Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars) Page 5

  The people she’d killed on security enforcement missions—the Pyke Syndicate and Crimson Dawn gangsters—had known better than to try to negotiate. They’d known there was no place for their cartels under the Empire. What did it mean that the trading council was so confident it could negotiate with the New Republic?

  The next thought hit her hard enough she nearly stumbled. Ginruda looked at her with concern.

  It’s not your job to question.

  She hadn’t earned the right to doubt the New Republic. Not after the choices she’d made. Not after staying loyal to the Empire too long.

  “We’ve already taken certain steps in cooperation with your government,” Ginruda said as they hurried past the entrance to a corridor filled with sleeping forms—men, women, and children slumped against the walls, legs entangled. “We hope you’ll communicate—”

  “What steps?”

  “Pardon?”

  “What steps,” Quell repeated, “have you taken in cooperation with the New Republic government?”

  Ginruda wriggled their fingers again. “One of your starfighter pilots has been assigned to defend the outpost and escort vessels requesting additional security.”

  Quell made an effort to suppress her eagerness. “What’s the pilot’s name?”

  Ginruda made a trilling noise, overtly uncomfortable for the first time. “I’m afraid I don’t know. I’ve not interacted with him directly, but I assure you he’s been a dedicated and diligent worker.”

  She doubted Ginruda was lying; they had practically introduced the topic. She decided to risk tipping her hand. “Do you know his ship? What he flies?”

  Ginruda beckoned her to follow. They led the way past entertainment centers aglow with riotous colors and through a corridor thick with the same webbing that swaddled the asteroid, emerging into a junkyard piled with carbon-scored scrap metal and acid-eaten barrels. Ginruda waved away a security droid and gestured to a stack of starship components. “On top,” Ginruda said. “Do you see it?”

  Quell craned her neck, trying to look past TIE wings piled like deadwood and the broken sphere of a cruiser’s deflector generator. The twisted metal Ginruda indicated seemed meaningless without a ship to give it context—like a child’s scribbles suggesting the idea of starship parts rather than anything real.

  Then she blinked and it all resolved.

  Atop the stack was the engine nacelle of a BTL Y-wing starfighter: a perfect hemisphere extending into a caged cylinder. Quell knew the shape from a thousand documents, had seen it blaze past her during combat operations, but had never seen one abandoned, its cage bent and dented. Her tally of rebel Y-wings destroyed leapt unbeckoned into her brain.

  “The ship he flies?” Ginruda said. “Like that, but complete.”

  When Nath Tensent had abandoned the Empire, the Rebel Alliance had armed him and his squadron with Y-wings. Quell had found her target.

  This was the New Republic the trading council wished to negotiate with. The New Republic that tolerated anything—even the likes of Tensent and his thugs—so long as it meant victory over the Empire.

  “Where do I find him?” she asked.

  * * *

  —

  Tensent was gone, Ginruda told her—out escorting a bulk freighter that had spent the past two weeks docked at the Hive. What Ginruda didn’t explicitly say, but Quell assumed, was that the trading council had assigned Tensent to protect an especially valuable client.

  She reported as much to the torture droid. She expected the IT-O unit to reply with instructions, but instead the comlink went silent until the voice answered, “I will await your next update. If we intend to linger more than fifty hours, we should contact my master.”

  “That’s it?” she asked. She stood under the glowing marquee of the club where Ginruda had deposited her, watching cybernetically augmented thugs enter and leave through the blaster-pocked doors. She wasn’t sure whether to appreciate the operational flexibility she was being given or to snap at the droid in frustration.

  She suddenly wondered if she was being set up for failure. If Adan or the droid fully expected her untrained struggles to result in disaster, ruining her and advancing some other oblique agenda. She’d heard of Imperial squadrons being sent to their death for political gain; the New Republic might be no better.

  “That is all,” the droid said. “Reach me if you need assistance.”

  She forced herself to refocus. “Fine. What about Kairos? If we’re staying awhile, does she need a room? Supplies? Someone to stare at menacingly?”

  “Kairos will tend to her needs. See to your own, Yrica Quell.”

  The comlink deactivated. She thought about the possibility that she was being humiliated. That Adan was laughing at her efforts. But she couldn’t know, nor find out without risking her parole and pardon and hope to fly again.

  Her stomach grumbled. She hadn’t eaten in half a day. Existential dread later. Basic survival comes first.

  She considered her options. There were rations aboard the U-wing, but she wasn’t ready to face the droid or Kairos in person. She swept her gaze around the cavern and saw the food stalls crammed against grocery vendors and high-end entertainment and dining units. With a start, she realized she could go to any of them—she had only a handful of credits, but no one would stop her from going where she liked. She was freer than she’d been since arriving at Traitor’s Remorse.

  Several minutes later she sat with her back against a cavern wall eating a spicy ocher meat patty. Grease dripped onto her sling as she fantasized about running, finding a ship in need of a half-competent mechanic, and signing on in return for passage. It was an old fantasy, honed during her time in the Academy, repeated over many meals in the mess hall—a comfort after a brutal drill that left her hands burnt and scarred, or after she’d suffered the wrath of her gunnery instructor. Sometimes the fantasy involved a fortune in stolen coaxium or a captain who fancied her. Always, it had been a place to escape to when her path seemed too difficult.

  The fantasy had consoled her then, but she was no longer a child. The meat felt like a sponge in her gut. The acrid air made her want to vomit. She wiped her hand on her hip and started walking.

  If she was Adan’s fool, she would have to deal with it when the time came. The possibility was no excuse to give up.

  She set out for the residential units. She didn’t relish the thought of questioning heavily armed strangers at random, but maybe she could learn more about Tensent near his home. As she walked, she passed a field-sealed aperture looking out into space and lingered on her view of passing ships: a modified ZH-25 freighter strapped with cargo pods; a rusting G9 Rigger; even the dented saucer of a YT-2400, not too different from the one her mother had flown.

  She was still staring when she felt a jab at the base of her neck and a numbness radiating through her body. “Looking for me?” a voice asked, but she never got to answer before the world went dark.

  III

  “You don’t even have a damn body!”

  Chass na Chadic enunciated each word as if it could shatter mountains. When she was finished, spittle dotted the lanky teal face of Riot Squadron’s commander. Chass laughed in disbelief as the commander’s goons grasped her shoulders, face, and horns and dragged her backward; she wriggled out of their grip and resisted the urge to lunge and swing.

  But she didn’t need to punch anyone. Not when she was right.

  “Nasi Moreno was unable to escape to lightspeed with the rest of the unit,” the commander said. “Flight recorder sensor data indicates she was under attack—surrounded—at the moment of the jump. She could not have survived—”

  Chass spoke over the Duros woman, gaze locked on bulbous red eyes. “Made an emergency jump to different coordinates. Ejected. Ejected and was captured—”

  “S
he could not have survived, barring a miracle,” the commander continued. “And while I would welcome a miracle, while I would bow to any deity who could return Nasi to us, I can’t in good conscience proclaim our friend anything other than killed in action. It is what she would have expected. Even what she would have wanted, for she understood the anguish of uncertainty.”

  They stared at each other in the hangar of the Hellion’s Dare, surrounded by nearly forty pilots, mechanics, astromech droids, and frigate crew. The members of Riot Squadron were clustered around their commander, Chass, and the empty swath of deck plating where Nasi’s A-wing should have been refueling. The rest of the mourners stood in concentric circles—those who’d been closest to the dead woman nearest to the missing ship, those who’d barely known her tucked between the B-wings or perched atop repulsor tugs.

  “Had you known Nasi,” the commander added, “you would understand.”

  If Chass’s words could have shattered mountains, the commander’s words possessed the unbreakable weight of an ocean. The Duros didn’t look away. Off to the side, one of the Riot pilots called, “Are we doing this?”

  Chass swore, spun, and stomped toward her comrades at the far end of the hangar. The commander was right: She hadn’t known Nasi. None of Hound Squadron had, but there was a principle at stake.

  She restrained her anger for the rest of the funeral. The ritual was new to her—something Riot Squadron’s old rebel cell had cooked up, involving an ion detonation, the resulting blackout, and eulogies by candlelight. It wasn’t the rite Chass was used to, but she wasn’t enough of a dirtbag to interrupt when Nasi’s colleagues started sniffling.

  Nasi was our sister. Our family. She fought to save the galaxy and she won, but she never knew the peace she desired. Riot Squadron will never be whole without her but it will fight on, big words, inspiring words, and so on…

  Chass held her tongue throughout the ceremony. But once the lights were back? Once the crowd began mingling and Riot Squadron started telling stories about every mission Nasi had ever been on? Chass let her voice rise as she murmured to Fadime, “It’s almost like they don’t want her to be dead. That can’t be right, can it?”

  Fadime laughed, though she sounded more like she was choking. An impossibly scrawny Riot pilot—Chass had seen him before but the only name she could remember was Skitcher, which was too embarrassing to be true—scowled and said, “Leave it be.”

  “Your girl doesn’t deserve this,” Chass said. “Treat her like she’s alive until you know she’s not.”

  Instead of looking angry, the pilot shook his head. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But if we do that? If we fly straight back to Jiruus for round two? You saw what we were up against. We’d all be doomed.”

  Fadime bared her fangs in a mockery of a grin. “Man has a point, Chass,” she said. “Isn’t one suicide mission enough for you?”

  * * *

  —

  They’d left Jiruus twelve hours earlier, when the Hellion’s Dare had come under attack and its pilots had abandoned the planetside celebration to rush to their carrier’s defense. It hadn’t been until after they’d fled—jumped to a middle-of-nowhere star system and settled in to wait while the frigate’s damage was repaired—that they’d learned what had really happened.

  The captain of the Hellion’s Dare had briefed the surviving pilots. That was unusual—Captain Kreskian rarely addressed the fighter pilots directly—but he energetically paced behind a lectern taller than he was, beady black eyes glowering from a head of white fur as he gave his analysis.

  The Hellion’s Dare had crossed the galaxy on a reconnaissance mission, using Jiruus as a launching point for mid-range expeditions utilizing smaller scout craft and hyperspace probes. According to Kreskian, one of the Dare’s scouts had sent a garbled transmission back to the frigate a short while before the attack. Imperial forces had seemingly detected the transmission, traced it, and sent a cruiser-carrier to Jiruus to obliterate the message recipient.

  “Which means,” Captain Kreskian had finished, “that the transmission must be valuable. Not a clue why. Lots of sensor readings. No time to decipher. But the Empire wouldn’t have come after us otherwise!”

  So their mission had changed. They were no longer a reconnaissance unit. Their goal was to carry data back to the New Republic—get the Hellion’s Dare to a star system linked into the broader galactic communications network and alert the provisional government about what they’d found.

  It was, in its way, a vital mission. If the Hellion’s Dare had discovered a location where Imperial fleets were regrouping, or exposed a hidden resource the embattled Empire was relying upon, the information had to be conveyed.

  But the Dare wasn’t plunging into danger. It was running to safety.

  Fadime had joked about a suicide mission, but this wasn’t one at all. After weeks of barely firing a shot, Chass wasn’t in the mood to turn her back.

  * * *

  —

  Chass had slept fitfully after Captain Kreskian’s briefing, showering early and whispering the Rising Prayer in the stall where no one could hear (she didn’t believe, it was a habit, and she blasted well didn’t need anyone asking her about it). She hadn’t planned on making an idiot of herself at Nasi Moreno’s funeral, but—as she told herself now, as the pilots gathered in the aftermath—what she’d said had needed saying.

  Over the past weeks since the Dare’s unit had formed, she’d seen enough of Riot Squadron to spot exactly what the problem was. The other Hound pilots said Riot was young, it was fun, which meant full of A-wing glory-chasers who think they’re hot as novas. Probably all true, but it was the commander who was the worst.

  The Duros woman—Rununja, Chass remembered now—had the makings of a cult leader without the usual charisma. Rununja let Riot have fun when she wasn’t deciding who was alive and who was dead based on scrambled flight recorder data. She probably even believed it was all for the squadron’s own good. Nasi understood the anguish of uncertainty and all that. Can’t list anyone as missing in action or the pilots will be weepy and distracted.

  It was garbage. You didn’t pretend someone was dead in order to avoid the cost of a rescue. Fadime thought Chass was just spoiling for a fight (with Rununja; with the Imps), but Fadime was wrong a lot of the time. The Nikto woman was smarter than Chass would ever be, yet Fadime didn’t understand a person could want two things at once.

  Chass was done anyway. She’d said what needed saying. She was done.

  At the wake, the pilots of both squadrons passed around a canteen of fruit brandy hidden from their respective commanders. Fadime took a swig, shook her head viciously enough to send her facial fins flapping, and said, “What do you want to bet we found a third Death Star?”

  She was speaking to Sata Neek, a leathery Ishi Tib who clacked and croaked in amusement at the question. Chass liked Sata Neek—he was prone to boasting about everything but his own flying. That made him the one member of Riot Squadron she found tolerable.

  “A third Death Star would be more valuable to the Empire as scrap metal,” Sata Neek declared. “It is the fate of all their battle stations—easier not to build at all!”

  “We missed out,” Fadime said. “Twice. Wouldn’t mind getting a shot at one.”

  Chass snorted in agreement. Sata Neek’s companion, the scrawny olive-skinned kid she’d called a coward back on Jiruus, smiled sympathetically and ran a hand through dark, ragged hair. “Someone will build another someday,” he said. “Let’s hope it’s a few centuries down the line.”

  “Says the pilot who fought so bravely at Endor!” Sata Neek clapped a claw on the kid’s shoulder.

  Chass noticed the younger pilot’s grimace of discomfort, but she peered at him more closely. He was the cleanest-shaven human male she’d seen in a while; she wondered if he was old enough to sha
ve. “You were at Endor?” she asked.

  “Riot was at Endor,” he said.

  Well, damn. She felt a tightness in her chest, like the loss of something precious. “You, too?” she asked Sata Neek.

  “Every one of us,” Sata Neek said, “and three others.”

  Riot had achieved something Chass never had. Resentment and admiration mixed inside her.

  “You’re lying,” she said, by which she meant: Tell me everything.

  Sata Neek lifted a claw into the air, gesturing toward the ceiling or the stars. Before he could croak out a word, the klaxons went off.

  Immediately the mourners scattered. Dare crew cried out to droids and leapt onto repulsor tugs, preparing to arrange the hangar for deployment. Launch orders came in over the comm, fast enough that Chass ignored everything except what pertained to Hound Squadron. Sata Neek, Fadime, and the kid broke away toward their ships, and Chass did the same.

  She felt parts of herself diminish as she scrambled up the ladder to the cockpit canopy of her B-wing. Her anger over the funeral, her need to hear the tale of Endor—those fires weren’t extinguished, but they retreated deep inside her. The Chass that remained was a pilot of the New Republic and the Rebel Alliance; everything else was secondary, guiding her systems without controlling them.

  The canopy rose. She swung inside, glimpsing the ladder being snatched away out of the corner of her eye. She flipped switches, swept aside the mess of Sabacc cards and blackened credit chips on the console, and slapped a loose button three times before the comm activated.

  “All wings report in,” declared a voice.

  The Hound Squadron pilots called off as they settled into their harnesses and powered their engines. Chass snapped a crisp “Hound Three, coming online,” as her ship began to tremble and she checked her flight systems. Riot Squadron A-wings already roared meters away, sweeping out of the hangar one by one—plunging through the magnetic containment field and into the void of space.