by Paul S. Kemp
“On my way!”
Isval vaulted over roots, ducked under tree limbs. She and Cham and three of Goll’s people turned, took position at the base of a large tree, and fired back into the onrushing pack. Shots bounced off the creatures’ hides, but the impact, at least, sent them careening backward.
“They’re spreading out!” Goll shouted, firing left. “Trying to encircle us. Grenades!”
More explosions to the right and left, angry hisses from the gutkurrs.
“Keep moving!” Isval said, standing and running back in the direction of the clearing. “Just keep moving!”
From the right, a gutkurr leapt high over a fallen tree and landed on the back of one of Goll’s people. She rolled over, shouting, and tried to bring her blaster rifle to bear, but too slowly. The gutkurr’s hooked claws tore through her clothes and unzipped her abdomen, spilling gore. Isval cursed and shot it through the head once, twice, and it collapsed atop its victim, dead.
“Gotta leave her,” Cham said, pulling at Isval’s arm.
She backed off, firing at anything moving in the trees, then turned and ran.
“ETA, Faylin?” Isval called over the comlink.
“Thirty seconds!”
“There’s too many of them!” one of Goll’s crew shouted.
From her right, Isval heard someone scream in pain. Blaster shots rang out, along with curses, growls, and hisses.
“Keep firing and keep moving!” Cham yelled, his blaster rifle painting the air with lines of energy.
Above, Isval heard the hum of the escort boat as it flew low over the trees.
“Can you see us on scan?” Isval called to Faylin. She spotted a gutkurr in the underbrush and fired a series of shots at it, but she couldn’t tell if she’d hit it.
“Yes! What are those things? There’re dozens of them!”
“Gutkurrs, a whole pack,” Isval said, and fired into the trees. She hit a gutkurr in the side and sent it sprawling. The pack had spread out and slowed their pursuit, forming an arc. She had no doubt some of them were circling wide to get behind them and cut off their retreat. “Can you put down some fire?”
“Fire? But I’m not—”
“You can do it, Faylin! We need it! Our blasters aren’t getting it done!”
“All right, got it.”
“Hold the line here!” Cham shouted to the team. “Incoming fire. Close ranks! Close ranks!”
Cham, Isval, Goll, and his surviving people clustered at the top of a low rise, behind a tree, everyone gasping. They took aim at anything that moved, and filled the forest with fire. Gutkurrs hissed and growled out in the darkness.
Blasterfire from the escort boat rained out of the sky, thick bolts of plasma that tore through the trees and slammed into the ground. Trees splinted, cracked, and toppled. Clouds of soil exploded around them. Gutkurrs screamed and howled. Acrid smoke filled the air.
“Hold fire, Faylin!” Cham ordered. “We’re moving…now.”
The group stood, turned, and sprinted for the clearing, leaping over roots and deadwood. The gutkurrs must have seen them, for they roared and shrieked and bounded through the trees. One of Goll’s men stumbled and fell in front of Isval. She heaved him up by his armpits, fired blindly back over her shoulder, and they ran on together.
“The boat’s blasters dispersed the pack, but they’re still coming after you,” Faylin said over the comlink. “Circling wide on both sides. Hurry!”
“Get to the clearing, Faylin,” Isval ordered. To the rest of the group, she shouted, “Run!”
They didn’t bother firing anymore. They just ran as fast as they could, the sound of the pursuing gutkurrs hard on their heels. The boat buzzed overhead, audible through the forest canopy, and set down not far ahead. Isval caught movement out of her peripheral vision from time to time, and she thought the trees would never end.
But then they did, opening into the clearing. Faylin already had the passenger compartment doors open.
“Move! Move!” Cham said, waving everyone past. Isval fell in with him and Goll, and the three of them blanketed the tree line with blasterfire. She couldn’t tell if they hit anything.
“Let’s go!” Cham said, and they turned and ran.
The moment they did, they saw several gutkurrs break from the trees to their left, pelting over the clearing toward the rest of the group, which hadn’t yet reached the ship. Isval took aim with both blasters as she ran. She fired once, twice, hitting the two leading creatures in the sides of their heads, causing both to tumble to the ground, dead. Cham and Goll sprayed the last two with so much blasterfire that it blackened their carapaces and knocked them down and five meters back.
Gutkurrs broke from the tree line behind and to the right. The rest of Goll’s crew took position just outside the ship’s open door and fired in teams at the creatures, but that didn’t stop them. They dashed across the clearing, a dozen or more, closing on the ship. Isval, Goll, and Cham ran, Cham shouting, “Get aboard! Get aboard!”
Goll’s people ceased firing and ran up the gangplank and into the compartment, Isval, Cham, and Goll just behind. The moment they were inside, Isval slammed her hand on the button to close the door. It started to rise…and just then two gutkurrs grabbed it and tried to scramble inside. Cham and Goll shared a look, raised their weapons as one, and fired. The blaster shots drove both creatures off the ramp, and the hatch closed fully. Goll did a quick head count and took stock of injuries.
“Four lost,” he said softly to Cham. “The rest are good.”
Cham’s expression fell for a moment, but only Isval could have noticed. He nodded and put a hand on Goll’s shoulder. After Goll moved back to debrief his surviving crew, Cham said to Faylin over the comlink, “Get us to Nordon’s coordinates.”
“On the way,” Faylin said. “Everything all right back there?”
Cham shook his head but said, “As well as can be.”
Isval stepped to Cham’s side. She almost touched him but held back. “What is it? And don’t you dare tell me nothing is wrong.”
He didn’t look at her, but he answered in a quiet monotone. “Been a long day, is all.”
“A lie,” she said. “Tell me.”
“You really want to know?”
She wasn’t sure she did, but she nodded anyway.
“We’ve thrown everything we had at this,” he said. “In one day, I’ve spent almost the entirety of the resources I built up over years.”
She let her voice fall to an angry whisper. “We’ve lost less than thirty of our people. And we brought down a Star Destroyer. That’s not a bad trade.”
He looked at her then, and his eyes were pained. “Thirty is a lot, Isval.”
She recoiled at the implication of her own words. “I know. Of course it is. I know.”
“I know you know,” he said. “But it’s not just that. Almost every ship we had is gone. And when the Empire does a post-action analysis of today, they’ll bring everything to bear—they’ll have to. They’ll track down our bases and they’ll track us down. We’ll have to disperse after today, at least most of us. That’s best case.”
She was shaking her head. “Why didn’t you say this before? We could have—”
“We could’ve what? Done nothing? Let this opportunity pass?”
Isval’s stomach hollowed out. “No, but…I didn’t realize…”
“You didn’t realize there’d be nothing left afterward? I know. I’m not sure I did, either, but I’ve been thinking about it since the Perilous went down and it’s becoming clear to me now. It’s a hard truth, but we might as well square up to it. After today, the movement as it exists is done.”
She still refused to believe it. “No, wait. Listen, the Empire’s not good enough to track our bases or us. We’ve dodged them for years.”
“We’ve dodged them with Belkor as our puppet. He’s done after this. We both know that.”
Isval didn’t deny it. Belkor had perhaps convinced himself that he could survive the day’s e
vents, but Isval knew better. No story Belkor could craft would keep him away from Imperial security investigators.
“We can rebuild the movement,” she said. “The same way we built it in the first place.”
He smiled, and it looked forced. “I don’t have it in me, Isval.”
The hole in her stomach grew larger. “There is no movement without you,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “It’s bigger than me. And if we start a galaxy-wide rebellion, Ryloth will have a chance at freedom. No, the movement’s an idea, not a person.”
She knew it wasn’t. She knew Ryloth needed him. She knew she needed him.
“You’re wrong,” she said.
“I’m right, and the fight will go on, Isval, but after this it’ll have to fall to someone else to lead.” He grimaced. “I’ll do what I can even after today, but we don’t have enough tools left to do much more than what we’ve done. We’ll start the fire by killing Vader and the Emperor. It’s just that someone else is going to have to fan the flames and burn the Empire down.”
“Closing in,” Faylin said over the comlink.
—
Vader, the Emperor, and the two surviving Royal Guards put kilometers behind them as night ate the last of the day. The darkness deepened as they picked their way through the uneven ground, the tangle of roots, the columns of tree trunks. The darkness seemed to amplify sound, isolate it, echo it back until Vader’s breathing filled the forest. The moons hadn’t risen and it would be hours before they did. The forest canopy hid the meager light of the stars, leaving them in a sea of ink. Vader’s armor allowed him to see in infrared and several other spectrums, and the Royal Guards’ armor, too, could compensate for low light, but the Emperor…
Vader spared a glance to his left, at his Master, who walked confidently through the darkness.
The Emperor saw clearly, saw everything, as ever.
Creatures large and small moved through the foliage at the edge of Vader’s vision, slinking, crawling, loping. Animals prowled the forest’s canopy high above, predators hunting prey. From time to time, the abortive squeal of something dying punctuated the quiet.
“It’s instructive, isn’t it, this place?” his Master asked.
“It is unforgiving of weakness,” Vader said.
“It is,” his Master said. “The weak are found out and killed by the strong.”
“As it must be,” Vader said.
“As it must be, indeed,” his Master echoed.
“But sometimes the strong mistake their strength,” Vader dared to add. “And so demonstrate weakness.”
“Do they?” his Master commented, and Vader said nothing more.
Long into the hours of night Vader walked beside his Master, silent but for the respirator. He would stop, or not, as his Master commanded. Before long, the breathing of the guardsmen sounded not unlike Vader’s. They were taxed, but still his Master pressed on. Eventually his Master stopped and held up a hand.
“You can rest here for a time, Captain. But not long. We will press on again soon.”
“Thank you, my Emperor,” said the captain, and he and Deez set about making a hurried camp. In moments they had a small chem fire going. Vader stood near it, staring down into the flames. His Master sat cross-legged in a pose of meditation. Tension hung between Vader and his Master, tension whose provenance Vader could not quite place.
“Master?”
“Do you think treachery begins in the deed, my friend?”
“No. It begins in the thoughts.”
His Master showed teeth: perhaps a smile, perhaps a snarl. “And yet we can’t know the thoughts of another, especially those of a traitor, who guards his thoughts closely so as not to reveal his treachery. And so we must draw out the thoughts to have them manifest in deeds, and thus reveal the truth. Do you agree?”
Vader stared into the flames. “I hear nothing with which to disagree.”
Again the smile or snarl from his Master. “You were a traitor, were you not, Lord Vader?”
Vader’s breathing caught on the hook of sudden anger. “What did you say?”
“To the Jedi. To Padmé. To Obi-Wan. To all those you loved.”
His Master turned to look at him, his eyes reflecting the flames.
Vader didn’t know the answer his Master wanted to hear, so he simply answered with the truth. “Yes.”
His Master turned his eyes back to the fire.
The captain of the Royal Guard sat on the ground across from them.
“You should remove your helmet, Captain,” the Emperor said. “It must wear on you to have it on all the time.”
“Thank you, my Emperor,” the captain said. He removed his helmet to reveal a mien familiar to Vader, the scarred face of a clone, the features an echo of so many faces from Vader’s past. Rex. Cody. Fives. Echo. The roster of names moved through Vader’s mind, each of them a trigger for a memory, each of them a ghost from his past.
“Is there an Imperial installation nearby, my lords?” the captain asked. Sergeant Deez removed his helmet, too, showing a face that wasn’t that of a clone: a clean-shaven, ax-jawed human with short-cropped blond hair and tattoos of abstract patterns inked on his cheeks.
If Deez had been a clone, Vader imagined they’d have called him Ink.
“What are we looking for, my lords?” Deez asked.
Vader’s Master stared into the glow of the fire. “Oh, I think we’ll know when we find it, Sergeant.”
“Of course, my lord,” said the captain. He broke out premade meals for himself and his comrade. Neither the Emperor nor Vader ate. Instead, both meditated, communing with the Force, Vader standing, his Master seated.
Vader, still pondering his Master’s words, drifted into the Force, let its rough currents pull him where it willed. As was so often the case, he saw moments from his past, a series of inchoate, violent, pain-filled images and sounds.
His decapitation of Darth Tyranus, the first kill his Master had asked of him.
Padmé’s screams.
His murder of the younglings in the Jedi Temple, their eyes wide with a fear that only fed his righteous wrath.
Padmé’s screams, her pain.
Treachery.
Mace Windu’s shouts of rage as he’d realized the truth.
Padmé’s screams.
Traitor.
The fires of Mustafar, his hatred for Obi-Wan, who’d feared him and tried to keep him from his destiny, who’d tried to take Padmé from him, who’d put him in the armor.
Padmé’s screams, her despair.
“No, Anakin! No!”
Vader opened his eyes, his fists clenched, his anger overflowing, to see his Master standing across the fire from him, staring at him. His Master’s expression was unreadable, his features partially hidden within the depths of his hood.
Vader sensed the anger in his Master, sensed, too, the threat that lived in that anger. Vader did not fear it, not at that moment.
“Where are the guards?” he asked. The Royal Guards were nowhere to be seen. “How long was I…”
“I sent them away. They will return soon.” A long silence, then, “What did you see as you meditated?”
“I saw…deaths, and faces from my past, the events that led me to this moment. I see them frequently when I consider the destiny the Force has for me.”
His Master’s anger grew, though his expression did not change. His voice was the low murmur of a predator. “Your destiny, yes. I have seen hints of it, as well.”
For a moment, caught up in the aftereffects of his vision, Vader wondered what it would be like to face his Master in battle, to take his small, frail body in his hands, lift it from the ground, and…
He cut off the thoughts, but his Master had sensed them, for his face split in a dark smile.
“I see you, apprentice.”
“And I see you, Master. You think I long for the past when I see it in visions, but you’re wrong. I don’t long for it. I think of it and the ma
n I was then and regard it all with contempt. And the only thing that makes it tolerable to ponder is that it ends with me here, in this armor, with you. I feel no longing. I feel no regret. My memories feed my anger and my anger feeds my strength and so am I able to serve you, and the Force, better. Your doubt…”
“Continue,” said his Master.
Vader did, heedless of what might come next. “Your doubt is unwarranted and…angers me.”
Several moments passed, each Sith Lord staring across the flames at the other. Finally Vader stepped around the fire and fell to one knee before his Master. He felt his Master’s eyes on him, the eyes that saw deeply into everything. He imagined his Master considering options.
“The guards are returning,” his Master said. “And they are not alone. Rise, Lord Vader.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Belkor sat in the copilot’s seat of the small, maneuverable search-and-rescue craft. They were scouring Ryloth’s surface near the equator, the search location based on the data Cham had provided about Mors’s descent trajectory.
“Hard to run a search in the dark with comm down to line of sight,” Ophim, the pilot flying with him, complained.
“It is,” Belkor said.
Belkor had assembled a team of men who owed him favors, men who wore the uniform but had no particular loyalty to the Empire, men who’d do what he asked without too many questions. He’d given them a cover story, of course: The rebels who’d brought down the Perilous had done so in the guise of Imperial troops with the apparent aid of Moff Delian Mors. Belkor had a general location for the Moff’s ship, which loyal Imperial troops had almost brought down. Belkor told the men that they were among a select group to whom he’d confided, because didn’t know how deep the conspiracy might run.
If anyone suspected him of concocting a story, none of them had spoken up. They owed Belkor their positions and the perks of power; they owed Mors nothing.
“Run through the search grid again,” he transmitted to the four V-wings flying beside his search-and-rescure craft. “Fly a comm ladder. I need to know what you see.”
They acknowledged his order and veered off to search again. They’d staggered their formation so that one was always in contact with another, and that one with yet another, and so on all the way back to Belkor’s ship. Maintaining the formation required constant attention and limited their ability to search.
