Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  They unloaded. Nath was pleased to see that Kairos was strong enough to carry what must’ve been her own weight in camping gear, along with an ornate bowcaster the likes of which he hadn’t seen in a decade. Wyl, once he’d cleared out the A-wing, spent the last few minutes on the mountaintop squatting in front of T5 and Quell’s astromech droid, grinning and whispering like a toddler. Anyone else, Nath would’ve wanted to smack for that—yet he found himself reluctantly charmed by Wyl’s boyish enthusiasm. It was unpretentious. Unperformative. And to give Wyl his due, the kid was a blasted competent flier.

  The five pilots picked their way down the rocks. The descent wasn’t steep, nor treacherous, and once the exercise took the edge off the chill Nath found the journey not entirely unpleasant. Quell led the way, while Kairos and Wyl took up the rear. Chass floated about, apparently focused on staying away from—well, either Wyl, Kairos, or both of them, Nath wasn’t sure. The bright, metallic odor of the needles grew strong as they crossed the tree line.

  Nath worked his way to the front until he hiked beside Quell. “Drink?” he asked.

  “I’ve got a canteen,” she said without looking at him.

  He tapped the flask in his jacket, then shrugged. Maybe better if he didn’t elaborate. “Didn’t get to talk much after Abednedo. Wanted to say I was sorry how it went down. Glad Syndulla and Adan weren’t too hard on you.”

  Quell grunted and leapt off a boulder, landing hard on both feet. Nath watched the way she rubbed her shoulder. She hadn’t completely healed since he’d seen her in a sling.

  When she didn’t answer him, he followed and went on, “Don’t think anyone blames you for taking a swing at Adan, either. Risky move, but no one doubts he’s a scumball.”

  “Are you saying,” Quell asked, “that you can forgive a swing at a superior officer? So long as he’s difficult enough?”

  He laughed. “Bet you wonder how my squadron worked, don’t you?”

  “I really don’t.”

  Nath laughed again. Slowly, Quell was growing on him. It was a pity she didn’t feel the same. “Anyway, I wanted to mention all that so you don’t think any of this is personal. I wanted to chat about the problems we’ve been having—seems like we’re not getting much closer to Shadow Wing, and Pandem Nai’s pretty far off. Maybe if Syndulla let us off the leash more we’d be having more luck, but—well.

  “We don’t find something soon to jump-start this operation, part of me wonders whether the New Republic would rather live with Shadow Wing than take the next step. They’d lose a ship or a city now and then, but still easier than laying siege to Pandem Nai while the whole galaxy is a mess—”

  “The New Republic,” Quell interjected, quiet and curt, “fully understands the threat posed by the 204th.”

  “Just saying it’s hard times. They’ll be making sacrifices. Could be we’ll see whole sectors turned over to Imperials when the peace comes. Trouble is—” He paused. “I’m only here because of Shadow Wing. You remember that, right?”

  It was a lie, but it felt as honest as anything Nath had said.

  “I remember,” Quell said.

  “So I’m telling you now, as a friendly warning: I’d like to do right by my old squadron. Take the whole 204th down. If I can’t, though…?

  “Well, there’s one Shadow Wing pilot in view right now.” He let his lips twitch upward, but it wasn’t really a smile. “I can always settle and cut my losses.”

  Quell kept her eyes on the path down the mountainside. Nath started to wonder whether she understood. Then she glanced back at him, colder than anything on the frigid moon.

  “Thank you,” she said, “for your frank assessment. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “My pleasure,” Nath said, and trekked past his commander with a grin.

  The chill of the moon was almost enough to make him forget about the real reason he was in the squadron. Vengeance was part of it, to be sure, but he’d known in the cantina on the Entropian Hive that there was no gain in it. He’d walked away from Yrica Quell, resisting the temptation to join her.

  He would have stuck by his decision if Kairos hadn’t come calling. If she hadn’t stepped into his room while he’d been cleaning the mess Quell and the torture droid had left, presenting a recording from Adan that promised more than vengeance: a recording that had promised money, all the credits Adan could scrape together so long as Nath understood he was working as Adan’s personal agent.

  The reward was too big, the gain too great, to turn down the bet.

  Now Nath was committed. And if he failed to find Shadow Wing, failed to shed blood after taking on the mission, he really would be letting his old crew down.

  He could let down Adan, too, but the spy was just another customer. Nath had no qualms about backing out of a deal.

  III

  They’d made it to level ground, but Chass was still miserable. It wasn’t just the cold, or the fact she hadn’t been on a world so wide open—so deathly silent, so full of wild smells—in ages. It was all those things, but mostly it was the company.

  These weren’t her people. Quell was an Imperial at heart, no matter what she did to try to show otherwise. Nath was entertaining, but Chass couldn’t begin to trust him. As for Wyl—she risked a glance in the boy’s direction and saw him angling her way.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said.

  It was—cockpit chatter aside—about the most they’d spoken since the Hellion’s Dare. Wyl’s face was stoic, but his posture was stiff. He was making an effort to show he accepted the brush-off and mostly failing.

  Chass turned her gaze away.

  He’d taken too much from her. He might not understand it, but he didn’t have to understand any more than she had to forgive.

  She slowed her pace. Wyl didn’t pursue her and Chass fell behind. There was no path through the forest, but the undergrowth was thin and the trees were spaced wide—they must have been one of the few life-forms that could survive on the dim, dreary moon. Now and again she heard a birdlike trilling, but she saw nothing rustling through the branches or burrowing into the dirt.

  She flinched when she heard footsteps behind her. She flinched a second time when she saw that it was Kairos.

  You need to do this, she thought. If not with Wyl, at least with her.

  She blew a funnel of breath and dropped back beside her colleague. Kairos tilted her head in acknowledgment but otherwise didn’t react.

  “You saved my life on Abednedo,” Chass said.

  Kairos seemed not to hear. Her pace was slow and steady, easy to match. Her cloak still bore dark stains from their last mission.

  “I got kind of creeped out when I saw you fight. You’re intense, and I—okay. I’m grateful for the save.” She forced out the words and felt satisfied with their sound.

  Kairos turned toward her and Chass forced herself not to visibly tense. She met the gaze of the visor. She pictured the woman tearing through ragtag soldiers with cruel fury. Whatever Chass’s visceral reaction, she could respect Kairos’s ability.

  Kairos inclined her head in a slow bow. Chass smirked in return.

  “Still be easier if we knew you,” she said. “You are kind of a freak.”

  IV

  The dim yellow sun hid behind the forest canopy long before its light disappeared altogether. Darkness brought life to the woods—or perhaps the absence of vision focused Wyl’s other senses, alerting him to sounds and scents he’d discounted too easily. The ground chittered and murmured, as if chitinous insects called out to one another; the odor of wet fur and fungal matter drifted to his nose.

  With the darkness came a sharper cold, and Quell swiftly called a halt, announcing that they were still several kilometers from the rebel base and that without even a trail to follow continuing through
the night would be folly. The five pilots rapidly unslung their packs and established a makeshift camp around a cluster of heat lanterns. Only Nath and Kairos seemed unaffected by the temperature, and Wyl felt a moment of genial envy at Nath’s layers of muscle and fat.

  Soon they sat in their separate corners, eating gritty chunks of ration bars dipped into a citrus-chemical nutrient paste Chass’s B-wing had been stocked with. They did all this in silence, and Wyl was struck—not for the first time—how different it all was from Riot Squadron. He remembered what Sata Neek had told him, the night he’d tried to leave forever: We had the best times.

  If only to hear a voice, he struck up a conversation with Nath, and presently they were speaking with ease about their worst nights in the wilderness: evenings spent in the factory-deserts of Phorsa Gedd, which vented heat from sunset to sunrise; or in the fungal forests of Felucia. Since their first night together at Ranjiy’s Krayt Hut, Wyl and Nath’s rapport had only improved. It wasn’t what Wyl had had with Sata Neek or Sonogari—it lacked the maturation of tested friendship, and tasted faintly of desperation—but it was relaxed and comforting. Wyl didn’t know if he’d be able to call Nath his friend tomorrow or a year from now (though he hoped so), but he could do it tonight.

  Wyl encouraged Nath to do most of the talking. Gently, without insisting, he asked for stories about the man’s old squadron. It was when Nath spoke about Reeka and Piter and Rorian that the cunning glint in his eyes seemed to thaw and he laughed without artifice. Their voices grew louder as Wyl asked about Nath’s night with T5 in the Red Isles of Thakwaa, and Nath described, in exquisite and implausible detail, how the astromech droid had convinced him to render plant stems into ointment for protection against the flies.

  “By the third batch it’s finally working,” Nath said, “and I’m covered in rashes like a lab animal. That droid…”

  “So what happened in the morning?” Wyl asked.

  “Nothing interesting. We got offworld a few days later, and I swore off taking botanical advice from machines ever again.”

  Wyl heard a muffled snicker from Chass, who’d been pretending not to listen. But it wasn’t Chass he spoke to when he raised his voice and said, “You’ve got to have some stories, Commander.”

  Quell, who’d been staring into the forest like a woman standing vigil for her dead, said, “Nothing to share.”

  “You’ve never ejected and had to camp?” Wyl tried. “Spent a night under a tarp in the rain?”

  Give us something to work with, he wanted to say. Something other than orders and drills. I’m trying to help you.

  “Nothing to share,” Quell said again.

  Wyl forced a smile and rubbed his face with his palms. They’d grown icy.

  “Why don’t you tell your own story instead of stealing ours, huh?” Nath grinned and slapped a meaty hand against Wyl’s shoulder. “Or at least make up something good.”

  “What do you want to hear?”

  “To start with? What sort of man acts like he’s never seen a droid but flies like he was podracing in diapers?”

  Wyl furrowed his brow. There was nothing hostile in the tone, but he didn’t understand. “What—”

  “He wants to know where you’re from, you thick-skulled man!” Chass called in exasperation, falling backward where she sat.

  “Pretty much,” Nath agreed. “What sort of backward world are you from and how’d you end up here?”

  Again, Wyl heard no hostility in Nath’s voice—no judgment despite the phrasing. He paused, then nodded cautiously.

  There was a door in his heart that he kept closed, separating the Wyl Lark of Home from the Wyl Lark of the Rebel Alliance and the New Republic. He opened the door in dreams and in flight, and he needed it to keep himself from breaking.

  But if he was to call Nath—or any of the others—a friend, he needed to open the door for them. And though Wyl was not naïve, he was trusting by nature. He didn’t want to be a man who hid what he was when asked to share.

  “It’s not a short story,” he warned.

  “You got somewhere to be?” Nath asked.

  This is the story he told.

  * * *

  —

  Polyneus was the name outsiders called the world. Wyl had grown up thinking of it as the Empire’s name, a way of mocking his planet with a clumsy and meaningless designation, but that was both untrue and unkind—even before the Empire, no one had ever called it Home but his people. And Wyl’s ancestors, along with all the progenitors of Polyneus, had been outsiders once, too.

  “We were fortunate compared with many,” he said, in a voice unlike the voice he used to speak at all other times. His audience watched him, rapt one moment and uncomfortable the next. Wyl didn’t soften his candor.

  The Clone Wars had damaged many worlds irrevocably. Wyl hadn’t seen them, but he’d heard the tales passed on by elders and storytellers. Polyneus had been unscathed. Ignored. The Republic had had no strategic reason to garrison there. The Separatists had seen it as a backwater, a primitive place full of primitive people.

  The Polyneans were not primitive. They did not reject science or galactic technologies, but they were judicious in what they permitted on their world. Like the Abednedos, they built cities into mountainsides—but also into jungles and on mighty platforms above lakes. They milked beasts and grew crops, but where their needs would bring suffering to living creatures or exhaust the natural landscape they tasked their engineers with finding technological solutions.

  “It wasn’t like this,” Wyl said, gesturing to the forest around them. “Not in the places where we lived. But it was closer to this than any city I ever saw in the Core Worlds.”

  The children of Polyneus grew up as children of all, playing together, studying under the Sun-Lamas, and moving among communal homes as their needs and desires demanded. It was at the age of seven that Wyl first mounted one of the sur-avkas, following a group of older children to the cliffsides where the half-tame, half-wild creatures flocked. There was no ritual significance to sur-avka riding, no cultural rite attached—but it was a source of mirth and challenge, and Wyl took to it like thousands of youths. He learned to grip the beast, to breathe as it breathed so that it saw him as an extension of itself, and in time he joined races and displays of skill.

  The Empire didn’t interfere with Polyneus when Wyl was young. (At least not the way he remembered—maybe the elders and the Sun-Lamas had sheltered young children from the truths of the galaxy.) But when he turned twelve, the Empire’s presence became unmissable. “They chose to build a weapons platform in low atmosphere. I don’t know why—if it was to intimidate us, or if they worried about rebels or some other invader. Everyone said it would be the first of many.

  “You could see it in the sky. This black, spiny thing that passed over us once a day. The clouds around it turned the color of rust. Soon you could smell it on the wind, like the acid from your stomach. The sur-avkas didn’t fly quite as fast anymore. The birds—”

  The elders of the settlements petitioned the Empire when they saw the damage being done. The Empire promised inspections and studies, assured the Polyneans they’d compile reports and long-term impact projections. Those were only promises, though, and they were never kept. A brave and wise messenger was sent to Coruscant to seek the advice and aid of the Galactic Emperor, but that messenger never returned.

  Slowly, Polyneus’s biosphere began to die. The Empire didn’t care.

  “That’s when the elders knew they couldn’t solve the problem alone.

  “That’s when they reached out to the Rebel Alliance.”

  Wyl didn’t know how contact had been established. Maybe, he admitted, the Sun-Lamas of the Peak, learned masters and keepers of the Polynean ways, had been in touch with Senator Mothma or other rebel leaders for years beforehand—but he doub
ted it. He imagined the search for a rebel contact had been perilous, and that the rebels had been skeptical of Polynean aid until they’d heard the offer.

  “The Hik’e-Matriarch—translate it as ‘queen,’ maybe, though it’s more complicated—she knew the rebels needed pilots. So she offered, on behalf of us all, to send one of the finest sur-avka fliers from each community to serve with the Rebellion until Polyneus was free of the Emperor’s shadow.”

  The proclamation was passed among the Polyneans but never written: Let every village send a warrior-tribute, for the battle against the Empire has become our battle; and no people in the galaxy fly as the people of Home fly.

  Some villages held competitions. Others allowed volunteers to step forth and let the elders choose among them. Neither method was needed in Ridge, where Wyl had been raised. Only one other sought to deny him his place, and that was an act of kindness. But no one doubted that Wyl Lark was the finest flier they had.

  He wanted it. He wanted to do right by his people, and to make a difference in the galaxy.

  He left Home. He made an oath to return when the Empire was defeated.

  “They called us the Hundred and Twenty—the volunteers from Polyneus who found their way into the Alliance. We didn’t know one another. We left separately, made our way to different rebel hideouts, but I hear the others fared well. Some lived, some died, but they fought. They made us all proud.

  “As for me, you know the rest. I ended up in Riot Squadron. I left behind my siblings, my family on Polyneus, and I gained a new family.”

  * * *

  —

  Wyl told them the truth, but there were truths he didn’t tell. He didn’t mention how much he missed Polyneus. How joining the Alliance, traveling the galaxy, had forced him to take up the wider galaxy’s ways and lock the teachings of his people away in his heart.

  He didn’t tell them how he had longed to return Home after the Battle of Endor, and that he still longed to go back now.