“Maya?” a man’s voice asked.
Gruyver emerged from behind the cargo hauler, a hydrospanner in hand. Chass barely spotted him before he went down with a cry, face striking grass and stone and the metal shaft of a crutch extending from the back of his neck to the hand of his assailant.
“Pay attention,” Seedia said. “If they set off an alarm we could still fail.”
Chass looked from her ship to Seedia to the man on the ground. She was no longer making decisions—sometime after the disquisition she had been swept into a current, acting without thought or control or comprehension of where those acts would lead. She was at Gruyver’s side, turning his bleeding head in her hands, trying to determine if the emotion suffusing her was rage or terror or relief.
When the metal rod struck her skull she could only think: Well, of course.
Chass rolled onto her side and caught the crutch as it came down for a second blow. She tugged and climbed the rod, pulling Seedia forward as she rose. She twisted her hands, rotated the rod, and Seedia yelped—Chass didn’t think she’d broken the woman’s wrist but she’d come close enough.
Seedia’s booted heel drove into Chass’s chin, compressing tongue against teeth and filling Chass’s mouth with blood. She let go of the crutch, tried to stabilize herself to throw a counterpunch, but could only swing wildly as the Shadow Wing pilot hopped from side to side. Chass reached for her blaster and the crutch tapped her shoulder and elbow in rapid succession before she managed to draw.
“They got to you,” Seedia said. She sounded almost disappointed.
Chass’s vision blurred and filled with crimson as she squeezed the trigger, gripping with both hands. The blaster jerked and her shoulders ached and she felt the metal grow hot against her fingertips. She was screaming obscenities but she couldn’t tell where her target had gone.
She kept on firing. She looked for motion in the shadows, twisting her body and ignoring the pain. She saw the kind face of Wyl Lark mix with the blood and scars of Gruyver and wondered for an instant where she was trying to escape to. She felt a blast of warm air like a desert wind, adjusted her stance, and watched a four-winged jumper lift up and move jerkily through the sky like a mosquito.
She shot at it until long after it was gone. Until the blaster began to overheat.
“Maya?”
Gruyver was standing beside her, trembling. His voice was thin and soft and old.
“Maya? Are you all right?”
Her arms were stiff, frozen from her shooting stance. She lowered them but held on to her weapon.
“Put down the gun. Come to the medical suite. We’ll fix you and we’ll talk.” Gruyver’s face was soaked in red. He was shaking, but he watched her with pure compassion.
Wyl Lark would’ve watched her the same way, but Wyl was one person with a rare and bizarre capacity for empathy; Gruyver was a single cultist among many.
Another voice called: “There is no shame except the shame of self-deception.”
Chass turned to see Let’ij, flanked by her guards at the entrance to the garden. The cult leader pressed a cloth to her forehead where Chass had brained her, but she smiled calmly.
“If you go,” Let’ij went on, “you will not rid yourself of us. You will carry the seed inside you, and it will grow.”
“Screw you,” Chass said, and ran for her ship, turning only to say: “And my name isn’t Maya.”
* * *
—
When she was roaring skyward, feeling once more like Chass na Chadic, she vowed to never again think of her time on Catadra or her experiences with the Children of the Empty Sun. The thoughts and experiences would tear off her and flutter in her wake and burn up in the atmosphere and she would be purged, ready to pursue vengeance—to bring the wrath of the New Republic down upon Shadow Wing and face whatever that battle had to offer.
She didn’t need Gruyver or Let’ij or Nukita. She didn’t need disquisitions or meals with insipid fanatics.
She reached under her seat and discovered that her slugthrower and her box of music chips were gone. In their place she found a small metal case, which—once squeezed between her hips as she maneuvered one-handed—she opened and discovered held another set of datachips. These were labeled HOLOGRAPHIC LECTURE and numbered several dozen.
She slapped the case shut and shoved it back beneath her seat and flew into the dark.
CHAPTER 20
COURAGE IN THE RUINS
I
The Core Nine mining megafacility was as much a bunker as any military outpost Soran Keize had ever seen. It had no shield generator and few weapons, but its sixty levels were dug into the bedrock of Troithe, constructed to endure any quake or industrial disaster its designers could conceive of. Its lowest sections could, Soran was sure, survive a bombardment from anything short of a Star Destroyer; it was no wonder General Syndulla’s remnant had chosen to try to flee there.
Soran’s interest was not in the lower levels. Outside a cursory search, his soldiers had not descended below sublevel fifteen—the base of the primary launch silo. He walked across the pitted duracrete bay beside Governor Fara Yadeez, watching local Troithe engineers work alongside ground crews from the 204th as they welded hull panels and power-washed thruster modules. Cadets from the Edict hurried up loading ramps into the facility’s sole remaining ore freighter, carting ordnance that the newly assigned crew would load into freshly added torpedo tubes.
“They’ve done extraordinary work in so short a time,” Yadeez said. “Your people are remarkably adaptable.”
“Thanks to your assistance,” Soran said, and the flattery was sincere. Somehow, Yadeez had produced twenty engineers out of the chaos of Troithe who now toiled under brutal conditions. She’d salvaged more of the Edict’s weapons than he’d hoped possible. “We have a flagship to be proud of once again.”
He caught Yadeez smiling. He suspected she knew that he was less sincere in his praise of the freighter—upgraded or not, it was a five-hundred-meter crate with missile launchers and cannons bolted on. But it would hold six squadrons of TIE fighters and it could make the jump to lightspeed.
It would allow Shadow Wing to abandon Cerberon and leave behind their costly victory over Troithe and the Lodestar.
“Regardless,” Yadeez said, “I’m grateful for the opportunity to see your launch. We’re gathering as much sensor data as we can from the satellites we’ve reacquired, and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised—”
Her words fell off as a klaxon sounded, loud enough that Soran’s eardrums throbbed in response. The engineers at work on the freighter paused as one, then returned to duty team by team as officers waved them back into action. Until orders decreed otherwise, their obligations had not changed.
Soran raised his comlink, ready to shout through the noise, when he saw Broosh racing toward him from the direction of the lift shaft. “Report!” Soran cried, and Broosh shook his head with a grimace as he closed the distance.
“Aircraft squadron,” Broosh called. “Mixed signatures but we spot three starfighters along with what appear to be atmospheric craft. En route to the facility, not more than five minutes away.”
“The survivors?” Yadeez asked, wincing the moment she’d spoken. Soran gestured dismissively—he was in command but he saw no need to prevent her from taking a role.
“Let’s assume so,” Broosh said. “No other signs of activity. I won’t guess what sort of attack they’re planning—they don’t have the firepower to pose a serious threat, so it must be, what? A trap? A distraction?”
“Likely one or the other,” Soran agreed. “But I wouldn’t totally rule out a frontal attack.”
“Sir?” Broosh grimaced and cupped a hand over one ear. Someone finally shut the klaxon down, and the silence that followed was like the airless vacuum of space.
Twice now, Shadow Wing had confronted General Syndulla’s forces. The first time Soran had been absent and Colonel Nuress had died above Pandem Nai. The second time had been above Troithe, and though the foe’s flagship had been destroyed the price had been far greater than Soran had been prepared to pay.
He did not intend to see his soldiers humbled a third time.
II
Wyl Lark sped through atmosphere unhindered by rock formations or housing facilities or the fear of detection by enemy scanners. His A-wing’s fuel supply was low, but he had more than enough for a mission confined to a single planet. The damage he’d sustained since falling to Troithe was no worse than damage he’d endured in the past, and he’d learned to compensate for the tilt his repulsors produced. And though he was out of missiles his blaster cannons were still operational. His ship was wounded but he was flying again, and it was wonderful.
Could be our last run together, he thought, and skimmed gloved fingers over the console. Let’s make it a good one.
His comm was open. “Lark to squadron,” he called, “all ships report in.”
“Wraive standing by.”
“Prinspai standing by.”
“Ubellikos standing by.”
“Vitale standing by.”
“Tensent standing by.”
An A-wing interceptor, a Y-wing assault fighter, a V-wing antique, and three airspeeders weren’t much against Shadow Wing. Four of his pilots were still strangers to him. He’d never fully planned and executed a mission as sole squadron commander, and he was working with soldiers who lacked any reason to trust him after the loss of Gorgeous Su.
He wouldn’t try to lie to them.
“I do believe—I truly believe—that we can win this,” Wyl said. “Let’s look forward to talking about it tomorrow, huh?”
He heard the nervousness in his voice. If he’d been speaking one-on-one he might have been able to perceive what they needed, to hear them out and offer support or blunt honesty or dutiful professionalism in return. But here—
Nath Tensent interrupted his thoughts. “That’s Wyl’s way of saying: These bastards are tricky. But they blow up when you shoot them, like anything else.”
The others laughed. Wyl laughed. Thank you, Nath, he thought.
Less than two hours earlier, Nath had been ready to draw a weapon on Wyl. Now he was grinning and taking on the most dangerous part of the mission. Wyl wondered if he was trying to make amends—he doubted it, but Nath was a complicated man.
Wyl trusted him to do his part, at least.
The other aircraft trailed Wyl as they raced over canyons and burning mineral deposits. Wyl spotted the energy signature of the mining facility on his sensors and leaned forward, trying to spot the structure on the horizon—but if it was ahead it left no silhouette against the glittering, star-filled sky. He felt himself sliding in his seat and straightened his ship; the vessel bounced and jolted enough that he made a mental note to be careful when he spoke.
Don’t bite your tongue off.
He called out a new vector and his squadron followed as he dived toward the ground, leveling out a dozen meters above the tops of the canyons. He checked his scanner again.
“Where is it?” Prinspai called. “We’re directly above the—”
The insectoid pilot didn’t finish the thought. Rock dropped away beneath them and they were suddenly flying above an enormous chasm where a hundred lesser canyons merged into a single basin. In the center of the basin was a domed cylinder of metal and duracrete that reminded Wyl of a rocket silo. There was no architectural artistry in its design, nothing to break up the stark walls except for lines of fading yellow paint that might have once offered guidance to incoming ships. Yet for all its brutal mundanity, the sheer size of the megafacility was daunting—it was large enough to distort perspective, to make the surrounding cliffs seem impossibly small. It was a spike driven into the heart of the world, breaking and scarring the land such that millennia of erosion and tectonic shifts would only begin to heal the damage. It was the reason there was nothing green on the Scar of Troithe.
It would take full seconds for the squadron to cross from one side of the chasm to the other. Wyl’s sense of perspective was distorted further when he saw the dome begin to retract, hemisphere parting down the middle. His scanner flashed and showed starfighters ascending through what, from afar, appeared to be the slightest crack.
For an instant, he was tempted to deviate from the plan. If he accelerated, he thought, he could enter the mining facility before the dome closed again. He could attack Shadow Wing from the inside…
…and be shot down in seconds. It wasn’t an option.
“Squadron coming out!” he called. “Stay with me—we’re going in close and we’re going in fast. Scatter them with cannon fire and make sure they follow.”
“Perhaps the challenge is to keep them from catching us?” Wraive said.
Wyl loosed his first shots and his squadron joined him. Crimson fire splashed off the dome with no noticeable impact; but as the first TIEs emerged, they broke formation under the barrage.
“They’ll need time to accelerate to top speed,” Wyl said. He pitched his A-wing toward the dome, ready to pull up the moment the full TIE squadron was free. “Until then, their advantage is marginal. We don’t have to buy too long.”
He’d plotted a course already. When they fled Shadow Wing, they would ascend in a broad spiral arc that would avoid taking the TIEs out of the facility’s general vicinity. The TIEs would catch them or they would drop away at whatever altitude they considered too far from base. Either result would, Wyl hoped, be enough.
“Wyl to Nath,” he called. “They spotted us, as planned. Now it’s over to you.”
III
Nath Tensent felt his ship bob like a wooden boat on rough seas. The engine growled and sputtered with every lurch, and his readouts spat out warnings one moment before going dark the next. “You’re doing a fine job,” he muttered, and T5 squawked back irritably as he opened his throttle and set the Y-wing into motion.
Wyl and the other pilots chattered as the canyon walls blurred around him. Nath kept half an ear out but he was too focused on navigation to really listen—his sensors gave him plenty of warning to indicate where the canyon branched but an overhang or unexpected avalanche could end his day very suddenly.
The Troithe underworld had been worse—tight maneuvering had been the order of the day, and agility was not a Y-wing’s strong suit—but he hadn’t been on a schedule down there, either. Now, if he was going to do his part, he’d need to hit close to top speed in Troithe’s atmosphere.
“Remind me why we’re doing this?” he asked.
T5 replied with a threat to take control. Nath smirked. He hadn’t expected a better answer, and the truth was he knew his reasons. They were stupid reasons, but he had them thoroughly cataloged.
Nath was a practical man, but he’d never been a coward. If you wanted out, he told himself, you could’ve gotten out after Pandem Nai…and if you wanted to lead, you should have fought for the position.
But he’d stayed, and no matter how much Wyl infuriated him he didn’t want to take command. He’d been through that heartbreak before and even with the right crew—say, a band of thugs and pirates who could thrive following Nath’s philosophy of self-interest—his days in charge were probably over.
That didn’t mean Wyl wasn’t ungrateful. He wondered if the kid would ever understand.
“Hey!” he called, and thumped a fist on his console. “Where’s my targeting computer?”
The secondary screen swung out and wobbled on its tracks. The
range indicator blurred as it counted down the distance to the canyon’s end.
There was a very real chance he was going to get himself killed. And why? For his squadron. For Wyl Lark. For Chass and Kairos and Quell, who might have been alive and might have been dead. He’d looked for other ways to serve Alphabet, and there were no other good options.
He’d cleared all his debts before when he’d shot and killed Shadow Wing’s colonel. Now he was racking them up again.
He made a tight turn into a crevasse that nearly sheared off his starboard nacelle. The high walls blotted out the starlight above, and Nath was forced to pilot in darkness. T5 sent warnings to his console indicating shifts in the topography, but even the astromech was navigating by sensors alone.
The range indicator fell toward zero.
Nath primed his torpedo launcher without looking toward the controls. Suddenly the walls of the crevasse dropped away and he was in a broad chasm—a pit that might have housed a whole city district. In the center of the jagged plane that served as the chasm floor stood the massive cylinder of the Core Nine mining megafacility.
His scanner showed Wyl and the others along with the squadron of TIEs, but they were too high above to concern him. He spotted what might have been a ground entrance into the facility—a strip of flat ground and a dark line that might have been the outline of a blast door—and adjusted his heading.
“Locked and ready!” he called.
The range indicator blinked with all the disinterest of an alarm clock. Nath squeezed his firing trigger and saw his power readings spike; T5 was trying to optimize energy distribution and targeting. The burning bolt of a torpedo ripped from the Y-wing and jolted Nath backward, and he fired the next before the missile reached its target. Then the next. His cannons pulsed, sending smaller quivers through his vessel—he didn’t hope particle bolts would do much good, but if he’d had a rock to hurl at the bunker he’d have thrown that, too.
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