Victory's Price (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  “Did I know any of them?” Chadic asked. “Your pals down there?”

  “Know them?”

  “Yeah. Was one of them Char, or Blink, or something?”

  “No,” Quell said. “You didn’t know them.”

  “Kind of a bunch of morons anyway. Couldn’t shoot straight, couldn’t fight. Couldn’t protect you.”

  Quell knew better than to reply. She answered anyway. “Not every pilot knows how to use a blaster. Some of them weren’t even—”

  “—teenagers? I noticed. One of them looked younger than Wyl and twice as skinny—”

  “—some of them weren’t pilots,” she finished, sucking breath between her teeth. “They were engineers. What—did you see what happened to the kid?”

  To Rikton.

  Chadic showed her teeth in a sneer. “Don’t know. You should’ve kept a better watch.”

  Quell squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think of them. She couldn’t talk to Chadic about it—couldn’t afford to ask whether Rikton and Mirro and Brebtin and Raida were alive or dead. Couldn’t think about whether anyone had rescued Kandende, or if the ship had gotten clear of the outpost or delivered its message to Keize—

  “What’d you need engineers for, anyway?” Chadic asked, her voice abruptly casual.

  “I don’t remember my mission,” Quell said. “You’ll have to ask the colonel.”

  The Theelin laughed, low and hoarse. “You’re a bad liar. You go big, though.” She leaned against the bulkhead, studying Quell; the mocking smile didn’t reach her eyes, merciless as Cerberon. “Paid off before. We all knew you were filth for flying for the Empire all that time, but who’d have guessed that you were genocidal filth? Other than the people of Nacronis, I mean.”

  Quell made sure to show no reaction, though the old guilt and self-loathing beaded on her like cold sweat. She remembered the eye of the tower on the red planetoid, and the despair she’d felt at the knowledge that nothing would ever make her actions right.

  But she’d moved past it. She would never forgive herself, but she would move forward.

  “What happened to Chadawa?” Quell asked.

  “Who the hell knows? We left right after you did.”

  After a while Chadic returned to work. Quell was relieved, but she shuddered when she noticed that at some point during their argument, Kairos had turned to watch them both.

  * * *

  —

  She could’ve told the truth: that she’d led Alphabet Squadron to Shadow Wing. That she’d been a spy, not a traitor. She’d longed for someone to say it aloud to, longed for a chance to admit her doubts to IT-O or anyone she could trust. But her original lie, the lie about Nacronis, overshadowed everything. Chadic wouldn’t believe her—Lark or General Syndulla might’ve given her a chance, but not Chadic—and Quell had no desire to broach the subject with a woman who loathed her.

  After a lengthy silence, Chadic approached Quell and slammed a small toolbox on the deck in front of her. “I’m going to keep watch for the droids. If you’re so smart, you fix it,” she said, and stalked into the cockpit.

  Quell wasn’t sure the droids were coming. But she was grateful for the distraction and got to work.

  A UT-60D U-wing wasn’t built for easy hyperdrive access during flight. She discovered this while dismantling bulkheads and squirming into filthy access spaces that would’ve suffocated anyone larger. The process was painstaking and occasionally frustrating, and she suspected she’d receive an unhealthy dose of radiation from the reactor; but it was indeed an excellent distraction and mostly kept the intrusive thoughts at bay.

  Now and then, when she emerged to switch out tools or check a diagnostic or breathe cleaner air, she saw that Kairos still lingered in the cockpit doorway. Sometimes the woman watched her. Sometimes she faced the cockpit, both hands on the doorframe, staring into the stars as if expecting to see some glimmer that the scanners couldn’t.

  Quell had difficulty thinking of her as Kairos at all. Once, when the woman’s back was turned, Quell observed her awhile. But Kairos was too perfectly still and Quell’s attention wandered to Chadic, whose foot was barely in Quell’s field of vision and who was whispering something that sounded like a chant.

  Who are these people? Quell wondered. Had they been such a mess when she’d led Alphabet? Had she gotten used to it? Forgotten during her time away?

  She’d just located a thermal recoupler, kneeling at the toolbox, and was bracing herself to return to the access space when a shadow moved above her. She looked up to see Kairos.

  The woman said in her broken voice: “Where are Adan and IT-O?”

  Quell shifted onto her knees, then slowly rose. She recalled the first words Adan had spoken when she’d saved his life in Cerberon (the first time, before she’d failed him and let him die): What happened to Kairos?

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know—”

  I know the three of you were bound together. That you survived torture in an Imperial prison camp together.

  She stopped, swallowed, and steadied her voice. “They’re dead,” she said. “They died in Cerberon, and I’m sorry. I tried to save them both. I was lucky to get out at all.”

  The words were facile. She wouldn’t have blamed Kairos for throttling her, but the woman only turned away to stare at the stars again.

  * * *

  —

  The damage to the hyperdrive was largely superficial, consisting of fused cabling leading to the reactor (which Quell replaced without trouble) along with lesser damage to the motivator (which Quell couldn’t fix but which would survive at least one jump).

  The bigger trouble was the navicomputer. There was physical damage to both core and backup core significant enough for Quell to see without a magnifier—she could smell the damage when she crawled underneath the main console. The ship would fly but the entire nav system had been corrupted. She could’ve taken apart and reassembled the whole transport with enough time and tools, but data recovery was an entirely different discipline and not one the Imperial Academy had trained her for.

  “Basically,” she told Chadic and Kairos as she closed the toolbox in the main cabin and wiped her hands on an already filthy rag, “we’re in a mess. Hyperdrive is online, so we can hit lightspeed. But we can’t calculate our destination so all we can do is pick a direction, jump, and hope we don’t smash into a star.”

  Chadic grunted. “So, what? We go back to Netalych, tell the droids we’re sorry for the damage and hope to get some replacement parts?”

  “I don’t know,” Quell said. “I don’t know. I don’t get a vote. But I can tell you those droids—” She thought about the Surgeon and Kandende and tried not to show her discomfort. “—I don’t like them and I don’t trust them.”

  “Yeah, well—” Chadic swung drunkenly around the crew seats. “—I don’t know what other options we have. Maybe we can trade them something. Or we float here until they finally kill us. Or we wait for someone to help and hope our oxygen doesn’t run out.”

  Chadic made no move toward the cockpit. It was a relief, in a way; Quell smelled the methane of the Netalych outpost, felt the ice prick her flesh. Running out of oxygen seemed preferable.

  Kairos had turned back toward the viewport, staring at the stars again. “I know,” she said.

  “Know what?” Chadic asked.

  Kairos raised an arm and pointed into space—toward a star, or the dark between the stars, or nothing at all.

  Chadic furrowed her brow at Kairos, then glanced to Quell. Quell parted her lips to speak but Kairos was leaving the cabin, sliding into the pilot’s seat and bringing her hands to the controls.

  “Know what?” Chadic asked again, following Kairos into the cockpit.

  Kairos didn’t answer. The ship shifted beneath them, m
aneuvering thrusters pushing them to face whatever it had been Kairos had pointed to. Whatever she stared at now as she pressed buttons and flipped toggles.

  “Know what?” Chadic asked more frantically, and now Quell was up, too, racing to the cockpit and grasping the doorframe for support as the U-wing lurched forward. She heard Chadic say something else but didn’t catch the particulars; her eyes were fixed on Kairos as the woman’s hand found the hyperdrive accelerator and eased back the lever.

  The stars distorted and stretched. Quell felt weightless as she heard Chadic cursing over and over.

  III

  Nath Tensent fixed a grin on his face as he dropped out of his Y-wing onto the deck of the Deliverance. His expression didn’t waver as he steadied himself on a landing strut and Sergeant Ragnell approached with a ground crew. “You want to tell us not to touch your ship now?” she asked. Nath breathed in the stink of burnt metal and laughed off her outrage. He heard himself say, “This time it’s all yours.”

  T5 was chiming in the distance. That was good, he thought—the old droid had had a rough ride and there was bound to be damage. He braced himself to look, grinned at something one of the ground crew said (he didn’t hear, just saw the man smiling and responded in kind), then felt a hand clasp his shoulder. He whirled to defend himself.

  There was no threat. No one saw him make a fist. He dropped his hand to his side and tried to focus on the thickly built woman in the flight suit in front of him.

  The hell is wrong with you, Tensent? Pay attention.

  There’d been four survivors of Hail Squadron—roughly a third of the pilots they’d started with. Nath had counted the bombers while they’d awaited pickup from the Deliverance. The woman half a meter away was Hail Ten, real name—

  You know this. You talked to her a dozen times on the Lodestar, you were at the party when Hail split off on Troithe, you had opinions on whether she was fit to lead a squadron of her own…

  “Jiona,” Nath said, and clasped her arms. “You did good out there. They all did good.”

  He thought that was what he said, at any rate. There was too much noise in the hangar, engines powering down and people shouting and someone spraying sparks pell-mell with a laser torch. Jiona was insisting they had to go back, that she’d spotted Hail Nine ejecting before his Y-wing had been blown apart by a Raider, and Nath said something placating in return. She could take the demand to Captain Arvad if she really believed it was true.

  “They did good,” Nath said again. “That planet out there—” He blanked on the planet name, too, though he’d just been thinking about it. “—Chadawa, it’d be dying of radiation poisoning if not for us. You hear me? It’d be another Alderaan!”

  Jiona nodded. Nath released a breath and turned away, pushing aside images of Y-wings burning and the sensation of his cockpit shaking. He thought he was recalling Trenchenovu again, but the feel was wrong—he’d never saved a planet in those days—and he realized he was above Troithe in his mind, steering into a missile to save millions, to earn a medal, to earn the trust of the New Republic and be a damn hero…

  There were other voices intruding. He shook his head and saw Ragnell talking to General Syndulla, who looked between Jiona and Nath. Syndulla had the expression of a woman who’d run a marathon to reach a funeral.

  She called his name. He smiled tightly and reminded himself of his role. “We got Chadawa,” he said. “Planet’s safe, I think. What about Shadow Wing?”

  “You worked a miracle out there,” Syndulla said. “But they got away. Captain Tensent—Nath—listen, we found Wyl. His ship was destroyed, but we found him alive on Chadawa’s moon. He’s hurt, we’re bringing him in—”

  “Where?” Nath asked. He heard his voice clearly for the first time since landing.

  “He’s en route to the medbay,” Syndulla said. “You can go. Our position’s secure.”

  Nath grunted a thank-you, or meant to. Then he was shoving his way through the crowd. He made it out of the hangar and turned one way—like a fool, as if he were going to the medbay on the Lodestar—then turned the opposite direction. His world narrowed to the sight of his own boots and the sound of his breathing and the ringing in his ears, and an eternity later he was in the medbay, smelling disinfectant and scanning the floating gurneys around him. There was a handful of figures laid out—crew casualties from the Deliverance’s own fight—but he rapidly spotted two men in flight suits pushing a gurney into an operating suite.

  On the stretcher lay Wyl Lark. The boy was still and pale, and the left leg of his grime-encrusted flight suit was soaked with blood.

  “What happened?” Nath called.

  One of the rescue crew paused at the door and repeated what Syndulla had said about the moon. “He’s not awake. Med droid will be by in a minute.”

  “Can I see him?” Nath asked.

  “Until the med droid is here.”

  They finished moving the stretcher and exited the suite. Nath moved inside, feeling the prickle of sanitizing rays as he passed through the doorway. Wyl was breathing deep and steady as a child.

  “Congratulations,” Nath said. “You made it.”

  When he blinked, he saw Y-wings burning again. He saw Wyl’s A-wing glimmering in the distance.

  “You made it,” Nath repeated, shifting the emphasis. “Real clever plan, keeping Keize and his lot distracted while we went for the Raiders. We got the message. We did our jobs. Of course—”

  He spat out the words as they rose up his throat. He wasn’t a man prone to speaking thoughtlessly, but he let himself speak now. Wyl wouldn’t hear, no one would hear, and that thought was infuriating in itself.

  “—of course not everyone’s the pilot you are. Y-wings were blowing up before the enemy even took a shot, and after that? You should’ve seen them come apart. You never got to know Hail that well, but I promise you it’s going to be quite a memorial.

  “Because they’re heroes now. They’re heroes, just the way you like them, only they weren’t lucky heroes like you. There’s only so many times the rest of us can cheat death trying to win medals before we end up martyrs instead—”

  He stopped abruptly. The words had ceased coming and all that was left was rage and fear.

  Too much fear. He shuddered, twisting his body violently and sucking in quick breaths.

  Wyl shifted on the cot and turned his head a hairsbreadth in Nath’s direction. His eyelids began to lift, then fell shut again. “Nath?” he whispered.

  “It’s me,” Nath said. He sounded tired.

  “Did you save Chadawa?”

  Nath managed an echo of a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, we saved Chadawa.”

  Wyl dipped his chin in something like a nod. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. I’m sorry I doubted. Thank you.”

  Nath tapped the boy’s shoulder with shaking fingers before stepping back. “Med droid will be with you in a second. You rest up, brother.”

  It took everything he had to say the words.

  “Nath?” Wyl tried to turn his head again and failed. This time, though, his eyes were open. “Wait.”

  Nath shifted where he stood and waited.

  Wyl’s voice was clearer. His eyes strained to look in Nath’s direction. He sounded weak but lucid. “There’s something—I didn’t want to tell you. Please listen.”

  “I’m listening,” Nath said.

  “I spoke to Polyneus. I spoke to the elders. They told me—they told me, Nath, that I’m the last.” His eyelids fluttered like he was fighting off exhaustion. “The last of the Hundred and Twenty. Everyone else, the others who fought—they’re all Home now. All of them except me.”

  Nath looked down at the boy, trying to comprehend what he’d heard.

  Then Wyl made it clear enough: “I want to go,” he whispered. “I’m ready to go Hom
e.”

  Metal hands gently pushed Nath aside as the med droid arrived. He stared awhile longer, no longer feeling rage or fear or even shame but a pity he couldn’t remember experiencing before; and when he left the operating suite he barely saw the burning ships behind the face of a homesick child covered in dust and blood.

  CHAPTER 15

  OBFUSCATION OF UNDESIRABLE RESULTS

  I

  “Now you want to explain?” Chadic asked. Quell felt the Theelin spoke for both of them.

  They stood with Kairos in front of the U-wing, the transport half buried in peat at the end of a kilometer-long furrow plowed through the jungle. The hull had already cooled from reentry, and a layer of moisture had condensed onto the viewport. One loading door refused to close, its mechanisms clogged by churned-up muck. Quell found the temperature pleasant after the chill of Netalych, and the smell of fermented fruit was noticeable but not overwhelming; and while her muscles ached and her injuries burned, the U-wing’s inertial dampeners had eased the worst of the jolts. As crash landings went, she had few complaints.

  But they still didn’t know where they were. Kairos had refused to speak during flight, and they’d emerged from hyperspace so close to the planet they’d nearly been torn apart by the sudden gravitational pull. Kairos had handled their forced descent well, yet it was past time for answers.

  “I knew,” Kairos said.

  “Knew what?” Chadic asked. “What did you blasted know?”

  Kairos said nothing, beginning to circle the U-wing and looking from the damaged vessel to the jungle. Gray, broad-leafed trees hung with globules like melons or egg sacs, and ocher cliffs rose far to the north against a pale-rose sky.

  After a minute, Chadic looked to Quell. “She doesn’t leave footprints.”