Galaxy's Edge

by Delilah S. Dawson

  “I don’t want to worry anyone, but am I hallucinating a red buckethead?” Zade said.

  Archex snorted. “I’ve been hallucinating a drunken idiot for days now.”

  “Ah. Archex. So it’s you. Welcome to the fray.”

  As Kath, Rusko, and the last, limping trooper made their final break for the transport, Archex stepped out from behind Vi and into the open hatch. Kath skidded to a halt, his jaw dropping in the most gratifying manner.

  “Hello, Wulfgar,” Archex said with a sneer.

  “Captain Cardinal,” Kath answered stiffly. “Well, no. Not Captain. They withdrew you from the logs. Completely erased your existence. You’re not anything, anymore. You’re nothing.”

  “Clearly.” Archex stepped down from the transport. With all the stims in his system, he didn’t even feel his leg. “Say, didn’t you have an entire squad of troopers when you landed? And now you’re hiding behind a local? And here I thought organization was your greatest pride.”

  Kath flapped a hand at his last soldier and shoved Rusko aside so he could stand directly before his old…well, friend wasn’t the right word. No one in the First Order had true friends. Brothers-in-arms, perhaps, although they’d chosen different paths. Archex had believed in the First Order with all his heart and had longed to pour everything he had into serving it and helping the galaxy, whereas Kath wanted power and authority, and he’d given everything he had to climbing the ladder. There were rumors he’d sabotaged other officers on his way up, but perhaps that was a feature, not a bug. The First Order was good at promoting people up or down to better utilize their strengths.

  “Didn’t you have integrity when I saw you last, Cardinal? And here I thought…well, if you’re working with the Resistance, clearly you have no pride,” Kath shot back. His face was pink, his once perfect hair straggling down, his eyes bloodshot.

  Inside his helmet, Archex smiled. Making Kath angry gave him more pleasure than anything he’d felt in months. The stims helped, too. He could barely feel any of his wounds. His blood fizzed, his lungs were full of delicious air. And being in the armor? It was like going home.

  Even if no one else could see it, he was truly happy.

  And then he punched Lieutenant Wulfgar Kath in the teeth.

  VI WATCHED IN HORROR AS SHE realized what Archex was doing, which was the exact same thing she’d just done.

  He was sacrificing himself to give them the time they so desperately needed.

  “Stay here,” she murmured to Zade, her ears ringing after all the blasterfire. “Don’t shoot, no matter what.”

  He looked at her, panic in his eyes. And surprise.

  “No matter what? Even if they take turns kicking him in the tum? Even if they try to kill him?”

  “He’s buying us time. Kriki needs every second he can provide. Don’t dishonor his sacrifice by playing tough guy. Let him do his job.”

  “Didn’t know he had a job,” Zade murmured with a shrug. “But yes, sir.”

  “He chose this job for himself,” she said softly.

  Vi hurried up to the cockpit, where Kriki was typing so fast it was a blur.

  “How’re we doing in here?” Vi asked, taking care to keep her voice gentle and calm.

  “Well, at first I was freaking out about the blasterfire, but now I’m freaking out about the lack of blasterfire. I was afraid they’d killed you.”

  “Pfft. Naw. They did shoot Zade, though, which sounds like fun.”

  “Shoot him? No way. He’d whine too much. Maybe rough him up a little. Stain his scarf or something.”

  Vi laughed, even though it hurt. Kriki was funny under pressure, probably because she was working too hard to self-censor.

  “We got an ETA?”

  “Just a few more minutes. So close. Programming in the final message now.” Kriki looked up, her jaw dropped. “Wait. If you’re up here, what’s going on out there? Are they all dead? If they’re dead, who’ll take the ship up? This one doesn’t have the kind of autopilot that can do that—”

  Vi shook her head. “Archex is stalling them.”

  Kriki’s horror deepened, her nostrils fluttering with worry. “Archex? But he’s…I mean, isn’t he one of them?”

  “Not anymore. Which only makes them more anxious to hurt him.”

  “Then you have to go help him!”

  Vi drew a deep breath. Kriki didn’t know how badly she wanted to do just that.

  “We each have a job to do. Archex is doing his job to give you the time to do yours. So do him proud. Make it count.”

  Kriki nodded repeatedly and turned back to her work, fingers flying. “Yes. Yes, I can do this. I can do this quickly and well.” Plucking at the gray bead on her necklace, she kissed it and tucked it back where it lived, over her heart. “Now go away. You make me nervous.”

  Vi nodded and drifted back toward the hatch.

  When she looked outside, Archex was on his back on the ground, helpless.

  THE GOOD THING ABOUT THE FIRST Order’s stims was that they provided everything that an individual might lack at the moment of greatest stress: strength, confidence, energy, determination. The bad thing about them was that they masked pain, which meant that Archex didn’t know his leg had given out until he was already falling.

  Up until then, he’d given as good as he’d gotten, trading blows with Kath and the giant shark guy, taking whatever chance he found to hit or kick his enemies. At least it was personal enough that they weren’t using blasters. And at least Zade hadn’t gotten involved and was sitting in the transport hatch like Vi had ordered him to. The man’s face showed none of his earlier derision and distrust. He looked absolutely terrified on Archex’s behalf, which was gratifying, if a little too late.

  “That all you’ve got?” Kath said, looming over him.

  Archex gritted his teeth and rammed his foot into Kath’s knee, hearing a satisfying sort of pop. Kath growled, bloodless lips pinned against a scream as he stumbled, and Rusko stepped up to help him.

  “Kill him,” Kath said to his last trooper. “And you—help me onto the ship. I’m tired of these games.”

  Rusko helped him hobble toward the ship while the last trooper loomed over Archex, the faceless bucket staring down. Archex realized for the first time what it felt like to face the flat white mask, to die in such an impersonal way, not knowing who was on the other side. It had been a little like that with Phasma, except he’d known exactly who was behind the mask. He’d convinced her to take off her helmet, but that gambit wouldn’t work with this grunt.

  “What if you didn’t kill him, though?”

  Everyone looked up when Vi spoke. She stood in the hatch of the transport, holding her blaster, pointing it directly at Kath.

  “Starling,” Kath snarled. “And here I thought he was just stalling so you could run away. That’s why I let you go: The First Order has an even higher price on his head than on yours. Think about it. You could just walk away right now.”

  “Maybe,” she allowed.

  But Archex, of course, knew she would never walk away when one of her charges was in danger. That simply wasn’t who Vi Moradi was. And they both knew that Kath would never truly let her go.

  Archex could barely breathe now, and the pain was beginning to creep up his leg. When he looked up, he saw that the trooper had a blaster pointed at him but was focusing on Vi. Pain filled him like a cup, and he felt small and broken, like a troublesome child everyone was ignoring. He needed to do something, but he didn’t know what. If Vi wasn’t shooting Kath, that meant she was still stalling for Kriki, and until someone else started up the fight, Archex was going to stay here, on the ground, trying not to move. The armor was great at repelling blasterfire, but every kick and punch had crunched betaplast against tissue and bone, and he was pretty sure he had several broken ribs and at least a minor concussion. As the
stims wore off, he felt it, more and more, every wound old and new.

  And yet this strange standoff kept going as if in slow motion, and Archex could only watch from the ground, helpless. He had no way to know if Kriki had finished her work, if his ruse had been successful. And with his face covered, he couldn’t communicate anything to Vi without speaking.

  “What do you want, Starling?” Kath said tiredly. “You’re not shooting at us, so there must be something.”

  Vi shrugged like it was just a normal afternoon in the market. “You’re right, Kath. I’m tired. I just want to be left alone. I came all the way out here, to the middle of nowhere, and you tyrannical megalomaniacs still came after me. Just say I died and let me go about my business. You’ve got your bounty, right there. So I accept your offer. Take your Cardinal and go.”

  “Curious, that you would set so low a value on someone who chose the Resistance.”

  “Yeah, well, we got what we needed from him, didn’t we? His intel, I’m sure, is already out of date. And he’s pretty useless, as is. Phasma messed him up good.”

  Archex knew she didn’t mean it, knew she was buying yet more time. She had to be. And yet…it hurt. That she could speak of him so callously. Even though he knew it wasn’t true. It was exactly what the First Order said about the Resistance, that they were worthless scum, the sort of space rats who would turn on each other when times got rough, all their nobility forgotten in the face of a true threat.

  “Get off my ship, then,” Kath said. “As I’m sure you know by now, there’s another hatch. We’ll take him back to the First Order immediately and forget you ever existed. Is it a deal?”

  Vi looked back inside the transport and smiled. “It’s a deal.”

  And then she shot Kath’s left ear off.

  ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE.

  Still on the ground, Archex was completely forgotten as Kath, Rusko, and the last trooper whipped out their blasters and started firing—but carefully. It was their ship, after all, and even though it could take a lot of heat, they likely didn’t want to find out exactly how much. Archex tried to stand but couldn’t; between his bad leg and the new wounds they’d inflicted, he could only crawl away, backward, using his one good leg. It hurt more than anything he’d felt in his entire life. When Phasma first stabbed him, these wounds had been numb with poison, and dying had seemed quite pleasant. But they’d never truly healed, and now they sang along with every other hit, every other trauma, a lifetime of damage, a cacophony of abuse that he couldn’t escape.

  Living, it turned out, was what really hurt.

  Archex blinked.

  Things were still happening overhead, beyond him. Kath’s ear was gone. Vi disappeared into the ship, and Kath, gushing blood down the shoulder of his pressed black uniform, gave chase.

  “Bring him!” he shouted to the last trooper as he pointed back at Archex. “Let’s get out of here with something valuable before things get worse.”

  Archex scrambled back, pain be damned, scuttling like a crab away from the stormtrooper reaching for him even as blood leaked from the black body glove at his waist. The white helmet no longer felt like camaraderie and safety and order; the trooper was a faceless monster, attacking as if in a dream. Archex was panting now, his breath booming inside the helmet, his body broken out in sweat and weighed down by the heavy armor.

  Blasterfire erupted from the forest opposite the ship. The trooper lunged and grabbed Archex under the armpits and began dragging him toward the waiting transport. Archex couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, and he yanked off his red-painted helmet and threw it away. Finally free, he fought his captor, wrenching himself away and trying to kick out—but his leg was dead, as if the poison had finally wormed its way into every cell. One-legged, his bad lung failing him completely, his flailing wasn’t nearly enough to disrupt the soldier who towed him directly toward the very place he was trying to protect. The ship was only a few meters away now.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  Kriki needed more time.

  He had to fight.

  With all his might, he ripped his arms away, got his leg under himself, and pulled to standing. There, in the forest, staring right at him, her blaster raised, was Vi Moradi.

  Time seemed to stop as he stared at his once-enemy, noting the bruising and contusions on her face, the rip in her gray Batuuan tunic, the blaster graze on her pants rimmed with blood. Her face was set ferociously as she tried to shoot the trooper without hitting Archex, a nearly impossible task from her angle.

  Behind Archex, the transport powered up. “Come on!” Kath screamed. “Bring him!”

  With that strange clarity he only experienced in battle, Archex finally understood.

  Vi hadn’t meant what she said. She’d lied to Kath to buy more time—more time for Kriki, and more time for her to sneak around and save Archex. If Vi was here, now, that meant that Kriki had finished her work.

  They’d succeeded.

  But Archex knew Kath, and he knew that Kath wouldn’t leave the planet without him or Vi.

  Until he had one of them in his grasp, Kath was doomed in the First Order. He might move the transport to a new clearing, but he would stay here, on Batuu, hunting for the Resistance base and recruits and abusing the townspeople and winning cowards over to their side until he had his prey in hand.

  Their only hope was to give Kath what he wanted.

  When the trooper again grabbed him and dug his blaster into Archex’s armor, right under the armpit, Archex stopped fighting.

  He looked at Vi and mouthed words he hoped she could read from across the clearing.

  May the Force be with you.

  And then he turned away and let the trooper push him onto the ship.

  VI HAD BEEN IN BINDERS, IN an interrogation chair, in a tractor beam, but she had never felt so hopeless as she did watching Archex turn around and limp toward the First Order transport. She took aim and shot at the trooper forcefully marching her friend toward his doom, but her blaster bolts just skidded off the betaplast armor. Seconds later, Archex was crawling onto the ship, and time seemed to slow as Vi sprinted toward it, teeth gritted, hoping for some way to save him.

  But the hatch door slid shut and the massive transport lifted off the ground and into the air, sending branches and leaves raining down as it sliced through the canopy above.

  “I should’ve killed you ten times!” she screamed at Kath, not that there was anyone there to hear it.

  A blaster shot at her from behind, and she spun and shot back, so many times that it made no sense, until the wounded stormtrooper who’d risen for one last fight went down with a lucky shot in the groin.

  “Vi?”

  She looked up from the ground, where she had inexplicably curled up in a ball. Kriki and Zade stood over her.

  “Are you okay?” Kriki asked. “Where’s Archex?”

  Feeling like she’d aged a century, Vi stood, slapping away Zade’s hand when he held it out to help her.

  “He’s gone,” she said, her voice rasping. “They took him. But he…he knew it. He let them. He sacrificed himself. He knew that Kath would never leave without one of us, without his quarry. That Kath couldn’t go back empty-handed. And if Kath never left, then his ship…”

  “Wouldn’t explode,” Zade finished. “That stupid glorious dumb brave idiot! I wish he was here so I could punch him in his dumb neck!”

  Vi realized he was crying, and when she touched her face, she found that she was, too. Kriki was softly snuffling, and Vi put an arm around her, pulling the Chadra-Fan close. A landspeeder zipped out of the forest, and there were Ylena and Dolin, who’d been roughly bandaged up, with gauze over his head.

  “Did it work?” Dolin asked. “Did you have enough time?”

  “I think so,” Kriki wailed. “If I didn’t, then he…then…if it was all for nothing�
��”

  “Shhh,” Vi murmured, pulling her closer. “Don’t even let the thought of failure enter your mind.”

  “Have faith,” Ylena said, standing to put her arm around Vi’s other side. “The Force works in mysterious ways.”

  Dolin wrapped his arm around Ylena’s other side, and Zade fell to his knees. They all looked up, watching the transport rapidly shrinking until it had almost disappeared against the deep blue evening sky.

  “How will we know?” Dolin asked again. “If it worked?”

  “We should just barely be able to see it,” Kriki said. “Keep watching…keep watching…”

  The ship was a dot, and then a speck.

  Kriki’s datapad beeped, and she excitedly scrolled through it. “The message is sent!” she announced. “Resistance spy Vi Moradi deceased during interrogation. No sign of Resistance base. Batuu strategically useless. No natural resources or manufacturing. Miserable place. Returning to fleet.” She paused. “That’s what it said.”

  They kept watching, but the speck…didn’t explode.

  “SIR, A MESSAGE WAS JUST RELAYED to the Penumbra,” CE-6675 said.

  Kath looked up from the poetry he was creating of Cardinal’s face with his fists. “Well?” he asked peevishly. “What did it say? Was it one of our older messages, catching up?”

  The trooper at the helm paused, which wasn’t a good sign. “I can’t tell. It’s scrambled. That’s, uh, not my area of expertise. The fleet techs will know more, when we return.”

  Sighing heavily, Kath stepped back and raised an eyebrow at Cardinal.

  This man—whatever was left of him under the bloody pulp of his features—was Kath’s key to getting back into Hux’s good graces. The betrayer, Captain Cardinal, now with bonus Resistance secrets. The thought of delivering Cardinal to the Finalizer still wearing this poorly painted armor, this pathetic facsimile of the power he’d once known…well, it was just too delicious.

  Cardinal was sitting in the same jump seat that had once held Vi Moradi, the harness still stained with her blood—under a fresh wash of his own. Kath reached out, grabbed a handful of Cardinal’s sweat-soaked, too-long, ink-black hair, and wrenched up his head.