Luke studied the X-wing’s tactical displays as the trio of fighters hurtled through hyperspace toward Ralltiir.

“A concentrated strike,” he said aloud, half to himself and half to his astromech. “Six proton torpedoes, fire synchronized. If the Raider doesn’t have time to turn, that much firepower in one spot should penetrate the shields and knock out the main sublight engine. If it does manage to turn, at least two proton torpedoes should still impact the hull. Probably not enough to destroy it, but it’ll be enough to cripple it.”

Artoo whistled approvingly from his slot behind the cockpit.

The sinking feeling refused to go away. Someone isn’t coming back. The thought was intrusive, his mind putting words to the feeling.

“Pull the diagnostics again,” Luke ordered. Artoo whistled a protest, but Luke shook his head. “I know you’ve pulled them twice already. Do it again. The ground crew just finished a major overhaul on all three X-wings. If they made a mistake, I don’t want us to find out by having an engine failure in the middle of a dogfight.”

The astromech’s tone was begrudging, but diagnostic data from all three X-wings began to scroll over a secondary monitor.

Nothing. Everything looks fine. We have a plan to open a hole for Derlin. Luke drummed his fingers on his leg. It’s just nerves, right? We’re going in hot with a small strike package against a blockade and almost no time to think or plan. But I have a solid team. Sarkli’s great. Mara won’t let me down. The X-wings are in great shape. We’re combat-ready, with a full load of fuel, Tibanna gas, and proton torpedoes.

So why do I feel like one of us isn’t coming back?

Luke turned back to the tactical display. “Run scenario four again,” he ordered.

Artoo’s tone was outright irritated, but Luke ignored it. “Worst case,” he murmured. “The Accuser shifted its orbit after Derlin’s last transmission, and it’s directly in front of us when we drop out of hyperspace. So we revector…” He continued on, half-mumbling, half-thinking, keying corrections into the battle plan, plotting six different attack vectors the three-ship Rogue flight element could use, depending on where and how the Accuser‘s support ships were positioned. He finally finished the contingencies, added the new set to the existing tactical scenarios he and Artoo had been building for the last hour, and sat back in his cockpit.

The sinking feeling remained.

He opened the comm. “Rogue Flight, we’re just a few minutes out. Report with combat readiness.”

“Rogue Two,” Sarkli reported, his voice as calm and flat as a pane of transparisteel. “All systems green. Deflectors online. Laser cannons charged and ready. Proton torpedoes configured to fire in pairs for the initial strike. Ready to cut to sublights.”

“Rogue Three,” Mara added after a short pause. “Green here, Commander. Shields, lasers, torpedoes all nominal. Ready on sublights.”

“My astromech is transmitting our battle plan and contingencies,” Luke said, trying to shake the gut feeling. Someone isn’t coming back. “Your astromechs should filter based on the Imperial blockade’s actual configuration and position when we come out of hyperspace. We hit a soft part of the formation with coordinated fire, punch through, link up with the Bright Wake, and keep the TIEs off her until we’re back through the blockade. We don’t slow down, we don’t turn back, and we don’t chase kills,” he continued, emphasizing the last part.

“Yes, Commander,” Sarkli said, his voice now with a trace of both eagerness and irritation.

“Here we go,” Luke said, watching the timer tick down. “Sixty seconds from realspace. Stay in attack formation and we’ll get through this.”

Someone isn’t coming back, the thought repeated, and Luke hated it. We’re fine, he reassured his own gut. We have a plan. We’ll execute it. It’s overwhelming odds, but we’re not staying to fight everyone. Just open a hole, help a blockade runner slip out, and jump back to the safety of hyperspace.

But someone isn’t coming back.

---

The hypnotic blue-white mottled swirl of hyperspace gave way to stars and darkness and a planet.

Mara was already hitting switches in the cockpit before Skywalker’s voice crackled in her ear. “S-foils to attack positions. No TIEs in immediate threat range. Shields double-front for our initial attack run, then even out coverage. We’re scenario two. Accelerate to attack speed, full throttle. Don’t give them time to think.”

Her systems panel was full of green lights as she jammed the throttle forward, a half-second behind Sarkli and a full second behind Skywalker. “Arfor,” she murmured, “give me the long-range tactical.”

A wireframe grid of the planet painted her main display, with a giant red triangle indicating the position of the Accuser and a scattering of red dots advertising smaller support ships. The Accuser was directly over the capital city, Cambrielle, with its support ships positioned in a far-ranging grid. Or a net, she corrected herself. To catch anyone attempting to flee.

“Broadcasting missile lock now,” Skywalker continued. “Use my data so we sync fire.”

The tactical data moved to a secondary display, and her primary monitor lit with Skywalker’s targeting. A Raider-class corvette filled the display, one hundred and fifty meters of Kuat Drive Yards engineering built specifically to screen Star Destroyers against snubfighter attack. It was the Empire’s response to the lessons of the Clone Wars, where swarms of cheap, fragile, and fast droid starfighters could overwhelm a capital ship’s point defenses at knife-fight ranges, duck inside deflector shields, and sting repeatedly with laser cannons.

X-wings weren’t cheap or fragile, the Rogues were not targeting the Accuser, and Luke Skywalker had no intention of a close-in attack.

“Fire, fire, fire,” Skywalker ordered.

Six torpedoes flashed out from the trio of fighters. Over five kilometers ahead, the Raider sat in orbit, nose pointed down at Cambrielle, its sensors no doubt focused forward as it waited for the Bright Wake. Mara watched, a cold smile on her face as she monitored the tactical plot. To the naked eye, it was tiny, but the subsequent explosions of multiple torpedo hits over the course of a full second were bright enough to catch her eye against the grey-brown planet below.

“Broadcasting escape vector to Derlin now,” Skywalker said. “Looks like a patrol group of TIEs vectoring in from ahead and to starboard. Follow me.”

Mara nudged her stick through the turn, keeping pace with his X-wing and peripherally aware of Sarkli doing the same far to starboard. Her monitor lit with a target, fed to her by Skywalker’s astromech.

She kicked her X-wing further out to port. No sense drawing any stray fire toward Skywalker.

The distance closed rapidly as the TIEs chose a head-to-head attack on the Rebel interlopers. In theory, we have the advantage with our deflectors. Doesn’t mean we automatically win.

The trio of TIEs ahead opened fire at maximum range. Mara jinked left, right, left, and threw in a bit of nose drift along with it. A couple of bursts caught the very edge of her deflectors, but at maximum range, they did little damage. She rode through the fire, closing with her target, waiting for the opportune moment.

The moment came two seconds later. Skywalker’s target, the Imperial element’s leader, exploded under a precise burst. Mara’s target flinched, his weapons suddenly tracking a hundred meters away from her X-wing as the pilot reflexively ducked away from the explosion. Mara pounced, her targeting reticule dropping directly on the TIE’s cockpit glass. She squeezed the trigger reflexively, a hail of red laserfire converging on the TIE. Fire and smoke erupted, and her target spun away into atmosphere, clearly out of control.

The third TIE, Sarkli’s target, aborted its run, accelerating away from the X-wings on a perpendicular course.

“Let him go,” Skywalker said. “Bright Wake is launching. We rendezvous with it, reverse our course, and climb back up the gravity well and get out.”

“Copy,” Sarkli said.

“Copy.” The X-wings roared down into atmosphere. Mara spared a glance at her tactical plot, finally remembering at the same time to even her shield coverage out to cover her tail. The Accuser had not changed position from the heart of the Imperial net, but the scattering of smaller capital ships was maneuvering, attempting to close the hole the Rogues had opened. Skywalker had anticipated that in the tactical planning he’d broadcast to Mara and Sarkli; by trying to plug the obvious hole, the Empire was opening more gaps. Her R4 beeped as it highlighted the most likely extraction route.

Down, down, down the X-wings dove. Mara could only stare in horror at the landscape below as it began to resolve into detail. Ralltiir had been under Imperial occupation for over a year. From orbit, she’d assumed the planet was naturally a mottled brown-grey. Now, closer to the surface, she could see that much of the color was from damage. Fires had clearly burned large swathes of land; fields that should have been growing crops lay fallow. How they’ve managed to resist at all is beyond me. 

Below and ahead, the glimmering shield dome over the battered city of Cambrielle flickered and vanished, and in the same heartbeat a CR90 Corellian corvette appeared, already picking up speed. “Form up,” Skywalker ordered. “We keep the Imperials off the Bright Wake and punch our way out.”

Skywalker led the Rogues in a high-speed pass, flashing by the Bright Wake before bringing them around in a fast, tight turn to position them above and behind the corvette. “Rebel fighters, this is Captain Derlin,” a voice crackled on an Alliance frequency. “Give us our exit track.”

“Transmitting now,” Skywalker said. “Rogues, loosen formation. We’ve already got TIEs starting to vector on us. Two, stay low-starboard, Three, low-port, and I’ll stay high-center. Call for help when you need it. Don’t chase kills.” Skywalker’s confidence buoyed Mara’s grim skepticism as Arfor painted Imperial fighter squadrons on her tactical plot.

She looked up from her tactical displays, visually orienting on Skywalker’s X-wing, on the Bright Wake, and out of the corner of her eye, saw the nose of Sarkli’s X-wing begin to bank to port, toward the corvette itself.

---

Luke glanced down at his tactical display as Artoo screeched an alarm. “Proton torpedoes?” was all he managed to say before the whole thing went straight to hell.

He caught the glimpse on his rear scope, two torpedoes closing fast on the Bright Wake‘s engines. He did not have time to comprehend they’d been fired by Sarkli before red laserfire from Mara’s X-wing intercepted the warheads, the shockwave from the detonation buffeting all four ships.

“Imperial forces, this is Lieutenant Sarkli of Rogue Squadron.” The voice was composed but cold on the open channel. “The fleeing Rebel corvette is carrying a military research team. Intercept and destroy. I am broadcasting my own IFF codes. Please do not fire on me.”

“Sarkli, what are you doing?” Luke managed.

“Choosing the winning side, Commander.” Sarkli’s laugh was mirthless. “If you’re the best the Rebellion has to offer, the war will be over in six months.”

“Go to hell,” Mara’s voice was low and full of cold fury.

Sarkli was already breaking off, his attack thwarted by Mara’s intervention. Luke barely had time to register what was happening; TIEs were already closing from above, ranging fire lancing down at the accelerating Bright Wake.

And then Luke realized, to his horror, that he was alone. Sarkli was diving away, and Mara was diving after him.

“Rogue Three, break off!” Luke called urgently as he began spraying fire at the first element of TIE fighters. “Rogue Three, do not pursue!” One of the TIEs caught an unlucky shot and exploded; a second, rocked by the detonation and unprepared for atmospheric interference, fell out of formation. Not dead but out of the fight for the moment. He tried to focus fire on the third fighter from the trio, and the Bright Wake‘s guns opened up as well, but two more TIE elements were two kilometers behind and closing fast.

“The squadron mascot thinks she has teeth,” Sarkli spat.

Luke could barely spare a glance backward. Already falling behind in the Bright Wake‘s desperate climb, he could see the other two X-wings tied in a twisting, rolling fight, with red laserfire exchanged but no hits. Then his attention was forward again, laser cannons cycling as more TIEs came into range, the deeper thundering booms of the corvette’s cannon audible even over the scream of his engines and the lighter report of his weapons. “Rogue Three, come back!” Luke said again, trying to keep despair from tinging his voice. “Rogue Three, Bright Wake needs cover!”

Mara did not answer.

---

Dimly, Mara registered Skywalker’s order to break off. It did not enter her tactical calculations as she pursued Sarkli, trying to get the target solution she needed to kill the traitor. Cold rage consumed her mind, and she was not inclined to take control back.

Sarkli was laughing. “Go home,” he taunted, his X-wing twisting around her sights and rolling into a banking dive.

Mara followed, aware that every second she continued the pursuit, more distance opened between her and Skywalker and Bright Wake. But it didn’t matter. She was going to kill Sarkli.

“Skywalker’s pet,” the traitor said. “You’re a child in a cockpit on the losing side, following a man who’s going to get you killed. Give up, Jade.”

She tightened the bank, shedding speed to try to get enough lead to take a shot. A moment later, she fired a quad-burst, all four cannons firing together. Only one bolt impacted, a glancing hit off Sarkli’s rear shield. He responded immediately, the roll turning into a split-S as he completely inverted and pulled back on the stick to send him rocketing over Cambrielle. He leveled off for a brief second. Mara pursued, her maneuver more ragged but not enough for Sarkli to shake her off. She came out of the dive firing, trying to split Sarkli’s X-wing with hard light.

Her weapons fire filled empty air, Sarkli breaking hard to port. “Fine, little mascot,” he said, the X-wing rolling and banking back to starboard as Mara followed, engines roaring as she tried to keep up. “Then we end this.” He cut back to port.

Mara followed, laser cannons firing in vain. Skywalker’s voice was in her ear, but she ignored him. Her astromech was warbling something at her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Sarkli’s fighter long enough to read the translation scrolling across her display. Another cut to starboard, then back to port, and Mara registered she was losing ground.

It was only then, when she realized Sarkli was slipping away, that clarity entered. And in that half-second of clarity, three important, related thoughts blossomed together in her mind.

The first was that she was low in atmosphere over Ralltiir, isolated, with the only friendly ships in range moving away and climbing. If she stayed in this fight for another ten seconds, she was going to be trapped by the TIEs even now trying to paint her with target locks, too deep to escape back to Skywalker and the Bright Wake.

The second was that Sarkli had pulled her into the same flat scissors he had used to kill a TIE over Dantooine while she’d watched from the copilot chair of the U-wing transport. She was losing ground every reversal, and she was a few more turns away from being forced fully defensive.

The third, and the hardest thought to swallow, was that Sarkli was better than she was. She had started the fight with Sarkli fully on the defensive, and she was now on the verge of losing.

Cold rage demanded she finish the fight and kill him. Logic informed her that continuing the fight now was death.

“Arfor, next torpedo, detonate at one hundred and fifty meters,” she snapped, flipping weapons control from lasers to proton torpedoes. As her nose came back around, she fired blind.

A heartbeat later, the torpedo detonated; fire and smoke filled the sky, blinding her and buffeting the X-wing. Mara rolled inverted and pulled back hard on the stick, dropping two hundred meters of altitude but accelerating away from the fight. She risked a glance at her rear scope.

“Run, mascot,” Sarkli said coldly. His X-wing was banking away, not trying to pursue. “Follow after Skywalker like the good little pet you’ve been. The Empire will come for all of you.”

“Rogue Three,” Skywalker’s voice was in her ear again. “Mara, come back.“

“I’m coming,” she managed through gritted teeth. “I’m coming, Lead.”

Ahead, she could see the Bright Wake and Skywalker’s X-wing, both trailing smoke, still rising as fast as the corvette’s engines could push it. The task force, trying to close the hole the crippled Raider had opened, had inadvertently created a new gap in their net, and the Bright Wake was slipping through.

“Don’t wait for us,” Skywalker called. “When you can jump, Derlin, do it.”

“Roger that, Skywalker.”

Mara had barely slid into place on Skywalker’s port wing when the corvette’s engines flared and it vanished into hyperspace. More TIEs were accelerating along the edge of Ralltiir’s atmosphere, clawing too late for their prey.

“Together, Rogue Three,” Skywalker said, and Mara’s R4 chimed with the receipt of hyperspace navigation data.

Stars stretched into lines, and the X-wings vanished into hyperspace. And only in the safety of faster-than-light travel did Mara force her grip on the stick and throttle to loosen.

Her hands were shaking.

---

Luke slumped in his cockpit. Half a dozen red lights flashed on his status displays, warning of an overheated laser cannon, a cracked shield projector, hull damage, and several less critical failures.

One of us isn’t coming back. He closed his eyes, trying to marshal his thoughts. I knew something was wrong. Sarkli stabbed us in the back. Why?

That thought was a cold knife in the gut.

We got the Bright Wake out. Mara got out alive. Derlin and the people he went to get all made it out. We lost an X-wing and a pilot.

He keyed the comm open by touch. “Rogue Three,” he said without opening his eyes. 

“Here, Leader.” Mara’s voice was clipped, short.

“Are you okay?”

“My X-wing is fine.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Luke said.

Mara hesitated for a long moment. “Fit to fly.”

That’s as much answer as I’m getting right now. “Copy. Rest while you can.” He keyed his comm off.

One of us isn’t coming back. How in the hell am I going to explain this to Wedge?

Luke found Hobbie and Mara first.

The borrowed U-wing had already been ferried back to the Independence‘s main hangar, leaving Auxiliary Two feeling oversized for the half-dozen X-wings taking up space. We have ten pilots now, Luke noted, and six X-wings. I hope Rieekan comes through on the rest of the fighters we need. The idea of the squadron being filled to its paper-promised twelve pilots brought a smile to his face.

The two pilots were sitting on the port s-foil of Hobbie’s X-wing. An access panel on the upper laser cannon was open, and they were clearly in discussion about it.

“…know that Wedge has it installed backward. And I know he claims it works better that way,” Mara was saying, tone cross. “I also know that is not the Incom spec, and there is zero reason it’d work better reversed.”

“You’re going to argue that Wedge is wrong?” Hobbie asked doubtfully.

“No, I’m just taking Incom’s side in the argument.”

“Good evening,” Luke said mildly.

Both heads turned to look. “Commander,” Hobbie said.

“I’m checking in on everyone who flew today,” Luke said easily. “Nothing formal.” He frowned for a moment. “I thought we were finally getting a maintenance crew in tomorrow to work on the X-wings properly. Why are you two working on Hobbie’s fighter now?”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Mara said briskly. “I bet the air wing has an emergency tomorrow and needs them instead. Wouldn’t put it past S’man.”

Hobbie snorted.

“I wanted to ask you two, since you flew the transport: what did you think of Tycho Celchu?”

Hobbie shrugged. “Hard to get a read on him. Don’t doubt the defection is real. He’s hurting, real bad, from losing Alderaan. Told me he was talking to his family on the HoloNet when it happened. But I didn’t get any feel for what he’ll be like in a month when he’s had time to sit with everything.”

Luke nodded as he filed the observation away. “Mara?”

She looked uncomfortable for a moment. “He’s observant. Smart. And he definitely has no loyalty left for the Empire. Outside the pain I have no idea what drives him.”

“And you two? Anything I should know?”

They both shook their heads, and Hobbie added, “We’re all green here, Commander. I’d rather be in my X-wing the next time, though.”

Luke suspected there was something being left unsaid, but he decided to let it go for now. “No one has to do the scut work every mission,” he reassured him. “Any idea where Sarkli and Puck are?”

“They talked about hitting up the simulators with the newcomers,” Mara volunteered.

“I’ll start with the sim bay, then. Thanks.” Luke offered a casual nod, then headed out of Auxiliary Two and to the simulator bay.

The walk from Rogue Territory to the simulator bay wasn’t long, but it did mean entering Pilot Country proper. Luke passed a number of air wing pilots along the way, with mixed reactions. Some he clocked as admiration and surprise, but some expressions flashed irritation or even outright contempt. He chose to ignore it all. Celebrity doesn’t keep pilots alive, and while S’man may not like the Rogues, he does care about the air wing. I’d bet every credit I have that the air wing pilots are loyal to him. He frowned to himself as he neared the simulator bay. Wedge might not like it, but we’re going to need to figure out how to work with him. We have enough enemies shooting at us that we don’t need enemies inside the Alliance, too.

The simulator bay was a larger chamber than any the Rogues had claimed, save the Auxiliary Two hangar itself. At a glance, Luke estimated at least fifty simulator pods filled the room in paired rows, with the pods grouped by type. The X-wing simulators were easiest for him to pick out, both due to his own experience training in the T-65 simulators and the presence of a group of his Rogues, including Sarkli and Puck. He didn’t hesitate before heading over to his pilots.

Only two of the X-wing pods were active, and the master control panel showed the occupants were running through familiarization training. Luke had a twinge of recognition. Those were the first sims I flew, before the Death Star arrived. Only when Luke was within earshot of the Rogues watching the display could he make out the Aurebesh notation that the current pilots were Zev Senesca and Karie Neth.

“…is decorative,” Puck was saying cheerfully. “The scorch marks make it look faster.”

“Absolutely,” Wes Janson agreed. “When Hobbie’s fighter has them, it’s usually going really fast into the ground.”

Sarkli shook his head. “Naeco, I thought a man with eleven kills would be more aggressive. The whole mission to Dantooine and you only scored a single kill.”

“The kills weren’t the point,” Luke said mildly as he stepped into the circle of pilots, which also included Cesi Eirriss. Several of the Rogues stiffened at his unexpected arrival. “At ease,” he added.

“Commander, the kills are absolutely the point,” Sarkli said, still stiff. “We’re fighter pilots. The four TIE pilots I vaped over Dantooine are neutralized. They’ll never threaten Rebel forces again. The Empire has to spend credits and time to replace them and their ships.”

Luke smiled reprovingly. “The extraction was the point,” he corrected. “When we climbed out of the canyon, you were right to engage that element coming after the U-wing. You led with a proton torpedo, which was a great tactic. But if you’d aimed at the leader instead of the wingman, you’d have broken the element and you could have extracted cleanly. If they’d tried to pursue when you were on the climb, Puck could have covered you. Instead you took on all three by yourself.”

“I didn’t need Naeco,” Sarkli said. “I put all three of them down.”

“Yes, you did,” Luke agreed. “And your flying was phenomenal. But you left Naeco alone escorting the U-wing instead of operating as part of a team.” He lost his smile. “Red Squadron lost almost everyone at Yavin. Wedge and I want to build a squadron that does better than that. And that means relying on each other, even when you’re sure you can handle a fight yourself.”

“What about you, Commander?” Puck asked, oddly serious for once. “You jumped out in front and tangled up with the TIEs that were dropping on us from altitude.”

“I did, yes, because we were short on options and I knew you two were both climbing after me. If it turned bad, I was certain I could survive long enough for you two and the U-wing to reach me.” Luke shrugged. “I won’t pretend there’s always a clean answer, but we need to trust each other.”

Sarkli bristled, but closed his mouth firmly.

Luke nodded at the simulator pods. “Who’s been training?”

“I’ve been beating up on the newcomers,” Wes volunteered. “Senesca insisted on running Neth through the early training. Something about making it fair?”

“Wonderful,” Luke said dryly. “Wedge and I will put together a training schedule when we can stop and take a breath, which probably means tomorrow. Tonight, though, I’m just checking on the pilots who flew today.” His eyes landed on Puck. “How are you doing, Puck?”

“Well, I joined your squadron three days ago. I’ve flown two combat missions since. This is the most excitement I’ve had since I left Denon.” His smile came easily, though Luke could see a bit of fatigue in his eyes. “I’m sure the maintenance crew will complain about the beating my X-wing took the last few days, but I’m good, Commander.”

Luke nodded, then turned. “Sarkli?”

Sarkli’s expression was composed, now, a mask over the irritation Luke knew he had to be feeling. “I’m ready to fly whenever you need me, Commander.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Luke offered him a reassuring smile. “The next time the call comes, I’ll need you on my wing. You’re a great pilot, Sarkli.”

“Thank you, Commander,” he said, tone flat.

Luke decided not to press any further. “Don’t forget to get some sleep, Rogues,” he said lightly. “Maintenance crews will be going over our X-wings tomorrow, and we’ll be hitting the simulators hard. We’ve gotten lucky so far. Two missions with no casualties, but no training as a squadron. I don’t want luck to carry us any further.” He offered a casual nod instead of a salute as he turned to leave. “I’ll see you all in the morning at 0700 for breakfast in the mess in Pilot Country. And if you’re not there, I’m sure Wedge will get creative.”

---

A kilometers-long warship like the Independence did not truly sleep, but it did operate on a standard 24-hour Coruscant day. For eight hours of the day the ship’s lighting in non-critical sections was dimmed. Silence did not settle, but the ambient noise was usually quieter. Most of the ship’s occupants rested or slept.

Mara could not sleep. Celchu’s question still echoed when she tried to quiet her mind. You’re from Alderaan? And some part of her wanted to answer. No, I’m not. It’s complicated. But that was more than what she’d tell Wedge or Hobbie, let alone a defector she’d just met. So why did it bother her so much?

The mess in Pilot Country wasn’t staffed during ship’s night, but shelf-stable food was available and caf dispensers offered the dark liquid with a flavor only moderately worse than usual. Mara didn’t particularly care for the caf, but a warm mug in her hands felt more comfortable than the caf was palatable, so she sat at a table with her back to the bulkhead and mug held firmly.

A handful of ship crew came through the mess while Mara stewed over her mug: a few starfighter technicians, a pair of patrol pilots from the air wing, and a Mon Calamari in a fleet lieutenant’s uniform that Mara suspected was more smuggler than Rebel officer. It came as a surprise, then, when an older man with greying hair wearing a pilot’s jacket without a unit patch approached her table, his own mug of terrible caf in hand.

“May I?”

Mara looked around at the nearly-empty mess hall. “I suppose it would be impolite for me to say no, given how crowded it is.”

He laughed once, though it sounded genuinely amused as he sat himself down opposite her. “Usually it’s the squadron leaders in here this time of night,” he commented. “Not flight officers.”

“I aspire to leadership,” Mara said dryly.

“Interesting way to go about it,” he said agreeably. “I heard that a young combat pilot from Skywalker’s squadron pointed a blaster at Colonel S’man this morning. She didn’t even have the decency to wear a uniform while she was doing it.”

Mara’s lips quirked upward in spite of herself. “I was holding it, not pointing. And it was early.”

The older man laughed again, longer this time. “I can see why S’man was filing complaints,” he chuckled. “Mara Jade, right?”

“Yes,” she said. He clearly already knows who I am. “And you are…?”

“Hal,” he said.

Mara paused for a moment to study him. The hair wasn’t prematurely grey, she concluded, and even in the dim lighting she could see the age in his skin. The hazel eyes had some sparkle of energy, but not the vigor of youth. And a closer look at his flight jacket showed traces of old insignia that had been removed in the varying discoloration, barely visible in the darkened mess hall. He’s seen some battles, she concluded.

“And what do you want?” she asked, deciding on the direct approach.

Hal paused for a moment, taking a sip of his caf. He didn’t wince at the burnt flavor. “I like meeting interesting people. You strike me as interesting.”

“Interesting? How?”

“You’re the youngest combat pilot on the Independence,” he noted, then waved dismissively when he saw her expression. “I’ve known younger, though. And you’re part of the squadron Skywalker and Antilles are putting together. Rogue Squadron,” he said, barely smothering another chuckle. “S’man was furious when he saw the paperwork for the official name. But you, you don’t fit.”

“Don’t fit how?”

“The same way Skywalker doesn’t fit,” Hal said with a wave of his hand. “Too young. Not enough combat hours. But maybe that’s what the Alliance needs. Young pilots who come in without the baggage of us old veterans, officers who might see new things that we retirees can’t anymore.”

Mara lifted an eyebrow. “You’re retired?”

“Do you see a rank insignia?” he asked rhetorically.

“A three-kilometer-long Mon Calamari warship is a hell of a place to retire.”

“If I stay long enough, maybe it’ll turn back into the luxury starliner it used to be,” Hal answered cheerfully before taking a drink of his caf.

Mara took a drink from her own mug and only mostly managed to hide her grimace. This stuff is practically a solvent. I bet the maintenance crews use it to clean their tools.

“Rogue Squadron,” Hal mused aloud. “I’ve seen a few units like it before.” His eyes flicked up and met Mara’s, seeing the unasked question. “Sometimes a squadron like this is a vanity project. Skywalker’s a big hero after the Death Star, and sooner than later the Empire will know who he is because the political opportunities for Mon Mothma are too good. And honestly, it’s too big to keep secret forever, so using it makes sense. Now, most of the time, that sort of squadron becomes a parade unit. Flashy, but in real operations, average at best. But neither Skywalker nor Antilles strike me as the type that would be satisfied with that.” He smiled at her knowingly. “And you’re not the sort who gets picked for those units. Pointing a blaster at a colonel would be rather frowned on.”

“Holding, not pointing.” Mara shook her head. “Who are you? Really?”

“Told you. I’m Hal.” He rose to his feet, both knees cracking. “I’m sure I’ll see you around. Mess hall is quiet this time of night. Good place to clear my head.” He smiled. “And I really like the caf.”

“No one likes this caf.”

“It’s better than the water, not as good as the whiskey.” He grinned. “Good night, Mara.”

She shook her head. “Good night, Hal.”

Mara watched as the man vanished through the mess hall door before deciding she should make another attempt at sleeping. Morning would come all too soon.

---

It was nearly time for the midday meal when Luke’s plan for the day, such as it was, fell apart.

The ground crew from the main hangar had been smaller than expected, with Colonel S’man co-opting some of the assigned technicians to his own emergency maintenance. Mara hadn’t bothered with an “I told you so”, but her expression wore it nonetheless. Wedge had been exasperated, Luke had decided it wasn’t a battle worth fighting, and together over breakfast they’d sketched a quick new plan for the day. Wedge had taken the four Rogues still waiting on a spaceframe, along with Hobbie and Puck, to start running pilots through the simulators.

Luke, Sarkli, and Mara had returned to Auxiliary Two after breakfast to oversee the maintenance work on their fighters. The mechanics had grumbled, but Luke’s misspent youth in a T-16 Skyhopper with no credits to pay a mechanic left him with a distrust for flying a fighter he hadn’t touched himself. And what the ground crew lacked in enthusiasm for pilot oversight, they made up for in thoroughness. With their reduced complement of mechanics, they had opted to work on three X-wings at a time. Proton torpedo magazines were unloaded, Tibanna gas cartridges removed, fuel drained, power cells pulled, and then a full teardown of the major systems. The sublight engines were gutted, checked, and rebuilt; laser cannon components were pulled and scrubbed clean of corrosion before reassembly; even the proton torpedo alleys were polished clean.

Unhappy or not, the maintenance crew was thorough. The three Rogues found nothing to complain about; even Artoo-Detoo, who had a reputation for demanding standards for Luke’s X-wing, warbled approvingly.

With just rearming and refueling left, most of the maintenance crew descended on the remaining X-wings, starting with the engines. A handful of junior team members and a binary loadlifter droid restocked torpedo magazines and fueled the completed X-wings. On Yavin IV, fighters wouldn’t have been fueled and armed until a mission was imminent; the Independence, however, had standing orders to keep all fighters ready to fly at a moment’s notice. 

And then General Rieekan stalked into the hangar, a single aide trailing him.

Luke saw Sarkli’s gaze catch first, and followed his line of sight until he saw the general.

“Commander Skywalker,” Rieekan called, his voice gravelly. “We have an emergency.”

Luke raised an eyebrow. “General. I’ve got more pilots than fighters and we’re in the middle of a maintenance cycle.”

Rieekan approached him, showing him a hand-held holoprojector. When he’d closed the gap, he powered the device up. “I apologize, Commander. I know you’ve flown two sorties in two days, and this will be three. I already spoke with S’man, and the air wing is already committed to an emergency operation elsewhere, and he’s looking at a twelve-hour delay.”

The smile on Luke’s face was grim. “What’s the situation?”

The hologram finally shimmered into existence between them. “Ralltiir,” Rieekan said. “We’ve been debriefing Lieutenant Celchu. He’s an observant man and has a good head for prioritizing sensitive information. The Empire had an operation planned to seize a civilian research and engineering team on Ralltiir under the guise of nationalization. They’re a specialist group working on a new model of planetary defense shields.” Rieekan glanced around. “The Imperial military has been cracking down harder on anything with military implications every week. They’re trying to prevent the next Mon Calamari or Incom incident.”

Luke studied the hologram. A Star Destroyer was visible in orbit, along with a number of smaller symbols representing support ships: Gozanti freighters, Raider corvettes, Arquitens light cruisers, Nebulon-B frigates. “If that’s an orbital blockade, it’s configured wrong,” he said slowly.

“The pending seizure on Ralltiir was the first topic Celchu brought up,” Rieekan said. “That Star Destroyer is the Accuser. Captain Derlin volunteered to take a team to recover the specialists. The Corellian corvette Bright Wake left thirteen hours ago. Derlin made contact with the research team and they chose to come to the Alliance, but it took time to gather their research material and families. Before the Bright Wake could launch, the Accuser and its task force arrived.”

“That’s why it looks wrong,” Luke said, still studying the hologram. “A blockade usually is built to keep ships away from a planet so no supplies can reach it. Here, they’re trying to keep Derlin from escaping.”

“Correct.” Rieekan shook his head. “Ralltiir is about ninety minutes away for your X-wings. Derlin’s last transmission, before the Accuser started blanket jamming, reported the Bright Wake was safe for the moment under a city-wide shield generator prototype the development team was testing. Standard Imperial tactics in this situation will land ground teams with heavy armor to move in, penetrate the shield, and bring it down.”

“General, you can’t possibly think my squadron can defeat the blockade by ourselves,” Luke commented with a raised eyebrow.

“Not defeat, no. Derlin doesn’t need the blockade broken. He just needs a seam.” Rieekan tapped a button on the holoprojector, and the image magnified. “He had enough foresight to include the Bright Wake‘s sensor data of the orbital picture. If your X-wings can open a hole by pulling one or two of the Accuser‘s support ships out of position, and then provide some cover from TIEs, the Wake can punch through the orbital blockade and escape. CR90s are nicknamed ‘Blockade Runners’ for a reason, and the Wake‘s crew is very good.”

“How soon?”

“Thirty minutes ago.”

Luke shook his head. “The mechanics have three of our X-wings pulled apart. We need at least three hours to put them back together, then more time after that to fuel and arm.”

Rieekan folded his arms. “Three hours is too long. If we give the Empire that much time, the Bright Wake will be caught by ground forces or, if they take off, caught in the air by the Accuser‘s task force.”

Luke studied the hologram again. “How many?” he asked quietly.

“Commander?”

“How many people?”

Rieekan looked at him askance for a moment. “Forty-nine crew on the Bright Wake. The Ralltiir research team was twenty-two people, but I have no idea about their families. Fifty? Sixty?”

Luke chewed his lip. “I can have three X-wings in the air in less than twenty minutes. It’ll have to do.” He glanced at the general. “If we’re going to keep doing this, Rogue Squadron needs more ships. And we need time to train. I know lives are on the line, General Rieekan, but we’ll start losing pilots if we keep going like this.”

The Alderaanian officer had enough humility to look abashed. “If I had somewhere else I could go, Commander, I’d be there.”

“Sarkli, Mara,” Luke called loudly. “Start preflight on your X-wings. We’re skids-up in fifteen!” He dropped his voice. “Send over all the orbital data, raw, to my astromech. We’ll figure out our plan in hyperspace.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

“We’ll get our people out alive, General,” Luke said, wishing he felt nearly as confident as his tone sounded as he turned toward his own starfighter. Wedge is going to kill me if this mission doesn’t first.

Mara had managed to wrangle her own thoughts and fears down into something more manageable fifteen minutes into the hyperspace jump when Hobbie started unclipping his flight harness. She glanced over at him with a puzzled look.

“Gonna talk to Celchu,” Hobbie explained simply as he reached forward and keyed primary control of the U-wing over to Mara’s side of the cockpit. “You’ve got the ship.”

“I’ve got the ship,” she echoed, hands still off the yoke. At faster-than-light speeds, the transport practically flew itself, but it was best practice to keep a pilot in the cockpit.

Hobbie doffed his flight helmet, stood, and dropped the helmet back in his chair.

Mara didn’t intend to eavesdrop, but the U-wing was cramped and hardly designed with privacy in mind. The empty, hard interior allowed voices to carry easily, and the rumble of the hyperdrive was low enough that it didn’t obscure their voices at all.

“You need to give me your blaster,” Hobbie said without preamble, and apparently as greeting.

“Seems a bit late to worry about disarming me,” Celchu said dryly. “Should’ve done that before I got on the transport.”

“I don’t want you to get shot by security on the Independence when we open the door.”

There was a faint rasp of metal on cloth, presumably the Alderaanian defector drawing his blaster.

“Thank you,” Hobbie said.

“You’re Derek Klivian, aren’t you? Deserted at Skystrike Academy?” Tycho’s voice was tired but held a note of genuine curiosity.

“There are only two kinds of people who call me that,” Hobbie said soberly. “Imperials who are trying to kill me, and my mother. Everyone else calls me Hobbie.”

Mara could barely hear a chuckle. “I’d best call you Hobbie, then.” There was a beat of silence as the former Imperial recalibrated. “So how did you do it?”

“Under fire from a very unhappy flight instructor, with Wedge Antilles and a Mandalorian infiltrator named Sabine Wren. She was a former Imperial herself, and walked back in like she belonged there to find us and get us out.” Mara could hear the faint pop of a cracked joint. “It was a messy few days. You?”

“The Accuser put in at Commenor, and I went dirtside for shore leave. Walked away after I made contact with an Alliance operative who put me in contact with someone further up the chain. Used every credit I had to get a seat on a transport to Dantooine.”

There was a long silence, long enough that Mara spared a glance back. Hobbie was sitting beside Celchu on the troop bench, both of them leaned back against the backrest. Celchu looked haggard, no doubt exhausted now that the adrenaline from the escape was ebbing away.

“So what was it?” Hobbie asked at last.

Tycho didn’t ask for clarification. “Alderaan. My family, my fiancé, they all…” his voice trailed off, and the silence lingered uncomfortably while Celchu struggled to compose himself. “I was talking to them. On the Holonet. When it happened.” The words came out haltingly. “I wasn’t blind. I didn’t think the Empire was great. But I thought it could be changed. After that, though…”

Hobbie grunted in acknowledgement. Mara fingered the pendant under her flightsuit.

“What’s going to happen now?” Celchu asked.

“Debriefing, I suppose,” Hobbie said. “General Rieekan will want to squeeze out everything you know and make sure you’re not a security breach in progress. After that, with your skills, I’d guess they’ll want to put you in a starfighter. Maybe even our squadron. We’re a new squadron and we haven’t even filled our roster yet.”

“Rogue Squadron,” Celchu said. “The kid up in the cockpit said you’re Rogue Squadron.”

Mara smothered the brief spike of irritation. If Rieekan puts him in a cockpit, he’ll learn quick enough I’m not some kid mascot for the squadron.

“Hardly a kid,” Hobbie said dryly. “She’s young, but she’s been training off and on for two years now as a combat pilot. Four confirmed TIE kills. And yesterday she was in a firefight with stormtroopers on Yavin IV.” He paused for a moment. “‘Course, this whole squadron looks pretty crazy.”

“Anyone else I might know?”

“Antilles is the executive officer.”

“He’s on more wanted posters than you are,” Celchu said dryly, his voice steadier now that the conversation was on professional ground. “Who’s the CO?”

“You wouldn’t know the name, but you’d know the reputation. He’s the one who made the kill shot on the Death Star a few months back.”

The silence stretched long enough that Mara risked another peek back. Celchu’s face was surprised as he processed the information. “That wasn’t Antilles? Or Garven Dreis? Or Antoc Merrick?”

“Wedge was wingman for that run. Dreis died a minute or two earlier after he missed the same shot. Merrick had died a week or so before at Scarif.” Hobbie shook his head. “No, the pilot who made the shot was an Outer Rim farmer. Nineteen years old. First time in a starfighter was the Death Star engagement, and his first time in a sim was just before that. His name’s Skywalker.”

Celchu’s mouth fell open. “An Outer Rim farmer blew up the Death Star.”

“The longer you think about it, the crazier it gets,” Hobbie said dryly. “Probably the best natural pilot I’ve ever met. Practically grew up in a T-16 Skyhopper, to hear him tell it, and it’s like he was born to fly.”

“You’re putting me on, aren’t you?” Celchu said after another pair of heartbeats.

Hobbie smiled at that. “No, no I’m not. Welcome to the Rebellion, Celchu.”

---

Luke Skywalker led the small formation of Rogues – three X-wings and a U-wing – through the magnetic containment field and down onto the deck of the Auxiliary Two hangar bay. New scorch marks decorated Puck’s fighter, though Luke was grateful the U-wing did not appear to have picked up any damage on the run. Colonel S’man was already fit to be tied. I can only imagine how much worse he’d be if we broke one of his ships.

“I’ll be back to handle post-flight, Artoo,” he told his astromech as he popped his canopy. One of the ground crew was already moving a ladder to his X-wing, but he waved it off and slid down from the fighter to land half-crouched on the deck, standing quickly.

General Rieekan and his security team were already marching into the hangar. Captain Bren Derlin was marching beside him, and they were trailed by a pair of aides in fleet lieutenant uniforms. Luke couldn’t identify either by name, but he was fairly certain at least one of them had been in the Great Temple on Yavin IV when he and Mara had gone back in for General Dodonna. Half a dozen men in security uniforms completed the group, each armed with an A280 blaster rifle.

The U-wing took a moment before the troop compartment door slid open, long enough for Luke to reach the craft. A blond man, maybe a few centimeters taller than Luke himself, led the way out, his hands clasped in front of him and his holster conspicuously empty. Hobbie was on the man’s left, and Mara was on his right, both flanking him a single step behind. He glanced over at Luke and offered him a nod before reorienting on General Rieekan and his team, walking at a steady pace that neither lingered nor appeared hasty.

“I’m Lieutenant Tycho Celchu,” he identified himself, “formally requesting asylum with the Rebel Alliance.”

Rieekan looked the man over, his expression sober. “General Carlist Rieekan,” he said in return, his tone formal. “Lieutenant Celchu, we will debrief you and question you before we adjudicate your asylum request.” The formality broke just a bit. “But unofficially, as one Alderaanian to another, welcome to the Rebellion. We have a lot to talk about, son.”

“Yes, we do, sir,” Tycho said with a nod.

Rieekan gestured, and Derlin stepped forward. “If you’ll follow me, Lieutenant,” he said. Tycho fell into step behind him, and the Alliance security personnel fanned out beside and behind him.

Luke waited until the general turned to him. “Mission successful,” he said.

“Any complications?” Rieekan asked.

“The Empire was on Dantooine and looking for Celchu. Hobbie had barely parked the U-wing when we had TIEs all over us. We extracted under fire, ran through some local canyons to the east of the rendezvous to shake pursuit, then burned for high orbit and jumped before the Empire could hit us with anything heavier than a few TIEs. We picked up at least one escort frigate and two corvettes in orbit, but they weren’t in position to intercept us.” Luke shook his head. “Not as clean as I would have liked, but we didn’t lose anyone and we got your defector out.”

“Thank you,” Rieekan said with a nod. “And I will stand by my word. Colonel S’man has been trying to cause trouble for you while you were gone, but he’s not getting much traction. Antilles has been recruiting more pilots for your squadron, too.” He frowned for a moment. “This Rogue Squadron you’re building. You had Dodonna’s approval and blessing. What are you trying to accomplish with it?”

Luke pursed his lips for a moment as he marshaled his thoughts. The topic wasn’t unfamiliar; he and Wedge had spoken about it long before he’d put forward a proposal for Dodonna. But how do I explain it to a senior officer who’s not a pilot?

“The Death Star battle was a disaster,” Luke said slowly. “Of the thirty fighters that went up, just three came back. Ninety percent casualties. And no one blinked, because we had to win that fight, or the war was over. What Wedge – Captain Antilles – and I want to build is a squadron that can tackle those critical missions for the Alliance without everyone paying in blood. It’s easy to say we want to build the best fighter squadron in the Alliance, but that’s not really the truth of it. We’re trying to build the squadron that can go anywhere, do anything that the Rebellion needs. So the next time there’s a threat that has to be handled right now, the mission isn’t accomplished by sacrificing a wing of pilots.”

“And how do you accomplish that?” Rieekan asked. “By poaching the best pilots in the Alliance? Weakening other squadrons?”

Luke shook his head. “No, sir. I mean, yes, we need very good pilots. But we want to try new tactics. New fighter doctrine. Maybe even cross-training on other starfighters. But if we’re doing all that, we need very good pilots, pilots who can adapt on the fly, or every experiment that doesn’t succeed ends in blood.”

Rieekan’s eyebrows lifted. “Commander, existing fighter doctrine was developed by veteran pilots who have seen more combat hours than your entire unit.”

“With respect, General, existing fighter doctrine hasn’t changed since the Clone Wars. And two decades ago, the war was two massive governments with major industrial bases with clones on one side and droids on the other. We’re fighting an insurgency with different fighters and people.” Luke shook his head again. “If there’s a better way, Wedge and I will find it.”

Rieekan studied the younger man for a moment, and Luke wondered if he’d overstepped. Then Rieekan offered the smallest of smiles. “I don’t know whether you’ll succeed, Commander, but I could use a squadron that’s willing to adapt to do whatever needs to be done. Now, officially, your squadron is still attached to Massassi Base under Jan Dodonna, but that won’t last much longer before the data catches up with it. You need a new chain of command for Rogue Squadron. Colonel S’man will, no doubt, push for Rogue Squadron to be moved to the Independence air wing. After all, for now at least that’s your base of operations.”

Luke nodded, finding no fault in Rieekan’s words.

“What I propose is to instead reassign Rogue Squadron directly to Alliance High Command. Which would mean you answer directly to me as a representative of High Command.” He turned and gestured around the hangar. “I don’t see any reason to pull you out of this hangar. You’d remain operationally independent of the air wing. I’m sure S’man will be unhappy about it, but as long as your squadron is making itself useful, his complaints won’t get anywhere.” Rieekan stared at the young squadron commander directly. “I want to make this clear, Skywalker. I’m not threatening your unit or your command. I think you and Antilles have potential to do important things for the Alliance, and this is a clean way to keep you and your squadron out of political infighting. But I’m not going to reassign your squadron without your go-ahead, because I don’t want to be fighting Princess Leia in council meetings because Commander Skywalker is unhappy.”

Luke’s lip twitched at that. “I doubt Leia would be concerned about that.”

“You’d be surprised, Commander,” Rieekan said dryly. “Take the night to think about it. Talk to Antilles. We’ll speak again tomorrow. I need to make arrangements to get your squadron more X-wings, anyway.”

“Sir?”

“Talk to Antilles,” the general repeated. “He’s been busy while you were gone.”

---

Rogue Territory had changed while Luke’s team was gone. Some of the empty crates had been replaced with real furniture, and a glimpse inside Luke’s own quarters showed the cot had been replaced with a larger-but-still-cramped bunk. Progress, he thought. More like actual assigned quarters than squatting.

Wedge was waiting for Luke in the Rogues’ common area. It now featured a pair of small tables, a mismatched set of chairs that included a Y-wing ejector seat that Luke was fairly certain he’d last seen on Yavin IV, and a stained, overstuffed, overlong sofa that absolutely had no place on a warship. Wedge was sitting at one of the small tables with a pair of pilots whom Luke didn’t recognize. Wes Janson was sprawled on the sofa with a satisfied grin. The new pilot, Karie Neth, sat on the floor with her back against the sofa, reading a datapad.

“Commander,” Wedge said, rising to his feet and offering a formal salute.

It was enough to bring a touch of blush to Luke’s cheeks. You’re an officer in the Rebel Alliance, Luke. Act like it. He returned the salute. “Captain.”

The other two pilots had risen and were saluting as well. Wedge turned. “With your approval, Commander, two new pilots for Rogue Squadron. Janson actually made himself useful and helped me sort through the ship’s records to find unassigned pilots.”

Wes’s lazy smile grew wider. “The last time Colonel S’man came stomping in here, we got a squadron name out of it. I want to see what we get next time.”

Luke studiously ignored him. “Who do we have, Captain?”

“Lieutenant Cesi Eirriss,” Wedge nodded first toward the green-skinned Twi’lek woman. “She’s made herself an absolute menace to the Empire.”

“And that was before I trained to fly X-wings, Commander,” the woman said slyly.

“Eirriss has the dubious honor of holding a doctoral degree from the University of Chandrila in political science,” Wedge said dryly. “The Empire was not a fan of her thesis.”

“One of the reasons I’m here,” Eirriss said. “Education is all well and good, but having knowledge isn’t worth much if I don’t put it to use.”

Luke returned her salute at last, studying the woman: attractive, green-eyed, cheerful, but clearly steel-spined. “Glad to have you, Lieutenant.”

“Most squadrons end up calling me ‘Doc’. I’m sure you can figure that out,” she said, her voice as dry as Tatooine sand.

Wedge gestured to the second pilot. “Lieutenant Zev Senesca.”

Luke returned his salute immediately, taking a moment to evaluate him. Wrinkles had started to tug at his skin, and his salt-and-pepper hair was clean but hardly youthful. His eyes make him look even older, Luke decided. He’s seen some action.

“Senesca spent some years gun-running for the Rebellion,” Wedge continued. “But he’s more interested now in active combat operations. He’s cleared his certification for the T-65, but his combat hours so far are all in Headhunters.”

“Glad to be here, Commander,” Senesca said, his voice having just a trace of roughness that Luke associated with either age or cigarros. “I’d like to have a permanent squadron for once.”

“My best friend spent plenty of time running guns. If you fly like a Rogue, I’m glad to have you,” Luke said with a smile.

Wedge offered a smile to the two new pilots. “We’ll start simulators soon, hopefully tomorrow. Your training and combat records look great, but we want to evaluate everyone and make sure they fit before we finalize the roster.” He spared a glance at Luke. “Though finalize sounds more formal than it is, given that we’ve been handed two combat missions in two days.”

Luke realized, for the first time, how tired he was. “Simulators tomorrow sounds great, unless we get handed another mission. But for now, welcome to the squadron.” He caught Wedge’s eye and jerked his head toward his office. “Chat?”

Wedge nodded and followed. “How did the mission go?” he asked quietly.

“Everyone came back intact. We got Celchu out. Some damage to Puck’s fighter.” He grimaced. “Sarkli chased kills during extract. We got out clean, but it could’ve been cleaner.”

“We’ll work on it,” Wedge promised. “You have to remember, Luke, the squadron’s been together less than a week. Even with veteran pilots, we need time to train before we can act like a squadron, and we’ve been in firefights twice in the last two days.” He shot Luke a sideways look as they entered the office. “How’d Jade do?”

“Fine,” Luke said with a shrug. “She let Hobbie do the talking on the comms. I don’t know much more than that, really. You’d have to ask Hobbie about it.” He offered a small smile. “Are we going to keep doing this?”

“Until we’ve actually had time to train the squadron, probably,” Wedge said with a wince. “You’re still not sure about Sarkli, and I’m still not sure about Jade.”

“Then we keep doing this in private until we’re both convinced.” Luke shrugged. “I’m trying, Wedge. And I know you are, too.”

“So what did you want to talk to me about? I assume there’s more than Sarkli on your mind.”

“We’ve still got S’man and the air wing hanging over our heads,” Luke said bluntly. “And Rieekan offered to solve the issue permanently for us.”

“Permanently?” Wedge frowned. “How?”

“Attaching Rogue Squadron to Alliance High Command, tasked directly.”

“Meaning we’d get orders directly from Rieekan.”

“For now, yes,” Luke agreed. “Though I have to imagine that would change.”

Wedge considered for a few moments. “That solves the immediate threat from S’man, more or less,” he said slowly. “Though it means we’d be more exposed politically. If High Command decides we’re not worth the resources, they dissolve us directly. No one in the chain of command to deflect and keep us intact. Did you take his offer?”

“Not yet. I wanted to make sure you and I agreed before I made any decisions. Rieekan said he’d talk to us about it again tomorrow.”

“So we don’t make any decisions right now, but you and I meet and discuss this first thing in the morning,” Wedge said. “Luke, I signed up with the Rebellion to fight the war. But I’m a pilot, not a politician. If Rogue Squadron is attached directly to High Command, the politics might become inevitable.”

“Maybe. But that’s not really any different than our existence right now,” Luke pointed out. “Rogue Squadron exists because you and I blew up the Death Star and survived. When we asked to build a new squadron, they weren’t going to tell us no.”

Wedge grimaced.

“So, we sleep on it and decide tomorrow,” Luke agreed. “And if we agree, we go into it with eyes open. There’s always a string attached.”

“Sleep?” Wedge asked, his smile sardonic. “You actually do that?”

“Not very much,” Luke admitted. “I need to check on everyone who flew today’s op before I go pretend to sleep, anyway. You coming?”

Wedge waved him off. “You’re the boss. Just let me know if you need any follow-up from me.” He smiled. “I’ve got more datapad work to do. We’ve got a maintenance crew coming from the main hangar tomorrow to evaluate our X-wings. I swear, Skywalker, the next time we have a mission, I fly it and you can stay behind and fill out flimsi forms.”

“Wedge, Wedge, that’s what an executive officer is for.” Luke grinned. “See you in the morning, Captain.”

The blue-white veil of hyperspace ripped open, revealing a blue-green and golden world against a dark blanket of stars. Dantooine, Luke thought. It looks beautiful from here. Too bad we can’t stay and enjoy it for a bit. “Rogue Group, check in,” he ordered.

“Rogue Five, looking forward to boredom,” Puck said cheerfully.

“Rogue Six, still alive,” Hobbie said dryly, “though I’d feel better if this U-wing had ejection seats.”

“Rogue Two, all green,” Sarkli reported in, “but my astromech is reporting Imperial IFF contacts on long-range.”

Luke straightened in his cockpit. “Five, Six, confirm Imperial IFFs,” he ordered. “Artoo, transmit our pickup code.”

The blue-and-white astromech blatted irritably, a moment later confirming with a low whistle. Luke drummed his fingers on his leg and waited.

“Rogue Three, confirming multiple Imperial IFFs on long-range,” Mara’s voice crackled over the comm from the U-wing’s copilot seat. “Looks like an Imperial Nebulon-B Frigate and two Raider corvettes. I’m not picking up TIEs or shuttles, but that could just mean they’re either parked or they’re down in atmosphere.”

“Which means they’re probably looking for Tycho,” Luke said grimly, running the numbers in his head. The Imperial Nebulon-B was a more heavily-armored, slower version of the Rebellion’s cut-down frigate. It wasn’t directly a threat to the Rogues – the nimble X-wings could easily stay out of range, and even the U-wing should be able to manage it – but the vessel could field a squadron of TIE fighters and a handful of support vessels or heavier TIE models, giving the Empire at least a four-to-one advantage in a straight fight. The Raider corvettes could also be carrying three TIEs apiece, though most of the Empire’s hunter corvettes carried none at all. In the worst-case scenario, three Rogue X-wings could be dealing with eighteen TIE fighters and three to six heavier ships, most likely TIE bombers or small boarding craft.

Very ugly, Luke concluded, but we’re not here for a straight fight. We’re here to get to one person and get him out.

“Artoo, do we have a confirmation?” he asked. His main display shifted into a wireframe of the planet ahead, with a pulsing green point. “Thanks, Artoo. Transmit to the squadron.” He switched back to external comm. “Alright, Rogues, we’re going in fast and low-profile. Celchu transmitted the confirmation. We stay away from the Empire’s big ships, drop in fast, make the rendezvous, pick up our defector, and get out. If we let the Empire draw us into a long fight, we’ll get pinned by that frigate or the corvettes, and we lose. Five and Six, stay on me until we run into TIEs. Call for help if you need it, and we keep the U-wing alive.”

“I appreciate that last part,” Hobbie said.

“Follow me in,” Luke said, opening his throttle and pointing the X-wing’s nose down at the planet. “Artoo, keep an eye out for Imperial fighter traces.”

Fire licked the nose of his X-wing as they descended rapidly through Dantooine’s atmosphere. It was possible, of course, for the Rebel team to take a slower, stealthier approach to the mission. But the Empire’s already here and looking for their missing pilot, Luke concluded. Speed gives us a better chance to get him out. Move faster than the Empire can react.

---

Mara eyed the U-wing’s long-range sensors from the copilot’s seat, trying to ignore the U-wing’s insistent bucking protest at the high-speed atmospheric insertion. Hobbie has it under control, she told herself. Just…ignore Hobbie’s reputation for crashing. 

She couldn’t help but keep at least one hand on the controls.

Mara had never flown a U-wing before, though she had on occasion ridden in one. With the stabilizer foils locked forward for the insertion, the transport was almost twice the length of her X-wing. The tandem pilot and copilot seats made for a cramped cockpit, and with Hobbie next to her she felt nearly as enclosed as she would in her snubfighter. The controls, however, were strictly Incom-standardized; the layout was nearly identical to her X-wing’s, and her muscle memory served her well. In theory, the U-wing could be flown by a single pilot, but a two-pilot team could divide the task load, not unlike the X-wing’s astromech droid taking on a number of the jobs necessary to keep a fighter in the sky.

“Coordinates locked,” Mara reported out loud as Hobbie leveled the transport off, their altitude less than five hundred meters. “We’ll be there in three minutes.”

Hobbie grunted an acknowledgement.

“Rogue Two, Rogue Five, loosen formation,” Skywalker ordered over the comm. “Maintain escort on Rogue Six. I’m going for an advance sweep.”

Sarkli and Naeco’s X-wings banked away enough to open several hundred meters of air between themselves and the U-wing, Sarkli to starboard and Naeco to port. Skywalker’s fighter accelerated out ahead, rapidly outdistancing the U-wing as he headed straight for the agreed-upon rendezvous point with the defector.

Mara stayed quiet as the U-wing approached the coordinates Rieekan had provided. As they neared, she could start to see details. An old farmhouse was clearly their destination, but on closer view she could see the disrepair. Some of the windows were instead black, gaping eyes; the roof was not uniform, but checked with missing tiles. The painted walls were faded and sun-streaked, and as Hobbie brought the U-wing in to a gentle landing, she could see visible scorch marks on the walls. Whoever lived here didn’t leave peacefully, she thought. Several other outbuildings were within fifty meters, all collapsed, save one that had been burned to the ground with only a few soot-stained uprights remaining. Green growth was steadily reclaiming the ground, indicating the fire had happened months before.

“Five minutes,” Hobbie said as the U-wing settled onto its struts. “I’m staying here and keeping the engines hot. Go find Celchu.”

Mara nodded and shrugged out of her flight harness, pulling off her flight helmet as she stood, leaving it on her seat. The DL-18 was in her hand when she reached the small troop bay and slapped the release on the door.

A rank stink assaulted her nose when she took a breath of Dantooine air. She took a moment to catalogue it as something unpleasantly botanical, then ignored it and headed straight for the farmhouse. The ground was covered in low growth, soft and muffling her footsteps as she approached. “Celchu!” she called before she reached the door. “Alliance retrieval team! Come out unarmed!”

Silence lengthened half a dozen heartbeats before a male voice finally answered. “You sound very young.”

“I am young. Come out with your hands empty.” She chewed on her lip, pushing down nervousness.

The man who appeared in the doorway had his hands up and empty, though a blaster was holstered at his hip. He was dressed in nondescript civilian clothes, grey trousers and a brown tunic that would fit in on a thousand Outer Rim worlds. He was of average height, older than Mara but probably no older than Hobbie. His blonde hair was greasy and unkempt. His face, at a glance, could’ve belonged to a planetary aristocrat, but exhaustion and pain robbed it of any sort of haughtiness. “A shot that destroyed a world,” he said.

“And a shot that rocked the galaxy,” Mara countersigned. “Tycho Celchu?”

He nodded. “Formerly of the Star Destroyer Accuser, 252nd TIE wing, second squadron.” His lips twisted into a facsimile of a smile. “You’re late. Rieekan sent you?”

“We came when we got the mission,” Mara countered. “We were a little busy evacuating Yavin.”

Tycho’s eyes widened. “Rieekan’s last transmission said he’d be sending a team to take me there. Where are we going?”

“Elsewhere,” Mara said dryly, pointing at the U-wing with her free hand. “That’s our ride out of here. There are Imperial ships in orbit looking for you.”

Celchu winced as he started walking toward the waiting transport. “That smuggler that gave me a ride from Commenor to here must have sold me out.”

“Or maybe you were spotted at a starport. Or maybe they’re actually looking for your smuggler buddy. A hundred things could have gone wrong,” Mara pointed out, walking beside him with blaster in hand but not pointing at him.

The defector shook his head. “Who are you?”

“Flight Officer Jade, Rogue Squadron.”

Celchu frowned. “Rogue Squadron? Never heard of it.”

Mara offered him a predator’s smile. “You will.”

They stepped into the U-wing, and Skywalker’s voice crackled over the comm. “Do you have Celchu? We’ve got multiple contacts coming in now. Six, I need you in the air now.”

Hobbie was looking back and Mara gave him a thumbs-up as she slapped the control to close the troop bay door. The engines whined as Hobbie started feeding them more power. “You’re going to want to strap in,” Mara said, pointing at the back-to-back benches normally used for hauling squads of troops. “Extract might get a little rough.”

Tycho nodded, then peered closer at her. “That’s Alderaanian,” he said. “You’re from Alderaan?”

Mara glanced down and saw the pendant had worked its way out from under her flight suit. She jammed her blaster in its holster, then reached up to tuck the pendant away. “No,” she said shortly. “Strap in. I’d hate for you to break your neck when the shooting starts.” Without a further word, she turned her back and stalked back to the copilot’s chair, feeling the U-wing rise and shift beneath her as Hobbie took off.

Klivian glanced over at her as she strapped back in and slid her helmet on. “Everything okay?”

Mara merely shook her head.

---

“Five, Two, report,” Luke ordered over the comm, his X-wing’s etheric rudder whining faintly as he snapped his tail straight. A squeeze of the trigger sent four laser bolts flashing through the Dantooine sky, and the TIE in his sights, two hundred meters ahead, detonated instantly.

“Five here,” Puck answered immediately. “Still flying. We’ve got TIEs converging on us from north and south. I think they knew where our defector was.”

The third TIE exploded, this one close enough to rattle Luke’s X-wing. “Two,” Sarkli said calmly, as though he hadn’t just hit a four-hundred-meter deflection shot. “Six TIEs from the north, six from the south, and three vectoring from high orbit.”

“They knew exactly where he was,” Luke said grimly. “Hobbie, can the U-wing pick up the Raiders or that Nebulon on long-range?”

“Negative, boss,” Hobbie answered a moment later. “We’re too deep in the soup.”

“Artoo, give me a local topography map,” Luke said, glancing down at his main monitor. There. “We run straight east. Two kilometers out and we drop into a series of rough canyons. The X-wings and the U-wing can handle that at speed better than the TIEs, and their sensors hate ground clutter. We shake them off, get some distance, and then climb for orbit. Go, Five, go!”

The U-wing’s drives flared at full thrust, fast but not nearly as quick or nimble as an X-wing. In orbit, or ducking through an asteroid field, the TIE fighters trying to converge on them would be much faster than the Rebel craft and as nimble as the X-wings, but deep in atmosphere, Incom’s insistence on all-conditions performance meant the X-wings and U-wing would have a sizable edge in maneuvering compared to Sienar’s vacuum-focused TIEs.

Luke firewalled his throttle, blasting past the U-wing and leading the way toward the canyons, trusting Puck and Sarkli to fall into rear escort positions. A glance at his rear scope showed them forming up in good fashion even as Hobbie swung the U-wing’s long s-foils into their forward-locked position, narrowing the transport’s profile and reducing the chance of a wingtip catching a canyon wall. Eyes back forward, Luke led the way, diving into the first canyon.

He pulled back his throttle, and the X-wing slowed. I could take the canyon at full throttle, but I don’t want to leave the transport behind. Rocky walls rose on either side of his wingtips; beneath him stretched a long, wide, lazy river. The distant TIEs vanished from his scopes, their sensor contacts obscured by the terrain. Come and find us if you can, Luke thought with a smile on his lips as he glanced back to see the rest of the Rogues follow him in.

The canyon narrowed, and Luke rolled his fighter, water off his port wing and empty sky to starboard. He threaded the narrow gap easily, then reversed to choose the southern fork when the canyon branched into two. “Broadcast our course, low-power, back to the rest of the squadron, Artoo,” he ordered. “Let’s not make them guess or stay so close they have to maintain visual.”

The blue-and-white astromech droid whistled, and Luke continued through the canyon. Another sweeping turn, faster than prudent but slower than Luke would’ve taken it if he’d been flying unencumbered, and suddenly there was green laser fire blinking at him from five hundred meters ahead. Artoo screamed a warning warble, and Luke shoved the stick forward, sending the X-wing perilously close to the tranquil river.

Another warning screech from Artoo, and Luke pulled back, climbing this time. A concussion missile flashed past, hit the water below and behind his X-wing, and exploded.

TIE bomber, Luke managed to identify, his guns already answering. The ponderous bomber somehow rolled between Luke’s probing shots and in a moment they were past.

Can’t turn back, got to warn…

---

Mara reacted instinctively, reaching for the controls as Hobbie banked the U-wing into the canyon. Skywalker’s voice burst from the comm. “Ambush! TIE bomb…” was all Mara registered before she saw it, closing head-to-head, her thumbs already depressing the firing studs on the yoke.

The U-wing’s twin nose-mounted laser cannons roared, and suddenly the TIE bomber was falling toward the canyon floor in two smoking halves. Hobbie spared her a glance. “Nice reflexes.”

“Thanks,” Mara managed, fully aware the only reason her hands weren’t shaking was because she was gripping the yoke. Was that…? No, it wasn’t. I didn’t reach. Didn’t flare. Visibility is death. Just reflexes and pattern recognition.

Skywalker led the way through another series of twists and forks until abruptly his X-wing rose, standing on its tail and riding a trail of fire toward space. Hobbie followed, the U-wing’s engines at full thrust. Ten thousand meters above them, clearly visible on sensors, a trio of TIEs were patrolling and spotted them, beginning to descend toward the Rebel formation.

Three TIEs jumped them the moment they rose above the canyon walls.

Mara barely registered the Imperial fighters, the U-wing’s shields sparking as laser fire impacted. “Five, stay with Six,” Sarkli called. “These are mine.”

She could only watch the scope as Sarkli’s X-wing inverted and dove, trading altitude for speed. Hobbie had the sublight engines at full throttle, clawing for space with no intention of turning back to dogfight. A U-wing transport simply wasn’t built for that sort of knife fight. The TIEs began to bank, clearly intending on making another pass on the climbing, vulnerable U-wing. The TIEs were below the U-wing, and their next pass would require them to climb to intercept. Sarkli’s quick maneuver had left him even lower than the TIEs but faster, and their turn robbed even more of their airspeed.

Sarkli’s first pass took one of the wingmen with a proton torpedo. The shockwave clearly buffeted both of the surviving TIEs, and his pass caught the second one with a clean, surgical burst of laser cannon fire. The remaining TIE snap-rolled as Sarkli flashed past, trying to settle onto the X-wing’s tail. The TIE’s airspeed disadvantage was temporary; even in atmosphere, a standard TIE line fighter could out-accelerate the X-wing in a straight line. They continued like that for two seconds, the TIE sliding into kill position on Sarkli’s tail as both fighters accelerated at full thrust.

The TIE pilot managed one burst, a glancing hit on Sarkli’s tail, before the X-wing pilot cut the X-wing hard to port, then back to starboard. The TIE tried to follow him into the flat scissors, but with the thick atmosphere dragging at his maneuvers, he lost more ground through each rapid turn. To his credit, the TIE recognized he was losing the scissors. In a few more turns, Sarkli would be on his tail. The Imperial tried to take the fight vertical, breaking out of the flat turn and climbing for altitude.

Sarkli pounced in an instant, clearly having been waiting for the maneuver, and fired. The TIE died, a quick explosion punctuating the end of the fight.

“Six, as soon as you break atmosphere, make the jump,” Skywalker ordered. Mara looked ahead and could see, distantly, he was tangling with all three TIEs. How he’d prevented them from bypassing him on their dive and pouncing on the U-wing, she didn’t know; she’d missed the start of Skywalker’s skirmish while watching Sarkli below.

“Copy, Lead,” Hobbie replied. He glanced over at Mara. “Coordinates set?”

Mara’s fingers flew over the navicomputer. “We’re not coming out where I expected,” she said shortly. “Getting adjustments to the calculations now.”

Hobbie nodded, and the U-wing flashed past Skywalker’s X-wing and the three – no, now two TIEs. More distantly in orbit, with less atmosphere to interfere with the U-wing’s sensor package, Mara could make out both Raider corvettes at full acceleration, trying to cut them off. But they’re too late, she mentally calculated.

Puck had settled in off their starboard wing. “You know, I could get used to this,” he said conversationally. “Let Lead and Two do all the work. I’ll escort you all the way back to the Independence and look like the responsible one. You’ll tell the XO I stuck with you all the way, right?”

Hobbie snorted. “I’m sure he’ll be impressed, Naeco.” He glanced over at Mara.

“Coordinates set,” she confirmed as the U-wing cleared the gravity well, the Raider corvettes both too far out of position to stop them.

Hobbie merely grunted, and then the stars stretched into lines, leaving Dantooine behind.

Mara’s eyes snapped open when she registered the muffled shouting from the corridor. Groggily, she rolled off her cot – acquired by Hobbie and Sarkli in lieu of proper bunks – and stumbled to the door, shaking her head and trying to force herself to alertness as she hit the release. The door hissed open, allowing her to finally make sense of the shouting.

“…isn’t a civilian cruise ship! And then I find Wes Janson released from the medical bay and promptly vanished into this forsaken corridor that isn’t even cleared for occupation!”

Mara squinted against the harsher light of the corridor. What time is it, anyway? She glanced back into her room where a chronometer glowed in subdued red numbers. 0541. Kriff, it’s too early for this. She turned back to the escalating argument outside in the corridor.

Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles stood shoulder-to-shoulder, clearly blocking the path. Opposite them was another man – human, or near enough – who towered a solid thirty centimeters taller than either Skywalker or Antilles, and was at least fifty kilos heavier, a mountain of a man whose face was currently red enough to be a Zeltron. “We have authorization from Captain Verrack,” Wedge calmly answered. “I talked to him less than an hour after we landed…”

“I’m the commanding officer for the Independence air wing,” the man snarled. “All fighter operations report to me, not to Captain Verrack.”

Colonel S’man, Mara thought. He found us faster than Wedge thought he would.

“With all due respect,” Skywalker said, “you’re not in our chain of command. We’re not assigned to the Independence. Our chain of command runs through General Dodonna to High Command.”

“Your little vanity group was assigned to Massassi Base, which is now in Imperial hands,” S’man ground out. “Your base of operations is now the Independence, which puts you under my purview.”

By this time, more hatches in the corridor were sliding open. Mara turned enough to see that Hobbie, Sarkli, and Puck had all become aware of the argument; and further down, Wes Janson leaned into the hallway, his expression more asleep than awake.

S’man picked it up immediately. “Lieutenant Janson!” he shouted. “Report to the main hangar at 0700. You’re slotted for the bomber squadron.”

Mara glanced back down the corridor and saw Wes offering a jaunty smile and wave.

“No, he’s not,” Wedge said smoothly. “He’s assigned to our squadron. It’s already recorded with Captain Verrack, along with our authorization to occupy these quarters, approved requisitions for fuel and munitions for our X-wings, and scheduled maintenance for our fighters and astromechs. If you don’t like it, take it up with Captain Verrack.”

S’man turned on Wedge, his face now a match for the stripes on Wedge and Skywalker’s X-wings. “Listen here, Antilles! Your little rogue squadron may be squatting in my auxiliary hangar for now, but all fighter operations run through me. This is my air wing, and you won’t be setting up your own kingdom on the Independence like the rules don’t apply to you!”

“Colonel, if you have a problem with our authorizations or activities or roster, I’d suggest you take it up with General Dodonna,” Skywalker said mildly. “We’re operating under High Command’s authority. Or perhaps you’d like to appeal to High Command directly. I’m sure Mon Mothma and Princess Leia will gladly set aside their critical work keeping the Alliance together to deal with your complaints about the squadron that pulled a general off Yavin that had already been left for dead. We did commit the crimes of parking in an auxiliary hangar, servicing our own X-wings, and sleeping.”

The colonel stared daggers at Skywalker and Wedge in turn. “This isn’t over. I’ll have Janson back on my roster before the day’s over, and filling the holes in my fighter wing is far more important to the war than keeping your little group together.”

Wedge crossed his arms. “We’re not going anywhere, Colonel. But I’d be surprised if anyone at the command level is eager to disband the Hero of Yavin’s own squadron, the day after we saved General Dodonna’s life.”

“I’ll be back after I’ve had your authorizations revoked,” S’man hissed. His glare slid past Skywalker and Antilles to the pilots in the hallway, though his face twisted into surprise when he spotted Mara. Then he turned and stormed away, two aides in his wake.

Mara rubbed her face tiredly, looking down at herself and belatedly realizing she was only half-dressed in sleep clothes and barefoot, her pendant exposed instead of tucked away. In her right hand she was gripping her DL-18. Oh, that explains the look.

Skywalker and Wedge turned back toward the corridor and their pilots: eight in total with Karie Neth finally joining them. Unlike Mara, she’d taken the time to get dressed before exiting her quarters. Probably better that S’man didn’t know Wedge had signed up one of the escort pilots, too, Mara decided.

“That went well,” Skywalker said dryly.

“As expected,” Wedge answered just as dry.

Skywalker grinned, and Mara wanted to shoot him on principle. No one should be that cheerful at this forsaken hour.

“I like it,” he said.

“It does have a ring to it,” Wedge agreed.

“What does?” Mara finally found her voice, raspy from sleep.

“Rogue Squadron. It’s definitely going to be in S’man’s written complaint.” Skywalker’s grin broadened. “He meant it as an insult. Let’s make it ours.” His gaze shifted down and around the corridor at each of the pilots: Hobbie, Sarkli, Karie, Wes, Puck, and finally Mara.

“Rogue Squadron,” Puck repeated thoughtfully after a moment. “It’s no Skywalker’s Angels, but it has a ring to it.”

Smiles began to spread up and down the corridor as each of them considered it, and Mara felt her own lips tug upward as well.

Wedge crossed his arms. Even his expression had cracked its usual serious mask. “Rogue Squadron it is.”

---

The cluster of rooms and cargo bays attached to the Auxiliary Two hangar was extensive and, thankfully, almost devoid of any stored goods. Wedge had already earmarked empty rooms for a squadron lounge and a briefing room, with two smaller rooms marked with flimsiplast signs as the CO and XO offices. One of the pilots, almost certainly Puck or Wes, had strung together a flimsiplast banner at the end of the corridor declaring the entire area “Rogue Territory.”

Luke had merely smiled and let it go. “Good for morale,” he’d told a disapproving Wedge. “It doesn’t affect squadron discipline in any real way.”

“Are you sure you want to thumb your nose at S’man like that?” Wedge had asked.

“We just adopted ‘Rogue Squadron’ as our moniker. I doubt the flimsi is going to make it worse.”

Wedge had vanished into the Independence proper to continue his datapad war with Colonel S’man, and Luke had dragged a few empty crates into his designated office for temporary furniture. A trio of large crates pressed together formed a makeshift desk, and he sat on a smaller crate with its twin sitting across from the desk as a guest seat. It was moderately ridiculous, but it gave Luke room to spread out several datapads and a stack of datacards. Before disappearing, Wedge had pulled the most recent list of stray pilots littering the Independence after the evacuation of Yavin. If we’re lucky, we can fill out the rest of the squadron before S’man snatches them all up.

Luke was deep in the roster when a knock echoed from the hatch. He looked up just before it slid open.

“Commander Skywalker,” Sarkli said from the doorway.

“Sarkli,” Luke answered with a nod.

“You wanted to see me?”

“Yes. Please, sit.” Luke offered a self-deprecating smile. “Don’t worry, my chair isn’t any better than yours.”

The Pathfinder sat down on the crate, looking slightly ridiculous. Luke was sure he didn’t look any better. “I aspire to having actual furniture for the squadron,” he said dryly. “Though this probably fits our new name better.”

Sarkli smiled faintly but waited without speaking.

Here it goes, Luke thought grimly. “I assumed you’d want to talk to me about what happened on Yavin.”

“Respectfully, Commander, we got the Luminous and General Dodonna out,” Sarkli said flatly. “The mission was a success.”

“Yes, it was,” Luke said steadily. “But, as Captain Antilles and I discussed, success isn’t the only measure of command decisions.”

A trace of irritation crossed Sarkli’s face. “Permission to speak freely, Commander?”

“Granted,” Luke said, deliberately setting his hands on his makeshift desk, defying his instinctive desire to cross his arms.

“You had a Pathfinder on your wing when we were covering the Luminous. The mission changed and required a ground extraction, and when you made the call for someone to accompany you, instead of the Pathfinder – me – you took Flight Officer Jade with you. And I’d like to understand why.”

And there it is, Luke thought. At least Sarkli’s willing to approach it directly. “You’re a better flier than Jade. I ordered you to continue covering the evacuation. When we got Dodonna out, clear skies were critical for survival.”

“With all due respect, that’s bantha droppings,” Sarkli said, a little more heat edging into his voice. “Captain Antilles and Two Flight were already providing high cover.”

“Sarkli, your experience as a Pathfinder is valuable,” Luke said steadily. “It’s one of the reasons Captain Antilles recommended you for the squadron. Your simulator scores were very good, and that earned you a training flight so I could evaluate you. Our training flight turned into a combat mission and you did well and followed orders. That earned you a slot in the unit.”

“Then why didn’t you take me?” the other man asked, his voice tightly controlled.

“Because I made a snap judgment call in the middle of a combat zone,” Luke answered. “It was the call I thought was our best chance of getting Dodonna back and the Luminous safely away from Yavin.”

“That’s not an answer,” Sarkli said.

Luke shook his head. “It’s not the answer you want.”

“It’s not an answer at all.”

Luke took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and let it out before he spoke again, forcing his own irritation down. “You’re right.”

Sarkli froze at that.

“On paper, you were – are – the obvious choice for that scenario,” the commander continued. “You have ground combat training. You have experience in commando operations. If Captain Antilles had made the call, you would’ve gone into the Temple with me. And if we had planned for that operation, rather than it being forced on us, I would have assigned you to the role.” He kept pushing through, even as Sarkli’s eyes narrowed. “But it wasn’t planned, and Captain Antilles didn’t make the call. When the moment came, I made the call and I chose Jade. We got Dodonna. We got out. All of us made it off Yavin.”

“Sir, success doesn’t mean a call was right,” Sarkli said, heat back in his voice.

“You’re right, it doesn’t.”

For the first time since he’d entered the makeshift office, Sarkli looked uncertain.

“I own that call, Sarkli. Not Captain Antilles. Not Flight Officer Jade. Not you. Me. If it had gone wrong, it would be a reflection on my command, nobody else.”

“And what happens the next time?” Sarkli asked.

“The next time, I expect you to follow orders,” Luke said. “Even if they don’t make sense to you. Even if you think I’m wrong.”

Sarkli’s chin lifted. “I followed orders over Yavin.”

“I know you did.”

“I also expect my commanding officer to use my skills appropriately.”

“So do I,” Luke said, meeting Sarkli’s gaze.

The silence stretched uncomfortably before Sarkli answered, his tone chilly. “Understood.”

“I’m not blind to what you bring to the squadron, Lieutenant,” Luke said after another moment. “You have valuable training. Valuable experience. Valuable skills, both developed and natural. I have no doubt we’ll have missions, sooner than I’d like, where you will be the difference between success and failure.” He hesitated. “I understand you disagreed with my orders. It matters to me that you followed your orders far more than whether you agreed with them. The next time you disagree with one of my orders, though, bring it to me directly. Not over the squadron comm while we’re in the thick of combat.”

“Yes, Commander,” Sarkli said stiffly, hearing the dismissal in Luke’s tone and rising to his feet.

“And Sarkli,” Luke added, “don’t take what happened on Yavin as a lack of trust. I wouldn’t put you on my wing if I didn’t trust you.”

The Pathfinder nodded, tightly controlled, and left.

Luke felt like he’d taken a surprise test and failed.

---

Wedge was happy to see a trio of ground crew in the Auxiliary Two hangar when he arrived. Fuel umbilicals, connected to the Independence‘s internal distribution network, sprawled across the hangar decking to the six X-wings standing ready. The fighters looked too small, too few to be occupying the hangar alone. There will be more soon, Wedge told himself. Even if S’man is going to fight us tooth and claw for every spaceframe and astromech.

Behind the X-wings, Wes, Sarkli, Hobbie, and Puck were sitting on crates around a large, empty wire spool. Card game, Wedge identified it from a distance. Probably sabacc. Three meters beyond them, leaning against the bulkhead, Mara and Karie were deep in a discussion of some sort. Judging by Karie’s hand motions, Wedge suspected Karie was explaining a recent combat mission, possibly her most recent that had left her squadron-orphaned and now a member of Rogue Squadron.

Rogue Squadron, Wedge laughed to himself. S’man is probably chewing metal shavings right now off the bulkhead. He glanced around, looking for Luke.

As if summoned by the thought, Luke’s voice called from behind him, coming through the same corridor Wedge had just trod. “Captain!”

Wedge turned and froze. Skywalker wasn’t alone. Accompanying him was an older man in an Alliance general’s uniform, fair-skinned with dark brown hair that hadn’t yet begun to grey. “General Rieekan,” Wedge said, snapping into a salute.

“Captain Antilles,” Rieekan answered soberly. “I was looking for you and Skywalker both.”

“You have us both now, sir,” Wedge said. “Is this about Colonel S’man?”

“Indirectly.” Rieekan went silent for a moment, giving Wedge a moment to evaluate the Rebel officer.

Carlist Rieekan was a well-known officer in the Rebellion. He’d entered the Republic’s Judicial forces, and after the declaration of the New Order, he’d shifted his allegiance to his homeworld of Alderaan. When Bail Organa began building the resistance on Alderaan, Rieekan had been one of his founding members. Bail had died only a few months ago on Alderaan when the Death Star attacked, but Rieekan had been offworld on a mission for the Alliance. And now, at least according to scuttlebutt, Rieekan was maintaining what was left of Organa’s network.

“I understand your Red Squadron caused quite a stir with the air wing,” Rieekan said at least.

“Rogue Squadron,” Luke corrected.

Rieekan’s smile was genuine. “I heard about that, too, though I didn’t know if you were actually adopting it.”

“It was that or ‘Skywalker’s Angels’,” Wedge deadpanned. Luke shot him a betrayed look.

“Then I need Rogue Squadron for a mission,” Rieekan said, as though making a decision. “How many pilots can you put in a cockpit right now?”

“Six,” Luke answered. “The six of us that flew coming off Yavin. Lieutenant Janson is on our roster now, but he’s not quite recovered from Hesken Fever, and we’re short on X-wings anyway. Flight Officer Neth needs a familiarization course on the T-65 and we need to put her through an evaluation sim even if I had a Headhunter for her to fly.”

The general shook his head. “Five of you, then.”

“Sir?”

“I have a son of Alderaan waiting on Dantooine. Tycho Celchu, formerly of the Imperial service as a TIE Interceptor pilot on the Star Destroyer Accuser. He deserted while on shore leave on Commenor after Alderaan was destroyed. I’ve been exchanging brief encrypted messages with him on the old Fulcrum communication network. We were supposed to send a pickup team for him yesterday, but then we were forced to evacuate Massassi Base. Colonel S’man claims he can’t spare any pilots for at least three days.”

“We’re not equipped for a pickup,” Wedge said cautiously. “We’re an X-wing unit.”

“If you can be off the Independence in an hour, I’ll have a U-wing ready to fly. Your people will need to fly it.”

Wedge considered for a moment. UT-60D is an Incom ship. If we can fly X-wings, we can fly a U-wing. “Best to run with a pilot and copilot,” he said to Luke.

Luke was clearly turning over the implications himself. “Four X-wings,” he said aloud. “Me, you, Sarkli, and Puck. Hobbie as the U-wing pilot. He’s got some Y-wing experience, too, and that U-wing won’t be as nimble as one of our fighters. Mara as his copilot. He trained her, so they already know how to work together. Any other pairing we put in the U-wing won’t work as well.”

The flaw was immediately apparent to Wedge. “Three X-wings. Someone needs to stay here to make sure S’man doesn’t disassemble our squadron while we’re gone. Neth is too new, and Janson’s not the sort to leave in charge.”

“You,” Luke said.

“Me,” Wedge agreed.

Rieekan smiled faintly as the two pilots planned the mission right in front of him. “I have coordinates for a rendezvous. He’s already there and waiting. If we take too long, the Empire will probably find him first.” His already small smile faded into a hard look. “There’s already too few Alderaanians left. Celchu will have current intelligence on the latest Imperial deployments and tactics.” He paused for a moment. “If you can safely get him back to the Independence, I’ll give you first crack at him once we’re done debriefing. I know you’re already talking to evacuation pilots. S’man’s complaints have been thorough. If you want Celchu as an X-wing pilot and he’s willing, he’s yours.”

“We’ll get him back, General,” Luke said, his voice firm.

He’s already decided, Wedge noted. Not that I disagree.

“If you get Celchu back,” Rieekan said, “I’ll keep S’man off your back. Your squadron will be more useful outside of the air wing’s bureaucracy.” Rieekan nodded at both pilots. “I’ll have the rendezvous data delivered to you in half an hour. Good luck, Rogue Squadron.”

Red Group reverted from hyperspace at exactly twenty-one minutes, eight seconds.

Wedge double-checked his scopes reflexively. All six X-wings had successfully made the transition, and the Luminous was already a half kilometer ahead and below their formation. Luke led the formation in a leisurely cruise toward their destination, the Mon Calamari-built cruiser Independence. “Independence flight control, this is Massassi Red Group,” Skywalker’s voice crackled across the open channel. “We’re escorting transport Luminous with General Dodonna aboard. Requesting clearance for landing.”

“Stand by, Massassi Red Group,” a harried voice answered a few seconds later. “We’ve been overrun by evacuees here. Is there anyone behind you?”

“Negative, Independence. We were the last out of Yavin system,” Luke said.

Wedge switched his broadcast to squadron-only. “Red Group, report in by fighter status. We need any damage you’re aware of and remaining consumables.”

“Red Six,” Hobbie reported first, “no torpedoes left, fuel gauge is at sixty, and no major damage. Scoring on one of my s-foils but my droid says it’s cosmetic only.”

The rest of the group reported in, with Luke reporting last and Wedge taking notes on a datapad and beginning to plan.

“Massassi Red Group,” the flight controller called again, “transport Luminous is clear for docking in primary hangar. Fighter group, please redirect to Auxiliary Hangar Two. We’re broadcasting approach data now. We don’t have support crew in the hangar, but we’ll get them to you when we can. For now, get your fighters inside and shut it down.”

“Thank you, Independence. We’re beginning our approach now,” Luke replied.

Luke led the squadron through the requested approach to the designated auxiliary hangar, giving Wedge enough freedom to observe the star cruiser as they headed into safety.

Currently the largest cruiser in the Rebel fleet, the Independence was roughly three kilometers of Mon Calamari engineering. Originally built as a starliner, the Independence had been one of the earliest Mon Calamari ships refit for war. Refit with fabulous shields, armor, turbolasers, and capable of fielding ten squadrons of fighters, she was also theoretically the biggest weapon in the Rebel fleet. In practice, however, the Alliance simply couldn’t use the mighty warship to her full capabilities. Wedge knew from the Yavin IV squadron rotations that the Independence‘s practical air wing strength was four squadrons on its best day, but maintenance and pilot shortages meant three squadrons was a more realistic number. Her hull was capable of supporting far more Alliance personnel than the Rebellion could afford to post there, leaving large sections of the ship virtually empty.

That suited Wedge just fine.

Her sister ship, the Home One, was still undergoing refits at a hidden shipyard and was slated to take up the role of flagship. From what Wedge had gathered, most of the members of Rebel High Command were already there, protected both by the secrecy of the refit shipyard’s location and by the firepower and defenses of the headquarters vessel.

The Independence, along with the Defiance and Liberty, would no doubt vanish into the hyperlanes again now that the Yavin evacuation had been completed. Support ships cruised in a loose, slow formation around the warship. A trio of Corellian CR90 corvettes rode high cover, while a pair of Sphyrna corvettes held formation two kilometers on the other side of the Independence. Closer to the MC80a were a pair of Nebulon-B frigates, one equipped for war, the other configured as a medical support ship. A Quasar Fire-class light carrier was the final vessel in the task force, which struck Wedge as odd. Why have a starfighter carrier with the Independence when she already has more hangar space than she can use? This is why I stick to small-unit tactics and strategy.

Auxiliary Hangar Two was, as advertised by flight control, completely empty. The big hangar doors slid ponderously open as the X-wing squadron approached, internal lights brightening as they neared. Luke led the way into the empty hangar, Sarkli and Mara right behind him, then Wedge, Puck, and Hobbie.

The six X-wings looked small in the hangar. Wedge surveyed the space as his engines spooled down. Enough space here for two full squadrons in a pinch, he decided. Or one squadron comfortably. But we’re going to have to move fast.

The lack of ground crew was annoying when he popped the canopy and realized that also translated to a lack of a ladder. Grumbling under his breath, he swung out from the cockpit and slid down the fuselage, landing in a half-crouch on the hangar deck before rising to his feet. He glanced over and saw Luke already out of his X-wing and heading toward him, a smile on the Tatooine farmboy’s face.

Luke’s smile slackened when he saw Wedge’s expression. “What’s wrong?”

“We need to move fast,” Wedge said bluntly.

Skywalker’s smile vanished completely into a frown. “What’s wrong?” he repeated.

Wedge rubbed his face for a moment before answering. “The short answer is that we’re six pilots with six combat-ready X-wings and a provisional designation and an official roster that has two pilots on it, you and me. We don’t have a finalized roster, our base of operations is now in Imperial hands, and we just set down on a star cruiser with its own combat air wing that’s short on pilots.”

“You think we’ll get assigned to the air wing?” Luke asked dubiously.

“No, I think the air wing’s commanding officer, if he realizes we’re here, will use our pilots to fill holes in his squadrons, and without our pilots there is no squadron. We need to keep our people together and get our position cemented in place before the air wing comes looking for us.”

“We just pulled Dodonna off Yavin IV, and his name is on our authorization.” Luke shook his head. “I can’t imagine…”

“You need to be more imaginative,” Wedge said dryly. “Dodonna’s authorization doesn’t mean much here.” Wedge started walking toward one of the blast doors leading out of the hangar.

Luke fell into step beside him. “So what do we do?”

“First, we keep our heads down. The fact that we got diverted into this auxiliary hangar worked out in our favor. If we’d landed in the main bay where the Independence air wing operates, we’d already be fighting. If we move fast now, we can make this all work.” The blast door slid open and Wedge surveyed the darkened corridor. Perfect. “Here’s what we’re going to do.” He handed his datapad to Luke. “That has everyone’s status report post-engagement. You, Naeco, and Jade do post-flight work on all six X-wings. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but we need all of them ready to fly if we need to launch on short notice. Don’t tear apart anything you don’t have to. Don’t worry about torpedoes for now, and I’ll figure out how to get us fuel.” He waited until Luke took the datapad before continuing. “Hobbie and Sarkli are going to go find what we need: bedding, rations, caf, anything else we need to set up here and make this our own area.” He nodded at the darkened corridor. “This runs straight to Pilot Country on the Independence.”

“Pilot Country?”

Wedge gave him an exasperated look. “That’s right, you haven’t served on a cruiser yet. Any ship carrying embarked squadrons has, officially or not, a Pilot Country – quarters, briefing rooms, mess hall, usually a pilots’ lounge, and everything else the pilots and support crews need. It’s not exactly enforced, but it keeps any chaos from fighter pilots from boiling over into the rest of the ship’s crew. We want to stay out of it for now, because we don’t want the attention. We’re going to put our pilots in these rooms, right next to the hangar, and you and I are going to take the two rooms at the furthest end of the corridor. If someone comes walking into our area to try to reassign one of our people, you and I are in the way to stop them.”

“And what are you going to do?” Luke asked, clearly catching on.

“I’m going to see if I can find the ship CO and formalize our status here, including our current roster. If I can get him to sign off on us, whenever the air wing CO comes looking for us, we have paperwork to hide behind.” He pursed his lips for a moment. “Assuming you’re approving our current roster.”

Luke’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“Do you have any doubts about any of our pilots?” Wedge asked. “We were supposed to be flying an evaluation mission this morning, if you’ll recall. And then the shooting started.”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “No, I think after that they’re all on the roster.”

“I saw the hesitation. You and I are going to talk about what happened on Yavin, but after we make sure the air wing doesn’t pull us apart.” Wedge gave him a level look. “But that conversation’s later, not now.”

Luke winced. “I’ll give the orders. Go get us the paperwork we need.”

---

Hera Syndulla stood on the bridge of the MC80 cruiser Liberty with her arms crossed. “Check it again. Six X-wings and a GR-75 transport, the Luminous.”

The flight controller threw up his hands. “General, I can check it as many times as you want, but I don’t have any arrivals matching your description. None of the GR-75 transports I’ve got registered here are Luminous. Everything else was smaller, and we’ve had no X-wing groups arrive in the same time period that weren’t part of our air group.”

The Twi’lek general closed her eyes for a moment. They were in open space, they were clearly getting ready to jump. So why aren’t they…oh, stars, Hera. She gritted her teeth. “I never actually checked which rendezvous they were headed toward,” she ground out. “Sorry, lieutenant. They must have jumped to the Independence or the Defiance.” She turned, one hand gripping the other behind her back. “Comms, get me the Independence.”

The Mon Calamari officer at comms shook his head. “Sorry, General. Long-range communication is down. We can’t reach either the Independence or the Defiance. Either the Empire’s blanket-jamming, they’ve hit our comm relays, or…”

Or they were ambushed and destroyed, Hera finished silently. Unlikely, especially without them at least getting a distress call out.

She mulled her options for a moment. No long-range communication with the other task forces. I could take the Liberty directly to one of the other rendezvous points, but we’re under orders to scatter as soon as the evacuation is complete. I could order the Liberty task force to jump as planned and take the Ghost myself, but then I’m abandoning my command for a personal mission. Or I can follow the plan and abandon Mara. Hera considered that for a moment. This was so much easier a few years ago, when it was just Phoenix Group and Commander Sato. I wouldn’t hesitate. 

“Signal the task force,” Hera said slowly. “Evacuation is complete. We’ll be jumping to Point Baker. And keep trying to raise Independence and Defiance on long-range comms,” she added.

The noise on the Liberty‘s bridge rose as jump calculations began, fighter patrols were ordered to return, and support ships began maneuvering into their assigned positions for a jump.

It’s not abandoning Mara, she told herself. But when we get comms back up, I’ll find her. I’ll talk to Skywalker to make sure Mara is safe. And I am going to kill Wedge and Hobbie for not telling me they were recruiting her for Skywalker’s squadron. What were they thinking? Karabast, she’s just a kid.

And then the guilt hit her again. She’s older than Sabine or Ezra were when we started missions on Lothal. You told yourself you were going to do better keeping track of her after you found out Wedge and Hobbie had been training her for months. And she slipped through the cracks again. That’s not on Wedge, that’s on you. And now she’s in the middle of whatever Skywalker and Wedge are doing. So I’ll find her and, Force help me, if Skywalker’s doing something insane, I’ll drag her back to the Liberty kicking and screaming if that’s what it takes.

---

Luke was vaguely amused as he finished post-flight checks on Wedge’s X-wing. Wedge had noted a temperature spike on his lower starboard laser cannon. Luke had found the issue, a kinked coolant line, but had also discovered a power coupler installed backward. Written inside the cover panel with grease pencil was a note in Wedge’s handwriting: Installed backward on purpose. Works better this way.

He shook his head and finished fastening the cover panel back in place, glancing over to where Mara and Puck were working together to finish Hobbie’s X-wing. The T-65Bs had come through the engagement on Yavin IV admirably, and though they needed to be topped off with fuel, all six could fly if needed.

Luke could hear them coming before the hangar blast door opened, Sarkli in the lead pushing a repulsorcart, Hobbie right behind him with a second, and a third person walking side-by-side with Hobbie. Luke dropped his spanner in a toolbox and walked over to see what they’d brought back.

“Bedding for a squadron,” Sarkli announced as Luke neared. “Blankets, pillows, some sleepwear we borrowed. Also have some clean flightsuits and unmarked fatigues for shipboard use. I don’t know how well any of it will fit, but we weren’t exactly picky.”

“We’re lucky the ship was so overrun,” Hobbie commented. “The quartermaster barely looked at us. Don’t think he had any idea we were fighter pilots.” He jerked a thumb at his cart. “Ration bars, datapads, datacards, a caf maker, some power cells, a holoprojector, grease pencils, and a few other things that weren’t bolted down.”

Luke’s eyes fell on the caf maker; it bore painted text: Property Of Independence Air Wing. He raised an eyebrow. “I thought we were keeping a low profile.”

“Uncaffeinated air wing CO is going to have a harder time finding you,” the third person said cheerfully. Luke looked at him for the first time. No taller than Luke himself, brown hair, brown eyes, and a rakehell grin, he walked like a pilot. “You must be Commander Skywalker. I’m here to sign up.”

“Commander Skywalker, this is Lieutenant Wes Janson. If you’re not familiar with his exploits, he’ll tell you all about them,” Hobbie deadpanned.

Luke looked at Janson again. “Wedge told me about you. Said you were evacuated off Yavin IV before I arrived because of Hesken Fever. What squadron are you with right now?”

“None. I walked out of the med bay when I heard Hobbie complaining about the ration bars.” Hobbie offered a long-suffering sigh at Wes’s comment, but Wes ignored it. “I haven’t been on a flight roster since they shipped me off Massassi Base. Porkins took my slot and no one’s given me one since.”

“So I’m not going to make a new enemy by adding you to our roster?” Luke asked.

“You’ll probably get thanked by the medical staff,” Puck Naeco chimed in from behind him.

“So does this outfit have a name?”

“We’re working on it,” Luke said, offering a handshake instead of a salute. “Red Group is our temporary designation.”

Janson shook his head. “No squadron name? That won’t do at all.” His grin widened even further. “A squadron like this, personal command of the most famous pilot in the Alliance? Skywalker’s Angels has a great ring to it.”

Puck shouted, “Yes!” even as Hobbie, Sarkli, and a late-arriving Mara objected, “No!”

Luke sighed, even as the blast door slid open again to admit Wedge Antilles. “Commander, I think we’ve got our paperwork in ord…” his voice trailed off. “Oh, Sithspit, don’t tell me we’ve got Janson now?”

“The one and only, Captain,” Wes said brightly.

Wedge shook his head and jerked a thumb toward the hallway. “Let’s talk.”

Luke followed Wedge out into the corridor, doing his best to ignore Puck and Wes’s immediate cheerful dialogue and Hobbie’s pained, “Now there are two of them.” The conversation faded as Luke and Wedge headed down to the end of the corridor, to the rooms Wedge had earmarked earlier for the two of them.

“Okay, the official paperwork first. I talked to the ship command staff and they’re aware of our presence. We’re official with Dodonna’s name on our paperwork. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him directly. Apparently, the moment he left the Luminous he was pulled into some high-level planning session. The air wing commanding officer is one Colonel S’man, and he doesn’t know we’re here yet. I got Captain Verrack to sign off on requisitions for fuel and maintenance for our X-wings. We’ve got computer access codes approved, and Sarkli, Jade, Naeco, and Klivian are all officially on the roster now. When S’man comes looking, we’ve got enough leverage to keep the squadron intact, I think, though he’ll probably lean hard on Verrack to break us up.”

“So we stick with the plan,” Luke said, nodding. “We keep our pilots here. And we get Janson added to the roster, too.”

Wedge nodded in return. “I’ve got another pilot coming, too – a Z-95 Headhunter pilot who was escorting a supply ship into Yavin IV. The supply ship and most of her flight didn’t make it. Flight Officer by the name of Karie Neth. I pulled her service record while I was waiting to meet with Captain Verrack, and her simulator scores are very good. She’ll need to run through familiarization on the X-wing, but moving from a Headhunter isn’t a big jump. With Janson, that puts us at eight with six X-wings. If we hold things together, in a few days you can probably talk to Dodonna and requisition more X-wings. He’ll respond better to you, especially after you and Jade pulled him out of the Temple.”

Wedge’s voice went flat as he finished his last statement, and Luke winced. “I was wondering when we were going to get to this part.”

“Luke, as your executive officer, I have to ask: what the hell were you thinking?“

“I was thinking I wasn’t going to leave Dodonna behind to be captured,” Luke said dryly.

“Not that. Yes, it was stupid, but it was also the right thing to do.” Wedge looked at him evenly. “Dodonna gave the evacuation order. You took the seventeen-year-old pilot with you over your other wingman, who was a Pathfinder. Sarkli spent months doing exactly what you did. You could’ve taken both of them.” Wedge’s voice rose, some real heat in it. “Luke, we’ve spent the last couple months going over small-unit tactics. We talked about how important it is to use your people to their fullest, to take advantage of their abilities. Why did you take Jade over Sarkli?“

Luke hesitated, caught off-guard. “I…” he swallowed, considering. Why did I take Mara? Why didn’t I take Sarkli?

“A couple days ago, when we went over our recruitment roster, you were dead-set on adding Jade,” Wedge continued relentlessly. “You were also very hesitant about Sarkli. But the decision’s done at this point. You have to trust your people and use their strengths.” He raised an eyebrow. “Or is the decision not over?”

“No, the decision is made. You trust Sarkli, so I trust Sarkli,” Luke said. “And after that evacuation on Yavin IV, all four of them earned their place in the squadron.”

“So why did you do it, Luke?”

Luke pursed his lips before reluctantly answering. “I don’t know why,” he admitted. “In the moment, when Dodonna ordered us out, I made the decision to land and get him out instead of allowing him to be captured. And I knew I needed to take someone with me. I don’t know why I picked Mara instead of Sarkli. And now that you pointed it out to me, I’m going to be thinking about it all night.”

“No one besides me is going to ask,” Wedge said after studying Luke’s pained expression. “You got Dodonna out. Nobody got killed. But believe me, it has your entire squadron asking questions about your command decisions. Taking Sarkli wasn’t just the right decision, it was the obvious one. And now your pilots are going to look at that and wonder what they should do the next time you issue an order that’s obviously wrong.”

Luke closed his eyes for a moment. “So, as my executive officer, what do you suggest I do?”

“Figure out why you made the call you did. Talk to Sarkli and make sure he understands you trust him. And next time you issue an order, think before it comes out of your mouth. You could’ve gotten yourself, or Jade, or Dodonna killed with that call. Next time, maybe it’s the whole squadron.” Wedge’s expression shifted to something less frustrated and something more concerned. “Luke, command means every one of these pilots is your responsibility. It’s a heavy burden to carry, which is why it’s so critical you make the right call. And we’re going to take losses. Pilots are going to die flying under your command. It’ll be a lot harder to live with if they die because you made a bad call.”

“I’ll…think about what you said,” Luke said at last.

“That’s all I’m asking. Figure this out.” Wedge jerked a thumb back at the hangar. “Let’s get everyone assigned quarters and settled in for the night. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.”

Mara’s X-wing settled on its struts. “Keep the engines hot,” she ordered her astromech. “We won’t be long, and when we get back we’ll want to be in the air immediately.” She barely registered the R4’s answering whistle as she popped the canopy open and climbed out. Without a ground crew, there was no ladder available; she let herself drop until she held the edge of the canopy by her fingertips, then let go and dropped the rest of the way to the ground.

Smoke billowed from the Great Temple’s hangar. She glanced over at Skywalker’s X-wing. He was sliding to the ground as well, and he landed in a half-crouch before he rose. On his right hip, he wore a heavy blaster pistol, a Merr-Sonn knockoff of BlasTech’s popular DL-44. On his left hip hung a silvery cylinder that Mara recognized immediately as a lightsaber. Her mind flicked to the bottom of her pilot duffel in the X-wing’s storage compartment, to the cloth-wrapped—no, don’t even think about that, she interrupted herself. Instead, her hand fell to the butt of the BlasTech DL-18, worn low on her right thigh, the holster strapped on over her flightsuit. The grip was leather-wrapped and worn, but it fit her hand perfectly as she drew it.

Skywalker had his own blaster in hand, lightsaber still swinging from his belt. Wordlessly, he waved for her to follow as he trotted into the Great Temple’s hangar. Mara grimaced and followed. Why did he order me to follow him in and not Sarkli? she asked herself. A Pathfinder would have a lot of experience with this sort of fight. Or raid. Or rescue. 

The hangar was empty, Mara realized when her eyes adjusted to the relative darkness. The half-disassembled Y-wing she’d observed earlier was the source of the smoke, though whether it’d been set ablaze by Imperial marauders or a Rebel technician to destroy evidence was impossible to determine.

She finally caught up to him at a personnel turbolift. Skywalker glanced over his shoulder at her while waiting for the carriage to arrive. “We need to move fast. The command room where General Dodonna was coordinating was most of the way up the Temple. They’re probably pinned down on that level. Dodonna’s team should be the last people here, so the Imperials will be focused toward them, not us.”

“Just two of us against a few hundred stormtroopers?” Mara asked wryly.

Skywalker shook his head. “No, think about it. None of their transports got near enough to drop squads close to the Temple. Every drop ship that came within a couple kilometers of the Great Temple we destroyed. We also didn’t pick up any speederbikes or troop carriers down at ground level approaching during the battle, either. I bet this is a small team that inserted days ago and hiked in. The Empire knew when they tried a large-scale assault we’d evacuate whoever was left. This was probably a special team meant to catch stragglers.”

Mara grimaced again at the logic. It tracked clean. “So, not just regular stormtroopers.”

“No, I’d bet it’s a commando team. Small.” He offered a smile as the turbolift opened with a quiet chime. “We hit hard and fast and we run.”

She stepped into the turbolift behind him and didn’t return the smile. “Has anyone told you your planning is terrible?”

“Wedge. Frequently.” Skywalker considered. “Han, too. Artoo already told me this doesn’t qualify as a plan.”

Mara shook her head as the turbolift rapidly ascended through the Great Temple. “Not inspiring a lot of confidence here, Commander.”

He grinned. “At least this isn’t enemy territory yet. And just remember, even if it looks crazy, I’d come for you, too.”

“Stupid.”

“Maybe, but it’s the right thing to do.” The turbolift slowed and Skywalker moved to one side of the door, blaster in hand with muzzle pointed up at the ceiling. Mara moved to mirror him before the door slid open.

Two Imperial commandos, dressed in green-painted camouflage-patterned scout trooper armor, were already turning toward the unexpected sound. Skywalker’s shot took one; Mara blasted the other a quarter-second later. Both fell with a clatter that Mara barely heard, because Skywalker was already in motion and she fell in beside him, not a full sprint but faster than a jog. Over her own labored breathing, Mara could hear the report of weapons – the harsh, consistent chatter of the stormtrooper-favored E-11 rifle, but also the return fire of several distinctly different models of blasters, mostly the higher-pitched screeches of blaster pistols but occasionally the heavier boom of a Rebel-favored A280 longblaster.

Which means Dodonna’s team is still alive and fighting. Skywalker led the way into a long corridor, and the cacophony of the firefight grew, with the blaster reports echoing down the stone passage. At the far end, another pair of the camouflaged scout troopers had taken position on either side of a doorway, but they were both turned and focused toward the connecting chamber. They were taking turns leaning into the doorway at unpredictable intervals, firing at targets Mara couldn’t see, then withdrawing back into cover. Return fire splattered against the doorframe, and a stray bolt zipped down the corridor barely above Skywalker’s head. Skywalker didn’t flinch; if anything, his pace increased, and Mara was hard-pressed to keep up with him. The closer we get, Mara told herself, the better our shot. If we open fire here and don’t put them both down, we have no cover.

Skywalker apparently had the same idea, and he hit a full sprint – a pace Mara couldn’t match. Another wave of blasterfire splattered around and through the doorway, this time a stray bolt hitting the floor three meters in front of her. She pushed as hard as she could, preparing to stop and shoot the trooper on the right side of the doorway the moment Skywalker stopped to make his shot.

Except he didn’t stop.

He passed his blaster to his left hand and in one smooth motion as he closed the last few meters, the scout troopers’ heads both snapping around as they realized in the same breath there were enemies behind them. Even as blasters started to come up, his right hand pulled the lightsaber from his belt. The impossible-to-forget snap-hiss of ignition echoed down the hallway, and Mara saw Skywalker swing without breaking stride – a blue-white flash of light – and both troops went down, their chestplates streaked with a smoking, orange-glowing slash. The lightsaber shut off almost as fast as it had ignited, and Skywalker was through the door with his blaster back in his right hand and firing. Mara was still ten meters behind as Skywalker ducked to the left inside the chamber, vanishing from sight.

When Mara finally cleared the door herself, Skywalker had taken cover behind an overturned table eight meters inside – something crude built from the local Massassi trees and thankfully durable, judging by the charred and smoking surface. There were five Imperial troops still upright and firing, two of them at Skywalker and the other three at the other end of the chamber where Rebel officers were crouching behind a long, overturned stone table. Two more of the scout troopers were prone and unmoving, dead or near enough.

None of them were looking at the late-arriving Mara.

She fired twice, three times, and both the scouts who had been shooting at Skywalker went down in a flurry of sparks and acrid smoke. Skywalker rose immediately from cover and fired, sending one of the last three spinning into a boneless fall. The last two were caught in a three-way crossfire and died a few seconds later.

“General Dodonna!” Skywalker called.

The white-haired and bearded Commenorian rose from his cover stiffly. “Commander Skywalker. I may need to write you up for disobeying orders, right after I give you a medal for getting us out of here.” He paused. “You have an extraction plan?”

“Back to the hangar, sir,” Skywalker said. “The Luminous will pick you up. Our X-wings are waiting there.”

Dodonna’s eyes flickered from Skywalker to Mara, a brief puzzled look on his face before he turned back to Skywalker. “Thank you. Captain Derlin and I owe you our lives.” He gestured with his blaster pistol toward the door. “Lead the way, before more Imperial surprises arrive.” 

---

The VCX-100 freighter had not been built for war, but a decade of service to the cause of freedom, tens of thousands of credits, and some seriously deranged mechanics had turned the Ghost into a weapon of war.

Corellian Engineering Corporation had, of course, designed the diamond-shaped freighter to defend itself against pirates. The recommended factory equipment for the VCX line included a dorsal-mounted light laser cannon and an aft-docked, short-range auxiliary fighter-shuttle which provided tail-gun coverage. The Ghost had plenty of upgrades over the years; the forward observation bubble had been equipped with a nose-mounted twin laser cannon turret, the dorsal light laser cannon replaced with heavier twin cannons, proton torpedo launchers and magazines added at the cost of cargo capacity. Her engines had been rebuilt and tuned to allow her to keep pace with Imperial starfighters, her shield generators replaced with equipment fitting for a vessel three times her size, and her sensor jamming suite earned the freighter her name, allowing her to slip through Imperial customs without detection. The original Corellian-built auxiliary shuttle had been lost on a mission years before, and she instead carried an unorthodox, heavily modified Sheathipede-class transport shuttle.

And at that moment, the Ghost needed every one of its refits, additions, and rebuilds just to stay alive.

“Transport Shelterwind, you’re drifting,” Hera Syndulla barked over the convoy’s shared comm channel. “Viper Squadron, we’ve got another group of TIEs coming in and two seven four mark forty. Scatter them so they can’t hit the convoy together.” She barely heard the acknowledgement from the A-wing squadron’s commander, rolling the Ghost over the Shelterwind to get a clean shot on a trio of TIEs angling up at the vulnerable transport’s belly.

The nose gun barked, and the lead TIE fighter evaporated in a cloud of burning shrapnel. “They’re breaking off,” Sabine Wren reported, continuing to fire at one of the evading fighters.

A warbling complaint echoed over the Ghost‘s internal comm in Binary.

“Zeb, cover the rear!” Hera ordered. “More TIEs coming in behind for a run on the engines. Shelterwind, get back in formation!”

“Roger that, Hera,” the Lasat in the dorsal turret answered, laying down fire back over the Ghost‘s engines. The docked Sheathipede shuttle’s weapons fired, too, controlled by Chopper, the crew’s battered old C1 astromech droid. Another TIE evaporated, but the remaining pair pushed on, laying down fire on the transport, which was itself trying to maneuver back into formation with the other four Gallofree GR-75s clawing for open space, away from the Yavin IV moon.

A trio of X-wings flashed past, s-foils spread wide in attack posture and cannons blasting. The TIEs evaporated, buying the formation a moment of breathing room. “Thanks, Comet Leader,” Hera breathed.

“We’ve got your back, General,” the squadron commander replied.

The Twi’lek officer took advantage of the few seconds to evaluate the tactical situation.

Out of position and too far away for accurate targeting, a pair of Star Destroyers were keeping up harassment fire on the convoy, but they weren’t any real danger. Their inbound route to Yavin IV had clearly come on the major hyperspace route in, the same route flown by the Millennium Falcon months ago, and the Death Star that followed. The Rebel Alliance, however, had planned carefully for the evacuation with hyperspace navigation in mind. Three cruisers, the Defiance, the Independence, and Hera’s own Liberty were keeping station a mere twenty minutes away by hyperspace on different vectors, with routes held open by expensive s-thread boosters. The Empire would attempt a blockade, but evacuating Rebels could escape by temporary paths the Empire had no knowledge of. Hypercomm relays kept the three task forces and Massassi Base itself in communication, though long-range comms from the Yavin system had gone down when the Alliance evacuated the Great Temple.

Hera frowned as she studied the long-range sensor plots. Not all of the TIEs deploying from the Star Destroyers and their support ships were moving to engage the convoy; a surprising number were heading down to Yavin IV itself. That seems odd, unless…

As if cued by her thought, a new voice spoke in her ear. “Two Flight, break them up as they come in,” a young man’s voice ordered. “Deny them momentum and we’ll clean up the mess. Luminous, keep your throttle at maximum. We’ll keep up.”

That didn’t sound like any of the Independence‘s pilots, and I know all my pilots off the Liberty. Hera frowned and glanced at the comm board. Wait, that’s the Massassi fighter group channel. Is that…Skywalker?

“Copy, Lead,” Wedge Antilles answered, a voice Hera knew well from the months he spent with Phoenix Group before the disaster on Atollan. “Hobbie, Puck, loosen formation. Stay within five hundred meters, don’t break off a climbing vector, but take potshots. We need time and space, not kills.” Hobbie and Puck both answered in the affirmative. Hobbie, of course, had flown with Phoenix along with Wedge in Phoenix Group. Puck was likely Puck Naeco, who had a reputation. He’d been on Yavin IV according to some of her pilots, and she’d fielded several complaints from a squadron commander who classified Puck’s application of a high-temperature decal portraying a nerf to three X-wings as vandalism.

Hera looked over her sensor plots again and realized, belatedly, there was one more transport coming up from Yavin IV, six X-wings flying escort. She grimaced. I thought we had everyone. And Wedge has been flying with Skywalker for months now, so that was definitely Skywalker. But why was Luke Skywalker of all people still on Yavin IV?

“One Flight, same instructions,” Skywalker said, his voice surprisingly light given the number of TIE contacts descending on his formation. “Force them to break. If you score the kills, great, but the objective is to get General Dodonna out.”

“Killing them is breaking them,” a male voice Hera didn’t recognize answered.

“Accept that you’re not going to beat Antilles’ kill count,” a young woman’s voice answered dryly.

Hera’s heart stopped. “Is that Mara?!” Sabine immediately demanded on the internal Ghost comm. “That sounded like Mara!”

“More TIEs coming in!” Zeb growled. “Hera, fly!” The dorsal guns were already thundering, forcing Hera’s attention back onto the battle at hand. Three more vics of TIEs were screaming in on the transports from three wildly different vectors. Hera glanced at the Viper and Comet formations, gauged distances, and turned the Ghost into the path of the TIEs most distant from both fighter groups.

Chopper warbled protests as Hera continued to maneuver, both the dorsal and nose guns firing nonstop at the TIE formation. “No, Chopper, I don’t know what Mara is doing flying with Luke Skywalker,” she said through gritted teeth. “Wedge and I are going to have a talk about this when we get to the Liberty.” She switched comm channels to the formation frequency. “Transports, we’re twenty seconds out from jump. As soon as you can make the jump, do it. No waiting.”

TIE fighters flared into incandescence, but Hera barely noticed, too much of her attention focused on the X-wings and the Luminous, now just clearing atmosphere, red and green bolts being hurled between Rebel and Imperial fighters.

“Mara, scissor port,” Skywalker called, removing any trace of a doubt whose voice the Ghost crew had heard.

“I’ve got her,” the unidentified male pilot said. “Your tail’s clear, Three.”

“Thanks, Sarkli,” Mara said. “Lead, do you have coordinates?”

“Artoo’s calculating it now. We’ll send jump data to the entire group. Stay focused. Luminous, jump as soon as you’re clear.”

Hera couldn’t see them with her naked eye, but she could see the evidence of their ascent – long-range fire from the Star Destroyers, inaccurate but harassing; sensor traces; the occasional explosion bright enough to look like a flickering star.

Ahead of the Ghost, transports began to flicker with pseudomotion and vanish into hyperspace. “Comet Leader, Viper Leader, get your squadrons home,” Hera ordered.

“Are we going back for Skywalker’s fighters?” Zeb asked.

Hera pursed her lips for a moment. “No,” she said reluctantly. “They’ll be clear before we do anything more than cause a distraction.”

“Why is Mara flying with a Massassi Base squadron?” Sabine asked. “I thought she was on the Liberty.”

“So did I,” Hera said softly, the old guilt welling up. “But I never actually checked. I told her weeks ago that we were moving there. I just assumed…” she shook her head. “We’ll straighten this out on the other end of this jump. Let’s go.”

The Ghost rolled onto the same vector the transport group had used. X-wings and A-wings were vanishing into hyperspace around them. Hera hesitated one moment longer before engaging the hyperdrive, the Ghost vanishing like her namesake into the ethereal swirl of hyperspace.

The gas giant was barely rising above the horizon, casting an orange glow across early morning on Yavin IV. The shriek of sublight engines split the air as mechanics and pilots ran X-wings through preflight checklists.

This isn’t the sort of training I had in mind, Luke thought wryly. But the war isn’t waiting for us to be ready.

The members of Red Group were gathered in a loose semicircle, with Mara being the last to join, dropping her pilot’s duffel – popular among Alliance pilots due to its size fitting well in the small belly cargo compartment of an X-wing – on the floor next to her.

Luke looked around the group. “Everyone’s bag packed?” he asked. “Once we launch, we’re not coming back.” A chorus of affirmations answered his question, and he took a moment to look at each of the pilots to evaluate readiness.

Puck was standing furthest to Luke’s left, practically bouncing on his heels. He had a smile on his face, and there was no sign of strain in his eyes. His duffel was slung over his shoulder, his hair tamed enough to suggest he’d been awake for a while before the evacuation order had arrived, and he’d been making a joke at Hobbie’s expense a few moments before. He’s ready to fly, Luke confirmed to himself.

Hobbie was next to Puck. His countenance was serious, a step up from the dour look he normally wore. He carried no bag; Luke suspected Hobbie had already stashed it in his fighter. Half his hair was matted flat, while the rest stood on end, evidence that he’d been awoken by klaxon and hadn’t bothered looking in a mirror yet. Still, his flight suit was pulled on and zipped, his eyes were alert, and his hands were wrapped around a half-finished cup of caf. He’ll be okay.

Sarkli stood between Hobbie and Wedge. He looked ready to take a holo for a recruitment poster, eyes sharp and measuring, hair immaculate, a half-smile, half-serious expression on his face. Unlike the rest of Red Group, he didn’t have a pilot’s duffel; instead, he was wearing a camouflage bag on his back, an agrinium-framed pack popular with the Pathfinders. Unlike most of the pilots, he had an A280-CFE heavy blaster pistol strapped to his hip. The blaster could quickly be built out into a rifle with a detachable barrel and stock, and Luke had no doubt those components were stashed in Sarkli’s pack. He’s ready for air or ground, Luke noted. He probably has more experience in commando operations than the rest of us put together.

Wedge had his arms crossed, his expression carefully composed, his duffel on the hangar floor at his feet. Luke had known Wedge long enough now to see the weariness in his eyes and the concern tugging the corners of his mouth downward. Covering evacuation wasn’t what either of us had in mind, Luke thought at his friend and executive officer. But there’s nothing to be done now but fly. And tired or not, Luke had no doubt that Wedge would tear up the sky the moment Red Group left the Great Temple.

Mara, too, had her face schooled into something unreadable, and Luke didn’t know her well enough to pull details from her stance. She, too, had her arms crossed like Wedge, and her hair was pleated tightly against her head – no doubt to allow her flight helmet to fit more comfortably. She wore a light DL-18 blaster low on her hip, the holster tied tightly around her thigh over her flight suit. Those brilliant green eyes showed no trace of worry or weariness, and her posture only told Luke she thought she was ready to fly. It’ll have to do.

Luke opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the roar of engines as the last squadron from the Liberty began launching from the hangar. Luke waited precious seconds for the X-wings to launch, leaving only Red Group’s six fighters and pilots. A half-disassembled Y-wing and the hulk of a Z-95 Headhunter were the only other remaining fighters, and no doubt would be left behind by the evacuating Alliance forces. When the din finally faded, Luke tried again. “This was supposed to be a training flight,” he began ruefully, “but the Empire is pushing hard enough that Command has decided to issue the final evacuation order. We’ve got several squadrons in the air right now from the Independence and Liberty that are intercepting TIE squadrons in upper atmosphere and orbit. We’re going to provide close support for the final evacuation. In less than thirty minutes we’ll be off Yavin IV for good.”

He glanced among his pilots, and noted all five were paying attention. Good. “Standard three-ship flight elements,” he continued. “I’m Red Leader and leader of One Flight. Sarkli, you’re Red Two and on my starboard wing. Jade, Red Three and port.” He waited until both gave an acknowledging nod. “Red Four is Wedge and leader of Two Flight. If something happens to me, he has command of the squadron. Red Five, Puck, on starboard. Hobbie, Red Six, on port.” Another trio of acknowledgements. “Our goal is to keep the Empire off the Great Temple long enough to complete the evacuation. We’ve got a handful of Gallofrees and shuttles finishing loading right now. Remember to stick together; we’re not chasing kills, we’re buying time. And be ready for the plan to change. As soon as the last transport is off the ground, we’re up to orbit and escaping. Independence, Defiance, and Liberty are all twenty minutes away by hyperdrive. We link up and we get out of here. Questions?”

“What do we do if one of us goes down?” Sarkli asked.

Wedge grimaced. “Don’t. We have no search and rescue team and no window to extract a downed pilot. If someone goes down and survives, capture is inevitable. And that’s better than wandering around the jungle. Lot of things down there will eat a downed pilot if you try to get clever.”

Luke looked around at the squadron. “Mount up. We need to be in the air five minutes ago.”

Ground crews had already scattered away from Red Group’s X-wings. Luke hit the ladder and vaulted into his cockpit, his own pilot’s duffel already stashed behind his command chair, though it was nearly empty – a few changes of clothes, civilian and military, and almost nothing else, given that he’d left Tatooine with only the clothes on his back. His lightsaber – his father’s lightsaber, passed on to him by Obi-Wan Kenobi – bounced on his left hip, and a heavy blaster pistol rode on his right. R2-D2 was slotted in behind the X-wing’s cockpit, and he beeped an all-clear as Luke strapped into the harness. The astromech whistled a longer query, and Luke glanced at the translation scrolling across the X-wing’s displays before answering with a smile. “Yes, this isn’t training, but at least it’s not a Death Star.” He flicked the X-wing’s comm open to the Massassi Base fighter channel. “Red Group, report in with readiness. Red Leader, ready to fly.”

“Red Two,” Sarkli answered, “all green and ready to fight.”

“Red Three, green,” Mara said.

“Red Four, four lit,” came Wedge’s check-in.

“Red Five, all lights green, though I feel like this callsign should be retired,” Puck said helpfully. “Or maybe you should have both Leader and Five, boss.”

Luke snorted.

“Red Six, nothing’s gone wrong yet,” Hobbie said dryly.

“Red Group, launch,” Luke ordered, bringing his X-wing up on repulsorlifts and sliding out of the hangar. As soon as he had cleared the Great Temple, he punched the sublight drives in, and the X-wing rocketed up into the air. Sarkli settled in beside him and Mara joined them a moment later.

Luke took a moment to study his X-wing’s scopes as Two Flight settled into position four hundred meters aft and to starboard, evaluating the tactical situation the way Commander Narra with Renegade Squadron and Wedge had both been teaching him. TIE formations were far overhead, trying to punch through the defending fighter screen, but the on-station squadrons – X-wings and A-wings from the Independence and the Liberty – were putting up a terrific fight. Trios of TIEs were slipping through piecemeal, with a handful of Imperial transports, mostly Gozantis, circumnavigating the edge of the fight to try to descend toward Yavin IV. The Gozantis were an immediate danger to the evacuation; even at a distance, Luke could tell they were carrying AT-ST and AT-AT walkers, and no doubt had holds full of stormtrooper squads. If they manage to drop troops outside the Temple, they’ll pin everyone left inside.

“Massassi Base, this is Red Leader,” Luke reported in. “We’re going to hit those incoming drop ships. If something slips by, call it out so we can cover the evacuation.”

“Red Leader, Massassi Base,” General Jan Dodonna’s voice answered. “Confirmed. Buy us the minutes we need.”

“Copy, General.” Luke switched to transmitting only on Red Group’s frequency. “Alright, squad, let’s hit those transports. Sarkli, Mara, stay tight with me so we can focus firepower and burn down the drop ships faster. Two Flight, keep those TIEs off us. S-foils to attack position.”

---

Wedge rolled inverted and pulled back on the stick, the X-wing accelerating through a split-s to drop him behind a trio of TIEs clearly aiming to intercept Luke’s flight. Hobbie and Puck slid back into formation behind him, Puck lagging a half second behind Hobbie. Sloppy, Wedge told himself, but we haven’t had time to train together. “Two Flight, fire in two, one…” The three X-wings opened fire together. Wedge’s target, the TIE formation’s leader, vaporized instantly. Puck’s target caught a full burst on its hexagonal radiator panel, promptly catching fire and spiraling out of formation toward the jungle far below. Hobbie’s target shuddered from the hit and dropped away, but it was a controlled evasion, not a kill.

“Let him go,” Wedge ordered, already scanning for the next threat.

A kilometer away and three hundred meters lower, Luke’s trio hit a Gozanti transport like a pack of Corellian slice hounds pouncing on a bageraset. A dozen Taim & Bak KX9 laser cannons spat hard red light, shredding through the drop ship’s shields seemingly without effort, and a moment later the transport’s port and center engines both erupted in flames. It began to drop toward the surface when a proton torpedo from Sarkli’s X-wing hit the Imperial ship dead-center, sending fire and debris in all directions. A pair of AT-AT walkers began a long, uncontrolled fall toward the Yavin IV surface, several thousand meters below. Wedge’s grin was a hunter’s carnivorous smile. Better than dealing with those monsters on the ground.

“Transport Luminous is taking fire,” the Massassi Base channel called urgently, Dodonna’s voice filling Wedge’s ear. “Enemy armor advancing on their position.”

Wedge led Two Flight in a banking turn, looking to his scopes and then out his cockpit canopy to fill in the battlefield’s details.

Luminous was one of the Alliance’s ubiquitous Gallofree GR-75 medium transports. 90 meters of off-white hull, a trio of engines, and an inherited reputation for poor reliability, Luminous was visually indistinct from any of her siblings, but she was impossible to miss against the green vegetation of the jungle. Parked at one of the smaller temples a kilometer away from the Great Temple, she was no doubt loading support staff and equipment; Wedge had no idea what that particular temple had been hosting for the Rebellion. But coming out of the jungle and into the clear-cut zone around the temple was a pair of AT-ST walkers and squads of stormtroopers, converging rapidly on the evacuating Rebels.

Wedge glanced around at the skies. TIE escorts for the drop ships Luke was targeting were scattered, but the skies were hardly clear. “Red Leader?” Wedge asked, trying not to grit his teeth. He’s the commander. Let him make the tactical decision.

“Go, Wedge,” Luke said. “Two, Three, loosen formation. Keep any TIEs off me while I keep hitting the transports. Two Flight’s off screening duty.”

Wedge finished his turn and firewalled his throttle. “Five and Six, stay with me. Target the walkers, one proton torpedo apiece. I’m going to suppress the troops.”

“You left me one of the fun targets,” Puck chimed in cheerfully.

“One pass, Puck,” Wedge warned, arming his own proton torpedoes. “A-Three, set torpedoes for impact detonation. We’re firing blind.” The X-wings rapidly crossed the battlefield, maintaining altitude until they were nearly in weapons range before Wedge pushed the stick forward and led Two Flight into a dive.

The AT-STs were firing, blaster cannons chewing away at Luminous‘s armored hull. Wedge grimaced, forcing himself to focus on the stormtroopers as he picked his target point. While Hobbie and Puck’s targeting computers could no doubt identify the AT-STs as a recognizable target, with durasteel armor, power cells, blaster cannons, and heat dissipation, a starfighter’s sensor package wasn’t built to pick out individual sentients as a target, let alone provide weapons lock. “Firing in three, two…”

Wedge waited until pink cones flashed past his cockpit on both port and starboard before he fired his own. Hobbie’s torpedo hit first, and his targeted AT-ST vanished into a silvery ball of fire and smoke. Puck’s torpedo detonated a heartbeat later, and Wedge caught a glimpse of AT-ST debris scattering from the shockwave, the “head” of the walker tumbling back into the jungle. Then his own torpedo hit, well ahead of the walkers, a third ball of fire and shockwave to scatter stormtroopers, leaving a four meters-deep crater in the clearing where it had exploded.

A shriek of warning from his astromech was just enough warning for Wedge to slam his control stick to the left and jerk back. Green laserfire hammered at his rear shields, a glancing blow that made his X-wing shudder even as he pulled back harder through the turn. “Hobbie, Puck, pincer!” he called, continuing his turn as both wingmates broke off. The trio of TIEs that had been pursuing them broke – one peeling off after Puck, the other two after Hobbie. Wedge grimaced as he completed his turn, evaluating the situation for only a moment. Puck had pulled his pursuer into a flat scissor, attempting to force the TIE to overshoot and spoiling his aim. Hobbie, on the other hand, was pinned by two fighters and in a worse position. Hobbie first.

Even as Wedge watched, Hobbie pulled his X-wing through a spiraling loop, trying to force an overshoot. The TIEs didn’t bite, apparently content to hold their advantageous position for a few moments longer and wait for a cleaner kill. Unfortunately for them, however, Wedge was already climbing back toward Hobbie. The X-wings pulled a head-to-head pass, Wedge’s canopy less than ten meters from Hobbie’s belly as their flight paths crossed; Wedge fired almost without thought as the pursuing TIEs crossed his gunsights. His lasers sheared off one of the TIE’s panels, and the fighter began to tumble uncontrolled toward the jungle below even as the second TIE broke off.

“Luminous is lifting,” Dodonna’s voice crackled over the command frequency. “Imperial stormtroopers are advancing into the temple and we’re cut off from the transports. We’re discontinuing transmission and retreating into the temple. Finish evacuating, Red Group, and get out of here. Massassi Base out.”

Wedge pulled up on Hobbie’s wing, even as the other man vectored after the escaping TIE; the hunter was now the hunted.

“We’ve got to get the General out of there,” Luke’s voice crackled on the squadron channel. “We’re not going to let him be captured. Mara, follow me in. Sarkli, join Two Flight and cover the evacuation.”

“You won’t stand a chance,” Sarkli protested. “I’m coming with you.”

“We’ll be fine. The evacuation needs you more,” Luke replied evenly.

Hobbie was maneuvering on the TIE, its pilot only now realizing he was moments from death. Wedge focused on staying on Hobbie’s wing even as he listened to the exchange on the comm. Luke, what are you doing? Sarkli’s a Pathfinder. He should be going into the Temple with you!

“As you wish, Commander Skywalker,” Sarkli finally said, his tone flat and devoid of emotion.

Hobbie fired, and the TIE evaded. Wedge contemplated countermanding Luke’s order even as he held position to cover Hobbie. What is he thinking? Months of tutoring Luke on small unit tactics and how to use people under his command to their fullest abilities, and he picks the seventeen year old girl to charge into a temple full of stormtroopers instead of the trained soldier. 

Sarkli had already pulled away from Luke and Mara even as their X-wings accelerated fast and dropped low, skimming treetops with s-foils locked closed. Sarkli was pulling up, angling toward Puck, who was still trading lead and pursuit positions with his Imperial opponent, neither able to get a clear shot on the other.

Hobbie fired again, this time his cannons finding their target. The TIE exploded, a fireball in the hard blue sky even as Luke and Mara’s X-wings vanished from scopes as they set down in front of the Great Temple. “Red Group, we continue screening,” Wedge called as Hobbie dropped back to his proper position on Wedge’s wing. “We hold the Empire back until our pilots are out of the Temple.”

The refectory on Yavin IV was usually crowded at the evening meal, and that night was no exception. Wedge Antilles picked up a tray of food that looked only marginally more inviting than ration paste and paused just inside the doorway, scanning for a place to sit.

At least twenty pilots were already eating, along with another dozen support personnel Wedge recognized – some by name, some only by sight – as the ground crew who kept Massassi Base’s snubfighters flying in spite of impossible odds, indifferent supply chains, and machinery that ought to have failed days ago. Most of the pilots were drawn from the Independence and the Liberty, temporarily rotated down to Yavin to bolster security and cover an evacuation if the Empire made a stronger push on the moon.

He could have sat with any of them.

He knew perfectly well where he was going to end up.

At the far end of one of the long refectory tables sat the pilots of Luke and Wedge’s provisional squadron, still saddled with the painfully temporary name of Massassi Red Group. Luke’s long-suffering silence and Puck Naeco’s cheerfully relentless tone carried above the general noise of trays, utensils, and conversation. Wedge considered turning around.

Then he caught Mara Jade’s expression from across the room – flat, unimpressed, and carrying the distinct promise of violence held in reserve – and, reluctantly, decided his commanding officer probably needed support.

He slid onto the bench at the end of the table. Hobbie immediately shifted over to make room, which bumped Puck down the bench in turn.

“…is the most important defining trait of a squadron,” Puck was saying, with the air of a man delivering doctrine to the less enlightened. “We have to have a memorable name.”

“Memorable,” Mara said dryly, “is how they’ll describe your memorial.”

Sarkli chuckled into his drink. Luke, seated across from Wedge, simply closed his eyes for a moment as though appealing to powers higher than High Command.

“Captain Antilles,” Puck said brightly, “I’m glad you’ve joined us. I was just explaining to our new unit how important it is to have the proper name.”

“I’m assuming, Naeco,” Wedge said, setting down his tray and poking at something that might have once aspired to be meat, “that this is all prelude to suggestions.”

Puck’s face lit with vindication. “You are an officer after my own heart.” With a theatrical flourish, he produced a datapad from under the table. “I spent an intense seventeen minutes compiling a litany of possible squadron names. I now present them for review.”

Luke covered his eyes with one hand.

Mara did not bother disguising the look she gave Puck.

Hobbie kept eating with the grim focus of a man who had survived too many mess halls to care.

Sarkli, to Wedge’s surprise, looked genuinely interested. “Let’s hear them.”

“From best to worst,” Puck said. He cleared his throat. “At the top of the list: Skywalker’s Angels.”

Luke actually choked.

Hobbie thumped him once between the shoulder blades without looking up from his tray.

“After all,” Puck pressed on, “our commander is the most illustrious pilot in the Alliance, so it stands to reason that a formation of elite fliers under his…”

“No,” Mara, Hobbie, and Wedge said together.

Luke was still coughing. “Absolutely not.”

Puck nodded thoughtfully, stylus poised over the datapad. “I’ll mark that down as a maybe.”

“You do that,” Mara said.

“Next: Echo Squadron.”

“Taken,” Wedge said at once.

“Viper Squadron.”

“That’s an A-wing unit off the Independence,” Sarkli said. “So also taken.”

“Black Squadron.”

“We are not changing one color for another and calling it originality,” Wedge said.

Puck frowned and made a note. “Fine. Phoenix Squadron. Symbolic, dignified, evocative. We’re rebuilding from the remains of Massassi Base’s Red Squadron. Rising from the ashes and so forth.”

“No,” Mara said, and there was enough edge in it to make the table go briefly still.

Puck glanced sideways at her, curiosity flickering across his face, but she offered nothing more.

Wedge grimaced faintly and looked back down at his tray. After the attack on Lothal, I don’t blame her.

“Crimson Squadron,” he offered instead.

“There are already two variations of that in circulation,” Hobbie said. “At least. There was a group called Crimson Fury, unless they got folded into something else. There’s also a mixed-type squadron called Crimson Phoenix flying now.”

“Really?” Puck looked offended by the galaxy’s refusal to preserve names for his personal use. “How does the Alliance have this many squadrons and still no decent naming oversight?”

“Poor central administration,” Hobbie said.

“Shocking lack of imagination,” Sarkli said.

“Too many pilots with too much spare time,” Mara muttered.

Wedge glanced at Luke. “No comment?”

Luke lowered his hand from his face and sighed. “I already figured out that speaking only encouraged him.”

“Wise,” Wedge said.

Puck ignored them all. “Very well. Dragon Squadron.”

“Taken,” Wedge said.

“Nomad Squadron.”

“Taken,” Hobbie said.

“Star Squadron.”

“That is barely even a name,” Mara said.

“It says what we do.”

“We fly starfighters,” Wedge said. “By that logic we may as well be Pilot Squadron.”

Puck stared at him. “That’s terrible.”

“Thank you.”

Puck scrolled farther down the datapad, muttering to himself. “Lancer. Sabre. Meteor. Comet. Thunderbolt.”

“Taken, taken, probably taken, definitely taken, and sounds like an escort frigate,” Sarkli said.

“You are all very negative,” Puck informed them.

“We’re experienced,” Mara said.

He sat back and drummed his fingers on the datapad, thinking. Around them, the rest of the refectory carried on: laughter from another table, the scrape of benches across stone, the low constant murmur of tired people eating before the next round of duty. Someone from maintenance shouted for more caf. The place smelled like overcooked protein, damp uniforms, and engine grease that no one ever fully got out of their hands.

For a moment, despite himself, Wedge felt the shape of it settle around him, the ordinary noise of a base still functioning, still alive. Too many empty seats elsewhere. Too many pilots gone from rooms like this forever. But here, for the moment, there was Luke trying not to smile, Hobbie pretending not to enjoy himself, Sarkli leaning in like this was high drama, Mara looking as though she’d rather be anywhere else while also very clearly choosing not to leave, and Puck somehow treating the naming of a half-assembled squadron like a matter of galactic consequence.

It was absurd.

It’s also, Wedge thought, exactly what they all need.

Puck straightened suddenly. “I have it.”

Luke groaned quietly. “That sentence has never once led to anything good.”

Puck pointed at him. “You lack vision. Listen: Skywalker’s Angels, but in Aurebesh.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then Mara set down her utensil with exaggerated care. “Naeco.”

“Yes?”

“If you say that again, I’m going to help history lose your records.”

Sarkli laughed outright. Hobbie finally snorted into his food. Even Luke, against all reason, cracked.

Wedge looked across the table at him and shook his head. “Remember, Skywalker – you wanted this. A new fighter squadron. Command. All of it.” He gestured once at Puck with his fork. “This is on your head.”

Luke rubbed both hands over his face. “I know.”

Puck brightened. “So we agree the burden of naming authority rests with command.”

“No,” Luke said.

“But…”

“No.”

“Then perhaps,” Puck said, undeterred, “we should at least establish a shortlist.”

Mara closed her eyes.

Hobbie leaned back on the bench. “This is how a squadron’s reputation is stillborn.”

“This,” Wedge said, finally taking a bite of the dubious contents of his tray, “is how officers start drinking.”

Luke looked from one face to the next, then exhaled and surrendered to the inevitable with the expression of a man accepting a doomed attack run.

“Fine,” he said. “A shortlist. But if ‘Skywalker’s Angels’ is on it, I’m transferring Puck to sanitation.”

Puck grinned. “I knew you’d come around, Commander.”

---

The main hangar in the Great Temple was quiet in the hours after the evening meal. Though it meant natural lighting was minimal and glowlamps were required, Mara long preferred quiet over bright when she was working on her X-wing.

She was elbow-deep in the guts of the lower-starboard Incom 4L4 fusial thrust engine, determined to fix the issue bothering her for the last three patrols she’d flown. At standard cruise throttle, seventy percent of full, there was a consistent vibration in the spaceframe; not critical, nothing that affected combat performance, but clearly wrong. The Massassi Base ground crew had pulled the engine twice and stripped it for examination, finding no issues. They’d hooked it up to a diagnostics computer and it declared the engine function nominal. Her astromech, R4-MS, found nothing wrong with the engine, though it did detect the spaceframe flutter at cruise throttle. The crew chief himself had looked over all the reports and told Mara, in no uncertain terms, that the engine was within tolerance and she needed to move on.

Mara had not moved on.

Within tolerance was not, to Mara’s mind, the same as correct.

So now, working with the light of a handheld glowlamp, she traced connections – fuel line, coolant line, control lines, sensor traces – looking for the problem.

This time, Hera might actually murder Wedge and Hobbie, she thought idly as she followed one of the connections with a fingertip. Though she’s the one who told them to treat me like a real pilot. Real pilots get assigned to squadrons, even high-profile ones. And anything with Skywalker leading it is going to be high-profile, at least inside the Alliance.

She allowed herself a chuckle as she tugged a hair-thin sensor trace; the connection was firm in place, unlikely to be the source of the vibration. I should’ve told Hobbie no when he suggested I apply for Skywalker’s squadron. This is going to end badly, if any of the rumors floating around are true. She grimaced. And I already know at least some of them are true. The Empire is going to come looking for him. I should be far away. Flying in his squadron is visible, too visible. I should turn down the slot, transfer to an air wing.

And then she found it – the coolant feed. Like all the connections she was tracing, it was secured inside the engine in several places. On the third bracket, she found a bit of play, perhaps a millimeter worth of wear between the line and the bracket. It wasn’t enough for the line to come loose, but it was enough for the line to move, and perhaps, under cruise conditions, it was enough.

Don’t reach out. Don’t flare. Don’t listen. Visibility is death, Mara. She’d heard those words, repeated, varied, and drilled into her for eight years. Yet here she was, joining a squadron with the most visible man in the Rebellion. Even as shut down as she kept it, walls fortified, ignoring instead of listening, she had felt it when he came down the ramp of the Millennium Falcon on Yavin IV months ago, following the princess. Felt him. Like he was unafraid of what the Empire would send after him.

She fumbled blindly in her toolbox before coming out with a series of split-ring shims. One by one, she tried them on the coolant line, looking for one that would slip between the bracket and the line to firm the connection and eliminate the vibration.

If the Force was an ocean, she’d built dams around her mind. It was an incomplete metaphor but it worked well enough. Still, the pressure was greater than it had been since Lothal, as if the Force itself was more insistent. Or maybe it was Skywalker’s presence. Another reason this is a bad idea, she told herself as she picked the shim that felt best by hand and began properly securing it in place. Visibility is death.

With the shim locked in place, she began closing up the engine again. She’d need to fly a patrol to know for sure whether the vibration was gone, but she was fairly certain the issue would be fixed. Tomorrow, I’ll know for sure. Training flight with Skywalker’s group.

She pondered that as she finished closing the sublight engine panel, securing it in place before turning to clean up her tools. Eight years as the shadow of a shadow. Maybe I can actually belong here. Be a combat pilot the way Wedge and Hobbie trained me. Belong to a squadron that lasts. Make a difference. She almost laughs at the last thought. Yeah, Mara, make a difference. Not just watch while other people die around you, trying to keep you alive. Maybe be worth the sacrifices other people made for me. Or maybe I’ll be vaped in our first real mission and none of it will have been worth it at all.

“Need help?” Hobbie’s voice interrupted her thought.

“No, I’m just finishing up,” Mara said, shaking her head and refocusing outside her own head. “I think I found the vibration in the number three engine.”

“What was it?”

“Bracket on the coolant line is worn enough there was play. I shimmed it. I’ll see tomorrow if I still pick up that flutter at cruise.”

The dour pilot nodded. “That’s the sort of thing the ground crew overlooks if the line and bracket are both still inside spec.”

“Right, but together, they don’t fit right anymore.” Mara stretched as she rose to her feet. “I should get some rest. Training flight tomorrow.” The pendant hanging on a loop of leather around her neck had slipped out from concealment when she had been lying prone under the engine; she tucked it back under her tunic.

“Mara,” Hobbie said, voice soft. She froze. “I talked to Wedge.”

“About me,” she said flatly.

“Yes. Either you earn your place in the squadron, or you don’t. It’s you, either way. Not Syndulla.”

An exasperated sigh escaped. “Hobbie, you don’t get to…”

“Skywalker told Wedge he didn’t care about the politics,” Hobbie said dryly. “It’s driving Wedge up a wall. He wants you in the squadron, and his compromise with Wedge was tomorrow’s training flight before making it official. Wedge is ready to chew through a bulkhead.”

Mara couldn’t help but laugh at the image. “You think Skywalker’s the real deal?” she asked after a moment. “He’s not going to put me on the roster as a mascot or to curry favor with Hera? And he’s not going to ground me or kick me off the roster for the same reason?”

“I know you haven’t gotten to know him yet, Mara, but Skywalker doesn’t play games.” Hobbie shook his head. “I’ve never seen an officer like him in the Empire or the Rebellion. Everyone learns to play the games to get promotions; Skywalker flew exactly one mission before being put in command track, and he acts like it.”

“That one mission was blowing up the Death Star.”

“Exactly.” Hobbie offered her a rare smile. “He thinks you have the chops for this. Tomorrow will prove it. And you’re in. Welcome to whatever comes next.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I’m voting for myself. Training you was my idea, after all.”

“Wedge says it was both of you.”

“I let Wedge think that.” Hobbie offered her a more sober nod. “You earned this, Mara.”

---

The azure glow of the lightsaber painted the room in blue highlights. Luke flicked the blade up to guard position, as Ben Kenobi had taught him, attempting to stretch out with his feelings.

The first dart from the hovering target remote took him in the thigh. Luke yelped and stumbled back, his guard dropping, and the second bolt took him in the shoulder before he got the humming lightsaber back up in position. Focus, he told himself as he reset his stance and tried stretching out again.

He could feel it, then – a trickle of energy on the edge of his senses, like he was standing next to a high-voltage power cable. This would be easier if I had more time to train. Or if I still had a teacher. His hands moved on instinct, and he batted away a pair of stingers in quick succession. But there’s not time. There’s never time, and there’s no one to teach me.

The next bolt drilled him in the hand, and he nearly dropped the lightsaber altogether. “Shavit,” he growled aloud, before he forced the frustration out with a breath and tried to stretch out again.

But his mind wasn’t focused on the exercise – it was focused on the new squadron. After the battle of Yavin, he’d been given his promotion, put on the command track, and then he and Wedge had pulled a number of missions: diplomatic, yes, but plenty of flight missions with Commander Narra’s Renegade Squadron to tutor him on command and combat tactics. Flying the T-65B X-wing was far more natural than this lightsaber exercise, but flying wasn’t the same as commanding. Rebel High Command clearly had leadership in mind for him, but they weren’t so foolish as to put him in position before he was ready.

And now I’m in that command position, and I’m still not sure I’m ready. The lightsaber picked off another stinger, Luke’s conscious thought never interrupting the movement. At least I have Wedge.

And with that, he began considering his squadron, such as it was.

Wedge Antilles had become a fast friend. Two years older than Luke, Imperial Academy-trained, Corellian, and level-headed under fire. Corellians are all supposed to be hot-headed and reckless, like Han, Luke reflected, but Wedge doesn’t fit that at all. Without him, this squadron won’t work. I just hope I can learn enough from him before the Alliance needs him to command his own squadron. Wedge understood paperwork and procedures in a way Luke suspected he himself never would.

Derek Klivian struck most people as the silent type, but Luke saw something else in him – the quiet skeptic who thought before he spoke, and didn’t use a lot of words. Hobbie was a survivor, an Imperial defector, and Luke suspected he’d be a cornerstone of the squadron.

The lightsaber moved, again almost of its own volition, picking off another pair of bolts.

Puck Naeco was going to drive Hobbie up a wall, though. The Denon pilot’s squadron name ideas at supper had taken Luke entirely off-guard. But if this squadron gets used the way Wedge thinks, we’ll need pressure relief. He’s the relief valve. Skywalker’s Angels is a ridiculous name, but if the squadron can laugh, they can survive.

Sarkli, though… Luke pondered his unease, the lightsaber picking off another stinger. Wedge thinks he’ll work out. Maybe I’ll have more of an opinion after I’ve flown with him. I need to give him a fair shot. He was a Pathfinder, he’s been in Alliance service a lot longer than I am, and we could really use his skills. 

And then there was Mara Jade. A stinger bolt finally slipped through his guard, catching him in the ribs. Luke hissed in pain, finally shutting down the lightsaber and surrendering the exercise. On paper, a good-but-not-great pilot. Wedge and Hobbie had trained her. Hobbie had talked to him, privately, to vouch for her. On paper, she was a questionable decision if Dodonna started throwing combat missions at them sooner than he expected. Yet the same part of him uneasy about Sarkli was bedrock certain he wanted her in the squadron.

That led to a whole different chain of uncomfortable thoughts. After the Death Star, after trusting the Force and his feelings to make an impossible shot, it’d be easy to reassure himself that it was more Force-driven intuition. And the moment I start doing that, I could label any impulse I have as coming from the Force. But I’m not a Jedi, and if I’m leading a squadron into battle, me deciding every idea is from the Force is going to get a lot of people killed. So, I evaluate Sarkli and Mara, and if they make the cut, they fly with us. If they don’t, I don’t argue with the results. I can’t afford to delude myself if I’m going to be a good squadron commander.

Luke clipped the lightsaber back to his belt and picked up the deactivated target remote. I need to make more time for this, he chided himself, or I’m never going to get better. Wedge would tell me to put in the time and commitment, not make excuses. He’d be talking about flying, but if I want to learn about the Force, it’s no different.

Tomorrow, we’ll fly and we’ll make decisions.

Luke Skywalker didn’t expect the Rebellion to involve paperwork.

Months ago, he had destroyed the Death Star over Yavin from the cockpit of a T-65B X-wing. The Rebel Alliance had kept him in the cockpit since, helping fend off Imperial patrols and run scouting missions while the Alliance’s leadership decided on a course of action – evacuate, which was sensible, or hold the line at Massassi Base for as long as possible to declare to the galaxy we are here and the Empire is not invincible.

Luke had no doubts about his ability to fly. Biggs’ confidence in him had always been a cornerstone, and during the battle of Yavin he had engaged and shot down TIE fighters – military-trained pilots both capable and dangerous, flying the best front-line starfighters the Empire could field. What he hadn’t been certain of was his ability to lead – he may have practically grown up in a skyhopper, but he hadn’t spent those years formation-flying and engaging in small-group combat tactics.

Which is why General Dodonna gave me Wedge. He knew I would need the help. I couldn’t do this without Wedge. He knows all these pilots.

Luke’s eyes flicked back to the roster. He and Wedge had been poring over the records of all available Alliance pilots: defecting TIE pilots who needed to be checked out on an X-wing, trainees who hadn’t been blooded in combat, and survivors from squadrons shattered by engagements between Rebel and Imperial forces at Eadu, at Scarif, at Yavin.

So far, they’d assembled a handful of pilots: besides Luke and Wedge, three more pilots on the roster – an uncomfortable number. According to the starfighter doctrine laid down by General Antoc Merrick – the last leader of the Rebels’ starfighter corps, dead months ago at Scarif – X-wings deployed in three-ship elements. Ideally, they’d build the new squadron out to twelve pilots total, but six would be a solid start.

Which is why he didn’t understand why Wedge didn’t want him to recruit the last pilot on his short list. But before they fought that battle, Luke wanted to review the rest of the list first.

“Sarkli,” Luke started with.

“Pathfinder,” Wedge supplied as he looked over his own datapad. “Expert in survival. Transferred to starfighter corps when he moved here to Yavin. Good simulator scores, and he’s been good on patrols according to the pilots he’s flown with.”

“A lot of ego,” Luke pointed out. “I’ve looked over some of those after-action reports, too. He’s got a tendency to chase kills instead of the mission. I’ve heard plenty of bragging  over drinks here in the Temple, too. He’s good, but he wants to be seen as good.”

“Ego is hardly uncommon in fighter pilots,” Wedge retorted. “You know that as well as I do. You have to have plenty of ego to convince yourself you’re better than any Imp pilot you’re going to run into. Some of us just control it better than others. And one of us has a Death Star kill and doesn’t need to brag.”

“That wasn’t…” Luke flushed.

“No, but he’s sharp and we need him. I wish he were more polished, too, but we’re not exactly spoiled for choice and he’s good enough to survive the sort of missions you and I have been talking about.”

Luke shook his head. “I know. I think I want to interview him before we finalize him, but he’s on the roster.” He picked up his datapad. “Hobbie. Do we need to talk about Hobbie?”

Wedge smiled. “No.”

“He’s hard on equipment,” Luke pointed out. “I’m not telling you that we shouldn’t put him on the roster, but he’s got a reputation for losing starfighters. His record doesn’t exactly contradict the reputation, either. But the fact that he’s survived every one of those losses does make me feel a bit better about it.” He looked at his datapad again. “Puck Naeco.”

“Naeco’s an interesting one,” Wedge admitted. “He flew with a rebel cell out of Denon for a full year before the Rebel Alliance was officially formed. R-22 Spearhead pilots, with more hours than anyone else on the shortlist. He’s technically a double-ace in the Spearhead, too – eleven TIE fighter kills. But things were different then. The Empire was still treating resistance cells like a policing problem, not a military problem, and we both know the average Imperial garrison pilot is nothing like the Imperial Navy’s TIE pilots.”

“Why hasn’t anyone else picked Naeco up?”

“Medical and personality,” Wedge said dryly. “He put an R-22 down badly a week before the battle of Scarif and broke his left ankle in two places. With medical shortages, no one wanted to dump him in bacta to recover when we needed it for a lot of pilots in a lot worse shape. He was still healing during Yavin. Since then, he’s been a terror in the simulators, beating up on the new recruits, and making an absolute menace out of himself. The squadrons rotating off Independence, Liberty, and Defiance all dealt with his pratical jokes here and decided they didn’t want to keep dealing with him.”

Luke’s smile was wry. “Lucky us.”

“Lucky us,” Wedge echoed. “He’s going to drive Hobbie up a wall between missions, but he’s all business when we’re in the cockpit. He won’t say it out loud, but I think he’s a lot less certain about himself than he lets on. If Sarkli had eleven TIE kills, we’d never hear the end of it. Puck usually brushes it off.”

“That’s three on the short list,” Luke said. “So…do we talk about the snorbal in the room?”

Wedge grimaced. “I already know where this is going.”

“Let’s start with her service record,” Luke said, ignoring Wedge’s expression. “She’s been officially part of the Alliance for two years now, and was part of a resistance cell before that. She did her initial flight training on R-22 Spearheads, and then trained on X-wings – according to the flight records, by you, Wedge, and Hobbie. Her simulator scores are good, and your own evaluation on her test flights gave her high marks.”

The dark-haired pilot nodded. “Yes. And she’s a damned fine pilot. Has great situational awareness and tracks what’s going on in a fight well. If she survives, she has the potential to be one of the best, but she’s not anywhere close to that right now.”

“So why are you telling me not to bring her in?” Luke asked.

“She’s young,” Wedge pointed out. “Seventeen, more or less – she has no documentation on her birthday.”

“Wedge, I’m not even twenty yet. You’re twenty-one, and you were younger than me when you flew your first combat sorties. And the Alliance has put pilots younger than she is in a cockpit before.”

The executive officer shifted uneasily in his seat. “She’s been through a lot.”

Luke pulled the appropriate page of flimsiplast from the stack. “I saw that. Flew as part of General Syndulla’s attack group on Lothal a year, year and a half back and was shot down but survived. Flew with Blue Squadron at Scarif. Most of her squad made it through the shield gate and ended up trapped down on the surface and destroyed. She was at the back of the formation, didn’t make it through before the gate closed, and fought in the orbital fleet battle. Two TIE kills, and just surviving that engagement means she’s good.” Luke laid the page back down. “That’s more reason to bring her in, not less. She’s got combat experience in some ugly battles and survived it. I should at least interview her.”

Wedge’s lips compressed into a line. “I think it’s a bad idea,” he said at last.

There’s something you’re not telling me, Wedge, Luke observed silently as Wedge’s jaw clenched and unclenched. The two men had formed a fast friendship, and Wedge had been open and honest about his evaluation of all of the pilots they’d recruited so far – and those they had decided wouldn’t work with the squadron they were trying to put together.

“I want to meet her,” Luke said aloud.

Wedge sighed and picked up his comlink. A flick of the thumb, a single call, and he laid it back on the desk between them. “She’ll be here in a minute.”

Luke spent a moment studying the other man. “So, we interview her, and then we make a decision. Not before. We need the pilots, Wedge, if we’re going to make this work, and our options are limited.”

Wedge shook his head. “No, you and I are going to disagree on this. I already know it.” He offered a small smile. “You’re the commander.”

A chime at the door, and Luke raised his voice. “Come in.”

The door slid open, and the pilot stepped in – a slip of a teenage girl, dressed in the orange flightsuit favored by most of the Alliance’s starfighter pilots for both its comfort and visibility in case of ejection, flight boots not unlike Luke’s own, and a pendant around her neck, mostly but not entirely concealed. A DL-18 blaster with a well-worn grip rested in a low-tied holster over her flightsuit. Her posture wasn’t entirely relaxed, though she tried. Her expression was guardedly neutral, she looked very young, and her striking green eyes betrayed experience that was incongruous with her youth.

Her red-gold hair was vivid even against the flightsuit.

“Flight Officer Mara Jade, reporting as ordered for interview for the new unit.”

Luke waited until the younger pilot settled into the salvaged Y-wing ejector seat sitting opposite his makeshift desk. “Thanks for being so quick,” he said congenially.

The young woman offered a nod and nothing else, her eyes sharp and observant.

“Wedge and I are putting together a squadron,” Luke said without preamble. “I already looked over your record, such as it is. I’m not much for paperwork,” he added with a small smile. “You’re not officially on any active squadron after Blue Squadron was disbanded. Are you interested in joining a new unit?”

“If it means I’m flying, yes,” Mara said. Her voice was clipped and tight.

Controlled, Luke corrected himself. Tightly controlled. “And why do you fly?” He hesitated for a moment. “No. Why do you want to fly after Scarif?”

That question got a reaction, but not the one he expected; her face blanked for a moment into something unreadable. “It’s the only place my head is quiet.”

“Most of your unit was wiped out at Scarif,” Wedge noted. “How did you survive it?”

“Couldn’t make it through the shield gate. I was at the back of the formation when the gate started coming back online. Knew I couldn’t make it and if I pushed it, I’d die.” She offered a small shrug. “After that, I stayed alive.”

Luke studied her, but Mara’s eyes could’ve been blindfolded for all they told him. “Any problems flying with a wingman in the past?”

Mara shook her head slightly. “No. I keep up.”

Definitely not the talkative type. “And if I offer you a position in the squadron we’re putting together, what do you need from your commanding officer to do your job?”

“Clear orders.” She seemed to consider for a moment. “If I’m in your squadron, I follow the orders you give me and no one else’s.”

Wedge shot Luke a concerned look across the desk but didn’t speak.

That was…specific, Luke thought. “I’ll want to evaluate your flying before we make any final decisions,” he said slowly. “I’ll let you know as soon as we can get a training flight scheduled. Thanks.”

Mara stood smoothly, offered another nod, and walked out of the makeshift office without looking back.

Luke looked at Wedge after the door shut. “So, are you ready to tell me the whole story? Because I’m ready to put her in a cockpit and see how she flies.”

Wedge hesitated. “Mara is…complicated.” 

“So make it simple,” Luke replied.

“She’s one of Hera Syndulla’s,” was the reluctant reply.

Luke picked up the flimsi off his desk again. “General Syndulla led that attack on Lothal where she was shot down,” he noted. “But that’s the only record I have of her flying as part of Phoenix Squadron. For that matter, your record shows a lot more time with Phoenix at the base on Atollan than Jade’s record.”

“Because she wasn’t part of Phoenix. She was part of the Ghost crew.”

Luke set the flimsi back down. “Syndulla’s personal ship? That VCX freighter?”

Wedge nodded. “Mara was part of the Ghost crew when I first met her. While I was with Phoenix, I was aware she existed, but Hera always kept her away from anything public, and Mara wasn’t the sort to volunteer for missions. I didn’t really get to know her until after I transferred to Massassi Base, when Hobbie and I caught her moping around the hangar. It was Hobbie’s idea to teach her to fly, because she clearly didn’t have anything else to do. I thought Syndulla was going to flay us alive when she found out, but at that point we’d been training Mara for months. Hera looked over the records, made us swear that we were going to treat her like a real pilot and not some kid mascot shavit, and then let it go.” Wedge shrugged. “She’s good, Luke, don’t get me wrong, but…”

“But you’re worried about Syndulla,” Luke finished.

“You haven’t dealt with her,” Wedge said wryly. “She’s a fine officer and squadron commander, but she gets very protective about her crew.”

Luke leaned back in his chair and considered. Political and personal stakes with people I don’t know yet. “So we don’t make a final decision yet,” he said aloud. “Let me fly with her and evaluate her myself. If I don’t think she can fit with the unit we’re building, it’s not an issue. If she does fit, we’ll figure out how to handle any personal complications.”

Wedge grimaced, but nodded. “I’ll get everything lined up for a training flight tomorrow. We’ll bring in the whole shortlist and run a patrol.”

Luke nodded. “Tomorrow, then.”