by Ben Acker
They ate double rations. Dec told them there were enough varmints in the swamps that, with him around, they could survive for months. Thanks to the group, he added, he was around.
They did their best to find dry wood and piled it onto the fire. They burned their ration wrappings. The sky—the sun had been veiled behind cloud cover all day—went from a light gray to a dark gray to a painted bluish purple. They sat on blankets in a circle, full, exhausted, and alive.
“This is a good squadron, you guys!” Klimo’s enthusiasm hadn’t waned, but he wasn’t bouncing around the clearing. His body was as spent as everyone else’s. Hiking through the bogs and scavenging odd scraps had done him in. “J-Squadron could take down the First Order all by ourselves!”
They all laughed, except for Jo. “We’re getting there,” he said, which seemed an enormous concession to the rest of them. “We’ll make pilots of you. I’m sure of it.”
Dec shook his head. “We are pilots, man. Doesn’t it make any difference what happened here today?”
Jo held Dec’s gaze. There was no malice in it, as there might have been just that morning.
“Why do you want to fly?” Jo asked him.
“I already fly,” Dec replied. “In my head, I’m in the clouds.”
“Your head is definitely in the clouds,” Lorica said snarkily. She was back to her irritable self, but there was a good-naturedness to it.
“I’m serious,” Dec said. “Aygee and me—you said it before. We’re swamp rats. We been down in the muck so long there’s mud in our lungs. And that ain’t a complaint. I like where I’m from. I like our people. I love ’em. But there were nights when Aygee and me would lay on the roof of our home and look up at them stars….There’s a world out there. I’m good enough to do good in it. I already helped all I could on Ques, fixin’ folks’ vehicles and the like. I reckoned it was time for me to fix bigger things. Flyin’ is a way to do that.”
They were all silent a moment. Each of them owned a version of Dec’s recital. Mattis thought, If we ask Jo his version, maybe the truth will come out. After Jo’s heroic turn at the sarlacc pit, Mattis couldn’t believe he was a traitor. Then, of course, Mattis was clever enough to know that letting his entire squad die was no way for Jo to work his way up the Resistance ranks. Which left Jo with what loyalty?
“I felt the same,” Mattis said. “Except, I can’t fix things and people tend not to like me.”
They laughed, and AG said, “That ain’t true.”
Mattis shook his head. “I don’t mean they dislike me. I just mean they don’t think of me. I’m Mattis.” He remembered Klimo’s words. “I’m just another person. Just another speck on a planet in a system of planets in a galaxy…I think I can fly, though. I love to do it, but I’ve only ever done it a couple meters off the ground on the farm or in deep space in my dreams. Or in the sims, I guess, but that’s never leaving the ground. When I believe in something, I’m pretty sure I can do it. And I believe I will be the greatest pilot anyone’s ever seen.” They laughed again, and he laughed with them. What Mattis didn’t add was: I have the Force. It flows through me.
He hadn’t meant to speak so much, but now that he had, he seemed unable to stop. And they didn’t want him to. No one had ever listened to Mattis that much. He felt both safe and utterly exposed. “I want to make a difference,” he said. “Before I joined the Resistance, I didn’t know about the First Order, but I knew there was bad in the universe. There was bad in the orphanage where I grew up. So there must be bigger bad across the galaxy. I don’t want bad things to happen to good people. So. Here I am. Learning to fly. Fighting against the bad people to help the good ones.”
He was out of breath. He took shallow gulps, trying to hide it. He wished someone else would talk. Maybe the Force was working after all, because Lorica spoke.
“I didn’t do the things people say I did.”
An invisible wave ruffled all of them. They couldn’t help it. Lorica’s words were surprising and discouraging. She dropped her forehead into her hands, then lowered her palms onto her knees and sat up straight. “I’ve never told anyone,” she said.
“You’re talking about the weapons cache?” Sari said. “It belonged to smugglers. You blew it up.”
“It blew up, that’s true,” Lorica said. “I was just…there. My parents own a luxury hotel on Kergans in the New Republic. This was a couple of years ago. I was in a very expensive school. I learned to hunt with bassa hounds. I learned to ride fathiers in competition. I hated all of it. What I liked was flying. They bought me a brand-new SoroSuub Petite Opu-Yacht. It was gold, of course. Everyone at the Academy envied it. And I loved it, but not for the reasons they did, because of the way it looked or because it was expensive. I loved it because it meant I could go anywhere I wanted to go. That ship was freedom. I flew from one end of Kergans to the other. The planet wasn’t big enough for me.
“I was also reckless. As much as the ship meant to me, I didn’t take care of it. I scratched it up on the sides of structures and bridges. There are a lot of bridges on Kergans. It was full of dents and divots after just a week. It didn’t matter. My parents would have it repaired.
“I left it outside the hotel one afternoon. I was only stopping in for a moment for food and to spend some credits. The yacht hovered at the entrance, gleaming, beautiful. A light freighter came screaming into our landing strip and smashed right through it, exploding both ships. It’s a good thing my ship was there or the freighter might have gone right through the front of my parents’ hotel. I was only steps from the landing strip. If I were slower, I’d have blown up, too.
“We didn’t know what that freighter was or what its pilot was trying to do. The Kergans Security Force found the illegal weapons on board the remains of the freighter. They were the first ones to congratulate me on my work for the New Republic. Then people started talking. I was a hero. I’d saved the hotel, the city, Kergans, the Republic. What could I say? Should I have told them it was an accident?
“So,” Lorica finished. “That’s why I fly. I’m already getting credit for being a hero. I thought I should make myself one for real.”
Mattis didn’t waste any time telling her, “You will. I’m sure of it.” As he said it, he realized he was sure. Lorica, despite her jagged personality, was a good person.
“Lotta secrets comin’ out, eh?” AG intoned. He was pointedly looking at Jo.
“Here’s another,” Jo said. They all leaned in, despite not wanting to betray their interest. “Lorica tried to talk me out of erasing your memory, Aygee-Ninety.” He let them chew on that a moment. “That’s why she was there at droid maintenance that night. She told me you’re a good pilot. That it’s your glitches that make you one. Mind you, I was mad enough that I wasn’t minding what she was saying, but what she was saying was sound. A reasonable argument. I think your glitches could make you a great pilot. It’s possible. The enemy could never predict your actions.”
He looked around the group, meeting the eyes of each member. “That’s true of all of you. I tried to make you all pilots by the book. It’s what made sense to me. But I discounted what each of you brings to the table. You’re all full of glitches,” he said. They laughed.
“More than most,” Dec agreed.
“And it’s those glitches that make you all what you are. And it’s what makes you all great. And that’s why the First Order will never defeat us.”
“Since you brought it up…” Dec began.
“I’m not a traitor,” Jo said. He watched the fire, wouldn’t meet anyone’s gaze. “But my parents are First Order officers.”
Jo laughed at their collective gasp, which broke the tension. “They’re…good parents, is what’s strange. They’re just so wrong about the First Order. They think it will make the galaxy better, but the things they talk about…It won’t. The First Order is bad. We have to defeat it.”
Sari asked, “But—they can’t know you’ve joined the Resistance, right? That would be
—that would be—” She didn’t have words for it. Confusing was one, but that didn’t begin to cover it.
“They don’t. They think I’m at the New Republic Military Academy on Ganthel. But the commander at that academy is sympathetic to the Resistance. She sent me here, and she covers for me. General Organa knows; so does Admiral Ackbar. They allow me to talk with my parents. That,” he said to AG, “is what you saw the night you spied on me.”
Mattis was so relieved, he nearly started crying.
Klimo, on the other hand, bawled like a baby. “That must be so ha-ha-harrrrd!” Sari rubbed his back gently.
AG nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said.
They all mumbled apologies to Jo, then sat for a moment in an abundant silence, broken only by Klimo’s snorfling.
“I fly because I like math,” Sari said.
She didn’t get a chance to explain further, because that was when a panicked, bleating tauntaun crashed through their campsite.
“THAT WAS A TAUNTAUN,” Klimo observed a moment after the animal had run bleating back into the brush. The tauntaun had blown over the ridge, knocking flaming logs from their campsite. The logs sizzled on the soggy ground.
They all stood, looking around, waiting for an explanation, maybe wondering whether that tauntaun had been a collective dream, because Vodran was the farthest planet from the animal’s native icy Hoth in every way.
Sari took a few steps toward the brush where the large animal had disappeared. “Why would a tauntaun—”
They heard the stampede before they saw it. The bleating of tauntauns—more than one—but other animals, too. Roars and grunts and howls. And they were getting louder.
“Run!” Mattis yelled, but it wasn’t soon enough. The animals were upon them. Three tauntauns leaped over the ridge, crashing through and caroming off of Sari, who fell backward into the muck. The herd kicked up a flock of long-necked, speckled swamp birds that screeched as they took wing. Lorica tackled Mattis and threw him off the ridge and into the bog as the other animals bounded through. A pair of clawed, toothy, slinky nexu, gnashing at the fleeing tauntauns and whatever else went near them, didn’t stop to attack. They, too, ran with the herd. They, too, did not belong on the planet.
Mattis peered over the ridge as more and more animals galloped through. A heavy-hoofed bassa hound nearly took off Mattis’s head. Luckily, Mattis jerked back and all he received was a faceful of mud. Wiping it away, he saw Klimo across the ridge, jumping into some underbrush. Or at least, Klimo attempted to jump into some underbrush. Instead, he took a flying leap and was met midair by a lumbering moof. Klimo bounced against the animal’s thick hide, then dropped back down into the mud. For once, the Rodian didn’t come up short and rolled away in time for the moof’s hoof to barely miss him. Lorica yanked Mattis back below the ridge before he could locate any more of their friends.
“We have to help them,” he yelled over the cacophony of footfalls, bellows, and yawps.
“When this passes,” Lorica hissed.
“When this passes it’ll be too late!” Mattis snapped back. He went to rise, and Lorica pulled him down again.
Then, clearly thinking better of his idea, she said, “Okay,” and hoisted him up onto the ridge. They were in the middle of the stampede. Animals surged around them like water around jutting rocks. If they were still, they got nudged side to side by a passing jefflac or bumbling dewback that hardly noticed them at all. Something else had the animals’ attention: escape. They were all running from something.
Whatever it was surely was coming, which meant Mattis and Lorica had little time to help their friends. Quickly scanning the ridge, Mattis found Sari and Klimo. The Rodian had made it to the underbrush and was doing his best to stay hidden and safe. Good. Mattis just hoped Klimo didn’t get stomped by something bigger than the pack of moss lenas that were bolting through his hiding space.
Sari, however, was in more dire circumstances. Her back was to them, but Mattis could tell she was defending herself against something large. She took rapid but tentative swings with her fists against whatever she was blocking from their view. Mattis pointed, and as quickly as they were able, he and Lorica made their way to her.
Sari was fighting a ginzy. The creature was about half Sari’s size, but it was thick, with chunky clay-colored and blond feathers. Its tiny hands ended in hooked talons. The ginzy stood on two skinny legs and swiped at Sari with its talons. Behind the creature, Dec was hunched in the mud, clutching his side. The ginzy made a nonstop, atonal gibbering noise to distract its enemies.
“How’s it going?” Lorica asked, dodging a ginzy talon lash.
“It tore a chunk out of Dec,” Sari said. “We have to get him out of here. Something is coming.”
Mattis nodded curtly. “You two can handle it.” Lorica shot him a withering look. “I would die!”
It shouldn’t have made Lorica and Sari laugh, but it did. “Get Dec,” Lorica said.
Mattis circled the ginzy, and the creature followed him with its black eyes. As if they’d practiced it for years, Sari and Lorica leaped at the ginzy, each grabbing one of its feathered arms. The ginzy shrieked and gibbered, but neither girl let go. They held its wrists so it couldn’t slash them.
Mattis rolled Dec over and saw the long slice the ginzy had left in his friend’s side. “Can you walk?”
“Do I haveta?” Dec moaned.
The stampede grew thinner, with just a few small or overly large animals. They heard a rumble and crunch of branches as something big moved toward them through the swamp.
“Yes,” Mattis said. They stood, Mattis supporting Dec as they stumbled away from the ridge.
“Meet us at the transports!” Lorica shouted as they ran.
Mattis helped Dec get back to the transport ships. He left Dec on the boarding ramp of one. “Get this running,” he said. “I’ll be back with the others. We have to get out of here.”
Mattis didn’t wait for Dec to protest, just bolted back the way they had come, slogging through the bog until he was back at that ridge. It was dark, and he could barely make out the path. But their fire still lit the clearing. That was how Mattis saw the tawd swarm approaching.
Tawds were vile, bile-dripping animals of a sort one might get if a wampa mated with a rathtar. All teeth and mucus and fur. Usually snow-white, these tawds—there were six of them—were caked with swamp muck. They bowled toward the ridge, mewling and growling. One tawd could destroy a dozen farms by eating every living thing and destroying what remained. Six would surely end them all.
The two tawds in the lead of the swarm bounded up the ridge, heading directly for Sari and Lorica, who still held the snapping, pulling ginzy between them. Pink bile flung from a tawd’s jaws into the fire and sent sparks spitting out.
Mattis heard Lorica grunt, “Throw!” as the tawds barreled toward them. She and Sari pushed the ginzy into the two oncoming tawds, one of which barely stopped to snatch the taloned monkey-thing in its teeth. The other tawd, seeing the ginzy’s kicking feet, chomped down on them. Together, they pulled the ginzy apart.
The other four tawds smashed into the two already on the ridge. Seeing Lorica and Sari, all six hunched on their short front legs, fanning out their spiked tails. This was a sign of imminent attack.
“Hey!” Mattis shouted. “Over here! Look at me!”
The tawds turned as one, bellow-growled, and pounced. He was just far enough away that they missed, and he didn’t look back to find out how small the gap between them was. He pushed through the bog back toward the ships, the tawds making slick chomping noises behind him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sari and Lorica running along with him. If they could make the ships, they’d be safe. Tawds were vicious, but they weren’t large. And he thought—if AG had made it back—that they could get out of there before the swarm dismantled the transports.
He hoped AG had made it back, and Jo, as well. He worried that he hadn’t seen them or Klimo since the stampede. He worried they might be l
ost forever on Vodran. He also worried he might be eaten by those tawds, but somehow that immediate fear seemed insignificant. The Force was with him. It would keep him safe.
He came into the clearing with the tawd swarm behind him. Sari plowed into a tawd just as it lunged for Mattis’s head. She knocked it off course, but in righting herself, she pushed Mattis into the mud and in the way of another drooling tawd. It bore down on him and, thinking quickly, Mattis rolled through the mud into an overturned log. He heard the tawd chewing on the thick bark, but that would slow it down. Thank the Force. He was safe for now.
Mattis listened, trying to figure out whether everyone else was safe. He heard a boarding ramp raise. That must mean Sari and Lorica had successfully boarded the transport Dec was manning. Maybe the others, too. He was listening so intently to those distant sounds that Mattis didn’t notice when the tawd stopped gnawing on his protective trunk. That was odd. He’d have thought it would have gone until it broke through, at which time Mattis would have raced for the other transport. So where was the tawd?
Mattis dared to crawl through the hollowed-out trunk to peer out the other end. The tawds were rolling and pouncing away, retreating back into the swamp. Why had they given up?
As he crawled out of the overturned trunk, Mattis got his answer: rancors.
FOUR OF THEM circled the transports. Each was twice the size of their ships, if not bigger. They had jagged rows of teeth with meat still stuck in them and long, branch-like fingers ending in blade-sharp claws. One was feeding itself the remains of one of the tawds; chunks of the dead animal dropped into the mud below.
The rancors sniffed the clearing with their snubby snouts and grunted, hunting. They knew prey was nearby. Mattis froze. Of course. Rancors. Vodran had belonged to Harra the Hutt, Mattis recalled. Admiral Ackbar had told them all about it. Harra made her fortune buying, selling, and trading exotic animals to other Hutts around the galaxy. When Harra the Hutt had abandoned the planet, it was assumed she’d taken her business with her. It seemed that she hadn’t and that her animals had returned to the wild, thriving even in that harsh environment. The rancors, and the other animals, too, were left to roam free. Left to hunt.