I ate in a somewhat seedy diner that evening. Probably if I had returned to Avram's, Ghesli or some of the other managers would have fed me again, but I had no desire to do that. The diner's food was sustaining enough, and I made polite conversation to no one. The viewscreen in one corner of the diner was showing the pod-races on Malastare. I watched it with half an eye as I ate. The speeds those things were going at must be awesome, I thought, and I was sure no human pilot could manage the stunts these aliens were pulling off. Suddenly, the broadcast was cut short. Instead of the sports channel, a rumpled-looking newscaster appeared on the screen.
"We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a breaking news report," she intoned. "A serious disaster has occurred in the Alderaan system..."
My glass dropped to the ground and shattered.
"...possibility of a meteor strike..."
I let out a high-pitched panicky animal sound, leaping to my feet, running for the entrance, cannoning into tables and patrons and the doorjamb in my blind desperation. No one made any move to stop me; everyone gazed, mesmerised, at the ongoing transmission: "...all communications from the planet ceased abruptly..."
I reached my speeder, and drove for the Alderaanian Embassy as though the Corellian Furies were behind me. As though, by reaching the Embassy, I could save my home, could make the news untrue. The road leading up to the Embassy was jammed with traffic, speeders darting this way and that like a swarm of angry insects. I dived for the surface, klaxons blaring and lights flashing at me. I ditched the speeder and sprinted for the Embassy. It isn't true, it isn't true, my feet beat out to the rhythm of my running. My breath sobbed in my throat. I rounded the last turn in the road and skidded to a standstill. The Embassy building, outlined against the sunset, was swathed in purple. Bed linen, towels, gowns, curtains...from every window and vantage point flapped and fluttered the signs of mourning. And from the open entrance came the low keening sound of sorrow, of women sounding the deathwail.
Inside the Embassy was chaos. Grown men wept openly as they stood, people screamed out denials or swore vengeance, strangers clung to each other for comfort.
"The Empire, it was the Empire," the voices accused. "A superweapon-the Death Star."
I couldn't take in the information. I wandered through the Embassy, through crowds pale and wide-eyed from shock. Some practical person had ordered the culinary droids to dispense soup and kaff.
"Keitin!" someone shouted. I turned, bewildered, to see Ari Oharran, tears streaking his face. We ran into each other's arms, clinging on as if for life itself.
"Ari, oh, Ari!" I cried against his shoulder. "I can't believe that they just-just blew everything up-"
"They're evil," Ari choked out. "How could they-"
The night wore on like a horrible dream. More and more people kept arriving-any Alderaani on Coruscant, people who had family or friends on the planet. News began to filter through; from the orbital stations, the moon bases, from ships that had been in-system. Alderaan had been utterly destroyed by an Imperial battlestation the size of a moon. They had had a little warning on Alderaan of the battlestation's arrival-a few minutes merely. There had been a panicked rush for anything hyperspace-capable. Very few made it.
Towards morning, two distraught-looking men, still in their standard ATT flightsuits, pushed their way through the crowd at the entrance. One of them recognised me and came over-I was sitting with my back against one of the porch pillars, hugging my knees and staring out into the night, hoping against hope that Shamma would come up the road, or that I would wake in my own bed from this horrible dream. He clasped the hand I held out to him.
"I am glad to see you alive at any rate, little Inia. We dropped into realspace at home with no warning. Tthere's nothing there but asteroids and floating rock..."
He shook his head, close to tears. Misha, his name was. I used to sit in his cockpit as a child, 'piloting' the ship. I tasted blood. I had bitten my thumbnail to the quick without even noticing I was doing it.
"And my grandmother? The Inia?"
"I don't know-I'm sorry."
I said nothing-there was nothing to say.
-~-~-~-~-
By morning, it was certain that neither my grandmother nor Ari's family had escaped. No starships had left Aldera. I did not cry, not then. I had wept for Leia, but this grief was too raw, too great for me to take in. Coruscant's sun rose blood-red that morning, its light staining the smog in the eastern sky. I watched it rise, sitting on the edge of a speeder platform outside the Embassy. I will never see the sun rise over the Glasbens again, I thought. It seemed impossible. I was shivering as though I had never been warm in my life, and there was a dull pain in my solar plexus. My mind circled aroung the brutal fact; Shamma is dead, and Dan and Iruben and Ged, Finn and Lusar and the baby and little Yemi, Uncle Tad and Aunt Shosha and the Viceroy…Kolm and Bailey and Princess Leia, and Shamma. Shamma…I had thought I was prepared to lose my grandmother, but sitting outside the Embassy on that cold foggy morning I discovered how wrong I had been.
I heard footsteps behind me, and turned my head to see Ari, with a mug of soup in each hand. I took one from him.
"Thanks, Ari."
"Where's the Rebellion at?" he asked without preamble. "I know you're involved, or at least your grandmother is."
"I'm only involved with Supply," I replied. "I'm not a soldier."
"It's all fighting them, isn't it? It's good enough for me-any way I can hit them. I hate them!"
He kicked the ground savagely.
"You shouldn't talk that way," I said automatically. I had not yet considered what I was going to do now, but becoming a fully-fledged Rebel seemed the obvious choice. I couldn't think beyond that, and I did not want to.
"It's true-you can't tell me you don't feel the same."
I said nothing. Ari sat down beside me, swinging his legs.He blew on his soup, and then asked me, "Do you know where to go? I suppose you have that nice ship of yours with you on Coruscant?"
I rubbed a grimy hand across my forehead.
"Her hyperdrive's out at the minute-which reminds me, I'll have to get hold of that module. Do you have a speeder, Ari?"
"No, but one of the fellows I work with does, and he talked like he was interested in the Rebellion-I'm sure he would come with us, now."
I felt better when I had something practical to do. In the end, not one, but three of Ari's friends came back to Swift with us; Solik, the owner of the landspeeder, another young man named Tev, and Bailin, a dark-haired girl with such a perfect figure that I felt an instant resentment of her. We swung by ATT to pick up my hyperdrive motivator. If the place had been been disorganised by the news of Princess Leia's death, it was in chaos now. Nearly everyone had, if not immediate family, then friends or relatives on Alderaan. I only got hold of the motivator by pointing out at some length that I now owned a considerable portion of the company. Actually under Alderaanian law, the shares belonging to my family would not revert to me until seven years after their unproven deaths, but no one was in the mood to quibble. Later on, the lawyers would descend like carrion birds on the spoils of Alderaan, but the day after the atrocity was a little too soon for the wrangling to arise.
Solik was a mechanic, so we had my hyperdrive working in short order.
"I hope you know where you are going," Tev said to me as we lifted into orbit.
"Of course she knows," Ari snapped defensively. And I did know. The coordinates were not programmed into the navicomputer, but I had them by heart. The base was in a remote system, but not absolutely in the Outer Rim. Somewhere in its maze of asteroids and small cratered planets, someone coordinated supplies for the entire Gamma Quadrant of the galaxy. The usual procedure for receiving messages and orders was to drop into realspace a few lightminutes from the system, and pick up the radio frequencies broadcast from Headquarters. Even the Empire could not monitor every sub-light communication in every tiny system under its hegemony.
Our hyperspace trip was long, even for Swift's refurbished engine. I was woken from a restless doze, full of troubled dreams, by the blaring of the proximity indicator.
"What's that beeping?!"
I rubbed my sore, gritty eyes.
"We're a bit close to the comet swarm for comfort, is all," I reassured my worried companions. I flicked on the comm as I moved the Swift a bit closer in-system, tuning it to the usual frequency.
"Grandfather, this is V-195-Omega. Do you read me?"
There was a delay of around half a minute before the comm crackled a reply.
"Reading you, V-195-Omega. What are you doing in-system at this time?"
"Did you hear about Alderaan?" I demanded.
"Is it true?"
"I've spoken to eyewitnesses. It's true, all right." I swallowed, clutching at my composure, before continuing, "There are five people here who want to join you. May we land?"
The silence was longer this time, but eventually the voice replied, in sombre tones, "Stay where you are. A fighter escort is being sent out to guide you in."
The escort, when it arrived almost a standard hour later, consisted of two Z-95 Headhunters and a Clone Wars-era Delta-Seven.
"Visual confirmed," the Delta-Seven called back to base. "V-195-Omega, follow our flight pattern."
It was a nerve-racking flight, skimming the edges of the asteroid belt before plunging among it, to a larger than usual one, cratered and shattered. The snubfighters disappeared into a crevasse in the rock, and I followed more catiously. The Supply and Procurement HQ was tiny, hollowed out of the centre of the asteroid, manned by a mere handful. I never knew the name of the system, but it went by the nickname of 'the Coop'. From there the network stretched out between the stars, from old women knitting socks on backwater planets, to pilots and soldiers in the hidden military bases. And between these went we supply runners, in battered freighters and swift corvettes and luxury yachts, transporting everything from hyperdrives to hyrospanners to hyuda eggs. Not the most glamourous job to go down in history, but certainly very necessary.
A couple of wary-eyed young pilots, hands on their blasters, ushered us five recruits into the boss' presence. 'Grandfather', despite his codename, was in his thirties, a tall man with anxious eyes.
"You're all Alderaani?" he asked. Ari nodded confirmation.
"Allow me to offer you my deepest sympathy. This is an outrage, a terrible tragedy." He cleared his throat and continued, "I must tell you that the Rebel Alliance is also in danger from that battlestation; it is unlikely to find us here, but if the Empire knows the location of the military base-however, you should all rest now, and get something to eat. We must simply wait."
I'd forgotten how long it was since I had had solid food, and my stomach growled loudly at the thought of it. In the small canteen, Bailin muttered to Ari, "What's the point of joining a Rebellion that's about to be blown up as well?"
He shrugged, moving to collect a portion of rations. We were eating when an excited messenger pelted in.
"They did it! They did it! We're saved! They blew up that thing!"
She waved a piece of flimsiplast in the air. The people in the cantina cheered loudly, rushing up to her, clamoring for details. "Some hotshot kid in an X-wing...proton torpedoes...blew it all to hell..." she gabbled.
We Alderaani did not join in the ensuing celebrations. But I saw the fierce exultation in Ari's face, and shivered. I was hollow, as though my soul had been torn from me. I could find no joy, no vengeance satisfied, not even any relief. I just felt tired.
-~-~-~-~-
Ari and I were assigned together for runs, in Swift. Our first transfer was on Osis Prime. Ari was nervous, pacing up and down the Swift's corridor.
"Sit down, Ari," I snapped at last. "And stop worrying-nothing's going to happen."
He smiled wanly.
"Is this the boy who told Princess Leia that he would fight for the Rebellion? What would she say if she were alive to see you now?"
"Didn't you hear? She is alive!"
I gave an undignified yelp. "Leia's alive? How?"
"Apparently she was an Imperial prisoner, and that kid who blew up the Death Star rescued her. Skywalker or some fancy name like that."
I curled my feet under me on my pilot's chair. "They haven't won," I said.
Ari stared. "Who said they had?"