Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  “Of course you do.” Ragnell sighed.

  II

  Nath hadn’t slept more than five hours. The latest mission—a raid on an Imperial outpost caught relaying messages to Pandem Nai—had gone too well not to celebrate, and he’d spent until the wee hours in the Krayt Hut comparing notes on Y-wing repair with Hail Squadron. He didn’t much like the Hail Squadron pilots—to a person, they seemed much too proud of landing a spot aboard Syndulla’s flagship—but Nath might need them down the line. Humbly accepting a few accolades and acting friendly seemed worth the time.

  But he hadn’t been expecting a wake-up call from Quell and orders to head down to the hangar at an unnatural hour, and he clearly wasn’t the only one: Chass’s eyes were bloodshot as she marched down the corridor, and even Wyl didn’t look fresh. Only Kairos seemed unperturbed.

  Thing probably doesn’t even sleep, Nath thought with a mix of annoyance and admiration.

  “They can win,” Chass muttered. “The Empire can win. Shadow Wing can win. Don’t make me fly this early.”

  “Reasonable compromise,” Nath said as they strolled into the bay.

  Quell was waiting in her flight suit. She offered a curt nod toward the group and jutted a thumb behind her at the rows of fighters. “Got word there’s an admiral coming today. He’ll be doing a full inspection of the Lodestar and its complement. Give your ships a walkaround, check your cockpits, don’t embarrass me. Understood?”

  In other words, Nath thought, hide anything you can hide and clean up your mess.

  Wyl mumbled a “yes, ma’am,” though Nath felt the boy must have been sarcastic. Chass paused, seemed on the verge of marching out, then lurched forward like something was dragging her by puppet strings. Nath eyed Quell, who shrugged at him as the others moved on.

  Before Nath could follow, he heard Wyl’s laugh—a swift bark—followed by Chass swearing. Puzzled, he sauntered past the Meteor Squadron X-wings and came into view of the rear of his ship. His Y-wing sat there, scratched as always but scrubbed and polished like it was fresh from the factory.

  He walked slowly around the vessel. His eyes widened. He must have looked absurd, he knew, but it was his ship—his ship. Someone had touched his ship and painted a crest on the gleaming metal depicting five vessels—an A-wing, B-wing, X-wing, Y-wing, and U-wing. Above the crest, a banner read: ALPHABET SQUADRON.

  He looked to his comrades. Each stared at his or her own vessel; each ship had been similarly branded. Chass went from swearing to laughing loudly, while Wyl turned around to look over at Quell. Kairos gazed at the U-wing’s markings as if transfixed—she extended a hand and touched the paint gingerly, like it was something ancient prone to crumble in the light.

  “You do this to my ship?” Nath called toward Quell.

  “Do I look like I can paint?” Quell asked, voice humorless.

  “Don’t do it again,” Nath said, but he was smirking despite himself.

  “It’s fantastic,” Wyl said. “Thank you.”

  “There’s something else,” Quell said, and she strolled down the central aisle between fighters. Kairos stepped away from the U-wing reluctantly. “Thought I’d show you, while we’re at it.”

  When her audience was gathered together, Quell tugged up the sleeve of her flight suit and rotated her arm. Stenciled into the irritated flesh of her biceps was a tattoo: the same squadron crest that now adorned the ships.

  “In case I get stranded planetside,” Quell said. “They’ll know where to send me.”

  “That they will,” Nath said.

  “You’re a freak,” Chass added.

  “I’m also your commanding officer,” Quell said.

  Chass shrugged. “Still a freak.”

  They were all smiling. Chass and Wyl continued ribbing Quell, and Nath complained about the early hour. But he could see what she’d done and he respected the effort. Maybe she couldn’t bond with her team like Nath had with his squadron, but Quell had managed to bring the team to her.

  It wasn’t a bad outcome. Whatever Nath’s issues with Quell, he hoped she would keep them all alive.

  “Time for breakfast,” Wyl said. “You coming with us, Lieutenant?”

  “Not this time,” Quell said. “But thank you.”

  Nath laughed and waved Wyl and Chass to follow him. Yrica Quell. You’re still Imperial at heart, he thought, but he didn’t spoil the moment.

  III

  Caern Adan was being outmaneuvered. He’d seen it coming—could have planned it himself, for all the details he’d predicted—yet it was still happening. Worst of all, it was his own fault.

  “I let General Syndulla have them,” he told IT-O as he toweled off in his quarters. He’d been saving his water rations, hoping a long shower would bring him some semblance of peace. (It hadn’t.) “I could’ve held them in reserve but I didn’t, and now she’s handing my working group their assignments.”

  “If you were handing out assignments, you wouldn’t have time for analysis. General Syndulla is sending them after leads you obtained from our captive.”

  Our captive was IT-O’s way of saying “that war criminal stormtrooper you spent a week interviewing.” It was true that Adan had extracted useful intelligence from the man—scraps about Shadow Wing’s garrison and Pandem Nai’s developing status as a key refueling post for Imperials on the run. And Adan had obtained that intelligence without spilling blood, albeit not without compromises. He’d shipped the man off when they’d finished; Adan expected he would languish in a cell for months before anyone figured out what to do with him.

  Now he was neck-deep in data from Argai Minor and elsewhere. Data that, piece by piece, revealed an image of Pandem Nai’s defenses and Shadow Wing’s operational status. A map of the Pandem Nai star system was burned into his brain.

  “It doesn’t matter that I know my contributions,” he said, “or that you know my contributions. We’re all thrilled that the general and my superiors are finally taking Shadow Wing seriously, but if this ends with ‘General Syndulla’s Alphabet Squadron’ achieving a major strategic victory, it—”

  “Leaves your heroism unsung?”

  “—leaves the New Republic Senate more convinced than ever that firepower is the solution to every problem. What will they do when the next Shadow Wing comes along? The goal ought to be to predict and prevent another Nacronis, not to send a fleet in after the fact.”

  “We agree that New Republic Intelligence must play a more prominent role in galactic security. But your working group was never going to neutralize the 204th on its own. Military assistance was always inevitable.”

  “Assistance. But now I’m assisting them. They’re not assisting me. The whole point of this operation was to show what’s possible when intelligence takes control.”

  “The point,” the droid said, “was to bring a dangerous enemy to justice and prevent future massacres. Besides, Caern—your involvement isn’t over yet.”

  That was true. It wasn’t satisfying, but it was true.

  Caern dropped onto the cot that passed for his bed and found his fingers stroking a bottle of Corellian red. The bottle was half full—a fact he made sure to file away in case IT-O complained about his drinking. If I were really drinking too much, would I have so much left in the bottle?

  But the droid didn’t say anything as Caern took a sickly sweet swallow. The silence was almost worse than the rebuke.

  “I may,” Caern stressed, “have another option. A last resort, in case Syndulla tries to shut me out altogether.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Yrica Quell,” he said. “You weren’t able to dig up much. But I got an interesting note yesterday from one of my contacts in Hutt space. Check my files—you have the decryption codes.”

  The droid contracted its photoreceptor and hummed as Caern too
k another swig from the bottle. A few moments later, IT-O’s servo whine rose in pitch.

  Got your attention, did I?

  “Assuming the information is accurate,” IT-O said, “that would represent a significant discrepancy in Lieutenant Quell’s story.”

  “It would,” Caern said, and waved a hand airily. “And no, I’m not confident it’s true—my contact is competent but not picky about his sourcing. If it’s true, though—if I can confirm it—it could help me rein in the team. Remind them they answer to me and not Syndulla.”

  “If Yrica Quell is not what she claims, it could also do considerable damage to your reputation. Assuming her intent to neutralize the 204th Fighter Wing is genuine at all.”

  “Details,” Caern muttered. “I’m making progress, Ito. Be happy for me.”

  The droid didn’t reply. It wasn’t happy for him, Caern knew. Not that it wasn’t capable of the emotion—he’d seen the droid express pleasure and empathy in the past, when one or another of its patients performed some feat of psychiatric recuperation. But that wasn’t—had never been—Caern and IT-O’s relationship.

  Caern realized that the bottle was now empty and thought about procuring another. Then the intercom chimed.

  When he saw who his caller was, he decided to remain sober.

  * * *

  —

  General Syndulla’s battle group had secured six systems over eight days. Aside from being formidable in its own right, that accomplishment positioned the fleet to take control of the Skangravi-Mestun Regional Hyperlane without exposing the newly freed systems to an Imperial counterattack. The Skangravi-Mestun, in turn, led nine-tenths of the way to Pandem Nai—close enough to open dozens of potential paths for the final leg of the journey. Shadow Wing presumably had early warning mechanisms set along the longer, easier, more obvious routes to the system (like the Celanon Spur, which Caern had spent hours studying since learning of their enemy’s location; or the winding path through H’Grathi, where the scouts of the Hellion’s Dare had originally been spotted), but access to the Skangravi-Mestun multiplied the New Republic’s options tenfold. Shadow Wing couldn’t possibly watch every path to Pandem Nai.

  Nor was Pandem Nai itself the mystery it had been. Between intercepted communications and everything the battle group had procured, Caern’s dossier on the enemy garrison had grown to considerable length. The next natural step was to go beyond a general overview to obtain detailed schematics, personnel information, and security codes.

  “Do we have time for that?” Quell asked, after he finished his assessment.

  He was pleased that she asked him instead of assuming. He was pleased she’d come to him at all instead of sequestering herself with the general to plan an assault on Pandem Nai. They sat in the dimly lit tactical operations center, surrounded by transparent screens displaying hyperspace charts and system layouts, with no one but the Lodestar’s droids for company.

  “No,” he said. “We don’t.”

  “What happens if we don’t find a weakness?” she asked.

  “A formal decision hasn’t been made, but the New Republic recognizes that leaving an enemy unit responsible for who-knows-how-many atrocities sitting on a major strategic resource isn’t an option. If it were just Shadow Wing, frankly, it might be different—the military would ignore the problem until your people shot down a dozen command ships and blew up a small moon—but Pandem Nai is already supplying several smaller Imperial factions. That’s only going to get worse.

  “So what happens, most likely, is that Syndulla’s battle group joins a protracted siege of the system. Pandem Nai gets blockaded. The damage is contained until the enemy breaks the siege or finally succumbs.”

  “Which could take months,” Quell said, soft and tentative. “The Empire makes gains across the galaxy while our fleet is besieging Pandem Nai.”

  Caern leaned back in his seat and clapped his hands. “Exactly. All of which you already knew, didn’t you? It’s why you’re here.”

  He expected an argument and didn’t get one. Quell nodded, staring at a display. “Yes.” She tapped the console, changing the screen to show the Pandem Nai system’s orbital paths.

  “It’s on us to make a plan. To find a weakness,” Caern said.

  “Yes.” Quell scrolled through additional screens of data: defensive estimates, minefield positions, historical data on Pandem Nai’s gas extraction operations.

  “You understand what that means?” he asked. “This was never going to be the Death Star. We weren’t ever going to find a secret vulnerability in Shadow Wing that could shut the whole unit down, or a path through the system the enemy somehow missed.”

  She looked from the display to him and said nothing. He heard the condescension in his voice and tried to moderate it. IT-O had told him many times that smugness wasn’t helpful; in this case it might have even been unwarranted. “Lieutenant Quell—you are the vulnerability. Your insight into Shadow Wing is the only reason you’re here. It’s our only substantive advantage.

  “So if you want to neutralize your old unit swiftly and as bloodlessly as possible, you need to take into consideration all of this—everything we know about Shadow Wing and Pandem Nai—and tell me:

  “What are they going to do when we attack? And how do we counter it?”

  He couldn’t tell if she heard the words. She kept staring at the display, absently rubbing at her biceps beneath her shirt sleeve.

  “Three days, maybe, till we’re in position?” she asked.

  “Give or take.”

  “Then we have time to go through scenarios one by one. Until we find a plan that works.”

  IV

  It was a terrible plan, Hera Syndulla thought. It would get Alphabet Squadron killed and leave the fleet in a precarious position, forced to retreat or begin a siege that was very likely to fail.

  “It’s a solid plan,” she told Quell as the young woman skimmed a datapad at the front of the ready room. Hera had learned to read Quell, at least a little—she knew the lieutenant turned serious and quiet when she was most nervous. “Present to your squadron what you presented to me. I promise they won’t revolt.”

  “It’s reckless,” Quell said. She cast a glance toward Adan, who was speaking quietly into his comlink at the opposite end of the room. “You and I both know it.”

  Hera smiled wryly. “It’s a rebel plan. You’ve been watching how we operate. You kept your people’s abilities in mind, and the capabilities of the battle group. All rebel plans look reckless on the surface.”

  And they all look terrible, she thought, but Quell looked anxious enough without that particular truth.

  Hera had spent the last thirty hours alternating between cloistered sessions with Quell and Adan and larger meetings with her captains and New Republic High Command. Lindon Javes had studied and agreed with Quell’s prediction. Hera had argued to Admiral Ackbar himself that Quell’s approach was their best chance, and the man who had won the Battle of Endor had given his approval. Yet there was still something that felt foreign about the plan—some nuance that eluded Hera but was embedded into its structure.

  Maybe, Hera thought, it was just that it was Quell’s plan and not her own. It had the fingerprints of a stranger on it.

  She hoped there wasn’t anything more.

  Quell’s pilots filed into the room. Hera hid a smile when she saw them sit together. She’d been watching them since they’d come back from the Jedi temple. You haven’t lost your touch, Hera.

  She waited until they’d settled and began, “In fifty-three hours we will be in position to reach Pandem Nai, where—according to the best of our intelligence—the 204th Imperial Fighter Wing is currently garrisoned.

  “You’ve all seen the reports. Shadow Wing has fortified the Pandem Nai system with minefields. It patrols the inner syst
em with fighter squadrons and cruisers. Pandem Nai itself is sheathed in a volatile atmosphere that causes heavy weaponry to backfire—effectively rendering capital ships ineffectual in any assault.”

  That had been a point of contention during the battle group’s planning meetings. What if we reduced the power output to the turbolasers? What about coherent beam weapons? What about—? Hera had been surprised by her captains’ desire to find a scientific solution—some engineering trick—to the problem presented by Pandem Nai’s atmosphere.

  But she’d spoken with Tibanna gas extraction experts who’d once worked in Cloud City and a defecting Imperial scientist from the Tarkin Initiative. They’d tried to explain the chemistry, but what it came down to, they said, was mathematics: Add enough energy to Pandem Nai’s atmosphere and its gas would combust. The more energy, the bigger the explosion—similar to starting a fire in an oxygen-rich environment. Capital ships would be forced to keep thruster temperatures low and use their weakest weapons or else risk immolation. If they got too close to the planet, they’d only get in the way.

  “That means,” Hera continued, “that starfighter supremacy will determine victory or defeat. You’re all intimately familiar with the capabilities of Shadow Wing, so I won’t dwell on what it means to face dozens of TIEs under the command of Colonel Nuress.”

  She looked among Nath, Wyl, Chass, and Kairos, and saw nothing less than resolve. It was what she’d expected, but she’d been ready to change course if she’d seen fear or doubt. “Finally, we have reason to believe that Shadow Wing’s base of operations is not on the planet surface but on one of the orbital stations designed to extract and process Tibanna gas from the planet’s atmosphere. That gives us a clear target, but the station is as heavily armored as any battle station. It may not be capable of annihilating a planet—or even a ship like the Lodestar—but it will be designed for anti-starfighter operations.

  “Under the protection of a lesser unit, Pandem Nai would be a tough fight. Under Shadow Wing, it’s almost perfectly defensible against direct attack. But Lieutenant Quell and Officer Adan have given us an alternative strategy.