Galaxy's Edge Page 2

  “Trying to get out of this assignment?” Kalonia asked with her usual wry grin. The older human woman had smoothly bobbed dark hair threaded with gray and was known for her competence as a physician and her warm bedside manner. “As I told Leia, you’re perfectly fit for your usual misadventures.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” Vi told her. “It’s Archex. I understand you treated him here when we returned from the Absolution and that you’ve been monitoring his recovery while he’s been on Cerea?”

  Kalonia tilted her head knowingly. “Discussing the private concerns of my patients is generally considered a breach of protocol—”

  Vi opened her mouth to interrupt, but Kalonia stopped her with a hand.

  “But Leia and I suspected you would want answers. I don’t blame you; if you’re going to be stuck in a transport with him and then alone on a planet far from backup, you deserve to know what you’re dealing with. Considering he’s technically a political prisoner who hasn’t yet formally joined the Resistance, we feel it’s reasonable to share some information that will be relevant to your partnership.”

  Partnership. Vi snorted. “That’s not the word I would use for it.”

  Kalonia shrugged. “Collaboration, then. Let me show you.”

  The physician led Vi over to a bank of screens and pulled up a holo. There was Cardinal as Vi had last seen him, still in his bright-red armor and black captain’s cape as Kalonia, med droids, and other personnel swarmed around him under bright lights. He was on a gurney, his helmet off, unconscious. A worrisome amount of blood stained his armor, especially in the two places where Phasma had stabbed him with a poisoned blade she carried from her homeworld.

  “When you brought him to us, he was in bad shape. Lost a lot of blood. The weapon introduced an organic compound we’d never seen before, and it took us a while to work up—well, not an antidote. We couldn’t just cancel it out. But we were able to fight it. Still, one lung was punctured, and the wound in his leg was deep and festering. We did all we could, but for all our technology, as you know, medicine is still an imperfect, messy science.”

  Kalonia pulled up a new holo, this one showing Cardinal out of his armor and clad in the usual white medcenter gown, sitting up in a bed and connected to several machines by tubes. He looked so different without the bulky plating, smaller and more human, and Vi realized that this wasn’t Captain Cardinal—it was the man who now went by the name Archex. His black hair had grown out a little, but his face was as she remembered it, his yellow-gold skin freckled from a childhood under the Jakku sun, and his creased brown eyes troubled. He wasn’t smiling.

  “At first, he was withdrawn and seemed…well, like he’d lost the will to live.”

  “He told me so,” Vi murmured. “When I was pushing his gurney out of the Absolution. He said let me die, over and over.”

  “Yes, well, letting people die is not my job,” Kalonia continued with a twitch of her lips. “So I did my best to help him through it. We see this sometimes, in war—soldiers become disillusioned. They lose faith. They don’t know how to go on. And yet there’s just something about him, isn’t there? He’s a survivor, but not the kind made cruel by the crucible that forged him. He didn’t seem to want to live, and yet he approached rehabilitation like it was his job. He walked weeks before we thought he would. He exercised on his own time, even though I’d warned him that his lung wasn’t ready for it.”

  She flicked the screen over to a video of Archex doing push-ups. Sweat beaded his brow, and he was clearly struggling. His arms and legs wobbled, and he toppled over, but he quickly got back up and continued. Vi watched him gasping for breath like he’d run a kilometer, his eyes grimly determined.

  “He doesn’t give up easy,” she noted.

  “He does not,” Kalonia confirmed.

  “But what about his psyche? Is he…broken?”

  Kalonia clicked her tongue. “No more than you, or me, or Leia. So many of us came to the Resistance via tragedy. He’s healing, but he has a long way to go. The program on Cerea is intended to give him the space and time he needs. When you’re in the middle of things, on a base like this or one of our ships, you get caught up in the cycle. Everyone needs downtime to figure things out.”

  “But is he safe?”

  “Let’s not fool ourselves, Moradi. No one here is safe. But he’s not violent. He’s cogent and reasonable and even if he hasn’t joined us, he’s no longer aligned with the First Order. He’s not going to attack you in your sleep, if that’s what you’re worried about. But like you, he might have nightmares for the rest of his life.”

  Vi sighed. “That’s what I needed to know.”

  “I can heal bones. But I can’t heal souls. You have to do that yourself.”

  Vi looked down, fidgeting. She’d been neglecting that, focusing instead on action. Maybe she’d find some healing herself on Batuu. Maybe life would move slowly and she’d, what? Commune with nature?

  Sure, why not?

  Well, because she’d run from Chaaktil, and she’d never stop running. As it turned out, there was always another fight.

  “Work first, therapy later,” she finally said. “I’ll focus on healing when we’ve beat the First Order. So what about—”

  “Attention, all hands,” Leia’s voice boomed through the intercom system. She sounded exhausted and sad, like she’d aged fifty years since the last time Vi had spoken with her, just yesterday. The general had to be well on her way to Takodana by now. The comm system crackled, and Vi held her breath, waiting for more. “To your stations. An unknown weapon has just…I don’t even know how to say it. We believe…somehow…we are working to confirm this, but it seems the worst has come to pass. The Hosnian system appears to be gone. Yes, every planet. The entire New Republic government can only be assumed a casualty of this cataclysm.” And then, as if an afterthought, “May the Force be with everyone who was lost. May it remain with us all.”

  It was as if a great hollowness entered Vi’s chest. She’d been there—to Hosnian Prime and Hosnian and Cardota. Lived and slept and worked on their surfaces, felt their sun’s warmth on her skin. And now they were just…gone? She struggled to breathe, thinking of everyone she knew who would count among the dead, recalling faces and names. At least her brother was still on Pantora, she told herself; he’d once worked as an intern for the Senate. And in a flash she wondered: Was this how Leia had felt, so long ago, when she watched Alderaan explode, knowing exactly what had been lost?

  “An entire system,” Kalonia said, almost a question, as if she couldn’t even comprehend it, either, because who could? “Billions of people…”

  Vi put a hand on her arm. “Focus on the ones here, now. We’re going to need you.”

  Kalonia nodded, and Vi watcher her undergo the process that she’d seen so many of her compatriots undergo, that cycle of emotions she’d felt herself. Whatever doubts a person might have disintegrated in the face of necessity. If the First Order had a weapon like that, the answer wasn’t to stop, go silent, wait, cry. The answer was to feel your will coalesce, to firm up your chin and focus on the future and what you could personally do to fight the enemy, to stop such a horror from happening again.

  Her comm buzzed. “Magpie? Your mission to Batuu is on hold. You’re needed in the hangar.”

  “I have to go,” she said, and Kalonia nodded.

  Vi ran.

  The Resistance might need Batuu, but Batuu could wait.

  AFTER THE HOSNIAN CATACLYSM, THE RESISTANCE was thrown into utter chaos. And after the Battle of Crait, it was nearly destroyed. Their ships and officers were gone, Leia almost died, and Luke Skywalker saved what was left of their crew only to pass into the Force himself, leaving the Jakku scavenger, Rey, as their only hope. With nothing left of their fleet but the Millennium Falcon and no allies rallying to their call, Leia contacted all her spies and gave th
em new orders:

  Hide. Recruit allies. Gather ships. Collect fuel and weapons. Rebuild. Go far away from the target on my back and find a way to help us get on our feet again.

  For Vi, that meant it was time to go to Batuu.

  But first, she had to pick up her partner.

  No. That word still didn’t sit right.

  Her collaborator.

  And so she slowly rambled toward Cerea in an ancient transport filled with junk. Or, as Leia called it, the building blocks that Vi would use to help build a new Resistance base. The world down below reminded Vi of what life could be like when beings were allowed their freedom and weren’t blown up or subjugated by cruel regimes: gorgeous turquoise seas, old-growth forests, fields of waving golden grain. She sighed and aimed her old, bulky transport for the grungier spot of smog over Asphodar 3, one of Cerea’s Outsider Citadels. The native Cereans took great pains to keep their planet untouched by pollution and technology, so these city-sized structures were the only gateway and accommodation for immigrants and visitors. Vi landed in a short-term docking bay and glanced around.

  “You ready for this, Pook?”

  Her rejiggered PK-Ultra worker droid let out a comically loud groan of despair from the hold, where he was fixing a dented power droid. “Ready for what, another day of inconceivable torment? With another feeble human ordering me about nonsensically? With twice the work to do, I’ll most likely snap an arm.”

  Pook was twice the size of the usual PK droid, designed to be just as forgettable and inoffensive as the original but sturdy and capable of lifting heavy loads. His “head,” if you could call it that, looked like a lamp with a black light, and his body was bottom-heavy with clunky feet and three-fingered hands, all a pearly silvery white.

  “Wish I’d had time to get your personality tuned up.”

  “And I wish I’d been left to slowly rust away on Naboo, but here we are, all victims of some sort of grand cosmic joke.”

  Vi ran a hand over her face and murmured, “If only the FO hadn’t torn Gigi into parts.”

  “I heard that,” Pook warned. “And I’m far superior to any garbage pail of an astromech, considering I have a ramped-up JN VerboBrain combined with the ability to lift a fully grown male ronto. A lot of help a U5 would be where we’re going. Wretched, beepy things.”

  Vi stood and pushed her bangs aside. She’d let her hair grow while she was recovering but now wore it in flat twists under one of her favorite wigs, which was styled in a long, shaggy bob, smooth black with the tips dyed blue. Two more wigs carefully rested in a special case in the hold, just in case Black Spire Outpost wasn’t the most stylish of places.

  It was actually kind of strange, starting a mission dressed as herself. No disguise and fake name, no zippy little starhopper. Just Vi Moradi, openly working for the Resistance, and a transport ship that had once carried loads of ore and fuel to and from some dusty moon but was now heavy with cargo of a different sort. She’d found a jacket that felt almost as good as the one she’d jettisoned while being dragged into Cardinal’s Star Destroyer, Resistance-orange synthleather with cream trim, plenty of pockets, and a proud starbird symbol. Her cargo pants were packed with useful tech and weapons, including her favorite blaster, her second favorite blaster, and a specialized tactical baton that had saved her rump more than once when laser bolts weren’t the answer. Her boots were rugged, and her gloves were still stiff with newness and ready for hard work. This was an unusual sort of mission for her, and originally, yeah, she’d had her misgivings. But with what was left of the Resistance on the run from the First Order, she was glad to do whatever Leia asked. After the Hosnian Cataclysm, her will had resolved. She no longer had any doubts, just goals.

  Which meant she had to stop stalling and move on to the next step.

  “Here goes,” she said as she stepped off the ship and into the nicely kept hangar. A Cerean woman with a tall head and gray robes gracefully walked toward her carrying a datapad.

  “Have you made docking arrangements?” the woman asked, inclining her head in greeting.

  Vi returned the gesture. “No. I will be departing within the hour.”

  “And your cargo?” The woman’s eyebrows rose.

  Glancing back at her ship, Vi recalled that it definitely looked like something that would require loading or unloading, and the Cerean administrator was most likely making sure that Vi wasn’t bringing anything illegal to her docks. The Cereans had trouble keeping the criminal element out of their citadels, but Vi wasn’t here to smuggle armaments or obtain the valuable Cerean drug guilea. Not that the administrator would believe that until she’d checked the ship’s hold or watched Vi leave without loading or unloading anything except…

  “I’m just here for one thing,” Vi assured her. “And there he is.”

  Walking toward them was a figure both familiar and curiously different. His dark hair had grown out from its uniform shave and was getting a bit floppy, and he had a noticeable limp, but it was still Cardinal—

  No.

  It was Archex. She had to remember that.

  Scanning his simple costume of white shirt with brown jacket and black pants, Vi realized she’d never seen him in civilian clothes outside of Major Kalonia’s holos of his time in the medbay. He seemed smaller without his armor, vulnerable and aimless. And yet he was a powerfully built man and, as Kalonia had shown her, he’d taken pains to maintain his strength and fitness despite his injuries. It was his eyes that made him seem exposed. He seemed to always be squinting into a far-off sunset, always worried about what was to come. Vi read pain there, and she knew quite well that any kindness on her part would rankle.

  “I know I’m a few months late, but you look good, Emergency Brake,” she shouted across the busy spaceport.

  His mouth turned down; he hated his limp, she suspected. It was probably infuriating to a man like him to wear armor every day for twenty years and then suddenly feel so unprotected and…well, imperfect.

  “He does not look particularly good by human standards,” Pook said, peering down from the transport’s open hatch. “No wonder they included advanced med protocols in my most recent upload. That one’s a piece of work.”

  “Keep that to yourself,” Vi snapped.

  Pook sighed; it was like he was programmed to sigh. “Human bodies are garbage,” he opined.

  Cardinal—no. Archex! It was so hard for her to see him as anything other than the man who’d taken her to the darkest cave of her mind, a man she’d still inexplicably considered worth saving, in part because Leia believed redemption was possible. He hurried toward her ship, clearly putting himself in pain to do so and trying to hide that he was breathing heavily. She held out a hand to help him up the short step and into the cargo hold, but he ignored it, grabbed the edge of the hatch, and pulled himself up on his own. It cost him, and his face showed it, but Vi knew well enough that any further attempts to help would only make him resent her more.

  “Welcome to the fastest ship in the galaxy,” she said. “Just kidding. That’s a total lie. Welcome to a clunky transport full of secondhand junk and a melancholy droid that I’m pretty sure they gave me just to get him out of the way.”

  “I heard that,” Pook grumbled. “And I’m not melancholy. I’m realistic.”

  Archex carried one small brown leather bag, which he slung on the floor as he levered himself into an uncomfortable seat designed to haul miners.

  “Can we go now?” he said.

  The Cerean administrator was still hovering just outside.

  “Do I need to sign anything?” Vi asked.

  “Although visitors may legally dock here for up to an hour, it is important to record the comings and goings—”

  Archex pushed the button that slammed the hatch down in the poor woman’s face.

  “It’s not necessary. Just go.”

 
Vi gave him the quelling look one gives a small child who doesn’t yet understand civility.

  “It’s true,” he said. “Trust me. I’ve been here for months. As long as you’re not loading up four tons of guilea or dropping off a dead Hutt, it’s all voluntary. They just like manners.” Vi continued to stare at him, and he shook his head and gesticulated at her. “So let’s take off. We’re on a mission. Dire circumstances. All that.” After she stared at him a beat too long, he added, “Please. Get me off this exhaustingly polite rock.”

  Vi finally relented because she needed him as an ally more than she needed the approval of a random Cerean bureaucrat. Settling in the captain’s chair, she made sure the woman was out of range and took off. She would never get used to the way the awkward transport rumbled up into the atmosphere; she preferred a sleek ship with some style, or at least some speed. This thing was ugly and slow, not to mention almost impossible to maneuver.

  Archex maintained a firm, disapproving silence, and after a while she couldn’t help returning to her original role in their relationship: goading him.

  “So did you have a nice vacation on Cerea?”

  “It wasn’t a vacation,” he snapped. “It was a…what did they call it? A peaceful and nature-led deprogramming protocol in the beautiful and ancient forests of Cerea. In addition to daily meditation, obnoxiously gentle stretching, and practicing the Dance of the Three Suns, I ate an entirely plant-based diet and detoxed from the evils of technology.”

  Vi couldn’t help laughing. “Yeah, you sound real peaceful. What was Leia thinking?”

  Archex sighed and had the grace to look a bit ashamed. “She was thinking she needed to get me away from First Order action. And maybe she wanted to actually help me. But I think she overestimated my interest in making baskets from porlash needles.”

  “Fair enough. I don’t think I’d do so well in a program like that, either. A body likes to move. You get used to work, it’s hard not to work.”