by Chuck Wendig
“Sure?”
She rolls her eyes. “Thanks, Lug.”
“You got it, Trace.” He winks one of his eyes—an unnerving gesture, as a nictitating membrane slides sideways over the eyeball. It’s meant to be playful, but it only comes across as monstrous. He saunters off.
Things have changed for her in the last months. She’s gone from the cushy platform of safe worlds and out into the galaxy—the war between the Republic and the Empire has gone hot. The New Republic keeps pushing the Empire back, and the Empire grows more and more desperate, like a cornered feral. Plus, the HoloNet’s mandate has changed—with the Imperial controls on what can be broadcast broken, the network is free to show the real story, free to get into the middle of the fight and reveal the truth.
Tracene said she needed to be on the front lines.
So, by all the gods of all the stars, they put her on the front lines. Now it’s her and Lug out here in the thicket of war.
Nag Ubdur in the Outer Rim—home to the native Ubdurians plus the transplanted Keldar and Artiodac refugees—has seen a brutal pushback by the Empire. That, most likely because the bedrock of Nag Ubdur is flecked with zersium, an ore essential to the making of durasteel. The Empire has strip-mined this world down to its nub, and still it keeps finding ore. As such, they’re not keen to give it up—so they’ve bitten down hard and won’t unclench.
Norwich said he suspects that the forces here aren’t really under anyone’s command beyond what exists in the Ubdur system: meaning, they’re cut off from the Empire proper. Making this yet another rogue Imperial remnant hunkering down, taking control, and either waiting for backup or carving out their own mad little fiefdoms.
As such, the Imperials here have grown more and more brazen—driven, it seems, by desperation and fear. The massacre here in Binjai-Tin is just one such example. They came in, swept through like unholy fire, killing everything in their path. That is unlike the Empire. The Empire has always been known to keep its populace in check—punish 10 percent to keep the 90 in line. This is not that. This is a whole other level: murderous and foul.
Right now, she knows that only ten klicks away, over the tussock and past the sedge, the Imperials have dug in. They’ve excavated trenches. They’ve got walkers, TIEs, a new garrison. A fight is coming. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon. And Tracene will be along for the ride. Her and Lug, filming it all so the galaxy can see the valiant Republic against the venomous Empire.
Speaking of her Trandoshan cam operator, Lug returns, hauling a New Republic soldier by the arm. It’s some young, wide-eyed Kupohan—his face pelt hangs bound up in a series of braids, helmet askew and pushing forward his eyestalks. He looks lost. Shell-shocked, even.
“What’s your name?” she asks. He blinks at the camera, then at Lug, then at her. The Kupohan has the look of a lost child. She pats his arm. “It’s okay. We’re not on cam yet. Can you tell me your name?”
He says, “Rorith Khadur. Private in the NR.” His voice is a tremulous growl. He’s not comfortable. But he’ll have to do—the rest of the soldiers are counting the dead, setting up triage, building a camp. More women and men of the Republic keep trickling in, and will over the next several hours, given the long line of them outside the city’s shield-gate.
Without warning, she holds up three fingers, then counts down—Lug raps a knuckle against the cam droid, and its eye-lens goes from red to green. “And we’re on,” she says.
The soldier looks flummoxed, but then he nods.
“Tell me about yesterday, Private Khadur,” she says.
“Yesterday.” He blinks. “Right. We encountered Imperial forces on the Govneh Ridge—it’s a, like a plate shift where the ground bulges, and these tall crystals grow alongside it, and the Imperials were…they were waiting for us. They came out of nowhere. It was intense. My squad leader, Hachinka, she got it in the neck—a blaster shot hit her and the spray caught me in the face and—” He has to take a second. She lets him. It’s good drama. The cam droid has a high enough resolution, too, that it’ll capture and confirm what Khadur said: In his face she sees the flecks of dry blood that belonged to his leader. “We got her out of there and she’s still holding on. We lost a lot of good men and women, but we did it. We took the ridge.”
She holds up a finger and as the cam droid pivots toward her she instructs it: “Mark it. Run segment: ‘Govneh Ridge footage.’ ” She already edited together a package of clips from last night—the cam droid will auto-splice it into this interview and send when they uplink to the HoloNet servers. Khadur seems confused as to what’s happening, but she just smiles as reassuringly as she can. Tracene gives the droid a second as it runs through a catalog of beeps, then continues. “Private Khadur, can you tell me where we are and what you believe happened here?”
His tongue licks his lips—it makes a raspy sound—and he says, “This is an Ubdurian city. A merchant city. Binjai-Tin. A mostly Ubdurian population. The Empire, they came in here and—” His voice cracks. “They slaughtered everybody. These people weren’t soldiers. They were already…under the boot, you know? Weren’t allowed to carry blasters. Had to give a percentage of all earnings to the Empire. And what did it get them? This. A massacre.” The Kupohan soldier flares his many nostrils.
Tracene sees that he’s at the edge of breaking. It’s not his fault. She decides that this is good enough—the footage will speak for itself and anything else he has to say won’t come close to the impact in the way he said that last word. Massacre. She tells him he can go, and thanks him.
As he starts to walk away, Lug steps in front of the Kupohan and gives him an awkward hug. The Trandoshan isn’t good at affection, really—the “hug” is stiff and uncomfortable and has all the warmth of a protocol droid romancing a tree stump, but she supposes it’s the thought that counts. Then Lug hands the man a small token: a tooth broken off a zlagfiend, which she understands is some kind of…many-mouthed, dagger-fanged hell-predator? Lug killed one when he was a boy, still hunting for his pack. He kept the teeth, of which there were many. Lug says to Khadur, as he says to all the soldiers with whom they speak, “It’s good luck. Take it. I tied it to a length of gut-cord so you can wear it around your neck or wrist or…Just take it.”
Khadur nods, then clasps Lug’s hand before walking off.
“You’re nice the way you do that,” she says, a wry smile on her face.
Lug shrugs and offers a growl-hiss. “Mnuh. They have it hard enough.” He almost looks sheepish about it.
She laughs. “All right. We need to get an uplink on the highest point.” She gestures toward a guild tower—it’s half collapsed, but even broken it’s still pretty tall. “Get the beam-com set up there.”
“That’s high.”
“And you can climb.”
Another disappointed hiss. “Fine, fine, yeah, yeah.”
He turns, starts walking—no spring in his step, of course, because Lug has two speeds: slow, and slower—and she turns to look back at the gathering soldiers coming into the city square. Setting up tents and generators. A gonk droid meanders about. Two soldiers splice a pair of cables together with a shower of blue electricity.
Then their eyes turn heavenward. Panic registers on their faces.
Before she can turn, Tracene hears the sudden sound—
TIE fighters. Twin engines shrieking.
She turns to look—and sure enough, a dozen of them framed against the purple sky. Coming in, and coming in fast. Tracene expects the obvious: lasers cutting across the city, digging furrows in the cobble-rock, tearing through soldiers and maybe even her if she’s not lucky.
But no lasers.
And yet, the TIEs keep coming.
She turns, screams for everyone to get back—they’re setting up weapons and turrets but it won’t matter. Tracene grabs the cam droid and tucks it under her arm, running like hell toward Lug. Yelling for him to run, too, now, fast, go, go, go—
Wham. The first TIE fighter hits the
ground about 150 meters away. It plows into the wall surrounding the Binjai-Tin city square, and a massive fireball belches into the air—stone and scrap rain down around her and the ground shakes like it’s throttled by a quake.
It’s the first, but it’s not the last. The Imperial starfighters punch into the city, one after the next. Suiciders. Wham. Wham. Wham. The ground shakes so hard she loses her footing—the cam droid tumbles away, its lens cracking. She hears screams and sees the space above smear behind a gauzy haze of superheated air. And then she closes her eyes, her ears ringing.
It keeps going—until it goes no more.
In the darkness behind her eyes all she can do is think: How desperate they must be to send these pilots on a suicide mission. Because that’s what this is. TIE fighters flung to the surface? Each a weapon unto itself?
Those bastards.
She tastes dirt and blood. Tracene has no idea how many TIE fighters hit or how long it took. With a groan she lifts herself up on wobbly arms. Where the soldiers were entering the square is now a TIE interceptor, smashed into the ground, fire crackling and circuits popping. Bodies lie around. Others are alive, running for cover, weeping, or mobilizing in case it means incoming troops. She sees Khadur not far away, standing in the middle of it all. Dizzy and bewildered. One of his arms is missing. Sheared off, it seems, from a piece of fighter debris stuck in the ground nearby.
He waves at her. Such a strange gesture.
But in her short time out here, she knows that trauma will do that to you. It’ll leave you spinning like a top.
In that waving hand of Khadur’s is a fang dangling on a leathery cord.
Lug.
She turns toward her cam operator—
No.
No.
Where he stood is a wing panel from one of the TIEs. Bent up and smashed into the ground. Tracene cries out and runs toward it—if anyone can survive something like that, it’ll be Lug. Trandoshans are built like steel rebar swaddled in scale armor. She once watched him head-butt a jukebox in half because it wouldn’t play his song. Didn’t make a mark on him.
But there, she sees an arm—his arm—splayed out across the broken stone. She sees his face, too, Lug’s head half crushed underneath the metal. Tracene hurries over on her hands and knees, calling his name, that name dissolving on her lips into a blubbering gush. His eyes are open but empty. Blood runs from his mouth. He’s gone.
She weeps for a time. How long, she doesn’t know. Long enough that night starts to creep in, like a thief. Someone comes over, checks on her, and she shoos them away with a swipe of her nails.
Eventually, she stands and feels the cold reality settle into her veins. Then she does what she does best: She goes, picks up the cam droid, hits it a few times until it’s working, then she brings it back to Lug’s body.
She crouches down, turns on the cam, and speaks into it, trying very hard not to cry:
“This is Tracene Kane, HoloNet news reporter embedded with the New Republic Thirty-First. And I’d like to tell you about a friend of mine. A friend the Empire just stole from me.”
Ashmead’s Lock goes dead.
All his cams, all his connections, they go dark in perfect simultaneity. The feed is gone. The prison is liberated.
Admiral Rax smiles.
It is time.
—
“Your ribs,” Jas tells Norra. “They’re broken.”
Norra struggles to breathe. “Am I going to be all right?”
“Eventually. Doesn’t feel like they punctured the lung—though I’m betting it feels that way to you.” Jas manifests a rare smile. “I’ve been there, Wexley, more times than I can count. You’ll make it through.”
All around them, pocket lights spear through the darkness of the now derelict Ashmead’s Lock. One by one, her crew rescues the prisoners from their docks. It’s literally dozens. Maybe even a hundred or more. Many of them are dressed in the uniforms of the Rebel Alliance—officers and pilots and doctors from the days before the second Death Star fell. Some even before the first one blew thanks to the farm boy from Tatooine.
Bodies shuffle past. Weak and confused. They all get the same instructions—head outside and wait. Oh, and don’t stray. Because who knows what waits out there in the dread Kashyyyk forest?
Norra grunts, winces, and tries to stand.
“Sit down,” Jas says.
“You’re not a doctor. I want to help.”
“You can help by sitting down.”
“Would you stay seated?”
In the half darkness, she sees Jas’s shoulders shrug. “No.”
“And neither will I. So help me up already.”
The bounty hunter does as asked.
All around, the shadows of droid carcasses surround them. Once the power cut out, they all slumped and fell like okari junk-puppets with their dancing wires cut. Clatter and collapse.
“We find Sinjir and Jom yet?” Norra asks.
“Jom’s outside, helping keep people together. Sinjir, we haven’t—”
From somewhere in the darkness, an all-too-familiar voice reaches their ears. The voice is hoarse but clear. “Everything tastes like licking a blasted battery. Someone please come get me.”
Sinjir.
Jas retreats into the darkness, then returns with the ex-Imperial. In the glow of Jas’s pocket light, Sinjir looks like he just woke up from a weeklong bender: hair amuss, the whites of his eyes red, the skin around gone bruise-dark. He is licking his lips and making a wrung-washrag face.
He nods. “Norra. Been a while. You end up in one of those…pods?”
“Yes. Well. Almost?”
“Not restful at all. Would not recommend.” He leans in between both Jas and Norra and in a low voice asks: “Either of you fine upstanding New Republic citizens happen to bring a jorum of skee with you? A nip of korva? I’m feeling a bit dry over here.”
“Anyone ever tell you you have a drinking problem?” Jas asks.
“My only problem is I’m not drinking.”
She shakes her head. “Go help Temmin and Solo get more of the prisoners free. I’ll go with you.” Jas turns to her. “Norra, you take it easy—”
“I’ll go help the prisoners outside. Make sure they stay close.” Jas starts to protest, but she cuts her off: “I need to stay busy. Need to keep focused.” The way her mind was going in that dock, it feels like she’s on stable ground but too close to a rain-slick edge—it wouldn’t take much to tumble down again into the darkness of those terrible thoughts. “Okay?”
Jas sighs and nods.
Norra grabs the light off her belt and makes her way outside.
Out there, the dead forest is filled with life. Prisoners. Rebels. A Rodian in a flight suit stands staring off at nothing. A woman ties the sleeves of a cold-weather coat around her middle. A Sullustan in blue Dantooinian robes leans for support against a pudgy old Corellian in a tattered rebel army jumpsuit. Norra limps along, shaking hands and clasping arms, offering words of wheezy encouragement—all the while trying not to cough, because coughing just feels like she’s being punched with pistoning fists. She tries to share the good news with them that they’re free, that they can go home soon, that the Rebel Alliance has become the New Republic—
“Is he out here?”
Solo comes out of the prison ship with the fury of a storm. He steps into the middle of the crowd, not far from Norra. “Yeah, yeah, hi, yeah,” he says to those gathered. “I’m looking for a big guy. Hairy as anything. Wookiee. Name of Chewbacca.” Desperation shines on his face like a beacon. He spies Norra. “Norra. Where is he? He’s…he’s not in there—”
“Han, I’m sorry…”
“Don’t say sorry, just find him!”
The panic on his face is clear. And she feels it, too. Rescuing all these prisoners is a victory for the New Republic—but it’s an accidental one. For Solo, the only thing that matters is paying what he owes.
And that means finding his friend.
; Just then—
A gurgling roar cuts the air.
Solo spins around. There, coming out of the ship—alongside her son—is the massive walking fur-beast. The Wookiee, Chewbacca.
“Chewie!” Solo calls, and laughs as he breaks into a run. The Wookiee looks bedraggled and beaten down, but that doesn’t diminish Chewbacca’s enthusiasm. The Wookiee tilts his head back and ululates a loud, joyful growl, then wraps his impossible arms around the smuggler. Solo looks like a child snatched up by an eager parent—for a moment his whole body lifts up off the ground, his legs kicking as the Wookiee purrs and barks.
“I messed up, pal,” Solo gasps as the Wookiee sets him back down. The Wookiee yips and barks. “No, no, I gotta own this one, big guy. I shoulda been there with you. But we’ll make it right. I promise.” Then, a moment as the Wookiee looks around. His body goes slack like he’s taking it all in. Everyone goes silent.
The Falcon’s copilot utters a low growl.
Solo nods. “Yeah. You’re home, Chewie.”
The Wookiee stands there, stock-still and dead silent as he stares up at the trees. As if he’s just realizing where he is. He makes no movement and utters no sound, as if nothing could convey what he’s really feeling. Everyone waits to see what he’ll do, but Chewbacca does nothing.
More Wookiees emerge behind Temmin. “Found another chamber of prisoners in the back. I think they’re with you, Solo.”
“Thanks, kid. Thanks.”
Those Wookiees join with Chewie and together they stand with one another, staring up into the darkness of their damaged world.
Norra watches it all. The tears that warm the corners of her eyes are ones she tells herself belong to the pain in her side and not the one in her heart. She steps forward, intending to go to her son, hug him, ask him about Bones—but then behind her, someone says her name.
“Norra? Is that…is that you?”
Her knees go weak. She almost falls. Temmin rushes to her, helps her before she falls. That voice…
She turns to see if it really could be him.