Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  “Sounds like you’re volunteering,” Nath said with a grin, and went to plug his droid into the Y-wing.

  Wyl didn’t think much about his conversation with Chass. He’d dwell on it later, he suspected, after returning to the Lodestar; but for the moment he was grateful for the armistice between them.

  In time, the job was finished. Quell called them together, the five ships already powered up and humming. “Should be an easy flight back,” she said. “That pirate scout jumped out of the system a day ago, and I got a signal from the battle group with rendezvous coordinates. No alarm, no warning to come in hot, so I’m assuming operations are going well.” She paused and added, “Good work,” before sketching a rough flight path for departure.

  Wyl’s A-wing was ready for takeoff when he decided to check the U-wing one last time. He hurried through the loading door and into the main cabin, dimly lit and packed full of cargo. He shook a stack of crates, confirmed the settings on the repulsors they’d used to lock everything in place, and finally stepped back, satisfied they’d done the best they could. “You’re set,” he called to Kairos, eyes still on the load. “Give it a final look if you want.”

  Kairos didn’t reply, of course. But neither did Wyl hear her emerge from the cockpit. He frowned, stepped to the cockpit door, and saw that no one was inside.

  Where was she?

  He left the U-wing and scanned the mountaintop. The other pilots were in their ships. He saw no sign of Kairos. He could’ve called her on his comlink, but he was more curious than worried. He started back toward the slope where they’d made their ascent.

  There, a dozen meters down the trail, stood Kairos. She was still, staring across the forest in the direction of the temple.

  Wyl sauntered toward her, careful to make enough noise to announce his approach. When he reached her side he followed her gaze, trying to see what she saw. The noise of the engines fell away; the calm of the forest swept over him. The moment was tranquil, but if there was any glimmer from the top of the temple spire, any sign of the ancient structure at all, he couldn’t find it.

  He thought back to the images he’d seen inside. The burning stars, the darkness—it felt like a faded dream now, half remembered and impossible, exposed as fakery in the light of day. Only the last moments remained with him in full: The galaxy as it is.

  He found peace in that.

  “Wyl Lark.”

  The voice was low and wet and guttural, and at first he didn’t understand where it came from. When he saw Kairos facing him he flinched.

  “The Emperor’s shadow is long,” she said.

  Then she looked away and began to hike back toward the ships.

  Wyl felt his muscles quiver. He felt a chill more profound than anything the forest moon had inflicted.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE DETERMINATION OF SOLDIERS

  I

  The Lodestar, along with the rest of Syndulla’s battle group, was waiting on the outskirts of the Borleias system. Quell saw fresh damage on the Lodestar’s port side as she flew to dock, but the fleet as a whole appeared intact—she noticed a corvette with one of its sections exposed to the vacuum of space and a freighter trailing sparks, yet she noticed no vessels missing altogether.

  Syndulla was waiting in the hangar when the squadron landed. That surprised Quell—the general presumably had more important things to do—but Quell climbed out of her X-wing, offered a cursory nod to Ragnell as the engineer waved teams into position, and marched crisply in Syndulla’s direction.

  “General,” she said. “Mission accomplished.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Syndulla replied. She was looking past Quell, to Lark and Chadic and Tensent as they called to one another and hopped out of their vessels. Quell saw the general smile, but the expression only lasted an instant. “No problems on the ground?”

  “None,” Quell said. “We found the rebel base without issue. One scout ship—we’re assuming pirates—flew by but didn’t see anything. The team reported some odd visual phenomena on our last day, but nothing that interfered with the job.”

  “Visual phenomena?” Syndulla cocked her head. “In the temple, you mean?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Quell said.

  “But you didn’t see it yourself?”

  “I was off-site at the time.”

  Syndulla peered at her in a way that Quell found vexing. “Too bad,” the general finally said. “I think you would’ve liked it.”

  Behind her, Quell heard Ragnell yelling about the repulsorsleds. “We’re highly trained engineers,” the woman called, “not your blasted labor force.” Quell resisted the urge to turn and see what, exactly, was happening. Instead she kept her chin up as she waited for the general.

  “Regardless,” Syndulla said, “it looks like you’ve come out of it in healthy shape. Which is good—because I’ve got another mission for you, if your squadron is ready.”

  Quell nodded cautiously. Before she’d gone to the cold Jedi moon, the general had told her: How you handle this mission will help me decide if there’s another. And though she didn’t understand how she’d passed Syndulla’s test, she knew better than to question the result.

  “We’re always ready, ma’am,” Quell said.

  * * *

  —

  It was another salvage operation. The fighting on Argai Minor had been brutal, and New Republic Intelligence suspected Imperial forces planetside had been receiving logistical support from elsewhere. “We want to know if their supply lines reached all the way to Pandem Nai,” General Syndulla had told Quell. “Since Shadow Wing is your specialty, you get first crack.”

  The plan was to patrol the battlefields surrounding the ruined Treinhaus Citadel, holding off any remaining Imperials and buying time for a New Republic salvage team to collect data from the wreckage. The enemy had already been decimated by orbital bombardment and precision strikes from Syndulla’s fleet, so resistance was expected to be scattered and desperate. “Three-legged walkers and stormtroopers with surface-to-air missiles ought to be our biggest problem,” Quell told the others at the briefing.

  They’d proven they could avoid bungling a mission altogether. Now Syndulla was giving them a chance to show they could operate in a combat zone. She’d done so without embellishment or warnings about the risks, but they all understood the significance.

  For a hundred reasons, this couldn’t go like Abednedo.

  Yet it didn’t take long for things to go downhill. The salvage team, upon arrival at the citadel, immediately increased its time estimate from two hours of work to sixteen. The fortress itself was missing most of its eastern wall—the kilometers-tall sheet of durasteel had been crumpled and melted by Imperial sappers using deep core mining drills. And the surrounding battlefield—rather than offering excellent visibility, as the pilots of Vanguard Squadron had predicted—was littered with the wreckage of speeders, troop carriers, walkers, and other vehicles, many of which had been ignited by Imperial guerrillas and now spewed toxic smoke into the air.

  Quell scrambled to adjust her planned patrol patterns and to organize shifts for the sixteen-hour wait. Four ships would stay in the air at any given time, in two two-ship elements. One pilot would be permitted to rest and stand watch over the citadel itself.

  She assigned the slower vessels—the Y-wing and B-wing, both poorly designed for atmospheric flight—to patrols closer to the citadel, while the A- and X-wings patrolled farther out. The U-wing could substitute for any single vessel. The resulting schedule appalled Quell’s sensibilities: She didn’t trust Chadic to fly with Tensent. She didn’t want to leave Lark and Kairos without support. She didn’t believe any of them would coordinate, following their assigned patrol routes and covering all necessary ground.

  But she said none of this. When she took off with Wyl Lark for the first patrol, she
told her squadron, “Keep to your assigned sectors. Stay with your partner. Follow your instincts. And alert everyone the moment something happens.”

  They were rebels. She couldn’t remake them into Imperial pilots in the time she had. As she’d done on the nameless moon, she had to treat them as what they were.

  For the first three hours, they encountered no resistance. They took potshots at infantry squads maneuvering below, simply to force the Imperials into cover; they caught glimpses of a TIE scout at the limits of their sensor range; but for the most part, they watched and waited.

  During the next three hours, as evening fell and the smoke grew thicker, they found themselves repeatedly targeted by Imperial ground forces. One moment, Quell would peer through the poisonous smog and adjust her course across the battlefield; the next, her console would flash, alerting her to a missile lock, and she’d frantically bank and ascend, bank and ascend, trying to reach an altitude where the missile couldn’t follow. She never ordered a counterattack after these frantic, furious encounters. She knew the starfighters would become vulnerable if they dropped low enough to strike at the infantry.

  For the next five hours, through the Argai night, they fended off waves of TIE bombers. The bombers came infrequently, in flights of two and three, unescorted by fighters and taking weaving paths through the smoke and darkness to reach the citadel.

  Wyl Lark destroyed three. Kairos and Chadic neutralized two each. Quell never even saw one.

  She should have been pleased. She was pleased—the squadron was performing admirably and the mission was going well. But she’d hoped for a chance to prove herself. General Syndulla’s question remained unanswered—Do they know that you’ll fight for them?—and she’d failed to demonstrate the risks she would take to keep her people alive.

  When morning came, the attacks stopped. The final patrols were uneventful, and in the misty light of dawn the pilots joked and traded stories. Quell didn’t discourage them.

  They returned home with the data. The mission was a success.

  Quell thought her “Alphabet Squadron” might have a chance after all.

  * * *

  —

  After Argai Minor—after two days of downtime, during which Quell spotted Tensent and Lark frequently mingling with the pilots of Meteor Squadron—the next mission took them to Rentaxius VIII, where they were to intercept and capture an Imperial cargo vessel believed to have resupplied at Pandem Nai.

  The operation had begun well. The New Republic ships had surrounded the enemy vessel. Quell demanded that the freighter surrender, and the captain agreed. Then she had to sit listening as the captain was murdered, a new commander took over, and the freighter opened fire. What happened next was neither a success nor a disaster: Tensent and Chadic disabled the ship, but a stray shot from Lark aimed at a laser turret hit an oxygen generator instead. They’d had to evacuate the survivors and tow the escape pods to safety.

  Lark didn’t mingle with the Lodestar pilots that night. Quell went looking for him after her debriefing with General Syndulla and Caern Adan. When she found him in the hangar drinking with Tensent—D6-L and T5 flanking Lark like loyal hounds—she backed away quietly before she could be noticed.

  Her pilots were supporting one another. Again, she was pleased. Again, she felt the flash of bitterness. Major Keize, she thought, would have been ashamed—by Quell’s neediness and doubt, as well as her inability to forge a bond of blood and trust with her people.

  The next mission was a support operation, backing up Hail Squadron after the Y-wings had been decimated by a run-in with an unidentified Imperial cruiser-carrier—possibly a Shadow Wing vessel, but more likely an escapee from Argai Minor. Hail’s new target was a half-wrecked Star Destroyer that had been limping through the Haldeen sector for weeks. Quell very nearly had the opportunity to draw the destroyer’s fire—another chance to prove her devotion to her squadron—but the moment passed and superior tactical options became available. Quell had no death wish, and together, her squadron and Hail delivered the killing blow to the enemy craft. Quell ached as she watched the ship fall—she couldn’t help but imagine the crew aboard scrambling through the flames. She imagined what battles the Star Destroyer had fought in its past; the squadrons it had hosted.

  When they returned to the Lodestar, she smiled grimly and said nothing of the dead as she reviewed the operation with her troops.

  * * *

  —

  “I understand,” the torture droid said, “that your relationship with Adan is improving.”

  “Did he tell you that?” Quell asked.

  She still met regularly with IT-O, though their sessions were shorter now. She had more work on her hands; she had missions to plan, reports to file, meetings with the ground crew to attend. These were all excuses, but they had the benefit of being real.

  “There have been no further physical altercations,” the droid said. “That alone qualifies as improvement.”

  “We don’t—” She paused. She wasn’t sure what was safe to share with the droid—what it was fishing for and what would make its way back to Adan. “My sense is that he’s content to let General Syndulla assign the missions. He’s focused on analyzing the data we’re bringing in. When he wants my opinion on Shadow Wing or Pandem Nai, I’ll be available.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” the droid said. “You understand that while he may have stepped back from direct supervision, Adan is ultimately in control of—”

  “My fate, yes. He can always send me back to Traitor’s Remorse.”

  “I wouldn’t have focused on the negative possibility. However, you will need to come to an understanding with him, sooner or later.”

  “We have an understanding.”

  “You have a cease-fire agreement. If I may make an assertion, Yrica Quell, you have a tendency to view half measures as finished journeys—” The droid’s photoreceptor dilated menacingly as she straightened in her seat. “—when it comes to issues relating to psychology and interpersonal relations. You complete an important first step and, feeling justifiably triumphant, see no purpose in a second.”

  Don’t argue with the droid, she told herself. Just nod and get it over with.

  “Where do you get the gall to say something like that?” she asked.

  The droid’s voice was steady. “You felt recruiting your pilots was sufficient to command them. You agreed to sessions with me but have shown little interest in taking our lessons beyond these walls. Even your adjustment to the New Republic has involved remarkably little—”

  “Stop,” she said. The voice still told her not to argue, but it was drowned out by the roar of blood in her ears. “You don’t know what I’ve done to try to adjust. You have no idea. Just because I don’t talk about something doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it. It doesn’t mean I’m taking shortcuts.”

  The droid contracted its photoreceptor and reduced its altitude by several centimeters. “Of course,” it said. “I may have overstepped.”

  It almost sounded hurt. But it was still a torture droid, and almost wasn’t convincing.

  * * *

  —

  The droid was wrong about Quell. If it had been right—if she really had been the sort of person to call a first step a victory—she wouldn’t have spent so much time dwelling on her squadron. The question of how to cement her bond with her pilots lingered in the back of her brain as she reviewed munitions supplies with Ragnell in the hangar, arguing over concussion missile requests and Lark’s “damage-prone” flying techniques. “You’re shutting us out,” Quell snapped. “We’re not guests aboard the Lodestar—we’re part of your complement, so treat us like it.”

  “I am treating you like you’re mine,” the mechanic sneered. “You think Meteor and Hail are thrilled when I prioritize Vanguard? Hail still has four ships too broke to
fly, and I’ve got their commander nagging me every day like I’m all that’s holding them back.”

  “You think you’re not?” Quell asked.

  Ragnell didn’t answer, instead glowering at Quell from where she squatted amid a pile of datapads and toolboxes.

  Aboard the Pursuer, Quell thought, a mechanic was always responsible for the state of her squadron. She’d never heard excuses about workforces and supplies in the Empire.

  “We’re stretched thin,” Ragnell said at last.

  “We’re winning,” Quell said.

  “And we’re not built for it. I’ve worked with some of these ships for years—I’ve kept them functional all this time. But that was when we were hiding. Keeping these squadrons ready for missions daily? That’s a whole separate set of problems.” She locked eyes with Quell. “Meteor and Hail get that. General Syndulla gets that. Even Vanguard gets that. You need to adjust, too.”

  Quell grunted. “I don’t have much choice.”

  The mechanic looked triumphant. They went down the list of Quell’s needs and Ragnell’s time estimates, and Quell assisted with the triage as best she could.

  She found her eyes tracing the woman’s tattoos—the dancing figures and whorls like waves or fire, intricate and connected on every centimeter of flesh. The two finished up and Ragnell walked with Quell between the rows of starfighters—Meteor and Hail’s vessels, scarred and blasted but still painted bright. Quell thought of Ragnell and the Pursuer and the words of the droid and the words of General Syndulla.

  “Before we go,” Quell said, “I need a favor.”