Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  She remembered studying his face. Brown hair dark enough to look black in the wrong light and thin, delicate lips out of place on a light, angular face. She remembered noticing the rumple of his collar and wondering if it was an affectation—a way of reassuring his subordinates that he was not, in fact, the perfect officer. That he was one of them.

  “What’s troubling you, Lieutenant?” he asked.

  The question came unprompted. Quell flinched, though she wasn’t surprised.

  “I’m fine, sir. Mek’tradi shook me up, but I’m fine.”

  A smile appeared on Keize’s face and vanished as swiftly as it came. “You can lie to me if you want. I can ignore it, and you can leave here no better off than you were. Or I can take offense and remove you from duty. Neither seems an ideal outcome for you. Or am I missing something?”

  He asked it like he genuinely wanted her input. She thought it through. “No, sir,” she finally said.

  “Then what’s troubling you, Lieutenant?”

  She laughed. He didn’t. She considered lying again. She trusted Keize, who had taken an interest in her since practically her start with the 204th. What she didn’t trust was the systems that operated around them—the loyalty officers and the disclosure requirements and the recording devices that were monitoring them as they spoke.

  Yet it was shame as much as mistrust that she warred against in order to say: “When I was an adolescent, I wanted to be a rebel.”

  “And now?”

  “Of course not. Of course I don’t now.”

  “Do you respect them?”

  Again, she hesitated. The fear remained. The shame was gone. “No,” she said. “But I think I pity them.”

  “If you respected them, that would be easier,” he said. He waited for her to reply, then continued when she only stared. “When you believe people come to the fight with open eyes—when you believe they’ve judged their course of action rationally, however wrongly—killing them becomes simpler. You know they understood the risks and they deemed their cause worthwhile.”

  “And if I pity them? You think it’s because I doubt their judgment?”

  “Pity implies circumstances beyond your enemies’ control. Circumstances that shaped them unfairly. Distorted their judgments. Pushed them into the line of fire.

  “No one wants to be a butcher, Lieutenant. We all want to feel like we’ve bested someone fairly.”

  Quell considered the argument. Keize wasn’t wrong, but nothing he said changed the situation. “The circumstances are our fault, though,” she said. “The rebels’ tactics are obscene but their grievances have merit and we’re doing nothing to address the underlying causes—” She cut herself off, surprised at her own words.

  Keize gestured with one hand. “Continue.” As he spoke, he rose from his chair and began to pace. He stopped halfway across his office.

  In front of the recording eye. “Continue,” he repeated.

  She did, though the words came slower this time. “The Emperor began by promising to reorder the decaying and corrupt Republic after the Clone Wars. And he did it. The corporate powers lost influence. Petty crime rates dropped. Local governments had to answer directly to him if they failed or abused their people.” It was the history she’d been taught, though she’d heard other claims: that the Emperor had sought to militarize the Republic, and all else had been a side effect of the power grab. Stranger yet, she’d met Imperial patriots of her parents’ generation who swore that a conspiracy of Jedi mystics had forced the Emperor’s hand; but aside from wild stories, she’d never read anything suggesting the Jedi had been more than a marginal cult.

  She went on: “Now, though, we’ve gotten inefficient again. There’re probably more corrupt governors out there than there were ten years ago, and that can’t all be blamed on the Rebellion. The famines in the Dryorkeen Cluster are real. Even petty crime is going up again in places.

  “The rebels are making things worse. But we’re not making things better.”

  Keize nodded thoughtfully and took his time before replying.

  “Our Empire,” he said, “is as corrupt as it is glorious. We’ve done so much wrong and so much right. But you’re a soldier, Lieutenant, and that means you’re faced with the burden of every soldier since the galaxy was formed.

  “Soldiers can’t choose their battles. A soldier fights for an imperfect nation, not a perfect ideal.”

  “We fight for the Emperor,” she said.

  Keize shook his head and stepped past her to the door. He gestured and they exited together.

  They walked down the polished black corridors of the Star Destroyer, past ranks of stormtroopers and naval officers, technicians and pilots. Keize led the way to the hangar where dozens more men and women scrubbed scorch marks off TIE fighters or peeled off flight suits. He looked out and smiled with those thin, delicate lips.

  “We fight for them, Lieutenant. We fight for our brothers and sisters beside us. Always remember that.”

  * * *

  —

  Yrica Quell had been a pilot once. She had been a great pilot, and proud. At last, she was starting to remember.

  She emerged from her reverie when her X-wing jumped into the Jiruus system—prize jewel of the sector’s Imperial moff and muster point for a missing New Republic reconnaissance expedition. The moff was dead now, and the New Republic frigate Hellion’s Dare was days late to report in.

  She checked her scanner as she approached Jiruus itself and saw no ships and few satellites. An automated signal from the planet indicated functioning landing pads. If nothing else, she thought, Operation Cinder hadn’t come to the world.

  But she was short on time. She would need to head back to the Buried Treasure soon in order to make her rendezvous. She saw no immediate evidence of a battle, no sign of TIE fighters or the Hellion’s Dare, and she was preparing to jump out when a message came through from the D6-L astromech droid.

  She frowned at her display as she read through what looked like a chemical analysis of—what? The composition of Jiruus’s exosphere? The droid had been largely silent on the journey so far, only responding to her explicit commands. She wasn’t sure how typical independent action was for an astromech loaded into a starfighter, but this seemed well outside normal operations.

  “What am I looking at?” she asked. “And why are you helping?”

  Several lines in the compositional analysis blinked. Tibanna. Irolunn. Clouzon-36. Traces of hyperdrive fuel and particle weaponry.

  Whatever had happened over Jiruus, it had happened in low orbit and it had been significant enough to leave scars.

  She studied the display for several seconds. “All right,” she muttered. “Good work.”

  The droid pinged a short, courteous acknowledgment.

  She put the astromech unit out of her mind and adjusted her systems, diverting all power to her sensors. An X-wing wasn’t a science craft, but maybe she could find enough traces to provide more information. If not, she could look planetside to resolve her two most urgent questions:

  When had the fight happened?

  And where was the wreckage?

  Within an hour, she had her answers. The implications terrified her. They left her giddy and certain of her decisions. When she ordered the droid to set a course for the Buried Treasure, she was ready, she thought, for what was coming.

  She had proved she was valuable to the New Republic. Now she had to convince the only man who mattered.

  * * *

  —

  Caern Adan met her in the cramped mooring tube where she had stolen her X-wing a day before. With him were Nath Tensent and two Buried Treasure crew members, all of whom carried their pistols unholstered. Tensent would have been enough, Quell thought—there wasn’t room to miss.

  Adan sta
red with fury in his eyes, his antenna-stalks buried in his wiry hair. Quell was surprised he hadn’t brought the torture droid; she almost said as much, but spitting in Adan’s face wouldn’t convince him of anything. It wouldn’t help the mission. She’d found what she’d gone after, but she was still in the wrong.

  “Lieutenant Yrica Quell,” she said, “ready to report and submit to disciplinary action.”

  Tensent cracked a cold smile and aimed his blaster at the floor in lazy circles. He stood a half step behind and to one side of Adan.

  “You stole a ship,” Adan said. “The appropriate discipline is to throw you out an air lock.”

  “That’s fair.” Not merciful, but fair. She wondered if New Republic regulations allowed an Intelligence officer to execute a traitorous asset. She wondered if there were regulations constraining New Republic Intelligence. “Before anything else, though, download the ship’s logs. Check them for tampering. And—”

  She hesitated, then decided to take a risk. “—ask the droid what happened, too. I think it understood what I was doing and it can confirm our findings.” For all she knew, the droid would incriminate her. But the thing seemed to like her.

  Adan let out a grunt of a laugh. “We’re not equipped for hostile information download. I’m not loading a malicious program into the ship’s computers, or spending a day dissecting your droid in a clean room—”

  “Then listen to me,” Quell said. She heard the passion in her voice and tamped it down. “I came back. I’m worthless to you if I’m a traitor, but I can still be useful if I’m real.”

  “You can be real,” Adan replied, “and still too much trouble to bother with.”

  Her eyes flickered to the crew. One of Adan’s guards was fully focused on her, weapon clenched tight—too tight, in a nervous grip rather than a professional one. Another studied the status panels and the walls in something like shame. Tensent, however, showed no sign of stress. He looked as cold as when he’d tried to kill her in the Entropian Hive cantina, and as relaxed as when they’d shot targets in the cargo hold.

  “Your play, but can I make a suggestion?” Tensent watched Quell, but his words were directed to Adan.

  “Make it quick,” Adan said.

  “If she were in my crew? I’d give her five minutes. Then decide whether to toss her out the air lock.” Tensent grinned, and Adan frowned dubiously.

  Quell doubted Adan would execute her. She was less certain about Tensent. Nonetheless, when Adan turned away from the larger man Tensent’s grin vanished and he caught Quell’s eyes. He nodded very slowly, as if prompting her to act.

  Tensent understood people better than Quell ever would. She tried to take the advice given.

  “Two minutes,” she said. “I don’t need five. Just give me two.”

  Adan looked from Quell to Tensent and back. “Two minutes,” he said.

  Quell told him what she knew.

  “Just over a week ago, a detachment from the 204th Imperial Fighter Wing ambushed the Hellion’s Dare in the Jiruus system. The Dare was a New Republic frigate on a reconnaissance mission, with two fighter squadron escorts—enough firepower to defend itself.

  “I know because I went to investigate sites of likely Shadow Wing activity. Jiruus showed traces of a battle in low planetary orbit but I couldn’t find any wreckage.”

  Adan was paying attention. She was rushing, she knew, and she tried to slow down. She needed to seem confident, not desperate.

  “I did a flyby of the planet surface and saw minimal damage from the fight. I made radio contact with the locals. They’ve got no galactic communications but they sent me scanner logs confirming that a conflict had taken place and that the Hellion’s Dare had fled. The fact the cities are still standing indicates Shadow Wing didn’t stick around long—they busted a few key facilities but didn’t bother to purge a planet full of witnesses.

  “I believe the Hellion’s Dare fled the system into the Oridol Cluster. A Shadow Wing sub-unit pursued, and that the pursuit is ongoing.”

  She felt sweat under her arms. Her shoulder was sore from so many hours without the sling. She watched Adan’s reaction, but his expression was flat. When he wanted to, the man could hide anything.

  “You started strong,” Adan said. “But you ended with speculation.”

  “I ran out of time,” Quell replied.

  Adan laughed—a genuine laugh this time, albeit a brief one. Quell let herself smile.

  “Go on,” Adan said. “Explain.”

  “We had a maneuver in the 204th we called trapping the bantha. Tricky to execute but very effective, and we got good at it.” She heard her tone and cursed herself. Sound humble. Sound penitent. “When an enemy unit looked ready to flee to lightspeed, we’d pick a single fighter and separate it from the rest of the group. Surround it, harry it, but keep it intact right until the jump into hyperspace.

  “As soon as the enemy started jumping out, we’d blast the trapped fighter. Everyone else would escape. We’d tractor the wreckage aboard our carrier and salvage the navigation system. Recover whatever jump coordinates the unit was using.”

  “That’s some fancy timing,” Tensent said. “Clever.”

  Adan’s eyes half lidded and he nodded. “And you figure Shadow Wing chased after the Dare at Jiruus because, what—they didn’t stay long enough to do much damage to the planet?”

  “Yes. Shadow Wing went after a frigate on a reconnaissance mission. That suggests they wanted to prevent some discovery from reaching the New Republic, so why—”

  “—why would they leave witnesses on Jiruus, yes. I’m not an idiot. What about the Oridol Cluster? Why there?”

  “If Shadow Wing had destroyed the Hellion’s Dare, they would’ve returned to Jiruus for mop-up. That means they’re still in chase mode. Oridol’s the obvious place for a rebel to flee and the—the abnormalities there would slow both the Dare and Shadow Wing to a crawl.”

  Again, Adan nodded. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other as if he wanted to pace but was frustrated by the cramped space. “What makes you think,” he said carefully, “that your Shadow Wing detachment wasn’t destroyed by the Dare?”

  He’d caught her. She thought of lying, but he’d just begun to trust her. The truth, then.

  “The recon unit is a frigate and two fighter squadrons. Against the 204th, they don’t have a chance.”

  CHAPTER 6

  PAYLOAD

  I

  The goal was simple: Locate and extract the Hellion’s Dare from the Oridol Cluster. But everything Yrica Quell knew about military strategy implied a thousand layers of complexity beneath that statement of intent. Locate meant scouting missions. It meant high-speed vessels and long-range scanning buoys; supply convoys and those convoys’ fighter escorts; timetables and star charts and encrypted communications channels. Extract meant carriers and more starfighters and intelligence on the enemy force; detailed maps of the zone of action and meetings between wing commanders and squadron leaders; and in the end, for the briefest of periods, violence.

  That was how the Empire had operated—with the slow, crushing inevitability of a tectonic shift. None of it was possible under the New Republic.

  “If we want to find the Dare, we do it ourselves,” Adan had told Quell, after he’d called off the guards and they’d returned to the main deck of the Buried Treasure. “I’ve sent a message to the commander of the Barma Battle Group but Shadow Wing isn’t anyone’s most urgent problem. It’ll take us days to get reinforcements, at best.”

  Every passing hour increased the odds of the Dare’s destruction. Adan seemed to know that, and—testy though he was—he seized the Treasure’s conference room for his working group and didn’t argue when Quell requested access to his files on the Oridol Cluster. They sat together with Nath Tensent and the silent Kai
ros, poring through intelligence reports and debriefings from past expeditions; reviewing technical specs for the Hellion’s Dare and its escorts.

  They debated ways to contact the Hellion’s Dare and found none. They discussed whether to guess at the Dare’s course and follow along, but determined they would never find the ship in time. They considered what would happen if they did find the Dare and were forced to engage with Shadow Wing, and agreed engagement was to be avoided; they needed to help the Dare escape to friendly territory—learn what its crew had learned—not start a fight.

  “We need a signal,” Tensent said. “Send out a flare and bring them home.”

  That’s a metaphor, not a plan, Quell thought. She said: “What kind of flare?”

  Tensent shrugged. “Used to hear stories about purrgil. Living creatures that roam hyperspace. Old buddy of mine claimed he knew how they communicated. Said he could make them yell across a whole sector—warn his business partners without using Imperial beacons.”

  “We don’t have purrgil,” Quell said, “and the Dare wouldn’t know what to listen for.”

  Tensent leveled his gaze at Quell and, one boot at a time, dropped both feet on the conference table. “It wasn’t a suggestion. It was supposed to be inspiration.”

  She thought of snapping back, but Tensent didn’t deserve it. She was irritable and they were short on time. She made a mental note to apologize later and hoped she somehow forgot.

  Adan was silent through the exchange, drawing fingerprint-grease squiggles on the table. Tensent seemed as surprised as Quell when he announced that he’d found their solution.

  * * *

  —

  Seventy minutes later, Quell was zipping up her flight suit when she heard a mechanical hum enter the berthing compartment. She turned to the doorway and saw the torture droid. “Adan agreed to let you fly,” it said, as if the statement were a question.