Victory's Price (Star Wars): An Alphabet Squadron Novel (Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron, Band 3)

Chapter 1Naval Hymns of the Old Republic“This war is over,” the admiral said. “We know it, and soon the Empire will, too.” General Hera Syndulla almost believed him, but reminded Only rebellions thrive on hope. Republics need sturdier foundations.The assembly room smelled of ozone and glittered like the interior of a sapphire, each facet a hologram flashing and wavering as transmission streams threaded the galaxy and manifested in the New Republic’s military leadership. Eleven months prior—following the Battle of Endor, when the war had first been declared over—such a gathering would have been unthinkable. Now, thanks to the twin miracles of a newly reclaimed hyperspace comm network and the massive receiver systems of the ex–Star Destroyer Deliverance, the architects of the Rebellion’s victory exchanged reports like conquerors dividing spoils.“The core of the enemy force has retreated,” Gial Ackbar went on, and flapped a holographic hand at an unseen assistant. A star map sprang up at the center of the amphitheater, and ghostly heads—along with the heads of the flesh-and-blood attendees near Hera—refocused their attention. “Coruscant remains under Imperial control, but the fleeing loyalist armadas have ceded the rest of their territory to us. That leaves the warlords and opportunists isolated; eliminating the last of them will take time, but few remain a serious threat. Our battle groups are even now removing the holdouts’ fleet-building and transport capabilities.”Red blotches flashed onto the map, stains of Imperial presence on the galaxy. Blue arrows, each indicating an allied force, encircled the red. Hera recognized the larger occupied territories—the Anoat sector, the Faultheen sector, the Chrenthoan Abyss. Coruscant, where the Imperial regent controlled a single blockaded planet and trillions of lives, glowed softly in the map’s center. A faint mark like a blood drop represented all that was left of the Imperial presence in the Nythlide Array, where the Deliverance had spent the past week smashing blockades.It was, at a glance, a simple map with a clear message of New Republic supremacy. Yet fainter lines suggested a more complicated Trails from a dozen points led into a region where individual stars became a haze of fog in the poorly charted Western Reaches. What was left of the true Empire’s military—what the admiral had called the loyalist forces—was secreted there, on the edge of the Unknown Regions.Hera squared her shoulders and spoke in a voice that offered no challenge, no skepticism. Ackbar viewed the war in ways foreign to her, focusing on the ebb and flow of fleets like tides rather than the struggles of mortals on the ground. But she had come to recognize the artistry of his designs, even when she disputed their wisdom. “How close are we to finding the enemy’s hidden base?” she asked.The admiral smiled broadly and bowed his bulbous head. “We’re launching probe droids as swiftly as Troithe and Metalorn can manufacture them. Chief of Intelligence Cracken will speak to other leads under investigation. Shall we begin with the division reports . . . ?”The conference took on a familiar shape, and though Hera listened to what was said—filed away every word in the whirring part of her brain that cross-referenced tactical updates and coordinates for strategic significance—she found her attention less on the briefs and more on the emotional tenor of the room. Airen Cracken spoke of the Empire’s efforts to remain hidden, cited rumors of a harsh world occupied by legions of stormtroopers, and there was a predator’s excitement beneath the frost-bitten surface. General Ria appeared exhausted, but her mouth curled into a smile as she spoke of the campaign to drive the Imperial-Royalist coalition off Xagobah. Admiral Ho’ror’te’s snuffling and grunting was harder to parse, but Hera thought she recognized a weary resolve as he spoke of the sacrifices of the Unerring and its escorts to destroy a conspiracy orchestrated by one o