by Claudia Gray
“Then why, Lieutenant Commander Ree, has he abandoned his post?”
“I can only think that he is—in despair, sir. Overcome by the loss of so many friends.” Ciena hesitated before continuing. This came close to betraying Thane’s secrets, and she had almost done that once before, when she’d mentioned his problems with his father in front of Jude. But she needed to save Thane and his commission now, any way she could. “Lieutenant Kyrell grew up in extremely difficult circumstances. His family provides no support whatsoever. So his fellow officers—we’re his family. All he has. That loss has affected him profoundly.”
“He’s not the only one who lost people,” Ronnadam snapped, but then his expression grew more thoughtful. “And he’s not the only officer we’ve seen falter. The same offenses that would have gotten a man cashiered two years ago are now handled on a case-by-case basis…for now. There will of course be a penalty to be paid, but if Lieutenant Kyrell returns to duty in short order, he can continue his career without undue difficulty.”
Ciena breathed out in relief. At least there was still time to save Thane from a terrible mistake.
“Do you know where he is, Lieutenant Commander Ree? If so, you realize you must report that information.”
“No, sir. I don’t have Lieutenant Kyrell’s current location. But I know where to begin looking for information: our homeworld, Jelucan.”
“Very well, Lieutenant Commander. I’ll put through orders for you to travel to Jelucan on the next transport.”
Her eyes widened. “Me, sir?”
Ronnadam snapped, “Do you think such duty is beneath you?”
“No, sir! I simply thought—an ISB officer—”
“Our agents are busier now than at any other time in our history. You’re already familiar with the area, so sending you instead is a better use of resources.” His voice had acquired a dangerous edge. “Unless, of course, you have superior ideas?”
Ciena was almost glad for the misunderstanding; better if Ronnadam didn’t realize how badly she wanted to be the one to find Thane. “No, sir. I’ll leave for Jelucan immediately.”
“Search for him high and low. Use whatever resources you must.” Ronnadam’s eyes narrowed. “And if you hear so much as one whisper of Kyrell’s involvement with the Rebellion—you will follow that whisper wherever it leads and report every word. Do you understand?”
Ciena had a chance to rescue Thane because the Empire wanted to use her as a spy. She’d never wanted to inform on anyone, for any reason. Duty demanded loyalty, but loyalty was owed to friends as well as superiors. For the first time she realized how dark the tasks that fell to her in this war might be.
But that was the price of finding Thane again.
“Yes, sir,” she said, thinking, Whatever it takes.
IT WAS THE FOURTH and final freighter haul that got to Thane.
He’d kept his head down, remained quiet, and made it off Kerev Doi easily enough. The ships he had boarded for the next few trips gave him no trouble, either. On a passenger ship, he would’ve had little privacy and an overly interested crew to deal with. On a freighter, however, the few extra berths were sold to workers who wanted cheap transport and no frills. Thane didn’t have to worry about being noticed there.
But when the last freighter came out of hyperspace near Jelucan, Thane grabbed his bag and headed for the disembarkation area. Long metal benches bolted to the walls had a few harnesses for those worried about a bumpy ride down; he strapped himself in and waited. Another passenger did the same—then another—and a fourth.
None of these people behaved markedly different than Thane himself. They wore the sort of nondescript clothing that could be purchased on almost any world. They showed no undue interest in the people around them.
And yet any one of them could be an Imperial spy.
The idea latched on to Thane so hard he could scarcely breathe. The woman with the long salt-and-pepper braid—had she just glanced at his face? The Ottegan, with his wide-set eyes—who knew what he might be observing? Or the Volpai there, with all the fingers on all four of his hands tapping at his data feed—was he reporting Thane to the authorities even now?
Everywhere else, Thane had known he possessed the advantage of surprise. There was no way for the Empire to predict his earlier moves, but they might have guessed he’d return to Jelucan. So someone could have traced him to that freighter. Or an entire platoon of stormtroopers might be waiting for him in the landing bay—
Instead, the freighter landed without incident. The other four passengers dispersed without even looking at Thane. He laughed at his paranoia as he shouldered his bag. You’re on familiar ground now. Soon you’ll feel like yourself again.
Yet he didn’t.
At first Thane believed he was only suffering from reverse culture shock, the strangeness of home after a long time away. Valentia, the grand city he’d admired as a boy—of course it would look small and provincial after he’d spent three years on Coruscant. If people seemed guarded and less friendly, probably that was because he was contrasting their reactions to the small boy he’d been with the more reserved reception they’d give an adult. And he was still on edge. His unease deepened the shadows.
But the longer he looked around, the more certain he was. His world had changed. The Empire had changed it.
The senatorial building everyone had been so proud of on the day Jelucan joined the Empire—that had been taken over by the military to sequester troops. Thane kept his distance, but he could tell that it was no short-term emergency measure. Already engineers were constructing a high surrounding wall, and the perimeter force field overhead glinted when sunlight broke through the gray sky.
Valentia might never have approached Coruscant’s polish and sophistication, but it had been a vibrant, bustling city. Now the entire place seemed more crowded and emptier at the same time. Ramshackle, makeshift shanties had been built next to the older, stone-carved buildings; these clearly served as housing for itinerant workers, who had come out of the mountains looking for new opportunities that never materialized.
Or had these people been forced out? Thane wasn’t sure. He could tell from the clothes they wore that both valley kindred and second-wavers were among the new vagabond population. Yet the two groups were harder to tell apart than they’d been before. Both the brilliant silks and plain homespun cloth had begun to be replaced by cheap mass-produced garments. A dense, stultifying sameness had settled over the land.
Even the entertainment was affected. Thane’s rented room stood on the higher floor of a building that also housed a cantina at ground level. When he was a boy, his father had sometimes taken him into such establishments, promising to have “just one drink.” So Thane had spent many long hours sitting in a far corner watching podraces or the spice-world holos he enjoyed so much.
The cantinas were rougher now—less neighborhood pub, more seedy bar. Most of the patrons were not local characters; outworlders seemed to have crowded them out. As Thane nursed his ale, he stared at the screens in disbelief. Every single program was Imperial propaganda of some kind or another: a documentary ostensibly about the Empire’s successful “building programs” on Thurhanna Minor (really enormous power facilities that squatted over once-pretty countryside) was broken up by recruiting calls for stormtroopers (“Discover adventure and serve your Empire!”) or news items about Emperor Palpatine receiving guests as he smiled and nodded. Worst of all was an ad for a special report scheduled to air soon, in which the “full extent of the treasonous acts of sedition on the planet Alderaan will finally be exposed!”
Thane had thought everyone would be talking about Alderaan. No one did. The silence about an entire Core World planet’s destruction told Thane more than any gossip would have. Everyone is thinking about it. Everyone is afraid. If the Empire would destroy a world as important and prosperous as Alderaan…no place in the galaxy was safe.
(The Imperial broadcasts were vague about the Death Star’s destruction
, speaking only of an “unprecedented attack by the Rebel Alliance.” Thane had first thought the Empire would play it up as a rebel atrocity, but then he realized that it was more important for the populace to believe that the Empire could destroy another world at any moment.)
When he walked outside, he was disturbed even by the color of the sky. Jelucan’s atmosphere usually showed itself as more gray than blue, but the air had always been clear and sparkling, and the gray overhead had the sheen of a fine mineral. Now the skies were darker even when they were cloudless, as if expecting a storm that never came. Had the mining begun to affect the atmosphere?
Thane had argued with himself about whether or not to contact his family when he arrived. Little as his father cared for him and as much as his mother wanted to curry favor with the Empire, he couldn’t believe they’d actually turn him in. Even if they wouldn’t have protected him, they wouldn’t have wanted to endure the shame. At home he could have saved his credits, taken his time, and waited for Ciena.
He could even have ridden his old line down to the Fortress, tidied it up, made it nice. It seemed so right to meet her there again—
In the end, though, Thane had decided against contacting his parents. He had no need for his father’s drunken contempt or his mother’s outrage; least of all did he want to hear them talking about how Dalven was doing.
(Given the severe shortage of Imperial troops, even an oaf like Dalven had probably received a promotion. He’d be fool enough to take pride in it, too.)
But as the days went on, his spirits sunk lower. Ciena still hadn’t appeared. What if she’d tried to desert but been captured? The thought of her in jail, feeling shamed and hopeless, sickened him. (He didn’t give in to despair; Ciena was too smart, too capable to be easily caught. She’d wait until the moment was right, but that moment might not come for a while.) The scant funds Thane had managed to escape with had mostly gone to pay for his freighter trips. His rent on the tiny room already seemed like too much, and he was living on nothing but street food—thin slices of suspiciously sourced meat cooked on small makeshift grillers outside the shanties, or thin “stews” thickened with ground grain.
Like most cadets, Thane had dreamed of having a few days to sleep late, ignore military discipline, and do whatever he wanted. Yet without the strict framework he’d lived within for the past few years, he found himself rudderless—bewildered and irritated by more freedom than he knew what to do with. Instead of fulfilling his assigned tasks at a preset schedule, he did…nothing. Stubble appeared on his face as the beard suppressant wore off, and buying more didn’t seem worth the credits it would cost. Every night he had nightmares—about Alderaan, the Death Star, his father, or Ciena in danger. The only thing that separated him from the down-and-outers around him was that Thane didn’t spend all his money on ale, though by now he understood why some people did. With each day he sunk deeper into melancholy.
At first he’d thought it would be easy to find some kind of employment; there was always work for pilots, even unlicensed ones. But now he realized he couldn’t do that on Jelucan. The Empire’s presence there was too strong for a deserter to wander through the ports asking for a job. No doubt he could indenture himself to one of the less savory freighters that passed through—they never looked into people’s backgrounds—but that was only one step removed from selling himself into slavery.
Very few things seemed worth trying any longer. It felt as if his entire life were frozen in time, waiting for Ciena to arrive. And if she never came, he didn’t know what would become of him and didn’t much care.
Thane hit his limit one night about two weeks in, as he sprawled on his bed in his sleep tunic and pants. The pale plaster walls of his room were blank, his coverlet a light beige without any pattern. Given its price, the space was surprisingly comfortable—but Thane felt as if it were taunting him with its emptiness.
In the academy’s Security Protocols and Interrogation Techniques class, they’d taught that one of the most effective methods for breaking a person down was simply to make that person stare at a plain wall without ever sleeping. The sleep deprivation and boredom did what pain and threats could not. A prisoner’s mind would split itself open, spilling every word hidden inside, just to end the exhausting monotony. Thane had never understood how that worked until now.
A commotion outside made him sit upright. It sounded like some of the street merchants were folding up their not-quite-legal wares in a hurry. Thane went to the one small window in his room and pulled back the screen. On the ground a few floors down, he saw an Imperial patrol cruiser that had obviously just pulled up.
Then, on the stairs outside, he heard the thump of boots as someone headed his way.
All right, think fast. That’s a single-person cruiser. They only sent one guy. You can take one guy out. Not without a weapon, though. Was there anything he could use? But the few items in the room were all either too big to be lifted or too small to do any meaningful damage.
Maybe he isn’t coming for you. There are dealers in the neighborhood. Prostitutes. Smugglers. Plenty of people to arrest. But then they’d send one of the local paramilitaries, not an Imperial officer.
Thane took a deep breath as he ran his hands through his short hair. He’d have to bluff his way through it as best he could. If he denied being Thane Kyrell and acted completely confused, he might throw the guy off for a minute—long enough to grab the officer’s blaster.
But could he shoot a guy who was just doing his job? Someone who had been his fellow officer just a few days ago?
A fist thumped on Thane’s door. He mussed his covers as if he’d been asleep, went to the door, and said—as if groggy—“Mmhmmn. Yeah? Who is it?”
The reply: “I’m here on official business.”
He knew that voice.
Instantly, Thane opened the door and saw Ciena standing there in uniform. The sight of her felt like the first breath he’d taken in years.
“You made it.” He pulled her inside his room, locked the door behind them, and hugged her tightly. As he breathed in the scent of her skin, he had to marvel at Ciena’s brilliance. She hadn’t deserted; she’d come here on official business, making sure the Empire would pay her way and delaying any other pursuit. “You’re a genius, you know that? I kept waiting, and I thought they might have stopped you, but here you are. Here you are.”
Thane kissed her then, long and deeply. That damned gray uniform was too stiff against his hands, but they could worry about that later. Ciena kissed him back just as passionately—but when their lips parted she looked so troubled that he wondered if he’d done something wrong.
Or maybe she was worried about their safety. “Did the Empire send anyone else?”
“No. They were sure you’d go somewhere besides Jelucan. I knew you’d guess that, so of course you’d come here—”
Thane grinned. She understood him so well.
But Ciena looked even more distressed than before. “Thane, what have you done?”
And then he finally began to realize how far apart they still were.
An hour later, Ciena sat with Thane in the cantina below. She’d been afraid they would be overheard, witnessed, maybe even turned in, but Thane had shaken his head. “Trust me,” he’d told her. “The kind of people who come here? They give Imperial officers a wide berth. Nobody we know is likely to show up.”
“It’s not worth the risk,” she’d said.
But Thane’s square jaw had set in the way that she knew meant complete determination or just plain stubbornness. “If I don’t get out of this room, I am going to lose it. Trust me. We’ll be safe.”
Sure enough, they had the entire corner of the place to themselves. Most of the patrons were newcomers to the planet, not natives, and they crowded at the front near the viewscreens. She and Thane sat at their small table alone. Merely being in a run-down cantina like that would have unnerved her a few years ago or even now, if she weren’t so wrapped up in trying to stop T
hane from making the worst mistake of his life.
“You can come back,” she repeated. “I know you think they’ll arrest you, and at any other time they would have, but they badly need qualified officers after what happened.”
“I don’t want to come back,” he said, not for the first time.
Ciena still refused to believe it. “Three years in the academy—all that work, all that effort, for nothing?”
“You think I’m happy about this? I’m not. But after what I’ve seen, what the Empire is doing to the Bodach’i—after Alderaan—I can’t wear that uniform any longer.” Thane leaned over his glass of ale, head in one hand, like a man with a headache. “I thought we agreed about this.”
“I thought we agreed that after what happened to so many of our friends aboard the Death Star, we needed to stand together. The rebels killed thousands of our fellow officers. They killed Grand Moff Tarkin—”
“Tarkin was nice to us,” Thane admitted. “Meeting him changed our lives.”
“—and they killed Jude,” Ciena continued. “Do you condone that?”
“I’m not joining the damned Rebellion, Ciena. I’m not condoning what happened to the Death Star or what happened to Alderaan. Are you? That’s impossible. You’d never think destroying an entire world was the right thing to do.”
Miserably, she shook her head. “No. I understand the thinking that led to the attack on Alderaan—but I don’t condone it. The thing is, I don’t have to.” Ciena leaned closer, looking into Thane’s blue eyes and willing him to understand. “The Emperor and the Moffs have to see, now, that destroying Alderaan did no good. It didn’t stop the Rebellion; if anything, it made the rebels more desperate.”
“So two billion people died in vain,” Thane said.
