Author's Note: Akuria II actually does exist in the Star Wars universe, the Imperials did really have a base there, there really were human settlers, and the Imperials really did drive off an indigenous alien species named Snow Demons, although I made up the idea of the conflict between the humans and the Snow Demons. The Empire's hostility to non-humans is well-documented. As for the orphan thing, Bryna's experiences are loosely based on those of Kasan Moor, who was an orphan essentially raised to be an Imperial pilot, although I add my own little piece. Thus, it is not impossible for a female to rise in the Imperial Navy without being loose like Daala. The battles I describe actually took place, and the Black Squadron actually exists, although I took some liberties in allowing an OC to join. I think that's about all I have to say…Enjoy the story.
Flashes
Darkness: Darkness overtakes me, and, after a lifetime of fighting, I don't hesitate to surrender to the obsidian night that will engulf me forever. On some level, it repels me, but on another, deeper one, it draws me toward it as inexorably as a magnet attracts a flimsy clip. Even I know that there is no point in fighting something as inevitable as this. There is no escaping death as this second Death Star explodes all around me, and trying to do so would just make my last moments a panic, which is not how I want to leave this galaxy.
Folly: Death Star—there's a joke, for it was more like a Death Trap. I don't know why the omniscient Emperor didn't learn when that first Death Star of his went up in flames during the Battle of Yavin that Death Stars may look pretty on a holosheet, but in practice they are worse than useless. They are a liability. Of course, it's as stupid as cheating in a sabaac game with a Wookie to expect anything the government does to make sense. The Imperial government claims to have all the knowledge, but that rarely helps them make wise decisions in my experience.
Knowledge: Yet, as I die I realize that everything I know I've learned from the Empire. When I was dodging laser canons in my TIE fighter every day, it didn't seem to matter anymore than a counterfeit decicred. However, now that I was dying, it suddenly occurred to me that there were a lot of black holes in my education. What I didn't know outnumbered what I did by a considerable margin. Maybe it wasn't too late for me to learn, though. Death was sending flashes of my life before my eyes that I had never really thought about when I had naively assumed that I would live forever.
Birth: I was born on Akuria II, a frigid Outer Rim world so inconsequential most cartographers couldn't come within a parsec of locating it on a bet. I was born in midwinter on my side of the globe, but I doubt that anyone noticed the bitter cold in the midst of the heat of battle that enflamed my village the week after I was born. The fire of battle consumed my parents and most of the adults in the settlement. Most of the children, including me, were only saved by teenagers who fled with us into ice caves before our village was reduced to ashes. Anyway, that's what one of the older village girls told me late at night in the orphanage when we were supposed to be asleep.
Orphan: When I was a little girl, I believed that everybody was an orphan, because my first memories were of the permacrete orphanage. It wasn't as dumb a conclusion as it sounded. Every child I was acquainted with was an orphan. Later on, when I learned about families, I discovered that most human children on Akuria II didn't have them thanks to the endless civil war. At any rate, most of us didn't have biological ones. Yet, human children are resilient and will create their own families if they have to, even if they don't recognize that they are doing so.
Family: The family I chose for myself was the other children at the orphanage. The older girls were my mothers, because, unlike the matrons hired by the Imperial government to run the orphanage, they ensured that I ate my porridge even when it was watery and mended my sweaters when I ripped them. The older boys were my fathers, because they taught me how to be strong on a harsh world where you needed to strength to survive. My brothers and sisters were all the children at the orphanage whom I built snowpeople with in the snow that forever blanketed our planet.
Sharing: My family at the orphanage taught me how to share. I learned to share a narrow cot with another girl my age and to sleep in a dormitory with twenty other girls. I learned to keep my clothing on my half of the drawer. I learned the hard way to share my quilt and my soup with the other girls if they had a particularly severe cough or else they might die as Neera did. I learned not to squabble over the few toys the orphanage had or else I would end up sharing a beating from the matrons.
Prejudice: When I was six, I was first taught to hate non-humans. I believed every word the matrons said about the savage alien Snow Demons slaughtering everybody's parents for fun. I ignored Lana's whispers in our dormitory that the Snow Demons had killed in order to protect their tribes, so they were no worse than the humans who killed Snow Demons. When she suggested that the Snow Demons might have been more justified in their brutality than we were since we had been the ones who had immigrated here, I plugged my ears. Hatred of the Snow Demons kept me warm.
Obedience: Obedience was hammered into me from infancy. I knew that you did exactly as the matrons instructed you if you didn't want to be slapped ever since I could walk. However, I never realized how important it was until Lana disappeared the morning after she whispered her defenses of the Snow Demons. The matrons claimed that she ran away, but even at six I wasn't stupid enough to believe that. She had disappeared because she had dared to defy them. It was either go with the flow or be crushed like Lana, and I couldn't stand the idea of being trampled.
Debts: Throughout my childhood, the matrons impressed on the other children and me how much we owed the Empire. They made it sound like we should worship the Empire for saving us from the evil Snow Demons as well as for providing food and shelter for us orphans. It never occurred to me that the Empire's intentions might not have been noble, since they virtually wiped out the Snow Demons so they could build a military base here. Likewise, it never entered my mind that decent people did not brag about acts of charity. I was young. I wanted to believe in heroes as much as I wanted to believe in monsters.
Freedom: Fierfek, when I first got into flight simulator cockpit was the best moment of my life. When I started moving, I felt my stomach somersault as it never had before and adrenaline throbbed in my veins. I loved the excitement of it all, because I was only eight, after all. I had yet to experience a real war. As I danced across the black background with the golden pinpricks in my simulated ship, I had imagined that I was really flying into hyperspace away from the orphanage. In that moment, I loved flying, which I mistakenly equated with freedom.
Bondage: I was deluded in that conviction. Flying wasn't the path to liberty but to oppression, or at least it was for me. During that first simulation, I hadn't known that the hawkbat-eyed matrons had detected exceptionally fast reflexes in me and wanted to test me and some other children for our potential as Imperial pilots at the nearby base. If I had, maybe I wouldn't have let my instincts take over. Perhaps I wouldn't have evaded the simulated shots as much or as smoothly as I did. Maybe I would have pressed wrong buttons or pulled on incorrect levers more often. Then I wouldn't have revealed my talent.
Talent: I was a talented pilot. Further simulations and even jaunts in Imperial ships with off-duty pilots at the base that I was subjected to several times a year after I turned eight proved this. Up until I was thirteen, I was too silly to even realize that I was being tested and trained, so that I could serve the Empire. Even when it dawned on me that I was being used, I just flew as I always did, since I was addicted to the thrill flying gave me. Besides, I was an orphan and owed the Empire. My talent belonged to the Empire.
Maturity: When orphans reach the Galactic Age of Maturity, the Empire kicks them out of the orphanages to fend for themselves. Unless, of course, the orphans have talents the Empire can use like I did. In that case, the Empire suggests that you serve them, and, unless you are enamored of the notion of having a bullet shooting through your brain, you obey. In my case, the Empire in the form of the orphanage matrons made it quite clear that I was to attend the Naval Academy, so I went. I was content to be guaranteed food and shelter as well as to be given the chance to do what I loved most: fly.
Overwhelmed: When I endured the entrance exams at the Sector Naval Academy, I was utterly overwhelmed. The piloting tests went well, as most things did in a cockpit for me, and I had been well-trained by the pilots at the Imperial base on Akuria II. However, the written academic exams were far more challenging. There were times when I felt like I couldn't remember a word the matrons had said in their astrophysics or Galactic Literature lessons. Still, no matter how overwhelmed I was when I took the entrance exams, it was nothing to how I felt when I discovered that I came in the top two percent of applicants at the Sector Naval Academy, which allowed me to attend the most prestigious Imperial Naval Academy.
Secrets: At the Imperial Naval Academy, I learned all about secrets. The first secret I learned was its location, which is hidden from the rest of the galaxy. The second secret I learned was to nod sympathetically when fellow cadets complained about roommates, instead of pointing out how lucky we all were to be sharing dormitories with one or two other people rather than about twenty. My third was that none of the mystery meat issued by any Imperial organization was actually meat. My fourth was to obey the upperclassmen unless you enjoy having your head thrust down a toilet. My fifth was to ignore any comments about my being a "token orphan" or "token female" and just to prove my worth through my piloting.
Sexuality: The downside to the tactic of proving my worth through piloting was that once I had done so, most of my peers forgot about my gender. I became just another one of the guys, rather than a potential romantic interest. I knew I wasn't pretty and I never had time to style my hair or paint my nails like other young women, but I wasn't hideous. Surely, some guy I found attractive would want to date me if he could just see me as a female. Sadly, that never transpired, and I was stuck with a dozen male friends and no boyfriend. When I commiserated with the handful of female cadets at the Imperial Naval Academy, we all blamed our unhappiness in love on the uniform.
Uniformity: The uniform that all cadets had to wear wasn't the only attempt to force uniformity on us. We all were required to rise at the same time every morning and perform training exercises at dawn as group. We were required to eat the same foods at the same time. We were all forced to go to bed at lights-out, and anyone caught out after curfew was severely punished. We were all expected to abide by the same strict military codes of honor, and we were all given ID's that we had to carry everywhere.
Identity: When I was born, my parents gave me an identity when they named me Bryna Gunne. That was the name that I went by until I was sent to the Imperial Naval Academy. Then I was given a new means of identification—a number that I came to know as well as my birth name—that came to symbolize me. The number made me feel like I was a clone trooper. Maybe that was what the Empire wanted. Perhaps the Empire hoped that if we felt like clones, we would act like them. Clones were known for their uniformity, after all, and the Empire loved uniformity.
Honor : I always saw my Imperial Navy ID with its number as a means of humiliating me with its dehumanizing number. However, my feelings changed when my designation was modified to indicate that I would become a TIE fighter upon my graduation. After all, it was an honor to be selected as a TIE fighter, since only the top five percent at every Naval Academy in the galaxy was chosen to serve as TIE fighters. For that reason, TIE fighters were known as some of the most talented and bravest pilots in the Empire. Naturally, I was honored to be a member of such distinguished company, and I loved the ID that proved my membership.
Killing: Despite all the intense training I received, I wasn't ready for my first battle. Nobody ever is. During the Battle of Vnas near Duros, I discovered that it was harder to send enemy Y-wings up in flames than I had imagined. It got easier when I remembered that the beings I was shooting at were traitors who had proven disobedient and disloyal, two virtues that had been bashed into me during my time at the orphanage and at the Naval Academy. Anyway, I knew that if I didn't fire on the Y-wings, I would be guilty of treason myself would be blown up. I was more than willing to kill Rebels to save myself, especially once the comm system began to be flooded with the dying cries of my squad mates. My first battle was a victory, but I emerged from it feeling defeated, even though I got several kills added to my record as every TIE fighter pilot dreams of doing.
Glory: With time, I distinguished myself during the Bombardment of Gerrard V and the subjugation of Sulon, but all of our victories seemed hollow. I liked flying, but I didn't like shooting. I liked freedom, not oppression. I liked liberty, not following the rules. I had the sense to keep such seditious notions in my head, however, and I found myself moving up in the ranks faster than I would have believed possible. None of the new honors I received made me flush with as much pride as I had when I learned that I was going to be a TIE fighter, though. Flying for the Empire was now purely a duty with no hint of pleasure in it.
Horror: Even I, who had witnessed firsthand the savagery that the Imperial Navy and Army were capable of and had participated in my fair share of brutality, was horrified when I heard about the destruction of Alderaan. The concept of blasting a whole planet into space terrified me. No one deserved to have that sort of power, especially not the Empire, which couldn't even resist the temptation of manipulating orphan girls placed in its care. After the destruction of the peaceful and cultured Alderaan, beings in all branches of the Imperial armed forces deserted.
Escape: I could have deserted like so many others did, but I didn't. They had deserted because they were utterly disillusioned, but my illusions had vanished long ago, and yet I remained. I had sworn allegiance to the Empire, and I wouldn't renege on my promise. I knew that bounty hunters would track me down and troopers would shoot me on sight if I did, and the only way to gain protection from such a macabre fate would be to join the Rebellion. New members, especially ones who could fly like I could, were always in demand with the Rebellion. Yet, I could never bring myself to join them.
Nobility: Nobility was something all governments and organizations lacked. That's why I knew that the Rebellion was really no better than the Empire. The Rebellion was just as quick to use people as the Empire was, and if it somehow managed to defeat the Empire in a violation of all the laws of probability, it would be just as corrupt once it gained power. Governments and organizations existed to ride over individuals, and if you didn't want to be smashed you joined the group and became just another tool. At least tools of the Empire had decent weapons in addition to a steady source of food and other vital supplies. It was better to be a tool of the more powerful group than the weaker one, as powerful groups always trampled over the weaker ones.
Acceptance: Unlike the foolish, sentimental beings who deserted the Empire after the destruction of Alderaan, I accepted my position as a tool in the Empire. That's why, after the first Death Star was destroyed during the Battle of Yavin (I wasn't sorry to see the weapon that had blown up Alderaan explode, but I concealed this emotion knowing that it would be constituted as treason and would result in my execution), I accepted Lord Vader's offer to join his own Black Squadron. He needed pilots to replace the ones he lost after the Battle of Yavin, and I was among them. I had heard enough rumors about Lord Vader choking military personnel who displeased him to be terrified at the prospect of being near him all the time, but I couldn't refuse without being killed all the sooner.
Mistake: Maybe that decision to accept Lord Vader's offer was my mistake. After all, if I had never agreed to join the Black Squadron, I might not have been stationed on the second Death Star when it exploded. Somehow, though, I think that was not my greatest error, but rather a mere symptom of an overall moral failing of mine. My true error was in my willingness to be used. I should have stood up for myself. I should never have let a fear of death prevent me from living while it murdered me piece by piece. After all, everyone dies eventuality, but not everybody truly lives. Despite all my adventures in space, I certainly didn't. As I die, that is my biggest regret. I may have murdered Rebels, but my worst crime was in killing myself and my conscience.