The Ruins of Dantooine

by Voronica Whitney-Robinson

  She examined his burned leg and was relieved to see that it didn’t look that bad. She used a bulb of antiseptic wash to irrigate the wound, then applied a small bacta patch on the most severe section of injured tissue. She was almost done when he began to rouse.

  “Wh-what?” he asked, sounding confused. When he struggled to rise, Dusque held him down.

  “Hold still for a few more moments,” she told him gently.

  He winced as she pressed the bandage to his wound. “Have you still got the holocron?”

  Dusque realized she hadn’t even thought to check for the device. She placed her hand in her pack and felt its now familiar sharp edges. “Yes, it’s fine,” she soothed.

  “Get out of here,” he ordered her, pain evident in his voice.

  “No.” She grabbed a stimpak. “This will help you get moving in a minute or so,” she explained, as she injected him in his upper arm with a stim-shot.

  “We don’t know how many more of these guys might be lurking around.” His voice sounded stronger, the stimulant already starting to take effect. “You need to get out of here now. Take the holocron and get out.”

  “Not a chance,” she said again. “Don’t go and turn into a martyr on me now,” she joked, hoping to distract him from his pain.

  He stared at her with clouded eyes. “No chance of that ever happening.”

  Dusque chuckled, but he remained silent.

  “Better give me another shot,” he finally told her, “if you’re going to waste your time waiting for me.”

  She adjusted the stimpak and treated him again. “I don’t want to give you too much more,” she told him. “The more I give you now, the harder you’re going to crash later.”

  “If you don’t treat me now and get moving, we won’t have to worry about later,” he told her, struggling to his feet.

  Dusque could tell by the set of his jaw it was useless to argue. She put her right arm around his waist to steady him. She knew he was still in pain when he didn’t protest her assistance.

  “Okay,” she told him, “one step at a time.”

  They hobbled over to the water and waded in together, like two creatures clumsily joined at the waist. Finn hissed as the cold water made contact with his leg.

  “Should we stop?” Dusque asked him.

  “No,” he said firmly. “Actually feels kind of good against the burn.”

  She thought he was probably lying to humor her. The least she could do, she thought, was not slow them down further by trying to stop him every few meters. She guided him through the water as carefully as she could, desperately afraid that she might slip and lose her footing.

  “Don’t forget your weapon,” Finn reminded her before they ducked under the waterfall.

  “Right,” she said, mentally berating herself for focusing so hard on Finn that she had already forgotten about potential danger. She pulled out her heavy blaster with her left hand, and Finn did the same with his right. With every step, he grew stronger—thanks to the effects of the stimpak—so that when they came through the falls, he was able to hobble about unaided. Keeping their backs to each other, they turned about and scanned the area.

  “Looks clear,” Dusque said guardedly.

  “For now,” Finn agreed. They walked slowly across the ancient courtyard, their steps the only sound in the night. The clouds had completely cleared, and Dusque could see a moon over the horizon. She tried to remember how many moons Dantooine had, but couldn’t. The stars were brilliant, as they always were without the lights of civilization to compete with. She allowed herself to look up for a moment and take it all in.

  When she lowered her head, she saw that Finn was also regarding the stars, but his expression was intensely serious. He seemed to be concentrating hard. Finally he turned to her and said, “This way,” cocking his head toward the left.

  Dusque was a little embarrassed that she’d been wasting time stargazing while he, the wounded one, was working on figuring out their position. She wondered if she could ever hope to live up to Finn’s—and Leia’s—confidence in her.

  They walked slowly at first, to accommodate Finn’s injury. The longer they continued, however, the better he was able to pick up the pace and walk more sure-footedly. Dusque listened carefully for sounds of animals or other people. Hearing none, she took the chance of initiating a conversation.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry about what?” he asked, obviously surprised.

  “For what happened before,” she told him, not wanting to elaborate any more than necessary.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why would you be sorry?”

  She sighed. “For what happened back at the waterfall. You tried to give me a signal and I missed it.”

  He continued to look at her blankly.

  “When you said that you were sorry,” she explained. “You know, when you tried to warn me about the Gray Talon and I didn’t get it. I let you down. I’m sorry.”

  Finn didn’t reply. Dusque wished she knew what he was thinking—if he was trying to think of a gentle way to reprimand her, or if he might tell her that it didn’t matter. She was pretty sure he was disappointed, though. When he finally spoke, she wasn’t reassured.

  “Let’s not talk about that,” he said shortly. “We’ve got a ways to go yet and I don’t want to dwell on that. It’s best forgotten.”

  Dusque would have liked him to explain her mistake in specific terms, so she could learn from it and not repeat it, but it seemed she had no choice but to let it go. For now, she amended silently. She would ask him about it later, when they had more time and were out of danger.

  The weather continued to hold as they walked on. There were only a few purple-streaked clouds to compete with the brilliant stars, and neither Dusque nor Finn felt the need to illuminate their halo lamps. Gradually the steep hills gave way to gentler, rolling hills. The ferns and mountain flowers, conifers and evergreens melted into the large fields of lavender grass, and the spiky biba trees started to reappear. Dusque knew they were nearing the Imperial base.

  A loud tearing sound startled them. Weary and ill equipped for another battle, Dusque and Finn looked around for a place to hide. A small rocky outcropping was all they could find. Dropping to the ground behind it, they drew their weapons and steeled themselves for whatever might be out there.

  The roar grew louder, and a huge lizard, longer than several humans laid end to end, burst out of the brush. It snarled and shook its head violently from side to side, something clenched in its teeth. Dusque recognized the lizard as a bol pack runner. It looked malnourished and sickly, and at first she thought that they were safe, because it had obviously caught something … until she realized that what it had in its maw was a juvenile bol.

  It thrashed the baby around a few more times and then threw it to the ground. The wounded juvenile emitted a weak call and tried to drag itself away. The adult charged at it, spearing it with one of its two curved horns. Raising the now dead juvenile in the air, the adult flicked its head to one side and tossed the carcass into a heap of plants.

  “Are they cannibals?” Finn whispered to Dusque, as the adult bol stood there huffing.

  “No, not even during the worst periods of famine,” she replied. “That female is not going to eat her baby. She’s using it for bait. Watch.”

  The bol huffed once more, then thudded off a short distance, just past the rise in the hill. The air was heavy with the scent of blood. Soon enough, another creature came out of the brush, drawn by the smell.

  It was a lone huurton. It approached slowly, cautiously, but then put on a burst of speed and ran up to the fresh kill. Noisily, it ripped hunks of flesh free with its sharp canines. The adult bol came crashing out of her hiding spot, grabbed the huurton by the back, and shook it in almost the exact fashion that she had her infant. The huurton bleated in agony as it was tossed from one side to the other. The powerful incisors of the bol cut through the thick, woolly hide in a matter of
moments. Finally, the huurton went limp in the bol’s huge jaws. The lizard flipped the lifeless body to the ground and began to devour it.

  Finn and Dusque watched the feeding for a while without saying a word. Eventually, Finn turned to Dusque and asked, “Why did she do that?”

  “Because she was dying and her infant was, too,” she explained.

  “So she killed her infant?” he asked with a trace of disgust.

  “Obviously the feeding has been scarce around here lately. The adult bol looked thin and her infant was emaciated. She couldn’t feed her baby; that much is certain. Rather than let it face a miserable death by starvation, she killed it.”

  “But she deliberately used it as bait!”

  “Even stronger than her desire to save her offspring from suffering is her instinct to survive. It makes sense for the preservation of the species. She did what she had to, sacrificed what she had to in order to save herself.” She stopped briefly, suddenly thinking of the Rebels she had encountered—which reminded her that they still had a mission to complete.

  “Come on,” she told him. “While she’s feeding, we should be able to slip past her.”

  They maneuvered around the feeding bol without alerting her to their presence. Dusque noticed that Finn remained quiet for some time after they had left the scene of feeding carnage behind.

  “It still bothers you, doesn’t it?” she asked, breaking the heavy silence between them.

  “She killed her own offspring,” he replied. “I can’t think of a more horrendous betrayal.”

  “But that’s where you’re wrong,” she said gently. “It was an act of survival. For it to be betrayal, there would have to have been malice involved. Malice and planning,” she added.

  Dusque’s comments only seemed to darken his mood. She wished she knew what was bothering him so much; she wanted to help, but he seemed to want to be left to his thoughts. They walked for some distance without saying another word. It wasn’t much longer before a distant glow appeared, close to the horizon. They were almost back to the Imperial base.

  Finn slowed to a halt and turned to Dusque. “Make sure your weapons are ready,” he said shortly.

  “Why?” she asked. “We had no difficulty when we entered the base. Why should it be any different now?”

  “We thought we were alone by the waterfall, too, didn’t we?”

  Dusque fell silent at that. Apparently, her failure at the waterfall had changed his opinion of her abilities. She couldn’t bear that thought, and realizing how much his opinion had come to mean to her scared her even more than the evidence of her insecurity.

  “What I mean to say is that some time has passed since we passed through there,” he explained in a kinder tone. “Something you need to remember is not to count on anything to remain static. Get comfortable with a situation and you can get complacent. In this business, that is the fastest route to dying. Don’t trust anything.” He said nothing more, but turned to busy himself with his weapon.

  Dusque thought about his words as she verified the charge on her heavy blaster. Now that they were so close to success, she wondered if this was just his safety mechanism. She had missed his cue about the Gray Talon—there was no denying that. But how had he seen them so quickly? She knew how to listen and look for cues in the wilderness, but the Gray Talon leader hadn’t been clear of the waterfall when he’d surprised them with his threat. How had Finn known so quickly who was there?

  She shook her head. It didn’t matter how he did it. He was better trained than she was. If he’d stayed alive this long, he must be good at his business. Finn was right when he said there were no second chances. Thinking about it, she realized that it made sense that the last leg of a mission would be the most vulnerable time—simply because one would be elated with victory. Elation led to cockiness, which could lead to mistakes, failure, and death. She decided that was why he was riding her so hard: to make sure she stayed alive.

  Once she verified that her blaster had a fresh power pack, she had to conceal it on her person. Both she and Finn had abandoned their cloaks at the waterfall along with the short-circuited scanner. She slipped her blaster into the waistband of her trousers and pulled her tunic down to cover the telltale bulge. Finn slid his weapons into the upper portion of his boots and untucked his trousers to hide them.

  “I’m all set,” she told him. Suddenly she was struck by another realization. Ever since they had recovered the holocron, Finn had slowly resumed the mantle of leadership. And she had acquiesced easily—mostly because he had made a few pointed remarks that had eroded some of her confidence.

  He was hurt pretty badly, she reminded herself. Like a wounded animal, he would have been stripped to his basic self in the moment of absolute agony—and the fact that his main concern, even in the midst of his pain, had been her safety and the success of their mission comforted her. She decided she could take the sudden intensity he was projecting, at least until they were safely away. Then, maybe, she would give him an earful.

  “Time to go,” he told her, and led the way past the outer walls of the base to enter the compound proper.

  Because it was so late, there was only one guard in front of the command building. The dark Imperial flags rippled in the slight breeze. Dusque didn’t see anyone else around.

  “Looks all right,” she offered cautiously.

  “Looks like it,” Finn agreed, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  “Can you see the ship from here?” she asked.

  Finn craned his neck. “Hard to say.”

  Dusque took a closer look for herself. Even in the low lights of the base, she could see that another ship had arrived. Its markings and wing structure were unmistakable: an Imperial landing craft. She let out a slow, quiet breath.

  “They’re here,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Finn answered darkly.

  “Maybe they’re just changing troops or something,” she suggested hopefully.

  Finn shot her a foul expression, and even she knew her words sounded lame. She was terrified that, inexperienced as she was, she might have made a critical error that had betrayed the Rebel Alliance. Maybe the Empire had gotten around to issuing a warrant for her because of her friendship with Tendau, or maybe something she had said or hadn’t said to Commander Fuce earlier had tipped them off. Whatever the mistake, she didn’t want Finn or the Alliance to have to pay for it. She handed Finn her pack and started to walk toward the craft.

  Finn grabbed her by her arm and yanked her back into the shadows. “What are you doing?” He shoved the bag back into her hands.

  “I’m doing what I have to so that I can live with myself,” she replied.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She looked him deeply in the eyes and confessed, “I must have done something, or else it’s simply because of who I am, but they’ve caught up to us. If I turn myself in, that will give you a brief window when you can escape. I can’t let you or the Rebel Alliance down. Too much depends on this.”

  “The only way I’m leaving is with you,” he told her. He unslung his pack and crouched down. He tugged Dusque by the arm until she dropped down, too. He tossed a few sundry items onto the ground before pulling out three round objects. Thermal detonators.

  “What did you have in mind?” she asked him.

  He flashed her a wicked grin. “A few carefully placed explosions should provide enough cover for both of us to escape,” he told her. “I’ll simply manually reprogram the timer mechanism to give us a few more minutes and alternate them so they go off at staggered times. That’ll keep them running.”

  As he quickly adjusted the timers on the switches, Dusque kept an eye out for any activity. The post remained quiet.

  “Okay,” he told her. “Take this one and flip the switch when you get near the cantina. I’m going to lay one down by the data terminal near the medcenter, and the last one close to the Imperial craft. Now go!”

  Dusque crouched low and scurried over
to the cantina. Before releasing the trigger, though, she ducked her head in the door. The cantina was as deserted as the base appeared to be. She tossed the detonator inside and ran back to where she had been standing with Finn. She could see him returning from the Imperial ship, running fast. He crouched down next to her.

  “Now we wait for the fireworks,” he said, sounding satisfied.

  After a long moment, the detonator in the medcenter went off. An alarm sounded from somewhere, and suddenly troops streamed out of what Dusque had wrongly assumed was an empty building. She noted bleakly that there were far more troopers here now than had been here when they had arrived. Her suspicions were sadly confirmed. They had been found out.

  A moment later, the detonator in the cantina exploded, sending debris flying into the air. Finn threw his arms over Dusque to shield her from the initial wreckage that was raining down on them. When he saw that some of the stormtroopers had split up to investigate the new explosion, he jumped to his feet and yanked Dusque up.

  “Now’s our chance!” he shouted. She could barely hear him over the sirens and the secondary explosion caused by more of the medical equipment igniting.

  Finn gripped a blaster in one hand and held on to her hand with the other. He ran as fast as his injured leg would allow him, tugging on Dusque as he went. She, too, had pulled out her blaster and was looking about wildly, frightened and confused. They were almost to the shuttle when a stormtrooper who was investigating the new explosion near the medcenter saw them.

  “They’re over here!” Even Dusque could hear his transmission.

  They both opened fire as more stormtroopers started to turn at the sound of the laser blasts. Dusque was grateful for the scope on the blaster that allowed her to aim through the smoke and haze that filled the compound. She fired at anything that moved, even as Finn pulled her behind the Imperial landing craft for cover.

  Somehow, in all the smoke and confusion, a stormtrooper slipped along the other side of the craft. Neither Finn nor Dusque saw him. The shuttle had been sealed, and Finn set to work with an electronic lock breaker to open the hatch while Dusque laid down cover fire. The stormtrooper caught her by surprise.