At least Zaluna had been useful, leading them on routes she knew weren’t under surveillance. Once she had confirmed that the cams in the building were still dead, Kanan had sent everyone upstairs into the attic apartment. He’d lingered downstairs in the dark bar, gathering up whatever food he could find.
Kanan had left that morning assuming he’d never see the place again. Now he had no idea where he’d be in twelve hours. He didn’t think anyone had gotten a good look at his face back at the Imperial spaceport, but he didn’t want to count on that.
And something had to be done about his other guests.
Someone worked the lock at the side door. Kanan quickly pulled his traveling bag off the bar and put it at his feet. Okadiah walked in, looking grayer than usual.
“You’re here sooner than I expected,” Kanan said.
“Something’s going on at Moonglow,” Okadiah replied, somberly placing his jacket on a peg. “You heard about Boss Lal?”
Kanan nodded—and then shook his head. “I didn’t hear the whole story. What happened?”
“They said a groundquake knocked her into an acid pool at the plant. She got too close,” the old man said.
Kanan shook his head. “Terrible.”
“Terrible lie, you mean.” Okadiah wandered through the darkness, straightening chairs. “I’ve known Lal Grallik for longer than you’ve been alive, my boy. She knew where to walk. She stepped in front of a vicious cyborg, is all—just like the guild chief did.” Pausing to wipe something from his eye, he turned. “They rerouted all our personnel transports to Calladan’s field. I took a hovercab over.”
“That explains the crowd,” Kanan said, trying to sound normal as he looked around the empty bar. “I guess it’ll be quiet tonight.”
“That’s one reason,” Okadiah said. He walked up to the counter and placed his hands together on it. “Some gentlemen met me when I landed.”
Kanan found a rag and began to wipe the surface. “Were they dressed in white?”
“Pretty foolish, given all the mud on this planet.” The old man walked to the far end of the bar and turned. Looking back, he saw the sack stuffed with food at Kanan’s feet. Evidently choosing to ignore it, he joined Kanan behind the counter. “They said the Imperials had to commandeer the Smoothride to the spaceport—and that someone stole it from there and took it for a joyride.”
“Surprising,” Kanan said. “You’d think a big Empire would be more careful with other people’s property.”
“It’s a good habit to get into.” Okadiah opened a bottle and set out two glasses. “Apparently whoever went on this joyride shot up a bunch of stormtroopers and did a hundred thousand credits’ worth of property damage.” Not looking at Kanan, Okadiah poured. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Kanan stood, stone-faced. “No, not really.”
Okadiah picked up both drinks and looked at him. “That girl isn’t getting you into something?”
Kanan didn’t answer.
Okadiah watched the young man for a moment, before walking up to him with the drinks. “You’ve always struck me as a fellow with nowhere to go, Kanan—never as a man on the run.” He kept his eyes fixed on him. “Nowhere to go is better. Fewer people come around asking where you are.”
Kanan nodded. “I understand,” he said, taking the offered glass. He gestured to a spot beneath the counter. “By the way, if you’ll check the safe, you’ll find some credits. I think someone dropped them behind a table.”
“Is that so?”
“Enough to put a down payment on another hoverbus,” Kanan said, shuffling a little on his feet. It was half the money he’d saved. “Er—probably not as new as the one you had.”
“Then at least fortune smiled on someone today,” Okadiah said. He raised his glass in a toast. “May the spirit of death make a clerical error and forget you exist.”
“Right,” Kanan said. Then he added: “To Boss Lal.”
“To Lal.”
Kanan downed his beverage and placed his glass in the sink. He picked up the sack of food and made for the staircase.
The raised voices behind the door silenced immediately when Kanan knocked. The latch opened. Seeing him, Hera lowered her blaster and let him inside.
The room was a living space only in the Gorsian sense of the term. A chimney ran up through a low, slanted ceiling; from the street, there was no indication there was an upper level at all. Pipes ran along the floor, bisecting the moldy chamber. Portable lamps provided the only light. A mattress had been thrown onto some crates to create a makeshift bed.
Zaluna sat at the foot of the bed, rubbing her ankles. The compartment had been a cramped place, and she’d slept wrong—when she’d been able to sleep at all. Skelly was seated in front of a little washbasin, doing his best to clean his wounds. And Hera was holding the door, looking as frustrated as he’d seen her.
“Problem?”
“We’ve just been discussing the day’s events,” Hera said, speaking evenly. She shot a look at Skelly. “Particularly some things that could have been done … differently.”
“That’s what this crowd needs—a life coach.” Kanan walked past and began doling out food. Zaluna and Skelly reached for it eagerly. Kanan walked to the bed and sat down, offering Hera a seat and what remained in the bag. “Your table, madam.”
After a moment, she sat with him.
All ate in silence.
“I’m serious,” Hera finally said as she finished her meal. “You’ve been doing this all wrong, Skelly. You need to forget the old way.”
“That sounds familiar,” Skelly grumbled.
Kanan chuckled. “What’s Skelly doing wrong now?”
“It’s what I was trying to tell him earlier,” Hera said, crumpling the sack. “Gord confronting Vidian. Skelly blowing up everything in sight—it’s suicide. It’s not the way to do this.”
“To do what?”
“To run a—” Hera stopped. She took a deep breath and lowered her voice. “This is no way to make a difference against the Empire.”
“They’re not trying to make a difference,” Kanan said, doling out the food. “They’re just trying to strike back.”
“And I understand that. But if the people who have a beef with the Empire act solely in their own interests, it won’t do anybody else any good. In fact, it might make it harder for any kind of real rebellion to flower—”
“Rebellion?” Skelly snapped. “Who’s talking about rebellion?”
Nearby, Zaluna let out a tsk-tsk. She spoke to the air in a lilting voice: “This is how you get in trouble.”
“Nobody’s talking about rebellion, that’s for sure,” Kanan announced. Zaluna had swept the room for listening devices, but she clearly wasn’t comfortable with the words she’d heard.
Hera rolled her eyes. “No, not us. We would never. But in theory …” She said the word loudly and looked reassuringly at Zaluna.
“They really don’t like you talking theory,” the Sullustan said with a chuckle.
Hera went on. “In theory, say you did have thousands of people—no, thousands of systems—enraged at a hypothetical Galactic Empire in a faraway galaxy. But they’re all upset over local matters, over particular grievances, and they never get together on anything. So they get no strength in numbers, no strategic advantages from cooperation. They’re easy to divide and conquer. And worst of all, no common spirit ever develops.”
Skelly looked back in disbelief. “You’re saying we don’t fight back?” His voice reverberated in the small room. “What they’re doing to the moon. What they did to Lal. What they did to me—”
“—was horrible, Skelly.” Rising, Hera walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. “But you weren’t hurt by one person.”
“You’re right. It felt like an army.”
“You were hurt by a regime. You might get vengeance against the hand that hurt you—or that killed Lal. But you wouldn’t get justice. Not until everyone gets it.”
&
nbsp; Skelly’s eyes narrowed, and he looked back down in silence.
On the floor, Zaluna drew yet another small device from her bag and started fiddling with it. “Checking my messages,” she said to those around her. “It’s safe.”
Hera nodded.
Skelly stared idly at the leafy stalk of the only vegetable Kanan had been able to find in the cantina’s larder. “You know, there were a lot of us that lost limbs in the war. All we wanted from the docs was to be able to do what we used to again. We didn’t volunteer to be turned into murder machines.” He leaned forward in a daze. “What’s wrong with that guy?”
Kanan assumed it was a rhetorical question. He also realized that Skelly had taken a worse beating than he’d imagined.
Zaluna gasped and dropped the gadget she was holding.
The Twi’lek looked to her with concern. “What is it?”
Hands on her knees, Zaluna stared in disbelief at the small device at her feet. “I-I just checked in. My entire team was suspended. And when I didn’t show up for my shift, so was I.” Her words caught in her throat. “Thirty years with a perfect work record—gone.”
Hera covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, Zaluna, I’m sorry.”
“It’s more than that. The Empire knows I was friends with Hetto. They’re going to find out where I was today. I’m going to lose my job—or worse!”
“Some job, spying on everyone,” Skelly said, snapping out of his funk.
“It’s important!” Zaluna retorted. “At least—it was, once. We did things. Important things.”
“I don’t see it,” Kanan said, standing and walking over to the door. He leaned against it with his arms crossed. The Empire’s snooping didn’t surprise him, of course. It just seemed like a waste of time. “What’s the good in watching a bunch of miserable people going about their boring lives?”
“In the old days—under the Republic—we did more than that,” Zaluna said, perking up. “We found missing persons. We stopped crimes. We prevented—”
“Prevented people from questioning anything!” Skelly threw the green stalk he was holding on the floor. “You helped the Empire monitor production. Helped them bust anyone who got out of line!”
“That’s now,” Zaluna said, her voice pitched high. Her words coming fast, she faced Skelly. “Has anything bad ever happened in your life?
Anything bad that could have been stopped, if only someone had been paying better attention?”
Skelly took a breath and nodded. “More than once.”
“And you, Kanan? Is there something bad that could have been prevented if someone’d been watching over you?”
Kanan shifted. Hera had been listening silently from the corner, but now he could feel her attention focused on him. “I don’t know,” he finally said, hands in his pockets.
“Everybody’s got something like that,” Zaluna said. “What we do—what we did—was good.” She dipped her head fretfully. “And now I’m done for.”
Kanan struggled to find something to say. He couldn’t think of anything. But removing his hand from his pocket, he found the recording device Zaluna had located in the hoverbus. “Unless someone wants to relive today’s disaster,” he said, “I’ll be crushing this thing.”
“No, wait,” Hera said, approaching him. She reached for it. “The Imperials were driving the bus for a while earlier. Vidian, and the Imperial captain.”
“I didn’t hear anybody,” Zaluna said, offering Hera her holoplayer. “But then, no one heard me.” Hera connected the devices and cued the recording back several hours.
They sat in silence, watching the material from the hoverbus surveillance cam. By the time it was over, Kanan looked up, bewildered. “Skelly was right. They’re going to blow up the moon.”
“… so we don’t have to mine Cynda at all. If what the bomber says is true, the moon could be pulverized, and its thorilide directly harvested and processed in space. No need for slow miners, or the costly processors on Gorse …”
Hera shut off the recorder. She looked mystified.
Skelly was apoplectic. “He stole my idea!”
“Stole your—” Kanan smirked. “You gave him your idea. You nearly got killed giving him your idea!”
“Hey, when I told you the Empire was going to destroy the world by accident, you thought I was crazy,” Skelly said. “Now we know they’re going to destroy it on purpose. Looks to me I wasn’t crazy enough!”
“So this is why Vidian left Moonglow so abruptly.” Hera shook her head.
“Delusional,” Kanan said. Sloane, he’d noticed, had barely said a word during the recording. He wondered if she thought Vidian was insane. “You can’t just dissolve a whole moon!”
“You want me to show you?” Skelly snapped. “I’ve got loads of studies I can show you!”
“All on the wall of a bomb shelter across town,” Hera said. She frowned. “I didn’t believe it, either. Skelly, are you sure?”
“I’m sure! Of course I’m sure,” Skelly said. He gestured to his battered face. “Do you think I would’ve risked all this if I weren’t?”
It sounded too incredible to Kanan. Was Vidian really taking any of this seriously?
And yet, hadn’t Skelly brought down several levels of Cynda’s substrate just by one well-placed bomb?
“It could happen,” Zaluna said. “None of the rest of you was born here. I remember when I was young, my mother used to tell me the moon was all brittle, because Gorse loves it and keeps trying to hug it too hard. And the moon keeps trying to get away.”
A good metaphor for some of my relationships, Kanan thought.
“She said Cynda would one day break up and come tumbling down. We all heard that story, as schoolchildren.” She chuckled darkly. “Maybe that’s part of why people on Gorse live as they do—because doomsday’s coming. But we were told it wouldn’t happen for thousands of years, so not to worry.”
Hera nodded. “But what if it happened tomorrow?”
The grinning young lieutenant appeared in the doorway of the captain’s office on Ultimatum. “The projections are run, Count Vidian.”
“And?”
Ultimatum’s planetary science specialist saluted Sloane belatedly and read from her report. “The bomber was right,” Lieutenant Deltic said, “partially. The moon Cynda might be shattered by blasts at the stress points he names, but it would require far more explosives, and of a higher grade, than Gorse has in its stores.”
“I have baradium-357 in quantity at Calcoraan Depot,” Vidian said, looking meaningfully at Sloane. “As well as a thorilide collection vessel, of the sort that harvests the material from broken-up comets. Would the debris field remain in orbit for sifting?”
“The highly elliptical orbit makes it unlikely that the material would form a ring around the planet,” the lieutenant said. “At least some debris would be ejected from the system; some would be captured, falling on the planet. Presuming the thorilide survives, your collector would have more than enough to keep it busy.” She chuckled darkly. “The planet’s another story, though.”
“I don’t need to hear about Gorse,” Vidian said.
“I do,” Sloane interjected. The lieutenant worked for her, after all.
“Well, first there’s the direct impact—that depends on how energetic the initial dispersal was, and where it took place. You’d have more meteor action if the blast occurred at the upcoming perigee; less if it happened weeks from now, when the moon is farther out. The chunks won’t be that large, but their composition will make them harder for the atmosphere to burn up.”
“And seismic reactions on Gorse?” Sloane asked.
“Hoo boy,” the lieutenant said, her expression suggesting they were well off into the realm of speculation. “Little would change at first, but the system would evolve. As the tidal balance shifted, Gorse would respond. Things could get pretty rocky.”
“Groundquakes and meteor storms!” Sloane looked at Vidian. “Sounds cataclysmic.”
“What?”
“The moon is a junior partner in the dance between Gorse and its sun, but an unusually important one. The dynamics of Gorse’s atmosphere are extremely sensitive to change—it’s already a miracle the dark side’s livable at all!”
“The bottom line?” Vidian asked drily.
The lieutenant checked her notes. “Nothing could happen. Or you could see the destruction of the whole biome in ten years.”
Sloane was amazed. “Ten years!”
“Or not,” the lieutenant said hastily. “It’s almost worth doing just to see what would happen.”
“Enough,” Sloane said, rolling her eyes. Glancing out at the moon, hanging large and bright outside her office viewport, she remembered something else the lieutenant had said, something earlier. “You said if the thorilide survives the moon’s destruction. Why wouldn’t it?”
“I’m not a chemist,” the young woman replied. “But I know the thorilide molecule is fragile, easily prone to dissolving into its component elements. It’s why Cynda’s such a great source for it. The crystals that the thorilide’s suspended in protect it. But there’s a difference between carefully controlled blasts and what we’re talking about. You wouldn’t know whether the crystals would survive unless you did a test first.” She paused. “Be a waste of a good moon otherwise.”
Sloane glanced at Vidian, and then back at the lieutenant. “Dismissed.”
The lieutenant saluted and departed. The captain looked back at Vidian. “The Emperor will expect such a test,” she said.
Vidian idly studied the back of his hand. “I’ve already considered it. One of the specialists I brought in my entourage has assured me he can make the observations using Ultimatum’s sensors.”
Convenient, Sloane thought.
“So we can run an experiment posthaste. We will, of course, report everything we find to the Emperor,” Vidian said.
Of course. Things were moving very fast—especially considering the seriousness of what they were contemplating. “It’s still so hard to imagine. Wiping out Gorse within ten years?”
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