by Paul S. Kemp
She saw Vader bound out of the village at a run, lightsaber in hand.
“See him?” she said.
“See him,” Goll and Cham said.
They fired by turns at Vader, at the stormtroopers. Someone from the quarry’s bottom returned fire, the shots pinging off the stone and sending Isval and Goll back from the edge for a moment. Cham just kept firing, his jaw set, his eyes fixed.
“They’re cut off!” Goll shouted, returning to the lip to fire. “We have to get down there or extract them. Get Faylin and the shuttle over here.”
“She’ll never make it through the V-wings,” Isval said, and Cham knew she was right.
The men on the quarry’s floor were dead, or soon would be.
Cham resolved to hurt the Empire as best he could before he died.
“Everything on Vader,” he said. “Focus on him.”
The three of them poured fire down on the dark shadow and the glowing red line he carried.
—
Mors watched through the cockpit viewport—impervious to small-arms fire—as soldiers on both sides shouted orders, fired their blasters, and died. The Twi’leks dropped to their bellies or knees and divided into two groups, each firing in a different direction, while the stormtroopers ran toward them in a crouch, firing as they came. Twi’leks screamed and died. Stormtroopers hit by blaster bolts flew backward or spun to the ground, their armor blackened by fire. Mors sat in her seat and watched it all unfold. It could—and would—end only one way. The Twi’leks were surrounded.
She looked up, saw the V-wings turning sharply to come back in on an attack vector. They must have found something along the top of the quarry at which to shoot.
Movement outside the ship caught her eye, and when she saw the source, it caught her breath.
Lord Vader strode heedlessly through the crossfire, cape flowing out behind him, his lightsaber cutting the air before him, deflecting dozens of blaster shots back at the Twi’leks, killing one, another, another. He did it all almost casually, as though his mind was on other things. The black lenses of his helmet were fixed upward, at the rim of the quarry.
As Mors watched, Vader exploded into motion, moving at a preternatural speed that left her mouth hanging open stupidly. Vader was heading directly for the side of the quarry, which was too steep for an ordinary man to scale. But Mors knew she wasn’t looking at an ordinary man.
“Who is that?” the pilot asked softly as both of them leaned in their seats to follow Vader’s progress. “Is that…”
Mors nodded. “Darth Vader,” she said, and pitied the person or persons upon whom Vader had fixed his gaze.
—
“Those V-wings are coming back around,” Goll said, firing down into the quarry at Vader, who was sprinting across the quarry’s floor, coming on so fast that Cham would not have believed it had he not seen it. Isval had both pistols out and aimed, firing red lines at Vader. Cham was shooting as fast as he could, too, but Vader’s blade was faster, deflecting every shot, sending fully half of them back at Isval and Cham and Goll, causing them to duck and cover.
When Vader reached the steep-walled side of the quarry he bounded up, caught a hold on some protuberance or other, crouched, and bounded up again.
“That’s impossible,” Goll muttered, but he kept firing.
Isval knew better. She’d seen what Vader could do. Nothing he did surprised her.
And now he was coming for them.
They kept firing, leaning out over the lip of the quarry to fire down the steep side, but Vader’s lightsaber turned the air red before him and none of their shots so much as touched him. He leapt from one spot to the next, ascending, pausing only for a moment upon landing to tense before leaping again and ascending farther.
“How is he doing this?” Goll shouted.
Vader’s cape flowed out behind him as he came, and he looked to Isval like some kind of mythological being, some dark spirit of death come to take a tithe of lives. She couldn’t let him take Cham’s. The movement needed him. And he had a daughter. She wouldn’t.
“Get out of here,” she said to Goll and Cham.
She looked down past Vader to the floor of the quarry. The firefight was already slowing. Goll’s fighters were dying or dead. She could hear the V-wings streaking back toward them.
“Get out of here!” she said. “Now!”
Cham seemed not to hear her. He was firing rapidly at Vader, his teeth clenched, his skin flushed.
“Goll, get him out of here!”
She turned and looked back to see the V-wings bearing down on them. Goll followed her gaze, turned, and saw the ships incoming.
“Come on, Cham!” Goll said, grabbing him by the shoulder.
“I’m not leaving! You go!”
Vader leapt up again, again. His eyes were fixed upward, on Isval, on Cham.
“Go, damn it!” Isval shouted. “You have a daughter, Cham! Think of Hera! Take him, Goll! Remember our deal! Go!”
She stood up, making herself plain to Vader.
“What are you doing?” Cham exclaimed. “Get down, Isval!”
She turned and smiled at him, not a half smile, a full one. “I’m thinking through an exit. I love you, Cham. Now get out of here!”
And with that, before Cham could say anything, she ran along the lip of the quarry away from them, firing at Vader with both blasters as she went.
“Isval!” Cham called after her, but she ignored him. He loved her, too. He had for years.
“Do you remember me?” Isval shouted down to Vader, still firing at him. “Do you? I saw you on the Perilous before I blew it to hell!”
The sound of the V-wings streaking in sounded like a scream.
—
“Come on, Cham!” Goll said, and pulled him up by his collar. “Now! Right now!”
“I’m…not…leaving her!” Cham said, looking at Isval, trying to shake himself loose from Goll.
Above, the V-wings were roaring down on them.
Goll finally heaved him up, flung him over his back like a knapsack, and started running for the tree line. Cham cursed him, tried to shake himself free, but Goll was even stronger than he looked and Cham might as well have been a child.
“Isval!” he shouted.
Blasterfire sounded from above them, the V-wings opening fire. Trees splintered and cracked, huge chunks of dirt and stone exploded, and the concussive blast of the V-wings’ firepower caused Goll to stumble. Rocks pelted Cham, most of them small, until a large one caught him in the temple. He saw sparks and turned dizzy. Goll seemed to be moving in slow motion. Distinct sounds disappeared, replaced by a dull roar. Everything went black.
—
Vader bounded over the side of the quarry, standing in the smoky aftermath of the V-wings’ strafing run. The wind billowed his cape, and Isval could hear the rhythmic work of his respirator. She was eight meters from him, the man or god or whatever he was who’d done repeatedly what no one should have been able to do.
“You should be dead,” she said, her voice hoarse. She holstered her blasters.
“As should you,” he said, and his voice was as deep as the quarry. He deactivated his lightsaber.
She thought of Pok, of Eshgo, of Nordon, and everything in her boiled over at once. She shouted and rushed him, drawing a knife as she came, knowing even as she did that she’d never get close enough to use it but hoping somehow to take him by surprise.
Of course she didn’t.
No one took Vader by surprise. How could they?
He raised a hand and somehow stopped her altogether. Her body would not respond to her mind. It was as though he held her in a giant fist. She felt her body rise, lifted off the ground, felt the knife fall from her grasp. Vader turned his head slightly sideways, eyeing her, and made a pinching gesture with thumb and forefinger.
Her windpipe closed and she could not breathe, could not even gag. She stared at him as her body screamed for oxygen, hoping to pierce him with her eyes, with h
er rage, with her hate.
Her vision went dark, narrowing down into a tunnel, at the end of which stood a dark figure in dark armor with his hand raised. In seconds she couldn’t see. She could hear the slow, steady beat of Vader’s respiration but could draw no breath herself. The world went dark.
—
Cham opened his eyes. He was in a ship, Faylin’s ship. He felt it go airborne as he left Isval behind, as he left everything behind.
“No,” he muttered, but it was done. She was gone. Everything was gone.
He stared at the bulkhead, not really seeing it, not really seeing anything.
“What happened?” Faylin called back from the cockpit. “Where is everyone? What happened, Goll?”
“Just fly the damn ship, Faylin,” Goll said. “Cham? You all right? Are you hit?”
“Are they dead?” Faylin asked. “Is everyone dead?”
“Fly the ship, human!” Goll snapped.
“They are dead,” Cham said, his voice dull and gray. “Everyone is dead. The movement is dead.”
Isval was dead.
“Don’t say that,” Faylin said, shaking her head. “Don’t. That’s not right. We’re still here. We’re still here.”
“Stay on top of the trees, Faylin,” Goll said. “With the comm back up, this area will be crawling with Imperial ships soon.”
She didn’t say anything but did as Goll asked.
“What are we?” Cham said. “What are we, Faylin? A swarm of insects trying to sting a rancor.”
“You’re not thinking clearly,” Goll said. “That’s grief talking. I’ve seen it before.”
“Have you?” Cham snapped at him. “Have you really?”
“She was my friend, too, Cham,” Goll said.
But she’d been more to Cham than a friend, and all of it had gone unsaid until the end. “You shouldn’t have listened to her,” he said to Goll.
“Of course I should’ve. And you know it. You have to carry this forward, Cham. You’re the only one who can. She knew that. That’s why she delayed Vader. You know that.”
Cham did know it. On some level, in some way, he knew she was right.
“What do we do now, Goll?” Faylin asked. “Where am I even going?”
Goll stared at Cham. “Cham? What are we doing next?”
Cham thought of all he’d lost that day—not just Isval, but the many others. He thought of the men and women he’d lose in the coming days, when the Empire put Ryloth under its heel and questioned every suspected rebel they could find. He knew it would never end. Ryloth was just another obstacle to the Emperor and his plans. Tomorrow another world would be ground to dust. Then another. The Empire was a machine, and its gears would just keep turning, grinding away at freedom until there was none left in the galaxy.
Someone had to keep fighting against that. Someone had to make them pay for that, for Isval, for every life they took in their fixation on order and control.
Cham could not quit. He could never quit. He’d just paid the dearest price he could imagine. The Empire could do nothing more to him. He’d fight, fight them forever and without remorse and without pity and without quitting. Ever.
“We get as many of our people clear of the system as quickly as we can,” he said. “Then we get out of here. Kallon should’ve already started the withdrawal. Then…”
He paused, and Isval’s face appeared in his mind’s eye, her fierce eyes, her smile, not a half smile but a full smile, the one he’d keep close to him forever. His eyes welled, but his conviction didn’t waver.
“Then what?” asked Faylin.
“Then we fight, Faylin. We damn well keep fighting.”
Plans would come later. For now, the resolve to carry on the fight was enough.
Goll grinned and thumped him on his shoulder hard enough to hurt. “You heard the man! We fight!”
—
Isval came back to consciousness on her knees, her wrists behind her, bound with some kind of restraint. Stormtroopers called out orders to one another; they moved through the quarry shooting any of the Free Ryloth troops that still survived. She was the only one they were taking prisoner, it seemed. She imagined herself being subjected to interrogation by Vader and tried not to think too hard about it. The fact that she didn’t see Cham anywhere gave her hope. She told herself he’d gotten away. She’d thought through an exit—his.
The Emperor stood before her, an old man in dark robes, his jaw hard, his eyes as sharp as knives. Beside him stood Darth Vader, looming and dark. Stormtroopers stood in a loose ring behind him, their white armor ghostly in dark. A Royal Guard stood just behind the Emperor, his helmet gone, his face inked with tattoos, the whole of him covered in grime.
“She fears I will turn her over to the ISB,” the Emperor said to Vader, his voice surprisingly gentle. “There are far worse things than that, my dear.”
“I don’t fear you at all,” she said.
“I think that’s true,” he said. “I should’ve expected nothing else. But you also understand very little.”
Isval stuck out her chin. “I understand the Empire lost a Star Destroyer and hundreds of troops today. You lost them. To us.”
“True,” he said, the frustrating hint of smile lurking in his words. “Very true. You know what I’ve lost, but do you know what I’ve gained? Have you considered that?”
“You’ve gained nothing!” she said contemptuously. “You barely escaped with your life.”
“Oh, my life was never in danger, dear girl. But since you seem unable to understand what actually happened here, I will tell you. Everything that happened today happened only because I allowed it to. True, your sorry little movement struck its blow, but it did so too soon, before the time was ripe and before it was mature enough to pose a serious threat. And now it’s exhausted itself and will grow into nothing. What’s left of it after today, do you think?”
Hearing an echo of Cham’s words come from the mouth of the Emperor was too much.
“Shut up,” she said, looking away and hating herself for the tears that welled in her eyes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cham was left, she told herself. He, at least, was left.
“Ah, she begins to see now,” the Emperor said. “Perhaps you thought the events today would spark a rebellion? Ah, you did.” He laughed contemptuously, the sound gouging itself into Isval’s brain. “That was never going to happen, my dear. Your little movement was a candle that I encouraged you to light and now…it has gone out, igniting nothing.” He knelt and looked her in the face. His eyes were as empty as a corpse’s. “Nothing.” He stood, looking down on her. “Lord Vader.”
Behind him, towering and dark, Vader ignited his lightsaber. Isval heard her death in the sizzle of its blade. The tears in her eyes dried, replaced by defiance, by anger, by hope kindled in the knowledge that Cham, at least, had escaped, that the fire of rebellion had not gone out because he carried it.
She stared up at Vader, unafraid. “I hate you and everything you stand for,” she said. “But when I murdered, I murdered out of love.”
Vader raised his blade, his breathing loud and steady. When he spoke, his voice was as deep and hollow as a funeral gong.
“I know precisely what you mean,” he said, and slashed.
—
Her decapitated body fell at Vader’s feet. He deactivated his blade.
“There’s work for that yet, my friend,” the Emperor said, nodding at the hilt of Vader’s blade.
“Master?”
“The villagers, Lord Vader. Drua and her people. We can’t allow so many witnesses to live. I’ll wait for you here.”
Vader looked from his Master to the dark mouth of the mine inside of which Drua and the rest of the villagers had fled. He felt the Emperor’s eyes on him, the intensity of the gaze, the weight of his expectations, and Vader knew that the day’s events had been only half about depleting a rebel movement before it could grow. They had also, as Vader had suspecte
d, been about testing him, forcing him to face the ghosts of his past and exorcise them forever and fully. He saw that more clearly now; saw, too, that his Master was right to administer the test. It also explained why his Master had shown so little of his true power throughout the day. Perhaps he’d wanted Vader to rely on himself to overcome the challenges they’d faced. Or perhaps he’d wanted to seem weaker than he was, to draw out any treacherous ambitions Vader may have held.
“I hear and I obey, Master,” Vader said.
He ignited his lightsaber and strode toward the cave, his mind drifting back to another day, a day when he strode into the Jedi Temple filled with nothing but younglings. He’d slaughtered them then, and he would slaughter the Twi’leks now.
His Master’s laughter followed him into the cave, and it lingered in his mind, louder even than the screams of the Twi’leks as they began to die by his blade.
When it was done, he returned to his Master’s side.
“Well done, old friend,” Darth Sidious said. He wiped his hands, as if to clean them of dirt. “And now let’s move on to more important things.”
For Jen, Riordan, Roarke, Lady D, and Sloane. Love you all.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wrote this book during the most trying period of my adult life. It wouldn’t have been possible without Shelly Shapiro. Shelly, my thanks for your patience.
By Paul S. Kemp
Star Wars
Star Wars: Crosscurrent
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Twilight Falling
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The Twilight War
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