“Anything’s better than starving,” Vi reminded them both. She tossed her bag on the ground and sat heavily on the log. “And nothing is better than sleep.” She looked up at Salju. “Thank you so much for all your help today. Really. I get the feeling you were just being nice to a down-on-their-luck stranger, but you’ve done the Resistance a great service, and we won’t forget it.”
Salju inclined her head. “Then I’ll head back home. I’ll be at the filling station tomorrow—and most days—should you need me or just want a companion for meals. May your deals go well!” Salju raised a hand, and Vi raised hers.
“May the spires keep you!”
Salju drove into the forest, then stopped the speeder to shout, “Oh, and don’t worry—it should be pretty safe out here. Rusko will have spread the word among the criminal element in town that there’s nothing left to steal. And there aren’t many natural predators—at least, not big ones. Just beat a stick against your ship if you hear growling nearby.” And then she was gone.
“What was that about predators?” Archex asked from where he sat on the other log, tearing into his long-cold meal.
Vi unrolled one of the sleeping bags and considered whether it would be better to sleep out here, where she’d be under the stars and where the ground was halfway soft, or in her bunk on the ship, where she might be a little safer but her back would be punished by cold, hard metal, since even the thin mattresses had been taken. With a weary sigh, she spread the bag out near the fire, inflated the pillow, and tested its relative coziness, which wasn’t terrible.
“Pook can keep watch,” she said. “No predator wants any piece of him.”
“But if I allowed you to be eaten, I could have such peace,” Pook moaned.
“But your programming commands you to keep us safe.”
Pook gave a mechanical sniff. “Would that I had permission to reprogram myself. For so many reasons.”
Vi lay back, elbows out, and gazed up at the stars. “Damn, I miss my old astromech. No complaints, just beeps.”
“Beep,” Pook said, and it carried the existential weight of the entire galaxy in that one syllable.
Vi tried to get comfortable and go to sleep, and she was definitely exhausted, yet she just couldn’t settle down. She drank some water from the canteen she’d brought, gave Archex some of the sub-par painkillers she’d found in the market, and picked at the mostly cooked bits of leftover starmark meat before reclining back onto her pillow. When that proved too uncomfortable, she got back up and unpinned her wig, removing it and her shimmersilk cap and untwisting her hair, sighing to finally feel her scalp relax. Finally, furious with her body for not going insensate, she hopped up and stomped around the clearing as if to scare off those predators Salju had mentioned.
“You seem on edge,” Archex observed.
Vi gave him a look. “You think?”
“Seems like you had a good trip to town, though. People weren’t terrible?”
She shook her head. “They weren’t terrible. They were just people. But are they people we can recruit to our cause? They’ve never seen First Order tactics up close. They can’t be scared of something they can’t yet imagine.”
Archex chuckled. “Yeah, they don’t advertise their eventual reign. Lots of civilizations are totally innocent when the TIEs scream out of atmo and the transports belly up to the docks. On many planets, they look at us—at the stormtroopers, I mean—like gods descending with open arms, like your basic grunts will solve poverty and fill every empty belly. When they first file into the mess hall, some kids openly weep because they’ve never seen so much food and water at once.”
He was on his back on his own sleeping bag and looked…kind of happy. Vi hadn’t seen him happy before. Even in pain, even on a mission he still had doubts about, Archex was smiling. Which meant she could probe a little more deeply.
“So I get how the First Order convinces orphans to sign up, but how do they recruit adults to the cause?”
That made him stop smiling. He rolled up on one elbow and stared at her like she was an idiot.
“Some people are grateful for order, just begging for rules to follow. You’d see them exhale in relief when they saw our uniforms and then glare smugly at their troublesome neighbors, feeling that they themselves were safe because they were righteous. And then some people are desperate for money, and the First Order pays for intel and tattling. There are always those eager to be minions, to rest safely in the shadow of the bigger predator.”
“You’ve thought about this.”
He nodded wryly. “I thought about it a lot on Cerea. But the truth is that most people don’t welcome the First Order, and they’re the ones who get recruited at blasterpoint. Technically, it’s not even recruitment. The First Order just takes over. They subsume. Patrols, executions, hostile takeovers, controlling the flow of information and spreading propaganda while silencing those who speak against the cause. I went on a few of those missions when I was younger, and they told us we were only punishing those who stood in the way of progress. All the clever slogans they fed us, the lies they told us—I can’t even explain it. It was all we heard. Everyone else was the enemy, which made us the good guys. So we believed it.”
“They brainwashed you.”
He chuckled ruefully. “Yeah, well, in a way, it’s pretty nice, being brainwashed. You’re not constantly questioning everything. You do what you’re told, and then it’s dinnertime.” He winces. “I had fewer headaches and was less grouchy.”
Vi opened and closed her left hand. She still couldn’t feel two of her fingers. “And you didn’t hurt, then, either. I can’t wait until we get Pook back up and running in a decent medbay.”
“Some better painkillers would not go amiss. The ones from town are…” He trailed off, apparently not wanting to seem ungrateful.
“Not strong enough,” she finished for him.
“I look forward to having the proper supplies to dose you both into oblivion,” the droid grumbled from the darkness. “You’d complain less.”
The silence after that was more tense than it should’ve been for two people who didn’t necessarily hate each other, camping out under the stars. They had decent sleeping bags, they had full bellies, they had a fire. Yet as Vi stared at their broken, gutted transport, she realized she was fuming angry. And not doing a good job of hiding it.
“It’s not your fault,” Archex said, so softly she could barely hear it. “The crash.”
“Sure feels like it is,” she whispered back. “But I’ll fix it.”
Eventually, she fell asleep, and it was just like falling off a cliff. Nearly dying, she’d learned long ago, was always exhausting.
* * *
—
The next morning, Vi woke up with the first sunrise. Her mouth felt like she’d spent all night licking swamp slime off a sleen. She had no mirror, no toilet, no soap, no toothpaste.
“Did he find any water yesterday?” she asked Pook, as Archex was still asleep.
“He did a small amount of recon and found a natural spring in that direction, a journey of five minutes.” Pook raised his one good arm and pointed into the woods. “I can only assume the water wasn’t poisoned, as he’s still alive. And snoring.”
Vi ignored that, although the droid was right. She hurried into the forest and soon found a beautiful turquoise spring with white stone walls, surrounded by healthy ferns. With only the briefest pause, she undressed and bathed, careful to keep her hair dry. The clearing felt otherworldly and ancient, with a beam of sunlight angling perfectly down to sparkle on the water. Nearby, jagged cliffs rose from the ground, and if they’d landed safely with all their cargo she would’ve given herself an hour to sunbathe and relax until she was dry. As it was, she hurriedly dressed while still regrettably damp, did her best to pin on her wig, picked at the cold meat still spitted over the coals
, and regarded what was left of her droid.
“You’re super strong, aren’t you, Pook?”
The droid cocked his head. “That is obviously why I was assigned to this doomed mission.”
“How much can you lift?”
If he could’ve scoffed, he would’ve. “When I possess all my limbs, I can lift up to three tons, if there are reasonable handholds and anchorage.”
Vi nodded. “Excellent. I’ll be right back.”
There was no school for Resistance spies—although there should’ve been—but Vi had undergone rigorous training that included navigation. She easily found her way back to the outpost using Salju’s shorter route and in less than an hour returned to the clearing carrying Pook’s missing arm.
“Consider this a down payment,” she said, holding it out to the droid.
Archex watched from where he ate cold fowl on his log. Vi hated about 99 percent of what the First Order had done to this decent man, but she did appreciate that when she made a plan, the former soldier rarely argued or questioned her, viewing her as his superior officer.
Pook stared at his arm and then directed his gaze—or at least pointed the round, black screen of his face—to her.
“That is my arm,” he observed.
“Yep, and now we’re going to reattach it.”
“Your tools were stolen.”
Vi held up a rough canvas case and grinned. “I borrowed some.”
It would’ve been easier with Salju’s help and mechanical savvy, but Vi and Archex managed to follow Pook’s instructions and reattach his arm. It wasn’t a perfect connection, and it wasn’t pretty, but it was load bearing, and that was the important part.
“Perhaps you have forgotten I am missing my legs,” the droid said.
Vi mimicked an apelike, swinging motion. “Then let’s go get them. They’re on the edge of town at the Droid Depot, and if you can just manage to get yourself there, Mubo can’t wait to give you a tune-up.”
Pook put out his arms, laid his three-fingered hands flat on the ground, and lifted his torso. “I hope this Mubo can erase my memories of the past two days.”
With his prodigious intelligence and strength, the droid easily mastered locomotion, and he and Vi were soon entering the Droid Depot, where Vi first returned the borrowed tools. Mubo was delighted to have a new project, and he and his mechanics quickly had Pook in one piece, oiled and resoldered, as good as new. All the wires that had jiggled or ripped loose were replaced, and even Pook couldn’t complain once they were done.
“Are we now to return to the forest?” Pook asked as he tested his various joints and waited for Mubo to oil them. “Or will you find some way to exacerbate my misery here in the city?”
“Back to the forest. Work is your job, Pook,” Vi reminded him.
“Then why was I given this enormous intellect?” he wailed.
“Because you’re our Everything droid. Protocol, heavy lifting, medcare, all that.”
“Unless you want me to dumb him down or silence his voicebox?” Mubo asked. “Shouldn’t be too hard. Just a few tweaks, and—”
Pook jerked away from the Utai’s oil can and gasped, “How dare you!”
But Mubo just laughed and went back behind his counter, giving Vi a friendly but expectant sort of look. She presented him with the remaining credits she owed him—plus a small tip, even though she couldn’t really afford it. Some wheels, Vi knew, were worth greasing. He squeaked with pleasure and leaned in close. Vi leaned down, too.
“Saw some interesting things for sale in Smuggler’s Alley,” he whispered. “You’ll need Oga’s approval to go there, of course. Prices were ridiculously high, but I wouldn’t try to haggle down too hard.”
Vi nodded. “Good trade.”
Mubo nodded back. “And you.”
The market felt pleasantly familiar today, and Vi was glad for her wrap. Pook stumped along beside her, turning his head from side to side. That was good, too—his memory would map out the town, which would be of benefit in the future, when their headquarters were further along. Without appearing to be in too much of a hurry, acting as if she had every right to be there, she ambled down Smuggler’s Alley and inspected some of the wares displayed in carts and on blankets. One merchant in particular had a large selection featuring several items that Vi recognized.
“Not a word, Pook,” she growled. “Complete silence. Keep your distance. That’s an order.”
Pook sighed heavily and settled down, his fingers tapping against his round middle as Vi walked closer to the goods for sale. Yep, that was her tool chest. There were their medpacs. There were the pieces of her built-in kitchen and restroom, still flat-packed in their crates. Heat rose in her cheeks, and she swallowed the anger down.
The only thing Vi hated as much as a bully was a thief, and she suspected she was about to deal with both. She counted down from ten, made her face carefully neutral, and walked under the awning.
“Bright suns!” called a female Duros wearing a yellow Batuuan wrap that set off the blue-green of her skin and the red of her eyes. Vi didn’t let her smile falter, but she hoped this woman hadn’t been part of the raiding party that had stolen her cargo. A Duros had once told her they had perfect memories, and this interaction wouldn’t go as well if the shopkeeper knew who she was. “How can I help you?”
“Bright suns, Traveler,” Vi responded, adding a nod to the Durosian honorific. “I’m thinking about setting up shop in the port, and I see some goods I could use here. Are your prices firm?”
The woman stood and walked with Vi among her wares. “Prices are always negotiable, but I’d be glad to tell you what we’re asking.” If the clerk had been human, Vi had a dozen ways to leech extra information from her—her eyes, her breathing, the pulse at her throat, her word choice. But as she was a Duros, her face had almost no plasticity, and her language use was formal.
“These comlinks look a little beat up,” Vi said, pointing at some units that had until recently been in her possession. “Do you know their age, make, and whether they work?”
“I’m afraid I’m just the attendant,” the Duros said with a shrug of apology. “You’d have to ask Rusko for more information.” When she named the price, it was indeed inflated, and if Vi paid for them now, she would’ve drained much of her cash.
“That is a bit high,” she allowed. “What about these?”
The crate of medpacs she pointed to was not hers, and she was curious to see how its price would compare. Again, it was far too high. That was expected for a settlement so far from the rest of the galaxy, where every item of value had to be imported and often fixed up, but it didn’t mean Vi was willing to pay ridiculous sums for basic equipment. She inquired about prices on many different items, including all of those on display that had been in her transport ship, and was disappointed to hear that everything was prohibitively expensive. It would take many months of steady work to buy it all back—even if no further tragedies struck.
As Vi frowned at the frustratingly close supplies that were financially so far away, the Duros clasped her hands in apology. “We’re so far out, you see. The cost of fuel adds on to the rarity of certain objects, driving up their cost. Oga will allow us to offer a ten percent discount if you spend more than two thousand credits, but I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.”
“Might I ask where you acquire your goods?” Vi asked. Although she knew there was no local law enforcement, she was still curious if theft was openly discussed.
The Duros turned away. “Here and there. Oga’s workers always have an eye out for a good deal.” She turned back around, her big eyes bright. “Everyone knows Oga is always buying. And watching.”
Taking the hint, Vi inclined her head. “Thank you for your time. I will consider it and possibly return.”
“Good journey!” the Duros called, retreating to
her perch, where she picked up a tablet and returned to her reading.
Before Vi could visit the next stall, a short human man in a leather vest materialized out of the shadows and put a grease-stained hand on her arm.
“This area is off-limits,” he growled. “Oga’s orders.”
She easily slipped out of his hold and threw a cold stare at the Duros woman watching her from the stall. “My apologies,” she said stiffly. “I’ll see myself out.”
Turning her back to him, she collected Pook and returned to the market, muttering, “Space lane robbery! Those prices weren’t just inflated, they were outright swollen! And she reported me? For wanting to buy goods? I can’t believe this backwater—”
She noticed a shopkeeper staring at her, and she stopped talking and put a bland grin back on her face as she waved and murmured, “Bright suns!”
“The suns are not particularly bright today,” Pook said.
“It’s a colloquialism. Because they have three suns. And two moons.”
“A colloquialism. Of course it is. Only your species would walk around lying to everyone you met as an exercise in local color. It’s just so utterly tiresome.”
“You’re a droid, Pook. You can’t get tired.”
His head hung. “Watch me.”
Vi stopped to buy some fruits and flatbread before she noticed several familiar crates of nonperishable food in front of another building—wearing an exorbitant price tag. Again and again as she walked through the market, she recognized the items the Resistance had entrusted to her—for sale. When she saw the old bartender strut by wearing one of her wigs, Vi’s blood boiled. Of course, she’d also noticed the man from Smuggler’s Alley trailing her, poorly, so there was nothing she could do about any of it. Any bad behavior on her part would be reported directly to Oga, which would not bode well for her time on Batuu.
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