T5 pinged loudly and sent over a new report. Nath frowned and tapped the screen.
“Homing beacon, huh? You sure it’s from the Deliverance?”
T5 chimed once.
“All right. We’ll take a look.”
He adjusted his course to take him deeper into the hills. They’d spotted plenty of escape pods already, including a few from the Deliverance that hadn’t survived landing, and he had to suppress the hope rising in him. If Wyl had somehow made it out—
He ignored the thought. The great piles of dun rocks blurred and he cut his speed, allowing his sensors to recalibrate. In the distance he spotted a glint—something metallic matching the beacon’s coordinates, half buried in a landslide.
He switched to bioscanners. No life signs at the pod’s location, but there were two signatures in motion less than a kilometer away. Instinct told him to open his throttle and hurtle toward the site, but he cut speed again until he was moving slow enough to see whatever was on the ground. (Slow enough to guarantee he’d be blown out of the sky if he turned out to be chasing a stormtrooper with a surface-to-air rocket.)
Come on, brother. Be out there.
He passed over a hilltop and T5 squealed so fiercely that Nath was sure, for an instant, they were under attack—that he’d made the fatal mistake he’d been dreading all day, and that he was going to die not in battle but on a rescue mission. He grinned at the irony, ready to face his final moments, then understood the droid’s reaction: In a narrow valley ahead two figures trekked among the scree. One wore the black suit of a TIE pilot; the other was lean and dressed in what looked like shredded civilian clothes, supporting himself with an arm around the pilot’s shoulders.
“You sure?” Nath asked. “You sure it’s him?”
He pushed the Y-wing as low as he could without choking the survivors with grit. T5 was beeping in the affirmative and as they came closer Nath got a better look: Wyl Lark was hobbling through the sand and gravel, leaning into his companion and laughing. The TIE pilot’s helmet was off and the expression Nath saw was similarly joyous—they looked like two siblings reunited after years as they waved frantically at the Y-wing.
Nath felt a grudging sense of admiration and amusement. Maybe all Wyl’s outreach to the enemy hadn’t been wrongheaded. He’d just been playing the long game.
“You call it in to the New Republic, all right?” he told the droid. “Convince them it’s a priority pickup. Don’t mention Wyl’s name, in case he’s tagged as a deserter—just tell them it’s a wounded man from the Deliverance, and patch me through if they don’t take it serious.”
He circled around to reassure the pair they’d been spotted, but he didn’t look for a place to land. He didn’t have room in the Y-wing for a passenger or any supplies to offer. More to the point, he didn’t have anything to say to Wyl Lark after everything they’d been through. If Nath had been wrong about Wyl’s choice to leave the squadron, well—Wyl had vindication without an admission from Nath. And the kid would be better off not knowing Nath had disappointed him in the end, leaving the battle before the last of the work was done.
Their paths were separating. Nath was glad Wyl was alive.
T5 made a disappointed noise. “Not this time,” Nath said. “Come on—Chass’s odds are worse, but we’re not writing her off until we’ve picked through more wreckage than this. If she brought that B-wing down, it should be within a few hundred kilometers of where the Deliverance dropped its pods…”
He trailed off as Wyl and the TIE pilot came back into sight. Both were looking skyward, away from the Y-wing, pointing to something in the clouds in the obscuring light of the western sun.
V
Chass na Chadic wasn’t sure if she’d made a mistake.
She was alive. That was a shock by itself, really; her cockpit had stayed intact after the loss of her airfoil, doubling as an escape pod as it tumbled and tangled with wreckage, finally falling to Jakku in the torn-open belly of a Star Destroyer. She could see sky and mountains and even a swath of desert from the remains of her bomber high in the warship’s hull, and she thought it wasn’t the worst view to die with.
Because she was dying. She’d chosen life, only to be crushed between her seat and her console. Her legs were numb, her arm was burnt, she was bleeding out very slowly, and she was thirsty. She’d chosen life and what she had to look forward to was a lingering death over hours or days.
Maybe she’d have been better off with the blaze of glory.
She alternated between states of boredom (when she counted the specks of ships crossing the sky; or tried to guess how long she’d been trapped; or attempted to catalog every song from her lost collection) and blossoming panic (when she wondered if there was a way to hasten her death; or grew terrified by the thought of being rescued and never recovering, suffering the same nightmare future as usual—only this time without legs).
Sometimes she prayed the way her cults had prayed, only with a simple message to one man: Nath Tensent, find me. You said you’d shoot me if I needed you to shoot me. Find me!
Jakku was hot, and her oxygen recirculators had failed. Sometimes she licked the sweat salt off her lips and chin.
Some hours into her ordeal she saw a flying speck that didn’t move like a ship. It descended in canted circles and slowed and sped at odd moments, and when it came closer she thought she saw outspread wings. Other specks followed, and she wondered if they were carrion birds come to scavenge the dead. That didn’t seem right for a desert world like Jakku—would carrion birds be so big?—but people said strange things lived in the Western Reaches.
Each bird, upon descending to a certain altitude, ceased spiraling downward and headed out over its own strip of desert. She made out enormous iridescent wings, stubby heads, and outstretched claws. She wondered if she was hallucinating when she saw that on the back of each creature sat a humanoid rider, limbs wrapped tight around their mount while craning their neck to see below.
Chass didn’t understand. She felt lucid and awake. She stared as several birds and their riders dropped out of her sight, then returned to the sky minutes later bearing burdens that might have been bodies.
She recalled stories her mother had told her (before the cults, when Chass had been no older than three or four) of spirits from the sky who carried the souls of the dying to another world. Then she recalled a different story—Wyl Lark’s story, of the Hundred and Twenty of Polyneus, who had learned to fly the great beasts of their homeworld.
She remembered Wyl slipping away during the journey to Jakku before announcing his resignation. She began to laugh as she realized that, deserter or not—alive or not—he’d done his part one last time.
One hundred and nineteen Wyl Larks were out there, all searching for survivors.
Chass lay back, closed her eyes, and waited.
VI
Outside the crawlway on the repulsorlift platform, Yrica Quell found Kairos among the living.
The woman stood straight-backed in her stained and torn garments, despite the new cracks in the chitinous plates covering her face and the thick fluid like blood or pus welling at those plates’ edges. She looked like she’d survived catastrophe—more than a fifty-meter fall, more than a battle on an occupied world at the center of the galaxy—yet remained brave and unbowed.
“You brought it up the turbolift shaft?” Quell asked, indicating the astromech behind her with a tilt of her head.
“Yes,” Kairos said.
“Thank you,” Quell said. Then, faster: “And for what you did up there. I would’ve died if I’d been alone.”
“Yes,” Kairos said, apparently without humor.
Quell smiled anyway. She swallowed it and searched Kairos for any indication of weakness. She found what might have been weariness instead—a slight sag in the woman’s shoulders, a sway i
n her arms, but nothing specific to injury. “Are you okay? Physically, I mean?”
“Yes,” Kairos said a third time. There was quiet delight in the word. “Are you?”
“I’m bruised. I’m sure I broke something—I always do.” She glanced at her flight suit and shrugged. “The blood isn’t mine.”
“I know.” Kairos cocked her head, and Quell saw that one of the plates had begun to detach from whatever was underneath—like a peeling scab, or an eggshell separating from its membrane. “They won. The New Republic won at Jakku. There are broadcasts playing in the undercity.”
“Good.”
It was an inane thing to say, but Quell had been resigned to a New Republic victory since shortly after the Battle of Endor; hearing the news now felt like a statement of the obvious.
Even as she thought this, however, she began to tremble. The galaxy had changed, and it would be the New Republic that would define the way she lived—the way everyone lived—forevermore. It was a profound change, even if her instinct was to reject it. She thought she was glad.
“Anything from the squadron?” Quell asked.
“No. The transmitter was destroyed.” She paused, and Quell expected her to say: I hope they are well, or I’m sure they survived, or even They might be dead. But that wasn’t Kairos’s way, and Quell pushed aside her own worry as Kairos added: “I think it will be dangerous here soon. Find a place in the city where no one will look until the New Republic comes.”
Quell nodded, though she wasn’t sure how she would find safety—she didn’t know Coruscant, and on foot the vastness of the city, the way the sky hid behind the tallest buildings even near the upper levels, was intimidating the way the confines of the generator crawlway had been comforting. She was bred for claustrophobia, for artificial lights and hard vacuum outside her windows.
The droid behind her buzzed quietly, as if offering its assistance. It was only then that Kairos’s phrasing struck her. “What about you?” Quell asked.
“You are my sister, and the heir to those dear to me. But I have made my judgment, and you no longer need me.”
“That’s not an answer.” She understood more than she would’ve expected, but she was too tired, too overwhelmed by all the day’s events, to fully comprehend. “Are you coming with me?”
“I am pleased for Adan and IT-O,” Kairos said, with something like the interrogation droid’s amused tolerance. “I am pleased you’ve become what you are. I am changing, too, and I am ready to move beyond my bond to this war.”
“Are you dying?” Quell’s voice was suddenly small.
“I am changing.” Kairos stroked the loose chitin. Only a thin film held the plate to her face now, and other plates had begun sliding free as well. “The ship is gone. My chrysalis is broken. The war is ended, and only you remain of those whose blood and spirit mixed with mine. Now you have changed, and I am becoming—”
Kairos mouthed something and shuddered, as if struggling with the limits of language.
“I cannot return to my people,” Kairos said, and turned away from Quell to face the city. “I will not be a shaman or a warrior anymore. I am new, Yrica Quell, and the first thing to touch my skin will not be linked to pain or destruction.”
The first chitin plate dropped to the platform with a wet smack. Another piece hung from her chin.
Quell wanted to step forward. She stayed where she was. “Can I look at you?”
“No,” Kairos said, and there was ecstasy in her voice. “What I become next will not be what I was. I am leaving, and I will find a place where I do not need a shell—where my spirit and blood resonate with the air and life around me.”
“What does that mean? Where are you going?”
Kairos placed her hands over her face and turned, just enough to look back at Quell—just enough for Quell to see one of the woman’s dark eyes, and a glimpse of something below the peeling chitin like newborn flesh.
“Somewhere beautiful. I will find it. Be very well, my sister.”
With that, Kairos turned again and stepped to the edge of the platform. When she jumped—a small motion, a quick bending of the knees and a spring—Quell caught her breath and rushed to the edge, stepping over a trail of ichor. She looked down and saw a narrow catwalk ten meters below the platform, and Kairos—or whoever she was now—striding briskly and comfortably, lightly along it, toward some destination Quell couldn’t fathom.
Quell began laughing and knelt on the metal. Be very well, my sister, she echoed, as if the woman could read her thoughts; and she felt tears on her cheeks, and the longer she knelt the more came. She wept not only for Kairos, and for the loss of Kairos, but for all the pain and joy she’d experienced yet never allowed to surface.
She looked out at the city, tears falling onto the levels below like rain, and with the droid behind her she smiled and wondered what the future would bring for all of them.
PART FOUR
VICTORY’S PRICE
CHAPTER 25
ENDURING SCARS OF FLESH AND SPIRIT
I
“So…what are we going to do about Lieutenant Quell?”
Hera Syndulla stood across from Mon Mothma, chancellor of the New Republic and leader of the known galaxy, as the human poured two glasses of water from a ceramic ewer sculpted to resemble a Skakoan squid. After she’d spoken, Mothma crossed the vast office and returned to Hera’s side, passing her one of the glasses as they settled into cream-colored armchairs.
The synthleather seemed to envelop Hera as she leaned back. In that moment she was certain it was the most comfortable chair she’d ever sat in. She’d barely slept in the weeks since Jakku, and this meeting on Nakadia had been her most pleasurable task in a while; the war was over, but the challenges never stopped.
“Have you talked to her personally?” Hera asked.
She recognized the crease of Mothma’s brow, the line added to her already lined face—the indication that she’d delegated a task she felt responsible for to someone she didn’t altogether trust. “I saw transcripts of her interviews, but I haven’t had the time. For what it’s worth, Intelligence has confirmed her story—the security footage from Coruscant shows her and Keize exactly as she reported.”
“I told you she would cooperate.”
“You did, and I believed you.” Mothma’s lips quirked into a smile. Hera read the meaning: I believed you, but it’s my job to make sure. “She is comfortable, by the way—I had one of my people arrange it. House arrest, but an apartment is more comfortable than a cell.”
“I wish you could talk to her,” Hera said, then added, “Thank you.”
Mothma sipped her water. “Intelligence has sent upward of fifty agents, plus security, to study the data bank Keize attempted to destroy. It’s encrypted, but we’ve already unlocked sections and Cracken is confident we’ll have the rest in time. He says we’d have stumbled on to it sooner or later but that Quell’s information gave us a tremendous head start—like you, he’s requested an expedited hearing to determine her status.”
Hera frowned. “Meaning…Intelligence wants her freedom contingent on her continued assistance?”
“Meaning he wants to know what’s happening one way or the other. I don’t blame him for that.”
It was a rebuke so gentle and subtle Hera almost didn’t catch it. She nodded to indicate she understood. New Republic Intelligence was picking up where the military had left off, following up on thousands of leads daily and trying to assess a galaxy’s worth of threats; General Cracken needed to know what assets he had to work with. Hera felt fortunate not to be in his position.
“The hearing won’t amount to much, of course,” Mothma went on. “We’re not equipped for it yet, so expediting means I pull strings until our overworked advocates sign off on whatever I decide.” She sighed. “Tell me what you thin
k of her? I’m not asking you to shoulder the burden—but give me your opinion, as someone who was there.”
Hera had been awaiting the question for days. She still wasn’t sure how to answer. “I think,” she said, attempting to read Mothma’s expression and failing, “that Quell’s actions after Cerberon, regardless of authorization, were laudable. She infiltrated an enemy unit without assistance or a means to coordinate with our forces, and she led us to the 204th despite those obstacles. That saved countless lives on Chadawa; and if we’d never found Shadow Wing at Chadawa, we wouldn’t have been prepared to deal with them at Jakku. How much she contributed to Keize’s work is arguable, but she ultimately reported on Keize’s plans for Coruscant and personally stopped who-knows-how-many deaths during that attack.”
“She didn’t exactly come back willingly,” Mothma said. “Two of your pilots had to retrieve her.”
“Chass na Chadic and Kairos defied orders.” Hera shook her head. “I’m confident neither of them was diplomatic about it, but I’m not going to assume Quell wouldn’t have returned on her own. She didn’t have the chance.”
“All right. Granted.” Mothma lifted her glass while her eyes remained on Hera. “Now say the rest.”
They knew each other too well—liked each other too much—to play games. Let’s get to the truth, then.
“Quell’s record with the 204th is…concerning, even before Endor,” Hera said. “And when I chose her to lead a squadron, I didn’t realize the extent of her actions after the Emperor’s death. None of us did. She was a willing participant in Operation Cinder and she was actively involved in the destruction of Nacronis—and she lied about it.
“I like Quell. I believe she’s changed. But her victims can’t speak up because their civilization died with their planet, and I can’t ignore that.”
Victory's Price (Star Wars) Page 45
