She sighed, her shoulders relaxing slightly as she finally turned to face him. “You’re right. Of course you’re right.” She shook her head as if ridding herself of bad thoughts. “I just saw those X-wings…”
“And all the old memories came back. Hey, I get it. I was there, too, you know.”
“And I love you for it,” she said, finally favoring him with a smile. She leaned in and kissed him. “Besides, I don’t think anyone else could put up with me.”
“Well, there is that.”
She punched him lightly in the shoulder. “Hey pot, watch who you call a kettle. We’ve both got our share of war memories.” She glanced around the room pointedly.
“Sure we do. But there’s room for new memories, isn’t there, Norra? Quiet days on the farm, grandchildren running around, nights watching the stars instead of flying between them.”
She gave him a long look, her eyes narrowing, lips puckered tight.
He winked. “Gotcha.”
She exhaled, relieved. “I thought you were serious. I mean, of course I want the farm and grandkids, but…”
He nodded, a little sad. He had been serious even though he played it off now for Norra’s sake. She was struggling as it was, trying to fit in with the neighbors and forgive herself for her past mistakes, and he would do what he could to help. Besides, he knew what he had signed up for when they got married, and that was Norra, as complicated as she was. But he wouldn’t trade her for all the credits in the galaxy.
“Yeah. Me, too.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “Now let’s go see why Snap and Karé are here and have some caf before it gets cold.”
* * *
—
Snap and Karé were seated on the long kitchen table bench, heads together. They pulled apart, guilty as academy cadets caught canoodling after hours.
“Mom,” Snap said, getting to his feet. “Wow, you look great.”
“You do, too, son.” She hugged Snap briefly and then Karé as she stood to be embraced. Norra motioned them to sit again, and she and Wedge joined them. Karé had brought the caf to the table along with four mugs. She had already poured herself and Snap a cup, and Wedge did the same for himself and Norra. Norra wrapped her hands around the mug and breathed in the fragrant steam. “It’s great to see you, Temmin, and you and Karé are always welcome here, but Wedge said you had news?”
“I’ll get to that,” he said, sounding a bit evasive, “but first tell me how you’ve been.”
“We’ve been the same as always,” she said, a little sharply. “There’s not much change out here in the Outer Rim.”
“Did the news of Hosnian Prime not reach you?”
Norra blushed. “Of course it did. I’m sorry, is that what you meant?”
He nodded. “How has the local government responded?”
“An emergency election was called,” Wedge said. “They voted out the governor and voted in some wealthy merchant known to be friendly with the First Order.”
“A hedge against occupation,” Norra said. “But no one’s showed up demanding to take over the planet, yet. And day-to-day things have stayed the same. What’s it like out there in the galaxy? We haven’t gotten any news in ages.”
“We came from Ikkrukk,” Karé said. “Do you know it?”
“A Mid Rim world. The capital is Grail City. Made a few cargo runs there before.”
“The First Order came knocking and demanded they surrender to immediate occupation. When they refused, the First Order opened fire.”
Norra glanced at Wedge. “Just like what we expect to happen here.”
“Luckily, we were in the vicinity,” Snap said. “General Organa had sent Black Squadron there on a related mission. It was rough for a while but Poe showed up at the last minute to pull us out of the fire.”
“Literally,” Karé added.
“How is Poe?” Wedge asked. “He was one of my best students. Besides you, of course,” he added hastily for Snap’s sake.
“Now I know you’re lying,” Snap countered. “I was a terrible student.”
“You were a terrible student,” Wedge agreed.
The three of them laughed, but Norra frowned, mouth tight.
“What do you mean Poe Dameron showed up at the last minute? Isn’t he Black Squadron’s leader?”
“Snap was flying Black One on this mission,” Karé said, a note of pride in her voice.
“That’s great, son,” Wedge said, beaming. “I knew you would lead your own squadron one day.”
Snap lowered his head. “It was more out of necessity. Poe had another mission.” He sipped from his mug and then straightened. “And here we come to some of the bad news.”
Norra stiffened. “I knew it. Who’s dead?”
“Norra,” Wedge admonished her softly. “Snap didn’t say—”
“We weren’t there,” Snap said, cutting him off, “but Poe filled us in on the important information. There was a battle at some backwater called Crait and…” He shook his head sadly.
“And who?” Norra said, voice taut.
“Everyone,” Karé said gently.
“Not everyone,” Snap corrected hastily at the look on his mother’s face. “But the Resistance leadership is gone. Admiral Holdo, Ackbar, Statura. The entire fleet.”
“Leia?” Norra asked, voice breaking.
“No, General Organa survived. Somehow. But she’s still not entirely well, Poe said, and she can’t run the Resistance by herself.”
“I don’t understand,” Wedge said. He stood up and took a few steps away, as if he wanted to put space between himself and Snap’s news. “Admiral Ackbar is gone?”
Snap nodded.
“But he survived Endor. And Jakku. I thought…” Wedge ran a shaky hand through his graying hair. “I thought he would live forever. How?”
“Does it matter?” Norra asked.
Wedge looked at her, but she shrugged and looked away.
“There’s one more loss. Wedge, you better sit down.”
Oh no. That was a sure sign Wedge preferred to stand. He leaned back against the edge of the kitchen counter and crossed his arms. “Tell me,” he commanded, his voice hard.
“Luke Skywalker.”
Wedge swayed. He reached back, gripping the counter. Not Luke! Could he even be killed? Didn’t Jedi live forever or something?
“You okay?” He looked up and Karé was standing next to him, holding him by the elbow. He shook her off gently. “I’m fine. I’m not an old man, damn you.”
Karé stepped back, eyes big. Her mouth turned down, clearly wounded. Wedge sighed, telling himself to get a grip.
“I’m sorry, Karé. I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just…” His hands really were shaking now. In fact his whole body seemed to be shaking.
“Everyone,” Norra said, repeating Karé’s earlier word, her voice barely a whisper, but Wedge heard her. His eyes met hers, and all he saw there was defeat.
“Then it’s over,” he said. “The Resistance is over. The First Order has won.”
WINSHUR LOOKED UP FROM his datawork to find Monti Calay staring fixedly at him from the doorway to his office. It was not the first time he had caught Monti staring at him, as if he were studying Winshur. Well, he supposed he did cut a fine figure, and Monti probably wanted to know how he could rise in the ranks, too, like his boss. But really, the staring was starting to be too much. He suppressed a shiver of unease at the younger man’s intensity and carefully sat back, folding his hands in his lap.
“What is it, Monti?” Winshur asked his assistant. “It’s already been a trying morning, so please don’t test my patience even more.”
“A message from central command, sir. For you. It was marked urgent and confidential, so I thought I should bring it to your attention immediately.”
Ah, so
mething from command. And marked confidential! He motioned the cadet forward. Monti handed him a datapad. It was a slim, silver model that was the latest in First Order technology. Winshur kept his on his person most of the time, but he had left it with Monti last night to run the laborious backups the handheld device required. Unlike other communications devices, this particular datapad could not simply be remotely backed up but instead had to be physically plugged in to a port that accessed the larger network. Before he had been assigned Monti and Yama, Winshur had stayed the extra hours after work once a month to run the backup himself. But it was boring work and entirely uneventful, unless staring at a screen with a rotating planet to signify the passage of time was considered an event. So there was one thing he had managed to delegate after all.
Winshur stared at the screen a moment. The twirling planet was gone, replaced by the prompt for his password. He frowned.
“Did you try to access the data?” he asked Monti.
“No, sir.”
“Then why is it prompting me for a password?”
Monti hesitated. “I-I thought to look before I disturbed you. I could hear you were busy.”
“If the transmission is marked confidential, then it is meant only for me. I am the owner of this device.” He held up the datapad in one hand as if to illustrate his ownership. “Don’t do that again.”
“Of course, sir. I was only trying to help.”
Winshur appreciated the boy’s enthusiasm, the direct opposite of Yama’s lackadaisical attitude, but it was misplaced. Nevertheless, no harm was done. The datapad was secure. He typed his password identification into the keypad and then pressed his thumb against the pad that read his fingerprint. The screen cleared and he saw the visual that Monti had glimpsed as the transmission came in: The words URGENT and CONFIDENTIAL blinking at him in bold red letters. He skimmed over the long disclaimer about accessing data that was not meant for his eyes and clicked the agreement at the end that avowed he knew what he was doing. Finally he was presented with a hologram message option, which he accepted. A woman in a gray First Order uniform manifested just above the datapad in a show of lights. He recognized his superior officer, the same one who had interviewed him for the position he now held.
“This message is intended for Executive Records Officer Winshur Bratt of the Corellian Command Base. If you have accessed this in error, you continue under penalty from the First Order.” Winshur was both annoyed and intrigued. What in the world had she sent him? He paused the transmission.
“You may leave, Monti.” The young man had been standing silently. If Winshur didn’t know better, he would have sworn Monti was trying to go unnoticed, perhaps hoping that Winshur would forget he was there altogether. A natural curiosity, but clearly this information was for his eyes and ears only.
“Of course, sir.” Monti snapped his heels together in a gesture of farewell and turned crisply.
“And close the door on your way out. I’m not to be disturbed.”
Monti released the doors, allowing them to close behind him. Now that he was alone, Winshur activated the transmission again. The hologram continued:
“I am now transferring you three highly sensitive documents that the First Order has been compiling for a while. The first is a list of subversives. High-profile individuals whom we believe threaten the peace and order of the galaxy and should be detained for questioning immediately. As you can imagine, this is very sensitive information. If this list were to leak, these individuals, once forewarned, might go underground and be lost to First Order justice forever.
“The second document is even more sensitive. It is a list of Currently Detained Individuals that the First Order has in custody. We know that some of these individuals under our control no doubt have connections and acquaintances in hostile governments and extrajurisdictional bodies that we believe would like nothing better than to liberate their friends. We cannot let that happen.
“The third document is a subset of the second list. It includes the names of fifteen high-profile prisoners that have been deemed inappropriate to hold at our standard security locations and are therefore transferring to Corellia. In fact—” The woman paused and seemed to smirk. “—you might recognize some of the names on the list. Your job, Executive Records Officer Winshur Bratt, is twofold. First, you are to bury these documents in your archives where they may only be retrieved by myself or another at high command, and second, you are to equally bury these prisoners.”
Winshur pressed a suddenly sweaty hand to his heart. It was unusual but not a problem to hide the records themselves. He could keep them isolated and off the larger network, difficult to find at the best of times and impossible if the searcher didn’t know what they were looking for. But that last part. Had he heard her right? She was sending fifteen prisoners here?
He hit the REPLAY button and listened again. Yes, fifteen prisoners were being sent to Corellia and he was to receive them. And do what? He wasn’t a prison warden. He let the transmission continue.
“They will be accompanied by their own First Order security under the guise that they are prison labor, which is in fact the truth. None of these prisoners are considered a high security threat, as we have taken precautions to neutralize any danger they might have once posed. In fact, you will find them quite weak, but not too weak to work.” The hologram woman leaned in. “This is the opportunity you were waiting for, Officer Bratt. I need you to personally work with their accompanying officer from the Reform Office to oversee the placement of these prisoners into the shipyard labor pool. The dirtier the job, the better. But they are to be kept alive and above all, they are to work. Prisoner reform through labor is a vision the First Order embraces. Vocation, discipline. These are purifiers. Do you understand?” The woman straightened. “Do this, and do it well, and it will be no time at all before your leadership qualities are noticed and you are invited to leave Corellia and join us here at high command. And perhaps we’ll see about that raise.”
The woman disappeared. Winshur pressed a button on his datapad that brought up the last document. A scrolling list of fifteen names crossed before him. By each name was the prisoner’s origin planet, species, crime, and sentence. Winshur pressed another button on his datapad. This time, the first document appeared. He perused the most-wanted list but recognized none of the names. Disappointed, he flipped back to the Corellian Fifteen—as he was starting to think of them—and looked at the names more closely.
He was glad he was sitting down.
These names. He thought he recognized a few from the newsnets, and others had designations like DIPLOMAT or ATTACHÉ; SENATOR was even listed next to one. Winshur’s heart raced as he wiped a hand across his forehead. These weren’t just criminals who needed hard labor to atone for their crimes; these were political prisoners, many of them former New Republic leaders who must have been offplanet when Hosnian Prime was eradicated. And now the First Order was clearly planning to hide them on Corellia, losing them in obscurity or breaking them in hard labor while in service to the glory of the First Order.
“Opportunity,” he told himself quietly. “This is just an opportunity to prove my quality.” Winshur had never been political. Since he had come of age after the Galactic Civil War, he hadn’t really seen the alleged horrors of the Empire at its height, and the presence of Imperial troops in Bel Vistal had been limited. By the time he was old enough to notice, the stormtroopers that his mother had often complained about occupying the town had mostly gone. When the First Order came, people had grumbled. Some had protested and a few politicians had openly opposed the occupation, but they had quickly been voted out. People had been scared at first, but life had gone on. A few more checkpoints, a curfew, restrictions on public gatherings and some kinds of speech, but generally people had adjusted. Even when their most outspoken neighbors had been arrested and taken away. Even when their rights were slowly eroded. What could you
do, after all? Politics was too big for average citizens to wrap their heads around.
“A chance to be someone important,” he said, his eyes running across the list again. These people had been important before and look at them now, lower than Winshur Bratt. He smiled, his moment of conscience fleeting, lost in a rising tide of ambition. Yes, he could do this. Easily. Joyfully.
He checked the time. They were to arrive well after midnight when only the skeleton crew was present. Well, it would be a long day and a late night, but Winshur didn’t mind. He would send Yama or Monti out to bring him takeout for a working dinner. He had plenty to catch up on, and he’d want to get a look at the job roster so he had a better idea of where to assign the prisoners. He’d have to retrieve that himself. In fact, he should do that now.
“Monti,” he called before he remembered he had closed the door and it was unlikely the cadet would hear him.
The door opened immediately. Winshur looked up, surprised, to find Monti standing in the entrance. Had the boy been waiting for him to finish? Possibly. Likely, as that was his job.
“I need to step out for the morning to retrieve some records from the Employment Department. Can you manage the office while I’m out?”
“Of course,” Monti demurred.
“And why don’t you plan to stay late tonight. I’ll have an errand for you to run before you leave for the day.”
The boy nodded his assent without complaint. Oh, if only Yama could be taught to be so professional.
Winshur retrieved his hat and coat and slipped his hands, the same hands that had been sweating minutes before but were now cool and dry, into his gloves. And he left his office, daydreaming about greater things.
WEDGE’S STATEMENT HUNG IN the air and for a moment, no one seemed to know what to say. Finally Snap met Wedge’s eyes, his face a mask of determination.
Resistance Reborn (Star Wars) Page 7