Gruyver continued introducing Chass to most every cultist in the palace, and though that left her busier than before she was now trusted. She had a room of her own—a tiny, unpainted stone cell. She’d been invited to take part in the garden planting the following month. A small child had taken to giving her presents—little sculptures of bent wire representing Catadran animals; Chass didn’t have the heart to reject these and lined them up against her cell wall. Most significantly, she’d been able to steal a radio so she could listen to subspace static on concealed headphones during Let’ij’s daily lectures, awaiting a signal from the New Republic or Imperial reinforcements or whatever she could get.
The third time she encountered the prisoner was that same evening, on her way back to her cell to lounge and plot. She passed the TIE pilot in a palace corridor and the woman moved surprisingly swiftly, despite the burn marks and bruising and limp—she planted her feet on the marble, adjusted her stance, and jabbed a crutch into Chass’s nose before Chass realized she was under attack. The medics rushed toward them as they scuffled and fell.
Chass was attempting to pound the woman’s head against the marble floor when her adversary leaned up, teeth close to Chass’s ear. “You know about Shadow Wing?” the woman hissed.
The last time she’d spoken, Chass had chalked up the hoarseness in the woman’s voice to fatigue and injury. Now she heard something new—a hitch of static. Maybe a medical vocabulator?
“Yeah,” Chass grunted.
“You were at Pandem Nai,” the woman said.
The medics were trying to pull Chass away. The woman clamped her teeth on Chass’s earlobe, released, and whispered, “I know where to find a ship.”
When they parted ways, Chass was bleeding profusely. The pilot met her gaze and bowed her head in a gesture that seemed almost submissive.
* * *
—
Gruyver visited Chass in the medical suite while her nose was bandaged by the attendants. They checked her horns for damage with an expertise Chass could grudgingly admit—if only to herself—that she’d never experienced in the New Republic. “Does your species require any additional care?” one attendant asked, and Chass almost snorted in reply. The sudden, sharp pain and rush of salty blood into her throat turned the sound into a gurgle.
“Aren’t there people on the street who need treatment more?” Chass asked Gruyver when the attendants moved away. She spat a wad of blood and phlegm onto the marble.
“Anyone outside is welcome to join us. But we can’t force them,” Gruyver answered.
“Your medics could go to the people of Catadra instead of promising bacta as a recruitment bonus.” She tried to keep the disgust out of her tone—she didn’t want to lose Gruyver’s trust—but she didn’t try hard.
The scarred man laughed anyway. He seemed to laugh at just about anything. “You’re ornery when you’re injured, Maya. I can’t speak for Let’ij, for she speaks for the Force—but she always says the health of the fellowship, of the community, is what matters most of all.”
“In that case, why’d you rescue me? Why’d you grab—” She almost said the Shadow Wing pilot. “—the Imp?”
“Have you spent much time on Catadra? Just because we don’t walk into a riot or a holy war doesn’t mean we have no mercy.”
“And you keep the Imp under guard because…?”
Gruyver smiled brightly and wiggled a finger at Chass’s nose. This time she laughed—a quick, humorless bark. She wondered how many cultist limbs the woman had broken.
Gruyver shrugged and offered his arm to Chass as she stood up from the examination table. “She told the man who found her that her name was Lieutenant Palal Seedia,” Gruyver said. They walked alongside each other out of the medical suite and back toward the palace living chambers. “That’s about all she says. Let’ij says to welcome her, so we welcome her. You should welcome her; set an example.”
“An example of what?”
“What the future could look like. Rebels and Imperials, working together and moving past their grudges to be part of something bigger.”
Chass smirked and prodded the bridge of her nose, sending a jolt of pain into her skull. “So we’re definitely not hostages for you to use when whoever’s running the system takes a closer look at your operation?”
“Do you want to leave, Maya?” Gruyver stopped abruptly and turned to face her. “You’re no hostage. You can leave if you must.”
Tone it down, she told herself.
“Childhood trauma. Bad cult when I was young. Remember?”
“I do,” Gruyver said. “Maybe Palal Seedia brings back other bad memories, too? You think about your friends from the New Republic?”
She’d never talked about friends—Maya’s or Chass’s. She thought of Nath Tensent’s face, caught a flicker of Wyl Lark, and pushed it all down before the worst of them rose up in her brain. “They weren’t my friends,” she said.
“Everyone had friends before they found the fellowship. Know that you have family now—but if there’s anyone we should watch for? Anyone you wish us to haul to safety if we find her floating in the void? You need only say the word.”
The name Chass didn’t want to remember rose up again. The woman who had stolen her trust, lied to her, earned her loyalty and let her down. If you see Yrica Quell? If she’s still alive? Then you kill her.
She blinked away a sting in her eyes. The words came without thinking.
“I knew a woman named Kairos. I don’t know if she made it out, but she deserves better than to die in a stasis tube.”
“Of course,” Gruyver said. “Of course.”
* * *
—
Gruyver’s urging to set an example made it easier to meet the Imperial without drawing attention. The next morning Chass cornered her in a dusty, half-collapsed corridor that smelled like pipe smoke. Once again, Chass threatened to kill the woman.
Seedia listened patiently to Chass’s lavish descriptions of evisceration before asking: “You’ll wait to settle our differences on the outside?”
“You said you have a ship?” Chass asked.
If Seedia had been part of the attack—if she’d killed Alphabet Squadron and Riot Squadron and Hound Squadron—then she would die. But if she could lead Chass to the rest of the people who needed killing, so much the better.
“The cultists thought I was unconscious when they brought me here. I was not.” The woman’s vocabulator whined like an insect; she didn’t seem to notice. “I know where they keep their vessels. I can’t get there on my own, though—not with these.”
Chass eyed the crutches. “We climbing somewhere?”
“I need access codes or grade-four explosives. Normally I would steal one or both. Under the circumstances—”
“I get it.” Chass scowled. She could rig a basic bomb if she sacrificed her blaster’s battery and scavenged parts from the kitchens and the bathrooms, but grade four meant they were going through something thicker than a standard blast door. “Whose access codes?”
“I’m not certain. I assume even the holy Vessel of the Force needs a code cylinder.”
She spoke with such disdain that Chass smiled despite herself.
* * *
—
Nothing ever came easy. Chass learned the name of the child who insisted on giving her toys—Nukita—and she discovered where the palace corridors dead-ended in unpainted granite or mounds of rubble. She sought in vain for a cultist who dealt in contraband, or one who could grant her access to heavier weaponry. She located a crypt used by whoever had built the palace centuries before and found the solitude there peaceful.
She saw the cultists attempt to welcome Seedia as they’d welcomed her. The Imperial began to take meals with the others, reluctantly spearing fried beetles before stalking
away. The cultists endeavored to make conversation each time, asking Seedia what she thought of the food or if she liked the clothes left for her—nothing that touched on matters personal or political. Usually, Seedia ignored the speakers altogether.
Once, however, when Nukita offered the pilot one of her bent wire toys, Seedia whispered something to the girl and sent her away bawling. Chass saw the exchange from start to finish and something turned in her gut.
She made a note to kill the woman slowly.
* * *
—
The next time Let’ij lectured to the cult, Chass removed her headset and listened.
“How many of you,” the fungus-faced hologram began, “sought to destroy yourselves before coming to the Children? How many of you indulged in practices, knowingly or unknowingly, that could only have led to your doom?” The woman smiled with gentle humor. “Did you toil, obedient to droids you believed you owned? Did you steal and deceive so that you could earn credits for spice and death sticks? Did you fight, claiming to yourself that it was for a worthy cause?
“Look at your neighbors. They did the same. There’s no shame in this galaxy except the shame of self-deception. There’s no reason to carry with you the burden of your past, or the burden of dreams for the future. With the Children of the Empty Sun, there is no future.”
That’s the most honest thing you’ve ever said, Chass thought, and shifted on her blanket in the common area. One of the cultists—no one she knew—rested his head against her shoulder.
“The Jedi Order tells stories about men with great destinies, whom the Force chooses for terrific deeds. But the Force doesn’t desire greatness. The Force desires simplicity and life and love. The Children of the Empty Sun may one day spread across the galaxy, but as individuals? We will rise every morning and sing and eat and raise our children according to the laws we have deciphered from cosmic truth.
“There are no criminals among us—no paths to doom. Nor are there heroes.”
The lecture went on for a very long time. Afterward the cultists gathered for their thrice-weekly “disquisition,” in which small groups sat in silence until, one by one, the attendees rose and spoke about whatever the Force moved them to speak.
Usually these little speeches were confessions of sins, major or minor, from various points in the speaker’s lifetime. To Chass, the whole affair looked an awful lot like a way to gather blackmail material—she expected there were recording devices in all the disquisition rooms, ready for Let’ij and her attendants to review. She’d seen similar scams elsewhere and thought, as scams went, it was a pretty good one.
Today Gruyver talked about his daughter, whom he’d abandoned along with her mother years earlier. A pale child admitted he’d been eating raw nectrose crystals, despite the cult discouraging sweets. A tusked Aqualish spoke at length in a language that Chass didn’t understand; he was applauded and embraced when he finished. Chass searched for something to talk about in case she was asked to share—something appropriate to the life she’d built for Maya Hallik.
The confessions went on. No one even looked at her.
Lieutenant Palal Seedia rose from the auditorium’s bottom tier on a single crutch. Chass hadn’t seen her, hadn’t recognized her in civilian garb instead of her flight suit. Her electronically enhanced voice reverberated through the room, distorted by echoes.
“I executed a planet,” Seedia said. “I was part of Operation Cinder and I accept personal responsibility for the cleansing of Nacronis.”
The cultists shuffled in their seats but no one interrupted.
“I don’t think of that as the worst thing I’ve done,” the pilot went on. “Many people would disagree—I assume the New Republic would hang me for it, probably after giving me as humiliating a trial as they could manage—but I was raised to believe in duty and obedience to those who uplifted and privileged me. I can’t bring myself to believe that obedience is ever truly wrong. At worst, it’s like a solar flare—bad news in the wrong circumstances but not possessed of agency. You don’t hang a sun for incinerating a passing freighter.
“That said? I’ve done many things I am ashamed of. I left my twin sister in charge of the estate when I promised my father I’d care for it and pass it on to my children. I once—I’ve made errors on missions that cost lives, and I—”
Seedia paused and looked around at the crowd. Her voice fell.
“The worst thing I’ve ever done—the thing I feel most guilty about, that I’ve done more than once? I didn’t tell my friends I loved them when they went on a mission to die.
“Not because I was scared, or—not because I was scared. Because it seemed undignified. So they died without knowing.”
Seedia sat down. Scattered applause sounded before silence resumed.
What the hell was that? Chass thought, though she had a good guess.
* * *
—
Chass met with Seedia that night in one of the palace gardens. Even through her broken nose the smell of mulch was almost overwhelming.
“The ancient Tangrada-Nii general Mardroon called it crossing the threshold of the mirror,” Seedia said.
“What?”
“The moment when you’ve seen the face of your foe. When you’ve gotten so close, learned so much about each other, that whoever moves first is bound to win.” The TIE pilot sounded disinterested, as if she were explaining something rudimentary. “It’s a dangerous time. But the gravest peril is to wait too long—to believe you’ve not yet arrived at the threshold, when you already have. You risk going from understanding the enemy to becoming the enemy.”
Chass wasn’t a fool. She understood. Mostly.
“The cult? Or us?”
“You tell me,” Seedia said. “I tried to earn their trust today, but you saw the result. They’re brainwashed idiots and provincial yokels but they’re not entirely stupid.”
“At least they don’t go around killing planets,” Chass snapped.
They watched each other awhile.
“You’re the one with the blaster and working legs,” Seedia said. “If we don’t get the access codes soon I suggest we take hostages.”
Chass wrinkled her nose as the bandage tickled her skin. “I can get the access codes,” she said. “Then you die, or I die, and the winner gets the star system.”
II
The Cerberon sky was dazzling after so long spent underground. The stars bled together into shining clouds, too dense and bright to do otherwise. No electric lanterns or neon signs tarnished the heavens’ clarity—the only sources of illumination at ground level were twinkling indicators on droids and repulsorcars, and the distant blue-green fires that rose from the cracked landscape of pitted metal plains and blasted canyons.
“It’s beautiful,” Wyl Lark murmured, his hand resting on T5’s top module.
A flight of ships crept overhead from the direction of the city.
“They’re heading for our target, you know,” Nath said.
“I know.” Wyl felt an unexpected flash of irritation, though he was confident that Nath meant no condescension. He hoped his voice hid his emotions; despite their spat below the surface, the last thing Wyl wanted was to alienate his friend. “There’s nowhere else they would go. But if they’re setting a trap, they’re not being subtle about it.”
“Maybe they figured we wouldn’t look up.” Nath shrugged, T5 chimed and vibrated beneath Wyl’s hand, and then Nath continued, “Or maybe they figured there’s no turning back for us. We go to the mining facility or we starve to death in this wasteland.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
Wyl surveyed the ruined land around them. The Sixty-First Mobile Infantry was hidden within a ravine as desolate as any asteroid. But where CER952B had been shaped by meteorite impacts and erosion over millions of yea
rs, the Scar of Troithe had been formed by living beings. Its shattered expanse lacked the grandeur of mountains or ocean depths; instead it resembled a pane of hardened glass repeatedly struck by a hammer until cracks covered every centimeter. The continent had been excavated and strip-mined until it was barren; and then the people of Troithe had kept digging until there was nothing left but chasms and unquenchable flames.
T5 squawked louder and wiggled from side to side. Nath looked back to the sky and Wyl followed his gaze, spotting three new lights—vessels flying low in the atmosphere, close enough for their howling to be heard.
“Droid recognizes the engine signature. Says they’re cargo hoppers,” Nath said. “Looks like the Imps are moving in some serious equipment. Could be they thought our plan was too good not to steal?”
Wyl laughed. Someone shouted his name and he removed his hand from T5. “If our plan was good enough for Shadow Wing, then we must be getting better at this,” he said, and hurried to answer his summons.
* * *
—
The commanders met in a circle of dust in the shadow of overhanging rocks. The rest of the company provided them with a modicum of privacy by staying at a distance, but Wyl still heard boots shuffling in the dust and the low murmur of conversations throughout the ravine. Carver had given orders to stick to the shadows and keep the noise down, yet there was only so much the troops could do to hide their presence.
“Good thing they’re not actually looking for us,” Twitch muttered. The churlish, middle-aged squad leader was cleaning an assault rifle as she squatted in the dirt, paying more attention to her weapon than to the rest of the group.
“There’s more going on than a scheme to ambush us,” Carver agreed. The sergeant-turned-unit-commander looked as if he’d aged over the past days, his skin cinched tight over his muscles. “If we were their top priority, their scouts would be all over the canyons. Hell, they could blow the mining facility apart from the inside and pick us off out in the open.”
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