“It’s okay,” he breathed with what little oxygen his lungs could find. “It’s okay.”
“In position,” Quell said, and Wyl closed his eyes and waited.
IV
“Bombers! Go! Go!”
General Syndulla’s voice came through the comm, sudden enough to startle Chass. She straightened in her seat, checked her angle, and ignited her thrusters even before Nath called, “You ready?”
“Sure,” Chass said. “So long as no one tries to shoot me, I’ll be just fine.”
“How’s the rest of our squadron doing?” Nath asked.
The B-wing bounced as Chass adjusted its gyroscopics—she’d kept the cross upright while holding position against the wind, but in flight she was better off horizontal—and began a long, spiraling descent through the cloud cover toward the capital. Nath and the Y-wings of Hail Squadron were behind her now, but according to the flight plan they’d overtake her once they descended below shield altitude.
She was wondering if something had gone wrong when Quell’s voice said, “Lark and I are intact and on our way to escort you. Kairos is giving cover to the ground teams.”
“Great,” Chass said. “We’ll try not to blow her to bits.”
When the cloud cover ripped away and the city came into view, Chass tapped a button. The rapid patter of a Loletian politi-folk singer filled the cockpit. The Y-wings followed her and she swayed with the breeze and the song, and the first proton torpedoes and laser-guided bombs dropped toward preassigned coordinates like the too-bright stars of Cerberon rattling loose from the sky.
Soon Chass would be close enough to see the devastation. Soon she’d be picking targets and evading fire while trying not to murder her own side’s ground troops. She could forget the conversation with Nath—he’d sneered, You don’t want to see Shadow Wing again, do you? but he was wrong about that; Shadow Wing didn’t frighten her so much as what came after Shadow Wing.
The B-wing leapt as a proton bomb ejected from its launcher.
For now, she could do the thing she was best at. The only thing she was made for.
V
General Hera Syndulla of the New Republic stood in the tactical center of the Lodestar and observed as glowing dots on a screen shaped the fate of a planet. She listened to the chatter of pilots and ground troops, heard triumphant cries and anxious voices, and watched her subordinates clutch their headsets and snap replies. She tried to appear strong and confident and compassionate.
All to bait a trap.
Even if they won, she wouldn’t know if it was worth it until Shadow Wing arrived. Until another battle had been fought.
“Lodestar is in position,” her aide said as he drew up to her side. By the expression on his face, she could’ve believed Stornvein hadn’t said the words in a dozen battles before; his unwillingness to become jaded was why she kept him on staff. “Even without the shield, there’s not much room to descend, but we’ll pick off any TIEs if they get close.”
“Thank you,” she said. “What about the video feed?”
“Some jamming activity,” Stornvein said, “but it should be ready now.”
Pixelated holo-footage from a soldier’s helmet cam showed a telescope’s view of chaos—too-close glimpses of a grand tapestry of destruction. Fires burned. Stormtroopers squatted behind barricades made of piled speeders. The frame of a scout walker slumped against a building. Streaks in the sky could have been starfighter cannons or torpedoes.
Hera should have been on the ground. Instead she’d chosen to remain at a remove, to coordinate forces too professional, too well organized to truly need a general overseeing them from orbit.
“Rotate the comm channels,” she said. “I want to know what they’re thinking.”
She pieced together the state of the battle from audio fragments. Meteor Squadron was maneuvering to drive away TIE strikers and thwart enemy attempts to provide air support; she flinched as Meteor Two called for assistance and sighed in relief when his brother eliminated their pursuers. Infantry squads were calling in coordinates to Hail Squadron; glowing dots faded from her screens as walkers and tanks were annihilated by proton bombs.
She lingered on the feed from Alphabet. She recognized Wyl Lark’s distress as he hissed, “If this goes on, there won’t be anything left of the district.”
“This is the plan,” Quell said. “This is the only way we win.”
Hera shook her head briskly. She’d grown to like the Alphabet pilots over the past months, though she didn’t know them well. She’d been proud to see Quell take command and apply her skills as a tactician. But part of her—a very small part, one she wasn’t thrilled with—wished they’d never brought their war with the 204th to her unit.
She’d approved Adan and Quell’s plan because it was a good one. That didn’t mean she liked it.
“What’s going on there?” she asked as multiple dots on the tactical screen crept in sync away from the edges of the district, back toward the midpoint.
Stornvein huddled beside a comm officer. The two whispered urgently as Hera examined the maps. “The governor’s ordered a retreat,” Stornvein said after a moment. “Enemy ground teams are withdrawing toward the logistics center. Control for communications, data flow, civilian power grid. The ‘Tri-Central Complex,’ officially.”
She recognized the name. She was puzzled nonetheless. “Why not the governor’s mansion? Or one of the military stations? Tri-Central doesn’t have much in the way of defenses, does it?”
“It’s accessible via two major throughways under enemy control. It could just be a convenience—the easiest spot to regroup.”
Hera started to swear, caught herself, and squared her shoulders. She stepped to one of the comm stations and keyed in a frequency override. “General Syndulla to all forces—we have to cut off their retreat. Do not let the enemy near the Tri-Central Complex.”
A flurry of affirmative responses followed. A familiar, husky voice asked over the link, “What’s happening, General?”
“Lieutenant Quell. So far as we can determine, whoever’s commanding their forces just made a very stupid decision or a very smart one.” She summarized what they’d seen and continued: “Either way, we can’t afford to let them consolidate forces there.”
“Understood,” Quell said.
Hera expected she did understand. The battle plan was Quell’s as much as Hera’s own.
She watched the dots on the map. Very soon she would have a decision to make, but she feared it would be no decision at all.
VI
Quell heard General Syndulla order the bombers to break off as enemy ground forces approached the complex. She immediately recognized the reasoning. Predicting the consequences took her a moment longer.
Tri-Center wasn’t a military installation, but the facility was essential to the planet’s infrastructure network—holding it wouldn’t win the war, and losing it wouldn’t bring about defeat, yet if Tri-Center was reduced to ruins by the bombs and torpedoes of New Republic starfighters, Troithe would be left in disarray for months to come. No outside force would care to reclaim the planet for the Empire.
Therefore, Tri-Center had to be preserved, or else the working group’s efforts to bait the trap—to lure Shadow Wing into attacking Troithe—would fail.
Quell wasn’t prepared to fail.
She thought of all this as she escorted Chadic’s assault craft out of the combat zone, pursued halfheartedly by a TIE striker barely able to stay aloft. She split her attention between her flight and the feeds blinking on her display—indicators of ground troop positions and enemy progress.
With the bombers pulling back, the New Republic infantry would be left without support. Tri-Center wasn’t well fortified but it didn’t need to be; allied and enemy ground forces were evenly matched, and a clash
inside the complex would guarantee a bloodbath. Alternatively, if the New Republic infantry retreated, it would position the governor (or whoever survived to take command) to resecure the region and collapse the narrow corridor Syndulla’s forces had been establishing from the spaceport to the capital.
Those were the options: hundreds of dead New Republic troops, or weeks—months—of progress lost in the campaign to take Troithe and trap Shadow Wing.
Quell knew what she would choose. She knew what General Syndulla would choose, too.
“CB-9?” she said. “I want to hear what the squads are saying.”
The droid patched her into the infantry frequencies. Only a handful of squads were in position to intercept the enemy approaching Tri-Center, and they were sorely pressed—barely a dozen people were attempting to blockade the entrance against hundreds of stormtroopers and army regulars. The Imperial walkers and tanks, at least, had largely been destroyed or abandoned, but even at a chokepoint the New Republic wouldn’t hold out long.
“What’s the word, General?” the infantry captain called. “I can’t stop them. I can buy you another minute. Maybe five, with a miracle.”
Quell had met the captain, though she couldn’t recall his name. He’d been younger than she’d expected, aware of the peculiarities of the campaign and insistent that Syndulla understand the cost in lives—but never refusing an objective. Never asking why they were taking the capital in such a manner.
She expected he would let his people die if ordered to do so.
Quell spoke, though she knew doing so was improper. “Would five minutes be enough to bring your people in from the rear? Flank the enemy, push them away from Tri-Center?”
“No,” the captain said.
“Get them out of there, Captain, however you think best,” Syndulla said. “I’m sorry, Quell.”
Quell was protesting, but she couldn’t hear herself. She saw the work she’d done, the sacrifices on the ground, the last hope of finding Shadow Wing burning away in the fire of the battle. There would be no second chance—everything she had built with Adan required that the trap be set now, not in a week or a month.
Her heart rate spiked. The air in the cockpit seemed thin.
Then a new voice broke into the comm frequency. She didn’t recognize the speaker—one of the infantry troops.
“Captain? Got a U-wing coming in fast and taking a lot of damage. If that’s our evac, not sure we can make it back out.”
This, too, Quell immediately understood.
Kairos.
She pressed a rudder pedal hard, leaned into the turn and the pressures on her body, and made for the Tri-Center Complex.
VII
There were words Kairos did not understand. Even after years of exposure, she struggled to comprehend the intricacies of the language so demeaningly called Galactic Basic. But words were not always a barrier to understanding, and she knew what was occurring on the battlefield.
She knew why the ships and soldiers pulled back. She would not join them.
A single broad boulevard led to the Tri-Center Complex, joined by narrower tributaries. A horde of white-clad troopers pushed toward the front entrance—toward the once-transparent metal façade towering like a cliff wall, pockmarked and ash-smeared into opacity where particle bolts had left their mark. Where the eternal gloom of Cerberon enveloped the streets, the interior atrium blazed with light, illuminating the trapped rebel soldiers who attempted to repel the invasion.
Perhaps they had a means to escape. A way out of the complex.
She swept in low above the boulevard, flickering particle lances from the horde shattering against her shields. Her vessel trembled as the electromagnetic field churned and coruscated—her ship the hatchling within her deflectors’ invisible shell. She fired her cannons into the crowd, sending burning bodies flying into packs of survivors. There were too many for her to miss, even as they scattered.
Perhaps her allies did not need Kairos to save them. Perhaps she acted for her own sake.
She fumbled with her vessel’s controls through ungainly gloves, smelling the rotting odor of her twisted body trapped inside her mask. She could not scent the smoke or charred corpses, though she could imagine both with perfect clarity. She angled her ship ten degrees upward, exposing aft and underside to the continuing fire of the enemy and making for the transparent metal façade of the complex. She diverted all power from her forward deflectors and into her killing cannons—an act of technical wizardry that possessed no deeper meaning, no resonance in the true world, yet proved effective for her needs.
Cannons flashed. The howl of torn metal resonated through her organs (somehow she could taste the tang of iron) and she entered the atrium through the newly created gap in the wall, shifting from thrusters to repulsors, turning ninety degrees, and floating ten meters above the startled New Republic soldiers.
Kairos had been at war with herself, her spirit sundered. She’d often thought of leaving her people—leaving the defector, leaving Adan. But she would not leave Adan.
Half sheltered by the fragmented wall of the atrium, Kairos accepted the blow of an incoming rocket against her flank. The vessel heaved and listed to one side; she saw on her console the damage to thrusters and repulsors, but she was still aloft. She gently adjusted a lever and climbed out of her seat, retreating to the main cabin. With the touch of a button, she opened the loading door and—stepping behind the turret gun—fired into the horde once again.
She understood that Adan and the defector sought to ensnare their foe in a trap—she’d comprehended those words well, after Adan had taken her aside and explained each step. The butchers of Nacronis and Pandem Nai and so many other worlds did not deserve to escape justice. Nor did the beast of Troithe who called himself governor—who unleashed monsters against his enemies—deserve to escape punishment. So she had accepted the strategy of a man wiser than she, and agreed to the price in blood.
She raked the stream of the turret through the gap in the wall and across the boulevard, tearing apart stormtroopers and black-clad troops, their faces sweaty and screaming. She could hear the battle clearly now, the shouts and the sizzle of bolts and the crackle of flames. As her foes returned fire and the deck began to shake, she thought that the horde seemed smaller.
Since their time on Troithe had begun, she had slaughtered and allowed noble warriors to be slaughtered. In her commitment to vengeance, to the scouring of her foes, she had accepted the sacrifice of the soldiers she was expected to preserve. She had agreed to the price. She would not, could not turn away now.
The deck jumped once to warn her that the ship was failing. She leapt from the turret to seize the crew seats as repulsors died and the U-wing dropped to the atrium floor. She heard only a cacophonous roar and saw nothing—her vision was obliterated by the stresses of gravity and bulkheads—and when sight returned her body was suffused with pain. Motion was rewarded with surges of agony. But she had suffered worse, and she scaled the wreckage of the askew cabin to retrieve her weapon.
She could not turn away. Never turn away. Not after all that had happened.
She didn’t know what had become of the New Republic soldiers. She lodged her bowcaster against her shoulder and gurgled instead of screamed as it kicked back against her with every shot fired. The crash of the U-wing had left the atrium thick with smoke and flame, and the clouds glowed like the clouds of Pandem Nai, exquisitely scarlet, as they soaked up the colors of particle bolts streaming toward her.
She felt air against her skin. Her forearm wrappings were scorched. She had broken her last vow.
She fired into the smoke. She fired at the stormtroopers who hurled themselves toward her, piled body upon body—few in the grand tale of it all, few compared to those she’d killed in the past and those soldiers she’d failed to save—and kept on firing until she co
uld no longer feel, could no longer stand. She heard cannon fire outside the complex but she could not raise her head to see.
She heard the calls of rebel soldiers still alive.
The last thing Kairos saw was the beautiful face of Yrica Quell—the defector, the traitor—looking down at her.
VIII
Caern Adan could hear the reports through the wall but he steadfastly ignored them. His staff was tracking every soldier’s death, every meter gained by the New Republic infantry, as if there were something they could do to affect the outcome of the battle from their stations in the tram tower—as if the fight for the capital were part of their duties instead of a distraction.
Adan remembered a summer in the offices of the IGBC Financial Review when his colleagues had made a daily habit of ceasing conversation one by one and tuning their consoles to the season’s ongoing smashball tournament. Adan had possessed neither interest in smashball nor any local pride in Muunilinst’s team (having only transferred there for the work); he’d found the practice relentlessly irritating. And though his time on Muunilinst seemed like a half-forgotten dream and he had much at stake in the battle at the capital, he was determined to make better use of his time than his colleagues past and present.
After all, it wouldn’t be long before Shadow Wing arrived in-system. He intended to be fully prepared.
He told himself this even as his antennapalps stood rigid. The noise of comm chatter outside his office resonated in his skull. He ignored the reports yet he still listened. What would Ito say, seeing you distracted? he wondered, and snatched a datapad from his stack to review.
He buried himself in news of Vanguard Squadron’s operations in the Bormea sector, taking diligent notes on the impact to Cerberon’s defense capabilities until his console pinged and notified him he was receiving a direct transmission. The codes were military but the sender was unidentified. He activated his comm and waited.
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