“Don’t worry, it’ll work,” Kanan said, climbing out of his suit. “Sloane was sold. I could tell.”
“You could, could you?” Once the airlock door sealed behind her, Hera removed her mask and frowned. “Sloane thought you were cracked.”
Kanan waved dismissively. “Skelly is cracked. I sounded like a responsible adult.”
“Who wanted to buy her a drink. That charm thing of yours is not for every situation, Kanan.” Hera hustled past him and slid into the pilot’s seat. “See to Skelly.”
Skelly, facedown where he’d collapsed on the acceleration couch, feebly tried to peel off his hood with his one working hand. He finally succeeded when Kanan gave the mask a yank. The man looked rough. They’d had to load the explosives and make their way back to the ship quickly, and there hadn’t been room left on the hovercart for Skelly to ride. The walk had been hard on him, and Hera and Zaluna had supported him part of the way. They’d been the last crew to make it back, just barely avoiding notice.
Skelly looked up, his face twisted in pain. “I still think … we should have killed him.”
Kanan shook his head. He wasn’t going to explain it again. He pushed Skelly upright in his seat and strapped on an oxygen mask. “Trust me, everybody. This’ll work.”
“If … it doesn’t,” Skelly said between breaths, “we need … to warn Gorse.”
“What’s the point?” Kanan asked, shuttling forward. “The Empire’s declared full groundstop on Gorse. Nobody can take off.”
“There are tunnels,” Skelly said. “And bomb shelters.”
“Hera tells me they make fine homes,” Kanan said, settling into the passenger seat beside her. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Zaluna looked forward as the engines revved. “You need to talk to everyone on the planet at once …”
Kanan looked back at her. “You got something?”
She shook her head. “It—it’s nothing.” She slumped back in her seat, weary. “We’ve done too much already.”
Hera turned to face Zaluna. “Come on, Zal. You have a way to help, don’t you?”
Zaluna let out a deep breath. “I think there’s a way,” she finally said. “But I can’t do it with this ship’s transmitter. I need something built in the last thousand years.”
“Hey, I’m sure there was a refit a century ago,” Kanan said, looking up at the bulkhead. He wasn’t about to get defensive about Expedient, no matter how much he and the ship had been through. He looked at Hera. “How about your lovely ride?”
“It’s got everything,” she said, pulling back on the control yoke. Expedient heaved off the deck. “My ship should be up to date for whatever you need. If we can land on Gorse and get to it.”
“We’ll be shot at on the way down and up again.”
“Up I’m not worried about.” She smiled.
I have got to see this ship, Kanan thought again as Expedient turned in midair. “What have you got in mind, Zaluna?”
“I still have Vidian’s passcode from earlier. If we can send a signal mimicking an Imperial override request, we can push out an emergency message onto every electronic system on Gorse that Transcept is spying on.” She looked at Kanan with trepidation. “We’d only be able to do it once, ever. They’d close the door immediately.”
“One message, then. It’ll have to be enough,” Hera said, guiding the ship through the magnetic field into space. “We’d have to get there and do it before he changes the passcode.”
“If he doesn’t realize we did anything,” Kanan said. “And he won’t.” He gestured forward. Traffic was moving along outside the station, and he could see the TIE fighters routinely flying past. “See? Nobody’s shooting us out of the sky.”
“That’s just because your new friend hasn’t called out the heavy artillery yet,” Hera said—
—and as she did, Expedient shuddered violently. Zaluna yelped. Kanan and Hera glanced warily at each other.
“Just the parking tractor beam guiding us out,” Kanan finally said, nodding forward. The ship was turning, making progress toward the perimeter.
Hera took a deep breath and let out a whistle. “We’d better hope this thing lets go of us before the stasis beam lets go of Sloane.”
“I’m telling you not to worry,” Kanan said, leaning back and stretching his legs. “None of this is necessary. Vidian is done for. Sloane is sold.”
“My lord! My lord!”
Count Vidian roused. Awareness always returned quickly to him after sleep, medically induced or otherwise. His eyes activated a second after his ears did, and he saw the fraught face of the Star Destroyer captain leaning over him.
“Sloane? What’s going on?”
She yanked at the straps binding him to the operating table. “You were unconscious,” she said, straining to remove one of the durasteel cuffs binding his wrists. “Are you all right?”
“I believe so.” Whispering a command, he cycled back through everything his eyes had recorded in the last several hours. There was nothing there from the time he was under—not even any of the feedback his nightmares had been producing lately. And neither had his senses recorded anything from the hour before, during the battle with the pilot and his companions. A glitch, caused by damage in the fight?
The servos in his hips activated, and he sat up on the table. He looked around at the mess of his living space. “Someone drugged me.”
“There were intruders here,” Sloane said, moving to work on the cuffs holding his ankles. “They attacked me, too, when I entered. They trapped me in your stasis beam. Then they left.”
Vidian looked around. “Through the floor?”
Sloane nodded. “It was dark—I couldn’t see much. What did they want?”
“Me.” Vidian leaned down and ripped at the ankle cuffs with his metal hands. The manacles were designed to withstand his thrashings, and yet they couldn’t survive against his rising anger. “I want a full search. Lock the station down!” He opened a channel on his internal comlink and prepared to give the command.
Sloane spoke before he could. “My lord—one of them talked to me.” Her dark eyes were full of concern. “He claimed to be an agent of the Emperor.”
“What?” Vidian closed the audio channel and stared at her. “Who?”
“One of the people who waylaid me,” she said.
“An agent of the Emperor?” Vidian rose from the table and stood, turning his back to the captain. “What … did he say?”
“A lot of nonsense. He claimed you were acting against the Emperor’s interests in the Gorse project. That your plan was to destroy the moon and its thorilide, regardless of the yield.”
Vidian froze. Cautiously, he turned to face her. “Most amusing. Pray tell, what reason did this mystic give for my doing such a thing?”
“It was senseless ranting, Count Vidian. I didn’t listen.”
“Perhaps he thinks I’m some kind of traitor? Some kind of plant in the hierarchy?”
Sloane laughed. “I think he was insane.” She looked at him. “Have you called for security already, or should I?”
“I’m doing so now,” Vidian said. But directing his eyes to check the station’s surveillance reports, he found precious little for his staff to go on. Nothing unusual had been seen aboard Calcoraan Depot in the last few hours. He’d recognized the gunslinger from Cynda, and he’d remembered Skelly. But all the workers aboard were in hazmat masks, and the ships had already departed. Even a check of the data feeds from his medical droids in the room confirmed that their memories had been wiped.
The infiltrators were good, whoever they were.
Reports from the TIE sentries on the system perimeter confirmed that all the ships had gone to hyperspace on the same heading: toward Cynda, as ordered. If his assailants weren’t still aboard the depot, there was only one other place for them.
Vidian thought quickly about his next move. He wasn’t sure who his attackers were, but neither was he sure what they woul
d say if found. All that mattered was making sure nothing interfered with the destruction of Cynda.
And he had a way to do that. “Ultimatum will arrive in the Gorse system before the last of the baradium haulers?”
A little startled by the change of topic, Sloane nodded. “They haven’t built the freighter that can outrun a Star Destroyer.”
“Good. I want your whole complement of fighters deployed, managing the final delivery. Bring in additional TIEs from here, using the Gozanti freighter carriers. If any hauler moves a centimeter out of line, I want that ship destroyed, cargo and all. Regardless of any danger to the pilot doing the shooting. Is that understood?”
“They’ll do their duty—for me.” Sloane looked at him searchingly. “You think the intruders are headed for Gorse?”
“It pays to be ready.” Vidian walked across the room to a fallen cabinet. Righting it, he thought about his other problem. He highly doubted the gunslinger was an agent of the Emperor; while Palpatine was fond of testing his underlings’ devotion, he was never as clumsy as this. But neither could he see a bunch of amateurs successfully boarding his station, simply looking for revenge for Lal Grallik’s death.
What Vidian could easily see, however, was the pilot and his friends being part of some plot by one of his many rivals. And that meant he had to be cautious. He had no idea what the pilot had said to Sloane—but he had to be certain of her loyalty, and his eventual success. “I appreciate your freeing me, Sloane. This could have been … embarrassing.”
She shrugged. “My duty is to you, sir.”
“Then I will do mine to you.” He paused for several seconds before speaking aloud again. “I have just sent a verbal instruction to the staff at my offices at Corellia. In a few days Captain Karlsen will be receiving a very lucrative offer to join the private sector.”
Surprised, Sloane put up her hand in protest. “Sir, I wasn’t expecting—”
“At that time, Ultimatum is yours to keep.”
The news appeared to take her breath away. Good, Vidian thought. “Return with Ultimatum as planned while I finish the preparations aboard the collection ship. Once the moon is destroyed and Forager begins to do its job, the Emperor will see the return, and our work together will be vindicated.”
“Together, my lord?”
“You’ll have the credit you deserve for helping to make this happen so quickly. I might even request you and Ultimatum be permanently detached to me.” He eyed her. “Who is the youngest admiral, I wonder?”
There wasn’t always much to do when a ship was in hyperspace, the interdimensional realm between stars. There was even less when flying Expedient, a ship with no galley or living quarters. Worse, the cockpit area offered no privacy at all; Skelly was snoring away on his seats, and Zaluna, unshakable for so long, had taken to nervously fidgeting around with the contents of her magic bag. Well, even the strongest had their limits—especially when death was coming for their homeworld.
The only getaway existed in the far rear of the ship, down one of the branching aisles of the cargo hold. And there, at the far end, standing amid the shelves of secured baradium-357 canisters, waited the person he wanted to see.
“Cozy back here,” Kanan said. “We could send out for flatcakes.”
“Very funny.” Hera held the smile for only a moment. She looked tired. “We need to talk.”
“My pleasure.” Kanan found a spot at the end of the aisle with no canisters on either side, creating two makeshift seats on opposing lower shelves. “I fixed the ID transponder like you asked. It’ll say we’re a different ship than landed on Calcoraan Depot—in case they’ve finally figured out we were the ones that messed with Vidian.”
Hera still wore the same worried expression, he saw. “I’m guessing you had a different problem?” Kanan asked.
“It’s Skelly,” she said in a low voice, nodding in the direction of the cockpit. “I think he’s in trouble.”
“He’s always in trouble.”
“I think he’s dying,” she said. “The joking around is a cover. He’s in bad shape.”
Kanan inhaled deeply and nodded. He’d seen the same thing. “Vidian did a number on him. Broken bones, internal bleeding.” He shook his head. “I caught a look at the readings that medical droid took of him. It wanted to open him up, right then and there.”
“We need to get him to a medcenter,” Hera said. “He’s navigating on force of will alone.”
“He’s got plenty of that. But where can we take him? We’re about to tell everyone on Gorse to run for their lives.”
Hera sighed. “You’re right. They come first. He’s just going to have to hang on.”
She looked toward the small viewport to her left, at the end of the aisle. Stars streaked by. Kanan thought she looked striking even now, facing likely defeat. “This isn’t what you came to Gorse for, was it?”
She chuckled darkly. “Not even close. I’ve been talking to people who have grievances against the Empire—but only to find out the scope of what’s out there, what’s possible. I wasn’t expecting to do anything against it. Not yet, anyway. Not for a long time.”
“That’s the problem with people,” Kanan said. “They never need help on your schedule—only theirs.”
She nodded. Then she looked back at him. After studying him for a moment, she spoke. “Where are you from, Kanan?”
“Around,” he said. “You?”
“Same.”
“Fair enough.”
She smiled gently. “That’s not what I really wanted to ask, anyway.”
Kanan smirked. “Fire away, then.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Sitting with you? Wouldn’t miss it.”
“No, I mean this. Flying around fugitives and trying to take down Vidian. I know why Skelly and I are doing this,” she said. “Even Zaluna. But not you.”
He shrugged. “I love a party.”
“Seriously.”
He scratched his beard. “You were there. You saw what happened to Okadiah, and all the others—”
“And that’s awful. But by your own admission, you move around. You were about to leave Gorse forever when I found you. So while I appreciate your being here, I wonder if there’s something else going on.” She eyed him. “I mean, you’re not here for the politics.”
He laughed. “Definitely not.”
She smiled. “Yeah, you don’t strike me as a victim of oppression.”
Kanan’s grin melted a little on hearing her words, and he looked away. “You never know,” he muttered. “Appearances can be deceiving.”
“What?”
Feeling her eyes on him, he faced her again and smiled. “Nothing. Hey, it’s like I said at the start. I’m just going where you’re going.”
Hera’s nose wrinkled. “Hmm,” she said, after a moment.
“Hmm what?”
“I think I liked your first answer better.”
Zaluna stood before the onrushing stars. It was an amazing spectacle, something she had never expected to see. Her salary wasn’t enough to take her far, and besides, she had nowhere to go. Her office was her universe.
And now that Skelly was snoozing and Kanan and Hera were gone, somewhere in the back, this was her last chance to get it back.
Her last chance to change her mind.
She’d completely ruined her life in the last few days. She’d only wanted to fulfill Hetto’s parting wish, not go running around the galaxy like some kind of secret agent. Infiltrating an Imperial depot? Tampering not just with the computers of an important official, but with his very body? Who was that person? It certainly wasn’t the woman she’d imagined she was.
But here, she had an opportunity to undo everything. She’d seen the big red light on the forward control panel, earlier: It had signaled when the vessel was about to exit hyperspace. Dark now, it sat adjacent to the comm system—and that was something Zaluna knew how to use.
And she could use it, right as they reente
red realspace, to contact the Empire and get off this ride.
They might still believe her. She could say she was kidnapped, forced to help the would-be radicals. Skelly and Kanan were violent characters who’d attacked Imperial agents. Hera was the mastermind, trying to lure her into betraying the Empire. Zaluna was innocent, a pawn, a foolish woman with nothing but good intentions. She could say she was trying to entrap the agitators when she got trapped herself. They’d taken her into danger. She didn’t owe them anything.
And the moon might still be saved. If Vidian was doing something he shouldn’t, the Empire would stop him, wouldn’t it? And how was any of it her business anyway? Maybe the deadly predictions of what might happen were wrong. Who was she to second-guess decisions made from so far on high? It would be an irrational Empire indeed that would ignore its people’s best interests.
Only … the Empire had done exactly that many times that she had seen. And its minions had never listened to anyone’s defense before. They only listened to what people said about the Empire. Zaluna knew firsthand, having been the state’s ears and eyes on Gorse and Cynda for years. She’d heard—but never comprehended. She watched, but never saw.
And now that was changing. The others had started her thinking.
Hera had listened patiently to Zaluna’s concerns several times during their journey, and each time had spoken frankly and firmly. Fear was understandable and forgivable—and no one expected Zaluna to do more than she was capable of. “But seeing and doing nothing isn’t the worst thing,” Hera had said. “The worst thing is to see and not to care.”
Zaluna had seen Imperial minions do many things. Bad things, that Transcept’s watchers were ordered to look the other way on. She’d done as commanded—but it had never made sense. Wasn’t being a watchperson her job? What good was being a witness if the laws could be changed at whim by the lawgivers?
Then there was Skelly. He was troubled, for sure, but she’d come to understand that he truly was interested in protecting Cynda and Gorse. The Empire cared little for those damaged by the Clone Wars, and even less for people who had qualms about its industrial activities. She could tell that for Skelly, the impending destruction of the moon was like watching death approaching for someone close to him.
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