Galaxy's Edge

by Delilah S. Dawson

  Zade knelt by the ancient bartender and caressed her withered cheek.

  “How much do you love this place, your home? Your planet? Your children and neighbors and friends? What are you willing to do to preserve that? Because believe me: The beast is here, and there is no more hiding.”

  He hopped down to the ground, meeting eyes one by one. “Take it from a guy who had to drag his best friend’s corpse across the deck of a First Order ship, a guy who can’t see that white armor without his hands shaking and his bowels going loose: I’m willing to do anything. That’s what the Resistance is all about. And tomorrow when the spire’s shadow is long, we fight. Come with me tonight, or take up your arms tomorrow. Every dead buckethead is one less monster at the gate.”

  At first, he was met with only silence, but he knew better than to say anything. He simply stood, open and aching and steely with resolve. Then someone in back started clapping, and someone else pounded their fist on the bar, and then they all began stomping under their tables, and finally, the applause built to a roar.

  “To the Resistance!” Zade shouted, his fist in the air.

  “You there. Stop!”

  The room went eerily silent.

  Zade’s bowels did that pesky loosening thing the moment he heard the voice filtered through a stormtrooper’s helmet as he sprinted past. There the metaphorical beast stood, in the cantina doorway, armor immaculate and blaster drawn. And Zade was just excited enough and drunk enough after that stolen gulp of liquor to whip out his blaster and shoot the trooper in the belly, always aiming for those black lines where armor ended and vulnerability could be found, if luck was on one’s side. The trooper shot back, and blasterfire pinged off the bar. One particularly close shot hit one of the creature tanks, leaving a mark on the glass.

  Zade kept pulling the trigger, and he hit something first. The trooper doubled over, bright-red blood spattering the white armor, and Zade charged him. The crowd opened up, making an aisle, hungry as always for a scene, and Zade picked up a big glass on his way and crashed it into the trooper’s buckethead as he bolted past. He pinged off a few shots in close range and bolted out the door, zigging and zagging as he ran through the sleeping market. Behind him, he heard blasterfire and the crash of glass, but there was no telling what was happening, and he wasn’t going to stick around to find out.

  The excitement and exercise fizzed the liquor right out of his bloodstream, which meant he was sober enough to take a circuitous route home. It wouldn’t do to lead the troopers back to their headquarters. As the running fell off to a gentle jog and then a loose walk, Zade wished he’d made a holo of that performance. It was flawless, from the opening to the meat of the message to the applause to the fortuitous arrival of that shiny-armored monster like a big white exclamation point. He’d seen it in the eyes of the locals—they’d felt his passion, absorbed his message. Hadn’t they?

  Or maybe they were just a bunch of drunks in a nowhere backwater outpost on a nowhere backwater planet, desperate for anything more entertaining than betting on holo-chess. Maybe they would’ve applauded anything. Maybe they still believed that if they just kept their heads down and feigned ignorance, the beast at the door would give up and go away. He hoped that they would make the right decision, that he’d played some small part in helping the Resistance turn the tide. He hoped he’d done enough to satisfy the life debt he owed Vi. He was sick of heartache, sick of worry, sick of hating himself for being the only one still alive when Valoss was obviously the best of them.

  He realized, suddenly, that he was bleeding. The bastard had grazed his shoulder, making a right mess of his shimmersilk blazer.

  Not that it mattered.

  He fully planned on dying tomorrow.

  It would be easier, that way. For everyone.

  THE STOLEN COMLINK NESTLED SAFELY in Vi’s pocket. To think: Such a small thing could be the difference between success and failure. For her, and for what was left of the First Order forces on Batuu. For all that her time here had been riddled with bad luck, finding Kriki was a godsend. And Zade and Dolin and Ylena, too. Maybe what Ylena had told her held true: The Force was always watching.

  Carefully, slowly, groaning all the while, she clambered up the outside of the ruins, hoping for privacy and trying to get a little closer to the sky when she made her call. She could only use the comlink once, Kriki had informed her, as one ping off the First Order ship could be seen as a glitch or interference, while a second ping would be instantly suspect. And she wouldn’t have much time before they investigated the ongoing connection. This had to work, and quickly.

  It had to.

  Vi pushed the button, triggering Kriki’s scramble sequence as she opened the channel. “Magpie for General Organa.”

  She spoke a secret code, her voice rusty with feeling and hope. A long moment later, a bleary blue hologram appeared—Leia in night robes, hair down, seated at a rough desk, supporting her chin with a hand like she might fall over at any moment. “Magpie. Good to hear from you. You made it.”

  Leia sounded as beat up and exhausted as Vi felt, but Vi felt a rush of warmth, seeing her leader, knowing that wherever she was, whatever was happening, Leia was still up and working, burning like a candle, keeping the Resistance going as if through sheer force of will.

  “We made it, but with a lot of caveats. We don’t have much time—I’m using stolen First Order tech. We crashed and much of our cargo was stolen by a local gangster, but we’re in the process of earning it back. The First Order is here looking for me. An officer, Lieutenant Wulfgar Kath, with a transport full of troopers. We took down Kath and at least eight troopers, but we don’t know how many are left. We have a plan to get rid of them all and convince the FO that this planet is useless, but it’s dicey, and if you can send more people and supplies—”

  “We can’t spare more people and supplies. I’m sorry, Magpie, but you’re on your own. I have faith in you.”

  “I’m injured and we have almost nothing—” Vi’s voice broke.

  “Almost nothing is still something. You’re a leader, Vi. You’re brave and smart and strong, and you understand people. Whatever resources you have, I know you’ll find a way. Your kind of dedication and commitment is the reason the Resistance is still here. You have my complete trust.”

  The connection wavered, and Vi knew her window was closing.

  “That’s all the time we have. Hope I can live up to your trust, General, but the odds are not good.”

  Leia smiled a sad little smile. “Never tell me the odds. And even if you did, I’d still bet on you. Good luck, and may the Force be with you.”

  The moment the general’s holo disappeared, Vi felt cold and alone, as if she could sense every empty bit of space between her and the Resistance, the living breathing people on the other end of that transmission. Somehow, it always felt like it was safer where Leia was, even if it also seemed like she was forever in the thick of danger. In contrast, Batuu felt so desolate and far away. As if Leia were the warm heart of everything.

  In that moment, Vi had a realization: That was what she’d become to her own small contingent of rebels, why they jokingly called her Mother Hen. She was the warm, life-giving sun around which they orbited. She held them together, encouraged them, made them feel useful, gave them purpose. She took a deep breath and firmed up her chin. Rising from where she’d wedged herself into the stone, she felt every injury, the pulls in her shoulders and the bruises on her face and the tenderness over her ribs.

  It might seem impossible, but like Leia, she would keep going.

  For her people.

  For her general.

  For the Resistance.

  And for the galaxy.

  A rough, underfunded, understaffed refuge on a backwater planet, after all, might one day be what turned the tide against the First Order.

  It was up to her to ignite that
spark.

  AS MUCH AS HE DISLIKED THE outpost itself, Lieutenant Wulfgar Kath wanted to see for himself the progress his troops were making. They still hadn’t found Vi Moradi, and one of his soldiers had taken injuries when following a tip to Oga’s cantina last night, where a known malcontent had been openly fomenting rebellion among the local populace. That left him with only eleven functional stormtroopers, one of whom had a damaged trigger finger. He still had probe droids canvassing the forest, but thus far they’d only found a bashed-in transport with a pair of lahiroo nesting inside.

  By Kath’s reckoning, he had only a handful of days before General Hux decided to stop sending fruitless comms and start sending down a new officer with explicit instructions regarding relieving Kath of duty and possibly his head. Therefore, Kath needed to complete his mission, immediately. Never mind that everything about this trip to Batuu had gone jogan-shaped up until now. He would find Vi Moradi, and he would destroy the Resistance base, and then he’d return to the Penumbra and give the general the good news himself. Success was the only option he would entertain; that strategy had served him well up until now.

  He sat up perfectly straight in the speeder, and from the moment they zipped into the marketplace, he could tell a definite difference. Those citizens performing vital, useful duties continued to do so quietly, their eyes downcast respectfully, while the most distasteful of the population silently melted into the shadows or slipped through doors, trying to avoid detection. Old women didn’t sully the avenues with their fetid handicrafts, and small children didn’t chase one another around the trees and shout unnecessarily and get underfoot. The streets were cleaner and more orderly already—a good start.

  As he stepped out of the speeder and strolled through town, meeting every eye and gazing into every shop, some folk offered him food or drink, which he of course turned down. Even if poisoning on purpose or by accident hadn’t been a constant possibility in a place this primitive, it would be vulgar for a man of his office to eat in public, and his troopers of course were never to remove their helmets. And besides, all the local foods looked rampant with sugar, salt, and spices. He vastly preferred his bland First Order rations.

  As a last resort, his soldiers had found stims and boosters for him in town, and the bruise on his chest was fading. His headaches had mostly receded, but the walk in the hot, bright suns definitely cost him. Back on the Penumbra, such negligible injuries would’ve been healed easily in the medbay, but here, on the frontier edge of the galaxy, his physical frustrations stubbornly lingered. The fresh, pollen-filled air didn’t help.

  “Bright suns, sir!” a young man said, giving something like a salute from where he stood amid piles of refuse.

  Kath scowled as his soldiers stepped in front of him, blasters drawn.

  “Move along,” one said.

  “But I have, uh, intel,” the man said, fumbling for the right word. “On the Resistance.”

  Kath waved the two stormtroopers away and stepped forward, hoping the unkempt young man wouldn’t try to touch him. He clasped his hands behind his back.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “My name is Gol, sir. I run Gol’s Tech Bay, right here. If you should need any tech while you’re onplanet.” He laughed nervously and waved at his garbage.

  Kath sighed and made a go-on gesture.

  “I think my former employee may have joined the Resistance.”

  “What’s your point, Gol?”

  “Well, I mean, uh. I heard you paid for valuable intel?”

  Kath stepped forward, forcing Gol to step back. “We do pay for valuable intel, yes. I’m looking for Resistance spy Vi Moradi or any evidence of a Resistance base here on Batuu. Tattling on your ex-employee isn’t useful to me.”

  “But she could lead you right to them! The Resistance, I mean. And Vi.”

  Kath ground his teeth. This is why the First Order was needed: People were just so unimaginably stupid. And greedy. And weak. No wonder they couldn’t self-govern.

  “CD-5502, take down a description and search the outpost for this supposed Resistance sympathizer.” He looked to Gol, hoping his true disgust showed in his eyes. “If we should find your ex-employee and if she should lead us to either Vi Moradi or the Resistance base, you will be compensated.”

  Gol stepped forward. “How much are we talking?”

  Kath wanted to say, I’ll let you live, but instead he merely said, “Enough.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, VI SAT AT the mess hall table, hands wrapped around her mug, her caf gone cold. The corridors were heavy with that sort of grim, oppressive sense of expectation that always hung around right before a fight against an unbeatable enemy. Vi had slept poorly, and she wasn’t the only one. Kriki had been up all night studying an array of datapads and manuals. Vi knew that the Chadra-Fan stayed up all night every night, and yet Kriki looked exhausted and frail this morning, her eyes blinking overmuch and her nose flickering and her breathing fast.

  Archex had deep-purple smudges under his eyes and was rubbing his leg more than usual. Vi didn’t remark on it, but Kriki had told her in confidence that she’d followed him to a quiet chamber one night and watched him secretly practice fighting and stretching as if, with enough willpower and struggle, he might be returned to full health. No matter how often Pook told him that there was no chance of miraculous healing, thanks to Phasma’s poison blade, still Archex held out hope—which was one of the things Vi liked best about him. But just now, as she worried about the coming fight, she would’ve felt better if Archex had looked well rested and capable of carrying on with the Resistance refuge, should something tragic happen to the rest of them.

  Dolin had been gloomy ever since he’d returned from his futile visit home yesterday. The Batuuan farm boy had resisted any efforts at conversation about what he’d found there, but Vi had no choice but to assume they couldn’t count on support from the agrarian communities beyond the outpost. Her heart went out to him—his grandmother must’ve rejected him, or at least given him an earful. If Vi’s own brother, Baako, ever found out what she did with her time, she’d get a good chewing-out, too. It was hard to make a more traditional family understand that one’s passions lay elsewhere, that not all lives were meant to be lived in safety and comfort, and that some paths led off the farm. At least Dolin had Waba, the hog contentedly snuffling up the leftover breakfast on a plate at his master’s feet.

  And then there was Zade. He was usually the last one awake, and many mornings Vi didn’t even see him before she left for the scrapyard. But this morning, she wouldn’t be going to sort through piles of discarded junk, hunting for treasure, joking companionably with her friends. And Zade wasn’t sleeping in his bunk, contorted into strange, lanky shapes as he snored and mumbled in his sleep to someone named Valoss. No one had yet asked him about this mysterious figure, but judging by the way he often had tear tracks on his cheeks when he rolled in to breakfast, Vi had to assume that Valoss was dead, or at least permanently out of the picture.

  No, this morning, Zade sat among them—slumped, really. His usual wry and carefree humor was conspicuously absent. He hunched over his caf, his knee jiggling madly under the table. There was a blackened blaster mark on his shimmersilk jacket showing a white bandage underneath, but he was ignoring it, so everyone else did, too. He hadn’t spoken yet, which was unusual. He hadn’t even made fun of Archex, which told Vi that Zade, too, was worried about what was to come.

  Finally, she couldn’t stand the tense silence any longer.

  “Anybody have anything to report?” she asked, aiming for friendly confidence and landing somewhere around chipper anxiety.

  “As I have no real duties, I have nothing to report,” Archex said, his face tight. “But if you can give me some way to be useful—”

  “You are useful,” she told him for the millionth time. “Being here, running things, training people, cooking, carving
, knowing what’s going on. All of that is invaluable. And saving me from death by First Order torture was also a job well done. Full marks, now and forever.”

  He sighed and put his head in his hands. “But you’ve given me nothing to do to help you today, on this mission. It’s driving me mad!”

  “You know full well why you can’t be there. It’s beyond personal. And you know that you can’t…that you’re…”

  “Yes. I’m broken. Thank you for the reminder.”

  “You’re no more broken than I am!” she barked, at her wit’s end. “But we need you here.” In case we don’t make it, she wanted to say but didn’t. Someone has to keep trying to build a refuge here if I die. “Now does anyone have anything positive to report?”

  “I’ve been studying all night,” Kriki said. “I think…I think I can do it. I’ve downloaded every First Order code or manual I could find into my datapad, so it shouldn’t take longer than fifteen minutes. Been practicing the keystrokes. Trying to eliminate mistakes.”

  Vi smiled encouragingly. “Well done. I know you can do it.”

  “I can try,” Kriki said weakly. “But I need to double-check something.” She bolted up and scurried out of the room, hugging her datapad to her chest.

  For a moment, the only sounds were chewing, sipping, and the gentle snuffling of the truffleboar hunting for scraps under the table.

  “I got shot for the first time last night,” Zade said, breaking the silence. “I didn’t like it.”

  Vi tipped her head. “Welcome to the club. You get used to it.”

  “Just a minor graze,” Pook observed. “As long as he keeps it clean, he’s unlikely to die of sepsis.”

  Zade threw his spoon at the droid and muttered, “How cheerful!”

  The spoon splattered breakfast meal on Pook’s screen, and Pook moaned, “You are a study in the grotesque,” and everyone laughed. It was a pleasant moment of relieved tension…that didn’t last.