—
For the rest of that afternoon, they saw nothing but sand and dunes. Up each dune they trudged, pulling their sleds and carrying their packs and carefully sipping the smallest amount of liquid. At the crest of the dune, they couldn’t help halting, scanning the area ahead for something, anything, that was not sand. Again and again, they were disappointed. All they saw were endless gray dunes rising in endless waves against an endless sky of molten blue. Gray clouds bunched, far off, darkening the horizon back the way they’d come. The Scyre seemed doomed to dwell under an oppressive pall and the threat of thunder. But here, just a few days away, not a single cloud dotted the sky; there was nothing to provide either shade or the hope of water. The air wavered over the sand, the dry heat bouncing up to burn Siv’s eyes. The land itself drove them forward, spurring them toward the promise of Brendol’s ship and the imagined peace and coolness of space.
That evening, Phasma stopped at the top of a dune and held out her hand in the universal signal to approach with caution. Siv turned to meet Torben’s gaze, and he transferred both sled ropes to his left hand and hefted his club.
Up ahead, Phasma pulled out her quadnocs, looked through them briefly, and then passed them to Brendol, who also gazed for quite some time.
“What do you make of it?” he asked.
Phasma shook her head. “This is not our territory. We know nothing of this place. Have you not seen something like it before in your travels?”
The reprimand in her tone must’ve escaped him. He shook his head and frowned his pinched little frown. “I can’t even tell what it is. Animal or mineral, we shall find out. It’s directly in our path.”
Phasma looked to her people. “Draw your weapons. Be ready.”
“What is it?” Gosta asked, cresting the dune by Phasma’s side.
“We don’t know,” was all Phasma said.
Phasma and Brendol led on, the troopers and Gosta behind them. Siv and Torben came last, their weapons drawn. As they topped the dune, Siv was itching with curiosity. What could possibly have both Phasma and Brendol at a loss? What she saw beyond gave her no answers.
The sand stretched out flat for a long time, with no dunes for what would be several hours of walking. Out in the middle of that infinite flatness was a large black mound. From this distance, and with the air wavering and hot and full of whipping gray sand, it was truly impossible to guess at what it might be, or even how large it was or if it was alive.
The shape was black with sparks of reflected sun, here and there, that suggested something about it was shifting or possibly metallic. It was lumpy and seemed big—bigger than a person, bigger than the Nautilus. The sand around it was the same gray that had become their entire world, and there was nothing to mark a difference of topography—no greenery, or rock, or metal. Just the slightly heaving, shifting, dark blob out in the middle of nowhere.
Now, one must remember that Siv and the other Scyre warriors had never seen anything living on land that was bigger than a human. They’d seen mouths in the ocean but not the giant bodies they had to be attached to. They’d seen bits and pieces of huge beasts washed up and battered against the rocks, but truly, not a one of them could’ve named or described the monsters whose skins had become their own cloaks and boots. There were no mammals in their world bigger than the few remaining tiny goats, and even the lizards that had pulled the sleds had been a revelation to them. They’d never seen a building or a machine that hadn’t been relegated to parts and blades. So how could they possibly know what they were looking at? As for Brendol, perhaps he had some idea, but no one could ever tell what he was thinking, and he certainly offered no hints.
“We’ll skirt around it. Keep your weapons ready,” Phasma said.
Not that she had to tell them to do so. Her warriors were well trained. She’d made sure of it.
“You okay?” Torben asked, and Siv glared at him.
“Of course. Don’t doubt me.”
They crept down the dune and into the great, flat valley. Everyone was twitchy, weapons in hand, scanning for signs of life, for more lizards and attackers, or for the big, bulky thing to do anything but just sit there, throwing an equally big and bulky shadow onto the sand. It didn’t act like an animal, though—didn’t shake or snort or blink great, yellow eyes at the trespassers. There was something uncomfortably alien about it, about the way it didn’t seem to care or even notice them there. They drew even with it, then moved around it, and Siv went pallid and white-eyed when she told me about it.
The words don’t take long to say, but the actual journey went on for hours. Hours approaching the thing, hours moving around it, hours getting past it. All the time, it did nothing but shiver to itself, for no reason they could discern.
I remember this part of the story because for all the violence she described in our time together, Siv looked the most haunted when she said that bit.
After they were around the thing, Brendol stopped. Everyone else stopped and stared at him; no one felt safe. They were in the middle of the open, near something disconcerting they couldn’t explain, and every nerve in their well-tuned bodies told them to get the hell away. But Brendol stopped, because that was his way, wasn’t it? Brendol was curious, and Brendol needed answers.
“Give me your blaster,” he said to his nearest trooper.
Once he had the blaster, he took aim and fired at the heaving black mound.
And it exploded.
The black skin they’d been watching shift and quiver was a huge flock of birds, or bats, or some mixture of the two. Whatever they were, they were black and small and fast and sharp, and they burst away and into a cloud that moved as one, screeching like death. The glimmers underneath the black proved to be more of the golden beetles, and when they, too, shifted aside, the true form of the lumpy thing was revealed. It was a monster, a dead thing being torn apart by the scavengers. Something like the lizards they’d seen earlier, but bigger and with great ridges and spines up and down its sides. There wasn’t much left of it, just blankets of the skin hanging off stark bones and a brown hole flapping in the side.
“We don’t need the water that bad,” Phasma decided.
“Not with that many beetles,” Brendol concurred.
“Wait, what’s that?” Gosta asked.
The insides of the dead beast rippled, and two bright-red lights appeared in the hole in its skin. A growl went up, and a beast slunk out of the carcass, a wet-looking thing like a hairless boar-wolf, its skin the same color as the gray sand. It stalked out on long legs that bent backward and was covered with warts and bumps, all splashed with rusty red gore stains from its feasting. Its red eyes were pinned to the group, and it crouched briefly before leaping into a run right for them. Two more of the creatures appeared and followed it, loping in a V-formation to attack.
True to form, Phasma pulled her spear and her dagger and ran for the first beast, shouting her war cry. Gosta was on her heels, and Siv and Torben followed. Siv’s leg muscles ached from so much struggling up and down through sand, but they loosened up on the flat run, and she veered slightly right as Gosta veered left, each of them swinging for one of the foul, glistening creatures. There was a clash of flesh and metal, but Siv’s entire being now focused on the wolf-thing. Her job was to kill it before it could hurt anyone else. The Scyre folk knew that any wound could go toxic, but the lore said that animal bites and scratches were more likely than most to kill.
Unlike the lizard, the skinwolf, as they later named it, didn’t go down on the first slice. Its skin was thick and rough, and her sword slash made a cut that seemed to stick itself back together, not even getting down into the meat of the thing. It went for her arm, and she yanked back and slashed at its slender ankles, hoping to hack through thin skin and into tendon or bone. Her scythe hit and skittered off, barely doing any damage, and the creature caught the hem of her robe and shook it, yanking Siv onto her back. She shoved up with her curved blade, but it didn’t pierce the wolf’s wrinkle
d neck, and she had to drop her scythes to hold its bulk away as it snapped for her face.
Pew!
A red-hot bolt zipped past her wrist and hit the beast, and it howled and backed away, pawing at what was left of its nose.
Pew!
Another bolt caught it in the ribs, and the creature limped once and dropped to its side, a hole steaming in its wet, gray chest.
“Need a hand?” The female trooper held out a glove to Siv, who gladly took it and stood.
The other troopers were taking care of the two remaining skinwolves, which had both absorbed numerous cuts but refused to slow down or respond to their injuries. The blasters were brutally efficient, though, and the creatures didn’t last long under the assault of laser bolts. Two shots each, and they died.
“Did anyone take damage?” Phasma asked.
Brendol held up his arm, showing a rent in the cloth that went down to his skin. It wasn’t quite bleeding, more like a burn, just a red line against the pale belly of his arm.
Phasma exhaled in annoyance. “We should’ve put you in Carr’s leathers. Siv, put liniment on it. General Hux, let me know if it gets any worse or the fever comes. If you’re lucky, it won’t.”
“And if it does?” Brendol asked, faced pinched as he inspected the wound.
Phasma gave him a grim, determined stare.
“Then you lose your arm at the elbow.”
Brendol glared at her like she was a fool. “But wouldn’t that make an even worse wound? Attract even more infection?”
“No.” Siv knelt before him with the ancient metal tin that held the oracle liniment her mother had taught her to make. The liniment formulation was different from the salve, crafted specifically for abrasions and wounds and including soothing herbs that still grew near the cliffs of the Scyre. When she held out her hand, Brendol paused a moment before offering up his arm. “The infection comes from the animal or lichen, not from the air. A clean blade makes a clean cut, fire cauterizes the wound, and the liniment prevents further contagion.”
“Are you trained in medicine?” Brendol asked her, looking interested in someone besides Phasma for the first time.
Phasma stepped forward. “This knowledge keeps our people alive. Children learn it as soon as they can speak. Children who don’t tell adults about their cuts die by nightfall. Tell him, Gosta.”
In a singsong voice, Gosta chanted,
“If you get the smallest wound
Better tell your Mama soon
Edges red and skin gone white
Gonna lose a toe tonight.
Don’t tell Mama and you’ll see
Wound goes putrid, dead you’ll be.”
Brendol shook his head as if to rid his mind of the words. “How very macabre.”
“We don’t know that word. But you make it sound like something bad. Like we have a choice to be other than we are. This is our life. This is why my people are strong.” Phasma put a hand on Gosta’s shoulder, and the younger girl glowed with pride. “Even our children can fight for the clan. We grow up knowing exactly how hard life on Parnassos will be and what is expected of us. We don’t mourn the weak.”
“Are you saying that the man we lost today, a man you chose and trained, was weak?”
Brendol said it like it was a sort of test, and Phasma stepped toward him, just a little too close.
“Carr was strong and I trained him well, but he was unlucky, and now he’s gone. Those who survive must move forward.”
Brendol smiled as if these words pleased him, but Siv couldn’t imagine why.
“If only I had a comm,” he mused. “These slogans would do so well in our program.”
“Your program?”
Siv had finished applying the liniment, and she pulled down Brendol’s sleeve. Brendol inclined his head toward her in mute thanks, stood, and began walking, his hands behind his back. After jerking her head at her warriors, Phasma moved to walk by his side. Everyone else hurried in their wake. Siv was glad that she wasn’t expected to use the detraxor on the foul dogs. For all that they were tough and strong, they looked diseased and wrong. She secretly worried that their essence might carry whatever pathogen had caused the hideous boils and warts to form on their skin. As Torben took up his sled ropes, he and Siv hurried ahead to hear what Phasma and Brendol were discussing.
“I have a special task in the First Order,” Brendol said. “My rank is general, very similar to your rank here among your people. I’m a leader. My greatest responsibility is to design the program that will train up the young warriors, teach them how to fight while helping them understand why we fight. As you can imagine, this involves not only the physical aspects of instruction, which I leave to younger and fitter officers, but also education. We have sayings like the rhyme about wounds, songs and stories and parables that we use to instill our values and beliefs into our fighters from the earliest age. The end result is what you see here before you.” Brendol gestured to his three troopers. “The finest warriors in the galaxy, trained to follow my orders precisely using a variety of weapons and equipment and while navigating a wide selection of environments. They must know how to think on their feet and act quickly no matter how hostile the situation. It seems like a task for which you, Phasma, might be particularly well qualified.”
Phasma snorted, unmoved by his praise. “You say you raise the finest warriors in the galaxy, but I would test my fighters against yours any day. A life like ours adds a determination, a grit that can’t be instilled with clever songs.”
Brendol nodded, looking amused. “I look forward to hearing more of your strategies and how they might be applied in a more, say, controlled environment. Perhaps we will one day sit together and watch your warriors test mine, but under ideal conditions. You would be most impressed, I think, with our training barracks on the Finalizer. ”
Behind her mask, Phasma’s face was inscrutable. “That would be most instructive,” she said, her cool accent and cadence matching Brendol’s perfectly. It sent a chill up Siv’s spine.
They walked across the flat plain until the sun began to set and the air grew heavy and cold. The world was the same in every direction, endless sand with no place to hide. They would be exposed no matter where they camped for the night.
“We’ll rest here,” Phasma said, stopping in a place no different from any other place. “The warriors will keep watch in shifts, and we rise at dawn. I’ll take first watch.”
Her warriors nodded in response, and after glancing at Brendol, so did the troopers. Brendol was left out of the guard duties, and Siv wasn’t sure if it was because he appeared to have few fighting skills or because Phasma considered him superior in rank and above such tasks. Back in the Scyre, Keldo had never held guard duties for this same combination of traits. But it wasn’t Siv’s job to think about the hierarchy. Her job was to heal wounds and distribute the water and salve. Normally, Gosta would’ve been collecting bits of kindling all day, and as they settled down, she would build a fine fire, but here, in the sand, there was nothing to collect, nothing to burn.
Although the Scyre was a lonely and forbidding place, Siv had never felt so miserable and exposed in the world. The hard winds caught at her robes, plucked at every edge of cloth, and blew so much sand about that the only way to eat was to slip chunks of jerky and dried sea vegetable underneath her mask. It was a wretched night, and everyone seemed to sleep very lightly, tossing and turning in the sand and waking, startled, half covered in gray, to dust the sand off and try to find a more comfortable position. There was none. The Scyre folk were accustomed to sleeping in their net hammocks, alone or with a trusted companion, but as the temperature dropped and dropped yet again, they moved close together, searching half asleep for some kind of warmth. Siv was glad enough when Torben woke her for her watch, as sleep had brought little comfort.
She spent her watch on high alert, scanning the pitch darkness for any new sensation. There was little light, the stars obscured by swirls of sand, and nothing cou
ld penetrate the blackness. The only sound was the high keening of the wind and the soft shuffling of the sand. Everything smelled of minerals and bodies, for the Scyre folk had sweated through their layers during the day and were now drenched with the sour tang of unwashed flesh, sticky with sand. Even through her mask, sand flecked Siv’s lips, and when she grew frustrated enough to lick it off, it crunched unpleasantly between her teeth. The Scyre began to seem a friendly place by comparison. Whatever Phasma thought they would gain from Brendol Hux and his ship—Siv could only hope it was worth this suffering, worth losing Carr.
When her hour had passed, she went to wake one of the troopers, as the Scyre folk had all taken their turn at guarding the camp. Her eyes had adjusted to what little light there was, and she scanned the loose group of sleeping bodies and chose the one closest to her, reaching out to gently touch the sleeping soldier’s armored shoulder.
“It’s time,” she said, quite low, and a glove landed on her hand and twisted it so that her wrist nearly popped.
She knew better than to cry out. “I’m on your side,” she whispered.
The trooper jerked upright, his mouth going from a snarl to a frown as he released her hand. “Sorry,” he said. “Training, you know.” The man’s voice was low and rough, not nearly as clipped and proper as Brendol’s.
“It’s fine,” she said. “We’re all jumpy.”
“I’ll take it from here, then.”
“Be strong.” When his eyebrows drew down in confusion, she explained, “That’s what we say when switching watch.”
“You do this every night?”
“Of course. Both in the home camp and when sitting as sentry.”
He shook his head. “The Finalizer ’s barracks seem more and more cozy the longer I’m here.”
She nodded and moved closer to Torben, pillowing her head on the sandy sleeve of her robe. Torben was on his side, and she wiggled toward him until her back touched his arm. He reached out and drew her in close to the warm curl of his body, and they both sighed in relief. For all the horrors of the sands, this embrace was an entirely new experience, so different from bodies tumbling together in a hammock swinging precariously over the sea. Memories of Keldo and Carr flashed through Siv’s mind, though it wasn’t the way of the Scyre to mourn those who were lost or gone. Dwelling on the past risked everyone’s life in the present. But it was lucky she took that moment to pause and put away her sorrow, for in the stillness, she was certain she heard a sound that should not have been there.
Phasma (Star Wars): Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Star Wars: Journey to Star Wars: the Last Jedi) Page 12
