Galaxy's Edge Page 15

  Kath crossed his arms. “Do you now?”

  “The Resistance woman.”

  He nodded slowly. “The Resistance woman. Tell me where she is, and you will be rewarded handsomely. The First Order is always anxious for allies and can ensure ongoing peace for your planet.”

  Oga snorted, and snail slime flew across her desk. “Oh, I’m not your ally. I’ll tell you the same thing I told her when she stood right where you’re standing and tried to convince me to join her cause: The only things I care about are Black Spire Outpost and my interests here.”

  “You’ll very much care about it when our Star Destroyers arrive and rain down—”

  “I don’t respond well to threats, and I wasn’t done.”

  Something about her grating voice and the guttural nature of Huttese actually had the power to interrupt him, and Kath wasn’t accustomed to being interrupted by anyone who wasn’t a direct superior. He didn’t like it.

  “Oga, let’s make an agreement. You don’t interrupt me, and I won’t kill you.”

  Oga sighed like he was a troublesome child. She crunched into another snail, sucked at it thoughtfully, and tossed the shell on the floor, where a shaggy tooka-cat pounced on it and proudly carried it back into the shadows.

  “I was going to help you, pateesa, but if you’d rather keep threatening me, I won’t. I have twenty ways to kill you in this chamber, any of which I can set into motion before you can draw your blaster. So let’s just talk like equals.”

  “I have no equals outside of the First Order,” he said, carefully enunciating each word.

  “This is why I don’t often leave this room,” Oga muttered to herself. Her hand hovered over the snails for a moment, but then she stood and braced herself against the desk to look him in the eye. Even across the dark room, there was a piercing, predatory nature to her stare, and Kath forced himself to remain still, hands clasped stiffly behind his back, and listen.

  “See, there’s this artifact I want,” Oga said. “And if you bring it back to me, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about Starling, including her real name.”

  VI ARRIVED AT THE CANTINA SO early the next morning that the doors were still closed. As she contemplated knocking, a Wookiee’s groan echoed from the balcony across the street and a familiar if unwelcome form stomped down the stairs and stood before her.

  “No Rusko?” Vi asked N’arrghela.

  In response, the Wookiee shook her head and scratched her armpit, then began walking. Vi didn’t need to speak Shyriiwook to understand that this was her guide, so she simply followed N’argghela through Black Spire Outpost, waving at Salju as she passed the fuel station. Once beyond the outpost proper, the cantankerous Wookiee led her along Savi’s Path, past the scrapyard and toward some natural rock formations out among the spires. Although it was quite close to town, Vi hadn’t been to this part of Batuu before. The area around her camp felt quiet and old and resigned, as if nature had firmly swallowed up any sign of the trappings of civilization. But here, there were interesting shapes integrated into the landscape, carved into and cut out of the mountain crags, and she wondered why the outpost had been built separately from what had obviously once been a settlement. It all looked quite intentional but…ancient. Forgotten.

  So these were the ruins she’d bet on—the dangerous caverns that she hoped to turn into a Resistance refuge.

  “Hurrghn graaaahl,” N’arrghela growled, pointing at a deeply shadowed part of the forest that felt both mysterious and a little sacred.

  “That’s where I’m supposed to go, huh? Doesn’t look like much of an entrance. I just walk in and the artifact jumps out at me?” Vi asked.

  She didn’t know if N’arrghela understood Basic, and she cursed Oga for her lack of forethought in the communications department. If Oga wanted her to succeed, this sort of information was obviously pretty important. If she could retrieve the artifact, she should have enough of her cargo back to begin actually building the command location and getting her mission back on track. If only she spoke more Shyriiwook.

  The Wookiee screeched a laugh and walked her hairy fingers through the air as if down the path before forcefully flattening out her hand. “Urrrghrl grrrow grrr nerrgh.”

  “So you’re saying that everyone who’s walked this particular path under these particular trees has not come back?” In punctuation, Vi walked her own fingers through the air, then rolled up her eyes and stuck out her tongue to simulate a nasty death.

  N’arrghela crossed her arms and nodded, her eyes sparkling with an evil delight.

  “Well, I plan on coming back. You gonna be waiting?” She tapped her wrist.

  A headshake.

  The Wookiee motioned toward the forest, flapping her hand in a shooing gesture. “Granerrgh grawwwwwr.”

  “Yeah, until the spires and all that to you, too.”

  After N’arrghela had walked off back toward town, Vi took a moment to check over her person and make sure she was ready for everything—or as ready as she could be, considering most of her belongings had been stolen. Under her orange wrap, she had two blasters and her tactical baton, and she carried a walking staff she’d made from a broken metal bar in her crashed transport. She’d thought about bringing Pook, but without a power source, he was heavily drained already. At least this way, she didn’t have to listen to him complain about how the cave affected his sensors.

  Part of her was annoyed to be under the thumb of an unfair gangster who’d sent her into danger with little information and no supplies, but most of her was grateful for something to do to earn her goods back faster than months of slow work at the scrapyard would. And, if she was honest, this mission was a lot more fun than the one Leia had given her. Vi Moradi had chosen to become a spy for a very specific reason.

  She needed a little danger in her life.

  As soon as she stepped under the forest canopy, the temperature dropped, and the sounds changed. Batuu suddenly seemed to transform into a very different planet. It didn’t feel scary or threatening. It felt holy somehow, as if the land still listened attentively, holding its breath. Everything else might’ve been abandoned, but the spirit of this place remained, serene and noble. And perilous. She drew her blaster and paid close attention to the sounds of the forest. The birds were all singing happily high above, but Vi didn’t think it was the wild animals or living people that were going to be the problem.

  This place—it was just too beautiful to die here.

  As she continued, creeping deeper and deeper into the forest through a sort of natural path weaving among the lush trees, she noticed that the landscaping around the rock formations in the clearing up ahead looked more planful. Flat stone pavers nestled here and there among the grass. A hollowed-out, petrified tree was surrounded by these pavers, as if it was part of a park or otherwise important somehow. Vi couldn’t tell if the ancients had carved architectural features out of the stone or if they’d actually constructed the rock formations themselves, but a grand overhang merged seamlessly into the mountain. The sound of dripping water called her forth, and she found a cenote similar to the one near her camp, the cool, clear runoff from a small waterfall captured by flowing pools surrounded by rocks. Sunlight shone down through holes in the canopy, dappling the clearing with golden sunbeams and stripes of indigo shade.

  The only thing that wasn’t lovely was a corpse, and it definitely wasn’t ancient.

  The moment Vi saw it, she stopped in place and looked more carefully. It appeared to be a female Trandoshan in bounty hunter gear, relatively fresh without any odor or visible decay. The body lay by the blue pool, curled up and frozen in place, the hands in fists and the face puckered up. The overall impression was one of pain and constriction. The Trandoshan’s weapons were still in their holsters, suggesting there had been no attack or altercation, nor were there any wounds or blood that she could see. Whatev
er had killed Oga’s underling had most likely been in that beautiful pool.

  Vi crept toward the corpse, staying low and hunting for trip wires as she avoided the pavers and stepped around stones that might’ve been pressure-sensitive triggers. Up close, she smelled something a little flowery, a little sour, and when she looked in the pool, it confirmed her suspicions. Sparkling rocks lined the edges of the pool, and among them glowed golden jewelry and a sprinkle of old coins. Flickering among these treasures, almost invisible, were the gently waving tentacles of glass anemones—or something like them. The freshwater creatures were highly venomous, and anyone reaching into the pool for some quick plunder would end up just like this Trandoshan—stung with powerful poison sacs and violently convulsing to death as they bit off their own tongue. This species seemed a bit different from those she’d seen on Naboo, and someone who hadn’t traveled widely and studied up on natural poisons probably wouldn’t even notice them.

  Vi swiftly looted the Trandoshan’s body, glad to take possession of the night-vision goggles and grappling gun, plus pocket the credits and spira she found. She also took the nice wrist comlink and nicer blaster. Surely Oga would want her to have the best chance possible of surviving this mission? Vi wished she’d asked Oga exactly how many people she’d sent here so she could anticipate how many corpses she was going to find on her way to the artifact. Then again, more corpses meant more supplies and credits, so even that dark cloud had a silver lining.

  At least now she knew that whoever had once lived here at the ruins was subtle and clever—and didn’t like greed. If someone reached into the center of the cenote to drink, they would be unharmed. Only if they tried to snatch the treasure among the nearly invisible anemones would they die.

  She was closer to the rock structures now. Ancient, crumbling stairs were cut into the stone, while the remains of carved patterns decorated the walls. A curving path around the cenote led into the darkness of the caves, and Vi took a last, deep breath of the soft, warm air before heading in that direction. In her experience, pitch-black darkness full of traps was never as serene as a garden. The path led into the windowless depths of a chamber with moist, clammy air, and Vi stopped just outside the doorway. Niches and troughs cut into the walls suggested that perhaps water had been stored here, long ago. The remains of ancient vases littered the floor, the pottery broken and jagged. Among them, a dark shape huddled on the ground. Not an urn—another corpse. She slipped on her newfound night-vision goggles, which smelled vaguely of unwashed Trandoshan, and everything shifted into shades of red and black.

  These were the remains of a human man, and he looked like he would’ve fit right in on Oga’s team, with a long, greasy leather duster and a blaster slung over his shoulder. It took Vi a moment to find his head, as it had been severed from his body and had rolled away.

  From her crouch in the door, it was easy enough to see the mechanisms at play, for all that they were carefully hidden. The stone pavers on the floor were in a circular pattern, and the dead man had clearly stepped on the wrong stone, which had triggered…well, something concealed in the patterns carved in the stone walls at just the right height. Due to the damp cold of the cave, the cut wasn’t a clean one she could analyze. She was curious if it was just lucky that this man had been the right height; what if N’arrghela had stepped on that stone? Or the Talpini? The dead man seemed of average height for humans, though, so perhaps the people who had built this place had been of similar stature.

  After scanning all the patterns in the chamber, she crept out to the edge of the pavers and used her metal staff to tap at stones until she felt one give. It barely took any pressure at all before a solid sheet of water sprayed at high velocity in a glimmering black arc, right at skull height for Vi. Nothing happened lower down. The water disappeared into a ridge in the stone, and Vi took note that the ancients really did have a way with water, to make it behave like a blade. She spent some time tapping every stone in the floor and even prodding some of the patterns on the walls. Nothing else happened, so she took the man’s comlink, and sidled around the edge of the chamber and through the tall doorway on the other side.

  The next room looked like perhaps food had been stored, butchered, and cooked there, with carved tables still showing the marks of knives. Shallow bowls had been hacked into the rock, worn smooth and stained dark, perhaps by mineral-rich liquid or ground spices. Or blood. A water trough like the one in the last room suggested the ancients had known well enough that cleanliness was important to food preparation.

  There was one body in the room, and it was curled against the wall, a shriveled Weequay. The floor was rough here with no specific stones that could be activated, but Vi noted several odd, globular shapes growing from the rough stone. Remembering the anemones in the cenote, she put two and two together.

  “Some kind of poisonous puffball, probably,” she murmured to herself, a habit she’d gained whenever she was alone and using her brain to keep her alive. It seemed that each of Oga’s minions only got one step beyond their predecessor before triggering a trap. Staying low, she took the Weequay’s comlink and carefully sidled across the room, staying as far away from the puffball clusters as possible.

  Vi paused in the next doorway, taking stock of the chamber beyond. This one had clearly been used for kitchen storage—an old pantry. Clusters of black twigs hung here and there from wooden racks set in the walls, the remains of dead roots gathered by the ancients. Some of the supports had broken, leaving racks fallen at odd angles like broken marionettes. The scent of rot rode the air, and Vi noted old bins filled with blackened soil—compost, maybe. She didn’t see any of the telltale stones or wall designs that signaled pressure-sensitive death machines, but that didn’t mean she felt safe. Every section of the ruins so far had included a hidden danger, and she just had to figure out what nasty sort of surprise the ancients had left behind here.

  Whatever it was, it had rendered the requisite corpse nothing but a skeleton. There were no clothes or organic materials left, but a collection of metal gadgets still adorned the bones, including the comlink Vi was all too happy to collect.

  With her metal staff, she poked the floors and walls and reached out to jab the nearest hanging rack, but it merely creaked and swung from its broken rod. Tapping the staff before her, she crouch-walked across the room, which reminded her all too much of her mother’s story of cave witches on Chaaktil, ferocious viragos who gathered poisonous herbs and shapeshifted into chaakbats and cast spells on children who ventured into their underground lairs.

  The first sign of trouble was a rustle in the soil-filled bins across the room. Vi froze and spun around, focusing on the dark corner. Every hair on her arms stood at attention as the old black soil shifted, filling the air with the scent of death as glowing, blobby forms burrowed up, making the dirt churn and splatter to the ground.

  What were these—these maggots? They were bright red in her night vision, as big as a fist, with too many legs and fat, bulbous bodies and no eyes, and they plopped out of the bins onto the ground and scurried toward her. First just a few, and then dozens. Their mouths opened to reveal thick pincers dripping with juice.

  “Giant mutant cave maggots that crave flesh? Are you kidding me?” Vi murmured, jogging low toward the next doorway with the maggot-things wobbling along behind her. As the first one got close, she speared it with her staff, and it died shrieking and dripping goo that hissed as it hit the stone.

  The room beyond was smaller, and Vi wasn’t willing to run in there blindly, so she pulled her blaster with her free hand and started shooting the maggoty things, which exploded and sprayed acidic ichor. The ones that got too close got speared with the staff in her left hand as she shot maggot after maggot with her right hand. Her ears rang and the cave smelled like rot and fire and tangy ozone, but she didn’t stop until her goggles detected no more glow.

  So much for the sacred calm she’d felt ou
tside.

  No wonder Oga’s idiots kept dying here.

  The ancient ruins were a creepy death carnival, and she was only three chambers in.

  If she lived through the experience, she was going to have a lot of work to do, making this place safe for the Resistance.

  Taking a deep breath, she reholstered her blaster and turned to the new room. This one was a shrine, with a semicircular altar in the center, surrounded by niches cut into the walls. Vi could imagine little statues in each niche, an audience of gods—or whatever the ancients had worshipped. But when they’d left, they’d taken their statues with them, leaving her alone in a chamber now empty of purpose.

  There was no corpse.

  “Doesn’t mean it’s safe,” she muttered, looking more carefully. In one of the niches, there was a tiny statue of a starmark, carved of dark, shiny rock. She’d almost missed it, but now it called to her. Was this Oga’s artifact?

  Or was it another trap?

  With her staff fully extended, she reached out and tried to swipe the statue onto the ground. It was about the size of her palm and should’ve easily been swept out of its niche, but instead it merely tipped over.

  “Oh, kriff.”

  At first, nothing happened, but then Vi smelled something sickly sweet.

  Some sort of gas.

  A wall of stone began to fall in the doorway nearest her, another one across the chamber—an attempt to seal her in the room. But she wasn’t in the room yet. She was still standing just outside, and she needed to get into the room beyond, if she wanted to find that artifact.

  She held her breath, ran through the shrine, and skidded under the closing door and into the next chamber, which was actually a long, narrow tunnel. That sickly-sweet smell followed her, and she considered how nice it would be to lie down and take a nap. Just a gentle nap on the soft, pillowy floor of the cave. A brief nap. Just a little one.