Galaxy's Edge

by Delilah S. Dawson

  “There was a murder last night,” one of the troopers said. “Right here by the cantina. Two of our own were killed. Executed. What do you know about it?”

  Vi knew these women—she had helped them pick up their spilled baskets once on a windy day, and she remembered that the one in the wide woven hat was named Jenda and her sister with the freckles was Oh-li. Jenda just shook her head sadly like it was a shame, and the trooper pulled his blaster and pointed it at her.

  “We know nothing, nothing!” Oh-li cried, standing, her withered hands up and jingling with cheap wire bracelets and her toothless lips trembling. “We go to sleep early!”

  The other trooper aimed his blaster at her, and she sat back down, her long dress billowing around her. It was a cruel display of the First Order’s bullying, two armored soldiers aiming their weapons at frail and powerless old women, and it made Vi’s blood boil.

  “Do you know Vi Moradi?” the first trooper asked.

  “Who?” Jenda asked.

  “The Resistance spy.”

  Oh-li shook her head. “We don’t sell pies.”

  The trooper’s boot shot out, crushing the complex basket the woman had been weaving. The entire market seemed to go quiet at that crunch of straw and reed.

  “There is a new woman in this town,” the trooper barked, loud enough for all to hear. “She is a Resistance spy. She has dark-brown skin and may call herself Vi Moradi, Amaka Kottu, Evette Harlo, or Starling. She is an enemy of the First Order, and there is a large reward on her head. Now I’ll ask you again.” He pointed his blaster directly between Jenda’s eyes.

  “Do you know this woman?”

  Jenda’s lips quivered, and her eyes darted to her sister, who shook her head just the tiniest bit. Vi was overcome with gratitude for these brave women willing to stand up to troopers for her—or maybe for the Resistance. Was it because she’d helped them that day with a cheerful heart when no one else would? Because she’d stopped another time to offer them some water and compliment their basketry? Was it because she’d tried to fit in, unlike the space racers and smugglers who came, spent their coin, and left? She hadn’t been here long, so it’s not like she was one of them. Yet. Even if she felt like it, sometimes.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time where I can find the Resistance spy. We know she’s here.”

  “I’m just an old woman—”

  The trooper whipped his blaster across Jenda’s face. Blood spurted from her nose, and she doubled over, rocking and crying as her hat rolled away down the street. Oh-li put an arm around her and murmured to her, bracelets jingling. All around the market, people stared, but no one spoke up or stepped forward. They’d melted back into the shadows, behind columns, under awnings. No one did anything to help. No one picked up the hat or offered Jenda a rag. Some of them looked like they wanted to, rage burning in their eyes. And yet something held them back.

  One more strike like that, and he’d kill the old woman.

  “Tell me what I want to know or I’ll have to ask your friend here,” the trooper said. He drew back his blaster and let it hang in the air, on the cusp of striking Oh-li, and it felt as if the entire world went silent, waiting. Oh-li turned her face away, rheumy eyes squeezed shut.

  Just as in that moment in the alley with Zade, Vi’s will coalesced. What she was about to do? It wasn’t the smart choice, and everything in her training told her to run away and hide, but Vi hadn’t joined the Resistance because she was the kind of person who could watch old women get beaten to death by bullies in the street. Unwilling visions of her father in the marketplace, of the executions, of white armor just like this, blasters just like this—there was no way she could walk away, even if it’s what Leia would’ve ordered her to do.

  She settled her Ubese mask more firmly, slipped on her black gloves, and wrapped her shawl up over her head before jogging over to the scene, shouting, “No! Please don’t hurt them! They are innocent!”

  As she got close, she made sure to trip on the women’s baskets, sending them and the meilooruns and tubers inside scattering, directly into the stormtroopers’ legs. They looked down, trying to sort out this new bumbling idiot, and Vi motioned for Jenda and Oh-li to hurry away. Jenda held her shawl to her streaming nose, and her eyes were flowing with tears, but she gave Vi a nod of thanks as Oh-li wrapped an arm around her and the sisters hobbled into the shadows and scurried into their apartment. Vi stayed there, using her body to mask the sisters’ retreat, but the stormtroopers were quickly onto her scheme.

  “Another troublemaker,” the second stormtrooper said with a clipped accent. “This planet is full of scum.”

  Now the blaster was pointed at Vi’s chest, and she was grateful for the jacket under her green wrap, which featured cleverly hidden pieces of plate armor. She trembled like a normal person would and held her gloved hands in the air.

  “Please. They were innocent. So am I. No one here knows this spy,” she said, her voice flat and strange through the mask.

  Crack!

  The swing was so fast that she didn’t even see the blaster until it was bouncing off her helmet. Her skull rocked back, and everything went fuzzy and slow as stars exploded in her vision. This mask, uh. It wasn’t padded. It wasn’t meant to—

  Crack!

  “Remember anything yet?”

  Her vision was flashing; the mask was damaged. When she drew in a breath, it felt like there was no oxygen left. She was starting to panic. Was the voice modulator broken? If she spoke, would he hear her true voice? Was the filter gone, too? Would she asphyxiate?

  She couldn’t speak, then. She couldn’t call anyone, even if she’d had the comlinks Kriki was working on. The locals weren’t going to step in—if they wouldn’t stand up for two old women who’d lived out their entire lives in BSO, they wouldn’t help the very person whose presence had drawn the enemy in the first place.

  That meant Vi could either run or fight. With her vision limited, both options were risky. She’d have to play it by ear.

  Vi wobbled and dropped to her hands and knees among the rolling baskets and bruised fruit. One stormtrooper had his blaster trained on her; the other held his weapon up to land the next strike. She couldn’t see his face, but she would’ve bet that he was smiling, that he enjoyed the fact that his job let him punish rebellious trash in the street. She knelt and then began to stand, swiftly whipping out her own blaster and using it to strike the weapon pointed at her head out of the trooper’s hands to skitter across the street. Before the other stormtrooper could react, she shot him in the black bodysuit revealed in the rift between the armor over his thigh and his torso.

  But she wasn’t fast enough, or maybe she was just a little bit concussed, as the other stormtrooper snatched his friend’s blaster and smacked her mask so hard that it halfway flew off. He must’ve had orders not to shoot anyone who might be the wanted spy. Now she couldn’t see at all. Her next shots went wide, ricocheting off the buildings and making the crowd gasp and rustle as it took cover. She heard the stormtrooper she’d shot fall to the ground, making animal groans and whimpers, but the one she hadn’t managed to shoot knocked her blaster out of her hands and laid her out on her back with a forceful kick from one big boot.

  “Let’s see who’s hiding under here,” he said in that clipped accent.

  The boot pressed into her solar plexus, making it impossible to breathe, and he reached down, grabbed her mask, and tossed it away.

  The impersonal white-and-black helmet looked down on her, framed by the blinding suns.

  “Well, if it isn’t Vi Moradi,” he said.

  AS VI MARCHED THROUGH THE FOREST in binders, blindfolded, all she could think was, At least that’s one more stormtrooper dead. In her years as a spy, she’d learned that in the moments when it felt like she couldn’t go on, when she was moving step by step toward the bad thing and not yet away from it, i
t helped to think positively.

  Sure, she could think about how she’d been captured by the First Order.

  She could think about how none of her friends or fellow Resistance members knew that she’d been taken. How Leia didn’t even know the FO had traced her to Batuu.

  She could think about how there was no way to track her, and how she couldn’t even find her way back to the Outpost if she managed to escape since the buckethead who had captured her had cleverly blindfolded her.

  Or she could think about how she’d killed five troopers so far and if things went her way, she’d kill this one, too. And the rest of them.

  And Kath.

  And she’d find a way to do so without calling down the First Order’s wrath on all of Batuu.

  Her chance to do some damage would come soon, as that was surely where she was being taken: directly to their camp. She would then have invaluable information…and no way to relay it to the Resistance. If she died out here, whatever she learned died with her, leaving Archex and her recruits all alone in hostile territory with no way to get in touch with Leia. At least Vi knew she wouldn’t give up the location of her own headquarters or the Resistance fleet. She would die first. But her people—they would have no chance without her. Archex hadn’t even begun to teach them how to handle a blaster yet. If Kath and his soldiers found the ruins, every single person there would die.

  Vi knew they were getting close when she heard noises other than gentle birdsong and their own footsteps on the soft forest floor. Generators, armor clacking, machinery whirring. The First Order had their own mobile command center out here, and she couldn’t wait to see it. The trooper’s arm landed roughly across her chest, and she stopped.

  “Well, well, well. What have we here?” a deep and familiar man’s voice said.

  “A bunch of brainwashed orphan kids in silly armor and their sadistic, sycophantic leader, who’s probably wearing starched breeches as black as his heart,” Vi answered.

  A pleased chuckle. “Oh, this is going to be fun. Bring her into the transport. It’s not outfitted with an interrogation chair, but I’m sure I can whip something up.”

  A blaster prodded her in the back, and Vi stumbled forward.

  “Hello again, Wulfguts.”

  “Ugh. So childish. My name is Lieutenant Wulfgar Kath, and you may address me as Lieutenant. Or sir. I’ve been very anxious to find you after our meeting in that cave.”

  “I had hoped you would die there,” Vi observed as she stumbled forward, unable to see, occasionally prodded or directed with the blaster’s muzzle as Kath walked beside her, smelling of expensive cologne dominated by scents of leather and rotok wood.

  “I’m so sorry to disappoint,” he said lightly. “You’ve given us quite the chase through this rancid backwater pit. But I knew we’d eventually flush you out.” She could imagine his sneer, just then, and she longed to wipe it off his face. “Let’s hope we can get what we need today, and then we can raze this planet to the ground, like its dishonest inhabitants deserve. All this fresh air. I swear I’ve had indigestion for days.”

  Vi sighed loudly. “Great story. Can we get on with the torturing so I can go home?”

  Kath’s laugh was a gruff bark, and Vi’s stomach went sour. She’d met enough bad guys by now to know what she was dealing with. Some villains, like Oga, were no-nonsense, and if you just did as they asked and stayed out of their way, they could be benevolent, or at least ignore you. They technically weren’t even villains unless you got on their bad side. Some villains, like Archex had been as Captain Cardinal, were conflicted, and Vi could carefully twist the key inside them until something clicked open. Some villains were just straight-up evil—like anyone with the last name Hux.

  But Kath—he seemed like the kind of villain who rode that fine line between reality and madness and hid it carefully under crisp pleats and hair product. She could almost picture him, neat as a pin, perfect posture, quite proper, all those obsessively built muscles contained in a starched black suit—until the beast underneath peeked out from a crack in amusement. Or rage. She would have to be very careful. If she pushed him too hard, he wouldn’t stop hitting her until she was pulp—even if he had direct orders to keep her alive.

  This kind of villain was a monster, tightly bound and barely leashed, even if he thought himself a gentleman.

  “Ah, here we are. Sit her down, please.”

  The stormtrooper’s gloved hands caught her shoulders, spun her around, and forced her down to sitting. From the feel of the cold metal, it was the usual sort of jump seat found on just about every transport in the galaxy. At least it wasn’t another interrogation chair. When the harness seat belt clicked down over her head and was pulled too tight against her chest, she had to remember her training and focus on her breathing to avoid panicking. No matter how hard they pressed, she told herself, there was always enough space for one more breath.

  Finally he whipped off her blindfold.

  Kath was exactly as she remembered him—almost. In the cave, he’d been a shadow, a rough red shape in her night-vision goggles. In person, he was substantial—and scary. She’d never seen a First Order officer as big as him, and she’d assumed they had nutritional protocols and enforced calisthenics and brainwashing in place to make sure these guys could always fit in their armor or regulation black uniform. But Kath was built like a bear, tall, with a broad chest and muscular arms. His auburn beard was just as perfectly trimmed as she’d imagined, though, his hair neatly combed and gelled into submission, and his sideburns sharp.

  A man this fastidious was bound to be unhinged, and it shone out of his eyes like black oil leaking from a brand-new landspeeder.

  “I bet the First Order tailors hate you,” Vi deadpanned.

  His mouth twisted up in disgust. “What, do you think they’re humans with feelings? That’s why we have machines. They don’t complain.” He tapped a finger to his chin as if thinking and turned his back to her.

  She took that moment to glance around the transport. It was a new sort of mobile habitat, bigger than anything she’d seen before and kitted out to carry several dozen troops, along with racks for their blasters, rifles, and axes. A lift suggested it had multiple levels, which meant it was probably fully stocked for extended occupation. The cockpit was sectioned off so she couldn’t see it, but she could see the door, and she knew she could get it open—

  The world exploded as Kath’s fist rammed into her cheek, a solid left hook.

  Vi’s head bounced sideways, her vision going blurry. Two head shots in one day, less than a week after a bad concussion. That was not…not good.

  “I think I like the interrogation chair better,” she said with a slight slur. “But they didn’t give you one of those, huh? Just this flying junk heap. You must be in trouble. Or not very important.”

  Kath’s eyebrows drew down in anger right before he punched her again.

  Vi went unconscious before she could consider how to insult him next.

  * * *

  —

  Water splashed over her head, and Vi spluttered awake. Kath stood before her looking serious and inquisitive. For a big man, he’d shown flawless self-control. Neither hit had broken a bone or busted her skin, and she didn’t think she’d been out for very long. He could keep doing this all day, and to some extent she could keep taking it. Even through the ringing in her ears, Vi was still taking note of every detail. He had a weak spot around his ego—he must’ve been in serious trouble with his higher-ups.

  This mission—collecting a Resistance spy—was somehow personal.

  As much as she wanted to keep metaphorically poking that rotten tooth, she had to space out these hits or she was going to go unconscious again, which meant it was in her best interest to avoid making him too mad just yet. She let her head hang, breathing heavily. It was an act, but not by much. He was welcome to
take the lead, if he wished.

  “Ready to let me speak?” he asked, right on cue.

  She bobbed her head the minimum amount.

  “Good. Now. Here is what I need to know, and you should be aware that I’m willing to push you to the very brink of human suffering to get this information. I require the locations of three things: your Resistance headquarters here on Batuu, Leia Organa with the remaining Resistance fleet, and the girl Rey. Would you care to make this an easy afternoon for us both and tell me any of the above so we can forgo spending any more time together than we must?”

  Vi raised her head and looked up at him, blinking innocently. “Who’s Rey?”

  Kath sighed heavily and his fingers twitched like he wanted to hit her again but knew that his big, meaty fists were simply too damaging. Instead, he turned to a crisp black satchel sitting on another seat and withdrew a slender leather cylinder from its depths. He showed it to her and unrolled it over his hand, revealing a variety of unpleasant metal instruments that reminded Vi of things she’d found in Savi’s junkyard, but cleaner.

  Vi’s face remained a mask, but inside she was screaming. At least in Cardinal’s interrogation chair, she had felt a sliver of hope, had sensed that even in the dark, hidden belly of a Star Destroyer, she might find a way out. Back then, strapped down, she’d known he would have to leave her to return to his duties, or he’d make a mistake, or, as eventually happened, she’d manage to turn him and convince him to let her go.

  But with Kath, she had no such hope. She could see no way out. This man could not be turned; he was a monster glad to live among other monsters. His commitment to exactitude would leave no room for error that would allow her to escape, and even if he left for a time, there were many more troopers between her and freedom—she still didn’t know how many or how they might be dispersed. There were just so many variables.