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Colonel Broak Vessery had survived fighting the Rebellion and the New Republic. He’d survived deserting the Empire. He’d survived abandoning Ysanne Isard’s faction. He’d survived pirates, merchant guilds, and various governments in the years since. He had never, though, taken on the Empire directly prior to this escapade. And that mistake I may not survive.
Vessery looked down at his torso, where a wet patch continued to spread from an epicenter to the right of his stomach, where his jumpsuit was shredded. A blaster bolt might have cauterized its wound, but no, of course he had to get hit with shrapnel from a grenade explosion. Vessery calculated he had less than fifteen minutes before he lost consciousness, and less than half an hour before he bled out. I very much doubt I’ll get that long, though.
He’d managed to find himself a hidey-hole in a storage room in the airbase, but it was only a matter of time before Imperial troopers found him. They’d scattered the rest of his infiltration team, killing or capturing most of them, and Vessery didn’t imagine they were lucky enough that the damage they’d done to the base’s sensors was permanent. He could hear scattered blaster fire every now and again, sure signs that his team wasn’t completely finished, but this mission was over. A failure.
He had no bacta patches, so he pulled his vibroblade from its sheath and carefully cut one of his sleeves away, then did the same to the bloodied fabric around his wound. He carefully folded the sleeve and pressed it against the wound, biting down a scream as he did. It might not do any good. Even if his efforts kept him alive long enough to be captured, he might wish he hadn’t. But Broak Vessery was not a man who rolled over.
Either an eternity or a couple minutes later, Vessery heard an explosion. Then another, and another. The ground shook beneath him, and the storage room’s dim light flickered. Vessery perked up, but could not calculate whether that was more likely to be good news or bad. His team hadn’t brought large explosives—they weren’t intended to be noticed, after all. Has someone gotten their hands on a TIE? The explosions continued.
A series of indistinct shouts started—a group of frantic people—and grew closer. Vessery tried to sit up, and tightened his grip on his blaster. The shouts sounded like they were right outside his door…and then continued, fading once more, as the group ran past.
Seconds ticked by, then minutes. Then Vessery heard footsteps outside his door once more, and it slid open with a hiss. Vessery tried to stay still in his corner, hoping he’d go unnoticed.
“Just a storage room,” he heard a familiar voice say, then the door slid shut.
And back open. “Who’s there?” the same voice called.
Vessery kept his blaster raised but dared to speak. “D…Dorset?” he stuttered.
A figure entered the room, backlit against the room’s single light, but clearly not a stormtrooper. She all but ran the rest of the way to Vessery and slid to her knees next to him. “Colonel, what the hell happened?”
“What are you…what are you doing here?”
Dorset turned back to the door. “Watch the door, Ges. He’s wounded. I can’t move him yet.”
Vessery heard a grunt in response. “I thought…I was under the impression that your superiors did not approve this joint operation.”
One side of Dorset’s mouth twitched upward in a grin. “I called in a favor. They changed their minds.”
“W…why?”
Dorset was pulling items out of a backpack that she’d set on the floor. “Need to get this blood stopped, then patch you up. You really infiltrated an Imperial base without basic medical gear?”
“Lieutenant Havamal had it.”
“Well that’ll teach you.”
Dorset set to work, cleaning the wound, applying coagulant, and all but covering his side in bacta patches. She also gave him painkillers—she lifted a bottle to his mouth, took his chin in her hand while he drank, then dropped pills into his mouth. After each step she checked in with Ges.
“Any news?”
Ges’s gravelly voice came from the doorway. “Air support reports they were caught off-guard. Imperial fighters remain grounded. Ground team is still pacifying but they’ve found a couple other wounded."
Vessery perked up. “Captain…”
Dorset knew he didn’t mean her. “Have they located Captain Trement?”
Ges mumbled into his comlink for a moment. “Yes. She’s stable.”
Dorset clapped her hand on Vessery’s shoulder. “She’ll be alright, colonel. We’ll get you all out of here.”
Ges called from the corridor a few moments later. “Rogue Leader wants us to hold. Says there is a squad still holding out, protected by energy fields and an anti-starfighter gun emplacement. They’re going to need time to take it out.”
Dorset sighed and slumped to a seat next to Vessery. “Guess we’ll be here a bit longer.”
Vessery coughed and turned to her. “You called in a favor from the Rogues?”
Dorset shrugged. “I’ve lived a life, Vessery. Built some relationships. Some of my contacts are powerful people.”
“Did you tell them who the favor was for?”
“Not…specifically. Just said I needed to help a stupid contractor friend of mine who was in over his head on a heist that he should not have tried to pull after Special Missions turned him down. Why?”
Vessery shrugged off the insults. “Well…let’s just say they might not be thrilled to be risking their lives to save mine.”
“Wait…Vessery…what the hell did you do to the Rogues?”
Vessery looked down and started inspecting his blaster. “I was mostly…simply present for some indignities that I am certain they’d rather forget. I wouldn’t say I did anything per se.”
Dorset clearly did not believe him, but she didn’t press. She laid her head back against the wall behind them and sighed, staying silent for a few moments. “It really was stupid of you to try to pull this off, you know.”
“The base was underdefended and wouldn’t be for long. If it had been your call, would you really have let that intel go to waste?”
“No, I wouldn’t have,” Dorset conceded. “But it wasn’t my call. And when Zessella said no, you should not have tried to infiltrate without backup. You idiot.”
Vessery shrugged, then winced. “We’ve succeeded with worse odds. As have the pilots currently providing you air support, mind you.”
They sat in silence for another minute. “Look,” Vessery said, his tone softer. “My crew does not have supply lines. We don’t have a home office or tax revenue. When we see an opportunity to steal fighters and parts, we really can’t afford to be overly cautious.”
Dorset sighed. “Yeah, I suppose. The Rebellion certainly didn’t make the same acceptable casualty calculations that the New Republic does.”
“No. Different worlds altogether. And let me tell you…the death wish that Rebel cells seemed to have absolutely terrified many of us serving the Empire.”
Dorset laughed. “And now what the New Republic has are veterans who were too good to die for the Rebellion and rookies who want to be just like them.”
“Which is also terrifying.”
“That why you left?”
“No…no, captain, I left because the Empire did not deserve us. Or rather, I should say I left the Empire because Isard coerced us, and then I left her because neither she nor the Empire deserved us. Rebel idealists may have had death wishes, but Imperial commanders wish death upon their subordinates, with no interest in risking their own lives. The Empire uses up worlds and people alike.” Vessery turned to look at Dorset again. “I wanted to get out before that happened to my pilots.”
“And before it happened to you?”
Vessery shrugged again, not noticing the pain this time. “I’m not sure it hasn’t.”
Dorset shook her head. “This one’s a fluke, colonel. I’ve seen you exercise some truly impressive creativity in the time we’ve known each other. I’ve seen you inspire your people. I’ve seen you get results.” She slapped his knee. “You’re a lot of things, Broak Vessery, but you’re not used up.”
Another round of explosions shook the room, and then they heard chatter on Ges’s comlink. “Alright,” he called into the storage room, “Rogues report clear for the moment, but we have incoming. We have to get out now.”
Dorset hopped to her feet, and Vessery tried to do the same. He gasped in pain as he pushed off the wall, and slumped back against it. Dorset squatted before him and reached out, putting her arms around him under his armpits, and pressing her chin to his shoulder. “Ready?” she said into his ear.
She smelled of flowers, but he wasn’t sure what kind. “Ready,” he grunted, and she pulled. Together, they got him to his feet. Dorset put an arm around his waist, careful to steer clear of his wound, and drew her blaster with the other hand. Vessery had his at the ready.
Ges was in the doorway, blaster rifle raised, staring down the hallway. Vessery could see now that Ges was a furry Trunsk, and he was never sure if a Trunsk was frowning or if it was just an effect of their tusks peeking from their lips. He was certainly never going to ask.
Ges led the way, sweeping each corridor as their reached junctions, calling Dorset and Vessery forward once it was secure. They reached a landing pad within minutes, just in time to see a pair of X-wings flash by overhead, currently in a patrol pattern. Ges gestured at a nearby TIE Bomber. “We can wait for a shuttle pickup, or we can finish the mission. Can you get him out of here in that?”
Dorset grinned. “Wanna steal starfighters after all, colonel?”
“If there’s a hyperdrive-equipped ship in orbit, by all means, my friends.”
“Of course. We came prepared, after all.”
Dorset led Vessery to the bomber as Ges sprinted off toward a nearby TIE Interceptor. He hovered, keeping watch, while Dorset slowly helped Vessery up the ladder into the bomber’s cockpit. He settled into the passenger seat and strapped himself in, while Dorset went through an abbreviated flight checklist and got them into the air.
Within minutes they were landed on board a rickety freighter that Dorset assured him was a valuable Starfighter Command asset; Ges, two other stolen TIEs, and a shuttle full of commandos and Vessery’s wounded team joined them. Once the Rogues were formed up in escort formation around the freighter, they jumped, leaving Imperial reinforcements behind.
Ship’s crew rushed to Dorset’s bomber, helping her carefully extricate Vessery from the craft and lower him onto a gurney. They started to push it out of the hangar, but Vessery grabbed Dorset’s wrist.
“You came for me,” he whispered. “You blew a favor from Rogue Squadron for me.”
Dorset shrugged it off. “I owed you one.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Okay fine, I stopped counting.”
He took her hand. “Thank you.” The crew led the gurney away, and Dorset leaned back against the bomber wing with a sigh.