“The heroes of Alphabet Squadron!” a burly sergeant with a stormtrooper’s haircut cried. “You drag yourselves back here looking for applause?”
“We’ll take it if you’re offering,” Nath said.
The sergeant—Nath vaguely recalled the other troops calling him Carver—scoffed loudly, swept his gaze past Wyl, and then gave a fierce nod to Kairos. “Only one who deserves it won’t be the one to ask. Strike team sends its regards—good shooting out there.”
Kairos didn’t seem to hear, and strode toward one of the corridors leading off the hangar. For a woman who risked herself for the infantry as often as she did, she never seemed much interested in face-to-face encounters.
Wyl tried to excuse himself next, but Nath gripped him by the arm and pulled him into conversation with Carver and a dozen other ground troops. While Alphabet had been running jobs for New Republic Intelligence, the Sixty-First Mobile Infantry had continued its slow march through the districts of Troithe. The ground war was a war of attrition and the outcome seemed inevitable—same as throughout the galaxy, really, where there hadn’t been a decisive triumph since Pandem Nai—but the stories were decent enough and it was best not to get on the infantry’s bad side.
“Be charming,” Nath muttered to Wyl as a jittery woman named Twitch described knifing Imperial guerrillas in an alleyway. “You get shot down, you’re going to need these people.”
“Troithe needs these people,” Wyl returned. “General Syndulla needs these people. I need a shower before we’re called out again.”
“Suit yourself.” Nath shrugged. “I can celebrate for the full squadron.”
He could, too. He started to, making an effort to learn the names of Zab and Vitale and Junior, watching for exhaustion and boredom and fervor in the eyes of the grunts as he wove lies about how Alphabet had come together, why General Hera Syndulla had brought them to Cerberon aboard the Lodestar and joined the ground war. He could’ve gone on for hours, but eventually his comm buzzed and he was surprised to hear Quell’s voice crackle through.
“Couldn’t get through to the others,” she said. “Pass the word—briefing tomorrow with the general.”
“Good news or bad?” Nath asked.
“Adan and I have a plan,” Quell said. “The convoluted spy job worked, and we got the intelligence we were looking for off the captured cargo shuttle.”
“Sighting?”
She would know what he meant.
There’d been no confirmed sightings of the Empire’s Shadow Wing since Pandem Nai. They didn’t talk about the enemy they’d been assigned to neutralize anymore—had avoided the topic insistently since reaching Cerberon, with their efforts to assist the assault broken up only by the occasional inexplicable intelligence op.
“Not exactly.”
“What, then?”
She didn’t speak for long enough that Nath wondered if he’d lost the signal.
“We’ve been looking at the layout of the Cerberon system. We have the makings of a trap,” she said.
Nath grinned.
Quell was a liar, a hypocrite, and a war criminal. But on her best days, the woman had style.
CHAPTER 2
AN HONEST DAY’S WORK
I
Soran Keize stood aboard the bridge of the Aerie, surrounded by tactical displays and viewscreens aglow with charts and status readings. He saw none of them consciously—he allowed his hindbrain to absorb the data and translate it into something visceral, staring instead through the viewport of a TIE in his mind’s eye, listening to the imagined scream of the vessel’s twin engines.
He saw junk rings glimmering in the sky above Jarbanov’s barren soil, and the domes of a colony rising on the horizon like triple suns. From one of the rings, a glittering stream trickled into the atmosphere like a distant waterfall. Leather-winged birds prowled the air, dipping close enough to study the TIE before veering off in search of easier prey.
“Squadron Four is in position now, Major.” The voice came from the comm. “What do you suppose we should do next?”
Soran let his eyelids flicker and banished the fantasy. When he returned to himself he spoke softly and deliberately, observing the reactions of his bridge officers to Captain Gablerone’s evident sarcasm.
“Proceed as planned,” Soran said. “We have you on monitors and will provide assistance if required.”
“Acknowledged, Aerie,” Gablerone replied, before issuing commands to his squadron—calling approach vectors and assigning targets, ordering final systems checks before the violence began.
The Aerie’s bridge crew, meanwhile, concentrated on their consoles and headsets, never glancing toward Soran. He’d met most of them only recently, but he recognized a stiffness to their professionalism. Officers comfortable with their duties showed it in their posture and the ease of their words. Chatter meant communication and cooperation. Quiet soldiers, conversely, were soldiers with unspoken fears.
He would return to that later. For the moment, his bridge crew was out of danger. It was his pilots who required attention.
Squadron Four struck its first two targets almost simultaneously. Lieutenant Seedia—the squadron’s newest member, transferred and promoted after the death of Draige at Pandem Nai—and her wing strafed the colony’s primary disassembly plant. Soran had suggested filling Draige’s role with Arron, but Arron had died on a mission to someplace called the Oridol Cluster; a loss Soran blamed on his own recent absence. Lieutenant Kandende’s flight, meanwhile, fired on the battery recycling facility nearly too late to inflict significant damage. Soran would have to interrogate that error during debriefing.
Give them time, he told himself, then chastened himself. Time was not on their side.
“Distress calls going out,” Rassus announced from his station on the bridge, glancing backward at Soran. “Shall we attempt to jam them?”
“No,” Soran said.
Rassus opened his mouth to argue, then returned his attention to his console.
Question me or be silent, Soran wanted to say. Show confidence for the sake of the others.
Perhaps the others wouldn’t notice.
The fighters continued their brutal work, Gablerone’s own flight spraying fire onto the roads and bridges. Soran had timed the attack precisely, allowing the colony’s industrial hubs to release their workers from their afternoon shift. Civilian casualties (if one could call colonists supplying the New Republic military civilians) would be higher than if he’d chosen a nighttime strike, but that was incidental to Soran’s goal. Fewer workers at their stations guaranteed greater chaos.