Sair Yonka

"Avarice's Captain Sair Yonka is very smart and calculating&mdash;the antithesis of us Corellians because he does care what the odds are and does everything he can to maximize his chances of survival."

- Mirak Terrik

Sair Yonka was the captain of the Avarice, an Imperial II-class Star Destroyer.

Captain Yonka
"This affair is not without danger&mdash;the wrath of a Moff is not often survivable. If one is going to dress for death, can blood-red ever be a wrong choice?"

- Sair Yonka, to Poe

A tall, slender Human male, Sair Yonka was born on the planet Commenor, and was of a military background. During his upbringing, Yonka befriended a young girl named Aellyn, and, over the course of their adolescence, the two began to fall in love with each other. The two parted ways, however, when Yonka managed to gain an appointment to the Imperial Naval Academy. Yonka proved to be a competent and calculating tactician, though his first assignments were on backwater worlds in the Outer Rim Territories. Here, he served on vessels tasked with fended off pirates and defended convoys, on worlds like Elshandruu Pica. Yonka performed well in the Outer Rim, and his career began to blossom. He was soon awarded the captaincy of an Imperial II-class Star Destroyer, the Avarice; although he did infrequently perform missions closer to Imperial Center, the majority of his time was spent in the outermost regions of the Rim.

During a routine patrolling exercise on Elshandruu Pica, the Avarice chased off a band of pirates who had set up a base in the system's asteroid belt. When he went to pay his respects to Elshandruu Pica's Moff, Riit Jandi, he discovered that his former lover Aellyn was the Moff's wife. Their feelings rekindled, the two Commenorians entered an illicit affair, which they managed to keep secret from Moff Jandi. Aellyn was friends with Kina Margath, the proprietor of Margath's hotel, and she and Yonka used it as a place to meet and romance together. Yonka appeased Margath with free supplies of multitudes of alcoholic beverages he had captured from pirates during his Imperial service, while Aellyn used her influence with the Moff to gain Margath favorable treatment. Additionally, Sair helped spread rumors that he was going to the hotel every few weeks to sleep with Margath, not Aellyn. His and Aellyn's relationship was largely physical, and they were unable to see each other for any extended length of time. Unbeknownst to either Yonka or his lover, Kina Margath was a Rebel spy, and Yonka's personal droid at the hotel, Poe, had once served Rebel starfighter pilots. However, in the several years their relationship lasted, Margath never acted against the Star Destroyer captain.

Yonka recognized that the Empire was far from perfect, though he convinced himself that he was on the right side of the Galactic Civil War, as the Empire was the legitimate government. He had qualms about the harshness with which the Rebel Alliance was dealt with, though he reasoned that they were the same as the pirates he dealt with in the Outer Rim. Sair Yonka was far from sure of the Empire, though he stayed loyal to it up until the Battle of Endor, when the Emperor was killed, and his Empire was thrown into disarray.

Defection
"Out there you have people in freighters and snubfighters pounding on that behemoth. They're gnats compared to the Lusankya. They can sting it, but they can't kill it. That job is up to us and we're going to do it because if we have to die, it isn't going to be dying while running. The Empire is dead&mdash;we all know that&mdash;so this is our buy-in to whatever follows it."

- Sair Yonka

New Republic service
Shortly before the Battle of Thyferra during the Bacta War, Yonka defected to Rogue Squadron, which, at the time, was disbanded from the New Republic, and renamed his Star Destroyer Freedom. He had an affair with Imperial Moff Riit Jandi's wife, Aellyn, and played a critical role in the capture of the Lusankya. Despite having initially left Imperial service due to a substantial bribe by Wedge Antilles, Yonka became a loyal officer of the New Republic and fought in the Battle of Sluis Van, Bilbringi and the toppling of Prince-Admiral Krennel.

Appearances

 * X-wing: The Bacta War
 * X-wing: Isard's Revenge

Notes and references
Sair Yonka