by Alex Wheeler
They ran up the steps. Once at the top, Luke tossed a fragmentation grenade into the records room and slammed the door behind it. A moment later, they heard a muffled explosion. The Imperials would know they'd been here—but they would never know what the Rebels were trying to steal.
Footsteps pounded down the hallway. Their time was up. Luke led the way out of the building, but when they broke through to open air, they stopped cold.
Their landspeeder was gone.
"This way!" Luke shouted, catching sight of a few Imperial scout speeder bikes parked nearby. They raced toward them.
"Stop right there, you Rebel scum!" a stormtrooper shouted.
Laserfire shot past them. Running flat out toward the bikes, Luke twisted around and fired over his shoulder. The stormtrooper dived for cover. A second one had joined him, a blaster rifle in each hand.
Chewbacca reached the speeder bikes first and looked at them dubiously. They were narrow repulsorlift vehicles designed for a single rider. Handlebars for steering, foot pedals for speed and altitude, and no margin for error. The Wookiee growled something at Han, waving his furry arms in the air. Han shoved him toward the closest bike. "It'll hold you," Han said quickly. "Trust me." He hopped onto one of his own and lifted off. The Wookiee let out a mournful sigh, but he trusted Han. He jumped onto the bike and started the engine. It wobbled slightly, its repulsorlifts struggling to support the Wookiee's weight, but then the engine roared and the bike shot forward.
There was only one bike left.
"I said stop!" the stormtrooper shouted.
"I'll drive," Leia said, yanking Luke toward the bike. "You shoot."
They climbed on together and lifted off, thrusters on full. Luke straddled the bike and wrapped one arm around Leia's waist, using the other to fire back at the stormtroopers, who were fumbling with the door of a small storage shed off the side of the main administrative building.
Luke quickly understood why. The shed contained more speeder bikes. The stormtroopers were giving chase.
"Faster!" Luke urged Leia. "We have to get out of here!"
"Gee, thanks for the great idea," Leia drawled. But the bike accelerated. The city turned into a grayish smear as they sped away from the dense center and out toward the corridor of factories along the coastline. Luke turned back and fired another barrage of laserfire. The stormtroopers swooped out of the way. One of them veered straight into the path of an oncoming troop carrier. It exploded on impact.
Luke grabbed Leia tighter as the shock wave slammed into them. The bike lurched forward and dropped several feet. Luke's stomach rocketed into his throat. But he kept firing. And Leia never flinched at the controls. She made a sharp turn into a narrow passageway, trying to lose the remaining stormtrooper in a zigzag of alleys. But the bike behind them drew closer and closer, and Leia had pushed the thrusters as far as they would go. They shot toward a narrow spit of land bounded by sea on one side and by a murky bay of toxic runoff from the nearby factories on the other.
The stormtrooper fired his bike's blaster cannon. The beam of laserfire pinged off the main battery of Luke's speeder. The speeder shuddered and lurched precariously to the side. Luke, who was holding on with only one hand, lost his balance. The bike tilted further, dumping him off the seat. He scrabbled for purchase but felt himself slipping. They weren't very high off the ground, but if he hit at this speed…He was dangling half off the bike, and as it tipped further, he lost his grip completely.
"Hold on!" Leia shouted, grasping his hand.
Luke dangled in midair. She couldn't hoist him up, not with one hand. It was hard enough to steer while holding on to him. And impossible to fire at the approaching stormtrooper.
Desperate, Luke had an idea. "Fly over the bay!" Luke shouted up to her, hoping she'd hear him over the roar of the engines. He held tight as she steered toward the toxic water. He winced as his body slammed into the bike, buffeted by the wind. They were flying so low that his toes skimmed the water. There was a sizzling noise and a trail of smoke as the toxic liquid ate away at his shoe. Luke yanked his legs out of the way and gripped Leia's hand tighter. He tried not to look down.
He still had his blaster, which meant he had a chance. Wind tore at his body, trying to rip it from Leia's grip. The stormtrooper was firing relentlessly, his shots coming closer and closer to the mark. He didn't have much time. And it was nearly impossible to aim, dangling by one hand as he shot forward at two hundred kilometers an hour.
But Luke was sure of one thing: He could hit any target at any speed. He blocked out the wind, the bubbling toxic sludge, the hail of laserfire.
He squeezed the trigger.
Direct hit. The Imperial's primary drive motor exploded in a shower of sparks, and the bike began spinning out of control. The stormtrooper went flying into the soupy lake of toxic waste. He landed with a loud splash, thrashing and flailing in the bubbling iridescent water. But soon he slipped below, the white armor disappearing into the deep. Luke shuddered.
A few more seconds, a little less luck, and it could have been him.
Leia helped him climb back aboard the bike. The engine thrummed beneath him. Leia was shaking. Luke took a deep breath, steadying himself. "Let's go," he suggested, trying his best not to look at the toxic soup swirling beneath him. "Meet up with the others and start planning phase two."
"Let's just hope it goes better than phase one," Leia said, turning toward the rendezvous point.
"Couldn't go worse," Luke pointed out.
Leia twisted around to give him a wry smile. "You know what Han would say to that."
Luke was pretty sure he did. And he had to admit, for once, the pilot was probably right. "Things can always get worse."
CHAPTER TEN
X-7 closed his fingers around the enemy's neck and squeezed. He would throttle the life out of this imposter. Punish him for daring to believe he could fool X-7. That level of idiocy deserved death. Div gasped for air as red bloomed across his cheeks—blood vessels bursting in the struggle for oxygen.
The enemy jerked his hands up in a reverse Moravian maneuver. X-7 toppled backward, and the enemy was on him in a heartbeat. They rolled across the carpet, knocking over a synthstone table. Dishes and glasses clattered to the ground, shattering on impact. X-7 raised an arm to protect himself against the spray of jagged fragments. But his enemy grabbed a wrist and flipped X-7 onto his back.
As he fell, X-7 hooked his leg behind his foe's and brought him down, too. But the enemy had seen the move coming, and grabbed a fire poker from the fireplace on his way down. He slammed the durasteel rod down at X-7's face.
X-7 rolled out of the way just in time. He drew his blaster. With lightning speed, the enemy knocked it out of his hand. It skidded across the room, disappearing under a couch.
The enemy was a blur with the poker, lashing and lunging like a master swordsman. Driven by instinct, X-7 reached blindly, his hands closing around a curtain rod and ripping it off the wall. Some part of him must have noticed it earlier and filed it away for later use. That was why X-7 was invincible. He fought like a machine. No emotion, no passion. Only speed and observation and power. He moved with grace and without hesitation. He was like a force of nature. He had been bred for battle. He was a deadly weapon.
And yet the enemy matched him. Move for move.
Their makeshift weapons clashed and clanged. X-7 launched an attack, but the enemy countered with a Phr'shan maneuver. A Griggs-Barnay was the next logical move, but instead, X-7 opted for the unexpected, slashing at the enemy with a modified Ptann attack that he had picked up on Tarivo III. The enemy danced backward almost before X-7 had begun to strike, as if he knew what X-7 was going to do even before X-7 himself did.
They were too evenly matched. X-7 needed to regain the advantage. He began consciously to speed up his breathing, as if he were struggling for air. Sweat streamed down his face. "Hold," he gasped, panting. He let the enemy take the offensive and back him further and further across the room. "We ne
ed to talk."
The enemy lashed out with the poker. X-7 parried the blow but let his arm sag just a bit. He didn't want to look too weak. Just weak enough that it would be believable for him to stop the fight.
"You break into my home, attack me without cause or warning, and you expect me to take pity on you?" the enemy growled. He pounced on X-7, who shifted his weight and leaned into the attack, using the enemy's momentum to throw him across the room.
"Not pity," X-7 said, dropping into a crouch behind the sofa. His blaster was under there somewhere. If he could just reach it…"But if you're at all curious why I'm here…"
There! His hand closed around the blaster. He lodged it into his belt, tucking it beneath his shirt. Then he stood again, arms out to his sides. "A temporary ceasefire, that's all I'm suggesting. Time for explanations."
The enemy took a few cautious steps toward him, the fire poker lowered to his side. He nodded. "Fine. Explanations. You start."
X-7 could tell when a man's defenses were dropped. It was a predator's instinct, knowing exactly when to strike. "My pleasure," he said. Then raised the blaster, squeezed the trigger, and—
Somehow, the enemy wasn't there anymore. The blasterfire blew a hole in the wall. A cold blade pressed against X-7's neck. Warm blood trickled down his skin. The enemy was behind him.
The enemy had proven faster than him. Stronger than him. Smarter than him.
There was a chance he could dislodge the knife, knock the enemy off balance, disarm him, all before the knife plunged deeper and sliced an artery.
X-7 closed his eyes, let the blaster drop to the ground, and waited for the end. He had been bested, and it was no less than he deserved.
But the pressure of the knife dropped away. "Now perhaps you're ready to explain what you're doing here."
X-7 whirled around, ready to strike, but the enemy caught his arm before a blow could fall.
"Talk," Lune Divinian said.
It was his only viable option. He wouldn't risk hand-to-hand combat again, not until he found a way to regain the advantage. "Did you really think I would fall for it?" X-7 snarled. "Believe a man like you could be my brother?"
The man visibly recoiled. "My brother is dead."
"Your adopted brother, you mean," X-7 said, correcting him.
It was like the man's face turned to durasteel. His expression went completely blank. "What do you know about it?"
There was something strangely familiar about the dull eyes, the toneless voice, but it took X-7 a moment to pin it down. Then he realized that it was the same blank and pitiless gaze he saw in the mirror. This was the only man he'd ever met who was able to shut himself down as completely as X-7.
Just as he was the only man X-7 had ever met who could so evenly match him, strength for strength, move to move.
Is it possible…?
"I know everything about it," X-7 said, "but that's just what you intended, isn't it? Planted the information for me to find, invented this ridiculous story. You probably didn't even have a brother. This person, this Trever—"
Lune Divinian struck him across the face. Hard.
X-7 forced himself not to respond.
"You don't say his name," Lune said. "Ever."
It didn't make sense. If this was all a trap and Lune was behind it, then wouldn't he be welcoming X-7 with open arms? Certainly he could be lying, trying to put X-7 off balance, confuse him. But X-7 had never met the man who could successfully lie to him. People were too emotional, too invested in their own words. X-7 was separate from all that, separate from humanity. The distance allowed him to see behind people's masks, into the rotting truth that lay beneath. And he didn't think that Lune was lying.
He thought Lune was telling the truth, but didn't know. Wasn't certain.
Before, he would have been. Uncertainty wasn't a part of his programming.
Of course, neither was memory. Or curiosity. Or anger.
But X-7 wasn't the man he had once been.
It was proving to be a problem.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Div let X-7 think it took him some convincing. He looked through X-7's evidence, challenging his story at every turn. Refused to accept that Trever might be alive, standing in front of him.
And then, on the third day, he did. And in the process, X-7 accepted it, too.
Now Div couldn't decide where to rest his eyes. Not on the familiar threadbare couch, a hole on its armrest torn long ago by Trever's rambunctious pet bull worrt. Not on the door to the kitchen, where Astri had so often appeared with a pot of some foul-smelling concoction. She had always tried to recreate her father's recipes, but more times than not, her efforts had resulted in an inedible sludge. Clive had eaten it anyway, a smile fixed on his face. (Apparently love wasn't just blind; it was taste bud-deprived.) But at Trever's suggestion, Div had devised a better system: dumping the sludge into their napkins, then using the Force to float it out of sight.
Div couldn't look at the empty desk that had once been covered by Astri's computer clutter, or the shelves that had once been filled with Clive's collection of exotic Merenzane Gold vintages. The caretaker who came in once a month had managed to keep the abandoned house from falling in on itself, but she couldn't stop the dust from collecting. She couldn't turn the house back into a home.
She couldn't clear out the ghosts.
It had been a week. And with each passing day, it grew easier to see those ghosts; it became harder to forget. Which was why he almost couldn't bear to look around the house. But anything would be easier than looking at X-7, who was sitting on Trever's couch, wearing Trever's clothes, flipping through Trever's old collection of Gravball trading cards.
X-7 tossed them onto a side table. "I don't understand," he said. "Why would he…I…anyone collect something with no value?"
"For fun," Div said. "It made you happy."
X-7 riffled through a stack of holopics sitting on the table. He picked up one of Trever grinning in front of a shiny new Arrow-23 speeder. It had been his fifteenth birthday. "Happy." X-7 frowned and shook his head. "I can't remember that."
It wasn't the only thing he and Div had in common.
There were their strength and agility, of course, and their single-minded determination. But it wasn't just that. They were both men without a past. They understood each other.
"Tell me again," X-7 said. "Tell me how it happened."
Div sighed. He'd told so many stories of the past, but this was the only one X-7 ever wanted to hear.
"They were betrayed," Div said. "It was supposed to be a simple raid. The munitions factory should have been an easy target. But one of the Rebels sold them out to the Empire…stormtroopers everywhere. They…they never had a chance."
"They killed our parents," X-7 said, brushing his fingers across a holopic of Astri. "Except they weren't really my parents."
"They were. In every way that counted," Div said fiercely.
"But Trever—"
"You," Div said, correcting him. "You managed to sneak into the factory."
"You were watching from the ridge, with electrobinocs," X-7 said. "You were too far away. Too young."
"You saw Astri and Clive go down," Div said. "You still had the charges, and you were determined to get them inside. You weren't about to let them die in vain. But then…" He shook his head. "I still don't understand it."
"Then the TIE fighters dropped the concussion missiles," X-7 finished for him. "They destroyed their own factory. With me inside."
"They killed our people for trying to destroy it—and then they blew it up," Div said. It was the one thing he'd never been able to understand. It made all the death even more pointless.
"Because you've never worked with the Empire," X-7 said. "They have something they couldn't risk falling into Rebel hands. Or maybe they were planning on razing it anyway to build the garrison. So they destroyed it before you could. To make a point."
"A point that killed hundreds of their own men," Div said.
>
"Men are expendable," X-7 said with chilling calm. Then he gave himself a small shake. "I mean, that's what the Empire believes. That's what the Rebels don't understand."
Div understood. As soon as he'd seen that laserfire blast Astri to the ground, he'd understood.
"Except, they didn't kill everyone inside the factory," Div said. "There were survivors. You."
X-7 became very still. His face was a chalky gray. He looked up from the holopics and, for the first time in a week, met Div's eyes. "I may have made it out of that factory alive. But, Div, we both have to accept it: Your brother did not survive. Whoever I was, it's not…we can't…"
Hesitantly, half afraid he'd end up shot in the head, Div put a hand on X-7's shoulder. "You're here now," Div said. "So maybe we can."
"You're late," Ferus said as Div arrived at the rendezvous point. Div and Trever had discovered the abandoned shack, a few kilometers from the house, many years earlier. They'd once used it as a clubhouse, where Trever pretended to be interested in Div's childish games, because that was what brothers did. Even adopted brothers. As they'd grown older, it had become a useful meeting point for the Belazuran resistance.
"It's not easy," Div said. "He's watching me all the time."
"I'm sorry you have to go through this," Ferus said. "If I could bear it for you—"
Div shook his head. "It's fine. It's actually…"
"What?"
"Nothing."
But Ferus looked at him with those placid, knowing eyes, and Div couldn't help continuing. "Whoever X-7 was, he was conscripted into Project Omega against his will. We know that. Brainwashed to forget whoever he used to be. He must have had a family, people who missed him—who think he's dead. So isn't it possible…" Div was too ashamed to say it out loud. As he put the hope into words, even he could see how ludicrous it was.