Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’ve heard a hundred stories about the Jedi. They terrified me as a boy on Coruscant…”    Del Meeko to Luke Skywalker, after Luke saved his life on Pillio

[0745 Galactic Standard Time, Lothal Year 3252, Coruscant, Senate Plaza]

The boy pressed his face against the turbolift, mesmerized by the sky rising high above the never-ending eddies and flow of all manner of hovercraft in the city below.

“Hands and face off the glass, Del, you’ll leave smudges.”

Del Meeko quickly backed away, but without breaking his gaze toward the view outside. Finally he glanced up at the middle-aged, decidedly grumpy man next to him. “Can we see our house from here?”

“No.”

The curt answer couldn't dampen his spirits. Today was his 7th birthday, and it was going to be the best because his parents granted his birthday wish: he was going to work with Dad. Today he was going to meet Senators from places like Chandrila and Dantooine and maybe even Mon Cala!

“Don’t be disappointed if you don’t meet many senators today,” his dad gruffed, seemingly reading the small boy’s mind. “Most of my job is sitting at a desk. Why you want to sit at a security desk watching mucks all day is beyond me, but happy birthday, Del. Let’s get you your security badge.”

The lift doors opened behind them, and wide-eyed but obedient Del followed his father through what seemed to him a maze of halls and sub-chambers. Eventually they were stationed outside of one of the many Senate entrances, Del with his very own flimsi security tag pinned to his chest.

“Now, the basics of working security.” Dad crouched down to address him face-to-face, and Del was hanging on to his every word. “Just remember EAR. Evaluate, act, reassess.” Dad tapped Del’s right ear with a wink, “That should be easy for you.”

'You’ve got ears like a Bothan’ his older brother Jonn had teased. 'He’ll grow into them,’ Mum tried to be reassuring.

“Most people who work here are too busy for chit-chat with guards, but if anyone addresses you, bow and refer to them as sir or ma’am. If you can’t tell if they’re a sir or ma’am just... just bow and don’t say too much. They’re busy, remember?”

The morning was uneventful as politicians accompanied by clusters of aids rotated throughout the building. Del counted two Ithorians, four Sullustans, one Bothan, and even two Wookiees! Real, live, furry Wookiees in the Galactic Senate! Most of the humanoids didn’t interest Del, but one took an interest in him.

“Good day Agent Meeko, and you must be Agent... Del?” The brown-haired young woman peered down at him with a smile, deciphering the block letters of his name that Del had very carefully written himself on his security tag. Del was taken aback by the sudden attention. All the other creatures passed them by without words, some with a nod toward his father, but no one had stopped to talk to Del, if they even seemed to notice he was there at all.

His father must have felt uncomfortable with Del’s silence. “He’s shy,” he said as if in apology, placing a hand on Del’s shoulder. “Del, this is Senator Amidala from Naboo. It would be polite to bow.” The last sentence was more of a command than a suggestion, but Del couldn’t keep his mouth shut while obeying. Naboo!

"Gungans are born as tadpoles,” he was so excited to blurt out, “they can spit on something five meters away, even while under water!”

The senator seemed caught off guard but was still smiling. “I believe that’s correct, Del. Maybe you are more of a scholar than a security agent?”

His father’s hand tightening on his shoulder reminded Del of his manners.

“Yes ma’am. I can be both, ma’am. I’ll be a good security agent and I’ll keep you safe.” He straightened his spine a much as possible, straining to seem like a strong, capable security agent that he was sure he would one day be. “...ma’am.” He added belatedly, hoping he had followed his orders correctly.

“Keeping people safe is why I’m here.” She glanced left and right before kneeling in front of Del, about to let him in on a secret. “There is fighting in a star system close to my homeworld. I’m going to ask the Senate to send Jedi to help.” She stood and Del’s eyes tracked her smile, wondering if he would ever see anyone so beautiful smile at him like that ever again.

“In the meantime, I’m glad you’re here protecting us, Agent-scholar Del.” She nodded to his father and continued into the Senate hall.

More than a little starstruck, Del nearly missed counting the lanky Gungan that ran past after the senator. Eventually he came to his senses and turned to his father, the taciturn man who had hardly spoken a word all morning.

“Are they going to help her? Are the Jedi going help the Senator?” Immediately Del recognized his mistake. It was one thing for the Senator to mention, but for someone in his own family to use the j -word...

“Of course they will. She’s powerful and important. Those are the people the jedi help.” His dad’s response was less vicious than Del was expecting, but he didn’t push his luck and dropped the topic.

[1835 GST, same day, Coruscant, mid-level]

Birthday celebrations for a family such as the Meeko’s were nothing extravagant, but Del was on top of the world as he scarfed down jogan fruit cake and recounted (for the umpteenth time) his encounter with Senator Amidala, she called him agent-scholar and he was going to be great agent one day so he could keep her safe -

“Ugh, it’s time.” Jonn, the Meeko’s eldest child at age 13, groaned. “Del is finally old enough to have a crush.” Albi, the middle son who was thrilled to have the teasing focused on someone else for once, jumped in, “Tell us again, Del, how she’s sooo preeeeetty !”

“It’s not that.” Seven-year-old humans generally don't appear stern or intimidating, but Del was trying his hardest. “It’s that I’m going to grow up and be a security agent. A really really great security agent.”

“If you want to be a security agent, you’ll be an amazing one.” Mum kissed the top of his head as she gathered dishes from dinner. “But you don’t have to do the same thing your father does. You can be whatever you want when you grow up.”

Del chewed a too-large bite of cake and considered his response. Thinking of the Wookiees and Gungan that towered over him today, he found a satisfying answer. “When I grow up, I want to be tall.”

Snickering from his brothers ensued. “You can’t choose that, nerf-herd – hey!” Mum balanced dishes in one hand to smack the back of Jonn’s head with the other. “It’s his birthday. Be nice.” Del may have stuck out an icing-covered tongue at his oldest brother, who grumbled under his breath.

Dad stumbled out of the kitchen and returned to his seat. He liked to think that he was sneaky with the bottles in the kitchen. Everyone, including his youngest son, knew that he wasn’t. It’s not that he was dangerous or destructive after he snuck off to the bottles; it’s that he was so loud .

Brothers exchanged knowing looks as Dad launched into his tirade of the night, this evening’s topic a common one: the jedi.

“...it’s not a problem if they don’t look down! They just... they don’t look at us. Anything below their shiny, ivory temple is just...” he trailed off, staring angrily at some point on the wall. “...trash. Everything below is trash. And remember your cousin!” He turned to Del, placing a heavy hand on his shoulder that felt different from the guidance that it had communicated earlier that day.

“Your cousin, Aisin? The Jedi made him lose his job. They... they controlled his mind, Del. Made him do things he didn’t want to do!”

Mum returned with a terse attempt at diplomacy, “It wasn’t a good job, anyway.” Del knew the word gangs was related to his cousin’s job, but mentioning it made Mum upset. He didn’t want anyone upset. It was his birthday, and he wanted to eat cake and read about the two-mouthed Ithorians he had seen today.

“They’re power-hungry,” Dad continued, “we’re just bugs they step on to get their way... Steps to step on the way to... like bugs.” His imagery was confusing, but it always ended the same way. “Monsters, my boys. Never forget: the jedi are monsters. You can’t trust them.”

It’s frightening to a young boy to look into his father’s eyes and see fear, and to wonder if someday the Jedi would step on him and control his mind... or whatever was so scary that it made his dad go back to the bottles.

[1710 GST, Lothal Year 3258, Coruscant, mid-level]

Del squinted at the array of wires splayed out in his lap, determined to figure out something that would make this work. He hadn’t made much progress and was deciding to blame that on Jonn and Dad’s talk distracting him.

“Separatists just don’t realize how good they had it. With Palpatine leading, at least there will be some kind of consequence!”

“I wish there was a real army, something I could be a part of. Clones don’t even know what they’re fighting for.”

“The Jedi lead them to be slaughtered - they’re expendable. If you want to fight, Jonn, you need to be the opposite of that.”

Recently Jonn had become obnoxiously proud that he could talk to Dad about ‘adult’ topics, which seemed to revolve around the war, becoming a soldier, and how great it is that Chancellor Palpatine was so much more aggressive than those ridiculous do-nothing senators that Dad saw all day. Del thought he sounded like a nagging protocol droid, mindlessly echoing whatever Dad said. Albion offered some half-hearted comment to seem included in the conversation, but soon turned to Del. “Still trying to get it to work?”

‘It’ referred to a small Arakyd surveillance droid, or at least the shell of one. A whole batch ordered for Senate Security had shown up defective (‘sabotaged,’ according to Dad, but Del wasn’t sure if that were true or if it was the bottle talking), and somehow dad had managed to sneak one home . “For your… projects,” he had said, gesturing to the mess of circuitry that, thanks to Del, frequently covered their dining table.

“I’ll work on it more tomorrow.” Del said as he heard Mum at the door, back from visiting her sister Della. I will get it working tomorrow. It will help Mum feel safe. He valiantly framed his efforts as for Mum’s benefit, but truthfully Del wanted the security as well. The brothers were under strict orders to never separate when going to and from school, and to never make any stops along the way. Del wasn’t sure if the neighborhood was really rougher now than it was a few years ago, or if he had been sheltered from the threats when younger.

Mum was at the door. But hadn’t she just left a little while ago?

Del was twelve years old, and seeing his mother’s face at this moment was the first time in his life he felt his stomach drop. A kind of dread entirely unknown to naive children filled the cavity where his stomach had been a moment before. Even Dad and Jonn seemed at a loss of how to respond to Mum’s tear-streaked face.

“They’re dead. Aisin and Della. Manglers.”

The weeks that followed were a blur. Manglers were just one of the gangs fighting for dominance in the mid-levels of Coruscant – was Aisin involved with them? Was he some kind of rival? Del never found out. Dad had been saving both credits and favors for years to get his family an apartment in a higher level. It was time to cash all of those in. Moving, changing schools, and soon Jonn was gone. Dad knew an old coworker leading a security training program on Corellia – it would be a good start for him.

Albi quickly filled Jonn’s absence at Dad’s side, in their discussions agreeing that Aisin had never been the same after that jedi fierfek messed with his head. Del spent more time with his droids and his studying, trying to support his family in his own way.

[0815 GST, Six Months Later, Coruscant, upper-level]

The dread was back, this time pressing in from all sides. Del forced himself to take a deep breath and look up to spy pieces of the sky between the serpentine paths of hovercraft between buildings. It didn’t help; it couldn’t block out the noise. The news was everywhere.

“The Jedi attack on my life has left me scarred…” The Chancellor – no, Emperor? Spoke from every screen and holo on the planet it seemed, broadcast in unison to build an overwhelming chorus from every angle. Del was supposed to be on his way to school, but morbid curiosity controlled his path. Finally, he spotted it, the smoke billowing behind clone troopers whose armor he couldn’t place. The Jedi Temple was burning.

Albi was by his side, grabbing his arm. “Let’s go home. We should check on Mum.”

Why did it feel as though the world had turned upside-down? Wasn’t this what he should have been expecting, what his father had predicted: the Jedi were the enemy of the Republic, the enemy of Palpatine. Their thirst for power had grown too strong and had led to complete betrayal.

Two weeks later, they received a comm from Jonn.

“I’m enlisting!” His blue face in the holo was lit up with excitement. “In the new Imperial Army – we’ll be tracking down those kriffing jedi scum! And putting the Separatist worlds in their place. Finally, the galaxy has a leader!”

A year ago, Mum might have scolded her boys for cursing. Now she barely reacted to Jonn’s words, as if she already knew what he had called to tell them.

It was worse, if that could be possible, when Del learned what had happened to Amidala. The Senator from Naboo, the beautiful woman with kind eyes and brilliant smile for a small boy, was killed by the Jedi. The official story was that she was arguing in defense of Emperor Palpatine when the Jedi strangled her, and in Del’s eyes she was canonized as a martyr for the Empire. Dad was right about the Jedi. Only a monster would extinguish such a bright light from the galaxy.

Albion was quick to follow in Jonn’s footsteps. He would have to wait one more year to be old enough for enlistment, but his life during that year only revolved around Imperial military service. It felt to Del like he was already gone.

Evaluate. Act. Reassess. His father’s words echoed in his head whenever Del felt unsure in a situation. To evaluate, Del scanned their tiny apartment. There was Mum, too quiet in the kitchen. Dad was nodding off in a chair; Albi deep in his datapad scanning for updates on a recent military operation. Wires connected to the circuitry of Del’s latest project were spread across the table, and he wondered if there were any possible action that could put the pieces together again.

[1920 GST, Lothal Year 3264, Coruscant, upper-level]

“I still have some connections in the Senate, they know people getting the Academy here started – you don’t have to do this.”

Del set his jaw and prepared to recite his arguments for the fifth time in as many days. Dad was happy to see his two older sons enlist, but something was holding him back from endorsing his youngest’ plan. Maybe he still saw Del as his smallest, most vulnerable child, but that must only be because his brothers were not standing next to him for comparison. In the years since Albi left, Del shot up, now taller than any member of his family. The lanky affectations of adolescence were gradually becoming comfortable, and his good-natured attitude had developed into a kind of confidence.

“Enlisting was good enough for Jonn and Albi, and it’s good enough for me.” Before Del could continue on to point #2, Mum interrupted.

“You’ll comm us often? Surely you won’t just fly off into the sunset and break your mum’s heart.” Del took Mum’s hand and kissed it – “I would never dream of it.”

“Look Aden, he’s charming. My baby is charming! He’ll break hearts across the galaxy.” Now Del was blushing, and his father still looked unsure. Having Mum on his side was a surprise, but she had been walking on air ever since Jonn called last month and told them he got married . If Del was going to enlist, he had better do it soon before Jonn called again to tell of an impending divorce.

Dad sighed, as frustrated with their current impasse as Del was. “It’s not that enlisting is not good Del – but why are you set against officer training? With your grades, your talent – that you know your brothers don’t necessarily have – you could be something special.”

This crux of the issue, that Del had turned over in his head for months, was hard to explain. There is a simple trait that Del has, difficult for him to identify in himself yet obvious to most people who interact with him. It’s something that developed as he excelled in school but saw his brothers struggle; something nurtured as he recognized the fortune he was born into, even as he acknowledged the difficulties his family had faced. He reached a point of maturity that many sentient beings never reach throughout their entire lives, which is an understanding that it is not necessarily talent, or hard work, or any cosmic sense of justice that determines one’s lot in life, but simply luck that affects circumstances far beyond one individual’s control. Del thought he had been lucky so far, and that was good enough for him - he felt no need to ask the universe for more.

Del Meeko was humble. He didn’t need to be special.

There were more arguments with his parents, more points made and appeals to both reason and emotion. In the end, Del was gone within two weeks of signing with a recruiter, shipped off to basic training on Eriadu.

Chapter Text

“Vardos was our home, Hask.”

“The Empire is our home.”

Iden Versio and Gideon Hask, during Project Cinder’s execution on Vardos

[2010 Galactic Standard Time, Lothal Year 3260, Kuat, Imperial Shipyard E4-10]

Gideon scratched around the collar of his too-stiff shirt, regretting his persistent arguments that convinced his parents to let him come tonight. The party was celebrating the christening of a new Star Destroyer, the Solaris; the event had turned the orderly, sparse shipyard into a place of fine dining and crowded pleasantries. After an hour of politely nodding to officers in nearly identical uniforms with nearly identical personalities, Gideon thought a night in with their nanny droid Fourjay didn’t sound too bad.

I’m old enough that I don’t need a nanny, he thought glumly, but not old enough to care about whatever these people are yakking on and on about. He thought there would be interesting people at this party - he thought there would be starfighter pilots. He had taken the shipyard tours dozens of times and seen the gleaming black twin ion engines’ assembly. Grown-ups liked to ooh and ahh over the Star Destroyers produced in the Kuat shipyards, but Gideon thought the TIEs were much more impressive. 

Everyone at school knew that TIEs were way cooler, too. The only kid who wanted to pretend to be a bridge officer was Jaden, and he was kind of weird. At school, Gideon was Rathtar One, leading his friends' Rathtar Squad as they zoomed imaginary TIEs around the outdoor rec area and destroyed any rebels (usually younger students) in their path. But here at the party, he was just Gideon Hask, son of Imperial Shipyard East’s Chief Engineers, and bored out of his mind.

“What a fantastic educational experience,” the man in white, denoting him as an intelligence official, was ingratiating himself with the Hask family, “for a child, the future of the Empire, to learn about the might of Imperial shipbuilding!” 

“Gid’s keen on being an officer one day, and we’re sure he’ll make a fine one. Perhaps he’ll be under your command, Director Krennic?” Gideon’s father replied. His parents were proud of him, Gideon knew, and they were right. He was determined to be a fine officer, hopefully one that got to fly a lot. 

“Nothing would please me more.” Krennic answered, and Gideon had to fight an eyeroll at everyone just being so polite to each other, without actually talking about anything interesting. Surely one of these officers had to have some stories of outsmarting the enemy, of a time they had taken on pirates and rebels and saved the day. What was the point of joining the Imperial Navy otherwise? Yet so far all he had heard was chit-chat about promotions and assignments and ‘have-you-heard-the-news’ on whatever the Senate was currently doing. 

Krennic droned on in his self-aggrandizing manner, “Unfortunately I cannot stay for the tour. My work keeps me busy, as you know.” The adults’ talk continued for a few more minutes until Krennic left towards the shuttle that was waiting to take him back to whatever command post the Empire had assigned him to. 

He gets to leave, lucky. Gideon was grumbling again to himself. His father had noticed his sour face and was ready to scold him when his mother intervened.

“You must be hungry, Gid, we’ve barely had a chance to eat tonight. Why don’t you stay here and grab something while your father and I start the tour?”

Mother seemed to have a special sense for knowing when her son needed to eat, and she gave him an out from rubbing shoulders with snobbish officers. Well, metaphorical shoulders. Gideon hadn’t yet had the growth spurt that some of his friends had, but he was certain he would catch up in height soon enough. He scanned the serving droids with their rotating platters as his parents headed up into the belly of the behemoth, the Solaris , and finally decided on his meal.

With so many officers focused on boarding for the tour, Gideon had little competition in reaching his target. He stuffed his pockets (slyly, he imagined) with Mon Cala eel sushi and imported chocolates. Now he just needed a secure place to enjoy his feast where he wouldn’t be accosted by someone telling him he was the future of the Empire for the fifth time tonight. He walked along the nearest wall of the hangar until he found the entrance to a maintenance tunnel, and soon he was clambering inside, ignoring the ‘Authorized Use Only’ placard above the opening. 

The tunnels were nearly a meter high and just as wide, built to allow service droids to quickly ferry small tools and materials between various production areas. Gideon and his friends had first discovered them when a school tour got delayed - they were waiting in a hangar for so long , what else were they to do but play Pilots & Pirates? Sure, they got in loads of trouble when the teacher discovered where they ran off to, but his team won by hiding in these tunnels, so Gideon thought the trouble was worth it.

He was quite content munching in the dark, his feet propped up on the wall in front of him, until his eyes fully adjusted and he noticed a silent face observing him from further down the tunnel. He nearly choked on his sushi as he stuttered, “H-hey, you’re not supposed to be in here!”

The face moved towards him, and now Gideon could see it was attached to a human body in a standard grey officer's uniform, much less frightening than when it had seemed a floating head. 

“Neither are you, are you?” The man was nearly whispering, and while Gideon had been ready to bolt and tattle a moment ago, he now realized his predicament. Complaining that someone was hiding in the maintenance tunnels meant he would have to explain that he was hiding in the maintenance tunnels. He got in enough trouble last time - it would be better to make this officer his ally.

“I… I just wanted some of the fancy food, to eat without getting lectured.” He might have to offer more to convince the man. “Do you want some?” He held out a piece of sushi as a gift of friendship, only slightly deformed from being squished in his pocket. He wasn’t sure in the darkness, but it looked like the man almost smiled.

“No thanks, I already ate my stash. I’m Kelton. What’s your name?”

“I’m Gid.” After a moment of consideration, he expanded, “Gideon Hask.” The name ‘Hask’ meant that shipyard crews and visiting officers were extra nice to him, if only to be in the good graces of his parents. He hoped it would be enough to get Kelton on his side.

The officer's face changed again, flickering so quickly Gideon couldn’t tell if it had really happened or was something he imagined in the dim light.

“You should come with me, Gid. We can explore these tunnels a bit.”

The haste in his voice triggered a voice of suspicion in the back of Gideon’s mind, and it prompted him to become more stubborn.

“No. I’m going to stay right here and eat my dinner.”

Kelton drew closer, and now Gideon could see his expression was one of panic. “Look, Gid -” He was interrupted by a soft beep from the chrono on his arm. He glanced at it and started retreating.

“I can’t stay Gid. Don’t leave this tunnel, ok? You should be safe here.”

Kelton disappeared into the darkness, and Gideon sat frozen, his thoughts torn among don’t trust him and safe from what and you’re supposed to listen to grown-ups and he didn't introduce himself by rank? He decided that he needed to find his parents right away.

He had just poked his head out of the tunnel when blinding light and the screeching of rent metal came crashing from overhead. Gideon instinctively scooted back into the darkness; it was too bright and it wasn’t just because his eyes had adjusted to the tunnel, something was wrong . His ears were ringing and he couldn’t tell where the noise was coming from. Alarms blended with the sounds of screams with the striking booms like fireworks that were far too close, shaking the floor beneath him. He couldn’t see, couldn’t understand the noise, and then he was struggling to breathe, clawing his way down the tunnel and away from the smoke billowing behind him. 

Mother, Father , the urgency of needing to find his parents forced him to pause and turn back toward the entrance. He stayed crouched in the tunnel, trembling, and when the smoke stinging at his eyes seemed to clear, he took a few wary steps out. 

The Solaris, hovering on stilts above the party moments before, was broken in two as if snapped by the hands of an angry giant. Fires flickered from deck to deck along each side of the bisection, shrapnel still plummeting in the chasm between. 

Gideon’s first reaction was denial. This kind of destruction all around him, chunks of scorched durasteel and shattered glass reflecting firelight, this only happened in holos, in fake explosions made for action stories. Not in real life. Not like this. Not on the ship where his parents - 

The burning in his chest and sharp metal smell in the smoky air confirmed that this was real.

Stumbling forward, he saw the shape of a hand reaching up through rubble. Delirious, he grabbed it, desperate to find someone that could explain what was happening. The charred flesh crumbled against his fingers, and he screamed. 

Gideon did not know how long he wandered and cried, the sound of his wailing drowned out by sirens. He was trapped in terror until the cold metal arms of a KX security droid scooped him up and catalogued its find. 

"Located survivor #2:  human child, male, approximately 10 years of age. Commencing escort to medical facilities."

[0800 GST, two weeks later, Kuat, Hask Estate]

“It is time to rise and shine.” 

Fourjay's tinny voice bounced around the spacious room as the droid opened the thick velvecord curtains of Gideon’s bedroom windows. The Hask Estate was large, larger than most of his friends’ houses, Gideon knew, full of heirlooms and trinkets that had been passed down for generations. On many occasions Gideon had tried to convince his parents that there was enough room in the house for a sibling - brother or sister, he didn’t care which. Maybe if they had listened to him, he wouldn’t be so alone now. A domestic droid was not the same thing as family.

“How are you feeling today, Master Hask?”

“Fine.” 

His answer to Fourjay had been the same every morning since he had been released from Kuati East MedCenter. After several bacta treatments for the smoke damage to his respiratory system, the medical droids had announced him fully healed, asserting that he was exactly the same as he had been before the explosion.

But he didn't feel the same. Nothing would ever feel the same. 

"Did you sleep well, Master Hask?"

"No."

He had slept in the MedCenter, hurt and exhausted and confused, in between the questions from Imperial investigators - how had he survived? He was in the maintenance tunnel, with the man. The man with a fake name and a fake uniform, Gideon learned.

He had barely slept at all since the return home, probably because it didn't feel like home at all. Without his parents saying goodnight, without Father chastising him for not pulling his sheets to military standard, without Mother reminding him to fold his sleep clothes - he was sleeping in a stranger's bed. A stranger who had no mother or father. 

The few times he could sleep were filled with dreams that replayed the christening of the Solaris, each time the ending slightly changing. In these dreams, Gideon was older, bigger, he was stronger. Sometimes he would enter the Solaris and race through the decks, disabling detonators along the way. In others, he would find the stranger in the tunnels and figure out a way to stop him. He dreamed of punching him, over and over and over, until the man was a bloody pulp as mutilated as the bodies Gideon had seen in the wreckage. In his dreams, he couldn't even accurately recall what the man looked like - did he have dark hair or light? Or was his head completely shaven? His appearance didn't matter. All that mattered was that Gideon won. His parents were saved. And the terrorist never lived to see another day. 

“Mr. Enterra is waiting for you downstairs, Master Hask.”

Enterra was a family friend that frequented Hask holiday parties and, Gideon had recently learned, was his parents’ lawyer.

He joined Enterra in his mother’s study, the older man seated behind a large desk covered with copies of various legal forms. He pointed to each flimsi in turn as he explained them to Gideon, “...to be held in trust until your 20th birthday, or upon graduation from tertiary studies, whichever comes first. Now, for the insurance on the house...” Gideon’s eyes wandered around the room and his attention did similarly. He didn’t really understand what the lawyer was saying anyway. 

It was only the second time he had been in this room, previously forbidden to him. The first time he had come here was right after he had been released from the MedCenter, maybe wishing that one of his parents would appear to scold him and usher him out.

They hadn’t. There had only been Fourjay, urging him to the kitchen to eat something.

“ - Gideon? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

The boy shook his head, unsure of how to respond both politely and honestly.

“I’m sorry. Um, Mr. Enterra? What do I do now?”

His father often referred to his instructions to Gideon as ‘orders,’ and if he wanted to be successful in the Imperial military he had better learn to obey them. Good soldiers follow orders. After two weeks of grieving, Gideon was ready to follow orders, to do something , even though he hadn’t the slightest idea what that something was. Please, just tell me what to do to make things better. I’ll follow orders, Father, just like you wanted me to.

Instead of giving orders, the lawyer sighed and gave Gideon a look of pity that made him clench his fists. He didn’t want pity, he wanted action. He wanted anything besides sitting alone in this too-big house. He was relieved when Enterra finally spoke, his words measured and cautious.

“You’ll go to Vardos. The Future Imperial Leaders prep school there is fitting for a Hask. And it should be good for you, to start over in a new place. How does that sound?”

Gideon nodded eagerly. “I’ll go to Vardos,” he echoed, immediately wondering, where is that?

“I’ll make the necessary arrangements and get the details to Fourjay.” Enterra said as he gathered his forms to leave. Once he had packed up, he hesitated to step away.

“Gideon, my boy -” I’m not your boy, Gideon thought, “- you have already sacrificed so much. The Empire will take care of you from now on. The Empire is your home.”

He didn’t like being called ‘boy,’ but the rest of the words stuck with him as he mulled over the breakfast Fourjay had prepared. If the Empire was Gideon’s home, then his home could be anywhere. Maybe he would find it on Vardos, or on a ship he would one day command, or on some far-flung planet he hadn’t heard of yet. Wherever his home would be, maybe he would find a family there, too. That home would be less lonely than the empty house he sat in now.

Chapter Text

“Del Meeko. You worked your way up through the ranks, first as a stormtrooper, then a shoretrooper, then as a TIE pilot. You have received several commendations for courage under fire.”

Admiral Garrick Versio to Lieutenant Commander Del Meeko

[0530 Galactic Standard Time, Lothal Year 3266, Christophsis, Chaleydonia City] 

Christophsis was cold, despite the green-grey rays of sun starting to break between the crystalline towers. The chill came from sideways glances and hushed conversations of human and Rodian citizens alike as the Imperial Army 900th Company 1st Platoon swept through the city on their daily route to the towering refinery on the outskirts. How much did they suffer during the Clone Wars? Del pondered as his squad split off from the others to reach their assignment on Sub-Level 6. This deepest floor of the factory had finished construction several months ago but was yet to be put into use. The value of running security on a completely dormant floor was not lost on Condor Squad. 

“Wow, look at that. It’s just as empty as yesterday.” Private Sheeron Calda liked to couch his complaining as ‘observations.’  

“Look on the bright side Private, there’s almost enough space over here for a makeshift grav-ball field – Meeko, you think we could sneak some tags down here tomorrow for a game?” Sergeant Jastina Adro added. As far as commanding officers go, Del liked Adro. It probably had something to do with her sense of humor and distaste for strict hierarchy, and definitely had nothing at all do with how she leaned towards him and placed her hand on his arm while telling a funny story in the mess hall. 

“Kitehawk Squad, your relief is here!” She called out before he could put together some witty response. 

The returning silence was unwelcoming. 

“Calda, come with me to check the storeroom. Those bums probably fell asleep after playing dejarik all night. Meeko, try to get Kitehawk on comms.”  

“Yes, ma’am.” Specialist Del Meeko was the squad engineer and managed external comms, as well as every other kind of basic tech a squad could need. Sometimes he felt like a pack mule, but he couldn’t complain when he knew he was lucky to get the promotion to specialist within his first year of completing boot camp. Besides, he liked the balance of his position: necessary to the team, but without the responsibility of being in charge. 

“Kitehawk, this is Condor Squad on Sub-Level 6 for shift change. Do you copy?” Safety regulations put several layers of rock and heat-management systems between refinery levels. At this depth, comms would only reach someone on the same level. 

The comm crackled to life.

“Kitehawk Private *bssssh-buzz* under - *pop * don’t understand it *buzzzzzz* so quiet” Del froze as one last word came through: “Help!” 

Private Adjeera, standing next to him, heard it all. The uniform faces of their helmets were blank, their shocked expressions underneath them equally frozen. Their silence was broken by the comm, this time broadcasting the sergeant’s voice. “Privates Ishia and Gronin, book it to the main level and request emergency search and rescue support! We have a major structural problem that will need engineers as well. The rest of you join us in the storeroom and help us figure out what the hell we’re looking at.” 

Chalk it up to dereliction of duty or just plain boredom, but the storeroom was where most squads ended their shift. With little to watch on the empty refinery floor, soldiers tended to gather there for games, gossip, and general comradery. Del made sure the sergeant’s commands were relayed and followed Calda and Private Platten, unprepared for the sight of the massive hole that consumed what had been more than half of the storeroom floor. 

Karabast, was all of Kitehawk in this room when this happened? “What even is this, what happened?” Del didn’t realize he had voiced that last thought. 

Sergeant Adro seemed lost. “Wish I knew. Any response on comms?” 

“Briefly – the signal wasn’t clear, so whoever responded must be…” Del gestured helplessly at the dark pit in front of them. Beyond the edges of durasteel floor panels, the storeroom light reached a couple of meters down to reveal striations of rock layers speckled with the planet’s famous crystal. Calda was pacing, brainstorming some reason that made a missing squad and a giant pit make sense. “There wasn’t an earthquake or anything, right? Other parts of the factory would have felt it. What about sabotage, this was some kind of rebel bomb?” 

“Sabotage an area of the factory that’s not doing anything? I hold no love for terrorists, but I don't think they’re that dumb.” 

“How else do we explain the massive hole in the floor?”  

“Infiltration, maybe. This was just their entrance to the refinery.” That was Platten, in what was the longest string of consecutive words his squadmates had ever heard from him. 

“So now there’s terrorists loose in the factory. Fierfek, we’re going to be more dead than Kitehawk if we’re found responsible for this.” 

Their discussion paused. Del was crouching as near the edge of the hole as he dared, only half listening to the squad’s frantic theorizing. 

“Do you really think they’re all dead?” 

Adjeera spoke up, adamantly grasping for some sense of hope. “No, no, someone is there! I heard them respond to Meeko’s comm.” 

The engineer felt all eyes on him. He took a breath and tried to organize his thoughts, figuring he would have to talk through his theories and hope he’d arrive at something that made sense. 

“Christophsis doesn’t have earthquakes - there’s no tectonic plates or volcanic system. I don’t think this was rebels. Or at least, this wasn’t caused by an explosion or some kind of drill.” Del pointed to the edge of a durasteel panel to make his point. “This isn’t blown out like from a detonator. There’s no scoring or any indication of a burn. A drill would leave marks from friction, or a pattern from the spiral. But there’s no marks at all, it’s like the rock just... it’s just gone. Disappeared, and the floor panels broke down when it did.” 

That’s where his theory ended, but Calda spoke up to fill the silence.

“Ok so... I’m just gonna say it guys. Miniaturized-hyperspace tunneling.” 

Even under her helmet, the sergeant’s eye roll was obvious. “Seriously? You’ve been reading too many novels.” 

“The Empire has sponsored some interesting research into hyperspace tunneling.” That’s what Del had meant to say. Instead it came out as, “the Emp-” 

Then he was falling, the light from the storeroom ceiling suddenly far away; he was vaguely aware of flashes of white as the other troopers fell beside him. 

[???? GST, Lothal Year 3266, Christophsis, ?? underground] 

Del had a thought that rarely ever crossed the mind of an enlisted soldier: Thank the stars for stormtrooper armor . He was pretty battered, but the impact had shattered a shoulder plate into two and spared his bones. Others hadn’t been so lucky. 

“Kriffin mother...” Calda trailed off into expletives of a language Del didn’t recognize as the private tried and failed to stand up atop rubble with an obviously broken ankle. Adjeera helped support him and looked to the sergeant for guidance. 

Adro had nearly immediately got on her feet and started perimeter sweep, calling out to her squad to join her in an adjoining tunnel. “We’re leaving the area where rescue will be looking for us?” Calda sounded incredulous. 

“Look up.” There was a faint amount of light filtered through dust and rocks above them, several floor panels perched precariously on roughed edges. The hole they had fallen through overlapped with the first, and the high walls of rock that surrounded them looked ready to crumble at any moment. “Whoever or whatever made that tunnel, it’s got to be safer than where we’re standing now.” Adjeera nodded in agreement and tugged Calda along. 

They regrouped with the sergeant – all four of them. 

“Platten isn't here. Any chance he could still be above? In some part of the room that didn’t just... collapse, or whatever happened to us?” 

The emotionless stares of four helmets gave no answers. 

Adro sighed and sat down. “We each have about 4 hours of light on our helmets, and we’re not really sealed off from the surface so oxygen shouldn’t be an issue while we wait. Sit tight everyone. Search and rescue is already on their way.” 

Del could just barely reach the rock above them with his fingertips. It was oddly smooth in the same way the walls and floor were. He removed his bucket and sniffed the wall near him – there weren’t any visible substances on the sediment, but some chemical coated the tunnel with a putridly sweet odor, markedly organic. He sniffed his gloved fingertips to confirm the substance was on the ceiling as well, his eyes growing wide as he noticed the slight deformation on the finger pads.

“No,” Del whispered, but grew louder as he realized what he had discovered. “No, get up – sergeant, get up!” He pulled up Adro by the shoulders and immediately pointed to her rear. He had better be right about this or there would be hell to pay, which is exactly what the sergeant must have been thinking. 

“What in nine hells, Meeko!” (Adro) 

“Shit.” (Calda) 

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” (Adjeera) 

“There’s some kind of acid.” Del gestured, in the most respectful way he could manage, to the deformations on the sergeant’s rear armor plate from where she had just been sitting. “We should all check the bottom of our boots.” (more cursing ensued) 

Del braved a jog back into the area where they first fell to fetch his broken shoulder plate, then carefully stood on top of the pieces to put another layer between his boots and the acid-covered tunnel. Ardo instructed the rest of the squad to do the same, which led to more hopping and cursing from Calda. Eventually everyone was settled – Calda sitting on his chest plate with his good leg pulled to his chest, while Adjeera, squatting on two upper arm plates, examined his outstretched broken ankle. They settled on Calda owing the latter at least two drinks after they got out of this.  

Sergeant Adro slid her makeshift-skis toward Del with as much grace as possible. “How long were you staring at my ass before you noticed the acid, Meeko?” She must have sensed his mortification because she quickly continued, “Don’t worry, I’m just trying to joke because I have no idea what the hell is going on. You got any theories?” 

Del bit his tongue. He did have a vague idea, one that initially seemed ridiculous but as he thought more on it appeared to be the only explanation. He’d have to make his case to not sound like a total lunatic. “These tunnels are definitely not rebel work.” 

“Right, because no blast damage.” 

“It’s not just that. If rebels were trying to get in and sabotage the refinery, they would also need a way out. Something that wouldn’t collapse on them.” 

The sergeant shrugged. “Unless they’re just doing shoddy work, like I’d expect from that kind of scum.” 

“Okay, even saying it is irresponsible work… acid? How did they use acid to develop some kind of tunnel system that wouldn’t damage them and their transport in the process? Plus there is no transport here, no get-away vehicle waiting for them to return. No, I think these tunnels and the collapse are caused by something more natural.” 

“By natural you mean… an underground acid river or something?” 

He was definitely about to sound crazy. 

“I think it’s a vandermole.” 

After a long pause, the sergeant turned away. “Forget I asked,” was her only muttered reply as she started to begin the awkward process of scooting away while balanced on two arm plates. 

It sounded pretty ridiculous. The vandermole was a creature from stories used to scare children of Christophsis away from playing in the planet’s many crystalline caves. While they had definitely existed at some point, the academic consensus was that vandermoles had been extinct for millenia. Suggesting such a thing was farfetched, and Del was comforted by the idea that he was completely wrong. 

Moments later, when he heard the sergeant yell “Shoot it!” and Calda let out a “mother fu- ” Del really, really, wished he were wrong. 

There was only a maw in front of them, filling the entire height and width of the tunnel – of course, these are its tunnels – helmet lights revealing row after row of teeth-like spikes. The creature advanced, bizarrely silent and seemingly unphased by the shots of blaster fire and rock tumbling around it. Soon its tongue, or tongues? Tendrils? Darted forward several meters like a multi-ended whip, wrapping the sergeant’s right arm and holding in an intimate handshake. The  sergeant abruptly stopped firing, then her entire forearm detached and the tendrils whipped back into the gaping mouth with it, blaster and all.  

Calda was not pleased with what he was witnessing and, stars bless him for it, he made that known. 

“You kriffing beast, what the fierfek ! What the hell do you think you’re doing, touching the sergeant!” Del had been frozen in place since the animal appeared but seeing the sergeant’s arm gone and realizing the creature’s reaction to Calda, he finally joined the fray with a shout. 

“Keep yelling!” 

“Yeah I’ll yell and I’ll shoot that ugly kriffer too!” 

“No I mean we all have to yell, noise repels it! It’s moving back! YAAAAAAAAAH!” 

The sergeant should have been in shock but she managed to release a high-pitched shriek that sent the creature back a meter. Bolder now, she joined Calda’s refrain. Adjeera got the message and soon they were cursing up a storm, because “NASTY FIERFEK, YOUR MOM STINKS WORSE THAN DAGOBAH!” was more effective at driving back the monster than blaster fire. 

Del was splitting his attention between yelling nonsense and fumbling with a spare comm and a multitool from his engineering pack. It had been a while since he last opened up a communicator to fix it, but he didn’t have to fix this one. He just had to break it. They were quickly growing hoarse, but he managed to shout, ‘Helmet audio filters, full shield!’ as he touched two stripped wires. The resulting whine pierced through their helmets regardless and the creature, just as silently as it had appeared, retreated completely out of sight. 

Their voices stilled, and Del released the wires. Although everyone was spent from adrenaline, Adjeera still found the energy to help the sergeant sit down on her chest plate and begin to examine what was left of her arm. 

“It should hurt, right? But it doesn’t. There’s just nothing. I don’t feel anything at all.” Adro’s rush from battle was quickly weaning off into panic. Adjeera gently removed her helmet as she continued babbling. “Why don’t I feel anything? This is wrong. Kriffing fierfek, this is bad. Meeko, if I die, you’re in charge.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” his response was meek as he grabbed supplies for wound-cleaning and joined Adjeera. You’re not going to die , he wanted to say, but as he looked at the sergeant’s dilated pupils and heavy breathing, he wasn’t sure he could say that truthfully.  

Adjeera had field medic training, but he was at a loss at how to proceed. He had studied soothing blaster burns and creating makeshift tourniquets, but nothing prepared him for a limb severed cleanly, straight through the bone, apparently with the same acid that coated their surroundings. Hopefully cleaning the area that would slow down whatever effect the acid was having on the sergeant. Del occasionally re-tapped the wires as Adjeera worked, just to make sure the… thing ( a vandermole, it must be ) stayed away. The sergeant kept talking, and while she was usually quite outgoing, her speech was deteriorating towards manic.  

“Calda, you know you owe me, right? I stuck my neck out for you after the captain caught you cursing about your schedule. He seriously wanted to reprimand you for that. Can you believe that? It’s ridiculous, completely ridiculous , and Meeko – listen. This is important, Del. When you say ‘yes, ma’am’ in your precious little Coruscanti accent – wow, it’s adorable . Really, Del.” (Del was thankful her attention didn’t stay there.) “Adjeera, jee-eera, look,” she patted his helmet as if she were praising a family pet, “You’re a good one.” She was perspiring despite the chill and her pulse had skyrocketed.  

A buzzing comm provided a welcome distraction from worrying over the sergeant.  

“ *bzzzzzz* -dor Squad, this is Private Ishia currently in what’s left of the store- * crackle* search and rescue with me – what the hell happened to you guys?” 

Del was so excited he nearly dropped the comm, “Ishia, this is Specialist Meeko. We’re below you. We’ll need two med evacs and caustic material handling. Kriffin get us out of here, alright?” Less than an hour later, they were. 

[0900 GST, Two Weeks Later, Christophsis, Imperial Ground Forces base] 

 “Specialist Meeko, you remember when I filched you from the 375th? The 900th was lacking in engineers, and they were wasting your talent as a Private-rank stormtrooper.” 

Captain Anter Helloun wasn’t waiting for a response. 

“And then you did that great work in the factory – you know, I wanted to get you some kind of recognition, but there’s not a whole lot of awards that apply to fighting ancient mythical creatures. So I thought this soldier – this specialist – was able to take charge in an emergency situation, used his knowledge of the local fauna, put together a makeshift weapon out of the back-up comm, rescued his squad from some crazy local monster that most people didn’t even think existed… well clearly, that soldier deserves a promotion.” 

“Thank you, sir?” It sounded like a question because Del still wasn’t sure if he were supposed to speak. The rule around here was that if the captain was speaking, you were listening, and that usually meant listening for a long time. 

“Yes, well. High command didn’t exactly agree. I wanted you to get a promotion, get you on the sergeant track, but they’ve got other ideas.” 

The captain’s frown deepened as he motioned for a holomessage to start playing. Del couldn’t remember a time he’d ever seen the captain not frowning, so that didn’t give him any clue as to why he had been called into his office. 

The blue light of the holo flickered and then stabilized, showing the face of a young ISB agent.

“Imperial Security Bureau requests transfer of ST-4378, Specialist Del Meeko, to Scarif for naval intelligence training and SpecOps assessment. Transfer of rank includes a Class II promotion to non-commissioned officer pay grade. The details are attached for his consideration. To accept the transfer, Specialist Meeko must report to the Scarif Training Centre next quarter with appropriate contract forms. ISB Recruitment Team awaits his response.” 

The image blinked out and for once Del was really hoping the captain would keep talking, because he had no idea what to say. 

“There you go, Meeko. ISB thinks you’ve got something special. Don’t worry too much if you’re not interested in spooking. Lots of people wash out, but you’ll get all sorts of training and a couple of promotions before you do. And look, they may phrase it all nice as though you’re getting an offer , but that’s not how ISB works. If they want something, they get it, one way or another. Plus it’s a cushy assignment, all things considered. Even if ISB dumps you, you’ll end up on a long-term vacation in just about the only pleasant planet in the entire Outer Rim. So just head to Scarif, alright?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

There were a few stops to make before Scarif – to the base MedCenter to see how the sergeant was handling her new arm, and to the barracks to say farewell. Del Meeko the Army Specialist would soon be gone. Del Meeko the pilot and Special Operations Agent was just starting his career.

Chapter Text

“You, Del, Gideon - you’ll forget what you’ve seen, eventually. Not all of it. But time will soften it, and it’ll lose some of its punch. You’ll forget some of the details. But I won’t. I can’t.”

Seyn Marana to Iden Versio, while undercover within the Dreamers

[1720 Galactic Standard Time, Lothal Year 3267, Uyter, Upper Peninsula]

“Simply incredible.” 

The professor clasped her hands together, the crinkling around her eyes indicating a smile hidden in her otherwise stern demeanor. Seyn’s legs swung back and forth under her chair, giving away her restlessness. This encounter had followed the same predictable patterns as the dozen plus previous visits from the Imperial Academy instructors over the past few years: a commander would come to her parents humble home in the rural northern region where they were responsible for maintaining agro-droids. The visitor would test her progress in various areas of learning, languages, primarily, but also galactic history, interstellar cultures, and sciences. The visit always ended with a soliloquy on how Seyn would do great things for the Empire.

There were slight differences among them all - this one preferred the title ‘professor’ over ‘commander,’ one had rudely snubbed the Marana’s offer of tea, another had the most distractingly bushy, expressive eyebrows. Seyn remembered each one of the visitors and their specific traits. She couldn’t forget.

When she was four years old, she had asked Appa how her ‘head was different.’ Seyn was Seyn, how would she know she was supposed to be anything else?

“For most people, memories are like a picture.” He picked up a burnt stick of incense from the porch censer and knelt to draw on the stones underfoot with the blacked nub. It was a simple humanoid stick figure: a cartoonish round head with two dots for eyes and a semicircle for a smile, resting atop a body of lines representing a torso, arms, and legs.

“You and I can both look at this picture and try to remember it. Next week or next month, we can think back to this moment and know what this figure looked like. But -”

He brushed the heel of his palm over the stick figure’s face, smearing the ash into a grey cloud.

“As more and more time passes, I will forget the details. I will not remember if this figure had a smile or a frown. I might even remember incorrectly, believing I drew hair on top of its head. But the basic shape is still there, I will still remember the outline of what it looked like.”

“Not you, Seyn. You will not forget, even years from now, or so your teachers say.”

Young Seyn was alarmed by this revelation, imagining that her physical face would change if appa remembered her incorrectly. She clung to her father’s leg as he stood.

“Appa! After long time you will no ‘member me? My face go away!”

He patted the top of her head. 

“Don’t worry, Seyn-a. Nan niga gyeolko i-cheul su eopseo.”

You are unforgettable to me.

“Eidetic memory is of course quite rare in humans, verging on entirely unheard of!” This professor echoed all the ones that came before. Seyn didn’t bother to file away the rest of her little parting speech. She had heard its variants enough times, and the professor arrived at the same concluding statement as all the other visitors. “We look forward to seeing Seyn at the Academy in a few years.”

Then finally she was free, the visitor gone and Seyn bouncing around the kitchen as her mother, her eomma, packed up their dinner and next day’s breakfast. Seyn’s waifish frame was small even for a 10 year old, but she still managed to lug the preser-pak of food to the family speeder. She paused outside, examining the darkening sky. She knew the cycles of Uyter’s solar orbit, each year the stars moving in the exact same patterns as the year before. But tonight, the sky would look different. Seyn danced on tip-toe back inside, giddy over their evening plans.

It had been Mr. Eyebrows - Seyn knew she should call him Commander Stalla, but in the privacy of her mind, she preferred the nickname - that suggested her parents take her camping. “Monotony will curb her talent,” he advised, “and some learning is best done away from a datapad.” Truthfully the Marana’s couldn’t afford to travel further. Overseeing agro-droids was necessary work but without much monetary compensation; the Empire’s financial stake in Seyn’s education was limited to providing satellite equipment for unfettered access to holonet learning materials. One day, in service of the Empire, Seyn would travel to many distant worlds (or at least that’s what she dreamed Imperial Service would mean), but until then, the lone mountain on the edge of their fields would have to do.

The ride to their campsite took about two standard hours, and Seyn filled the time by translating the article she had read earlier into Chadra-Fan, then Huttese, then Shyrriwook, and finally Tarivo. Bored with doing the work in her head, she translated back into Basic and recited for her parents.

“It will take approximately 40 minutes for human eyes to fully adjust away from artificial light. From the Uyter equatorial coordinate plane, the hour angle of the Nazzriad comet cluster would be 2.8 degrees. From our position, the comets should be visible starting from 2110 standard hours until 0325, with peak activity in the 2350-0025 window. The comets will appear at declination +25 degrees, over the Nazzri system’s sun within 4.72 degrees of variance, so starting from -” she abruptly paused, looking up through the speeder’s glassteel roof and gathering her bearings under the endless field of stars, “- over there!” 

Appa pushed away her outstretched arm, pointing across his face to the sky, with an exasperated, “ Seyn-a, I’m piloting! Hands down!” The last few winding turns up the mountain required his full attention. 

“Sorry, Appa…”  

Eomma looked down at her daughter wedged between the pilot and the co-pilot seats, and squeezed her hand. “Tell us more, Seyn. What else did you read about the comets?” 

They had arrived at the campsite, a wide clearing on the otherwise deciduous mountain. Her energy revived as she hopped down from the speeder, Seyn resumed her report.

“The Nazzriad comet cluster formed over 2 billion years ago, from the protoplanetary debris that surrounded the beginnings of Uyter’s sun. The burn of the comets has decreased their size by an estimated 16% over the past 500 million years. The comet cluster is visible from Uyter’s northern hemisphere once every 598 solar cycles.” 

Then in an awe-filled near whisper, “This will be the only time we will ever get to see it.”

[5 hours later]

“Are you falling asleep?” 

The soft tickle of her mother’s hand on her ribs jolted Seyn upright. “No!” She rubbed her eyes and reconsidered. “...maybe just a tiny bit.”

It was hard not to get sleepy, with her parents lying on either side of her blocking most of the mountain chill. She was warm and her stomach was full from their picnic dinner, but she was not going to fall asleep.

“It’s okay, Seyn-a, it’s late. We’ve already seen quite a few comets tonight, if you want to go to bed in the speeder.”

“But we’re getting to the best part!” She was adamant as she snuggled back down between them, eyes fixed on the star of Nazzri for which the Uyterans had named the comets.

“ Sen Seyn, ” her father whispered into her hair. Appa’s favorite thing to call her was a pun from his native Tarivo tongue that combined Seyn’s name with ‘stubborn.’

Her eyes drifted down to the east, where the star of her parents’ home system shone.

“What was it like on Tarivo III?” 

Seyn had asked this question many times before, and of course remembered all of her parents’ answers. Yet she kept asking it from time to time, as she climbed into their bed after a nightmare, or after another evaluation where a teacher emphasized how different she is. Thinking about Tarivo III was comforting, because if she had cousins and second-cousins and distant family there then...

Then maybe one of them was like Seyn. 

She had imagined this theoretical Not-Seyn many times, a girl or boy near her age - they probably looked similar with the same straight black hair and dark eyes. Not-Seyn had the same special memory that marked her as different. Not-Seyn would understand how it felt to be treated like a spectacle, asked to perform for others entertainment. Not-Seyn would study with her, a companion in the lonely daytime hours while her parents worked, as she was already well past the education level the rural regional school offered. 

She wanted to hear about Tarivo III because she wanted to believe that not too far away, Not-Seyn was looking for a friend like her. Seyn wanted to believe that she was not as unique as everyone said.

Perhaps her parents knew this was why she kept asking or perhaps they didn’t, but they humored her repeated question regardless.

“The mountains are beautiful. Much higher than the one we’re on now, frequently topped with snow. There are ancient light towers along the ridges that early settlers used to signal messages when storms interfered with their electricity.” That was Appa, waxing poetic about the nature of the world he left behind.

“The leaves change into a brilliant indigo in the third season, and the mountainsides are beautiful swirls of green and blue. There’s no sight like it.”

“ Ay-ra , the cities are beautiful, too.” Eomma added, always quick to defend her metropolis home.

“Ah, but not so beautiful as the woman I found in one. A girl like oori-eomma with a country boy like me? I never thought it would happen.” Her parents kissed over her head, and Seyn made a face.

“ Gross. And you’re blocking the sky.” Eomma bent down to kiss her forehead with a smile before settling back down beside her.

Seyn wasn’t brave enough to ask what she really wanted to know. Is there someone like me on Tarivo III? Is there anyone else like me anywhere at all? Her question could start smaller, closer; she was desperate to know but not ready to hear a negative answer. Several small streaks of comets crossed the sky as she mustered the nerve, only for it to come out timidly, “Will there be people like me at the academy?”

The chirping of a nightlark was the only response. Seyn momentarily broke her gaze toward the stars to crane her neck back, trying to intercept what her parents were communicating to each other with their faces. Just that afternoon the professor had tested her completion of a basic aurabesh cipher course, yet the knotted brows and light sighs from her parents were indecipherable.

“Manara Seyn,” Appa was careful with her full name, as if he were cradling something precious, “I don’t think there’s anyone like you in the entire Lantillian Sector.”

Seyn locked her eyes on the Nazzri star, her chest tight and her face stoic. She could feel Eomma’s hand smoothing the plait of her hair, so neatly tied that morning but now loose against their blankets.

“But that doesn’t mean you’ll be alone.” Eomma’s voice was soft, like Seyn’s was a moment ago, like she was scared of what she was about to say. “Someday, Seyn-a, the Empire will send you far away from here. And you will do amazing things, and we will be so proud of you -” Her voice was cut off by the pressure of tears in the back of her throat.

Her mother’s sadness was something Seyn could not yet understand. Like mothers of many species across the galaxy, one day her Eomma would send away her child. But Seyn would be gone earlier than others - she was too talented, too special, and her parents would have to say goodbye too soon.

Eomma steadied her voice, now confident. “You will be with incredible people. People who are talented, and dedicated, and even if they aren’t like you Seyn-a, they will like you . I know they will.”

Seyn gasped at the sudden brightness of four brilliant streaks appearing over Nazzri, illuminating their camp. This was the peak of the event, and a multitude of smaller lights flickered alongside the bright lines. Seyn knew the measure of a lightyear, and that any distance her human eyes perceived did not come close to reflecting an actual position in space. She knew the chemical composition of these comets, their age of formation, and the timing of their orbit. 

Yet she couldn’t help but wonder if there was something more to the lights than burning gas in the coldness of space, as one comet from the four appeared to deviate from its age-old path. It must have been an optical trick, perhaps caused by the diffusion of light in Uyter’s magnetic atmosphere, but Seyn saw that light bend east towards the Tarivo system where she longed to go. It seemed to fade over Tarivo as the other three continued, two now nearly entwined as they reached the northern horizon.

The magic of the comets, and the closeness of her parents, and her stomach full of homemade food, all these things woven together made Seyn believe, yes, everything will be ok. I will not be alone.

Chapter Text

“I know it’s soon, but it’s always best to get right back in the thick of things. Not to dwell on them. And the Empire needs your help.”

“I serve at the pleasure of the Empire, sir.”

“I know you do. You’re a Versio. It’s how I raised you.”

Admiral Garrick Versio and Captain Iden Versio, after the Dreamers mission.

[1920 Galactic Standard Time, Lothal Year 3268, Vardos, Versio Complex]

It might be surprising that, given her top spot in class rankings for several years running, Iden Versio hated studying. She excelled at drills, presentations, anything active really, but just sitting with a datapad trying to force dates and names into her memory was her least favorite task. With what had happened after school today, there was really no way she was going to stay focused.

It had been so normal - walking home from school with Tessamina, talking about the end of the term.

“I can’t believe they still have these stupid events, at a military school no less! Don’t we have more important things to be doing than attending silly dances?” Iden hated it last year, and she was determined to hate it this year, too.

“There’s more to being an officer than war, Iden. It’s a social status, too. That comes with… formalities, I guess. Anyway, so, has anyone asked to be your escort yet?” Tess was a good counter to Iden’s sour mood. Thinking about their classmates who braved asking her to the last dance made Iden laugh.

“Stars, no, I think most of the boys learned their lesson last year. The only one who might be dumb enough to try again is Jaren, but I think he’s too scared of my father.” Iden already thought the event was frivolous enough as it was, so the idea of bringing a date was absolutely ridiculous.

Tess cleared her throat. If Iden had been paying attention, she would have noticed that, and Tess’s fidgeting hands.

“Well, maybe you could do something different this year.”

“Different like what? Think I can get away without wearing a dress?”

“I don’t mean what you wear. I mean, we could go together. As dates. IwanttobeyourdateIden.” The words spilled out, Tess couldn’t take them back.

Oh. Oh.  

“You mean like -”

“Yeah. Like that.”

“Well, I would have to talk to my father.”

“Right. I guess he has opinions about this kind of thing.”

“He doesn’t give me his opinions. He gives me orders.”

Iden would inevitably have to talk to her father, but in the moment she meant it as a stall tactic. She should call Gid, he would know how to handle this. Maybe he had been rejected lots of times since he left for the academy, and would have advice on how to -

“You haven’t looked at your datapad in 4 minutes.” Inspector Garrick Versio, Iden’s father, was at her shoulder. Kriff. She straightened, addressed him with a nod, “Inspector.” Her mind was definitely a mess if she hadn’t even heard him come in.

Garrick took off his gloves and placed them neatly on the entry table before turning to face her. “What is it?” 

Answering the question was not optional. Anything that distracted Iden from her studies - from succeeding - was unacceptable. Avoidance was pointless as well; Iden didn’t know if it was from his job with the Imperial Security Bureau or if it was because they were just so kriffing similar, but her father always seemed to pinpoint what Iden was thinking about. Or what she was trying to not think about.

“The school dance. Someone asked to escort me, and I don’t know how to respond.”

“You didn’t have any trouble turning them down last year. Which one was the pathetic boy that left chocolates at our gate every day for a week?”

“Jaren.” If she were talking to Tess about this, Iden would have rolled her eyes and made fun of Jaren’s voice crack the poor boy couldn’t seem to outgrow. There would be no such casual display in front of her father.

Garrick already knew it was not Jaren. He was studying her intently, and Iden wondered what she was giving away, how he was gathering clues.

“Dare I say, you liked rejecting those offers last year. Such a question puts the asker in a position of vulnerability. It’s likely the strongest taste of power someone your age could have.”

Iden knew better than to break her father’s gaze. When he was standing in front of someone, he demanded their full attention. So he had a full view of her eyes widening, just slightly, and the flare of her nostrils.

“That you are not so willing to do so this time implies two things. One, that you care about this person, in some way. I shouldn’t need to remind you that relationships are not your purpose in attending school. Two, you don’t want or need to hold power over this person. You consider them your equal.”

He turned on his heel, marching into the kitchen to fetch himself a glass of water before returning to look at Iden from the doorway.

“Ah. Sweet Tessamina, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Tessamina, one of the few other girls in a class full of boys, holding her own at class rank #2 to Iden’s #1 for the most recent term. 

Garrick took a long drink. His next words were shockingly nonchalant. “It’s understandable to have emotions in this situation.” 

Iden couldn’t hide her puzzled expression. Her father was not an ‘understanding’ man, about anything, at all, ever.

His usual sharpness returned, “But you know what to do with your emotions. Channel them into something useful. And if it cannot be useful, then…” He trailed off expectedly.

“Then get rid of it.” Iden finished.

The problem was, how could Iden get rid of something if she didn’t even know what it was?

[0700 GST, Next Day]

Iden went through her mental checklist the same as any other school day. Uniform, neatly buttoned. Hair, smoothly pinned into a low bun. Nasty military breakfast mix, in a disposable cup. (Garrick declared the drink necessary for both nutrition and discipline. Iden may have dumped quite a few of them still full in the bins outside school.) Then she was out the door, on her way to meet Tess down the street for the walk to school. They usually weren’t very chatty in the groggy mornings, but today was especially quiet. 

Her father was right about power. Iden didn’t mind, and maybe actually liked that so many boys in her class were at least a little afraid of her. But Tess asking her to the dance felt so fundamentally different. For most of their years in school together, Tess had been a quiet, timid girl. It was only in the past year that she had come out of her shell, finally exposing the determination that challenged Iden for her top ranking. Iden was still thinking about the shy girl Tess. It felt wrong to scare her.

But Tess really wasn’t that shy girl anymore. She’s the one who broke their silence. “What did the Inspector say?”

“He told me to get rid of my feelings.”

“...what?” 

Iden hadn’t found her father’s input very useful, so in the late hours when she couldn’t sleep, she tried to conjure up what her mother would tell her. It had been at least two years since Zeehay Versio’s last visit, but Iden pulled together a few themes from her mother’s speeches about art into something resembling advice. Truth above all… no, truth through passion? Something like that um, she talks about sincerity of purpose a lot. Kriff it, I’ll just try to be honest. 

So Iden was trying to be honest, but Tess hadn’t grown up with Inspector Garrick Versio for a father. She would have to do some translating to make his words make sense.

“My father is very strict about how I use my time. So when something distracts me, like… like emotions about formal dance dates, they’re distractions that need to be taken care of. The rule is, if it can’t be useful, then get rid of it. The problem is, I don’t know what my emotion is about this,” she motioned between her and the other girl, “so I don’t know if it’s something I need to get rid of.”

They had reached the front gates of the Future Imperial Leaders Military Preparatory School. Tess looked at Iden with an exasperated frown.

“You know Iden, that’s a really weird excuse when you could just tell me no.”

“Tess, I don’t… I don’t know if I want to say no.”

“Well, you certainly don’t sound like you want to say yes,” Tess huffed, impatient with whatever Iden was dancing around. 

Iden checked her chrono. Six minutes until 0715 uniform inspection. She took a deep breath. Honesty sucks . “Look Tess. I have to try to obey my father. And I just… I don’t know if you’re what I like .”

At this, something in Tessamina’s mind snapped into place. “I thought after you rejected every boy last year I actually had a chance. But that’s not it at all!” Then Tess was laughing, and Iden was the one confused. She wasn’t in on whatever Tess found so funny, though the laughter was edged with bitterness.

“You didn’t want any of them, and you definitely don’t want me, because I’m not Gideon Hask!” 

Iden instinctively took a step forward, “Gid has nothing to do with this!”

Tess was still laughing, and Iden, for the first time in the past 16 hours, recognized what she was feeling. She was angry. And just as she was figuring how to make that anger useful, Tess opened her mouth to make it worse.

“Come on Iden, just admit you need an older man to satisfy your crazy daddy issues.”

Then Iden made both her anger and her breakfast useful, by pouring the latter all over Tessamina’s neat uniform jacket. Careful not to spill any of the drink on herself, Iden tossed the container and left Tess sputtering outside. 

I don’t think we’ll be walking together anymore. The anger was dissipating as Iden marched down the halls toward her reporting room; she struggled to keep out the sadness that filled anger’s place. This is how it’s supposed to be. No friends, just allies in the service of the Empire. When that thought failed to calm her, she returned to anger.

Kriffing daddy issues.

[1640 GST, Versio Estate]

If Iden could have slammed the front portal closed, she would have, but there was only so much aggression one could put into a hand-wave towards touch-less doors that close silently. She rolled her neck in a futile attempt at relaxing . She had already practiced what she was going to say to her father during the (somewhat lonely) walk home. Good thing she rehearsed - he was already there. 

Iden transitioned her jerky movement of surprise into standing at attention. “Inspector.” It’s not that he was home early exactly, but the ISB inspector working late was so normal she couldn’t recall the last time she hadn’t come back to an empty house.

“Iden.” He didn’t stand. He also didn’t motion for her to join him sitting. Parade stance it is, then, Iden thought as she clasped her hands behind the small of her back.

“Did you speak with your classmate Tessamina today regarding the school formal?”

“I did. She did not respond to the rejection gracefully.”

He leaned forward, just a few centimeters. “Expand.”

“She accused the reason for my rejection of being an inappropriate relationship with another student. This is, of course, false.” Iden was careful to speak truthfully. Gid had graduated from their school and was currently in this first year at the Royal Coruscant Naval Academy, but a university student was still a student.

Her father gave pause to consider whether to press this line of questioning. To Iden’s relief, he shifted. 

“I received a curious message from Headmaster Gleb today. Tessamina failed her uniform inspection. Her jacket was reportedly covered in a substance with striking similarity to your usual breakfast.” He wasn’t saying any of this to give Iden information. She already assumed he knew more than he would tell her, and with equal confidence assumed that he was watching her closely to see how she responded to his words. 

Iden knew her angle, and she didn’t hesitate: “A failed uniform inspection is quite careless for the second-ranked student in the class.”

Her father responded with his own careful evaluation, “Such a mistake will certainly make it more difficult for Miss Tessamina to achieve first-rank. How unfortunate for her.”

“Yes,” Iden agreed, “how unfortunate.”

There was something in her father’s face now that Iden didn’t see often. Pride behind his eyes maybe, or just the slightest hint of amusement the way the corners of his mouth tightened. Whatever it was, it lifted her spirits, and then something even better happened.

“Dismissed, Iden. I placed a package from your mother in your bedroom.”

She didn’t have to be told twice. Visits from Zeehay were few and far between, and Iden was still smarting over the sudden cancellation of the planned visit two months ago. Chandrila fashion shows apparently took precedence over her daughter. Iden carefully removed the note attached to the lid of the elegant box - it was hand-written, because Zeehay prized the archaic medium of print.

“Dear Iden,

How I wish you could experience the serenity of Chandrila with me, but I know that one day in service to the Empire you will see more of the galaxy than I have ever dreamed. It pains me to not be nearby for your styling for your upcoming school formal, but I have already notified my old salon that you will be coming in day-of. The enclosed dress is of course for you to wear to the event, fresh from Chandrila fashion week. It is sure to be the envy of your classmates. When your father complains about it, remind him that you are still my daughter and are entitled to my gifts. Mingko’s Tailor in the Mercantile District is expecting your call to schedule a fitting.

Truly,

Your Mother”

Followed by an elaborate swirl that Iden recognized as her mother’s art signature.

The contents of the box itself were... overwhelming. She definitely needed to call Gid.

[2210 GST, Coruscant, Royal Coruscant Naval Academy]

Cadet Gideon Hask glanced again at the blinking light on the comm, indicating a holo request from Iden Versio. It had been there for over three hours, but he had a hand-to-hand combat workshop, then a report to polish for Commander Grujden’s class and then… Cadet Hask was exhausted. But he knew if talked to Iden, then he could just be Gid, just for the last 20 minutes until lights out. 

He entered the command to respond.

Iden knew his time was precious, so she wasted none getting him up to speed on what had happened with Tess.

“- and then she said, the reason I rejected them all was because I was pining for you.”

He was struggling to mute his laughter as they talked in a corner of the dormitory lounge, his fatigue managing to make the story even more hilarious. “Iden Versio? Pining? Please, tell me you punched her. Broke her nose, maybe?”

Iden faked a frown. “Get serious, Gid. And get her blood on my uniform? No, I just dumped the MRE drink all over her jacket.”

“Wait, it’s the first of the month on Vardos isn’t it? Iden, did you ruin your only rival’s uniform right before monthly uniform inspection?”

Iden’s sly smile was an affirmative.

Now he was laughing so hard his chest hurt (more likely from the giant bruise across his ribs courtesy of that night’s sparring), and a still-studying cadet was shooting him glares from across the lounge. Something was still bothering Iden about Tess - he had known her for eight years now, and he knew she was omitting part of the story. But he didn’t have the time or the energy to press for it.

“Gid, that’s not even all that happened today.” Iden disappeared from view, and Gideon checked the time. Ten minutes until lights out. It wasn’t long enough, but he would take what he could get. Iden came back into frame, dwarfed by a heap of fabric bundled in her arms. 

“This came today, from my mother. It’s for the formal.”

Gideon blinked his eyes several times to clear sleepiness and try to figure out what he was looking at. “Oh, I see. Your mother sent you a parachute, so you can escape the formal by jumping off the roof of the school?”

That earned him a genuine Iden laugh, something that seemed so common when they were kids (maybe Iden still was a kid, though he wouldn’t dare tell her that) but was becoming an increasingly rare sighting. 

“Apparently, it’s a dress,”  Iden tossed a long swath of silky fabric dramatically across one shoulder, “I can’t wait until prep school is behind me. No more formals!”

“I didn’t tell you yet?” He was suddenly feeling like the very exhausted Cadet Hask again. “Top four students from each class are invited to an annual senatorial ball. It’s next week, actually.” 

“Fine, but can’t you just wear your dress uniform?”

Gideon grimaced. “That would be for military events. This is purely civilian - and we’re supposed to dress like civvies, too.” 

Iden groaned and burrowed into the heap of fabric. “Well, what are you wearing then?” Her head had surfaced somewhere from the gauzy mountain to ask.

“Not a dress.” 

“ Kriff you, Gid.”

“Are you actually going to wear it?”

“Yes, I will.” She was glaring into the holo, daring him to challenge her on it. Instead he said, “What does the Inspector think of it?”

“He said,” she ran her fingers across a panel of intricate embroidery, “it’s ridiculous and impractical, as well as ‘immodest’ but frankly I don’t see how that’s possible with this amount of fabric.”

“...and?”

“And it’s a gift from my mother. So he can’t stop me from wearing it.”

[2230 GST, Vardos, Versio Complex]

Iden surveyed the mess of fabric around her as the holo winked out. She was suddenly feeling self-conscious about all that she had told Gid. He was at the Royal Academy, soon to be a real officer, and here she was spilling all of her schoolgirl formal dance drama. 

The strongest taste of power someone your age could have. If this were a taste, it was bland and unappetizing. Iden had seen power beyond her reach; it was in the attention her father commanded when he entered a room, the orders of Headmaster Gleb that determined which Imperial academy the school’s graduates would attend. Those people were powerful, they gave orders that were obeyed without question.

Many people assumed that Iden and her father were much alike, commenting on her drive for success or incredible discipline. But they were wrong in assuming those things were done for her father - they were in spite of him.

Iden stuffed the rich scarlet fabric back into its box as best she could, and motioned to turn off the lights. She drifted off to sleep, picturing the future she was striving towards: one where she succeeded, rose through Imperial ranks faster than anyone thought possible. In this future, Iden outranked her father. He wouldn’t be commanding her anymore.

Chapter Text

“Meeko may enjoy repairing things, but he’s not a simple technician. You’ll want him with you when it comes to fighting.”

Admiral Garrick Versio to Commander Iden Versio, on the addition of more crew to the Corvus

[0830 Galactic Standard Time, Lothal Year 3267, Scarif, Naval Intelligence Training Centre]

“ST-4378, Del Meeko, reporting.” 

Del stood at attention, hoping that the young woman at the desk in front of him could tell him what exactly he was reporting for . The information he received from ISB was frustratingly vague, and what Del didn’t know far outweighed the things he did. For starters, he had been stripped of his ‘Specialist’ rank when he signed the new contract. Having no rank meant he had no idea if he should be saluting the assortment of white, tan, and grey-uniformed troopers that passed him by as he waited in the lobby.

Eventually the petty officer behind the desk deigned to glance at him. “You can sit down,” she said, drawing out the syllables as if talking to an imbecile. Del suspected she might be. 

He sat on the lone long bench, forcing his palms to lay flat on his knees. Squinting at the desk officer, Del realized she was the same person from the recruitment holo he had received on Christophsis. Without the fuzzy blue filter, he could spot freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her mousy brown hair was pulled back tightly and nearly completely hidden under the officer’s cap. Just like in the holo, he could only see her head and top of her torso, the rest of her body obscured by the wide black desk littered with comms and datapads and flimsi notes. The mess was a stark contrast to the neatly manicured minimalism Del was used to in other Imperial offices. 

She caught Del looking her way, so he threw out some words to pass as conversation. “Do you like it here on Scarif?” 

The woman stared at him, her glare sharp enough to slice all the way through his head. “No. I hate sand.”

“Oh. Well.” He winced at himself. Kriffing hell, Del, what are you doing? Just keep your mouth shut.

He was keeping his mind busy by counting the tiles on the floor when she unexpectedly addressed him. “Meeko. Do you know why there is a Naval Intelligence branch but no Ground Forces Intelligence branch?”

“Ah, no ma’am, I suppose I do not.”

“Because there is no intelligence in Ground Forces.” Her delivery was so monotone, it took Del a second to catch the pun. She sighed, and then fixed her mouth back into a thin, hard line. 

“Meeko!” The booming voice from a barrel-chested, grinning captain cut through the lobby. “I assume you’ve met Petty Officer Katarzyna Bartos here? I’m Captain Greer. Follow me.”

“Yes, sir.” Del grabbed his rucksack and skipped a few steps to catch up with the captain. The turbolift they entered was the same brilliant white as the rest of the facility, and Del wondered how they managed to keep sand out of the building. He chalked it up to yet another thing about Scarif that didn’t make any sense.

“And Meeko, did Kat tell you the joke? No intelligence in Ground Forces!” Greer slapped his chest as if it were the funniest thing he had heard in years, then leaned towards Del conspiratorially, “I promised her an extra leave day next month if she told it to every new transfer.” 

They exited the lift into a windowed office with a stunning view of the Security Citadel several islands away. 

“Welcome to Scarif!” Greer announced, his ruddy face beaming, while sweeping his arm across the windows like a tour guide. “I’m sure you have many questions. Why are you here? What is the large construction project you passed from orbit? Why do we have such tight security around the planet? Of course, I can’t answer those questions. Then I’d have to kill you!” He released a laugh that filled the large office. 

Del tried to muster a polite smile as he set his bag by the door. So far, Scarif had been different from his previous assignments in every imaginable way. From the mysterious summons to the tight-lipped security to the boisterous commanding officer, every element had caught him off guard and feeling ill-prepared. 

If the captain noticed Del’s reticence, he made no outward sign of it. “Oh, that’s not quite right. I can tell you why you’re here. Let’s get to work.” Greer motioned for Del to sit across from him at an absurdly large desk, where the captain pulled up a holo of Del’s service record. “Your entrance aptitude scores were through the roof. You could have gone to any academy of your choice with those numbers but, for better or for worse, you enlisted. Straight out of boot camp, served with distinction on Malastare.”

Del blanched for a moment before regaining his composure. He had tried not to think about Malastare since he left for the 900th. A Partisan attack on their fuel lines had wiped out a third of his platoon only two weeks after finishing basic training. It was a harsh introduction to life as a stormtrooper, so he boxed up those memories and pushed them to a remote corner of his mind rarely visited.

“—attained the rank of specialist after receiving basic engineering training with the 900th Company. Then there’s the whole vandermole episode. And, look at you now!” 

The captain’s expression was downright jovial, so Del raised an eyebrow and risked a dry response. “What exactly am I looking at, sir?” 

Greer waved away the holo and leaned forward on his elbows. “You see, Meeko, when an officer gets tapped for Special Forces, they’re shipped off to the nearest academy for additional training, simple as that. For enlisted troops, the path to Special Forces isn’t quite so clear cut.”

Now Greer was on his feet, and Del stood to follow him. Pacing along the windows, the captain seemed incapable of staying still for long. “So I’ve built a program of my own here on Scarif. We get that sort of freedom out here in the Outer Rim.”

“Freedom to do what, sir?” 

“You’ll start as a shoretrooper—still Ground Forces, I’m afraid, but nerf meat has to pay their dues.” 

Del raised his eyebrows at the casual epithet that denoted lower-ranking ‘fresh meat’ on a base. For a senior officer, Greer definitely spent quite a bit of time with the non-commish.

“Your shifts will alternate between trooper duty and multi-faceted training. Amphibious maneuvers, scout and survival courses, infiltration tactics, the works. That’s two years, minimum . If you succeed, Meeko.” The captain finally turned away from the windows to look directly at Del. The scrutiny made Del stand a little straighter, slipping into the familiar stance and expression of a boot camp shiny.

“ If you don’t disappoint me by then, you’ll get a naval commission as an ensign. But that’s not the end of it—I’ll throw you at the flight sims, then on ships. Get you in and out of atmosphere. You’ll have to fly groundspeeders, submersibles, TIEs, shuttles, hell! Let’s put you in charge of a frigate! Pilot, navigate, repair, handle weapons systems, you’ll have to do it all. See how quickly you can earn a spot on the Shield Gate.” Greer’s voice had quickly gone cold. His bouncing steps and large gestures had all stopped, the energy behind those movements now singularly focused on the man in front of him. Del was alarmed at the sudden shift, but consciously schooled his features to remain unchanged as the captain continued. 

“If you succeed, every commander in the fleet will be vying to have you on their post. Maybe I’ll send you to the ISB for spooking work, maybe you’ll join a Special Operations squad. Maybe you’ll wash out and end up with a cushy spot on some backwater base, because you couldn’t handle all that Special Operations would ask of you.” Greer leaned into the enunciation of those final words. The weight of his gaze was crushing, but Del held it, unsure of what he was getting into but determined to face it unafraid.

“I won’t disappoint you, sir. I will serve the Empire as my commander sees fit.”

Like the flip of a switch, Greer was back to the boisterous personality from a few moments ago. “Wonderful! I’ll page Kat to show you to the quartermaster for your new gear and barracks assignment. Dismissed, Sergeant Meeko.” 

So that’s my rank now. With a polite salute and a proper ‘yes sir,’ Del grabbed his bag and stepped into the lift. As soon as the doors closed, he shut his eyes and leaned against the wall. If every officer here was as volatile as Captain Greer, his life was about to become exhausting.

Petty Officer Bartos - or Kat, as the captain had called her - was waiting for him by the lobby door. Del politely averted his eyes from the stumps where her lower thighs should have been, pant legs knotted to prevent them from dragging on the ground under her hoverchair.

“Let’s go.” Her face held as much enthusiasm as a Kaminoan. “I’ll tell you what you need to know. First thing is, don’t ask questions - about anything. If you had the proper clearance, you would know already, and since you don’t , you don’t.”

Scarif’s sun was just warm enough to make the rich blue waters tempting. Despite the idyllic surroundings, Kat sounded distinctly irritated as they traversed the compound and she pointed out major buildings to Del. “The ground complex is divided into three main areas: the Citadel, where ISB gets up to who knows what. The MedCenter, where gimps like me get poked and prodded and try out new limbs. And the Naval Intelligence Training Center, Captain Greer’s domain.”

She squinted against the sun as they turned towards the Ground Forces barracks. “In name General Ramda’s in charge of the entire Scarif installation, but he gives Greer a loose leash. Occasionally Director Krennic will visit planetside; be on your best behaviour then. Otherwise, listen to the captain and you’ll be fine.”

A small, square building stood in front of the long rows of garrison housing. Hanging from the lip of the roofing was a sand-weathered sign reading ‘Quartermaster’s Office.’ Kat pounded the door and called out bluntly. 

“Jaag! Got some of Greer’s nerf meat for you, freshly ground.”

[1030 Galactic Standard Time, Lothal Year 3270, Hyperspace]

Please, oh please don’t let me screw this up.  

Lieutenant Junior Grade Del Meeko, callsign Lightning 3, wasn’t sure who or what his prayer was directed to, but he figured it couldn’t hurt. He triple-checked his crash webbing, stretched his fingers, and unsuccessfully tried to slow his heart rate. Sweaty, shaky hands were the last thing he needed while flying a TIE. 

The day had started with normal formation practice above the Shield Gate - two squads of TIEs on the Gladiator -class Star Destroyer the Justicar . Then they got the distress call, and the Justicar jumped into hyperspace to follow it. 

That was the norm for Scarif installation. This section of the Outer Rim didn’t boast much Imperial presence, so when help was needed, Scarif supplied it. In the past three years Del had spent nearly as much time providing trooper support off-world as he had spent on base, but this was his first time responding to such a call as a pilot.

The warped starstream of hyperspace outside the hangar froze into the field of stars over the planet Ukio.

“We’ve got a three-freighter caravan that needs our help, but their lead unit is past the rescue point. Bridge orders are to protect the remaining two freighters so they can evacuate and unslave from the dead unit to jump to hyperspace. Our target is one Corellian Raider, likely modified.” Del was finally able to calm down a bit as Lieutenant Commander Jeffard gave commands. A single raider didn’t stand a chance against them.

If destroying the pirates were the only goal, Star Destroyer turbolasers could do the job, like using a thermal detonator to kill a gnat. Unfortunately the explosion and debris would also damage the freighters they were supposed to protect, so this attack required the precision of TIEs instead.

“What kind of pirate attacks an agro-shipment?” Andee Nestor, callsign Lightning 4, had recently transferred to Scarif and wasn’t good at following the ‘no questions’ instruction.

“Can it, Four. You know all you need to.” Jeffard never had much patience for nerf meat.

Each squad began their launch procedures, and once the bridge gave the order, they were out. Del had only a split second to marvel at the weightless, vulnerable freedom of flying in space before the lieutenant started barking orders.

“Thunder Squad, you’re on protection screen. I’ll feed you to Greer if you let a shot through to those freighters. Lightning, form up on me. Esaya, Scantin, and Til will take out the raider’s hyperdrive while the Justicar holds them in a tractor beam. The rest of you will focus on taking out the turret guns.”

Just shoot the turrets, this will be easy, Del told himself as he fell into formation with Nestor alongside him.

It would have been easy, if the turrets were just shooting lasers, but it was obvious right away that the raider’s backmost gun had been modified. Jeffard gave new commands over the comm, “Lightning 3 and 4, break off and get a handle on those seismic charges.”

Del bit his tongue to hold in a swear as he skirted around the edge of the first blast, uneasy with the shaking of his TIE.  It must not have been the pirates’ first run-in with Imperials; seismic charges would hardly budge a large freighter caravan but could easily send small, lightweight TIEs spinning out of control.

Nestor’s voice came over the direct comm to his wingman. “Ready for Round 2, Meeko? You’ve got to actually shoot it this time.”

Del couldn’t help but smile at Nestor’s carefree attitude. He flipped the switches to charge a laser barrage as he sidled up next to Nestor for a second attack run. “Playing chicken with a charge launcher isn’t what I had planned for the day.”

They could fake confidence over comms, but the two pilots were out of sync on their attack. Del triggered his barrage too early, his fingers twitchy from the potent mixture of adrenaline and anxiety. Nestor pulled his control stick up too late; the next seismic charge sent him hurtling toward the freighters, clipping one that Thunder Squad was supposed to be shielding.

Del could hear Nestor cursing through the comms, but it was just another layer of noise added to the blare of alarms around the cockpit. The last blast had sent him back towards the Justicar; the flashing lights around his controls blurred into a dizzying swirl with the stars outside. 

Evaluate. Control, Del needed control. Spins were centripetal, he needed to counteract the angular momentum.

Act. He trained for this. Del pushed the heavy sliders to shift power to the left engine, fighting the spin.

Reassess. The movement of the stars slowed, and his left hand brought the sliders back down as his right gripped the control stick, knuckles white under the black pilot gloves. Ah, kriff . His barrage crosshairs, the missile target screen - they were completely blank. The seismic charge had done more than throw him, it had fried his display circuitry.

“My left panel’s damaged, I’m flying crooked.” Nestor’s voice came through loud and clear on the open comm as Del reoriented himself and pulled his TIE around to face the battle.

“Raider’s hyperdrive is disabled, lieutenant,” Ensign Til reported.

“Then join Thunder on screen. And tighten up formation! Lightning 4 should have hit one of you , Thunder Squad, not the freighter.” Jeffard would rather have his pilots die in a head-on collision than suffer a loose protection formation. Such was imperial discipline.

With the turrets and the hyperdrive destroyed, the lieutenant turned his attention to Del and Nestor, “Lightning 4, make your way back to the Justicar. Lightning 3, what’s your status?”

Del took stock of his cockpit before responding, his voice shaky from surges of adrenaline. “I’ve got no HUD for my missiles or primary lasers, but all other systems seem to be operational. I can still shoot.”

“Affirmative Meeko, show us what you can do. Rest of Lightning Squad, pyramid formation on me next to the Justicar .”

Training for SpecOps meant always being tested, even in the midst of battle. If he had the spare fingers, Del would have crossed them for luck, but flight controls kept his hands entirely occupied. One thought – a memory – helped him get his racing pulse under control. Shooting with no crosshairs. I’ve done this before.

It had been a standard scouting mission with Lieutenant Firra last year. The lieutenant had handed Del an IQA-11 sniper rifle with the scope broken clean off. Del had been horrified by the sacrilege to the weapon, but Firra was unperturbed.

“If it shoots, it’s a weapon. If it doesn’t shoot, it’s a bludgeoning weapon. Peripherals like scopes are luxuries. Make do with what you have.”

So Del did the same thing that he did with that sniper rifle.

He breathed in.

He breathed out.

He fired his weapon.

The laser barrage not only disabled the launcher once and for all, it triggered the seismic charge currently in the launch chamber. The vibration of the subsonic waves resonated through every bone in his body as his TIE’s entire right panel sheared off. Del was careening through space with no sense of direction. Shrapnel from the launcher, or maybe from his own TIE, hammered the small ball cockpit and shot sparks hot against his helmet. 

Just as suddenly as the spinning began, it abruptly stopped and Del lurched against his crash webbing. He closed his eyes and hoped the end would be quick. The rush of vacuum, or a final burst of white light — whatever he was waiting for, it never came.

“The Justicar has got you in a tractor beam, Three. Nice shooting.” 

Del swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat as he registered the voice of Lieutenant Jeffard from his comm. He opened his eyes, taking in the endless expanse of stars, then focusing on his cockpit alarms. Navigation, red. Laser charge, red. Auxiliary power, flashing yellow. Hull integrity, 76%. He was leaking, but the tractor beam would pull him back in plenty of time.  

He took a deep breath; the stale air pumped from the TIE’s life support reserve into his helmet tasted sweeter than the atmosphere of any planet Del had ever visited. He was alive, and miracle on top of miracle, Lieutenant Jeffard had complimented him. Behind him, the two intact freighters blinked into hyperspace. The Justicar waited until Del’s TIE was safely pulled back into the hangar bay to destroy what was left of the pirate ship. 

Scarif had no prisons, but that was not the only reason for the brutality. No matter whether they were on the ground or in a ship, Special Forces from Scarif gave no mention of where they came from. While much of the Imperial military had heard rumors of the pristine beaches and prestige of assignment to Scarif,  the full extent of Scarif Installation’s operations was a need-to-know topic. The majority of the Imperial Military, much less the rest of the galaxy, did not need to know.

There was always a risk in helping civilians like they had today—someone could share what had happened and wonder, where could the Imperials who responded to the distress beacon have come from? That was the only risk they were willing to take. The pirates would not live to wonder the same thing.

Chapter Text

“You possess the gift of eidetic memory, which has served you well throughout your career. You graduated top of your class at the Imperial Academy of Uyter a full year early—and with honors. You speak… twenty-seven languages, is that correct?”

“Twenty-nine, sir.”

Admiral Garrick Versio and Lieutenant Seyn Marana, on the formation of Inferno Squad

[2050 Galactic Standard Time, Lothal Year 3260, Uyter]

Seyn snuggled closer to her plush bantha Maymay as her eyes fluttered shut. She was so close to drifting off to sleep, but...

The muffled noise of her parents talking in the common area abruptly stopped. Seyn was used to falling asleep to the gentle thrum through the walls of Tarivo music her parents put on after dinner, but that had paused, too. It was too quiet now. 

The unusual silence prodded the edges of her awareness, breaking the spell of sleepiness that had come so close to sweeping her away. Seyn climbed out of her tiny bunk, Maymay tightly held in one arm, and toddled out of the bedroom. 

A nagging little thought that said trouble made Seyn freeze at the end of the hall. Light from the common area spilled through the archway, illuminating the brushstrokes of the long-tailed birds on the wall to her left. Just a few more steps, peek around the corner, and she would be able to see her parents. But Seyn was supposed to be asleep. Trouble? She might get in trouble for getting out of bed.

Stubborn Seyn wanted to know why it was too quiet, so she stepped forward into the light. The cool, earthen tile under her bare feet nearly made her shiver and Seyn clutched her shaggy bantha to her chest.

Eomma was sitting at the table, facing the flickering blue image of the holoprojector. The long, sleek braid of her black hair hung down her back, uncoiled from her head after a day of work. Appa stood next to her, one hand on eomma’s shoulder. Maybe it was to comfort her. Maybe it was to steady himself. 

This scene of her parents together would be etched in Seyn’s mind, so different from the vague recollections of earlier memories. The small details - the frayed edge of appa’s sleeve, the creak of the chair as eomma leaned forward - they would not be important in retelling the scene later, but Seyn would remember them regardless.

She would remember appa swaying on his feet, like a skinny sapling in danger of being uprooted by the winds of a storm. She would remember walking forward to see eomma’s face, so strangely empty of expression, eyes fixed on the holo. 

Seyn was cold, and she wanted the warmth of her parents. Her voice felt impossibly small against the weight of silence that hung over them.

“Appa? Mwu-weo ya?” She knew the right words to ask what is it in both Tarivo and Basic, but her mouth and tongue were not practiced enough to make the sounds without stumbling.

Appa didn’t respond right away, but he turned and knelt towards her, arms open in invitation. Seyn ran forward so he could pick her up and hug her close to his chest. At that moment in her father’s arms, Seyn was happy in the simple, precious way that only small children can be. Appa raised a hand to smooth her hair, sticking out wildly in all directions from bed. Seyn twisted in his arms to point at the image projected over the table.

“Movie?”

The holo showed a boy crying in front of some… something burning, large, too big to fit inside the picture. There was fire and smoke, and the boy looked so frightened. This was a scary holo and Seyn didn’t like it. She didn’t like that eomma and appa seemed scared, too. 

“The Solaris.” Eomma whispered as her eyes scanned the news script underneath the image. Her face, normally tanned from long hours of toiling outside, was eerily pale in the blue holo light.

Appa finally answered, “ A-ni , Seyn-a. Not a movie. It’s real.” 

[0830 GST, Lothal Year 3273, Imperial Academy of Uyter]

“That was when it started.” Cadet Seyn Marana had spoken very matter-of-factly of her first memory, hoping the commander hadn’t noticed her sitting on her hands to hide their shaking. There were hazy impressions from earlier times, but the Solaris was when everything changed. From then on, her memories were all as crystal clear as when they first happened.

Commander Stalla seemed lost in his thoughts on the other side of his desk, his fingers steepled together and unmoving. Seyn liked coming to Stalla’s office; the rounded furniture and splattered-ink art were softer than the sharp lines and clean efficiency that ruled the rest of the Academy. The Imperial military demanded uniformity, but Stalla’s title of Provost of Students gave him the power to break that mold.

“The attack on the Solaris was a traumatic event for many,” he finally spoke. “And ‘ Remember the Solaris’ was a rallying cry. Stormtrooper enlistment surged because Imperial citizens were so determined to stop the terrorists. I suppose it was different for you, Cadet Marana. Yet the timeline fits the standard development of the hippocampus in a human child.”

“Yes, sir, med scans since then have shown my brain developed completely normally.” Her feet started tapping under the chair. 

Commander Stalla noticed the cue of impatience. “Am I correct in assuming, cadet, that you are bored with your coursework?”

“Terribly so, sir.” Seyn held back a sigh as she maintained rigid, proper posture. “The only challenge is physical tests, and there is a limit to how much I can push myself without injury.” 

The commander nodded, nearly smiling. “That’s what I expected, which is why I have some extracurricular work for you. Special operations, you could call it.” His bushy eyebrows were raised in a way that revealed the mirthful challenge in his eyes. Seyn leaned forward eagerly, then thought better of it and returned to her upright pose. Stalla wasn’t just the Provost of Students, he was also the official Imperial Security Bureau liaison at the Academy. Maneuvering into his good graces meant getting her dream post.

Other cadets, eager to show off their piloting and shooting, scoffed at ISB positions as menial desk jobs. Seyn thought those classmates were short-sighted braggarts. Any being with at least three fingers could pull the trigger on a blaster, but not everyone could think and adapt in the way that intelligence work required. It necessitated a special kind of mind and Seyn had been told, nearly as long as she literally could remember, that she had a special mind.

“There are some… vulnerabilities here at the Academy,” Stalla began thoughtfully. “I want you, Cadet Marana, to find them out.” He picked up a datapad that had been lying inactive on his desk. The commander was a stocky man, his hands large and rough, yet he activated the screen and handed it to the young cadet with a nimble flourish.

This was intelligence work - a chance to prove herself! Seyn couldn’t help but smile as she scanned the instructions on the datapad. She would be spending a lot of time in the Academy archives.

[1620 GST, three days later, Imperial Academy of Uyter]

Zanter Ettison sat up and stretched his neck. Bright pink splotches appeared on his chin from where his hands had been supporting him over a datapad. Instead of looking back down at his assignment, he turned to his classmate. “Why don’t you just do the entire project then?” 

Seyn didn’t bother looking over at him as she entered another command into the terminal in front of her. “Because that’s not the purpose of the assignment, Zanter. In service of the Empire, we will have to work with different kinds of teams in all manner of work. A joint report is really quite basic.” She bit her lip to hold back a ‘duh.’ Her portion of the assignment had long since been completed, and she had moved on to a more interesting project.

The cadets were barely three months into their first year at the academy, and so far they had been the most difficult months of Seyn’s life. She was at least a full year younger than most of her classmates, and her skinny frame made her appear even more childlike. While it hadn’t taken long to prove her abilities, doing so only emphasized how different Seyn was from the other students. Those differences made joint assignments like the one she was supposed to be working on now with Zanter Ettison more difficult.

Zanter himself made it more difficult because he seemed far more interested in pestering his assigned partner than actually writing the report. “You finished the assignment, and yet you’re still studying. Do you ever actually have fun?”

“I have fun outside of coursework.” Seyn’s fingers froze over the input pad as her thoughts flitted about to find an example. “Last week I started learning Ahak Maharr!”

“...which is what?” Zanter’s bright, caramel-colored eyes regarded her with one eyebrow raised.

“The language of the Ahak Maharr people of Berida Prime.” 

“That doesn’t sound fun at all.” 

“It is fun, but it’s tricky since I don’t have tusks.” Seyn frowned a bit as she moved her tongue around, trying to mimic the alien mouth shape. 

“That sounds like studying,” Zanter grumbled, but he seemed to finally lose interest and return to his datapad. 

With her classmate placated, Seyn resumed her work on the databank terminal. Clearance Level 5 and 4 topics had proved no challenge to access, but she was running out of strategies to break through to Level 3. It was nonsensical to assign motive and emotion to a databank, but she couldn’t help but feel that the [Restricted] banner that flashed on each failed attempt was mocking her. A soft clearing of the throat alerted Seyn that her efforts had not gone unnoticed. 

“Cadet Marana, the administrator terminal receives a notification every time a restricted topic is unsuccessfully accessed. This terminal has pinged restricted topics 13 times in the past 5 minutes,” Commander Chiata, a slim, pallid man who managed the Academy databanks, stated very plainly. “Perhaps your research could be directed towards a more fruitful topic.”

From the corner of her eye, Seyn could see Zanter pointedly leaning away and focusing on his datapad with newfound dedication, his light skin looking more flushed than usual. Whatever Seyn was getting into, he clearly wanted no part of it.

Turning towards the commander, Seyn widened her eyes and notched her voice up artificially high. “Commander Chiata, I need your help! Commander Stalla tasked me with researching causes of eidetic memory, and I think I found something from the Clone Wars, but…” She collected her hands in her lap, and looked down at them contritely. “I just don’t know what I’m doing and the terminal keeps flashing. Am I doing something wrong?”

Chiata regarded her stoically for a moment before he sighed and gently shook his head. “The first-years always need more time to learn their way around the archive system. Let me see what I can do.” He leaned over Seyn and tapped out his authorization code, his motions swift and methodical.

Besh 8 5 7 Dorn Aurek 2 4 3 3 0 1. Score. The input might have been too fast for most people to  track, but Seyn watched closely and replayed the memory in her head.

Chiata stood up after unlocking the file, the contents now projected above the terminal. “Null-class ARC troopers. Yes, one of them did possess eidetic memory, but I’m afraid this article won’t help you much. Those troopers were genetic accidents, and the eidetic memory trait was a side effect of that. There was no known cause for it.”

“Oh well, thank you anyways, Commander.” Seyn forced her face into a disappointed frown, drawing on techniques from every ridiculous holodrama she had seen to make sure she looked dejected. With a polite nod, Chiata returned to his desk.

Soon Seyn was deep in her research again, so she wasn’t sure how long he had been gone before she noticed Zanter had left. That’s just as well , Seyn thought; she had a report to finish and it would probably go faster without Zanter’s interruptions. To her dismay, thinking about Zanter interrupted her nearly as much as his presence had. She saved the report on her datapad and turned back to the terminal. There was still more research she could do.  

[0700 GST, the next day, Imperial Academy of Uyter]

Seyn patted down her hair once more, all attempts at getting it to lay flat thus far foiled. During her first few months at the Academy, she had meticulously braided and pinned her hair to meet Imperial dress standards. When she cropped her hair short a week ago, she expected that it would make meeting uniform code much easier. So far, each morning’s spiky bed-head had proved that prediction hilariously incorrect.

Obstinate hair aside, Seyn was in good spirits as she entered the mess hall. At first bouncing on the balls of her feet, she had to consciously hamp down her excitement once she received her tray so as not to spill anything. Her cadre had first rotation for breakfast, so Seyn could set her tray of egg-like sustenance and nutrition drink across the table from Zanter with no one else nearby. She had hardly settled in the chair before blurting, “Zanter! You don’t have any face tattoos.”

He froze with a fork halfway to his mouth. “Uh, good morning to you too, Seyn.” 

“Was acceptance to the Academy not enough of a milestone? I guess you’re waiting until graduation and commission, then.”

His gold eyes narrowed on her before he decided to avoid looking at her entirely and gaze across the room. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His face was flushing distinctly pinker as he said it, his fork still unmoving in his hand.

“You’re half-Mirialan, right? Or maybe only a quarter. Either way, why don’t you have the traditional face tattoos?” Seyn thought this was a very straightforward question. She had noticed odd things about Zanter—the tint of his skin, the vibrant, nearly orange color of his eyes, and most notably, his flexibility in taking down opponents in hand-to-hand combat. His obstacle course times were setting academy records, and he made it look so easy—no, graceful , in a way that struck Seyn as... 

Inhuman. She had questions, so she researched until she found the answers. This is simply what Seyn had always done.

Zanter’s fork clattered on the tray, and Seyn had a split second to think that’s weird. Then in one swift movement, Zanter was out of his seat and grabbing her by the wrist, dragging her to the return dish nook at the back of the mess hall. Everyone had just started eating and wouldn’t be coming to this corner for at least a few minutes. 

“Tell me what you know,” He was nearly hissing, and Seyn struggled to come up with a response. She had barely reacted to being grabbed and pulled – damn, I really do need extra self-defense training – and she couldn’t bear to meet Zanter’s harsh glare.

“I– I know lots of things,” she stammered. “You’ll have to be more specific.” 

“Why would you ask me about face tattoos?”

“Because you’re part Mirialan. You are, aren’t you?” 

That did nothing to calm him down, but at least Zanter let go of her arm to clench his hands by his sides. “What’s your angle, Marana? You’re at no risk of losing your class rank. I’m not your competition.”

Seyn was shifting her weight from foot to foot and rubbing her wrist. She had been excited in her discovery of hybrid-Mirialan traits because she had found someone different . Not like her exactly, no one was like her, but couldn’t they be alike in difference, even if the difference wasn’t the same? “I don’t have an ‘angle,’ Zanter. I just asked a question. Why is this such a big deal?”

“Why is—I thought you were supposed to be smart, Seyn.” Zanter gestured towards their classmates, dutifully eating their breakfast. “How many inhumans are at the academy?”

It took a moment for Seyn to catalog every face she had seen since the start of the term. Their cadre, the entire first-year class, upper-level students, instructors, and administrative staff - it was a lot of people to review, but the tally was short.

“One, that I know of. You.”

“No, there are zero, because that is how many are allowed to be here. A few may slip into the stormtrooper corps, but the Empire demands a unified, homogenous officer corps. I want to serve the Empire, so as far as the Empire is concerned, I am human.”

Seyn’s mouth was frozen in an oh that she couldn’t voice. Zanter was still standing uncomfortably close, but the possibility of stepping back never crossed her mind. More of a witness than a participant in this scene, she analyzed the boy— no, the man , he’s older than you, I bet he would hate being called a boy— and took in the detail of his frown, the anger in his brow, the harsh tone of his whisper.

“So whatever you think you may know about me, it’s wrong. Besides, if you ever voice your crazy delusions about this to anyone, I know what you’ve been up to.” Zanter crossed his arms, holding his head high in apparent triumph. “Slicing the academy databanks could cost you your entire career.”

The accusation pulled Seyn out of her analysis and she sputtered for an explanation, “I thought you didn’t notice—”

“You’re not the only one with eyes. You really do underestimate everyone who’s not like you. Slicing like that could expel you from the academy and send you back to your mud-dweller hut faster than you can say ‘poor little Seyn.’ ”

‘Mud dwellers’ was one of the kinder names that Uyter’s wealthy southerners spat at their rural northern neighbors. It still wounded her pride enough for Seyn to speak without thinking, “I wasn’t slicing with any malicious intent, I was working on a special security assignment for Commander Stalla!”

An assignment that she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about until it was finished. It was a detailed examination of several security weaknesses in the academy’s databank system, including Commander Chiata inputting his authorization code and accessing Level 3 classified articles in full sight of students without the proper clearance. Seyn had considered that including that in her report might cost the man his job, but she determined it was the right thing to do. If Chiata was making such careless mistakes, then replacing him would be for the betterment of the Empire.

She wanted to be proud that Commander Stalla had asked her to do extra work, intelligence work at that, but Zanter didn’t respond so positively. He took a step back, his face shifting from surprise into wariness as he understood the charade she had put on for Commander Chiata the day before. ‘Poor little Seyn,’ indeed.

“Wow.” He shook his head and turned away. “You really are a good little ISB agent already, aren’t you?” He sulked away and left the mess hall without looking back. 

Her stomach was doing flip-flops like she was in a flight simulator as Seyn walked back to the table and gathered their abandoned trays, food hardly touched. One of Commander Stalla’s comments from their meeting earlier that week was echoing unbidden in her mind: Some information is dangerous. Controlling who knows what is an intelligence agent’s primary mission.

Stalla had been referencing information in the academy databanks, but his words applied far beyond the context of a simple security report. The truth of Zanter Ettison’s heritage—be it Mirialan or human—was such a small piece of information. If someone knew what to look for, they could find it with DNA from just a single strand of hair… or a drop of saliva. Seyn examined Zanter’s fork with cautious curiosity. She marvelled that just one tiny little fact was so dangerous it could potentially destroy a young officer’s career. 

Chapter Text

“Del… do you think this has anything to do with you having been stationed on Scarif?”

“I’ve been asking myself that. But I can’t think why. That was a long time ago.”

Lieutenant Naylyn Bashan and Lieutenant Commander Del Meeko, on Del’s transfer to Coruscant

[1840 Local Time, 4 BBY, Ryloth Lower Atmosphere]

The T4-A shuttle dipped beneath the dusk cloud cover as Del turned away from the cockpit controls to glance at the two young troopers behind him. “Izzy, what’s the status on those imploders?”

Specialist Gazder Izayn looked up from the neat racks of thermal imploders in the back of the shuttle, the bags under his eyes belying their squad’s recent hardships. “Sir, we’ve got enough to space them around the cavern and create a blast radius of at least 200 meters.”

“Bring the launcher, too — if the target is inhabited, we’ll need the range.”

The last time Izzy got to use the launcher, the young detonations specialist had done so with a wicked grin on his face. Now, he just managed a weak half-smile. “Yes, sir. If we’re lucky, it will destabilize the whole cave system for several klicks out. I’ll finish packing these before we land.”

If we’re lucky. We haven’t been lucky all week, Lieutenant Del Meeko thought as he returned to the controls. Lieutenant JG Andee Nestor, next to him in the copilot’s seat, began their descent towards the dense equatorial forest. The lush greenery below was a welcome sight after spending four days in the dusty desert capital city of Lessu. Del could only hope their intel on a forest cavern-turned-rebel smuggling storage was better than the dead-end leads they had had in the city.

Their four-person unit was one of a handful of Special Operations squads sent in to smoke out agents of the ‘Free Ryloth Movement.’ At every step of the way, the rebels had seemed to know they were coming and were already long gone. Del had surreptitiously notified Scarif of his concerns about a leak, but there wasn’t much else he could do but keep working.

“Lieutenant Meeko , sir, still no signal from General Madine.” The other Izayn brother, Bollo, reported from his spot at the comm equipment. The Izayns were fraternal twins, not identical, but their shared deep tan skin and dark wavy hair made the resemblance unmistakable. At times Del wondered what strings had been pulled to allow brothers to serve together, but it wasn’t worth sticking his neck out to ask. When the Izayns put on their gear, they were soldiers like anyone else.

Bollo chewed his bottom lip and stared at the comm controls, as if simply willing the signal from Ember Squad to arrive. “Lieutenant Meeko…” He started, but Del cut him off. “It’s fine, Bollo. We’ll make do without them.”

“Yes, sir.” The younger man replied, but he looked no less worried.

The distant roar of thunder rumbled over them. Nestor’s mouth twisted into a grimace, a strange facsimile of the smile he usually wore.

“Nestor, drop us a couple klicks short of the rendezvous point. With no word from Madine or Ember Squad...” Del trailed off, feeling it would be bad luck to voice his suspicions. 

His copilot dropped his voice low so the younger troopers couldn’t hear. “Yeah, I know Meeko. I got a bad feeling about this.” 

Despite the worry on his brow and the tension in his hands, Nestor landed them with his usual grace. Del pulled up a holomap of their path through the forest, adjusting their landing coordinates and marking turret positions. “Bollo, set up an encrypted beacon for General Madine to find us. Nestor will rig the surveillance turrets 100 meters out surrounding the shuttle. Even with the beacon, we should assume that Ember Squad won’t be joining us, so let’s keep this simple: silent entry to the target, plant the imploders, and get back here before the storm rolls in.” 

A small chorus of ‘yes, sir’ sounded in response, then they donned their gear. Whatever doubt or concern or even fear that may have been written on each man’s face, it was now hidden under the black, glassy-eyed mask of Imperial Special Forces.

Their trek through the forest was eerily quiet. From the west, the last weak rays of sun cast long, looming shadows. From the east, angry clouds declared their approach with claps of thunder. There was no chatter of birds or insects; it felt like every creature in the forest save the four, black-clad humans had already taken shelter from the oncoming storm. 

Three soft pings in his ear alerted Del that Nestor had finished setting the turrets. The pilot had been carrying the three arachnid-shaped devices, each over half a meter wide with spindly legs folded underneath, on his back. Now that Nestor had activated them, each surveillance turret would crawl up a tree and send their footage to the shuttle’s computer — any sign of trouble from them and the shuttle would prepare the engines while the turrets’ basic lasers provided cover fire. 

Meanwhile, Del and the Izayn brothers moved through the stifling, humid forest, slowing to check for signs of activity as they neared the high rock formation of their target. “Probably deserted like the other locations we checked. But let’s still be careful—who knows what kind of surprises could have been left behind for us.” Del said as they continued.

“No patrols,” Bollo confirmed after a scan with his thermal binocs. “But there were blurrgs here.”

The young soldier stepped into the small clearing of the target location and motioned to a section of grass that had been trampled and stripped by some large beast. The creatures had eaten away at the vines that obscured the cave entrance, which otherwise would have been nearly impossible to spot. Nestor quietly caught up to them as Bollo circled the area, scanning for any other tracks. He nodded to himself, then turned to his lieutenant to report. “Minimum four blurrgs, possibly up to seven, tied up here 12-16 hours ago.”

It should have been somewhat reassuring: the rebels were long gone, there was no one here to fight them. But Del had learned to trust the sense of something is coming that had given him luck on many other missions, and as they entered the cave that sense was ringing in his ear, nagging and persistent like a song he couldn’t remember the words to.

Their progress was slow and cautious, the sound of their footsteps dampened by a carpet of cave moss. Their helmets’ night-vision color correction cast the ocher sediment walls in vibrant, uncanny hues. When they approached the entrance to a larger cavern, the squad stopped and waited for Bollo to scan. The young trooper carefully adjusted his sights, then exhaled a sigh. “There’s no one here.”

The cavern was roughly twenty meters wide and twice as deep, with several dark openings of additional tunnels towards the back. Nondescript plasteel crates were scattered around with no semblance of organization. Proper procedure would be to sweep for sensors, test the soil and air for traces of combustibles, and only then attempt opening the crates. The sweep would be the same they had done at every other hideout they found this week, routine at this point, so Del didn’t understand why every nerve in his body seemed to be urging him to turn around and run back into the forest.

Every hideout they had cleared in the city had been meticulously empty, no crates, no storage, not a spec of dust left behind. Here with so many crates to go through, it would take a long time to clear the entire cavern.

Too long, Del thought uneasily. They would be stuck in here during the storm.

It took Izzy prodding him with, “Orders, Lieutenant?” for Del to realize his team was waiting on him to say something. When he failed to respond, Nestor spoke up, “We could start a sensor sweep, or—”

“No.” That sense, the nagging voice of danger, had turned into a full-fledged klaxxon in Del’s head. “We have to get out of here.”

Even in their trooper gear, faces hidden, the uncertainty in his squadmates was plain to see. “Uh, sir,” Bollo began, but Del had already turned and started back towards the entrance. “Your lieutenant said out, soldiers.”

They had scarcely made it back to the forest when a pulsing red light appeared on both Del’s and Nestor’s wrist controls, synced to the turrets. Wordlessly, Nestor summoned the feed from the west turret, and for a moment the squad was transfixed on the holorecording of rapid incoming blaster fire — then static. 

“Shuttle, now!” Del shouted, even as his team was already moving, tepid rain drizzling down on them through the filter of leaves.

A second wrist light started blinking when they were nearly halfway to the shuttle. “ Shavit, that’s the north turret!” Nestor yelled through their helmet comms, barely audible over the rapid blasting of heavy gunnery in front of them.

He said something else, but a boom like a detonator — no, that was the north turret, the closest one, exploding — and the violent shaking of trees drowned him out. A cascade of leaves blocked their lines of sight as red hot streaks of blaster fire rained down too close, leaving trails of steam where bolts singed the falling rain.

“They’re in the trees?” Izzy managed to utter as his brother yanked him away to avoid the shots. 

“Launcher out, Izzy!” Del shouted as he took cover behind the widest trunk he could spot and pulled up the turret status on his wrist controls. He had to confirm it for himself: two turrets had been completely destroyed.

It shouldn’t have been possible. Today was the first time they had ever used the surveillance turrets on Ryloth; there was no way for the rebels to even know to look for them. His mind was rapidly going over every possible point of failure—Del had only disclosed the turrets over secure comms to General Madine that morning, even if the transmission was intercepted there was no way it could have been deciphered that quickly, so— 

Only Madine knew about the turrets. Only Madine had the code to locate their shuttle. Blood rushed through Del’s head, the deafening pulse in his ears louder than Nestor yelling through the comms, louder than the tell-tale pew of blaster fire. Del closed his wrist panel and grabbed the thermal scope to attach to his rifle, his thoughts trained on a single, vile word.

Traitor. 

It was unthinkable, and now that he had thought it, Del was awash with guilt. How could he think that of the general? No, he must have been captured and tortured to reveal the codes, that must be the explanation.

Not that the Empire would find that explanation any more honorable or acceptable. 

His rifle ready, Dell looked up to scan the branches above him. “Izzy, you ready to launch those imploders?”

“Ready to blast some tail-heads, sir!” Came the enthusiastic reply in his ear.

“Bollo, Nestor, you circle east and secure the shuttle. Izzy, we’re climbing. I’ll scope out your targets and pick off anyone who manages to escape the blasts.”

The rain had quickly turned into a downpour that made scrambling up the trees more difficult, but also mercifully hid their movements from the enemy. Blaster fire continued to pelt the base of the trees haphazardly while Del and Izzy secured themselves up above.

The first blurrgs were easy to find with the thermal scope, their hulking shapes pawing the ground next to the trees they were tied to, clearly eager to escape the storm. All Del had to do was follow the tree trunk up, and there were two Twi’leks, firing their blasters nearly blindly through the torrential rain.

“Mark one.” The lieutenant said coolly, transmitting the location to Izzy, perched in a tree fifteen or so meters to Del’s left.

“Mark one.” The specialist confirmed the location tag.

It didn’t take long for Del to find more blurrgs, this time with three Twi’leks standing next to them and a fourth Twi’lek in the tree, holding some kind of binocs. One of the rebels on the ground was strapping what looked like a sentry gun into a blurrg’s pack and while the others were scanning the forest in the direction of the cave with their blasters, firing at the movement of leaves tossed by stormwinds. 

“Mark two.”

“Mark two.” Izzy parroted back.

There’s got to be more, Del thought as he methodically swept his scope across the forest. If the rebels were smart, they would consider the two destroyed turrets a victory and make a hasty retreat. Well, if they were smart they wouldn’t be terrorizing their own planet.

A streak of lighting speared down from above, and the vibration from the thunder suddenly made Del aware of how absurdly vulnerable they were. Sure, they were safe from the rebels still looking for them on the ground, but there was no evading or shooting back at lightning. He finally spied three Twi’leks using trees for cover with only one blurrg between them. They seemed to be arguing, their blasters thrust about wildly in their hands as they gestured. This was going to be almost pathetically easy, but Del had to push aside any ounce of sympathy for the terrorists. They had attacked first, after all.

“Mark three, fire at will then get the hell out of that tree.”

“Mark three, firing.

One, two, three— Gazder Izayn smoothly adjusted his aim from target to target, his speed and precision even more impressive considering he was controlling the heavy launcher five meters off the ground, his legs hanging on either side of a branch and his back to the trunk to brace for recoil. The projectiles themselves produced no light and little noise. They landed with unceremonious thuds at the base of trees, spooking a blurrg or two but otherwise unnoticeable for the seven seconds before they detonated. A flash of lightning in the sky briefly brightened Del’s visor, the accompanying thunder shaking the branches he was leaning on, but he was able to blink away the bright spots and turn his scope back to mark one. Then—

One blurrg had gone over to the first imploder to sniff it, and the resulting flash of fire and then implosion was a gruesome sight. A shrill scream accompanied the fall of the trees. One Twi’lek landed on his back, the sharp angle of his neck making it clear he would never get up again. The other was trapped by her leg under a heavy tree limb, her cries swallowed by the storm and then silenced with a shot from Del’s rifle.

Two Twi'leks on the ground dove for cover when they saw the flash of the first imploder, inadvertently landing themselves right next to the second projectile. Their compatriot up in the tree yelled something to them, scrambling down as fast as he could, but it was no use. Del aimed for the rebel with the sentry gun, two quick shots that took him out as the imploder went off. The two on the ground were burned and then torn apart by the blast as the one in the tree toppled down. A single deadly bolt from Del made sure he would stay down.

Three blaster bolts rang out from the last target, the bickering trio. They were desperate to hit someone or something, as if that could save them, as if it weren’t already too late. The blurrg broke free from its tie before the blast went off, and Del let it run, focusing only on holstering his rifle and getting down from the high branches before the storm brought him down more forcefully. Even if the Twi’leks survived, they didn’t pose as much of a threat right now as the weather.

His fingers slipped and Del jerked backwards, tucking his head to brace for impact. Instead, an intricate web of branches softened the fall but left him stuck feet up, his boots wedged at an awkward angle between the limbs. The position was far more uncomfortable than doing an inverted sit-up in the base training room, but the movement was the same. The blood that rushed to his head and back down as he pulled himself up was dizzying; the backs of his legs burned in protest to the stretch. There — one foot was loose, and Del used the moment of relief to pause and comm his squad. “Nestor, shuttle situation?”

It was Bollo’s voice that responded, “Ready to fly sir, but we’ve got a problem—” 

Del’s other foot was almost free when the branch that impeded it bent with a sick snap that sounded all too similar to a bone breaking. Somewhere to his left an unbearably bright flash superseded all thought and movement, accompanied by a subsonic vibration so strong it knocked his teeth together. His helmet’s night-vision filter shorted out from the overload of light, his foot slipped from where a branch should have been, and Del was plunged into darkness.

[1245 Local Time, Three Weeks Later, Scarif]

He took another deep breath, reveling in the slightly salty breeze. And to think I get used to space station recycled air. Today Del was starting his first shore leave from the Shield Gate in five months, and the freedom of leisure time stretched out before him. 

His grand plan for the week of R&R was to do absolutely nothing, just check into the visiting officer barracks and laze around in the sand. Those plans were somewhat derailed by the intra-base message he received right before shuttling down from the orbital station. Apparently some new arrival in the MedCenter was asking after him, so Del would solve that mystery first and then hopefully get back to his previously scheduled do-nothing plans.

After making his way to the MedCenter front office, a stoic trooper escorted him to Building Cresh Room 4. When Del finally saw who had been asking after him, his heart leapt and seemed stuck in his throat. 

Her stump of a right arm was outstretched to a scanning device held by a medical droid, her left hand tapping idly on her lap. She looked over and saw him standing in the doorway, her face first exhibiting surprise and then a brilliant grin. “Del Meeko?” Her eyes widened upon registering the bars on his chest, “Apologies, Lieutenant Meeko! I had no idea when I asked around if you would even still be stationed here, much less that I had the power to summon an officer.”

He stepped into the room and returned the smile. “It’s good to see you,” he paused, noting her lack of military attire. Del had only seen her before with hair cropped close to her scalp, but now the dark, delicate coils floated down to brush the caf-with-cream colored skin of her jaw. She looked arrestingly casual compared to Del's memory, but the friendly voice and bright smile of Sergeant Jastina Adro were still exactly the same. “Ah, Adro?”

“Jastina or Jas is fine. I’m a civilian now. Have been for a few years.”

Talking with her was easy, just like it had been when they were stationed together on Christophsis. Del was naturally friendly, but being with Jas brought out a light-hearted giddiness that he hadn’t felt in… how long had it been since he transferred to Scarif, nearly six years? Of all the people and all the possible places in the galaxy, Jastina Adro was here on Scarif with him. If there was some cosmic karma or higher power in the universe, it seemed to finally have brought something good to his life to counter everything in the past few months that had gone terribly wrong.

Jastina was explaining the kind of limb-testing experiments she had volunteered for when a pertinent example came clunking down the hall, stopping in the med room doorway.

“So, the hotshot pilot finally decided to grace lower atmosphere with his presence.” Katarzyna Bartos directed a stony stare at Del as she adjusted her stance on two metal legs. These were pretty different from the proths Del had seen her testing in the past. There was a distinctly predator aesthetic in the way the knee joints bent backwards, the taloned feet resembling Trandoshan claws more than anything human.

Del sported a teasing smirk as he gestured to where Kat’s head barely reached the top of his shoulder. “Looks like they gave you the wrong size. Better return your legs to get some taller ones.”

“Go jump off a cliff, Meeko.”

“Hm, I tried that last year when I joined Firra for aerial training.”

Kat made a show of scanning him head to toe. “Looks like it didn’t stick. Go jump off a cliff, again.”

Jas leaned around Del to peer at the figure in the hall. “You’re a friend of Lieutenant Meeko’s?”

Motioning for Kat to come inside, Del made basic introductions before adding, “Kat’s an acquired taste. I hear she shows affection by detaching a leg to beat you with it.”

As if to prove the point, Kat extended an inhuman limb with the flexibility allowed by cybernetic joints, clacking metal talons uncomfortably close to Del’s amused face. “I could strangle you with my foot, you know.”

[Later that evening, Scarif Cafeteria #2]

Not much could be said for Scarif’s cafeteria food, but good company tended to make it more bearable. Jas seemed to be settling in pretty quickly with Del’s — well, they shouldn’t be friends, but they were the people that gathered together when their leisure time overlapped. Friends weren’t a good idea in a place like Scarif, where the slightest failure meant Captain Greer would send you away, or where you could head off-word for a support mission and never return.

That thought led Del to consider Corporal Izayn, recently promoted, seated next to Firra. He had responded politely to anything directed to him tonight, but was altogether quiet. Del was just glad that he answered his comm at all to meet them for dinner. At least Andee Nestor more than made up for him in conversation, with Kat biting in whenever she could.

“—now that Dee and Del are back together, you can share that one brain cell you’ve been passing back and forth.” ‘Dee and Del,’ as Kat called Del and Nestor, were usually both on the Shield Gate, but Nestor had been on medical leave for several weeks as his right femur was being knit back together.

“Interrupting me is rude , Kat, now where was I? Right, Del was flying totally blind—”

“I could still see, no HUD isn’t the same as blind.”

“Okay Mr. Ace-I-don’t-need-a-targeting-computer, for us mere mortal pilots shooting with no HUD is shooting blind. So the lieutenant told everyone to form up and watch Del on one more run, and what does he do but knock out the launcher and trigger the last charge! That’s a crazy shot, I mean it was like a Jedi trick!”

Del cringed at the description and Firra muttered, “Someday, Nestor, your big mouth is going to get you into trouble.” His big mouth had, in fact, gotten him into trouble many times, yet he inevitably talked his way out of whatever messes he talked himself into.

“You can’t fault me for running my mouth when it’s the effect of the pain meds, you know.” Nestor gestured to the full-leg brace that protected his injury between treatments at the MedCenter, putting on a theatrical woe-is-me expression. “Can’t help it.” 

Firra just rolled his eyes. “I don’t recall ‘becoming a dumb-ass’ as one of the side effects of your medication.”

‘Dee and Del’ had been stationed together on and off for several years, so by now Del was used to his role of reigning in Nestor’s exaggerations. “It was just a standard laser barrage. Maybe you’ve forgotten basic particle physics, but it’s literally impossible for lasers to not shoot straight. It’s not as if I were trying to shoot a torpedo with no computer.” 

His attempt to downplay the story didn’t dampen Nestor’s enthusiasm, the latter digging a playful elbow at Del and saying, “That’s Lieutenant Meeko for you, just as talented as he is humble, huh?”

It wasn’t just the bragging that made Del uncomfortable. Three years was long enough for the basic classified status of the Ukio mission to expire, but any discussion of their field work was still discouraged. Sometimes he wondered if Nestor had been assigned to Scarif with the sole purpose of seeing how much chatter Greer would allow before sending him away. It was no small miracle he had managed to ingratiate himself with the captain and stay as long as he had.

Kat addressed the newcomer among them with her typical disinterested monotone, “Adro, you were Meeko’s sergeant. What kind of dirt do you have for us?”

Jas gave a shrug. “We were on Christophsis, didn’t see much action. You know, there were the occasional troublemakers or belligerent drunks in the city, but our main job was running security on a refinery. And I’m sure Del’s told you the vandermole story.”

His fork scratched out a tinny squeal on his tray, pushing around the last few bites of re-hydrated vegetables as Del said, “Ah, actually no, they don’t know about that.”

Her hands waved about as Jas launched into the story, with Del making a few comments here and there to clarify. “...so how did he figure the tunnel was coated in acid? Well, I guess he was staring at my ass—”

“I was not!” Del nearly choked as he felt the heat rising up his neck, his mortification plain for all to see.

“That’s exactly where you pointed though! And don’t worry, I’m not mad at you for it.”

“You should be. I mean, you shouldn’t, because I wasn’t, but if I were it would have been inappro—”

“Wow, that’s… I just learned so much about you, Meeko.” Nestor interrupted them, his grin taking up so much space on his face that his almond-shaped eyes nearly disappeared. “Too much, maybe.” 

Del looked at him accusingly, all too familiar with that grin, “What are you talking about?”

“All I’m saying is,” Nestor raised his hands to feign surrender, “if someone’s crushing on their commanding officer… well come on, soldiers only do that if they’re into being bossed around.” He was wiggling his eyebrows to make it clear he meant it like that and Kat actually joined the round of laughter with her own chortle. Del was momentarily at a loss for words, but eventually managed to stutter, “You— I— junior lieutenant, I outrank you!”

Jastina’s laugh was clear and friendly, and it made being the butt of the joke a little more bearable. “Okay, okay, Del,” she turned to him in mock seriousness,  “I won’t hold your kinks against you,” and then with a smile towards everyone else, “but I haven’t even gotten to the part with the vandermole yet!”

The rest of the story was mercifully without more teasing, and it led to questions about Jastina’s arm that steered the conversation away. She was a good story-teller; her version of events seemed like a fun adventure. She didn’t mention that no trace of Kitehawk Squad was ever found, and that their own squad’s Private Platten had been declared MIA. Those losses were neatly wrapped up and packed away in Del’s memory, labelled ‘Christophsis’ and shoved to the back.

When dinner hours ended, the group relocated to a beachside landing pad that had been transformed into a make-shift lounge. They had to partake in ‘nerf meat gimp welcome,’ according to Kat, which mostly involved sharing a small stash of liquor and coming up with ridiculous theories of how Kat lost her legs. All too soon it grew late, and each person bid their adieu. Then it was just Del and Jas walking in the sand, ambling along the shore as Jas asked questions about the people she met today. It was easy to speak about Firra, Kat, and Nestor — they were long-timers on base that due to some mix of skill and personality had worked to stay in Greer’s good graces.

“And Izayn? He seems… nice. Awfully quiet though.” Jas was looking to Del for more. He was suddenly much more interested in staring at the top of his boots, partially buried in the sand, than saying anything about the young trooper. 

“He hasn’t been here long,” he finally replied. “Less than a year. The workload is tough. I’m sure he was just tired tonight.”

“No Del, that’s not it.” Jas crossed her arms and stared him down. Part of why she had become a sergeant so young was because she was skilled at reading people. Candor and friendliness could make someone a good leader, but earning a sergeant’s patch required the ability to recognize when someone was trying to serve you shavit.

The dark, shifting water gently lapping on the sand and the incessant drone of nocturnal insects filled the silence between them. You’re asking too many questions, Del wanted to say. That’s what he should say. Jas didn’t have any rank here, her civilian clearance was strictly limited to her tests in the MedCenter. 

But there was a memory that wouldn’t settle, that refused to fit in the neat compartment of loss where it belonged. Maybe it was just too soon, the wound too fresh, that’s what he would blame it on. In time the memory would fade and shrink and fit in its place with all the others, but not yet. Del swallowed as he pieced the words together, carefully selecting bits of truth that wouldn’t reveal too much.

“Survivor’s guilt. He lost someone recently and is taking it pretty hard.” He forced his jaw closed before he uttered more, fighting back the torrent of confession the small admission had released. It was my responsibility, I was in charge. Two pilots and two troopers, in and out, should have been simple. Instead Nestor was injured and Izzy is dead. The other Izayn. His brother.

The stricken lines of his expression were as clear to Jas as if he had spoken aloud. “You lost them, too. Shavit Del, I shouldn’t have pressed it.” 

Her hand brushed against the lieutenant’s bars on his chest as she moved to grab his arm. In hyperspace on the way back to Scarif, with one empty seat, Bollo in shock, and Nestor passed out from emergency meds, Del had felt those bars weighed enough to create a black hole and swallow him entirely. Even now on the beach, it wouldn’t take much for the sand to shift under his feet and he would sink with the weight of responsibility – of guilt – that his rank represented. 

So Del was grateful that Jas led him back to firm ground, the path of plasteel panels set in the sand. He didn’t know where they were walking, but he allowed her arm in his to anchor and guide him. There was nothing to be gained by wallowing in memory, so Jas did her best to distract him. She told him of the nerf meat pranks Condor Squad had pulled on Del’s replacement after he left for Scarif, and of the celebration they had held when Adjeera was promoted to sergeant. The stories didn’t lessen the guilt that Del carried, but they did fix his mind on something else, on some bright, clear horizon where his loss was not so strong.

It was only natural as they walked and talked that their interlocking arms fell loose and gradually shifted to holding hands. At some point the warmth of their touch triggered a jolt of realization for Del — this was allowed. Jas was a civilian, so there was no regulation preventing them from… well, he was getting ahead of himself. But Jas seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “You know, I meant what I said earlier. I’m not mad about you staring at my ass. Maybe even… wouldn’t mind it?” Her smile wasn’t quite the open friendliness Del knew from her; it was smaller, hopeful.

The rapid shift in mood left him feeling more than a little light-headed. “I bet you say that to all your specialists,” Del responded, his surge in giddiness — or maybe the liquor they had shared earlier — plastering a grin on his face. They had stopped walking, paused outside the door to Jas’ civilian quarters.

“No, Del. I only say that to you.” Before he had time to really consider her words, she darted forward on tiptoe to kiss him, then immediately withdrew like the touch of his lips had burned. “Stars, I’m sorry. We just met for the first time in years and—”

Her words were interrupted by Del swooping down to return the kiss, one hand instinctively raising to brush her hair away from her face. He savored the moment, desperately wishing that with all that had gone wrong recently, there was at least this one thing in the galaxy that could go right.

Chapter Text

“You need someone to settle down with.”

“Nope. Wouldn’t be fair. You?”

“Nah. I’ve got my eyes on a command.”

“Does Iden know?”

“Yes, she does.”

Agents Gideon Hask and Del Meeko, waiting to be captured by pirates, 0 BBY.

[0940 Galactic Standard Time, 4 BBY, Coruscant]  

Iden Versio crouched against the plasteel wall. With two fingers on her pulse, she tried to steady her breathing. First a breath in, then out, she matched the rhythm of the orange and white lights along the floor. Her heart was still racing from the scuffle with Target 6 five meters back. 

It had almost been embarrassing. A simple uppercut had dislodged her helmet, then it took Iden a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the alternating hues of emergency lights in the sterile white hallway. Losing the helmet was unfortunate, but it would have taken more than that to really take her down. She regained her composure while blocking her opponent’s sloppy right hook, then it only took a basic Grimshall hold for the enemy to yield beneath her. By her count, that left three targets remaining.

As for her squad, Iden was the last member still standing. The responsibility of taking down the enemy combatants and completing the mission rested solely on her now. Every soldier in this battle was equipped with a blaster, but their orders were clear: blaster fire attracted attention. Hand-to-hand combat should be the preferred method for this infiltration-and-elimination mission. That kind of pressure might have intimidated a lesser soldier, but Iden was more than just confident—she was thrilled.  

Her main advantage was familiarity. Gideon Hask was Target Leader—the enemy commander—and Iden believed she knew which strategies he favored and what tactics he would rely on. It wasn’t just because they both attended the Military Preparatory School back on Vardos, although that common education certainly helped. It was more that after years of studying, scheming, and fighting with or against each other, Iden and Gideon seemed to think and move in lockstep sometimes. This time, she was determined to be a step ahead. 

Target 3 rounded the corner in front of her, his helmeted gaze landing on his fallen comrade down the hall. Too easy, Iden thought as she knocked his knees to sweep him down and touched her blaster to his neck, just above his chestplate. She allowed herself a bit of internal gloating directed towards her unprepared enemy. By now Gideon would have to know that trying to assault her with his one remaining soldier would run too high a risk of crossfire. They should retreat to a defensive position. She had already mentally mapped the most likely locations for the final confrontation and— 

Suddenly Target Leader was in front of her, using his blaster as a bludgeon to knock her own out of her grip. Iden reacted instinctively, barely conscious of her movements as years of training played out in their grappling. Both their blasters were out of reach now, knocked to opposite ends of the hall as they struggled. At some point while Iden was clinging to his back like a hungry mynock, trying to position her arms around his neck for a headlock, she understood. 

“Kriff.” Too easy. Target 3 was a distraction, ordered to sacrifice himself to hide Gideon’s approach. Gideon dislodged her by releasing his helmet latch, Iden’s own momentum throwing herself backward at the sudden loss of tension. She should have expected the move; purposefully exposing the head was reckless and arrogant. It was exactly Gideon’s style. 

Even with his blondish hair mussed from the helmet and his chest heaving from the exertion of their wrestling, Gideon Hask was the model image of a young Imperial officer. His jaw was narrow and sharp in perfect proportion with his lean frame. His wide mouth was shaped into a confident smirk, the smug air inherited from generations of aristocracy. As Iden rolled towards her fallen weapon, Gideon reached the blaster from Target 3. For a split second they locked eyes, blasters pointed. 

“A sacrifice?” Iden hadn’t meant to utter the question, still reeling from being caught so off guard. That’s not protocol. That’s not minimizing personnel losses . While she hesitated, Gideon didn’t. He pulled his trigger. 

Iden didn’t bother hiding her brief scowl as she swatted off the blaster tag he shot into the joint of her chest plate and shoulder. The lights rose as Gideon’s teammates got on their feet and the voice of Commander Adenta came over the arena’s hidden speakers.  

“All other squads have been eliminated. Congratulations Besh Squad on your success. Squad leaders, stop by my office for debrief. Cadets, turn in your practice gear and regroup in Hariff Hall. You have until 1100 sharp to write up and submit a report on your actions in this scrimmage.” 

By the time Iden retrieved her helmet from down the hall, Gideon had found his own and had fallen into an easy step beside her. Iden was silent as they walked through the spotless academy corridors, the anger she felt at her failure bubbling inside her like an acid creeping up her throat. There were alternative courses of action she should have considered, moments where she should have stopped to consider the situation before charging forward. 

Gideon finally cut through her self-analyses by answering her earlier question. “He wasn’t necessarily a sacrifice. There was a chance Cadet Isak would take you down.” In response to her pointed eyebrow raise, he continued, “Alright, not much of a chance at all, I know.” 

“You sent him in front of you like a baby bantha to be slaughtered. How do you justify that kind of personnel loss?” Iden’s dark eyes narrowed with accusation.

Gideon’s voice took on the grave timbre that he reserved for speaking of the Empire.  “We’re special forces, Iden. Objective success trumps protocol. That’s what makes us different from the rank-and-file. We’ll do whatever it takes.” 

“ You’re special forces,” She retorted. “You’ve been training for this for nearly two years–I’m just getting started. It’s not an entirely fair competition.” 

“I know that Versios don’t make excuses for failure, so I’ll forget you said that.” Gideon said to hand-wave her explanation. “Besides, in just a few years you’ll be in my shoes. The Academy couldn’t ask for a better SpecOps candidate. You’ll catch up to me soon enough.” 

“I’ll surpass you soon enough.”

“Yes of course, and then I’ll just have to cross my fingers for your brave death so I can get a battlefield promotion.” This was a childhood joke between them, that the only way bossy little Iden would allow Gideon to outrank her is if she died and left him in charge. It had been funnier when they were kids and they imagined heroic adventures of their future military service. Now that deployment was looming close, it was gallows humor for a startlingly real possibility.

Gideon paused at the intersection that led to Commander Adenta’s office, a smile now leaking through the stern soldier demeanor. “Time to dazzle the commander with my winning strategy. Shall my debrief include the part where you cursed in my ear?” 

Iden rolled her eyes at the threat. “I’ll see you at lunch, Gid.”  

“That’s Ensign Hask to you, Cadet Versio !” Gideon called out after her, his smile still audible. 

That morning’s exercise was the first in a week of joint operations that combined the Coruscant Academy’s Special Forces track students, like Iden, and the current Special Operations officer training cadre, which included her childhood friend Gideon Hask. Some of Gideon’s co-trainees were commissioned officers recalled from assignments, tapped for Special Forces training after a higher-up noted their excellence in multiple skill areas. Most, like Gideon, entered SpecOps training as soon as they graduated from one of the Imperial Naval academies, their path selected years before as their training track. 

Iden could truthfully say she was proud when Gideon was formally accepted into SpecOps because she admired his skill and discipline, but she was also happy because it meant he would spend two years on Coruscant before shipping out to a full-time assignment. Now his special training was nearly over, and Iden would face her final years at the Academy and her own two years in SpecOps training without him. 

Sitting at a desk in Hariff Hall, Iden quickly jotted down and submitted her account of the exercise. She tried to use the spare time after to review her reading for Commander Grujden’s Amphibious Tactics course, but as she scrolled through diagrams of assault formations on her datapad, Gideon’s words replayed in her mind. Versios don’t make excuses for failure. It sounds like something my father would say. Versios shouldn’t be failing at all! Her studying-turned-contemplation was interrupted by Commander Adenta’s entrance. The entire hall rose to stand at attention as the squad leaders—the SpecOps cadre—filed in behind their instructor.  

“At ease, have a seat,” Adenta said and before Iden had a chance to fully sit down, “Cadet Versio, attention.” She stood unwavering but not stiff, her face and posture not revealing if she was excited for or dreading what the commander was about to say. Iden wasn’t sure which of those things she should be feeling, so she dared a glance at Gideon. The tightness in his jaw and his eyes fixed on the floor told her everything she needed to know. This is not going to be good .  

“Cadet Versio, as the last standing member of your squad this morning, you performed admirably in the face of difficult odds.” Adenta’s rich baritone filled the hall, then paused to allow her to respond.

“Thank you, sir.” 

“Despite your leader’s failures, you survived to face Ensign Hask as the final combatants.” As he spoke his merciless gaze turned to Lieutenant Jadus, Iden’s squad leader whose poor planning had spelled disaster for most of their team. They must have already been dressed down in his office, Iden thought. That explains why the heat is on me right now and not them.  

“What led your defeat today, Cadet Versio?” 

“I miscounted the remaining targets, sir. Believing Ensign Hask to still be in the company of a remaining teammate, I expected them to retreat to a defensive position. My failure to track enemy combatants led to my defeat today, sir.” Her voice was confident, and Iden hoped the dry swallow that followed her response didn’t reveal her nerves. Adenta had a reputation for crafting highly skilled officers, usually through the practice of nigh-impossible standards and harsh punishments for failure. His troops were SpecOps, after all. The expectations for the best of the best were not forgiving. 

“Yes, that was a grave mistake. But when the moment came for you to live or die, that is not what caused your failure.” Adenta made some motions behind the lecturer’s podium and summoned a holorecording of the training area, paused where Iden was about to be thrown off Gideon’s shoulders. “Watch closely to these final moments,” Adenta instructed the room of students and officers. 

Still standing, Iden watched as the recording played at quarter-speed, showing her rolling to a dropped blaster, she and Gideon aiming at each other. Gideon fired, and Adenta paused the recording as the blaster tag touched her gear.  

“ Why , Cadet Versio,” Adenta’s volume had increased three-fold, and Iden knew a scolding shout was coming. “Why did you not discharge your weapon? The enemy leader was in your sights, your finger was on the trigger, and you hesitated!” 

In the recording it seemed obvious, she could have shot Gideon while she was still kneeling on the ground. She hadn’t needed to stand up to aim, or to make any line of sight adjustments. What had she been waiting for? 

“Could it be,” the full power of Adenta’s glare matching his voice, “that for a second, you saw Ensign Hask not as an enemy combatant, but as a friend!”  

He spat the word friend as if it were a slur. Of course he knew his students’ files, he must know that Iden and Gideon grew up together, attended school together, and even that they met weekly for sparring. There was no pretense of privacy for cadets at the academy; their relationships were closely monitored for inappropriate fraternization.

“But when it comes to eliminating an enemy, you cannot trust your history with someone! You cannot trust your relationship! The terrorist Madine waited years gathering intel before betraying the loyal imperials that he lived and fought alongside!” 

There the commander revealed the real issue burning at the center of his tirade. Rumors of a traitor had been circulating after the recent AWOL of a prominent officer, an alumnus of their own academy. Adenta’s wrath was the first confirmation of the cadets’ whispers. 

“Just like Madine’s squad, you hesitated to eliminate an enemy target!” His voice seemed to calm down from the height of his fury, but with his gaze still fixed on Iden, she felt he may as well be four centimeters from her face instead of the four meters between her desk and the podium.  

“Don’t trust your relationship with someone. Trust your orders. Don’t flinch, don’t hesitate. If your orders are to shoot your own father , you follow them. Cadet Versio, what is your relationship to your fellow officers?” 

Her lips twitched at the mention of her father, and Iden met Adenta’s burning gaze with all the confident power she could muster as a Versio. This question was easy; the proper response had been drilled into her head at home on Vardos before she ever stepped foot on the Coruscant Academy. 

“Imperial officers are not friends, sir. We are allies in the service of the Emperor.” 

13 Years Earlier…  

[0930 Local Time, 17 BBY, Vardos]  

This new world didn’t look terribly different from Kuat. The sleek, silver buildings had slightly different shapes, but the same reassuring strength of blocky urban engineering. Somewhere among these towers was Gideon’s new home. 

He vaguely recognized the man who met him at the spaceport: Garrick Versio, a friend of his parents. Gideon had met him briefly a year before at some boring function that Imperial officers frequented. Versio spoke to him with an authority that a lot of grown-ups pretended to have, but Gideon believed his to be genuine. It made Gideon rather quickly decide that he liked Mr. Versio—no, Inspector Versio, he had been swiftly corrected. Inspector Versio was in charge, acting for the Empire, and that meant good things would happen.

The dark-haired little girl trailing behind him was completely unknown to Gideon. She was silent during the chauffeured speeder ride to the Versio Complex, staring at him with wide-eyed fascination like he was a feral nexu at the zoo. He refused to be intimidated by a kid half his age, so Gideon crossed his arms and stared right back at her. This turned into an exaggerated staring contest that the little girl decisively lost when she leaned so far out of her seat to look at him that she toppled onto the floor. Gideon smiled in spite of himself as she released an embarrassed giggle, quickly hushed when her father paused his comm call and turned around from his seat in the next row up.

“Iden, this is not the time for playing.” He didn’t sound angry, but there was clearly no room for discussion. His voice was strangely comforting to Gideon. It held the same tone his parents had used when directing engineers around the Kuat shipyards. That voice meant that Inspector Versio was an important person in charge of very important things.

“Yessir!” There was something jarring about hearing a serious response in such a high-pitched voice. The speaker returned to her seat with ramrod-straight posture, bouncing her legs that were too short to reach the floorboard.

After a brief tour of his quarters at the Versio Complex, Gideon was instructed by the inspector to wait in the courtyard as he met with his new school’s headmaster. The little girl, Iden Versio, stayed outside with him. Her face scrunched up quizzically as she finally spoke, “Are you going to be my brother?”

He physically recoiled in a way that, he would realize later, probably hurt her feelings. “Absolutely not.” 

Back on Kuat, Gideon had pestered his parents’ estate lawyer with many questions about his future on Vardos. One thing was clear: legal guardianship was not the same thing as adoption. He would remain a proud Hask, and one day he would serve the Empire and honor his family name the same way his parents had. Education on Vardos and living under the roof of Inspector Versio were means to achieve that.

“Well, good. Because I don’t want a brother.” Iden stood with her feet apart and her hands on her hips, projecting a confidence at odds with her size and age.

“Fine.” 

“Fine!” She was staring at him again, the same way she had in the speeder.

He hated it. He didn’t know her, he didn’t want to know her, and the sooner he could go inside and get away from her, the better.

The little Versio nodded to herself; her examination apparently had reached some conclusion. “Can you climb trees?” 

The stately trees arranged around the pavement dripped with scarlet leaves. They were light of structure, but definitely climbable. 

Gideon was nearly eleven years old and recently orphaned, so both a childish pride and a sobriety of his circumstance influenced his response: a scoff. 

“I guess.” He included an eye roll too, just for good measure.

“I can climb trees.” Iden was undeterred. “And I bet I’m faster than you!”’ 

“No way, you’re little. I’m twice your size and can reach more. I’m definitely faster.” 

“Okay, but I’m going!” 

By ‘going,’ she meant ‘going up the nearest tree,’ and she was fast. Gideon wasn’t going to let the little girl humiliate him on his first day on a new planet, so he scrambled after her, determined to catch up. 

Back to…  

[2115 GST, 4 BBY, Coruscant]  

Ensign Gideon Hask groaned as he picked himself up off the mat. “You know, after this morning, I thought maybe you were deciding to be nice to me. Not shooting me and all that.”  

Iden let out a sharp laugh as she grabbed her flask of water with one hand, the other smoothing down the thick, wavy hairs that had fallen loose from her braid.  “I thought that after this morning, you were probably missing me beating you up. You know I rarely pass up a chance to deck you.”

“I know that, and now my arm knows that too.” Gideon motioned to the bruise forming on his left bicep as a result of their wrestling. Occasionally assignments or field training got in the way, but otherwise once every five days Iden and Gideon met in one of the many Academy training rooms for an evening of sparring. Gideon would teach Iden techniques from his advanced courses, with begrudging acknowledgement that she picked them up a little too fast for his liking. 

They were usually precise in their takedowns, not leaving much of any sort of mark, but tonight had been… off. Truthfully, Gideon had felt out of step since that morning. It didn’t make any sense that not being shot by your best friend would have such an effect. Or was it being shot by a not-friend? Not-shot means not-friends? No wait, that’s not… Trying to parse out the positives and negatives had left him with something like a nagging headache all day. Kriffing Commander Adenta using Iden to make a point.  

“You know, Adenta’s little rant today about the ee-vils of friendship won’t help the rumors about us.” Normally Gideon was a soldier of perfect decorum, never disrespecting a commanding officer, but around Iden his guard was a little down (or a lot down). 

“I don’t have time to listen to rumors,” she countered, “and I didn’t think you did either. Besides, he wasn’t really upset at me. It’s that traitor Madine that caused problems.”  

Iden faced the training room’s mirrored wall as she spoke, carefully coiling her braid into a bun and securing it tightly.

Challenge the speaker. Distract with your hands. Change the topic. Gideon recognized the evasive maneuvers she was using, several basic ways Inspector Versio had trained them to steer conversations. She was speaking more like an intelligence agent than a soldier.

“Iden.” He raised a hand to her shoulder but stopped short. Iden had turned back to face him and was tracking his movements like she was preparing to knock him flat on his back again. She squared her shoulders and met his eyes, raising one eyebrow to challenge him to continue. He dropped the hand to his side, biting his tongue as he reached for the right words. “My training ends next month, and I’ll be shipped off to kriff -knows-where, so I want to address the rumors before I leave. I like you, Iden. More than I should.” 

It was stated so simply, as if he hadn’t agonized over this conversation. Gideon had practiced so many ways of saying the same thing— Is ‘I love you’ too dramatic? What does that mean to someone who is like family anyway? No matter how he wrestled with the words to describe what he felt, he always ended up at the same conclusion.

He and Iden shared a past. But they wouldn’t—they couldn’t —share a future.

“But my service to the Empire is more important than my feelings for you.”

In all the times he had gone over this conversation in his head, Gideon rarely dared to imagine her reaction. Iden, like him, had been raised as a model imperial citizen that would one day become a model imperial soldier. He feared she would think less of him for even bringing up the frivolous topic of rumors and relationships. 

Now he searched her face for some hint of what she was thinking, be it anger or annoyance or disappointment. Instead he found… nothing. No tension in her brow, no curve upwards or down to her mouth. Her eyes were fixed on some spot on the wall beyond Gideon’s left shoulder, relaxed but not unfocused. Perfectly neutral, she gave nothing away. Her father should be proud. 

The purgatory of waiting for some response was tortuous. Gideon took a breath, preparing to apologize for bringing it up at all, when she finally met his eyes and reached out to place her hand on his arm. 

“You’re right.”

Somehow she could say it and look content and regretful and earnest and stoic all at the same time. Piecing it apart was too overwhelming, so Gideon retreated to what was more comfortable—a smirk and a smartass comment. “Of course I’m right. It wouldn’t hurt you to admit that more often.” 

She responded with her own smirk and a squeeze of her hand, pressing down on the bruise she caused earlier. “Your ego is already big enough without any help from me. But—” Iden swiftly turned away to grab her flask off the floor, then held it out to him. “I think you know that I feel similarly. And you are right. This time.”

If her words were a concession, the flask was a white flag. They were done for the night.

Gideon accepted the water and her response, bringing the flask to his lips to hide the smile forming there. Although only four years separated them in school years, Iden was five years his junior in age. For years, he had borne the brunt of teasing from his adolescent peers about the stubborn little girl that chased him around. So much had changed since then, but with her hands on her hips as she watched him, she still had the same confidence of the little girl that challenged him to tree-climbing races.

“I’m right.” Gideon teased as he handed back the water.

Unwilling to be goaded, Iden just nodded. “Our work is too important to get distracted by anything else.”

Their silence now was comfortable as they left the training room and headed towards the dormitory wing. They were back in sync, walking side by side.

Chapter Text

“So, what happens now? We both walk off in separate directions and pretend like this never happened?”

“I don’t think you can. There’s still conflict in you.”

“Of course there’s conflict in me. I’m not blind, I know what the Empire’s capable of. But what else is there?”

Agent Del Meeko and Jedi Master Luke Skywalker at the Emperor’s Sanctuary on Pillio

[0240 Local Time, 3 BBY, Scarif Orbit, Shield Gate Station]

Blue light flickered at the edge of his consciousness, annoying in its inconsistency. Del wiped his bleary eyes and shifted in his bunk. The light was still moving across the tiny compartment that passed as a two-pilot bunk room on the Shield Gate. He sat up slowly, head heavy from sleep. “Dee, what the hell are you doing?”

Andee kept moving as though he didn’t hear him, crawling on his knees with a brightly lit datapad clutched tightly in his hands. He reached the wall at the end of the narrow space and settled on his heels, rocking arrhythmically from side to side. His fingers were shaking over the input of the datapad, each jerky motion entering more gibberish into the search field projected above.

“Kriff, what did you do?” Del asked as he jumped down from his bunk to grab Andee by the shoulders. “Is it ryll? Glitterstim?”

Andee’s eyes refused to focus on any one place, flitting around and squinting like someone avoiding looking directly at the sun. “I… it ah…”

His jaw hung open as words failed to form. Del released him and reached towards the light controls. The datapad clattered to the floor as Andee raised his hands to shield his face from the harsh white light flooding the room.

Wearily, Del crossed his arms and regarded the sorry state of Andee Nestor, Junior Lieutenant, elite pilot and special operations officer. From the man on the floor came a stuttering, panicked voice. “Yo- you- you’re angry … at me. Me me me me!” 

His outburst turned into a self-pitying wail that Del quickly moved to hush. “I’m not angry, Dee. Tired, yes, and annoyed about getting woken up. But I’m not angry with you.”

“Loola-la- li ar . I ca-can hear you. Yo-your mind.”

So it’s glitterstim. Shavit, Del thought as he took a deep breath. With Andee in this state, there was no point arguing with him that ‘hearing people’s thoughts’ was just a hallucination brought on by the spice. Feeling helpless, Del sat on the edge of the lower bunk and bit back a sigh.

This wasn’t the first time he had awoken to find his roommate slurring and stumbling. Each time, Del wondered if it would be the last. Would his reports about Andee’s habit, mysteriously ignored thus far, finally result in him getting disciplined or at least reassigned… or would Andee take too much? It always seemed like too much.

“Too much... T-too too much. On the Gate. So Loud. Eh- ay- ev’one… think so loud.”

Hallucination or not, his words were still unsettling. 

“Where do you even get this stuff?” Del muttered. In nine years of military service, Del had been deployed to over a score of planets. All manner of illicit substances could be traded in those Ground Forces camps and stormtrooper barracks, but somewhere as tightly controlled as Scarif? It should be impossible to get through security. 

Even if Andee were in his right mind, Del wouldn’t expect an answer. But Andee jerked his head up to look directly at Del, his gaze fixed like a man possessed. A wide smile broke across his face, full of teeth and empty of cheer.  “Nuh-uh-uh!” he sang the taunt. “Y-you don’t get to know secrets for f-f-freee. Wha-what can you give me?”

Nothing, Del thought. The only secrets he could trade without risk of espionage charges were his—well, whatever was going on between him and Jastina Adro, and Andee had made enough teasing comments that made it clear that wasn’t nearly as much of a secret as Del would prefer. Others may like to brag about the intimate details of their love life, but Del wanted private life to stay private.

A bit less frantic than before, Andee crawled towards Del while making a sound somewhere between a tooka wail and a throaty giggle. Del was only half listening as he grabbed Andee’s wrist to check his pulse, confirming that he was coming down from the initial overstimulation of the glitterstim. This was the most coherent portion of the trip. Soon his roommate would be blissful and sleepy, drifting off to glitter-fueled dreams.

Andee was still kneeling, right at the edge of the bunk in a posture of worship for his pillow. Less shaky now, his voice was quiet. “You wanna know why Gree-eer won’t send m-me away?”

Del briefly turned away to hide his eye roll, but he decided to play along. “Of course I want to know. But I have nothing to trade for it.”

His movements clumsy, Andee waved a hand in front of Del’s face before it landed on his shoulder. “This one’s a freebie. Si-since I already know a-a-all about your secret kriffing .”

He was close enough that Del could smell the sickeningly sweet odor of spice heavy on his breath. Whatever Andee was about to tell him, Del realized, might not have much grounding in reality.

“He’ll never let me out of his sight ‘cause he thinks m-my mom’s gonna haunt ‘im. It was her la-last will or some shavit that he look out for me. Such a bossy little sister, controlling her brother f-f-from the grave, huh?”

Del’s reaction was stunned silence, and Andee wasted no time breaking it. “After Ryloth, he’ll never let me go. I haven’t left the sector since m-medical cleared me. What’s a pilot that doesn’t fly? What? What am I!” He answered himself with a low chuckle, then his voice rose unsteadily to a manic laughing-wail. No, no, this is ridiculous, Del thought. Some crazy spice-induced idea.

But—

But all those times Andee had talked his way out of trouble? All those times Del was sure it would be the last straw, that he would be reassigned away from Scarif like so many before him?

Andee’s laugh had subsided and he was leaning against the edge of the bunk, his grin still wide. Recognition shot through Del like static coursing off a bad motivator; he jumped up to stand away and look at his roommate in entirety.

They had the same smile, bright and toothy, although Captain Greer’s was usually accompanied by a booming, intimidating laugh. Del probably never would have noticed it without prompting; where the captain was blondish and barrel-chested, Andee was narrow and nimble, with eyes that curved into sharp corners under his straight dark hair.

“So,” Del started, his mind still racing through the implications of this—of nepotism, plain and simple. “Letting his nephew die of spice addiction won’t incur the wrath of his dead sister?”

“Hey!” his roommate snapped, his eyes taking a few moments to find Del and focus on him. “You sound pa-pretty judgemental throwing ‘round words like ‘addiction.’”

“If you’re not addicted, why do you do it? Look at you. One of the Empire’s finest pilots, manic and shaking on his knees.” Now, Del wouldn’t deny that he was angry. He swiped up the datapad abandoned on the floor, glancing at the nonsense Andee had been frantically typing. “This is pathetic,” he said, shaking his head and putting it away in Andee’s locker.

“I’m clean for flying. Yo-you know I am, always. Besides, you and me…” 

Somehow Andee had managed to get one leg up on the bunk, and was stuck sprawling halfway on with his face down in the pillow. Del grabbed his dragging leg and rolled him over onto his back. “We’re what? ”

“We’re not that different. Everyone… copes. I have spice, you have cunt, it’s the same.”

He had just helped him get in bed, but now Del grabbed Andee by the neck of his shirt and dragged him halfway out. “Would you like to try saying that again?” he seethed.

“Ah haha, I hear your m-mind. You’re mad I called Jastina a cunt.”

One upward hit to the solar plexus was all it took, then Andee was doubled over and wheezing. Truthfully, Del would have liked to punch his face, but leaving a mark there would have led to questions the next day. 

Andee deserved it, didn’t he? Jastina Adro had been Sergeant Adro once, Del’s sergeant, and it should be expected that any trooper would go to bat on behalf of their squad leader. That kind of loyalty was a given. But Del’s punch was rooted in something else, a primal possessiveness that he didn’t entirely want to acknowledge.

“You,” Andee wheezed between labored breaths, “mi-misunderstand. Not about her. Issa—about you. And not just sex.” He recovered enough to pull himself mostly back into bed. “You n-need people to like you. Desperately.” His head drifted to the side as Andee nodded to himself. 

Del had moved to stand away from the bunk, his arms crossed to stop himself from lashing out again. “You’re pitiful,” he said.

“Del Meeko,” Andee seemed to be talking to himself, “what a nice guy. Oh, that Lieutenant Meeko—so friendly. So good. Almost… like he isn’t a murderer. Like the rest of us.” Andee’s gaze wandered around the room, his glassy eyes passing over Del. “I can hear you. You think being nice will make up for all the beings you’ve killed. Like on...” Andee took a deep breath and shivered, probably a final tendril of spice roiling through him before it would settle into drowsy bliss.

“On Lasan. Being so f-friendly will make up for what you did there?” He gave a helpless shrug. “It won’t.”

Shock, panic, anger—Del was ricocheting between reactions so quickly he felt like he may have inhaled a bit of spice, too.

Andee Nestor wasn’t on Lasan with Del. That mission had occurred before Andee even transferred to Scarif, before Del had completed pilot’s training and was still going on support missions as a ground trooper. Andee didn’t—he couldn’t —actually know what had happened there.

What then-Sergeant Meeko had done there.

“You’re just a blathering spicehead,” Del said as he moved to climb up to his bunk, but paused at the base of the ladder. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Andee admitted as he laid down. “Or maybe I’m right. Or maybe—maybe we’re both really, really wrong.” 

His eyes closed. For several minutes Del stood in place, watching the rise and fall of Andee’s breathing. Eventually he reached out a hand to feel for a pulse on the sleeping man’s neck.

Safe enough. Andee Nestor wouldn’t die tonight.

As Del settled into his own bunk above, the soft chime of a commlink sounded from his locker. Del tapped the controller on his wrist, which projected a small notice: Greer had summoned him to the ground base. Good, Del thought as he adjusted his alarm to catch the surface shuttle. His last thought as he fell back into sleep was wondering when his roommate had stopped being ‘Nestor’ to him and became ‘Dee.’

[0655 Local Time]

Despite his disrupted sleep, Del was alert as he drummed his fingers on the nearest control panel. His mind was replaying every slight breach of protocol he had witnessed on base, any opportunity for spice to slip through. As strict as security was supposed to be, in recent months it would have been easier to sneak in contraband. Shuttles through the gate had increased tenfold, with troops coming in, construction material going up, as well as more frequent visits from Director Krennic—even Moff Tarkin had visited a few times. The important guests were merely harbingers of a much more important event.

Construction was almost finished. 

Given how much it had stopped and started over the years, Del estimated that still meant two or three years until it was actually finished, but in any case things had gotten a lot busier around Scarif. Busy people tended to overlook things and ignore protocol in favor of expediency.

The station (that was all anyone called it, to reveal any other name would be sharing too much) was an imposing sight in the shuttle’s viewport, an ominous moon of metal and might. It didn't seem so awesome to Del, having watched it grow gradually for six years. But to new arrivals, the artificial moon was nothing short of sublime, evoking some mixture of pride and fear and wonder.

“I’ll never get tired of looking at it.” pilot Private Bennett said as he prepped the shuttle for takeoff, his pale blue eyes wide with wonder. “The station is big enough to be a moon back where I’m from. Hey, do you think it affects the water? Tides, I mean. Alderaan used to have only one moon, and it was too small to really make tides, but our oceans…”

Del settled in for the pilot’s usual spiel. Bennett talked about his home planet of Alderaan so much that Del could probably name all of their provinces and major cities by heart at this point (he had also made several half-sincere promises to visit one day, at Bennett’s urging).

Bennett was young, freshly enlisted, sent to Scarif as a shuttle pilot straight from boot camp. For every highly-skilled stormtrooper recruited to train for special forces at Scarif, there were three more like Bennett: adequate competency scores, low ambition, and high loyalty. Someone had to run the transports and maintain the mess halls.

Over the past few months, as Del worked out more and more excuses to spend time at the ground base, he had gotten to know the young man. Baby-faced Bennett had taken to him quickly; Del was probably the only officer in the entire Scarif Installation that hadn’t yet snapped at him for talking too much. On these trips, Del sat in the copilot's seat, instead of in the back with the Gate’s rotating shift crew.

The frequent trips were probably what made his time spent with Jas such a poorly kept secret. Del had been volunteering to co-lead training excursions with Lieutenant Commander Firra so much that his fellow officer had asked him about it directly.

What are you doing Meeko? You giving up flying to become a Death Trooper instructor down here?

I never said I’m giving up flying. It’s just…  You need more instructors. And I like helping the new trainees.

Yeah right, kid. You think I’m blind? Spend your nights before and after this trip with Adro if you want, but I’m putting you to work. This week we’re avoiding heat and scent trackers. Have fun showing the nerf meat how to get properly covered in poodoo.

It wasn’t until they were much closer to the surface that Del realized how odd it was for Greer to summon him in the middle of the night. Night and day didn’t mean much up on the Gate, since whatever squad was on-call had to be ready to run to their TIEs, but the ground base kept more regular hours of operation. Del was already tense, but the circumstances prompted a new wave of unease.

The pilot was talking about Alderaan’s native sharks when Del noticed the small crowd milling about the base of the massive security complex tower. “Bennett,” Del spoke over him, “did something happen at the Citadel?”

Normally Bennett would take no offense at getting interrupted—it was generally the only way Del could get a word in—but this time it seemed to trigger the impossible. Bennett was silent for about eight seconds, the longest Del had ever witnessed from him.

“No!” he eventually blurted. “I’m sure it was nothing. I mean, nothing happened. Everything’s fine down there. It’s fine, I’m fine, and you’re fine? I mean I’m fine today, how are you, Lieutenant Meeko, sir?”

Pretty bad and getting worse, Del thought.

But Bennett didn’t wait for an answer before he launched back into his shark trivia with far too much zeal for the early morning hour. They had to head away from the security complex to land in the west, so Del couldn’t get a closer look at the Citadel. By the time they were settling onto a landing pad, Bennett seemed to have run out of things to say. That marked the second impossible thing to happen, and the day had barely started.

“Wait, lieutenant!” Bennett finally said as Del stood to leave the cockpit. The young pilot’s round, fair face was strained as if he had been holding his breath. “There’s an escort waiting for you on the pad. Sent by Captain Greer, sir.”

“Is there, Private Bennet?” Del asked with faked nonchalance. “How considerate of the captain.”

The other passengers had already dispersed like the morning fog they flew through on the way down. As Del exited the shuttle, a lone shoretrooper snapped to attention upon seeing him. “Lieutenant Meeko, sir! SS-8021 reporting. Captain Greer has ordered me to escort you to his office.”

“I know my way there, trooper. You can return to your previous post.”

“Sir, I cannot do that. My orders from the captain are very clear.”

It was worth a try , Del thought as he started walking, the trooper rigidly keeping pace beside him. An escort was a subtle punishment; Del was being treated like a child in need of a babysitter. He could only hope to figure out what he did to deserve the treatment before he arrived at Greer’s office.

“SS-8021, have you been by the Citadel today?”

“No, sir.”

“I saw a crowd there on the flight down, must have been something interesting going on.”

The trooper was silent. Whether that was from ignorance or discretion, Del couldn’t tell. He was already in trouble with Greer, he might as well be direct. “In fact, I’d like to go see for myself. Let’s take a detour,” Del commented.

“I’m sorry, sir, I cannot let you do that.”

“And you have the authority, trooper, to tell a lieutenant what he can and cannot do?”

The cold muzzle of a standard-issue blaster in the side of his ribs accompanied the shoretrooper’s response. “I have orders from Captain Greer, sir.”

After taking a glance down to check that the rifle was set to stun, Del kept walking as if it were a completely normal occurrence to be threatened at blasterpoint. Whatever had happened at the Citadel, Greer would rather shoot Del than have him find out.

To Del’s relief, the trooper stood outside as Del entered the pristine white lobby of the Naval Training Intelligence Center. Just like she had been when he first arrived six years before, Katarzyna Bartos was sitting behind the massive black desk, buried behind datapads and flimsi reports.

Well, not exactly like she had been. Her head snapped up as Del walked in, and he was immediately struck by how tired she looked. 

“Del,” she said, her voice dry and cracking, “you should sit down.”

“Lieutenant Meeko, have a seat. Let’s go over Lieutenant Commander Firra’s report.”

Del sat as commanded but blinked in bewilderment. “Pardon?” he asked Captain Greer, who was leafing through some flimsi documents.

“Last month you joined Firra for Death Trooper training, an excursion to demonstrate various types of detonators,” the captain said as he clasped his hands together over the desk. “Let’s read his report.”

With a dramatic flourish, Greer presented Del with a flimsi copy. It was a frivolous show; he could have easily brought it up on the holo. Greer didn’t wait for Del to pick it up before he started reading aloud. “Day 4, Section 3: Thermal Imploders. Lieutenant Meeko deviated from the planned route to avoid a quokka nest. He relocated his team two klicks off of target to avoid harming the creatures, like a civvie sap,” Greer said, then dropped his copy on the desk. “What do you know! And here I was thinking Firra liked you!” He erupted into a booming laugh.

Del was silent; he knew he was supposed to be reading between the lines to figure out what Greer was really saying. The quokka nest had been… odd. Truthfully, Del didn’t know what had come over him. Quokkas were tiny mammals that had evolved to be arrestingly adorable, and in the split second when he realized he was about to blow one up, he called it off. Del had received commendations for courage under fire and had racked up a more than respectable number of confirmed kills among Scarif’s strike teams. Why had one little quokka thrown him off so much?

Captain Greer quieted down and regarded him with that familiar wide grin. “Explain your actions, lieutenant.”

Words came to Del automatically, easy filler of things he knew he was supposed to say. “It’s good to force troopers to change their plans.”

“I don’t believe you. Try again.” Greer stood to lean over the desk, then turned away to pace in some show of concentration.

“We’d be awful instructors if we let them get away with thinking that everything is going to go according to plan all of the time.”

“Wrong, lieutenant,” Greer emphasized the point with a stubby finger pointed in Del’s direction. “Try again!”

“The original location was poorly planned. My change worked better for our training purposes.”

“No, Meeko! Why wouldn’t you kill a stupid, little rat?” Greer’s face was red.

“Because there’s enough death here already, isn’t there?” Del stood as he answered, barely keeping his voice below a shout. “Sir. ”

“Well,” the captain said, suddenly much calmer. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Take your seat, lieutenant.”

They returned to their chairs on either side of the desk.

Greer reclined back, twirling a holostylus between his fingers. “How much death is ‘enough,’ lieutenant? Enough when every rebel is dead? Just enough to eliminate the largest cells? Are you only willing to withstand deaths that would secure the Core Worlds, but leave the rest of the galaxy in chaos?”

Del looked down at his hands, tense in his lap. “That’s not my decision to make, captain,” he conceded.

“No,” Greer’s voice was cold. “It is not,” he said as he leaned forward, again breaking into an overbearing grin. “Do you know why I’ve kept you here so long, Meeko? It’s because you’re friendly. Nerf meat trusts you! Being able to gain trust so easily makes you a good leader—it also means the ISB is clamoring to claim you as a military agent. But do you know what happens to good soldiers, to friendly soldiers, when they’ve seen too much war?”

His words were eerily similar to what Andee had said to him in his drug-induced haze hours before.

“They get tired. Some lose their taste for fighting entirely,” Greer continued, then flicked the stylus to drop on the desk. “Then they desert.”

Indignation rose in Del, bursting from his mouth before it reached his brain. “If my loyalty is under question—I have given nearly a decade of my life in service to the Empire! And I will give my life if asked of me!”

“Don’t embarrass yourself, lieutenant,” Greer sneered. “Your willingness to die for the Empire is not in question. It’s your willingness to send others to their death that concerns me.”

“Is that what you think happened to Corporal Izayn? That I sent him to his death?” Despite his years of training—not just for weapons or piloting, but in infiltration, interrogation, training to tightly control emotions and tells—he couldn’t completely hide his emotion now. Del was seated across from Greer, like he had been so many times before, but this time his heart was thudding in his ears, pounding out a dirge.

“Corporal?” Greer’s mock ignorance was salt in a raw wound. “You mean Specialist Gazder Izayn, who died under your command on Ryloth.”

“With all due respect, captain, drop the pretense. You commed me at nearly four in the morning, shortly after you learned Corporal Bollo Izayn threw himself off the top of the Citadel.” 

There was a brief pause before Greer’s laugh filled the office. “Well I’ll be a kowakian monkey-lizard! Perhaps you could cut it in Intelligence after all,” Greer said with grating cheer. “What I wouldn’t give to know the source of that leak.”

Leak. Greer could be playing dumb, maybe it was part of his plan all along for Del to know, but that wouldn’t explain the armed escort. 

The gravity of what Kat had done for him sunk in. I think you should know, she had said after Del sat in the lobby. He had attributed her shakiness to grief, but he wondered now if it was fear. Kat never disobeyed orders, and she certainly never shared classified information. Del hadn’t even asked her to explain what had happened; he knew better than to ask. She defied orders with no prompting but her own conscience.

Greer entered several commands into the holo panel, bringing up charts and reports that Del could see were his psychometric evals for the past year. Greer gestured to the images and said, “I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Meeko, and believe Corporal Izayn’s unfortunate death may have some undesirable effects. To be frank, you’re not the efficient soldier that you once were. Scores for risk assessment, asset efficiency, and discipline have all changed in recent months.” He waved away the projections.

“Despite my misgivings, you’ve been nominated to lead a new team based from Coruscant, trained as special forces but under the command of ISB. It’s quite the honor,” Greer said, eyeing Del like a vornskr circling its prey.

Del turned his gaze towards the long windows that offered a stunning panorama of the ground base with the outlines of the Shield Gate and the station faint through the cloud-spattered sky. He’d never given much thought to life after Scarif. Given the kind of work he did, he didn’t really expect to survive for it.

So many others hadn’t.

But he had been on Scarif long enough to know that any choice offered to him was false by design. There was always a larger game in which Del was just one of many pawns. Greer probably fancied himself a masterful player, but in the scope of the entire Empire didn’t really hold all that much more power than Del did. Some mixture of pride and resentment made Del set his jaw and meet the captain’s eyes.

“Once I’m gone,” he started, “who’s going to look after Lieutenant Nestor?”

“Imperial officers should be perfectly capable of looking after themselves.”

“Should be, but he’s not. And my reports on the matter don’t seem to make any difference.” Del cocked his head to one side. “His problem—do you think that’s hereditary? Nestor certainly looks more like his father, but maybe his mother was an addict, too. Maybe that’s how she died. And isn’t it odd,” he continued, growing more confident, “that there have been no repercussions for Nestor? No reassignment to a less critical position?”

Greer leaned back and crossed his arms. “You’re asking too many questions, lieutenant.”

A common phrase on Scarif. But Del just smiled.

“I’m not asking. I already know the answers. For all the pretense of keeping Scarif secure, you’re purposefully ignoring the biggest security risk here.”

The captain had picked up the stylus again and was fidgeting with renewed energy. “You’re revealing your short-sightedness, Meeko. Causing a fuss over a single irresponsible pilot could raise questions about the management of Scarif Installation, it could endanger our Death Trooper program and our funding. You know Firra is desperate for more supplies and personnel, and the good of the Empire depends on it.”

But Nestor was far from the only problem on Scarif, he was merely the visible tip of the iceberg. He had to have a supplier for his spice—that would require the cooperation of several pilots, some Gate personnel, and at least a few troopers for transport. Was it merely bribery that held the network together? Or was there blackmail, too?

If that issue were being swept under the rug, Del didn’t imagine Bollo Izayn’s fate would get any better treatment. A sense of righteousness, long ignored for the sake of the ‘good of the Empire,’ blazed behind his words.

“You were right, captain. I’m not the soldier I once was, not nearly as obedient. Your orders may be to ignore the problem, to send away the only person who’s acknowledging it, but I will not stand by and let Nestor slowly kill himself just so that you, and General Ramda, and every other negligent senior commander can go on pretending that Scarif is without problems!”

If Greer was surprised by his outburst, he gave no outward sign. “Shall I take this to mean that you are rejecting the position offered to you?” His voice was low and sharp.

“I don’t care where you send me. I’m not going to stop trying to get Nestor the help he needs.”

“Then I will notify you of my decision in a few hours. You are dismissed, Meeko.”

[Later that day, Scarif Installation, Landing Pad S-4]

“Your reports on Nestor were sent to Director Krennic’s office and to my contacts in the ISB. Greer’s pretty slippery, so I wager he’ll keep his position. It’s only a matter of time before he finds out who forwarded the reports, but he can’t touch my MedCenter contract. I’ll still be around.” Katarzyna Bartos stopped speaking and tossed a pebble into the gentle waves. The ripples were soon lost in the shimmering gold surface reflecting the setting sun.

“Kat, I know this is still a big risk. Thank you,” Del tried to convey his sincerity. 

She shrugged as she pushed her metal feet deeper into the sand. “I know you ended up hating it here. Hating what you do.” Kat paused, digging in the sand for another pebble to throw, “I wouldn’t blame you if you hate me for bringing you here.” She threw this one harder than the last.

“What?”

“You were my first recruit after I started working under Greer. Your recommendation came from—,” she stopped as she looked at Del, noticing the puzzlement on his face. “Do you actually not know what my job is? Dank farrik Del, you’d be hopeless in intelligence work.”

Pieces clicked into pace that probably should have years ago. Del knew that Kat had access to a wide range of personnel records and reports, but he had assumed that was part of her job managing Greer’s office. He had never actually understood that she was the one scouting through files of enlistees for special training candidates.

He smiled at his own ignorance. “Completely hopeless. I could never hate you, Kat. I’m glad that I know you.”

Kat narrowed her eyes. “Save the sap for her,” she said, nodding to Jastina, walking towards them. As she stood, Kat placed one hand on Del’s shoulder to steady herself. It was the first time Del could remember her touching him that wasn’t a kick from a prosthetic leg; the significance of its newness was matched by its finality.

“I’ve got to go report how these joints filter sand,” she said to excuse her leaving. “If I don’t see you before you go, good luck, Meeko.”

“Wait, Kat,” Del rushed to say as he stood and brushed sand off his grey officer’s uniform. “There’s one thing I have to know before I leave.” Horrible day aside, he couldn’t hold back a grin as he asked, “how did you lose your legs?”

“Ha! Find me when we’re both civvies, and maybe I’ll tell you.”

The women passed each other with greetings. Jas was smiling, the easy kind of smile that accompanies a sunny day and a good mood. “I know I can’t ask about what happened,” she started. “About whatever it is at the Citadel that caused a fuss. I don’t have clearance for anything. But that will change soon.” She was nearly bouncing on her feet.

“It will?”

“Greer offered me a long-term position,” her words poured out as she pulled his arm to walk, “like what Kat does. Assisting her, actually. Part-time at the MedCenter, like I currently do, then full hours in personnel management. It’s an enlistment contract, so I won’t be a civvie anymore and, well there’s a lot of transfers coming in, new assignments for—” 

Jas abruptly stopped, catching herself before she said more. She sighed. “I’m telling you too much, aren’t I?”

Del wished he could laugh. “You seem happy about it. This is what you want, back in the military?”

“Of course it’s what I want. Have you been in for so long that you’ve forgotten what civilian life is like?” The incredulous look on her face made it clear she thought he had. “It’s lonely, Del. You don’t have anyone watching your back.”

It wasn’t like her to change so quickly from upbeat to somber, or maybe Del just thought so because they had always tiptoed around any kind of serious conversation. He never spoke of his missions off-planet, and she never spoke of her years back on Corellia between leaving the Stormtrooper Corps and getting recruited for the Scarif MedCenter.

“I know there are downsides,” she continued, raising her prosthetic right arm to tug on the tiny, dark kinks that haloed her face. “I’ll have to cut my hair. And I’ll definitely miss the civilian quarters, there’s no privacy in military barracks.”

“If it’s what you want, then I’m happy for you,” Del said, and he tried to mean it. “But I have news, too. I just found out today.”

He slowed their walk as he searched for words, but Jas was too anxious to leave the silence. “Good news, I hope?”

“Well,” Del began, “that depends on your point of view. In a way I’m getting exactly what I wanted—what I wanted when I enlisted a decade ago.”

“I know everyone here loves to be cryptic, but just spit it out.”

“I’ve been reassigned to a Star Destroyer, the Implacable. Their chief engineer is setting to retire, so I’ll be training under him for several months to take his position.”

“I don’t suppose the Impacable ’s one of ours?” Jas directed the question towards the sky, where beyond the clouds two Imperial Star Destroyers had joined the Justicar in orbit, new additions in recent months.

“No. I know that I’ll board at Fondor, but where it goes after that…” Del shrugged.

He was expecting more questions, but after six months on Scarif Jas must have learned that that wasn’t the best way to get information. She was quiet, eyes turned down to the sandy path they walked.

“Chief Engineer is pretty prestigious,” she finally said. “But really different from what you currently do.”

She was right on both points. It was a great responsibility that would be drastically different from leading special forces teams. Chief Engineer was a role where he wouldn’t send anyone to their death.

“I ship out tomorrow.” The words were bitter on his tongue.

“What? You can’t be serious,” Jas said as she stopped in her tracks. “You’re transferring sectors, that kind of reassignment takes at least a few weeks to go through.” 

“I know, it’s… unusual.”

“No shavit, Del,” Jas punctuated the curse with a kick in the sand. “I can’t figure out if you’re being rewarded or punished.”

Me neither, Del thought. Barely an hour had passed since Kat first told him the details of his new assignment while Del had been gape-mouthed in shock. It still didn’t feel real.

“Well, we knew this would happen. Soldiers get reassigned all the time,” Jas said as she started walking again.

Somewhat dumbfounded, Del started after her. “Yes, but, I thought you’d be more upset?”

Her face twisted into exasperation as Jas looked back at Del trailing behind her. “Don’t—don’t do that. Don’t get all moody and scrunch your big eyebrows. It’s like they’re taking over your face.”

Usually her jabs were teasing, but now they stung. “What do you want me to do? Say I’m thrilled to be leaving and probably never see you again? It’s not as if I have any choice in the matter!”

“We chose the Empire! That is our choice, to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. Serving the Empire is what matters.”

“And we don’t matter. I understand.” Lieutenant Del Meeko was a grown adult and he was bitter and moping. Under normal circumstances he would have been embarrassed to be so petulant, but it had been a very long day and the next day’s travel would be even longer. 

“That’s not what I said.” Jas crossed her arms and stepped in front of him. They were at the door to her civilian quarters—again, because this is where their feet always seemed to lead them, despite intentions to go elsewhere. “You’re no coward, Del Meeko, will you at least look at me?”

“You’ve already said enough—”

“No, listen to me.”

Jas was suddenly much closer, raising a hand to his jaw and brushing over the day’s stubble with a gentleness he didn't feel he deserved. Del swallowed his pride to meet her eyes and was surprised to see a softness there that she rarely allowed to surface. 

“It won’t always be like this,” her voice was hushed, like she was saying something sacred. It was a voice Del knew from late night hours when his fingers memorized the shape of her and she whispered dreams for the future—places to go, wonders of the galaxy to see, with a ship she would own and maybe a tall, dark-haired Coruscanti pilot to go with it. There were no promises at night, nothing so naive, but hopes were easier to offer up to the darkness than they were to the harsh light of day.

“Just look up, Del.” Jas motioned to the station in the sky, a bright crescent reflecting the sun’s rays. “Soon, the Empire won’t need us anymore. When it’s done, there will be no fighting, no rebels or terrorists. We’ll both be civilians, together.” 

Del wanted to match her smile, but it seemed too good to be true. “Do you really think we’ll be so lucky?” he finally asked, his eyes turned down from the sky and back to her like a moonmoth drawn to a flame.

“Did you really forget that I’m Corellian?” She grinned as she opened the apartment door and tugged him inside, “we make our own luck.”

“I thought that just meant Corellians cheat at sabaac,” Del whispered into her hair as he pulled her close.

“Well, that too.”

Their eventual goodnight still felt final. Promising to meet again in the future seemed too much like a lie, whether it was to Jastina or Kat or anyone else. But it was a lie Del was willing to make believe in, supported by the small, fragile hope he had in the station under construction above them.

Though night fell on Scarif Installation and all but the sentries of Ground Base went to sleep, construction for the station continued at all hours. An army of worker droids and human foremen continued to build their hope—hope for the Empire, for peace, for Del and Jas, for Kat, for Andee, for everyone that had been fighting and surviving as others died around them.

Soon.