Beyond - Legends Beyond the Saga Take A Memo—the life and times of Princess Leia’s PA for Dear Diary 2024

Hello, all. I’m determined to try a dear diary again this year and thought it would be fun to explore this. Alole appears in the Black Fleet Crisis and I’ve used her in two fics and that is about it as far as I’ve been able to find so far.
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ENTRY 1

I’m curious what Her Royal Highness Princess Leia was like before she got into politics. She was raised to be a public figure, so I don’t think she ever really got to speak her mind. Until today, I spoke maybe seven sentences to her and one of them was a run-on after I spilled my caf on her data pad. Another was a morning pleasantry the day after that, hoping she wasn’t angry with me.

For all I knew, she was livid, but it was six days after we got to Hoth and everyone who worked in the command center was keeping their mouths shut very carefully. So when I shorted out her data pad twenty minutes before a briefing, she closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and told me it could have happened to anyone. Someone told me a day later that Leia Organa knew the Alliance so well she didn’t even need notes to conduct a briefing and I was a bit mortified.

Apparently, Mon Mothma wants everyone on the Provisional Council to have a staff, which is why I found myself having caf with the Minister of State today.

She’s famous for being self-sufficient, so I was surprised to be invited to the conversation at all. She looked peeved, but I didn’t take it personally. She made me caf without mentioning our unfortunate history, which was a relief.

“I haven’t felt the need for an aide since I was in the Senate,” she said with unusual bluntness. “Winter was excellent at her job and served the Alliance faithfully. I hope she keeps finding other uses for her talents. You have many talents as well and General Rieekan thinks we would work well together.”

She didn’t say what those talents were. Maybe they’re ones that only Rieekan knows or she was just being polite. It was slightly hard to tell.

“You are going to be helping one of the most powerful people in the New Republic,” she said, “but as of yet, that doesn’t mean much. I apologize in advance for needing to experiment with your duties.”

“I’m honored to help.”

She smiled wryly at that. “You were with us on Hoth. Everyone who endured that place has a special dedication to the cause, which is why I took Rieekan’s recommendation to heart. I have opinions on the need to set up an office and start dispatching reports to various committees, but I thank you for coming to my aid in this time.”

She ran the gamut from polite to frank to resigned and back to polite, which I will have to get used to. She also said that I was to let only four people bother her without an appointment: the Chief of State, Admiral Ackbar, her brother, and her boyfriend. Having lived in earshot of Han Solo and the Princess, I was a bit shocked by that last one, but no one had told me she had family, much less Commander Skywalker. She says she’ll tell more people when the time’s right, but no one will wonder why her closest friend comes to visit. She just thought someone who will be at her side every day should know.

I’m being paid a reasonable amount with benefits to keep secrets for a hero. I’m not sure what to think of that.

 

Super start. I love the voice you give Alole. She's mortified and awestruck during her first encounter with Leia, understandably, and spilling caf and shorting the datapad was an inauspicious beginning.

Leia's tone definitely runs the gamut of emotions and this is no surprise because rebuilding the Republic is a daunting task and inspires a broad range of tangled feelings.

I love the list of people who are always going to find Leia accessible. Two trusted friends/colleagues, Luke, and Han.

 

Yes, a diary about Leia's aide. I like how you write Alole and her thoughts about the first time she met Leia. And of course she has to keep some things secret.

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Thanks! My main memory of Alole is her being emotionally unguarded, but a bit naive. And there’s one part of her story that I put into Lest Ye Be Judged that will be relevant to why Leia comes to like her. The accessible list is a reference back to The West Wing, when Debbie tells her replacement about walk-in privileges and says to never take the First Lady off that list. Also my H/L vignette in which Leia tells Alole that she will only let generals in with enthusiasm.
@earlybird-obi-wan Thanks. I’m trying to decide when Leia lets her aide know about who her father was. Alole has a lesser skeleton in her closet where family is concerned and this isn’t in the universe where Leia talks about it over a decade later. It’s more in line with Bakura, where Han implies that Leia already told some people.

ENTRY 2

Today, HRH Princess Leia didn’t have to worry for long about finding things for me to do. I went through a fundamentals of security training that took most of the morning, ate lunch, then was instructed in some very specialized matters of security “as it pertains to matters of statewide intelligence and associated concerns.”

My instructor must have spent the war writing press releases to confuse the enemy and is now being paid by the syllable to intimidate assistants. If so, I would rate him as top-notch. I was able to quote him verbatim on the test and he looked pleased.

I was then questioned for my security clearance. I was relieved that my service record is so bland that I only have a slap on the wrist for breaking curfew once on Sitaria to my name. My life before I ran off and joined the revolution was mostly defined by how proud my family was to be patriots and most of their questions were about Jov.

No, I haven’t spoken to him in four years. Yes, I’m aware that he has tried to find me. No, I have no intention of having a tearful homecoming and reconciling with any of them. I imagine that my parents think I took up with some boy and either got myself killed or found a hovel on Raltiir where I could raise a large family with this imaginary ne’er-do-well. After seven years, they can declare me legally dead and I made my peace with that.

A lot of what we do in the New Republic is now legal under the charter that was drafted after Endor even if the Remnant can still prosecute me for rebel activity. Mother would still be horrified that I joined the Alliance, but I think she’d be relieved that I am very unlikely to wage direct war against Palpatine supporters anymore.

General Cracken’s people didn’t tell me if I passed the clearance interview, but they didn’t escort me from the administrative wing immediately. I came back to the office and helped Princess Leia track down a report that was overdue and had to be read before tomorrow’s Council meeting. The boring end to that task was that Colonel Katlin had transposed the middle two numbers of HRH’s comm code and had it returned to sender as an invalid number. It reminded me of the wrong number calls I used to get when my work number was one digit off from a popular local diner. Hopefully, no one will accidentally share state secrets with U-Store 992 or something similarly inane.

 

I got a chuckle out of the intimidating assistants comment. The instructor sure seems to like long-winded explanations that say little to nothing.

I was very intrigued by Alole's comments about her family. It sounds like their relationship is complicated at the very least and downright estranged at the most.

LOL about the comm code being one number off from a popular diner. That is one RL thing that probably happens more than once.

 

A bland service record is just what you need to serve. Details about her past and family hmmm. And that com-code sure is RL happening to a lot of servants.

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Glad that made you laugh. I feel like there are a lot of people who are used to giving orders and now have to do ordinary jobs like this. The instructor is base on someone I’m close to who learned a sales tactic in the 1970s and uses it for everything. It goes state the purpose of the conversation, ask the person to repeat it, restate it, ask the person to rephrase it, outline a three-point plan for achieving the purpose of the conversation, ask the person to identify their role in that plan, ask them to restate the purpose of the conversation, and close with a handshake. I’m not kidding when I say that this makes for tear-jerkingly frustrating conversations at times. This person was very successful as a salesman and I think it was mostly out of sheer exhaustion. So long-winded explanations that say little to nothing is spot on. The family is going to crop up very specifically. But I think her experience is probably not that uncommon with people who joined the Alliance and didn’t know if they would ever come home from the war. I mentioned before that I worked one digit off from FedEx, but my brother once called an adult hotline when mixing up the numbers for tech support.

@earlybird-obi-wan Yes, an uncomplicated history is ideal for being in a position of trust in certain circumstances. Spoilers, if you read Lest Ye Be Judged, we know one thing about her family. But Jov’s story can be found later in what I have planned for this.

@devilinthedetails Thanks! Hope you like this next one. I didn’t realize until today that I based the caf on datapad on a Doctor Who reference for Donna Noble getting sacked after she did that twice. At least she’s not like me, who tends to stare blankly at people I admire. Though my last run-in with someone resulted in him apologizing to me, me assuring him I wasn’t offended, and shaking his hand, which was probably presumptuous of me. But I was at a concert, thought someone had to pass by me to get to my seat and it turned out one of my favorite people on earth had the seat next to me. Sorry, that’s a bit of a tangent. I appreciate the nod to the dry humor. I’m hoping to keep that up with her. Leia trying to be politically tactful while appearing approachable has to be that complicated. Things will get better. As for the fundamentals of security training, I worked in a famous and closed to the public building for two years and about two weeks in, I was given a very comprehensive tour of the main hall and then asked to point out places to hide in an active shooter situation and what things I could use as weapons and even what furniture I could use outside the hall to create a barricade. I’m reminded of Han and Leia fighting off Imperial agents in The Last Command with their furniture blocking the doors when I think of that and I can imagine Alole now being able to say “If stormtroopers invade, I can fit under HRH’s desk and will be able to access the silent alarm, but the lamp is only effective if the Imperial invaders aren’t wearing armor.” Thanks for liking the backstory elements.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’m glad I went looking for more detailed information because guess what? I’ve gone through three stories now and never found the Wiki entry that says Alole is a Twi’lek. So that’s going to require some maneuvering with some of my fanon. But in my defense, the one description I could find of her in the Black Fleet Crisis was of having round cheeks.

ENTRY 3

I had my first encounter with greatness today. Technically, I’ve also helped greatness organize the reports coming into her office from different sources and shown her where I put the caf filters, but Mon Mothma stopped by. I remembered to bow instead of salute, since I’m not military enough and she’s now the Chief of State instead of Commander-in-Chief.

Princess Leia allows Mon Mothma to come without an appointment, so I asked her to wait for a moment and then gave my boss a respectful heads-up that HER boss was in the outer office. These legendary patriots both thanked me and then had an open-door meeting about a reception for a new member state that they are planning for two weeks from now. I wasn’t aware that we were taking applications for new member states, so I discreetly did a search of our intranet and found that there are sixteen pending applications and four recently approved. There are many worlds and systems where citizens were granted membership in the New Republic if they were already registered members. There weren’t a lot of Twi’leks in the ranks at the time I signed up, but they granted me something like citizenship in recognition of faithful service.

Mon Mothma exchanged a few pleasantries with me ten minutes later; I probably mumbled incoherently or stared a bit, but I at least didn’t ignore her in favor of my search history. No sooner had I shown her out with another bow than General Solo swept in and Princess Leia closed the door for a while. Since he was another of the permitted four, I began cataloging the upcoming petitions for membership and preparing a briefing on one of them.

Five minutes later, General Solo stopped by my desk on his way out.

“I know you from somewhere.”

“Yes, sir, Hoth.”

“Don’t call me sir. Leia likes you, which means I don’t want you bowing and scraping to me.”

“Sure thing, General.”

General Solo flinched at that. Then he looked at me pretty hard then and it took everything I had not to blush. Most of us who were stationed at Echo Base had a run-in with his charms at some point.

“Did I flirt with you at some point?”

He had said six words in the presence of his current girlfriend/my current boss and one of them had been “gorgeous.” Not that I remembered it in detail or anything.

“I’m not sure you meant to.” I tried out a smile. “It irritated Her Royal Highness, which is what I think was the point. I didn’t take it personally.”

He seemed to relax at that, probably realizing that there were not a few of us in that category. “Thanks, Alole. Call me Han. You’ll see me enough that it’ll get awkward otherwise.”

“I’ll do that, Han.”

Leaning in, he lowered his voice. “And see what you can do about dropping the formalities with Her Highnessness,” he intimated. “It’ll get awkward otherwise.”

I decided to leave that to Her Royal Highness(ness) to decide. She’s the one with all the titles to ignore if I’m on a first-name basis with her.

“I’ll try.”

When he left, Princess Leia called me in and hoped he hadn’t given me a hard time.

“No, Your Highness.”

She looked more at ease with that title than Han suggested and smiled slightly. “He is likely to have many questions about what it was like for a Twi’lek to spend the middle part of the war at Echo Base.”

“It was unpleasant for us all,” I demurred. “The quartermasters were quite kind about making accommodations, though.”

Maybe my special skills included enduring unexpected things and that was why Rieekan recommended me. It certainly wasn’t my typing speed.

“I see you’ve been making quick work of the overwhelming information in my briefing files,” Princess Leia said. “If you can send me the folder on the Rudur application, I can approve that before we go to lunch.”

I was caught off-guard by the pronoun, but did as she said. She let me into the officers’ mess with her and asked a few sincere questions about what it was like for an alien to be part of an Imperial loyalist family. Clearly, she’s read my file, but didn’t pry too much. She let me list the names of two sisters and two half-brothers without asking about the half-brother whose career was so interesting to New Republic Intelligence. She then disclosed a little of her own background. Adopted as a war orphan, she had never known that she had a brother and it was a closely-guarded secret on Alderaan that she wasn’t born there.

I’m sure there are many more stories to be told about that, but as long as she’s waiting for me to bring up Jov and his Imperial rank, I will hold off on asking just how long it’s been since she found out she’s one of the Skywalkers.

I’ll at least hold off until I stop calling her by titles. If that day never comes, I’m all right with that.

 

You worked in Alole being a Twi'lek very smoothly. LOL on the exchange with Han; even in early days and light acquaintance, Alole figures any flirting Han did was motivated pretty much to get Leia's attention.

 

Love how she encounters the greatness and Han and his humour.

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Lol, thanks. When I found official art and she was BLUE, it was slightly jarring. The flirting thing was inspired by Allegiance, where Han flirts with Pink 5 just to get Leia’s goat. . And I figure not everyone is as understanding, but they can be apologized to individually.
@earlybird-obi-wan Thanks for enjoying that. I’ve been deprived of Han Solo in another story, so like bringing him in here.

ENTRY 4

Today was less exciting. I continued my filing and developed an algorithm for automating some of the process. I haven’t used that skill in a few years, but I managed to get it right on the second try.

It was a great day for three systems in the Mid-Rim, but I’m not going to blow a noisemaker every time the filing is complete for that. That’s what the receptions are for.

It would be nice if people my own rank/age stopped by, but that’s not really realistic for this high in government. The closest I got was a courier from Rieekan’s office who was only a major.

Everyone is polite as I’m their best bet for an appointment with HRH, but I wish someone was glad to see me on my own merits. Maybe if I took up juggling or modern dance.

 

Enjoyed the comments about the filing process and Alole wishing for interactions with those her own rank/age. A very understandable feeling.

 

Filing, just work. And wishing for more people of her own age? That's always nice to have but it depends on where you work.

 

Thanks to both @WarmNyota_SweetAyesha and @earlybird-obi-wan. I work for a law firm and the amount of filing is simply ungodly at times, especially because I handle medical records and 90% of the job is paperwork. Alole is getting a bit of my vocational loneliness at the moment, since my nearest coworkers are all the way down the coast. I also am a day late on this because of a new endeavor.

ENTRY 5

Relief at last. Filing goes on, but I was approached by someone who understands what I’m going through.

Erskin Semaj is not someone I was familiar with, but I never moved in the circles of the Alliance elite until a few days ago. I did see him once when Mon Mothma and I happened to be on the same base, but he stopped by half an hour before noon and offered to split his lunch with me.

This time, we stayed in office. He and I are in a kind of limbo, where we have no rank to pull and people consider us to be in a different class because of the people we are attached to. So eating half a tchau salad sandwich and making him caf in the outer office was appropriately comfortable.

It was also reassuring. I’m fairly sure that no one assigned him to be my wise old mentor, but he shared some pearls of wisdom after commiserating about busywork.

The most enduring lesson was that there’s no primer for the level of trust that exists in our positions. There’s also no one way to be an aide. HRH’s senatorial aide works with Intelligence, but Erskin has been with Mon Mothma since her days in the senate and while he’s not significantly older than me, he spent the war in a more administrative role than I did.

Before leaving, he asked me to set aside time tomorrow morning to meet with him and my own boss. Apparently, there is a special project that the Chief of State has in mind.

I put it on the agenda with Princess Leia’s permission. She was intrigued enough to allow an 0900 meeting.

ENTRY 6

The intrigue was well-founded and Erskin formally presented the request with very little preamble.

There are thousands of soldiers who served and lived and died within the Rebel Alliance and its unofficial affiliates. Some, like me, have family who have tried to reach out to them. Some have no family to speak of.

Mon Mothma’s office has been informally contacted by many people trying to track down the missing persons of the Imperial period. While it would be wonderful to reunite people with their loved ones in every case, it could be a trap or inadvisable. Princess Leia made efforts after the Battle of Yavin to find surviving citizens of Alderaan and it was that mission that put Mon Mothma in mind of our office for this assignment.

She would like us to field those requests, research the origins of those communiques, and make recommendations on how to proceed. New Republic Intelligence will take things from there, but Erskin presented it as a project for which the Minister of State would be uniquely suited and expressed his confidence that I will be of useful service to her as well.

I was already intrigued by the mission for reasons that had nothing to do with escaping the filing system. HRH agreed to it.

Our first batch of requests arrived just before I left the office and Princess Leia gently asked me to leave work in the office. I dutifully locked the files away on my computer and set an access timer for five minutes before I’m expected at my desk.

I’ll be here 6 minutes before my shift tomorrow.

 

Nice missions to search for people to reunite. And a relief from file work. I like Erskin
And file work. I was very familiar with that as an archivist. But with volunteer firefighting I could be away when called. And the work didn't suffer from that at all.

 

Super gaining a friend and colleague in Erskin who can tell Alole how to navigate her job and relationship with her boss successfully. A Great mission they are undertaking which will be very fulfilling for the families they are able to reunite.

 

Intriguing to get a look at the early days of the New Republic from the political side rather than that of the military, something I think is ultimately better framed through using a character like Alole rather than Leia herself.

 

This is really lovely stuff; feels like catching up with old friends, only through the eyes of a new one!

Alole is great, and I find her observations very relatable in many ways. Quite often, those who keep secrets are more interesting than the secrets themselves, and I have a feeling that'll be the case here, especially with those mentions of her pre-Rebel backstory in Entry 2 (which was a brilliant entry overall, seeing that whole process from Alole's perspective). I'm glad she finally found... well, maybe not a peer in the strictest sense, but somebody who at least "gets it" and who she's comfortable to share lunch with, in Entry 5. Meanwhile, you've gotten Leia spot on, and Han's brief interjection was excellent, too.

And again, I've just noted this in another DDC project, but I appreciate the smaller, "nothing much happened today" Entry 4, which lends authenticity to the diary format (and gave me another great moment of empathy with Alole, when she tags on the idea of taking up juggling to make herself stand out more). I'm somebody who lives for those kinds of smaller, naturalistic details, so they're often my favourites!

Sounds like a noble cause to be undertaking, so am really looking forward to seeing how things go!

 

Thanks to the increased number of responses. I’ve been fighting off a headache for two days and needing more sleep.

@earlybird-obi-wan I remembering about Leia’s quest in the comics and adoring it. I can’t remember if you’ve read my Queenleia!verse stories, but she has a close advisor named Verlaine because of Evaan Verlaine in that comic series. For a while, I worked one-on-one with a man who didn’t speak English and was represented by my company. He lived close enough to the office that he would come in when he got a letter from the government and I’d translate it for him and help him with any response he needed. I looked forward to getting a call from our front desk to say he was looking for me and I feel like Alole will have this kind of feeling about the missions where she can do something more concrete to help. In the books, Mon Mothma has two sides, but I decided to meet the character from Rebels. He seems cool.

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha she probably won’t find a lot of kids her own age, but man, it can help to have a comrade-in-arms. I’m looking forward to a few stories from these missions.

@Mechalich thanks for liking it. That was exactly my thought on the framing. I also used to only write OCs for main characters and it’s nice to get back to those teenage roots. I also really like doing third person assessment of someone I write as frequently Leia.

@Happy Sando thanks so much. I’m grateful for the mention of entry 2 because I have a specific backstory that I’ve only mentioned in one scene in a fic years ago and always wanted to explore because the reference was made by Leia while thinking about problematic families. I’ve been writing stories where Han 100% doesn’t interact with Leia and it’s been driving me nuts, so I’ve found time to write my favorite scoundrel. The “nothing much happened” reminds me of a friend complinsulting me by saying my first blog was about the stuff no one wants to read about. He meant it the way you put it, but didn’t realize how it sounded. The juggling comment is inspired by my mother, who learned to juggle for her 40th birthday.

ENTRY 7

I’m glad that HRH dictated a priority for this project because it would be a temptation to blaze through the most notable names in the inquiries. Instead, we are doing them in the order in which they were received, just as the hold message for my bank’s customer comm line used to say.

Query number one was from a woman whose husband had been missing in action since sometime after Alderaan’s destruction. He was an officer on an imperial Star destroyer at the time and the woman suspects that he acted on his conscience and came to the Alliance. She receives Imperial widow pension and it helps with raising their daughter, but what she really wants are the details of why he is listed as MIA.

It was a relief to find that his name appeared in the Alliance records. It was less of a joy to discover that he served faithfully on the Mon Calamari Star Cruiser Liberty. At Endor, the fleet realized the Death Star was operational when it fired on the Liberty. This Imperial defector helped to win the war and that might be of some comfort to his family, but it’s my job to report these facts to NRI and let them handle the rest of the case.

I had a less easy time with the other five cases before lunch, but two of them were referred to NRI and three are in a state where I am waiting for more information. After I brought soup to Erskin and ran a few errands for HRH, I ran across a file before leaving that had a more familiar name.

I never had a real heart-to-heart with General Rieekan when he commanded me on Echo Base, but I know he’s Alderaanian and that means he lost his world and probably his family. One query claimed to be from his daughter and I had to ask Princess Leia a very delicate set of questions.

She looked very weary at the idea, but answered promptly. “Carlist and Isra had a daughter, but Mirien would have turned ten this year, not nineteen. I expect there will be quite a few inquiries based on famous names and public knowledge. Has anyone claimed to be one of my parents, adoptive or otherwise?”

I knew her question was not meant in jest or in curiosity, but more out of resignation.

“No, but one person claimed to be your older sister.”

At that, she let out a very short laugh. “My adopted sister works with NRI to this day and it’s not common knowledge yet that I have a brother. Someday, it will be safe enough to talk about both of those things, but for now, have NRI respond to that with a ‘no records show that you are related to one of our members’ or some similar form letter.”

I’m sure Erskin can prevent me from asking similar questions about Mon Mothma, since he’s been around since the days when she was known to have a husband and daughter. I did as the Princess asked and moved on to a woman who was asking about two of her sons. Both survived the war, so it was another file to refer to NRI.

I know Jov has tried to find me, but I’m curious if someone will write in or if I’ll simply be the subject of an unmentioned Imperial investigation. Maybe I already am, though I can’t imagine the runaway half-sister of a Star Destroyer’s first officer is high on anyone’s priorities.

I don’t want to reunite with the people I left behind, but I’ve thought of writing to them sometimes. “Still here, still rebellious. Weather continues fine. My conscience is pretty clear. As yours are not, please consider this matter closed.”

 

Superb realism with families wanting closure and sometimes getting awesome news that leads to a reunion in contrast to bittersweet where they did follow their conscience or principles but were still a casualty of conflict.

I got tickled by the conversation between Alole and Leia about people asking about family more so by latching onto famous names.

The last paragraph about her family was very definitely no overtures welcomed.

 

I like how she is searching for the families and what she does with famous names. And her family? A no!

 

Sorry, had to work late for two days and then have injured my hand in a way that makes typing hurt.

ENTRY 8

It’s not technically the weekend, but it’s the policy of the Of States as Erskin calls them for us to have some peacetime luxuries. During the war, the Empire could wreak havoc on any day of the week, so we couldn’t stand down. Now that we are considered the victors, Princess Leia is giving me two days off after every five days. She just forgot this first time because I think part of her still worries about the war.

I promised my boyfriend that I’d leave work at the office, but I checked the newsfeeds first thing this morning out of duty. My Of State’s own boyfriend has been making himself scarce around the office by flying supplies to Kashyyyk and there were reports about the ongoing struggle to rid the world of Imperial influence. I’m sure HRH isn’t leaving work at the office while Han is sneaking onto the Wookiee homework’s.

Ilar keeps normal weekends, so I had our quarters to myself. I caught up on my reading in the first two hours of the day, then got bored while he was still on duty at the med center. I wasn’t about to get in an accident just to see him again, so I went for a walk on the savannas. Nearly ran afoul of some local wildlife because they got curious about the bright blue moving object who was stopping to take holos every minute or so.

If the war were truly over, we could settle in and explore local real estate, but with both of us still assigned to the Cause, the closest I could come with all this spare time to slaving over a hot cooktop was saving Ilar extra of the dinner food.

I dream of a galaxy at peace and a refrigerator of my own.

 

Writing about her free time is nice. And her friend Ilar. Will we get to know more about him?

 

Nice details of a free weekend and musings about war and peace and Ilar.

 

Thanks and yes we will. I’ll write more proper replies next time.

ENTRY 9

I ran into Erskin today completely without scheduling it. We were raising the quartermaster’s wares since new bedding just came in and it’s first-come-first-serve for the least scratchy sheets.

Ilar’s day off happened to coincide, so I got to introduce them. When Ilar went to the hygiene aisle for soap, Erskin asked me if I knew what tomorrow was.

When I got hired by the most Alderaanian person this side of the Alliance, I looked up their holidays and commemorations. I also made sure to familiarize myself with sore spots on the calendar. So, yes, I know that HRH has office hours on the anniversary of the Calamity.

She had me schedule meetings that were requested by three people, but Erskin let me know that the Chief of State won’t be doing an unannounced stop-in and I shouldn’t hover because it apparently doesn’t go well.

I’m wondering if tomorrow’s anniversary is why General Solo and Commander Skywalker have both arrived on base. There was also a note in the base memos about a memorial vigil, but I can understand if she wants to keep her rituals on her own.

According to Erskin, she also might have a hangover the day after tomorrow, but that’s her business. I’ll have water and painkillers around just in case.