She turned off course to check the site of her battle with the torture droid and found the machine in the dust, torpid or deactivated—she didn’t have the tools to tell. She stripped it of anything she hoped would be useful and moved on.
The tower was unchanged, stabbing into the heart of the planetoid. The black hole was below the horizon. She had plenty of time for dread before it aligned with the lens.
Her instinct was to pace; to distract herself from what was coming. She sat instead. She sorted through everything the droid had said about the portal and the tower’s response to her bioreadings. It couldn’t all have been lies—whatever IT-O had become at the end, she believed it had been sincere at the start—but what answers did that leave her?
She could smash her own kneecaps and hope raw, physical pain did the trick. She could attempt to explore, to inhabit her feelings as the droid had advised. Neither option seemed promising—she could hurt herself no worse than the droid already had, and as for her feelings? Was she, as the droid had said, resisting?
The question lingered awhile before she decided she knew the answer.
She’d stopped resisting after Pandem Nai. Every moment since she’d acutely felt her own guilt, her own complicity and cowardice. She understood all she had done and why. The droid had mistaken an unwillingness to confess with a lack of comprehension.
Which left her with what?
I drink. I work. I do what good I can in the galaxy. I manage, Yrica Quell. I move forward, because dwelling on my shame doesn’t help anyone.
Was the solution that simple?
* * *
—
Quell waited for darkness to return her stare.
In time, the black hole reached the point of conjunction. The iris rippled and distorted and the pupil seemed to dilate and tug at Quell’s consciousness. The sense of falling was familiar; the taste of despair no less so. The visions came, assailing her with her guilt, reminding her of all the times her cowardice had brought pain to beings she loved or beings she’d never met.
This time, she knew better than to wait.
As the nightmare wrapped about her soul she lifted her left foot and planted it in dust she could not see or feel. She lifted her right foot, never shirking from the stare. Her body was foreign to her as the black hole captured her mind, but still she walked.
I move forward.
She wanted to weep. Maybe she did. But she did not fall to her knees. She saw Nacronis and Nette and Soran Keize and Caern Adan. She saw the faces of her squadrons, old and new, and recalled Wyl Lark and Chass na Chadic and Nath Tensent leaving her behind on the Lodestar.
The tug of gravity was violent and seductive. The nightmare was agony, yet it was an agony she had earned—one she had invested in over the course of months or lifetimes, and if she abandoned it then what made her Yrica Quell would be left behind, too. Her identity would be stripped away, ripping off her like skin and fluttering into the dark.
It wasn’t too late to return, a voice told her. Not too late to turn around and plunge back into the comforting horror that the tower made manifest.
Still she walked.
She heard the howling of the black hole in her skull, felt it devouring space and stars and years like a whirlpool. She howled in reply, unable to do otherwise, and with every step her body returned to her. She felt an ache in her teeth and a burning in her calves.
The black hole released its grip and she felt weightless.
The vision ended and she stood in front of the tower. The great door was open before her, wide enough to admit ten people abreast into the chamber beyond.
Still she walked.
Inside, she was not at all surprised to find a ship. But for the first time in days, she smiled.
CHAPTER 19
THE END OF COMMUNITY
I
“I have a dream sometimes,” Chass said during disquisition. She rocked back and forth on her bare heels, staring into the auditorium aisle to escape eye contact with the cultists. Twenty, maybe thirty of them watched her. She’d chosen a seat opposite where Palal Seedia had sat two days prior; she’d worried it was too obviously considered a choice, then decided there wasn’t much she could do to hide her intentions.
She stood silent and awkward, forming words. She placed her hands on the back of the bench in front of her then hastily removed them when the occupant turned around.
“Okay,” she amended. “I have the dream a lot.”
No laughter. No smiles.
“I’ve never been to Coruscant,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure it’s on Coruscant. Probably because it looks like you’d expect Coruscant to look in a holodrama or some garbage, and it’s not real, you know? My dream. So Coruscant.”
The name Coruscant rapidly lost meaning through repetition. Tell them, she thought. Tell them everything.
“The war is over. Not the way it’s over now, but really over. The fighting’s stopped. Chancellor Mothma—or whoever, it’s just a dream—has disbanded the military and I’m out. And I’m alive, you know? I didn’t muster out early or anything. I survived every battle of the war, and—”
She heard the hoarseness in her voice. Tell them everything.
“—and I wasn’t expecting that? Everyone dies sooner or later, right? Stupid deaths, mostly, like—” Hound Squadron, she almost said, then remembered that Maya Hallik hadn’t been part of Hound. “—Fang Squadron. But I always figured—I always looked up to people who made a difference when they died.
“When you know you’re going to die, you look for a way to make it matter. You make it big as you can, because you might as well. Right?”
Right? Right? She heard her own voice echo in mockery.
In the dream there was no Scarif for her. No third Death Star to set things right. In the dream she was a survivor, like every good soldier wanted to be. Her moment of sacrifice had never come.
“So I’m living on Coruscant. I’m getting a stipend, because the New Republic is good as its word, but the money’s not enough to pay for more than a cruddy apartment. I’ve got whatever furniture came with the place and cheap, garbage food that’s better tasting and less filling than ration bars.” She could smell Surabat noodles boiling, bleeding oil as they softened. “I could use extra cash, but what am I supposed to do?
“It’s not like I haven’t been looking, trying to find work. There’s not any work. There’s two hundred ex-soldiers for every job that needs a killer and I don’t have any other skills. I don’t know anyone on Coruscant—everyone I flew with, the three who’re still alive, are all back on their homeworlds. Good for them. I don’t get that ending.”
She didn’t really dream that part. The apartment was clear as anything in her mind, but the rest was a sensation. A ghost of a life she hadn’t truly lived.
“I do some stupid stuff just to pass the time. You know the sort—petty stuff, not robbery, but enough to catch the eye of local security. They go easy on me, because I’m a vet. They go easy on me the first time.
“After that, I lose the apartment. Keep my gun. It all goes downhill from there.”
The end of the dream didn’t need embellishment for her audience. She saw the alley behind the cantina with perfect clarity. She saw herself, utterly sober, turning the blaster over in her hand and considering what to do next.
“I have the dream a lot,” she said again. “The last few years I tried so hard to make sure it wouldn’t come true. The last month or two, I’ve just been trying not to dream.”
The silence in the room suddenly seemed less like the silence of prayer and more like the awkward moment in a crowded billet after someone’s digestive system produced the wrong noise. Chass sat back down, her confession finished.
She knew what to expect afterward, but knowing didn’t make her more c
omfortable. As she sat on her bench, shivering and curling her toes and trying to shake the dream, she heard the shuffling of bodies around her. Hands clasped her arms from behind and lifted her back to her feet. She shouldn’t have shuddered at the touch—it did nothing to serve her goals—but she couldn’t help herself.
She kept her eyes downcast but perceived the cultists closing in, trapping her. She felt the warmth of more hands, hands on her shoulders, fingers trailing down her chest, not possessive or insistent but reverential, like pilgrims touching a holy icon. She drew into herself, breathing deep and making herself narrow, but the cultists enfolded her anyway and their bodies pressed against hers.
This is necessary, she told herself, but she no longer believed it.
She looked up. Eyes locked with her own—nonhuman eyes, kind eyes, and she felt the tide of compassion lift her and carry her away. The world whispered her name: Maya Hallik.
* * *
—
They celebrated her confession, as she’d known they would. The cultists ushered Chass to a gallery where they presented her with silk robes and garlands of pungent flowers, both of which she refused; but an elderly woman tucked a long-stemmed blossom between Chass’s horns and she remembered the time Hound and Riot squadrons had crowned her Queen of Starfighters. She’d taken joy in that event; yet that joy seemed faint and gray compared with what she felt among the Children of the Empty Sun.
Hound Squadron had fought and cheered and died with her. The cultists loved her. They were deluded fools but it was love all the same.
“It’s not like I just joined up, you know,” Chass murmured to Gruyver. They were in line for food, as word of Chass’s disquisition had spread and the day’s cooks had gone rummaging for fresh fruit and unspoiled flavor tubes. “I’ve been here a while.”
“You did better than join us,” Gruyver said, and heaped stewed pits onto her plate over warm flatbread. “You trusted us.”
“I trusted you. I still haven’t even met Let’ij. She’d probably kick me out if we met.”
“Let’ij obeys the will of the Force. She’s our interpreter, not our leader.”
Chass waited for more, sopped up juices with bread, and decided to push. “How am I supposed to know that when she’s always hiding?”
Gruyver laughed. “You want to see her? You’re our first convert from the New Republic. After today, I’m sure she’d make time.”
Chass forced herself to smile through lunch as cultists passed her and touched her and wished her well. She only saw Palal Seedia once, at the back of a crowd. The woman nodded in her direction with the swift surety of a guillotine.
* * *
—
Let’ij summoned Chass in the middle of the night. Chass barely had time to check the blaster at the small of her back before a pair of cultists she didn’t recognize escorted her from her cell into regions of the palace she’d never seen before—up a staircase with three glimmering ray shields and topped with a blast door. Eventually they arrived in a mosaic-tiled room with a glass skylight, divans covered in soft cushions that warmed on contact, and a pool of scented fluid that danced with iridescent colors. Let’ij’s guards wheeled in a tray of fresh fruit and bread after Chass sat down—a meal far superior to the rations and fried beetles the rest of the cult typically survived on.
Her body was buzzing, as if she’d taken a dose of spice and then forced herself to lie down. There was too much energy inside her for her circumstances.
Chass remained seated for a quarter of an hour before Let’ij arrived, wrapped in sallow cloth embroidered with gold. The woman padded forward as if she were rushing to check a forgotten roast in the oven. “Maya! I’m sorry to keep you,” she called. “Had a minor crisis involving a street fire, but it’s all dealt with.” She spoke without the crispness Chass had heard during the lectures, but she sounded no less serene. “The acolytes fed you?”
Chass gestured at the tray of food, swallowing a mouthful of sweet bread. “Didn’t know we had stuff this good here.”
“If there were enough for all of us, we’d share.” Let’ij snapped up a berry, sucked out the seed, then nibbled on the flesh as she spoke. “Unfortunately, there’s not—and it’s hard to be attuned to the will of the Force when you’re suffering hunger pangs. So we reserve it for occasions like these.”
“Sure,” Chass said, and shifted her weight on the divan so that she could feel the comforting bulge of her weapon.
Let’ij lowered herself beside Chass, turning and leaning against the divan’s back with one arm. Her perfume was of attar and petrichor. “In any event, it’s a privilege to finally meet you. I know you’ve got doubts about us, but you’ve come so far and I hope you’ll stay a while.”
“Sure,” Chass said again, and realized she hadn’t fully considered what was to happen next.
She’d come ready to act. Ready to see her plan through. Yet facing Let’ij, she wasn’t able—the buzzing inside her, the energy awaiting release, was too great. If she let go all at once she’d explode.
“What’s your scam, anyway?” she asked.
Let’ij cocked her head and waited.
“I mean, all your lectures are just about peace and community and submitting to you. It’s not even—there’s not even a prophecy or some end-of-the-world garbage to keep things lively.” The words flowed out unexpectedly, and Chass savored their bitterness.
Let’ij smiled and looked up through the skylight. A few stars gleamed bright enough to penetrate Catadra’s cloud cover. “You’re not the first to say that,” Let’ij said.
“So what’s the scam?” Chass asked again. Her voice was trembling—rage and excitement leaked out in hitches and bursts. “What’s your goal? You want to run Cerberon and live it up with a bunch of worshippers? Or are you thinking bigger?”
Let’ij waited, then replied as calm as ever: “The Force exists in every species, but it only shows us what we’re meant to do when we operate as a larger organism—a community.
“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done to create a community that nurtures, thrives, and supports life. No Republic or Empire, just people depending on people for love.”
“No place for independence in a cult,” Chass said. “Believe me, I get it. Doesn’t explain the ships, though, or the guns, or—”
“We’re not out there putting heads on spikes. We’re not the ones who bombed Catadra. But we’re not averse to self-defense, either.”
Chass tried to interrupt but found she couldn’t form coherent words.
Let’ij went on: “Judge us by the same standards you judged the New Republic. There’s millennia of wisdom from a hundred cultures that teach what the Force wants—the flourishing of life, tranquility, community—yet the ruling powers only fight. You don’t trust the military to turn away from violence any more than I do. They don’t know how.”
“But you know how,” Chass said. She laughed and shook her head. “You listen to the Force, so you can build a better civilization.”
“Hard to believe, but what’s more likely to work? Holding on to war hasn’t given you peace, Maya. Maybe, just maybe I’m an alternative.”
Chass didn’t hesitate after that.
She allowed the energy boiling up inside her to froth over, grasping her blaster and bringing the grip down onto Let’ij’s scalp as if it were a knife. There was no swell of blood but the cult leader’s grunt was satisfying enough. Chass brought the weapon down a second time, then a third, until Let’ij stopped moving and Chass was panting.
She didn’t hear the guards. She didn’t hear much of anything over her own breath.
Two minutes later, she gripped Let’ij’s personal code cylinder—found after rifling through her pockets—and marched back to the stairway leading to the main section of the palace. No one stopped her. As she walked, she re
alized she hadn’t bothered to check whether the cult leader was alive or dead.
* * *
—
Seedia wasn’t stupid enough to tell Chass where they were going, and Chass wasn’t fool enough to let go of the code cylinder. With most of the cultists abed, the palace was silent as they hurried through dim corridors. The marble felt strangely warm beneath Chass’s feet, and the only smell was dust.
They descended stairs that took them beneath the crypts and then ascended a tower, passing into a chamber cluttered with wires and machinery. Seedia, now using a single crutch as if it were a walking stick, declared, “Here,” and pointed at what Chass had assumed was a wall and now realized was a massive blast door.
“Stay where I can see you,” Chass said, and Seedia moved to the side of the door opposite the control panel. Layered around the metal were strips of duracrete, marble, and wood—remnants of earlier iterations of the palace. Chass ignored them, inserted the cylinder, and watched the door rise.
She stepped out with Seedia into what had clearly once been a garden dominated by a central fountain. Now the planting troughs were empty and the fountain was dry and the husks of spacefaring vessels littered the grounds. Chass saw a Corellian cargo hauler stripped to its skeleton and a mountain of salvaged pieces of the solar skiff she’d arrived on. She began to shake and twisted her neck, trying to find anything operational. Something that could fight or at least get her out of Cerberon and to the New Republic.
Then she caught a glimpse of the B-wing assault fighter resting behind the remnants of the skiff. Spiderweb cracks spread through stonework under the vessel’s landing gear, and the air stank of oil and fuel additives. Chass knew the B-wing’s black scars and chipped paint intimately; even without the crest on the ship’s side she would have recognized it.
She was going to leave Cerberon. She was going to forget all about the cult. She was going to take revenge on Shadow Wing.
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