(Ace) Support

Life on Chad was a pleasant existence years ago, before and aside from the present strife that grips the galaxy. On the beautiful blue jewel a care free soul was born to a family that found employ with human ranchers, hardy colonists that braved the ferocious seas on floating arks, herding giant seacows and other aquatic life. The child, Zomii, took to the ranching lifestyle naturally and it was said by those around him when visiting shore that the boy learned to herd before he had learned to crawl, aspiring to a bravery few Chadra-Fan dream of even in his formative years. Growing up a capable ranch hand, Zomii was taken under the tutelage of his family's employer, Mellik Betros. Betros would show the boy trinkets and star-charts, recounting many of his previous exploits as, he put it, the best smuggler this side of Chad. To a little boy that had never left his planet, that meant something. The old humans stories and data-stores helped to educate the young Chadra-Fan and he had promised Zomii that one day he would take him to see the stars and the Empire beyond. The possibility of adventure filled the boy with hope and drove him to learn all he could about flight and he often dreamed of zooming through space, as free as the stars above.
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​When the Chadra-Fan and their human counter-parts made port one fateful day, the tide began to recede from the shore and Zomii's family and their ark went with it, the occupants aboard trying desperately to follow their seacow herd as many millions of Chadra-Fan raced to the seabed, unaware of the exposure and its grave implications. Zomii and Betros had been at the spaceport as The Big One rolled in, many times more massive than anything Zomii had seen, the waters nearly eclipsing the planet's huge treetops. The ensuing escape happened so fast, with Betros pulling the young, distraught Chadra-Fan behind him to Betros' ill kept and hardly-used estate. They didn't have time to admire the old space vessel hidden away behind the utility shed before boarding but Zomii had seen it before in old holos and the half-faded, half-covered starbird on the starship underbelly. The problem with Betros' transportation was that a Z-95 was able to take just one occupant. Betros' final act was setting an automated course to the ships last departure point, webbing the Chadra-Fan into the cockpit. As the Headhunter roared to life and the engines kicked the craft up into the sky, Zomii watched in horror as his life washed away below him.
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​As the retrofitted craft jumped into hyperspace Zomii cried himself to sleep for the first time in his life. He was later roused by the sound of snarls and yapping, with thick coats of mucus and saliva rolling over the canopy above Zomii. It wasn't long after hearing the high-pitched whines of a child that the master of the animals quickly investigated the scene firsthand. The Z-95 Headhunter had landed itself, rather precariously, into the heart of a jungle and, without a coherent pilot, lodged itself between two tree trunks in the descent. After a few hours of sheer determination and brute force the craft was wedged from the trunks and hauled to the ground, where Zomii was greeted by humanoids of different shapes and colors, dressed in ocher and each with a small starbird adorning their uniforms. After they brought the Chadra-Fan back to their outpost, Zomii was able to recount the events on Chad and his association with Mellik Betros, whom the commander of the outpost took an interest to at first mention. He told Zomii of Betros' career as a smuggler and, later, a fighter pilot in rebellion against the Empire, an enemy the young boy from Chad had not experienced the evils of often but, hearing of his lost mentor being a force against some larger and decidedly wicked foe made the boy feel hope again, as if he could weather a tsunami in the face of danger. Zomii would come to know by the end of the introduction, that the Rebels had thought Betros dead after a skirmish over Chad, and lingering Imperial presence prevented mounting a search mission for any debris to confirm. Those at the outpost did not seem surprised in hindsight that Betros would survive and go on to make himself a new life.
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​ While Zomii was not a fight pilot like Betros, he had been taken under the man's wing and had some knowledge of space flight. Without anywhere else to go, Zomii found himself assimilated easily enough into the rebellion. The outpost scouts often took turns tutoring the Chadian on the art of survival, appreciating the boy's quick reaction to surviving in a hostile environment and his friendly nature with the beasts used to fend off planetary predators. Zomii would go on to spend the next decade after The Big One at this outpost, learning of life in the rebellion and, every night, wishing for one more night among the stars - with less tears and many more memories, if he could brave them.