It’s a small and inelegant carving of a happabore.
Long ago, Brendol told his child army to bring nothing with them, that the First Order would supply everything they needed, become father and mother and employer. But a young boy named Archex smuggled this lone object in the pocket of his fatigue pants. His father had carved it, his mother said, when she was pregnant. A gift for the son he never met. At the time, the boy had thought himself very brave and reckless. For the first few years, he’d taken great pains to hide this artifact, feeling guilty and worrying that he would be discovered. But now, looking down, twisting the happabore between his gloves, he just feels very old and very conflicted.
He realizes, suddenly and with great emotion, that he has never killed anyone unless directly ordered to do so, while Phasma has killed many. Every time his platoon was sent planetside, he did his duty and followed orders, so he’s never considered it a problem. His superiors have never questioned his performance. And yet…does he have what it takes to be that ruthless? Is this why he holds back with Vi?
Is he the one who’s really the rot in the heart of the First Order? A knot of weakness amid strength?
No.
No, that’s foolish.
Taking lives unnecessarily doesn’t make Phasma strong.
He drops the happabore into the box, gently places the box back in the drawer. Here is evidence that he, too, has been imperfect from the start. His first response to the First Order’s kindness was rebellion. Their main difference, it would seem, is that Phasma is willing to do anything and kill anyone to get what she wants, and he’s happy to do as he’s told and be satisfied with what he’s been given.
Or, at least, he was.
All this time, he’s been pressing Vi to give him the intel in time for the assembly. It’s so rare that General Hux, Phasma, and the other leaders are all on the same ship. More and more these days, it seems as if everything of import happens on the Finalizer, while the Absolution fades from consequence. Although he was invited to attend, Cardinal wasn’t even informed of the meeting’s purpose. It could’ve been to discuss something sweeping like planetary occupation strategies, but deep in his heart he’s always worried that he’ll lose yet more responsibilities, whether to Phasma or another trooper. Everyone in the First Order has a job…until they don’t. Cardinal was looking forward to presenting his case and watching Phasma as the truth was revealed, but now he dreads attending at all. Without Armitage on his side, he needs more than just stories.
He hurries from his room and walks down the hall to the cafeteria, glad that the children within won’t be able to see him sweating, thanks to his helmet. The door opens, and every face turns to stare. As one, they rise to their feet and salute, their small faces earnest and their black uniforms spotless. Cardinal faces them, forces his chin up, and returns the salute. When his arm goes down, they stare for one moment more before returning to their food. Their chatter is much quieter now: No one would dare utter a harsh word or do anything remotely raucous while Cardinal is watching.
He knows every face here. Knows every number and every childish nickname. He’s tucked them back into their bunks when they had night terrors, calling out for parents they’ll never see again. He’s placed their fingers on triggers, taught them how to squeeze just right. He’s given them stern looks of disappointment and doled out their punishments. For fifteen years, he’s stood here, looking out at a sea of faces, every one reflecting the boy he once was. Boy or girl, tall or short, light or dark, brave or clever, these children are him, and they are his. For the first time, he doubts why he would ever hand them over to a monster like Phasma for safekeeping. His children—she turns them into monsters like her, doesn’t she? Killers without conscience. It makes him sick.
But he can’t let that show. Not when there are thousands of eyes watching.
Following his usual pattern, Cardinal walks up and down the tables, calling out to this child or that to ask about their training, compliment their scores, or point out a belt buckled backward. When he reaches the food line, he’s the only one there.
“Good morning, Captain Cardinal,” the droid says. “Will you be having the standard breakfast?”
“Yes. And a prote snack and extra caf, please.”
His tray is different from those sitting in neat rows before the children. Their meals are perfectly designed for their ages, genders, weights, and nutritional needs. He suspects that other chemicals are included to keep them healthy and boost any vitamin deficiencies they might’ve had, growing up on rough planets. Their food doesn’t taste good, but hunger works wonders for the appetite, and the children are worked hard. His food tastes no better, but it’s all he really remembers. The caf, at least, will help him stay alert—he had been on his way to sleep when Iris informed him of the capture of Vi’s ship, and being awake this long isn’t helping his mental state or his jitters.
Cardinal takes his tray to a table set perpendicular to those of his recruits. His place is always left empty, whether he’s there or not, and surrounding him are the up-and-coming leaders in his program. He sits and looks around the room. There’s no choice but to see the posters of Phasma watching over the children like some great silver goddess in a cape. They don’t see a monster, though. They see a hero. A tall soldier, looking toward the future, her cloak dramatically outlining her shining chrome armor. The black eyes of her helmet reflect the stormtroopers they will one day become. They see what they’re meant to be, what they might be if they work hard enough, if they fight well enough. They long to be molded in her image. He never noticed before how very many of the damn posters line the walls. It’s like he can’t escape her.
“Good morning, sir,” FE-1211 says. She’s his brown-noser, but she always scores highest on intelligence testing and has a mean eye with a blaster.
“Did you sleep well, sir?” This from FB-0007, a serious child who’d love nothing more than to supplant FE-1211 but can’t quite outfox her.
“Yes, thank you,” Cardinal says. As he stares down at his plate, he realizes he’ll have to take off his helmet to eat, and then the children might be able to see the mental war he’s fighting writ in the lines on his face.
The third child, FM-0676, just stares at him, her dark eyes as hard as a mask. She’s the one to watch, he thinks. Because she’s the one who’s always watching.
“I’ve a meeting today. Do your best. I’ll check your scores tonight. As you were.”
He stands, picks up his tray, and forces himself to walk slowly and with gravitas back to his room, where he rips off his helmet and wipes the sweat off his face with a cloth before eating. The food sits in his throat, and he forces it down with the caf. It does no better in his stomach, where it roils like a stone ball and threatens to come back up. He can’t cram down any more protein, so he pockets the extra packet and chugs the caf, wishing it were easier to get his hands on the real battle stims handed out to troopers when they’re training in sims and later fighting on the ground. He could use an extra boost just now. The stuff he gave to Vi is child’s play by comparison.
When he stands, his legs tremble.
The ship, once so solid, feels like it’s shuddering all around him.
He should be overseeing the children’s training, but he can’t stop worrying about his little project downstairs. If some random trooper assigned garbage duty for the first time becomes lost and stumbles onto the spy, Cardinal’s entire life will be destroyed. The odds are impossible, but paranoia doesn’t care about odds. Clever as Iris is, she’s not programmed to deal with that. He flicks his comm to contact his closest colleague on the ship. If Cardinal has a friend, it’s SC-4044.
“SC-4044. I’m feeling a bit off today. Run the program as usual. Let me know if there are any issues. Put FE-1211 in the rear flank and see what FB-0007 can do with his own platoon.”
“Going to medbay, sir?”
He pauses. “It’s not that bad.”
“Did you finally hit the cantina?�
�
Another pause. “Something like that.”
He mops off his face again before putting on his helmet and heading out. He’s never felt claustrophobic before, not about ships and not about his helmet. But now his helmet feels like it’s made of lead, like it’s pressing down, making him shorter and smaller and stupid. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears, smell his own sour breath laced with caf. When he checks his image in the mirror by the door, he can’t help staring.
This is him.
This is Captain Cardinal.
This is the leader of the youth training program, once Brendol Hux’s right-hand man.
He is polished perfection, upright strength and courage. He is the second most important trooper in the entire First Order, and he now knows that the number one trooper isn’t what everyone thinks she is. He has done the right thing, reported malfeasance to his superior officer as outlined in the First Order laws, and in return he has learned that a murderer walks free among his people, given the highest honors above him, her actions supported by those who should be punishing her. And the only thing he can do is go back to a Resistance spy to see what other orts she will throw him in a bid for her freedom.
He’s out the door and storming down the hall, his steps echoing, when he nearly bumps into a figure coming around the corner.
It’s Captain Phasma.
“Pardon me, Captain,” she says, her voice as cold and clipped as ever.
For a moment, Cardinal can do nothing but stand there and stare. Her chrome armor is as well polished as his, her armorweave cape equally long and impressive. She’s taller than him, but he’s more muscular, and although he’s never seen her face, he imagines a twisted and feral visage torn by scars, something more akin to her Parnassian mask fringed in feathers and fur.
His hands ball into fists. His right one uncurls, and his fingers dance over the blaster on his hip. How he’d love to kill her, right here. Kill her and tell the truth, not just to Armitage, but to the entire First Order, to Ren and Snoke and anyone else who will listen. He could produce Vi Moradi, could go back to Parnassos and bring back Siv as a witness to Phasma’s character. He’d bring them dozens of beetles. He could get rid of this monster once and for all.
He wants so, so badly to kill her.
His entire body trembles. He’s so close to doing it.
One shot, and all his problems would disappear.
But he doesn’t pull his blaster. In the end, he’s utterly incapable of going against his strictest order. Just like with Phasma’s old Scyre folk, there is to be no infighting among troopers. It’s one of the first things they learn here.
“Captain?” Phasma says when he doesn’t move or respond.
“Pardon me,” he says, glad for the helmet’s voice modulation.
He steps around her and hurries away without looking back.
VI DOESN’T KNOW HOW LONG SHE’S been out, but it’s been long enough. Going unconscious isn’t quite like sleeping, she thinks. Sleeping is like settling into a warm bath, whereas being knocked out is more like being held underwater. You lose time, and you have no control over when you can come up again. And when you do begin to surface, the world comes back in bits and pieces.
She feels the metal band across her forehead first, hot and hard and pressing, as if it had spikes driven deep into her skull. She pulls back the tiniest bit—all she can manage—and her skin clings to the metal and peels up with a light sucking sound. She’s fallen forward, and the manacles have jabbed into her arms, digging rivets in her flesh. The bastard could’ve at least tilted the interrogation chair back instead of leaving her standing on legs that can’t support her, held in place by restraints that dig into her arm muscles. It’s obvious he’s never interrogated anyone before. He probably doesn’t even know the chair can tilt back to take some of the weight off the numb feet of the unbalanced subject within so they can be tortured for that much longer before going unconscious.
Vi’s feet scrabble to find purchase, and she stands under her own power, an ache thrumming up her back. She’s getting too old for this sort of thing. If she gets out of here, she swears that the next time General Organa—or anyone—asks her to just have a little look-see, she’s going to run in the opposite direction and find a nice cantina to disappear into. She’d rather hang out on Pantora with Baako, up to her knees in bog, than be here. Dodging the planetary defense system of Parnassos was a simple affair, considering she looked up the right codes, but now she knows that it’s impossible to dodge the First Order’s Star Destroyers. Once they see you and get their tractor beam hooks into you, you’re out of luck. The Resistance needs that information, but Vi’s not sure if she’ll be able to provide it.
Still, she hasn’t lost faith. She’s escaped worse situations. True, she generally had at least one crew member and some weapons with her when she did so—and even more often, she had a fast little ship—but there’s hope.
“How about you, Iris? You got any hidden interest in defecting to the Resistance?”
In response, the floating orb beeps something that sounds like a laugh, and a shockprod pokes out, snapping with electricity.
“Can’t blame me for asking.”
There’s plenty of time for her to consider the odds while she waits for Cardinal to return. Hell, maybe he won’t return. He seemed pretty upset by her story. Not that he was surprised at all; he knew there was something dark lurking under the surface of Phasma in the same way most good-hearted people can smell a rat. No, what’s really destroyed him is the knowledge that Phasma killed Brendol and not only lived to tell the tale, but also continued to rise in rank and reputation. That’s the problem with following all the rules—somebody else is eventually going to get ahead by breaking them, and then where will you be? Vi’s always made sure to break at least one rule, even something as paltry as putting her boots up on the dash or getting crumbs in the seat cushions. Just to keep herself from erring on the side of perfection and obedience.
The door opens, and her eyes cut sideways. When she sees that it’s Cardinal, she sighs in relief and relaxes against her bonds. Not like she could actually do anything if someone else showed up, but she can’t help being tense. Cardinal, she’s guessing, is the biggest softy on the ship.
“Welcome back, Emergency Brake. Think maybe you could tilt me back a bit? I can’t feel my feet.”
Cardinal hasn’t given her more than the briefest glance. He’s tapping into the datapad and fiddling with the cams yet again. But is he turning them on, or—? No. He’s ripped out a bunch of wires in one of them. If he was earnest earlier, he’s deadly serious now.
After moving around the room, he appears in front of her, a solid wall of shining, flawless red, his cape swinging behind him.
“Iris, did she attempt to escape?”
The droid beeps a negative.
Now he focuses on Vi. “Good. Can I trust you?” he asks urgently, and this time it’s different from the first time he asked her, hours or maybe days ago.
Vi licks her dry lips. “That’s still a complicated question. Let’s say you can trust me not to attack you or try to fight my way out of here. I haven’t lied to you so far, and I don’t plan on doing so, unless I think you’re going to kill me if I tell the truth.”
He snorts. “That’s an honest answer for a spy.”
She gives the barest vestige of a shrug, all that her bonds allow. “I’m a pretty honest spy.”
Taking off his helmet, he places it on the table and hunkers down in front of her. Ha. As if looking in her eyes is going to show him any new truths just because the red face of his helmet doesn’t stand between them.
And yet…he does look. Right into her eyes. As if he’s trying to reach down into her soul, a drowning man searching dark waters for the salvation of a rope. Beads of sweat stand out on his forehead, under the dark circles beneath his eyes, above the freshly shaved skin over his lip, marked with one tiny, imperfect nick.
“I’m going to let you out of
the chair. You won’t be bound. You can eat and drink.” He puts a bottle of caf and a silver foil packet on the table. “But you’re going to tell me more. All of it. Everything you have. I told Armitage that Phasma killed Brendol, and it wasn’t enough.”
“What do you mean, it wasn’t enough?”
“He already knew. And he seemed pleased about it.”
This is just another tidbit of information for Vi to tuck into her memory. Armitage Hux hasn’t left as much of a data trail as the other First Order leaders because he’s had no life outside of this war machine. He was Brendol’s hated son at the Imperial Academy on Arkanis, and then he was Brendol’s hated son on the Finalizer, and then he rose through the ranks to become what he is now: the true heir to Brendol’s command and a powerful leader of the First Order. But now they know he’s got his own secrets, and that’s useful.
“Well, what do you know? The greasy ginger weasel birthed a greasy ginger weasel.”
Cardinal’s arm flies back like he’s about to slap her, but he stops himself before his droid can beep a warning. His arm drops and settles by his side again. “Say what you will about Armitage Hux, but watch your tongue about Brendol. That man was my savior, and he did more for me than my own father.”
She narrows her eyes, unable to let that one go.
“Then your family stank.” He gives her a stern look, so she chuckles sadly. “But speaking of terrible families, I can give you what you need to know. Just let me out first. That was a good idea. One of your best, actually.”
Phasma (Star Wars) Page 30
