Victory's Price (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  She did all these things, and when Soran Keize called, she went to his side.

  She preferred to associate with members of the unit she didn’t know. That was easy, most of the time—much of her work she did alone, and she took her meals briskly and at odd moments. Many of the pilots she’d laughed with and befriended and kissed and bled with were dead and thus did not request her company. One of the junior engineers, a boy named Agias Rikton, seemed content to take on tasks at whatever hour she required, allowing her to use her supervision of him as an excuse not to visit her fellow officers.

  It would be easier, she imagined, to betray all of them—as she would betray Soran Keize—if she didn’t spend more time with them than necessary.

  She was thinking about that one evening as she scrubbed herself in the shower, counting the seconds until the water automatically turned off. She glanced to the stall door, then to her left biceps, where the splash of red scar tissue appeared almost healed. Water followed the web of lines like rivers carving canyons—as if enough time aboard the Yadeez would erode and erase her scars, leaving an unmarked plain. An irrational fear rose in Quell: the notion that when the last remnants of her tattoo faded—the tattoo of five mismatched rebel starfighters that she had scoured from her body—she would also forget her time in Alphabet Squadron.

  She clenched her biceps with her right hand, ready to rake her nails through the flesh and deepen the marks. It was a wild, primitive response to an absurd terror, and she would’ve clawed herself until she bled if someone hadn’t rapped on the thin metal door.

  She dropped her arms to her sides as if standing at attention. Water ran into her eyes and licked the underside of her chin.

  “Quell!” The voice from beyond the door was stern, almost angry. It sounded like Fra Raida, whom Quell had been in low-key competition with since she’d first joined the 204th. “Get your butt to the ready room!”

  “On my way,” Quell said. “What’s going on?”

  “Squadron Five is back,” Raida answered. “Everyone else is ready. It’s time for the birthday party.”

  * * *

  —

  She couldn’t escape this time. The ready room—what had been the bulk freighter’s rec area, consisting of little more than a few chairs, a cooler, and a nonfunctional pazaak table—was crowded with pilots, all of whom she recognized from her years flying.

  Squadron Five was welcomed with roars and embraces. (Had Shadow Wing been so affectionate, so tactile before the Battle of Endor? Quell wondered, and no longer trusted her memory.) Commander Broosh and his subordinates were not the guests of honor, however; they were merely the last to show. Quell stood straight-backed against a bulkhead as Lieutenant Darita passed out crowns of cracked tubing combined with sprigs of vegetation collected from Dybbron III before its death. Quell donned her own without comment and felt sap glue crown and hair and skin together.

  “Should the colonel be here?” one of Broosh’s pilots asked—her name was Jeela Brebtin, Quell thought.

  Darita sounded exactly like her sister—the woman who’d died to guard the Yadeez’s retreat at Cerberon—when she said, “Don’t be stupid. Pilot corps only, same as always.”

  “Same as always!” a voice cried from the back of the room, and they all laughed because the Star Destroyer Pursuer was gone and Colonel Shakara Nuress, the woman they’d called Grandmother, was dead.

  Yet it was still her birthday.

  Grandmother had never known about the gatherings aboard the Pursuer. Officially, the pilots observed the Feast of Lord-Protector Jarmanidath—an obscure holiday from a world in the Colonies, mysteriously approved for celebration by the Empire’s Culture Ministry censors. (Quell recalled Xion speculating that the approval had been an error too embarrassing to correct.) Over the years the birthday party had taken on more and more traditions from the true feast; but they were a tribute to Shadow Wing above all.

  In the ready room of the Yadeez they sang holiday songs, replacing references to “the protector” with “the colonel.” They drank nutrient blends flavored with the most colorful spices they could find, and Quell couldn’t help but smile when Squadron Six proclaimed Captain Phesh to be the Lord-Protector’s jester. Phesh had once been the gathering’s staunchest opponent, acting as chaperone more than celebrant and twice forbidding his squadron to attend; now he rubbed his mustache and delivered a speech about Grandmother’s triumphs during the darkest days of the Clone Wars.

  “Many believed the Republic would fall, then,” he declared, “but women like Colonel Nuress and men like Chancellor Palpatine led us to victory. Their generation is gone, and now it is our responsibility to lead. To learn from them, and to light the fires of victory anew.”

  Some among the pilots rolled their eyes or stared at the deck; some cheered and raised glasses. A few breathed heavily, their eyes wild and enraged—among them Lieutenant Kandende, whose face had turned bright red. Quell feared her own expression had given something away when a hand pressed her shoulder and she felt an exhalation against her ear.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” Meriva Greef said. Quell recognized the voice, almost comically high-pitched, before she turned to see the sergeant she’d shared a bunk with in the days after Endor. Greef’s face was the same as always, thin and dark, but Quell was surprised to see the woman in a flight suit.

  “I’d heard—” Quell said. She’d seen the squadron rosters; she should’ve known what to expect. “Congratulations. You always wanted to fly.”

  “Not how I planned to leave the ground crews,” Greef said, “but it’s the chance I got.”

  If there was a note of disappointment in her tone, Quell couldn’t be sure.

  Quell attempted to leave the celebration three times as the evening progressed. Each time she was thwarted by a toast or intercepted by a colleague. The pilots began exchanging stories in small groups and the groups gradually merged, story blending into story. In time, Commander Broosh stood in the center of the ready room, one booted foot on the pazaak table as he spoke of Pandem Nai.

  “They didn’t come to fight,” he said. “They came to kill—to trap us inside our station, to burn us in our house. It was a rebel plan, the plan of terrorists and guerrillas, and that should surprise no one.

  “But their eagerness set the sky on fire. They would’ve incinerated everyone on the planet if we hadn’t stopped them. And while our comrades sacrificed themselves, the rebels sent a death squad to assassinate Colonel Nuress.

  “They asked for no surrender. They acted not with the sober intent of an executioner but with the angry rage of a child—a child with a blaster rifle…”

  Quell listened to the description of her mistakes and to the names of the dead and tried to appear outraged. When the story was done and she turned to go, she was stopped one final time; Broosh himself stood at her side and said, “It’ll be good to have you flying again, once you’re recovered. We need you out there.”

  “I understand,” Quell said, and did not sleep that night.

  * * *

  —

  The opportunity she’d awaited came the next morning, when the unit came under attack by three Gozanti-class cruisers—ex-Imperials, Quell assumed, who had heard of Shadow Wing’s mission and decided to take the offensive rather than wait for annihilation. The Yadeez rattled and attempted evasive action as particle bolts boiled away its fragile shielding; the corridors were full of the roar of TIEs launching and the odors of smoke and leaking coolant.

  Had Quell been on the bridge or with Keize when the attack had begun, she would have been trapped by duty. As it was, she could slip into the current of chaos and resurface after she’d completed her mission. She would make her excuses then.

  At the best of times, the reactor level of the freighter was a cramped labyrinth of machinery occluded by steam and crisscrossed with cabl
es and pipes. Condenser pillars and sub-unit generators glowed gently, providing beacons in the dark. During combat, however, the reactor level became an unstable nightmare, and Quell was forced to crawl to maintain her balance and hope a power surge didn’t burn her alive. If she burned herself and survived, she couldn’t dare scream—the grates overhead led to populated areas of the ship, and discovery might end in a worse death than electrocution.

  She scuttled through the maze, timing her movements to the lulls in the battle and listening for sounds from the Yadeez’s crew. After a last furious dash, she wedged her body between a bulkhead and the icy metal of a cooling tower, and slid her hands across pitted deck plating until she found the edges of an access panel. She tugged it open, nearly smashing the panel door into her face, then peered into the machinery below.

  Wired directly into the ship’s reactor systems, sandwiched between high-voltage flux stabilizers, were the innards of a TIE bomber’s comm array. Quell had stolen the parts over the course of weeks, spent days more reassembling them and configuring them for their new housing, but the array worked. She was almost certain it worked.

  If anyone spotted her now, there was no explanation that would suffice. She touched the blaster on her hip before beginning.

  Her hands trembled as she tapped the emergency keypad. She hadn’t been able to find a spare display, so she’d never know it if she miskeyed a command. When she was done—if she did everything perfectly—the Yadeez would send a burst of coded data bouncing among hyperspace relays. Some listening post would intercept the data package and send it on to New Republic Intelligence, assuming it had been transmitted inadvertently. Someone at Intelligence would decipher it and match it with the bulk freighter’s unique identifiers. Whoever had replaced Caern Adan would review the data and bring it to General Syndulla, and the general would continue her pursuit…

  If Quell did it all correctly. If she wasn’t found out.

  But she’d done it right before. Keize had said it: General Syndulla is in pursuit.

  And what would happen when Syndulla and the others arrived? There would be a battle, and if Syndulla and Alphabet chose their moment correctly then Shadow Wing would die. The Yadeez would burn. Its pilots would be picked off in their TIEs, and only the bulk freighter’s escort ships might have a chance to surrender.

  Quell accepted this as her price. She’d been too slow to save the Imperial population of Fedovoi End from choking on the planet’s poisoned atmosphere; from sealing themselves away until their sole alternative was suffocation. But she would stop the 204th and the second Operation Cinder even if she could never set things right.

  A roar like thunder or a proton bomb echoed through the maze. The Yadeez rocked, and Quell’s head slammed into the cooling tower. She let go of the keypad, terrified she might enter an unwanted command. Reality blurred and her brain pulsed with pain, and she distantly remembered fracturing her skull only months before; if she hadn’t done permanent damage then, maybe she had now.

  She pressed her hands to the floor to steady herself and slid them back toward the comm array. If she didn’t send the data burst soon the battle might end. Someone might come looking for her.

  You don’t need eyes for this. Touch is plenty.

  She saw a shadow to her side—a silhouette that hadn’t been there before, two meters away.

  The shadow was moving. She moved as well, and she didn’t think as she grabbed her blaster and wheeled. The deck lurched again and she couldn’t be sure if she pulled the trigger on her own—not the first time, at least. The second shot she meant. She smelled the blaster bolt, saw the flash, and the shadow crumpled to the floor.

  When her head finally cleared, she recognized the figure lying on the deck plating: a bundle of red leather and cloth, its one arm splayed out and its glass face cracked, staring lifelessly into the grating above. Robe and circuits burned in the center of its chest.

  The Emperor’s Messenger was dead.

  CHAPTER 5

  NIGHT VIGILS OF THE POLIS MASSA RELIGIOUS CASTE

  I

  Wyl Lark felt as if he’d descended beneath the known universe—below the Star Destroyer, out of the stars, and into an endless abyss. Somewhere half a kilometer from the lightless turbolift shaft he would find his goal, though whether there was any point to reaching the hangar bay now he wasn’t sure. No one seemed to be shooting at the Deliverance. No attack had come since the sabotage droids had latched on.

  He lowered himself rung by rung, resting when his arms trembled or his footing began to slip. It was better (he told himself) than waiting in one of the bunk rooms, where he’d been helping Lourgh T’oknell retrofit a bed to accommodate his six limbs. That task had almost made him feel ordinary again—like a man who could while away time with friends instead of leading them—but the moment had ended when the ship’s alarms rang.

  They need you. You’re doing all you know how, he told himself. It wasn’t comforting.

  His feet found something solid, and he dragged the toe of his boot across a metallic surface until he located a handle. He dropped to hands and knees and worked the handle with increasingly forceful pulls until the hatch he squatted on slid open and he fell. He had the presence of mind to relax his limbs, and when his soles hit the deck the pain was dull instead of sharp. After the shock passed, he blinked into the light and wondered why he heard squealing.

  “Give him space, huh?” a low voice called.

  Wyl rose unsteadily. A meter away he saw the source of the squealing—a squat, flat-topped astromech droid coated in flaking green paint, shifting weight rapidly between its two bulky legs.

  Wyl grinned and wrapped his arms around T5. “Good to see you, too. You staying out of trouble?” He raised his chin, looking past the droid to the man in the corridor next. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

  Nath Tensent gave him a nod. His face was spattered with ash and grease. Wyl wondered what Nath had been through (wondered what Chass and Kairos and the rest of the Deliverance were going through) even as he felt grateful for Nath’s survival.

  It took him a moment before he remembered the distance between them. His smile faded.

  “No trouble upstairs?” Nath asked.

  “Power shortages, and lots of them. Oxygen levels seem okay for now.” Wyl stepped around T5, swallowed awkward words before adding, “I really am glad to see you.”

  Nath had never been less than his friend. Even at their lowest on Troithe, the man had fought to protect Wyl. That had been the problem, really—Wyl had seen a chance to avert bloodshed, to save people, and Nath had decided for both of them that it was too risky.

  Wyl had once asked Nath to be there for him—to back him up when he called. Nath had agreed, and he’d kept to his promise; they just didn’t seem to agree on what friendship entailed, and Wyl didn’t know what to do about it.

  Nath shrugged. Whether Wyl’s outreach meant anything to him, Wyl couldn’t tell. “We’re on our way to field control,” Nath said. “You coming along?”

  The man marched past Wyl, T5, and the turbolift shaft. The droid followed, and Wyl pursued the both of them. “You have a plan?”

  “I’d call it an idea more than a plan, but it’s something. You know how many safeties a Star Destroyer has to prevent explosive decompression?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “More than a few. My guess is that the bridge could blow most of those droids out their own hull breaches by opening up the right blast doors. Sweep them into space with the force of a hurricane, then shut the doors again. Only if anyone tries, emergency energy fields will snap into place to keep the air in. We’re going to try to disable those safety fields manually.”

  “All right,” Wyl said. He was out of his element, and Nath knew Star Destroyers better than he ever would. The part of him still wounded—still mistrustful—
over Troithe wondered how Nath was prioritizing the crew’s lives, and he caught himself saying: “Any risk our people will be blown out with the droids? Or that they’ll suffocate?”

  “Always a risk,” Nath said. “But that’s up to the bridge. We’re just giving them options.”

  Wyl nodded and increased his pace. “I’ll follow your lead and hope I can help. Lucky we found each other.”

  Nath snorted. “Yeah. Lucky.”

  They walked awhile, T5 occasionally letting out a burble or a beep. Nath paused at an intersection and peered down the branches—one lit, one not—before choosing the lit corridor. They heard clanking metal and sparks, but the echoes seemed to come from a great distance. They were in the eye of a storm, Wyl thought: safe while disaster shaped the world around them.

  “Kind of a mess these days, huh?” Nath asked. His tone was more than easygoing—it was gentle in a way Wyl barely recognized.

  “Been a little rough,” Wyl agreed, trying to hide his surprise. “First Keize and those planets, now this…”

  Nath frowned, then wiped the spattered grease from his face with a sleeve. “We’ve been having problems long before Keize. Have you talked to Chass or Kairos since Cerberon?”

  Wyl gave a chagrined smile. “I did try talking to Chass, but I—” He nearly lied; he wasn’t ready to talk about why he’d been called away to the comm. He elided the truth instead. “—got interrupted. We are a mess, aren’t we? And the pressure’s just going to get worse.”

  “Can’t argue, brother. And you’ve got your hands full with three other squadrons—don’t know how you manage it.”

  “General Syndulla’s been there with me. The pilots are good people, you know that—”

  “But it’s not the job you were looking for. You weren’t thrilled with the role on Troithe, you sure as hell can’t be happy with it now.”