At least fifty people were headed directly for the wreck, and Siv and Torben ducked as more blasterfire flickered off the ship around them. Keldo’s people must’ve found Gosta’s blasters and the spare blasters left behind in the GAVs.
Siv had never been on the receiving end of blasterfire, and it was disorienting. The shiny metal deflected the bolts, but that just meant there were two ways to get shot, from the initial fire and from the ricochets bouncing back in random directions. Phasma struggled to singlehandedly pull Brendol up onto the ship, but then the line flapped in her gloved fingers, shot by a lucky blast. Brendol fell more than a meter and landed badly, crying out and flailing on his back as his troopers knelt in front of him, returning fire at the approaching attackers.
“We must get to the ground and defend Brendol,” Phasma said.
“He’s not one of us!” Torben shouted, neatly conveying what Siv had struggled so long to communicate.
“But he’s the only one capable of bringing the First Order to help. If we don’t save him and get him up here to make the call, we die here.”
Siv saw and hated the truth of it, and she knew her only chance was to follow Phasma’s orders. When Phasma jumped backward off the ship to rappel to the ground, Siv followed, and Torben was right behind them. They landed in a cloud of sand, Siv’s hands stinging from the rope’s friction, even through her gloves.
“Protect Brendol at all costs,” Phasma said, speaking to them and to the troopers, who were already doing so.
Phasma pried a rectangle of metal out of the sand and flipped the broken ship plating up as a shield to face the attackers, and Torben followed suit. Siv gladly joined him behind the makeshift barricade as the troopers did the same, sheltering Brendol between them behind their panel. With each blaster hit, the metal rang and shook, and Siv used both arms to push sand behind it and help Torben hold it up. Whenever she sensed a break in the shooting, Siv peeked around her edge and shot back. The sudden rush of triumph she felt each time one of her blaster bolts found home was immediately swallowed down by sadness as her brain registered who she’d just felled. These people had been there all her life, helping her toddle about the Nautilus and teaching her how to make strong boots and pushing her to be fearless as she learned to leap between rock spires. Now she was ending them with the single pull of a trigger, not even in a valiant and worthy fight. Most of them were armed with only axes and knives, the rough weapons of the Scyre, and still they kept running toward her, screaming as if they had a chance. One by one, she picked them off and watched them fall.
Despite their diminishing numbers and the ongoing blasterfire tearing them apart, Keldo and his people continued their attack. Someone had attached a piece of metal to the front of Keldo’s sled, and he was ducked down behind it, avoiding the fire just as Siv’s side was, which made Siv feel both frustrated and glad. She didn’t want to hurt him. But she didn’t want to die, either. The Scyre and Claws were coming fast, and Siv suspected that, soon, they’d be close enough to call one another by name and see the light leave the eyes of friends as they died far from their home territory, swarmed by beetles and crusted with gray sand.
The first warrior crashed into Phasma’s metal shield, a Claw swinging a big ax, aiming for Phasma’s body behind the metal plate. Phasma put a foot against the metal and kicked him over, dispatching him with an impersonal blaster bolt to the chest. If not for her imposing height and the flash of Arratu cloth between the joints of her armor, she could have easily been one of Brendol’s faceless, nameless troopers.
Siv didn’t have long to ponder her leader’s transformation. The wave of warriors struck, and she was too busy hacking with her scythe and shooting with her blaster to consider philosophy. The blaster wasn’t as strong or trustworthy as the ones Phasma and the troopers wielded, but Siv was grateful for the ability to fight at two ranges and to end a foe without having to pull a blade out of sticky flesh. She took down two Claws with the blaster, but it clicked and failed to shoot the third body in the line. Screaming her own war cry, taken over fully by the bloodlust of war, Siv rose from behind the shield and lashed out with one of her blades, a weapon that never failed. It bit into a woman’s neck, half cleaving it from her shoulder.
The woman’s surprised eyes met Siv’s, and Siv realized it was Ylva, the mother of Frey. She pulled out the blade, horrified, and looked around for the treasured little girl, but all she saw were yet more warriors out for her blood. Ylva sputtered on the ground and began screaming as the golden beetles surged up from the sand, swarming over her and feasting on the blood. There was nothing for it; such wounds would not heal. Siv’s only gift was mercy. She slashed Ylva across the throat and moved on to the next attacker, no time to use the detraxors or say the prayer for Ylva, no time even to clean the blood from her scythe.
She caught glimpses, between attacks, of her fellow fighters, her former family. Torben wrestled with his own brother, born much smaller and less inclined to brutality, and it was clear that Torben didn’t want to be the one responsible for his older brother’s death. They wrestled with bare hands, their weapons long ago fallen to the sand, and although Torben could’ve ended the fight in ten different ways, snapping his brother’s neck or spine or bashing his nose up into his brain, he just kept growling at the man, holding him in something that might’ve been a hug if they hadn’t been muttering ferociously at each other about loyalty, surrounded by the dead and dying.
Between assaults, Siv watched her side struggle, what few of them there were. One of the troopers was dead, and Brendol was industriously hunched behind the shield, putting on the man’s armor. The other trooper had a blaster in each hand and was methodically shooting everyone in his path. A trail of bodies slid down the dune, full of blaster holes and gently smoking, some still crawling or moaning. This was not how fights went in the Scyre, not how Balder’s band had faced off with Phasma’s warriors. There had been an element of courage and respect in their skirmishes, the bands testing each other, whetting their skills against their opposition like a blade to a stone. But this? It was slaughter, and it turned Siv’s stomach. There was no honor in this fight.
As for Phasma, she had abandoned her shield and entered her pure element: war. She danced from attacker to attacker, evading every sword stroke and ax hit. There was an elemental elegance to her every move, to the cold precision with which she dispatched every warrior who approached her with malice. Watching her, Siv could see the path she forged, and it led straight to Keldo. Unable to fight, thanks to his missing leg, he waited behind his shield, his mask hiding his true face and two discarded blasters on the sand by his sled. Tiny fingers curled around his shield suggested that the child, Frey, hid behind it with him.
That was the moment when Siv realized that even if Phasma was wrong, Keldo wasn’t right, either. A good leader would’ve accepted the loss of his greatest warriors and worked to shore up his territory. He would’ve armed the next line of defense, secured food and shelter for those who remained, and focused on maintaining his relationship with the nearest band, likewise recently weakened. Instead, Keldo had abandoned his generational home, the territory for which they had fought so long and given up so much, and brought all his people here, across the wastelands, to die on a hopeless journey of revenge.
A soft cry drew Siv’s attention, and she watched Torben fall. The big man landed on his knees, then gently slumped sideways onto the sand, blood gushing from a gash in his side and his mask slipping from his face. His brother stood over him, staring down at the blade in his hand in mute horror. It was, to Siv’s knowledge, his first kill. Siv wanted to run to Torben, to comfort him, to hold him, to give him the proper prayers, but she knew well enough when a wound was fatal. Nothing she could do would save him. His eyes were already open to the blue sky, empty, the beetles swarming up in a golden river to suck on the gaping wound.
Torben’s brother looked up at her, his eyes pleading for something. Forgiveness, maybe, or understanding, or that he might
somehow wake from this nightmare. He was not a warrior and had never earned his mask, which meant that his tears were there for all to see. Siv could not give him what he sought. She picked up the dead stormtrooper’s blaster rifle and shot Torben’s brother, Torben’s murderer, one lone bolt carefully placed to guarantee its lethality. A small smile lit his face before he fell, and she thought she saw his lips form the words thank you.
Siv looked around for her next fight and found that there was no one left. Torben was gone, and both of Brendol’s troopers were on the ground, one half stripped of his armor. The only people still standing were Brendol Hux, cowering behind his shield, partially stuffed into armor that didn’t fit, and Phasma, standing in a circle of bodies that were swirled in red blood and gold beetles. And, far off, Keldo on his sled. Bodies lay everywhere. Considering most of them were old or had never been warriors, it felt less like a victory and more like a slaughter of fools.
Dropping the shield, Siv gave Keldo a hard look, picked her way across the battlefield, and knelt by Torben’s body on the opposite side of the beetle flood. Taking her detraxor from her bag, she attached a new skin and slipped the spike into place. As the machine hummed to life and did its work, depriving the beetles of their goal, she gently pulled the mask from Torben’s head and snapped it in half over one knee. His skin was redder now, starting to peel, and his lips were so dry that they were shredded. His unseeing eyes glared up at the sun, asking a question that would never be answered.
“Thank you for serving us, Torben,” she said, tears threatening. “Your today protects my people’s tomorrow. Body to body, dust to dust.”
His brother lay nearby, and she put the other detraxor to work, reciting the same prayer. Even if Brendol’s people managed to save them in time, before the sickness truly took hold, and even if such unsophisticated medicines had no use in ships among the stars, this was Siv’s task. This was how she helped her family. This was who she was. This was how she would do honor to her people.
But the fight wasn’t actually over.
Phasma had her own responsibilities.
She and Keldo stared at each other over the field of battle. He’d taken off his fierce mask as if he could simply set violence aside. Although Phasma wore a helmet and her brother’s burned, red face was bare, Siv knew well that neither one blinked. It seemed to be a battle of wills, at first, but it was clear that Keldo couldn’t move. He had a sled with no one to pull it and only one leg, although he wore the prosthetic made from the droid and sat tall with tiny Frey in his lap.
An orphaned child and a field of sand and corpses formed an impossible divide between Keldo and his sister. When Phasma lowered her blaster and strode across the bloody field to him, it was in no way an act of subservience. It was a statement: I walk because you will not. Because you cannot.
And Keldo knew it. His face went even redder as she took powerful, deliberate strides toward him. Still she didn’t remove her helmet, but she didn’t have to. She was the tallest woman Siv had ever seen, and even if that didn’t make Phasma’s presence clear, her fighting prowess did. It felt like an eternity, the proud warrior in singed and dirty armor approaching the helpless man trapped alone in the desert. Brendol finally stood and straightened, quietly disentangling himself from the poorly fitting armor and brushing down his black uniform as if to acknowledge that something of import was occurring. He followed in Phasma’s path, blaster in hand. But where she strode like a colossus, he picked and hopped over the bodies as if disgusted by the very real carnage of the war his presence had wrought.
Siv heard the telltale sound of a detraxor with no more work to do and looked to Torben. His huge body, once her shelter and her comfort, had been reduced to a sad and sunken husk. The beetles had fled, no more sustenance to draw them near. Recognizing her calling, she switched out skins and looked for the next body, but they were all swarming with beetles. She could only sit back on her heels and watch Phasma as she crossed an uncrossable gulf with Brendol, an almost comical figure, trailing in her wake.
“Phasma?” Keldo asked. “Take off the helmet and speak to me.”
Phasma shook her head. “While you sit behind two shields? No. Warriors earn their masks, and I have obtained a superior one.”
Keldo frowned in distaste. “What have you become, Phasma? That’s not your voice. Those aren’t your words. That’s not your mask. You’ve destroyed everything we worked for.”
The next step Phasma took carried a new threat, and Keldo sensed it and flinched.
“Wrong, Keldo. You destroyed it. We had one chance. One chance to leave this dying shell of a life for something better. And instead of grasping for that greatness, you doomed your people.”
“I didn’t kill these people, Phasma. You did that.”
“You delivered them to their doom.”
Brendol took a step closer, his hands behind his back and his posture erect and formal.
“Phasma, we must call the First Order. Time is wasting. The sickness will soon take hold.” His clipped, brutal words carried on the still air. “You know what has to happen now.”
Kneeling in the sand, every breath tearing from her dry throat, her eyes burning and her skin peeling, Siv watched the scene unfold as if it were a dream.
Keldo put his hands up, pleading. “Phasma, don’t do this. Don’t be this.”
“I know what I am, Keldo. I always have. That’s the difference between us. I am willing to finish what I’ve begun.”
Phasma took a step toward Keldo, pulled out her blaster, and shot him in the chest.
Keldo’s eyes jerked wide, and his body went limp, slumping sideways out of the sled. A tiny, ragged cry ripped out of Frey, still hiding behind the shield. Phasma aimed her blaster.
“No!” Siv screamed.
Phasma’s head whipped around as if she’d forgotten that Siv existed, much less that she’d survived the battle. But Phasma’s blaster didn’t waver. Her helmet turned to look at Brendol as if in question.
“The First Order can always use strong children,” he said. “If she can survive the sickness.”
Phasma nodded once.
“Siv,” she called.
That’s all it took to break the spell. Siv forgot the detraxors, her feet pounding across the sand to pluck the child from the sled and hold her tightly, the last remaining member of her family.
“Siv? What happened?” Frey asked. “Where’s Mama?”
“Hush, love,” Siv whispered into the child’s wild brown hair. “We’re going to take a ride to the stars.”
TIME WENT STRANGE AFTER THAT. AS the madness of battle ebbed, the sickness took hold. Siv had been feverish once as a child, alternating hot and cold as her bones seemed to burn and her head throbbed in time with the ocean. This sickness was like that, plus peeling red skin, boils, and a feeling like her body was swelling, her skin stretching beyond capacity. Frey had it, too, and Siv covered her face in salve and gave her a waterskin to suck on, hoping the extra liquid and nutrients would help the girl fight it off.
Back at the crash site, Phasma easily rappelled up to the cockpit. Although it took some time, she was able to haul Brendol up onto the nose of the ship. Together, they bashed in the remaining glass, shoved out the dead pilots, and set to work on whatever sort of technological magic Brendol used to send his call for help out into space.
“What happened?” Frey kept asking.
Siv wasn’t sure herself. A simple disagreement had resulted in an insane journey and an even more unbelievable genocide. How could she tell the child that everyone she’d ever known was dead because Phasma and Keldo had failed as leaders? She couldn’t. Especially not within hearing distance of the only two people who could save her life.
All she could do was what her mother had done: teach the child how to carry on. She explained the detraxors, showed Frey how to change the waterskins, and had her repeat the prayer with each new body, for all that the beetles had already claimed most of their liquids. Frey didn’t see
m particularly interested, but then again, the little girl had to be in shock and growing sicker by the minute. Siv’s movements were becoming slow, her sight blurry. She looked up to the sky, hoping to see a ship appear there and wondering what it would look like. Would it shine with all the might of the sun? Or would it block out the sun, as big as one of the Con Star stations?
When it did finally appear, it was nothing like what she’d expected.
Brendol’s ship resembled the falling star they’d seen, bright and silver and glowing. But the First Order ship that came to save them was black and sharp, cutting through the sky like one of the sharks they’d feared in the wild, cold waves of the Scyre. It hung there in the blue for a few long, dreamy moments before disgorging a smaller, blocky ship, which sped directly toward them and landed on a blank stretch of gray sand. A hatch opened in a hiss of steam, and two lines of stormtroopers marched out in step, their armor perfectly fitting and painfully shiny.
“What is that?” Frey asked.
“Our salvation,” Siv said, smiling.
Phasma and Brendol rappelled down from his ship and walked toward the troopers. Brendol was in front, Phasma taking her position behind him, her blaster rifle held in both hands to mimic the other troopers. Between the two lines of white soldiers marched a young man about the same age as Siv and Phasma, a younger and thinner version of Brendol. The man’s black uniform was spotless and crisp, his red hair carefully combed.
“The First Order is pleased that you survived, Father,” he said with Brendol’s clipped accent.
“I owe my good fortune to Phasma. Phasma, this is my son, Armitage.”
Phasma inclined her head but said nothing. Armitage looked her up and down, barely concealing his skepticism.
“The First Order thanks you, Phasma,” the young man said, clearly trying to impress his father.
“She will be joining us on the Finalizer. As will this child. Come now.” Brendol turned and held out his hand, and Siv clutched Frey close to her, realizing that no one had yet spoken of Siv’s own contribution, or her fate.
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