by Ben Acker
“What happened to Antha Mont?” Mattis asked.
“I’ll ask the questions,” the sour old crocodile growled back, and then, after obviously trying hard to think of a question, he finally asked, “Who is Antha Mont?” He was no help. Mattis again rode the drift in silence, did his chores, and went through his days. He didn’t know what that interlude with Antha Mont had been about, but after a while he didn’t think about it every day. And soon he didn’t think about it every week.
Once Antha Mont and the teeming galaxy were just about gone from his thoughts, she reappeared, and she wasn’t alone.
“Mattis,” she said. “This is Snap Wexley. He wants to talk to you.”
Snap Wexley, a likable and jocular pilot, stood amid the seats of the drift shuttle and told Mattis all about the growing Resistance. Under the generalship of Leia Organa, the Resistance was a splinter of the New Republic military that felt the Republic wasn’t taking the threat of a new dark force seriously enough. General Organa was concerned that the First Order, a group that had seceded from the Republic’s senate, would someday follow in the footsteps of the Empire. She would not allow that to happen.
Mattis didn’t understand all the political parts, but when Snap told Mattis “the Resistance is made up of people like you: Good people who want light in the galaxy. People who stand up to bullies. People who want to make a difference,” Mattis desperately wanted to be a part of it all. And that was what it seemed like the conversation was about.
All he could think to say, however, was, “I’m only fifteen.” Which wasn’t even true. Mattis was fourteen.
That made Snap Wexley laugh for some reason. Mattis always seemed to be making people laugh, though he was never sure why.
“We know all about you, Banz,” Wexley said. “Antha’s always been good about keeping an ear to the ground for us. Now”—Mattis felt like he was standing up straighter than he ever had before as he braced for the question he hoped Wexley was about to ask him—“do you want to join the Resistance and make a difference in the galaxy?”
“Yes!” Mattis replied too loudly. He didn’t have to think about it. After everything Snap Wexley had told him? After all the long philosophical conversations with Antha Mont about light and dark and power? Mattis wanted to be a hero; he always had. And the Resistance was going to show him how.
Snap Wexley laughed again and stood up. “You sure you don’t have any questions for us?”
“You’re sure you’re the good guys?” Mattis asked.
“We definitely are,” Snap said with a smile.
“Can I be a pilot like you?”
“There’s no reason why you couldn’t be!”
A hero and a pilot? His mind splashed around in the puddle of his imagination. His heart vaulted. “Then I guess my only other question is…how soon can we leave?”
Three weeks? Three whole weeks? It was hard enough when Antha Mont had fueled his imagination with details of a galaxy far beyond Lund Gourley and then disappeared. Knowing he was going to embark on a great adventure to see that galaxy, to save that galaxy, he had to wait three of the longest weeks of his life before Snap Wexley could return to take him to the Resistance base. It was unbearable. Worse was that he couldn’t even tell anyone! The Resistance was a secret! Before Antha Mont took an interest in him, Mattis had never had a secret, not one he hadn’t invented himself.
The three weeks crawled by like they were wounded badly, dragging a useless leg but soldiering on. Every meal, every day working the hemmel fields, every trip to temple (which he now had to sit through, squirming) was just a day that he was waiting to go to sleep so he could wake up again and be a day closer to leaving Lund Gourley. He took some of the smaller boys aside and encouraged them to stick up for themselves, preparing them, without saying why, for a time when he would no longer be there to protect them. He practiced flying the roto-cropper as often as he was allowed.
Mattis felt Fikk’s angry eyes on him every time he got up on that roto-cropper. He could tell that Fikk knew something had happened. Something was happening. Something was about to happen. Fikk had laid off Mattis since their confrontation, because Mattis didn’t tell on him. But now Mattis was too happy for Fikk’s liking and was pretending not to be. It was suspicious. The reprieve was over.
The day before Mattis was set to go, he played one last game of Rocks and Sand with Beckgam and Burm and Tchock behind the silo. Fikk was suddenly there, blocking the suns. He picked up Mattis’s Emperor Stone right off the pitch, right in the middle of the game, and examined it slowly, elaborately turning it in his hard hands.
“Give that back.” Beckgam stood up, surprising Fikk. Mattis was pleased. He was leaving the kids more confident than he found them. They were going to be all right. Mattis stood up, too, getting between Fikk and Beckgam. Tchock buried his face in his hands.
“Ssssomething issss happening,” hissed Fikk, gesturing at Mattis as if that were an explanation. “What isss it?”
Mattis wanted to tell him. He had never wanted to tell anyone anything more than he wanted to yell in Fikk’s face what the next day promised him. Mattis needed to tell him, but not as much as he needed not to.
“Tell me or I will take you up to the top of thissss sssilo and teach you once and for all how to fly.” Fikk crushed the Emperor Stone as if it were a sand cluster.
“Leave him alone,” yelled Tchock from behind his hands. Fikk snarled at him.
Mattis could imagine the conflict escalating if he didn’t do something. Then he thought of just what to do.
“Fikk. Tomorrow at the center, I’ll tell you everything.”
“If I don’t like it…” Fikk started.
“I’ll fly away forever,” Mattis finished, forcing himself not to smile.
There were two Phirmist holidays a year that were so much fun it was hard to fall asleep the night before either of them. Mattis tossed and turned in his bed that night as if both the holidays were coming in the morning. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears. He felt like his pulse would shake the bedframe. Finally, he drifted off, dreaming of flying the roto-cropper in an old battle, side by side with Luke Skywalker, under Admiral Ackbar’s orders.
Mattis awoke having defeated the Empire all by himself. He barely touched his breakfast stew. He took his rucksack full of everything he owned, just as he had every day for three weeks, so as not to arouse eventual suspicion. He forced a neutral expression and didn’t greet Antha Mont as the orphans boarded her barge. He sat next to Fikk and laughed and joked the whole way to the center, which confused the Saurin utterly.
Then, when the orphans left the drift one by one, Mattis waited for Antha Mont to tell him not to go. Instead she yelled for everyone to get off! He started to worry. He walked toward the exit as slowly as he knew how. He was nearly to the hatch. Fikk was waiting for him. Antha Mont was checking her instruments, paying no attention. Did he have something wrong? Was it because he didn’t greet her? He wasn’t supposed to! Had they changed their minds? Had they forgotten about him? If Antha Mont didn’t say something, what was Mattis going to tell Fikk? He had one foot off the drift. Fikk licked his lips. Mattis gulped.
“Hey, Mattis Banz,” Antha Mont finally said. “Sit back down. You’re needed elsewhere.”
“What?” asked Fikk as the door hissed closed in his grimacing face, and Antha Mont piloted them away from Lund Gourley, toward the infertile lands and whatever was next for Mattis.
They stopped at a small shack on the outskirts of Lund Gourley to pick up another passenger—a Saurin. For just a second, Mattis thought it was somehow Fikk, that they had left him at the center only to pick him up again, and he felt what little of the stew he had eaten that morning climb back up his throat.
It was not Fikk. This Saurin, Golin, had a kind, quiet demeanor. He was a little older than Mattis and didn’t say anything for the whole ride. Antha Mont didn’t say much, either, only told them that they were brave. Mattis wished they could be brave sooner.
/> They arrived in the middle of a dry field overgrown with wild grasses and brambles. There the drift landed nose to nose with the Resistance transport ship. Antha hurried Mattis and Golin off the drift and quickly said good-bye, and someone from the Resistance—it wasn’t Snap Wexley this time, but a woman of similar bearing—ushered them on board the transport, where about a dozen other kids and a couple of adults were already seated.
“Strap in, recruits,” she told them as she took her own place in the cockpit. “We have a few more stops to make. Then we’re headed home.”
“You’d better strap in,” said the Zeltron girl. Mattis had been caught in reverie, but her voice snapped him back to the present. They were on the shuttle, headed for the base. Mattis thought for a moment the girl was talking to him. She had an authoritative way of speaking that drew all attention to her. But she was addressing Klimo, who was still running around the transport.
“Why?” Klimo asked.
The Zeltron girl looked a little older than Mattis. Her red skin was a shade lighter than many Zeltrons’ (Mattis had met a few as they were run through the orphan farm over the years), and her thick blue hair was pulled into a no-nonsense ponytail. She was strong, Mattis could see, but it seemed more likely that she’d knock you over with a glance. Mattis thought that was what she’d do to Klimo for daring to ask her a question, but instead she just smiled.
As she did, the entire transport ship shuddered and lunged. Klimo jounced around the passenger compartment. He squealed and chippered. The Zeltron shook her head and laughed.
They were making their descent toward the Resistance base on D’Qar. Mattis looked through the large viewport behind him. For a moment everything was gray. Then the transport lowered through the cover of clouds, and Mattis saw mountains that seemed to heave under the heavy vegetation that blanketed them. Trees threw their foliage into the sky. The planet was green and alive. It was everything the dirt farmland of Durkteel wasn’t. Mattis liked it there already.
No one else seemed to stop to look at the trees. Everyone was up and moving. The pilot told them all to grab their gear and go. Mattis didn’t know where. He took his rucksack and followed the others.
He didn’t have much choice. The recruits were standing and moving, and if he didn’t move, too, they’d trample him before trampling Klimo, who was rummaging under the seats for his belongings.
“I got it!” Klimo yelled to no one about something.
Mattis pulled the Rodian to his feet and walked him outside onto a long tarmac.
“Thanks, new best friend!” Klimo chirped, but Mattis was too spellbound to respond.
The hangar was a bigger, busier space than Mattis had ever seen. There were ships—short-range fighters and X-wing fighters and A-wing fighters—and there were people. Lots of people.
He’d never seen so many people moving toward a common goal. Pilots in orange uniforms deploying for a mission. Ground crew readying their ships. People clapping each other on the shoulders, wishing each other safe return. He saw Snap Wexley! Mattis tried to wave, but Snap was climbing into his ship. Snap knocked his knuckles on the dome of his astromech droid, smiling.
Mattis jumped aside as an orange-and-white droid came bowling through, getting in everyone’s business. It paused by him, squeaked, then rolled on. Mattis watched it go, watched as that and other astromechs were loaded into their pilots’ ships. Then he spotted—could it be? Yes! It was Admiral Ackbar! Mattis couldn’t believe he was there! He looked around to see if anyone else was as elated to see Ackbar. The Zeltron girl shot Mattis one of those wry, condescending smiles that he could see she gave away freely. Well, what business of hers was it if Mattis was excited to be there? She should be, too! He decided he wouldn’t let her, or anyone, tamp down his excitement. In fact, he’d help her liberate her own.
“I’m Mattis Banz,” he said.
“Who care—” she stopped, as if she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t be unnecessarily cutting. She took a deep breath, closed and opened her eyes, then said dully, “I mean, hello. I’m Lorica Demaris.”
Lorica Demaris! “No way!” Mattis exclaimed.
She rolled her eyes. “I promise.”
“Lorica Demaris! You’re Lorica Demaris.”
“Don’t make me say it again.”
“The Lorica Demaris!”
“I swear if you say my name again, I’m going to shove you in an astromech hole on one of these ships.”
“Do you know who you are?”
“Yes, I do. Well, bye.” She started out across the tarmac. Mattis figured they were probably headed the same way, so he followed. Without looking back, she said, “I don’t need company.”
“You blew up that cache of illegal weapons on Kergans! Amazing! We even heard about it on Durkteel! My friend Tchock thinks you’re great! We all do, but he really does!” She didn’t respond; she probably couldn’t hear him over the din in the hangar. “Hey. Can you hear me? It’s loud in here.”
She turned back to face him. “I can hear you,” she said. “So can everyone else. And you’d be doing me a real big favor, Durkteel, if you wouldn’t trumpet my heroics.”
“But you’re a hero,” Mattis said. He didn’t mean for his voice to sound like a whine, but it did. “People know who you are; they should know you’re who you are!”
Lorica pursed her lips and rolled her eyes again. “Please tell me you’re training to be ground crew,” she said.
“Nope,” Mattis replied. “Pilot! What about you?”
Lorica Demaris stared at Mattis.
“What about you?” he asked louder, in case she hadn’t heard him.
“Okay,” she said, as if surrendering. “Thank you for your interest. It is one-sided. Please don’t follow me.” Then she turned on her heel and marched away. Mattis didn’t follow her. He started to feel bad for himself but was interrupted in thought when dozens of engines roared to life at once. Mattis faced the end of the tarmac, where ground crew was finishing its prep, the last of the astromechs were being deposited into fighters, and the ordnance crew was walking away.
Mattis was finally there! He was so overcome by the sight of the ships lifting off the tarmac one and two at a time, he could hardly stand. So right there on the tarmac, he dropped his rucksack and took a knee to watch the Resistance fighters rise above the forest. Someday soon, he’d be one of them.
A droid squatted next to Mattis. “Beautiful, ain’t it?” he asked with an unusual lilt for a droid.
“It really is,” Mattis said. The two of them shared a moment of reverie as they watched the amazing spacecraft disappear into the gray clouds.
“Ships,” the droid said in awe.
“Ships,” Mattis agreed. “I can’t believe everyone isn’t here watching this happen. It’s amazing,” he murmured after the last ship was out of sight.
The droid swiveled his head toward Mattis and nodded. He was unlike any droid Mattis had ever seen. He seemed to be made up of parts from about a hundred other droids and was the color of tarnished pewter, though he had some plating that was black and one navy-blue leg. His large, bug-like eyes covered most of his pointed face.
“You think that’s something,” the droid said, “you’re gonna have your boots kicked off your feet just being here. You’re gonna see things you never even thought about seeing.”
“I’m Mattis Banz.”
“Aygee-Ninety. Come on. You wanna meet my brother?”
“Sure!” Mattis stood up to follow AG-90. How could he not? He’d never met a droid’s brother before.
AG-90 WALKED QUICKLY for a droid. There was something unusual in his legs, some system of pistons Mattis had never seen before, that made AG-90 take loping strides. He might be the first droid Mattis had ever met who had a lazy confidence. And a drawl.
“Dec and me grew up on Ques. You know it? You probably don’t.”
Mattis didn’t want to offend AG-90, but his brain was flooded with questions. How did a droid “grow up”? Was
his head a J9 and his body mostly agromech? That’s what he looked like. But how was that possible? Who would put those together? Who was Dec?
“Dec is your brother?” Mattis asked, since it seemed like the simplest question.
“Yep.”
“I don’t know Ques,” Mattis said.
AG-90 laughed what sounded like an off-key song. Droids could laugh? “Ain’t much to know, really,” he said. “Ques is a humid swamp planet. Mostly scavengers. Some are roughnecks, y’know. Some are lum runners—you know what that is?”
Mattis shook his head. AG-90 sang that laugh again.
“Most are good folk. A community. Help each other out. Look after each other. Our folks are scrappers. Dec’s a scrapper, too. Most Ques folk are. But not like Dec. Dec’s a tinkerer. Can build you anything. You shoulda seen this speeder bike he tinkered up! Made them first-gen speeder bikes look like Gungan bongo subs.”
Mattis wasn’t sure what a Gungan bongo sub was, so he asked, “Did he build you?”
“Dec didn’t have brothers or sisters and he needed lookin’ out for. So Momma—she’s a tinkerer, too—built Dec an older brother. That’s me. What Momma didn’t reckon is we look out for each other.”
“You have to,” Mattis said. “I mean, that’s what people do.”
AG-90 stopped and studied Mattis a moment. “That’s what family does,” the droid said.
Mattis shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”
AG-90 cocked his head. “I ain’t touching that with a Gungan’s bill.”
“You really don’t like Gungans,” Mattis observed.
“I really do not,” AG-90 agreed.
They continued across the base to the small barracks at its edge. AG-90 led Mattis between the narrow buildings to a box cabin, where he threw open the door and hollered, “I found one!”
Mattis didn’t know what he was one of, but he was glad to be anywhere Lorica Demaris wasn’t telling him to go away.
AG-90 ushered Mattis inside and closed the door. It was a small room with a bunk bed, where a sandy-haired human boy of about Mattis’s age lounged with his hands propping up his head.