Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars) Read online

  “Building a rapport requires time. Without a rapport, I can be of little use to my patient or to you.”

  It was an old argument, and Caern was eager to move past it. “Her background checks out, so far as we can tell. We can’t confirm operational details, but she was definitely part of Shadow Wing.” He rose and moved his hand to the door’s control panel. “Any reason to think she’s a spy? Could the whole defector story be a ruse?”

  “If she’s a spy, she’s not an especially good one, given how suspicious we are of her already.”

  “Maybe the Empire is fresh out of competent spies.” Caern tapped the panel and stepped into the hallway. “Come on. We need air.”

  They moved through the corridors of the bunker, past makeshift processing stations and communications rigs. One of the military interviewers mumbled a greeting at Caern, and Caern muttered back. IT-O received glowers from several officers and was ignored by others. The torture droid was divisive at the best of times.

  Once outside, Caern pulled his coat around him. He felt a distant buzz—some sort of cutting rig slicing through rock—and retracted his antennapalps into his skull to reduce the bothersome sensation. The source appeared to be a fenced-off section of the outpost over the next hill. He waved IT-O along, tromping through grass and dirt until he saw the ruins of the bombed bunker. A dozen New Republic workers clustered about the entrance, dragging equipment and stone and bodies into the midmorning light.

  “You know what this is?” he asked IT-O, nodding in the direction of the rubble.

  “Something symbolic of whatever argument you intend to make?”

  Caern scoffed. He brought his sleeve to his upper lip as his nose dripped from the cold. “It’s an intelligence failure. Yes, it’s symbolic. It was also predictable and preventable. It’s the fourth bombing we’ve had here.”

  “We are in agreement,” IT-O said. “It was indeed preventable.”

  “But no one else sees it. We’ve got an outpost full of ground-pounders and flyboys who think security means ‘shoot down anyone who finds the secret base.’ But the bases aren’t secret anymore and we’ve got too many problems to shoot.”

  In truth, it was worse than that. The problem was leadership. The New Republic was a military organization—no matter what Chancellor Mothma said, its roots in the insurgent Rebel Alliance ran deep—and it only understood military solutions. He didn’t need to reiterate that point to IT-O, and instead said: “Intelligence will hold the New Republic together, or the New Republic won’t hold at all. No one up top seems to realize that. No one seems to care, no matter how many bombs are planted.”

  “There are those in government who care about the dead. You know this.”

  “About the dead? Maybe. But not about what’s killing them.”

  “We’re talking about a government that’s barely had time to form,” IT-O said. “To attribute any philosophy of national security to the New Republic is, at this stage, premature.”

  “Maybe,” Caern repeated. He glanced at the droid, wondering (as he often did) whether IT-O was manipulating him, nudging him toward a conclusion he might not otherwise reach. But the droid’s crimson photoreceptor gave no hints. “Regardless, New Republic Intelligence is underfunded and understaffed. But if someone did something right for a change…”

  “You believe that an intelligence operation to dismantle the 204th Fighter Wing would force New Republic leadership to reexamine its priorities.”

  “Shouldn’t it?” Caern turned his back on the rubble and dust. “Shadow Wing was trouble before the Battle of Endor, but back then we were more scared of another Death Star battle station than Imperial fighter pilots. Now they’re making precision strikes. We lost all hands aboard the Huntsman and the Kalpana. I’m sure the 204th was involved in the raid on Beauchen. Exclude the Operation Cinder genocides and they’re still responsible for the deaths of thousands.” He swept his arms to indicate the broken bunker. “This is what the Empire looks like, now: fewer planet-killing superweapons, more murderous fanatics.”

  “Counterterrorism being an intelligence specialty.”

  “Exactly!” Caern clapped his hands together. “If an intelligence working group were to neutralize Shadow Wing, it would prove everything I’ve been saying. The threat and the solution.”

  “And once New Republic leadership agrees that Imperial splinter groups are best countered by intelligence officers, do you imagine that would justify a massive resource allotment to the working group that neutralized Shadow Wing? Along with said working group’s supervisor?”

  Caern shrugged. “Why not? It’s better for everyone.”

  The droid’s repulsors whined as its spherical body navigated past Caern, descending a meter down the hillside in the direction of the rubble. “Is this about defeating an enemy of the New Republic? Or about seizing power in a time of political instability?”

  “Why not both?” Caern failed to hide his irritation. He wanted to repeat himself: It’s better for everyone. And it was—Shadow Wing’s threat was real and ongoing, and if neutralizing it led to greater intelligence resources and his own personal elevation, that would lead to fewer bombings and fewer Operation Cinders. Running a government and defending a populace weren’t the same as assassinating an emperor; the sooner the New Republic realized that, the better.

  He forced himself to draw a breath and regroup. “The real question,” he said, “is this: Is Yrica Quell the person I need?”

  The droid didn’t move. Caern recognized IT-O’s deep concentration as it ran dozens of scenarios and dredged through a thousand years of medical texts for an answer. The silence calmed Caern. However much of an annoyance IT-O could be, Caern found the droid’s willingness to work—to sort facts and make the best call possible, no matter how ferociously they’d argued—comforting.

  “No,” IT-O said. “I don’t believe she is.”

  He visibly flinched as frustration reignited in his chest. He turned his eyes to the column of smoke rising intermittently from the rubble. She had been there, he knew—Quell had been spotted pulling someone from the wreckage—and he tried to picture her wounded, brittle form caked in dust and blood.

  She was a liar. A woman who’d committed who-knew-what crimes during her time with the 204th. A woman who’d seen the Empire crumble and now claimed to have a conscience. Caern had seen her kind before. He never forgave them, and sooner or later they all reverted to type.

  But he could handle that.

  He needed her, whatever IT-O claimed.

  “Call our friend,” Caern said. “The working group convenes tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 2

  ANGLE OF ATTACK

  I

  They weren’t heroes, but they celebrated like they were. They marched across skyways arm-in-arm and launched fireworks under the Grinning Moon of Jiruus. They sang Imperial anthems, inserting vulgar jokes in place of homages. They danced to music drifting out from club doors and apartment windows; danced to their own clapping in plazas and parks and under the disapproving glowers of defaced statues. And as they celebrated like heroes, so, too, were they celebrated. The people of Jiruus emerged to ask their names, to offer food and drink, to welcome them into the festivities that had lasted a month and seemed primed to continue into eternity. They danced with the people of Jiruus until they were dizzy and their flight suits were soaked with sweat, stopping only to drink from canteens and fountains before returning to dancing.

  They were comrades, veterans of a war they’d won not long ago. In the hour after midnight, they walked through a garden of scintillating colors and said goodbye to one of their own.

  “Wyl Lark, you fleshy peasant boy—you will be missed, whatever the others say!” Sata Neek croaked and clacked, his beak working under engorged eyestalks as if he were swallowing a small animal. He leaned heavily again
st Wyl, ready to topple without support—a gesture Wyl had learned indicated fondness among Sata Neek’s people (and not inebriation, as a passerby might have reasonably assumed).

  “You’ve always been kind to me,” Wyl replied. “I’ll miss—”

  He was interrupted by another round of clacking and croaking. “Sonogari? He will never admit to missing you so long as Sata Neek is here to tend his wounded heart. Nasi will spit on every sheet you ever slept on. Rep Boy? Never! Why, in all of Riot Squadron, only Sata Neek shall truly miss you!”

  Sata Neek went on and Wyl grinned and turned to Sonogari, who kissed Wyl firmly on the forehead before splashing through a pond of glowing lilies; and to Nasi, who rolled her eyes. Rununja, a lean-faced Duros whose steel-blue skin seemed mossy in the garden, spoke over Sata Neek with a voice that exuded authority. “You’re certain, then? Tomorrow?”

  “Unless you need me,” Wyl said. “Otherwise I’ll follow the course we talked about, keep my scanner on, and turn over my ship when I arrive.”

  “We’ll always need pilots. We won’t need you.” Rununja gently prized Sata Neek’s claws off Wyl’s shoulder as she spoke. “The Hellion’s Dare has orders to hold position over Jiruus until the last of the scout reports are in. After that, Riot may return to a combat zone—but the war won’t be what it was.”

  Wyl nodded. The weeks since Endor had been as calm as he could remember. There had been fighting, of course—furious battles against scattered Imperial forces—but the primary mission of the Hellion’s Dare and its starfighter squadrons had been reconnaissance. The fall of the Empire had led to communications breakdowns across the galaxy, and the New Republic needed to identify which systems had lost a hyperwave relay and which had been overrun and blockaded by Imperial holdouts. So far, Wyl had seen more than a few of the former and none of the latter.

  Sometimes they had found worlds like Jiruus. Wyl didn’t know why the locals loathed the Empire so, or why they found such unutterable joy in its downfall. He didn’t know how old its plazas and gardens and skyways were, or what crimes the Imperial garrison and its commander had committed. Most of the Jiruusi barely spoke Galactic Basic. So Wyl was simply grateful to be a visitor on Jiruus in a time of beauty.

  He was also ready to go home.

  Rununja strolled on ahead. Wyl and Sata Neek and Nasi and a dozen others took the scenic route through the garden, under fronds whose radiance blazed and dimmed with the sounds of their voices. They trekked on past entangled Jiruusi lovers and into a marketplace strung with gaudy lanterns and smelling of Corellian cinnamon. They ate sweets and began telling stories of their own time together. Some stories were of battles (at Mygeeto, where Riot Squadron had earned its name; at Thumbsnapper’s Bridge, where pirates had nearly achieved a victory even the Empire hadn’t aspired to), but more were of pranks and foolish errors and the dreams of dead comrades. Talk eventually turned to Wyl and his tenure with the squadron, and he was surprised to hear a voice call, “You’re a damn coward!”

  The heckler was perched on the second tier of a multi-level fountain that loomed over the market. She was compact and muscular, bronze-skinned with a fuzz of lime-green hair and short, fleshy horns protruding from her temples—marks of a Theelin (though Wyl didn’t know if she identified with that species or another; Theelin ancestry was a sensitive topic). He frowned at her taunt, more puzzled than insulted.

  As Nasi shouted back at her, Sata Neek shook Wyl’s shoulder with one claw and croaked, “Don’t worry. Chass is always itchy without combat duty.”

  Wyl nodded. He’d been among enough rebels to understand. “She’s Hound Squadron?”

  “It would explain it, no?” Sata Neek said.

  One by one, the pilots of Riot Squadron drifted away—to their starfighters or hostels or the Hellion’s Dare, depending on their duties and interests. The Hound Squadron pilots and the Dare’s crew took separate paths. Wyl and Sata Neek were left alone, walking along a skyway through the residential district. “You’re safe for tonight?” Sata Neek asked. “I could escort you to the Dare…”

  “Met a Jiruusi,” Wyl said. “Gave me a key and told me to stay with her anytime.”

  Sata Neek erupted in a fit of croaking laughter before throwing both arms skyward. “Wyl Lark, the beloved! Gift to the galaxy!” Someone at ground level echoed the shout and Sata Neek cackled once again. In a more subdued tone, he added, “The best pilot I ever knew.”

  “We saved the galaxy together,” Wyl said.

  “We had the best times,” Sata Neek answered.

  * * *

  —

  Wyl slept on a mountain of cushions softer than any bed he’d ever encountered, too tired even to wake his host. His final thoughts before dreaming were of his comrades—his brothers and sisters—in the unit, and how soothing his last days in Riot Squadron had been.

  He woke to sirens.

  The noise reverberated through the city, unfamiliar in its precise pitch and cadence but unmistakable in meaning. He scrambled to dress and pulled curtains aside, scanning the sky through the apartment’s glass wall. In the predawn light, dark flecks streamed across the clouds in thin bands, like nocturnal insects going to feed. Wyl imagined he could hear the screams of ion engines, though the sirens overwhelmed everything.

  TIE fighters, he thought. The Empire is here.

  He was zipping his flight suit closed as he sprinted down the skyway toward the platform where he’d landed his starfighter. He could see flashes of light high above. The dark flecks spiraled around a single bright point: the Hellion’s Dare.

  He spotted his RZ-1 interceptor and felt unexpected relief. He’d feared, without thinking, that he would find his A-wing reduced to slag by an enemy scout. Yet the craft was intact, and he half climbed, half leapt onto the sleek, triangular body, wedging the toes of his boots between metal seams as he scrambled toward the cockpit. Every scorch mark on the hull, every dent and chip in the amber paint, was familiar. He forced himself to contemplate none of them as the canopy slid open and he dropped into the pilot’s seat.

  “We’re going to help our friends,” he murmured as he flipped switches and tapped buttons. He ignited the fusion reactor; activated the displays; distributed power to all components. The ritual was as familiar as the ship’s scars. His voice was placating, and the low hum of the engines seemed to answer. “We’re going up, okay? One more mission.”

  There were a dozen preflight diagnostics he should have run. Manual equipment checks he should have performed, especially without a ground crew at hand. A-wings were temperamental, prone to thruster decalibrations and componentized power losses and shorting out whatever gear seemed most vital. They were jury-rigged machines, stripped and modified by the Rebel Alliance for speed over heavy firepower or durability, and the consequences were apparent in every minute of flight. Wyl hoped his lack of caution wouldn’t prove fatal.

  The A-wing lifted smoothly off the platform, repulsors whinnying and familiar vibrations running through Wyl’s seat as he retracted the landing gear. He couldn’t help smiling. “You get to let loose.” Then they were airborne, thrusters roaring, racing over skyways and between buildings as the starfighter gained altitude and pitched at the open sky. Gravity and acceleration pushed Wyl against his seat and he struggled to focus his sight on the black spiral above.

  Seconds later he entered the fray. Riot Squadron had already engaged. Pairs of A-wing fighters swung into the TIEs’ spiral path to scatter enemy flights before they could make their attack runs at the Hellion’s Dare. The New Republic frigate floated above the thin haze of Jiruus’s atmosphere, shields shimmering as it absorbed volleys of particle bolts, turbolasers discouraging enemy approaches from a dozen angles. Orbiting the Dare were the cross-shaped slivers of Hound Squadron’s B-wings, sticking close to the mother ship and unleashing massive firepower at any TIE that reached optimal weapons range
.

  Wyl activated his comm and announced: “Riot Three, coming in.”

  Rununja—Riot Leader—was the first to answer. “Counting thirty eyeballs in tight formation, Riot Three. They’re ignoring us except when we disrupt their attack pattern. They want the Dare—they don’t much care about fighter kills.”

  “Bombers?” Wyl asked.

  “Negative.” Nasi’s voice, crisp and low. Riot Eight.

  “Not that we’ve spotted,” Sata Neek corrected. Riot Five. “Plenty of opportunity for error!”

  The chatter continued, identifying TIE vectors and the Dare’s targets. Wyl listened but concentrated elsewhere. The scanner was barely intelligible—thirty TIEs and two New Republic squadrons meant upward of fifty marks, most of them fast enough to cross the engagement zone in moments—which left him reliant on eyes and instincts as much as sensors. If he died, he’d likely never see the shot that atomized his ship.

  He joined Riot Four and Riot Eight as they set course for the spiral. In practiced shorthand, Nasi described her plan to approach perpendicular to the TIEs, curving into their spiral flight path with a tight turn and punching through the enemy arc. If the Riot pilots were lucky and their aim was true, they’d destroy one or two of the fighters in the process. If they were unlucky—whether or not they hit their targets—additional TIEs would pursue them as they escaped, well positioned to pick off the three A-wings. Shaking the foe would be difficult; but even drawing pursuit would leave the spiral formation fragmented.

  They accelerated together and matched velocities. In a planetary atmosphere, their speed would have been incomprehensible. In the vastness of open space, speed and distance were relative, fathomable only in how one related to the other. Wyl’s A-wing was traveling fast; therefore the enemy was near. The black void yawned above his cockpit, denying him any sense of orientation as he banked into the turn.

  His targeting computer flashed as they neared the stream of TIEs. He responded by squeezing the trigger of his control yoke, and he heard the energized warble of his cannons. Red lightning rippled around him as Riot Four and Eight, too, made their attacks.