by Chuck Wendig
Her body goes weak. It’s as if her limbs aren’t even hers anymore—like they’re just sacks of meat stapled to her torso. She tries to do something, anything, but the blaster clacks against the ground and her vision starts to smear like grease on a window. She begins to fly, lifting up off the ground, and for a moment she feels giddy—I’m escaping, I’m flying—but that’s not it at all. They’re carrying her just like they did Sinjir.
Where are they taking me?
What are they going to do to me?
Help—
Someone—
Anyone—
She chokes.
And darkness sweeps the light aside.
—
Mister Bones sits cross-legged on the ground in front of the door. He has his vibroblade out, and it crackles and spits as he saws through a stick, one cut after the next, until he’s got a little cairn of equally sized stick bits in front of him. Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.
He sweeps the pile away, then grabs another stick to begin anew.
“What are you doing?” Temmin asks.
“CUTTING THINGS.”
“Why?”
“I ENJOY IT.”
He shrugs. “Fair enough.” The droid is weird. He knows that. He programmed Bones to be functional, yes, but also…independent, in his own way. Problem is, Temmin isn’t really sophisticated enough to know exactly what he did when creating his bodyguard’s personality matrix.
So what he got was…this.
Whatever. That’s not important now.
What matters is: “They haven’t come out yet.”
“THIS IS A TRUE STATEMENT, MASTER TEMMIN.”
“They should’ve come out.”
The droid suddenly stands. As if eager. “YES.”
“Which means they might be in danger.”
“I ENJOY DANGER, MASTER TEMMIN.” The battle droid’s vulture-like head tilts back and forth on its axis with little whirs and ticks. His jagged teeth gleam in the half-light. There’s an eager tinge to the droid’s discordant voice.
“If they’re not coming out, we may have to go in.”
“WILL THERE BE VIOLENCE?”
“If they’re in danger.”
Bones’s fingers tickle the air. “THEN LET US HOPE THEY ARE IN DANGER SO THAT I MAY PERFORM EGREGIOUS VIOLENCE.” One finger flips back and the datalink emerges, its fiber-optic tip glowing. “MAY I OPEN THE DOOR NOW?”
Temmin snaps his fingers, suddenly nervous. “Yeah, Bones. Open her up.” Please be okay, Mom. Before, he was excited for the promise of action. Now, though, that rush of excitement has been replaced by a river of fear.
—
The door mechanism is cratered from one of Jas’s slugs, and static arcs of electricity jump from it as it sizzles. She and Solo crouch down behind a bank of computers as the droids work to cut through the door.
The room they’re in is hexagonal. It’s out in the open—in a massive central area seen easily through the scalloped windows that surround them. The windows are thankfully impenetrable blast glass; the droids continue to hammer against them with their lashing arms, but so far they’ve only served to scratch the surface. The door, though? They’ll come through that soon.
The computers aren’t like anything Jas has ever seen: no keypad, just a smooth convex bubble sitting in front of a green holoscreen. When Solo’s hands move across the bubble, the monitor flits from screen to screen. None of it in Basic. None of it making any sense to them.
“I…I don’t know what I’m looking at,” Solo says, exasperated. “I’m a smuggler, not a damn slicer. This is some kinda…machine language, maybe, or something old, real old.” He roars in frustration—sounding not unlike his Wookiee copilot—and brings his fist down onto the control pad. “Blast it!”
His neck is still bleeding. But not gushing, though—so, thank the stars for small favors, right?
The door bangs as it rises up a few centimeters off the floor. Segmented droid arms slide in under the gap, whipping across the floor like agitated serpents before finally pausing to lift. The door groans and moves up a few centimeters more. Jas says: “They’re coming in.”
She leans around the side of the computer bank.
Bang. Bang.
Two shots in quick succession, and the arms break apart into metal vertebrae that spin and slide across the metal floor.
Through the window, she sees dozens of mirrored masks staring in at them, now—implacable and emotionless. Like drones. They’ve stopped bashing at the window. Now they’re just waiting.
Above them comes the voice of SOL-GDA, the ship intelligence—
“SOL-GDA welcomes you to lay down your weapons. You will be intercepted and held in stasis until your purpose here can be determined.” It repeats that phrase in Zabraki: “SOL-GDA thisska chu hai gannomari. Chu tai captak azza kan chutari geist fata-yith-ga.”
“Computer!” Han barks. “You give me my friend, Chewbacca, or I’m gonna tear your IPU right out of its brain hole and throw it into an engine fire! You hear me!”
“SOL-GDA possesses a wide variety of prisoners, all of them held in eternal stasis. They invite you to join them.” This, too, she repeats in Zabraki.
Solo stands and fires his blaster at the computer. It peels back like a metal flower, and a small electrical fire burns.
“We could’ve used that,” Jas says.
“Be my guest. I improved it.”
The door lifts up another dozen centimeters. Mirrored faces now stare through that gap, gleaming. One struggles to get its head underneath the door. Jas bares her teeth and lines up another shot—
Suddenly the droid in her scopes hitches and shakes. Its mirrored mask vibrates and pops off as an ember-hot vibroblade bisects the machine’s skull. Cinders rain before the droid goes dark.
Jas pulls back on the rifle.
Could it be?
Out there, through the window, the mirrored droids noticed the defeat of their fellow. But they’re too slow.
A pair of glowing vibroblades spins through the air as Mister Bones dances through the droids, pirouetting—mirrored skulls popping free like a child flicking the heads off bugs.
“That who I think it is?” Solo asks.
“It is.”
“That thing is terrifying.”
“Just be glad it’s on our side.”
The mirrored droids mob Bones—their arms lashing at him. He ducks and leaps, slicing off segments of limb bit by bit with his blades.
“The door,” Solo says. “Let’s get it open while we have a chance.”
She nods—
But the door is still opening of its own volition. It cranks up another few centimeters—which is enough for someone to slide through. She takes aim, but Solo palms the barrel of her rifle and pushes it to the ground.
“Whoa, hold up, Emari. Look.”
It’s Temmin. He smiles sheepishly, his hair stuck to his sweat-slick forehead. “Hey, guys. Need a hand?”
—
Impossible visions.
Norra drifts along, stitching in and out of consciousness, her breath coming in a keening wheeze. She feels loose, unmoored, utterly disconnected from the world. She floats through a dark room. She hears a song played on a valachord. Brentin is home. Lightning flashes at windows that weren’t there moments before, and she sees the skull masks of stormtroopers staring in—Temmin is crying, Brentin is yelling, and the Imperials kick in the door and drag him away. Outside isn’t outside. Outside is inside: the tangled conduits and piping of the Death Star battle station’s interior. Power cablings spark and energy lines shine red and now she’s in her Y-wing again, and she turns to peel away down a passage in order to lead the TIEs away from the Falcon but the flight stick is reversed and she pulls right but the fighter tugs left—her ship clips the Falcon, putting both of them into a spin. She sees the freighter slam into a massive concrete-and-steel post, dissolving into a ball of fire and debris.
Then her eyes are open—torn wide in a paroxysm of fear.
She’s being carried. A mirrored mask regards her. She starts to struggle, but the segmented arms tighten around her in a vise grip.
Her head twists to look for something, anything that can help her. And she sees the circular windows peering into closed chambers. Pods sculpted into the walls. Hard to see from below—but these were the blue lights, the portholes seen. She sees faces pass her. A Rodian. A woman she doesn’t recognize. Sinjir! Oh, gods, no, Sinjir—his eyes are shut, his mouth slack, a tube snaking toward and pushing up his nose—
Then something sticks into the side of her neck again.
A flush of fatigue washes through her, empties everything out.
They carry her toward an open chamber.
And she sees one more face as she passes—it’s him. It’s Brentin. Staring out from behind the window. His eyes are open. His mouth is working soundlessly in a scream. But she can hear his voice in her head: Why didn’t you ever come for me, Norra? You never looked. You never came. But now you’re here to join me at last…
—
Outside the windows of the control chamber, Bones is besieged. The droids are mobbing him, capturing his limbs before he can strike. One of their arms whips around his neck, lifting the B1—Temmin watches as Bones wrenches upward, about to be torn off his spine.
But then Bones pulls his body up, kicking out with both legs—those wretched feet sinking claws into the masks of two drones. With a scissor motion, Bones smashes the droid heads together. The lash leaves his neck and Bones drops to the ground in a crouch—but quickly he’s mobbed anew.
He doesn’t have long.
Temmin has to move fast.
“Kid, I hope you got some kinda idea,” Solo says. “Otherwise, you’re trapped in the fishbowl with us.”
“I…sure, yeah.” He has no idea. They can see that. He didn’t have time! Outside, Bones screams a mechanized sound—
One of his arms clatters against the window. Separated from his body.
Think, think, think!
He can’t think. All he can do is panic. He can’t do this. His droid is getting torn apart in front of his eyes. His mother isn’t here. He’s trapped in this…room and he doesn’t have the power to change anything.
Wait.
The power.
Power.
That was the key to Aram’s compound, wasn’t it? Cutting the power. How is this place powered? Is it offsite? If it is—
“I say we shoot our way out,” Jas says.
Solo nods. “I can get behind that.”
“Wait!” Temmin says. “Hold on. Look-look-look.” He points out the window, snapping his fingers—there, along the far side of this room, nestled in the wall joint and running up along the eaves is a thick bundle of cable. As it gets higher, those cables break from the bundle and spread out like the branches of a tree—leading to a series of pods lining the ceiling, pods that…
Oh, no. Those pods contain people. Faces stare back. Distant, but plain to see now that he’s looking at them.
Those are the prisoners.
Jas says it before anybody else does: “They’re powering the ship with the captives. They put them into stasis and they become…generators.”
“Human gonk droids,” Solo says. “Disgusting.”
And genius, Temmin thinks. “Which one of you is the better shot?”
Jas and Solo both raise their hands at the same time.
“Aygir-dyski,” Jas curses with a sneer. “I am.”
Han waves her off. “Keep dreaming, honey. I’m the crack shot around here. Hell, maybe I have the Force. I should have Luke check.”
“Never mind,” Temmin says. “Both of you, get out there and shoot that cable. Now.”
—
It’s like sinking into dark water. Norra can’t breathe. Panic chews through her like parasites. She feels herself settle into some kind of cradle. There’s a tickling sensation up her jawline, up her cheek, toward her nose. In front of her comes the hiss of a door closing—
It’s my tomb sealing up.
Thoughts chase one another in her mind like starving rats.
Temmin. Brentin. Leia and her child. Solo, Jas, everyone, anyone. I’m disappointing them.
She remembers a game as a child, a handheld game where you played these adventures and you got to choose where to go next—fight the monster or run from it, go through the swamp or run through the forest, choose a blaster or a sonic knife, be a pilot or a pirate…and now she realizes life is just like that. Just a series of choices. Sometimes you make the right ones and you get the good ending to the adventure. Other times you’re eaten by a rancor in the dark.
She never did those games right.
Maybe she didn’t do her life right, either.
Then, up through the darkness, a sound.
No. A voice.
The voice is distorted and mechanized—
She knows that voice. It belongs to a B1 battle droid.
Her son’s creation—a cobbled-together robot monstrosity that will protect her child to the point of its total obliteration. Just as she would. Just as she must right now because—Temmin’s here, isn’t he?
She couldn’t save Brentin. But she can save her son.
She fights her way through the dark water of her own drowning mind—Norra swims up through that septic layer of regret and fear, and she wills some part of her, any part of her, to wake up, to move. Her hand twitches and then the arm follows—before she even knows what she’s doing, she’s catching the door of her cradle just before it closes on her. She forces her eyes open, an act that is far more epic than it should be—but she manages it just the same. Her other hand flies to her face, where it grabs the tube snaking its way toward her nostril and yanks it away.
The ship’s voice cuts through the air—
“SOL-GDA has identified a perilous course of action and asks that you refrain from further violence against Ashmead’s Lock. Please lie down on the ground now with your hands at your sides. Thank you for your understanding.” Then she repeats it in a language Norra can’t understand, nor does she care to try. All she can think about is finding the processor matrix of this IPU and emptying her blaster into it.
Norra struggles out of her chamber, pushing the door wider—
One of the mirrored droids appears. Its arm is tipped with another needle, and it plunges it toward her—
Norra skirts to the side, and the needle sticks into the cushion just behind her. Then she growls one word—“No”—and leaps.
She tackles the droid. Unprepared, it scrambles to stay clinging to the pod, but it’s off balance—and its arms catch only open air as the two of them fall.
Norra winces, the air rushing up around her. She pivots so the droid is beneath her—and just in time, too, as it slams into the railing on one of the staircases. The droid’s back snaps with the sound of a tree breaking in half, and next thing she knows, she and the shattered droid are tumbling down the steps, end-over-end-over-end until—
Wham. They hit the bottom floor. The air blasts out of her lungs, leaving her gulping for breath. The droid beneath her hitches and twitches, its head bent at a ninety-degree angle. Norra tries to stand—
Pain lances through her side and she collapses.
She lies there on her back, clutching her middle. The world blooms around her in light and dull sounds. She hears her son yelling—and then blasterfire and booming slugs tear apart the air over her. A droid descends upon her, its whipcord arms slashing at the air—and it’s suddenly knocked aside by Bones. Bones, whose one arm is gone and whose leg is bent at a funny angle. Bones, whose own side is cratered in, dented like a kicked can. The B1 droid tries to say something but the sound only comes out as a garbled scream. Above them all, SOL-GDA narrates a constant warning for them to stop, lest they be destroyed.
Next comes a flare of light—and a crackle of little lightning filling the air above her. Norra rests her head, and once more, all goes dark. And yet—
She’s awake.
She didn’t go dark. The ship did—
The power has gone out.
Temmin grabs her hand. “I’m here, Mom. I’m here.”
And with that, Ashmead’s Lock goes dead and SOL-GDA goes silent.
The jagged campanile towers of the Ubdurian homes lie shattered. Bodies lie underneath, crushed, shot, lanced. Dozens of them. The stink in the air is strong. Rot-wings form blurry clouds above the corpses—the insects buzzing with endless hunger.
Tracene Kane pulls the white cloth over her mouth. Her nostrils are rimed with salt-dust; Commander Norwich said it would help prevent the smell from reaching her, and though it has diminished it considerably, still she smells the pickled, rotten stench of the dead.
She lifts a finger and waves Lug toward her. The Trandoshan stomps over. None of this seems to bother him. He’s fond of telling her about life among his people: hunting and killing and reveling in death. He’s not like that, not like the other reptilians, but it was still part of his childhood. “You want the shot set up, boss?”
“Right here,” she says, holding the cloth over her face. “Get that collapsed wall in the frame.” It has a dynamic shape—the tower broken, the wall shattered in just the right spot, and one body slumped over it.
Lug grunts a command to the cam droid—it’s an upgraded model, ruggedized and battle-hardy. The little floating droid with one telescoping eye hums along, pulsing flashes as it takes a series of still shots to frame out the hologram. Foomp, foomp, foomp. It burbles and bleeps.
“I’ll get Norwich,” Lug says.
“No,” Tracene says, shaking her head. “Go get someone…more common. We need to sell this to the common citizen, and that means putting the common citizen on cam. Get me a soldier, a private, a trencher.” As the big reptilian grunts and starts to walk off, she catches him by the arm. “How’s my hair?”
“I don’t know. It’s hairy?”
“I’m going for battle-frizzled, but still…well kept, you know? An order to the chaos. A well-designed non-design.”