Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  Still, she’d let her guard down. She’d let herself hope when, in truth, there was so much work ahead. She’d—

  She laughed aloud at her desk. Stornvein, who’d just delivered the latest intelligence brief and was halfway out the door, stopped to look back. “Something wrong, General?”

  “Plenty,” she said. “But if you ever find yourself frustrated? Think back to when smuggling fruit to starving villages was a triumph for the Rebel Alliance.”

  “I’ll do that, ma’am,” Stornvein said. “A bit of perspective never hurts.”

  The man exited with a bow of his head, and Hera resumed reading the brief. Yinchorr had devolved into a siege situation; Arkania was caught up in ground-level fighting; and Moff Pandion was continuing to sweep up Imperial strays to add to his fleet. The picture became clearer each day: While the Imperial Navy had scattered and dissolved at the galactic level, isolated fleets were entrenching under the control of admirals and regional governors. Any planet that hadn’t freed itself already would be harder to liberate tomorrow.

  The Barma sector had lacked an Imperial leader charismatic or tyrannical enough to consolidate sector defenses, which was part of why Hera had taken her task force to the border. Her official mission was to reclaim as much territory as possible, swooping into systems with her ragtag flotilla of battleships and starfighters and neutralizing naval opposition for the benefit of local resistance forces. But in truth, half her time was spent triaging distress calls instead of pushing forward; the other half was spent coordinating with New Republic operations in neighboring sectors, trying to maintain some semblance of a coherent galactic strategy.

  These were good and necessary tasks. The New Republic was making progress, as was the Barma Battle Group. She’d seen the horrors of Operation Cinder, and she understood the consequences of prioritizing the wrong problems. She just wished the resources available were equal to the problems she faced.

  “General Syndulla?” Stornvein was back already, leaning through the doorway with an apologetic expression. “Your appointment is here. He’s early, but—”

  Speaking of problems, she thought, and made a throw-it-here gesture. “Send him in, and call security if he isn’t out in thirty minutes.”

  Caern Adan had been demanding a meeting ever since the Buried Treasure had rendezvoused with her task force. Now, almost two weeks and a minor planetary invasion later, she’d cleared enough room in her schedule to deal with the analyst face-to-face.

  She recognized him from his holoreports when he strutted into the room. She arched her brow at the sight of his antenna-stalks, raised at attention as if he meant to monitor the entire ship. They looked somehow like slender imitations of her own jade head-tails, each thick as an arm and running down her back. She supposed she’d get used to them in time. She’d learned not to laugh at human hair, after all.

  “Officer Adan,” she said, gesturing to a metal stool. “I’m sorry we’ve had to delay this meeting so often—” He started to reply but she kept talking. “—and I wanted to thank you again for your work with the Hellion’s Dare. That was a tough loss, but two survivors is better than none.”

  Everything in the man’s communiqués had reeked of self-importance. The least she could do was try to start out on the right foot.

  “Two survivors and vital information, General,” he said, and she didn’t find his tone—matter-of-fact and respectful—objectionable at all. “You saw the assessment of Pandem Nai?”

  She nodded. Among her many problems, Pandem Nai wasn’t the most urgent—but she recognized the potential for it to grow until, like a black hole, it swallowed everything else. “Gas mining world. Resource-rich, highly defensible, and behind enemy lines. Based on the Dare’s recon data, New Republic Intelligence thinks an especially nasty Imperial fighter wing has taken residence there. Does that sum it up?”

  “It’s a start,” Adan said, and Hera heard the rising impatience. “If the 204th—they call it Shadow Wing—has locked down Pandem Nai, they can supply half a fleet with the planet’s gas mines. Shadow Wing will turn the place into a fortress and launch who-knows-how-many attacks from it. Have you seen their file?”

  She had seen the file on the 204th. She’d felt a numbing dismay when she’d read about their links to Orinda and Operation Cinder. The list of the Empire’s atrocities was practically endless. “Yes, and they need to be addressed. So does Moff Pandion. So does the berserker fleet carving through Hutt space—”

  “Then let me propose—”

  “I know what you’re proposing,” she snapped. She let out a long breath and forced herself to calm. “Walk with me?”

  She stood without waiting for him to answer and stepped into the corridor beyond her office. Ringing metal, shouts, and droid whistles echoed—the sounds of the latest round of repairs to the Lodestar, an aging Acclamator-class battleship that had carried thousands of clone troopers in the years before the Empire. Hera suspected there wasn’t a hull plate left on the vessel that hadn’t been replaced; its captain called it sturdy, a descriptor that Hera lacked the heart to dispute. If the Lodestar survived to the end of the war, she’d be pleasantly surprised.

  Adan hurried to keep pace as she walked. “With every hour we wait,” he was saying, “Pandem Nai becomes more heavily fortified. At the rate your task force is gaining ground, it’ll be weeks before you get there.”

  “I’m aware, yes. We can’t afford to ignore Pandem Nai for long—” She held up a hand as she made the concession. “—and we can’t afford the resources to attack right now. Even if we could, we don’t have the intelligence to know what we’d face. You don’t need to convince me of the problem. You need to convince me of your solution.”

  Hera turned abruptly and hopped onto a ladder leading to the lower decks. She heard Adan swear softly as they descended. “I have a small working group,” he called from above. “The same group that located the Hellion’s Dare. My group is fully trained and equipped, dedicated to cracking the problem of Shadow Wing and Pandem Nai. All we need is an operating base.”

  She held back a laugh as she swung off the ladder and into the lower hangar. She swept her gaze over the vast enclosure and breathed in the smell of melted plastoid. Six columns of starfighters stretched before her, and half a dozen engineering teams hurried among the vessels (Meteor and Hail Squadron fighters, mostly, with others in for maintenance from Vanguard), rearming, refueling, and repairing them. A repulsor sled stacked with concussion missiles glided past her; a droid squawked orders from a catwalk up above.

  “All you need is an operating base?” Hera asked, as Adan arrived at her side. “That’s your way of saying, I want to run a personal fighter squadron out of your fleet?”

  “Specialized,” Adan said, “not personal. My group is tasked with analyzing the Shadow Wing threat and developing plans to counter their tactics; obtaining information from combat zones out of reach of New Republic Intelligence; and assisting or leading direct engagements against Shadow Wing itself.” Adan was quoting from his own memoranda, but Hera didn’t interrupt him. “You said you don’t have resources? My people come with their own ships. You said you don’t have the intelligence you need? That’s our top priority.”

  “But what your people don’t have is all this,” Hera said, gesturing to the chaos of the hangar. “You’re not just asking for space aboard a cramped ship. You’re asking for supplies and expertise. You’d need my ground crews, my munitions, everything. And frankly—” She hesitated to say what she’d been thinking since she’d first read Adan’s proposal, but she’d been in the Rebellion long enough to speak her mind about its future. “—what you’re asking for looks a lot like an attempt to run a military operation without military oversight.” She softened her tone and lowered her voice. “Officer Adan, the chancellor’s made it clear she doesn’t want a New Republic military at all once the peace
comes. I don’t like the precedent of this.”

  Adan met her gaze. The frustration left his face, but the harshness didn’t. “I’m not asking you to like it,” he said. “But my superiors have already authorized me to carry out the plan. I told you: All I need is an operating base.”

  Hera hid her surprise, squaring her shoulders and clenching her jaw. She could object, she knew—take her complaint directly to the chancellor, who owed her dinner and more than a few favors—but that wasn’t how a situation like this needed to be handled.

  “I have two conditions,” she said.

  “By all means,” Adan said, almost graciously.

  “First, if your squadron is operating out of the Lodestar, it answers at all times to the captain and wing commander on duty. We’re not delaying a launch for you, and if we need extra fighters to defend the battle group you don’t sit on your hands and watch. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  That was the easy one, Hera thought. Now for the hard part.

  “Second, you don’t get to command the squadron.”

  Adan’s eyes turned hard. “Excuse me?”

  “You never served in the Alliance military, did you?” Hera knew the answer—rushed as she’d been, she’d done her research.

  “No, but—”

  “What about before you joined the rebels? Any naval training? Local security work?” This time the question wasn’t rhetorical.

  “No.”

  She thought of asking: What did you do, exactly? But she wasn’t trying to humiliate him. “Then I can understand,” she said, “why you may not fully appreciate what running a starfighter squadron entails. But if you’re going to operate out of my fleet, I need someone who can look at all this—” She jerked her chin in the direction of the ships. “—and know how to talk to the ground crews and account for support and logistics. Someone who knows how to plan an operation from start to finish, and who knows what a B-wing is capable of and what an A-wing isn’t. I won’t have time to review every flight plan your working group puts together, and for your own people’s safety I want someone with flight experience signing off.

  “You can oversee the squadron. Give it mission parameters, propose whatever you want. But when it comes to day-to-day operations, your squadron commander runs things.”

  His nostrils flared. His eyes were cold as diamonds. But he didn’t object, and Hera was relieved that he seemed to accept the logic.

  “I can live with that,” he said. “I’ll tell Wyl Lark to report to the Lodestar’s wing commander.”

  Wyl Lark. She tried to remember what she’d read from Adan’s reports. “He’s one of the Dare survivors? The one from Polyneus?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m sure he’s quite a flier—” She’d seen two of the Polynean tributes in her career, and both had astonished her with their knack for piloting. “—but he’s never come close to running a squadron. This isn’t the time for him to learn.”

  Adan smiled sardonically. “I thought you didn’t have time to micromanage us?”

  Hera mirrored his smile. “It took a while to set up this meeting. I may as well use the time we booked.”

  “So. Command experience. That leaves Tensent.”

  His resigned tone surprised her. “You don’t like Tensent?” she asked. She had her own objections to the man, but he was qualified and capable. She’d met him in passing once, and found him smart and charismatic.

  “I trust Tensent to do his job. But I don’t trust Tensent to do his job unsupervised.”

  “You’re afraid he’ll steal your group away, aren’t you?” She started to laugh, then swallowed the sound. “I’m sorry, that’s not fair—”

  But Adan was smiling again, almost chagrined. “It’s a concern, yes. If you don’t trust Intelligence running a side game, you certainly shouldn’t trust Nath Tensent.”

  “In that case, you really only have one choice. Less command experience than Tensent, but enough, and plenty of time operating out of a carrier. Expertise in the enemy you’re hunting.”

  Adan’s reaction was swift and contemptuous. “She’s a defector. She—”

  “Some of the best pilots—the best rebels—I’ve known have been defectors. If you can’t trust her she shouldn’t be flying at all.” Hera sighed and glanced at the nearest console. Her thirty minutes were almost up, and she had ten thousand other emergencies awaiting her input. “I’m not going to force this, Officer Adan. If you prefer Tensent, you can give him the position and hope we don’t regret it. Quell would be my choice—I’ll even overlook where her X-wing came from—but you know your people better than I do.”

  Adan held her gaze awhile, then looked out at the sea of starfighters. He seemed to be studying the workings of the Lodestar and its squadrons; as if he’d find an answer in the welding of metal or the uncoupling of fueling hoses. “It’ll be Quell, then,” he said, “until it isn’t.”

  Good enough, Hera decided. She nodded briskly and strode toward the ladder. Adan was still looking away when she turned back.

  “I said I don’t have time to review your plans, and I meant it. But I will be keeping an eye on your squadron. Your pilots are operating out of my fleet. That makes them my responsibility.

  “Keep them safe. Be smart. We’ve all seen enough funerals.”

  Adan faced her, arched his brow, and snapped a salute. “General.”

  She grunted an acknowledgment and ascended the ladder.

  She was halfway to her office when the old longing hit her. General Syndulla never seemed to fit—like a perfectly tailored garment that nonetheless belonged to someone else. She had been a rebel before the Alliance to Restore the Republic had existed. Back before they’d had fleets and armies. Back when they hadn’t been worried about setting bad precedents for a galactic government they were still figuring out how to run.

  The Empire was crumbling every day. Trillions of people were free because of the Rebellion. Because she was a general running a battle group instead of a cell leader flying the Ghost on one mad assignment or another.

  Still, she missed her old crew. Her family.

  She wished they all could have been with her aboard the Lodestar.

  II

  Fly, try, and die was an adage of the Imperial Starfighter Corps: advice to undertrained TIE pilots fresh out of the Academy and desperate for practical instruction. It was bleak and demoralizing—enough so that saying it in public risked spawning stern memoranda from the security bureau—and not entirely unhelpful.

  Survival in the brutal Imperial infantry was a matter of luck. Survival as a pilot meant pushing your fighter to its limits and coordinating with your squadron. Those who learned became aces. Those who didn’t were dashed into nothingness in a thousand different ways.

  Fly, try, and die, Yrica Quell reminded herself as her squadron—her squadron—maneuvered outside the perimeter of the Gobreton minefield. Four marks trailed her X-wing in a perfect wedge formation; in the dark between the ships, communications bursts linked droids and navicomputers, synchronized thrusters and maneuvering jets so that the five ships moved as one. She saw nothing ahead of her except the distant azure sphere of a gas giant and the endless starfield behind it.

  “Ready for targeting pass,” she said. “Lark, with me. Kairos, you’re backup. Ready jammers. Weapons free but watch what you pull in.”

  “Lark acknowledging.” Crisp and responsive. After only a handful of flights, Quell expected nothing less from Lark.

  A low, computerized buzz was the only response from Kairos’s U-wing. D6-L translated ACKNOWLEDGED on Quell’s display, but it wasn’t necessary. Building a vocabulary of sounds had been Quell’s first task upon learning Kairos would be flying under her.

  She still didn’t understand the reasoning behind
her promotion to squadron commander. She’d earned it—she’d proven her value, proven her skill, and the thought made her want to weep and cheer in triumph—and Adan had pledged his support and confidence in the most sober terms. But she didn’t entirely trust it.

  “Unlink navigation. Opening throttle,” she said. D6-L indicated it would handle the first task. She felt the surge from the thrusters, felt her seat sculpt to her spine, as she handled the second.

  She didn’t trust her promotion. She didn’t trust Adan’s reasoning. She didn’t trust—she didn’t know her squadron, and though Lark and Chadic seemed professional Tensent and Kairos had each tried to kill her once already.

  Those were interpersonal challenges, and ones she was steeled to face. But she also didn’t entirely trust her own judgment. She’d earned her position as squadron second-in-command in the 204th. She’d been ready for elevation after almost a year building training schedules and filing maintenance and personnel requests; after taking command of more than one mission in times of emergency. Yet a squadron of disciplined Imperial pilots who had undergone the same training, who spoke the same shorthand, was different from what she faced now.

  She’d told Adan she could have the group combat-ready in a matter of days. It hadn’t seemed like a choice, when the 204th was supposedly fortifying Pandem Nai with every passing hour.

  She spotted the reflective glimmer of a smart mine and chose her new trajectory. She turned and rolled, skirting the mine’s targeting sphere as Lark and Kairos trailed far behind her. Her sensors flashed as the mine came alive and she continued her turn, accelerating and pulling away.

  The mine was pursuing her now, locked and burning fuel in an effort to catch the X-wing. Quell’s heart rate increased. She couldn’t outrun it. She might be maneuverable enough to force it to expend all its fuel, but she didn’t yet understand her ship’s capabilities on that base, intuitive level.

  She didn’t trust her X-wing, either.

  She felt exposed with the emptiness of space above her. A TIE fighter viewport faced straight ahead. In the X-wing, cold and dark enveloped her.