by Claudia Gray
“Chassellon, you go first!” Leia cried. He was right about being stronger. She cupped her hands together, and he instantly stepped into them, hurling himself onto the bank. Over the roar of the mudslide—louder every second—she said, “Come on, Harp! Now!”
Harp took the step after that, reaching for Chassellon’s outstretched hands as he pulled her onto the bank. Then he lunged forward, desperately reaching for Leia—
The wave hit her as hard as anything solid, as hard as a tree or a wall. The breath left her lungs; the light left her eyes. Her body tumbled over and over, surrounded and suffocated by heavy mud rushing along at incredible speed. She felt as if death itself had swallowed her whole.
Pathfinder training kicked in. Squeezing her eyes shut, Leia forced her hand down to her belt, where she hit the field generator. She heard a horrible slurping, liquid sound all around her—then startled as the mud popped out to the edge of the field, leaving her bobbing in an energy bubble. By the dim light at her belt, Leia could make out the swirls and ooze of the mud rushing by.
Although panic tugged at the edges of her consciousness, she managed to keep her body still; the bubble was strong but not impermeable, and thrashing around could compromise the field’s integrity. She had to trust it. Air is lighter than mud. Lightness rises and heaviness falls. Wait it out.
But there’s only so much air in this bubble—
Light slowly began to filter in, then burst upon her in a rush as the bubble surfaced. Bobbing within it, Leia rolled sideways toward the nearest dry land, or what passed for it on Chandrila’s marshes. Once she saw wet, flattened grass beneath her, she turned off the field generator and flopped onto the ground like a caught fish. Her breaths came too quickly in her chest, and mud covered nearly every millimeter of her body. It didn’t matter. All she wanted was to lie here, not moving, preferably forever.
From a distance she heard her name being called. After another few moments, she regained enough energy to care, and to recognize the voices.
“Leia?” Harp was very nearly screaming. “Leia?”
“Your Highness!” Chassellon had pitched his voice to carry, a surprisingly deep, booming shout. “We’re looking for you! If you can hear us, let us know where you are!”
After a couple of tries, Leia was able to take a deep enough breath to cry back, “Here!”
They ran up to her moments later, each of them so obviously terrified that Leia almost wanted to laugh. “Field generator,” she said, coughing once. “Remember?”
Harp collapsed by Leia’s side. “I forgot all about it.”
“You won’t next time,” Leia pointed out, then had to cough again. Maybe she’d swallowed a little mud at the beginning.
Chassellon pulled himself together almost instantly, and held out his hand to Leia, courtly and formal. “Will you rise, my lady?” Usually she found his emphasis on her royal status irritating, but today it felt comforting, like being wrapped in a familiar blanket. Leia let him pull her to her feet. Although the world tilted oddly at first, she soon regained her balance. Wet mud slithered down her body, and Chassellon put his free hand to his chest. “Your royal robes are stunning, Your Highness. Designer?”
She laughed again. “One of a kind.”
They belatedly made it to the rendezvous point, so late that Chief Pangie and the others had begun assembling a search party. Kier went to Leia immediately, gathering her in his arms. So much for being discreet, she thought, although at the moment she couldn’t care.
Chassellon’s temper had returned, and this time it was directed squarely at the chief. “This is ridiculous! Harp gets injured on Alderaan, Leia and Kier nearly fall to their deaths on Felucia, and now this? Pathfinding’s supposed to be a learning experience, not survival of the fittest!”
Chief Pangie just shook her head. “Field generators, Stevis. You’re supposed to use the field generators so that nobody gets hurt. You have to remember that.”
“Or else what?” Chassellon retorted. “We die?”
“Exactly.” The chief let the word hang in the shocked silence that followed, until she continued in a quieter, more serious tone than Leia had ever heard from her. “Pathfinding can be dangerous. Every single one of you knew that before you began. Every single one of you thought that danger somehow didn’t apply to you, because you’re young and stupid about that kind of thing. You have to learn better, and I’d rather you learned it out here with your field generators to save you, than somewhere else in the galaxy where you get no safety net, no teammates, and no second chances. Pathfinding isn’t just about learning how to find your way around. It’s about learning how to think on your feet. How to deal with real risks. Even how to face the fear of death.”
Did my parents realize this? Leia wondered, before deciding that of course they had.
In the circle of her classmates, everyone remained hushed and subdued—Harp pale and shaky, Sssamm with his head hanging low, Chassellon unexpectedly solemn—except for pink-haired Amilyn Holdo, who grinned and said, “I knew it!”
Originally Leia had planned on returning to Coruscant with the others, but after her tumble through the mudslide, she felt the need to go back home at least for a night or two.
“I could come with you, if you want.” Kier held one of her hands in both of his as they stood at the spaceport. The class’s transport sat a few meters away, their friends already climbing aboard. “Look after you on the way back. Then we could return to Coruscant together.”
“It’s all right. Honestly, I’m exhausted. I just want to sleep.” Which was true—if not the whole truth. Leia wasn’t so shaken by her experience that she’d failed to see an opportunity, one she wasn’t yet ready to share with anybody else, even Kier.
“If you’re sure,” Kier said. When she nodded, he kissed her forehead once, brushed his thumb along her cheek, and headed off to the transport.
Leia didn’t have to wait on her own very long. The Polestar arrived promptly, with Ress Batten alone at the helm. Batten hurried out to greet her, then frowned. “You look fine. I was told you’d been in mortal peril, and this is, what, slightly mussed hair?”
“You should’ve seen me before I washed up.” Even though she’d changed back into her dark blue traveling gown and now looked almost as polished as 2V could wish for, Leia’s skin still itched from the mere memory of mud. “Come on, let’s go.”
They took off from the surface of Chandrila without more than half a dozen extra words exchanged between them. Never had Batten mentioned their voyage to Crait, but Leia could sense the knowledge between them at times, a silence more energizing than intimidating. Although she wasn’t certain how to read Batten’s reaction, it certainly wasn’t disapproval, or fear.
Hopefully it was curiosity.
“So,” Leia began, a few minutes before they would make the jump to hyperspace, “would you say that we’ve—taken some interesting trips together?”
Batten shook her head. “They’ve been pretty dull, really. Average. Everyday. Humdrum.”
“Humdrum. Like that run to Crait.”
“So boring.”
Leia made sure to look down at the console, not at Batten’s face, as she said, “On the way home—I was thinking—if it wouldn’t take too long, maybe we could take another boring trip. Something completely average.”
“Oh, yeah?” The note of pure anticipation in Ress Batten’s voice made Leia look up to see the older woman’s grin. “Turns out I could use a little more humdrum in my life.”
She wants this, Leia thought. She knows this is action against the Empire, and she wants in. How many others must be ready, willing, even eager to join us as soon as we speak the word?
To Batten she said only, “The Paucris Major system. No landings this time—distance observation only. And let’s leave it off the logs.”
“Your Highness, I like the way you think.”
As the Polestar hurtled through the blue shimmer of hyperspace, Leia lay back on one of the long co
uches. Adrenaline battled with exhaustion and won—barely—as she counted through the possibilities. Batten’s probably a good candidate to join us someday. Chassellon Stevis? Maybe not as bad as he seems at first, but still, he’d report us in a heartbeat. Amilyn Holdo…Leia frowned. By now she genuinely liked Amilyn and believed her to have noble ideals, but that didn’t change the fact that the girl seemed highly unlikely to be useful in a crisis situation.
Thinking of Kier made her smile. Of course Kier would want to play a role. She hadn’t forgotten his concerns about protecting Alderaan, but lots of planets were joining forces now. He loathed the Emperor and was braver about speaking out than most. When they took action, he’d be by their side.
“Coming out of hyperspace in a moment, Your Highness,” Batten called back to Leia.
When she stood up, Leia felt another wave of tiredness hit her. She reminded herself of the bed waiting for her back on Alderaan. It wouldn’t be long now. They were only here to take a few scans of the system. To her it seemed no more than feeling out the dimensions of what her parents were planning, getting an idea of scope and scale that would let her know what to prepare for. Would they be going after targets like Calderos Station? Trying to persuade more ships to defect?
The small shudder that went through the Polestar meant they were back in realspace. Leia joined Ress Batten in the cockpit and found her already running scans. “You sure are interested in this boring planet,” she said.
But Batten had lost interest in the joke. “Oh, kriff,” she said as data scrolled by her. “Kriffing kriff.”
“What? There aren’t—is the Empire—”
“No, that’s not it.” Batten brought up a visual on the screen. “Look at this.”
The scans hadn’t even touched the planet’s surface; instead, they focused on what floated in orbit. Dozens of larger ships, from midsized transports to enormous planetary battleships, were tethered to spindly deep-space repair stations, no doubt by tractor beams. Some of the ships were newer, but most looked old—though Leia could tell they were being repaired. No. Refurbished. Kier had shown her enough of his Clone Wars historical materials for her to recognize that some of the planetary ships dated from that era, but they now sported newer, top-of-the-line engines.
“They’re fixing them up,” Batten said, more to herself than to Leia. “Getting them ready.”
Up until this moment, Leia had believed her parents would support strike attacks. Controlled, directed military action, nothing like the terrorist acts of Saw Gerrera. Resistance to Palpatine’s forces, maybe defense for those most directly endangered. Pressure that would force the Emperor to listen, to moderate, maybe even to abdicate.
She’d been fooling herself.
Looking out at the sheer scope of the armada in front of her, Leia finally understood that her parents were preparing to go to war.
“The Clone Wars.” The docent of the Emperor’s Museum addressed the Apprentice Legislature tour with the clasped hands and carefully monotone voice of a funeral guest. Behind him, a flat screen showed images of thousands of clone troopers marching in lockstep across rugged terrain. “A tragedy such as has rarely been seen before, and thankfully never will again.”
Leia flinched, then glanced around her, hoping no one had noticed. Nobody had. Most of her classmates were visibly, profoundly bored; Kier, who stood by her side, was of course completely engrossed in the images playing before them, real footage of the Clone Wars he’d studied so much.
Real footage. False history.
“Count Dooku of Serenno led the Separatist faction away from the faltering Republic,” the docent continued. “Although he acted out of craven ambition, with disregard for the billions of lives that would be lost. Dooku was correct about one thing. The Republic had indeed become rotten at its core, no longer governed by law, order, and discipline. Had the Senate chosen a different chancellor after the deposition of the weak, ineffectual Valorum, galactic order itself might have fallen apart. But the times we live through create the heroes we need.”
The inaugural portrait of Palpatine filled the screen until it seemed as if the Emperor himself was smiling down at them with kindly eyes. Leia wondered how much digital manipulation had been necessary to create that illusion of kindness. Or maybe he was only acting. Either way, she couldn’t see the point of projecting a benevolent image while doing everything necessary to prove himself a cruel man and a warmonger.
Palpatine started the past war. Was her father starting the next one?
As the docent led them into the display about Palpatine’s childhood (titled “From Humble Beginnings,” like Naboo was poverty-stricken), Leia trailed behind. Kier murmured, “Are you all right? You’ve been quiet all day.”
“I guess. It’s all just so—” She made a hand gesture instead of outright saying the word fake.
Kier considered that carefully. “When I go looking for deeper background information, it’s…hard to find primary sources.”
“You should talk to my dad sometime. He could tell you stories you wouldn’t believe. Like the time bounty hunters took him and several other senators hostage in the heart of the Senate itself.” It was safe to mention that incident publicly. Most of the stories Bail Organa had to tell about the Clone Wars were far more politically sensitive.
“Would he tell me about it? Really?” Kier had the fascinated gleam in his eye that most guys his age only had for new speeders.
Leia managed a smile. “Yeah. My parents adore you, by the way.”
“Hope they’re not the only ones.”
She nudged his side, he nudged back, and they took each other’s hands. A few steps away she saw Chassellon pretending to vomit; the joke was probably meant to be more friendly than not, but Leia had no patience for it. In truth she found it hard to concentrate even on Kier’s presence, or the museum of lies around them.
Her mind kept going back to the fleet around Paucris Major, preparing for a conflict with the potential to make the Clone Wars look like a dinner party.
“Another dinner party?” Leia said in dismay as she stood in the great hall of the palace, watching the servitor droids whir about in a bustle of activity.
“Yes, our queen is holding yet another banquet.” 2V practically gleamed with satisfaction as she rolled alongside her royal charge, weaving through droids carrying wineglasses and bundles of flowers. “I must say, it’s so good to see a return to proper courtly standards of hospitality and conviviality. Now, spit-spot, off to your room. We’ve got to make you presentable, and the Maker knows we hardly have the time!” There was nothing for Leia to do but follow.
She’d decided to come clean with her parents about snooping around the Paucris system as soon as she returned to Alderaan. Probably their explanation would be terrifying in its own right—as would the inevitable lecture she’d receive—but she’d decided she could endure any concrete truth better than the suspense of not knowing.
Instead, she’d have to bear at least one more day of it, plus the knowledge that her parents were hard at work planning this right here in the palace, around a dinner table with their co-conspirators.
Listen to me—“co-conspirators,” Leia thought as she absently shimmied into the pale yellow gown 2V had laid out for her. Her brain had already run ahead to one potential future, where this had all gone horribly wrong, where her parents were jailed or executed for treason, and where she was either left utterly alone or made to die by their side. It was as though she could hear the judicial officer speaking the charges already.
“Shall I put on the cuffs?” 2V said.
Leia stared at her until she realized the droid was talking about the broad silver cuff bracelets set out atop a cabinet. With a sigh, she held out her hands.
By the time she emerged onto the terrace, the guests had already assembled. This appeared to be a smaller banquet than most; no doubt the people gathered around formed the core of the anti-Palpatine movement. Bail Organa was deep in discussion with Winmey
Lenz, while Breha spoke with Senator Pamlo. In the distance, Aldera sparkled on the twilight horizon. It was Mon Mothma who first welcomed Leia, walking closer with a smile on her face. “Princess. How very good to see you again.”
“It’s good to see you too,” Leia said, but it wasn’t. How was she supposed to get through the usual small talk with what she’d seen at Paucris weighing so heavily on her? Then it hit her—she could just ask Mon Mothma herself. Nobody else at this gathering would tell Leia the truth, maybe not even her parents, but Mon Mothma probably would. Leia began, “My class took a trip to Chandrila recently—”
“I heard you fell prey to the mud flats.” Mon Mothma put one hand on Leia’s arm, a brief touch of apology. “If you come back sometime and let me know, I can make sure you spend your time somewhere more agreeable.”
As in, anywhere else ever. But Leia didn’t get sidetracked. “On the way back, I took a short side—”
She broke off as the doors to the terrace swung open wide, revealing the palace majordomo, Tarrik, who looked on edge and discombobulated. Leia understood why the moment she recognized the figure behind him.
“Your Majesty, Viceroy,” Tarrik announced in his booming voice, his eyes darting from side to side. “Presenting Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin.”
Silence instantly fell. Everyone went utterly still, except for Tarkin, who strolled onto the terrace as though it were his own. He wore full military uniform and a thin-lipped smile. “Your Majesty,” he said, half-bowing to Breha, his behavior as polished and polite as though he had actually been invited. “Forgive my intrusion.”
“Governor Tarkin.” Breha responded so easily, smiled so gently, that any outsider would’ve thought nothing was wrong. “To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“I was traveling in my personal vessel, the Carrion Spike, when it suffered a systems malfunction.” Tarkin sighed. “Nothing too major, I hope, but we needed to put in for repair, and Alderaan was the closest world. Naturally I knew I must pay my respects to the queen and her viceroy as soon as possible.”