The ground crews crowded around the hangar personnel entrance, making room as the U-wing slipped past the magnetic field and sent hot wind across the gargantuan chamber. Hera stood by Sergeant Ragnell and smiled politely at one of the new engineers who caught her eye—an aristocratic woman with a shock of orange hair and a medical vocabulator. The engineer abruptly shifted her gaze away from Hera to the alighting ship.
The B-wing came next, and as it entered the hangar Hera saw that its primary airfoil appeared partly dismantled—not ravaged by energy blasts, but disassembled panel by panel as if by scrappers. “Well,” Ragnell muttered, infusing a galaxy of disapproval into the word.
Nath’s voice rose behind Hera. “I miss anything?”
“They just landed,” Hera said. “They have to be all right.”
“Otherwise you can’t kill them yourself?” Nath asked.
“Exactly.”
The B-wing’s ground crew coalesced around the vessel as its canopy slid open and Chass na Chadic emerged. She waved the team away, hoisted herself over the rim, and hit the deck with a grunt. She was out of her flight suit, wearing only an undershirt and shorts, and as she passed the engineers she smiled soberly at one and ignored two others. She looked present but not angry, which was a change from the usual—hopefully one for the better, Hera thought, though the Theelin was always hard to predict.
One of the U-wing’s loading doors opened next. Kairos stepped out, and it became clear what had happened to Chass’s flight suit—instead of her ordinary wrappings and cloak, Kairos’s body was snugly encased in ill-fitting pilot’s attire.
“Woman’s full of surprises—” Nath began, then fell silent as Yrica Quell followed Kairos out of the U-wing.
Quell was dressed only in a short-sleeved shirt and pants. Her upper arms were covered in scars and her squadron tattoo was gone. Her nose appeared faintly crooked; fading bruises covered her face. She looked, all in all, like a woman who’d come a very long way through trying circumstances.
Yet her expression was calm. Kairos murmured something to Quell, then drew away; Chass gave them both a comfortable berth. Neither Kairos nor Chass held a weapon. Hera was moving toward Quell without thinking; Nath trailed her, and the ground crews parted to give them access.
The last time Hera had seen Quell, they’d been sitting on the hull of the Lodestar on Troithe. Hera had been preparing to leave Cerberon and had said something like: You don’t need me for this, Yrica.
That had all been before she’d learned that Quell had killed Nacronis and lied to them all. Before Quell had joined the second Operation Cinder.
“General,” Quell said as they approached.
“Quell,” Hera replied. Nath and Chass and Kairos were all watching her.
Figure the rest of it out later, she told herself. It’s all right to say it.
“Welcome home,” Hera said.
PART THREE
STAGES OF A TRIAL BY ORDEAL
CHAPTER 17
AUGURY AND SIGNS
I
The medical droid was on its third pass over her body, having already disinfected and bandaged the worst of her wounds and applied bacta spray to the oldest and most pungent. It had promised to further examine and, if necessary, realign her broken nose later; for now it jabbed her apparently at random and ran its scanners over every centimeter of battered skin. Maybe, Quell thought, it was checking for tracking devices or other Imperial implants. She couldn’t really blame it.
The endless examination gave her time to think. Often she considered the words Kairos had whispered to her in the hangar: You are my sister, but your crimes are not forgotten. It was an almost reassuring statement—it told Quell where she stood with the woman. Nothing else about her situation felt as solid or certain.
She was aboard a Star Destroyer for the first time since she’d left the Pursuer—an experience that filled her brain with a nagging sense of wrongness, as if she were with neither the New Republic nor Shadow Wing but in a dream mingling them both. She hadn’t recognized most of the ground crew members, though she was certain Sergeant Ragnell had seen the damaged flesh where her tattoo had been; where Ragnell had spent hours layering ink under Quell’s skin, never asking why or requesting payment. Ragnell hadn’t said anything as Quell had been led out. Hail Squadron, according to what she’d overheard on the way to the medbay, had been decimated and Nath Tensent was a hero—likely to be awarded a second medal, reinforcing the impression everything Quell encountered was a dream.
Wyl Lark had been hurt. She’d caught a snippet of conversation between Chadic and Syndulla to that effect, but it was all she knew.
The droid had curtained off a small section of the medbay for privacy. Quell could hear voices outside as someone spoke to the guards. “Pardon me,” the droid said, and finished another pass over her right leg. “You may dress now.”
It exited through the curtains. Quell’s garments—encrusted with dirt, sweat, and blood—sat folded on the floor. With a sigh, she dragged a medical gown off a shelf and pulled it on. It felt clean.
She was sitting on the bed when General Syndulla stepped inside. “Lieutenant,” the general said. “Is now a good time?”
“I’m fine,” Quell said, which hadn’t been the question. She slipped her feet onto the floor and stood straight-backed, chin up. “General. Yrica Quell, Lieutenant, formerly of the 204th Imperial Fighter Wing, formerly of the New Republic Intelligence working group on the 204th Imperial Fighter Wing. I am surrendering myself for disciplinary action and—”
And what? she thought. Trial in a civilian court? Summary execution for treason and genocide?
“—and whatever further consequences are deemed appropriate.”
Syndulla watched her, expression hard. Then she laughed, brief and low. “That’s generous of you, Lieutenant, considering you’ve already been captured. But I appreciate you not making trouble for the medics.”
“Yes, General.”
“Are you aware that there’s a good chance you’re facing life imprisonment?”
“Yes, General.”
“Are you aware that New Republic Intelligence is eager to see justice done, too?”
“No, General. I’m not surprised, though, General.”
“Are you aware that I don’t personally take betrayal very well?”
Quell saw no mirth or compassion in Syndulla’s eyes. “Yes, General,” she said. The woman frowned and Quell added, softer, “It was not my intention to betray you, General.”
Syndulla let out a sigh like she was deflating. She turned, scanning the vicinity as if looking for somewhere to sit and finally settling on the foot of the bed. She dropped onto the thin mattress and nodded to Quell. Quell eased onto the bed beside Syndulla with arthritic reluctance.
“Yrica,” the general said. “Tell me what happened.”
Her body reacted faster than her mind. She felt nauseated and shaky and hot, like she’d been so badly sunburned that the pain encouraged tears. She’d known what to expect, known she would be debriefed, but all she wanted was to lie down on the cool metal of the deck.
“Adan’s files on me,” Quell said. She sounded hoarse and foolish, and endeavored to shore up her voice. “Everything he said happened at Nacronis, happened. But there were gaps in his information; things I lied about even after he learned about Cinder.”
“Okay,” Syndulla said. She’d transformed from general to something more intimate, and her tone was gentle and patient. “And what really happened at Nacronis—it has something to do with why you went back to Shadow Wing?”
Quell nodded. “Soran Keize. You need to know about Soran Keize to understand.”
She told her story then—her true story, from the murder of Nacronis and Keize’s decision to send her away to Adan’s discovery of the truth and her esca
pe from the Lodestar over Troithe. She spoke little of what had happened on the planetoid, describing it in only the plainest terms: Adan and IT-O had been injured; they discovered a facility of unknown origin; Quell was able to escape. But she left out nothing relevant, nothing that might incriminate her.
“Upon leaving the planetoid and becoming aware of the 204th’s lingering presence in the Cerberon system—and understanding my return to service in the New Republic wasn’t likely to be permitted—I decided my best course of action was to infiltrate the enemy unit and neutralize it from the inside.”
Syndulla watched her, as she’d watched Quell since Quell had begun. “You were the one sending us signals,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What was it like?” she asked. “What were you thinking?”
“As I said, it was my intention to eliminate the 204th. The same as always.”
Syndulla looked ready to argue, but she only shook her head. “Go on.”
Quell told her about the infiltration. This part was more difficult to report—it brought to mind interviews with Adan, where she’d been obliged to name every Imperial pilot and crew member she’d ever met, detail every mission she’d undertaken. But Syndulla was not Caern Adan and she asked very few questions, only encouraging Quell to fill in details when the story lost cohesion. Quell described the second Operation Cinder and how she’d managed to signal the New Republic, and she justified as well as she could her choice to fly against Alphabet and announce her presence. “I was trying to avert unnecessary losses. I thought I could make a better opportunity later on.”
“It must’ve been a terrible decision for you to make,” Syndulla said.
Quell thought back to her sessions with IT-O, where the droid would find a thousand different ways to bait her into expressing her feelings.
“It seemed like the optimal choice at the time. I won’t claim that I was operating at my best, but I stand by it.”
The longer she spoke, the easier it was to suppress the emotion and tell the truth. She explained Keize’s obsession with the Emperor’s Messenger, and the discussions they’d had over it. She summarized the mission to Netalych and her retrieval of the machine’s data and admitted to sending it on to Keize even after the rest of her team had turned on her. She hurried through her capture by Chadic and Kairos and what had happened on Kairos’s world. “Our actions on the ground aren’t relevant to my status, and I feel bound to respect my comrades’ privacy. Chadic and Kairos can confirm the broad strokes.”
“I’m not worried about what happened between the three of you,” Syndulla said. “But you’re leaving something out.”
“Yes, General,” Quell said.
“What data did you salvage from the Emperor’s droid? What did you see that made you send it to Keize?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Yrica, I’m—” Syndulla paused. “I’m very grateful for your honesty. For what it’s worth, I think I believe you—though that doesn’t necessarily mitigate all you’ve done. But that’s a hell of a missing piece. You’re holding back about the Emperor’s Messenger?”
“I understand your position,” Quell said. “I can’t tell you what I found.”
Syndulla straightened but remained seated. “Consider it an order, Lieutenant. You want to do this formally, we’ll do it formally. Tell me what you found.”
Quell suppressed a flinch and shook her head. “I can’t.”
Syndulla winced and her body relaxed again. Adan would’ve made her suffer his bluster and threats, Quell knew; Syndulla seemed to understand her mind wouldn’t change. “You want to tell me why, at least?”
“Because,” Quell said, and she smiled faintly at the black humor of it all. “I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do.”
To her surprise, Syndulla laughed. “That’s always a hard one to argue with. But listen—sometimes we have to accept that a decision isn’t only our burden. It’s—”
She was interrupted by a voice outside the curtain. “General? They’re waiting for you in the assembly room.”
Syndulla frowned, appeared to think something over, then rose from the bed. “I’ll be back,” she told Quell. “Think about it all.”
“Of course.”
When Syndulla was gone Quell allowed her mouth to hang open and her eyes to drift shut. She’d survived the interrogation but she needed air, felt more exhausted than she had in days. She listened to the hum of medical equipment and the deeper thrum of the Star Destroyer’s engines, and she waited for security officers to take her away and put her in a cell. Star Destroyers had plenty of cells—even Star Destroyers reconfigured by the New Republic, she was sure.
No one came. She was too far past tired to lie down and sleep and eventually she pulled away the curtain and paced across the medbay in her gown. The droid was out of sight—maybe in one of the operating suites—as were the guards, so Quell walked past the rows of mostly empty beds without direction or purpose.
As she passed a bed half concealed behind another curtain, some instinct stopped her. Her eyes fell on the slender lump beneath the thin blanket, following the length of the body until the curtain blocked her sight. She stepped around the curtain and saw a pale face—exhausted and thin, dark-haired and sunken-eyed and unshaven, but not without life.
“Lark.”
Wyl Lark blinked and turned his head and squinted at her in the too-bright lights.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m okay,” he said. He lifted his upper body, propping himself up. “You’re here.”
“Kairos and Chadic found me. I’m—I don’t really know what happens next.” She stepped forward, her legs suddenly weak, and knelt beside the bed. “I was the one feeding information to the New Republic,” she said. It sounded pathetic—saying it aloud, saying it the second time in an hour when she’d held it back for days. “I brought you to Shadow Wing so you could stop them.”
He didn’t smile at her. He seemed to take the words in and stared at her face. “I’m glad,” he said at last. “I’m glad you did.”
She nodded briskly and recomposed herself. Leave him alone, she thought, and let him rest. Don’t drag him into this when he’s hurt. But she stayed at the side of the bed.
He seemed to be waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t, he said, “We did stop them, you know. At Chadawa. The planet’s safe.”
“That’s good.”
“It was mostly Nath and Hail Squadron. I’m in command, now, but—”
“I heard. Congratulations.”
He laughed, or came close to it. “Thank you. It wasn’t really earned, but for a while it was me and Nath, and Nath didn’t want it, so—well.”
“What happened to you?”
“I’m okay,” he repeated. “I was lucky. It wasn’t smart, but it worked—I went to fight Colonel Keize, while Nath and the Y-wings did their part. They took most of the beating, I got to eject…”
Lark kept talking. Quell couldn’t hear him over the roar in her ears. The barrier around her emotions was crumbling, and she couldn’t say why, nor could she turn away from the wounded man before her. Her eyes stung and she felt tears slide down her cheeks, tried to pinch back each one and failed. Her thoughts went from Lark, ejecting from his burning ship, to Rikton on Netalych—Rikton, who might’ve lived but might’ve died at Chadic’s hand or at the droids’. She had led her team into a nightmare and they were dead now, along with so many others.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry you had to take command. I didn’t mean to leave you like that.”
Her voice sounded remarkably steady, and she wiped her face on the front of her hospital gown. Lark observed, and she wondered if he would ask what was wrong (if anyone would, it would be Lark, even after all she’d done, after she’d l
ied to him about her crimes and abandoned him for Shadow Wing) but he only nodded slowly and said, “It’s okay. These things happen in war.”
“Yes,” she said.
She exhaled and squared her shoulders, steadying herself as they sat together. She stopped looking at Lark and he watched her sometimes and, other times, simply watched the curtain as the recirculating air sent ripples through the cloth.
Leave him alone, she told herself again, and didn’t. She didn’t need him to accept her; but she wasn’t ready to go.
She thought of Fra Raida and another wave of grief hit. She swallowed it so Lark wouldn’t see.
“Can I ask you something?” Lark said.
She nodded briskly.
“Why did Keize walk away from Shadow Wing, and why did he come back?”
It wasn’t the question she’d expected, and she was puzzled but grateful. It gave her a focus, and her voice sounded clearer when she said, “You want to know what he told me?”
“Or what you believe.”
She could vividly picture Keize standing in the bogs of Nacronis, ordering her desertion. He’d spoken of his reason for leaving again aboard the Yadeez, and Rikton had talked about Devon, the alias Keize had used in his wanderings. Yet she’d always seen his journey through the lens of her own defection, her own return, and that clouded her vision now. “I think—” she began, and mouthed the words before she spoke them. “I think whatever he saw when he left, it convinced him that no one could really leave. That—he said this—‘to accept defeat is to sacrifice every soldier who remains alive at the altar of rebel justice.’ ”
“But why leave in the first place, then?”
She shrugged. “Because he knew we wouldn’t win the war, and he thought he could set an example for the rest of us. It didn’t work.”
“It still could’ve been the right thing to do,” Lark said.
“Maybe.”
Lark settled back onto the bed. He frowned in thought awhile before looking to Quell and saying softly, “Thank you.”
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