Galaxy's Edge Page 11

  “All these years,” Ylena mused, her eyes far off. “All these years she had access to the Force and never used it. She could’ve swayed the Senate but wasn’t willing to use cheap tricks when she believed in diplomacy and freedom. That’s a strong woman and a good leader, right there. And yet, in her time of greatest hardship, when it benefited not only her own needs but the greater good, she reached deep inside and claimed that connection that had always waited, dormant, for her call.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Vi said, rolling the idea around in her head.

  She’d been glad that Leia had survived the destruction of the Raddus, of course. And devastated to learn of Vice Admiral Holdo’s sacrifice. But she had assumed that Leia’s Force power had been activated by her desperation. She had never even considered that all this time, as a princess and a senator and a general, Leia had actively chosen not to use such a valuable advantage. The general was a master strategist who used every piece on the dejarik board. Usually. So this choice, if it had been a choice, as Ylena suggested, must’ve been a moment of great and important truth for a woman who had already earned Vi’s respect and loyalty tenfold, a moment she had been prepared to wait her entire life before reaching.

  Vi looked at her hands, at their scars, at those two fingers that still tingled, partly numb. She just felt so powerless. Maybe her moment of need wasn’t quite as dire as Leia’s had been, maybe she wasn’t floating out in space, on the verge of death, but she was definitely in a dark place without a clear path. Her cargo was out of reach, her collaborator was challenging, and her own task seemed insurmountable. Her first attempt at recruitment had ended in a round of public laughter. Everything had gone wrong. She felt lost and unsure, which was not her usual state.

  If she reached deep inside herself, what would she find? Not the Force, of course. But there was something there—an iron core. Determination. Tenacity. Stubborn persistence. She’d gotten herself out of that First Order interrogation chair, after all. She just had to live through one moment, and then the next, and then the next.

  She just had to keep going—until she had a better hand.

  When Vi looked down at her drink, she saw that she’d drunk it all, which she hadn’t intended to do. She went to the bar for water to help her sober up, and as she waited, she scanned the room for possible allies…and possible enemies. Like any cantina, it hosted a motley crew of humanoids that ranged from cozy knots of humans in local gear slumped over cheap ale to shady, shifty-eyed collections of pirates and smugglers whispering and passing things under tables, to pilots and flyboys laughing a little too loud to impress the unimpressable Twi’lek women in a corner.

  When she’d returned to the table with her water, Vi felt a prickle up the back of her neck, that familiar and hateful jolt that every spy feels the moment they’ve been identified. She easily found the source: a snub-nosed, moss-gray face in the corner, his bright black eyes lingering to make sure she knew she’d been caught out. He was an unusual-looking fellow, but Vi had an excellent memory for species, and it rose up from her training: Karkarodon. From Karkaris. And a particularly beefy specimen.

  If the galaxy’s biggest human and hungriest shark had an ugly baby, it would grow up to be this guy. And for all that he didn’t look like the most intelligent fish in the school, he’d still been the one to identify her in the crowd. His stare was blank and alien and feral, and his wrapped hands were the size of shaak roasts. His nose was blunt and his sharp teeth glimmered in the low light. While she watched him back, showing her own power by not looking away, he lifted a tankard of something thick and red and took a long drink that left what passed for his lips coated in what appeared to be blood.

  The ruffians around him hadn’t so much as looked her way. They were the more usual sort of thug—big humans, the smaller man from Smuggler’s Alley, a Gamorrean, a Talpini, and an older Wookiee who laughed a growling laugh and honestly looked a bit unhinged. If Vi had to wager a guess, she would’ve bet these were Oga’s minions.

  The Karkarodon finally turned to smack the Wookiee in the shoulder, and Vi gasped a breath, unaware that she’d been holding it in as long as she’d been locked in the staring contest. If one could even have a staring contest with a species that didn’t actually have eyelids and therefore couldn’t blink.

  “Ylena,” she murmured out of the side of her mouth. “Over there, in the far corner. Do you know those people?”

  Ylena glanced up as she sipped her drink, and Vi began to wonder if the woman had had some spy training of her own, so subtle was the gesture.

  “Rusko,” Ylena confirmed, her lips twitching with disgust.

  “Oga’s men.”

  “Except for N’arrghela. The Wookiee is female. And you don’t want to mess with her. I once saw her rip the arm off a Besalisk. You’ll want to avoid the lot of them, if you value your limbs.” In punctuation, Ylena loudly slurped the last of her drink from her straw. “We have an early day tomorrow. Dotti will stay here all night and be no worse off, but I’m ready to turn in.” She gently smacked her forehead before continuing. “And I regret to say that when I invited you along, I didn’t consider your safety after dark. Are you based far from here? My apartment isn’t large, but you are welcome to sleep on my couch.”

  Vi patted the blaster at her hip. “I’m heavily armed, well trained, and unafraid. Nighttime is my favorite time. But I appreciate the kindness. After my confession earlier, I wasn’t so sure I was still welcome.”

  Ylena put a hand on Vi’s arm, and the weight was comforting. “You should always feel free to speak your truth. Just because you’re ready to speak doesn’t mean others are eager to hear it. Like I said—we’re a simple folk, and many are not ready to absorb the reality of what you have to say.”

  “When the First Order arrives, it will be too late.”

  “Then that will be our own trial to suffer.”

  Ylena stood, and Vi followed suit. Dotti and Roxi stayed in place, shoulder-to-shoulder as they laughed and continued to drink. When Ylena waved, everyone smiled and waved in return.

  “May the spires keep you, friends,” Ylena said.

  “And you!” they called back.

  Vi’s glass of water and the sobering glare of the Karkarodon had helped her regain sobriety, and even if she was still a little tipsy, she was trained to be lethal in that state. She was following Ylena toward the cantina door when she realized that nature had called and the outdoors held only bushes.

  “I’m going to hit the restroom before I leave,” she said. “Thanks for being so friendly today.”

  “Of course! We’re glad you’ve joined us. I can tell you’re going to fit in fine. Savi always knows.”

  Vi nodded in agreement. “May the spires keep you, Ylena.”

  Ylena turned and clasped Vi’s forearm. Vi had no choice but to return the gesture, their forearms lying warmly alongside. It was an odd sort of leavetaking that reminded her more of how warriors tested each other, a closed circle of trust.

  “And you,” Ylena answered. The grin she gave Vi was a new one, almost cocky.

  Ylena unclasped her arm and left, but Vi had marked the bathroom earlier and headed in that direction. As with every cantina ever, a dark hall was the only route to relief, and Vi’s hand subtly strayed under her orange shawl to the tactical baton on her hip. She was glad to see that the restroom was clean and in good repair, definitely better than a patch of ferns full of who knew what sort of specialized Batuuan bloodsucking brain slugs. She came out of the stall and washed her hands, staring at her face in the dull mirror and noting that her eyes were red and her lips were cracked.

  “Crashes and menial labor do not agree with me,” she murmured.

  “Good point.”

  A crescent moon of teeth appeared in the mirror right behind her—Rusko. Of course. Before she could spin and shoot him through his rubbery hea
rt, he pinned her arms to her sides with cold, clammy hands and dragged her back into the stall.

  IT WAS ALMOST A RELIEF, WATCHING Vi disappear into the forest on her way to work. Archex could finally sigh heavily and dramatically and stop guarding his expression and posture. He was a ball of nerves around her, and it took energy he didn’t have, holding up all those walls.

  He’d always had a respect for Vi Moradi, even when she’d cleverly twisted him like a knife back on the Absolution. She had grit and determination and a sense of humor that seemed to attack sideways, surprising him even in the darkest of moods. And he would even venture to say he liked her now, and that he felt it was part of his duty to protect her, even if that was physically impossible. Sometimes, when he watched her in quiet moments, when she didn’t know he was watching, he felt…tender? It was so muddled and strange, feelings he’d never had before. But he wasn’t ready to let her in, wasn’t ready to show her the pulverized mush of what had once been a hardened core of belief deep in his soul.

  All that work on Cerea…hadn’t helped him at all.

  He wasn’t sure why he was here, what he was meant to do. Just the thought of the First Order made bile rise in his throat, so he tried to forget and ignore it, most of the time. Of course, that didn’t mean he was rushing into the open arms of the Resistance. For all their talk of freedom, they hadn’t offered him much of it personally. He’d had no choice regarding Cerea and no choice regarding Batuu, nor in the babysitter who seemed carefully selected to dredge up old, unwanted memories and new, confusing, conflicting feelings.

  “Lieutenant Moradi is gone,” Pook noted. “Would you like your extra painkillers?”

  “You wouldn’t be so smug if you could feel pain,” Archex shot back, hobbling toward the droid for the extra pills he took whenever Vi wasn’t around. “Cut in half, and you felt nothing. Lucky.”

  “Oh, yes.” Pook’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Lucky is definitely the word I’d use for my current predicament. I assure you, the torture of my continued existence far exceeds the paltry jangling of your simple human nervous system.”

  “Then power down and let me suffer in peace.”

  “That would benefit us both. It is my duty to remind you that Lieutenant Moradi has requested that you not venture too far from the camp.”

  Archex snorted. “Like I even could if I wanted to.”

  “You know, your healing might progress with marked improvement if you took better care of your psyche and didn’t push yourself so hard. Your adrenal glands must be shriveled husks. Perhaps you could use this time to relax. The human body requires downtime, too.”

  He hated it, when Pook stopped complaining and started…well, caring wasn’t exactly the word. But sometimes, when Vi was gone, it was as if Pook dropped his melancholy front and actively tried to do his job, putting his major focus on Archex. Which Archex resisted.

  “Here’s a little hint, Pook. No sentient being ever relaxed because someone repeatedly commanded them to relax.”

  “Then find something to do. It’s not really my problem. Goodbye.”

  That was better. Snippy Pook was something Archex could deal with, and it was even better when the droid went offline.

  Finally, he was alone. Vi was gone, Pook was pretty much asleep, and Archex could get on with the exercise protocol he’d been following every day of his adult life—when he wasn’t strapped down in a Resistance medbay. Counting reps of sit-ups, push-ups, and pull-ups was as close as he got to the meditation they’d pushed on him in Cerea. When he had completed his workout, he was indeed calmer, his mind clearer. He bathed at the cenote and tried not to bristle at the feeling of dressing in the same filthy clothing, just as he had as a child on Jakku.

  Over the past twenty years, he’d taken so much for granted among the First Order. Waking up in a comfortable bed. Enjoying a hot shower with the proper accoutrements. Shaving with sharp razors. Putting on a crisp, perfectly folded, freshly cleaned uniform. The wilds of the Batuu forest made everything in him revolt. He hated the chaos, the quiet, the sunlight, the feeling as if he were always being watched, even though it was mostly by a curious pair of feathered reptiles Pook had identified as lahiroo.

  But most of all, he just needed something to do. Some way to be useful. That was the greatest thing he’d lost—not the First Order itself, but his own personal sense of order, the solid knowledge that he served a greater purpose.

  They’d sent him here to help build things, but there was nothing to build. He’d been told he could run the comms, but there were no comms. He’d been commanded to support Vi, but she was the most self-sufficient person he’d ever met. And now, after all their setbacks, he couldn’t hobble half a mile to work at the junk heap beside her—she wouldn’t even let him try.

  He stumped out into the forest in a direction he hadn’t yet scouted and was pleased to find several tarine bushes. If he built drying racks—using what, he wasn’t sure—they could have tea. He didn’t like tea, but at the very least it felt like he was producing something. He rolled the leaves into careful tubes and stuffed them in his pockets. Foraging on Batuu wasn’t easy; there were so many unfamiliar plants and no helpful guide for what was safe to eat. He’d been so pleased to find the cenote, but he hadn’t yet found running water they could fish. The forest creatures were unusually shy, and he couldn’t bring himself to shoot the soulful-eyed dugar dugar or gently trilling lahiroo, no matter how hungry he was. If they’d landed on a desert planet, he would’ve been indispensable. As it was, he was returning home with nothing but pockets filled with bitter, wilted leaves.

  As if waking up from a dream, he realized that he was leaning against one of the gigantic trees, his face wet with tears and his knuckles scraped from punching the bark. He lost time, sometimes—not much, but just enough to remind him that his mind was just as fractured as his body. Turning his back to the tree, he slid down to sit, his legs straight out in front of him. His good leg wore the tracker that reminded him that he was a prisoner, and his bad leg—well, he wanted to punch it, but that only made things worse. As Major Kalonia had warned him from the very start, there were some things even the most advanced medicine couldn’t fix. And because of the exact placement of Phasma’s blade, they couldn’t amputate the damn thing.

  Phasma—no. He wouldn’t think about her.

  Wouldn’t think about all his mistakes, all stemming from the moment his men yanked Vi out of that starhopper, dumping her ridiculous knitting on the floor of the Absolution. He’d been so determined to take down his rival, had seen Phasma as the rot in the heart of something great.

  If only he’d left well enough alone.

  He’d still be Captain Cardinal, still have respect and comfort and a purpose.

  He would never have known his entire life was a lie.

  Maybe it would’ve been better that way, even if now he knew the real mistake was buying into the First Order’s fiction. His life had been easier, then, but he’d been part of something monstrous. Hosnian Prime had closed that door for him, forever.

  But there was a certain cloying attraction to his old life, an exhausting nostalgia. If things had gone differently, he wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t be this.

  It was maddening. There or here, then or now, it all ended badly.

  He could only deal with so much failure at once.

  His hands were in the leaf litter now, curled into fists as if he could tear up the forest floor. But when he opened his fingers, he found nothing but needles and rich, black dirt. Not that he could do anything with dirt. He was no farmer. He had no skills on a planet like Batuu.

  But these needles—he could weave them into baskets. Very nice baskets, actually, even if they weren’t the silky, slender porlash needles back on Cerea. Then he’d have something to carry his meager foraged finds. But the very thought made him grind his teeth. The weaving was meditative, sure, but it a
lso brought back the songs and poems and essays his Cerean guides had read in chiming monotone as he and his fellow prisoners—no, students—worked. He couldn’t handle that. Letting go, living in the now, being one with the universe.

  Garbage thoughts for contented people who weren’t currently suffering.

  He dropped the leaf litter and picked up a small log, turning it over in his hands. Maybe he wasn’t willing to weave baskets and be bombarded with flashbacks of enforced Cerean peacefulness, but he did have one skill that wouldn’t be hampered by his current injuries. Taking out his knife, he began to clean off the bark and get to the creamy wood inside.

  Whittling had kept him alive as a boy on Jakku. Maybe it would keep him alive on Batuu now. If nothing else, it would give him something to do. Thinking back to one of their first conversations on the doomed transport, he almost smiled. He’d told Vi that there was no time to whittle on the Star Destroyer, but as Vi had told him, the Resistance would let him whittle wherever he wanted to.

  This, at least, was making something. And it was perhaps the only aspect of his life that no one else controlled.

  VI OPENED HER MOUTH TO SHOUT, but moist, fishy breath made her curl away as Rusko said, “Scream all you want. Nobody cares. And by the way: Oga wants to see you.”

  Twisting her head, Vi looked back to see where they were headed. A perfectly concealed door in the wall at the back of the stall was now open, and whatever lay beyond it was dark as pitch. Considering Rusko was operating on Oga’s orders, it would be better for Vi to act cowed and confused instead of like a trained spy who could turn this monster into chum in half a minute. She struggled like someone who didn’t know how to get out of his clumsy hold, and he just held her tighter. Good—let him think she was helpless.

  For Vi Moradi, this kidnapping was actually an opportunity.

  Vi was looking forward to meeting the mysterious gangster in charge of her new town—and to gathering intel on her minions and lair. She continued her ruse, twisting and pushing against Rusko’s grip, testing his strength while secretly feeling for where he had weapons concealed. The way he held his blaster in the very arm now wrapped around her waist suggested kidnapping wasn’t his usual job.