Rose Squadron: the Inkari Gambit

Reiner woke up shrieking in horror, unable to make himself forget the image of Annie collapsed on the ground, writhing, screaming and sobbing in what had to be a moment of torture. It took a long, painful minute before he was able to calm himself down enough to hastily get dressed, his mind set on bolting to Annie’s home to see whether or not his dream was a vision.
“What the hell was that?!” he thought, still in a panic as he adorned himself with his full Imperial attire. “Was that really a dream, or some sort of freak psychic warning?”
His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden pounding at his door, making Reiner jump in fright. When he heard the equally terrified voice on the other side, he managed to slightly relax.
“Reiner, please, open up!” he heard his best friend Bertholdt shout. “It’s about Annie!”
“Wait...him, too?!”
He ran to the door and yanked it open, to see Bert covered in sweat and panting from the exertion of bolting to Reiner’s quarters, his gray Imperial uniform clinging to his body. The tall, dark-haired young man was likewise out of his mind with anxiety as he seized Reiner’s massive shoulders and held them in a vice-like grip.
“I-I had an awful nightmare about Annie sobbing and screaming in agony! I ran as fast as I could to her apartment, but...she’s not there, Reiner! Her neighbors don’t know where she could be, either!”
“Shit!” Reiner snarled. “Bert, you and I had the same nightmare! This is feeling more and more like some sort of bizarre supernatural warning. And if she’s not here on Inkari...then we need to go to Chief Uttaka and see if he knows where she went! Let’s go!”
Bert nodded desperately, and the instant Reiner slammed his door behind them, the two of them sprinted madly for the Security Tower, drawing multiple confused looks from the civilians passing them by. The security drones dotting the streets focused on the two officers warily, but Reiner and Bert wasted no time worrying about what the droids were capturing. After several minutes of rushing towards the Tower, it finally loomed into view, and the two guardsmen stationed outside the door froze up in alarm at the sight of the two young men barreling towards them.
“Officers Braun and Hoover, are you ok?!” one of them started to ask, before Bert cut him off with a wail.
“Please, let us in! We need to speak to the Chief at once!”
“O-ok,” the two guards mumbled, and a moment later, Reiner and Bert were finally able to dash into the main room of the Security Tower, only to gawk at the sight before them.
All of the Security Aides were anxiously huddled around the Chief and and Pieck, collapsed on the floor, clutching their heads, their bodies wracked with painful sobbing. The two boys cautiously walked up to the crowd, drawing the attention of several Aides.
“Sirs, this isn’t a good time!” one of the female Aides snapped at them. “Our Chief and his Assistant are in a very poor state of mental and emotional health!”
“W-what happened to them?” Reiner asked, and the woman shuddered violently.
“A nightmare! They keep muttering the name ‘Annie’ over and over again-”
“Annie!” the two officers shouted in unison, provoking many aggravated looks from the other Aides. “Annie’s in trouble!”
“Reiner, Bertholdt, t-thank goodness you’re here!” Uttaka mumbled wearily, slowly rising from the floor, helping Pieck to her feet. “Pieck and I both had a disturbingly vivid dream of Officer Leonhardt shrieking and sobbing in agony, and…”
To the officers’ horror, Uttaka suddenly screamed to everybody gathered, “It’s my fault! I authorized her to leave Inkari for her personal mission, and now, she’s somewhere far away, potentially dead now!”
Reiner, Bert and the entire Security Department gasped, and Uttaka wiped away his tears, making himself face Reiner and Bert directly.
“She came to me only a couple of days ago, and after the discussion we had, I authorized her to go to Takodana, where Annie believed she’d find peace over Mina’s death. I expected her to be back by now, but…”
Reiner gulped, and told him, “Chief Uttaka, Bert and I had the same horrifying nightmare that you and Pieck had. Annie’s screams have haunted all four of us somehow.”
The Aides glanced between their commanders and the officers warily, and a knowing gleam flashed through Pieck’s dark, tear-softened eyes. Uttaka’s face went somber and stern, the entirety of his sorrow ebbing away to reveal his resurging iron determination.
“Then this is no mere coincidence. Annie is out there alone, in pain and despair, without anybody to help her. Reiner, Bertholdt, I hereby authorize you both to go to Takodana to find our missing Officer. You need to look there first, for whatever clues you can find on her whereabouts.”
Reiner and Bert turned to beam at each other, both of them thrilled to have found a bit of hope after their nightmare. They nodded eagerly at the Chief, and he grinned at them in turn.
“In about 30 minutes, I’ll ensure that the planetary shield is lowered so you to can depart. Be at the dock at that time. And...good luck, to you both.”
-------
Annie woke up from the dream-vision of Mina’s visit, let herself breathe deeply, and headed for the main room of the Vindictive Empress, eager to get out of the lonely backroom. When she entered the ship’s main room, she saw the entire crew seated around, apparently waiting for her to wake up.
“Thank goodness,” Ymir said, letting out a huge sigh of relief. “We were terrified that you’d never wake up.”
“Well, I don’t blame you for being so worried,” Annie said back, taking a seat next to Connie and Armin. “Half of me wished that I’d never wake up, after what I saw.”
Connie grimaced guiltily next to her, and she patted him on the back, hoping that he’d forgive himself sooner or later. She gazed out the port window in front of her, and saw that the Empress was absentmindedly floating through space, likely somewhere in the Mid Rim. Mikasa followed her gaze and anxiously shifted about on her seat as she spoke up.
“We’re trying to lay low, and stay off of any Imperial radar by hiding away from Endor. Takodana isn’t that far away from Endor, and if we’re not careful, we could encounter Imperial reinforcements heading there for the upcoming battle.”
“So you all won’t be joining the Rebels there?” Annie asked, and Ymir viciously shook her head.
“Absolutely not. My ship can easily fend off a handful off normal attackers, but there’s nothing she can do against an Imperial Armada. We’d get crushed in the first minute of fighting.”
Armin turned to her and told her, “That, and Annie, our primary goal is to stay out of any major conflicts as much as possible. Rose Squadron is only really ready to fight in small skirmishes, not any grand battle.”
Sasha sighed wistfully, and remarked to them all, “I still remember our surprise visit to Corellia. We wanted to gauge how loyal the Corellian people are to the Empire, and what sort of military strength they have. Well, we weren’t disappointed. While they do supply a fair portion of the Imperial Navy…”
“...The morale there is awfully low,” Jean finished, a wry smirk on his face. “You see, the Corellian youth have been drafted into the Imperial ranks for years now, and the vast majority of the population is fed up with it. Countless Corellian youth have been sacrificed for the Empire’s agenda, against their own will, and we heard multiple malicious whispers from the citizens that a Corellian revolt might be on the horizon.”
It was a stark contrast to the Inkarin’s loyalty to the Empire. Annie, Reiner, Bertholdt and thousands of other Inkarin youth had joined the Imperial forces of their own free will, believing that they were fighting to preserve order and justice throughout the galaxy. But not even Inkari was safe from feelings of dissent; the destruction of Alderaan, and the increasingly obvious brutality of the Emperor’s decrees against the worlds that dared to speak out against him had planted the seeds of revolt on Annie’s homeworld too.
“I’ll admit that Imperial propaganda hasn’t done a good job of lifting the morale of our citizens,” Annie said to them. “At this point, after what the galaxy has seen the Empire do, the Emperor is walking on thin ice. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the majority of the galaxy ends up supporting the Rebel Alliance over this corrupt regime.”
Christa mused to her, “Annie, for an Imperial soldier, you’re awfully jaded.”
“But of course,” Annie answered her. “I have my own reasons for despising the Empire. Learning that the Emperor himself arranged for Mina to be murdered was only the last straw in a line of offenses.”
“This is odd, though,” Eren said, drawing glances from the rest of them. “The Empire made us all orphans by either killing our parents or permanently separating our families, and that’s why we joined the Rebellion. So what made you finally lose trust in the Empire, Annie?”
Annie bit her lip and glanced out the port at the endless stars surrounding them. The crew of the Empress gave her a worried look as she whispered to them painfully.
“The Empire made me an orphan too, indirectly.”
------
(0 BBY, the day after the destruction of Alderaan)
Annie woke up in the middle of the night to hear her Hologram Communicator on her bedside desk vibrating into life with a message. She groggily sat up in her bed, pressed the Communicator’s reception button, and gasped when her father’s hologram materialized above the machine, looking wearier than she had ever seen him.
“Dad?” Annie worriedly asked, bending forward to observe the tears streaming down his cheeks. “Are you ok?!”
“No, Annie,” he answered truthfully. “What I saw on the Death Star’s main viewport was horrific. So many innocent lives, all brutally and instantly destroyed all because Tarkin wanted to prove his point!”
“W-what?” Annie muttered, trying to make herself wake up and unnerved at what she was hearing. “What happened?!”
“Annie, don’t believe the official propaganda about what happened to Alderaan. It’s a blatant lie! It wasn’t destroyed by a self-destructing Alderaanian superweapon; Grand Moff Tarkin destroyed it to spite Princess Leia Organa and terrify the rest of the galaxy!”
Annie gasped and collapsed backwards onto her bed, the full meaning of her father’s words overwhelming her. Inkari, along with the rest of the galaxy, had received Imperial reports that Alderaan had been suddenly destroyed in what was summarized as an unfortunate and unexpected cataclysm caused by an imperfect superweapon created to aid the Rebel Alliance.
“I know that the Grand Moff is a snake, Annie, but what he planned was disgusting! I was there with him as we approached Alderaan, for what reason I couldn’t initially understand. When Vader dragged the Princess out of her cell at Tarkin’s bidding, I realized that he was attempting to do something drastic to force information about the Rebels out of her. At first, after he threatened to destroy her homeworld in front of her, she panickingly revealed that there’s a Rebel base on Dantooine, and he seemed to accept he answer. But...then he ordered the Death Star to fire on Alderaan regardless!”
“N-no…” Annie mumbled, clutching at her stomach as nausea surged within her.
“Alderaan’s planetary shield did nothing to stop the superlaser from destroying it! And I watched Vader drag Princess Leia screaming and sobbing back to her prison cell! All the while, that bastard Tarkin was chuckling about how it was ‘a successful test of the station’s power after all’!”
Annie grimaced as she watched her father nearly collapse to the floor of his room as the trauma of what he’d seen crush him. All she wanted to do was reach across the light years separating them and do what she could to comfort him in his grief.
“Annie...I begged, pleaded with Tarkin to let me be transferred to another station, another planet, anywhere but here...and he refused. He treated me with complete contempt and told me he wouldn’t tolerate any sort of ‘weakness’ from those stationed here on the Death Star. Annie, I’m stuck here on this weapon of genocide, and I want out!”
-----
Annie shuddered as she wiped away at her eyes, telling them, “And as we all know, soon afterwards, the lone Rebel pilot defied the odds and managed to destroy the Death Star, with my father still on board. But I’ll never blame that pilot for my father’s death. I fully blame Tarkin and the Empire for ensuring that my father was trapped there, and for refusing to help him when they knew of the psychological toll Alderaan’s destruction had on him.”
“I’m so sorry, Annie,” Eren muttered, sighing and wiping away at his own tears. “The Empire has caused us all so much agony over the years, and all I want is to avenge my mother for what happened to her.”
Mikasa glanced away from them, and Annie could see more tears in the raven-haired girl’s eyes as Eren continued to speak.
“She adopted Mikasa when a group of criminals slaughtered her parents. Only a handful of years later, after my Dad, Grisha Yeager, disappeared without any warning from our village on Ruusan, and when a group of Imperials came to our world to scour for any traces of Rebels, they terrorized our village.”
His eyes fell as he muttered, “Mom lost her composure when a few of the soldiers threatened me and Mikasa...and she tried to attack them. They gunned her down in a matter of seconds. My nightmares are still haunted by that moment.”
Mikasa spoke up, adding, “Because of the atrocities we saw that day, because of the violent murder of my foster-mother, Carla Yeager, me and Eren dedicated ourselves to the Rebel cause, and over the years, we founded Rose Squadron alongside the others here.”
“I guess you could say that I adopted these kids in turn,” Ymir said softly, casting a weary glance at Annie. “All of them went out of their way to save Christa from being kidnapped by Imperial scum, and as thanks, I gave them a home of sorts. In its own way, it’s been a continual reward for me. I kinda know now what mothers feel.”
“That’s...beautiful,” Annie said, amazed at how the crew had come together.
“Annie, why is Inkari still so loyal to the Empire?” Jean asked her, and she turned to him.
“Inkari is one of the Empire’s main shipbuilding worlds. We’ve created dozens of Star Destroyers for the Navy, and in fact, some of our ships are in the armada gathering at Endor. Thanks to that, my people receives priority treatment from Coruscant when it comes to security, trade protections, and other benefits. But I suspect that if we didn’t benefit the Empire like we do, Coruscant wouldn’t give a damn about us.”
Before she could continue, Annie’s head suddenly snapped back as her senses were overtaken by a brilliant vision of an Imperial pilot ship leaving Inkari, the crimson planetary shield closing over the world as the lone ship jumped to hyperspace, in the direction of Takodana. The vision inverted, and Annie was given a view of the inside of the ship, revealing Reiner and Bertholdt at the cockpit, their faces etched with grim determination.
“Annie!”
The vision ended as abruptly as it had come, and Annie came back to her senses with a gasp, seeing Rose Squadron huddled around her, alarmed and tense. She shuddered, turned to Ymir, desperate to get back to Takodana.
“I...just had...a vision of my comrades, Reiner and Bertholdt, leaving Inkari for Takodana. I think my planet’s Chief of Security, Haston Uttaka, told them about my destination. If possible, I want to go back to Takodana and head them off, before they do anything drastic. I’m certain that if I show them the footage Connie found of Mina’s murder, they’ll join me in plotting revenge against Moff Datenshi.”
Ymir nodded stoically and pounded over to the Empress’s main controls. A moment later, the ship lurched out of autopilot, and the entire crew rose to their feet to prepare for the encounter. Eren glanced at her as the others left the room, and whispered to her as the ship moved faster.
“Are you sure about this, Annie?”
“Absolutely. Reiner and Bert also have their own reasons for not trusting the Empire. Right before Alderaan was destroyed, the three of us were patrolling the Corellian Sector for Rebel activity, one of our usual assigned duties. The instant the Death Star fired on the planet, all three of us nearly lost control of our ships as we felt the loss of millions of lives from light years away. Ever since then, they’ve been just as disgusted with the status quo as I am, though they’re far more subtle about it.”
They were momentarily interrupted by Mikasa entering the room, with Annie’s blaster in hand. Annie gawked as the girl who had stunned her before gently pressed the blaster into her hand, giving Annie a firm nod and leaving the room once more.
Annie looked up from her blaster, and told Eren, “Before I can kill Datenshi for what he did to Mina, I’ll need support from the other Inkarin. Reiner and Bert are the key to me relating this revelation to our people, and I can’t do this without them. But still, I know that we need to tread carefully down on Takodana, or this will turn into a needless fight.”