Welcome to Character Histories. In this series, I will look at the whole story of a character or group of characters from the Star Wars canon and try to give the main events. As I do this, I will also be letting you know where you can find this story (which I will put in yellow so that you can easily see and avoid that section if you want to avoid spoilers) so that you can find out the full details. I will look to stick to the details confirmed in canon, but will also make note of any information that I believe to be the case that may not have been expressly confirmed.
Some of you may remember that I did a couple of these a long time ago on here, but the final season of The Clone Wars has meant that we now have more confirmation as to how these stories played out, while I also think that I can do a better job on these articles now I am more experienced at writing on here.
Today, I will be looking at a group of characters, who were created for the story mode of Star Wars Battlefront II but have a story that stretches beyond that (and even puts some of them in the movies). They are a group called Inferno Squad, and as you will see, their line-up and their allegiance varies over time, while there are certainly gaps to the story that I would love to see filled in, along with the potential for more beyond where this currently ends.
Formation & first mission
From the novel Battlefront II: Inferno Squad
Following the Rebel victory at the Battle of Yavin and the destruction of the Death Star, Admiral Garrick Versio created a new Imperial Special Forces unit, named Inferno Squad. The 4 members of Inferno Squad were:
- Iden Versio – Admiral Versio’s daughter, who had graduated from the Imperial Academy with honours, at the top of her class. She fought in the Battle of Yavin and was one of the sole survivors from the destruction of the Death Star due to her TIE Fighter being on the edge of the blast radius, having crash landed on Yavin 4 and stole a Rebel ship to return to Imperial lines.
- Gideon Hask – an orphan, who studied at the Future Imperial Leaders Military Preparatory School and later the Coruscant Imperial University, where he graduated at the top of his class.
- Del Meeko – a native of Coruscant, who had worked his way through the ranks of the Imperial Military to become chief engineer on the Star Destroyer Implacable.
- Seyn Marana – an agent within the Naval Intelligence Agency. As well as being an expert marksman, she was a master cryptologist, whose possession of an eidetic memory and fluency in a number of languages had allowed her to graduate from the Imperial Academy of Uyter at the top of her class a year early.
- An ID-10 seeker droid – though not considered an official member, the droid was vital to many missions, usually utilised by Agents Meeko/Versio
To determine who would lead the unit, Admiral Versio had each member of the squad formulate a plan for their first mission: to expose Moff Jaccun Pereez for espionage. Agent Versio’s plan was selected and proved to be a success, leading to her promotion to captain and leader of Inferno Squad.
The Partisans
Inferno’s next mission was to recover and extract Bokk Naarg, a defecting member of the remnants of Saw Gerrera’s Partisans, from the Tellik Four Station. The mission soon took a turn as Naarg was accompanied to the arranged meeting by 5 other Partisans, who were wearing fake jewellery that was revealed to be explosives. The Partisans, including Naarg, were killed, but Hask used Meeko’s ID-10 droid to snatch a datachip and Inferno made it away unscathed.
The Dreamers
Inferno’s next mission was arguably their most dangerous yet, as they were tasked with infiltrating the Dreamers – a rebel terrorist group that had grown from the remnants of the Partisans and was having some success in their campaign against the Empire – to find the source of their information. To infiltrate the group, Marana, Meeko and Hask went undercover with new identities, while Versio’s route in was to pose as herself, but to fake that she had attempted to defect after becoming disillusioned with the Empire following the destruction of Alderaan – a cover so deep even her mother could not know the truth.
All 4 agents successfully infiltrated the Dreamers and each one began to work they way in with different members. The agents worked alongside the Dreamers in their campaign against the Empire with “The Mentor”, one of the group’s leaders, trained Iden to become a notable public voice for the group. The other leader, Staven, was less trusting of Versio, and when Marana gave herself away as a spy, Versio was forced to kill her in order to prove her loyalty.
The agents began to work at creating a rift between “The Mentor” and Staven. Versio managed to find and read The Mentor’s journal, before confronting him in private away from the rest of the Dreamers. The Mentor revealed himself as Lux Bonteri, and revealed his daughter to be the source of the information he had used to plan the targets the Dreamers would attack. Versio stunned Bonteri (though her orders were to kill him) and took his datachip with the information on before returning to Agents Meeko and Hask, who had wiped out Staven and the rest of the Dreamers while she was gone. The surviving members of Inferno returned to the Empire with their mission complete, and Versio’s record was cleared of her supposed defection.
Imperial elite
Marana was not replaced and Inferno continued as a trio, becoming an elite unit for the Empire, with an impressive service record spanning the next 4 years.
As the Empire set a trap for the Rebel Alliance above the forest moon of Endor, an encrypted transmission from Moff Raythe regarding the position of the Imperial Fleet was intercepted by the Rebels. Agent Versio was willingly captured by the Rebels and taken aboard the Invincible Faith, where the message was being decoded. Using the ID-10 droid, Versio escaped custody and made her way through the ship to the communications center, where she deleted the message. With the Rebels alerted to her escape, Versio fought her way to an airlock and ejected herself into space, where she was caught by the rest of Inferno arriving in the Corvus.
As the Battle of Endor raged on, Inferno were sent down to the surface of the forest moon to secure the bunker and the shield generator within. However, the generator had been destroyed by the time they arrived and they could only watch as the second Death Star exploded. Inferno fought their way through Rebel forces to steal a trio of TIE Fighters to escape the moon and make it back to the Corvus, where they rendezvoused with Admiral Versio’s Star Destroyer, the Eviscerator before retreating to Vardos.
In the weeks following the Battle of Endor, Inferno undertook a number of missions as a part of Operation Cinder. Inferno escorted the Star Destroyer Dauntless to the Fondor shipyard to retrieve satellites crucial to the operation, helping to defend the Star Destroyer when a Rebel fleet arrived to attack the shipyard.
Agent Meeko led a unit of stormtroopers to the planet Pillio, to access and destroy one of the Emperor’s Observatories. Though the mission was a success, Meeko was the only member of the unit to survive, thanks to the help of Rebel hero and Jedi Luke Skywalker.
Breaking up
Inferno’s next mission was on Vardos, home of the Versios, which was revealed to be one of the targets of Operation Cinder. Inferno’s mission was to extract an Imperial ally, Protectorate Gleb, but nobody else.
Seeing the suffering of other civilians, Agents Meeko and Versio disobeyed orders and prepared to evacuate other civilians along with Gleb, leading to an altercation with Hask. When Hask refused to obey Versio’s new orders and stick with the orders of the Admiral, Versio was forced to disarm him and she escaped back to the Corvus with Agent Meeko, his ID-10 droid and the civilians they were protecting – with a number of members of the Corvus‘ crew defecting from the Empire along with them.
Defending Naboo
“We’re Inferno Squad: you and me.”
With Inferno now just Versio, Meeko and his droid, the pair surrendered to New Republic forces in order to warn them about Operation Cinder and the satellites. With Imperial forces attacking Naboo with a set of the satellites, General Lando Calrissian convinced the pair to help Danger Squadron destroy the satellites and destroy the Star Destroyer Torment, before making their way to the capital city of Theed to help Leia Organa and Danger Leader Shriv Suurgav repair power relays to activate a defensive ion pulse that took out the Imperial technology.
Following the Imperial surrender on Naboo, Versio and Meeko offered their services to the New Republic.
Inferno of the New Republic
The name of Inferno Squad remained with Versio and Meeko as they began working as art of the Ne Republic Defense Force, with Shriv Suurgav joining the group and the ID-10 droid – who had developed a more affectionate personality after being affected by the Theed ion pulse. The Squad spent the next 6 months helping track down any remaining Imperials.
As a favour to Leia Organa, Inferno took a break from hunting Imperials to track down Han Solo, who had gone missing, finding him on Takodana and helping take out the Imperials trying to apprehend him. This helped set up the former Rebellion general in his plan to liberate Kashyyyk from Imperial rule. The information Solo had procured also helped Versio track down her father, so Inferno were assigned the job of dealing with Admiral Versio and his forces.
Inferno’s first action against Admiral Versio was to disrupt the fleet’s attempts to refuel at Chinook Station, a refuelling Station on Bespin. Versio and Meeko infiltrated the station disguised as stormtroopers in an attempt to capture Hask, who was overseeing the operation. Hask had expected their attempts and the pair found that he was not present and they had walked into a trap, however they managed to fight their way to a cloud car in which they were able to escape, but not before using the cloud car to destroy the refuelling station, causing a chain reaction that destroyed the 3 Star Destroyers docked with it.
Versio and Meeko were held back for the next mission, with Suurgav accompanying General Calrissian to Sullust, where they were meant to steal a weapons cache. However on arrival, the pair found the supposedly abandoned weapons depot to be an active factory building weapons armour and vehicles for the Empire. Calrissian and Suurgav destroyed the factory before being extracted by Versio and Meeko.
The Battle of Jakku
Inferno were present at the Battle of Jakku, with Versio and Suurgav providing support for New Republic forces on the ground as Meeko co-ordinated their efforts. When the Corvus was tracked down by the Eviscerator, Versio and Suurgav flew against the waves of fighters and bombers attacking the Corvus before taking on Hask, who attacked in a TIE Interceptor and shooting him down.
Going against the wishes of the rest of Inferno, Versio crashed her X-wing onto the hull of the Eviscerator – which was crashing after taking heavy damage – and found a way through the hull of the Star Destroyer into the ship corridors, making her way to the bridge, where she found Admiral Versio. She tried to convince her father to come with her, but he chose to go down with the ship and she left alone, jettisoning out of the Star Destroyer in an escape pod just before it was destroyed.
Peace
With the Galactic Civil War finally over, Inferno disbanded. Iden Versio and Del Meeko married and had a daughter, Zay. Wanting a more peaceful life, the pair left the military and Meeko used the Corvus to haul cargo and found faith in the Force.
Shadows of the past
With the Cold War between the Resistance and the First Order underway, Del found himself investigating the people of Athulla going missing. This led to him returning to Pillio, where he was captured by Jinata Security and handed over to the First Order. He was interrogated by Kylo Ren who used the Force to extract the location of Lor San Tekka. His usefulness spent, Del was executed by Hask, who had survived the Battle of Jakku and joined the First Order.
“Hask. Gideon! Don’t go after her. It won’t end well for you. Please.”
Shriv, who was working for the Resistance, found the Corvus abandoned on Pillio and took it to rendezvous with Iden, Zay and Dio, the ID-10 droid. The new-look Inferno Squad travelled to Athulla, where they discovered Del’s investigation before coming under attack from a J-Sec fleet. While Shriv co-ordinated from the bridge of the Corvus, Iden and Zay took on the fleet in their X-wings, shooting down the fleet’s commander, Leema Kai and forcing the surrender of the rest of the fleet. The surrendering members of the fleet informed Iden of something called Project Resurrection, and informed them that Protectorate Gleb had captured Del.
With this information, Inferno made their way to Vardos to find Del, with Iden and Shriv going to the surface while Zay remained on the Corvus. However, it proved to be a trap. Iden and Shriv found Gleb dead and were captured by Hask and the First Order, and could only watch as the Corvus was shot down. The outbreak of fighting between J-Sec and the First Order gave Iden, Shriv and Dio to escape and they fought their way through the remains of the capital to find the escape pods in the hope that Zay had escaped. The group successfully reunited and Iden officially joined the Resistance.
Resistance
Inferno commandeered 3 TIEs and used them to sneak aboard Hask’s Star Destroyer, the Retribution, just before it jumped to hyperspace on the way to Starkiller Base, which has recently destroyed the Hosnian system. The trio found information showing the size of the First Order’s forces and schematics for a First Order Dreadnought. While Shriv went to find a ship to escape in, Iden, Zay and Dio went to destroy the hyperdrive generators in order to pull the Star Destroyer out of hyperspace. Though they were successful, Iden was mortally wounded killing Hask.
The remaining members of Inferno – Zay, Shriv and Dio – made their way to D’Qar, where the Resistance was in the process of evacuating. Dio transmitted the information they had stolen from the First Order.
Leia tasked Inferno with tracking down her allies in the Outer Rim.
Rebuilding the Resistance
From the novel Resistance Reborn
Following the Battle of Crait, Inferno regrouped with the remainder of the Resistance on Ryloth, bringing a handful of allies, including some former members of Phantom Squadron and Carlist Rieekan.
Under Shriv’s leadership, Inferno and a number of the recruits they had found took on a mission to steal a handful of fighters. The mission was a success, though one of the former members of Phantom Squadron was killed in action.
From the novel The Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Edition
“Zay Versio with Inferno Squad, standing by. Look at all these ships!”
When the Resistance threw all their forces into the Battle of Exegol against the forces of the Sith Eternal, they were heavily outnumbered and outgunned. This changed with the arrival of the Millennium Falcon at the head of the citizen’s fleet. Inferno Squad were part of the 14,000 strong fleet, which helped change the course of the battle. The Resistance won the day.
And so ends (for now, at least) the story of Inferno Squad: a unit who evolved over time, both in their affiliation and their personnel. But one thing you could always rely on: Inferno would get the mission done. In the words of Iden Versio just before her death, they fought so that others may live.
What did you think of this history? Is there someone you would like to see me cover?
Thanks for reading. May the Force be with you…
The Canon Padawan 