“I never knew my mother,” Kath said, cold and clipped. “But I think we’re done here. You can barely stand. You’re broken, Vi Moradi. Maybe after I get what I need from you, I’ll send your fingers to General Organa in a pretty box. Tell her I finally clipped the wings of her Starling.”
On the forest floor of Batuu, Vi stared up at him, feeling every heartbeat pulse against her hurt places. The troopers and enemy Batuuans moved in, looming over her, the circle tightening. Still no arrows, still no blasterfire. Dolin must’ve been captured, or else chickened out. Perhaps whatever his grandmother had told him had finally sunk in and he’d slunk back home to pretend that life outside his village didn’t exist. In the open hatch of the transport, Zade was looking like he might spin and fight the trooper guarding him, which would only earn him a blaster bolt in the back. She rolled to her belly to get up again.
Kath squatted and pulled Vi’s head up by the hair, forcing her to look at his face. Vi tongued her poison tooth, considering her next move. If she was dead, maybe it would all be over. They would leave. There would be nothing on the planet they wanted.
She was going to die anyway.
She might as well die on her own terms.
She was just about to bite down when she heard an engine rev.
“WHAT THE BLAST IS THAT?” KATH growled, releasing Vi’s hair and standing.
Vi let her head fall down, hiding her smile.
She knew that sound.
It was a sound only a Batuu local would know: the rough, growling engine of a crankbike.
Dolin was coming!
As the sound got closer and louder, she realized it wasn’t just one crankbike—it couldn’t be. It had to be many crankbikes, a whole army of them, some revving high and some spluttering and some deep and guttural, each machine singing its own unique song.
“In formation,” Kath told his troopers. “Bind her and toss her in the transport. We can’t lose her again. And bring my hat and jacket.”
Vi twisted to watch what was happening as a trooper wrenched her arms behind her back again and slapped on the familiar binders. Despite her newfound hope, Vi’s body still felt like a bag of sloshing bones as the trooper dragged her up to standing. She stumbled toward the mobile habitat as the trooper hurriedly pushed and prodded her, not wanting to miss the real action. With a rough shove, he pushed her into the transport, where she landed on the floor by Zade as the trooper retrieved Kath’s belongings and jogged toward his leader outside.
“What’s a murderous spy like you doing in a bucket hotel like this?” Zade muttered.
She struggled to sitting and looked around. “I’m realizing they left us here without a guard,” she murmured. “Did Kriki make it on board?”
“I nobly sacrificed myself to draw their last trooper out of the cockpit,” he confirmed. “But I never imagined acting heroic would be quite so uncomfortable. Not really feeling much in the old arms, you know?”
Vi pressed herself against the wall until she could slide up it and stand.
“You get used to it,” she said. “Now stand up and shush while I get out of these binders.”
“You? Can get magnetic binders off? With your hands behind your back? When you can’t, like, see the binders?” His jaw dropped, and Vi gave herself exactly two seconds to enjoy it.
“Spy school was fun. Now come on.”
As he slithered upright, Vi peeked out the main hatch. The troopers were in formation while Kath pulled on his jacket and strapped his own blaster back on. The roar of the crankbikes had drowned out every other noise in the world, and the very ground was shaking.
Kath was screaming something, but Vi couldn’t hear it, and then the cavalry arrived, barreling in from every direction. Arrows and blaster bolts filled the air. Although Vi knew she had to get her binders off, she couldn’t tear herself away from the sight. At least two dozen riders roared and screamed, young men and women shooting blasters and skidding their bikes around the clearing, each vehicle a crude but somehow elegant mix of old and new, tech and raw metal, Batuu and everything else.
“The big dolt came through,” Zade said by her side. “Look at them! They do breed their farm kids rather brawny around here. Is it the blue milk, d’you think? Or the ronto ribs? If we live through this, I swear I’m going to eat—”
“Are you seriously talking about food right now?”
“What can I say? Being captured makes me hungry.”
As Vi worked the slender pin from what appeared to be a simple cuff bracelet and wiggled it into just the right place on her binders, she found Dolin in the crowd outside, wearing an ancient rebel helmet as he tore back and forth across the clearing on his crankbike, hatchet swinging. Waba was not in the sidecar this time, which seemed true to his character. Two of the other crankbikes were upside down, gigantic tires spinning, their riders thrown and unmoving. One of the troopers was down, too, but it was clear the simple Batuuan weapons were no match for First Order armor and tech. Most of the arrows clattered uselessly to the grass, and the Batuuans who carried junky old blasters weren’t very good with them. At least there were many more crankbikes than there were soldiers—for now.
Click.
Her binders fell off, and she went to work on Zade’s, which likewise clicked off within moments. She replaced the pin in her bracelet and ran to the closed cockpit door.
“Kriki?” she called.
“Eek! Yes?” came the response.
“How’s it coming along?”
“More slowly than I’d like. I need more time.”
“What if we didn’t have much of that?”
Kriki sighed. “Every time you make me panic, my chance of making a vital mistake goes up.”
“Acknowledged. Keep up the good work. I believe in you.”
“I said don’t make me panic!”
Vi smiled to herself. The Chadra-Fan had more guts than she knew. And now Vi’s job was to buy yet more time and keep the troopers off this ship.
As she pondered their next move, Zade appeared carrying two stormtrooper blasters. “Mummy, look what I found. Can I keep them?”
Vi took one. “You can keep that one.”
“I’m naming it Waba the Second.”
They ran to the hatch and peeked out, and Vi was confused by what she saw. There were only three troopers still up and fighting as Kath aimed his blaster from behind the soldiers’ armor. Rusko was still up, a blaster in each meaty hand, and Gol was hiding behind him, popping off shots when it seemed safe. Several of the crankbikes were crashed or stationary, their riders dead or injured, but most of the others had disappeared. Even Dolin was gone.
As Vi watched in horror, the last of the crankbikes leapt and skidded back into the forest.
Kath gave the order to turn around…and return to the transport.
DOLIN RELUCTANTLY TURNED HIS BIKE AROUND and followed his friends away from the clearing—well, what was left of his friends. He couldn’t believe they’d come at all—not after how they’d acted when he’d given his speech, again and again, back at the settlement.
“Not our business,” Sylvai had said as he watched his gruffins grazing.
“The First Order isn’t real,” Houz had grumbled from under his bike.
“I’m not about to die for some made-up Resistance.” This from Madeli, who didn’t even put down her scythe and stop cutting hay to listen.
And yet, this afternoon, on his way to do his part, he’d heard their bikes grumbling from far off and found twenty of his people armed and ready to fight. As it turned out, two stormtroopers had found their settlement while on patrol and killed his second cousin Tophin for practically nothing, and now they finally believed, even if their parents and grandparents had cried and threatened and wailed about entering the conflict.
And on their way to the clearing, he’d found his se
cond surprise: Ylena in Savi’s speeder, the backseat full of blasters.
Most of the settlement folk had never held a blaster at all. Having them in hand—it was like technologically jump-starting their community through time, giving them an advantage they’d never had before. He’d given them a quick lesson in blaster safety and management, the same speech Archex had given him, and knew that their aim would run true, trained as they were with bows and arrows.
“Please tell me you’re going to go far away now,” he’d said to Ylena as they remounted their bikes, blasters strapped to backs and thighs.
Her gentle smile had nearly torn him to bits.
“I am,” she’d said. “I’ve done my part. This is all Savi can do, but he sends his best wishes. The Force is with you all today.” She’d stepped closer, the blowback from his crankbike making her vest billow. “But promise me you’ll take care.”
Dolin had felt as if the next hour would determine the entire course of his life. He was filled with purpose, with righteousness, with confidence and strength. He could die today; he knew that much.
So he’d wrapped one hand around Ylena’s back and gently cupped her jaw with the other, pulling her close and kissing her, putting all his feelings into it, making it a promise.
“I’ll take care,” he’d assured her.
She nodded and stepped back, tears in her eyes, and he led his friends and cousins onward, toward the coordinates he’d been given.
And then they fought, and it wasn’t at all the crushing wave of triumph he’d imagined, with the crankbikes swooping in and the soldiers running away shrieking in terror. No, the troopers were ready for them, waiting in neat lines, weapons drawn, and there were more troopers than he’d anticipated, and their first volley of blaster bolts sent bodies flying and crankbikes spinning. Someone, he didn’t even know who, immediately turned tail and disappeared back into the forest. Although their aim was good, the settlement kids couldn’t manage to hit those narrow strips of black where their blasterfire would be most effective, not while driving their bikes. It was chaos, and his gut went cold as he began to consider that Grana was right.
This was a huge mistake.
And people were dying, people he’d known all his life. And he couldn’t help them, couldn’t stop to hold a hand and whisper warm words about being okay. He had to keep going. Keep driving, keep shooting. The forest floor was slick with blood and oil, and still the stormtroopers were a calm, identical line of monstrous death.
And then the rest of the crankbikes turned around.
And Dolin had to join them in their retreat and figure out some other way to do his part, because being the only target in that clearing wasn’t going to save anyone. He was filled with regret and shame and hurt. It was his fault people had died, and their deaths meant nothing. They hadn’t even killed all the troopers, hadn’t even managed to wound their officer.
Wait. Their officer? But Vi had shot him! Hadn’t she?
This entire attack had been meaningless. And to think that he had once thought he would just hide in a tree, taking the soldiers down one by one with his arrows.
To think: He’d thought himself a hero.
He was just another dumb farm kid who thought he could fight something far bigger, just a toddler chased through the garden by the Snarlok when he’d been told explicitly not to get caught. He revved his engine and turned toward home—his real home, where he would beg Grana for forgiveness and stop foolishly dreaming of adventure and just tend the gruffins like he’d been born to do.
But then the strangest thing happened. Someone stepped into his path.
It was a stormtrooper, but unlike any he’d seen before.
This armor wasn’t white.
It was red.
THE ONLY PROBLEM WITH KATH RUNNING toward the transport was that Vi couldn’t kill him. If she did, he couldn’t fly away and set their plan in motion. But if he made it onto the transport, Kriki might not finish. And it wasn’t like she could taunt him into hand-to-hand combat a second time. She could barely stand.
If only Vi could reliably hurt him without killing him and make the whole thing seem believable.
“Get ready,” Vi murmured to Zade. “They’re coming back. And we’re way outnumbered.”
“And we’re all out of farm boys,” Zade finished for her. “Leaving us as the only bulwark between our dear little Kriki and these monsters, and, more big picture, as the only hope for the Resistance mission on Batuu. And, oh, they will interrogate and kill us if we fail.”
“Look on the bright side. At least we get to hurt them a little first. Remember: We need them alive.”
“But not Rusko and Gol!”
“No, we can definitely kill them. Just not Kath.”
“But he can be grievously injured!”
“Exactly.”
They were on either side of the transport’s open hatch, doing their best to stay hidden while shooting, and Vi took aim at a trooper’s leg and pulled the trigger. It was satisfying, watching the blasterfire leave a burnt black streak on the white betaplast, but it didn’t slow him down. She didn’t dare hit Kath, though. As much as it pained her, the entire plan hinged on him being alive, and he was moving too fast, zigzagging around overturned crankbikes and bodies, weaving too much for a certain hit.
She focused on Rusko, but his skin must’ve been insanely thick, almost armored, as the blaster bolts just skidded off. She landed a shot on the inside of his arm, but he didn’t react at all. When Zade shot Gol, he stumbled and fell.
“That’s for Kriki,” Zade murmured, and Vi nodded her approval.
They took turns aiming for Rusko and the three remaining troopers, but none of their shots seemed to have any effect. They were still running, Kath behind them, getting closer and closer.
Vi’s heart sank. It was happening too fast. Kriki wasn’t done. They’d been so close, and she could feel her every failure weighing her down.
If only she’d managed to swerve the ponderous Resistance transport to avoid taking the hits that had caused them to crash here.
If only she hadn’t passed out in that crash and could’ve prevented Rusko and the rest of Oga’s thugs from stealing the cargo.
If only she’d managed to win more Batuuan hearts over to the Resistance.
If only she’d killed Kath when she’d had the chance.
Every minor miscalculation or case of bad luck had led her to this moment, when she was so close to keeping her people—and Black Spire Outpost itself—safe. Not only for future Resistance fighters, but also for the locals, whom she’d come to love.
Savi and Ylena and the Gatherers, with their friendliness and belief that everything served the Force.
Kriki and Zade and Dolin, who’d joined her even without pay or any promises of a better life, a safer life.
Mubo and Zabaka and Salju and Arta, who’d been kind and helpful, even when they could’ve been exploitive.
Jenda and Oh-li, who’d done nothing but live simply and refuse to give in to bullies.
She’d tried to save them, to save everyone. She’d put herself into the First Order’s clutches—Kath’s clutches—using her body and sanity to give Kriki time to do her crucial work.
And yet it hadn’t been enough. Sometimes, even your best wasn’t sufficient.
Vi and Zade kept shooting, and they took down two more troopers, but Kath and Rusko were still on their way back, hiding behind trees on their way to the transport—and shooting back in turn. Zade cried out and spun away, clutching his upper arm.
“Why does everyone here hate shimmersilk blazers?” he growled.
“You okay?” Vi shouted, not letting go of her trigger.
“I’ll live. Everyone digs scars,” he said as he returned to his post, still shooting even though his arm was smoking and dripping blood.
Vi was so focused on Kath and his guards that she startled when a gloved hand landed on her shoulder.
“Let me do this,” said a familiar but robotic voice in the transport.
Glancing away from Kath, she found a red stormtrooper standing behind her.
It was Cardinal.
ARCHEX KNEW THE RUSE WOULD NEVER hold up under close scrutiny.
As he’d sat in his hidden room in the ruins, carefully painting the stolen stormtrooper armor red with cheap enamel he’d bought on a secret trip to the outpost—and a little high on the fumes, if he was honest—he’d known he was there to buy time, not to fool anyone for very long.
He also knew Vi would be mad, at first, and he had an inborn, or possibly programmed, objection to enraging his superior officer. But even if he thought himself part of the Resistance now, he’d never taken any oath, never even had his tracking anklet removed. Technically, he was a free agent. And you couldn’t break the rules if there were no rules to break.
It was also more than a little satisfying, making Vi mad. He would’ve laughed, if laughing didn’t hurt so much these days.
As he kitted up, he felt a deep sense of rightness, even if this armor didn’t fit like his old armor. The betaplast wasn’t perfect. The red was slightly off—and a bit drippy. He didn’t have his cape.
But to anyone in the First Order with knowledge of Cardinal’s past, his glaring red form meant only one thing now: betrayal.
He was counting on it.
He touched Vi’s shoulder, and as her face went from rage to surprise to understanding to worry, he patted her gently.
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll stall them. You two get Kriki out through the back hatch.”
“But—”
“No buts.”
“But, Archex. They’ll kill you.”
He barked a laugh. “Probably.”
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