Life Debt

by Chuck Wendig

  Something clips her across the side of the head and she goes down. A boot presses on her hand and the chrome blaster slips from her grip. Another boot kicks her weapon away from her.

  An absurd, defeatist part of her thinks: This is fine. The New Republic soldiers can take her in. Let it all be over. She will make a fine catch for some bush pilot or some hick commando—a guaranteed medal.

  But a fire warms in her belly. Her heart goes supernova. This is my Empire, she thinks. She won’t leave it to these brutes. And she damn sure won’t let someone like Rax crash everything she’s worked for right into the heart of some star. No. Not tonight. Not if she can help it.

  Sloane rolls toward her own pinned arm—causing no small pain—and reaches up with her free hand to grab at whoever is holding her there. Her fingers find the attacker’s belt and she pulls hard, yanking him down to the ground. It’s not even a New Republic soldier—she sees a dark dress and a blue-and-gold rag bundled around the arm. Local resistance.

  The man, practically a boy, cries out for help. Other shapes move in toward her, but Sloane is up now in a crouch. Her body is coded with the memory of how to fight. Back in the Academy, she practiced and competed in NCB: Naval Corps Boxing. She was good. Never won the belt. But she always ranked.

  And Sloane has kept up with it.

  The first insurgent who comes at her does so with the inelegance of a drunken man groping for a kiss—she sidesteps him and jabs with a fist, catching him right in the eye. He flails and staggers backward as another one, this one in rough armor and a face-shield, steps in to fill the void. Sloane kicks out this one’s leg, and her enemy drops, so she drops with her enemy, catching the person’s arm as they fall. Sloane pivots herself into an armbar and yanks back on the insurgent’s wrist hard enough that the arm dislocates with a grungy crunch. The terrorist yells—and it’s a woman’s voice crying out in pain. Sloane kicks off the face-shield, then scoops it up and flings it at the next person coming in—

  It catches the incoming terrorist in the face, and they spin and tumble. But Sloane is too slow and outnumbered. Someone tackles her from the side, and her shoulder crashes hard against the plastocrete. The breath blasts from her lungs as she scrambles against the ground.

  Something presses hard against the side of her head.

  A blaster.

  “Don’t move,” comes a shaky, uncertain voice. That same voice calls out: “We got one. Imperial. Pilot by the look of her.”

  Sloane goes through a new set of calculations. She could fight back. But if they take her, will she play the role of Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, or will she instead aim to be Dasha Bowen, harmless pilot? The former has value, the latter almost none. What will serve her best?

  Someone else moves in—a big man, half his face hidden behind a swaddling of blue-and-gold fabric. He reaches down with a wide paw and flips her so she’s staring up. Sloane shows her hands. The woman with the blaster stands and stares, her face sooty, her eyes deeply set. “Get her up. We’ll take her in. Garris will know what to do with her.”

  “We could just deal with her here,” the big guy says. Others start to gather in behind them. Men, women, young and old. Half a dozen.

  “Deal with her?”

  “Yeah. Deal with her.”

  “That’s not who we are.”

  “Maybe it’s who we need to be.”

  Someone else from behind them, a gruff voice: “We’re not soldiers. We’re just taking back our home.”

  The blaster pointed at Sloane’s nose wavers.

  A new figure joins the group. Someone tall, thin. Arms extended out—a pair of batons held in hand. Hard to see anything but the cut of his silhouette. The batons twirl in his grip.

  “What’ve we got here?” he asks.

  “Caught us a fish,” the big guy says.

  But then someone asks: “Wait, who are—”

  The new arrival moves like a cyclone. He ducks and spins, jabbing each baton into a different insurgent. The batons bang like slugthrowers going off, and it’s a giveaway—those are concussive batons. And they are the signature weapon of someone Sloane has come to work with, recently:

  The bounty hunter, Mercurial Swift.

  The woman pulls her blaster out of Sloane’s face to concentrate on the new attacker—and it’s a mistake. Sloane gets up behind her and locks her arm tight around the woman’s throat. Tighter, tighter, until the woman slides to the ground.

  Swift, meanwhile, is up and down like a puppet on yanking strings, the batons jamming under chins and against ribs. Each time this happens, the baton cracks like localized thunder, and another enemy drops.

  Until the only two left standing are Sloane and Swift.

  “You,” Sloane seethes. “You followed me.”

  “Do we have the time to discuss this right now?” The bounty hunter twirls his batons and clips them back on his utility belt. “I don’t think we do. We need to go, Admiral. Unless you want to run into more of your friends?”

  She does not. “You can get me out of here?” she asks.

  Swift grins and licks his teeth. “It would be my pleasure.”

  —

  The speeder skims the tops of the buildings along the Verity District, hugging it so close, Sloane is afraid Mercurial is going to scrape bottom and scrap the craft in a plume of fire. But he assures her—this makes them hard to see and, more important, hard to hit.

  She smells burning ozone. And smoke. And hears blasterfire from somewhere behind them. Coruscant is a war zone. Has the Verity District fallen to the local resistance? Or is this just another random act of violence?

  In the distance, the Imperial Palace. A massive, jagged thing. Like a mountain swallowed up by bruise-colored light. Spotlight spires shining up into the sky, painting the bands of dark clouds hanging far overhead with swatches of white. Suddenly two TIE fighters scream above them.

  “You can tell your people that the resistance fighters are using the old cargo tunnels, the ones that run parallel to the subgrav tunnels.” He glances at her, waiting for her reply.

  What, though, could her reply be? The most pointed one, the one that sticks in her mind like a nail, is that these are not her “people.” That is a thought that thickens and chills her blood, because what it means is that there does not exist one Empire anymore. There are several—fragments of the mirror broken. All reflecting something similar, but broken apart…

  And, she worries, impossible to repair.

  All Sloane can say in reply is, “Thank you.” Two words that sound hollow. The bounty hunter must detect how little she means it.

  “You seem not to care very much that I just saved your hide.”

  “I care. I also care that you have been following me.”

  “You summoned me, didn’t you?” He flashes his white-toothed smile.

  She turns and with a sudden surge of rage says: “When I summon you, I expect you to come as your name suggests: swiftly. Not skulk after me like a tooka waiting for a taste of milk.”

  They pass over the end of the Verity District and into the Federal—where the lights are still on. None will dare to breach this region, she suspects, lest they meet the full force of the Imperial Security Bureau. But then again: At the end of time, all mountains crumble and fall. They become hills and then dust and then the winds of change take them away. Most mountains erode slowly, but sometimes a tectonic shift can speed up its inevitable destruction. The galaxy is undergoing just such a shift.

  “You have a job for me?” he asks. “Last one went fine. Our friend, the vice admiral, found that his addiction was just too much to bear. Nasty habit, that spice.”

  “I need you to find someone.”

  “I assumed that.” He looks like he’s about to say more—some snide or narcissistic remark. Even he is smart enough to know not to push the perceived head of the Empire too far. He clears his throat. “Who and where?”

  “Brendol Hux. He’s on Arkanis, at the Academy.”

  “Arka
nis. Didn’t the New Republic take that?”

  “Not yet, but soon. It’s under siege.”

  “You need him done in before then. Understood.”

  “No, not understood. I don’t need him ‘done in.’ This one, I need brought back alive. And with good care.”

  He barks a laugh. “You want me to guarantee safe passage to someone on a war-torn planet? I’m a bounty hunter, not a nanny.”

  “Then you’ll be disappointed to learn that he has a son, and you are to retrieve the child as well.” The Empire needs children… and with that, her mind flashes to the image seen back in the archives: a young boy on the cusp of manhood, standing there in an ill-fitting suit next to Palpatine himself.

  “I’ll need more credits.”

  “I can double the usual fee,” Sloane says.

  “Triple it.”

  “Or I could turn all the resources of the Empire against you. You would run and we could chase you. You would find no safe haven, and none would dare hire you for fear that the black miasma around you would capture and choke them, too.”

  “Bit of an empty threat, isn’t it?”

  “Is it? Do you not fear a resurgent Empire with me at its head?”

  Moments pass.

  “Double it is, then,” he says.

  “Good. Get me to the Imperial Palace. Then contact me when the job is done, and payment will be arranged.”

  Eleodie stands on the bridge, regarding their target.

  It must be quite a surprise, zhe thinks, watching the Corellian CR90 ahead of them buck and shudder as the tractor beam lashes it. Poor fools don’t know what’s coming. They think it’s the Empire. And why wouldn’t they? A Super Star Destroyer cuts through space like a sword tip, its shadow falling over your ship—well, traditionally, that meant one thing. You were getting boarded. You were now guests of the Empire. You are no longer free people. Zhe knows that sensation. Eleodie belonged to the Empire once. In a way.

  But those days are gone.

  And we are not the Empire. Forming an empire is quite different from the Empire, after all.

  Eleodie looks over at her second: an Omwati, Shi Shu, his splindly fingers running through the crown of feathers atop his head. Zhe asks him, “Remind me again what we’re looking at, hmm?”

  “The Starfall,” he says. “Senatorial ambassador onboard—Tia’dor Emshwa.”

  Eleodie hums. “And also remind me why we are picking a fight with the New Republic so soon.” The pirate’s head is full of details and data, rife with debts and assets, thick with the names of those who betrayed zher. Eleodie is trying to seize an opportunity here—the slow death of the Empire and the rise of the revivified Republic leaves pirates and criminals such as zherself scrambling for a foothold. But Eleodie doesn’t just want a foothold. Zhe wants the whole mountain. “This seems…unwise, and one hopes that here the juice is worth the squeeze?”

  “It is,” Shi Shu says, nodding. “They are on a mission to Ithor, hoping to, ahh, seduce them into joining the New Republic. As part of the seduction, they bring with them a ship full of wonders: reclaimed Ithorian artifacts, but also food, meds, and a bounty of tech. It would give our flotilla quite the edge. Even here, we stole this ship, but we still need to keep it stocked…”

  “Good, good. And the ship is properly subdued?”

  “It is.”

  “Comm array?”

  “Fried like ksharra bread.”

  “No mistakes. Not like last time. The Rangs almost had us because someone forgot to seal the breaching airlock—”

  “It is all handled.”

  “Then let us plunder.”

  The destroyer draws the corvette into its belly. Eleodie moves into place along with the others—they move to breach, and zhe stands just behind a pair of Weequay pirates with arc-lancers. As they burn a searing line around the edges of the door, Eleodie does a few vocal exercises and practices the speech in zher head. Zhe pops her knuckles and rolls zher neck.

  And then, it is done. The door is opened. The way is clear.

  Eleodie gives the nod.

  The two pirates storm in, flinging flash grenades. They go off, filling the channel ahead with pulsing white light. Zhe stands aside as more of zher crew rushes in. From the entranceway come the sounds of yelling, crying, another flash detonator going off. Eleodie hums a song in tune with the universe, hands behind zher back, eyes shut tight. Waiting. Meditating.

  The pirate ruler does not know how long this lasts.

  Eventually, though, Vinthar gently pats zher arm. “It is time,” the reptilian says. “The captives are secure. The ship is at peace. Your presence is required.” He hands Eleodie a long, baroque staff. Zhe also takes from him a vocoder, which zhe secures around her throat like a choker necklace.

  It is time, indeed, zhe thinks.

  Vinthar steps onto the ship.

  From back here, Eleodie hears his speech, a speech zhe wrote:

  “Greetings!” he says, his voice deep and resonant—as if the reptilian creature is stepping out onto a stage to address an eager audience. The lizard announces: “I am Vinthar the Sarkan of Egg-Brood Xazin’nizar, and I welcome you to this unscheduled boarding, friends of the spaceship designated: Starfall. I envy you today for the blessing you are about to receive as you are poised ineluctably to meet his highness, her glory, his wonder, her luminous magnificence—the picaroon! The plunderer! The pirate ruler of Wild Space! The glorious knave, Eleodie Maracavanya!”

  Showtime.

  As Vinthar presses himself against the hallway wall with a deferential swoop, Eleodie strolls onto the ship with a long-legged stride. Chin up. Eyes down. Project confidence. You will one day rule this galaxy.

  Zhe eases zher shoulder forward and a cape of chromatic scales falls over half zher front—shimmering as a wave of colors sweep across it like a turning tide. Eleodie takes the staff zhe’s holding and taps it twice against the ground, thump thump—

  A swooping scythe blade snaps open. The blade thrums and crackles with threads of blue energy. An electro-scythe.

  Zhe regards those bound before zher with golden eyes. These people are frightened of what is happening. Good. They should be.

  Now it is time to soothe their fear. A balm to salve the sting.

  The vocoder mutates zher voice as zhe speaks: Zher words are loud and alive, vibrating with a deep intensity. The voice that emerges is velvety and rich, and Eleodie can feel it all the way down at the ends of zher fingertips. Zhe hopes they can, too.

  “I am Eleodie Maracavanya, child of Nar Shaddaa and captain of the Super Star Destroyer Annihilator.” Though here, zhe pauses and looks up to the ceiling, as if reconsidering. “I don’t anticipate keeping that name. The Annihilator. Too final. Too murdery. Not really my flavor.” The pirate’s hand fritters in the air like a fluttering moth. “As such, you may relax: If none of you try to kill me today, I will kill none of you. Such is our bargain. I will be taking your ship to join my fleet—our sovereignty requires vessels like this and the cargo it carries. But I am no murderer, and certainly no slaver, and so you are free to step to the nearest escape pod and be gone.”

  Vinthar steps in front and thrusts a claw-tipped finger in the air. “But!” he announces.

  “But,” Eleodie continues, “while I will not press any of you into service, I will make the offer: join me. Come aboard our stolen destroyer. Live the life of a pirate. Enjoy a life of spoils and riches. Be greedy. Be self-interested. Life is far too short for all this…” Zhe makes a sour face. “New Republic nonsense. Do you really believe your precious foundling government will save the galaxy? Please. I think not. I am a precious realist, and what you get in this lifetime is purely the result of what you take. Come with me. Come to my nation. Become part of my fleet. Join my sovereign space. Enjoy the freedom that comes with taking whatever you want, whatever you can get, whenever the chance. Anyone? Anyone at all?”

  Someone will take the offer.

  Someone always takes the offer. />
  This time, the taker surprises Eleodie.

  There, against the wall, is a young woman. A girl, really. Plain as dirt, plain as space, nothing exceptional but for the fire in her eyes. She stands up, pulling away from a woman who Eleodie suspects is the girl’s mother, or at least her guardian—

  The woman cries out: “Kartessa! Sit down—”

  “I hate Chandrila,” the girl snaps. Her voice shakes, but there’s metal in there. It warms Eleodie. The confidence. The selfishness. Good. “It’s dull. I want adventure. I want a life. I don’t want to be cloistered anymore.”

  Yes, girl. That’s it. Be who you want to be. Eleodie’s growing pirate kingdom out there in Wild Space is all about the sovereignty of the self.

  The woman pleads, of course: “No, Kartessa—”

  But Eleodie shushes the woman. “Shhh. Let her be, woman. Are you her mother?”

  Reluctantly, with spite shining in her eyes, the woman nods. “Yes.”

  “The girl has made her decision. Respect it.”

  The woman swallows. “Then…I will come, too.”

  “Mom!” Kartessa says. Eleodie pulls the girl close.

  “Let her come. But she will govern you no more, Kartessa. The mother will find her way, and the daughter will find hers. Anyone else?”

  No takers.

  “Anyone at all?”

  Fine.

  Eleodie grins and says: “Then enjoy your intrepid escape-pod journey one and all. Thank you for the ship and your supplies. I have been Eleodie Maracavanya. It has been your pleasure.” With a flourish of the cape, zhe turns and heads back through the airlock.

  The girl, Kartessa, follows close behind. A small smile tugs at her cheeks even as her mother weeps.

  Eleodie’s own empire grows once more.

  As the sunrise burns the edge of the Silver Sea, the team shuffles one by one into the belly of the Halo, gathering in the main hold. Jas comes up last. Everyone is talking—Temmin mumbling about how he doesn’t want to miss X-wing practice, Jom chastising the boy because it’s called training and not practice, Sinjir saying something about how he forgot to grab that bottle of tsiraki and hey does anyone have an extra bottle of tsiraki because tsiraki, that’s why.