Turning Point

by Jason M. Hough

  Imperial stormtroopers are many things, but subtle they are not.

  That morning I’d risen early, troubled, though I couldn’t say why. Dawn had yet to break. I’d left Chloa and the kids to their dreams and done the only thing I knew would ease my mind: cleaned my gear.

  Which is why I was in my workshop below the house, working grime out of the hinges of a trap, when I heard them.

  I tracked them by sound alone, enjoying the mental exercise though it wasn’t especially difficult. They moved at a brisk march, the sound of boots slapping against worn cobblestones. Four sounded identical and would have made a standard patrol for Tavuu’s winding streets. Only there were three more pairs. Two, their steps fell heavier. More than a simple patrol, then, for they carried something. Bigger guns? That twisted my gut. Weapons of any sort were rarely needed in this quiet district of the city above the jungle. Tavuu was a big place, the capital city of Radhii. Plenty of crime and unrest in the darker corners on the eastern side to keep the garrison busy. Over here, though, on the western edges where the city abruptly ended at a monstrous cliff face, things were peaceful.

  It was as if an unspoken agreement had been reached, long ago, among those of us who lived in this part of the city. We’re cornered here; nowhere to go but over the edge, so we’ll play along. We’ll keep our heads down.

  It was the last pair of footsteps that I focused on now. Lighter on the step, feet rolling slightly. Not subtle, perhaps, but not entirely unfamiliar with the concept, either.

  They were beyond the alley, in the market.

  I set the trap down, half cleaned, and laid the oiled rag beside it. My overeager ASP droid made a little glomp sound— may I put that away?—but I shushed it, my ears now fully pricked. Footfalls in the puddle-ridden alley. As their steps grew louder I grew nervous. Which one of my neighbors had earned Imperial attention? I should pay more attention to our neighbors. The only thing we shared was this row of old houses huddled together at the edge of the cliff. Beyond the wall at my back was a sheer rock face leading to the forest below.

  The forest. Zoess, its ancient name, which literally meant impenetrable. My second home.

  Chloa’s voice, behind me. “Gorlan, dear?”

  “Thought you were asleep.”

  She knew the art of subtlety. After all these years she could still slip up behind me—me!—and plant a kiss on the back of my neck, my first inkling of her presence being the static just before her lips arrived. “Do they come for us?”

  Footsteps on the wooden stairs outside, answering her question. I turned, met my wife’s eyes, and shrugged. “Let’s find out.”

  They knocked hard enough to rattle the heavy door. I waited a few seconds, tried to make myself look tired. They liked to wake you. Draw you from bed.

  Chloa stood beside me, chin up, as I creaked the door open a few centimeters. “Yes?” I said, with a touch of morning rasp.

  “Gorlan Seba?”

  “Yes?”

  “May we enter?”

  He wore no helmet, this one. Dark hair, sharp features, keen eyes. I knew little of Imperial rankings but the fact that he was in charge was unmistakable. “Have we done something wrong?”

  The man’s face tightened, ever so slightly, and I knew the answer to my question, plain as day. What I’d done wrong was not say yes to his request.

  “On the contrary,” he said. “We are here to hire you. We need a guide.”

  I said nothing. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “We need,” he went on, “to visit the Zoess.”

  I stared, at a loss. Chloa gathered her wits before I could. “When?” she asked.

  “Right now. This very morning.”

  “Impossible,” I said automatically. “A proper expedition takes weeks to prepare.”

  “We don’t have weeks,” the leader said through clenched teeth. Then he glanced around, pointedly studying the curtained windows and balconies around us. Finally he held up his hands, palms out. “Let us in, and I’ll explain.”

  I sat beside Chloa, arms folded across my stomach, and listened.

  “There was an escape,” the leader said. He’d introduced himself as Lieutenant Vrake and rattled off a bunch of numbers and classifiers no doubt impressive to someone who cared about such things. Only the subtext mattered. He had authority here. “Yesterday,” he added, one eyebrow arched.

  I realized he was waiting for me to speak. “Oh?” I said, and felt a little jab from Chloa’s elbow. Don’t make trouble.

  “Any visitors last night?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing... out of the ordinary, then?”

  My mouth opened on its own to say no, but memory held me back. I swallowed. “Well,” I said, and felt Chloa tense. I pressed on. “Didn’t think much of it at the time. Kids, I figured. Running around just after last bell. They raced up the alley and—”

  Vrake leaned in. “You spoke with them? Aided them?”

  A hint of accusation. I shook my head. “Only heard them. My hearing is pretty good.”

  “And?” Vrake asked.

  “And nothing. They—whoever they were—were gone by the time I even sat up.” It was the truth.

  Vrake considered this. Then he explained.

  Four soldiers of the rebellion, prisoners, managed to escape a transport on the way to Segenka prison, all the way over on the east side of Tavuu near the Imperial base. Witnesses had seen the rebels descending the cliff eight hours ago, half a kilometer north of here, using one of the ancient stone ladders carved into the very rock. The reckless way. An act of desperation.

  I sat there, staring at the man across from me and the two white-armored troopers behind him, weapons held angled toward the floor. It could just as easily have been four outlaws across from me, seeking a guide, if only they’d known to stop instead of running past last night. I wondered what I would have done. I cared about the rebellion as much as I cared about Imperial rule. Which is to say, not much. None of my business. I had Chloa and the kids, and I had the Zoess. That was enough for me.

  “We understand you have a lift,” Vrake said. “And we know your reputation as a tracker. No one knows the forest as well as you. So I am asking you, Gorlan, to help us bring these criminals back.”

  Asking. Right. So easy to ask for something when you can just demand it if the answer is no. In fact, the only reason to bother asking at all in such circumstances was to give the person a chance to show their loyalty. I rubbed at my chin, pretended to consider the supposed request. Chloa put her hand on my arm and patted it. Get this over with, her gesture said.

  Finally, I nodded to the lieutenant. “You’ll have to leave those blasters behind. And your communicators. Won’t work down there.”

  “They’ve been specially hardened. With the extra shielding—”

  My patient smile stopped him. “A common mistake that’s caused more accidents down there than I care to count. Trust me, they won’t work.”

  “Hmm.” Vrake frowned. “Well, you are the expert.”

  “You want a good knife. Maybe a spear. I have a few extra. You’re welcome to them.”

  One of his men leaned forward and whispered something to him. “Ah, good,” Vrake said to him. He turned back to me. “It seems we may have an alternative.”

  Twenty meters from the base of the cliff, my lift came to a silent stop. Before we stepped off, I held a finger to my lips, a gesture acknowledged by Vrake. He and his squad stood perfectly still, waiting. They’d all left their helmets behind. None of the augmentations they offered would work once we descended below the canopy, which made them worse than useless: they’d hinder hearing and visibility, two things much more important than armor once in the Zoess. Still, I thought they might figure out a wa
y to keep them. Gut their electronics, maybe. Something, if only to retain the fearsome edge their faceless uniform provided.

  We all stared out at the vast bulbous carpet of foliage, alive with greens, purples, and yellows.

  The forest hummed.

  A low, undulating sound, almost like a pulse. Little more than background noise to those in the city high above, but down here the hum was a physical thing. It weighed on you. A pressure, wrought of the electrostatic build-up in the lightning trees that populated the forest. I gave the squad a moment to get used to it, while I listened for other things. Ghoma, and other, rarer, beasts. All quiet, for now.

  “From here you do exactly as I say,” I told them. The troopers looked to Vrake, who gave me a single, sharp nod.

  We left the platform by a series of wooden steps that descended out to the edge of a small clearing, away from the trash and debris that had been dumped along the cliff’s edge before Imperial law forbade the practice.

  We hiked north, to the base of the stone ladder, a series of footholds carved into the face of the cliff ages ago, some so worn they were barely visible. I pointed out signs that people had descended here recently, just as Vrake’s witnesses had said. Trampled leaves, newly exposed rubble. Those who had come down this ladder had gone straight into the heart of the Zoess. I had thought—hoped, even—that maybe they’d simply followed the cliff north all the way to its end. But of course that would have only got them captured, and the risks of the forest were clearly preferable to that. “What did these prisoners do wrong, exactly?” I asked.

  “Rebelled,” Vrake said, his tone closing off any further discussion on the topic.

  Fine by me. I set the example after that, saying nothing. With this company I could only move at half the rate I usually would. I ducked under heavy blue fronds, dripping with slimy syrup that carried seeds away. I brushed aside thorny cavenna vines that hung in curling loops around our faces, probing, tasting the air. Harmless enough if you didn’t let the little tongue-like tips get a sample of your skin.

  The farther we got from the shadow of the cliff, the taller the trees became. Their bases grew thicker, and the domes their heavy upper branches made left my followers speechless as they stared up at the Zoess’s eerie green cathedral-like ceiling. Insects darted around us, leaving little blue trails of bioluminescence. Birds sang in the distance, mostly to the west, where sunlight had begun to creep over the city and reach the forest. By midday it would be sweltering.

  And beneath it all, the hum of the lightning trees.

  There was something else, too.

  I dropped to one knee and held up a hand. The stormtroopers mimicked my position, weapons ready. Several held batons, one a long hunter’s knife. The rest carried the “alternatives” Vrake had mentioned: modified bowcasters. Wookiee weapons, no doubt confiscated and then modified to only mechanically fire chargeless quarrels. I wondered where the garrison had dug them up. Had they ever been fired? Not my problem, I tried to tell myself.

  The sound approaching us, that was my problem.

  We’d been keeping to a game trail, same one the rebels had used. I gestured for my companions to move to one side, off the path. Some of them moved quickly enough.

  Ahead, across the narrow patch of muddy forest floor, a fern exploded in a spray of green and blue. I saw only teeth and claws and the blur of motion before I rolled to one side and brought my knife up from its sheath. The beast, a deschene and a young one at that, galloped past me and slammed into one of the two stormtroopers who hadn’t yet taken cover. The pair—animal and man—went rolling into the underbrush.

  I barreled into the tangle of bushes and roots until I found the writhing pair. The trooper was on his back, hands clasped over his head, arms locked together in front of his face, as the deschene clawed at his white armor. Already there were gouges through the material, blood seeping through from the man beneath. Another few swipes and it would have him. I reached into a pocket and pulled out a device of my own design. A little black disk, its outer surface studded with small barbs.

  “Down!” I shouted, and threw the device as hard as I could. Then I dove to the ground and covered my ears, hoping they’d heard.

  With my arms clasped around my head, I could just see between my elbows. The throw had been true. It struck the six-legged animal on its middle flank. The barbs punctured skin and tangled in the fine hair. The impact caused the second feature of my device, a sphere within the sphere, to shatter. Chemicals inside mixed, creating a powerful electric current.

  There was a pop I felt more than heard, and a brilliant white flash. Bolts of electricity snapped down from the canopy and struck the little device and the beast to which it clung. Another pop, this one ugly and wet, resulted in a shower of smoldering meat and tough hide. I hid my face for that. I loved the animals that wandered the Zoess, even the predators.

  I came to my knees, then stood. The stormtrooper on the ground lay motionless. Vrake stumbled past me and knelt beside his soldier.

  “Alive?” I asked.

  The reply came a few seconds later. “He’ll be OK. Bring me a medpac!” This last command he shouted over his shoulder. One of the other troopers had recovered and complied.

  Vrake looked at me. “What was that thing you threw?”

  I shrugged. “My own invention. The trees’ discharge is drawn to powered devices, I figured why not harness that?”

  “Clever,” he said, eyeing the suddenly pathetic bowcaster in his hands.

  “Maybe, but far from subtle. If your rebels are out there, they know we’re coming.”

  He snorted. “They’re up against the Empire. They knew we’d come after them the moment they chose the wrong side.”

  I said nothing, a fact he seemed to notice. But Vrake ignored my slight and helped his stirring soldier to his feet. Soon we were moving again.

  Hours passed. The forest sounds were occasionally tinged with the hollow growl of distant TIE fighters, patrolling the edges of the forest, maintaining a safe distance from the lightning trees. I stopped when we heard them the first time, and glanced at Vrake.

  “You didn’t think we’d risk letting the prisoners slip out the far side of the forest, did you?”

  Half a kilometer later, as the day grew late, we came upon an ancient, petrified tree trunk in the center of a small clearing. The rebel’s tracks were obvious, the ground trampled. “They rested here,” I said.

  “When?” Vrake asked.

  “Three hours. Maybe four.”

  He let out a frustrated sigh. “We need to move faster, Gorlan.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Your patrols—”

  “We need to get to them before this forest does.”

  “So you find their remains, so what? The forest does your job for you.”

  “No, it does not,” he said through clenched teeth, patience waning.

  “I don’t under—”

  “We haven’t interrogated them yet,” he said, each syllable flat and sharp as a knife.

  I held his gaze for a bit and then had to look away, to the ancient dead tree. Interrogate. What, I thought, had I gotten myself into? I should have never opened my door that morning. I shouldn’t have gotten involved.

  I studied the tracks around the tree trunk. There was a hollowed area at the base.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Vrake said, sweeping one hand toward the direction the rebels had been traveling, “may we continue? I’d like to find them before they starve.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” I said.

  “Meaning what?”

  I moved to the gnarled, petrified wood and crouched. “They did more than stop here for a break. They had supplies cached here.” I pointed to depressions in the mud within the hollowed trunk. “Three, maybe four packs, I’d guess. Heavy.”

  Vrake blinked. “What?”

  “And another thing. Look at the tracks. There’s more from here, leading west. Eight of them, now, I think. They joined up with
others.”

  “Are you saying they planned this?”

  At that I could only shrug. “I doubt it was a chance meeting.”

  “Don’t get smart,” he rasped.

  “At least they’re shouldering gear,” one of the troopers offered. “Might slow them.”

  The lieutenant gathered his men. “Everyone stay sharp. Our escapees are likely armed. At least we can take comfort in the knowledge they won’t gun us down with blasters.” He eyed the pouch at my belt. “How many more of your little inventions are you carrying?”

  “Two,” I said, regretting I’d let him see one at all.

  He held out his hand. I hesitated, only just, and then placed the disks in his palm.

  “Now,” he said. “Move.”

  We marched until dusk. The forest grew cold and quiet, and we had no further encounters with the local wildlife. Luckily the rebels had taken a path that led to one of the few wide clearings in the forest, one I used frequently when my journeys required more than a day’s travel. “We camp here,” I said.

  “We continue,” Vrake snapped.

  “No, we do not,” I said. “Trust me. We cannot traverse the forest in the dark, much less follow tracks.”

  “They’ll gain an entire night’s march on us.”

  “Believe me,” I said, “they’ll have to stop, too. The Zoess is unnavigable after dark. Any light would trigger the trees, and a flame would bring the wrath of the wild ghoma. You haven’t seen anger until you’ve seen one of them enraged by the sight of fire. Besides, this clearing offers some small comforts.”

  I went to the very center and lay down my gear on the ground beside a tall wooden post that protruded from the ground. Hooks poked out from a dozen places along its length. From my pack I removed an electric lantern, slipped it over one of the hooks, and reached for the on switch.

  “What are you doing!?” Vrake shouted. He and his men leapt backward.

  I turned the lantern on. A dim red light bathed the center of the clearing.

  “Relax,” I said, satisfied at their expressions I must admit. I indicated a circle of stones around the post, barely a meter in diameter. “The one place in the Zoess out of range of the lightning trees.”