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part one| 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐝
━━ -ˋˏ★ˎˊ- ━━
. . .D'QAR, ILEENIUM SYSTEM
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐍 in front of her glowed a cold blue. Her eyes were beginning to burn, and words were starting to swim and swirl into an incoherent blob. Her only company was the solitude of a near-empty office. Brand new and shining clean, but very empty.
L'ulo L'ampar had said something to her three months ago that always replayed in her mind on nights like these. She had been promoted and the Duros man had chuckled and put a comforting hand on her shoulder, as was his way.
"Best of luck, Lyra. Don't count on sleeping for a while."
L'ulo was painfully correct. Everything came with a toll, nothing without something else.
Rubbing at her tired eyes, Lyra leaned back in the chair and took a deep breath. The reports were coming in from every angle, every system had something to say that might or might not be a lead. She had wanted this, fought for it, advocated for herself even when no one wanted to listen. And she had everything she wanted: a squadron.
Considering the events that unfolded during their latest mission, she was beginning to wonder if she was cut out for this job in the first place.
Her hand hovered over the file again. For the fourth time, she clicked on it and the contents spilled open onto the screen:
Mission to Hays Minor [Orwan Port] considered a success in achieving previously stated intelligence retrieval goal. However, cdr. Endellion failed to account for the possibility of capture, resulting in destruction of Resistance property [U-55 Loadlifter Theta].
No backup was called; all five squadron members presumed missing for 1.5 cycles until contact was made with D'Qar base. Still no backup requested, Phoenix Squadron returned to base at 0700. Stolen ships [3] will be repurposed in the Resistance Fleet.
The end result was good. Georgie and Ellis not only managed to find a way out, but they also hotwired enough ships that their intelligence retrieval came with some large souvenirs to bring back to base. But that one little word was enough to set Lyra back in her same, frustrated mood: failed.
It was no secret that the dirty work fell to them. Lyra was determined to find a new mission, something more substantial than these one-off kills and espionage assignments that inevitably ended in disaster. Getting stranded within the crystalline ore mines of Hays Minor was not happening ever again. But if they couldn't figure out how to pull it together and act like a team, their first three months as the Phoenix Squadron was about to come to a grinding halt.
