Rose Squadron: the Inkari Gambit

Aftermath

"She's...barely alive. The trauma of what she saw almost killed her. We need to let her rest..."

Annie heard those words in her unconscious sleep, vaguely aware of the fragile girl named Christa mournfully commenting on her status. The echo of Mina shrieking her name as Datenshi's Stormtroopers electrocuted her to death had sent Annie over the edge into what felt like a bottomless pit of despair that she had no hope of escaping.

"Mina...you died alone, surrounded only by people who viewed your life as worthless, with that bastard Datenshi gloating over his cruel, sadistic plot to murder you. And I let you die, even when you desperately called my name!"

When she finally opened her eyes, Annie saw that she was alone, the room pitch dark except for the faint lights covering the screen controls. Annie scowled at the screen in contempt as she groggily sat up, wishing she could smash it into a million pieces.

"Why couldn't that kid turn the damn video off? From the sound of it, this blasted equipment's always worked properly...so what was stopping him from shutting it off? I saw him smashing the controls desperately, so I know he wasn't trying to screw with me..."

Annie sat on the ground, clutching her knees to her chest and continuing to weep silently. In the maelstrom of thoughts whirling around in her head over what the video had revealed, the image of Mina screaming Annie's name as her final words kept resurfacing to haunt her. Everything Annie had remembered from that night, about the factory explosion and Mina's selfless attempt to save lives, had been shattered by the revelation that Datenshi had covered it all up. The same man who had so mournfully related the news of the explosion and Mina's death to the Inkarin was the same aberration who had murdered her and hundreds of other innocents citizens per the Emperor's direct orders.

And in the end, Emperor Palpatine's disgusting scheme had been created just to silence Inkari's sole voice of reason against the Empire's increasingly apparent barbarism. Mina's courageous attempts to make her people rethink their loyalty to such a corrupt regime had led to the Emperor himself declaring her a threat worthy of murder.

"Mina was right. After the galaxy learned of Alderaan's destruction, our people should've withdrawn our support from the Empire. If we had, the Empire would've lost one of its major shipbuilding worlds, and a fair portion of its Navy. The fear of Mina's speeches turning us neutral must've motivated that bastard Palpatine to have her be killed."

She heard the main door softly slide open, and when Annie groggily looked up, she saw Connie shambling in, carrying a tray with basic food and water, along with a key. The boy was shaking violently with ongoing grief from his unwitting hand in Annie's breakdown, and she could see tears still streaming down his face.

The instant he set the tray down in front of her, Connie took his key, reached behind her and hastily unlocked her handcuffs, violently tossing them behind him where they landed with a harsh clang. Annie gawked at him, alarmed at his emotional instability. He kneeled in front of her, looking very much like an upset Fathier.

"I-I-I'm so, so sorry!" he managed to choke out, unable to stop himself from shaking as he wept. "It's my fault!"

Despite her immense grief and rage at all that had she'd learned ever since leaving Inkari, Annie Leonhardt gave the rebel pilot a look of sincere pity, and she placed a tender hand on his face, wiping away at his tears and managing to calm him down.

"No. None of this was your fault, Connie Springer. You only wanted to see if your hunch was right, to connect the dots. It wasn't your fault that the screen went haywire and refused to be shut off. You were turned into an unwitting harbinger of a painful revelation that I desperately needed. Thanks to you, the droid that you found and the footage it captured, I finally know what happened to Mina Carolina, my best friend and Inkari's daughter. Please, understand that my ire isn't with you, but with the bastards who murdered her and lied to our people, to Senator Carolina's face."