Rose Squadron: the Inkari Gambit

Resurgence

Once again, Annie Leonhardt's mind was trapped under the spell of her dream, the image of Takodana's immense foliage and those piercing, green eyes locking her in place. The recurring, haunting image had sneaked upon her in her fitful sleep for what seemed to be the 1000th time, the sight an enigma that utterly baffled the weary Imperial Officer. Annie felt herself shudder in the real world as she gazed back at those unblinking verdant orbs hovering over the landscape, and asked the futile question she'd proposed from the beginning:

"Who are you?"

Barely a moment later, her surroundings faded to black, the green eyes dimming away slowly, until Annie's haunting dream finally ended once more.

--------

The Officer woke up groggily, finding herself in her modest gray-toned military apartment, and longing for the rest that had escaped her ever since that awful day a year prior. Annie cast a despondent glance at the portrait sitting on her bedside desk, showcasing one of the last joyful moments between herself and her late best friend: Mina Carolina, daughter of Hedasta Carolina, the Senator of Inkari, their homeworld.

In the photo, one of Senator Carolina's aides had happily captured the moment when Annie, after years of grueling training and practice, had finally graduated from Inkari's Imperial Academy, at last attaining the rank of Cadet in the Imperial Navy. At that time, their 18-year old selves had allowed the glory of Annie's success to blind themselves to the increasingly horrific atrocities that the Empire reveled in committing; only a month later, news spread throughout the galaxy that the Empire's new battlestation, the Death Star, had destroyed the peaceful planet of Alderaan in an attempt at absolute intimidation.

"That moment still makes me shudder," Annie mused bitterly, recalling the day when she had been patrolling the Inner Core with her fellow Cadets Reiner and Bertholdt for Rebel activity at the time of the disaster. "The three of us cadets could somehow sense the destruction from our orbit near Corellia...we could feel the moment when billions of lives were instantly wiped out. And for what? What purpose will that despicable genocide ever serve us?"

For Mina, that horrible act shattered her rose-colored lenses, and led to her becoming an increasingly outspoken protestor against the Empire's cruelty. Both Annie and her mother had begged her to not speak publicly about her feelings, but none of their warnings had been enough to placate the previously docile girl. On a number of brazen occasions, Mina had used her mother's Senatorial Podium in the middle of Gintomi City to implore the rest of Inkari to not deny the inhumanity they could plainly see in the atrocities committed across the galaxy.

In the year 3 ABY, one baleful night in the middle of Inkari's blistering summer, Annie and the rest of the planet had received an Imperial alert from the Inkarin Moff Sebastian Datenshi that Mina had perished in the fire resulting from an unexplained factory explosion on the outskirts of the main city. On the massive communication screens dotting Inkari's cities, the polite but cold Moff had stoically delivered news of the tragedy to the population that night, and the wails of the Inkarin could be heard echoing across the planet as Mina's fellow citizens reeled from the loss.

"Hedasta told me that Mina had received a direct plea from a factory worker that night for help in putting out the fire, because her bravery was so renowned on our world. But none of the workers stationed there that night lived to tell the tale. That disgusting pig of a Moff told us all that he suspected this was an act of arson by a Rebel sympathizer, but that doesn't sit right with me. While those Rebels have indeed created some civilian casualties in the past, I can't see them knowingly slaughtering hundreds of workers just to get rid of one factory. And why would they want to kill a girl who openly sympathized with their cause? Mina was lured to that factory and murdered that night, I'm sure of it...but by who?"