Eighthmonth 1094

I was born on Alderaan rather less than eighteen years before its destruction. That was the single most important factor in my life's path. I am no-one special; no destiny fastened itself inexorably to my shoulders, no portents heralded my birth. Born in another time or place, I would have lived a busy, obscure life, as untouched by galactic events as they were by my existance. But I was caught up in the events of the Rebellion against Palpatine's Empire, without my will, almost without a choice on my part. Perhaps the first step came in the summer of my twelfth year.

We-my grandmother and I-were walking in the courtyard garden of our house; I was barefooted, with the grass stems tickling my legs under my skirt. Shamma had been talking of other subjects, and suddenly demanded of me, "Keitin, do you want to go to Girls' Model next year and learn how to catch a man, or do you want some real education?"

This was an unfair reflection on the perfectly adequate syllabus of Aldera Girls' Model School; but most of my classmates who were going there seemed only interested in clothes and boys-subjects that inspired me to no great enthusiasm at that date. I replied vaguely that I would rather become a pilot or an engineer. Shamma laughed. "Then it's the Inst for you, m'lei."

I had too much healthy respect for my grandmother to disagree even if I had wanted to. She had been running Avram Trade and Transport with an iron hand since her husband's death twenty years before, as well as rearing me, and I held her in as much awe as any of her employees did. My early years had the humdrum uneventfulness of any happy childhood-I went to primary school, played and fought with my cousins, learned to drive a speeder. I was something of a misfit both at home and at elementary school, and not much changed when I went to Inst.

Eighthmonth 1085

The Vice-Regal Institute of Education, commonly known as 'Inst', was one of the foremost schools in the capital province, for Bail Organa sponsored it and indeed sent his own daughter there. As well as further lessons in the foundation subjects-mathematics, science, languages, galactography and astrogation, we learned wilderness survival, unarmed self-defence and combat, first aid, basic piloting and starship mechanics and repair. I also elected to study cookery and singing, out of a vague notion they were feminine and would please my aunts. I was the only granddaughter amid a swarm of boy-cousins, and as a result was a gawky, awkward tomboy of a child, more interested in piloting and mathematics than in dolls or frocks. My aunts must have despaired of me-I was a poor substitute for the daughter neither of them had.

History was noticeably absent from the official curriculum, but the Empire-prescribed version of His Highness Emperor Palpatine's glorious New Order, told listlessly in primary school, was supplanted by a truer version told in lowered voices. All in all, it would be hard to imagine a better education for potential future Rebels, and I can only conclude that was Bail Organa's intention.

The most popular girl in school was undoubtedly Princess Leia Organa. She was in the year above me, and always surrounded by a crowd of her friends like a bodyguard. I had, of course, known her before I started school. Shamma would take me with her when she visited Bail Organa at the Palace, and we would be expected to play together while the grown-ups talked. At this period I believe we had rather disliked each other than otherwise.

It was on the shooting range that I changed my mind. Since Alderaan's destruction, I have often come across the misconception that we were a planet of pacifists, unable to tell one end of a blaster from the other. It is true that we had no capital warships, no standing army, no starfighters or ground-to-space missiles. However, people with the ability to use a blaster were common enough, though our low crime rates meant few people needed to carry one regularly, and they were strictly controlled.

As I struggled to hit the target, Leia scored a series of centre shots on the next one. She watched my efforts with impatience, then leaned over to me.

"You need to sight down the barrel. Imagine you are the bolt."

I turned to aim again, too shy to thank her, and she added, "Sometimes your first instinct is the best one."

I pulled the trigger, and managed to hit the target for a change.

"See?" Leia said, smiling. "You can do it."

That was the first seed. Leia Organa was an easy person to admire; brave, highly intelligent, witty, confident, beautiful even at fourteen. I envied her her easy grace-I had shot up recently, was still not sure how to handle my newly elongated limbs, and had developed a distressing tendency to fall over my own feet. As for the rest, I had hazel eyes, freckles on the bridge of my tip-tilted nose, and wavy brown hair with a mind of its own-it took concentrated effort to put it up and keep it up. Overall, I was pretty, for the Avrams were a good-looking clan, and in this at any rate I ran true to type.

I tended to blend into the background at school, unlike my flamboyant cousins. My eldest cousin Lusar was still well remembered-when the teachers heard my surname they always asked was I his sister. Dan, the cousin closest to me in age and friendship, was in the year above me, but his method of coping with family in school was to ignore them, and so he made little impact on me at school.

Sixthmonth, 1096

In the survival hike at the end of my first year, I drew the same group as Princess Leia, to my satisfaction. A group of students of all ages was left in the mountains, with instructions to hike to a specified pick-up point over the next week. It was the great annual event, and was looked forward to eagerly by almost everyone.

We hiked through the Glasben Hills, with the Princess as our leader by default. The weather, on the whole, was glorious-high summer, but cool enough, up in the hills, to walk comfortably. The sky seemed closer up there, so vivid a blue it hurt to look at it, with blinding silver-edged clouds that made us hold our breaths for no rain.

We hadn't many actual rock climbs. Mostly the route was through knee-high frigh and bracken, interspersed with lochans and rocky places. There was nearly always a laverock singing overhead, and the hum of insects in the frigh. The most pervasive smell up in the hills was the faint, evocative scent of sweet-thorn flowers, and I could nevre smell it after that without being reminded of our hike.

I suffered the treble misfortune of falling into a shugh, getting badly scratched by an sweet-thorn bush and being stung by some insect, all within the first two days. I must have been a terrible nuisance to the team. Ari Oharran, a messy-haired boy in the year above me, dubbed me 'the pest', without the least malevolence, and the Princess treated me with a strained sort of patience. Anyone meeting her that week would never have known she was royalty. She slaved away with the rest of us, and harder than most-certainly harder than I did. She put the boys to shame, despite being the shortest member of the team.

Ari was our comic relief for the week. I didn't know him very well, only as a friend of my cousin Dan's, but he was friendly to me now, kind when I hurt myself, making us laugh with his quips, unfailingly cheery even on the day when it rained and everything went wrong. That was the day he kissed the Princess. Of course he had a crush on her, most of the boys in school did, but it took an enormous amount of cheek to act on it.

We were sheltering against a rock face to sort out our gear. I had just had my run-in with the sweet-thorn bush, and Devin Tryla, a third year who had won the fist aid prize the previous summer, was dabbing my bleeding scratches with antiseptic lotion.

"No point in that, Tryla," Leia commented as she redistributed and strapped up our gear. "It will just wash off again in the rain."

"The last thing we need at this point is for those cuts to get infected," said Devin, who took her responsibilities as amateur medic seriously. Scowling at me, she continued, "As if it wasn't bad enough that it's chucking it down, you had to go and fall in a bush so we have to stand still in the rain patching you up. Why can't you kids look where you're walking?"

"Oh no! We need a bacta tank before the pest dies on our hands!" Ari piped up. I made an appropriate death rattle, and he winked at me.

"Chin up, Inia Tryla," he added persuasively. "Any minute now the rain will stop and the sun burst forth from the clouds. Either that, or a rock will fall off this cliff and put us all out of our misery."

Devin snorted, but the Princess laughed, glancing upwards as if to see whether there were any rocks about to fall. Ari grinned at his success, leaned in and planted a kiss on her unguarded mouth. Royal dignity was flung to the winds; Leia shrieked like any girl and slapped his face-not hard enough to damage him severely, but definitely enough to sting.

"Ari Oharran! The boldness!" She put a hand over her mouth, rubbing vigorously at her lips. "You," she said sternly, "are getting the heaviest pack today as punishment. No one touches me without my permission, got it?"

The rest of the group was thoroughly enjoying the drama of the situation, forgetting the rain and our wet boots in our interest. Having 'oohed' and 'aahed' enough, we went on-Ari with the heaviest pack, and a broad grin on his face.

Having diverted us from our misfortunes, his prediction of fine weather came true; the sun blazed out again, drying our clothes and making the ground steam. The Princess was severe with Ari for the rest of the day, but it turned out that he had smuggled a packet of soft candies to eat round the campfire, so by nightfall he was back in her good graces again. I even heard her giggling with her friend Hanne over the kiss.

We sat around the fire that night, toasting our candies, getting sticky fingered and mouthed. Overhead were a thousand stars, every colour from blue to crimson, undimmed by Aldera's artificial lighting. We talked a lot, those nights under the stars, with the earnestness of teenagers who have not yet learned how to laugh at themselves. Perhaps with more reason than most, for we lived in a galaxy at war, no matter how remote it seemed from our peaceful lives in Aldera.

"I'm going to run for Senator next year," Leia told us one night.

"Don't you want to fight the Empire, not join it?" Ari asked. This sort of talk was common in the Inst, though not many would have stated it as openly as reckless Ari. Princess Leia looked up at him earnestly. Her hair was half coming out of its hip-length plait and there was dirt on her face, but she still managed to look regal as she replied, "Ari, sometimes the best place to change something is from within."

"Or attack something?" Ari pressed her.

"I'm not going to throw a thermal detonator at the Emperor if that's what you mean. There are more subtle ways of fighting."

"But the Senate has no real power any more," said Kolm, who, after me, was the youngest in the group. "If they go against the Emperor, he simply overrules them."

"Being a politician gives you an excuse to travel a lot," Hanne put in. I had already guessed that Leia's frequent absences were spent on more than royal protocol, and that her mercy missions were a cover for more illicit activity.

"Don't worry, Kolm," Leia reassured the boy. "If I have to fight, I will."

"So will I," said Ari. "So will we all."

Leia smiled. "The Rebellion needs more than just soldiers."

"What?" Ari asked.

"Money, mainly," Leia replied, glancing at me. "People on every planet who support us and can stir up sedition. If the Imperial leadership is ever destroyed, the people of the galaxy need to take control and restore democracy."

"A new Republic," Kolm suggested.

"Exactly," Leia said. "The Republic had its flaws, but no one should have enough power to control a galaxy. We need to make sure that no politician can seize control the way Palpatine did."

"When?" Ari asked abruptly.

"I don't know. Perhaps not in our time, but our surely our children and grandchildren will live to see it."

There was a pause, when we could hear the grasshopper chirping in the grass around us. The woodsmoke was tickling my nose, and I sneezed. Then Ari broke the tension, saying, "But Your Highness, this is so sudden! I had no idea..."

"Oy!" Leia said, laughing. "Time for bed, Oharran. You're already dreaming." -~-~-~-

At last the week drew to a close. We came down from the hills, tired and happy, grimy and suntanned. I had freckles. We were bruised, scratched and stung-or all three at once, in my case-but tougher and stronger for it, and we had been forced to get along with all our teammates.

"Last ridge," said Bailey, the boy who had the map. "The village is over the other side. And we're early-we made good time today."

We struck into a grassy lane, hedged with sweet-thorn. It was leggy and woody beneath, but at head height the thorny branches were so thick with flowers they looked like snow, with a smell sweet enough to make your heart turn over, and there were small yellow flowers like stars among the tall grass stems. I had grit in my boots. We reached the village. It was a farming community, nerfs grazing the slopes around it, the calves crying to their mothers. The yield of milk was so rich that year the herders couldn't sell or drink it all-they were practically giving it away, so we were able to have a brimming glass of milk each as we waited to be collected in our bright red school speeder-bus.

We found a stone wall to lean on, facing out across the green plains. Far away at the edge of sight, the ocean glittered. My sharp eyes could just make out Aldera's distant towers, sharp as tiny pins, and the silver curve of the lake. It was very still, apart from the nerfs and the laverocks, and very warm. Leia, propping her boot heel on the wall beside me, picked up a sun-warmed stone and weighed it in her palm.

"This is home, Keitin," she said softly. "This is what politics are about, and wars are fought for-for moments like these. This is what we are fighting for."

I looked out across the wide plains that had cradled our people for uncounted years, and agreed.