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“You’re a pilot?” “Yeah, all my life.”
Anakin Skywalker was so ready to fly away. He had a poor life, in a poor planet and he wanted out. He wanted to get away from the sand and the slavery and the way he was going to do this was by flying away from it all.
Then the ship came from the sky and gave him new goals, and an easier way to fly away.
He went into the Pod race. There were so many reasons not to but he wanted to. He needed to and his blood pumped vigorously to his heart as the adrenaline revved up like an engine. He could do this.
Turn, turn, turn, dodge a little, fly to the slid, nice and slim line, holding on when it seemed that everything was going to fall apart. He was a child and he was on a mission and despite the danger that clung to the entire Pod he flew like his life depended on it. In a way, it did.
He was always a dramatic pilot, turning incessantly and unnecessarily, but it was his freedom. In the air he was free in ways that he never was as a child and he was abusing every chance he got to fly a little too fancy, or a little too dangerous. He was piloting his own course now, danger be damned.
“I’m the pilot”
Bodhi Rook had wanted to be better than his childhood had given him. He wanted to fly, wanted to prove himself, and when they didn’t give him the chance he took whatever flying position they offered. He went into the cargo ships and took to the skies, back and forth he travelled, delivering the goods and the messages he was commissioned to do.
It took bravery to step out of the persona they had forced him into and take a mission he shouldn’t do. To deliver a message he shouldn’t have.
He was the pilot that kickstarted hope. He was the pilot that gave them the trail to the plans that would free them all. He was the one who put his life on the line to deliver the precious cargo.
He was tortured for it: his mind evaded and probed as he screamed for help that didn’t come.
He was the pilot that saved them. He was the pilot that took to the skies with a load of rebels and delivered them to where they needed to be. He took them to Eadu and Yavin IV and then onto Scarif. He was the pilot that smuggled the troops onto the beaches of Scarif.
He was the rogue pilot who provided a new hope.
“You bet I could! I’m not such a bad pilot myself!”
Luke Skywalker had always wanted to fly. He had wanted to get off of his planet, get away from the moisture farm that was draining the life out of him. He wanted freedom from his family - the chance to go and be someone else. He wanted to find the thing that connected him to the family he had lost. He thought flying might give him the answers he longed for.
Flying was in his veins. Like his father before him he was flying from a young age, flying Pods around his neighbourhood, but he wanted more. He wanted the stars and the skies above, he wanted to be one with the galaxy. He wanted to take off and find somewhere else to land. He wanted to take off and find something.
He joined the Rebellion, joined the movement his friends had flocked to before him. He flew right into the heart of the Death Star, flew right into the very core of the enemy and fired that shot. He closed his eyes, breathed in deep with the Force and fired directly into the core.
He was a true pilot for the first time and he was a damn hero.
Luke had wanted to fly, to connect him with his family. To find the part of his soul that called to him to leave Tatooine. He was as so like his father, so eager to fly, fly, fly away.
“That’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in twelve seconds.”
Han Solo was a smuggler by trade, and his trade allowed him him to go wherever he wanted to go find work. He was his own man, to the extent that he owed his job and his debt to his boss, but it was his own damn life. He could go wherever he wanted to.
It was just him and his co-pilot in their home. She was his home and she was his heart and Han Solo wasn’t Han Solo without the Millenium Falcon.
She was the most majestic beast in the whole galaxy. She may not look like much but she was clever and sleek, slim lined and sneaky. She was the perfect hold for smuggling. She could store the cargo legally and illegally in all of the spaces she had. She was the perfect home for two criminals wandering on the wrong side of the law. She was the constant he was always fighting to get to. If someone took his ship, his girl, away from him then damn them all because she was his ship and no one else should be flying her. No one else was deserved to fly her except her true pilot and those he trusted.
He had no ethical qualms about taking jobs, so long as he got paid. It was time he got to spend doing what he was good at, doing what he knew. Just him and Chewie and their Falcon.
“Red two standing by”
Biggs Darklighter was born on a sand planet staring up at the skies above. The thing about Tatooine was that sometimes the sky was so full of stars it was so easy to cluster them together and join them all together dot-by-dot. At other times the sky was empty save from the suns.
Biggs always wanted to fly. He knew his place in the world and he wanted to be up there with all of the stars.
He spent his youth racing Pods with his friend Luke. They flew as far and fast as they could but they always came home.
When he was old enough he went off to the Academy. From there he went into the Rebellion. Now he could fly for real. He had a purpose for flying, he had a mission.
He had his own squadron, his own call sign, his own place. He belonged with a group of people similar to himself. With the same ideals and the same focus. They all wanted to be pilots. They all wanted to fly for the Rebellion. So that’s what they did.
They were in a meeting, a briefing. This was what his life had been leading up to. This was the moment.
“Red three standing by.”
Wedge Antilles was a pilot for the Resistance in the heat of a war. He was as integral as the rest of the pilots, as ready to die to for the cause. He knew that. They all knew that. They were all prepared to go as far as they needed to for their cause to succeed.
The first mission they had where they had the opportunity to turn the time they went in with all they had. They had new pilots alongside old, numerous squadrons all together in the skies. Attack formations zeroing in on their target. The not-moon hanging in the sky, the weapon ready to blow them all away.
Wedge went in, ducking and diving, shooting down TIE fighters so that one person could reach the target. He cleared the target off Luke Skywalker’s back so that he could be the one to blow it up. It was their first major success, the first major push back. It was the first battle that started a trail of success for them.
His call sign changed over the years as the squad got changed up. Red Threes dead around him, battle of Hoth, battle of Endor. He was a survivor. He didn’t mean to be. He was just as ready to give his life for the Rebellion. He was just the lucky one.
He was the one who out flew the danger. He was the one who flew fastest and farthest. He was the one to make it through to the other end. He was the only one to make it through all of it. Red Squadron had died and changed around him but he had made it to their victory.
“I can fly anything”
Poe Dameron was the Resistance’s best pilot: the son of a woman just as famed for her skill. His parents’ hearts had beat with the life of the Rebellion and they gave it to him. They gave him the skill he had, the hereditary instincts that made him a natural in the air and a great asset as well as a person.
He was the one that could be relied on to do the General’s bidding and throw his whole heart into it. He was brave and fearless, and above all else, human. He was cocky at times, but he had earned it with his track record.
He was one of the oldest pilots left; most pilots didn’t live long enough to see their children become reality. His parents had. His parents had lived through the wars and the battles and flown to land to build a home to raise him. He was raised on the stories of their life: the missions and the flights. He grew up anted to be a pilot, wanting to be a hero - just like his parents.
That’s what he became. He became a hero of the Resistance, to make his parents proud, to make the General proud. This was his family and he would do whatever it takes to make them proud and to ensure their safety.
“Who’s the pilot?” “I am.”
Rey lived in the shell of a AT-AT by herself, planning the day that she would leave. She didn’t like to think of it, prefered to think instead that her family would return for her, but sometimes she wanted to. She wanted to fly but she was grounded. Her head was in the skies: in the helmet of a X-Wing fighter who had fallen before.
She took to the Falcon naturally, sliding in with ease to the ship she had labelled garbage and flew it with grace, looping it up and round and round, evading capture and flying it with such ease and expertise it had been like she was destined to fly such a historic ‘piece of junk.’ She was amazed as her co-pilot, a man she had just met who trusted her to fly them away to where they needed to be.
She had never been in a ship like this. She had never needed to fly something like this. Yet here she was, flicking switches and turning buttons with a sudden knowledge of how this particular Corellian freighter worked. She knew how to bypass the systems, how to cheat her way into getting the old girl to work.
She was fresh blood in the pilot’s seat and yet she took to it with an old grace.