II.
Strategic Defeat.
Only a shard of Yavin Four could be seen. Previously enshrouded, the green moon now peered out from behind the cold, blue aureole of Yavin Prime—a swirling, roiling red ball of hot gas.
Wedge Antilles watched, through the scratched, pitted transparisteel viewport of his X-wing, Yavin's moon "rise" upside-down. When it had risen, still only a silver sliver of its face could be seen; the rest was engulfed by Yavin's waxing umbra. In Yavin's darkness, twisted, tumbling, and glinting whenever they caught the light of Yavin's sun, Wedge watched masses of obliterated durasteel "fall" beneath the surface of the gas giant, to be crushed underneath layer upon layer of seething superstorms; entropy was erasing all evidence of Yavin's trespasser.
From the stillness of the cockpit of his X-wing, Wedge watched Yavin's turmoil. Watched, and waited.
Technically, this wasn't his X-wing. His had been damaged in the attack run, and was currently grounded for repairs. This X-wing was Red Five's. Pedrin's.
Luke's, Wedge corrected himself. Pedrin Gaul was dead, his starfighter destroyed. Like all the others. Killed in the battle of Yavin, days ago; or in the skirmish on Scarif, days prior.
Anyways, and besides—technically, their starfighters didn't belong to any of them. They belonged to the Rebellion's Starfighter Corps. Pilots belonged to their starfighters.
Quarter-billion-credit caskets outfitted with missile systems. Wedge scoffed at his own sardonicism.
Either way, this X-wing was, at present, Wedge's responsibility.
"Aythree, run a check: all systems."
In response, his red-domed astromech droid, R2-A3 (sheathed in the ship's astromech socket), beeped obediently. In Basic, her binary response flashed across the high-contrast display of the ship's in-board translation unit:
BAT: 308V
TEMP: 71°F
O2: 97.7%
H2O: 98.9%
TIB GAS: 53.5%
PRO TORP: OK
CHAFF/FLARES: GOOD
Wedge surveyed the rest of his dashboard's instrumentation. Cabin pressure was stable. Gimbals, stable. Deflector screens, steady. Inertial damper, dialed back to pilot's preference. Strike foils were locked in patrol position.
It was the third diagnostics check he'd performed since the start of his shift. Aside from maybe a percentage point off of the oxygen, nothing had changed since the second check. As his flight sergeant back on Montross used to say: everything is good; nothing is bad.
"How's comscan?"
Another series of beeps. Another translation:
RECEPTORS AND TRANSCEIVERS RECEPTIVE/RECEIVING. ALL CLEAR.
Wedge frowned.
Aythree bleeped once more, this time unprompted, and once more, a line of binary flashed across the screen in Basic. Somehow, she'd made the sounds sound concerned, despite lacking the organic mouthparts needed to create the necessary inflection.
Wedge suppressed a smile.
He lied: "I'm OK, Aythree. Just restless."
In truth, Wedge was grieving, and desired distraction—even if all he could get was the monotony of maintenance. A few short weeks ago, Red Squadron was invincible. Now, they were all gone. Along with the rest of the division's fighter-wing.
Brannon. Porkins. Rue. Quersey. Naytaan. Nett. Chan. Næco. The shaver, Darklighter. The old man, Dreis. The dozens of other pilots from Gold, Green, and Blue—the "colour squadrons" of the Rebel Alliance's Second Division (Rainbow Group). Numberless reservists who served at Scarif.
Friends—family.
Gone—atomized.
But so is Death Star, Wedge reminded himself. Gone—atomized, also.
Together, they'd destroyed the Emperor's dreaded superweapon, discovered only weeks before their own discovery. He told himself that the Empire's loss was worth the division's. And Alderaan's. He didn't make a very convincing argument.
Their sacrifices were hecatomb; their victory felt pyrrhic. Their enemy remained technologically and numerically superior. They were still on the run. Low on supplies. Funds. Short of manpower. Firepower. Outgunned. Outnumbered. Exhausted.
And any minute, the Empire would retaliate.
While transports were being hastily loaded for evacuation, Wedge was the eye in the sky. The mission was uncomplicated: monitor the system for approaching ships; alert, if spotted; if needed, defend evacuating transports; martyr, if necessary. The odds were abysmal: their only spaceworthy fighters were a single X-wing and a single Y-wing—not nearly enough to repel an Imperial counterattack. So, pilots rotated, worked in shifts. They had an abundance of reserve fighter-pilots (the so-called Grey Squadron), but no fighters for them to fly—and, Wedge thought disdainfully, they're all as green as Yavin Four.
Not that combat, or even flight experience had counted for much in the battle against Death Star. Nor had training, a whole lot more. Rookies and veterans flew, fought, and perished as equals.
The simple, black-and-white diagrams presented during the pre-battle briefing hadn't prepared any of them for facing the staggering size of the selenic, steel battle station in person. Many of them had stared down Golan shield-gates, and other low-orbit superdefence platforms before. Death Star had been something else entirely—a nightmare scenario: a near-impervious, nigh-on impregnable, orbit-less military base, capable of hyperspeed, barracksing an army large enough to occupy entire systems, and outfitted with a superlaser containing enough firepower to destroy entire planets in light-seconds.
No deflector screen could repulse such incomprehensible power. Their only shielding had been the slow orbit of Yavin itself. Ace fighters, with a combined hundreds of combat–flying hours, were annihilated by turbolasers and enemy TIE's, as if they'd never flown or fought before. A kid—a farm-son from Tatooine—with zero hours outside of outdated simulators, had fired the miraculous final shot. With seconds to spare. And without his targeting computer!
Whenever Wedge thought of that impossible moment, he saw the Death Star explode brilliantly again, as if its detonation was burned into the retina of his mind's eye. One second, it was a near-perfect sphere—the next, transformed instantly into a fireball of cascading, oxidizing sparks. When he closed his eyes, he could see it, even more clearly than the instrumentation on his dashboard when he opened them. Hyperphantasic.
Flash-burns still blurred the vision of his right eye—an injury he'd received on a supply run to Thesme. Wounded by a flash-bang; what had prevented him from being the one to lead his squadron's second element in battle. From being able to see with his targeting computer. From firing on the thermal exhaust port himself. And… missing? And seeing the Rebel moon explode on repeat inside his head instead?
Or perhaps not. Perhaps it would've been his torpedoes that destroyed Death Star. He, who found himself standing on that podium, receiving a Medal of Bravery from Princess Leia—rather than that bushwhacking boor, Solo, and a damn child. He felt a pang of jealousy, then a twinge of regret. Both yielded to a sinking feeling of guilt. A self-reprimand. Death Star wasn't an academy exam. War is not a schoolyard contest.
His jealousy masked his shame.
Get clear, Wedge! You can't do any more good back there!
In hindsight, Biggs had been right to defer top gun to the boy (to the chagrin of nearly everyone, including most of High Command). The best bush-pilot in the Outer Rim Territories, he'd claimed of Luke, a boyhood friend. But if Biggs hadn't've vouched for him, perhaps nobody would've stood on that podium and received medals. Biggs was right. Dead. But right.
In fact, Wedge thought celebrating had been a mistake. An audience might find value in a ceremony for cheering the survivors. To him, it seemed a malapropos response to so much senseless loss. It should have been a funeral. For Biggs, and everyone else who lost and was lost.
Biggs. Wedge's second. They'd both defected. He and Wedge. Not together. They'd attended different academies. Came from different castes. But they'd had the same stories to tell. The same ploy. The same plan. They'd both joined up to defect. They'd bonded over that, after defection. He remembered the times, after-hours, when they were still stationed on the Radiant, before Yavin, drinking rev-nog and jet-juice in the off-regulation makeshift bar tended to by Zyrgyk's brother. Dodging officer's inspections. Dousing the lights whenever they made their rounds. Toasting to the memory of the newly departed in the dark. The dull droning of the ship's superlight engine their only elegy.
He never thought he'd be toasting Biggs'. The person he was—that deadly and infectious combination of charm with a wicked sense of humour—deleted by laserfire. Their shared dream of running a landspeeder garage on some fameless backwater, one without a memory of galactic war because it never had the misfortune of having strategic value, would never materialize. Deleted, too—as if it had never existed.
"Wedge, Ground. Sitrep. Your scopes clear?"
With a gloved hand, he wiped a hot stream off of his cheek, and rubbed his eyes with the orange sleeve of his flightsuit. Where the tears rubbed off, they left darker orange splotches. He paused. Inhaled. Exhaled. Inhaled, exhaled again. Then flipped the comms' switch. His voice transmitted unshaking, unbroken.
"Ground, that's affirm. Receptive, receiving: all clear."
Static.
Then: "Copy—how about you, Gold Three? All clear?"
Wedge winced, knowing how much the controller's callous use of her callsign would sting. The sole survivor of Gold Squadron had to be feeling the same sadness, the same anger, the same guilt, the same emptiness in the pit of her stomach, as Wedge was. Every sibling, no matter how far removed, suddenly slaughtered. The battle was over. But… that inner war never ceased.
Then came her answer: "Crystal, Ground."
Her voice transmitted as unwavering as his. He smiled through his tears. He was proud of her professionalism. They were a far cry from the ragtag band he'd first met on Dantooine.
And that was it. Their hourly routine for twelve hours. Empty silence. The shadows of the system's rotation drawing out and receding like long knives. Together, they shared that silent, empty space for a long time. Watching the fading fire and fury of the battle's aftermath. Waiting.
Normally, his cockpit would buzz with the bored banter of his squadmates. They'd reminisce to make the time go easy. Tell the same stories, of war and of home, over and over, staving off their anxiety about the unknown future. Now—nothing. Brown noise. The occasional crackle or pop of interference from the open groundlink. He thought of hailing the Y-wing pilot privately, but he didn't know what he would say. And, he couldn't remember her name.
He knew she was a reserve pilot. Brought up shortly before Scarif. No less a part of their group and the division, but Wedge had only spoken to her in passing. They hadn't shared any engagements, nor any simulator time. They were always assigned opposite sides at drill. Still, they were family. Everyone was, according to the propagandists. From the lowliest engineer, to the highest of the High Commanders—they were "the biggest found family in the galaxy."
"The found few." Chosen few, even.
Orphaned from the blind and indoctrinated.
He thought of his biological family back home on Corellia. Fanatical Palpatists. Never more proud than the day their son enlisted. He wished he could've witnessed their reaction when they received news of his desertion. Attended his court-martial in his place. Received his dishonourable discharge in writing.
Absentmindedly, Wedge rubbed the scraped, sun-bleached symbol emblazoned on the sides of his white-green flight helmet; a circle divided by seven lines: crest of the Imperial Senate's Civil Star Patrol; token of the Shadow Senate's Renegade Squadron; spine of the Starfighter Corps of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. The Rebellion to Abolish the Empire. Brainchild of Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, and Padmé Amidala.
He turned his helmet over in his hands. Rubbed the painted V's all along its rim…
Each V represented each kill of his career—all of them painted with pride; it seemed to him a grotesque practice now. Millions of people were stationed on Death Star. They'd killed millions in a blink. Enemy combatants or not, Wedge struggled not to vomit at the idea. There wasn't enough space on their helmets now for their kill counts. He rubbed his thumb over the paint, scrubbing—as if that would erase it.
He feared nothing ever would. That he would remember every death forever. Relive every kill. Recall every life he'd taken with the press of a button. In his sleep, he was haunted. Ambushed by faceless reincarnations. He wondered if TIE pilots had the same fears. If they hid their guilt from their comrades, just as Wedge did. Were haunted by the ghosts of his comrades. Hid that behind the same ritualistic gamification of killing. The dehumanizing games.
After all, they were people. People he may have trained with. Grew up with, before Skystrike. Shared peace with, before the war. People he might share peace with again, afterwards. Rebuild with. Share soil. Find an explanation to explain the chaos within.
The war's eluded him. Beyond the obvious. It was like asking the inner void questions about existence. Its meaning. The abyss of non-answers could drive you insane.
Wedge was reminded of Canticum Indictus; the Song Unheard, a Kuati cantata. Though the notes and lyrics of the song were written, they had never been sung. Composed by the Core Founders to honour those who fought in the uprising against the Rakata: freedom-fighters, who died enslaved. The composition was stored on a Holocron encased in solid kyber, and embedded in a cenotaph on Corellia. A gift from the ancient Jedi. According to legend, the music echoed across space and time, to be heard only by the victorious dead—but also the dead defeated, their differences made meaningless in the afterlife.
It was a beautiful notion. If one were a believer in such things. The guardian Jedi. The guiding Force. Balance, and the eternal return.
Wedge was not.
He believed in what he could see. Smell. Taste. Feel. At the moment, that included his snub's odourless cabin. Its flavourless ration-paste. Outside, the newly sired belt of splintered steel spinning around Yavin Prime. His sorrow. His unease. But—faith in the unit leaders who'd organized the Battle of Yavin. Who were now organizing a strategic retreat. Faith had got them this far, despite innumerable setbacks. They'd started from scratch more times than Wedge could remember.
Warfare was a series of battles. The next was always more important than the last. Outcomes were sometimes unclear at first. Sometimes, they could only be determined retroactively.
The front line moved back and forth. Sometimes they stood and fought. Sometimes they turned and ran. Their fight was not a war of attrition. It wasn't even a war for territory—not yet, anyways. It was a fight for the very heart and soul of the galaxy.
It wasn't yet clear if they'd won.
What was clear was that the Empire had lost. Big. Yes, there had been death. Defeat. And there would be a lot more of both, before the end. Ultimate victory had its price.
But deep down, something still lived. Unkillable. Every time it was, and was burned at the pyre, it would reawaken, renewed, reborn from the ashes. It was inseparable from the soul. Indomitable.
This feeling had a name, but even when it was unfelt, and couldn't be identified, it was still there. Deep down. Like a sun, just below the horizon. It still shone. There was still light. There was still warmth. Even when you couldn't see or feel it.
Their entire movement was built on it.
He supposed he did believe in something he couldn't touch, after all.
For the last hour of his shift, he let play the newest communiqué, a HoloPAN recording of Mon Mothma's final address—democracy's final congress—as Yavin Four continued to disappear, until only the red planet remained. Until the green moon was entirely engulfed by its shadow.
"The sun has now set. The long night is here," Mothma had declared.
"But a new sun will rise. Look to the horizon. Our day will come again."
Long live the Republic.
With its final statement, Kleio Vaars concluded a third reading of the Rebellion's manifesto.
She closed the text file on her leatherbound datapad. And her fist.
The Galactic Crisis and the Hope of Rebellion. In particular, its final section: General Line. The unsigned work of Karis Nemik. Philosopher. Martyred during the Aldhani garrison heist. Once, he was a navigator for the Commerce Guild. A very prestigious position. There he'd been radicalized by a secret "study" circle. Then he'd found a passion for the pen.
Kleio had read his writings when they were still scrawlings on leaflets thrown out of container-transports by stow-aways on the Mining Dependencies. Back then, she fought for a visa. Then she fought speeder traffic with Orlean Star-Cabs and Bonadan Sky-Sedans. Now, she fought TIE fighters with Y-wings.
Her mother and her little sister still lived on Mapuzo. When she visited, they called her "Par," accepted her offerings of credits with embarrassment and shame, and asked with envy about father. When she visited father on Red Naala, he called her "Evaan," said nothing about her mother or her sister, chastised her for her grade-point-average, and paid for another trimester's tuition.
On Yavin, she was Kleio, and she had no family. Nor college classes to attend.
Everybody in the Alliance was a character in a play. Nobodies in the census data. Kath-hounds in nerf's clothing. Rebels.
The Rebel Alliance. United in the same cause: to end the Empire.
Different reasons. Some joined to kill Imperials. Avenge an injustice. Some joined for the thrill. The adventure. Some simply needed a stipend. Some craved the violence. Kleio, like many others, believed in The Cause: the twenty-four points of unity, the twelve attendant demands of restoration—the reversal of Palpatine's Eighty-Eight Decrees. Mon-Mothmatism.
She traced the trajectory of Mon's insurgency:
The expansion of Corporate Sector authority. Corporate authority's erosion. The fiasco on Ferrix. The nationalization of commerce—Imperialization.
The raid on Aldhani. The response—social revanchism: the Public Order Decree; the Resentencing Directive.
Mass internment. Mass surveillance. Massacre.
Spellhaus—Segra Milo—Ghorman.
Factionalism. Sectarianism. A groundcar spinning its tires in the mud.
The long-sought, hard-fought unification of the galaxy's many disparate, infighting rebel groups under one banner. Sector alliances first. Then, a galactic alliance.
Then—one day: whispers of a cataclysmal black-site project.
"Stardust."
Jedha—Eadu—Scarif—Yavin.
Death Star.
Death Star had been the apotheosis of the financial galacticat's military-industrial ambitions, which had arisen to extinguish the separatist flame in the midst of the bloody Clone Wars, and now sought to wash away, through a tide of overwhelming force, every island of independent thought everywhere. Until nothing else existed, except for the Empire…
When the existence of Death Star had been leaked to Rebel Intelligence agents by the renegade Imperial scientist, Galen Erso, suddenly, Imperial despotism was given its full context. Hundreds of prospering, civilized colonies of the old Republic, strip-mined or factory-farmed into destitution and even nonexistence. Entire planets of refugees ruthlessly denied asylum in the Galactic Core, and concentrated on desolate, isolated "bivouac worlds" in the outer Mid Rim. Alienated, they were unaware they were employed in constructing the means of their own destruction…
Stardust. Each component was built in segregation, innocuous by itself. Kyber lenses and focusing matricies. Electronic couplings. Mechanical joints. Mouse droids. All the workers wanted was a hot meal in the morning. A cold drink after work. A warm bed at night. A roof over their heads. To see tomorrow…
Maybe they demanded better working conditions, better pay; more holidays, less working hours. Action was resisted, but permitted. As long as they didn't demand power. Some did. Some organized. They were exterminated. Carted off to Wobani or one of the seven moons of Narkina. Chained. Caged. Never seen again. Until there was no "popular resistance;" only fundamentalist religious extremism—flames they could fan, easily, and popularly expunge…
Then civil wars. Then intervention. Then occupation. Then genocide.
Ryloth—Mandalore—Arvala—Mimban.
The Rebellion began as a reform movement. Charity funds. Mercy missions. It evolved into a complex network for the intelligent co-ordination of thitherto spontaneous, sporadic acts of insurrection. A revolutionary movement.
Before that, there was oppression, but no idea how to stop it. Then came ideas. With ideas, came followers. With followers, came leaders. With leaders, came real resistance. Nonviolent, at first. With resistance, came more and more violent repression. Violence begot violence. So then, resistance became more and more violent.
Then came the privateers. Spies. Saboteurs. Assassins. The cloak and the dagger. Counterintelligence. Then came profiteers, black marketeers. Pauperized military-industrialists of the old order, bereft of lucrative military contracts. Incom. Koensayr. Opportunists. Merr-Sonn. Off-the-books BlasTech subsidiaries. The Syndicates, even.
With sponsorship, came armaments—blasters, starfighters. With blasters, came soldiers. With soldiers, came armies. With starfighters, came pilots. With pilots, came starfighter squadrons.
Their political movement evolved again; became a military coalition.
With armies and starfighter squadrons, came Star Destroyers. Cold war turned hot. The dimensions of the conflict became galactic.
First, planet by planet—Raada, Lothal, Onderon, Mantooine.
Then, sector by sector—Atrivis, Batonn, Senex Juvex, Japrael.
Where next, who knew? Someday, Steergard—Fondor—Bilbringi—Rendili—Kuat.
Umbara—Champala—Imperial Center.
The Imperial Palace—the Emperor's throneroom.
The Imperial Throne.
After that? A new Senate. Tribunals. Demilitarization. And finally—peace, perhaps. Reparations. And long life.
But first, quick life. In service to the long-death.
That would take many more dead pilots to achieve. Kleio closed her eyes and committed the names of Yavin's Gold Squadron to the memorial in her mind. Acquaintances, but brothers still.
Hutch. Tiree. Torsyn. Krail. Oakland. Woolcob. Speer. Lepira.
She glanced out of her Y-wing's port viewport to the far side of Yavin, where his X-wing was. Wedge. The only other survivor, besides the "greensuit," Luke, of Red Squadron. She didn't know the names of their dead. But she said a prayer for each and every callsign. For Green Squadron, too. All nine pilots.
Out of her starboard viewport, she gazed down at the surface of Yavin Four, at the penumbra of Yavin's waning umbra, where the Rebel base was.
With an hour left of her shift, Kleio then returned her focus to the object in her hand. Relaxed the other. Blood returned to her fingers. She reopened the leatherbound datapad, and began her fourth reading of the Rebellion's manifesto. It began with a rallying cry:
Death to the Empire.