by Claudia Gray
Thane didn’t look up from the open panel in his wing. “My guess is that the dramatic stuff is what’s most likely to get you killed. We can deal with that when we come to it. I’ll do whatever we have to do, but I’m not suicidal.”
No reply followed for a few minutes, during which Thane remained engrossed in his work. He’d almost forgotten he and Kendy were even speaking until she said, in a low voice, “You know that’s what Ciena reported.”
He remained where he was, staring into the wires and chips that powered his ship. The wrench in his hand remained poised above the coupling he intended to work on. He didn’t look up at Kendy. “What did Ciena report?”
“She identified you as a probable suicide on Jelucan. I heard about it through some other classmates of ours—and I sent a holo to Ciena right away, because I couldn’t believe it. She didn’t really want to talk, though. At the time I thought it was because she was hurting. Then when I realized you were here with the Rebellion, I figured, hey, Thane covered his tracks pretty well. But the more I think about it…you could’ve fooled anyone else in the galaxy more easily than Ciena. The two of you know each other too well. She covered for you, didn’t she?”
“Yeah.” It was as if Thane were back on Jelucan, shutting the door behind Ciena as she left. He’d believed she would turn him in no matter what. “She did.”
Kendy whistled. “Ciena Ree broke an oath?”
“Sometimes we’re loyal to more than one thing.” He spoke from memory, haltingly, but still sure. “When there’s a conflict, we have to choose which loyalty to honor. I guess—I guess she chose me.”
Ciena had covered for him. She’d orchestrated that elaborate lie—when she never lied—all for him. Knowing her as he did, knowing where she came from, Thane realized what it had cost her to do that. The hard knot of anger he’d been carrying in his chest for the past three years finally went slack.
But that made it worse, because his anger had been his only shield against losing her.
The thump of boots hitting the floor of the hangar made Thane look up from his X-wing. Kendy had hopped down from her own starfighter to stand beneath his, hands on her hips. “Then why isn’t she here?”
“—Ciena?”
“She always said an oath was forever, a promise is a promise, you had to be true to your personal honor,” Kendy said, and she had begun to sound angry. “I didn’t even think she could lie. Now I discover that she broke her word to save you, but she still serves in the Imperial Starfleet. How can she do that? If she could defy them for your sake, why won’t she do it for the sake of the entire galaxy?”
“Ciena was never disloyal to the Empire.” Thane hated that but knew it to be true. “One time, back then, she chose her loyalty to me. That doesn’t mean she set aside her oath to the Empire.”
“I don’t see the difference.”
“That’s because you’re not from Jelucan.” And you don’t know Ciena like I do. The coupling could wait. Thane shut the panel, stowed his tools, and slid down to face Kendy. “Listen. You and I were in the Imperial Starfleet, too, remember? Good people can wind up in the service of evil.”
Kendy shook her head as she folded her arms across her chest. The air smelled like welding tools and engine grease; her dark green hair glinted in the harsh hangar lights. “Good people can start to serve the Empire. But if they stay, they stop being good. You do one thing you thought you’d never do—follow one order that makes you feel sick inside—and you tell yourself it’s the only time. This is an exception. This isn’t the way it’s always going to be.”
Thane remembered how he’d tried willing himself not to notice the pitiful slavery of the Bodach’i. “Yeah. I know.”
“But you keep going,” Kendy continued. Her gaze had become distant. By now she spoke to herself more than to him. “You make one more compromise, and then another, and by the time you realize what the Empire really is, you’re almost too far down that road to turn back. I managed to do it, but if the others hadn’t felt the same way—if I’d had to leave on my own instead of getting away with a group—I might have stayed. And I don’t like the person I would have become.”
By now Thane had realized that Kendy was trying to warn him that the Ciena he had known, the one who had saved him, might not even exist any longer.
Probably that was true. By now Ciena might have participated in one of the punitive massacres the Empire inflicted on noncompliant worlds. She could have been in one of the Star Destroyers in the Battle of Hoth, coolly aiming their lasers at the many rebel starfighters that never got away. The Empire had probably corroded her honor into stiffness, snobbery, and ruthlessness.
Knowing all that didn’t make it easier to accept.
Thane said only, “Guess we’ll never know. Not like either of us is ever going to see her again.”
In the instant before he turned to walk away from the hangar, he glimpsed the expression on Kendy’s face. It was pity.
Although he continued working throughout the day, Thane brooded enough that Yendor finally asked him who died, and even Smikes told him to cheer up. After they’d finished the full briefing about D’Qar, he excused himself from the usual group meal and after-shift card games. Instead he holed up in one of the rare empty computer bays on the Liberty, so he could be alone.
Solitude was a rare luxury for a rebel pilot—just as it had been for an academy cadet. He rarely got to be alone with his thoughts. As a boy, if he’d wanted to be alone, he was always able to sneak out to the Fortress. Sometimes Ciena had been there, but her presence had never disturbed him. Before they were ten years old, they’d known when to let each other remain silent, how to be close to each other without intruding. How many people ever understood someone that well?
We wouldn’t understand each other at all, now, he reminded himself. She’s been an Imperial officer for years. Everything good inside Ciena got poisoned a long time ago. If we met up again now, she wouldn’t cover for me; count on it. I need to move on.
Thane stretched out, wiped his brow, and pulled up the news feeds from Jelucan. Seeing his native world made him…whatever the opposite of “homesick” was. The planet changed month by month, always for the worse; it was impossible to read the reports without realizing that the rugged, primitive world he’d grown up on didn’t really exist any longer. The girl he’d known and come to love, the Ciena who had been, was as lost as the old Jelucan.
So he let the first few gloomy images play out in front of him, the desolation ironically easing the ache he felt inside—
—until they reported on the upcoming trial of Verine Ree.
Thane sat up so fast the holo rippled into static, unable to assess the ideal distance to project from its viewer. That’s not possible, he told himself. I imagined that because Kendy and I just talked about Ciena and I’ve got her on my mind. But then the face of Ciena’s mother again took shape. The label hovering beneath her image read THE ACCUSED.
Embezzlement? Impossible. Someone from the valleys might snap in a fit of rage and hit or kill you. Crimes of passion took place there the same way they did anywhere. Perhaps they also fell prey to other criminal impulses—stealing from shopkeepers, that kind of thing. But a crime as premeditated and corrupt as embezzlement went against everything they believed.
Surely there were hypocrites among the valley kindred, but not anyone in Ciena’s family. He only had to know Ciena to be sure of that.
Thane’s lips pressed together in a hard, tight line. If anything remained of the Ciena he’d known, it wouldn’t survive this. Once Ciena condoned her own mother’s conviction and imprisonment, she would truly be lost forever. As lost to him as if he really had killed her that day above Hoth—
Good-bye, he thought, remembering the little girl in her plain brown dress, the fallen autumn leaf. It was time to leave her behind forever.
This can’t be Jelucan, Ciena wanted to say to her shuttle pilot. You’ve brought me to the wrong system.
Yet she k
new too well that she was on the right planet. It was just that everything had changed.
Thick fog seemed to have settled permanently on the ground, and the air was thick with grimy soot. The mines that had carved gouges in so many of the mountains did not attempt to filter the byproducts of the work, so people simply walked through it, coughing, some with kerchiefs or light masks over their mouths and noses.
At first Ciena thought the masks were confusing her, making it harder for her to tell valley folk from second-wavers. Although she’d seen more mass-produced clothing the last time she’d been home, the two groups had still been distinct. Now it was impossible to discern any difference. She’d never thought she would miss the gaudy long coats of the second-wavers, but she searched in vain for even one flash of crimson or cobalt. No shaggy muunyaks wandered the streets any longer; people either rode ridgecrawlers or walked.
Valentia had seemed greatly changed to her three years ago, but it had at least been recognizable then. Now the migrant-worker shanties had multiplied to the point that the original buildings carved of stone were almost invisible. The senatorial building that had become an Imperial garrison was now a full military outpost, ringed by a force field that glowed a sickly green and with a constant flow of officers and stormtroopers walking through its gates.
Jelucani people walked more quickly past the outpost, Ciena noticed. They didn’t want to attract notice. Nobody would meet her eyes.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to come,” Paron Ree repeated, just outside the door of her old bedroom. “I thought of myself, and not of you. What will your superior officers say?”
“They’ll say a mistake has been made, because it has.” Ciena tossed aside her uniform jacket, which landed atop her trousers and boots. Her old clothes still fit and were only slightly musty. The mauve leggings and tunic seemed so impossibly soft; had she really worn things like this every day? She opened the door and stepped into the main room, where her father stood with his hands clasped, as if preparing to give a formal report. She took hold of his shoulders and squeezed. “It’s all right, Pappa. The truth will come out.”
Her father’s face remained tense and drawn. “The real culprit is unlikely to be identified by the authorities.”
“Because they haven’t found him yet? Well, we’ll see about that.” If only she’d already made commander! That rank might have done her some good when she went to speak with the magistrate the next day. “Forgive my saying it, Pappa, but you don’t look good. Have you been eating?”
“With your mother gone, I—lose track of time.”
Ciena paused. She hadn’t realized until earlier that day that her mother remained jailed, and she couldn’t believe her father when he said Mumma couldn’t even have visitors. That was another thing to take care of with the magistrate the next day. She’d requested an audience for first thing in the morning, so surely she would hear from his staff shortly.
Surely.
Her father had some meat and root vegetables in the refrigeration unit, so she started throwing together a basic soup. She hadn’t cooked in so long, but she still remembered which herbs to crush and the way the scent clung to her fingers afterward. Her stomach growled, eager for something—anything—that wasn’t Imperial nutritives. (Ciena had taken a couple of bottles of nutritive drink with her, but…better to save those for the trip home.)
When the broth began to bubble, Ciena stepped away from the hearth and sat on the floor cushions beside the low table, across from her father. Only after she’d taken her place did she realize it didn’t feel awkward at all, even after years of eating at higher tables, sitting on benches or in chairs. Home remained home.
Paron shook his head slowly. “It’s good to see you again, my girl.” He touched the side of her face, just for a moment.
“I should have come earlier.”
“No. I know there’s a war on. You do what you have to do.”
The new gray hair at his temples surprised Ciena, but not as much as his demeanor. Her father had always been her rock—unyielding and often tough, but invariably fair. Forever strong. Now his spirit was weary, so much so that she could see it as clearly as she could see the new lines on his face.
“There aren’t any flags out front,” Ciena said. “Are the kindred refusing to acknowledge the charges?” That was an act of defiance against authority—anathema to those in the valleys—and yet truly unjust accusations sometimes earned that response.
“They acknowledge them.” Her father’s voice tightened. “But no one has come.”
That couldn’t be right. “No one?”
He nodded.
She remembered the days she’d remained at the home of the Nierre family, standing by them in their darkest hours. They had all celebrated together when the accusers had finally backed down and accepted the Imperial version of events…though now that made Ciena wonder. “How could anyone who knows Mumma think she would ever steal?”
“They know she didn’t take the money!” her father snapped. “They all know it, but not one will say so.”
“But—to refuse to stand by someone wrongly accused—”
“The Empire accuses her. We owe our allegiance to the Empire. To stand against it would be the most base dishonor!”
“You can’t stand against Mumma.” Ciena stared at her father in shock. “…can you?”
“Your mother understands the demands of honor, as do I. Have you forgotten them, Ciena?” His piercing gaze caught her short, and she dared say no more.
But what about the truth? she thought. How could the truth not matter anymore? When did it become honorable to accept bald-faced lies?
“Forgive my temper,” he said, and he sounded even more exhausted than before. “These days have been difficult.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But I’m here now.”
An hour passed. They ate soup and bread in silence, and all her fear and worry could not keep Ciena from relishing the taste of real food in her mouth. Sitting near her own hearth, being with her father, even hearing the cries of salt hawks—at moments she could imagine that she had never become an officer, never even left Jelucan. That it was all a dream.
But she couldn’t indulge in daydreaming for long. Reality weighed on her more heavily with every minute that passed, because the answering message from the magistrate’s office never came—and neither did anyone from the valley kindred. Not one soul. The low trench of sand outside their home remained empty, advertising the depths of the Ree family’s shame.
The sky had gone completely dark overhead before Ciena dared to ask, “Pappa, why are you so sure no one will find who really did this?”
“You know the answer. Don’t insult us both by making me tell you.”
She had already drawn the most logical conclusion: the embezzler was an Imperial official, someone who ranked high enough to falsify the records. “The magistrate won’t publicly question Imperial officials? Even then, prosecuting Mumma—”
“Ciena, listen to me. You are a member of the Imperial Starfleet, and I’m proud of that. All that is good in the Empire comes from you and those like you.” He patted her hand. “But every rule, and every ruler, has its bad side as well. Here on Jelucan, we…have seen more of the bad. But we shall not waver in our loyalty.”
She thought again of the sooty skies, the mountains scarred with deep gashes that looked like the claw marks of some monstrous beast. Her father refused to give way even when everything around him spoke of corruption and ruin.
It’s only Jelucan, the result of one dishonest governor. Higher officials don’t know the truth, because if they did, they’d take action.
So Ciena told herself. But even within her own mind, the rationalizations sounded so laughable that she could not believe them, much less speak them aloud. She kept thinking of Ronnadam’s face as he’d granted her leave, and how he’d been so completely certain that the Imperial courts would make the right decision. He knew that because he knew the “right” decision w
ould not be the one that arrived at the truth; it would be the one that justified any actions taken by Imperial officials. The appearance of fairness mattered more than the reality.
And yet. “Not one person from the kindred, Pappa?”
He gestured toward the empty sand, the lack of flags.
After that, there seemed to be nothing more to say. Ciena moved through the house as if in a trance, putting away the extra soup and cleaning the pots. Once again half her world seemed dreamlike, but now it was her own home that had become surreal to her. How could she be in such beloved surroundings and still feel so small and sick inside? She almost longed to be back on the Executor, where the recirculated air smelled of ozone and nobody ever deviated from the safety of the rules.
The final transport journey to Jelucan had taken ten hours; Ciena had been too agitated even to think of sleeping during the trip. Now, another ten hours later, weariness had more than caught up with her. Her head swam and her eyes stung. But during times of trial, someone always remained awake at the house of the accused. Normally, loyal friends and family members took turns for the overnight vigils, but Ciena and her father were alone. As tired as she was, she knew Pappa was even more worn down.
“Go to bed,” she said quietly. “I’ll keep the vigil.”
“You need your rest.”
“And you don’t?”
“After you made the trip all the way here…” But her father’s voice trailed off. He lacked even the strength to fight her.
Outside she heard the humming of a ridgecrawler. She was so eager for the approach of a friend that the sound made her ears prick up, but immediately she chastised herself. Many people travel this way farther down into the valleys. They haven’t come for you.
But then the ridgecrawler stopped. Next Ciena heard footsteps and—oh, thank the Force—the unmistakable sound of a stick being thrust into sand.
Smiling triumphantly, Ciena patted her father’s shoulder and ran to the door. At least one person had been faithful. One person stood by them no matter what. Would it be one of the Nierres, pale skin blushing scarlet as they apologized for coming so late? Would it be one of the elders, saying he took the risk of defying the Imperial officials on behalf of all the kindred?
