Alderaan had been right around the time Pash had graduated from the Academy, been commissioned in the Imperial Navy. Even if he'd enlisted in the first place knowing that he wouldn't stay, it had been like a punch in the gut to get the news - to know that while he was in the belly of a Star Destroyer, wearing Imperial insignia and being assigned his TIE, that same force he was pretending to be a part of had just done the unthinkable. He could only imagine what it had felt like for the pilots under his command who hadn't enlisted with defection in their plans in the first place.

Sometimes, he wondered if some of them would've stayed behind when he left, if Alderaan hadn't forced them all to open their eyes to just how bad things had gotten.

(Maybe some of them would be alive now? Or maybe he'd have been forced to shoot some of them down instead of leading them into it.)

A change of subject was starting to sound like a pretty good idea.

He met the handshake with a solid grip of his own. "Captain Pash Cracken, New Republic Starfighter Command."