Chapter 104 |
“Look through my eyes, Wynnet,” Ciena Ree whispered, her fist around the butt of her rifle. The woven leather at her wrist pulled tight against her skin, “I… we’ve made it.”
Standing on the amphitheatre grounds of the Jelucan Preparatory Academy, Ciena could only think that it was the most beautiful day of her life. The air was cool and crisp, but not too cold; the sky was a clear pale blue; and the wind was a light refreshing breeze, if a little hazy from the nearby surface mines the new government had carved out. Jelucan’s weather was never this nice. Cold and mountainous, Jelucan was a freezing rock of a world. The valleys were a bit greener, but high atop the plateau upon which the campus sat, it was a wonder nobody was shivering in their uniforms.
Maybe the Force was keeping the skies clear for this once-in-a-lifetime moment. Or, Ciena thought, those new weather satellites were working overtime to ensure only picture-perfect skies for the graduation for the school’s pioneer cohort.
“Don’t celebrate yet,” Thane Kyrell murmured beside her, careful to keep his rifle straight and his voice low, “Not until we hear our names.”
“Come on, Thane,” she nudged him back into line, smiling despite herself, “We’re standing here. That means we made it.”
Over eight-hundred trainees stood arrayed across the amphitheatre grounds–the academy’s entire pioneer cohort, four companies strong, each one filling its own corner of the field. Four years ago, each company had numbered exactly three-hundred. Today, some barely reached two. Surrounding them on three sides, rising in a vast semicircle, the massive stands overflowed with the families who had come to watch their sons and daughters in a historic event for the world.
“Yes,” Thane said, but he wasn’t smiling. His eyes, ice-blue and dead serious, stayed fixed on the stage ahead. “But we’re not aiming for just any academy, are we?”
The trainees nearby shifted at the sound of his voice, then stilled at hissed warnings from their sectionmates. A ceremony was supposed to be a joyous occasion. For most of them, today, it was. But evidently not for Thane, and increasingly, not for Ciena either, the closer the moment came.
Because today, it was not the graduation itself that was important. The Jelucan Preparatory Academy was linked to a greater network of CAF basic training facilities and partner academies across the Outer Rim. And today, every graduate would be learning which specific military academy they would be slotted to, and which planet they would be living on within two week’s time.
Graduating from the prep academy was merely setting their first foot on the starting line. It was the next step that mattered most, what Thane and Ciena had spent the last four years chasing. She knew most of the cohort had set their sights on Serenno, capital world of the Hydian Oversector where Jelucan laid, and from there the Tingel Fleet. Serenno was prestigious enough to boast about, a founding world of the Confederacy, but also close enough to home to not feel overly ambitious.
But Thane and Ciena were nothing if not overly ambitious.
They were shooting for the stars. The stars beyond even Serenno. Ciena Ree had given every single day of the last four years of her life to make it to one specific place.
Raxus Secundus. Capital of the Confederacy of Independent Systems. And from Raxus Secundus, the Independence Fleet.
It was a shot in the dark for sure. She had made that promise with Thane, to go to Raxus together, four years ago, but even now she couldn’t fully believe in it. Jelucan was just so small, just one tiny speck of a world, worthless if not for the extensive mineral veins buried within its crust. The entire Outer Rim was fighting to go to Raxus Secundus, and for all she knew, there weren’t even any available slots reserved for Jelucani graduates in the first place!
Just the thought of everything being for naught could’ve made her groan in despair. Competition within the school was fierce enough, proven by the sheer number of dropouts.
This was the only preparatory academy on all of Jelucan, and it seemed like very their around their age wanted in, whether driven by ambition, adventure, or the insistence of vicarious parents. First-waver, second-waver, it didn’t matter. Thane and Ciena had applied the day construction was announced, and enrolled the day the last brick was laid. They were twelve years old. Among the youngest in the pioneer cohort–and it had never once stopped them from clawing their way up the lists every semester.
After all, they were aiming for the capital.
Let all the other kids dream small, they had something all the other kids didn’t. They had met Sev’rance Tann, the Supreme Commander herself! Had spoken with her, told her, in an eight-year-old’s breathless certainty, all about their dreams, and some small unshakeable part of them still believed she’d built this academy for them.
Well, Ciena could admit, now, that it was probably wishful thinking. But true or not, they kept that belief so close to their hearts, buried deep like it was the fount of their ambition, their drive. It would be no exaggeration to say that the moment they found out just who they spoke to that day–they had told everybody who would listen, or rather, held their ears hostage with all the excitement only an eight year old could.
She remembered telling her parents. They had given her that gentle, sad smile they did whenever they didn’t want to shatter her dreams. It was the same smile they gave her when she swore up and down she could hear her late sister’s voice. And, just as Ciena never spoke of her sister again, she never mentioned Sev’rance Tann again.
Thane’s father had beaten him within an inch of his life for daring to tell such a bold-faced lie. He didn’t share much else.
Fueled by hatred for Oris Kyrell and driven by pure spite, Thane Kyrell soared to the top of the lists in his first year, beating out even the older kids whenever he could, ahead even of his own brother Dalven, enrolled alongside him in the same pioneer intake. While Ciena rode the shuttle down to the valley most weekends and odd holiday, Thane always remained on campus. Once, she had offered to bring him with her down to the valleys. He shook his head.
“Dalven knows about you,” he told her, “He’d know I left with you. I don’t want to bring trouble to your family. This is the only place they can’t reach me.”
The school sat atop one of the southern plateaus, near the military bases, far away from just about everything else on Jelucan. The only way in or out was by the shuttles, which were reserved for students and staff only. Otherwise, the local airspace was restricted for military use only. Today was the only day civilians–their friends and families–were permitted to enter campus grounds.
Somewhere in the crowd above, Paron and Verone Ree were watching. She thought she caught a glimpse of them. It didn't matter if she had. Right then, it didn’t matter which academy she was going to. All that mattered was that in two weeks, she would be a cadet of the Confederate Armed Forces. She had already done the thing that mattered. She had made them proud. She had made every first-waver proud. She had brought honour to her family, to every first-waver on Jelucan, and to her homeworld itself.
“Parade, watch your front!”
Over eight-hundred trainees snapped straight as one, as though struck by the same invisible whip, at the sound of the sergeant major’s voice. At almost the same time, the noise in the stands quieted down to nary a murmur. A uniformed man walked onto the stage, whom she did not recognise to be any of their sergeants or instructors.
He was wearing grey.
“–the reviewing officer, Colonel Romar Adell, commanding officer for the X-Thirty-Fourth Armoured Division, Battle Group Arcus.”
“Parade–!” Ciena’s spine locked, “Present, arms!”
A single sharp clap rolled through the amphitheatre as eight hundred rifles snapped up in salute, and the stands answered with a roar of applause. Pride climbed up Ciena's throat until it was hard to breathe. A year of drills, finally spent on something that mattered.
The academy was meant for children who were dead set on the CAF, and prepared them for every possible branch of military life in ways no civilian school on Jelucan could. The first two years had been almost easy: mathematics, sciences, history, and languages. It was the third year that kicked the curriculum into high gear. Calculus replaced arithmetic. Physics and engineering fundamentals replaced general science. Alongside history, ethics was introduced, and so was law and politics.
Physical education became physical conditioning. Morning assemblies became morning parades. Walking to meals became formation marching affairs. Daily foot drills. Weekly physical training. Monthly obstacle courses. And of course, the quarterly field exercises that dropped them into the worst the Jelucani outback could offer, sleeping in trenches they'd dug themselves, through rain and through snow.
“Parade–!” Ciena’s gut clenched on reflex, “Shoulder, arms!”
“Parade, at ease!”
She let her shoulders drop, finally, and pulled in a full breath. At the podium, the colonel cleared his throat, and the amplifier droids around him caught the sound and carried it to every corner of the field.
“I will make this brief,” Colonel Romar Adell was on the older side; grey-haired, grey-moustached, grey down to the uniform, “I have only one thing to say: well done.”
Beside her, she felt Thane's shoulders ease, just slightly. Hers did the same. Whatever she had expected from a CAF colonel, it wasn't the warm, unhurried cadence of a man who reminded her, for one disorienting second, of her grandfather.
“You came to this academy as sons and daughters of Jelucan,” he went on, “You leave it today as proud cadets of the Confederate Armed Forces. You will take the Separatist Oath. You will don the Separatist Hex, and you will become the shields of our Confederacy. Remember what that six-sided shield means when it sits on your shoulder. It is a solemn duty you will all shoulder–to protect your home.”
He then produced a plain flimsi envelope, and raised it into the air, “I hold the list of every graduate, and the academy each of you has been assigned to. For four years, your instructors have measured your skill, your judgment, your character, and they have spoken for you. Some of you will become elite army rangers. Some, artillery officers. Some, naval captains, gunnery chiefs, or starfighter pilots. But know wherever you are sent, you carry a responsibility with you: carry Jelucan's name, carry it with pride, and make certain that both your allies and your enemies, within and without the Confederacy, learn to respect it, and you."
The amplifier droids caught the tear of flimsi as he broke the seal and unfolded the contents. He cleared his throat. Eight hundred backs went rigid, and the whole amphitheatre seemed to hold its breath at once.
“For the University of Agamar…”
Ciena could’ve groaned. They were going in alphabetical order by school? Of course it was alphabetical by school, and that meant an eternity standing at attention while letter after letter crawled past, with no way of knowing how far down the list Raxus Secundus would fall, or whether it would fall anywhere at all. She could already picture it: minutes bleeding away, every other academy named and claimed, and Raxus simply absent from the flimsi entirely. Or worse–there, read aloud to the whole world, and her own name nowhere beneath it. She would have to slink off the field afterward, settle for whatever scrap of an assignment she'd been left with, and call it a life. Failure wasn’t the same as dishonour, but it felt like it at the moment.
There were nearly a thousand names to be read, and her legs already ached from standing still. But she couldn’t zone out–nobody could. Her name could appear anywhere on that list Sure, the official letter would arrive by post regardless, But to miss the moment itself, here, surrounded by everyone she loved and everyone she'd spent four years competing against… that would be its own tragedy.
“For the Bothan Martial Academy on Bothawui…”
“For the Carosi-Twelve Academy of Medicine… Mothar Drik–”
Ciena straightened in surprise. Mothar Drik. A medic? The older boy had matured plenty over his years at the Academy–most of the self-important second-wavers did, eventually, whether they wanted to or not–but she had never once pictured him with steady hands over a bacta tank. Had the instructors truly seen that in him? Or had they simply run out of better places to put him?
“…Lateron Space Academy… Melford Star Academy on Lianna…”
The names went on. Planets she knew, planets she'd never heard of, cadets assigned to futures she could only half imagine.
“Marleyvane Academy… Ov Taraba on Onderon… Phelarion Academy…”
The academies inched closer to the end of the alphabet, closer to Raxus, and with every name Ciena fought down a rising urge to puke right there in formation. Her pulse climbed with each syllable that wasn't the one she wanted. And then, finally–
“For the Carannia Military Academy on Serenno…”
What.
No R. The thought landed like a physical blow. The list had moved straight from ‘P’ to ‘S’. Which meant there was no Raxus Secundus on the flimsi at all. Which meant Raxus didn't take cadets from Jelucan. Not this year.
Maybe not ever, she thought bitterly.
She didn't have the luxury of sitting with that thought. The colonel was already moving on; Serenno, the fallback, the safe and respectable second choice that suddenly didn't feel safe or respectable at all, just close, just good enough, just everything she had spent four years refusing to settle for.
He read through the names to a chorus of hushed ‘yes!’-es and fists pumped low at the hips, careful not to be seen by the stands or stage. The names came. The names passed. Ciena did not hear her own.
She risked a glance at Thane. His face told her nothing–and that told her he hadn't heard his, either.
And as if that weren't enough–
“...and Dalven Kyrell.”
The last name accepted into Serenno was his brother's. She heard Thane suck in a sharp breath through clenched teeth and winced on his behalf. She'd never had a sibling, let alone one to resent–but she understood, in her own way, what it felt to spend a life fighting to prove yourself, only to come up short exactly when it mattered most.
“Chin up, Thane,” she whispered, just for him, “It’s not the end of the world. You’re never going to see them again.”
Them, of course, meaning the Kyrell family.
“Two weeks at home,” Thane hissed, “Listening to him gloat? I might actually kill him.”
“Your father would kill you first.”
“Honestly?” his jaw tightened, “At this point, let–”
“Don’t say something you don’t mean,” her voice came out sharper than she intended, “We’re leaving Jelucan. Together.”
Thane Kyrell didn’t reply to that.
“Next,” the colonel folded the flimsi over to its second half, “For the Independence Naval Academy on– oho.”
He stopped in his tracks. For the first time since he started reading, Colonel Romar Adell lifted his eyes up from the flimsi, and looked at the gathered parade. He scanned the ranks, as if searching for someone in particular. The grandfatherly warmth had drained out of his voice entirely, replaced by something sharper and harder–one they knew all too well–the bark of a drill sergeant.
“I have never seen this one before.” A pause. “Thane Kyrell. Ciena Ree. Well done.”
Ciena turned to find Thane already looking back at her, both of them equally lost. A murmur rippled through the stands, and even the parade ranks itself began to whisper, at the break in program. Her mind was already running a hundred miles an hour. Independence Naval Academy? She’d never even heard the name before.
Independence.
Wait. Does that mean–
“Thane Kyrell and Ciena Ree.” Colonel Adell's voice boomed over the field. “Both of you will be going to–”
⁂
It still didn’t feel real to Ciena, right then. It didn’t feel real when Colonel Adell personally arrived to take her family to the spaceport. It didn’t feel real when they stopped by Thane’s house to pick him up, or how his parents said their good-byes at the door and didn’t bother seeing him off at the spaceport. Or how he was visibly relieved when they hadn’t.
It didn’t feel real when she first saw their Sheathipede-class shuttle transport waiting on the pad, or when she hesitated on the boarding ramp hugging her parents for so long that the colonel threatened to leave her behind. But she and Thane had become a team to get into the Independence; it was only right that they should arrive there together.
It didn’t feel real the moment when the shuttle shuddered into lightspeed–their first experience of hyperspace–and the two of them grinned at each other in total delight. The whole week that followed didn't feel real either; she spent most of it in a kind of daze, bouncing wall to wall through the commons compartment like the artificial gravity hadn't quite caught up with her yet.
Then they arrived at Columex, and it was like getting punched in the face.
The Independence Fleet was at port of call there, a thousand warships strong and orbiting the planet in a slow-turning ring of shadows and dark steel. She knew every silhouette by glance, recited their names to herself with a pride bubbling up her throat. Ciena had always known how much of a backwater world Jelucan was. Holos had told her the galaxy was far bigger and more sophisticated than anything she’d ever had the chance to see before. So she’d thought she had been prepared.
There were Providence-class battlecruisers, and Munificent-class frigates and Recusant-class light destroyers, the victors of the old war. There were Dreadnaught-class and Strike-class cruisers and even Star Destroyers like the Victory-class and Quasar Fire-class. And even those new warships from Dac Orbital Shipyards she saw on a Shadowfeed programme–shaped like a drifting cloud of alusteel and bristling with artillery blisters.And past all of it, the unmistakable rings of Lucrehulk-class carriers, swarming with TIE Vultures running drills against the black.
Twin Ion Engine Variable Geometry Self-Propelled Battle Droid, Mark Three. She recalled their full classification in her mind, memorised off a textbook page she hadn't thought about in months, and she felt a small, fierce pride in knowing it.
A squadron of starfighters screamed past the shuttle so closely she could feel the hull rattle, the cockpit blooming with the blue fire of engine wash.
“Drexl-class heavy starfighters,” Thane murmured dreamily, his eyes following them dive until they disappeared into the planet’s shadow.
“I don’t see any B-wings, though,” Ciena noted, swivelling her head side to side and up and down like a bobblehead, as if she couldn’t decide what to look at.
Thane frowned lightly, “B-wings aren’t as cool anyway. I want to fly a Drexl.”
She never got the chance to reply. It rose from nowhere, emerging from Columex’s own shadow like something breaching the surface of a black ocean. Except it was long and pointed, and in that moment, bigger than anything she had ever laid eyes on, and the breath went out of her in one motion.
Star Station Independence was the size of Jelucan itself.
Or that was how it felt, craning her neck against the viewport, mouth open in a way she would have been embarrassed by if she'd had room left over to care.
For the two weeks she spent steeling herself to leave, she had devoured every HoloNet forum and Shadowfeed documentary she could get her eyes on. She thought she knew what to expect. Star Station Independence was the supermassive, mobile headquarters of the Confederate Armed Forces, retrofitted from an old Republic star dreadnought captured during the Outer Rim’s War of Independence, and thus renamed in its honour.
Forged like a dagger quenched in gold and royal blue, ten klicks from bow to stern, and home to over a quarter-million souls, it was an entire world unto itself. And soon to be her entire world, too, possibly forever. Because Colonel Adell had made it abundantly clear that once you set foot on the Independence, you wouldn’t get to see your family again. It was the greatest honour a girl like Ciena could have, and the greatest sacrifice.
But to honour her oath her family made to the Confederacy? No sacrifice was too great. That was the resolve of a first-waver, of a Ree.
“Woah.”
She didn't know which of them said it. When Colonel Adell let out a low chuckle behind her, she nearly leapt out of her own skin. Her face reddened; she'd entirely forgotten he was still in the cabin.
“Do you want to see something larger, and more impressive?” Colonel Adell sat forward in his chair, thumb angled at a distant shape emerging from the planet’s eclipse.
Both of them leaned over his shoulder at once, straining to make it out, internally wondering how a man his age had eyes sharper than theirs. Then it came clear: a long strand of pearls, capped at either end, dragged slowly out of Columex's shadow.
“That’s huge,” Thane said from beside her, “Look at that Providence next to it!”
It was. The escorting battlecruiser sat dwarfed beside it, each pearl in the chain easily three times its size, if not larger.
“Field Secured Containment Vessel,” something in Colonel Adell's grin, half-hidden under his moustache, told her this was his favorite ship in the entire star system, “Here to resupply the Independence Fleet before it goes on its next deployment. Those spheres? They are force-field containment bubbles, and each one holds four times what a Lucrehulk-class freighter can carry. And a single FSCV can tow twenty of them at once, like that one there. Twenty klicks end to end and a klick in diameter. They’re the biggest vessels in the Confederacy.”
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Neither of them found anything to say to that. He let the silence sit, then toggled off the autopilot as Independence's tractor beams closed around the shuttle and drew them in.
“I am not permitted to step onto the station,” he swivelled the chair around and met each of their eyes, “So let me tell you this now, while I still can. Both of you are still young. Very young. I’d wager you will be the youngest aboard the station, by Human standards. It will be a… daunting place to navigate. But Star Station Independence is not the end of your road. It is not your final stop. It will not be–not unless you lose yourselves in the process.”
Ciena swallowed. The drive that had carried her this far–through four years of study, drills, and tests, through the shuttle and the week in hyperspace–wavered for the first time as the station's hull filled the entire viewport, every rippling metre of silvered steel a reminder of how small she actually was. A quarter-million strangers. No family within ten-thousand light-years. No going home, not for years, maybe not ever.
So indeed, she couldn’t help but think: what if I get lost in there?
But Thane Kyrell was beside her, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers, and she thought of her parents’ faces in the crowd, of Wynnet's bracelet still tight around her wrist, of every name that had been read before hers and every name that hadn't been read at all. She had fought four years for the right to be afraid in this exact spot. She wasn't about to waste it.
She glanced at her only friend, looking for some comfort, wondering if he was feeling the same.
Thane had closed his eyes and whispered, seemingly to himself, “I’ve made it. I’m gone.”
Ciena knew why he wanted to leave Jelucan so badly. She did too, but for reasons they did not share. She loved Jelucan’s stark beauty, the fellowship among the valley kindred–all of it was beautiful to her. Yet she could leave her homeworld without regret. Unlike him, she wasn’t escaping from anything. She was chasing her dream of becoming a Confederate officer, flinging herself joyfully into space.
So she straightened, chin lifting the way it had on the parade ground, and felt a resolve hardening even as Independence’s hangar bay swallowed the shuttle whole. Colonel Adell watched her do it, and something like satisfaction crossed his weathered face.
“Good,” was all he said, the sound of goodbye, “Welcome home.”
“I will say this once,” a female Human officer in grey stepped onto the hangar deck, flanked by two B1-series battle droids. “Welcome aboard the Star Station Independence.”
The hangar bay Colonel Adell left them in was one transformed into something resembling a lecture hall; she counted two dozen rows of metal chairs, two dozen across, occupying the centre of the cavernous space. A pair of B1-series battle droids holding datapads rather than blasters met them at the shuttle’s landing pad and escorted them to their designated seats. True to his word, Colonel Adell had taken not one step off the shuttle’s ramp.
“You have questions,” the officer said. Like the colonel, she was grey down to the hem of her uniform. Silver hair pulled back into a ponytail, a gaze crackled with the intensity of an oncoming storm, and a long fleshy scar that ran across her right eye and down her cheek, “Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? I intend to answer all three in this orientation.”
Ciena sat up straighter, eyes flicking across the rows ahead of her, sizing up the competition. Roughly half the cadets were Human, near her own age or a little older. The rest were aliens she only half-recognized. Near-Humans were easy enough to place, but others built along lines she had no frame of reference for at all, for nothing existed on Jelucan to compare them to. She and Thane sat side by side near the middle of the hall, on the aisle, no chair to her left.
“Every cadet in this hangar represents the best the Hydian Oversector has to offer,” the officer began to pace, slow and deliberate, boots ringing against the deck. “You are the return on our investment in the Third Expansion Zone. Most of you are among the first graduates of the Hydian Preparatory Programme.”
Ciena risked a glance sideways. Thane was leaning forward slightly, fully absorbed, hanging on every word. She turned to look the other way–
–and found herself looking directly into the elongated, scar-like sensor ports of a TIE Vulture.
Her heart lurched into her throat. She flinched hard enough to jump out of her seat before snapping her attention back to the front, heart hammering. The droid stood seven metres tall on four clawed limbs, its variable-geometry voidframe allowing it to walk with astonishing ease, its narrow head gazing down at the rows of cadets from the end of an extended neck strut.
Eleven more upright Vultures patrolled the bay’s perimeter. Thirty-six others hung dormant from the rafters above, folded into their stowed configurations like roosting things.
This is still an active service maintenance bay, Ciena realised, a fine sweat prickling at her hairline despite the controlled climate, as she tried to ignore the seven-metre tall starfighter-turned-walker burning a hole into the crown of her head. No. This is their nest, and we’re intruding.
“–be clear, you are not aboard this station because you were at the top of your class,” Ciena tried to focus back on the briefing, “Not because you aced your tests, placed on the lists, hit the most shots, or cleared the obstacle courses the fastest.”
“You are here because your instructors identified something in you beyond mere competence,” the officer did not need an amplifier to project her voice across the entire cavernous hangar. “You are here because of your ability to lead, drive to succeed, and loyalty to the Confederacy. You are here because you have been judged to possess the capacity, maturity, and talent to learn.”
The officer paused, allowing the assembled cadets a moment to digest her words and gather their thoughts.
“You are aboard the Star Station Independence, headquarters of the Confederate Armed Forces.You were told you would be attending the Independence Naval Academy,” her tone flattened. “I will be blunt; no such academy exists. While your former classmates will be planetside specialising in their new vocations, you have been given a head start. You are not academy cadets, but cadets of the Confederate Navy.”
Excited murmuring broke out immediately, rippling row to row–CAF academy programs ran two years, did that mean they were already two years ahead of everyone they'd graduated with?–and Ciena felt the words pull at her too, that same electric current of possibility. But the TIE Vulture's gaze was still like a physical weight against the side of her skull, and the officer's expression hadn't shifted from something deliberately grim. She did not allow herself to be swept up in the fervour.
The officer let the noise run its course and die on its own before continuing.
“You heard correctly. While your classmates planetside specialise in their chosen vocations, you will be given the privilege of immersing yourself in every facet of naval service the Confederacy has to offer. As the CAF headquarters, the Independence is rarely deployed to the frontlines, which along with its size and status, is why the Supreme Commander selected the Independence for an experimental training initiative. This is where all of you come in–there is a lockbox beneath your seats. Open them.”
Ciena reached beneath her seat and pulled hers out. It was cold alusteel, a holoseal on its lid reading ‘Ciena Ree, Cadet.’ It was unlocked.
Inside, nestled into shaped foam, were three items. First, a CAF-issued datapad with its flimsi manual. Beside it, a smooth metal badge cut in the shape of the Separatist Hex. It was lighter than she expected–she barely felt its weight on her palm–and printed across its face was the Independence Fleet insignia, a silver arrow flying above the Shield of the Confederacy against a field of dark blue, curved text beneath reading ‘POINTING THE WAY’ in High Galactic. She turned it over and inspected the fine circuit pattern etched into the crystal backing, catching the light at angles that shifted as she moved it.
This is real, she thought, and the thought arrived with a weight that had nothing to do with the badge in her hand. I'm actually doing this. I'm a soldier of the Confederacy.
Dalven Kyrell didn't have this, Mothar Drik didn't have this, not in some academy classroom planetside. Nobody needed to explain to her what it meant to wear a CAF unit badge. It meant she was already real. Already a soldier of the Confederate Armed Forces, true to the Force, in the way her old uniform–the one she was wearing now–suddenly far too small, like she'd outgrown it in the last five minutes alone. A CAF unit badge could only be worn on the CAF Service Uniform. The same grey dress the colonel had worn to Jelucan, the same grey dress the officer standing in front of her wore right now.
Ciena gently returned the badge to the box, setting it back into its foam bed as though it might shatter if she gripped it too hard.
The third and final item was…
“Consider these three items your new family. Keep them close, and keep them safe, because should you come to me requesting replacements, I promise your life will be considerably shorter than it needs to be.” the officer declared with a tone that suggested she was not exaggerating, “Your datapad is your primary means of communication and entertainment aboard this station. It is proprietary hardware, and will not send or receive anything beyond this hull. Your unit badge is your secondary identification, marking which command you currently serve under. Currently, the Headquarters Fleet, CAF High Command. It will update as your career progresses and as you are posted elsewhere. While in uniform, you are required to wear it on the left shoulder, without exception, at all times."
Ciena lifted the final item from its bed. A sheet of metal half a finger thick, crystal-etched on one face, the Separatist Hex printed across the other. She ran her thumb along its navy-blue edge, and felt the smooth plain white faces of the segments between them.
“The final item is your rank plaque. Your primary means of identification. It is embedded with all of your documentation: identity and biometric data, security clearances, medical records and commendations. It also functions as your CAF credit chip for purchases aboard this station. Be aware that CAF credits are not CIS credits; your salary will remain untouched in your accounts planetside. I trust you are all mindful enough to realise the importance of this item, and the severity of breaking or misplacing it.”
From somewhere in the front, a hand shot into the air, “Permission to speak, sir!”
“Granted. Stand and introduce yourself.”
A Human girl rose, somewhat short and stout, and from where Ciena sat, she could make out a long tail of dark hair.
“Cadet Berisse Sai, sir!” the girl snapped a salute, “When can we expect a promotion to ensign? How long would it take?”
The officer smiled unnervingly, “Excellent question, Cadet Sai. As stated, while your peers planetside specialise in their chosen vocation, you will be rotated around the Independence’s twelve stations, spending a minimum of six standard months at each post. Competency in at least four, certified by your supervising officers, is required before I consider your promotion.”
The dark-haired girl swallowed, “Are we permitted to choose our postings, sir?”
“You are. The relevant questionnaires will be on your datapad. Complete them, along with the rest of your intake documentation, by end of day.”
Thane's hand shot up before the girl had even sat down.
“Permission to speak, sir!”
The officer nodded toward him.
“Take your seat, Cadet Sai,” then to Thane, “Stand.”
He threw Ciena one fast, wide-eyed look before pulling in a breath and rising, "Cadet Thane Kyrell, sir! What happens if we fail an evaluation at the end of a posting term?"
“That is entirely your supervisor's judgment call. You may be held at that station until performance improves, or rotated to a different department to try again.” A sharp clap of her hands snapped at least two dozing cadets bolt upright across the hall. “Regardless of outcome, you will not be promoted to ensign without the commendation of four separate supervising officers. On your minds as motivation; you are not permitted outgoing communications, nor leave from this station, even at ports of call, so long as you remain a cadet.”
Her storm-grey gaze swept the hall, slow and even.
“The Confederacy has no use for unwilling soldiers. We consider them liabilities at best, and traitors waiting to happen at worst. If any among you balk at the possibility–however unlikely–of spending the remainder of your life aboard this station, you have seventy-two system hours to make that decision known and disembark, before the Independence slips its lines.”
The hall went very quiet. Ciena and Thane shared a look, one that only strengthened their resolve. Other cadets were doing the same, exchanging glances, feeling out the general mood, even despite being strangers seated together.
"Everything else you require–facility layouts, timekeeping, bunk assignments, station regulations, welfare policies, mess schedules–have already been loaded to your datapads. Complete any outstanding documentation, and you may spend the rest of today and tomorrow familiarising yourself with your new environment and fellow cadets, as we process your onboarding.”
The officer then checked her chrono, “You are dismissed.”
Chairs scraped back in a ragged wave across the hangar as the cadets rose, the buzz of two dozen overlapping conversations rising with them–half in excitement, half with barely-contained nerves. A B1 droid peeled off toward Ciena and Thane in a beeline that could only be programmed, datapad already extended, gesturing them toward the side exit with the rest of their intake.
“We both plan to serve the Confederacy for the rest of our lives,” Thane said as they filed out of the hangar, “We’re never going back to Jelucan–not to live, anyway. So we don’t have to worry about never leaving the Navy or whatever the officer said.”
Sometimes Thane could be very glib about authority figures, but Ciena thought he was more or less right about this. As they filed past the dais, Ciena's eyes caught on the officer's uniform, where her own rank plaque sat on her right shoulder. The same hexagonal shape, split into six segments, but where Ciena's plaque held only plain white, the officer's was different. Five of its six segments had been filled in with solid grey, leaving only a single white wedge remaining at its bottom face.
“Five out of six,” Thane whispered to her as he followed her gaze, “I think that means she’s an admiral.”
Admiral. Ciena pulled her gaze away. How long will it take for me to fill in my rank plaque? The officer didn’t look that old, by Human standards, and Ciena would hazard her to be in her forties, if not fifties.
Ciena hugged her lockbox closer to her chest, and murmured, “That’s what I’m here for.”
Thane shot her a look, “I’m going straight to the pilot course. I hear their ranks are sky blue.”
“Then we’ll be parting ways here,” she elbowed him, “I’ll be applying for the bridge.”
“We’re going to be officers. It’s going to happen.”
“You’d best believe it.”
Ahead of them, the droids were splitting the cadets in the males and females, and guiding them down opposite corridors. For a final time, Ciena glanced over her shoulder, over the hangar bay and its resident Vultures, beyond even the atmosphere containment field. She saw the Independence Fleet arrayed in all of its glory, to the background of a million stars. One of them, so very far away, was Jelucan.
Maybe some small part of her missed the simple life she could have had, next to, with Thane. They have only known each other for the last eight years, leaning on each other, supporting each other. Always they’d looked so different: Thane tall and handsome, forever wearing the bright elegant clothing of a second-waver; Ciena dark and slim, in the simple homespun garments of the valleys. From now on, they will be wearing the same grey uniform, and even if they weren’t next to each other anymore, anyone could see that she and Thane were alike in the ways that mattered most.
“The next time I see you,” Ciena said as they reached the junction, “You’re going to be flying from my ship.”
“No need to be so dramatic,” Thane smiled, “But I’ll be holding you to that.”
Then they turned away from each other to walk into the crowd, meet new people, and become the citizens of the Confederacy they were always meant to be.
Ciena’s datapad gave her the location of her bunk and the information that she would have three bunkmates. They can't be worse than the ones I had on Jelucan, she told herself. At least I won't have to deal with children anymore. Then a worse thought followed on its heels. By the Force, I'm going to be the youngest one here. She was mature for her age, or so she liked to think and decided then and there that she would make that count for something.
First, however, she would have to find her room. And the datapad's directions notwithstanding, that apparently simple mission turned into its own small ordeal.
She had spent her entire life navigating by valley and mountain ridge, by the slope of land and the position of the sun–and the Independence offered her none of that. Every corridor looked exactly like the last: sterile durasteel, identical lighting strips, doors that all wore the same blank face. She and Thane had been split up almost immediately, herded down branching corridors by droids with the indifference of traffic control, and more than once Ciena found herself standing in front of a door that buzzed an irritated refusal at her clearance level, forcing a maintenance droid–or worse, a visibly put-upon serviceman–to walk her somewhere else entirely.
By the time she finally turned into the right hallway, she was fairly sure she had circled the same junction twice.
But the hallway was long, lined with doors on either side, and halfway down it she caught a familiar tail of dark hair already walking its length.
“Hey!” she broke into a jog, “Berisse, right?”
Berisse Sai spun around in surprise. She stood half a head shorter than Ciena, but had arms twice her size. Ciena thought she had built a good frame in four years of prep academy conditioning, and got into more than a few fights, but she still had the distinct impression Berisse could fold her in half without much effort should it come to that.
“That's me,” Berisse's surprise melted into an easy grin, and Ciena decided it was unlikely it would come to that, “Were you at the orientation? Sorry, didn't catch you there.”
“I’m Ciena Ree,” Ciena introduced herself, “I was sitting a couple rows back.”
“Ciena! I think I saw your name on the tablet,” Berisse fell into step beside her, waving her along, “Looks like we're going to be roommates.”
As they walked, Ciena fumbled with her own datapad, thumbing through unfamiliar menus that refused to organize themselves into anything intuitive.
“How do you even see that?” Ciena muttered, struggling through the device in her hand, “I’m not very good with these things.”
“What, a datapad?” Berisse laughed–not unkindly, but enough that Ciena fought down the urge to blush, “Where are you from?”
“Jelucan. Jelucan Preparatory Academy.”
“Never heard of it,” Berisse glanced sideways at her, “I’m from Lothal. Pretor Flats Academy.”
“Lothal?” Ciena tried to keep the defensiveness out of her voice, “Never heard of it either.”
She failed, apparently, because Berisse laughed again, “Guess we’re both from backwater worlds, huh? Nice to meet you.”
Berisse offered a hand. Ciena took it. “Likewise.”
Their door announced itself with a holosign listing four names. MID Cilghal Ackbar. PLT Kay Karno. CDT Berisse Sai. CDT Ciena Ree.
She traded a look with Berisse, drew a short breath, and raised her hand to hit the door chime.
The door swooshed open to reveal a–a huge fish? Ciena's whole body flinched backward before her mind caught up. She was face to face with two enormous, bulbous eyes set into a wide head, skin the colour of mottled salmon, with lips broad and puffy. Mon Calamari, her mind told her, not that the fact did anything to slow her pulse, they're the ones building those new ships out of Dac.
“You two the new cadets?” the Mon Calamari didn't wait for an answer beyond Ciena's stunned nod before scoffing. “Why are you ringing the bell of your own room? Get in here.”
She half-turned then, raising her voice toward the room behind her. “Kay! Get your lazy ass up and meet our new roommates!”
The room itself was bigger than Ciena had braced herself for–longer than it was wide, four single beds in a row along one wall, separated by slim workdesks, with matching lockers facing them from the opposite side. It seemed on a station as large as the Independence, space wasn’t as such of a premium that all the holos had warned her about.
On the bed furthest from the door, a blue-skinned alien lay sprawled in a half-zipped flight suit, sleeves wrapped around her waist, boots hanging carefully off the mattress edge so as not to scuff the sheets.
“Nah,” the alien was holding a datapad into the air, and she didn’t so much as spare them a glance, “The last group came through, what, two months ago? Another batch of Tannists, so what?”
“Sorry about her,” the Mon Calamari looked something apologetic, but Ciena couldn’t really read the face of a fish, “Miss Sunshine over here is Kay Karno, our resident pilot. She’s from Pantora. As for me, I’m Cilghal Ackbar, midshipman, from Dac.”
“I’m Ciena Ree, from Jelucan,” Ciena took Cilghal’s webbed, rubbery hand, and tried not to cringe. That would be really rude–especially to a senior–and she had to get used to living with aliens anyway, “This is Berisse Sai, from Lothal.”
“Lothal!” Cilghal exclaimed, “I’ve been there. Not far from Dac at all.”
“I, for one, have never heard of either,” Kay said flatly.
“Jelucan only just joined the Confederacy,” Ciena bit her tongue, suddenly more nervous than before. Did she expect to share a room with fellow cadets? Maybe. “Just, uh, eight years ago.”
That got Kay to lower the datapad. She sat up properly, throwing a loaded look at Cilghal, “Wow. They’re getting younger and younger.”
Berisse, already stretching out across the bed nearest the door like she'd lived there for years, propped herself up on an elbow. “What's that supposed to mean?”
Cilghal sighed, the sound somehow carrying through gills Ciena couldn't quite place, “Kay thinks the Pantoran–”
“She’s not Pantoran!” Kay cried out, “I’m Pantoran! She’s a Chiss, or whatever they’re called! Kriffing aliens, I swear–!”
“–Kay thinks the Supreme Commander is trying to bring recruits from the Expansion Zones aboard the Independence to brainwash them,” Cilghal finished, very visibly rolling her eyes, “Personally, I think she’s been reading too many conspiracy theories.”
“You are literally proving my point right now.”
“Then why are you aboard this station?”
Kay Karno drew herself up with theatrical pride, puffing out her chest and stretching her grey tank top, “Because I’m the best pilot on Pantora. The Assembly couldn’t not send me to the HQ Fleet.”
“Does the best pilot on Pantora usually get so sulky over a botched exercise?”
Kay's expression went so flat and so serious that Ciena genuinely couldn't tell if she meant it, “I’m telling you, Cil, these new birds handle like a Talz on stim crash. And I might’ve actually been saddled with the worst backseater in the entire Outer Rim.”
Cilghal ignored that entirely, already steering Ciena toward the unclaimed bed between her own and Berisse's, “Kay’s had a long day. She’s not usually this insufferable–well, usually only half this insufferable. You don’t believe anything she says. Your commanding officer is the Countess, right?”
“The… Countess?”
“An admiral? The lady with a scar that runs like this?” Cilghal mimed a line crossing her eye.
“Yeah,” Berisse piped up, “That’s her.”
“Seriously?” Kay said, “You got Countess Clysm? You guys must be geniuses. I had Rear Admiral Mott, and that guy liked to say he used to be the greatest pirate king in the Slice.”
Cilghal leaned in conspiratorially, “They say the Countess is the Supreme Commander’s right hand woman. Just do your best and I guarantee you’ll have your first slice before two years’ up.”
She straightened, “Anyway, we’re heading out for food–anything you two want?”
Berisse bolted upright at the mention of food, “Food? Can we come?”
Kay snorted as she shrugged on a jacket, snapping a badge to her shoulders. A single sky-blue wedge sat filled in on the Hex. Pilot. That’s what Thane was aiming for. Kay’s flight jacket held even more patches and tags. Over her left breast was a patch with dragon wings and the words BLUEBIRD beneath it, and over her right was a circular patch printed with a solar eclipse, wreathed by the word CORONA. Maybe Ciena should ask more when Kay comes back.
“You have empty plates. Mess’ the only place you’re headed tonight.”
Cilghal caught the confusion on both their faces and reached up, unclipping her own rank to hold it out for them to see–two of six faces of the Hex were filled in grey. “We call them slices. No slices on your rank yet, right? So you have empty plates. Think of it like a pizza. The more slices you've earned, the more you get to eat. Leisure deck, mall, theater, the arcade, comms, land leave; all of it requires at least one filled slice. More slices, more privileges."
“There's a proper restaurant up on the leisure decks,” Kay added, tugging her boots on, “But the doors aren’t going to open for empty plates. Not that you’ll have the time; cadets have their whole schedule planned out already, down to reveille. Check your tablets if you don't believe me. Once you earn your first slice, things loosen up considerably. That's the Navy's way of saying it trusts you not to screw up.”
“Get some rack time while we're out,” Cilghal said, gentler now, pausing at the door, “You probably don't feel it yet, but space-lag catches up fast. We'll bring something back. Procurement dropped off your greys yesterday–they're in your lockers.”
The door slid shut behind them, and the room went quiet in a way that felt different from silence on Jelucan. There were no shutters for the wind to rattle, no distant livestock or gurgle of running water. There was just the low electric hum of a station she hadn't yet learned to ignore, running on through the bulkheads and into her head.
Ciena pulled open her locker and found four sets of grey uniforms folded, pressed sharp enough to have a crease you could cut yourself on. She could feel the sweat gather on her palms, and wiped her hands down before daring to reach for them.
“Well,” Berisse said, already shrugging out of her old clothes without a hint of self-consciousness, “May as well see if they fit.”
The uniform was stiffer than her old prep academy fatigues, the fabric heavier, woven with something that gave it a faint, almost metallic sheen under the overhead lights. Ciena pulled it on piece by piece, smoothing down a collar that sat higher than she was used to, and caught her own reflection in the locker's mirrored interior.
She almost didn't recognize the girl looking back. Grey instead of olive drab. A crisp, unfamiliar cut. A small blank Hex printed on the shoulder where her rank would eventually sit, once she'd earned the right to wear something there beyond an empty plate.
Ciena had just finished pulling up her boots when her datapad chimed with a bright, insistent tone that made her jump half out of her skin.
She snatched it off the bed. A small holo-icon pulsed at the corner of the screen: INCOMING CALL: T. KYRELL.
A grin broke across her face before she'd even opened the channel, and for just a second, the unfamiliar uniform, the strange room, the hum of the station around her–all of it receded, and she felt, for the first time since stepping off the shuttle, something close to steady ground.
A shadow passed over the screen, and Ciena looked up to see Berisse staring down at her with something mischievous, “Your boyfriend?”
“What–no!” Ciena pulled the tablet closer to her chest, “We’re just friends. We came together from Jelucan.”
Berisse wore a smile that made it very plain that she wasn’t hearing a thing Ciena was saying, “If you say so. I’m going out to explore the station.”
She winked, and Ciena had to bury her face in her hands out of shame. She had been around enough people to figure that Berisse was not the kind of person to keep a secret. What if she tells Kay, and Kay tells Thane? A part of her told her how unlikely that was to happen, and how large the station was–but if Thane ever got wind of this… Ciena would never live it down.
Berisse was still giggling to herself as she left the room.
Ciena took a long breath to calm herself down, and tapped the icon to answer.