The bed was more comfortable than the one on my ship. I fell asleep very quickly. My dreams were filled with swirling images of fire consuming a planet, Starfighters in flight, and two lightsabers clashing.

I woke up to a voice saying, "choose." I got up and washed. I went through my normal routine of putting on my arm wrappings and the orange jumpsuit, I had noticed that I had piloting first, and went to work on customising my helmet. I painted the helmet with silver stripes on the blast shield, I also painted my name and the design I'd seen on some holocrons, a star inside a circle with a set complicated lines entwining the star. That took up some if the time before Mira burst into my room. She was wearing her jumpsuit and had also painted her helmet, also in silver. Her helmet had a diamond pattern on the blast shield and her name on the side.

We didn't hurry to training, mostly due to a less than full stomach, but also because we talked a bit. When we got to the hangar we did hurry into our fighters. L9 had already prepped the fighter for launch. I cruised smoothly along the entire scouting patrol, until we left hyperspace right in front of an abandoned First Order station. The automated defended were still active. We broke formation and went about destroying the defences. One of the turrets hit my stabiliser, but the shot ricocheted off of the shields. I wasn't used to shields, the minor ones my old ship implemented were for small obstacles only. When we returned to formation the station was little more than a wreck. We circled back to investigate the remains.

"Kaise, can you send out that seeker droid of yours to scan the fuel supplies?" Paus, our squadron leader asked.

"Yeah, just one second." I relayed a command through my on-board communicator to DV, who detached from the bottom of my X-wing. I didn't even know he was there until he detached.

"The readouts are saying that they packed up and left in a hurry."

"Any fuel left?"

"Almost everything. DV says that they only gave the evacuation order when we were ten minutes away. Somehow they could tell we were coming!"

"Do you know how?"

"Can't tell… wait… DV says that their sensors report something on their communications array."

"What is it?"

"I'm sending it over." I got DV to return to his perch and sent over the data.

"Whatever it is, its big." Mira exclaimed as the data was relayed to the other members of the squadron.

Paus' craft suddenly turned to face the direction the transmission was coming from.

L9 and DV both screeched in alarm. The sound sensors, which provided an approximation of what the craft would sound like based upon shape and relative velocity, provided a loud low rumble. The Star Destroyer was huge. Streams of TIE fighters were flowing from the behemoth. Their sound pattern was deafening. All of us sent our fighters into attack position, all of us had been in space fights before. Everyone started talking at once, panicking about how to deal with the situation. The combination of chatter from the squadron and the panicking of my droids caused me to shut off all communication systems. Paus seemed to have done the same because we both started to move towards the fighters. I opened fire on the first two TIEs to reach us. The first few shots bounced off of the first, but the next penetrated the shields of the TIE. The second was too close to his partner and was hit by the severed solar vane which caused the TIE to spiral away, not destroyed, just dazed.

The others started to follow, noticing that Paus and I were clearing a path for our jump into Hyperspace. Mira and Krei helped us thin the crowd until the others were away. We turned tail and sped around the abandoned station, getting into a prime position for a jump. Mira and Paus were the first to leave, then Krei. I stayed as long as I could so that I could get L9 to wipe any information that the station may have collected about us. A TIE hit one of my stabilisers, not managing to sever it, but causing major hull damage. I jumped into Hyperspace moments later.

I knew that they couldn't follow us, but I was still sweating after seeing the amount of force that the First Order would use to protect its bases. I realised that I was also sweating after the rush of some real action. Rather than trying to talk my way through everything, we had to act.

Back on the cruiser my broken stabiliser was removed, and DV helped with repairs. Mira, Krei and I joined Gida, one of the Twi'lek twins, and Thom, an infantryman who was coming back from basic training. We went to lunch. The food was the same as last time. I focused more on the conversation than eating. Krei was retelling the story of how we narrowly escaped a Star Destroyer filled with TIEs and how he was fearing that we wouldn't make it.

Paus joined us after Krei's third retelling of the story.

"I've just given the intel to General Leia. We're avoiding that system, and any that lie close to the First Order."

"Cool. So how was it to be the first rookie squadron to see some action?" Poe had come to talk to us.

"Exciting, really." I was the first to speak. My response brought about slightly shocked faces from my peers

"How could you be excited by facing something like that?!"

"Easily." Poe answered for me.

"Well, you're both crazy." Krei said, "Give me a transport job any day."

"You realise that the transports generally can't fight back." Poe responded

"Well…"

"And they're the ones that are getting shot at the most."

"Okay." Krei sighed.

I finished my food, and we all parted ways for our free time. I went to the room Poe had told me about the night before. It was a small room with grey walls, carpeted floors and a long mirror along one wall. On a small table on the far side of the room were swords and knives, substitutes for the training saber I remember using when I first started learning. A single training dummy lay in a corner, a spare from the melee training room. A pile of random parts lay in a corner. Surprisingly I thought that it was perfect. I caught my reflection in the mirror. My tanned skin was covered in sweat and my dark brown hair was messy and far too long to suit my soft features. I started to think of what I could do with what I had been given, the space was nice, but I would need more.

The door opening was almost silent, but I noticed it due to the quiet of the room.

"Luke had a room like this, in his academy." Leia was on the verge of tears, but that didn't seem to diminish her presence.

"I remember a room like this on my home planet. It was grander, and darker, but still very similar."

"What was your home like?"

"I only remember parts, like building my lightsaber, and sparing with my father."

"We haven't gotten around to moving the holocrons. I'd like to see them before you start teaching."

"That's fine. I don't want to give you any reason to not trust me. However, I'll tell you this, some of those holocrons do contain dark side techniques."

"Were you going to teach them?"

"Yes, if I've learnt anything on my travels it's that the light has no meaning without the darkness."

"The dark side is dangerous."

"Yes, and it is also powerful, but we're at war."

"That does not give us permission to use the same cruelty as our enemy."

"The dark side doesn't have to be cruel. It can be used for good intentions, also the really dark techniques are not covered by the holocrons, like choking someone with the force, or throwing lightning. I just know how to do them from my own training."

"So what exactly is covered, that may be considered dark?"

"It teaches how to use emotions like hate and anger to form barriers of force energy. It teaches how to use your own pain to bolster your strength."

"Those don't seem so dark."

"They would be considered dark by the Jedi of old."

"Do you need us to get anything? If you do, I can find a way to get it for you."

"Eventually we're going to be building Lightsabers, but other than that I think a holoprojector and computer would be useful."

"I'll see about those, and we already have a list of Jedi planets that may have crystals."

"Great!" I was so excited my voice became high pitched and cracked in my throat. Leia smiled and I felt my face go red, "Sorry, I'm still not used to being around my superiors, or having superiors for that matter."

"Don't be." A bleeping from Leia's communicator meant that Leia had other duties to attend to. She left as quietly as she entered. I looked at my own datapad; it showed a section labelled "spec 1142" on the timetable. I pressed query and it just showed me that I should be in the exact room I was in. I had a bit of time left to kill, so I tried to practise some of the Lightsaber forms. My form was sloppy, I was attempting a protective technique, yet I ended up leaving more of my body exposed than when I used an aggressive technique.

I lay out the parts in four piles on the floor. I took my saber and traced it along the floor, the metal melted at the blade's touch, but it didn't tear. When I was finished there were four wide circles around the piles. I moved the heavy melee training droid to the centre. DV scuttled into the room, his legs making deafening clanging sounds on the bare metal.

"Hey! Aren't you supposed to be doing something productive?"

He chirped and flashed up a hologram of his schedule. It also stated "spec 1142". He then showed me a hologram of myself. I was lifting general debris. That clip moved on to a clip of me practising lightsaber techniques, then shattering a durasteel sheet that just wouldn't break with the normal tools. They were short, skipping parts and only showing half of the picture.

"How long have you been filming me for?" he chirped his reply.

"That long, really." Mira had entered the room, the sound of the droid covering her arrival.

"I thought Jedi were supposed to be able to tell when someone was behind them."

"They are. I can't. Let's leave it at that."

"Ok."

The rest arrived soon after. First were the Twi'lek twins. Next was Thom, then a shy Togruta girl.

I poorly fanned a dramatic introduction, "Welcome everyone, to the Spec 1142."

"We need a better name." Mira interrupted, before I could go on.

"How about 'The Freaks'." It was one of the twins.

"Why?" Asked her sister.

"Don't you know why we're here?" Mira stated, "We're…"

"Force sensitive." I finished, before Mira could add to the tension in the room.