by Paul S. Kemp
Finally, Cham decided to repair the damage he’d caused earlier. “I’m sorry about what I said before.”
“About what?” she asked, not looking at him.
“You know what. About the movement. About being tired. About the fight going on without me.”
She looked at him then, her skin wet and flushed. “So…”
“So we keep on after today. No matter what happens. We can rebuild the movement.”
Her eyes narrowed and she studied his face. “You’re a bad liar, Syndulla. You meant what you said.”
He held up his hands in protest.
“No,” she said. “Hear me. I thought about what you said. If we kill Vader and the—”
“When,” he corrected her. “When we kill Vader.”
She blinked. “Right. When we kill Vader and the Emperor, the Empire won’t just fall down overnight. But we’ll have started something, a rebellion maybe, but the rebellion will need leaders. You.”
He wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear so he said nothing.
“I’m not making myself clear,” she said. “You were right, at least in part. I see that. The movement is done after today, but that’s not because it’s going to die. It’s because it’s going to change and it’s going to spread. What we did today, what we do today, is going to ripple through the whole Empire. And whatever grows out of those ripples will need leaders. You, Cham.”
“And you,” Cham said.
She shook her head, her lekku waving. “I’m a fighter, not a leader, not a planner. That’s you, and that’s why I don’t want to hear any more talk about letting someone else carry the fight. After today we fight on different ground, and we maybe aren’t the Free Ryloth movement, but we still fight.”
Cham had always fought for Ryloth, and only for Ryloth, but he found Isval’s thinking contagious. Maybe a bigger picture was what he needed to consider. Earlier he thought he’d lost his purpose, but maybe in losing it he’d found another one, a bigger one. Maybe.
“I hear your words, Isval.”
“Then heed them,” she said.
At that moment Goll returned from the woods. Isval didn’t wait for him to speak. “What’d you find?” she asked.
“An old lylek tunnel leading down. Looks like it had been blocked by a rockslide, and then cleared by an explosive.”
“A grenade,” Cham said.
“Yeah,” Goll said. “Cleared so someone could get through from underneath.”
“Had to be them,” Isval said, grinning fiercely.
Goll smiled, too. “I agree, unless lots of people are wandering around in lylek nests. I found a trail leading away from the tunnel. There’s more than one left in their group, but the rain makes it hard to distinguish numbers. Gonna make it hard to stay on their trail, too, so we should get moving.”
It occurred to Cham all of sudden that they were as close as they’d been all day to their quarry—half a hour, maybe an hour, behind finally getting another shot at the Emperor and his right hand. He looked at Isval, at Goll, back at Goll’s team.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Isval said.
“Good, because I don’t,” Goll said, looking from Isval to Cham and back again. “You look like you’ve swallowed a rock, Cham.”
“We can do this,” Isval said, putting a hand on his forearm. “Think through an exit is all we need to do, right?”
“Right,” Cham agreed, and then he said the words that he always said to Belkor, words that felt uncomfortably like a rationalization. “We’ve come too far to stop now. Let’s go finish this.”
—
The wind carried a soft, irritating buzz from somewhere ahead. To Vader it sounded vaguely insectoid. The buzzing rose and fell with the velocity of the wind.
The sound seemed to put Deez on alarm. He held his rifle at the ready, looking hard at the trees around them, as if anticipating an attack.
Drua looked puzzled, then amused by his reaction. “There’s nothing to fear. Those are lylek tubes. The sound keeps them away. Irritates their brains. My grandfather says its gives them a headache so they don’t come around.”
“A sound keeps lyleks away?” the Emperor said. “How very interesting.”
“Oh, it wouldn’t keep one of them away if it was determined,” Drua said. “Grandpa says it just steers them in another direction. Why walk into a headache, right?”
The ground rose as Drua led them through the trees. Large boulders and rock piles dotted the landscape here and there, getting more frequent as they went. The buzzing sound grew louder and they soon saw the cause. Curved wooden tubes about as long as a human man’s arm hung from the trees, swaying in the wind. Holes of various sizes and at various places had been bored into them. When the wind blew through the holes, the tubes emitted the irritating buzz. Looking at them all hanging there, Vader was reminded of gallows.
“Puts one’s teeth on edge,” the Emperor said. “What if the wind dies down, Drua? Won’t lyleks come then?”
Drua looked at him as if he were ridiculous. “There’s always wind. And if we have to, we can run. We have a fortified place we can hide.”
“I see,” the Emperor said.
Soon the forest gave way to jagged hills of piled earth and rock. They picked their way through those until the ground fell away before them and they found themselves looking down on an enormous, steep-walled rock quarry. Two large tunnels opened near the base of the quarry on the side opposite them, dark holes, like the planet opening its mouth in a scream. Vader assumed them to be old mine shafts, and probably one of them was the fortified place Drua had mentioned.
Drua’s village clustered near one of the tunnels: thirty to forty single-story structures made of stacked stone and tree-limb beams, with roofs of stretched hide and bark. Raised gardens covered a sizable area of the quarry’s bottom near the village. Vader saw no livestock.
Torches burned along the walls of the quarry in two places, the flames dancing in the rain, marking a serpentine path along the steep walls. Torches burned at the bottom of the quarry, too, at the edges of the village. Vader could see Twi’leks moving about among the buildings. From a distance they looked like shadows, or ghosts.
As he watched, a fire sprang to life in a common area and half a dozen Twi’leks gathered around it, ordinary people doing ordinary things. Music carried up from the quarry, the sounds of a woodwind and then a lilting, haunting female voice.
“That’s Mala singing the Dirge of Valaunt,” Drua said.
“A dirge?” the Emperor said. “How very quaint. Drua, does the village have computers? Any vehicles at all?”
Drua smiled and shook her head. “No, nothing like that. We live simply.” She patted the blaster at her hip. “We make exception for some things, of course, but the Elders say that too much technology makes us slaves all over again. We have our ways and they serve us well.”
She led them along the lip of the quarry until they reached the torchlit path that snaked down to the bottom. “Mind your steps,” she said. “The way is treacherous.”
The Emperor chuckled softly at that.
They picked their way down the side of the quarry, Vader and the Emperor as sure-footed as Drua, Deez nearly slipping from time to time.
At the bottom, a Twi’lek man, muscular, green-skinned, and armed with a blaster pistol, met them. A carved wooden whistle hung from a lanyard around his neck. He looked with mild suspicion on Vader, the Emperor, and Deez.
“Narmn, it’s all right,” Drua said. “I found these lost souls in the forest. This is Sergeant and…” She trailed off, perhaps realizing for the first time that she’d never gotten the names of the other two.
The Emperor said, “My name is Krataa, and this”—he gestured at Vader—“is Irluuk.”
Narmn’s eyes narrowed but he bowed, his lekku shifting slightly, and said, “Krataa and Irluuk and Sergeant, you are here, and because you are here, you are welcome.”
“That is most gracious of you,” the Emp
eror said.
Narmn and Drua led them along the quarry’s floor toward the warmth and light of the village. Narmn put the whistle to his lips as they walked and blew a series of notes that Vader assumed indicated the arrival of strangers. The Dirge of Valaunt trailed off.
“I’m going to run ahead and gather Grandfather,” Drua said, and, after a nod from Narmn, she sprinted off.
“Gather everyone,” the Emperor called after her. “I look forward to meeting them.”
Meanwhile, more and more Twi’leks emerged from the buildings and congregated at the village’s edge, more shadows, more ghosts, all of them apparently waiting to greet the strangers, Krataa and Irluuk and Sergeant.
Other than the Emperor, only Vader knew the false names were ancient Sith words that meant “death” and “fate.”
—
Goll moved ten meters ahead of Cham and Isval, who walked ten meters ahead of Goll’s people. All of them were tense, and all but Goll had their weapons drawn and ready. Isval reminded herself that Goll was too good to allow them to simply stumble upon Vader and the Emperor; reminded herself, too, that Vader and the Emperor did not know they were being hunted.
Goll picked his way through the forest ahead of them, studying leaves and branches but mostly the ground, grunting and nodding to himself, moving them confidently through the woods.
“There’s four of them, but not the same four,” he said softly, returning to them for a brief update. “They lost one of the Royal Guards, and there’s an adolescent with them now, or a small-boned female. Possibly Twi’lek, but there’s no way to know for sure.”
“How far ahead are they?” Isval asked.
“Not far,” Goll said. “I can scout ahead alone if—”
Cham cut him off. “No. We stick together. We just stay staggered. When you see them, we stop to evaluate the situation and plan the attack. We’ll get one chance only, and we have to do it exactly right. We all know what Vader can do. We need surprise if we can get it.”
Isval nodded, Goll nodded, and they set off, Goll taking position well out in front.
“Some people hunt lyleks,” Cham whispered to Isval. “Did you know that?”
“I’ve heard that, yes. What are you getting at?”
“Why do you suppose they do that?” Cham asked. “Risk their lives that way?”
“The thrill, maybe,” she said. “Or to prove they can.”
“Maybe they think it’s important somehow,” Cham said, and Isval realized he wasn’t talking about lyleks, and neither was she.
“They must,” she said. “Otherwise it would be foolish.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Smiles and looks of wonder greeted Vader, the Emperor, and Deez as Narmn led them into the village proper. The modest homes recalled to Vader the kind of home he’d had on Tatooine, long ago.
The Emperor smiled and nodded, returning greetings and thanking the Twi’leks for their hospitality. Vader said nothing, though he was aware that both his suit and Deez’s armor were the subject of many whispered questions and pointed fingers. The Twi’leks crowded around them, interested in the strangers. Deez interposed himself as best he could between the Emperor and the villagers.
“Keep some distance,” he said to the Twi’leks, a bit harshly.
“It’s fine, Sergeant,” the Emperor said. “It doesn’t matter. Does it, Irluuk?”
Vader answered with a question of his own, speaking in an old Sith tongue, so only the Emperor would understand him. “You plan to kill them, Master?”
“I plan no such thing, apprentice,” the Emperor returned in the same language, never losing his smile. “But they will die anyway. You killed them all the moment you spared that girl.”
“I don’t understand,” Vader said.
“You will. Patience, my friend.”
Drua emerged from the small crowd and stood before them, her smile bright in the light of the torches. A frail, wrinkled, tan-skinned Twi’lek accompanied her, one hand on the girl’s shoulder. His milky-white eyes announced his blindness.
“My grandfather,” Drua announced.
Her grandfather bowed his head in the same fashion Narmn had. Probably his lekku were signing a greeting that Vader could not discern.
“Our custom is to welcome all strangers,” the grandfather said in a thin broken voice. “But my granddaughter has shared your names and so you are strangers no longer. Welcome, Sergeant, Krataa, and Irluuk. The village is here and they have seen you.”
Head nods around, waving lekku, smiles. Grandfather raised his hands for quiet and continued: “The rain has stopped and we have new friends. It is late, but it is not so late. We should celebrate and have music.”
Cheers and whoops answered his words. Music started from somewhere ahead, the woodwinds they’d heard earlier, accompanied by a drum. Many of the villagers started to sing or hum in Ryl, their native tongue, the rising and falling melody like pouring rain and booming thunder.
Drua took the Emperor by the hand and led him toward the village center. The villagers patted Vader and Deez on the shoulders as they followed, uttering words of welcome. Vader allowed himself to be led, looking into the colorful smiling faces, knowing that he was looking at ghosts.
A large fire was already burning in the village center. Two Twi’leks playing carved woodwinds stood near it, swaying to the music they made. A drummer sat between them, keeping time.
Carved stumps were arranged in a circle around the fire. Vader and Deez and the Emperor were seated on them. The rest of the villagers milled around, talking and smiling; one couple even danced. Others sat on the stumps and chatted with one another. Drua’s grandfather sat near Vader and the Emperor. Before Drua sat, the Emperor said to her, “Drua, perhaps you could bring Irluuk the broken communications unit you spoke of. He has skill in that regard.”
Vader looked a question at his Master.
“Indulge me,” the Emperor said to him. “Drua, can you get it?”
“Of course,” Drua said, and sped off. She returned quickly, bringing Vader a small, decades-old communicator and a box of hand tools, the kind of equipment Vader had used as a boy, when he’d made things of metal, rather than being encased in it. He opened the box and took a tool in hand, finding that it felt as right as the hilt of his lightsaber. He quickly disassembled the communicator and set to work fixing it. He saw the problem right away. He’d have it operational quickly. Drua watched in wide-eyed wonder.
His Master leaned over and said, “I see you’ve retained the skills of your youth.”
“But nothing else from that time,” Vader said.
“We will see,” the Emperor replied.
—
The wind carried a faint but irritating buzzing sound from somewhere ahead.
“What is that?” Isval asked Cham.
Cham shrugged, brow furrowed. “Let’s see what Goll says.”
He signaled a halt to Goll’s team, who trailed Isval and Cham. They didn’t have long to wait before Goll returned from his position scouting ahead.
“What’s that sound?” Cham asked.
“A signaling device, I think, or art or something,” Goll said. “Or maybe it keeps animals away. I’m not sure, but it seems harmless. And it doesn’t matter, because we found them. Vader and the Emperor. We found them.”
Isval’s heart beat against her ribs. She felt herself flush, felt the calm of action settle on her.
Cham took Goll by the shoulders. “Where, man?”
“There’s a gorge half a klick that way.” He nodded to indicate the direction. “Looks like an old quarry. I saw them in it.”
“Saw them!” Isval said, unable to contain herself. “Why are we waiting? Let’s go. Cham, call in Belkor’s V-wings, we can—”
“No, no,” Goll said, shaking his huge head, and the seriousness of his expression deflated Isval. “Don’t call in anything yet, least of all Belkor.”
“What is it?” Cham said warily.
“There’s
a village there, Cham. Isolated settlement. All rustics. All Twi’leks. I didn’t see so much as a comm array. They—”
“What did Vader do to them?” Isval snapped.
“Nothing,” Goll said. “They—”
“Nothing?” Isval repeated. “What do you mean nothing?”
“Let me finish a sentence, Isval!” Goll said, and Isval clamped her mouth shut. “They’re all gathered in the village center. It’s like a…celebration or something.”
Isval understood. Goll had said they were rustics. “The villagers don’t know who they are. To them, they’re just guests.”
The harshness of life on Ryloth had established certain norms in Twi’lek settlements—among them, hospitality to strangers. That didn’t extend to Imperial forces, of course, but some settlements had been isolated for so long they knew almost nothing of the Empire. It appeared Vader and the Emperor had stumbled into one of those, and the Twi’leks there had taken them in.
“Show us,” Cham said.
—
Syndulla had told him to set down because he had found something, but Belkor didn’t answer to Syndulla. He needed to keep looking, not just for Vader and the Emperor, but for Mors. He wouldn’t fly out of comm distance from Cham, but he’d darn well keep looking.
“Up, down, up, down,” he said to Ophim’s corpse, which was already beginning to stink. “He thinks I’m a fishing lure. I’m not, Ophim. I’m not!”
He realized he was sweating, maybe feverish, and talking to a corpse. The sound of the rain beating down on the bubble for the last half hour had given him a headache, and his thoughts flowed like mud.
“Just get through the next few hours, right? Right, Ophim?”
Belkor flew the recon bubble at the height of the forest canopy, moving slowly, the elaborate scanners on the ship poring over the landscape below and the sky all around.
Nothing, nothing, and nothing.
He checked his clock, seeing how much time he had before the comm hub got a dish operational and overrode the jamming signal. Time was running out. His head would not stop hurting. And they had found nothing! Well, not nothing. Cham had found something, but Cham hadn’t told him what it was.