“Okay. So we need water. Pook, go assess if the waterfall is potable, and if so, let’s gather all the bottles and canteens and fill them. From the waterfall, though—the cenote is full of poisonous anemones.”
“Poisonous what?” Dolin asked, jaw dropped again.
Vi wiped a hand through the air. “Don’t worry about it. Just don’t stick your hand in there unless you want to die. Probably should’ve mentioned that earlier. Now, Kriki brought food—I’ve no idea what. Archex, think you can put those spices to work?”
He grinned. “I’ll get the oil heated.”
“There’s roots and fungi, and I bought kaadu ribs from the butcher!” Kriki piped up. “But I had ’em double-boxed so they wouldn’t attract predators.”
Vi smiled—and drooled a little. “Thank goodness. Now we also need to set up the beds—probably all in here, since it’s where the fire and light are. We can work out better barracks later, once we find and unpack the cots. Eat, drink, sleep—”
“I set up the portable restroom from the cargo haul for you,” Pook said tiredly. “As I believe you will require it after eating and drinking. For all my many burdens, at least I don’t possess any sphincters.”
“Thanks, and yuck. So let’s all…do that.”
Pook went out to test the water, and Kriki trailed behind with bottles, since she could navigate the darkness easily. Dolin worked on turning his wool into bedding. Archex pulled Kriki’s food haul from the big sack, cut up the fungi, and set the tubers to roast in the fire. Soon they’d all dined on kaadu ribs, tubers, spiced fungi, and fresh fruit, had their fill of water, and claimed their own little niches to sleep in, nestled in warm gruffin wool. Talk was a little odd still, but they were trying. Vi went to sleep feeling as if the Resistance shelter was finally on track.
All was well until she woke up to screams.
“VI! HELP!”
Vi bolted upright, whipping her blaster from under the rough pillow of gruffin wool. The fire had died down, and they’d turned off the lights, making the room as black as the wrong side of a sarlacc.
“Kriki? Where are you? What’s wrong?”
“In the corner. Something’s trying to eat Archex!”
Vi got into a crouch and blinked rapidly, hoping for the tiniest bit of light and finding nothing but pure darkness. If Pook had been there, he could’ve helped, but she’d sent him outside with a power droid to recharge and guard the cave entrance. Never had she thought the threat might come from within.
“What is it? What’s that? I can’t see!” Dolin shouted.
Vi fumbled with the pack by her side and pulled out her infrared goggles. She slipped them on, and there in the corner in shades of red and black she saw a nightmare come to life. A giant glistening snake was wrapped tightly around Archex, who’d gone floppy. Tiny Kriki was trying to pry the creature away. As Vi watched, Kriki sank her teeth into the thing, but it didn’t budge. Vi couldn’t even see its face.
Blaster in hand, she jogged across the room, put the muzzle to the creature’s clammy skin, aimed away from Archex and Kriki, and pulled the trigger. The blast was muffled, but the creature didn’t drop away—it just squeezed tighter. She tried again and again, hitting it in different spots, but the thing felt like it was all muscle. It was as big around as her waist, and she couldn’t find a head, but she did see tiny arms and legs. She dropped the blaster and felt around until her fingertips landed on something feathery and wet. Gills, maybe? She rammed her fingers into them, and the thing hissed and flailed but didn’t let go. Poor Kriki was still tugging and biting and shrieking, some of her sounds so high-pitched that they made the hairs inside Vi’s ears quiver.
“Hold on,” Vi said. She ran out into the hall and screamed, “Pook! Hurry! We need the lights on!”
“Oh, bother,” came the mournful call from the courtyard. “I’m not done charging.”
“Can I help?” Dolin asked. “What can I do?”
“Working on it,” Vi said. She hurried to the fire and poked around in the ashes with a stick, finding one of the tubers left over from dinner. Using the knife on her belt, she stabbed the red-hot root vegetable and carefully carried it over to the beast. Hoping for the best, she shoved the tuber against the wet, slimy flesh. It sizzled the moment it struck, and a sick scent like burning fish assailed Vi’s nose.
A high shriek filled the air, and the worm-thing writhed and loosened, dropping Archex to the ground. Vi stabbed harder, letting her knife go through the tuber and into the beast, pinning the hot root to it.
“Archex?” Vi called, reaching over to pat his still cheek. “Come on, buddy. It’s just a little snake. Wake up.”
She was momentarily blinded as the lights along the ceiling buzzed to life, filling the room with cool blue light. The worm-thing screamed all the harder and uncoiled completely, writhing on the floor, its tiny arms and legs scrabbling uselessly in the air and its skin turning an angry pink, as if even the scant amount of light burned it.
Dolin picked up an ax—where had that come from?—and said, “You want it dead, boss?”
“Do you know what it is?”
“I know it’s no good.”
“Then sure, kill it.”
Dolin planted his feet and hefted the ax. He didn’t look like a soft, innocent farm boy just now—he looked like a competent, murderous brute. “Stand back,” he warned, motioning Kriki away with a jerk of his head. She scuttled away, panting, violet blood dripping down her chin.
With four mighty thunks, Dolin chopped the worm-thing in two, and after a few long seconds of screaming, flailing, and juicy spattering, it fell still in two massive pieces. Vi scrambled over it and knelt by Archex. He was waxen and pale and cold, and she slapped his cheeks and rubbed his hands with hers and said things ranging from, “Come on, Emergency Brake! Wake up! Don’t let the worm win!” to a more aggressive, “I swear that if you don’t wake up right now, I’m going to send you back to Cerea for another month of healthful stretching and drum circles!”
“He’s too cold,” Kriki said. “But I can hear his heart beating. Did you know he only has one?”
Vi’s laugh sounded more like a sob, even to her. “Yeah, that’s a human thing. Let’s get him over by the fire. Dolin, can you build up the fire. Kriki, where’d we put my orange tunic?”
Dolin had a fire going more quickly than Vi could’ve accomplished it, and Kriki helped wrap Archex up as tight as a baby in swaddling, and Pook began moving boxes and eventually produced a temperature control device that helped warm up the chill room.
“Just another design failure of your species,” he grumbled. “I’ll be over here, sensibly regulating my own temperature.”
It was a long night, waiting for Archex to wake up. No one could sleep now, not only because they were worried about Archex and hyped up on adrenaline, but also because they didn’t know if there were more cave worms lying in wait. They pulled crates around the fire and sat, taking some comfort in the light and warmth. Dolin got fidgety, and he used his energy to untangle the snakelike creature and lay it out on the floor. Uncurled, it was at least five meters long and seemed part amphibian and part worm, with a pale-blue segmented body burned pink here and there, feathery gills, and those tiny, clammy hands and feet that seemed mostly vestigial. Its mouth had no teeth, but that hadn’t stopped it from brutalizing Archex. He had deep bruises on his chest from where its lips had clamped around him.
“It came in from the hall,” Kriki said after disappearing for a bit. “There’s a bigger room down that way with a waterfall and pool, and there are wavy marks in the sand around the water.”
“We need doors,” Vi said. “The kind that close. Maybe Savi has some scrap I can buy cheap. And Pook’s first priority tomorrow will be to find the security equipment packed among the cargo crates and set up the cams and sensors, focusing on the cave worm’s suspected entrance
and the perimeter of the base. These ruins are perfect for what we need, aside from the giant strangling cave newts.”
“That’s not a very catchy name.”
They all turned to Archex, who hadn’t moved, but whose eyes were now open and bloodshot. He looked as shaky as his voice had sounded.
Vi beamed. “Well, since it nearly killed you, you’re welcome to name it.”
“Call it Hux, then,” he said with a light cough. “The Hux Worm. That’s fitting. It’s dead, right? Please tell me it’s dead. Or did you recruit it? I swear, the Resistance will take anyone.”
Kriki squeaked a laugh, and Vi walked over to Archex and stared down at him. “It’s very dead—didn’t even pass the job interview. You should see Dolin with an ax, though. He and Kriki saved your life.” She turned to the Chadra-Fan. “How’d you know what was happening? I didn’t hear a thing.”
Kriki shrugged. “I only sleep a couple of hours a day. I was in the other room working on a generator when I heard it. Big ears, you know. Came running, and tried to stop it, but…well, I guess my teeth are just little tickles to something that big. It tasted awful, though.”
Vi handed her a water bottle. “That was very brave of you. I can’t imagine trying to take down something that size without a weapon.”
“I don’t have a weapon.”
“Do you want one?”
Kriki’s nose wiggled as she considered it. “You’d have to teach me how to use it. But I think I’d like to learn.”
“I could teach her,” Archex said.
Vi hid her delighted grin. It was the perfect job for him—teaching new recruits how to shoot.
“That would be helpful—her and Dolin both. Unless you know how to shoot, Dolin?”
Dolin shook his head. “I can hunt with a bow and arrows or a spear or ax, but blasters are forbidden, back home. I do want to learn, though.”
Vi nodded. This was good. Archex clearly wasn’t aware of how much value he brought to the Resistance, how just knowing he was here, knowing she wasn’t alone had been a huge boon and comfort to Vi ever since they’d crashed on Batuu. He’d found the cenote at the last camp, cooked food, and carved his toys for spira and even produced several useful baskets, for all that he seemed ashamed of them. Of all the things the First Order had taught him, perhaps the cruelest lesson was that he wasn’t useful unless he was overproducing, unless he was constantly doing work and getting grades and being measured. Vi didn’t know how she could go on without him here, and yet he still wasn’t satisfied with his contribution.
Maybe this was the key to giving him purpose: reprising his role as a mentor and instructor. Teaching Dolin and Kriki about blasters and fighting would give him confidence and pull his attention away from his pain, and they would all need to be ready if the First Order found them.
But something was bothering Vi, something Kriki had said earlier. “Wait. Kriki, did you say you were working on a generator?”
The Chadra-Fan ducked her head. “I hope that’s okay. I wanted to be useful, and it’s strange to sit in a room with three sleeping people, doing nothing. So much breathing and twitching! So I figured we would need more generators as we got more equipment going. The first two I found were in good shape, but the third one must’ve gotten damaged in your crash. I was tuning it up.”
“So you are a mechanic,” Vi confirmed.
Kriki smiled and looked down shyly. “Nothing that special. A tinkerer, of sorts. I know how things work, and I like taking them apart, cleaning them up, and trying to improve them. Gol hated that, just wanted me to work as fast as possible, make things functional enough to sell. But I like knowing something can work more efficiently or with greater reliability. Why would someone choose mediocrity?”
“Because Gol was a fool.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not the first. People can come up with some ugly nicknames for those who don’t look or think like them.”
“The First Order doesn’t generally take on nonhumans,” Archex said. He pushed himself up to sitting. “They say it’s because the armor is made to fit only a certain body type.”
“That’s because nobody likes to say the word xenophobia out loud,” Vi said bitterly. “It’s easy to forget that humans built the Death Stars and Starkiller Base. A human gave the order that destroyed the Hosnian system. Those people don’t represent all humans, but they definitely don’t make us look like the galaxy’s best bet.”
Kriki held up her necklace, the gray bead in the center between her long fingers. “This is a piece of it. Of Hosnian Prime, I mean, or some part of the system. Or maybe it’s just a normal rock and I was swindled, but I don’t really care. I keep it with me always to remember my sister. It’s hard when there’s nothing left of those you love.”
Archex was carefully silent on this topic, as the new recruits didn’t know about his past, but Dolin pulled back his sleeve to show a leather cuff with hair woven into it in intricate patterns. “I carry this for my parents. They were trying to save the gruffins before a hurricane. Grana kept me in the house and…they didn’t come back.”
“I never knew my parents,” Archex said. “I grew up in an orphanage on Jakku, was sold to a mining operation, and managed to escape.”
“And then what?” Dolin asked.
Vi was curious to see how Archex would handle the question. He wasn’t much of a liar, but she also suspected he wasn’t ready to tell everyone about his time with the First Order.
Archex sighed. “And then I fell in with a bad crowd, did some things I’m ashamed of. And now I’m trying to make up for it.”
Vi smiled at him. “You’re doing the right thing,” she said, then looked around at all her crew, meeting each person’s eyes. They looked exhausted to a one. “All of you. But now you need to get to sleep. I’ve got to get to the scrapyard on time in the morning if I want to buy that long-range comm. And more kaadu ribs.”
“Do you think…I could work there, too?” Dolin asked. “Help make some spira?”
He sounded so sincere, so earnest, that Vi wanted to hug him. “We can always ask Ylena and Savi. The more the merrier.”
“And I can maybe work with you at the scrapyard during the day and stay up at night to get the tech running,” Kriki said.
“And I can help organize the armory and teach everyone to shoot,” Archex added.
Pook sighed. “And I will endeavor to put up with you all.”
Vi stood and yawned. “It’s a plan, then. Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the cave worms bite.”
“Again,” Archex added.
Laughter rang in the cave for the first time, and to Vi, it sounded like success.
THE NEXT DAY, WHEN VI SET out to walk Savi’s Path, Kriki and Dolin walked with her. She’d barely had time to bathe in the recently installed shower, but at least most of her smelled like flowers, and thanks to Kriki’s vibrobrush, her wig looked good as new. She was almost starting to feel like herself again. Dolin smelled of the same soap, although he’d later complained about the feeble lather and offered to teach Vi how to make a superior bar from gruffin fat and ashes. Ylena of course had to zip into town in a landspeeder to introduce Dolin and Kriki to Savi, but they soon returned with a smiling Dolin and purring Kriki, who had both won the old scrapper’s approval and were ready to work. Despite her lack of sleep due to last night’s excitement, the day went by quickly and Vi was content.
When Ylena and the other Gatherers headed off to the cantina after work a few days later, Vi, Kriki, and Dolin just naturally followed along. The walk was pleasant, and Vi had to hide her grin as Dolin trailed after Ylena looking lovestruck. The way Ylena stopped to adjust her boot to let him catch up suggested that she, too, felt something there. Kriki nudged Vi with her elbow, pointed, and gave a squeaky little giggle.
It was a pretty evening with a beautiful sunset, and as Vi walked the old p
ath through the ancient forest toward a town cobbled together of cast-outs and love, she realized that this place was starting to feel like home. She hadn’t felt that tug since Chaaktil, and even then Chaaktil was too wrapped up in pain and anxiety for her to ever consider settling there or going back. Whenever she thought about visiting, she again saw her father kneeling, the white-clad troopers behind him a row of identical blank masks and blasters.
But Batuu was beautiful and strange, old and new, magical and yet natural. She even loved the funny little pipa birds with their long pink beaks that trailed behind the scrappers, hoping for some kindness in the form of crumbs. When the gate to the Land Port came into view, Vi pulled down her goggles and pulled up her new green shawl to cover her face. She’d thought about bringing her Ubese helmet this morning, but that would’ve made a scene among the scrappers and cantina regulars. Oga had promised Vi she’d be safe in the cantina, and for now the wrap and goggles would have to do. She’d use the helmet the next time she was here on her own business.
As always, the cantina was a little slow when they arrived, as some bosses weren’t as generous with quitting time as Savi was. Two Bith were quietly playing jazz in the corner as a pretty Zeltron woman crooned into a mike. Vi greeted old Nanz at the bar and ordered a Jet Juice, Kriki sipped at a Bespin Fizz, and Dolin happily slurped his Gamorrean ale, claiming he’d finally found something better than the sour beer they made back home.
Over in his usual corner, his broad arms spread over the top of his booth, Rusko gave Vi a nod of respect while N’arrghela cleaned a knife with her teeth—or cleaned her teeth with the knife. It was hard to tell. The Talpini, as usual, just stared, but Vi was getting used to that.
She was getting used to everything here. The ruins were coming along, she was well on her way to purchasing some bigger pieces from Savi, and Kriki had her BSO contacts on the lookout for a long-range comm. Vi’s main problem right now was the presence of Kath and his troopers, and she planned on using her next day off to scout for their encampment. And she was also troubled that she only had two recruits so far—maybe two and a half, considering Ylena’s constant but subtle support. It would’ve been easier to repel the First Order if she had some soldiers of her own.
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