Chass na Chadic is the B-wing pilot of Alphabet Squadron in Alexander Freed’s trilogy, beginning with Alphabet Squadron (Del Rey, 2019). Her defining fact is stated plainly in the publisher’s own description of the unit: she has seen her entire squadron destroyed, twice.
Freed writes her as the opposite of Quell. Where Quell is a defector managing her own history, Chass is a true believer with nothing left to believe in — a survivor of two annihilated units and of a great deal else besides, flying the heaviest and least survivable fighter in the New Republic inventory with music playing in the cockpit because silence is worse.
The B-wing itself is part of the characterisation. It is a gun platform with an engine attached, built for pilots who intend to be in the worst part of the battle, and assigning it to the one person least interested in surviving is the sort of quiet structural writing the Alphabet books do throughout.
She is current canon, and one of the strongest arguments that the post-2014 novels can do ensemble military fiction as well as the Bantam era did — with better prose and considerably less mercy.
