Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  “Respectfully—” She’d already started to move away. She turned to face him again, waiting. “—we don’t have any spare resources. You know we’ve been stretched thin.”

  She was tempted to snap. To rage. She’d seen lesser commanders do so when challenged. The deck plating beneath her trembled as another enemy volley struck Orbital One.

  “Find resources,” she said. “Take stormtroopers off sentry duty. Halt gas extraction if you have to—pull every last man and droid from the Tibanna mines. You have my authorization to do whatever you need—just get my hangar bays operational.”

  There was no further argument. She stretched arthritic fingers and balled them into a fist. During the glory days of the Empire, a Star Destroyer had carried tens of thousands of trained crew. Never in her career had she been told that there weren’t grunts to spare for a repair job, and now—well, now she was faced with fresh problems to solve.

  She forced herself to consider contingencies. If she couldn’t get the hangars open, what defenses were available? The orbital stations—Orbital One, in particular—had basic anti-fighter armaments. Some of the midsized ships did as well, though she didn’t necessarily trust their captains not to use their more powerful turbolasers. The Pursuer was in no condition for combat, though perhaps she could employ it in some capacity.

  She wondered if she’d been wrong not to call for reinforcements. Too late now. The enemy fleet would annihilate any new vessels arriving out of hyperspace.

  The situation was exactly as it appeared to be, then. She was Colonel Shakara Nuress, commander of the 204th Imperial Fighter Wing, and she could win any battle with her squadrons deployed and time to prepare.

  Without her pilots, she was helpless.

  “Colonel?”

  She felt the change even before she heard Rassus—the quieting of voices, anxious chatter turned to whispers. She saw where the major’s gaze was directed and turned to the main entrance to the command center.

  There, gliding silently forward, was a figure cloaked in red leather and fabric with a pane of black glass in place of a face. She knew it intimately. The Emperor’s Messenger.

  The droid had spoken only once, demanding the destruction of Nacronis in Operation Cinder. Since then it had watched. On rare occasions, it had strayed from her quarters. She had never seen it in the command center of Orbital One.

  She approached the wraith and murmured so that her crew could not hear, “Are there instructions?”

  The droid did not speak. It halted before her and did not move further.

  Did it know? she wondered. Had it been monitoring transmissions and somehow determined the danger that Pandem Nai was in? Or had it predicted something else about the battle? Something about the enemy forces or Shakara’s own decisions?

  Her heart seemed to seize. Had it anticipated her doubt? Had it come to the command center knowing that she despaired at the condition of the Empire she’d once served well?

  It seemed unlikely. It seemed like paranoia to even wonder as much. Nonetheless, the Emperor’s Messenger was bearing witness to her decisions now.

  “We will emerge victorious,” she said softly. “In your master’s name, we will.”

  II

  Nath Tensent had a plan. It wasn’t, one could argue, the official plan—but even that was debatable, given the source. If he felt guilt over keeping secrets from the rest of his squadron, it was a guilt indistinguishable from sympathy; he felt no hesitation or regret, but it was a pity, he thought, that he was about to make Wyl Lark’s life much harder.

  “Give me a little space, will you?” he said. “I’ve got a thought for this next pass.”

  Wyl responded in a voice full of unconvincing cheer. “If I give you space, you’re going to pick up tails. Sure you can handle it?”

  Nath grinned. Brave kid. Means well. “You’ve got talent, but I’ve got experience. Keep yourself alive and watch for me coming out.”

  He wondered if he would feel actual guilt if he got Wyl killed. Maybe, he decided, but only if there was no mistaking his culpability. In a fight like this, where one stray shot could end everything, it was always hard to pinpoint blame.

  He swung in a wide arc back toward the orbital station. He’d made three bombing runs already, coming away each time with new scratches. He counted seven TIEs on his scanner; same number they’d been facing awhile now. He’d delivered a glancing blow to one, and Wyl had sent another spiraling toward the planet, but Nath didn’t hesitate in his analysis: If they kept going like this, they would lose.

  All part of Quell’s plan, of course, but it wasn’t part of his.

  The Y-wing shook in the atmospheric winds, and Nath drove his foot onto the left rudder pedal to coax his ship away from a volley of particle bolts. He transferred shield power from fore to aft as he passed under a flight of enemy fighters and into the shadow of the orbital station, hopeful he could run the gauntlet of turrets without getting incinerated. He felt every seam of metal ready to burst; he smelled wires overheating as he squeezed his control yoke. His teeth ached from the vibrations.

  He knew his ship and he knew how far he could push it. He still had room to stretch.

  The metal lattice of the station raced overhead—a dark sky contrasting with the endless sea of scarlet mist. Nath watched Wyl fall away on the scanner, taking most of the TIEs with him, but one of Nath’s foes still pursued. That wouldn’t do—he couldn’t have witnesses for this run.

  Particle bolts slammed into the ship’s aft end and sent him lurching forward in his harness. He spat a curse. The Y-wing lacked the maneuverability and the speed of the TIE, which meant he’d have to get clever. Figure it out, Tensent. Be the bastard they all say you are.

  He spotted his opportunity: a gap in the station framework leading to a maintenance shaft hung with gas pods, running partway along the station’s outer arc. It was built for a droid, not a Y-wing, but he could squeeze in. T5 let out a vitriolic screech as Nath adjusted his ship’s repulsors, mocking Pandem Nai’s gravity as he penetrated the structure.

  Almost immediately he heard a metallic wail as one of his nacelles caught scaffolding and tore a piece of the station loose. His damage indicators flashed red. He didn’t have time to examine them as he rolled his ship, trying to avoid another collision with the shaft’s protruding machinery. “Slow her down!” he called. “Cut the thrusters and give me repulsor drag!” He trusted the droid to do so without tearing the ship apart, though he felt a crushing weight against his chest.

  His velocity dropped by half, then by half again. Maneuvering through the shaft became easier, but that wasn’t the reason he’d done it. As he reached the shaft’s far end and emerged back below the station’s mass and into the scarlet sea, he grinned. The TIE that had pursued him was now directly ahead, having failed to curtail its own speed after losing Nath.

  Right in the line of fire.

  Nath squeezed his trigger. The TIE flashed, erupting in a piercing wave of light that whipped into the Y-wing, sent it nearly flipping. Careful when you blow those things, he thought as he regained control. Atmosphere really does burn bright.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ve got privacy and a few seconds to spare. How do we look?”

  A primitive schematic appeared on his display: a diagram of the orbital station constructed during the bombing passes they’d made. A section two hundred meters ahead blinked, and Nath nodded.

  “Good enough for me. Keep piping all transmissions my way. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  One hundred meters. Fifty meters. Nath checked his helmet and activated the seal, binding it to the collar of his flight suit and lowering the visor. T5 replied sardonically on the console, and Nath smirked back.

  “And hey—keep Wyl alive if you can, okay?”

  There was no time for a response. The coc
kpit depressurized with a roar as the canopy flipped open, leaving Nath exposed to the frigid, blasting Pandem Nai atmosphere. The ejector equipment came to life, and magnetic fields launched him and his suddenly detached harness up and out of the Y-wing. He slammed hard into the orbital station’s underside barely five meters above.

  His harness’s power supply wouldn’t last more than a few seconds, but it generated a magnetic seal that allowed him to cling to the metal and scurry to the emergency hatch he’d seen in the diagram. Blood rushed to his head as he silently prayed that the control panel wasn’t secured—he had some confidence that T5 could swing back around to catch him before he fell to his death, but it wasn’t a risk he wanted to take. He slammed his palm against the panel once, then a second time, before the hatch slid open and he crawled inside.

  His flesh was burning with cold as he collapsed on the floor of the station air lock. The hatch slid closed. Air blasted from the vents. He unsealed his helmet and sucked in a breath. He saw nothing to indicate he’d tripped an alarm.

  “You all right?” Wyl’s voice came through his comlink. “Lost track of you for a second.”

  “I’m fine,” Nath said. “Get ready for another pass—didn’t manage to do much damage this time around.”

  He rose to his feet, felt for the blaster on his hip, and studied his surroundings.

  He had a plan. He had a mission, assigned to him by Caern Adan.

  It was going to be a pleasure.

  III

  Yrica Quell watched another TIE burn. It streaked through the scarlet atmosphere and sparked like a firecracker before disappearing under the shadow of the orbital station. There was a chance, she thought, that the pilot might survive—if he could slow his ship’s descent, he might eject before hitting ground—but it wasn’t likely.

  That was the third of her comrades she’d killed today.

  She recognized the squadron pursuing her and Chass na Chadic above the station. Captain Gablerone’s unit had always favored maneuvering in groups of three, eliminating targets with brief, intense bursts of firepower; those signatures were unmistakable in her current opponents. Quell hadn’t known Gablerone’s pilots well, and she was grateful for that, yet she could still picture them in the mess hall of the Pursuer. She saw their faces as she aimed and fired, and she felt no grief.

  She observed the memories of her life in the 204th through a distorted lens. She remembered it all, yet as she flew and fought she was without pity or care. Each shot she fired seemed to warp her view further, distancing her from the scenes. Particle bolts seared away all attachment.

  She forced herself to assess her situation in the present. Her shields were oscillating rapidly, strained to their limit and flickering in and out of visibility. One of her thrusters was cutting out intermittently. Chadic’s B-wing trailed smoke.

  If you keep fighting like this, she told herself, you will die. It didn’t matter if they kept the rest of Shadow Wing contained inside the hangars. She couldn’t outfly her old comrades. She couldn’t outfight them. The moral questions, the psychological toll, none of it mattered when she was in an unwinnable situation.

  She had to buy more time for Kairos and her team.

  Be clever as a rebel.

  Emerald bolts tore through the mist around her ship, and she wove through the pattern, angling her starfighter between paired blasts and spinning away as soon as she could. She was high above the orbital station now, and she saw the speck of Chadic’s B-wing drift lower. Quell’s opponents stopped shooting. That meant they were going after Chadic.

  Be clever as a rebel. Be ruthless as an Imperial.

  She dived at an angle, gravity increasing her momentum as she plunged in pursuit of her foes and toward her partner. She scanned the battlefield with the same dispassion as before, searching for solutions. Searching for a way to delay or to kill.

  She recognized it without a jolt of joy. She simply saw it there, plain and unguarded.

  “Quell to Chadic. Listen carefully: I have a new plan.”

  IV

  Chass laughed, her ship twirling and rising and plummeting as if it were carried by a thrashing sea. The cramped pod of her cockpit felt like it was ready to tear free of the B-wing and fall into the endless scarlet. She’d almost lost the cannon on one of her S-foils, thanks to a blast that had nearly sheared off half her ship. But her music still played and her hair was wonderfully sticky with sweat and she was terrified and ecstatic at Quell’s words.

  “You sure about this?” she asked. “Is it even going to work?”

  “Yes,” Quell responded. “Just get close enough to blow the pod and stay far enough not to die. The explosion will consume the bulk of the gas instantaneously. No different from dropping a bomb.”

  “What about you?” Chass asked.

  “I’m going to pull the fighters into position. Go!”

  The playlist reached a Zeltron power anthem. A single, powerful voice cried out as synthesized notes urged the singer on and a single instrument became an orchestra. Almost too obvious, Chass thought, but it’ll do.

  She powered her thrusters in short bursts—bad for the equipment, bad for her neck and back, but great for confusing her pursuers—as she dropped through the atmosphere and beneath the artificial horizon line of the orbital station. She swung the cross of her vessel upright, bringing three of her four weapons above the cockpit as she raced below the station’s structure, turning toward her target.

  The enormous gas containment pod reminded her of a Star Destroyer’s deflector generator: a faceted metallic sphere attached by stubby moorings to the orbital station proper. She wondered if she actually had the firepower to puncture it—she’d exhausted her supply of bombs and torpedoes, and she wasn’t certain she’d do more than scorch the pod with her cannons. It must have been built to withstand collisions and industrial accidents. It must have been built to prevent exactly what she was about to attempt.

  Chass felt her terror crest over her ecstasy as she redirected all available power—shields, repulsors, thrusters, and the rest—into her weapons systems. Her fighter bounced as momentum alone kept her moving. TIEs crawled across her scanner like a swarm of insects, and she saw Quell swinging toward them, trying to draw their fire.

  Not my problem anymore, Chass thought. She saw the flashes of particle bolts in her peripheral vision and ignored them as the pod grew large in her viewport. She checked her targeting computer, calculated optimal firing range, and squeezed her trigger.

  She felt a flash of heat, heard the sizzle of the cannons and a series of pops that brought the music to an abrupt end. She smelled components melting as destructive energy poured from the four points of the starfighter’s cross, filling the viewpoint with sun-bright particles capable of vaporizing a small mountain. She kept squeezing as, one by one, instruments turned red on her console. But she heard no terrible thunder—she couldn’t see through the firepower she’d unleashed, but she’d have known if the gas pod had detonated.

  Wouldn’t she?

  She had to turn away. If she didn’t, she would fly directly into the pod.

  Would that be enough to detonate it, though? Would that be the answer?

  She heard a shriek—a whistling and crackling from outside her cockpit. The sound of a proton torpedo.

  Not yet, Chass. Not your time yet.

  She tried to pitch downward, to escape the coming blast, but her maneuvering thrusters were sluggish and she remembered that she’d redistributed their power. As the thunder arrived and white filled her viewport she slapped wildly at the console, trying to retract her S-foils and turn the cross of the ship into a dagger that would plunge straight down. A wave of heat cascaded over her vessel, singeing her skin through the cockpit canopy, but then the B-wing dropped away and she looked up to see an explosion like a battle station detonating. Like Sc
arif burning under the Death Star’s superlaser. Dark specks dashed themselves against the fiery wave and she realized that they were TIE fighters, perfectly positioned to take the blow.

  She wanted to sit back. To rest and let the B-wing fall. But Quell’s voice came through the comm and said, “Chadic! Where are you?”

  She rerouted power away from the weapons. Her thrusters came back online, arresting her fall. “About a kilometer below you,” she said, “but I’m okay. And just ‘Chass,’ all right?”

  “Station’s scorched—whole port side looks like it’s burning—but it’s not coming apart. We took out three TIEs, which gives us breathing room. Maybe the time we need.”

  “Maybe?” Chass asked.

  “Still no word from Kairos,” Quell said. “Get back up. We’re not through fighting.”

  Chass could live with that.

  She angled her ship back toward the battlefield and smiled as the music started up again. It was garbled and staticky, but it was exactly what she had hoped for.

  V

  Wyl recognized Char, the TIE covered in ash. He recognized Blink, who had mocked him when Wyl had reached out—who had said You’re going to be food in the guts of the Oridol god on the day that Wyl had been tested and found wanting.

  He didn’t know how he recognized them. Char was no longer black with carbon scoring and debris. Blink no longer fired a single laser cannon. If he’d told Nath, the man would have mocked Wyl’s certainty and insisted he was imagining things.

  Maybe he was. But the ghosts of Riot Squadron had flown with Wyl for weeks now. Was it any surprise that the ghosts of Shadow Wing had arrived at last?

  He spun his A-wing away from Blink’s latest volley, opened his throttle, and tried to lure his enemy into pursuit. Nath raced ahead below, maneuvering between the orbital station’s turrets and taking potshots at sensor arrays and gravity generators. “I could use a hand!” Wyl called. “Pulling one into your targeting zone, assuming he’ll take the bait.”