Arrek regained consciousness; he was floating in bacta, he guessed. The pain in his chest and head had subsided, but was still there making him feel dizzy and disoriented. Feeling a tug on the breath mask he looked and saw someone beckoning him from the opening above the tank. Kicking his legs he climbed out as the medic gave him a towel to rid himself of the sticky fluid.
"How do you feel?" asked the medic, a human male about the same age as Arrek.
"A lot better, thanks." Arrek replied. He wasn't in a conversation place, so he went down the steps into the medbay and found his clothes. They were ragged and blood stained, but would last him until he got back to his quarters. He put the clothes on then made sure he had everything and went out into the corridor and walked to his room.
It was empty, desolate, exactly how Arrek felt. Moving to the small cabinet, he pulled out some loose fitting black combats and a black T-shirt. After he had them on he grabbed all the personal effects he might find useful: his Minidisc player, cigarettes, a small notebook, some candy and a pen. Leaving his room he left the light on, playing some music so people would think he was still there, and then shuffled down the corridor as if a great weight was on his shoulders.
The late hour meant that people walking through the building were scarce. Arrek reached the turbolift and pressed the button for the roof. Thoughts of the previous days flitted through his head like flickering lights. The starkest memory was of his sister, bloodied after her battle with the thugs. Arrek had failed her for the first time in his life and with that failure he hated himself.
The turbolift doors opened and Coruscant hit him, assaulting his senses. The smell still remained, though it was a little crisper being the end of the day. Looking up, there were still no stars to be seen and with their absence, he felt hollow, wanting to see where earth was, he was filled with sorrow. Arrek missed home, being on Coruscant was something he'd never dreamed of, and he'd lost himself on the way it seemed. Things he knew and always counted on seemed to have disappeared and with their disappearance came failure.
Arrek was used to failure, there had been a lot of times he'd failed, but he'd always bounced back and succeeded, but this latest failure had almost cost his sister her life and that fact was like a kick in the teeth. He took out his cigarettes and lit one. Sitting down on the ledge at the top of the building, for heights never got to him, he looked down into a cauldron that represented most that was bad about life.
Dangling his feet over the edge he sat there nonchalantly. There was a small ledge a few metres down and wide, which he considered going to sit on, but decided to stay at the highest point. Putting his head into his hands he wept, slowly at first, but stronger, until his whole chest and stomach convulsed with the sobs. How long he remained like this, he had no idea.
Pulling out of a ball of tears and sorrow, he lay back on the roof looking at the speeders flying overhead and the ships in the distance heading out into orbit. Arrek fancied what it would be like to own his own ship and to travel the galaxy. He dismissed the thought as soon as it came, for he knew that the solitude would kill him. In that he found his main problem, solitude.
His sister was always there, and she was his best friend, but other than that there was no one. Of his new squadmates, he had never really talked to them or tried to get to know them. Sure, he'd met some of the team members and thought that he and Lieutenant Cochran might get on well, as well as some others, but there were voids, huge voids that threatened to swallow him from the inside out.
There was no moral compass to calibrate him, no one to make him feel special, no one other than his sister to share his life and experiences with. Of his entire family, he'd only been close to Sylvana, the rest didn't know him, or at least who he was, he doubted even Syl fully knew who Arrek had become. Arrek himself didn't know who he'd become.
Sighing, he sat up again and looked out at the vistas. The Imperial Palace was not far off and towered above everything, the scale of the building from even as close as this could not be fully measured. He looked up towards the top and lost balance for a second as he leaned back too far.
Leaning forward again, he lit another cigarette. They were his one true vice, but in times like this they were what he depended on, his coping mechanism. Inhaling deeply and exhaling in one shuddering breath he set his thoughts upon all the people below and around him. He wanted to help them all, with his empathy he could touch people in ways that no others can.
"Those things will kill you, you know?" came a voice out of the darkness behind him. The noise startled him and Arrek turned quickly- unfortunately, as he turned he slipped off the ledge.
Landing awkwardly on the ledge below Arrek adjusted his feet to try and regain balance, but it was too late. His right foot went out too far and unbalanced him. Beginning his fall into death, his head cleared and he put his left hand on the ledge. His body went over, but his hand was secured strongly. Hanging there for about five seconds before he got his breath, he heard the person who surprised him scrambling down to help. Arrek didn't need it. Pulling himself back onto the edge he lay back and tried to stop the pounding of his heart.
"Sithspit Wes, you'll kill me first." Arrek looked over at the man and smiled, Wes seemed a little pale, but colour came back into his face, just as quick as Arrek noticed it had gone. They got up and climbed back up to the roof. Arrek went back to dangling his feet over the edge, while Wes leaned against some giant air conditioning unit.
"Sorry, about that, I guess I don't know the strength of my own voice." Wes seemed a little abashed, but his features had returned to their usual merriness. "What are you doing up here anyway? Last I heard you were in bacta."
"I just got out before and wanted somewhere isolated to think."
"What about? You look pretty shaken." Wes asked. Damn Wes is observant . He was starting to pry as only Wes knew how, but Arrek didn't mind and thought he might be a good listener. Arrek lay back on the duracrete and gave him an account on the previous day's events and his feelings of failure and solitude.
Wes shifted his position and thought for a while before saying, "I know how you feel well. Everyone makes mistakes and the best way is to learn from them. It is hard having to live that way, but that's life and what life's about." He sat back again, thinking and watching Arrek's face as he mulled over Wes' point.
They sat in silence for a few minutes before Wes spoke again. "In this job that we do, people die. It's unfortunate and it hurts like hell when they do, but it does happen and has to be dealt with. One thing that surprises me is how both you and your sister are a part of Terra Group. That wouldn't happen in Rogue Squadron."
"I know you and Syl are different, I see it in the way you act, but I do wonder whether Sci has taken into account the fact that if anything bad happens your family and loved ones will have to suffer the loss of you both at the same time. I'm sure it won't happen and you better make sure it doesn't, but sometimes I wonder whether the tasks are too big for you."
"This isn't to say that I don't have faith in your abilities, I do, but it does make me wonder at the wisdom of this." Wes stopped and Arrek thought longer, all the points he had raised were pretty accurate, and he did speak from a depth of experience, but the main point of what he was saying is that Arrek had to be strong.
All this debating and self-analysis was not really what Arrek should be concentrating on. There was a job to be done, and Arrek had to help do it. Terra Group was a loose based organisation with minimal training, but they could do the jobs they were asked and had done.
"I think with Terra Group, we are pretty loosely based and inexperienced when compared with the New Republic military. We are ready for most things though. Compared with others on our planet we are different, more enlightened and stronger for it. I know that there could be a time when we will be faced with one task too great for us to handle. I also know that we will give our lives for freedom."
"On Terra, there have been so many fights for freedom I don't think you'd believe it. Fighting for what we believe runs through our veins, it's probably happening now somewhere back there. Terra Group captures all of that. We have the spirit and the will to make things better. The cost doesn't matter to us, just what we hope to accomplish, I'd gladly die in service to life and freedom and I don't doubt that every other member of Terra Group feels the same."
"Look, come with me and I'll show you something." Wes got up and led him to the turbolift. They went down into the locker rooms and he tossed Arrek a spare flight suit that would fit him. After changing into them they went to the simulators.
Arrek chose an A-wing one, while Wes went to the X-wing ones. Sitting back into the pilot's couch, Arrek pulled the helmet on and activated the scenario Wes had programmed. His voice came over the comm link, "Are you ready?" At Arrek's click, he continued. "Right this will give you an idea of what you face."
The screens came on and Arrek was immediately overwhelmed. Checking the sensors he saw that Wes' X-wing was ahead and to his port and five kilometres distant, there was at least a full wing of TIE interceptors angling in at them.
"Now we are Terra Group and the Interceptors are what we face. How will we go about tackling them?"
"Do what they least expect and hurt them badly?"
"Correct. Now you push your throttle up to full and head through the middle of them, keep maneuvering to make yourself harder to hit. On the flight stick you will find your trigger, take targets of opportunity, but don't engage one single craft. Fly back and forth and take out as many as you can and then we'll regroup."
Arrek did as Wes asked and sped out ahead angling straight in at the TIE's ahead of him. He moved the stick around as much as possible, feeling the ship twist and bank he squeezed the trigger and spat laser fire at his assailants. One of the ships exploded and Arrek turned away. He saw that most of the Interceptors had turned to follow him and Wes had come up behind them.
Wes loosed proton torpedoes at them and punished them for the compactness of their formation. Huge gaps opened in the Imperial formation and Arrek swung back aiming for the holes and Wes. He punched through and then swung about and flew back to Wes.
"That was great flying. I swear you must be a natural or something."
"I doubt it. I spent too long playing X-wing Alliance. Now I feel it was definitely worth it."
"Right, now we need to finish this. There are thirty-four squints remaining and we need to think of something to get rid of them fast. We can't try that first tactic again, so what do you think we should do?"
Arrek thought and then replied, "What about if we fly in close formation, overlap our shields, and do a head to head?" Arrek hoped that this would work, or that Wes wouldn't think him stupid and tactically naïve, but Arrek wasn't too fussed about it.
"Okay, come close and drop your throttle back to eighty percent. There's a switch on your right that will set your shields forward. Then use the dial on your flight stick to expand them by about three metres. Now hold the stick straight and turn when I turn. You'll have to try and anticipate what I'm going to do, so stay close and ignore the Interceptors."
Arrek did as he asked and together they turned to the TIE formation. Twisting left and right they fired in tandem, overwhelming their targets and those around the targets with their fire. Soon the squints were down to four somehow. Arrek was sure that Wes must have been deleting the squints that were about to kill one of them, but Arrek didn't really care so much.
They angled towards the remaining four, Arrek opening his throttle and heading in at them; while Wes hung back trying for deflection shots. Arrek had managed to destroy one and Wes two, then the last one pulled a surprise turn and came up on Wes' tail, vaping him with a quad burst. Arrek turned about to come up behind the Interceptor, but as he did so he found the squint behind him and laser fire eating his shields and engines. The simulator went black.
Jumping out of the simulator, Arrek went to see Wes. He was running around to the other side of the simulator hall at full speed and pulled up abruptly. There was a man getting out of one of the TIE simulators and Wes was speaking to him hurriedly. He turned and looked at Arrek when he reached Wes and offered a rue smile.
Wedge Antilles approached him and smiled then shook his hand then left. Wes turned to Arrek a sheepish look on his face. "Remember that your enemies and your squadmates fly dirty." Arrek smiled and thanked him for the talk and the impromptu flying lesson. Then Wes left to get some sleep and Arrek headed back to check on Syl and get some sleep himself.