Victory's Price (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  “No. You’ve been here how long? And you’ve barely started.” She eyed the case and the spool in his hand. “Warheads with no detonators. You need power from the generator to trigger them?”

  “Couldn’t have them blow up en route from Jakku.” This time he smiled, albeit bitterly.

  Quell smiled, too. Then she launched herself forward, sliding down the corridor on a knee toward Keize. It was one of the only moves she remembered from her hand-to-hand training, but she hoped Keize would be taken by surprise—that he’d anticipated a longer conversation, an exchange of threats, rather than an immediate attack.

  She heard the snap and sizzle of a blaster bolt; felt heat over her head but no pain. She grabbed Keize’s arm with both hands, wrenching it to the side, and he let out a swift, low cry. The blaster flew from his grasp, bounced against a wall, and clattered somewhere behind Quell.

  He didn’t attempt to lunge past her. He didn’t move from where he was. She stood, looked at his agonized expression, then slowly knelt again.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  Keize shook his head and grimaced. “It’s all right.” His arm was still outstretched where she’d positioned it, as if relaxing the muscles was worse than keeping it still.

  She said nothing.

  Gradually, Keize guided the outstretched arm down to his side with the help of his other hand. He rested his head against the wall, but his eyes were clear and focused on Quell. “It’s not too late,” he said.

  “Colonel—”

  “Yrica. Hear me out.” He swallowed, composing himself. Quell felt something wet touch her knee on the floor. “You’ve made your decision—you won’t sacrifice more lives, and I hear you. But we can still do some good.”

  “I don’t think so,” she murmured.

  He went on as if he hadn’t heard. “You have the explosives. Forget the repulsorlifts. Go to my fighter and remove the ion reactor core. Wire it to the proton bombs, find a place to detonate the bundle—”

  He drew deep breaths, exhausted by the effort of speech. Quell finished for him: “You want me to generate an electromagnetic pulse. Overload the data bank instead of destroying it.” He didn’t disagree, and she added, “I’m not sure it would even work.”

  It was a while before he answered. “Aren’t improvised solutions the rebel way?” His head lolled, swinging from side to side. “Maybe it wouldn’t work. I don’t know how much data we’d wipe, or what of that would be unrecoverable. But if it’s the most you’re willing to do—if you can wipe the records of even a few people, give a few troops a chance at real lives under the New Republic—then I’ll consider my efforts worthwhile.”

  His whole body was shaking. He moved his good arm again, reaching for her, and she clasped his hand. She couldn’t remember ever touching him before. His skin was cool and damp.

  “Honor your nature as a soldier, Yrica Quell,” he said. “Serve your comrades one last time.”

  “You like to talk about soldiers,” she said softly, and ran her fingers over his wrist. She hoped he couldn’t feel her own trembling. She spoke as if placating a delirious man who’d suggested something unreal; it made it easier to deny the possibility. “But it’s just a word for people who fight. Nothing special.”

  “If that’s true—” He struggled to maintain the patient tone he’d used with her through so many discussions. She caught undertones of urgency anyway. “—don’t those people deserve to move on from this war? You know the ones who’ll suffer. Your comrades, people like—”

  “I know.”

  “—Alchor Mirro and Jeela Brebtin. Or what about Meriva Greef—”

  “I know!”

  Keize’s fingertips dug into her skin, not hard enough to bruise. She didn’t want to hear him. She didn’t turn away.

  “What about Rikton? Or Fra Raida? What do you suppose they would have wanted? What do we owe their memory—”

  “Stop it!” She was shouting at a wounded man. She couldn’t help herself. “Stop it! I cared for them, you know I cared for them, so don’t act like I’ve forgotten who they are. I tried to save them and I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do on Netalych, but they were my team.”

  His hand began to slip away. She held on as he spoke. “I don’t doubt you. They were my colleagues, too. Rikton—” His lip curled up. “Rikton was a friend, in another lifetime.”

  Somehow she laughed. “I think Fra Raida was into me.”

  “I was aware she had strong feelings. Not those in particular.”

  “I was hoping she’d survived.”

  They were both silent awhile. The thought tugged at her mind—she could attempt to damage the data bank. It was a desperate plan. It might work. Maybe it was right.

  Yet she didn’t want to. She couldn’t explain why.

  “We’re short on time, so forgive me,” Keize said. He squeezed his eyes shut, then reopened them. She wasn’t sure he could see anymore. “Rikton and Fra Raida were not unique in their circumstances. Consider what you condemn their colleagues to.”

  She shook her head insistently, trying to shut out his voice. There was an answer somewhere, just outside her reach, and she couldn’t find it so long as he argued.

  He must have seen her struggle. For whatever reason he didn’t press his advantage, and she began fumbling with words, hoping to find sense in them. “Every time you say something like that—you keep describing this same future where the New Republic makes us suffer, but you never talk about the alternative.”

  “The alternative?”

  “ ‘If we don’t destroy the data bank they’ll hunt us down.’ But what if we do it? What’s that future like?”

  “It’s a future in which they have choices.”

  “Is it? They’re more like me than they’re like you,” she said, anxiety nearly stealing her breath. “Rikton and Raida and Broosh and the others…they think about what we’ve done and it bothers them. I know it does. They have the nightmares, just like me, and it doesn’t matter what we do to the Emperor’s data bank—they’re going to live under a shadow for the rest of their lives.

  “Leaving Shadow Wing didn’t cure the sickness in me; it just made it easier to ignore. So maybe they’re free but they’re eaten away inside, damned no matter what we do because it’s too late for them to choose what really matters—and the cost is a galaxy where people get away with genocide. You think that’s going to bring peace? You think ignoring the Empire’s crimes won’t make it easier for the worst of us to keep committing atrocities? You talked about rioting and terrorism, well—and not to mention all of our blasted victims, and how they suffer—”

  “Is that me? The worst of us?” Keize asked, soft and steady. “The one who isn’t like the others?”

  The avalanche of language came to a stop. She hadn’t been making sense anyway. She faltered and shook her head. “I don’t know what you are. I don’t know how you live with it all.”

  “I can tell you—”

  “Or maybe I do.” She laughed, the sound thick with mucus. “Hell, maybe it’s easy. You said it yourself—you asked if I was doing all this because I felt guilty over Nacronis. Maybe that’s not me.”

  Now she dug her fingernails into his arm, squeezing the clammy skin. He flinched, at the pain or the argument. She rushed on. “Maybe you’re the one clinging to a way to make Cinder meaningful. Maybe that’s your sickness—you justify and explain everything, everything we’ve done as being about loyalty or duty or principle, about saving your fellow soldiers, when really you’re just piling on excuses for the massacres in the hope that it’ll all balance out. Maybe—” She’d never spoken harshly to him and she hated herself for it. She was laughing again, near hysteria. “Colonel, you’re the best of us, but maybe you’re as much of a mess as everyone else; deluding yourself because y
ou can’t live with the truth.”

  “The truth being…?”

  Her laughter faded. Keize waited, expectant and without judgment.

  “We were murderous bastards,” she said, “and being true to one another doesn’t make it any better. It just means we don’t stop when we figure out how bad it’s gotten.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I truly do believe in putting my people first. Maybe you’ve finally found something to believe in, too.”

  There was respect in him, but no concession. She’d hoped for another outcome and tried not to show her disappointment. “I suppose so.”

  “Is that it, then?” Every sentence came slowly now, as if traveling a great distance. “You find neither future we’ve discussed palatable, but prefer one to the other?”

  “No. I don’t know.” She shook her head and remembered sitting with Caern Adan as he’d died. He’d meant so much less to her than Soran Keize, yet he remained in her spirit. “I don’t know what any of us deserve. What I do know…”

  She tasted the words before she spoke them, tested them for venom. She was surprised to find none. “I’ve accepted what I’ve done. I know the awful deeds I committed and I’ve tried to move past my guilt, because it stopped being useful long ago.

  “But I haven’t forgotten Nacronis or anything else. I live with the memory of what I’m capable of every day. I need the memory to do better. And wiping out the records of what we’ve done seems an awful lot like helping everyone else forget.”

  His eyes had shut again. “Then I ask you for the last time: You trust the New Republic to judge them fairly?”

  The question was familiar. Somewhere in the past weeks, Quell had come to terms with her answer.

  “No. I don’t. But I haven’t earned the right to make the call.”

  For a time, Quell thought he was preparing his counterargument; then she feared he’d fallen unconscious, though she could feel his pulse. Eventually the strain in his expression eased and he moved his head in something like a nod.

  Soran Keize, Imperial ace of aces and the finest soldier Quell had known, was accepting defeat.

  “I will miss our conversations,” he murmured.

  “So will I.”

  “I wish there were time for mijura,” he said, even softer.

  She didn’t know the word. She didn’t think he was talking to her anymore.

  She stayed with her mentor until the life had gone out of him. Even after that she remained there, clasping his hand.

  * * *

  —

  In the back of Quell’s mind was an assumption that Imperial security would come to apprehend or kill her. This gave her no pleasure, but she wasn’t afraid and she remained in the dim corridors of the generator structure as she turned over thoughts of her life and Soran Keize’s life. An hour passed before she realized no one was coming after all, and that whatever state Coruscant was in its condition was dire enough that the Verity District was no one’s foremost concern.

  After that, she pondered whether the New Republic would come instead. If Jakku was won, word would arrive quickly and it wouldn’t be long before the Imperial government surrendered. In that case, she’d need to turn herself in—General Syndulla had given her leave for a single mission, but that grace had expired.

  She was considering leaving, trying to recall if Keize had ever mentioned what he wanted done with his remains, when she heard scraping along the metal floor of the crawlway. She recovered Keize’s blaster and held it loosely as she stepped to the branch and peered out.

  Rolling toward her was 4E, smeared with black ash but otherwise untouched by the chaos. It chimed enthusiastically when it spotted Quell, then switched to a more serious register and burbled as she approached.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “How did you even get up here?”

  It emitted another series of incomprehensible burbles. Quell sighed and sat. She looked at herself and saw blood crusted on her clothes and her hand. She wondered what the droid thought of her, then felt absurd for wondering at all.

  4E waited another moment, then buzzed and spun its cone. Its holoprojector twitched before azure light filled the corridor, particles dancing and coalescing until Quell saw the face of her mentor alive once again. Keize wore his flight suit but no helmet, and he spoke with the sobriety she expected from his speeches.

  “This is Colonel Soran Keize of the 204th Imperial Fighter Wing,” he said. “I am broadcasting this message in response to the New Republic attack on Jakku and my own recent failures at Coruscant.

  “If you are receiving this, know that I take full responsibility for the actions of the 204th. Others will call those actions illegal or immoral, and that judgment is not mine to make; but I have gone to great lengths to ensure none within my unit had any choice but to comply with my demands. I also hid our most grievous actions from our superiors, both before and after the Battle of Endor.

  “Beginning with the massacre on Tu’oon and ending with the attack on Coruscant’s Verity District, this is my confession…”

  From there, he listed a seemingly endless series of operations, specifying his role in each. Quell didn’t recognize all of them. Of those she did recognize, many had been planned by Colonel Nuress, not Keize; and when he spoke of Operation Cinder (both the first and second Cinder) he made no mention of the Emperor’s Messenger or the military chain of command, emphasizing his personal involvement above all else. He described ways he had enforced discipline and obedience, few of which were true.

  Even in death, she thought, Keize sought to protect his people. If he couldn’t save every Imperial soldier, he would try to save the 204th by sacrificing his reputation—sparing others New Republic justice and being remembered as a war criminal.

  Maybe he had believed. And if his conviction had led him to slaughter millions, how could she hate him when her own lack of conviction had still resulted in Nacronis?

  She would never know the truth of his soul, or whether her admiration for him was justified or a remnant of the Empire’s conditioning.

  “I wish you’d been a better man,” she whispered to the hologram before it disappeared.

  She wondered, in the last glimmer of the holo’s light, whether she would have felt the same admiration if Syndulla had been her mentor from the start—if she would’ve seen any worthy qualities in Keize at all.

  She supposed it didn’t matter.

  “Come on,” she said to the droid, and they left toward the daylight spilling in through the crawlway.

  III

  “Don’t move.”

  Wyl wasn’t sure he could’ve moved if he’d wanted to. He lay very still in the escape pod and left his eyes closed to shut out the brightness seeping through the viewport.

  He was still delirious, he thought, but his hearing had returned. He should’ve been worried about his friends, but none of their faces would stay fixed in his mind.

  “I’m seeing a lot of blood, but we can’t leave you here.” There was the sound of something heavy shifting—the pod door, maybe? “Where’d you come from? The Ravager? The Eviscerator?”

  He didn’t recognize those ships. Something seemed wrong with the question. “The Deliverance,” he said.

  There was a long pause. Wyl finally opened his eyes and saw a black helmet looking down at him. Oxygen tubes ran from the helmet to a chest piece.

  “What’s your name?” the TIE pilot asked.

  “Wyl,” he said. “Wyl Lark.”

  The pilot cocked his head and looked down at him a long while before laughing. The sound was muffled by the helmet, but it sounded fresh and joyous.

  “Hell of a thing—I’ve heard a lot about you, Wyl Lark. Let’s get you home safe.”

  He felt gloved hands on his body, touching him gently at first
to see where he flinched from the pain, then working to bring him upright. Wyl had a thousand questions but no voice; amazement swallowed all his words.

  IV

  Nath flew low above the desert, kicking up enough dust to muddy the Y-wing’s sensors and make T5 grumble. “I know, I know,” Nath growled, “but much higher and the bioscanners won’t do any good. Not to mention we’ll be that much clearer a target for any ground troops—looks like nobody told them the battle’s over.”

  He increased his altitude anyway and angled toward the rocky hills at the desert’s edge, too stumpy and eroded to be called mountains. T5 sent a metallurgical report to his console (plenty of scraps, a few massive wrecks, nothing that looked like a whole fighter or escape pod within five kilometers), and he waited for life readings. Probably better if nothing shows, he thought. It’ll only mean trouble.

  He knew he was lying to himself. If anyone from his squadron was alive, he meant to find them no matter the danger.

  After knocking out the bulk freighter he’d spent the rest of the battle “repairing his ship,” keeping his distance from the fighting, and sniping at any TIEs that got close. He hadn’t fled the system. He’d even recorded escape pod trajectories from afar. His alibi wouldn’t hold up to close examination, and he wouldn’t come out looking like much of a hero compared with Lieutenant Itina and the others who’d returned to the fray; but he’d stayed alive when many—maybe most—of the crew and pilots of the Deliverance hadn’t.

  He’d made the best choice he could. The only choice, if he was to be true to himself. The New Republic, galactic peace, all that garbage—Wyl and Chass had believed. Quell and Kairos, too. Nath Tensent, though? He’d fooled a lot of people and nearly fooled himself, but he’d never truly bought into the dream of a better world. He’d just surrounded himself with zealots, and that made good camouflage.

  (Besides, he’d neutralized an enemy that might’ve cost the New Republic the battle. He’d be damned if he felt guilty for not doing more than that.)