She nodded rapidly. “Very good, sir. I’m sure there was no problem.”
“No problem at all.” What was he doing? Was he really going to say this? Yes, he was, he was, because he was overflowing with bitterness, because he wanted to fling that bitterness at her, even at the cost of his own post. “Despite the fact that I misfiled every single report.”
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“I did everything wrong. The wrong codes. The wrong clearances. The wrong order of events. I dated our receipt of initial orders later than the actual mission reports. I listed Lord Vader as a spacecraft in our order of battle, and our targets as accountants from a Neimoidian purse world. I said that we were attempting to erase all records of Emperor Palpatine’s old gambling debts.”
She blinked at him, twice, trying to divine what in the galaxy he was trying to say. “As a test, sir?”
“Of course it was a test.”
“To be sure that someone was reading the reports, and holding the Imperial Navy accountable.”
“Of course. My duty.”
“And…?”
“No one made any protest. I suppose the forms went into a vault somewhere. Some airless place tended by droids. But no one read them.”
She swallowed, as if digesting. “And if we made a complaint about Admiral Ozzel’s death, sir?”
“I think we both know what would happen, Commander.”
They stood side by side in silence. A long-derelict faculty stirred in Canonhaus, and to his surprise it did not give up and slink away. It was curiosity about what was happening inside someone else’s head. He glanced aside to watch her, in this moment of crisis when she could do many things, depending on which of many people she might be. She could write him up to COMPNOR, or save this fraction of the bridge logs for future blackmail. Or arrive at a silent, shared understanding that they both recognized a problem.
But she would be making her own interior calculation about who he was, and about whether he was trying to confide in her. Or whether this was reliable old Canonhaus laying out bait for the disloyal.
He did not know the answer himself.
He supposed that in this place, surrounded by the black corridors and white armor of Ultimatum, surrounded by all the uniforms and guns and systems of technology and personhood she had worshipped since childhood, she could really only make one choice.
Her shoulders squared. “The destruction of Alderaanian refugees does proceed directly from the Tarkin Doctrine, sir. Terror is an instrument of the state’s power. So it must flow from the state, not from the stories of confused refugees who lack the context to understand their own situation. Arbitrarily allowing some Alderaanians to live while others die would negate the lawfulness of Alderaan’s sanctioned execution. Either all are guilty, or none are.”
“Oh, precisely, Commander. Precisely.” It burst out of him: “And what would you have done in my situation? Given that you prefer direct tactical action against the rebels to…harder duty.”
“I would carry out my orders completely and enthusiastically, because I believe that the Empire is larger and smarter than me, and that I cannot possibly determine the right thing to do as well as my superiors.”
That was not what she said. That was what he had said when questioned about his ability to carry out his mission.
“I don’t know, sir,” she said.
“You don’t know?”
She touched the back of her cap in agitation. “Sir, I don’t wish to give a poor impression. But it would be arrogance on my part to assume I would rise to the challenge as well as you did. I only hope I can learn from your example.”
He flinched.
A mouse droid whirred up with a hard copy of the watch report. She retrieved it, passed it to him, their gloves skimming with a sound like the first whine of a migraine. He fussed over his datapad. The report was full of routine traffic, administrative matters, totally unrelated to the operation around Hoth.
“Changes to the uniform standard again,” he sighed. “New regulations for the display of recognition flash and skill tabs. The new header on personnel files accidentally corrupted dental records, and it has been judged faster for all officers to receive a new checkup than to restore from the archives, so we are encouraged to get our teeth cleaned at soonest opportunity. New orders from KDY on the safe use of pilots and tugs while in harborage…power system updates to defeat ion weapon attack, we could’ve used those today…”
She said, stiffly, “What do you think I would do, sir?”
“Eh?”
“If ordered to support a mission to eliminate Alderaanian refugees.”
“I suppose you’d do what everyone does.”
“What’s that, sir?”
He coughed into his glove. “Well, you do the work. Hard work. Awful work. But no one hesitates, really.”
“No one at all?”
“No. It’s a job, and the job is to carry out orders as efficiently as possible. That’s what you worry about—that you’ll screw up, let your end down, make things harder for the others. And if it gets to you afterward”—which it had, nightly—“well, ultimately you’re not the one who pulled the trigger. Or if you are, you’re not the one who gave the order. Or if you are, well, you’re not the one who made the whole mess necessary. You get to discussing it with the other officers, very coolly, very civilly, over caf in the wardroom. And you find there’s always someone else to blame. Someone who did something cruel, whereas you were simply merciful. Very well-designed system, all in all. A testament to the rational efficiency of the New Order.”
“I see, sir,” she said, with a kind of warmth. Did she pity him? Did she respect him? Was that the warmth? Had she just come to understand that Canonhaus truly was a person with a heart?
Or was she grateful to discover that reliable Canonhaus was in fact weak, and old, and unfit for command?
Perhaps his own eyes betrayed his vicious fear. Tian recoiled, turned sharply, paced away to consult with a lieutenant commander taking a report in the crew pit.
He tried to find a calm, authoritative stance to hold. Thinking of that mission always slashed him up inside, a long knife working at his guts like the underbrush on Haruun Kal. Where he had tweezed little wasps from his CO’s pores as she died, where he would always be, in the wet darkness of that jungle—
“Sir?”
He started. She’d crept around his other side. “Yes?”
“Orders from the flag. We’re to take Executor’s port station and screen her against asteroid impacts as we move into the field.”
“We’re going in there?” Ultimatum would happily have transited a normal asteroid field, but the Hoth field was young and dense, the cascading result of an interplanetary collision. Gravity drew the rocks back together into dense nodes where they shattered one another—and anything else in the way. “This is a capital warship, not a pursuit craft! We have squadrons for a reason!”
“We could file a protest, sir.”
Was she taunting him? “No, no. Asteroids must not concern us. Take up station on Executor’s port. Rig the ship for close defense.”
The old growl of power came up through the deck, engines battling compensators, swaying them both. Tian jostled against him: the hazards of standing with your hands clasped behind your back. “Sorry,” he said, and coughed. His throat itched now. He was getting a cold, wasn’t he? The weaknesses of flesh.
“Sorry, sir. My fault.”
“You get used to it quickly enough. The acceleration. It’s not like on the smaller ships, you know. The big KDY engines take a while to fight through the compensators. They’ll catch you by surprise.”
“I imagine they will, sir. May I ask, sir, how long you’ve been on navy ships?”
He had to do the math in his head. “Thirty years, I think. Since I was a midshipman w
ith the old…the prior regime.”
“And if I may also ask, sir, where do you see yourself in another thirty years?”
Eighty years old. In a white place with polished black floors, in dry air that made him sneeze, in a uniform with a cap that hurt his head.
In the jungle.
“In command of a sector fleet, I suppose. Or a staff position.” He smiled, and coughed again. “Or writing my memoirs.”
“And the New Order, sir? The navy? Still chasing rebels?”
“Oh, the Rebellion will be long over. I suppose we’ll be…”
He trailed off. He simply could not imagine what the New Order would do once the Rebellion was crushed. Would the Tarkin Doctrine have achieved a full galactic peace? Omnipresent fear becoming omnipresent respect and obedience?
She was watching him closely. She would pore through the bridge records and select any sedition on his part to put in her file of old Canonhaus’s mistakes. He could not show any doubt.
But no matter how he twisted himself around, he could not imagine what general orders the navy might operate under except to crush insurrection and bring worlds into the Empire’s control. In twenty years, the inner emptiness of the New Order would become outer; the logic of loyalty and rebellion would be accelerated until everyone who was not aroused to the highest state of loyalty would be marked as a traitor and denounced; professionalism would become fanaticism, temporary measures would become permanent, the conditions those measures had been meant to avert would become routine; old loyalties would become grounds for suspicion and purge; the New Order would become newer and newer, constantly revised and updated, containing less and less of substance and more and more of reaction, each new day’s ideology ready to denounce the last day’s thought as regressive backsliding. Until at last the New Order was newer than all other things, the first thought, the first principle, from which all else proceeded, even truth itself. It would not be about anything, intend anything, mean anything. It would simply exist for the sake of power, absolute and unlimited, without constraint.
That was the eating core of the Empire. And in time it would chew through all the shells of bureaucracy, all the Kuat Drive Yards contracts and orders of battle and armor patterns and TIE acronyms and XX-9 turbolasers and uniform tab codes. In the end, the Empire would not be about tactics and procedures and logic. It would be about the empty cruelty of men like Vader. It would be fear for fear’s sake, power without purpose, symbol without meaning, nothingness, nonsense. A man in a mask, like the Hendanyn death masks that had given him nightmares as a child. But when you took off the mask, there was no man.
“Sir,” Tian said, “you’re shivering.”
“Ah. Yes. I kept the bridge a little warmer on Majestic. And I’m—” He shook his head. If he admitted he felt ill, she would offer to relieve him. She would take the ship into the asteroid field herself.
Maybe that was good! Maybe she could face the danger on the command tower while he was safe in the armored hull! But what a craven, cowardly thought that was; what an unworthy and conniving act it would be…
“Would you like some caf, sir?” she asked.
“No, thank you, Commander. Your talents are wasted on an ensign’s work.”
“I do look forward to commanding my own watches, sir.”
Oh, she did want the bridge, didn’t she? Make way for Tian’s ambition. “On second thought,” he said, “do fetch that caf.”
She stiffened, sensing the closure of a door she hadn’t known was open. “Yes, sir.”
He sighed. “Wait.”
“Sir?”
“Never mind the caf. One of us should transfer down to auxiliary control, in case the bridge tower is hit.”
The Imperial-class kept its helm and weapons functions tightly centralized, to ensure “reliability.” Transferring command to the auxiliary was not an easy process—a measure meant to prevent trickery and hijacking. At Scarif there had been serious, if brief, fears of a boarding action. “If there is an impact, we’ll need to be ready to clear the field and make repairs.”
She eyed him carefully. “Yes, sir. As senior officer, perhaps you should take the better-protected station…?”
“No, no. My place is here. The bridge deflectors should be enough to stop anything that gets past the batteries and tractor beams.” And asteroids, unlike rebels, were not likely to make runs under the shields with proton torpedoes. At least the Separatist droids had been civilized enough to stand off and trade broadsides.
“Still, sir, you’d be much safer below.”
Ah, she was afraid that he was manipulating her into seeming cowardly. Maybe she thought he would report that she’d fled her post. Or was it the opposite? Maybe she wanted to command the bridge in combat, and claim he’d fled below…
Maybe she was the empty avarice of the New Order, waiting to eat him. As she’d eaten her two peers at Carida.
Or maybe she was honest, principled, funny, the hope of a new generation of better officers. He didn’t trust himself to tell the difference.
One of them had to go below. One of them had to stay here and risk death.
What would a decent man do? Impossible for him to know. But he could pretend he’d never heard of Helix Squadron. Never come around a lammas tree in the croaking jungle dark to find a Korun boy, drinking from a tap hammered through the gray bark. Never seen that final instant of white reflection from the boy’s terrified eyes. He could pretend.
What would the man who had never known these things do now?
“Go below,” he ordered. “Stand by in auxiliary control to take over if the bridge drops out. If that does happen, your orders are to clear the field and save the ship. On my authority.”
She looked up into his eyes. Wondering, perhaps, if he was trying to save her, or if he wanted all the glory for himself. Wondering who he was.
“You’re sure, sir?”
“I gave you an order, Commander. Go below.”
“Yes, sir.” She saluted. “Don’t forget the command conference with Lord Vader. I’ve configured the holo pickup and set it to the proper channel. You can take it right here.”
“I do not intend to displease Lord Vader by forgetting anything, Commander.”
“Yes, sir. Good luck, sir.” She turned smartly and headed for the lifts.
Canonhaus turned, settled back into the clasped-hands posture of cool consideration, and (when no one could see) screwed up his face to sneeze.
It wouldn’t come.
The maelstrom of the Hoth field whirled and pulverized itself ahead. Ultimatum’s sensors and tractor projectors reached out, plotting the turbulent courses, prioritizing larger fragments for deflection or destruction. The odds of anything getting through were—well, he was no droid, but they were acceptably low. Nothing would get through.
“None shall pass,” he murmured. He had vague pre-Imperial childhood memories of a show he’d loved, hazy, taboo, something COMPNOR would certainly not approve of. He remembered it as if from another reality. It was called Laser Masters. In one of the later episodes, a Laser Master defended the Senate chamber from an army of monsters. Those were the Laser Master’s last words before his final stand. None shall pass. He had loved that show. How many years since he’d thought of it?
“None shall pass,” he repeated. Something a hero would say.
The lieutenant commander running the crew pit to his left looked up in confusion. Canonhaus ignored him.
He looked back to be sure Commander Tian had gone below. No sign of her. He felt an unaccountable sadness, like an alien growing in him, fever wasps crawling out his tear ducts. And a sense of something rushing toward him from the dark, coming closer, wanting nothing, needing nothing, destroying whatever it touched. His brooding on the New Order had clearly set him badly off-kilter.
If something did go wrong—i
f the ship was hit, and they looked over the logs at his posthumous court-martial—they would find his final order was to send Commander Tian below. That thought comforted him, though he did not know if it should. A hero’s order. Standing the watch himself. None shall pass.
He sneezed.
AMARA KEL’S RULES FOR TIE PILOT SURVIVAL (PROBABLY)
Django Wexler
Please note I said probably. Nothing is guaranteed in this galaxy except taxes and the navy post losing your mail.
* * *
—
Rule number one: Don’t get attached.
Not to anything, not to anyone.
Don’t get attached to your fighter. I know some pilots get cute, tuning the tolerances and controls. Then they get killed when their precious machine is in maintenance during a combat scramble, and they’re not used to stock. TIEs are meant to be mass-produced, disposable.
Like us.
Don’t get attached to your officers. All the good ones will move on as soon as they possibly can. The bad ones will stick around killing people with their stupidity. High turnover among officers is a good thing.
Don’t get attached to your squadmates. Eat with them, drink with them, play sabacc with them, sleep with them if it suits your fancy. But don’t get attached, because then one day they’ll do something stupid, and then you’ll do something stupid, and then it’s a couple of fireballs and some Imperial morale officer sending your family a plastoid medal and a heartfelt note. And it probably gets lost in the mail.
You want to be the one still sitting on your bunk when they bring in the next round of new recruits. Those of us who’ve made it past one tour call them “cloudflies,” the kind that only live for a day. It helps us remember rule number one.
Until proven otherwise, you’re a cloudfly.
* * *
From a Certain Point of View Page 18
