“How’s it going?” Vi said, trying to be friendly.
The Talpini’s head canted to the side just slightly, his wide frown firmly in place and his blank blue eyes staring at her and through her. It was like talking to a scary statue.
“I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Vi.”
The Talpini said nothing.
“Good talk.”
Fortunately, N’arrghela roared for her from the hallway just then, and Vi gave the Talpini a little wave and followed the Wookiee down the hall and through a different door into Oga’s office. This route, Vi noted, was much more pleasant than being dragged past a toilet. Oga was at her desk, petting the same unkempt tooka-cat when Vi stepped into her lair.
“Coona tee-tocky malia?” Oga began, her focus not wavering from the holos around her desk.
“What took me so long was trying real hard not to die,” Vi replied.
Oga looked up, annoyed. “Take that helmet off. You sound like a frog-dog with indigestion.”
Vi glanced around the room to make certain they were alone. Now that she had to assume Oga had sent Lieutenant Kath into the ruins after her, she didn’t trust the gangster to keep her identity safe. With the helmet off, she was surprised to realize that the air down here actually tasted fresher through the mask’s filters. Without it, she could smell Oga’s damp musk plus the bowl of clamfruit that still sat on her desk, right beside a juicy pile of snail shells.
“Well?”
Vi slipped the necklace out from under her tunic and over her head and held it out for Oga’s inspection. After all this time, it was still warmer than her body temperature, and it had never stopped glowing. Oga tapped a rubbery finger on her desk, and Vi laid the artifact down, just so, glad to be rid of it.
“This is it, huh?”
“Nearly died five times fetching it, so I hope so.”
“What is this thing?” Oga asked, poking the necklace around and lifting the large crystals one by one. “What powers it?”
“I’m an errand girl, not an archaeologist. You told me to bring it, so I brought it.”
Oga focused on her, the Blutopian’s mouth tentacles curling hungrily. “What else did you find? Anything else of value? Multiple artifacts?”
Vi sighed. She knew that word of what she’d given Dok would get back to Oga, so she might as well be honest. Black Spire Outpost was a place where someone was always watching. She vastly preferred the anonymous nature of big-city life.
“It was the only artifact that wasn’t a weapon. There were corpses aplenty, but nothing of value that could be carried out. The necklace was on a pedestal in a very ornamental room and seemed like it might be related to worship. On my way out, I triggered some toxic darts, which I brought back with me and had to trade to Dok-Ondar.”
Oga slammed her hands on the table and stood. “Had to? You don’t have to do anything but what I tell you to do! And now he knows you were at the ruins, which means he knows I made other arrangements to collect the artifact. I’m your boss, not him!”
“That sounds great here in your personal office, but it’s not always true out there in the real world.” Vi rubbed the skin between her eyebrows. “I’ve heard of his Doklist. I figured a few darts would keep me on his good side, and if you wanted the darts, you could go threaten him instead of me. Gambuu darts, they’re called. If I find any more when we’re cleaning out the ruins, they’re yours.”
Oga sat back down, her mouthparts twitching. “Ah, yes. Now it all makes sense. You needed a disguise, so you went to see Dok, and that gossiping old gibberer knew what you were about and had you by the tentacles.”
“Ah, yes. Now it all makes sense,” Vi echoed. “You sent that First Order womp rat after me into the ruins, and now that he’s seen me, I have to hide my face because every time I come into town I’ll be in jeopardy.” She crossed her arms and glared, daring Oga to deny it. “I didn’t go shopping for an expensive mask for fun, you know.”
But the Blutopian just raised a sloping shoulder. “If you want a job done and everyone else has failed to do it, might as well send in two expendable and annoying offworlders. The hope being that one of you would get the prize and the other would disappear. Look at it this way: I gave you the chance to kill your enemy. If you didn’t take it, that’s your own fault.”
There was a twisted sort of logic to it, if you were a crime boss who sat in the center of her web and didn’t go out into the world and get her hands dirty. Make two enemies compete, give them the possibility of killing each other, and minimize your own future problems. Vi had to admire Oga—but she didn’t have to like her.
“Well, I guess you did tell me from the start that you weren’t taking sides,” she said.
“I don’t care about you, equally,” Oga said with a rasping chuckle.
“Then let me have my cargo, and I’ll get out of your way and take it back to my murderous ruins and start setting up shop.” Vi cocked her head. “If he did live, you’re not gonna tell him we’re out there, right?”
Oga pulled up some screens on her desk and clicked around before answering. “No. You did what I asked, and I honor my deals. I won’t tell him about either of your two camps. But he’s got a squad of armored soldiers, and you know they’ll be looking for you. I doubt you can hide for long.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Luckily the area around the outpost was wild and wide, and maybe it was a good thing that Kath had experienced the ruins himself and wouldn’t be eager to return anytime soon. Vi herself didn’t want to go back, and they were part of her prize. At least if he did show up, she would have the advantage of cover. She had to get the caverns cleaned out quickly and her goods moved inside and hopefully recruit more people to help—and to guard their supplies. With each hurdle she crossed in this mission, five new ones popped up. They weren’t supposed to crash. They weren’t supposed to get robbed. The First Order shouldn’t be here.
“Say, Oga…”
The Blutopian looked up in annoyance. “Why aren’t you gone yet?”
“When Kath was down here, as I’m sure he was, did he happen to mention what brought him here, to Batuu?”
“Of course he did,” Oga said, as if Vi were an idiot. “It was you. He’s looking for you. What else could he possibly want here?”
Vi ignored that question. “So someone tipped the First Order off. Any idea who that might’ve been?”
Oga turned off her screens and gave Vi a cold stare. “It wasn’t me. And you know it wasn’t me because if it was, I wouldn’t have sent him out to find the artifact. I would’ve let him sit right here with me, and when you returned, bedraggled and triumphant, I would’ve given you right over to him and collected a reward. If I’m going to stab you, at least I’ll stab you in the front.”
Vi held up her hands. “I can appreciate that. Let’s skip the stabbing. I’d still like to know if I have an enemy on Batuu.”
With a husky sigh, Oga pulled her screens back up. “You don’t need an enemy. You just need someone who’s more desperate for money than they are for friends. It could’ve been anyone.” She picked up a clamfruit. “We done here? Rusko’ll have all your cargo loaded up, what’s left of it. Go on.”
Vi didn’t like being dismissed by anyone of a lower rank than general, but she’d seen how Oga had treated Dhoran and didn’t want to be on the other end of the boss’s blaster. She gave a nod of respect, put her Ubese mask back on, and followed N’arrghela back out into the cantina. She walked right by Ylena, Dotti, and Roxi having an ale, but they didn’t even look up. The disguise worked, at least—they hadn’t recognized her. Still, she’d need to buy a new wrap that wasn’t connected to Vi Moradi. Someone in this very cantina—perhaps even someone here at this very moment—might’ve been the one to use a long-range comm to call the First Order with a tip about a certain Resistance spy trying to recruit for her
cause.
Surely it wasn’t Ylena or the other Gatherers? They’d accepted her, they were warm and welcoming, and they were already beginning to feel like family. And it couldn’t be Savi. Goodness shone out of him like a laser beam. Maybe it was Rusko or N’arrghela or the Talpini, or maybe Salju or Mubo or Arta…but no. She couldn’t consider any of them. She had training in reading people, after all, and some were just good eggs, and the bad eggs in Oga’s crew would’ve been under strict orders. Dok-Ondar was a definite possibility, though. Or any random smuggler who’d overhead her private conversation or seen the starbird on her jacket before she’d bought her wrap. At least everyone she noted around the cantina couldn’t see her eyes under the mask, couldn’t see her mouth twisting up in a silent snarl as she sought the snitch who had only made her mission all the harder.
Didn’t these people know that Vi’s entire life was dedicated to helping them? To keeping them safe? But instead, someone had called down the very villain Vi was working so hard to save them from. The irony did not escape her.
Outside the cantina door, Rusko waited in a junky landspeeder, one burly arm thrown over the back of the seat. The floating trailer behind the speeder carried a load covered by crusty old tarps. Vi tried to guess which shapes corresponded to the cargo she’d lost, but Rusko growled, “Stop counting and get in unless you want to walk.”
So she got in and put the crankbike helmet by her side, sitting as far away from Rusko as possible, which wasn’t very far, as he was big and the speeder was built for humans, not giant sharks. They zoomed through the market, and as they neared the archway, she asked him to stop. Dolin sat on his bike where she’d left him, looking conspicuously innocent. Vi would’ve bet any amount of money that he’d ventured into the outpost, at least a little bit, just to satisfy his curiosity.
“Would you mind following us?” she asked, lifting her helmet to show him her face.
“What? Yeah, sure. I think.” He had that twitchy look folks got when they couldn’t believe they hadn’t gotten caught. That was fine—the Resistance wasn’t his Grana, after all.
“We’re headed back to the ruins to start setting up the base.”
He nodded and pulled on his helmet, cranking up the bike to follow them. As they neared the ruins, however, he pulled his crankbike in front of Rusko’s speeder and angled in a slightly different direction, waving for them to follow.
“What’s this gruffherder doing?” Rusko asked, slowing down as Dolin’s path forked.
“He lives out here. He knows the ruins. So he must be leading us in either a more direct route or a less deadly one.”
“You trust him?”
Vi wanted to say, More than I trust you, but she really didn’t trust Rusko and didn’t want to make him mad, so she just said, “In this particular area, yes.”
Grumbling to himself, Rusko followed the crankbike, and Dolin led them off the path and deeper into the forest. As far as Vi could tell, they were headed in the right direction, and Rusko didn’t complain again. Soon she saw the rock formations rising up ahead, and her skin prickled when she thought about all that she’d faced here just a few short hours ago. If not for Dolin’s truffleboar, she might be just one more corpse.
“This is as far as I’ll go,” Rusko said, stopping the speeder inconveniently far away from the clearing around the entrance to the ruins.
“But Dolin’s up there and unharmed. He’s waving at us, and it’s not the wave of a man full of darts and assaulted by ancient spirits. Can’t you just pull up a little closer?”
The Karkarodon turned his body this way and that, his version of shaking his head. “No way. I’m not dying out here. I don’t mess with the ancients. Trailer’s yours anyway, so just float it to wherever you want. I did my part of the job. Like I said: You’re not one of us.”
He unhitched the cargo and sped off toward the outpost without another word. Dolin lumbered over and helped Vi direct the floating pallet toward the entrance that led into the maze of stone caverns.
As they pushed, she asked, “So I forgot to ask—how much do you know about these ruins? Because you knew enough to save me.”
Dolin sighed and blushed and wouldn’t quite meet her eyes. “I know a lot, but Grana said that it had to be kept a secret, that the ancients left things this way for a purpose. That anyone who came here to steal deserved what they got.”
“Then why did you save me?”
He cocked his head at her and shrugged. “Because you were running away from the ruins, not going into them. I figured you were lost, and you were definitely hurt. I just have a soft spot for hurt things.”
Okay, so technically she’d been running away from the ruins after stealing from them, but Vi hadn’t told him about the necklace. She felt bad for that lie of omission, but she needed him on her team. And what’s more, she liked him. He was a great recruit for the Resistance, and it might even help him grow beyond his own expectations. She wanted him to meet the pilots, test up, and see what he could do. He would never be another Poe Dameron—no one but Poe was Poe—but the Resistance could use all the steady, bighearted people it could get.
“Well, how do you think the ancients would feel about sharing space with a plucky group of goodhearted rebel fighters led by a princess and determined to save the galaxy?”
He paused to give it real thought; it was clearly important to him, and he was figuring it out as they went along. “You know, I think the ancients would want to do the right thing. We don’t know much about them, but…do you feel it? Out here, around the ruins…it’s so peaceful. It feels holy. I think they were wise and kind, and I think they loved nature, and I think they would understand the need to protect Batuu and our way of life. Grana would disagree with me doing that personally, but…”
“Sometimes the older generation resists change?” Vi supplied.
“I guess so.”
“And sometimes they’re afraid of losing the younger generation and being left alone. I imagine it’s hard, when you’ve got no one else to turn to. You would do anything to keep those you love near.”
“But that’s not fair,” Dolin argued. “The younger generation has a right to go out and discover their destiny. They can’t stay home hunting truffles and herding gruffins until they’re old, too. Sometimes we just…want more.”
“I agree with you,” Vi said softly. “My mother didn’t want me to leave home, but here I am. And now I’m supposed to build a command center, so let’s see how much of my cargo the boss of Black Spire has returned.”
They settled the pallet over an open patch of grass, and Vi went around untying the tarp. Dolin helped her tug it off, and she let it fall to the ground. Oga had indeed been generous, and most of the Resistance gear was here.
But the one important thing that was missing?
All the communication equipment, including their long-range comm.
They still couldn’t get word to Leia.
The Resistance had no idea the First Order was here, and that Vi and her people were in peril.
THE NEXT DAY, DESPITE THE FACT that she’d recently been poisoned and that the enemy had arrived planetside, Vi still went to work for Savi. She’d made the commitment, they still needed the money, and she had a feeling that the old scrapper and his junkyard would somehow prove to be a great help to the Resistance. Although she longed to slip away, find Kath’s base, and destroy it, she also knew that such a brash action would only serve to convince the First Order that she was actually here and that Batuu was worth investigating. So she had to stick to the standard spy protocol: lie low, act normal, and strategize.
While she was gone, Dolin was to hook the empty trailer up to his crankbike and haul Archex and Pook from the transport camp over to the ruins, where the droid would charge up using their returned power droids and begin unloading all the cargo while Dolin focused on disabling the defenses ins
ide the cave system. As for Archex, Vi assigned him the task of deciding how to organize and set up their new facility. He needed something to do, desperately. Carving wooden convorees for the toy shop wasn’t going to fill the hole in his soul. The man needed a purpose.
Out at the scrapyard, Vi chose a spot a little away from the other Gatherers. She was painfully aware that someone in town had alerted the First Order to her presence, and even if she told herself it was impossible, it very well could’ve been one of her smiling, happy co-workers. Ylena sat near her again, but Vi would’ve bet anything that Ylena wasn’t the problem. She, like Savi, seemed to have an almost spiritual calm about her, as if she glowed from within and radiated tranquility.
When the others were working elsewhere, Vi lowered her voice and said, “Ylena, do you think one of the other scrappers might’ve turned me in to the First Order? There’s an officer in town looking for me, and he knows who I am.”
Ylena’s mouth turned down. “I’ve heard that troopers were making trouble in the market. Their officer was seen going into the cantina. But I promise you it wasn’t one of us. I know we like to gossip, but no one here possesses the avarice to call down such trouble on our home just for money. As I think you’ve seen, Savi doesn’t hire people like that.”
“But he hired me,” Vi argued. “A complete stranger from offworld, one who already had a chip on her shoulder. I look like a troublemaker.”
At that, Ylena dimpled. “There are people who stir the pot for personal gain, and then there are people who cause trouble because they have a higher calling. Savi can tell the difference. We all can. You have the gleam.”
Looking up from the old, tarnished medal in her hand, Vi raised an eyebrow. “The gleam?”
“That’s what we call it when the Force has taken a shine to someone. The gleam. It’s a little like an aura, but…it doesn’t lie. And you have it. That’s why Savi took you on so readily.”
Galaxy's Edge Page 19