Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  The fog flared with red as a blip drew near on Wyl’s scanner: Sata Neek, firing at the TIE ninety degrees off Wyl’s starboard side. The volley didn’t hit, but it forced the TIE to reposition and gave Wyl an opening. He banked and accelerated as hard as he could, making for the gap the TIE had left open.

  His fighter clattered like a tin drum. Cries came in through the comm, suggesting that a second flight of TIEs had intercepted the Dare. But Wyl saw a glimmer in the corner of his eye as Sata Neek jumped to hyperspace. Coordinates blinked on his console. Emerald fire burned all around him as the TIEs targeted his ship. Through some miracle, none of the shots hit him.

  A streak of white filled Wyl’s vision and his A-wing lurched, screamed, and spun, rolling so swiftly that he lost all sense of direction. A web of new cracks spread across his canopy. The world hissed and his head throbbed. He realized instinctively what had happened—he’d clipped the TIE fighter targeted by Sata Neek when both he and the TIE pilot had frantically adjusted course. Now half his systems were down, his skull was pounding (had he hit it somehow?), and he feared he was leaking oxygen.

  And yet. And yet…

  There was nothing ahead of him but fog.

  He straightened his ship and began accelerating again. The hyperdrive hummed with power.

  He was laughing as the cracks spread and he fell short of breath. He fumbled under his seat for a sealant canister. “Love you, girl,” he said, frantically spraying, trying to cover every millimeter of the cracks even as they grew. “We’ll get you fixed. We’ll get you home.”

  As cerulean light enveloped him and his oxygen gauge dipped into the red, he turned flight control over to his navicomputer and hoped he would live long enough to see stars.

  CHAPTER 4

  ELECTRONIC COUNTERMEASURES

  I

  She knew her pride would damn her, but it was all she had to offer.

  Yrica Quell looked at her audience aboard the New Republic bulk freighter Buried Treasure: Caern Adan, perched on a bench with his eyes on a datapad and antenna-stalks rigid atop his head; Nath Tensent beside him, wearing an expression of performative skepticism; Kairos wreathed in cloth and leather and shadows, standing next to the doorway as if afraid someone—as if afraid Quell—would attempt to bolt.

  They were ready to judge every utterance she made. Each word would bury her deeper, reminding them of where she came from. It had been easy in Traitor’s Remorse, but now that she was free? When she had something to lose?

  She gripped the lectern of the freighter’s conference room with one hand and began.

  “The 204th Imperial Fighter Wing was one of the Empire’s earliest volunteer wings. Organized as a mobile unit, to be attached to a carrier ship or Star Destroyer and deployed anywhere in the galaxy, it has served in this capacity for over twenty years.”

  Tensent’s eyes drifted to her chest. Adan kept reading his datapad.

  “Composed of six squadrons—primarily TIE/ln starfighters, with detachments of TIE/sa bombers and TIE/IN interceptors provided on a per-mission basis—the 204th…”

  “Shadow Wing,” Adan said, looking up.

  Quell stared at him. “Yes.” Obviously.

  He looked back to his datapad. “Continue.”

  She kept her voice flat. She thought again of her days at the Academy: of being rebuked by her superiors for a failure to scrub a floor to a spotless shine, or recite obscure regulations, or perform a feat no human possibly could. She said what she’d learned to say then: “Thank you, sir.”

  She began again.

  “Composed of six squadrons, Shadow Wing distinguished itself as an effective peacekeeping and security force during Separatist mop-up operations at Umbara and Salient. After a brief campaign on the borders of the Corporate Sector, the 204th was reassigned to anti-piracy operations in the Mid Rim.”

  This was the simple part. She could separate herself from the tale here—she hadn’t lived through the Corporate Sector campaign, rarely even heard stories about it. She could speak without emotion. Speak without demanding judgment from her audience.

  And so long as she recited facts and ancient history, she was no more useful than a droid.

  “After the wing’s reassignment, two personnel changes occurred that would prove crucial to the unit’s future. First, Colonel Shakara Nuress joined as unit commander. Nuress had served in the Republic Navy during the Clone Wars and—”

  “We have her file,” Adan said. “She has a cute nickname, too, doesn’t she?”

  Grandmother.

  “Not that I remember,” Quell said.

  The lie came easily. She hadn’t planned it, couldn’t justify it. She had never known Nuress in any meaningful sense—she’d never exchanged more than a word or two with the colonel, though she could picture the woman’s silver hair and storm-gray eyes. She respected Grandmother, but had no need to defend her. So why, she wondered, had Adan’s words grated?

  The spy watched her.

  “Grandmother,” Quell amended. “Some of the pilots called her Grandmother. Sometimes it was a joke about her being senile. Sometimes it was about her being—about her being harsh and territorial, but protective of her people. She wasn’t liked, but she was well regarded.”

  It was Tensent who barked a laugh. “She let you get away with that?”

  “When she had to,” Quell said.

  Adan waved a hand as if trying to dismiss a foul odor. “Experienced, disciplined, highly traditional. Anything new about her we should know?”

  “Just that she was responsible for organizing the wing as it stands. The 204th had several commanders before Nuress—better and worse, but all of them used the unit as a stepping-stone to bigger things. Nuress never did.” She heard the danger—the instinctive pride entering her voice—but she bit it back. “Nuress kept the unit intact and ready for action without searching for glory, and her people appreciated it.”

  She knew she was losing ground. Quell mentally skimmed the presentation she’d prepared, trying to find something that might keep Adan’s interest—prove there was a point to this briefing. “That’s—I can’t say this for certain, but there was a rumor about how Nuress kept the unit out of the limelight. About the wing’s nickname.”

  Now she had Adan’s attention. He placed his datapad to one side.

  “ ‘Shadow Wing,’ ” she said. “The rumor I heard was that it started as a joke among the admirals. The 204th was the unit that, as soon as Nuress took over, only ever showed up when there were other forces to hide behind. Or another version: Nuress somehow made the unit unavailable if she didn’t like an operation. It disappeared into the shadows.”

  Adan cocked his head and asked, “What about the other story? The slogan. ‘Where shadows fall, all things die’?”

  “That was later,” Quell said. “After the Red Insurgency.”

  “The Orinda Massacre,” Adan said.

  She nodded, because it seemed more appropriate than a shrug. “I imagine some people call it that.”

  Tensent interrupted, exasperation in his voice. “Not really worried about names. What about the other one? You said two personnel changes?”

  Quell’s shoulder ached suddenly. The sling felt tight and hot around her arm.

  “Major Soran Keize,” she said. “He joined the 204th before Nuress’s transfer, but it took a few years before he became—” An ace of aces. A hero. “—influential. When he was just another pilot, everyone knew he was good, but it was when he became a squadron leader, started mentoring the squealers—the new officers—that he changed everything.

  “He flew like no one else. He taught like no one else. He made us all better.”

  She saw the disdain on Tensent’s face. The mockery on Adan’s. She blinked away ire and resentment and hurried on. “Between Nuress
and Keize, the 204th earned some small prestige. The wing was permanently assigned to the Star Destroyer Pursuer, and after the terrorist attack on the first Death Star battle station the wing gradually refocused on anti-rebel operations. I’ve annotated General Dodonna’s after-action report on the Battle of Grumwall—”

  “Skip it,” Adan said. “I’ve got one more question and then you can sit down. What does any of this mean for the unit’s current status? What do we know about the commanders now?”

  He already knew the answer. Quell had been debriefed enough times at Traitor’s Remorse. He wanted her to say it again—for Tensent’s benefit, or to see if her story stayed the same, or simply to show he was in control.

  “Major Keize is dead,” she said, “but the people he trained are still there. Colonel Nuress is alive, to the best of my knowledge. I imagine she’s holding the unit together. She’ll take orders until the Empire surrenders for good.”

  “What about desertions?” Tensent asked.

  Adan joined in. “Yes, what about desertions? You said the people Keize trained are still there—”

  “I wasn’t the only one to desert,” Quell said. “I don’t know what the current roster looks like, but by now anyone there is apt to stay.”

  Adan folded his hands together. She realized what he was waiting for and she moved to one of the benches. He took her place at the lectern.

  “Not a lot to go on,” Adan said, “but it gives us grounding. Moving forward, Nath, you and Kairos will handle investigation and legwork. No engagements for now, but if we need recon you’ll take point. Meanwhile, I’ll be analyzing the data from here and trying to work out Shadow Wing’s next move.”

  Tensent grunted. Quell wasn’t sure if the sound indicated acquiescence or dissatisfaction.

  “This ship,” Adan went on, and tapped the toe of his shoe against the metal deck, “is en route to deliver supplies and equipment to the Barma Battle Group. That’s not too far off from Shadow Wing’s last known location. By the time we arrive I’d like to have a plan to at least find our enemy, if not eliminate them.”

  That news surprised Quell. “The battle group’s waiting on us?”

  “The Barma Battle Group,” Adan retorted, in a tone harsher than Quell had expected, “has its own mission. We have ours. After we have a target, we’ll work together on a plan of attack.”

  That made sense. It was much too early to deploy a battle group against the 204th. But Adan’s defensiveness had tripped her alarms, and she was beginning to wonder.

  “Is the group committed to helping us?” she asked.

  How much does the New Republic actually care about finding the 204th? Right now the entire mission seemed to consist of an intelligence officer, a torture droid, a recent defector, and two pilots.

  “New Republic Intelligence is committed to the mission,” Adan said. “I’m committed to the mission, and you’re committed to me.”

  She heard the rebuke and was immediately chastened. “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Did you micromanage Colonel Nuress, too?” Adan asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Anything else, then? Questions? Kairos, Nath, you can bunk down until you receive flight assignments. Explore the luxuries of our host ship. Yrica, you’re on analysis duty. Put those years of experience to work.”

  She’d had no reason to expect anything else. Still, the words felt like one more reproof. She should have swallowed them and considered them her due, but she spoke anyway: “What about investigation? I’d like to fly myself, if something comes up—”

  “We have people for that,” Adan said, and snatched up his datapad as he marched out of the conference room.

  Tensent rose as soon as Adan was gone. He laughed and dropped a hand on Quell’s shoulder. “Makes you miss the Empire, huh?”

  She didn’t answer and the pirate—because a pirate, she thought, was what Nath Tensent truly was—followed Adan out the door.

  She wanted to kick the lectern. To shout a curse. She wanted to fly. She hadn’t earned any of it.

  When she finally stood, she saw that Kairos remained in the room. The silent woman stared at her and bowed her head in a gesture that might have been sympathetic and might have been a warning.

  Then Kairos, too, was gone.

  * * *

  —

  The Buried Treasure was a massive vessel, but 80 percent of its capacity was dedicated to cargo storage. Of that 80 percent, only half of the compartments were oxygenated and temperature-controlled for human habitation. The remaining 20 percent of the Treasure consisted of cramped corridors, operational hubs, and living spaces; the latter were little improvement over the container housing of Traitor’s Remorse. Quell traded her bunk in shifts with a Morseerian methane-breather and found showering one-armed nearly impossible in the tight bathroom stall.

  She didn’t complain. She had a function, if not one she was qualified for.

  Tucked in a corner of the mess hall, surrounded by the smells of nutrient broths and caf, she hunched over a datapad with a headset vise-gripping her ears. She listened, hour after hour, to the intercepted Imperial communications Adan sent her and tried to find any sign of the 204th Fighter Wing. Any hint that the droids and comm officers of New Republic Intelligence had somehow missed.

  The speakers on the recordings were mostly calm. The Empire prized discipline, and even after the Emperor’s death the comm officers remembered their duty. She heard stoic declarations of horror and failure—reports of positions overrun and ships obliterated by New Republic firepower. She heard an admiral refuse to aid desperate allies and a general demand that all the Empire rally under his command. In one recorded datafile, she heard hours of Imperial anthems interrupted by long series of numbers. She heard patriotic lies about an immortal Emperor, an enduring Empire, and a Death Star still operational. She heard offers of surrender cut off by blaster shots.

  She heard an Empire proud in its own defeat. Splintered and lost but too stubborn to stop fighting. She didn’t hear anything regarding the 204th Fighter Wing.

  After her first full day as an analyst, sick and saturated with thoughts of bloodshed, she reported her failure to Adan. Part of her hoped that he would find other duties for her—judge her unsuitable for spycraft and put her on any job other than listening to her comrades die. Instead he rolled his eyes and handed her another twelve hours of recordings to sift through.

  “I’ll keep trying,” she said, then left to rouse the methane-breather from her bunk.

  The next day, midway through her listening session, she received a message to report to the torture droid for a medical checkup. The droid met her in an unstaffed, underequipped medbay and scanned her skull and shoulder. “You are healing,” it said, “albeit slowly. Do you feel any different?”

  “Less nausea,” Quell said. “Otherwise, not really.”

  “You seem unconcerned with the damage.”

  “I’ve broken a lot of bones in my life. One of the pluses of growing up on a low-gravity station.”

  “I would think full recovery would be important to you—it is a prerequisite for flight clearance.”

  Quell laughed hoarsely. “Are you really going to tell me it’s my injuries that are keeping me grounded?”

  The red dot of the droid’s photoreceptor dilated.

  “That’s what I thought,” Quell said.

  “You’re needed here, not in a starfighter. For now, you are the member of the working group best suited for analysis. Adan is continuing his efforts, but you—”

  “I know,” she said. As pointless as the work felt, she might be the only person qualified to recognize a clue to the 204th’s location. She recognized the logic. “I’m doing my best. I’m doing my duty.”

  “But it’s not what you wanted?”

 
“It’s not what I expected.”

  The droid waited for her to continue. She didn’t. “What did you expect?” it prompted.

  The nausea and heat suddenly returned to the front of her skull. She pressed her palm against her forehead and slid her fingers back through greasy, half-washed hair. She wanted to walk away from the conversation, but she wasn’t ready to return to the litany of Imperial defeats awaiting her in the recordings.

  “You ever listen to rebel propaganda? Before Endor, I mean?” she asked.

  “I am aware of it.”

  The Empire’s censors were brutally efficient. Every message from home was screened and edited. Every source of information curated. For an Imperial pilot, the only streams available were military ones—most of the time.

  But Quell had seen holovids growing up on Gavana Orbital. She remembered being sixteen, sitting tight against Nette in the older girl’s mother’s apartment, watching recordings from the fugitive senator Mon Mothma. She remembered Mothma’s voice, so full of passion and sincerity as she recited Imperial crimes and urged listeners to fight for something better.

  As a pilot for the 204th, Quell had seen fragments of later recordings. She’d been subjected to broadcasts on missions to destroy hijacked comm relays; she’d seen snippets during shore leave on troubled worlds. She’d recognized Mothma and Leia Organa, the Alderaanian princess. Even if the older Mothma’s passion had seemed tempered by exhaustion, the message had been the same as ever: The Empire hurts people. The Rebel Alliance helps.

  Later she’d heard the princess speak again, broadcast on speakers in Traitor’s Remorse. The message had grown bolder by then. Quell remembered the words, “The galaxy is not afraid.”

  “The rebels promised a lot,” Quell said. “The Empire wasn’t as bad as they always said, but—it wasn’t great, and it got worse after the Emperor passed.” She had to stop herself from saying after the Emperor’s assassination.

  She steadied herself. She breathed and said, “I don’t regret anything, and you can promise Adan I’ll do my part. I just expected my role to look different.”