Star Wars: Before the Awakening (11 page)

Then they would break through the thin skin that protected the moon they called their home, and the Yavin gas giant would suddenly glow that much brighter against the darkness of space. All the push
and pull of atmosphere and gravity would vanish, and it was as close to perfection as young Poe could imagine. He would stare up through the canopy and lose track of the stars and feel the freedom and the potential, that he could go anywhere, that he could do anything. That was when he knew that whatever else he would be, he would be a pilot.

His mother had flown in the Battle of Endor, had taken
part in the massive fleet action against the second Death Star while Poe’s father had pounded the ground alongside his fellow Pathfinder commandos on the forest moon below. She didn’t like to talk about her service, but Poe knew that much, and when he had asked for more information, she had gently refused or redirected him. It was enough, she told Poe, that she had done her duty, that she had
answered when called.
That
she had was more important, she said, than
what
she had done.

“People were hurting,” his mother told him. “People were suffering. Your father and I couldn’t sit and do nothing.”

It wasn’t until years later, long after she had passed away and Poe had entered the New Republic’s service and become a pilot himself, that he began to learn the true scope of her heroism—that
Lieutenant Shara Bey had been awarded the Bronze Nova for Conspicuous Gallantry during the Liberation of Gorma; that she had earned her triple ace less than a week later, during Operation: Mynock Bite, raiding the Imperial fuel depot at Beroq 4; that she had flown in dozens of other battles, skirmishes, and actions; that her file held countless testimonies from fellow pilots, praising her skill,
claiming that they owed Poe Dameron’s mother their lives.

Poe’s father was more forthcoming with war stories, though he would never talk about his own actions, instead focusing on the heroism and bravery of others. He’d tell Poe how General Solo was the best shot he’d ever seen with a blaster; or about the time when one of his squadmates had gotten them out of an ambush with a rewired comlink
and two chargers from a standard-issue rebreather; or about the time his squad had been assaulting an ISB base in the Outer Rim and no one had known how to get inside until, completely by accident, they had taken down an AT-ST that then crashed into the base and allowed them easy access.

“Did you ever get scared?” Poe had asked his father once, when he was nine. It had been a year since his mother
had passed. Up until then, Poe had been able to imagine dogfights as pristine, glowing, spectacular displays of light and speed and grace and wit. He’d imagined stormtroopers as empty suits of armor, not as the men and women within. Losing his mother had brought death to him in a way he never could’ve conceived of before, and he understood then that war was not romantic; people died, and the
dead were not returned to those who loved them, no matter how much they might wish otherwise.

That was as terrifying a thought as it was a heartbreaking one.

They had been out on the edge of their property, the little ranch his parents had built after settling on Yavin 4. It was late afternoon and the sounds coming out of the jungle always got louder and more ominous as the night approached.
His father had been repairing one of the generators on the perimeter fence, and Poe was helping him with the work. They’d worked in silence, much as they had passed many of the days since Poe’s mother had died, united in their shared grief.

So Poe had been surprised that his father had answered, surprised that his father had known exactly what he was referring to.

“Was I ever scared?” His father
studied the dynamic hammer he was holding, the tool still vibrating, making its strange singsong moan as it resonated. He switched it off and dropped it into the toolbox at Poe’s feet. He wiped his hands on his pants and squinted into the jungle. Overhead, the sun was slipping behind the Yavin gas giant, casting the world in a ruby hue.

“When I was on the ground, back at Endor, there was this
moment when the bucketheads had us,” his father said. “We’d been surrounded by stormtroopers, all of us, caught. I thought we were done, I thought we had lost, and I mean everything. The war, everything. I looked up, past trees taller than these, into this perfect blue sky. You could just barely see the Death Star in the daytime. I knew what was happening up there, the battle they were fighting.”

His father smiled at him, a sad smile.

“And I thought that your mother was looking down on me, right then. In the middle of whatever she was doing, whatever fight she was fighting, it was like I could feel her eyes on me. I could feel how much she loved me, and how much she loved you.”

He wiped his hands again and plucked another tool from the box, returning his attention to the fence.

“Thing
was, I was
worried
, but I wasn’t
scared
.”

“So you were
never
scared?”

His father laughed softly. “I didn’t say that. I’m saying that what I was afraid of then isn’t what scares me now.”

“What’re you afraid of now?”

Poe watched his father raise his eyes from the fence and stare up into the dusk sky. The sun had almost slipped behind the gas giant, and in the last moments of daylight everything
seemed oddly brighter, more sharply in focus.

“That it was all for nothing,” his father said.

BB-8, secure in the astromech socket behind the cockpit of Poe’s X-wing, burbled a question. Plugged into the fighter, the droid’s binary-speak was automatically decoded and displayed on the console, but Poe didn’t actually need to read the translation to understand what the droid was asking. He
grinned and reached over his left shoulder to tweak one of the knobs that controlled the power to the port-side engines, adjusting the flow rate to the dorsal of the two fusial thrusters.

“Just talking to myself, Beebee-Ate,” Poe said. “Just wandering down memory lane.”

He checked his scanner and took another look at the utter emptiness of space surrounding him. There were three other T-85 Incom-FreiTek
X-wings with him and BB-8, flying a finger-four formation. This was Rapier Squadron,
his
squadron, his command.

“All wings, report in,” Poe said.

“Rapier Two.” Lieutenant Karé Kun sounded positively bored. “Everything’s green, Commander.”

“Rapier Three, and I have to agree with Rapier Two, Commander.” This was Iolo Arana, flying to Poe’s withdrawn starboard. “This is another waste of fuel and
time.”

“Rapier Four. Standing by.”

“You see,” said Poe, “you should all follow Muran’s example, there. You hear how nicely Rapier Four reported in, without editorializing or anything?”

The sound of Karé’s yawning for effect came over Poe’s speakers. He grinned, despite himself.

“Bring it around to one-four mark four,” Poe said. “One last loop and then we’re back to base.”

The formation banked
as one, each fighter executing the turn in rapid sequence, following Rapier One’s lead. BB-8 burbled again, less communicating than talking to himself, and Poe wondered what the little machine was computing. Every droid had its own manifest personality, and most that he’d encountered were predictable to certain stereotypes—bossy, sullen, grumpy—within their respective programming. BB-8 was his
own case, sometimes childlike, sometimes precocious, but every now and then Poe wondered if the droid wasn’t daydreaming, which was absurd, of course, because that would imply BB-8 had an active imagination.

Iolo broke into his thoughts, grumbling over the comms. “Thing I don’t understand, Commander, is why we keep coming out here.”

“We are members of the New Republic’s navy,” Poe said. “Or
have you forgotten who it is you signed up to protect?”

“I know it’s our
job
. What I’m saying is, look, I understand the Republic is concerned about piracy in the trade lanes, I get that. I absolutely, totally, I
get
it. Impact to galactic commerce, citizens need to feel safe, rule of law, all of that. But we’ve been flying this patrol for three weeks now—”

“Four,” Karé corrected.

“Four—thank
you, Karé—and not one smuggler, not one pirate, not one miscreant, heck, not even one unmanned drone has so much as beeped our scanners. I’d take a hunk of space debris. Anything.”

“What do you want me to tell you, Iolo?” Poe asked. “I’ve been writing to the Guavians daily asking them to step up their criminal activities, but so far, they’re just not responding.”

“That’s your problem,” Karé
said. “The Guavians can’t
read
, Poe. You should be writing to the Hutts.”

Laughter filled his cockpit, even Muran joining in, and Poe found himself grinning and shaking his head, and then BB-8 was chirping and beeping excitedly. Poe checked his scanner, then tweaked the gain, straightening up against the flight couch.

“Got something,” he said.

The laughter ended abruptly.

“Beebee-Ate, patch
it to the squadron.”

There was a chirp in response, a blast of static, and then a strained voice, oddly modulated—or someone speaking through a rebreather—filled the cockpit.

“
—free trader
Yissira Zyde
—nder attack, please, to any vessel receivi—us we—
”

“Beebee-Ate, get me a fix, transmit to all Rapiers.”

The display on the console came alive. The map of their patrol sector flickered to the
Mirrin sector.

“
—have—st power to sub—ght engines cannot man—peat cannot maneuver—multiple—ighters attacking—
”

Poe’s heartbeat quickened as he looked at the map, watching as BB-8 continued to isolate the distress call. There was no point in telling the droid to work faster; the astromech was working as quickly as he could, computing with all his power, but still Poe couldn’t fight his rising
anxiety, the urge to move, to move now, even if there was no place yet to go. Lines crisscrossed the map, zooming in, tighter and tighter.

BB-8 emitted a triumphant chirp.

“Got it,” Poe said. “Suraz 4. All Rapiers, confirm hyperspace coordinates.”

Almost immediately, Rapier Two confirmed, followed by Rapier Four, then Rapier Three.

“We’re going in hot,” Poe said. “Punch it.”

They came out
of lightspeed one after the other, with what Poe’s map told him was Suraz 5 dead ahead of them.

“Lock S-foils in attack position,” Poe said. “All Rapiers, report in.”

“Rapier Two, standing by.”

“Rapier Three, standing by.”

“Rapier Four, standing by.”

“Accelerate and stay tight.” Poe rebalanced power and nudged the stick forward, dipping his X-wing’s nose as he felt the stability foils on
the fighter rise then settle into combat position. The fighter accelerated at his command, surging forward as if shoved suddenly from behind, the motion itself bringing back the memory of his mother, of flying with her in her A-wing. The new T-85s were as fast and agile as anything she had flown back in the day, and not for the first time, Poe wished she had lived to see them, to see him leading his
own squadron.

“
Yissira Zyde
,” Poe said. “This is Commander Poe Dameron of the Republic Navy, we have received your distress call and are en route to render assistance.”

Nothing came back.

Still in formation, the X-wings broke around Suraz 5, now heading at attack speed for Suraz 4. Poe imagined pirates, and assumed the engagement would be a short one. Most of the criminal organizations working
the trade lanes of the Mirrin sector were poorly financed, using ships that were held together more by force of will than anything approaching engineering. Four X-wings would normally be enough to scare anyone off. That’s what he imagined. That’s what he expected.

It wasn’t what they encountered.

“Caraya’s soul,” Rapier Two’s voice was breathless and sounded almost hollow as it came over the
cockpit speakers.

The freighter, presumably the
Yissira Zyde
, listed in space, venting atmosphere from a hull breach on its starboard side, a cloud of debris mixing with the evaporating air. Even as they closed in, Poe could see the tiny figures of the boarding party leaving the attack shuttles that had pulled alongside, the glow of repulsor-powered jetpacks moving shining white figures across
the emptiness of the vacuum to enter the crippled ship. Better equipped, better armed, the boarding parties and the shuttles both, and that told Poe everything he needed to know, even before he saw the TIEs coming about, eight of them, moving to intercept Rapier Squadron.

“First Order,” Poe said. “Break, two elements, Rapier Two, tight on me.”

“On you tight, Rapier Leader.”

“Rapier Three, you
and Four see if you can’t get those shuttles to break off.”

“Confirmed,” Iolo said.

“Two against eight, boss,” Karé said.

“Yeah,” Poe said. “I feel kinda bad for them.”

He heard her laugh, and then they were into it.

There was a moment when Poe was sure they would pull it off, that they would send the First Order packing and rescue the freighter. He lined up his first shot on approach and
put his X-wing into a corkscrew as the first blasts from the TIEs lanced past, missing him and Rapier Two altogether. He pulled the trigger and the four laser cannons fired in two tandem blasts. The lead TIE cracked, then flared, then just wasn’t there anymore. He broke to his right, yanking back on the stick. BB-8 sang a burst of binary, and then Poe was behind a second TIE. The enemy fighter
jinked left and Poe saw it coming. When the TIE corrected, trying to cut to the starboard instead, it crossed dead center in his field of fire, and it was two down, just like that.

Then Karé came up from beneath another, and instead of eight TIEs, there were five left, and Rapier Three and Four had broken through the fighter screen. From his cockpit, Poe could see them both opening fire on the
first of the two shuttles, could see the blasts crackle and dissipate against the First Order shields. Both shuttles immediately broke station, one heading high and the other low, and Poe figured they were making a run for it.