You wanted command of the unit, Gablerone’s ghost told him. You sought the responsibility. What are you going to do with it?
* * *
—
Food did nothing to calm him, but he ate. Reports from the front of scattered anti-air fire and riots on the ground—some pro-Republic, some pro-Imperial, each hard to differentiate from the other—did nothing to quell his desire to join his squadrons, but he listened.
Soran Keize eventually turned from the hologram of Troithe to charts of the Cerberon system. He assigned three flights to search for escape pods from the Edict and the Aerie and see if they’d made planetfall beyond the reach of Troithe’s shields—in the planet’s oceans or across the scarred continent. He chose other flights to leave Troithe, to patrol Cerberon and watch for vessels attempting to escape. The moment the New Republic received word of the system’s fall, a countdown would begin ending in Shadow Wing’s defeat; no one could be allowed to depart Cerberon carrying a plea for reinforcements.
He still didn’t know what to do, though.
It wasn’t yet midnight when Kandende reported an encrypted Imperial transmission coming in from one of the aging refinery districts at the north end of the continent. One of the TIE patrols had picked it up during its third pass over the region—either the signal had just been activated, or it was weak enough to be nearly undetectable.
“Let’s see it,” Soran said.
The display table flickered again. Ribbons of light coalesced and sculpted the head of a woman whose dark, youthful face was crowned by elaborate braids and gemstone studs. Her expression conveyed the formal dignity of someone for whom formality and dignity were all she had left. Creases under her eyes suggested the scars of exhaustion. “—someone receiving? Channel nine-two-alpha utilizing military clearance code six-three-delta-delta—”
The woman went on, each syllable enunciated with marked determination. Soran didn’t recognize the code and, without the Aerie or the Edict, had no way to confirm its authority. But he decided the risk of replying was minimal, and he adjusted the table’s comm controls. “This is Colonel Soran Keize of the 204th Imperial Fighter Wing,” he said. “To whom am I speaking?”
If the woman was surprised, she didn’t show it. “This is Acting Governor Fara Yadeez. It is a privilege to speak to you, Colonel.”
“Acting governor?” Soran asked. Stress and weariness scraped at his brain as he attempted to recall facts he’d never expected to need. “What’s become of Governor Hastemoor?”
“Killed by the rebels in the attack on the capital,” Yadeez replied. There was bitterness in her tone but no sorrow. “The cabinet and advisory council were hard hit over the past months. I don’t know if you received our dispatches following Endor—”
“Only in part.”
“Then suffice it to say that the line of succession ends with me, Colonel. I am the rightful ruler of this planet, until such time as I am replaced by sector command or a higher authority.”
Soran wondered just how far Fara Yadeez had climbed. But he heard the implied question and said, “I am not here to replace you, Governor. The Empire is grateful for your service in this chaotic time.” It was a lie, but the polite sort of lie he imagined Yadeez might appreciate for what it was—or if not, simply accept as flattery. “We have very little information about the loyalist forces on Troithe. Can you tell me your status?”
“I don’t have a hidden army waiting to strike, if that’s what you’re wondering. We’ve mapped pockets of resistance but haven’t opened communications with the guerrilla fighters or the district leaders still loyal. The New Republic has been aggressive in containing us. I accept full responsibility for the state of things—” She forced the words out with obvious difficulty; Soran admired the effort. “—and would welcome whatever guidance you can provide.”
Yadeez paused. Soran watched her as her expression softened. For an instant the formality and dignity dropped away and were replaced by a profound humanity.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I’m not deluded enough to think that Cerberon was ever the Empire’s top priority and I don’t know what made you decide to come now, but—we’ve been dreaming of this day. Now we have a chance. Now we have hope.”
She waited.
We’re not here to rescue your world, Soran thought.
He said nothing, and Fara Yadeez transformed back into the acting governor of Troithe.
“Send me your location,” Soran said after another moment. “We should meet face-to-face. We have a great deal to discuss.”
II
They sat on the lowest level of a three-story speeder garage and repair shop in the decaying Highgarden District. The district was neither tall nor verdant, though Wyl had seen a handful of electro-fenced lots that might have been parkland in a different era. The garage itself had been built for maintenance droids and meter-high Ugnaught workers, and as a result Wyl, Nath, and the two dozen soldiers, pilots, and support crew present had to take care not to smash their heads against the pipes and deactivated light fixtures above their scalps.
The entire building buzzed with each distant explosion—every ion bomb bursting or mortar round hitting home. If there had been rain, Wyl could’ve pretended he was riding out a storm.
“Fighting’s getting worse on the east side,” an infantry soldier called out. He was crouched at the metal bars enclosing the garage, peering out with a pair of electrobinoculars. “Lots of blaster flash. Handhelds, no cannons. Probably mostly pistols. Could be close enough for us to join them.”
Wyl shifted on the duracrete floor. Nath reached out beside him, gesturing as if ready to hold him back. But it was Sergeant Carver who spoke, rising slowly from where he’d been lying down. “No,” the burly man called. “No one’s going anywhere.”
“What’s your thinking?” Nath asked.
The other troops looked between Nath and Carver. Wyl recognized Nath’s tone. The older pilot knew exactly what Carver would say and wanted to make sure he had the opportunity to say it.
“First? This is our rendezvous point, and we’ve got twenty, thirty stragglers who could still show. I want to be here to meet them if they do.” Carver scratched at his calves, then swept his gaze across the assembly as if looking for anyone ready to argue. “Second? We walk into that mess, we’ve got a real good chance of losing. We don’t know who’s fighting. We don’t know the terrain. If the locals are slaughtering one another our odds of doing good by getting in the middle are piss poor. Remember Switchmount?”
The man with the electrobinoculars nodded slowly.
“Or Mardona,” a woman’s muffled voice called. Wyl had trouble locating her until he noticed the bundle of torn blankets covering a lump in the corner.
“Thank you, Twitch,” Carver said. “Besides, you know how a good riot goes. Always blows over by morning.”
The sergeant grinned broadly like it was a joke. Wyl didn’t get it, but Nath snickered beside him and several of the other soldiers began laughing. It was Vitale who called out, “We’ll just wait till daylight, then,” and the meaning finally struck home.
Wyl still didn’t find it funny, yet he made himself smile. He’d heard worse among Riot Squadron and he could’ve let it pass if it had ended there; instead the joke and the laughter seemed to rouse the troops’ spirits and they began speaking to one another about past battles, past incidents where local populations had been caught between the company and the Empire. Past fights where the Sixty-First Mobile Infantry had been left for dead by the Rebel Alliance at large. Zab, the sergeant Wyl had met on the night Yrica Quell had joined them for dinner in the refugee camp, spoke of the company’s battle on the planet Sullust. “Lost our troop carrier that time. Lodestar was prettier, but nothing beat the—”
This, in turn, set off a round of debate about the merits of the Lod
estar. Wyl thought of the battleship falling toward Troithe, torn to pieces by the TIEs as it burst against the shield; he thought of the escape pods and wondered whether Quell had been among those lucky enough to depart. He didn’t blame the infantry troops for their callousness—they hadn’t been aboard the Lodestar long, nor had they witnessed its demise.
“Excuse me,” he murmured to Nath, and he wobbled as he moved through the garage with his head bent forward, hands touching the ceiling to keep him balanced.
* * *
—
Wyl spent the next hour on the garage’s top floor, where the two fighters were stowed between industrial meat processors stinking of ammonia and splashed with green stains. The ceiling was tall enough for Wyl to stand erect, but the scent sufficed to drive the troops below.
He was helping T5 weld a section of the Y-wing’s landing gear when heavy footsteps rang out on the grating and he recognized Nath’s bellow behind him. “Not in the mood for conversation?” he called.
“Too soon to laugh about the Lodestar, is all,” Wyl said, and shrugged.
“You don’t like the infantry much, do you?”
Wyl turned about and rose, gently leaning against T5 as he did so. The droid squawked happily, apparently taking the gesture as a sign of affection. “What makes you say that?” Wyl asked. “They seem like good people.”
“You think that about Shadow Wing, too,” Nath replied, and Wyl would’ve argued but his mind went to Blink. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but you’ll spend half a day listening to the ground crew talk about their mothers and you won’t spare an hour for this sort.”
“We don’t have much in common—”
“You don’t much like fighting face-to-face, and you don’t like being reminded that it happens.”
Again, Wyl wanted to argue. “Maybe,” he said. “If I insulted anyone down there, I’m sorry. I’ll swing by after—”
“No one cares, brother. Just figure since we’re stuck with them, you may as well be honest with yourself.”
Nath inspected the welding job with a skeptical eye, but he didn’t object to the results. They worked side by side until the heat of T5’s arc welder left them sweating and they climbed onto a ledge overlooking the streets of the Highgarden District. The wind was cold and the sky was dark, save for the eternally bright stars and the burning eye.
“Adan didn’t want us fighting them at all,” Wyl said.
“No one wanted us fighting them. That’s why half the infantry company is sitting on an asteroid somewhere, waiting to spring the trap and cut down the Empire’s favorite pilots while they’re not flying. But it looks like that didn’t happen.”
Wyl nodded carefully and let his legs dangle into the chill void. In the distance he saw flashes of crimson light. The bombs had stopped falling.
“It’s our responsibility now,” he said.
“Only if you want it.”
Nath was watching him, uncharacteristically somber.
“It’s our responsibility,” Wyl said. “We brought Shadow Wing here. We clean it up.”
They sat in silence a long while. There were no sounds of city life. No humming speeders or laughter in the distance. Nath finally pushed back away from the edge of the ledge.
“Get some sleep,” Nath said. “Infantry commanders are meeting in the morning. I got myself an invite, but I think you should be there.”
* * *
—
The solar projectors did not ignite when morning came. Whether intentionally sabotaged or damaged in the fighting, no one knew. Either way, the city remained lit by starlight and the black hole—enough to see by, enough to breakfast by, but an ever-present reminder that the skies belonged to shadows.
More soldiers—no pilots among them—had trickled in during the night but the complement from General Syndulla’s battle group still numbered fewer than fifty, mostly combat personnel with a smattering of support units. Perhaps another twenty volunteers had shown up representing local Troithe forces. Wyl wasn’t sure how the qualifications for leadership had been determined, but the combined unit’s six representatives sat with Wyl and Nath in a cramped, low-ceilinged office on the second floor of the garage. Someone had connected an emergency generator to the computer system, and one cluster of soldiers sat muttering softly and staring at holos of Troithe.
Carver was among the infantry squad commanders, as was the middle-aged woman called Twitch who’d been hidden by blankets the night before. A bone-crested Houk filled most of one corner with his silent bulk. A human named Vifra represented the surviving engineers, and was so encrusted with ash (save for a few stripes down her face where she’d clearly wiped a sanitation cloth) that Wyl wondered if she’d spent the past few hours escaping a bombed building. An elderly human male called Junior stared blankly at the computer images and fiddled with a holographic toy. Finally, a slender female Sullustan announced that she’d been liaising with the local forces and would represent them at the meeting; Wyl hadn’t caught her name.
Carver raised his voice when they’d all assembled. “Basically, we’re up to our necks again. Captain’s floating on an asteroid somewhere wondering why Shadow Wing hasn’t shown up, which means officially command of the Sixty-First Mobile Infantry passes to me.” Several of the others protested. Carver cut them off. “However, since we’re guests of the locals and our starfighter corps friends officially outrank us all, I figure we ought to chat as a group.”
Wyl and Nath exchanged a glance. If the man didn’t realize that Alphabet Squadron was part of New Republic Intelligence and not officially military, now wasn’t the time to bring it up.
“If no one objects,” Carver continued in a tone that made it clear objections weren’t welcome, “let’s go around and run down what we’ve got to work with. After that, we look at the state of the planet. Then we talk options.”
They did as Carver suggested, and it became apparent that conditions were worse than Wyl had expected. The company was not only understaffed but also underequipped: Most of the squads had been routed by Shadow Wing bombing runs and fled their positions unprepared. Twitch reported that one of her squad was armed only with a combat knife. Vifra wasn’t encouraging about the prospect of contacting other scattered infantry units—any signal likely to get through, she said, was also likely to be traced by the Empire. By comparison, Alphabet’s munitions-depleted A-wing and aging Y-wing were shining beacons of New Republic combat-readiness.
They moved on to the tactical situation next. The Sullustan had pieced together reports regarding the riots and enemy bombing campaign. The districts Syndulla’s battle group had left untouched en route to the capital were in chaos, with small numbers of heavily armed Imperial guerrillas attempting to lock down territory. Shadow Wing patrol patterns had shifted, prioritizing oversight of territories sympathetic to the New Republic. Bombing runs had decreased in frequency over the past twelve hours, but the 204th remained quick to obliterate whole city blocks whenever an uprising began.
“We have one report of TIEs heading offworld,” the Sullustan finished. “We couldn’t confirm it. Still, it’s possible they’re spreading through the whole system.”
“Who cares?” Twitch asked. “We’re grounded. Unless you’re going somewhere?” She jutted a thumb at Wyl and Nath and smiled nastily. Wyl simply shook his head.
“Way I see it,” Carver said, “our best bet is to reestablish a base of operations. Probably by taking it from the enemy. We hit hard and fast, we bring up anti-air defenses, and we become a rallying point for the rest of our forces. From there we figure out where the enemy fighters are based—”
A fresh chorus of arguments began. Wyl didn’t participate. He felt unqualified to judge the plan—though he recognized its flaws as well as anyone, he had no confidence in any alternatives he could propose. He listened as the others
debated the company’s anti-air capabilities and traveling speed; he readied himself to speak up and describe Shadow Wing’s capabilities, the damage that a proton bomb could do, but no elaboration was required. The commanders were debating how to survive the foe long enough to receive reinforcements or assemble a superior plan—not how to destroy it.
Wyl watched their expressions. If he’d known the commanders better he could have dug deeper, drawn out hidden reservations. If they’d been at odds he could have played peacemaker. But his skills were useless here.
“Not to state the obvious,” Nath said after Junior began to cough and the others made the error of pausing, “but the governor didn’t have the anti-air guns to take out our fighters. We’ve got a total of six or seven surface-to-air missiles, which won’t put a dent in Shadow Wing. Without a way to keep those TIEs grounded, there’s no point getting clever.”
“Big enough ion pulse could knock them all out of the sky,” Vifra muttered.
Carver didn’t hide his irritation. “If we had those kinds of warheads, we wouldn’t be debating what to do.”
The rumble of bombings resumed. Wyl looked at the ash on Vifra’s cheeks and tried to imagine how far Shadow Wing would go to destroy what was left of the New Republic military. He thought of walkers toppling skyscrapers and the burning skies of Pandem Nai.
He looked at the map of the city and the planet, staring into the hologram until the light burned his eyes.
“We should retreat,” he said. Too soft at first, but when he repeated himself the others looked to him. “We should retreat.”
“Nowhere to run, boy,” Twitch said. She snickered. No one else did.
“The 204th has destroyed planets before,” Wyl said. “So long as we’re in the city they won’t hesitate to raze whole districts, kill—” He glanced at the Sullustan, ready for her to correct his numbers. “—millions? Billions? The governor was invested in the world in a way Shadow Wing isn’t. This conflict will be different.
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