He nodded along. “Considering most of what they want me to do now involves tech, Cerea was a poor choice.”
“I will handle the tech,” Pook interrupted. “I’m still not sure what he’s here to do.”
“Ignore him,” Vi said. Then, louder, “Pook forgets I’m the boss. Point is I’m the hustle, Pook’s the brawn, and you’re the brains.”
Archex almost chuckled. Almost.
“If I’m the brains, then we’re in trouble.”
Vi wanted to correct him; the barrage of scans and tests they’d put him through on D’Qar had proven that he was smarter than most, but the First Order’s brainwashing had long ago convinced him that he was just the hand that wielded the weapon, not the clever brain that could build the weapon or decide what to do with it. The First Order didn’t want their soldiers thinking too hard, because then they might question the war machine. Poor Archex had no concept of his own intelligence, and any attempt on her part to tell him would surely backfire.
“Okay, so maybe you’re like the operator. You stay put and run the comms while I go out and recruit. You’re strategy, coordination, organization. And you get to tell Pook what to do—or try to. Just remember: You were chosen for this mission. Leia believes in you.” She turned to meet his gaze, sending an unwanted jolt of recognition through her own nervous system. “And so do I.”
Archex leaned back as they broke atmo. He couldn’t seem to get comfortable in the hard contours of the transport’s less-than-ergonomic chair. But who could? They were made for working-class folk lugging around the raw materials that would make greater beings wealthy. No one thought of the servant’s comfort. Vi couldn’t wait to land.
“So where are we going?” Archex asked. “All I was told was that I was operating as your support on a top-secret Resistance mission. If I’m honest, I can’t believe they’re trusting me with information like that already.”
“Ah, well, see…we’re going somewhere far from First Order rule. Our mission is to build a new Resistance facility on an out-of-the-way planet and attempt to recruit warm bodies for the cause. I’ve chosen a place called Black Spire Outpost on the planet Batuu. It’s the last stop before Wild Space. It’s a sort of crossroads, the kind of spot where everyone is too busy with their own business and secrets to worry too much about yours.”
Archex’s face screwed up as if thinking too hard caused him pain. Maybe it did—Phasma had messed him up pretty badly, and Major Kalonia had mentioned migraines as an ongoing trouble. Vi gave him a moment to consider this information as she checked their coordinates, saw that Pook had slightly altered their course, deleted his alterations to suit her own sensibilities, and kicked up the hyperdrive.
“Never heard of it, huh?” Vi continued as the ship jumped to hyperspace. “Yeah, well, that’s the point. There’s nothing of strategic importance there for the First Order. No grand resources, no industries to take over, no government to buy. Batuu is off the beaten path and has seen better days. Remember: Most of the galaxy doesn’t know that Starkiller Base is gone. They’re easy pickings for your beloved new Supreme Leader and his pinched little fox of a lackey, which means places that don’t matter…now matter even less.” She watched closely to see if Archex would bristle at that. “Guess the deprogramming worked,” she muttered.
But he just shrugged. “Hard to get energized about something that doesn’t matter. This doesn’t seem like a ‘top-secret mission.’ It sounds like a classic case of promoting people out of the way. And making sure I can’t get in too much trouble.”
Vi shook a finger at him and ignored the fact that she’d considered the same possibility before the Hosnian Cataclysm. “Just because something doesn’t matter to the First Order doesn’t mean it lacks value. The Resistance is built on hope. People need something to believe in, a symbol to stand behind. So we go to places where the First Order doesn’t have a foothold, win the people over, and create a place where anyone who stands for freedom can find their home—or park their X-wing and wait for orders. By now, you probably know how few people we have left. We lost most of our fleet, tons of our allies. Every bolt-hole we can build to hide and gas up our ships is one more pocket of hope. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
She reached down for her bag and pulled out a new knitting project. That was one of Vi’s little secrets—she loved the clack of needles juxtaposed with the cool blue lines of hyperspace, the primitive and the futuristic happening at once. It was relaxing and helped her get in the right headspace for a complicated job. The squashy hat was half finished on circular knitting needles, and the charmingly bulky bantha-fur yarn hid her imperfect stitches.
Archex stared at her like she was insane. “Are you…knitting?”
Vi raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. Why, you want to learn?”
He grimaced. “Can’t you just buy…whatever that’s supposed to be?”
“It’s a hat, and yeah, I guess I could. But there’s something to be said for making things with your own hands, the old-fashioned way. Having physical evidence of your effort to admire at the end of the day. Haven’t you ever made anything?” She was kind enough not to mention the fact that he’d once helped make thousands upon thousands of small children into merciless soldiers for the First Order.
But Archex just sighed sadly and looked like his mind was elsewhere. “I made things with my hands. A long time ago. Not recently. Not a lot of spare time for whittling toys on a Star Destroyer.”
“Well, the good news is that the Resistance will let you whittle wherever you want to. And when we get to Batuu, you and I are going to make something good.”
“Correction,” Pook interjected from the cargo hold. “You are both damaged specimens no longer in the prime of human life, meaning I will do most of the physical labor using my superior strength and spatial reasoning, all while taking whatever crude abuse you choose to heap upon me.”
“I need to knit a droid muffler,” she muttered.
Vi caught Archex’s eye and was gratified to see him smirking, for once. She realized there might actually be a sense of humor somewhere in there. Seeing an opening, she dived right in.
“So are we going to talk about it?”
He looked away. “Talk about what?”
Vi chuckled. “You never did strike me as a coward, Archex.”
“I’m not a coward. I just think actions speak louder than words. I’m here. That should be enough.”
Vi raised an eyebrow. “Well, I believe in honesty. Neither of us escaped that Star Destroyer in one piece. You did some damage. I’m still recovering. Just seeing you makes all my nerve endings jump around like frightened fathiers. But I have a job to do, and I’m going to do it, and I hope we can just start fresh. You were doing your job, I was doing mine. I told you on that boat and I’ll tell you now: I still think there’s a good guy buried somewhere underneath that red armor.”
He looked down at his hands, flexed his fingers. “The red armor is gone.”
“Maybe we can crack through the tough-guy exterior, then. See what you’re like without all the programming and protocol and propaganda. I bet you’re fun when you’re not torturing me.”
His sigh was a wheeze. Every breath would be like that for him now: a torture of his own. “Look, I know what you really want, and if you think I’m going to turn to the Resistance, become a true believer, you’re wrong. I may not believe in the First Order anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to immediately put my faith in something else. Right now…”
He trailed off. Vi dropped a stitch. He stared out the viewport at the calming blue, although he was radiating pretty much the opposite of calm.
“Right now?” she prompted.
“I don’t know what to believe. But that doesn’t matter. They sent me here, and I didn’t have a choice, but I have to do something, so whether it’s a punishment or a job, it might as well be this.�
� His fingers tapped on the chair’s hard armrest. “Although I do miss the First Order ships. This chair is like—”
“Like a torture chair?” Vi said sharply. “Didn’t think you’d ever seen the wrong side of one of those.”
Archex looked down, a little sheepish, but not much. “Bad metaphor.”
“It was a simile.”
“Are you always this annoying?”
“Always.”
“She really is,” Pook offered from the back of the ship. “You both are. All humanoids, really. It’s a plague.”
Vi almost smiled but stopped herself. She and Archex were bickering, almost like siblings. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
“I know it’s hard. I know…well, you lost everything. But I promise you, Archex: You’re going to come around and join the Resistance. Trust me—it feels great, being a good guy.”
He shook his head, any trace of humor gone. “A good guy. You think you’re the good guys? Then why am I wearing this?” He twitched up the pant hem on his right leg—not the injured one—to show a tracking anklet.
Vi had seen this sort of thing before. The slim metal monitor would track his every move, his heartbeat, his sleep. It would record any conversations he had. It was basically a tattletale so the Resistance could keep track of him until the First Order defector had proven himself trustworthy—if he ever chose to try.
“Just because we’re altruistic doesn’t mean we’re stupid,” she reminded him.
His eyes met hers, and it struck her to the heart, the pity she felt for her once-enemy, the man who’d taken her into that dank, bloodstained room in the belly of a Star Destroyer and pushed her to the limits of her own sanity and loyalty.
“You have to see it now, Archex. You saw the holos of the Hosnian Cataclysm. Billions of people—families, children, babies—all dead. You told me once that the First Order was all about order, but even you must recognize that they’ve moved on to extinction of all who oppose them. The entire First Order is flat-out wrong. I know you were starting to understand that, back on your ship. Phasma and Hux are just symptoms of the disease. But we caught you early, and there’s a cure.”
He rolled his eyes at the metaphor, but Vi could tell it hurt him. “And what’s that?”
“Empathy.” She reached out as if she might touch his arm, and he twitched away painfully, so she picked up her needles again. “Understanding. Seeing beauty in our differences. Valuing freedom and the right to fail and get up and try again. Standing together against oppression and cruelty.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It is easy.”
Archex turned to her, leaning forward, his breathing labored. “You can’t force people to believe in something, Moradi. Isn’t that the whole point of your Resistance? Resisting control? Don’t you all believe that eliminating the First Order lets everyone choose their path, even when they choose poorly?” She nodded. “Then you have to let me choose not to be part of the Resistance.” For just a moment, he smiled—very wryly—but then his usual scowl returned.
Vi shrugged as she knitted; he seemed easier to talk to when they weren’t looking directly into each other’s eyes, as they had on the Absolution. “You get to choose what to believe, Emergency Brake. But Leia and I have faith in you. You’ll change your mind. There’s always something, some revelation or epiphany or line in the sand, that makes ordinary people choose to take a stand. We just have to figure out what that is—for you.”
“If you were smart, you wouldn’t have let me live,” he said softly.
“We’ll see” was all Vi could say.
He turned his eyes back to hyperspace and went silent, his only remaining method of escape on the crowded transport. Vi knew that gesture well; she’d used it during her interrogation.
She watched him a moment before returning to her knitting. It would take time for such a broken man to heal. And then he would have to rebuild his entire life, starting with his heart. He would have to find his own reasons to go on, his own path out of this valley. Pain, regret, loss, and possibly even shame would be his constant companions.
As they were hers.
It was going to be a long road.
* * *
—
Sometime later, Archex hobbled over to one of the transport’s welded-in bunks and fell asleep soon after, which made sense—Dr. Kalonia had warned Vi that he was still healing and would be doing so for a long time, just as Vi would be. She had permanent nerve damage from Archex’s clumsy use of the interrogation chair, and she didn’t know if she’d ever feel two of her fingers again. At least it wasn’t her trigger finger, she told herself. She still found the blue streaks of hyperspace peaceful, and with the humans silent, Pook remained silent, as well. Unfortunately, such calm only made her more uneasy.
At first, she’d been insulted by Leia’s assignment, and in the wake of Crait, she’d hoped to be back in the field, this Batuu nonsense forgotten. Vi was a spy—the general’s best spy, if Vi was being honest—and she excelled at disguises, slicing, and sneaking through enemy territory like a wraith. She’d heard about an upcoming assignment that involved infiltrating a Star Destroyer, but that mission had instead been given to a newer unit, code-named Green Team. Vi had sliced into the system and discovered that Major Kalonia herself had advised against sending Vi, suggesting the setting might trigger ongoing psychological trauma.
Whatever that meant.
So now here she was anyway, on her way to a nowhere city on a backwater planet to build bunks and convince naïve farmers and shady smugglers to take up a fight that hadn’t yet reached their borders. It still felt like a waste of her talent and possibly a waste of time, no matter what she’d told Archex regarding the importance of the mission. It was just too simple. She’d told him to have faith in Leia, in the Resistance, but in moments like this one Vi, too, chafed at the shackles of obligation.
She took a deep breath and recognized that tight, gasping, achy feeling—it was tension. Worry. Stress. Her shoulders were hunched up and her fingers were numb, the nerve pinched. As she settled back against the hard chair and forced herself to relax, she had to confront the truth: Maybe Kalonia was right. Maybe she, too, needed time to heal. Maybe being around Archex brought it all back. Maybe she wasn’t over it. Maybe she needed an assignment like this, something useful, almost a vacation on a quiet planet. And maybe the Resistance really did need warm bodies and beds to put them in just as much as they needed First Order intel.
* * *
—
For several days of travel, she and Archex warily shared the same small space, eating and sleeping and being bored while trying to pretend the other didn’t exist. Vi had just finished knitting her hat when the ship dropped out of hyperspace, and she was almost accustomed to the rustic itchiness of the yarn. Sure, the fibers had felt soft enough on the skein, but it was rough compared with the luxurious hippoglace yarn she’d lost aboard the Absolution when Cardinal’s men had destroyed the sweater she’d been knitting for her brother. Even thinking about it made her furious, and she had to concentrate on unclenching her jaw as she recalled her droid’s nervous beeping and the feel of binders on her wrists. It was odd, how she could separate Archex from Cardinal but couldn’t control her physiological response to flashbacks sparked by such small details. Yes, fine, so a Star Destroyer was probably the wrong place for her right now.
The stars came back into view, and Batuu shone below, a jewel against the indigo curtain of infinity, just as full of natural beauty and boring peace as Cerea. Beyond it, Wild Space spread across the viewport, mysterious planets and unmapped stars twinkling.
“I guess this is our new home,” she murmured.
“I will only exist here until General Organa assigns me elsewhere,” Pook observed. “The natural humidity levels will wreak havoc on my sensors.”
Archex shuff
led into the cockpit and sat heavily in his chair, turning his bad leg this way and that. “Are we there yet?”
Vi smiled and nodded at the viewport. “Welcome to Batuu. We’re headed straight for Black Spire Outpost.”
As if on cue, the ship’s sensors beeped, and two red dots appeared. Vi kicked her knitting bag out of the way and leaned forward.
“First Order attack?” Archex asked, likewise leaning forward, his pain momentarily forgotten.
She shook her head. “They’re not TIEs. Just…”
“Disorderly smuggler ships,” Pook said. “Because that’s how backwater planets operate.”
Laserfire erupted as the two approaching ships went from blips on the screen to actual objects in space. A smaller craft with huge guns chased a larger ship, looking very much like a rat chasing the cat.
“They’re not after us,” Vi said, not that she sat back or relaxed. Their ship was big, visible, and definitely not a threat. She eased away, hating how sticky and slow the controls were.
“This transport is not equipped with deflectors,” Pook reminded her from the hold. “You might wish to take evasive maneuvers. Not that you generally listen to anything I say.”
“They have to see us,” Vi murmured.
But the ships were acting like they were alone in space, as if Vi’s hulking transport were inconsequential or possibly invisible. She wrenched the controls and juked out of the way as the first, bigger ship lumbered past, far too close for comfort.
“Is he using us for cover?” Archex shouted. “That absolute—”
“It is the intelligent thing to do,” Pook interrupted.
Vi jerked the transport to the side as the smaller ship zoomed forward, bright laserfire bursting from its guns. The ship was suicidally determined to continue its path and seemed quite willing to blow up Vi’s ship if it remained stubbornly blocking its target.
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