Nath waited. General Syndulla glanced surreptitiously to either side, checking to see if anyone was paying attention.
“I’ve been fighting this war for a long time,” she said. “A lot of us have. And we know how to fight an impossible battle, but this…?” General Syndulla sighed and looked past Nath, as if staring through the Lodestar’s bulkhead into the scorched clouds of Pandem Nai. “We’re old hands at losing. We’re still learning how to win.”
Nath considered the debts he’d accrued and the debts he’d paid off. He thought of Reeka and his old crew; of Adan, Quell, and his new squadron.
“I’ll drink to that,” he said.
He had no idea what he would do next.
IV
Yrica Quell arrived aboard the Lodestar thirty minutes after midnight, fresh from the bacta tanks of the medical frigate. She stank of antiseptic washes and prickled like her whole body was waking from paralysis. The deck felt unsteady beneath her soles. She shouldn’t have been on her feet at all—her medical droid had assured her of that, even as it had authorized her departure—but beds and bacta were in short supply aboard the No Harm, where the grim logic of computerized triage ruled.
The Lodestar’s hangar was aroar with New Republic soldiers and support crew, none of whom seemed to notice Quell or the other shuttle passengers. She drifted around the clusters of partygoers, catching snippets of conversation about Pandem Nai and Shadow Wing and Alphabet Squadron. It didn’t seem right to be celebrating, but Quell didn’t have the strength for outrage. Besides, it was the first time anyone had indulged since Argai Minor. The troops had been waiting a long while.
She’d intended to go directly from the shuttle to her bunk, but instead followed the path of least resistance. The currents of the crowd led her out of the hangar and down a series of corridors, and she was impressed to see that the celebration extended to multiple compartments of the battleship. She tried to think back to any victory party so sprawling aboard the Pursuer, and failed.
Just once, through a curtain of bodies, she spotted Chass na Chadic squeezing into a side room. Quell felt an urge to go to her and pushed it down.
If your squadron is celebrating, let them do it by themselves.
She was resting against a wall out of the flow of traffic when she heard a humming and a low voice. “You’re looking well, Lieutenant Quell. I’m pleased you’re recovering so rapidly.”
“I look like garbage,” she said. She turned to the torture droid, who bobbed in the air like a branch in a light breeze. Its presence sent her mind back to Pandem Nai and Adan, but she forced herself past those thoughts. “Thank you for treating me aboard the U-wing.”
“It was my pleasure. I rarely get to exercise those skills.”
She wanted to say: More used to cutting open than sewing shut? But it seemed ungrateful.
“The others aren’t far,” the droid said. “If you wish to join them, I can show you the way.”
“Not tonight.”
“I’m sure they’d welcome you.”
“They’re enjoying themselves.”
The droid reached a full stop, as motionless as if it had been pinned to the air. Its red photoreceptor dilated. “Then join me awhile. Adan is occupied, and it seems a pity to attend the party alone.”
Quell met the photoreceptor’s stare. “I’m too tired for therapy.”
“As am I. But if General Syndulla can walk among her troops as a fellow combatant, I can enjoy your company as a friend.”
Quell laughed hoarsely. “Are we friends?”
“Would anyone else consider spending the victory party with a torture droid?” The droid’s voice was mischievous, but Quell caught the note of self-pity. She wondered if it was intentional—a trick to elicit sympathy.
“All right,” she said. “One night, we’re friends.”
The droid led them down the corridor, away from the noise and the bustle. Quell expected it to bring up her confession, but instead it told her about the signals from the ground on Pandem Nai: offers of surrender, broadcasts of crowds cheering in town squares, and messages from local officials pledging cooperation. “Pandem Nai, as surely as any other occupied world, desired freedom. It has that, thanks to you.”
“That’s not why we came,” Quell said. “Do we have casualty numbers yet? From the civilian orbital stations? From the ground?”
“We do not. But you prevented—”
“Don’t,” she snapped. She paused to rest a hand on the piping lining the corridor, catching her balance. Then she resumed walking, still clutching the pipe. “I almost killed all of them.”
The droid’s humming scaled to a higher pitch. For an instant Quell thought her ears would split. Then the frequency changed again, and she could feel it more than hear it. The hum was almost calming.
“Don’t,” she said again. “I don’t need it.”
The humming stopped.
They turned a corner and arrived at a point defense station. Past a reinforced viewport, a turbolaser battery extended from the Lodestar’s hull, and beyond the barrels of the cannons the shrouded orb of Pandem Nai spanned the horizon. Scarlet clouds concealed the continents and cities; only a few dark specks hinted at the orbital stations remaining.
“I almost ruined this,” she said. Her voice was soft and passionless. “I decided to smash in the face of a defeated enemy and I thought I was being heroic because I was using rebel tactics.
“But I’m not a rebel. None of us are.”
“The plan wasn’t your responsibility. Caern Adan, General Syndulla, and her superiors all approved it.”
“It was my plan. And I’m the one who should’ve known better.”
Quell had experienced what it meant to have a dominant fleet behind her. She had hunted down determined warriors forced to flee to the far corners of the galaxy. She knew exactly the sort of carnage that resulted from applying massive pressure against a smaller force.
“You once asked me,” the droid said, “why the Emperor ordered Operation Cinder.”
She nodded, lowering herself into the defense station gunnery seat. “I remember. You said ‘I couldn’t say’ and asked what I thought.”
“And do you have an answer?”
Quell said nothing.
“Did he seek to save lives? To redeem himself? Was his motivation as pure as yours when you planned the attack on Pandem Nai?”
Her motivation hadn’t been pure. But it hadn’t been hateful, either.
She thought about the Emperor and Cinder and what had happened on Nacronis. “Maybe it was a sorting mechanism,” she said. “A way to separate the people who would commit—who would obey that kind of command from the people who wouldn’t.”
“Perhaps. Can I offer my theory?” the droid asked.
“As a friend?”
“A proper therapist would let you figure it out yourself,” the droid said. “But I’m ignoring boundaries tonight—so yes, as a friend.”
Quell managed a strained smile and nodded. “What’s your theory?”
“The answer,” the torture droid said, “is simple: The Emperor who ordered Operation Cinder, who built two Death Stars, who oversaw countless genocides and massacres and created an Empire where torture droids were in common use, was not a man of secret brilliance and foresight.
“He was a cruel man. Petty and spiteful in the most ordinary of ways; and spiteful men do spiteful things. Whatever else he intended, that is at the root of it all.”
Quell’s instinct was to argue—to defend the Emperor she’d pledged to serve. She swallowed the words, knowing they came from propaganda holos and drill sergeants rather than intellect or experience. Even Major Keize had never argued the Emperor was a good man.
“He ruled the galaxy for over twenty years,” she said ins
tead. Her voice sounded small. She stared into the clouds of Pandem Nai. “Everything we are is because of him. How do we get past that?”
“Yrica,” the droid said, with a voice that should have been condescending but instead sounded like a promise, “that’s what we’re all here to find out.”
She leaned back in the gunnery chair. Her eyes stung.
On the night after her victory over Pandem Nai, Yrica Quell laughed, and the torture droid laughed with her.
CHAPTER 23
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
I
The rain in Tinker-Town had been ceaseless but apathetic—constant, thin, spattering rain that a person could almost grow accustomed to. The rain of Vernid was different. The drops came swift and heavy, brutalizing bare skin and flooding every crack and crevice in the landscape. A person could drown in Vernid’s rains before growing used to them.
Yet after a few short weeks, Devon had grown fond of the world. He could almost imagine calling it home.
The Harch had been wise to send him here, he thought, as he peeled off layers of waterproofing in the cantina’s cloakroom. When he’d hung his belongings above the drain, he marched barefoot into the common area and approached a corner table where four large humanoids passed around a bowl of steaming sludge. “Devon!” a burly man cried, and the others jostled to make room.
The cantina was packed; the evening shift at the dig-rigs was over and, except at the height of harvest, the worm farmers always called it quits after nightfall. Devon joined his work crew with a murmured greeting and took a generous swallow of the sludge. It burned his throat and sent warm pulses down his spine. “Tyros not joining us?” he asked.
“Got a lad he fancies, next town over. Catches the shuttle once a week.” The speaker was a topknotted man perhaps twice Devon’s body mass—Klevin, the crew’s hauler.
“Boy’s going to miss check-in one of these mornings,” a woman with a grid of facial scars muttered. This was Nanchia, the crew’s rigswoman. “I’m not going to cover for him.”
“Only way he’ll learn,” Klevin agreed.
The bowl reached Devon a second time; then a third not much later. The drinking of mijura, he’d learned, was part of the culture of Vernid—not a ritual he embraced, but one he respected. Even if it meant he went home some nights with an aching head and a sway to his stride.
A waiter passed by the table. The work crew shouted requests. Somewhere in the back of the cantina, a platter slid off the bartop and onto the floor. Devon shouldn’t have heard it in all the noise, but he did; then he realized that the noise had diminished.
“Lower it!” someone from the underside crew shouted, and the buzz of a cheap viewscreen grew louder as the display unfurled behind the bar. Through wavering scan lines, Devon could barely make out the image of roaring flames.
Klevin was saying something but Devon ignored him, trying to hear the viewscreen’s audio. Something about a New Republic victory off the Skangravi-Mestun Regional Hyperlane. A world called Pandem Nai and massive destruction leading to an Imperial defeat. Devon squinted at pictures of orbital mining facilities and TIE fighter squadrons and a half-repaired Star Destroyer bound up in scaffolding.
“Another one down,” Nanchia muttered.
Devon shook his head briskly. Klevin was replying. Again, the picture of the flames. The broadcast cut to a New Republic senator asserting her pride over the operation’s success and her concern over the careless and brutal tactics of the Empire.
“Bastards,” Devon said, though he knew he shouldn’t have.
“What’s that?” said the man across from Devon. His eyes were wide and his beard of tendrils was festooned with gold rings. This was Vi’i’che, the crew’s cranksman.
“They’re bastards,” Devon repeated. Some portion of his brain warned him, knew better than to allow the words, but he ignored it. “The New Republic comes sweeping in with a fleet—enough firepower to destroy any garrison—and has the audacity to act surprised when there’s collateral damage.”
“Maybe the Imperials should’ve surrendered, if they didn’t want damage,” Nanchia spat.
“You think they had the chance?” Devon asked. He smiled coldly, even as his mind raged at him. “You think the New Republic declared their presence and tried to negotiate a surrender? Or did they use guerrilla tactics, like they were still a bunch of terrorists without laws of war or rules of engagement to worry over?”
Devon was not a man prone to outbursts. Even now, he kept his voice level. He saw what was occurring, understood exactly why, and couldn’t stop it. The sludge had shaken the words loose, but it hadn’t given them form. He could blame only himself for that.
“Anything they did to the Imps counts as justice, far as I’m concerned,” Klevin said. “You disagree?”
“I do,” Devon said. “I thought the word bastards covered it.”
Klevin rose fast enough to topple his chair. Devon watched the motion and saw, at the same time, other forms approaching him from across the room. He sensed the wariness from Nanchia, the concern from Vi’i’che and the nearby waiter.
“Maybe you’ve had too much mijura,” Vi’i’che said.
“Maybe so,” Devon agreed. He rose from his seat as well, slower than Klevin and with his hands on the tabletop. “Maybe best if I head home early tonight.”
His heart was beating rapidly. His body was ready to fight. But he bore these people no ill will, and striking them wouldn’t change anything shown on the viewscreen.
He felt bodies closing in, heard someone a pace behind him. But Klevin stepped aside as Devon walked back toward the cloakroom. He was alone inside, and pulled on layer after layer, forcing his adrenaline-suffused limbs to move slowly, calmly, precisely.
He walked the bridges back home—metal catwalks suspended a meter above the muck. It was a longer path than slogging directly through the mud, but it gave him a chance to wear himself down. The rain slapped at him and beat at his hood and shoulders.
He liked the people of Vernid. They were hard workers, bitter and strong and loyal, and he’d felt at ease among them the first day he’d arrived—the day the Harch’s contact, the dig-rig overseer, had offered him a position on the crew. He admired Klevin’s protectiveness and Nanchia’s devotion to her hounds and the emotion Vi’i’che instilled in his work songs.
He was getting tired of wandering. He feared he had only himself to blame.
* * *
—
No one spoke about the incident in the cantina as Devon checked in for work the next morning. Klevin kept his distance, and Devon partnered with Tyros on the rig’s south side. Tyros was the youngest of the group, and he adjusted cranks as Devon pulled levers and flashed signal lamps at the other crews. Against the noise of the rain and under the gloom of the cloud cover, light made for more reliable communications than sound.
“True there was trouble last night?” Tyros asked, an hour into the shift.
“No trouble,” Devon answered, grunting as he pushed an argumentative lever into position. “Could’ve been, but there wasn’t.”
“Sounds like trouble to me,” Tyros said, and laughed.
Devon didn’t hold it against the boy. But he wasn’t keen on the notion that word was spreading.
As the day continued, he watched Klevin, Nanchia, and Vi’i’che whenever they were near. He kept alert for anyone else—he took care not to position himself with his back to a doorway, avoided the isolated corners of the rig, and checked his surroundings before leaning over the railings—but it was those three who knew him best and who had reacted most strongly. If trouble was coming, odds were decent one of them would be the source.
He didn’t avoid his comrades. He did his duty and said nothing to indicate his wariness. But he hadn’t survived as long as he had—aboard the Whitedrift Exchange
, in Tinker-Town, and during an era in his life that now seemed distant—by ignoring potential threats.
During his meal break, he drained a pouch of nutrient broth and checked the shuttle schedules. If he had to leave the planet, he wouldn’t find transport on any of the public lines for at least five days. His best bet was to find work aboard a freighter—assuming one passed through Vernid’s single spaceport before a shuttle came—or, if necessary, to stow away on any departing vessel he could find. None of the options were pleasing, though he wasn’t particularly worried. In a worst-case scenario, he could disappear into the mud plains awhile.
Devon was a survivor. Survival was exhausting.
When evening came and the shift ended, the crew trickled out to the turbolifts leading off the rig. Devon remained to double-check Tyros’s work (the boy had a habit of leaving equipment in the water, justifiably irritating the night crew) and scanned the status displays on the wet console. He heard footsteps ring on the metal walkway and made no motion to turn.
“Hey!” Klevin called. “You coming tonight?”
“I thought I’d skip it,” Devon said. He kept his focus on the displays. “Stomach isn’t sitting well today.”
Klevin laughed harshly, then spat into the rain. “That how you settle things in the Core Worlds? Crawl and hide out of sight?”
Devon had never claimed to be from the Core Worlds, but he supposed almost any world was closer to the Galactic Core than Vernid.
“Just trying to avoid trouble,” he said. He turned at last and saw Klevin three meters away. The man showed his teeth, grinning brightly. “I came to Vernid looking for quiet,” Devon continued. “If I can’t find it—if I’m the one who makes too much noise—say the word and I’ll move on.”
The offer was genuine. Klevin was a brute when he wanted to be, but his mind was sharp and he was representative of his community. If Klevin didn’t believe there was a place for Devon on Vernid, he was probably right.
“You serious?” Klevin swore and squinted at Devon. “You’ve got more spine than that. I saw you half drown hauling Grahamos out of the mucking pit. Why pretend you’re a coward?”
Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars) Page 42