Entry 001: A Long Time Ago in a galaxy far, far away...
At least that's what it felt like. It wasn't, though. The truth is that it happened to me, and is continuing to happen to me as I write this. Force willing, it will continue to happen to me until I am old and gray. More than likely, it will just keep happening until some Imperial gets a lucky shot, at which point, please enjoy a drink on me. Heck, enjoy an entire bottle on me (encoded with this journal is a link to an account with ten credits plus whatever interest it accrues over the time it takes me to buy the agroplanet).
My name is Ander, Ander Sonalex, and this is my story.
I was born on the agro-planet Ukio. My father was a human, but was able to get himself appointed as an overseer for a handful of Ukian farms. During the Clone Wars, he was a logistical acquisitions specialist on Coruscant. He and my mother moved to Ukio to oversee food production for the Republic war effort. In his official capacity, he boosted distribution of crop productions almost three times what they previously were. This was all done through a hub system that he designed, had ownership over, and soon spread to the rest of the planet.
After the war ended, he was granted control of the flagship hub by the Imperial governor. I later found out that it was because that governor was getting a 10% kickback from the sizeable profits my father had earned. At the time, I was too young to understand any of it. All I knew was that I was the son of a Clone War veteran turned agro-entrepreneur. However, I wanted more than sitting in some boardroom counting my credits.
I loved flying. Whether it was flying with my father in his airspeeder as he inspected the hub or flying with my mother into town. I watched holodramas of the heroic Clone Wars pilots, read datacomics of heroes like Fenn Rau and his Mandalorian Protectors as they trained the Clone Army and fought the evil Separatists, and collected the various squadron patches of notable Clone Wars fighter units. I even built a repulsor model of a V-Wing when I was just six, though I ended up crashing it into a combine not long after.
When I turned twelve, I convinced my mother to enroll me in the Imperial Cadet Corps. She loved the idea, because her father was an admiral of a Republic Cruiser during the war. I never really met my grandpa, though. His ship was shot down when the Jedi turned against the Supreme Chancellor.
Father didn't like the idea, though. In my second week, he stormed into the Junior Academy yelling and screaming for me to stop being childish and get back home. At one point, he came close to punching the Training Officer. There was nothing he could really do without sounding disloyal to the Empire, though, so he had to let it be. I remember him telling me that it was only a phase and I'd be back to the agro-hub when I tired of it. The problem is that I never tired of it.
I only spent one year in the Junior Academy at Ukio. My father had always been insistent that I keep myself in peak physical shape and my tutor droids were all the latest models, so the courses were relatively easy for me. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't the best in either category, but I had enough to qualify for an expedited program and placement in a Senior Academy before I turned fifteen as per standards. I was lucky that I got the Sector Academy at Lothal. It was brand new and I was part of the fifth class to ever attend!
I was tapped for the Flight Program in the first month of training there. My mother bought me a simulator after I crashed the V-wing model to teach me how to fly. I'm pretty sure I spent more time in there than I did my bed at night. During a grand melee dog fight among the Flight Program cadets to test reflexes and aptitude, I was able to take out all of my classmates and one of the instructors before I was disabled. I impressed the instructor so much, that she named me Class Commander.
Looking back, the Class Commander role was more of a punishment. Whenever anyone else decided to screw up, I got punished right alongside them. If their grades were too low, then I lost personal time to help them study. If their fitness scores were subpar, then I trained with them after my training cycle was over. Marksmanship, piloting, repair, you name it and I did it for both myself and whoever the lowest ranked in the class was. In the end, I graduated fourth. I'm sure the only reason I didn't get first was because I was so busy helping others that I couldn't study on my own low points enough.
The day before graduation, the instructor who thought she was my own personal interrogation and torture droid, surprised me. She called for me to suit up and meet her in the hangar. We went through the normal pre-flight routines on a TIE fighter, which I knew by heart, and then we got inside. She told me to take the pilot's seat and instructed me to take off.
I loved piloting my family's airspeeders when my mom or dad let me have the controls, but this was the first time I had ever flown an actual non-simulated starfighter. Sure it wasn't solo, and the instructor was right behind me the entire time, but it was amazing. She let me take it out of the atmosphere and even engage the lasers to target some bits of debris around the planet. It was only an hour, but it was the best hour of my life at that point.
The next day was graduation and it was nothing but standing in formation in full uniform while being bored. I was hot, uncomfortable, and so excited that I actually forgot to use the fresher before the ceremony began. However, I controlled myself while waiting for my name and which Imperial Academy I would be attending. My highest scores were flight, second was repairs. I'm just thankful that my roommate was a math whiz or I probably would have failed into the Stormtrooper Corps.
I was lost in my own personal thrill of having flown for real the day before, and the need to empty my bladder, that I nearly missed the best news of my life. I was assigned to the Corellia Imperial Academy! It was the third best Academy for flight behind the Coruscant and Kuati, but was known to produce some of the best Elite Flight pilots in the entire Empire! Not to mention it was my grandpa's homeworld!
That's when the best day of my life became the worst. After the ceremony, we were allowed to visit with our families for a few hours before reporting to the shuttles. I didn't even know mine was there until I heard my mother's voice as I exited one of the temporary fresher stations set up for the event. I hugged her and saw my father stalking behind her. He looked like someone told him the company shares took a hit.
We went to a local upscale cantina for lunch before my shuttle left for Corellia. My mother did most of the talking; telling me what I missed over the last two years away from Ukio. My father was silent the entire time. They both walked with me to my room, to collect my gear, and then the shuttle pad. That's where my father said his last words to me.
"You just don't have your priorities straight." He then turned and walked away. My mother hugged me with a sad smile, kissed my forehead, and followed him.
My time in the Imperial Academy went by quickly. The classes were challenging in just the ways I liked them. The off-time in Coronet City was fun and far different from anything I was used to on an agro-planet. The Corellian ladies were even more fun and different. However, a gentleman never kisses and tells. I'm a pilot, not a gentleman, so I told my roommates everything that happened. The only other person who had any idea was the medical officer after this one Twi'lek dancer and I hooked up, but that's another more embarrassing story.
I was tapped for Elite Flight as I had predicted, though my roommates kept telling me that I'd be better in a Command slot. Not in a Hutt's eye. I'd either fly out of the Academy or walk. Though, any position would have been great.
I didn't graduate at the top of my class. Technically, I tied for seventh place. However, I had some of the highest mission scores of anyone in the rest of the Elite Flight program. I even set a new record in one of the live-fire missions. I think it was because of my high mission scores that my first assignment was to an Imperial Star Destroyer, unlike everyone else whose first post is some planetary or station duty. Heck, my roommate ended up lucking out to be a Garrison pilot on some tropical planet called Scarif.
The ISD Despot was huge. The entire thing had the same floor space as the entire Imperial Academy Complex on Corellia. Sure, I was still sharing a room with three other people, but that's the life of a newly commissioned Flight Officer in the Imperial Starfighter Corps. My deck assignments were pretty small, since pilots were generally kept within running distance of the launch deck.
I admit that I got lost on my way to Pilot Country on my first day. The deck officer told me to turn left at the main corridor, which I did, and ended up wandered into a Stormtrooper bay. The troopers had a bit of a joke at my expense, but it was nothing next to the jokes I got from my new squadron. It's not every day that a rookie pilot is hand-delivered to their squadron commander by a four-man stormtrooper escort. Jerks.
My flight schedule was fairly standard for what I was trained for. I flew about a patrol a day, but I wasn't even aboard for a month before we received our first mission orders. We were supposed to rendezvous with the Sector Fleet lead by the Sovereign, Grand Moff Tarkin's command ship from which he governed the entire Outer Rim Territories.
I admit that I wasn't really paying too much attention in the briefing. It was Empire Day, and the Wing Commander promised a party in the Pilot Rec room with some actual alcohol (normally a major contraband item on a Star Destroyer), but the Captain made some concessions for off-duty personnel on important occasions. The truth is that I was a little hungover from a pre-party celebration a few of us had the previous night (thanks to more contraband that the Captain didn't know about). However, I got enough of the briefing to do my job. It was just a babysitting run, after all. I manually raised my oxygen levels a little to make sure I was clear-headed before launch.
I found myself escorting a pair of TIE Bombers to put down a Rebel Cell on some planet. I didn't know the details, but the cell was operating out of a few of the major cities and was causing rebellion over the entire system. We weren't expecting any resistance, but still had to fly escort just in case. It wasn't anything I hadn't trained for a million times in the simulator. However, there was something strange about this mission that I couldn't really put my finger on until we broke through the light cloud cover.
We were flying over the Therim Equatorial Basin of Ukio on a direct path for the Northern Irrigation Canal. We were less than a hundred kilometers from my home. My head cleared immediately as I pulled up the navigational charts and saw what our target was. Part of my mind panicked and went numb at the same time, but my discipline overrode my need to stop what I knew was going to happen.
I saw the agro-hub; saw that my father's personal speeder was there alongside my mother's and a few of those belonging to the senior staff. My muscles locked as I saw the proton bombs drop from under the TIE Bombers. I couldn't speak as their energized glow burned into my memory. A single tear rolled down my cheek as they impacted. The fireball caused a grunting sound to escape my throat as it closed so tightly that I thought I would choke.
We continued on toward Sashasa, the capital, where both bombers unloaded on what I knew to be simple grain storage buildings. That's when my targeting alert system sounded and I juked the stick right, narrowly avoiding the line of shots from a point defense laser. I looped around and came in to take out what should have been a religious calling the tower for the locals. The green beams of coherent light tracked up the side of the minaret, punching holes in the ornately carved stonework before impacting the turret. I passed it before the fireball fully formed.
That's when the recall order was sounded along with an order that turned my blood to ice. I heard the precise Coruscani accent of Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, governor of the Outer Rim Territories and rumored third in line of the Imperial Throne, declaring a Base Delta Zero. I docked just as the turbolasers began firing.
It took only three hours with the number of ships in the Sector Fleet, but it was broadcast across every view screen. In the end, the atmosphere was burned away, the land was turned molten, and the seas were black with the ash of what used to be a planet covered in agricultural blocks. The planet I was born on, my homeworld, was dead at the hands of MY Empire.
I got so drunk at the Empire Day party that I don't even remember making it back to my bunk, let alone making it to the head to throw up, showering, changing out of my uniform, or anything else until my next duty shift two days later. However, when the hangover wore off and I sobered up, I knew what I had to do.
It took me a couple weeks to finalize my plans, but it wasn't all that difficult. I only needed to shift my flight schedule with another one of the pilots who typically made liberty runs to the various planets we were in orbit over during our patrol. I disgorged the passengers, lifted off as normal, and jumped midway to the ship. They didn't even realize anything was wrong until I was already in hyperspace. After that, it was easy work to reprogram the transponder to one I fabricated in the maintenance shop.
I ended up at a planet not too far from Lothal called Nixus where I arranged to sell the shuttle for a large amount of credits to some smooth-talking gambler. I didn't ask what he wanted an Imperial shuttle for and he didn't ask how I had one in my possession. Though, he did offer me a change of clothes and pointed me to someone who could make me a fake identi-card, for five percent off his original offer.
Most of the credits went to me hopping from one planet to another. I learned that I was wanted as a deserter and for theft of Imperial Military property, but there was no bounty. That still kept me on edge when I reached a new starport. I knew Imperial Intelligence wouldn't be actively looking for me, but I was guaranteed a cell or a blaster bolt if they did catch me. Their droids probed most of the disgorging passengers, so I took to wearing a hood with my jacket.
That's when I ended up at the starport cantina on Alderaan. It was probably closer to the core than I should have been, but the Intel types wouldn't expect me laying low on a core world. Also, I remembered from Corellia that most of the core world security types had no love for the Empire or Imperial troops. My hope was that I could find a transport to serve on, maybe even get picked up by a mercenary unit. I definitely wasn't expecting what I did find, though.
The first thing I noticed in the cantina was the seven pilots sitting in a corner booth. They weren't wearing their flight suits, but I could still identify them as pilots. They picked up on me, too. It's a pilot thing; the way you sit, the way your eyes scan, the way you grab your drink. It would take me too long to explain.
One of them came up to me at the bar to refresh her drink. I knew it was just to start up a conversation, though. The seat she vacated had a half-full glass sitting on the table. But, who was I to ignore a pretty woman who wanted to talk? This is especially true if the pretty woman was also a pilot and probably extending an offer for a piloting job.
The conversation was light, at first. We talked about flying, certain maneuvers, and general questions that I knew were only to prove that I was actually a pilot. That's when she brought up politics and the Empire. I told her that I didn't want to talk about it, but she pushed. So, I told her that I saw more than I should have. She pushed a little more, but then her eyes widened before I could politely disengage from the conversation.
I followed her gaze to the door and saw an ISB agent flanked by two Stormtroopers standing in the main entrance. I opened my mouth to say something and she pulled me into a fully docked lip lock. As far as kisses went, this one was a little more urgent than I preferred. Then again, when a blonde's tongue is wrestling with yours for dominance, you really shouldn't complain. Her drink was rather fruity, by the way.
The ISB team left and she finally came up for air. It took me a couple of seconds to form a coherent thought before we both said, "Thanks, they were after me." That opened a whole new conversation between the both of us that was cut short by the rest of her team. They 'invited' me back to their hangar to finish the conversation, one that I felt I couldn't get out of thanks to a not-too-concealed blaster in my side hidden under a flight jacket.
Long story short, they were Rebel pilots. I told them my story, to include the Base Delta Zero on Ukio, and they offered me a job. It's not every day you get offered to fly against the people that trained you and then destroyed your entire planet. Needless to say, I accepted.
The next week involved background checks, interrogations, and a great deal of time waiting in a private room aboard some kind of ship. It wasn't a cell, but I was still locked in. I got three actual meals a day and had my own fresher, so I really couldn't complain. The blonde visited me a couple of times with some holovids. She said that I was under constant surveillance just in case, but it didn't stop her from practicing what we began with less urgency than in the cantina. That's when things took a turn for the weird.
Everyone I had met so far was wearing uniforms. They weren't from any military I was familiar with, probably a planetary militia, but they were still uniforms. The only exception was my final visitor. She was a rather lovely Togruta woman who wore something wholly different from the rest of the crew. There was some armor to her outfit, but it was most definitely civilian wear of a style I had never seen before. It included a couple of free-hanging pieces of equipment that looked like vibroblade hilts without the blades attached. I guessed she couldn't carry the actual blades on the ship for safety reasons.
She didn't really interrogate me, as much as we just held a normal conversation. I felt a strange pressure in the back of my head the entire time, though. It was the same pressure I remembered from meeting with the 'special projects' recruiter at the Youth Academy close to six years prior. It was the same situation, non-military clothing in a not-interrogation. This time, the woman was giving off a feeling of peace rather than a feeling of I'm-going-to-play-with-you-until-you-die-and-then-I-might-play-with-you-some-more like that female did. Though, it would have been more fun if this one flirted like the other.
After the not-interrogation, I was issued a red flight suit, black vest, boots, gloves, chest box, and helmet. I was then shoved aboard a shuttle to the middle of nowhere with a group of other people. The helmet was just plain white, so I used a spray-pen I found in the maintenance box on the shuttle to paint in the rough shape of my family crest. It brightened the helmet up a little.
During the trip, I also began this log. It was mostly out of boredom, but the woman I first met in the bar told me it would help to alleviate some stress. She said she'd show me some other ways to alleviate stress if I got past the security checks. However, that's about where this log is going to end. One of the joys of being a pilot is that I need to fly. The signal just blinked that I'm needed back in the cockpit for co-pilot duty. I have to make sure this group of technicians gets to where the heck we're all going.