last order?
Quell’s heart seemed to seize.
There was nothing in the message about Shadow Wing. Nothing relevant to her mission, nor anything the New Republic hadn’t analyzed twice over. She could have skipped to the next recording.
She knew what was coming, at least in broad strokes—not with intellectual certainty, but in her bones she knew.
The Messenger—it was all in red, he said.
She remembered the day aboard the Pursuer, two weeks after Endor, when the order had come in. She’d heard whispers of a shuttle and a passenger of supreme importance.
She’d glimpsed red robes.
It had the Emperor’s face, the man went on. A hologram of his face. It wasn’t a droid so much as a ghost. It said we’d been selected for an honor, and then…
She remembered a rumor that Colonel Nuress had locked herself away with the passenger. She tried to picture the old woman staring into the withered, digitized face of the Galactic Emperor.
It spoke in his voice. It said, “Resistance. Rebellion. Defiance. These are concepts that cannot be allowed to persist. You are but one of many tools by which these ideas shall be burned away.”
Nuress hadn’t repeated the words. She hadn’t said they’d come in the Emperor’s own voice. She had kept all that to herself, for reasons Quell couldn’t comprehend.
She didn’t want to hear the rest, but she listened.
“Operation Cinder is to begin at once.”
She tore the headset from her ears and hurled it across the room. It clattered off a bulkhead, and her cabinmates—the crew of the Buried Treasure, rebels who surely would have been surprised at none of the Empire’s atrocities—groaned and cursed and pulled up their blankets.
She lay panting awhile before she retrieved the headset. She forced it back on and resumed her duties. But for hours afterward, every recording was from the same time period. Every recording was of messages regarding Operation Cinder, whether Imperial reports declaring planets cleansed of life or desperate calls for help as worlds fought back. Quell buried her face into her pillow and listened to it all, and fell asleep to dream of Nacronis and Naboo and Commenor. To dream of the stern face of the Galactic Emperor, his pale hands on her shoulders.
* * *
—
“Was it a joke?” she asked the droid during their next appointment. She was late and her eyes were bloodshot. “Did he give me those calls for a reason?”
“I don’t understand,” the droid said, slowly orbiting her skull as it performed its scans.
“Operation Cinder. Everything Adan gave me to listen to last night—it’s all Cinder.”
“I don’t believe it was a joke,” the droid said.
There hadn’t been anything about Shadow Wing in the package. Not anything new, anyway.
She had always assumed, without consciously analyzing it, that Operation Cinder had originated from surviving Imperial leadership rather than their dead sovereign. It made no difference, and yet she couldn’t cleanse the picture of the Emperor from her mind.
“Why did he do it?”
“Perhaps Adan was being thorough. He may not have realized the impact it would have on—”
She shook her head, then realized she had to remain still for the droid’s scan to work properly. Her mind wasn’t functioning right. She was too weary. “Not Adan. The Emperor. Why did he order Cinder? What was his plan?”
It wasn’t the first genocide the Emperor had ordered. She knew that, but there had been reasons for the others. The difference between Alderaan (or Lasan, or Dhen-Moh) and Operation Cinder was the difference between ruthlessness and cruelty.
“I can’t say,” the droid answered. “What do you think?”
“Go to hell,” she muttered.
But she let the droid finish its scans. She still had a job to do.
Ten minutes later, face dripping with cold water from the restroom, Quell stalked down a narrow corridor without direction or purpose. An astromech droid squealed with irritation as she nearly bowled the ancient unit over; her exhaustion and ire turned to near-hysterical laughter as she tried to sidle around the machine in the tight confines of the passage. It was over half her height, drab green paint flaking off its flat top, and its every move seemed intended to inconvenience her more.
When she finally made it to the other side of the droid, she found its owner waiting, arms folded across his chest.
“Tee-five giving you a hard time?” Tensent asked.
She would have snapped at him, but she didn’t have the strength. She drew a long breath and released it in a hiss. “That thing can’t be yours. Will it even plug into your ship?”
“Only droid I’ve found that can keep up with my flying. I try not to let it roam free, but sometimes it gets cranky.” He rapped his knuckles against the droid, the metal ringing like a gong. “You look like garbage, by the way.”
“Thanks,” she said. She stepped forward, ready to sidle around Tensent as she had his droid.
He surprised her by moving aside. She was five meters down the corridor when he called, “You want to shoot something?”
She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.
“It’s up to you,” he said. “You just look like you could use a break, and I’m heading down myself. You want in?”
“More than anything in the world,” she said.
* * *
—
Quell was a pilot, not a stormtrooper. She knew how to hold a pistol and how to fieldstrip a blaster rifle. If forced, she could talk shop about heat sinks and stopping power. But she’d never loved guns the way she loved flying.
Nonetheless, as Tensent’s DL-21 pulsed in her hand and left three burnt, smoking holes in the tarp they’d strung across the cargo hold, she couldn’t deny a spark of satisfaction.
“You sure we’re allowed to do this?” she asked.
“Made a friend on the bridge,” Tensent said. “No one’s coming to bother us. This place doesn’t even normally have life support.”
That explains the chill, she thought, and gripped the warm blaster tighter. “When you say you made a friend—did you bribe someone? Steal access codes?”
Tensent held out his palm. Quell passed the blaster back as he answered. “I mean I ran into a guy, we got to talking, and he offered to set me up. Believe it or not, I’m pretty likable.”
She did believe it. She believed that in his way, Tensent—despite betrayi
ng every organization he’d ever served, despite lacking anything resembling principles—had a way of persuading people to enjoy his company against their own best interests. She suspected he did it intentionally, and that he was attempting to win her over even now.
But she felt more comfortable than she had for days, and she could afford to be grateful for a little while.
Tensent fired the blaster three times. Each shot landed half a meter above the holes Quell had left. She glanced toward the turbolift, then to the row of dormant astromech units along one wall.
“We’re not going to get caught,” he said. “Hell—you deserted what, a month ago? You got those Imperial regs burned in your head pretty deep.”
“Guess I’m not rebel material.”
Tensent snorted. “Wouldn’t worry about that part. Rebellion’s over. It’s the New Republic now.”
“You don’t sound happy about it.”
“Rebels were more willing to let things slide. Now—you can see it happening. They’re making up rules fast.”
She nodded idly. She caught her mind drifting to the events of the night and her exchange with the droid. She tried to stop it, but it was like refusing to scratch a scab. She always scratched her wounds.
“You defected before Alderaan, didn’t you?” she said.
“Sure. Why do you ask?”
Alderaan had been the true start of the conflict. The Empire had attempted to avert a civil war with a demonstration of might, destroying a terrorist government masquerading as a peaceful ally. In snuffing out billions of lives—in deploying the first Death Star planet-killer—the Emperor had attempted to save trillions.
“Did anyone stop to think it might have been the Rebellion’s fault? That if things had gone differently—”
“Pretty sure most people blamed the Empire.”
That didn’t surprise her.
“It could’ve worked, though,” she said. “If the Rebellion had backed down, decided not to press the fight and stop recruiting from Imperial worlds, it could’ve saved lives in the end.”
Tensent passed the blaster back to her. She fired again, barely hitting the tarp.
“Could’ve, maybe,” Tensent said. “Sure didn’t.”
He was right. Alderaan had been the centerpiece of rebel recruiting holos for years afterward—justification for every terrorist attack. The controlled insurgency had flared into open warfare.
“Were you always this much of a dupe?” Tensent asked in a voice of friendly curiosity. He cut Quell off before she could retort. “With the Empire, I mean—did you believe every stormtrooper was there for your protection, or did you persuade yourself—about Alderaan, and all that—over the years?”
“I’m not an idiot, Tensent. I knew what the Empire was when I joined.”
“So did I,” he said with a grin.
She wanted to crack his perfect teeth. She enunciated every word. “I joined to get flight training. I joined so I could defect to the Rebel Alliance.”
Tensent cackled. She could see his breath in the frigid air. “Sure took your time getting here,” he said.
She shrugged. She remembered being sixteen years old again, pressing her head into the crook of Nette’s neck, their arms around each other’s waists as Mon Mothma talked about freedom and atrocity. “I was young. Someone I—someone convinced me that joining the Rebellion was the most worthwhile thing a person could do. She actually went and did it. I figured I could, too—the holos always talked about the Rebellion needing pilots.”
“So, what—you’ve been deep undercover the last few years?”
She shrugged again and held her hand out for the blaster. Tensent ignored her. “I meant to defect during Academy training,” she said. “But I hadn’t learned enough, so I planned to do it after graduation. Then after I had a few missions under my belt. By then it would’ve meant abandoning colleagues, and the Empire didn’t seem as awful as the propaganda said. Eventually I just…stopped planning.”
Tensent arched his brow as he checked the blaster’s battery level, then squeezed off another shot. “You really aren’t rebel material.”
There was no judgment in his voice, and she believed his disinterest—unlike the droid’s—was genuine. It was why she was able to talk to him. It was why she didn’t flinch at the insult, no matter how true it was.
They kept shooting awhile longer. But the flashes of the bolts and the smell of burnt fabric began to sap her, and eventually she excused herself and made her way to the turbolift. Tensent stayed behind. As the lift door opened, she paused and called back, “Kairos. What happened?”
Tensent didn’t even look at her. “What about Kairos?”
“Back at the Hive, she went to you. She convinced you to join. I know she did, I’m not stupid, so—what happened?”
“Ask our boss,” Tensent called.
At least it wasn’t a lie, she thought.
She had to prioritize her thoughts better, anyway. Whatever was going on among Tensent and Kairos and Adan, whatever the reasoning behind Operation Cinder, none of it would help her find Shadow Wing. None of it would get her back in a cockpit. You really aren’t rebel material, Tensent had said, and she needed to stop dawdling and prove otherwise.
The next morning, she realized what she had to do.
II
“Chass na Chadic, most esteemed pilot of the Hellion’s Dare—we hereby declare you Queen of Starfighters and gallant protector of fizzy drinks.”
A dozen voices cried, “Hear! Hear!” as Chass raised a fist and Sata Neek lowered a crown of wire onto her head. She tucked a strand beneath one of her horns as the bird-frog backed away, ignoring a fleeting pique at the crown’s human-favoring design. “Thank you,” she said, “for this most deserved honor. I couldn’t have achieved it without all of you—but I want to especially thank Riot Squadron, who valiantly allowed so many TIE fighters to come into range of the Dare, leaving me plenty of targets.”
Jeers erupted from the Riot pilots, but these were swiftly muffled—with hands on mouths, where necessary—by the Hounds. Chass grinned as she scanned the morgue and tried to swallow the sour taste. There were barely half as many pilots aboard the Dare as there had been a week before, and that number was dwindling fast.
Still, a win was a win.
Fadime stepped up to the tactical board. With Stanislok—Hound Leader—dead, it was her duty to finish the ceremony. “We had thirty-two TIE fighters aboard that cruiser-carrier. Thanks to Chass, we’re down to thirty-one. Puke is gone, and will never spray cannon fire like a toxic toddler again. Now who’s next…?”
Fadime gestured at the board and Puke dropped to the bottom of the listing. It wasn’t the kill Chass wanted most—Char had scratched more Hound pilots than anyone, and Snapper had engaged her twice already—but she would have other chances. The Dare wasn’t escaping anytime soon.
Jump by jump, the frigate worked its way through the Oridol Cluster. Jump by jump, the Imperial forces followed. As their environment grew stranger, the battles grew fiercer—the Dare’s escort fighters were too few to fight for long now, which meant running, hiding, and buying time to plot the next hyperroute was the order of the day. Captain Kreskian promised that the end was in sight—that they would emerge from the cluster soon and have a straight shot back to New Republic territory—but it was obvious to everyone that plunging into the cosmic anomaly had been a mistake. They hadn’t shaken their pursuers; they’d just signed up for a slow death by bleeding.
Chass hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since Jiruus. Few of the pilots had. Even in their berths, they stayed awake posing questions about Puke and Snapper and Blink and the Twins; wondering what made these pilots different from the others they’d faced over the years. Yeprexi described the tactics Imperial cadets studied at the Skystrike and Myomar academies, t
rying to find the key to the enemy’s training. Fadime argued that the TIE pilots had learned under an ace, and the Hound members listed the rebel-hunters they’d been taught to fear: Vult Skerris. Baron Rudor. Neosephine Calorda.
But what they rarely talked about was the fact that the enemy was getting sloppier, too—that Blink and Snapper and Char couldn’t have been sleeping much more than anyone on the Dare. That, in turn, would generate its share of opportunities.
Assuming anyone was alive to take advantage of them.
* * *
—
The fewer the surviving A-wing pilots, the more TIEs that made it to the Dare each battle. The more TIEs swarming the Dare like flies on waste, the more the B-wings participated in the fight. The more B-wings that fought, the more Hounds who died.
A B-wing wasn’t built for dogfighting small, high-velocity pests. It was an assault craft, designed to wreck anything too slow to get out of the way. It was extremely good at that job, no matter how unintuitive its controls and how painful it was to repair, but against a half-decent TIE pilot the tactics boiled down to “spray and pray.”
So Yeprexi died. Yeprexi, whose ship Chass had stolen once and crashed in a bog, and who’d never breathed a word of it to their superiors. Yeprexi, the old woman who could dance like a demon and had a thousand superstitions that looked a lot like obsessive tics. She died to the TIE maneuver they’d come to call the Spiral.
After Yeprexi they lost Rawn. Chass barely knew the kid, but he deserved better than to be pinned and demolished by a flight of TIEs. (They began calling that maneuver the Needle, and knew it as Snapper’s favorite.) Then Fadime went, and Chass made sure no one saw her cry at the funeral. Afterward she found a private place to dribble snot onto her sleeve.
That was how they became one squadron, not two, under command of Rununja—a result that, Chass imagined, the cocky Riot leader had wanted all along. Chass was designated Riot Ten.
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