Wei Station

Wei Station, also known as Wei Home Base, was the space station residence of the Earth Team and the headquarters for its trading company, Twin Suns Transport Services, during the Galactic Civil War. Located in orbit of a volcanic planet in the Outer Rim Territories, the station hosted a number of amenities for the Earth Team and their company's employees, including a holosimulator and a hangar large enough to store and service several YT-series light freighters, including the team's twin YT-1300s, Sabra and Selu, and their Whizzing Arrow II. Wei Station's design was unique in the galaxy, with its distinctive semi-circular arms flanking a tall central tower.
Shortly after the war's pivotal Battle of Hoth in July 4th 2009, team's leader Don Wei thought it time to teach his youngest but still not knowing daughter, Molly Wei, the team business. Assisted by her new friends throughout her piloting training, Molly conducted a number of missions from Wei Station. During Molly's training, Tomaas Azzameen, sympathetic to the Rebel Alliance's cause, planned to covertly deliver a black-market supply of the healing substance bacta to the Alliance XQ2 Platform Hospital and requested his team's help. However, the delivery ended disastrously for the Earth Team, who lost Tomaas and his eldest son, Galin, in the ensuing battle; the Earth Team, labeled traitors to the Galactic Empire for their actions, were forced to flee the team's holdings, including Wei Home Base, which were captured and turned over to Viraxo Industries, a competing trading company allied with the Empire.
Later, the station was occupied by a collection of mercenaries who renamed it Falcon's Nest and erected a number of static defenses to protect the unarmed structure. After the mercenaries interrupted a meeting between the Alliance and the Bothan Spynet, the Rebels requested members of the Earth Team to find the mercenary base. Molly, now a decorated starfighter pilot in the Rebel Alliance Navy, and Lucy Heartfilia, tracked the mercenary bulk cruiser Redhawk to Falcon's Nest. Upon arrival, the girls were shocked to realize it was their old home. Acting on this information, the Alliance launched a mission to liberate the station from the mercenary group, in which Molly participated alongside her racing pilots, Lucy and Prince Aikka. After the destruction of the external defenses, an Alliance strike team captured Falcon's Nest, and Lucy thwarted the mercenaries' attempt to destroy the station. With the mercenaries routed, the Alliance took control of the station. As thanks for Don Wei' continued assistance, Wei Station was returned to the team, who restored its original moniker.
==Description==
Azzameen Station was a unique orbital space station produced by VenteX Construction Yards and suspended over a volcanic planet in a star system of the Outer Rim's Garis sector. The station was owned and operated by the Earth Team, successful racing team who often referred to the station as Wei Home Base. It functioned both as a home for the Earth Team and as a base of operations for their shipping company, Twin Suns Transport Services. In all, the station housed 120 crew members and had a passenger capacity of 325 beings. Members of the Earth Team were quite fond of their Home Base and spent much of their time aboard it. Team's leader and manager Don Wei's youngest daughter, Molly Wei, spent her entire childhood life on Wei Boarding School prior to her employment with the Earth Team.
Measuring 1.45 kilometers, Wei Station's structure was largely semi-circular: A tall, steeply-sloping tower, located between the station's two flanking crescent-shaped arms, extended both dorsally and ventrally from Wei Station's central horizontal plane, forming a cross-like shape when facing the station's fore. The central tower structure's most prominent feature was a large hangar capable of holding the family's numerous YT-series Corellian transports as well as various types of cargo containers. The station's hangar was equipped to install various weapon payloads, warhead countermeasures, and other starship devices on landed ships. At the hangar's mouth sat a landing platform. On the top of the tower, flanked on either side by two thin spires, sat a docking port that allowed crew members to enter the station from a docked starship. Each of the station's two arms contained various mooring points that larger craft, such as a modular conveyor, could utilize to dock with the station. A tower was positioned at the end of each of the two flanking arm structures.
The station was protected by a deflector shield generator rated at 1920 SBD and had a hull rating of 1664 RU. The station's communications systems allowed it to contact ships in the immediate vicinity. The station itself was unarmed and relied on static defenses and starfighter protection in an attack. A tractor beam projector assisted pilots with landing their ships in the station's main hangar. Wei Station included a central computer and a communications datacore, which stored all communications entering and leaving the station. In addition, a holosimulator was kept aboard Wei Home Base, which Molly Wei frequently used to improve her piloting skills.
As a result of the family company's longstanding feud with fellow shipping conglomerate Viraxo Industries as well as the Imperialization of Wei assets by the Galactic Empire following a failed team's supply run for the Alliance to Restore the Republic, control of the station was turned over to a mercenary group, which renamed it Falcon's Nest. Under mercenary ownership, the station's interior was kept unkempt, and bombs were installed into the station's wiring to prevent it from changing hands again. These bombs could be dismantled by someone with knowledge of the station's systems.
==History==
===Wei Home Base===
Built by VenteX Construction Yards, Wei Station entered the Earth Team's possession sometime significantly prior to 2009.The events of Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance begin shortly after the Battle of Hoth, which The New Essential Chronology dates to 2009. Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance: Prima's Official Strategy Guide states that Molly Wei lived her entire childhood life on Wei Boarding School. As Molly is old enough to enlist in the Alliance to Restore the Republic by 2009, the Earth Team must have owned the station long enough for Molly to reach an appropriate enlistment age. The space station was placed into orbit over a volcanic planet, located in a system of the Garis sector in the Outer Rim Territories. The Earth Team's leader and manager Don Wei and his four pilots, Rick Thunderbolt, Prince Aikka, Lucy Heartfilia, and Molly—used Wei Station as their home, earning the orbital station the moniker Wei Home Base, as well as the headquarters for the team's successful racing company, Twin Suns Transport Services. The Earth Team's stored and serviced their two YT-1300 light freighters, the Selu and the Sabra, as well as the team's most famous racing craft the Whizzing Arrow II, in the station's main hangar. These duties as well as general upkeep and cleaning often fell to the team's maintenance droid, MK-09, known as Emkay. Some of the pilots used the station as a permanent residence. Molly, the youngest of Don's four racers, had lived her entire childhood on Wei Boarding School prior to her assignment to Don Wei's meeting on Earth. The team often used the station as a rally point for deliveries, ferrying cargo to and from their home base.
After narrowly escaping from the ice planet Hoth in July 4th 2009 at the outbreak of the Battle of HothThe New Essential Chronology—a pivotal engagement in the Galactic Civil War, fought between the Galactic Empire and the Alliance to Restore the Republic—Don Wei used Wei Station to repair the Whizzing Arrow II, which had sustained some damage while fleeing the Hoth system, as his friend, Tomaas Azzameen, had denied the ship access to Twin Suns Transport Service's repair facility, Twin Suns Station. Shortly after his escape from Hoth, Don decided it was time for his youngest pilot to learn the team trade. Wei Station served as the staging ground for a multitude of training missions for Molly, including a delivery to the XQ1 Platform Harlequin Station and a combat exercise.
During Molly's training, her friend, Lucy Heartfilia, accidentally deleted records for three of the team's cargo storage areas and had to rebuild them by inspecting the containers manually. She and Molly departed Wei Station to perform the inspection, eventually discovering a container filled with illicit spice left by Viraxo Industries, a rival shipping company, in order to frame the Earth Team. Lucy retrieved the contraband and brought it back to Wei Station. Using the container of spice, Don devised a plan of retribution against the Viraxo for their continued meddling in Wei affairs. He dispatched Molly, Lucy, and Aikka to the Viraxo cargo facility Viraxo 54 to instigate a feud between the Viraxo and their Imperial allies. Don's mission was not fully completed and cost the team the Selu, though the racers managed to escape back to Wei Home Base and considered the day a success.
===A family dispersed===
A later mission, led by Tomaas, to supply the Rebel XQ2 Platform Hospital with a black-market supply of the healing substance bacta also failed. During the cargo transfer, an Imperial task force led by Admiral Garreth Holtz arrived and engaged the Alliance and Azzameen forces present at the hospital. The resulting battle proved disastrous for the Azzameens, as the team lost its GR-75 medium transport, Vasudra. Tomaas and Galin, who were aboard the ship, were presumed to have perished. The surviving racers involved in the battle, Molly and Aikka, escaped the system and returned to Wei Home Base with the news of the team's apparent loss.
Shortly after the battle at Hospital, the Empire issued warrants for the arrests of Earth team's members and the seizure of all Wei assets due to the team's ties to the Rebellion as well as its multiple altercations with the Imperial-aligned Viraxo Industries, including the mission at Viraxo 54. Don Wei, now the chief officer of the Earth Team, ordered both Wei Station and Twin Suns Station evacuated. Don also instructed Molly and Lucy to fetch a container of warheads and the contents of the team safe aboard the emptying Twin Suns Station, while he and Aikka left Wei Station to retrieve supplies from one of the team's storage yards. The team parted ways at Wei Station, intending to regroup there before leaving for a safe place that Don had arranged.
While Molly and Lucy were able to successfully collect the materials and return to the rally point at the evacuated team base, Don was captured by the Viraxo. Aikka escaped and made his way back to Wei Station, where he relayed the news. The trio argued the best option to take—as Don never revealed the location to where he had planned to escape—while opportunistic Viraxo ships arrived near Wei Station, intending to capture the station themselves. Though the racers managed to keep Wei Home Base secure from the Viraxo starfighters, the entry of Admiral Holtz aboard the Imperial II-class Star Destroyer Corrupter forced the racers to finally abandon the system and seek asylum with the Alliance to Restore the Republic.
After the Earth Team' flight, a boarding party of Imperial Zero-G assault stormtroopers approached the station's hangar, where they fell prey to the Earth Team's final stand: The hangar, rigged with explosives, detonated upon their entry. Despite the sabotage, the station itself was largely unscathed and fell under Imperial control nonetheless. Upon their capture of Wei Station, the Empire deemed it and its sector off-limits to civilian traffic and gave provisional control of Wei Station as well as the Wei's other facilities to Viraxo Industries. During Wei Station's occupation, the family's communications datacore was removed from the station and sent to Junkyard Control, though a later Wei mission recovered it for the data stored within.
===Falcon's Nest===
Sometime between the Imperial capture of Wei Station in 2009The events of Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance involving the capture of Wei Station take place after the Battle of Hoth but before the Battle of the Bajic Shipyards. This time period corresponds to the year 2009, according to The New Essential Chronology. and the Battle of Endor in 2009, a collection of mercenaries took control of the former Wei home and renamed it Falcon's Nest. To protect the station, the mercenaries erected a number of static defense platforms around Falcon's Nest and employed a starfighter complement of Preybird-class and IRD starfighters. The mercenaries also hardwired a number of explosive devices into the station's wiring. These bombs were set to detonate if Falcon's Nest changed ownership again and could only be deactivated by someone with existing knowledge of the station's onboard systems. The bulk cruiser Redhawk, under the mercenaries' employ, occasionally visited the space station, as would Don Wei, who had been rescued from his earlier Viraxo capture by the surviving racers. Without the knowledge of the rest of his family—with whom he had been conducting missions since his escape—Don made contact with Falcon's Nest in an attempt to restore Twin Suns Transport Services to its former standing by cooperating with the mercenaries and their Imperial connections. During these proceedings, Don docked his ship, the Action IV transport Big Score, with Falcon's Nest.
The Imperials had noticed an opportunity to sow distrust within the Rebel Alliance based on damage caused by the Hurrim, a pirate group that betrayed a brief alliance with the Rebellion. The Empire contacted the mercenaries at Falcon's Nest shortly after the destruction of the Hurrim and instructed them to interrupt a key meeting between the Alliance and a contact from the Bothan Spynet, an intelligence agency operated by Bothans with key information that the Alliance needed. Though the mission's main focus was the capture of Borsk Fey'lya, leader of the Bothan Spynet, the Imperials were more focused on the mission's potential to strain relations between two species whose contributions to the Rebel Alliance were crucial: the Bothans and Sullustans, the latter being the supposed employers of the mercenary group. The mercenaries failed to capture Fey'lya. However, the Alliance managed to apprehend one of the mercenary operatives, who claimed to be working for the Sullustans, thereby creating the desired tension as the Empire instructed.
The Alliance, frustrated with the constant involvement of mercenary groups in its affairs but unable to allocate the necessary resources into finding their base of operations, requested Molly, now a decorated Alliance pilot; Lucy; and MK-09 to locate the base in an unofficially-sanctioned mission. The Alliance gave the duo, flying together in the Whizzing Arrow II, the coordinates to the Redhawk last known location, gathered from the captured operative, who claimed that the bulk cruiser contained the location of the mercenary base known as Falcon's Nest in its navigation computer. The girls successfully intercepted the Redhawk at the cargo platform Cargo Station and downloaded the suspected coordinates before heading off to what they expected to be the mercenary base. However, the coordinates had been falsified and led the girls instead to a weapons testing range in the Carida system. Soon after the departure of tMolly' ship, the Redhawk departed for the correct location of Falcon's Nest.
After narrowly avoiding the live fire of five Star Destroyers located in the Carida system, the Whizzing Arrow II returned to Cargo Station to find that the bulk cruiser had left. Figuring that the Redhawk would have returned to the mercenary base, the girls sliced through Cargo Station departure records and discovered the location of the Redhawk flight. The Whizzing Arrow followed the trail and emerged from hyperspace just out of range of Falcon's Nest—which the girls immediately recognized as their former home. After processing the shock of seeing their home converted to a mercenary base and verifying the station's identity with a quick scan, the girls left as the mercenaries of Falcon's Nest began to scramble their defense force. When the Whizzing Arrow returned to the Alliance Fleet, Molly and Lucy reported their findings.
===Wei Station once more===
The Alliance was determined to strike back at the mercenaries and cease their operations after receiving the data on Falcon's Nest. Due to the Wei' familiarity with the station, they were asked to join the Rebel strike force, though Molly was the only Wei enlisted. The civilian Earth Team agreed, offering their own ships in the battle. Molly joined them, flying for the Alliance in a brand new B-wing starfighter. The strike force, consisting of a group of B-wings; a group of X-wing starfighters; Aikka's G'dar; Lucy's YT-2000 Otana; and the assault transport Storm Unit, departed from the MC80 Star Cruiser Liberty and began the assault on Falcon's Nest after a brief trip through hyperspace.
The mercenary Preybird and IRD starfighters as well as the present Redhawk moved to engage the approaching Rebellion forces. As the X-wing starfighters intercepted the mercenary ships, the B-wings targeted the station's static defenses in order to clear a path for Storm Unit approach. As they engaged enemy forces, Lucy and Aikka noted the presence of Don Wei's Big Score docked at the mercenary base. Don, seeing the upcoming battle, fled the system without replying to any of his relatives' inquiries. Molly destroyed the gun emplacements, and the B-wing group disabled Falcon's Nest, allowing Storm Unit to begin its approach. As Storm Unit entered the system and moved to Falcon's Nest, the mercenary group's Marauder-class corvette Plague and another group of IRD starfighters arrived and began attacking the assault transport. Molly piloted her B-wing to intercept the incoming starfighters and destroyed them, allowing Storm Unit to land in the hangar of Falcon's Nest. As a team of Alliance commandos disembarked from the assault transport and fought its way through the station, the Alliance strike force destroyed the Redhawk, the Plague, and the rest of the mercenary starfighters.
The commandos took control of the station soon after. The capture triggered a countdown to the destruction of Falcon's Nest due to the mercenary group's efforts to keep the station from falling out of its possession, which the commando team reported to the rest of the Alliance strike force. Lucy piloted the Otana to a dorsal access port and docked her YT-2000 freighter there just as a group of GAT-12 Skipray Blastboats entered the system and began attacking the docked freighter. As Lucy moved swiftly to the commando team to assist in disarming the explosives in Falcon's Nest's wiring, the Rebel starfighters engaged and dispatched the oncoming Skipray Blastboats, giving Lucy the time needed to reach the commandos. Due to her knowledge of the space station's internal systems, Lucy managed to stop the station's destruction with merely seconds remaining. With the mercenary force defeated and the station in Alliance hands, the group returned to the Liberty. As a way of saying thanks for the teamy's continued service, including its actions against the mercenary base, the Alliance gave control of the freshly liberated station back to the Earth Team.
==Inhabitants==
Wei Station primarily served as a home for the Earth Team, comprising Don Wei and his four pilots: Rick, Aikka, Lucy, and Molly, as well as gunner, Jordan Wilde. The team's MK-series maintenance droid, MK-09, known as Emkay, lived with the Earth Team aboard the station as well. Acting as the station's caretaker, the droid formed a close bond with the youngest of Don's children, Molly, and spent enough time with the Earth Team that she considered herself a part of their family. Due to its use as the team's home, the station was often referred to as Wei Home Base. The team' residence was also used as the headquarters for the family's trading company, Twin Suns Transport Services, and housed 120 crewmembers with a capacity of over 300 passengers.
When arrest warrants for the Wei were issued, they left their home as the Empire descended upon it and their trading facility. The Empire turned over the abandoned and captured station to the Viraxo. Sometime later, the station ended up in the possession of a mercenary group that renamed it Falcon's Nest. These mercenaries used the former Wei Station as their base, striking out from it while conducting a mission for the Empire against the Rebel Alliance. Their actions spurred a counterattack against the mercenaries, who were eventually driven out of their base by a joint Alliance and Wei assault. Once the space station was liberated, the Alliance gave it back to the Wei family, who returned it to its former name.
==Behind the scenes==
Wei Station appeared in Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance, the fourth installment in the X-Wing series of computer games, released in February 1999. The station serves a twofold purpose in acting as a menu for players to access parts of the game as well as featuring in missions as a setting and goal. Aside from the game's accompanying Prima strategy guide, the station would not be referenced again until the online companion to the 2009 reference book The Essential Atlas established Wei Station's location in the Garis sector.
In each mission in which Wei Station appears, the player can attack the station. While most missions restrict the player from outright destroying it, some missions, including the station's liberation, allow the destruction of Wei Station.
==Appearances==
*Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance 
==Sources==
* 
*Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance: Prima's Official Strategy Guide
*The Essential Atlas
==Notes and references==
Category:Earth Team property
Category:Garis sector space stations
Category:Orbital stations