Title:
No Son of Mine
Author:
Jenny Kauer
Author e-mail: jenny.kauer@netcologne.de
Category: Rebellion
Rating:
PG-13
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction. No monetary profit
has been gained from its production and no copyright infringement is intended.
The Star Wars characters, and events used in this fan fiction are the property
of George Lucas. This fanfic may not be republished in any way, shape or form
without the consent of the author.
Summary: Rhun
and Sam must travel to Rhun’s homeworld Garon II, which is connected to
unpleasant memories for both of them. Samica realises there are some Imperials
that won’t fit any category, and Rhun makes a very interesting discovery.
This episode features more
heavily on Rhun than the last ones, and we get to see some more of Rhun’s
smuggler friend Grant Dyson, but there’s also Samica’s new squadron commander,
a certain Lieutenant Colonel Salm . . .
Author’s note. In my last stories, I apologised for not being a
native speaker; however, I’d been under the impression that I knew how to tell
American and British English apart. You’ll have noticed I was wrong. I intended
for Sam to sound British (proper Imperial) and for most of the others to sound
more or less American, but I didn’t quite succeed, I suppose. That’s the
problem when you spend a year in England reading American Star Wars novels—I
mixed it all up. Sorry! :o)
For
Guido (the one and only Rhun—and merciless beta reader)
They say that
time is a healer
And now my wounds
are not the same
I rang that bell
with my heart in my mouth
I had to hear
what he’d say
He sat me down to
talk to me
He looked me
straight in the eye
And he said,
You’re no son,
you’re no son of mine
You’re no son,
you’re no son of mine
You walked out,
you left us behind
And you’re no
son, you’re no son of mine
(Genesis, No Son of Mine)
1
It wasn’t her fault.
He’d tried to tell her that
so often in the last seven years that he thought she must surely have
understood by now, but whenever he tried to brush the topic again with her
afterwards, he found to his dismay that she had forgotten all he had said in
their last conversation. All the excuses, even her forgiveness he’d received on
occasion, had just vanished into thin air.
Which was hardly surprising,
considering the fact that all these conversations had taken place in his
dreams.
Rhun van Leuken sat up in
bed, running a hand over his face as if to brush away the remnants of the
dream. Seven years since he had run from home, and he still dreamed about his
mother. Riga van Leuken never rebuked him, was never angry, which was what hurt
most. She just sat there, hearing out everything he had to say, sometimes
nodding, but mostly motionless, silent. He had never, in all these years,
dreamed about his father, as if his guilt of his son’s running away was
beyond doubt, and it had never occurred to him to beg his father’s pardon for
anything that had passed.
Rhun flopped back on his
pillow again, folding his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. This
had been the third time in just one week that he’d dreamed about his mother
again, and it was beginning to get at him. He’d have tried to contact her years
ago, if that had been possible, but even for other Rebels, it was difficult to
contact their family if they lived on worlds that were controlled by the
Empire. It didn’t even take a stormtrooper sergeant in the family to further
complicate the matter, but that happened to be Rhun’s chief problem.
He supposed he’d never
forgiven his father for being what he was—or maybe he could have forgiven him
that if his father had accepted the fact that his sons did not want to become
what he was. When he’d run from home, seven years ago, his greatest qualms had
had to do with his mother and maybe the baby brother he’d never had the chance
to get to know, whereas he always thought his father had got what he deserved.
He couldn’t write home to explain things, he knew, because Gorn van Leuken
would never forgive him for throwing his lot in with the Rebel Alliance—if he
read the letter at all.
A glance at the chrono at
his bed told him it was nearly time to get up anyway, so he sat up with a sigh,
then padded over to the refreshing unit to wash and dress.
The large common room at
Yavin base was still rather empty, the sun only barely visible beyond the
nearest line of Massassi trees. The euphoria following the Alliance’s
tremendous victory in the battle of Yavin four weeks ago had died down,
followed by preparations to abandon the base before the Empire came down on
them. They had won a battle, but the Empire was still strong. It might not be
capable of destroying the planet anymore, but it wouldn’t take more than a
systems fleet to destroy Yavin base.
He sketched a salute to
Captain Candela, his superior in Intel, Intentions, who was also up early—or
maybe late, depending on one’s viewpoint—and sat down at one of the tables,
eating his breakfast (which, by Alliance standards, was extraordinary—there
must have been a supply ship that night), almost regretting he hadn’t just
stayed in bed. He was even too tired to appreciate the improved quality of the
food. He had two hours before the start of his shift, but he couldn’t think of
anything useful to do with that time, so he just remained sitting after he’d
finished, brooding over the dreams again.
When someone tapped him on
the shoulder, Rhun almost thought he had fallen asleep once more at the table, but
was relieved to find he was still in a reasonable sitting position. Samica
stood next to him, bending down to eye him concernedly, and he put up a hardly
convincing smile.
‘What’s the matter?’ she
wanted to know.
Rhun rubbed his eyes.
‘Didn’t sleep well.’
‘For how many nights in a
row?’
His face screwed up in
concentration. ‘About six?’
‘You look like it.’ Samica
sat down next to him and drew her tray towards her. ‘Anything you’d like to
talk about?’
‘Nah . . . think I’ll wait
until I get gastric ulcer.’ He stretched, picking up his caf cup, and found it
was cold. He shook himself. ‘Your big day today?’
She snorted a short laugh.
‘Big day? Well, that’s one way to look at it.’
Rhun cocked his head and
took his turn to look at her searchingly. ‘Anything you’d like to talk about?’
Samica raked her hands through her
short, dark brown hair. ‘Maybe I’m a bit nervous about the new squadron. I
don’t really know myself. I’m going to miss Dutch, I think.’
She had recovered from the
shock of seeing her former squadron commander panic in the Death Star’s trench,
but Rhun assumed it would take longer than this to get over the deaths of her
entire squadron over Yavin. At least she was back to her old view of Dutch
before the battle. Rhun supposed anyone could have panicked with three TIE
fighters behind him and no space to manoeuvre—even if it hadn’t been Darth
Vader in one of the TIEs.
That Darth Vader, Dark Lord
of the Sith and one of the most feared servants of the Emperor, had partaken in
the battle had come as an aftershock to the Rebels, and the fact that he had
come very close to being killed by Han Solo in the last minutes of the battle
but then had reportedly got away had spoiled some of the euphoria, even if it
had by now been confirmed that Grand Moff Tarkin and a number of other
high-ranking Imperial military leaders had perished in the destruction of the
battle station.
But the Alliance’s victory
had been paid for in blood. Thirty-four pilots had died that day, and of Gold
Squadron, only Samica had survived the battle, owing to luck as much as skill
on her part. Rhun was glad she had come over the shock she’d carried around the
first few days after the battle, and even though she still hardly talked about it,
she was ready again to face another squadron, another commander.
Well, almost.
‘Hey, Sam . . . you might
even end up as exec, captain that you are.’
‘I know. Still, it’s all
been so rushed. That was a field promotion if ever there was one.’
‘Yes, and it’s up to you to
show them all you deserve it.’ Rhun gave her a brief hug.
Samica smiled, her brown
eyes warming as she relaxed a little. ‘You always find the right thing to say,
don’t you?’
‘Part of my job,’ he
replied, also smiling.
She drew a deep breath and
nodded. ‘You’re right. It’s not like I was likely to get stuck with another
Imperial-type commander. Rebels seem to make a habit of promoting only nice
people.’
Rhun grinned. It was an open
secret that she thought a great deal about Commander Willard, but if he thought
about the only superior Imperial officer of hers that he had ever had the
pleasure of meeting, Captain Kolaff of VSD Resolve, he could understand
full well why she had taken to the Alliance so quickly. It wasn’t as idyllic as
her remark might have made it seem, but for the most part, the Rebel Alliance
did not believe in bullying.
‘When are your new squad
mates due to arrive?’
Samica glanced at her
chrono. ‘In three hours. I wonder if I’m going to be the only female again.
I’ve been told most women seem to like X-wings better than Y-wings.’
‘Why didn’t you want to move
up to an X-wing squad? You could have stayed with Wedge. At least you know
him.’
Samica shrugged. ‘Two
reasons. One, somehow I think I owe the Y-wings one. Even if there’s going to
be no new Gold Squadron ever again, it would have felt like betraying a
friend.’
‘And the second?’
‘The prospects were joining
X-wing squadron Grey and staying with Wedge . . . or joining Y-wing squadron
Blue and staying here on Yavin.’
Rhun feigned surprise. ‘Why
would you want to stay on Yavin? I thought you didn’t like the climate?’
Her smile got broader. ‘Some things
are worth putting up with Yavin for,’ she replied.
So he had her back on her
feet again. Fine. He was very good at sorting out other people’s lives, he
reflected, but he’d failed time and again in sorting out his own.
Despite Rhun’s excellent job three hours earlier,
Samica was more than a bit apprehensive when, just before noon, eight Y-wings
with blue markings came into the hangar of Yavin base. For the past weeks, the
hangar had been painfully empty, apart from two X-wings and her own Y-wing;
now, it seemed right once more, if it hadn’t been for the colour designation of
the newcomers. Instead of the gold stripe running along the cockpit of her ship
from nose to entry hatch, they bore blue markings, which looked almost shabby
to her compared to what she was used to. Samica noted that there had to be
three vacancies; but it was not unlikely that they would be filled within the
next few weeks. High Command had been very worried about leaving Yavin
unprotected at all, and if a squadron intended for detachment to the moon was
not complete yet, it would have to go short-staffed.
Commander Willard was with
her, as well as General Dodonna and several aides. Samica stayed in the
background. Her presence was not even required at this time; but she supposed
it would make a very bad impression if she weren’t here to welcome her new
squadron. The general would do most of the talking anyway.
Eight canopies popped open,
and eight people clambered out, looking around the hangar with interest. A
quick glance told Samica most were human males—again—but there was one Mon
Calamari. She had once flown with one of the quiet amphibians, and even if she had
never talked too much to Plancal, she had found him rather likeable. She hoped
the rest of his people were anything like that.
One of the pilots now came
towards their group; a very tall, very lean man in his mid-thirties with a
shaggy-looking black beard and matching black hair. He walked slightly stooped,
with very long strides, and Samica saw General Dodonna cast a glance at
Commander Willard and raise an eyebrow.
The tall man stopped before
the general and saluted, and they all returned the salute.
‘Captain Brock Cromarty
reporting, sirs.’
General Dodonna signalled
for him to stand at ease and shook the tall captain’s hand. ‘Welcome, Captain
Cromarty. You’ll forgive me my surprise . . . I hadn’t reckoned for someone
your stature to report to us here.’
Cromarty might have smiled,
Samica wasn’t sure underneath that beard. ‘The colonel was delayed, sir, so he
sent me ahead to take care of things here. He wants me to act as his exec . . .
but I’m certain he’s told you about that.’
‘About that particular fact,
yes, but I hadn’t heard he had so urgent business to attend to.’
‘A matter of formality, sir.
It was a bit of a surprise for him to be recalled to active duty on so short
notice; you know he likes to get things done properly.’
‘Indeed, he does.
Incidentally, Captain, this is Captain Samica Trey, a survivor of the Battle of
Yavin. She’ll also be in Blue Squadron.’ The general stepped aside a little.
Samica saluted, and Cromarty
returned it. ‘I’ve heard about you. I look forward to flying with you,
Captain.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Samica
replied, hoping she hadn’t blushed. She was not at all sorry for the fact that
Blue Squadron already had an executive officer. It wasn’t that she shied away
from responsibility, but she liked to take things a bit more slowly, and she
liked to know what was expected of her. To have the opportunity to watch an
experienced XO at his work and grow into a leading position rather than be
pushed into it was more to her liking, and she supposed she would get along
rather well with Cromarty—if the colonel were anything like that, he should be
no problem. Obviously a reactivated old warhorse, by the sound of him, she
thought. There were many retired pilots who had been dug out to go on active
duty again, if only for a short time, until the Alliance had compensated for
the losses it had suffered at Yavin. Maybe Cromarty was the colonel’s
designated successor once things had settled down, and he was free to return to
his paperwork or teaching or whatever he’d been doing before High Command
recalled him.
A blond young man around
Samica’s age or maybe a bit older came up behind the tall captain. ‘Where’re we
supposed to . . . oh.’ He registered the presence of a commander and a general
then and remembered to salute, if slightly sloppily.
Captain Cromarty turned to
General Dodonna again with what Samica now recognised as a crooked grin. ‘As
Flight Officer Haaland here points out, we’ve been in our cockpits for four
standard days and we’d really appreciate somewhere to store our stuff and
transform into human beings again . . . or Calamari and Shistavanen beings.’
Dodonna nodded. ‘Of course,
Captain. Captain Trey, I’m certain you’ll be able to show your new squad mates
to the pilots’ wing. There aren’t any nametags on the walls yet, but this is
the room assignment I got from Supply today. You can still change arrangements
if necessary.’ He gave Cromarty a datapad, and the exec nodded and saluted,
Samica following suit.
When Dodonna and Willard had
dismissed them, Samica led the eight pilots towards their quarters. As Cromarty
had already said to General Dodonna, they were all human, apart from one
Shistavanen and one Mon Calamari. Most of them seemed tired after the long
jump—something Samica couldn’t fault them for—and talked little.
‘We have single quarters for
lieutenants and up,’ she told Cromarty, ‘the rest have to share.’ She cocked
her head to look up at him. ‘No other female pilots again, I suppose?’
Cromarty looked puzzled for
a moment. ‘Well, now that you say it, no.’ Samica had difficulty to keep up
with his long strides, even if the tall human was not hurrying. ‘But we’re
still two pilots short, so there’s still a chance you won’t be all that alone.
That bother you?’
‘Not really,’ she replied,
but didn’t offer any more. She wasn’t really used to female colleagues, but she
wasn’t going to advertise her Imperial background first thing. They’d find out
soon enough.
The first time Samica got to know some of her new
squad mates was that evening, after they had all slept or showered or whatever
it had taken them to settle in. They were in the pilots’ lounge, sitting at one
of the long tables. Most of the pilots had not known each other before, but
some of them seemed to be comfortable already, at ease among the others and not
at all worried to chat away happily. Samica was not one of them She preferred
to listen.
Blue Two was the young
flight officer she had seen in the hangar. His name was Dave Haaland, and he
seemed hardly disturbed at having overlooked a general and a commander first
thing on Yavin. He was also the one who kept the conversation going, easily
establishing a friendly sort of atmosphere. Samica envied him that talent, if
she was honest, but knew she was not going to make a fool of herself in trying
to copy that ease.
Blue Three was Bent Colding,
a large, gentle-looking young man with a homely face and short blond hair. He
seemed to know Dave from their previous squadron; at least he chuckled
good-naturedly from time to time at some of the jokes Dave told, some of them
at his expense, but none so mean Cromarty saw reason to intervene.
Blue Four’s slot was still
vacant, and Blue Five was Captain Cromarty, who also chose to listen to the
conversation rather than take much part in it. Most of it was concerned with
Dave trying to convince the others that Coronet City, Corellia, was the most
boring place in the galaxy.
‘I tell you, you haven’t
been to the right places,’ Deon Cargill said. He was Blue Seven, the only
Lieutenant in the group, and he was struggling to remain aloof and not box Dave
around the ears—it hadn’t taken more than three words from the strong-muscled
man with his pronounced Corellian accent for the others to guess which city he
came from. Samica strongly suspected Dave had known that as well—before he brought
up the topic. ‘Anyway, I’m not arguing with an idiot who’s got no idea what
he’s talking about!’
‘Well, looks like you were,’
said a short, wiry youth with curly brown hair from the end of the table. Alden
Rincon was Blue Twelve, a year older than Samica, but with less combat
experience. ‘Arguing, I mean.’
Cargill looked at the
younger man, then seemed to realise he was. ‘Where are you from, anyway?’ he
asked Dave.
Dave grinned broadly.
‘Coronet City,’ he said proudly. ‘East End.’
Alden grinned, Cargill
snorted, and Samica shook her head. Teddie, the Gold Squadron jester, had found
a worthy successor—maybe a bit worse.
Shirk Rowl bared sharp
teeth. The Shistavanen wolfman, Blue Eight, was the first of his species Samica
had ever seen up close, and he hadn’t offered much about himself so far. ‘Now
I’d really like to know about the Coronet City East End.’
A gravelly voice spoke up
from the end of the table, opposite Alden. ‘I thought you had made a joke,
Dave.’
Some of the pilots grinned
at that, and Samica saw Cromarty lean slightly forward in his chair, to come to
Lawal’s rescue should he need it. The salmon-coloured Mon Calamari, who was
designated as Blue Eleven, looked almost exactly like Samica’s old squad mate
Plancal—to her, at least—but he was even less certain of his mostly human
environment. It was the first time he had spoken up at all, obviously puzzled
about human behaviour, but Dave eased the situation with a shrug. ‘Well, sort
of.’ He stretched his legs and leaned over to the Mon Cal conspiratorially.
‘You see, Lawal, it’s one of my principles to annoy one superior officer a
day.’ He winked. ‘That was a joke,’ he added, more for Captain
Cromarty’s benefit than Lawal’s, since the shaggy eyebrows had drawn together
ominously.
The Mon Calamari nodded
gravely. ‘I see.’
Gordon Dowd, a
freckle-faced, red-haired pilot around Samica’s age, turned to Alden with an
exasperated sigh. ‘How did that lunatic get into StarCom at all?’ he asked in a
stage whisper, too loudly for Dave to miss.
Dave grinned smugly. ‘I had
friends in high places,’ he replied. ‘Admiral Pimple used to tell me, “Y’know,
Davy, better you than that spoilsport from Danforra base, what was his name?
Dood . . . Dord . . . something like that.”’
‘We haven’t got any admirals
in the Alliance,’ Gordon interrupted, then got Dave’s joke and realised he’d
made a complete fool of himself. He sat back in his chair, arms folded like a
sullen child, and grumbled, ‘Idiot.’
Alden leaned forward,
addressing the exec. ‘Well, Cap, where’re you from?’ he asked in an attempt to
draw Cromarty into the conversation.
Cargill looked at the
captain expectantly. ‘Corellia?’
‘Not quite.’ Cromarty seemed
intent on keeping his part in tonight’s entertainment to an absolute minimum.
‘Selonia.’
Dave looked up sharply, with
the expression of a predator after sighting a very delicious dinner, but
Cromarty must have smelled the joke coming and cut the younger man off before
he could crack it. ‘Yes, Dave, that’s right, I don’t have a tail. I’m from
Selonia, not Selonian.’
Dave put up a ruefully
comical expression that made Samica smile in spite of herself. ‘Well, Cap, it
was a good one, you’ll have to grant me that.’
‘All right, all right.’
Cromarty got up. ‘’Scuse me, people. I’ve got a mountain of paperwork to do
before I go to bed. Captain?’
Samica looked up. ‘Yes?’
‘Try to keep them from each
other’s throats.’ But he grinned.
When the exec had gone,
Shirk Rowl turned to Samica. ‘You survived the battle of Yavin?’ the
Shistavanen asked her, and six other heads turned to her as well. She resisted
the urge to squirm.
‘Yes.’ She toyed with the
cup in her hand. ‘I used to be in Gold Squadron.’
‘Must have been terrible,
being the only survivor,’ Dave said. She was infinitely grateful he refrained
from joking this time. Maybe he wasn’t a bad sort after all.
‘It was.’
‘But you still stick to
Y-wings?’ Bent wanted to know, one of the few occasions he’d spoken that
evening.
‘There’s nothing wrong with
Y-wings,’ Samica replied, almost defensively. ‘The losses of X- and Y-wings were
equally high. The Imp pilots were awfully good, and our ships couldn’t
manoeuvre in the trench.’ She broke off when she realised that those had been
Pops’ last words, almost exactly. She wished she wouldn’t remember them so
clearly.
‘Anyway, it’s good to be
with a squadron again,’ she continued more briskly. ‘By the way, has anyone met
our CO yet?’
There was a collective
shaking of heads around the table. ‘I know he used to have a desk job during
the last few years but was reactivated after Yavin,’ Cargill said. ‘But I
haven’t met him. He’s a colonel, too. Captain Cromarty has been very reluctant
to volunteer too much about him.’
Dave snorted. ‘The Captain
is very reluctant to volunteer anything about any topic.’
Samica shrugged. ‘I can’t
really fault him. It’s not exactly good manners to tell your squadron too much
about their future CO in his absence.’
‘I know Cromarty used to be
the colonel’s aide,’ Rowl fell in. ‘I hope he hasn’t got rusty . . . either of
them.’
‘StarCom’s too desperate at
the moment to employ squadron commanders who aren’t up to the job,’ Alden said.
Gordon raised an eyebrow.
‘Who tells you they aren’t desperate enough to employ squadron commanders who
aren’t?’
Samica decided she didn’t
like the direction in which the conversation was heading, and she found it was
her place to do something against it. ‘Well, here we are,’ she said.
‘Speculating. I suppose that’s exactly what Captain Cromarty tried to prevent.
I for one think StarCom knows what they’re doing, and we can’t do a lot at the
moment anyway.’
‘Right.’ Dave yawned hugely,
then got up. ‘And since there’s so little we can do right now, I might just as
well catch up on some sleep. Nothing like four days in hyperspace if you want a
crick in your neck.’
‘Or dry out.’ Lawal rose as
well. ‘I’ll rehydrate some more. That’s why I wanted to go to such a humid
world: no restrictions on showering.’ He looked at his fellow pilots’ faces,
and added, ‘That was a joke.’
Samica grinned. So much like
Plancal. ‘I’ll go to bed as well. I’ll see you all in the morning for a sim
run, I suppose.’ She followed the Calamari and Dave out of the lounge, hearing
some groaning behind her at the mention of work the next day.
Dave said good-night and
left them at the entrance to the pilots’ wing, as Samica’s room was further
down the corridor, as were the showers, Lawal’s destination.
‘See you tomorrow, Officer
Lawal,’ Samica told the Mon Cal.
‘Good night, sir,’ the
Calamari replied. Samica had been called ‘sir’ for long enough not to find it
odd at once, but when she did, he realised that he was addressing her as ‘sir’
because he hadn’t realised she was a woman. Her initial reaction would have
been alienation only months ago, but when she thought about it, she didn’t know
how to tell male and female Calamari apart either.
‘Um—Lawal,’ she said,
deciding to tell him now, without witnesses, before the squadron found out. ‘I
suppose you didn’t know . . . I’m a woman.’ This sounded so silly.
The brown specks on his
domed forehead stood out more clearly than they had before, apparently the
Calamari equivalent of blushing. ‘I’m—I’m terribly sorry, Captain. I—beg your
pardon. I thought I knew how to tell male and female humans apart, but—’
‘No offence taken,’ Samica
assured him. ‘Don’t worry, Flight Officer. Good night.’
Several minutes later, alone
in her quarters, she had to stifle a highly un-captainish giggle as she
realised the Calamari had probably been told that female humans were short, had
long hair and considerable breasts. He might have realised her voice was higher
than a man’s would have been, but for a Calamari who wasn’t used to humans, all
human voices must sound rather high. Poor Lawal hadn’t stood a chance.
‘How was your first contact, then?’ Rhun wanted to
know two days later, when they finally found time together again and had dinner
in the common room. Their respective shifts hardly left them much opportunity
to spend more than a few minutes together each day.
‘All right,’ Samica replied.
‘The usual mix of pranksters and fighter jocks, I guess.’
Rhun eyed her closely. ‘I
can’t remember hearing anything like that about your old squadron,’ he
observed, avoiding the word ‘Gold’ on purpose.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.
Maybe it was because they had known each other for so long. No, I really think
these’re all right.’ She looked up again. ‘Stop worrying about me, Rhun. You
look like you’ve had more carefree days yourself.’
Rhun made a face. He hadn’t
slept well in ten days, and it wasn’t just those dreams. He’d had them before,
but this time, they scared him. He’d never felt such an urgent need to
go back to Garon II—his mind refused to think of it as ‘home’—in seven years,
and he didn’t know what to do. He could hardly ask Commander Willard for leave
to visit his family because he didn’t sleep well.
He longed to tell Samica
what bothered him, but he couldn’t think of a way to explain to her what scared
him about the dreams. It was something he couldn’t pinpoint himself, much less
elaborate on. As soon as he tried to come up with a definition of what he was
feeling at the moment, even if only for himself, it sounded nothing but stupid,
and as much as he would have liked to tell her, he didn’t want to sound like an
idiot.
So Rhun just shrugged.
Shrugging had been his most effective way of dealing with things like these in
the past, and it would have to do now as well. ‘Looks like we’ve all got our
own personal demons that haunt us.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘But I’m taking care
of them, don’t worry. Your squadron CO is due to arrive tomorrow?’
Samica nodded, still
reluctant to let the issue lie, but Rhun hadn’t volunteered anything about his
particular demons. Probably some Intel thing, she supposed. Not another
Death Star. But at least she was fairly certain it wasn’t anything to do
with her.
‘Yes, at fourteen hundred.
Wonder what he’s like, Colonel Salm.’
2
Lieutenant Colonel Horton Salm arrived in a shuttle
the next day at fourteen hundred sharp, as if even the shuttle pilot had been
caught in the colonel’s desire for arriving perfectly on time. Captain Cromarty
had lined up with General Dodonna to welcome him, but the rest of Blue Squadron
didn’t meet their new CO before the briefing set for fifteen hundred.
When the colonel entered the
briefing theatre, all conversation stopped immediately, and any comments on the
man himself were at once cut off by the look on his face.
Horton Salm was a very small
man, but made up for his lack of height with a stocky to thickset build.
Everyone would have looked right through him in a crowd. Unfortunately, his
near-bald head added to a less than hologenic appearance, and it was obvious he
was aware of that and determined to step on any comments on the part of his
pilots hard. Still, Samica thought, it wasn’t as if Y-wing pilots had ever been
picked for their beauty.
Captain Cromarty was in
front of the assembly with the colonel, and maybe it was the contrast of those
two standing side by side that made for a rather comical picture, the tall,
thin, scruffy captain towering over the small, broad, balding colonel.
Salm cleared his throat as
if to silence conversation, though there hadn’t been any since he’d entered.
‘Gentlebeings, I am Lieutenant Colonel Horton Salm. You are now part of Y-wing
squadron Blue, and together with X-wing squadron Green, it will be our job to
keep this base safe until we have the means to evacuate. Unfortunately, there
are very few operations we will have to partake in’—some of the pilots let out
small sighs at this, some of disappointment, but more of relief—‘but in the
meantime, Captain Cromarty and I will make sure that Blue Squadron remains
sharp. I suppose most of you know how to maintain your ships and perform
standard repairs, but some will not. This is one of the things that have been
neglected by many of your commanders in the past, and I feel responsible for
remedying it.’ A new set of groans was cut short at once by a sharp stare at
those responsible. ‘Before we start to work on this, however, I shall want an
interview with each of you in my office. Captain Cromarty will assign each of
you a time for this.’ He raised his eyebrows and let his gaze wander through
the front rows of the briefing room searchingly. ‘Any further questions?’
Deon Cargill raised a hand,
and the others twisted around to see who had the stomach to ask a question
after the less than cordial welcome.
‘Lieutenant?’
‘When will the remaining
slots be filled?’ Cargill asked, and Samica winced inwardly as she noticed,
with inbred Imperial training, that he had forgotten to say ‘sir’.
Colonel Salm’s eyebrows
knitted together in annoyance. ‘We will get new pilots when StarCom can spare
them, Lieutenant Cargill,’ he answered with unperturbed correctness, which caused
several others to wince as well. Samica could almost hear their minds working
as lots of mental notes were made around the room about how to address the
colonel and stay out of trouble.
‘That will be all, then,
Gentlebeings. Captain Trey?’
She resisted the urge to
jerk upright. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’ll await you in my office
at 15.30.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Well, Sam, welcome back.
Colonel
Salm had a datapad before him, which he had been studying carefully when she
entered. Samica doubted he did that for the first time. His office was as small
as most of the other rooms on Yavin base, very tidy and immaculate, which was
probably due to the fact that he had just moved in today, but somehow she
doubted it would look much different after it had been his for a year. She had
never been in it while it had been Dutch’s office, because her former commander
had never thought a lot of facing his pilots across a desk, and had probably
used it exclusively as his bedroom.
Salm gestured to the chair
in front of his desk. ‘Have a seat, Captain.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ she
replied, and sat.
He remained standing,
glancing at the datapad. ‘It says here, Captain, that you defected from the
Empire half a year ago. Is that true?’
‘That’s correct, sir.’
‘Why?’
Samica hesitated for a
second. She had been forced to think about that question in detail several
months ago, when Commander Willard as well as Rhun had wanted to know the same,
but back then, she hadn’t been able to tell them. The truth was that she didn’t
know. She had hoped that, after Yavin, she would never have her loyalty
questioned again, but it seemed that she had been wrong.
‘I found out some things
that were seriously wrong with the Empire, sir. Among other things, I watched
as a friend of mine was executed.’ She had settled on that as the main reason
for her defecting, even if Sören Hide had not quite been a ‘friend’, but it
came closest to what she actually felt—even if she couldn’t phrase it more
accurately.
Salm studied the file again.
‘You were the sole survivor from Gold Squadron?’
Samica met his gaze. ‘Yes,
sir.’
‘You must be an exceptional
pilot, then.’ Neither the colonel’s face nor his voice betrayed any emotion,
which made her nervous.
‘I suppose I am, sir.’
Samica deeply despised talking about her own abilities—even preferring to point
out the things that weren’t so good, rather than self-adulation—but she
supposed the colonel wouldn’t approve of false modesty in this case.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You
suppose?’
She took a deep breath. ‘I
never went down into that trench, sir.’
‘Why not?’
Her eyes went slightly
off-focus as the scenes flashed past her mind’s eye once again. ‘By the time
the first attempt had failed, my torpedo launcher was out, and there was only
one more Y-wing left besides mine. Commander Dreis decided we’d have to rely on
speed, so the X-wings took the next run.’
‘So you flew cover.’
‘Well, we tried, sir.’
‘You tried?’
‘The X-wings were too fast
for us, and we couldn’t do anything to help them during their attack run, sir.
All we could do was to keep the other TIEs off them.’
Salm nodded, slightly
absent-mindedly. ‘One more question, Captain . . . have you ever regretted
joining the Rebellion?’
Samica frowned. ‘Why would
I, sir?’
‘That’s what I want to hear
from you,’ he replied.
‘No, sir. Never.’
Salm nodded, apparently
satisfied with her answer. ‘Well, that will be all for the time being, Captain.
Incidentally, as Blue Nine, you will be responsible for the third flight group.
I trust that, as a former Imperial pilot, you know how to maintain a
starfighter.’
‘I’m better at flying, sir,
but I’ll do my best to work up to it,’ she replied.
The colonel eyed her for a
few seconds, then nodded. ‘Well, that’ll suffice.’ He sat down behind his desk.
‘Dismissed, Captain.’
Samica soon found that, in order to satisfy Colonel
Salm’s demands, she would have to do a lot about her maintenance skills, but at
least that was not her alone.
Most of the squadron were
rather capable mechanics, but with the possible exception of Lieutenant
Cargill, nobody lived up to Salm’s expectations. Lawal was worst off. His
reflexes served him well enough in a fighter cockpit, but his large, fin-like
hands were not meant to fuel up a Y-wing in hurry, much less with a glowering
superior officer behind him. That his flying skills also fell short of Salm’s
expectations didn’t help to lift his reputation in the commander’s eyes.
Much as Salm’s style
differed from anything Samica had ever encountered in the Rebel Alliance, she
didn’t find it too bad, certainly not as much as some of the other pilots, who
were obviously not used to a CO that tolerated no mistakes . . . no more than
once. Bent was one of the unlucky ones who got picked on more than the others,
and even Dave was a lot more careful in his choice of words when Salm was
around than the first few days had made the squadron expect. Cromarty retained
a carefully neutral position, never taking sides against either the colonel or
his squad mates, which meant he avoided pilot gatherings after hours most of
the time.
Samica had to grant Salm’s
methods one thing: they were efficient. She knew, if she was honest, that she
had never worked so hard under Dutch, and she finally found the excuse to do
something about her limited knowledge about her snubfighter’s interior. Salm
was right: they did have lots of competent techs and mechanics here on Yavin
base, but it was always possible to end up in a situation that forced you to
repair your fighter without qualified help—so you’d better make sure you were
qualified yourself.
An X-wing squad had joined
them on Yavin 4 three weeks after the battle, and apart from patrolling duty,
the other missions—recon, escort, or raids—were left to them, since Salm
insisted his squadron wasn’t ready yet. The sympathetic glances that Blue
Squadron got from the X-wing jocks in the pilots’ lounge did nothing to lift
their spirits.
After three weeks of
rigorous training, Blue Squadron finally saw action for the first time. The
nine pilots assembled in the briefing room, still two short of a full squadron,
and conversation stopped at once as soon as Salm entered.
The colonel went to the
holotank in the centre of the room and activated it. The holographic projection
of a star system sprang to life.
‘This is the Conovex
system,’ Salm began without preamble. ‘The third planet is called
Conovex-Gamma, an inhabitable cold rock. C-G itself has a number of moons . . .
five, to be precise.’ The image zoomed in on one satellite orbiting the planet.
‘This is our objective, Gentlebeings. C-G 2. It’s about as little charming as
its name. It’s a type-three atmosphere world, unbreathable, and the
temperatures range between minus twenty and minus forty degrees . . . in
summer.’
Samica exchanged a glance
with Cargill, who was sitting next to her. The lieutenant only shrugged.
‘C-G 2 also houses an Alliance
deep-space listening post,’ Colonel Salm continued. ‘However, High Command
assumes that the Empire has become suspicious of Rebel activity in the Conovex
system, and has ordered to evacuate the outpost.’ He pressed a button on the
holotank, and a group of green icons appeared, one of them a stylised Y-wing.
‘Transport group Erevon, consisting of three StarGazer class transports, will
dock with the outpost airlock and evacuate the crew. We are told to expect
Imperial scout ships if we are lucky, with the possibility of an Imperial task
group on the way to reach C-G 2 before we do. It’s our job to prevent the
Imperials from destroying the facility, and see to it that the transports make
hyperspace safely. Mission will start at five hundred tomorrow, so I’d advise
you to catch enough sleep before we start. We’ll only be in hyperspace for
three and a half hours. Questions?’
There was a collective
shaking of heads around the briefing room, and Salm dismissed them.
They still had thirteen
hours before the mission, and Samica went down to the hangar once again. Marvyn
Tibbs, the squadron’s chief mechanic, had finally got round to repainting her
Y-wing—a job that had been low-priority, what with the squadron grounded
anyway—and he’d dropped a hint to her that he had a surprise waiting for her.
She supposed it had to do with the wistful face she’d made when she told him
that her fighter could no longer keep its gold stripe. Tibbs had worked for
Gold Squadron as well, and he’d got along very well with Dutch.
She was not the only pilot
who had chosen to give her ship another once-over. Cargill, Lawal, and Alden
were also making systems checks and hunting for anything in need of repair.
Tibbs came over from where
he’d been working on the other end of the hangar when he saw her. ‘Finished
your ship, Cap,’ he said. With a grin, he added, ‘I think you’ll like it.’
Samica followed him to her
fighter. On first glance, it looked like any other Blue Squadron Y-wing, but
when she looked closer, she saw he had left a narrow gold line along the edge
of the blue, no wider than her fingernail.
The middle-aged mechanic
beamed at her. ‘D’you like it?’ he asked.
Samica traced the line with
a forefinger. ‘Yes, it’s great,’ she said softly.
He nodded vigorously.
‘Thought so. It’s a pity, really, that Gold Squadron’s not going to be revived
. . . so you’ll take a part of it wherever you go. And, well . . . the colonel
doesn’t need to know.’
‘I don’t need to know what?’
came a voice from behind her ship, and Samica froze. Salm couldn’t possibly
have picked a worse moment for appearing.
Tibbs also gaped at the
short colonel, but quickly caught himself and sketched a salute. ‘Ah,
g’evening, sir. Just talkin’ to Captain Trey about her . . . uh . . . kills.’
Salm’s eyes narrowed, and
Samica’s stomach sank. There was another thing Dutch had simply accepted, but
she didn’t know how Salm would react to that particular bit of nonconformity.
Not that she didn’t have
other problems. Salm noticed the gold line along her cockpit almost as quickly
as he would have spotted luminescent paint.
He looked up at her—she was
taller than he by ten centimetres. ‘What is that supposed to be, Captain?’
Tibbs started to reply, but
she cut him off. ‘A reminder of my old squadron, sir.’
He snorted. ‘Do you live in
the past or in the present, Captain Trey?’
‘In the present, sir. But
sometimes the past is worth remembering.’
‘Who is responsible for
this?’
‘I am, sir,’ she answered
before Tibbs could say anything. It might have been his idea, but it had been
what she’d wanted. And assuming responsibility was the only thing that might
get her out of this.
Without another word to her,
Salm turned to the mechanic. ‘See to it that the ship is painted according to
regulations by tomorrow morning, five hundred.’
‘Will do, sir,’ Tibbs
replied, his face gone unreadable. Both the mechanic and Samica looked after
the colonel as he stalked away, but when he was out of earshot, he turned to
her. ‘Really, ma’am, that wasn’t necessary. That was my idea to leave that
line, not yours.’
Samica shrugged. ‘It
wouldn’t have changed a thing, for better or worse,’ she replied. ‘But thanks
anyway. It really was a good idea.’
He scratched his ear and
looked at the Y-wing unhappily. ‘Looks like I’ll be on night shift again,’ he
began, then cut her off before she could say anything. ‘And don’t even think
about helping me, ma’am. Won’t take me all that long, and you need your sleep.
Think of it as a thank you for getting me out of that mess.’
Samica nodded reluctantly.
It wasn’t all that unheard of for a captain to help a humble mechanic patch her
ship together, but in this case, she knew that this particular humble mechanic
was right.
‘All right then, Tib. Again,
thank you.’ He nodded and went to get blue paint.
Marvyn Tibbs whistled as he
went to work again. No way Colonel Salm was going to notice a faint scratch in
the finish, through which some gold still showed . . . and if he did, he could
hardly say something against it. These things happened to Y-wings all the time,
after all.
Maybe . . . maybe he’d
arrange so it might just remind the attentive observer of a Gold Seven.
‘Blue Squadron, this is Blue Leader. Report in.’
‘Blue Two, standing by.’
‘Blue Three, ready.’
‘Blue Five, standing by.’
‘Blue Seven, all set.’ There
was the slightest of pauses before Cargill’s response; he had waited for a Blue
Six that wasn’t there.
‘Blue Eight, ready.’ Shirk
Rowl’s voice was surprisingly high for someone who looked like a predator.
Samica reached over to key
her com. ‘Blue Nine standing by.’
‘Blue Ten, standing by.’
Lawal’s low voice. ‘Blue
Eleven, ready.’
And finally, Alden. ‘Blue
Twelve, I’m ready.’
‘Ten, you’re out of line.
Close it up. Three, why are your shields down?’
‘Uh, sorry, sir. I
forgot—’
‘No use asking my pardon,
Three; if there had been hostiles here, you’d be dead.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Samica suppressed a sigh. It would
have to be Bent to forget about something like that and sink even lower in the
colonel’s opinion. They had dropped out of hyperspace fifteen klicks away from
C-G 2, together with the three StarGazer transports, and so far, according to
her scopes, there was nothing to indicate Imperial presence. From his socket
behind her cockpit, Imp whistled something.
I’LL KEEP SCANNING THE AREA, the astromech’s
translation showed up on her display.
‘No focused search until
we’re given permission,’ Samica reminded the droid. ‘It would be a dead
giveaway if anybody’s looking for us.’
Imp beeped an
acknowledgement, and Samica corrected her course slightly to remain between
Cargill and Bent. Her flight group was the only one that was complete, so the
squadron could not maintain the usual triple diamond formation.
The transports veered off
towards the moon, while the Y-wings maintained their patrol around the area. A quick
glance at the other ships’ tactical status told her that Bent’s shields were
almost up by now. She quickly called up the four ships belonging to her flight
group—Gordon’s, Lawal’s, and Alden’s—and was pleased to find they all had their
shields up and were maintaining a tight formation.
‘This is Five. Distance to
the listening post: thirteen point three klicks,’ came Cromarty’s voice over
comm.
‘Blue Leader here; I read
you,’ Salm replied. ‘Scan for enemy ships.’
The four outermost
starfighters—Salm forward, Cargill to port, Rowl to starboard, and Alden
aft—started scanning into their respective directions, so as to avoid blind
spots in their scanning pattern. Samica couldn’t do much but keep her own eyes
open, since it would only have muddled the others’ readings if the rest tried
to scan as well.
‘Contact!’ Cargill suddenly
barked. ‘Four hostiles at point oh-nine. Distance sixteen klicks.’
‘Which type, Seven?’ Salm
demanded.
‘I can’t get a clear reading
on ’em yet, Chief,’ Cargill answered. ‘They’re heading in our direction.’
‘My sensors make them TIE
scouts, Lead,’ Alden said.
‘Transport group Erevon,
this is Blue Leader. We have sighted enemy ships, three TIE scouts. Stay on
course; we deal with them. One and Two flight, we’ll take them; Nine, Three flight
stays with the freighters.’
‘Acknowledged, Blue Leader,’
Samica replied. She had the distinct feeling that Salm preferred that sort of
address to the more casual ‘Lead’ or ‘Chief’ that was common with Rebel pilots.
Most of her former Imperial commanders would have; and Salm was as intent on
correct address as any Imperial. ‘Three flight, this is Nine. Scanning mode; we
don’t know if that’s the only surprise waiting for us here.’
Salm and the other five
fighters flew towards the TIE scouts. They shouldn’t have any trouble with
them, as TIE scouts were equipped with shields and a hyperdrive, but hardly any
weapons worth mentioning. At any rate, four of them would be no match for six
Y-wings.
Meanwhile, her flight group
easily caught up with the three transports. They were only four klicks distant
from the moon C-G 2, and were hailed by the listening post.
‘This is listening post
12-4, Y-wing fighters, come in.’
Samica keyed her comm. ‘This
is Blue Nine, Alliance StarCom. We’re here to help you evacuate. There are four
Imperial scout ships in the area, so I suppose they’ve just noticed you’re
here.’
‘Uh—I hate to say it, Blue
Nine, but they’ve known that for days.’ The listening post’s comm officer’s
voice was somewhere between relief and anxiety. ‘We’ve had four scout ships
around here five days ago. To be honest, we hadn’t thought you’d be here before
the Imps were . . . with reinforcements.’
Samica swore, then commed
the colonel. ‘Blue Leader, this is Blue Nine. We’re likely to get company soon.
The Empire’s known about this outpost for five days.’
Only static answered. Samica
felt her stomach sink. Four scout ships couldn’t possibly have— ‘Blue
Leader, come in!’
‘They can’t hear you from
here, ma’am,’ the comm officer said. ‘Why do you think we waited until now to
tell you? There’s a high concentration of heavy metals here on the moon,
blocking communication.’
Samica thought for a moment.
‘Blue Twelve, get clear and inform the colonel. Erevon group?’
‘We read you, Nine,’ one of
the transports replied.
‘Be ready to start your
docking manoeuvre. We’ll stay near you, but we’ll get away far enough to be
able to pick up something.’
Alden took the shortest
route out of the moon’s distortion field, and several minutes later, he
reported, ‘Twelve here. The transports are to start the evacuation immediately.
The others are almost done with the scouts back there; just ten minutes or so.’
‘Good work, Twelve. Get back
into formation; Three flight, keep scanning.’
Alden returned into
formation, and Samica set her sensors for focussed search forward. They were
six klicks out from the moon, out of the interference, and her tactical told
her that Salm and the other five fighters were almost thirty klicks away. At
least she could see that they hadn’t lost anyone; one red dot denoting a single
remaining TIE scout was all that was left of the Imperial ships.
She still could not guess
what the presence of four scout ships in-system meant. TIE scouts had a
hyperdrive and were capable of operating without a carrier ship, but if they
had been here as early as five days ago, that could mean almost anything. It
might be another group of scouts, who hadn’t heard about the search results of
the first group, or even the vanguard of a large-scale attack . . .
‘Sithspit,’ Alden’s almost
reverent voice interrupted her thoughts.
‘What is it, Twelve?’ she
snapped.
He seemed to catch himself.
‘Impstar Deuce at eleven klicks, ma’am!’
She, too, cursed. ‘Blue
Leader, this is Nine. Imperial II-class Star Destroyer at eleven klicks,
position . . . two point four. We need assistance immediately!’
‘Twelve TIE fighters at
eleven klicks,’ Lawal’s gravelly voice reported. Even Samica, who did not know
very much about how Calamari communicated emotions, heard the fear in it.
‘Blue Nine,’ came a transmission
from the moon below, ‘this is Erevon One. We are starting with our docking
operation.’
Then Salm’s voice cut in. ‘Three
flight, this is Blue Leader. We’re on our way. Draw them away from the
transports!’
‘I copy, sir.’ Samica
inhaled sharply. ‘Three flight, we’ll keep them occupied until the others get
here. Erevon group . . . hurry up.’ The Star Destroyer had exited hyperspace at
approximately the same place where they had come in-system half an hour ago,
and it wouldn’t be more than a few minutes before Salm could join her group,
but those minutes were going to be tough.
The four Y-wings of Three
flight sped towards the incoming squadron of TIEs, both in combat formation.
Samica bit her lip. The Rebel ships might be fewer in number, but at this distance,
they had at least one advantage over the Imperial fighters: they could use
their proton torpedo launchers at five klicks while the TIEs had to close the
distance to less than two klicks before they could fire. There was one problem
with that, however: to hit a TIE fighter with a missile weapon was next to
impossible.
‘Three flight, target one of
the TIEs each, and fire on my mark,’ she said, switching over to proton
torpedoes and waiting for the distance to reach five klicks.
‘Ah—Nine, those are eyeballs,
not dupes,’ Gordon Dowd said. ‘We can’t hit them; they’ll be alerted by their
missile warning systems.’
‘I’m aware of that, Ten.’
The distance marker indicated five klicks. ‘Mark!’
Four proton torpedoes shot
towards the TIEs, but as Gordon had foretold, the fighters targeted broke out
immediately, shaking the missiles without too much effort—apart from the fact
that they had had to break formation.
‘Now what was that supposed
to—’ Gordon began, but Samica cut him off in mid-sentence.
‘Shut off your targeting
systems and eyeball the next four,’ she ordered. ‘Fire on my mark.’ It would
take a fair amount of luck to hit a TIE fighter that way, but at least, a
non-targeted missile would not warn the pilot in any way. Gawky had used that
trick to shoot down a TIE fighter trailing her in the battle of Yavin—Gawky,
who’d survived all the TIEs, but then had been caught in the explosion of the
Death Star. This one’s for you, Gawk, she thought fiercely as she
carefully took aim at the foremost TIE without warning off his missile alert.
‘Mark!’ she shouted, and
another salvo of torpedoes, this one utterly unexpected by the TIEs, who had
waited for their warning systems to react, raced towards the Imperial fighters.
Two blew up immediately, Samica saw, hit by her torpedo as well as Alden’s. The
other two raced through the ranks without inflicting damage, since the
non-targeted torps had no mark they could follow, but it had been enough for
the TIEs to break formation and scatter.
‘Three flight, engage,’
Samica said, veering off to pursue a pair of fighters that were still on course
for the freighters the Y-wings had to protect, Gordon right behind her.
Switching over to laser fire once again, she left the configuration of her
deflector shields to Imp, which had handled these things very efficiently in
the past. She assigned one of the two fighters to Gordon and targeted the other
one, when a red streak flashed past her ship, passed the first TIE and off into
space.
‘Whoops, I was still on
torps,’ Gordon remarked.
‘Ten thousand Alliance
credits wasted, Ten,’ she answered, and fired. The TIE avoided her fire, but
chose to break out and abandon his course for the time being, which had been
what she’d wanted. The other, apparently unperturbed at having been targeted by
a torpedo, stayed on a direct course for the transport group at the moon.
‘We separate, Ten,’ Samica
told Gordon.
‘I copy,’ his reply came
back, very tersely, and he started after the TIE. Samica brought her Y-wing
around to head for the first fighter when Imp screamed a warning at her, and
she barely managed to evade a green laser beam going past her ship. Dead centre
of her rear sensor screen, she saw a red dot, a TIE that had peeled off from
the others to cover the squad mate she was chasing after. Samica swore again.
She knew it was no use asking any of the others for help; they were busy enough
as it was, and most likely, she was not the only one engaging two enemies at
once. Still, being sandwiched between two TIE fighters was not her idea of
favourable odds.
She knew her best chance to
get out of this was to take the one behind her first, but that meant she had to
let the other get away, at least temporarily.
‘Imp, calculate his speed
and tell me when he can be in firing range of the freighters,’ she said. At the
same time, she jinked to present less of a target to the attacker behind her.
Imp whistled, and she read
his answer on her screen. TWO MINUTES, TWENTY-FIVE SECONDS, the droid answered. Samica nodded. Even if she
came to the freighters’ rescue a bit later than that, they’d be able to
withstand laser fire for a minute or so, and she wouldn’t be of any help to
them if she let herself be shot down by two TIEs now.
She let the one in front of
her go and brought her snubfighter around in the direction of attack in as
tight a circle as the heavy craft could manage. The TIE pursuing her got off a
quick, hurried shot at her, which pounded off her shields, but fortunately for
her, Imp had put all deflector strength aft, and they held. Her attacker hadn’t
been able to compensate for her sudden change of direction, and was suddenly
next to her, while she flew a ‘scissors’ manoeuvre to force him in front. He
reversed hard, denying her the initiative, and then came around once again, but
she throttled her speed and ended up behind him. His rear was before her lasers
for no more than two seconds, but that was enough, and she fired. The laser
beams hit him squarely in the ball-shaped cockpit, and the TIE spun out of
control, blowing up several seconds later.
One down, one to go.
While she picked up speed
again to catch the other TIE that was now heading directly for the transports,
she took the luxury to check the overall situation. Lawal had been forced to
retreat from the fight, his fighter heavily damaged, but the TIEs had had more
important things to do than finish him off, as two of them were now heading for
her. Gordon and Alden were still locked in dogfights with three more TIEs, so
she could not expect any immediate help from them, either. She saw that both
their ships had sustained damage.
The TIEs were still more
than three klicks away, so she decided to go after her initial target first,
hoping one of the others would be able to help her soon enough. Her prey had
almost reached the transports.
The TIE pilot had seen her
coming, fired into the freighters a few times, then broke off his attack to
deal with her first. They raced towards one another head-on, but Samica
couldn’t fire; he was directly in front of the Erevon group, and she couldn’t
afford to miss. Already, one of the larger ships had taken enough damage to
reduce its shields to almost zero.
The Imperial was under no
such restrictions, though, and began to fire as soon as she was in range.
Quickly, Samica made sure that Imp had focused her shields forward—which he
had—then jinked, but stayed on a collision course, to force him to break first.
If he didn’t—she would survive a head-on collision with a TIE fighter; he would
not.
Two of the laser blasts hit
her, one bouncing off her deflectors, the other slamming right into them and
frying them. Imp let out a shrill wail, and she ground her teeth. No way the
Imperial would take the chance and risk collision . . . but if he did, she’d
have to react really fast.
Luckily for her, the TIE
pilot was not suicidal, but he did manage to fire into her ship once more
before he broke.
The shot missed her cockpit,
but it hit the starboard engine squarely, and Samica gasped as her ship
lurched, fighting to get the Y-wing under control once more. There was a
mournful hoot from the astromech’s socket behind her.
STARBOARD ENGINE GONE, the droid reported. I COULD TRY TO GET CONTROL
BACK, BUT WE’D NEED TIME FOR THAT. Which was about the last thing in the world they
had.
‘Try,’ Samica said, voice
tight. Her attacker was flying a loop to come around and finish her off, and
she tried to propel her limping ship into a shooting position, but he had no
difficulty evading her. She was a sitting Hutt down here, and they both knew
it.
The TIE was returning for
another pass when suddenly Imp gave a series of high-pitched whistles and
bleeps, and Samica saw the Imperial ship breaking off the attack, facing a pair
of Y-wings that had come up from behind him, a more immediate threat than the
crippled ship hanging in space before him. Colonel Salm dropped in front of the
TIE fighter while Dave seemed to pick him off almost effortlessly.
‘Hope you didn’t break a
sweat, Nine?’ Dave asked.
In fact, Samica had. ‘Blue
Leader,’ she said, ‘there are two more TIEs heading for the freighters.’
‘Five and Seven are dealing with them,’ Salm replied. ‘What’s your
status, Nine?’
‘My starboard engine is damaged,
sir. My astromech is working on it.’
‘Stay out of it as long as
you can’t manoeuvre,’ Salm ordered her. ‘That was a good move with the proton torpedoes,
Nine.’
Samica felt a grin spread
across her face at the colonel’s approval. ‘Good timing is everything, Blue
Leader,’ she answered, referring to his timely arrival as well as to the proton
torpedo manoeuvre earlier.
‘Blue group, this is Erevon
One. Docking operation is almost complete. Give us a few more minutes to patch
up the damage that TIE inflicted.’
‘Blue Leader copies, Erevon
One. Blue Squadron, regroup.’
The ten Y-wings regrouped
near Samica’s ship, which, Imp proclaimed, would be spaceworthy again in a
matter of minutes, at least in a limited way.
They all knew, however, that
a Star Destroyer had more than one squadron of TIE fighters aboard. ‘Blue
Leader,’ came in Cromarty, ‘we’ve got twelve more TIE fighters at ten klicks,
as well as twelve bombers.’
A full squad of dupes at ten
klicks—that meant they’d be in missile range after just five klicks, and this
time, they had easy targets in the docking transports, as well as an escort.
The Rebels only had one chance, really—getting away from here before the
Imperials came in range.
‘Erevon One,’ Salm said.
‘Can you make hyperspace with that sort of damage?’
There was a slight pause. ‘I
. . . suppose so, sir,’ the communications officer finally answered.
‘The evacuation is
complete?’ Salm demanded.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Blue Squadron, Erevon
group, fly to the hyper mark and jump out immediately. Blue Five, you’re in
charge. Blue Nine, Erevon One, I’ll stay with you until we can make the jump,
and I’ll make sure you all make it to hyperspace.’
‘Copy, Blue Leader,’
Cromarty said, a little reluctantly, and nine Y-wings and two transports moved
out of the moon’s gravity shadow to jump into hyperspace. They’d have to make a
micro-jump, since the Star Destroyer was still blocking the regular jump point.
‘Imp?’ Samica called back to
her astromech. ‘How’s it look?’
NEARLY DONE, Imp replied. The TIE
bombers had closed the distance to seven klicks; the TIE fighters were already
at six. Ahead, Captain Cromarty and his charges disappeared from view as the
ships jumped into hyperspace. Colonel Salm was hovering next to her and the
transport when Erevon One reported, ‘We’re ready to jump out, sir.’
‘Jump out, Erevon One,’ the
colonel answered, and the transport started to get away from the moon. It was
obvious that the ship was damaged from its decreased speed; if it hadn’t
started right then, there wouldn’t have been any chance for it to get away from
the bombers before they were in firing range. Even so, there wasn’t going to be
much of a time margin. Samica willed Imp to hurry up, although she knew the
little droid was working as fast as he could.
‘How much longer, Nine?’
Salm asked her, urgency creeping into his voice as well. The same instant, Imp
whistled, and Samica read one word on her screen: FINISHED!
‘Ready, sir,’ she answered,
and tested the fighter’s responses. There was a lot left to be desired, but the
Y-wing would fly, and the hyperdrive indicated readiness. Still down to maybe
sixty percent her usual speed, she moved out, Colonel Salm shadowing her.
Despite the danger from the bombers, she couldn’t help but adjust her opinion
of the man. Neither he nor Captain Cromarty seemed rusty in the least, and
Colonel Salm, much as he might be a little poison-dwarf at times, wasn’t above
getting his fingers dirty, if that would get his people out in one piece.
GOT THE COORDINATES, Imp reported, and Samica
keyed her comm. There was a yellow light flashing on her HUD already,
indicating somebody attempting to target her with missiles. ‘Nine is ready,
sir,’ she said, bringing her ship around to shake the lock and reaching for the
hyperspace lever. Ahead of her, she saw a red line streak past—one of the
bombers had already fired at the remaining transport. Clenching her fist around
the lever, she watched the streak on its course towards Erevon One, dead on
target, and saw the freighter explode, unable to shake the missile with its
crippled sublight drive.
‘Go!’ Salm barked, and she
obeyed, pulling the lever towards her and letting out a sigh of relief as the
stars turned into lines. The yellow light on her HUD died, and the green status
lamps indicated that her ship wasn’t going to come apart in hyperspace either.
Samica allowed herself to
slump against her seat and rubbed sweat from her face. Mission
accomplished—mostly. It was going to be interesting, landing in the hangar with
only one functional sublight engine.
3
Blue Squadron landed in the hangar at Yavin 4 four
hours later, but Samica’s landing manoeuvre looked nowhere as bad as Lawal’s
did. The Mon Calamari had been injured during the mission, and that in addition
to the damage to his fighter caused several techs to dive for cover when he set
his Y-wing down less than elegantly, but at least in one piece.
Samica almost welcomed the
hot, humid air greeting her when she opened her cockpit. For four standard
months, Yavin 4 had been her home, and she supposed she was going to miss it
once the base was evacuated.
‘Well, ma’am, you don’t ever
bring a ship back intact, do you?’ Tibbs asked her when he got his first good look
at her starfighter. Ray Tinkler, his colleague, was helping Lawal out of his
cockpit, and somebody had already called for the medics.
Samica looked over to the
Calamari’s ship. ‘How bad is it?’ she asked.
He realised she was talking
about the pilot, not about her ship. ‘I don’t think it’s too serious,’ the tech
said. ‘After all, he was still able to land that thing . . . sort of.’ He
spread his hands at her glare. ‘Sorry, Captain. No, I really think it’s only
minor injuries. You met with resistance, then?’
She nodded. ‘You could call
it that. Lost one of the freighters, too.’ Erevon group had not jumped to
Yavin; they were too large to land here, so they had gone on to a deep-space
Rebel base, where the surviving personnel would be allocated to new posts.
It was then that she noticed
another ship in the hangar, a Gallofree Yards medium transport. Like all
Gallofrees, it looked like a giant space louse, but there the similarity ended,
as they weren’t as well protected as those animals tended to be. The more
surprising that it seemed to be here without a starfighter escort. Whoever flew
that thing had to be either very bold or very stupid. As if in answer to that
thought, she saw someone emerge from the transport’s entry ramp, a large,
middle-aged man in a spacer’s jacket, accompanied by a slim, blond woman
similarly dressed. She recognised the spacer as Captain Grant Dyson, a
Corellian freighter captain who was a close friend of Rhun’s, and the woman as
his co-pilot, Lieutenant Firia de Boeck.
‘Debriefing’s in half an
hour,’ she heard Captain Cromarty call to her, and she nodded. There was still
time to see how Lawal was doing, then.
Commander Willard looked up from his paperwork when
Lieutenant Riece entered. ‘Agent van Leuken is here, sir. And he’s right on
time, I might add.’
Willard raised an eyebrow at
the aide. ‘Tell him to come in, please, Jerrel.’
The red-haired lieutenant
stood aside for the young Intel agent to enter. Van Leuken looked as if he
hadn’t slept in days, Willard thought, but returned the salute the agent
offered.
‘Agent Rhun van Leuken
reporting as ordered, sir.’
‘Sit down, please, Agent.
You’ve talked to Captain Dyson lately, I suppose?’
Rhun looked puzzled. ‘Very
shortly, sir. We didn’t have time for more than a few words after he arrived
and reported to you.’
‘You don’t know where he’s
going, then?’
‘No, sir.’
The commander sat back and
studied the young man. ‘When he reported here, half an hour ago, he requested
your presence on his next trip.’
Rhun blinked. ‘He didn’t
tell me, sir.’ Then he asked, ‘Where’s he going?’
Willard sighed. ‘That’s why
I supposed you had asked him to come along. Garon II.’
The hazel eyes widened
slightly. ‘No, sir, I didn’t know—and I don’t think I’d have asked him to come
if I’d known,’ Rhun said. ‘Did he mention why he’d like me to come along?’
‘Would you like to
come along, Agent?’
Rhun hesitated. A month ago,
he’d have said no without thinking, but he strongly supposed Dyson had asked
for his presence to do him a favour. They really hadn’t talked very long when
the smuggler had arrived, but it had been long enough for Dyson to notice
something was wrong with him, and to coax out of him that it had to do with his
family. He wanted to go—no, he needed to go.
‘What is he doing on Garon II?’ he
asked instead.
‘He’ll be stopping there
briefly to pick up fugitives before going on to an Alliance Safe World,’ the
commander explained. ‘He won’t be on Garon II for more than a few days. As
you’re aware, he knows Gerion pretty well, but I think it couldn’t hurt to have
someone else who knows his way around.’
‘What sort of fugitives will
he be collecting?’
‘We don’t know that yet.
Refugees, dissidents. That’s one of the things he’ll—you’ll—have to find out
when you get there. Or do you have an idea, Agent?’
‘No, sir, I don’t,’ Rhun
said truthfully. He’d come into contact with the Rebellion long after he’d left
Garon II, so he didn’t know any possible Rebels on his homeworld—which probably
made it safe enough to come with Dyson. Furthermore, he strongly doubted anyone
in Gerion would remember a sixteen-year-old who had cleared out one or two
computer stores seven years ago.
‘There’s another reason why
I’d consider sending you,’ Commander Willard went on. ‘The Freedom needs
a starfighter escort, and I was thinking about sending Captain Trey, together
with Lieutenant Cargill. That way, we give her the chance to prove that she’s
loyal to the Alliance while we have you to ensure she is, if we haven’t been
totally wrong about her.’
Rhun nodded, but then
something else came to his mind. ‘Sir, you’re aware that she spent half a year
on Garon II as well?’ Well, she’ll be out of her mind with joy at the news
that she’ll be going back. She had never told him in detail, but she had
once indicated that something had happened there to give her second thoughts
about the Empire.
‘Yes, I am, but that
shouldn’t be a problem. You are not going into Gerion Spaceport with Freedom
and a Y-wing escort anyway. It may be less obvious than an X-wing escort, but
they still have “Rebel” written all over them. The fighters will remain on
Garon III—the smugglers’ moon will be a perfect hiding place—and you’ll shuttle
over to Garon II aboard Freedom.’ Willard leaned forward. ‘But you
haven’t answered my question yet, Agent. Will you go?’
Rhun put up a wry half-smile
that didn’t go very well with the dark circles under his eyes. ‘I don’t really
have much of a choice if you order me to, sir, do I?’ he said.
Samica returned from the sickbay late that evening,
after the debriefing—Salm had once again emphasised Three flight’s performance
against the TIE squadron—and after paying a visit to Lawal. Alden had
accompanied her, and they had been relieved to find that the Mon Cal would be
fit to fly again within the week. Gordon hadn’t joined them; he had been in a
huff since their return from C-G 2, and so far, Samica had not been able to
find out why.
‘Cap? A word with you?’
Samica turned at the sound
of Gordon’s voice. The pilot leaned against the wall of one of the corridors
that led to the pilots’ wing, arms crossed, still looking miffed, and she
suppressed a sigh as she stopped. ‘What is it, Flight Officer?’
‘Maybe I’m just a flight
officer and you’re a captain, but that’s still no reason to treat the rest of
us like a—a piece of equipment.’
Samica blinked in confusion.
‘What?’
‘You know what I’m talking
about. Is it common use for officers in the Empire, ordering their subordinates
to do things without explaining?’
Samica’s eyes narrowed, but
she made herself remain polite. ‘Whatever’s common use in the Empire is not
your concern. What’s that about giving orders without explaining?’
‘“Turn off your targeting
computers, and fire on my mark,”’ he mimicked her. ‘I thought you were trying
to play Luke Skywalker.’
‘There was no time to
explain more fully, and that’s why we’re a military organisation and not a
discussion group,’ she replied. ‘And it seemed to have worked perfectly well
for Alden.’
‘Well, of course, Alden,’
Gordon said disdainfully. ‘But Alden’s such a wonderful pilot, isn’t he? Always
on level pegging with the Captain’s dazzling ideas.’
Samica’s voice was cool. ‘Sometimes it’s necessary to just
obey an order even if you don’t understand it at the time.’
‘You’re skirting dangerously
close to Imperial thinking, Captain,’ Gordon said, distaste in his voice.
‘And you’re skirting
dangerously close to insubordination, Flight Officer,’ was Samica’s reply. ‘And
let me tell you one thing. I don’t care who told you that I used to be an
Imperial, but you don’t know anything about Imperial thinking.’ With that,
she went past him and to her quarters. She supposed that he was having trouble
with the idea of having to report to an officer who was one year his junior,
but she decided not to report him for now. If he came around, fine. She was not
going to run to the colonel to complain about a petulant wingman.
More trouble came the next day, this time in the
guise of Colonel Salm. Samica was in the hangar once again, helping Imp and
Tibbs repairing the starboard engine, when the colonel joined them, and the
look on his face boded ill. At first, Samica feared he’d seen the scratch Tibbs
had made in the blue paint on her fighter—it had taken her until this morning
to even notice it, although she’d looked at every inch of her Y-wing to hunt
for more elements in need of repair—but it soon turned out that something else
had provoked the colonel’s anger.
He stopped before them, and
both Samica and the tech came to attention. Samica was painfully aware of how
dirty her suit was, but she told herself she was a fool if she thought that
would bother him. It would have been worse if he deemed her too arrogant to get
her hands dirty.
Salm fixed her with that
stare she knew by now, even if she’d seen it used mostly on Bent and Lawal, and
she fidgeted. She didn’t have any idea what she had done to antagonise him, but
doubtlessly, he knew full well the kind of effect his silence had on her.
‘Well, Captain, it seems as
if you were too good for us,’ Salm finally said.
‘I—don’t understand, sir,’
she answered.
‘You’re leaving for Garon II
in two days, Captain. Some Intel affair, I believe. I do hope you’ll be back
before the squadron gets too crippled to be efficient any longer.’
‘I still don’t understand,’
Samica said. ‘I’m being sent to Garon II?’
‘You and Lieutenant Cargill.
You’d better get your ship back in working order until then; we can’t afford to
spare even more.’ With that, he turned and walked out, leaving them looking at
each other with raised eyebrows.
‘What was that about?’ Tibbs
wanted to know.
Samica returned to her work
on the engine. ‘I do hope we’ll get the new pilots soon,’ she said. ‘Colonel
Salm’s good humour seems to rise and fall with the number of pilots he has
available.’ But she was more worried than she cared to admit. She was not very
eager to return to Garon II, and she could not really see the reason why she
was sent there.
She was about to put the
plating back on the engine when her comlink beeped. She thumbed the button.
‘Trey,’ she said.
‘Lieutenant Rover here. I’ve been
trying to contact you over your terminal all morning, Captain.’
‘I haven’t been in my room
since morning,’ she replied. ‘What is it?’
‘Commander Willard wants to
see you, at sixteen hundred, Captain.’
She glanced at her chrono.
Fourteen thirty. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant,’ she answered. ‘You don’t know what
it’s about, do you?’
‘I’m certain the commander
will tell you, ma’am.’
The commander did tell her;
she, Lieutenant Cargill and Rhun were to accompany Captain Dyson to the Tergon
sector, where Dyson would collect refugees from Garon II. She had a feeling
that was not all there was to it—why her, of all the pilots on Yavin? But it
was a good prospect; she could get away from here for a while, and she would be
with Rhun, even if she wouldn’t be flying with the Gallofree freighter Freedom
but in her Y-wing. They hadn’t seen a lot of each other in the past few weeks,
mostly because she had always participated in extra training sessions assigned
by Salm.
Samica returned to the
hangar after the briefing, to continue repairing her fighter if it was to be in
working order again by the end of the next day. She told herself, now that she
knew what the mission was about, that Salm’s annoyance had most likely not been
directed at her but at Commander Willard, who dared strip down his squadron
even further.
Even before Freedom
left, however, Salm had reason to rejoice (though he had no doubt known about
it before anyone else had): a new pilot arrived along with a supply shipment to
Yavin 4. His name was Lieutenant Geremi Bergen, a lanky blond man in his mid-
to late twenties, who spent most of the first evening complaining about the
food. For the better part of an hour, Dave tried to stir up his interest in
other matters, but for some reason, the young Corellian’s attempts seemed to
irritate Bergen even more. Cromarty went to bed even earlier than usual, and
Samica followed suit, tomorrow’s mission in mind. Gordon Dowd had refrained
from further troubleshooting since the last mission, and she was glad that at
least the other two pilots in her flight group were easy to get along with.
Still, she reminded herself,
that was not going to be one of her problems in the next few days.
Samica and Lieutenant Cargill left early the
following morning, before any of their squad mates were in the common room.
Rhun was already in the hangar, helping Dyson and Lieutenant de Boeck with the
medium transport Freedom. When Samica joined them there, however, she
found out that nobody called the ship that.
‘So you’ll be Eggshell’s
escort,’ Dyson greeted her.
Samica raised a hand in
greeting. ‘Why Eggshell?’ she wanted to know. ‘I thought the ship was
called Freedom.’
‘You ever flown one of
those?’
‘No.’
‘Consider yourself lucky,
then.’
‘What happened to your
freighter?’ Samica wondered.
‘The Noble Cause?
She’s not big enough for this kind of mission. And then, she’s my private ship,
and the Alliance usually gives me another one when I do a run for them. No
worries, the Cause is safely in a spaceport one of my friends runs.’
‘Never thought I’d see a Rebel
without a Cause,’ she quipped.
‘You won’t,’ Dyson answered.
‘I may do jobs for you people from time to time, but no starry-eyed idealistic
Rebel will get me to join up.’ He hoisted a crate up into the hatch, and Samica
thought she heard the clanging of bottles.
‘Supply run, huh?’ she asked
the smuggler.
‘Life insurance,’ Dyson
answered. When he noticed her grin, he snorted. ‘Not what you think,
Captain. I can do perfectly well without Corellian brandy for a while. But if
you run into a customs party, and present them with some obvious, nice, Class
One infraction, none of those officious paper-pushers will look any further
than that. They’ll fine you a couple creds, tops, and forget about it.’
‘Especially if they include
themselves on your pay list for failing to mention said Class One infraction to
their superiors,’ Rhun added, who had joined them without her noticing.
Samica looked up at the
hatch through which the crate had vanished. ‘That works?’ she asked, dubiously.
‘Every time.’ Dyson heaved
up another crate. ‘I’ve built my life on that particular piece of philosophy.’
‘I can’t imagine customs
officers on Garon II are really that sloppy,’ Samica said.
Dyson favoured her with a
look that said, I know a lot more about how the galaxy works than you, kid,
but he shrugged. ‘They’re the same everywhere, really.’
Rhun squeezed her shoulder.
‘Ready?’ he asked her. She noticed that he looked less tired than he had for
days, as if the prospect of going to Garon II had worked miracles.
‘Ready,’ she acknowledged,
then looked around for Lieutenant Cargill, who had just made certain his
astromech unit was secured snugly in its socket. ‘Lieutenant, are you ready to
start?’
‘Yep,’ Cargill replied, then
looked up at the transport, then at Dyson. ‘I don’t envy you that space slug,’
he stated.
Dyson immediately put up the
expression he normally reserved for people who offended his Noble Cause.
‘Careful, flyboy,’ he told the fellow Corellian. ‘You don’t want me to get
started on the Y-wing jokes I heard at the X-wing pilots’ table last night.’
Cargill grinned. ‘I’ll
behave.’
A Mon Calamari appeared in
the hatch. His skin was lighter in colour than Samica was used to, and the
darker spots on his head were smaller than Lawal’s, too.
‘We’re ready for take-off,
Captain,’ he told Dyson.
‘We’re coming, Qelmam.’ The
smuggler gestured at Samica and Cargill. ‘This is Qelmam, our astrogator. He’s
a real wizard when it comes to shaving off parsecs along any space route.’
The Calamari inclined his
head. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
Rhun embraced Samica. ‘See
you on Garon II,’ he said.
‘Have a nice trip.’ She gave
him a quick kiss. ‘And think about me once in a while when you have something
warm to eat or go to the ’fresher.’
As much as Samica loved hyperspace, she preferred it
from the cockpit of a ship that had a bunk, a food processor, and a ’fresher
somewhere. She could live with a couple of hours in her Y-wing cockpit, even a
day, but everything that went beyond that was hardly a pleasure. She had never
given any thought to this particular inconvenience before she joined the
Rebellion, since hyper-capable ships in the Empire were usually larger than
fighter-scale.
The journey to the Colonies
took them three and a half days, and she was infinitely glad to have Imp, with
whom she could play a few games of Quadrant to pass the time. The rest of the
trip she spent sleeping or reading or eating the hardly exciting survival
rations, but they weren’t too much of a step backward when compared to the
usual Alliance food.
She’d fallen asleep again
when an alarm sounded, but she recognised the signal as the tone that indicated
they were coming out of hyperspace. A glance at her chrono told her they were
on time as well.
Garon III was not a sight to
inspire spacers to write any poems to their loved ones. The moon was grubby,
run-down, and avoided by anyone who had no urgent business there. Those who had
were usually not very law-abiding, smugglers, pirates, even slavers. The
atmosphere contained several gases that tended to be rather unbecoming for
human and humanoid lungs, so the moon’s main facility was a climate- and
atmosphere-controlled station on the moon’s otherwise uninhabited surface. The
Imperial garrison on the nearest moon, Garon II, had been called into being for
the purpose of watching the pirates’ moon, and it had succeeded brilliantly—in
watching. Samica had been stationed here until a year ago, and she hadn’t seen
a lot of action. The little they had done about the smugglers had been restricted
to times when COMPNOR or some other official had been stopping for a visit, and
it had been restricted to Garon II itself. Today, Samica supposed that
Commander Tonkin really hadn’t had the means to do anything about the
smugglers, and much as she hoped it wasn’t true, she had wondered if Tonkin had
made profit from them. Rhun had told her about how the Empire ruled Garon II,
and it hadn’t fitted in with her old points of view at all.
But then, very little Rhun
had been telling her over the months she’d known him had fitted in with
anything she’d held true while she was still in Imperial service.
There were two more ships
directly beside her: Cargill’s Y-wing and the Gallofree transport.
‘Good to see you’re still
with us,’ came Dyson’s voice from the transport. ‘Let me do the talking. We’ll
land here first, then we’ll decide how to go about the next bit.’
Cargill sent a response to
her, but he sent it on a private channel the Eggshell couldn’t overhear.
‘What exactly does he mean, “we’ll decide how to go about the next bit”? I
thought we’d had our plans laid out by Commander Willard?’
She responded on the same
channel. ‘Just trying to scare us . . . I hope.’
‘Oh boy,’ was Cargill’s
answer.
There weren’t any landing
formalities to speak of, and half an hour later, they set down on landing pad
231, which was large enough to accommodate two Y-wings and the transport.
Samica gingerly climbed out of her cockpit and stretched carefully. Vaguely,
she wondered how older people like Salm were able to put up with this. At the
moment, she felt like an old woman herself.
Across the landing pad, she
saw Cargill leave his fighter with similar awkwardness. Eggshell’s entry
hatch opened as well, and Rhun came out, the grin on his face not quite hiding
his concern for her.
‘What first?’ he asked.
‘Something to eat?’
‘A shower,’ murmured Samica,
casting a glance over at the shower rooms adjoining the landing pad, as well as
’freshers and a workshop. ‘On second thought, something to eat,’ she amended
when she saw they were in as sorry a state as the rest of this facility.
Dyson, Cargill, de Boeck,
and Qelmam had joined them. Dyson had set his hands on his hips and was looking
around the bay. ‘This place is sure going to rack and ruin,’ he observed.
‘Which brings us to the question
when we’ll be leaving it,’ de Boeck answered.
‘One or two of us have to
stay here to guard the Y-wings,’ Dyson replied. ‘Qelmam, I think you’d better
stay here.’
The Mon Cal nodded. ‘I don’t
want to set foot on an Imperial world anyway,’ he said. ‘That’s fine with me.’
‘You’re not exactly a crack
shot, Qelmam.’ De Boeck was looking at the others questioningly. ‘In a place
like this, it might be a good idea to have one who could defend the ships if
necessary.’
Cargill shrugged. ‘I’ll
stay, then.’
Dyson nodded, as if that
would have been his choice as well. ‘All right. Orders of the day. Firia, Rhun,
and Captain Trey will come with me to Garon II. We’ll find out where the
fugitives are, bring them to a safe house in Gerion, and get them out aboard Eggshell
the following night. Lieutenant Cargill, we’ll agree on a time when we’ll
flee from Garon II spaceport. It’s possible we’re being followed, so you’ll be
ready in-system when we have to make a quick escape. Give us some diversion,
then hop off into hyperspace, we’ll be right behind you and on our way to the
Safe World.’
Cargill grinned. ‘A
pleasure. As long as you get that crate into hyperspace in time.’
Dyson only said, ‘There’s
this Y-wing pilot coming into a cantina with his wishbone under his arm . . .’
Cargill stretched out his
hands. ‘Peace!’ he said, and Dyson stopped as if he’d never started.
De Boeck checked her chrono.
‘How much time do we allow for the rescue mission?’
Dyson thought about this.
‘Half a day to reach Gerion, that makes it tomorrow morning. We’ll allow for
two days of getting the fugitives to the safe house; that should be more than
enough. That’s sixty hours from now until we lift off from Gerion.’
‘So I’ll take off from here
six hours before that—well, seven—to be able to help you with that diversion,’
Cargill said. ‘Sounds fine to me.’
‘What about the trip from
Garon II onwards?’ de Boeck asked. ‘We’ll have to take the Y-wings aboard Eggshell
this time. A six-day jump is too long.’
‘Yes,’ said Samica and Cargill in
unison.
Dyson nodded. ‘We’ll
micro-jump to Garon III again to take in the Y-wings, then we head on. We can
kick you out again just before we reach our destination,’ he amiably continued
to the two pilots. ‘Qelmam, can you see to it we’ve got the micro-jump
coordinates by the time we need them?’
‘Of course,’ the Calamari
replied. ‘You could have them tonight if you like.’
‘In two days will do,’
Samica said.
‘Right,’ Dyson said. ‘Here
we go.’
4
It was odd to see Gerion again after so many years.
The colours were hardly
spectacular—a grey and ochre city in a landscape of muddy green and more ochre,
steppes and fields and more steppes, some farmland in between, with patches of
more brown than ochre in places, which Rhun knew to be hills.
Rhun couldn’t even remember
what it had looked like from above. He didn’t really recall what he’d been
doing when he’d got away from here with Dyson, seven years ago, but he was
almost certain he hadn’t been interested in looking out of the viewport. He’d
only been glad to be leaving, and in his youthful naïveté, he’d scornfully
decided he was never coming back.
He felt Samica squeeze his
hand beside him, in the freighter’s other passenger seat, and supposed she had
her own demons to contend with.
‘Looks familiar,’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ Rhun
replied. ‘I don’t really remember how it used to look. But I guess you’ve seen
it from above a couple of times.’
She nodded, and he saw she
was staring at the garrison, the white hexagon sticking out from the rest of
the city as if it didn’t belong there. As a matter of fact, it belonged to
Gerion more than to any other town on any other planet where the same
construction had been planted. Gerion had only been founded some thirty years ago,
and the Imperial garrison was almost as old. The architectural clash could have
been worse. Which wasn’t very flattering to the rest of Garon II’s
architecture: utterly and bleakly functional, sometimes looking as if
structures that had been intended to be makeshift had lasted for so long that
people had become used to them and nobody had really thought about replacing
them. As a relatively new colony world, Garon II had taken to the Empire
quickly, almost logically. There had never been many nonhumans on the planet,
no native races, very few alien colonists, so the city looked as if it was
taken from a propaganda holo—simple, hard-working humans living in peace under
a regime that let them live in peace.
Rhun knew the truth was far
from it.
Gerion was no different from
most big cities in the galaxy, at least where the human areas were concerned.
To be sure, there were those hard-working, simple people who would never even
consider thinking about supporting the Rebel Alliance because their own lives
were so perfectly normal. But there was the usual share of corruption,
and bribing, and organised crime, and poverty in those areas you normally
didn’t see in the propaganda holos. The sector Moff was far away on the sector
capital world Tergon, and Garon II was too unimportant to bother with anyway,
so it was very unlikely anything was going to happen in that regard. Which, in
a way, suited Eggshell’s crew fine.
It was not until the entry
hatch opened and Rhun saw and smelled Gerion spaceport again that he realised
he was actually back. The customs officer checking their ship had been utterly
disinterested, hadn’t even noticed Dyson’s camouflage brandy, just inspected
their forged IDs, gave them a datapad containing spacer information and wished
them a good day, which didn’t sound as if he really cared whether they had a
good day or were overrun by a speeder once they were around the next corner.
‘You all right, kid?’ Dyson
asked him quietly when they headed for the exit into town.
‘Yeah,’ Rhun replied,
equally softly. ‘Where’re we going?’
‘The “Stardust,”’ de Boeck
supplied. ‘A spacer’s bar at the edge of the starport. After that, Grant and I
go collecting the refugees, while you can take some time on your own, if you
like.’
The ‘Stardust’ was rather
cosy, surprisingly clean, and from the bartender’s welcome, Dyson and de Boeck
were frequent patrons there. There were terminals showing what was up in Gerion
that week, and Samica watched them with interest. Rhun found himself returning
to them time and again, too. He was torn between wanting some time on his own
and pretending to be leading a normal life where you went to the holocinema,
bought your food in a store, and went for a walk in the park.
Suddenly he noticed a look
of dismay cross Samica’s face, and he quickly looked up at the screen to see
what had upset her, half expecting to see something that might remind her of
her time here as a pilot, but all the text on the screen said was, ‘Last
showing today: Win or Die with Garik Loran, the once-famous boy actor
who was reportedly shot by Rebels three standard months ago. 16.30 at the Galaxy,
admission five credits.’
‘What is it?’ Rhun asked
Samica.
She shook her head. ‘I
hadn’t known Garik Loran had died,’ she said.
He frowned. ‘Did you know
him?’
She looked at him as if she
was wondering whether he was pulling her leg. ‘You’re telling me you’ve never
heard about Garik Loran?’
‘Did I miss something?’
Samica shook her head. ‘He
is—was—a famous actor on Imperial Centre. I guess everywhere. You could have
gone into any Year Seven at any school in Imperial City a couple of years ago,
and every girl there would have been able to quote The Black Bantha
forwards and backwards.’
Rhun grinned at her. ‘You as
well?’
‘I always thought he was a
little young . . . but well, he was really rather cute. My friend Tass had her
whole room covered up in holos of him.’
‘I’d have liked to see your
room when you were twelve,’ he said.
‘You would have had to duck
to avoid banging against a TIE fighter or Star Destroyer model at every step,’
she said with a smile.
‘Oh no!’
‘Oh, yes.’
Rhun thought for a moment.
‘Well, I was just thinking I would like to catch up on some free time I haven’t
had since I was sixteen. What about seeing Win or Die? We could hold
hands.’
Samica grinned. ‘Sure. But I
have to warn you . . . it’s an Imperial holodrama.’
Dyson made a face. ‘I’ll see
both of you tomorrow night, then. I’d really love to wish you a good time, but
I’ve seen the thing.’
They left the holocinema at eighteen hundred, after
ninety minutes of the most disgusting Imperial propaganda Rhun had ever
seen—and Rhun had worked in Intentions and decoded all sorts of recruitment
holos. The ending had been a scream—the poor boy dying in the Emperor’s arms,
shot in the back by his reactionary father who was a supporter of the Republic.
The Emperor seemed to have shed centuries in that drama. Rhun resolved to buy
the movie on data slug and show it to some of his Intel colleagues; they had
little to laugh about.
‘Did you like it?’ Samica
asked.
Rhun took a long time in
answering. ‘The actor was very cute,’ he finally said.
Samica laughed. They had
both had difficulty not collapsing on the floor during the holodrama, and the
worst thing was that they had been the only ones. The rest of the audience had
left the holocinema rather teary-eyed. ‘Still, I can’t really believe he was
shot by Rebels who thought he was dangerous,’ Samica remarked as they walked
along the brightly lit street. They had booked a room in a small, inexpensive
hotel before going to see the movie.
‘That sounds like another
kind of propaganda,’ she went on. It had become cold as well as dark; the wind
had been cool all day, and Gerion in autumn was rather chilly. The streets were
emptying fast.
‘Hmmm,’ Rhun said.
She stopped and looked at
him. ‘What is it?’
He let out a sigh and looked
up into the dark grey sky. ‘I don’t know. I suppose it’s rather silly thinking
about that drama, but it . . . damn, it brings back a lot. Not only that people
see this crap and believe it, but . . .’ He broke off and looked at her. ‘Sam .
. . would you mind if I went for a little walk on my own? It’s really not that
I don’t want you around, but I’d like to be alone right now.’
Samica hesitated, but then
she nodded. ‘No, it’s okay.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Don’t run into
trouble, all right?’
He stroked her hair. ‘I
promise.’
For a while, he simply
roamed about the streets, sticking to the more busy areas of the town—there
were memories about side streets he didn’t want to dwell on. He recognised some
of the shops, but most were new; he had never been much of a shopper anyway.
When he finally went into
the direction of less crowded living blocks, it wasn’t really totally by
coincidence. He knew that what he was about to do was the height of stupidity,
but he kept telling himself that there was no way his father could be home at
this time. He’d usually come home after twenty hundred, and there was a scene
in Rhun’s head about dinner on the table, and his mother home with his brother
Ren, which turned out to be irresistible. He was almost surprised at how eager
he was to see his mother again—his scorched earth policy of seven years earlier
seemed to have evaporated into nothing.
The tall block looked as it
always had, and his heart was beating in his mouth as he looked at the door
buzzers on the wall, and found the one labelled van Leuken.
He stood back from the
building and looked up; the climbing plant with the leaves that stank like
rotten eggs when you pinched them had grown well past the ninth floor, so he
had to count the windows from the bottom, but he found the right one without
difficulty. There was even the same old decoration in the dining room window
that his aunt had once sent their father as a birthday present and that his
mother had only put up there because it was so ugly. The windows were dark,
every one of them. Even when Rhun went around the building and looked from the
other side, it was obvious that there was nobody at home. His heart still
beating hard, he buzzed, but nothing happened.
It surprised him how
disappointed he was, and he stuck around the entrance for a while longer, until
the door opened and an elderly man came out. Rhun had never seen him before,
and the man hardly gave him a second glance when Rhun slipped inside.
The lift was new; at least
Rhun hadn’t seen it. When he reached the ninth floor, he wondered for the first
time just what he was doing here. He could hardly break in, after all.
He had stood before the door
buzzer for a while when the door to the flat next to his parents’ opened and a
middle-aged woman looked at him suspiciously. He didn’t know her; they had to
have moved in after he’d left. And she’d probably been watching him from behind
her door.
‘Good evening,’ he said in
the friendliest way possible, which was what she had least expected. ‘You don’t
happen to know if the van Leukens are home, do you?’
‘What do you want?’ she
asked, still suspicious.
‘I was just in town and
thought I’d drop by for a visit to Mrs van Leuken, but there seems to be nobody
here.’
She put her hands on her
hips. ‘You can’t have seen her for a while if you look for her here,’ she
stated.
Rhun felt his stomach sink.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She moved out. Weeks ago,
with the little boy. And if you ask me, I’d have done that years ago.’
‘She moved out?’ Rhun
managed. ‘Do you know where?’
‘No, just that the man was
hopping mad when he found she was gone. I wonder how she put up with him for so
long. I’ve been living here for three years now, and I haven’t seen him sober
once.’
Rhun swallowed. It didn’t
take much imagination to guess who ‘he’ was. His father had taken to drinking
after Jon, his older brother, had died, but he hadn’t known it had become so
bad. The idea that his running away might be responsible only made it worse.
He murmured a ‘thank you,’
then turned and took the lift down. He wandered aimlessly through the quarter
and was just about to head back for the hotel when he heard his comlink beep.
‘Yes?’
‘Rhun? This is Dyson. I’ve
got some news you might want to know about.’
Rhun just waited.
‘I’ve seen the list of the
fugitives. There’s one Riga van Leuken-Deering among them.’
The house was small, inconspicuous-looking and right
on the edge of the town, an hour’s walk away from the starport area. Rhun
pulled his jacket tighter around himself. It was nearly midnight; he had called
Sam via comlink earlier and told her he wouldn’t be back for a while. She
hadn’t asked why, only wished him goodnight. He was glad she hadn’t made him
explain.
It was so much more
difficult to sound the door buzzer here than it had been two hours before, even
if the name on the tag next to it said only Kjaer. A man in his thirties
opened the door but eyed him carefully.
‘Dyson’s friend?’ he asked.
Rhun nodded, and the man let
him in and carefully closed the door behind him.
‘Name’s Kilis Kjaer,’ he
introduced himself. ‘Dyson’s left already. He brought the people here; I’ll be
coming with you when we get them away from here tomorrow.’ He looked at the
younger man. ‘Dyson told me you wanted to talk to one of the people here?’
Rhun nodded again. ‘Mrs Riga
van Leuken.’
‘The one with the boy?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s in the third room on
the left, but I’m not sure if she’s still awake.’
‘She won’t mind,’ Rhun
answered.
Kjaer shrugged. ‘Well, go ahead, then. But be quiet;
the others will want to sleep.’
Rhun nodded yet again and
went up to the door Kjaer had indicated. As this was not a regular apartment
block, there were no buzzers at the doors, so he knocked, waited, then knocked
again, slightly stronger this time, when there was no reply at first.
There was movement at the
other side of the door, and Rhun heard a voice he hadn’t heard for too long,
saying something he couldn’t understand. Then the door opened.
A small boy of seven stood
before him, looking a little sleepy. The blond hair was a shade lighter than
Rhun’s own and the brown eyes a shade darker, but he was still so unmistakably
van Leuken that Rhun felt a lump rise in his throat.
‘What is it?’ came his
mother’s voice from the back of the room. ‘Kjaer, is anything wrong?’
‘Mommy,’ the boy said,
staring at Rhun, who was still unable to get out a sound, ‘there’s a man at the
door who looks like the holo of Jon in the living-room back home.’
She then appeared in the
doorframe, a questioning look on her face, drawing a robe around her.
Afterwards, he couldn’t remember how he’d ended up in her arms, as he couldn’t
recall either of them moving, but he supposed they must have stayed that way
for an eternity, holding on to each other. What he did remember were Ren’s
confused questions what was up, and who he was anyway, but he only became
really aware of them after a while. He found his face and her robe were wet
with tears he didn’t remember shedding, and when he finally had the stomach to
look into his mother’s face, he found she was crying, too.
Her hair was down, and he
brushed a strand of it out of her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he managed to whisper.
She shook her head
vehemently and drew him into her arms again. ‘It’s all right,’ she said
hoarsely. ‘It’s all right.’
Rhun finally remembered his
brother, who had stopped repeating his questions a while ago and had returned
to the cot where he’d been sleeping on the floor. As soon as the boy saw he had
been noticed again, he asked, for the twenty-oddth time, ‘Who is that, Mom?’
Riga van Leuken released her
older son a bit without quite letting him go. ‘That’s your brother Rhun,’ she
replied.
Ren frowned. ‘I don’t have a
brother Rhun.’
‘Yes, you have,’ his mother
said. ‘I told you about him, remember? He’s been away for a while.’ Rhun
noticed that she managed to say this without sounding accusing.
‘Where’ve you been, then?’
Ren wanted to know.
Rhun smiled. ‘All sorts of
places. I’ll tell you sometime.’
‘Can’t you tell me now?’
Rhun shook his head.
‘Later.’
‘What are you doing here?’
his mother now asked. ‘You haven’t been in Gerion, have you?’
‘I joined the Rebellion,’ he
said softly. ‘Six years ago. I would have tried to contact you before now, but
that wasn’t possible . . . you know why.’
‘He’s lost it completely,
Rhun,’ she told him, almost in a whisper. ‘You know he started drinking after
what happened to Jon, but it got worse when . . . Nobody was even allowed to
mention your name in his presence. He’d completely lose his mind, especially
when we heard the police were looking for you.’
Rhun swallowed. ‘You knew
that?’
She shrugged. ‘I saw the
newsfeed; Gorn wouldn’t have told me about it for the life of him. But when he
realised you had strayed from the straight and narrow, in his eyes anyway . .
.’ His mother shook her head. ‘The last to notice seem to be his superiors in
the Army. I can’t imagine he’s any different there than he was at home, but
they don’t seem to care. But I haven’t seen him sober for weeks. I just
couldn’t stand it anymore. I always thought I couldn’t do this to Ren, running
away, I mean, so I tried to tolerate it, but when he began to—’ she broke off.
‘I found I could do this to Ren after all. I’d heard that a friend of mine,
Dreisene—you remember her?’
Rhun nodded.
‘Dreisene had taken part in
a couple of anti-Imperial protests, and she had to hide from the police. When
she found I’d left Gorn, she put me up here with Kjaer, and since Ren and I
both knew we’d have to leave Garon II anyway . . .’ she shrugged.
‘We’re having an adventure,’
Ren proclaimed.
Riga nodded tiredly. ‘Yes,
love, that’s right. But you must have had even more of an adventure.’
She looked at Rhun again.
Rhun shrugged. ‘Well, not
too much of an adventure, really. I’m working in Intentions. That means
decrypting and encrypting messages most of the time.’ He couldn’t have said why
he was lying to her. Maybe he was just too worried to scare her again with what
he was really doing.
‘Will you be coming with us
tomorrow?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Yes, at least for a while.
I’ve got to go back sooner or later, but I’ll sure visit you. I promise, Mom.’
‘Where exactly have you
been?’ Riga wanted to know again.
Rhun hugged her. ‘Sorry, I
can’t say. Some of my superiors would give me a good hiding when they knew what
I’ve told you already.’
His mother shook her head
affectionately. ‘My pacifist son talking about his superiors. You’ve changed,
Rhun.’
‘The Rebellion is different,
Mom,’ he answered.
Ren piped up again. ‘Daddy
says the Rebels are evil.’
‘I bet Daddy says a lot of
things, and some of them are lies,’ Rhun replied.
Ren’s face screwed up in
concentration as he thought about this, then he decided, if a little worriedly,
‘So Daddy’s evil, then?’
Rhun shook his head sadly.
‘No, Ren, Daddy isn’t evil. He just believes other people’s lies. You know the
Emperor?’
‘Yes, I’ve seen him on holo.
He looks funny.’
‘He’s evil. He lies
to people so they do what he wants even if they don’t want it. He can make you
do things you don’t want to do, and that’s why he’s evil. But he’s also the
Emperor, and I and some people besides me try to . . . er . . . make him go
away so other people can rule.’ Well, it really is rather easy, so
why in the galaxy do so few people understand it?
‘Where are we going tomorrow?’ Ren
wanted to know, obviously of the opinion that the topic had been exhausted.
‘You’ll like it,’ Rhun
answered, also looking at his mother. ‘It’s a Safe World. I can’t tell you
where it is, but it’s warmer than here, and there are no Imperials, of course .
. . and I’ll be able to see you. It won’t be very often, but I promise I’ll see
you as often as I get permission.’ To Ren, he added, ‘There’ll be lots of other
kids to play with, and not just boring humans, but also Rodians, and Calamaris,
and Wookiees . . .’
‘Fishheads,’ Ren chimed in.
Rhun raised an eyebrow.
‘They don’t really like being called fishheads,’ he told the boy, ruffling his
hair. ‘How would you like to be called a scarecrow, huh?’ Ren yelped, trying to
squirm out of his brother’s grasp. Rhun noticed his mother’s worried look,
quite unexpected, and let go of the boy. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘He’s got two broken ribs,’
Riga answered. ‘They’re healing, but they’re still sore. That was why I decided
I couldn’t stay with Gorn any longer.’
Rhun became serious again in
an instant. ‘This time tomorrow, you’ll be out of here, and you needn’t ever
come back,’ he said. ‘I swear it.’
When Rhun finally went back, it was four hours after
midnight, but he was too elated to feel any tiredness. He hadn’t dared imagine
that the reunion with his mother might turn out like this, and now he was
looking forward to the long hyper jump to the Safe World Cheldiria.
He couldn’t wait to tell
Sam, couldn’t wait to tell her everything. He chuckled again as he recalled the
look on her face when she had seen they had a room with a double
bed—doubtlessly the friendly old woman at the reception had meant to be nice.
The truth was that they hadn’t come exactly very far since that first kiss just
after the battle of Yavin, but he didn’t mind right now. He didn’t mind
anything right now.
Silently, he opened the door
to their room and crept inside. Without turning on the light, he undressed
quietly and slipped into bed, reaching over to her.
It was then that he noticed
she was not there. The bed hadn’t even been touched.
5
Samica had taken a stroll around a small park before
heading back to the hotel. She was not bothered too much by the cold, and the
opportunity to spend time not cooped up in a ship or another room was too good
to be wasted. She had never cared much for open spaces—on Imperial Centre, you
could spend your whole life in the giant building complexes without ever having
to face the rain and cold outside—but she’d felt like it that night.
The park covered only a
small space between two blocks of flats, but she always enjoyed grass and
trees, at least as long as it crossed her path in a civilised fashion, not like
the jungle on Yavin 4. There were lamps all around the area, and the bright
windows from the adjacent houses gave her the feeling of cosiness she’d felt
too rarely after going to the Imperial Academy, really.
‘Excuse me, Miss, how old
are you?’
Samica turned around in
surprise and saw two people, a man and a woman, in the uniform of the city
militia. It was the man that had addressed her.
‘Pardon?’ she said.
‘Sorry for the
inconvenience, Miss, but we have to check this area after nineteen hundred
hours. How old are you?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘Can I see your
identification, please?’
‘Uh—sure,’ Samica replied
and produced the card from her pocket.
‘You see, this park is a
frequent haunt for all kinds of juvenile delinquents,’ the officer went on as
she handed him the card. ‘So it’s been closed for everyone underage after
nineteen hundred. You’re not from Garon II?’
‘No, from Balmorra.’ That,
at least, was what her ID said.
‘Right. Just a sec, Miss . .
.’ he put the card into the slot of his reader, hesitated, then slid it through
again.
‘It can’t read it,’ he said.
‘Try mine,’ his colleague
offered, and she tried the same procedure with her device, but it, too,
insisted the card was unreadable.
Samica felt her stomach go
cold. Her ID had worked at the spaceport—or had it? Had the disinterested
customs officer really checked all of them? Now that she thought about it, she
didn’t think he had.
‘That’s odd,’ she said,
feigning surprise. ‘It certainly worked this afternoon at the holocinema. The
man there wanted to see my ID as well. Do I really look that young?’ If this
wasn’t so damn dangerous, it would almost be a laugh, she thought as
she watched the female officer try again. She’d thought of herself as an
officer for more than a year, first as a member of the galaxy’s finest Navy
(the Imperial), then as one of the better pilots in another Navy that was finer
than she’d thought (the Rebels). She was very unlikely to forget her age, but
it had never really mattered in the past fourteen months.
‘Well, Miss, I’m afraid
we’ll have to check this.’ The officer suddenly looked a lot less polite than
he had a minute ago, and Samica noticed that his colleague had her hand on her
blaster. It would have to be her to find the only dutiful officer on all Garon
II. They knew her ID was a fake, and Stars only knew what would happen next.
For an instant, she considered bolting, but that was not a good idea. There was
no cover in a hundred metres, and it was dark, and she was in a place she
didn’t know.
She could only try to come
up with a good story and try to talk her way out of it.
Blast, talking her way out
of anything didn’t really sound like Samica Trey.
Samica had realised things were going Really Bad
when they took her up to the garrison in an enclosed militia speeder.
She hadn’t dared ask what
was wrong with her ID, but somehow they must have figured out she was not a
‘juvenile delinquent.’ They’d taken her comlink as well as the fake ID, so
there was nothing she could do to contact Rhun or Dyson, and there was no
thinking about bolting now. The two militia officers had handed her over to an
Imperial Army trooper when they reached the garrison, and she was unarmed. All
things considered, being unarmed was probably the best thing that could have
happened to her tonight, for if they’d found a weapon on her, she’d have been
in even greater trouble—which didn’t mean she wasn’t already in up to her ears.
She now sat in a cell in the
garrison complex, and according to her chrono, she had been for over an hour,
alone with her fears and what-ifs. Yes, of course she should have gone straight
back to the hotel, yes, she could have handled the ID control more easily and
thus got away, but she hadn’t, and the worst thing about it was that Rhun and
Dyson were now in danger of being discovered as well, and she had no way of
letting them know. Had Rhun felt this way before he was interrogated aboard Resolve?
If he had, she apologised silently, even if it had not been her fault that he
had ended up there in the detention level—or had it?
Her thoughts went round in
circles, and there was only one thing she told herself again and again: she
would not, no matter what, betray Rhun or the Alliance. Samica tried not to
think about how many Rebels awaiting interrogation had told themselves that.
When the door opened, a
captain in an ISB uniform entered, and Samica’s heart sank even further. She’d
always despised the ISB and even looked down on them while she was in the
Imperial Navy, but from this side of the story, she couldn’t have come off
worse. The Imperial Security Bureau was not known for its delicacy in handling
Intelligence matters, which made it the Armed Services’ laughing stock, but it
was feared by Rebels—for a good reason.
Behind the ISB officer, two
stormtroopers entered the room, and behind them, she heard a familiar whirring
and bit her lip when she saw the round, shiny black orb of an interrogator
droid.
The ISB captain remained
standing before her, forcing her to look up to him, which she didn’t.
‘Well, look at what an ID
check in a park can get you,’ he said. ‘Such a miserably forged ID. Did you
botch that yourself or did your Rebel friends manage that?’
She didn’t answer.
‘You want to make it
interesting? Fine with me, we can take all night if you insist. Or all week,
until you’ve told me what you want to know. What’s your name? Your real name?’
She finally did look at him.
‘Lou Ryder.’ That was the name her fake ID had given.
He shook his head. ‘Such
obstinacy. Let’s jog your memory a bit, shall we?’ He turned to the
interrogator droid. ‘OV600.’
The droid whirred towards
her, and she closed her eyes. She remembered that Rhun had talked under the
influence of the truth drug, remembered how hard he’d struggled and how little
it had availed him. Still, the thought of him helped her focus. She would not
tell them he was here. There was a stinging sensation in the side of her neck,
then the black sphere retreated from her field of vision. She waited for the
dizziness she thought must accompany the truth serum—she’d seen its effects on
Rhun and on Blissex—and was surprised when she felt none.
‘Now,’ the captain went on
after he’d waited for the drug to take effect; at least so Samica supposed,
because she still felt nothing out of the ordinary. ‘Let’s try again, shall we?
What’s your name?’
‘I’ve already told you, Lou
Ry—’ She broke off in a gasp of pain as fire exploded along the skin of her
neck, and she doubled over, panting with pain.
‘Well, didn’t your mother
tell you that you mustn’t lie?’ she heard the officer’s voice as if through a
red haze.
Samica made no reply, her
hands gripping the hand rests on the bench she sat on, forcing herself to clamp
down on it. She found that she could, if only by force, and made herself clench
her teeth against the pain. It seemed to ease off slightly.
There was a new kind of pain
as the interrogator gripped her face and forced her to look into his eyes.
‘Your name,’ he demanded.
‘Trey,’ she mouthed.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite
catch that,’ was the answer.
‘Trey,’ she repeated,
gasping as he let go of her face.
He leaned back, crossing his arms comfortably. ‘See, Lieutenant
Trey, that wasn’t so difficult, now was it? All you have to do is tell me, and
it won’t hurt. Oh, by the way—’ he stopped to inspect his fingernails, ‘you may
have noticed we do know a bit about you already. So save yourself and us the
time to lengthen this conversation unnecessarily. I’m sure that’s in your best
interest as well.’
Commander Gilles Tonkin tiredly drew a hand over his
face and pushed away another stack of datacards that went to his ‘done’ pile
without ever having been as much as looked at. Twenty-one hundred hours. Well,
the day was still young then.
When he’d been transferred
here, he had thought the posting was as good as a funeral, all expenses paid,
at that. Not too bad an outlook for a dead man, but a rather bleak perspective
for a bright young officer who had just made commander, in the known galaxy’s
best navy, at that.
Well, so he had been a bit less
than the bright young officer presented by the recruitment machinery, and he’d
once or twice made a bad impression with what the examination board had
referred to as insubordination. Stranded on Garon II, he’d had two options: do
what the Navy expected him to do, which was play dead, or make the most of it.
So he’d stayed here . . . the only one who had stayed for longer than two
years, longer than ten years. There seemed to be two ways off Garon II: make
your peace with the Navy, and be promoted, or blow it completely, and be
stationed on an ice rock in the Outer Rim. Tonkin had managed to tread the
middle path, staying out of trouble without ever excelling at his job, and
they’d left him in command of the TIE squadron at the base. Officially.
Unofficially, he practically controlled the whole garrison—Army General Infesen
asked his advice on everything that was concerned with actual leadership, and
Tonkin supposed that the pale-looking grounddog was very much content with the
situation. Infesen had about as much charisma as a Jawa under a general
anaesthetic.
And during all this time,
Tonkin had been cooking his own little soup, as the Garonic saying went. As
most other officers never lasted very long on Garon II—whatever path they took
afterwards—he had little trouble controlling them, and Garon II was unimportant
enough that they let him. He did not resent the Empire. He left it in peace,
and it left him in peace, and right now, that was a situation that worked very
well for all concerned. There had been a few problems in the past, especially
four weeks ago, when there had been a pro-Rebel demonstration in Gerion. The
idiots had actually believed in that propaganda rubbish that Grand Moff Tarkin
had blown up Alderaan and then been blasted out of the sky by a single X-wing
starfighter. It should be mentioned that Grand Moff Tarkin was supposed to have
been aboard a battle station as large as a moon at the time.
The ISB hadn’t been able to
find out how the insurgents had been able to call such a demonstration into
being without their knowledge (although Tonkin had a few ideas in that regard),
and it had been a while until he had the situation safely in his grasp again.
There were rather profitable
lines of business to get into in this system, and even if Tonkin had never got
exactly rich, he was well content with what he had made out of a position that
had looked so hopeless in the beginning. The problem with that was that they
left you with an awful lot of paperwork that he could trust very few people
with.
An admittance bell chimed,
and Tonkin looked up in surprise. He hadn’t thought there was anyone but him
still working in the garrison.
‘Come in,’ he said, and
Captain Tore Eriksson entered the office. Now here was a bright young officer
if ever there was one. Eriksson was one of the pilots that had to have landed
here by accident, but Tonkin was glad to have him. An excellent pilot,
efficient, loyal, but with a mind of his own, exactly the type of leadership
potential Tonkin liked in an officer. He wouldn’t dream about drawing the young
man into his own affairs—there were limitations to everything, after all—but as
his exec, he was about everything he could have hoped for.
‘I didn’t realise there was
someone else working overtime tonight,’ he greeted the captain.
Eriksson made a face. ‘We’re
not the only ones, Commander. The Army idiots down there have made a prisoner.’
‘Oh?’
‘You remember Flight
Officer—I mean, Lieutenant Trey, sir?’
Tonkin nodded. He remembered
the kid—straight from the Academy, with the typical fuzz on her head from hair
that was allowed to grow again after graduation, all knees and hardly any
breasts, but a very good pilot, and already with the markings of an excellent
officer. It hadn’t really come as a surprise to Tonkin to hear, some time after
she’d left, that she had defected to the Rebellion. Any sane woman would, if he
was honest, and he had known Trey to be a very sane young woman. The way she
had stood up against COMPNOR Captain Lockhart had been impressive, but it had
also told Tonkin that Trey was someone not to be taken lightly.
Lockhart had been on Garon
II not quite a year ago, sent by the sector Moff for a routine loyalty check.
Tonkin remembered the little snoop—Lockhart had sure given him a run for his
credits; satisfying him had been more difficult than with most others. Once,
the captain had caught Trey coming from a patrol and had thought it might be a
good laugh to intimidate a very young female flight officer. When he had begun
to get pushy, she’d slapped him across the face. Tonkin really couldn’t fault
her, not as a man, because the old goat had positively been begging to be
slapped (since the day he’d been born, most likely), but as her commanding
officer, he’d found himself pestered by Lockhart to punish her, insisting that
she’d tried to seduce him (the very idea of Flight Officer Trey seducing anyone
was downright ridiculous).
He’d tried to talk her into
seeing reason. Tonkin was not above an inquiry from COMPNOR, and Lockhart
threatened to inform his superiors about certain other things he’d seen here in
the garrison. She’d finally backed off—Lockhart got his way, and she got an
entry into her file about insubordination and indecency. He would have liked to
keep her on Garon II, primarily because he wanted to protect her; but after her
encounter with Lockhart, she’d insisted on going, thinking that Imperial
officers behaved more honourably elsewhere. And look where that belief had got
her.
He couldn’t think of
anything that might bring her back to Garon II, much less as a Rebel.
‘What the hell’s she doing
here?’
‘I can’t say, sir, but the
ISB’s got a tough time in finding out.’
‘ISB?’
‘Yes, sir. Baridan’s been on
the lookout, it seems.’
Commander Tonkin carefully
eyed his exec. He, too, had served with Trey. ‘So why exactly are you telling
me this, Tore?’
‘Well . . . just thought I’d
let you know, sir.’ The red-haired, muscular captain saluted and left.
Tonkin scratched his chin.
Damn, corruption and smuggling was one charge, high treason was another. The
first two might get him off with a dishonourable discharge; the second would
get him nothing short of execution. Blast, he had liked Trey, but if she was a
Rebel, she had to be kept in check. Again, corruption that everyone knew about
was one thing . . . anarchy that would plunge the galaxy into chaos was the
other.
Then again, nobody would
have to know. He’d be able to pull this one off, he knew, and nobody over at
Sector Command would ever know. And what was most important of all—he’d clashed
with Baridan before, and he couldn’t risk his position being questioned.
But still, if he helped her,
that was high treason, and he was not sure whether he could live with
that.
Heck, he’d lived with other
things.
And nobody, not even a
Rebel, deserved being interrogated by an ISB twit.
The detention block was empty apart from some MSE
droids hurrying along the corridors, scurrying out of the commander’s path as
he went to Trey’s cell. He thought he could hear her screams through the
durasteel walls.
Tonkin inserted his code
cylinder into the slot in the door and keyed in his code. The door slid open,
and he put his hand on his hips as he looked inside.
Captain Baridan turned at
the sound of the door, and his angry expression changed to one of surprise when
he saw who had entered. Trey sat on the bench, slumped against the wall, the
left side of her face from her hairline down to her shoulder a swollen, angry
red mess.
‘Just what do you think
you’re doing here, Captain Baridan?’ Commander Tonkin demanded, and the ISB
officer turned to him grudgingly. Trey didn’t move.
‘With all due respect, sir,
this is an ISB affair, and you have no business here.’
‘I do have business here
every time one of you idiots endangers the New Order through your own
stupidity,’ Tonkin spat. ‘Come out of there!’
Baridan stuck out his chin.
‘You’re aware I answer only to COMPNOR, sir, not the Imperial Armed Forces.’
‘The hell I am,’ Tonkin
replied. ‘Move your butt out here!’
The captain hesitated, but
he came out onto the corridor. The commander closed the door behind him. ‘Now,
can you tell me what you’re using that stupid OV600 for?’ he demanded.
‘I don’t have to account to
you for anything like that,’ Baridan replied stubbornly.
Tonkin snorted. ‘Tell me,
Captain, what have you got out of her so far?’
The ISB captain glared. ‘I’m
working on it.’
Tonkin crossed his arms over
his chest and nodded. ‘She’s not talking at all, is she? That’s the problem
with OV600. As soon as the victim realises that lying will cause her pain, she
can simply try to keep quiet, right?’
‘There are ways around that.
By morning we’ll have all the information she can give us.’
Tonkin shook his head. ‘You
seem to forget that the point in this little game is information, not your
personal fun. —Oh, that wasn’t meant to be an insult,’ he added, wondering how
far he could push the little slime. ‘And the best thing we could get out of her
is the location of the Rebel hideout, isn’t it?
‘I suppose.’
‘Accordingly, we’d have to
make her betray the Rebellion. You still with me?’
The captain nodded, his eyes
blazing.
‘So you really think she’s
going to do that? Listen, Captain, if you want her to betray the Rebellion, you
have to be a bit more clever than that.’
Baridan crossed his arms as
well and looked up at the taller commander. ‘So what do you suggest we do?’ he
asked, sounding as if the words were ground out of him.
Tonkin produced an injector
from his pocket. ‘Set her free—with a homing device that’ll tell us where she
is.’
Suspicion began to show on
the ISB man’s face. ‘Where did you get that?’
Tonkin snorted a laugh.
‘I’ve been in touch with every branch here on Garon II, Army and Navy, Intel
and COMPNOR. One thing a good commanding officer should do: know his resources.
She won’t have any idea, and she’ll lead us right to them.’ He leaned over to
the younger man and added, ‘That might be my ticket off this world—and yours.’
‘You would tell them it was
my idea?’ Baridan asked dubiously. These ISB jerks were so easy to twist around
your finger.
Tonkin shrugged. ‘I get the
fame, you get a promotion, and I could put in a good word for you with COMPNOR.
That looks a bit more promising than your approach, doesn’t it? If you torture
her to death, she won’t be of any more use to us.’
‘But she’s not here on her
own,’ Baridan objected. ‘She’s been trying to tell me she is, but she’s lying.’
Tonkin grunted. ‘No doubt.
But even if she is, and there are other Rebels here, what do you think will be
worth more in the eyes of COMPNOR? A handful of lowly Rebels or a full base of
them?’
The captain was not convinced
yet. ‘A hawk-bat in hand is worth two on a skyhook.’
Tonkin nodded. ‘Yes, but
worth less than several hundred on a skyhook—and they’re a relatively safe
catch as well.’ He decided to play his last trump card. Sometimes you had to
sink to their level to make a point. ‘And think of it—that way, we’d make her
betray the Rebellion after all, even if she doesn’t know.’
He was rewarded by a rare
grin of Baridan’s, one that made his stomach churn. ‘You should join the ISB,
Commander.’
‘Maybe next time, Captain,’
Tonkin answered.
Samica never knew how she made it back. She knew
even less why they’d let her go in the first place, only that it was still dark
outside when her head cleared enough for her to become aware of her
surroundings again, to find she was lying on the ground in some side street,
shivering with cold and pain from her face. It took her three attempts to get
up, and several minutes, leaning against the wall, before she thought she could
walk. Her knees were shaking so much that she had to lean against the walls for
support, and hopelessness gripped her again when she realised she had no idea
where she was, or how she could get back to the hotel. It was almost morning,
and the thought that someone might find her and, with the best of intentions, call
the police, scared her.
She sat down for a few more
minutes, trying to calm down, but it was hard to calm down when you had
absolutely no idea what had happened. She couldn’t imagine how she had got
here, and what the Imps were trying to achieve. She glanced around, but as far
as she could tell, there was nobody following her. Which didn’t necessarily
mean anything.
She was not even sure what
she had told them. She was pretty certain that she had tried to protect
Rhun, but the last few hours were little more than a haze. Somewhere in
between, she thought she had heard Commander Tonkin’s voice, but she doubted
her brain was up to wondering about that as well, so she forced herself to
worry about the most immediate necessity: how to get away from here—wherever
‘here’ was.
Samica got up again, and
staggered back into a direction that looked to her like the area where their
hotel had been. She had to walk for a long time, but at least she was lucky in
one respect; whenever she encountered anyone, they cast her just one glance and
hurried to be somewhere else. She supposed they probably thought she was on
drugs. Which wasn’t too far from the truth.
Somehow, after what seemed
an eternity, she made it back to an area she recognised, and even found the
hotel again. There was nobody at the reception yet, but after a few attempts,
she finally managed to remember the code that opened the door, and she quietly
let herself into their small apartment. She was normally very good with
numbers.
In the darkness she could
make out Rhun lying on the bed, fully dressed, which puzzled her, but she tried
to tiptoe around the bed and let him sleep. No such luck. Her foot banged
against the bedside locker, and the sound made him jerk upright.
‘Sam!’ he said. ‘You gave me
a scare! Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking for you, but . . .’ He let his
voice trail off when she didn’t answer and came over to her. ‘What’s happened?’
Samica still didn’t reply.
It was dark, but he was sitting to her left, and he gasped as he saw her face.
‘Emperor’s black bones,’ he
breathed, gently turning her head around to look at her, careful to touch only
her right cheek.
‘Where have you been?’ he
whispered again.
‘Ran into an ID control,’
she got out.
‘It didn’t hold,’ he
guessed.
She just shook her head.
‘Who did this to you?’ he
asked her gently.
‘ISB,’ she answered.
Rhun swallowed. ‘Sam . . .
you’ve got to tell me what they did. I know you’d never tell them anything, but
. . .’
‘They let me go,’ she
whispered. ‘Rhun—I don’t know what happened, I can’t—’
He gently eased her down and
stroked her forehead. ‘It’s okay,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve got a medpak here
somewhere. Try to get some sleep. It’s all right. You can tell me later. Okay?’
She nodded shakily, and he
kissed her temple. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he repeated. ‘We’ll get you checked
out, don’t worry.’
He went to fetch the medpak
and gave her a painkiller, then searched her clothes for bugs, even scanned her
with the bioscanner in the ’pak to hunt for microchips that might have been injected.
It didn’t yield any result other than the drug that was wearing off, which it
classified as unknown, but Rhun knew that the result was not conclusive—the
scanner would only find the more obvious things.
As Rhun sat beside the bed and
watched her, asleep now, he wondered what they’d do about this. Samica getting
picked up and tortured by the ISB only made things a lot more complicated than
they were already, and a lot more dangerous.
He thought about the possibilities.
It was possible, of course, but very unlikely, that Sam had returned to the
Empire. Rhun couldn’t imagine she had. Which left only two other possible
scenarios: they’d let her go, or she’d escaped. He could not really imagine her
escaping in her present condition, especially without being able to tell, so
that left only one thing: they’d let her go, and Rhun could think of many
reasons why the ISB might do something like that. He didn’t like any of them.
Most probably, they were either following her or tracking her with a device—his
small mediscanner hadn’t found anything, but that didn’t mean there was nothing
there. They’d have to get her to Eggshell and scan her more thoroughly
there, or leave her behind—which Rhun was not going to do. He knew it was
probably not worth the risk, but he just couldn’t leave her, and he was willing
to go against prudence in this case and follow his inner voice telling him to
sit this one out.
Rhun went over to the window,
carefully peering out into the darkness, searching for signs anyone had
followed Sam here. Outside, it was completely quiet, the sort of silence just
before dawn, and it didn’t feel as if they were being watched. Still,
when Rhun went back into the room, he took his blaster from his pack and laid
it next to him. His feelings could usually be trusted, but it couldn’t hurt to
be cautious.
He’d have to tell Dyson, and,
eventually, Commander Willard, and he could only guess at the sorts of
complications that would cause. He wasn’t even thinking about the implications
of Imperials knowing she was here.
Rhun glanced at his chrono. Nearly
six hundred. Dyson was not going to like it, but he’d understand being woken at
this time, considering the circumstances.
6
‘We can’t call off the operation now. We’ve brought
them all here, and bringing them back again would be just as dangerous as
bringing them out on the Eggshell,’ Dyson’s voice floated into her
consciousness.
‘The risk is too great.’
Lieutenant de Boeck.
‘It’s no use speculating,’
Rhun answered. ‘We don’t even know what happened.’
Dyson spoke again. ‘We can
only hope she hasn’t led the Imps straight here.’
‘They’d be here already. And
what do you think I should have done? Chase her out again?’
Samica made herself open her
eyes—her right eye, anyway—and look up. She still felt dizzy, and there still
was the pain in her face, but not as bad as last night. She noticed that Rhun
must have taken her boots and jacket off. Outside, it was light already.
Rhun noticed she was awake
and sat down on the bed, with a glance at Dyson to silence him. ‘How are you?’
he asked.
Instead of answering his
question, she looked up at Dyson and de Boeck. ‘I don’t think they found out
about the hotel,’ she said, a bit slurred, since the left side of her mouth
felt a few sizes too big for her face.
De Boeck shook her head, but
there was also compassion in her face for the younger woman. ‘That doesn’t mean
anything, Captain,’ she said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, please—I’m glad you made it
back here, but I’d feel a lot better if I knew just why they let you go.’
Samica turned towards Rhun.
‘Could it be Commander Tonkin just let me go?’ she asked, almost wishing for
him to tell her yes, of course, he’d simply let her walk out like that because
he was such a nice person.
Rhun looked at her
unhappily. ‘I know he was your former commander, and of course you know him
better than I do, but somehow I find that hard to believe,’ he answered.
‘So what are we going to
do?’ Samica asked weakly.
‘We’ll get you back to the Eggshell.
Under the circumstances, we can’t risk including you tonight. Someone may
recognise you. The medical facilities there are better, too, so maybe we’ll
find out more about what happened to you.’ Rhun paused. ‘Can you remember
anything about last night?’
Samica looked down at her
hands and forced herself to remember. ‘He asked me my name, but I think they
knew that already. They might have done a retinal scan and compared it to the
criminal records or something . . . maybe the Navy records, even. I don’t
know.’
‘Who interrogated you?’ Rhun
asked. ‘Tonkin?’
She carefully shook her
head. ‘No, an ISB captain. I can’t remember much about him. Tonkin was there at
some time, I think, but . . . all of that’s really hazy.’
‘Can you recall what they
gave you?’ he asked softly.
‘I don’t know. It seemed to
react when I was lying, so I tried not to answer at all, but when they asked if
I was alone here . . .’ She broke off and bit her lower lip.
Rhun exchanged a glance with
Dyson. ‘Do they know who you’re here with?’
‘No, but they know I’m not
alone.’
Rhun turned to Samica again.
‘Do they know why we’re here?’ He
wanted to know.
‘I don’t think so.’
He looked up again at Dyson
and de Boeck. ‘We’ll have to take the chance, Cap,’ he said to the Corellian.
‘There’s really no other way we could get out of this without endangering the
fugitives. You’ll stay on Eggshell, Sam, and we’ll come after.’
She only nodded, not feeling
in any mood to protest.
Dyson brooded for a while,
until, finally, he nodded as well. ‘Firia, I think it’d be best if you took her
to the freighter and stayed there with her.’ He wasn’t saying ‘have an eye on
her’, but they all knew that it was what he meant. ‘Rhun, I’ll need your help
tonight.’
The young man nodded. ‘What
do you want me to do?’
‘Originally, Firia was
supposed to lead one of the groups of refugees to the spaceport, but now you’ll
have to do that. But you know the area at least as well, don’t you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Very well. We’ll separate
them into three groups. One goes with me, one with Kjaer, and one with you.
We’ve got fourteen, so you’ll take four. We meet at the ship at twenty-one
hundred. See to it you’re there in time, because we won’t be able to wait
long.’
Rhun asked, ‘You’ve done
this kind of thing before, haven’t you?’
Dyson shrugged, then nodded.
‘I thought you always said
the Rebellion paid so poorly,’ Rhun remarked with a grin.
‘A soft spot of mine. But
don’t tell Commander Willard, or he’ll have me do it for nothing next time.’
It was almost dark already by 17.30, the time Rhun
was on his way back to the safe house in Gerion to collect the second group of
refugees. Kjaer had already left with his group; Dyson had to be leaving even
now. Neither Kjaer nor Rhun knew who exactly was in each group, or which way
the others would be taking, so that, if one of them got caught, they couldn’t
reveal anything about the others.
They weren’t supposed to face any
problems until they came to the spaceport, which was very difficult to enter
without being ID-checked, so they had separated as far as possible, in time as
well as place, so that, if one of the groups was caught, the others would be
far enough away to avoid being detected as well. Dyson would have preferred to
leave in the dead of night, but there were two children among the refugees, who
had no business out in town so late, thus making it even harder to go
unnoticed.
Some of the refugees were
politically prosecuted, for sympathising with the Rebels, mostly. Rhun had
learned many had started sympathising after the news about Alderaan and the
Death Star, and Rebel fractions and resistance organisations had mushroomed
everywhere in the galaxy. There weren’t too many on Garon II, but the
destruction of Alderaan had not passed unnoticed and unquestioned here, either.
Sam was back on Eggshell
with Firia de Boeck, but scanning her with the transport’s equipment hadn’t
yielded anything, no foreign bodies or anything else. Rhun desperately wanted
to believe that nothing was wrong with her, but he could also understand
Dyson’s suspicion where she was concerned. To make sure she couldn’t endanger
the mission, she didn’t know where the fugitives would be taken, but Rhun could
tell Dyson was not very comfortable with the knowledge that the Empire might
have bugged her or something like that. He couldn’t have put the captain at ease
with the reassurance that he thought it would be all right, after all. But Rhun
was certain, at least, that she hadn’t tried to lie to him.
He reached Kjaer’s house and
buzzed. There was a male voice from the inside, asking, ‘Who’s there?’
‘Time to get ready,’ Rhun
answered; that was the agreed-on password.
The door opened, and Rhun
slipped inside. The man who had opened him was heavy-set, around thirty, with
brown hair and an untidy brown beard. Behind him, there was a young woman maybe
a bit older than Rhun, and his mother and Ren.
The man nodded at Rhun.
‘We’re going?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Rhun agreed. ‘Kjaer’s
left already?’
The woman nodded. ‘Around
fifteen minutes ago; later than expected.’
‘It’ll be better if we wait
for half an hour or so, then,’ Rhun decided. ‘We’ve got enough time, and we
don’t want to run into them.’
‘Where are we going?’ Ren
wanted to know.
Rhun shook his head, but he
was grinning. ‘I told you yesterday, you’re going to like it. I can’t say how
it’s called, but we’re going to the spaceport first. Then we take a ship to
that place. Have you ever been off Garon II?’
‘No. But we went over to the
seaside last summer, didn’t we, Mommy?’
The man had listened to the
exchange, looking at the child, and then at Rhun, then asked, ‘Are you related,
anyhow?’
Rhun grinned more widely.
‘Yep. But sorry, I didn’t remember to introduce myself. I’m Rhun.’ His first
name would have to do; if anyone got caught, the name van Leuken would
certainly mean something to some people over at the garrison.
The couple then introduced
themselves as Trenc and Kiriali. They’d been staying with Kjaer for almost a
month, after the Army had broken up a demonstration against the Empire
following disconcerting rumours that the Empire was responsible for the
destruction of Alderaan.
‘We only barely got away
before the others were taken into custody,’ Kiriali said. ‘Before that, I’d
taken the whole thing as something like an exciting activity, something to do
with your time when your life got too boring, but I never realised how serious
it was, and how serious the Empire took the affair.’
‘What happened to those who
were taken into custody?’ Rhun asked.
Trenc shrugged. ‘Some got
off with imprisonment, but I don’t know about one or two others, the more
radical among us. The place was swarming with ISB and COMPNOR for two weeks,
and we haven’t been out a lot lately. We knew they were looking for those who
got away, and Kjaer told us he knew how to get away from here.’
‘Will you join the Rebellion
or just live away from it all?’ Rhun’s mother now asked.
Kiriali pursed her lips. ‘If
it’s true what they say—that the Empire is responsible for blowing up
Alderaan—they have to be stopped. I don’t know what I can do yet, but I’m
certain the Rebels need all sorts of people for all sorts of jobs.’ Rhun
nodded. ‘So maybe I’ll wait and watch until I decide how I can help the
Rebellion. I’m not a pilot or a soldier, but I suppose there are lots of things
everyone can do.’
‘Not voting for them in the next elections,
for starters,’ Trenc quipped.
‘I’ll join the Rebellion,’
Ren declared. ‘I’m going to be a pilot, and I’ll make the evil Emperor go
away.’
‘First, young man, you’ll
have to wait a bit before you’re able to reach the controls of a fighter
anyway,’ Rhun damped his brother’s enthusiasm, ‘and I really don’t want to
disappoint you, but flying does not run in the family, I’m afraid.’
‘I hope this war is over by
the time he’s old enough to be of any help,’ Trenc muttered.
Rhun nodded. ‘So do I.’ He
glanced at his wrist chrono. It was nearly eighteen hundred. ‘I think we’d
better get going,’ he said to the others. ‘The first part shouldn’t be too
difficult.’
They made their way along the blocks of flats, in
and out of circles of light from the buildings. The four fugitives were
travelling very light; the young couple had one backpack between them, and so
did Rhun’s mother, for herself and for Ren. Rhun had offered to carry it for
her; she’d looked at him as if he were a very young boy who’d said something
very stupid. It was good to be home again.
As
Rhun had hoped, the first part of the trip was relatively safe. If they had
been carrying trunks or larger pieces of baggage, somebody might have become
suspicious, but as it was, there were few people around anyway, and the few
that were hardly took any notice. After half an hour, a slow, steady drizzle
set in, further discouraging people to linger on the streets for longer than
absolutely necessary. Rhun usually wasn’t very fond of rain, but tonight, he
was grateful for it.
They had almost reached the
edge of town and were approaching the starport area when Rhun suddenly stopped,
stretching out a hand behind him to bring Trenc to a halt as well. Ahead in the
street, around one corner, there had been voices, voices that sounded
commanding. Voices he didn’t want to hear in a moment like this.
‘What is it?’ Ren whispered
behind him; at least he had somehow realised speaking aloud would not be a very
good idea.
Rhun silenced him with a
gesture, then carefully leaned around the corner to look into the street. There
were three men, one militia, two customs officers, some fifty metres away. One
of them was speaking into a comlink. One more militia officer was standing
fifteen metres away from the corner, but with his back to them, and he called
back to the others, ‘Yes, but if they were seen on the Starport Road, we can
cut them off this way.’
‘Come back here,’ one of the
others called. ‘We’ll seal off this quarter; let the Starport Police worry with
them.’
‘What if they’re not going
to the starport at all?’ the one before them said. ‘The route would take them
to the garrison. It could be another of those would-be-rebel sabotage
assaults.’
‘The garrison can look after
itself,’ the second speaker answered. ‘Come back here, that’s an order!’
Reluctantly, the first
militia man started to go, but cast one more glance into their direction. Rhun
jerked back behind the building, but too late.
‘Hey!’ the officer called at
them, starting to jog into their direction. In the semidarkness, Rhun saw Trenc
and his mother cast him a frightened glance, but he put on a reassuring look
(he hoped) and stepped forward, Ren at his side. The officer came to a stop
behind him, his hand on his belt.
‘How long have you been
listening?’ he demanded.
Rhun put on a puzzled
expression, sufficiently worried for someone who had never had trouble with any
armed forces in his life. ‘Listening? I wasn’t listening, sir.’
The officer eyed him, then
Ren, then the other three people behind him. The man’s colleagues were also
approaching now. ‘May I see your ID, please?’ he said.
Rhun fervently hoped it
would hold better than Sam’s had the night before, but he gave it to the
officer, who ran it through his reader. To his relief, it seemed to work.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked, at the same time willing Ren to be quiet. So far,
the boy hadn’t opened his mouth once.
‘Yours as well,’ was the
officer’s reply, addressed to his mother, who hesitated. They were rescued by
one of the customs officers, who had arrived at the corner now. ‘What is it?’
he asked his colleague, his tone indicating patience running out quickly.
‘These were lurking behind
the building, sir, so I thought I’d better check what they were up to.’
‘Lurking?’ the other man
repeated doubtfully, looking at the group before him.
‘Yes, sir. This man here . .
.’ he glanced at Rhun’s forged ID, ‘Haaris . . . he was acting guilty, if you
ask me, sir.’
The customs officer bent
down to Ren. ‘What’s your name, boy?’
Rhun’s stomach sank. He
should have spent more time going over situations like this with the kid. Come
on, Ren, make up something, I know you can do it!
Ren hesitated. ‘Ren,’ he
finally said.
‘Ren, and what else?’
Ren hesitated even longer,
but when he answered, he didn’t even look at Rhun. ‘Ren Haaris,’ he finished,
even refraining from grinning.
‘And what are you doing up
so late, Ren?’
Rhun knew that the officer
hoped to catch the child unawares, so it wouldn’t do if he answered instead. Ren,
make something up, but keep it simple . . .
‘We were visiting family,’
Ren replied. ‘We had a—a family reunion.’ He seemed to remember something,
turning around to his mother. ‘And Uncle gave me a giant cuddly toy, and Mommy
is carrying it, do you want to see it? Can he, Mom?’
The customs officer laughed
in an avuncular way and straightened again. ‘No, that won’t be necessary. Just
see you get the boy into bed, ma’am, won’t you?’
Riga nodded, replying, ‘Yes,
sir, of course. He really ought to be sleeping.’
Ren even remembered to
protest, and Rhun couldn’t help but admire his brother’s presence of mind.
‘Sorry if we caused any trouble,’ he told the customs officer, but the man
waved it off. ‘Good evening,’ he said, then turned around to his colleague, the
friendliness gone from his voice. ‘Drunkards and children always tell the
truth,’ he told him. ‘His ID was all right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the other man
said grudgingly.
The officer gave Rhun a nod
to indicate they could go, and Rhun didn’t plan to wait until he had time to
change his mind. As soon as they were out of sight as well as earshot of the
group, he stopped in a deserted courtyard and pulled out his comlink to contact
Dyson. The smuggler answered promptly.
‘Rhun here,’ Rhun said
quietly. ‘Cap, did you run into any patrols along your way?’
There was a short pause at the other end. ‘Yes, once, but we
thought we’d lost them successfully.’
Rhun nodded. ‘They’re still
looking for you. They are not sure if you are on your way to the garrison or
the spaceport, but they must have realised you were up to something. You don’t
have any kids with you, do you?’
‘No, Kjaer’s got the other
one. Why?’
‘Less conspicuous. Where are
you now?’
‘About to enter the
spaceport.’ Dyson paused, thinking. ‘We were delayed with losing those folks.
Are you at the port already?’
‘Almost.’
‘But you didn’t attract any
attention?’
‘Not too much. Ren helped us
out.’ With a grin, he ruffled his brother’s hair, and the boy grinned.
‘Hug him from me. Well . . .
let’s both go in right now. We’ve only got an hour left before the cavalry
arrives.’
‘Right,’ Rhun replied. ‘I’m
out.’ He shut off the comlink and turned to the others. ‘We can reach the ship
in half an hour,’ he told them. ‘Let’s move.’
‘Who’s the cavalry?’ Ren
wanted to know.
‘A fighter pilot who’s going
to help us if we are followed from the spaceport,’ Rhun replied. ‘By the way,
Ren . . . you acted like a real pro back there. You sure you’re not going to be
in Intelligence when you’re older? How did you think of that so quickly?’
The boy shrugged. ‘I’m not
sure. I thought that’s what you would have said.’
‘Pretty much,’ Rhun
admitted.
‘What do you do in
Intelligence?’ Ren asked as they got going again.
‘Same thing you did back
there, really. Sneak around places you’re not supposed to be and get out
again.’
Ren shook his head. ‘No. I
want to be a pilot. That pilot who will help us, what sort of ship does he
have? A TIE fighter?’
‘No, Ren, only the Empire
has TIE fighters.’ He took him by the hand. ‘And now I want you to be real
quiet, okay? We don’t want anyone to see us, and in the spaceport, we can’t
just talk our way out the way we did just now. They’ll want to see your IDs,
and they mustn’t see Mom’s.’
‘Because of our surname.’
‘That’s right.’
Riga touched her older son’s
arm and asked him quietly, ‘You don’t think it would be better to call it off
for tonight? With some local militia people on alert . . .’
Rhun shook his head. ‘We’re
almost there, and we won’t get a chance like this again. We’ll be able to lift
off as soon as we’re there, with Dyson so close, and be out of here. There are
guards at the starport, but the area is large, and it’s dark. As soon as we’re
in, we’re almost safe.’
‘How do we get in,
then?’
‘We’re almost there.’
Rhun led them to a massive
three-storey building looking over the edge of the spaceport. The whole area
was fenced off by three-metre duracrete wall; even if it was a civilian
facility, there were enough smugglers and pirates in the system to warrant
tighter defences than at normal spaceports. There were gates in the wall at
five hundred metre intervals, but they were all guarded by customs points.
‘How are we supposed to get
past the guards?’ the young woman, Kiriali, asked.
‘We don’t,’ Rhun said,
looking up at the building. There was a dull stomping sound from inside, as if
from music. The back wall had no windows, but as they stood there, something
moved on top of the building. Then a durarope ladder was lowered down to the
ground.
‘Who’s up there?’ Trenc
asked, aghast, but he kept his voice low. ‘Why are they helping us?’
‘This is the “Stardust”,’
Rhun answered, equally softly. ‘We’re getting help from here.’ He knew that
Dyson knew the owner, who did the smuggler a favour from time to time. It paid
to have acquaintances in all sorts of places, it seemed.
Kiriali made sure the ladder
was secure, then grasped the rope and climbed up. Rhun carefully cast a look
around. There was nobody to be seen, and he knew Dyson´s ‘acquaintance’ had an
even better lookout from up there, and would warn them when anyone approached.
Trenc was next, then Rhun
told Ren to climb. ‘You’re not scared, are you?’ he asked him softly.
Ren shook his head, but he
didn’t look convinced.
‘I’m directly behind you,
Ren,’ his mother reassured him. ‘You can’t fall. Just look up, not down.’
‘Okay,’ Ren said, still
uncertain, but he closed his hands around the first rung and started to climb.
Riga stayed close behind him.
They were halfway up when there
was a low whistle from the roof, and Rhun froze when he heard the crunch of
boots behind him, half expecting to see a customs officer—or worse—when he
turned, but suppressed a relieved sigh when he saw that the man approaching
them was dressed in civilian clothing and walking very shakily. Before he was
closer than two metres, Rhun could smell the booze. From the corner of his eye,
he saw that both his mother and Ren had frozen on the spot.
The man, somewhere around
thirty, did not do Rhun the favour to just go past him, but stopped before him,
swaying slightly. Rhun made sure he stood before the end of the ladder so the
drunk couldn’t see it.
‘Tell ya, I showed ’em,’ the
man blabbered.
‘You sure did,’ Rhun agreed,
then turning away to make him lose interest. No such luck. The drunk eyed him,
then remarked, ‘You were there?’
‘You bet I was,’ Rhun
confirmed. ‘Really impressive.’ From above, he could hear what sounded like a
moan from Ren; the boy wouldn’t be able to keep quiet up there much longer.
‘But I didn’t see you
there,’ the man went on, and Rhun turned his face away in disgust. The man’s
breath would have been enough to make you drunk yourself.
‘I was near the back,’ Rhun
answered, then turned the drunkard by the shoulder. ‘But I bet they haven’t had
enough, right? There—go back and show them what’s what.’
The man gave Rhun a long,
searching look, and Rhun heard Ren whimper up on the ladder. ‘Go on,’ he
encouraged him. ‘I’ll come after. If you show them again, I’ll buy you another
drink.’
‘Corellian?’ the man asked.
‘Sure, whatever you like.
Come on.’
Rhun heaved another sigh
when the drunk finally wobbled away, still muttering to himself, then he looked
up. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked softly.
‘Come on, Ren,’ he heard his
mother’s voice. ‘It’s only a few more metres.’
Rhun began to climb up
himself, after another careful look around, but then he saw someone coming down
from the roof to help Ren: Trenc. As quickly as he could, he followed them up,
then crouched on the flat roof and looked around. Ren was sitting near the edge
of the surface, in his mother’s arms, Trenc standing by, with Kiriali helping
another figure to pull up the ladder. It was a burly man, in his forties, with
balding brown hair. Rhun recognised him as the bartender of the ‘Stardust’. It
did pay to have friends in all sorts of places.
‘Gotta get down from here
quick,’ the man said, pulling the ladder up the rest of the way and storing it
in its hiding place in a small shed on the roof. There was a small window some
five metres away, through which Rhun could see light.
‘Are the others here
already?’ Rhun asked.
The bartender grunted.
‘Kjaer came through here an hour ago, but I haven’t seen Dyson. He’d told me
he’d be here by twenty hundred, but that was an hour and a half ago.’
‘He got delayed,’ Rhun
answered. ‘He’ll be here in a moment. Or maybe he knows another way in. Which
way from here?’
The burly man indicated the
window. ‘In there,’ he said. ‘There’s a ladder that leads down to the gents’ room—sorry
about the inconvenience,’ he added to Rhun’s mother and Kiriali.
Kiriali raised an eyebrow.
‘As long as I don’t bump into someone when I climb down there,’ she said.
The barman shook his head.
‘I put up a sign saying “Out of order.” Make sure nobody sees you coming out of
there, though. But that shouldn’t be too difficult, what with the sign and
all.’
‘Thank you,’ Rhun said.
‘Thanks for everything.’
‘That’s all right,’ the man
replied. ‘Just remind me to get suspicious the next time Dyson asks me to
return a favour.’
‘Do we have to climb again?’
Ren asked in a very small voice.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ Rhun
answered, squeezing his brother’s shoulder. ‘But it’s only down this time, and
it’s only one level, not three.’ He looked at the others. ‘Ready?’
‘Let’s go,’ Kiriali said.
Rhun remembered she had already indicated she might want to join the Alliance.
She had said she didn’t know how to fight, but she had a lot of courage and
determination. A good person to have around.
‘Okay, let’s go, then,’ he
said.
‘I’ll wait for Dyson,’ the
barman offered. ‘They won’t miss me downstairs; it’s not very full today.’
Rhun nodded, then hurried to
follow the others down into the building.
They didn’t have any trouble
getting down and out of the bar, and Rhun made sure nobody saw them, not only
on their way from the ’freshers, but also when they left the ‘Stardust’. A
child Ren’s age was bound to attract attention at this time, and attention was
the last thing they needed. As soon as they left the building, there would be
fewer people, but the people they were likely to run into out there were best
avoided.
The place in front of the
‘Stardust’ was empty. The rain had increased in strength, puddles reflecting
navigation lights, which suited Rhun fine. They had to cover about a mile to
the place where Eggshell was docked, and they crossed from one shadow to
the next, keeping close to buildings and sheds.
‘Rhun,’ Ren suddenly said,
tucking his sleeve. ‘It’s not far anymore, is it? I’m so tired . . . and my
side hurts.’
Rhun remembered the boy’s
injured ribs. ‘Come on, Ren,’ he said, bending down to pick him up. ‘I’ll carry
you for a while. But not the whole trip, okay?’
‘Okay,’ Ren agreed, looking
a lot happier.
Shifting his brother’s
weight (a bit more than he’d expected, actually) he looked around another
corner, then considered retreating again when he saw an Imperial customs
officer walking across the pad. But the man had already seen them, so he
guessed attack was the best means of defence—figuratively speaking—and walked
out, pretending to be intent on his way. It was good luck, Rhun thought, that
it was Dyson who had been seen by the militia and not Kjaer, in whose group
there had also been one child; at the moment, Ren’s presence might make them an
unusual sight at this time of night, but also very unlikely candidates for
anything untoward—he hoped.
The officer cast them only a
cursory glance, then hurried on, doubtlessly wishing to get out of the rain,
when he stopped and looked at them again. Rhun’s heart sank. The officer came
towards them, eyeing especially Trenc and his mother, who were carrying their
packs.
‘You’re out late,’ the
Imperial observed.
‘We got a bit delayed
shopping in town,’ Rhun replied.
‘And now we’re looking for
our landing pad,’ Ren added. He seemed to have developed a taste for playing
Intel agent, but right now, Rhun would have preferred him to keep quiet.
‘Which is your ship?’ the
officer asked.
To Rhun’s relief, Ren kept
shut. ‘The Easy Rider,’ he replied,
looking around. ‘But I think I know where she is again. Over there, if I
remember correctly. These hangars and stuff all look the same in the dark,
don’t they?’
‘Now, I always say we should
have a more thoroughly organised landing area,’ the official replied, without
making any move to go away. ‘Like the military spaceport over at the garrison.
Impossible losing one’s way over there. But the New Order is slow to catch hold
in as out-of-the-way a place as this, unfortunately.’ Rhun nodded, getting ready
to go, when the Imperial offered, ‘Well, I’ll see you over to your ship. Easy Going, was it?’
‘Ah—Rider,’
Rhun amended, cursing inwardly. He’d have to be really lucky if there was a
ship of that name here, but maybe the man wouldn’t check that—and at least it
would draw him away from where the Eggshell stood. But it would draw them
away, too. If his reckoning was correct, they couldn’t have much more time left
than maybe fifteen minutes.
They
followed the Imp across the landing pad to the place where Rhun had said their
ship was when Ren said sleepily, ‘The evil Emperor lied to him, too, didn’t
he?’
Rhun’s
blood froze, and the officer turned. ‘What did the boy say?’
Rhun’s
mind raced. ‘Oh, that was a line from a holodrama we saw today,’ he said.
‘“With the genial Emperor lies the hope of the galaxy.” It’s from Win or Die. He’s absolutely crazy about that holo,
wants to join the Navy when he’s grown.’
The
Imperial seemed pleased. ‘Oh, that’s good. We always need bright kids like
you.’ He was just about to resume the way when a look that Rhun didn’t like at
all crossed his face. ‘When did you say you saw the movie?’
‘Uh—today,’
Rhun said. ‘This afternoon.’
‘The
movie was dropped yesterday. He didn’t say anything about the genial Emperor at all, did he?’
The
customs officer had his blaster out in an instant, but before Rhun could get
rid of Ren, Trenc was there, grappling the Imperial from behind, his arm tight
around the surprised man’s throat. He got off a shot, but it went wide;
nonetheless, it had to have been heard or seen by somebody. Trenc fought to
struggle the resisting officer down, and Rhun, who had finally put down his
brother, came to his help. The Imperial gave a strangled sound, trying to cry
for help, when Trenc got his hold on the man’s throat, and the Imperial slumped
down.
Ren
stared at the form on the ground. ‘Is he dead?’ he whispered, between
fascination and utter horror.
‘I
don’t know,’ Rhun answered truthfully, picked the boy up again and turned to
the others. ‘Come on, this way, quick! If they see us running towards the Eggshell,
we’re dead!’ He didn’t wait for a
reply, only turned to make sure everybody was following him, then kept running
along one of the hangar halls, on a roundabout course that would eventually
lead them towards the freighter.
They
hunched down behind a building when they saw a group of several militia men
jogging across the field, glowrods in their hands, but they ran past without
noticing them. Rhun was up again the instant they had turned a corner, running
on. Ren seemed to be getting heavier every minute, but in his condition, the
boy wouldn't be able to keep their pace.
Across
the pad where Eggshell was docked, Rhun paused again, waiting for the
others to catch up, and carefully glanced about him. They seemed to have
succeeded in leading the police to the wrong area. He took out his comlink and
cracked it two times, hoping de Boeck would be there to pick up his signal.
She
was; an instant later, a double crack came back, indicating all was clear. Then
the ramp opened on the Eggshell; the lights remained out, so nobody
would see unless he looked that way directly.
Rhun
nodded to the three others, then they all ran across the landing pad into the
waiting freighter. Kjaer was standing at the ramp when they hurried up.
‘Is
that all?’ he asked when Rhun, Ren, their mother, Kiriali and Trenc had entered
the ship.
‘Yep,’
Rhun answered. ‘We’re all here. We can start if you’re ready.’
Kjaer’s
face fell. ‘Dyson was not with you, then?’
Rhun
stared at him, his stomach knotting. ‘You mean, he’s not here?’
‘Sithspit,’
Kjaer hissed. He closed the ramp, then keyed his comlink. ‘This is Kjaer. Do
you copy?’
Rhun
didn’t need his expression to tell that there had been no answer; the silence
had been enough.
‘Are
you all in?’ they heard Lieutenant de Boeck’s voice over the ship’s intercom.
‘We’ve got clearance for take-off.’
Rhun
ran into the cockpit, after he’d handed Ren to his mother again. ‘We can’t lift
off now,’ he panted. ‘Dyson’s missing.’
‘I
thought he was with you?’ de Boeck said, turning in her chair. Samica was in
the cockpit as well, as were several other refugees.
‘So
did Kjaer,’ Rhun replied.
De
Boeck shook her head. ‘We can’t stay, van Leuken. They’ll close the spaceport,
and there’s Cargill waiting upstairs. They’ll get all of us if we don’t take
off now.’
Rhun’s
jaw was working as his mind raced. According to the chrono on the ship’s
command console, they had six minutes left. Too little to go look for Dyson
even without Imps looking for them, and with the Imps alerted to their
presence, it could only be a matter of minutes before the starport was closed
and all ships searched.
‘We
can’t help him, Rhun,’ Samica said gently. Rhun looked up at her as if he saw
her for the first time. Her face looked still puffy and discoloured, but her
eyes were clear.
‘But
I can’t leave him here,’ he said, helplessly, remembering another time, another
ship, where he’d been forced to leave a man behind who’d been more than just a
superior. From Samica’s expression, she was thinking the same. ‘And I must have
led them straight into him . . .’
‘There’s
nothing we can do.’ De Boeck’s voice was tight, but Rhun could already feel the
engines working under him as the co-pilot prepared the ship for takeoff.
When
Eggshell cleared the landing pad, Rhun pressed his face against the cool
transparisteel viewport and looked out into the blackness, at the quickly
receding lights of Gerion. Leaving Sergeant Haynes aboard the Star Destroyer Resolve had been one of the most terrible
moments of his life, and he knew he simply could not leave Dyson behind now. I’ll get you out of there, Cap, he told himself as they entered atmosphere. I don’t care what it takes and against what orders I have to go to do
it, but I will get you out of there.
7
The whisky had never tasted particularly
good; after the fourth glass, it tasted of the dishwater that was probably the
basis of the brew anyway. It was a good thing, van Leuken reflected, that it
numbed his taste sufficiently so he didn’t care a lot. He couldn’t have said he
drank the stuff because he liked it. He drank it because . . . ah, to hell with it. He drained the rest and
considered ordering another glass, but then decided against it, rising a bit
unsteadily and leaving the bar. The barman never tried to remind him to pay;
he’d wait until the next time. There was always a next time.
Night
shifts were rotten, but night shifts in rainy weather were a pain. Good thing
that rain around Gerion was rare enough, but that didn’t make it any better.
Van Leuken could think of about a hundred better things to do than scanning the
spaceport for fugitives all night when the authorities knew all along they’d
gotten away by ship. Then there had been the group that was supposed to have
been seen around 21.30 but had vanished into thin air, and they’d been stuck
searching the whole city for five people. The ones they’d been looking for had
probably been inside the whole night, while his squad had been soaking outside.
Very few people would believe how much water could get into stormtrooper armour
if he told them.
Outside,
the rain had stopped. It had stopped the instant the shift had ended, of
course. Van Leuken steadied himself on the corner of the building, then began
to walk home.
Home.
That sounded as if it was a place he’d like to be, but he hadn’t liked it for
years, and had begun to hate it four weeks ago. He’d spent most of his free
time in bars, anywhere, just to avoid getting back to that place.
Twenty-five
years ago, Gorn van Leuken had seen the future as bright and promising, a
hopeful young colonist arriving on a newly colonised world, with a heavily
pregnant, beautiful young wife and dreams about owning a small farm, an
uncomplicated, simple life. His eldest son, Jon, had been born on Garon II, and
Rhun had come two years later. Then Senator Palpatine had become Emperor, and
Gerion had needed people for the armed forces.
Fighting
for the New Order after the chaos of the Republic had been all Gorn had ever
wanted. He’d become a corporal in the Army after two years of service, sergeant
after another five, and he’d been happy. His two boys would follow in his
footsteps, and he could look forward to a fine pension after retirement.
Then
Jon had reached sixteen, and everything had changed. He’d said he didn’t want
to become a soldier, wanted to study astrophysics on Tergon. They’d had violent
rows in those days, but finally he’d gotten the boy to be realistic. His grades
hadn’t really been good enough for studying, and after a while, he’d stopped discussing
and joined the Army.
Gorn
had hoped Jon would get used to it, but he never had. His father had counted on
the Army putting an end to his daydreaming and woolgathering. He’d been wrong.
After two months, Jon had asked him to get him out of the Army on a discharge,
anything, but Gorn had refused, told the boy to pull himself together and prove
himself. Two days later, Gorn had been called over to the shooting range. Jon
had put a gun in his mouth.
He
had never told Riga or Rhun. They hadn’t seen his body, and Jon’s suicide had
been declared an accident for the files, doubtlessly because of his own
position in the Army. But Gorn van Leuken knew, and couldn’t forget the sight,
and his only comfort had been alcohol—and the hope that Rhun would make him
forget.
Rhun
was made of different stuff. Jon had always been soft, but Gorn knew that Rhun
would make a better soldier than his brother had, would be better suited to the
drill. When Rhun had started having his rebellious ideas, just before his
sixteenth birthday, they’d had much the same arguments he’d had with Jon two
years earlier, but with Rhun, they had been much fiercer. As with Jon, however,
he’d convinced him to go—or so he’d thought at the time.
The
morning after Rhun’s sixteenth birthday, he learned that his son had never
arrived at the garrison, but had run away from the gathering point. Now Riga
had been furious, making him responsible for the boy’s behaviour. Gorn had
heard about his son three times after that. The first time, he’d heard that he’d
been seen breaking into a store in Gerion, but they had never caught him. Some
years later, he’d seen Rhun’s face on a wanted holo; he’d gone off and joined
the Rebels. And half a year ago, he’d heard, incredulously, that his son was in
part responsible for blowing up a Victory-class
Star Destroyer.
He
hadn’t told Riga either of this news. In fact, he hadn’t told her much after
Rhun had run away. The family had survived Jon’s loss, barely, but it hadn’t
survived Rhun’s. Riga had actually tried to side with the brat after what he’d
done, and she’d poisoned Ren against his father, too—Ren, who had been a few
months old when Rhun ran off to become a petty criminal.
Life
hadn’t been the same afterwards, even if he tried to pretend it was. When he’d
been told his son was now a Rebel, he had been about to be promoted to sergeant
major, something he’d worked hard to achieve, but the investigation committee
that followed as a consequence had suspended the promotion indefinitely. He’d
never heard from them again.
His
drinking had become a proper stinging then, and thinking of that Rebel who bore
his name made him more and more furious as the news trickled in. He knew that
Riga had tried to estrange Ren, too, and he’d lost it a couple of times when
they had arguments about Ren’s future. Damn it, the boy wanted to be a pilot,
the first of his children ever to want anything he approved of, so how could
she tell him he mustn’t? Gorn remembered he’d been completely plastered when
they’d had that particular argument, and afterwards, he’d been sorry that he’d
hit her, and hit Ren, but by then, it had been too late for that. When he’d
come back from work that night, she’d been gone, and Ren with her, without as
much as a note on the kitchen console. All that was left of his high hopes was
an empty flat that awaited him every night, and no sign of his wife or child.
Gorn
van Leuken hated this flat.
‘Rhun, this is insane.’
They
were sitting aboard Eggshell
on Garon III, de Boeck, Cargill, Qelmam, Kjaer, Samica, and Rhun. No Imperial
ship had tried to follow them, and the ease with which they’d made it off Garon
II almost seemed like a bad joke at the thought that they’d had to leave the
Captain behind.
Rhun
only continued staring at his folded hands in front of him. ‘I you won’t help
me, that’s all right, but you can’t keep me from going.’
‘Yes,
I can,’ Firia de Boeck said.
‘Nope.’
‘Yep.
You can’t fly down yourself.’
Rhun
looked up sharply, realising she was right. He did need the help of someone to
get down to Garon II again, and it didn’t surprise him when Samica spoke.
‘I
still think it’s dangerous, but I’ll come with you.’
Rhun
was certain that was what de Boeck had intended, and she’d intended to have him
back off to protect Sam, but here she’d been wrong. He shook his head and
looked at the pilot. ‘No, Sam, you can’t go back there. Even if you were
completely well again—which I’m pretty sure you aren’t—it would be madness for
you to return to Gerion.’
‘You’ll
let it drop, then?’ de Boeck asked.
‘No.
I only said it was too dangerous for Sam. I’ll go.’
‘On
foot?’
‘I’ll
find a way, dammit! Lieutenant, I know it’s unlikely to find Dyson again, but I
won’t go back unless I’ve tried!’
Cargill
scratched his head. ‘What does our flight plan say? Is it really that tight?’
‘We’re
not talking about the flight plan,’ Qelmam told the Corellian. ‘Apart from the
fact that the odds for finding Dyson are nearly nonexistent, it would mean
getting ourselves into danger.’
Rhun
glowered at the Mon Calamari. ‘What we’re talking about is Captain Dyson, and
we can still find him if we’d only try. He doesn’t necessarily have to be in
enemy hands now. If anyone can wiggle out of that, he can. He was only a few
minutes behind us, maybe he only got delayed.’ He looked de Boeck in the eyes.
‘Come on, Lieutenant, you know there’s a good chance he’s still at large.’
‘If
he’s at large, he’ll get out without our help.’
‘Not
without mine. I’m going. If he’s all right, fine, if he isn’t, I won’t forgive
myself for not trying.’
De
Boeck sighed, raking a hand through her blond hair. ‘Damn, you sound like my
conscience, Rhun,’ she said.
‘Yes,
ma’am,’ he said moderately.
The
lieutenant briskly sat back from the table and put her hands flat on the table’s
surface. ‘All right. Qelmam, we’ll hire some ship from the station here. You’re
in command until I’m back—or Dyson’s back,’ she amended. ‘If Rhun and I are not
back in six days, you get out of here.’
‘Yes,
ma’am,’ the astrogator answered unhappily.
Rhun
turned to Samica before she could say anything. ‘Sorry, Sam, but you really
have to stay here. Who’s going to get us out of trouble and shoot us a way away
from Garon III when we get back, huh?’
She
briefly rested her head on his shoulder. ‘It’s not being left behind with the
women and children,’ she said with a bitter smile. ‘You think I’m a danger,
don’t you?’
Rhun
shook his head. ‘No, I don’t. I want you to stay out of trouble, and there
isn’t a lot you could do anyway.’
‘I’d
be with you,’ she said.
‘I’ve
got a little brother who’d be happy if he could bombard you with questions,’
Rhun said with a wry grin. ‘And I’ll be back in less than six days.’
She squeezed him briefly. ‘Take care of
yourself, okay?’
He
returned the hug, then let her go. ‘Always do.’
‘Remind me to put this ship on my list of
things for which to give you a trouncing, van Leuken,’ de Boeck said as she
manoeuvred the Sunbeam-class inter-system transport
into Garon II’s atmosphere.
Rhun
didn’t reply; he couldn’t have said he had more important things to do—he
couldn’t do anything in this miserable rust bucket that passed for a ship for
the Rodian who had lent it to them—but he was occupied with looking out of the
bubble-like viewport and praying the ship would hold together. The reason why
they had chosen the Sunbeam
was that its emissions were low enough to enter atmosphere without being
detected by the starport authorities, but the Rodian had failed to mention that
this was not due to superior stealth technology, but a very, very poor sublight
engine. Rhun had been positive that the thing would make the trip to Garon II;
that had been before the emergency environmental control, the starboard
stabiliser wing and the comm system had collapsed. Within ten minutes.
At
least he could now convince himself that de Boeck was a good enough pilot to
bring them down in one piece (or at least two fairly large ones). Furthermore,
she seemed to be experienced in making failed systems work again, hotwiring,
kicking or simply begging if nothing else helped. So far, it seemed to work.
De
Boeck flew the freighter down towards the planet, then skimming the surface at
a hundred metres to further evade enemy detection systems. After several
kilometres, she brought the ship down in a hilly patch, sufficiently overgrown
to camouflage the ship from casual observers.
Rhun
and de Boeck had laid their plans carefully. They had landed twenty kilometres
outside Gerion, in no-man’s-land nobody was very likely to enter, and in order
to be able to reach the town, they had brought a speeder in the hold of their
freighter. The speeder had been courtesy of the Rodian, after Rhun had pointed
out that the ship itself was not worth half the price he’d demanded, even if
they’d wanted to buy it. De Boeck had still been forced to spend a lot of money
on the equipment, but she hadn’t tried to make Rhun feel guilty. He did so
anyway. He had very little money, not nearly enough to cover the expenses.
Almost
two days had passed since their departure aboard Eggshell (the Sunbeam had been very slow), and they entered the city
without difficulty. They both had agreed they’d check the ‘Stardust’ first,
since the owner might have seen something or even be hiding Dyson.
It
was late afternoon, and the bar had just begun to fill, but they caught the
barman in a quiet moment.
The
burly man was surprised and maybe a little frightened to see them. ‘What are
you doing here?’ he hissed. ‘I thought you’d left two days ago!’
‘We
wanted to,’ Rhun answered, ‘but Dyson wasn’t with us. Did you see him, after
you helped us?’
‘No,
haven’t seen him since,’ the man replied. ‘I gave up waiting about an hour
later. I thought I’d heard shooting further off, but I’m not sure.’
‘Damn,’
de Boeck murmured. ‘You didn’t hear anything afterwards?’
The
barman suddenly stared into the air as if trying to figure something out.
‘Wait—I got an odd message yesterday. It asked for a password, but I didn’t
know it. There was no sender.’
‘Can
you give us the message?’ Rhun asked excitedly.
‘Can’t
do much harm, what with the password and all, I guess, can it?’ the man
answered. ‘I’ve got it on my terminal. Wait a moment.’ He let his eyes wander
across the bar to make sure he could be spared for a minute or two, then went
into the small room adjoining the kitchen.
He
was back a few minutes later, with a datapad. ‘It’s on here,’ he said as he
handed the device to de Boeck.
‘Can
I?’ Rhun asked, and took it. He brought up the message. There was nothing but
the date, which was yesterday’s, and the recipient, but no address or sender’s
name. As soon as he brought it up, two words blinked on the screen: ENTER PASSWORD.
Rhun
rubbed his nose, then, on a hunch, typed in, ATMOS. At once, the screen flickered,
at a short message appeared.
De
Boeck stared at Rhun. ‘What did you do?’
He
grinned at her. ‘Read the captain’s mind.’ He bent over the datapad again to
read the message, but was more puzzled with it than he’d been with the
password. It read,
TO DO LIST:
FILL FOOD PROCESSOR UP
CHECK PORT ENGINE
TALK TO SPACE TRAFFIC CONTROLLER
GET SHIPMENT FROM RENKI
BUILD NEW ASTROGATION UNIT IN
REPAIR ENTRY HATCH
PAY RENKI
CLEAR UP TERMINAL
BUY FUEL
BUY FLOWERS FOR LARIS
De
Boeck read the message over Rhun’s shoulder, then shot him a questioning look.
‘Any ideas?’ she asked.
‘Not
yet,’ he replied quietly. ‘But I’d prefer to do this in private.’
De
Boeck nodded. ‘Thanks, Josk,’ she told the barman. ‘We’ll try not to draw you
into this any more . . . anyway, for your trouble.’ She gave him a credit chip.
Rhun couldn’t see how much it was, but the man grinned as he tucked it into his
pocket. ‘Anytime, ma’am. And tell the old pirate he can get me into trouble any
day.’
Rhun
and de Boeck left the bar and went back to their speeder. The vehicle was
enclosed, so they could brood over the message without being watched or
eavesdropped on.
De
Boeck studied the message once more. ‘Maybe this Renki?’ she asked. ‘He could
be the key—or she, whatever it its. Or Laris?’
Rhun
shook his head. ‘This is not a real to do list,’ he said. ‘And we’re not
supposed to take it as one.’
‘What
makes you think so?’ de Boeck asked. ‘Do you know Renki and Laris?’
‘Renki,
no. Laris . . . yes.’
‘Who
is she, then?’ the lieutenant asked, becoming slightly impatient.
‘His
wife,’ Rhun answered.
De
Boeck stared at him, her earlier irritation forgotten. ‘His wife? Grant’s married?’
‘Was,’
Rhun amended softly. ‘A long time ago, I think. He’d married her just after
he’d bought the Cause. Then he came back from a tour
and found she’d died in a speeder crash. He told me about her once when I
caught him staring at a holo of her. He keeps it in his bunkroom.’
‘He
never told me,’ de Boeck said.
Rhun
shrugged. ‘He doesn’t tell many people. I’m certain he would have told you some
day.’
She
looked at the screen again. ‘So this is not an actual to do list. Um—maybe the
first letters read together?’
‘Fctgbrpcbb,’
Rhun said, not sounding very convinced.
‘The
last letters,’ de Boeck exclaimed. ‘Perin . . . hills.’
Rhun
raised an eyebrow. ‘Sounds good,’ he said. ‘But what is it?’
‘Is
there a place called Perin Hills around here?’
Rhun
shook his head. ‘None that I know of.’
De
Boeck brooded again. ‘But it has to be the last letters,’ she said. ‘That would
account for the strange name Renki—he couldn’t find a proper word ending in i.’
She continued staring at the message a moment longer, then suddenly clapped her
hand against her forehead and started the speeder engine.
Rhun
watched her as she grinned and shook her head. ‘You don’t mind telling me what
this means, do you?’
‘It
should read “Per in hills,” not Perin Hills,’ she explained. ‘Per is one of
Grant’s contacts here on Garon II. Grant normally avoids dealing with him when
he can, but it seems he didn’t have a choice.’
‘Why?
Who is this Per?’
‘A
funny old man living in the hills. He sometimes helps us when we need to hide
someone, and he’s some sort of medic. I don’t have any idea how Grant met him,
but he’s known him for years. Maybe someone from his group was wounded so they
brought him there.’
‘What’s
so funny about him?’
‘He’s
got a screw loose, if you ask me. But you’ll see for yourself when we get
there.’
‘.
. . so the stormtrooper tells the TIE pilot, “Don’t worry, sister, mine’s a
BlasTech DLT-20A!”’
Laughter
ensued around the table, whooping and yelling encouraging the speaker to add
another one, but the eight stormtroopers in the ready room fell silent at once
when their sergeant entered. Gorn van Leuken’s face was surly as they all
scrambled to their feet, reaching for their helmets.
‘We’ve
got a hint that might lead to the fugitives that escaped two days ago,’ he told
them. ‘G-6585, get the Hoverscout.’
‘Yes,
sir,’ the trooper answered, put on his helmet and briskly walked out of the
room towards the vehicle hangar.
They
arrived at the spaceport fifteen minutes later, the sun already setting behind
the hills. Evening had brought out all sorts of people now entering the various
bars and clubs around the port, but the one van Leuken was looking for awaited
them in a customs checkpoint next to the place called ‘Stardust’. He was a
heavy-set man in his forties, now rising as they entered, and van Leuken stood
before him. He was glad his helmet concealed his features. Gorn van Leuken
loathed spies, but they were part of the way things went here.
‘You’ve
something to tell us?’ van Leuken said.
‘Yes,
sir. You were looking for a couple of people who escaped you some time ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘Two
of them came to my bar a few hours ago. The third one is still on the planet,
by the way it looks. I don’t know where they went, but I’ve got the number of
their speeder, and a surveillance holo.’
‘No
idea where they went from here?’
‘No,
sir. They were careful not to talk in front of me, but I don’t think they
suspect me.’
‘Give
me the number and the holo; we’ll find them.’ Van Leuken took the datacard the
barman gave him, then gestured for the squad to leave. He almost smiled at the
informer’s disappointed face as he made no move to reward him for his trouble.
Back
in the Hoverscout, van Leuken sat before the comm unit to transmit the data to
the base. He looked at it before he sent the transmission; the speeder was a
very old model, but one that was not produced on-planet. It shouldn’t be too
difficult to trace it.
The
holo showed two people, a man and a woman. The woman was slim, with long blond
hair, looking at the man, who was bending over a datapad, so that his face
wasn’t very well visible. He, too, was blond, slightly darker than the woman—
Sergeant
van Leuken sat motionless for several seconds, then he transmitted the
speeder’s specifics to the base, but not the holo. His hand paused over the
‘erase’ button, then he removed the holo data.
I’ll get you. And if it’s the last thing I do, I'll get you. I’ll
make you pay.
It was a two-hour ride from the city to their
destination. De Boeck drove the speeder with as much skill as she had the Sunbeam, with the difference that Rhun
didn’t expect the speeder to come apart the way he’d expected the freighter to.
Not before next week, at any rate.
The
further they drove away from Gerion, the more Rhun wondered who would live so
far away from civilisation without considering leaving the planet. Someone who
lived so far away from other people had to have something to hide, something
serious to boot, and it had to be dangerous to have something to hide so near a
city with an Imperial garrison.
De
Boeck steered the speeder towards a scattering of hills. Nothing grew here
except several very tough weeds and purple moss, and the hillside was strewn
with stones. The lieutenant halted the speeder near a long ridge maybe eight
metres long and three metres wide, then pulled a cammo net over the vehicle,
which would protect it from prying eyes from above.
The
sun had gone down by now, and Rhun’s eyes opened wide as she went over to the
hill, raising her hand and knocking.
He’d never realised there was a door in the hillside. It was covered with the
same purple moss as the hill, and in the dark, it blended in perfectly.
Rhun
heard footsteps, then a voice said, ‘Password!’
De
Boeck rolled her eyes. ‘You never gave me a password.’
‘True.’
The door opened, and when his eyes had adjusted to the warmly lit room beyond,
Rhun saw a small, wiry old man with a scant, wispy fringe of white hair framing
a wrinkled face. He had a round nose and a beardless chin, and his dark eyes
twinkled as he saw de Boeck’s annoyance. Rhun didn’t know how he had imagined a
‘funny old man,’ but he supposed he must have thought of something like a
choleric type. He instantly liked the man.
Old
Per moved aside for them to enter. ‘Now, now, Lieutenant, how else should I
have known it was you?’ he asked with a smile, then turned those dark eyes on
Rhun. ‘And you must be—’ he broke off in mid-sentence, mustering him with
decidedly more interest than he’d bestowed on de Boeck, and Rhun fought the
urge to squirm. Then the oldster chuckled and shook his head. ‘Rhun van Leuken,
I assume,’ he said.
‘Ah—yes,’
Rhun said, still bewildered.
‘My
name’s Per—but you probably know that. Considering you came here with
Lieutenant de Boeck, I assume you also know several things about me.’
‘Not
very much,’ Rhun said diplomatically. ‘And what I care most about right now is
if Dyson’s here.’
The
old man smiled warmly. ‘Oh, yes.’ His face became serious again. ‘They arrived
yesterday, in the morning, the captain and four others.’
‘Only
four?’ Rhun asked.
Per
nodded, causing his hair to bob up and down. ‘Yes. They ran into an Imperial
patrol the night you tried to escape. One of the fugitives was killed, the
captain and another woman were wounded.’ All mirth had vanished from his voice
or face.
‘How’s
he?’ Rhun asked.
Per
motioned for them to follow him along the narrow corridor. It was not quite two
metres in height, around the same width, looking like an old mining tunnel.
Rhun remembered there had once been mining projects on Garon II, before the
companies discovered that the ores produced here were of so poor quality that
they let them be. Most of the tunnels had collapsed since that time, or just
abandoned; this one was obviously well kept.
There
were doors on the right of the passage, and Per stood before one of them. ‘He’s
much better off than the woman,’ he said, ‘but they’ll both recover.’ He
knocked at the door. ‘Captain? There’s someone here who wants to see you.’
The
door was opened from the inside, and Dyson stood in the doorway. He was
bare-chested, with a bandage wrapped around his torso, but he was grinning
crookedly as he saw Rhun and his co-pilot.
‘You
found us more quickly than I’d expected,’ he said. ‘Come in, come in! You as
well, Per.’
The
old man shook his head. ‘No, I’ll have to check on Miss Cever. I’m certain you
have a lot of things to talk about without me hovering around you.’ Then he
closed the door behind him.
Dyson
went back to the bed he’d been sitting on when they’d entered. The room
contained a small portable heating unit, a chair and a table, and Rhun sat on
the foot of the bed while de Boeck took the chair.
‘What
happened?’ she asked Dyson.
The
Corellian’s mouth twisted into a scowl. ‘We collided with an Imp patrol as we
entered the port. We ran back into the city, trying to shake them there and
enter the starport through another way, but they shot after us. They got Braij,
and wounded his wife, and me as well. It was all we could do to find a hole to
creep into and hide there until they weren’t looking for us any more. Cever’s
better now, thanks to Per, and I really hoped you’d be careful if you came back
for us.’
‘“If?”’
Rhun echoed. ‘It was obvious we’d come back, wasn’t it? I can’t tell you how
glad I was I didn’t have to break into the garrison to find you!’
‘If
it hadn’t been for Per, you’d have had to,’ Dyson answered. ‘He came to pick us
up in the middle of night.’
‘How?’
Rhun wanted to know.
‘He’s
got a speeder that’s probably older than he is, but it’s large enough to carry
all of us.’
Rhun
grinned as he imagined the old man driving an ancient vehicle, but then
remembered something that had puzzled him earlier. ‘Did you tell him about me?’
he asked Dyson. ‘When we came in he behaved as if he knew me.’
‘Only
that you were coming. Nothing about the pittin in the fridge or the day you
found out I was not such a respectable businessman after all.’
De
Boeck shook her head. ‘Sometime you’ll have to tell me this “pittin in the
fridge” story. This is the second time you’ve mentioned that.’
‘Maybe
on our way off Garon II,’ Rhun said, still reluctant to let the matter rest.
There had been something about Per, something that fascinated him. Something
had been odd about the way he’d looked at him, making Rhun want to talk to the
old man before they left. Still, he didn’t want to ask Dyson in front of de
Boeck.
‘Per’s
a medic?’ he asked the smuggler instead.
‘I
don’t think “medic” is the correct word,’ Dyson answered. ‘Maybe “herbalist” is
the better term. I’ve never seen him use a medpak, but his herbal remedies are
as good as one. He got me back on my feet in no time, and Cever as well—and she
was really in a bad way.’
‘Is
he a Rebel?’ Rhun asked.
Dyson
shrugged carefully. ‘He’s not an Imperial, but I think his mind’s not political
enough to call him a Rebel. He helps us, and that’s all I care about.’
Rhun
nodded thoughtfully, and de Boeck said, ‘We’re here with a speeder that’s big
enough for us all. I’d say we stay here for the night and head off tomorrow.
Our ship’s parked an hour’s ride from here, in the hills, and I’d really
appreciate a bit of daylight before we take off. We didn’t dare come into
Gerion again with the Eggshell,
and we couldn’t have landed our current ship here without causing a riot, I
suppose. If van Leuken hadn’t assured me it would hold together, I wouldn't
have dared to fly it.’
Dyson
turned to Rhun with a grin. ‘Little wizard’s been working his tech magic
again?’ he asked.
Rhun
snorted. ‘With that sort of junk, wizardry wouldn’t have been enough,’ he said.
‘I’ll be happy if we can hand it over to that Rodian again and be gone from
here.’
‘Is
there anywhere we can sleep tonight?’ de Boeck wanted to know.
‘I
guess so. Wait, I’ll come with you and ask Per.’
‘That’s
all right, Cap,’ Rhun interrupted him. ‘You need your sleep; we’ll look for
him.’
They
didn’t have to look far; Per came across the corridor when they left Dyson’s
room, a bowl of water and several towels in his hands. As if he’d known we were
looking for him,
Rhun suddenly thought. What the hell was going on here?
‘Have
you got somewhere for us to sleep?’ de Boeck asked him.
Per
shrugged apologetically. ‘Only the large room at the end, together with the
others,’ he said. ‘There are blankets on the floor, and I’ve got something to
eat for you in case you’re hungry.’
Rhun’s
stomach was growling, and he nodded vigorously. Per smiled. ‘There’s some soup
on the cooking unit in the common room,’ he said. ‘Ah—Rhun, could I ask you to
help me before that? It’s only a minute.’
‘Sure,’
Rhun said, following the old man into another room, this one at the end of the
corridor. It was very small, and filled with all sorts of stuff, most of them
supplies.
‘I
ran out of noogga roots today, and my bones are a bit dodgy these days, you
know. You don’t mind carrying one of these sacks over to the kitchen, do you?’
‘No,
that’s all right,’ Rhun said. ‘Which one is it?’
Per
pointed it out to him, and Rhun hoisted it up and took it to a small room Per
opened for him. The low ceiling was full of herbs hanging from it, some of them
the moss and grasses Rhun had seen outside, some he’d never seen. There was a
large cooking unit in one corner, a pot stewing over the fire, with an air vent
over it in the wall, and a small stool before it. A table in the centre of the
room was covered with more plants and ointments. It looked like a scene
straight from a fairytale holo.
‘Where
shall I put it?’ Rhun asked, then put the sack down in the corner Per
indicated. He went over to the table and looked at the herbs. There was a
strange, pungent, but rather pleasant smell in here, and he found it was coming
from them.
Rhun
wasn’t really surprised when Per sat down on the stool before the cooking unit
and waved a hand towards another one next to it, but he hesitated.
‘The
roots were just an excuse, weren’t they?’ he asked.
Per
nodded. ‘Yes, they were. Sit down, boy. There’s something I’d like to talk
about.’
Rhun
sat down on the stool, still feeling puzzled, but not really uncomfortable. Per
filled two glasses with tjustrel juice, a reddish drink derived from one of the
few native berries that thrived all year, and handed Rhun one.
‘You
were interested in the herbs?’ the old man asked.
‘Yes,
sir. I’ve never seen things like those used. I was trained as field medic, and
I’ve only come across pharmaceuticals.’
‘Well,
it’s hard enough to come by foodstuffs and other necessities, and
pharmaceuticals are almost impossible to get if you haven’t got any connections
to the med centre in Gerion—which I haven’t,’ he added with a wink. Rhun
grinned.
‘I
can’t imagine you have many patients around here,’ he remarked.
‘Oh,
every now and then. Dyson and his type tend to bring me a few occasionally.
People who can’t risk being treated in the med centre . . . and be noticed.’
‘Why
are you living out here?’
‘For
the same reason. I don’t want to be noticed. That’s why I came here, and stayed
here, when a lot of people would have loved to get their hands on me.’
‘So
you are a Rebel, after all.’
Per
shrugged and sipped his drink. ‘That depends on your point of view, I suppose.
I do not love the Empire, and they wouldn’t be very kind to me if they found
me, so I try not to let this happen. I’ve become rather adept at that.’
‘Why
do they want you? What did you do?’
The
old man laughed, a chuckling sound that made his sparse hair nod once more.
‘I’m here—that’s enough for them if they
knew,’ he said, then stood to peer into the pot, stirring it a little. ‘Tell
me, boy, what have you heard about the Force?’
Rhun
shifted on his stool. ‘A bit. Children’s tales. But there don’t seem to be many
in the galaxy now who know more about it.’
‘True,
true . . .’ Per tasted the brew, added some spice from a small jar he took from
a console on the wall. ‘Very few, that’s for sure. What do you think of it?’
‘I
don’t know, really, sir. What do you mean?’
‘Do
you think it’s a children’s tale?’
Rhun
didn’t answer.
Per
turned around to him, chuckling again. ‘I didn’t think you did,’ he said as if
Rhun had answered his question. ‘Given what you are.’
Rhun
still made no reply. He felt as if the walls were coming down around him,
smothering him, but at the same time, he felt strangely excited, as if
something inside him had just been allowed to come forth for the first time,
something he hadn’t even known existed—or maybe he’d just tried to deny its
existence for as long as he could remember.
‘Are
you a Jedi Knight?’ he finally asked, almost in a whisper.
Per
surprised him with a hearty laugh, that destroyed the awe and at the same time
took away much of his own fear. ‘A Jedi Knight, Stars, no! If I’d been, they
would have got me no matter where I’d tried to hide. I never was strong enough
in the Force for that. I was born on a backwater planet—even more backwater
than this one—and they didn’t discover my ability before I was fourteen. By
then, I was too old to learn much. I can sense a lot of things, and they
succeeded in teaching me some healing skills, but I never was good enough to
become a Jedi.’
Rhun
found it hard to listen. His entire life suddenly made sense. He’d been so stupid! All the occasions he’d been
congratulated for his excellent insight into human nature, his quirks and
hunches he’d never talked about, not to anybody, but which he’d never
questioned no matter how his intellect had told them he must be
wrong—everything finally fell into place. He realised his initial ideas had not
been correct—the fascination was less due to the fact that he had powers other
people didn’t have, but that he’d had them for so long, even using them, though
he wasn’t aware of himself doing that, his reluctance to tell other people how
he felt about these abilities he must have guessed he possessed—he had guessed,
somewhere inside him, and he’d also been aware that these powers were not the
rule.
‘How
did you know?’ he asked.
Per
smiled. ‘I sense a lot of things, as I told you,’ he said. ‘When you came in
here, you were evaluating me. Maybe you don’t do that consciously, and maybe it
doesn’t always work for you, but in that instant, you were, and I knew you at
once. I don’t think I’d have noticed if you hadn’t been using the Force.’
Rhun
swallowed. Hearing these words didn’t make it any easier to come to terms with
that. ‘You mean I can learn to fully control the Force? Like a Jedi?’
Per
came back to sit on his stool in front of the cooking unit once again. ‘No. You
can hone the skills you have, and maybe learn a few new ones, but like I said .
. . I only noticed what you were when you were effectively using your powers on
me. They are not very strong.
Remember, you have lived on an Imperial world for most of your life, and
believe me, the Empire has found all the Jedi in hiding. If they overlooked
you, you can’t be very strong in the Force. But in a time like this, now that
all the Jedi have been hunted down by Palpatine, every little bit of Jedi blood
is almost a miracle.’ He paused and studied Rhun’s face. ‘Now I wonder, where
did you get it? I don’t suppose you know about any Jedi in your ancestry?’
Rhun
shook his head slowly. ‘Nobody I know of. My parents never mentioned anything
like it, and my brothers . . .’ He paused, then stared at Per. ‘Could it be my
brother’s got it, too?’ Blast, that’s what had happened on their way to the
spaceport two days ago! When Ren had said he’d done what he thought Rhun would
have done, he’d done what Rhun had told
him to!
‘I
would suppose so,’ Per answered. ‘But your parents don’t seem to have it?’
Rhun
snorted a bitter laugh. ‘Certainly not my father. He doesn’t have any insight
at all into people. My mother, maybe, but I . . .’ He broke off. He’d been
going to say, ‘I don’t really know her well enough for that’, but he couldn’t
say it, even if Per wasn’t quite a stranger any more.
Per
only nodded, as if he’d understood anyway. He probably had. ‘Now, my boy, it’s
become rather late, and you must be tired. ‘We’ll continue this tomorrow, if
you like. I suppose you have a lot to think about now.’
Rhun
nodded and stood. ‘You couldn’t teach me how to better control them, could
you?’ he asked.
‘Little
but the basics,’ Per said. ‘I doubt there are any people around these days who
could teach you more. And you can’t stay here.’
‘You
can,’ Rhun remarked.
Per
shook his head. ‘Your place is elsewhere,’ he answered. ‘This life is fine for
a crazy old man stewing his healing potions, but nothing for a young man who
has more skills to boast about than a few chancy Force abilities.’
Reluctantly,
Rhun let himself be herded towards the door. ‘But I can come back once in a
while,’ he said.
Per
smiled again. ‘Yes, you can. And I’ll be looking forward to those occasions.’
8
The next morning dawned brisk and clear, and
Rhun found the others were already up. Three of the fugitives had been sleeping
in the large common room together with him and Lieutenant de Boeck, the woman
named Cever and Dyson had their own sickrooms. Cever, he learned, was well
enough to be brought off-planet without any risk; Dyson was acting as if
nothing at all had happened to him. Rhun found himself wondering how much of
this was due to Per’s Force skills, and whether he would be able to learn any
of this. He didn’t really think he could. There were things he knew he had
within him, and others that seemed as far away as trying to fly by flapping his
arms would have.
To
Rhun’s relief, Per didn’t mention anything that had happened the previous
evening, and neither did he. He wasn’t ready to talk about that yet, and he
didn’t really know what he would do now that he knew he could use the Force.
The implications were staggering, and he suddenly looked forward to seeing Ren
again. He was certain he wouldn’t tell him straightaway, if he told him at all,
but at least he knew now what to look for.
Rhun
had a late breakfast and met Dyson in the corridor, helping one of the other
women ready their packs to get going. Rhun recognised her as Dreisene, his
mother’s friend, and raised a hand in greeting.
‘Where’s
Lieutenant de Boeck?’ he asked the smuggler, thereby hoping to cut off any
remarks about how much he’d grown.
‘Gone
out to get the speeder,’ Dyson answered. ‘She seems to have some trouble
getting the crate going.’
Rhun
sighed. ‘I’ll go out and help her, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll take one of these,
shall I?’ He bent down to pick up one of the packs.
That
moment, the door burst open, and Firia de Boeck ran in, her face flushed, but
her eyes were cold. ‘Get out of here, all of you!’ she called through the whole
dwelling. ‘There’s an Imperial Hoverscout coming this way, and they’re not on a
regular patrol if you ask me!’
Dyson
looked up sharply. ‘How could they have followed you?’ he said, arming himself
with a heavy blaster rifle, handing Rhun another one. The younger man took it
and slung it over his shoulder. He normally preferred the smaller pistols, but
he could hardly afford to be picky.
‘I
don’t know,’ de Boeck replied. ‘My guess is someone tipped them off, and if I
find out who, I’ll have his head!’
‘That
won’t help.’ Per had appeared in the kitchen doorway, some hastily gathered
belongings on his back. ‘Lokrast, Rhun, get out Cever and carry her to the
speeder. How long until they can be here?’
‘A
few minutes,’ de Boeck answered as Rhun and Lokrast, a middle-aged man who’d
been in Dyson’s group of fugitives, ran off to get the injured woman.
‘Blast,’
Dyson cursed. ‘Firia, Genno, Dreisene, quick! We’ve got to get out of here!’
The
two remaining fugitives and de Boeck had followed Per out of the passage, all
carrying packs, and Dyson hoisted the last pack, hesitating as he saw Rhun and
Lokrast disappear into Cever’s sickroom.
‘Grant,
come on!’ he heard de Boeck calling from outside, then the unmistakeable
whining of blaster bolts. There was a louder thud, and the corridor shook. The
Hoverscout was firing its laser cannon.
That
jarred him into action, deciding his skills with a blaster were of more use
outside, and seeing that Rhun and Lokrast were coming out with Cever, he
sprinted forward, into the opening of the old tunnel. Peering around the corner,
he saw that Firia had the speeder waiting ten metres to his right, desperately
trying to get the thing going, blaster bolts flying from the left from where
the Hoverscout was approaching. The Imperial troop transport was almost the
size of a starfighter, but more compact in shape, with a laser turret on top
which continued firing into the hillside. They were still more than three
hundred metres away, but that was almost the maximum range for an Imperial
stormtrooper blaster rifle.
A
laser blast slammed into the side of the tunnel, and Dyson looked back into the
passageway in alarm as he saw the ceiling starting to crumble. But then the two
men appeared carrying between them Cever, who was trying to help them, but she
couldn’t really do much.
‘Come
on!’ he heard de Boeck from the speeder.
The
injured woman looked at the three men. ‘Put me down,’ she told Lokrast. ‘I can
run over if someone supports me; it’s only a few metres.’
‘Lokrast,
get her over there,’ Dyson told the other man. ‘Rhun and I will cover you.’
Lokrast
nodded, carefully shifting Cever’s weight over his shoulder and casting them a
questioning look. ‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘Go!’
Dyson shouted, firing at the Hoverscout, Rhun kneeling down to do the same. He
was glad now that they had the blaster rifles; pistols would have been useless
at this range.
The
Imperial vehicle had stopped, in a distance of maybe a good one hundred metres,
and Rhun saw white-armoured stormtroopers jump out, taking position with inbred
accuracy and starting to fire. They were using the Hoverscout for cover from
Dyson and Rhun’s blasts, but that also meant they couldn’t all fire
simultaneously. Dyson drew back with a curse as a blaster bolt shot past his
head into the hillside, resulting in a cloud of dust clouding their vision, but
at least this held true for the Imperials as well. They continued firing into
the troopers’ direction, until Rhun saw that the two refugees had made it to
the speeder. He groaned with relief when he heard the sound of repulsor engines
coming to life; de Boeck had got the speeder to work.
‘Run!’
he shouted to Dyson. ‘I’ll give you covering fire!’
Dyson
nodded, knowing Rhun would need his cover from the speeder later, as soon as he
was there, so he ducked and ran.
Rhun
fired, coughing as another dust cloud shot up under a hit. He hardly saw Dyson
anymore, but at least he knew what direction the speeder was and what direction
the Imperial barrage came from. Another consolation was the fact that the Imps
saw about as little as he did.
He
fired several more times, again realising a blaster pistol would not only have
had too little range, but also too little energy for this kind of firefight.
‘Come
on!’ he heard Dyson’s voice from several metres away, took a deep breath and
ran.
‘Get around on this side!’ Sergeant van
Leuken barked. ‘That way, you won’t hit the hill!’ He suited action to words,
his squad following him. He didn’t know how many more Rebels there were in that
old mining tunnel, but bringing the hill down was very unlikely to gain them a lot
at this stage. Four of them he’d seen running towards the speeder. An earlier
blast of one of the Rebels had disabled the laser turret on the Hoverscout, and
their blasters hadn’t been able to disable the speeder so far. Dust had
impaired their vision, and at this range, their sensor packs and helmet filters
hadn’t helped.
The
sergeant and his squad took position, aiming at the speeder again, this time at
an angle that would keep them from hitting the dusty hillsides again, when a
single figure dashed from out of the dust and towards the speeder, a figure the
sergeant instantly recognised.
Gorn
van Leuken heard himself hiss in disgust. He was going to get away yet again.
He was going to make a fool of him the way he’d done for almost ten years. He
hadn’t searched the mines all night for nothing, after they’d figured the
speeder had gone into the hills. The misbegotten brat had trampled on his way
of life and everything he’d ever held dear.
He
took aim.
Rhun saw the stormtrooper squad appear outside
the dust as he cast a hurried glance over his shoulder, dodging instinctively
as a blaster bolt whined past him. His eyes stung from the dust, but for the
split second he’d looked back, he’d seen the orange shoulder patch denoting a
stormtrooper sergeant, and even if he was aware of the fact that there were
hundreds of them over at the garrison, he knew.
Maybe
it was this Force thing again, but he couldn’t have said for certain. He didn’t
really care. It was just three metres to the speeder, only three lousy metres,
when he felt a blazing pain in his back, and then nothing more.
‘Rhun!’
Dyson
saw him go down, rolling over a couple of times, and for an instant, he hoped
he would get up again, but the when the boy finally came to a halt, he remained
lying where he was. Dyson ground out a curse that would have made a fighter
pilot blush and jumped out of the speeder, dodging a blast from the
stormtroopers that had stayed at the Hoverscout, grabbing the young man and
running back to the vehicle, murder in his eyes. Several pairs of hands reached
out to pull him and Rhun into the speeder, and Dyson felt the car jerk as Firia
coaxed all possible speed out of it. He leaned out of the passenger cell again
to fire at the Hoverscout, hoping to hit something that would cripple it
sufficiently to keep it from pursuing them. He fired as long as he thought he
could hit something, but after a minute, he shifted back into the seat and
slammed the hatch shut. Still panting and only now beginning to feel the strain
in his injured side, he turned around. Rhun lay on his side on the middle
passenger bench, motionless. Dreisene was bending over him and gently peeling
off his jacket and the shirt. Dyson felt his insides go ice-cold as he saw the
blaster burn across the young man’s back and smelled the sickening odour of
burned flesh.
Dreisene
felt for a pulse and looked up at Dyson in alarm. ‘He’s not breathing,’ she
said, her face pale.
Dyson
crawled over to Rhun, but someone gently pushed him out of the way. Per had
clambered over the front bench to join them. ‘Let me see,’ he said, his voice
sounding strangely calm.
Dyson
moved over to make room for the old man, carefully lifting Rhun’s head to ease
it into his lap. ‘Do something,’ he said to Per, ‘do something, dammit . . .’
Per
made no reply, and Dyson drew a hand over his face as he watched Rhun. ‘Don’t
do this to me, kid,’ he said, realising his hand was shaking as he held it
before his face. ‘This is so bloody unfair!
Hang on, Rhun, come on . . .’
Rhun
suddenly drew a gasping breath, laboured and obviously in pain, but the relief
Dyson felt surging through him as the boy continued breathing turned into
anxiety once more as Rhun gasped again, his hand convulsing around Dyson’s in
pain, and the smuggler turned to Per helplessly.
‘Can’t
you do something for him?’ he almost snapped at him in his frustration.
Per
still didn’t answer, and although Dyson was certain he’d been watching the old
man closely, he couldn’t discern anything he was doing. After a while, however,
Rhun’s taut body relaxed again, and he gave a small whimper, then he lay still.
Dyson made himself calm a little as well, when he saw that the young man’s
chest was moving almost imperceptibly.
‘We’ve got to get him to a med station,’ the
smuggler said.
‘How
do you suppose we should do that, Grant?’ Firia asked from the driver seat. ‘We
can’t get him into a hospital, not on Garon II! They’ll be looking for us
everywhere after this!’
‘Didn’t
you say there was a sickbay aboard your transport, Captain?’ asked Cever, who
lay on the bench in the back of the speeder, supported by Lokrast.
De
Boeck grimaced. ‘In that miserable crate of a Sunbeam, it’ll take us two days up to Garon III and the Eggshell.’
‘Will
he last that long?’ Dyson asked Per anxiously.
Per
sat bending over Rhun’s wound, looking up now, nodding slowly. ‘Yes, he will,’
he confirmed, his voice sounding a little dreamy. ‘But we need to get him into
medical care, at least temporary. He won’t last much longer.’
‘The
means aboard the Sunbeam are very limited, but I think I
saw a medpak when we came here,’ de Boeck remembered.
‘He
needs bacta treatment,’ Dreisene pointed out.
‘Impossible,’
Genno, the second man among the refugees, shook his head. ‘Only Imperial
hospitals have bacta, and they use it only on Armed Forces personnel.’
‘But
the Alliance will be able to treat him, certainly?’ Dreisene asked hopefully.
‘The
nearest Alliance base is a three days’ jump away,’ Firia said.
‘I
may know just the place,’ Dyson said grimly.
‘Have you ever shot down someone?’ Ren
asked, sitting on the cockpit ladder as he watched Samica perform a systems
check.
She
looked up briefly and grimaced, in part because of his question, in part
because the starboard sublight engine that had been hit in her last mission
still had its troublesome moments. ‘More than once.’
‘Are
you good?’
She
shrugged. ‘I suppose.’ She realised she had told Colonel Salm the same.
‘Better
than a man?’
He
finally had her attention. ‘Better than some, yes. Why?’
‘Because
women aren’t good pilots.’
She
snorted. ‘I see. But men are?’
‘Yes.’
She
returned her attention to her display. ‘Where did you get that kind of
nonsense?’
‘From
“Galactic Heroes”. The women are always good-looking and have to be rescued.’
‘That’s
why I never liked the series when I was small,’ she said. ‘And you could ask
your brother some day about this “Men can fly” thing. He would tell you
something different. Holoseries aren’t always right.’
‘Can
you show me how to fly the Y-wing?’ Ren asked pleadingly.
‘What,
after you told me I can’t fly myself?’
‘You
could demonstrate it to me,’ Ren said with a grin.
She
shook her head, but grinned as well. ‘You’d like that, wouldn't you? When
you’re older, maybe. Now . . . if you could do me a favour and get Lieutenant
Cargill? He may be able to help me with this engine.’ Pity I fit the cliché in
that regard, at least, she thought wistfully. She envied people like Rhun their inborn skill
with repairs.
Ren
climbed down the ladder, but before he could leave the docking platform where
the Eggshell and the two Y-wings stood,
Qelmam emerged from the transport.
‘Captain?’
he called, his normally slow Calamari voice betraying urgency. ‘Lieutenant?’
‘What
is it?’ Samica asked. Cargill had gone over to one of the bars to have
something to eat, tired of the processor food from Eggshell, and she found herself wishing he hadn’t.
‘Transmission
from the Sunbeam,’ Qelmam answered. ‘They’re on
their way here. Firia says they aren’t followed, but they suppose the Imps’ll
come look for us, and if they see Eggshell
here, after they didn’t catch us on Garon II . . .’
Samica
produced her comlink to recall Cargill, seeing with relief that Ren had stopped
at the exit of the docking platform. ‘How long until they are here?’ she wanted
to know.
‘The
Sunbeam? Ten minutes, the Imps, no
idea.’
She
nodded. ‘I’ll get Cargill. Get the transport ready for takeoff.’
Samica
cursed that blasted sublight engine and hoped it would at least function in
more or less the usual way. She supposed she’d have to compensate a lot, but as
long as the thing didn’t come apart altogether, she would be fine—mostly, she
hoped.
She
sent a short message to Cargill, their ‘Emergency—to the fighter at once’
signal, then reached over for her flight helmet that lay on the vacant gunner’s
seat behind her. She winced as she put it on. Her face was still sore, and the
helmet wouldn’t help much to make the injured places heal.
She
saw Cargill sprint to his fighter with long strides, giving her a thumbs-up,
and she grinned. When he’d disappeared into his cockpit, she keyed the comm.
‘Ready, Seven?’ she asked. ‘The Sunbeam’s
probably not alone.’
‘Let’s
kick some Imp butt, Nine,’ Cargill replied.
‘Eggshell, you all set?’ she asked Qelmam,
still over comm.
‘Everyone
here and strapped in,’ Qelmam replied. ‘I’ll come after you as soon as the Sunbeam has landed. Keep a lookout for
trouble up there.’
‘Acknowledged,
Eggshell.’ Samica kicked off the repulsor
engines that would get them off the platform. ‘In that case, Seven, let’s be about
it.’
The ships around Garon III didn’t follow any
particular flight plan. There was some sort of traffic control, but that was
concerned with intervening only when the ships’ owners around the smuggler’s
moon couldn’t work out solutions for themselves. Samica had to admit the system
of ‘Comes first, lands first’ worked remarkably well, and the system was not so
crowded that ten or more ships were trying to land or take off simultaneously.
There
were several ships hanging in orbit, however—bulk freighters and heavy
transports that couldn’t land on the moon, and these had to be careful to stay
out of the way, but even that worked rather well. When they had cleared the
moon’s atmosphere, Samica scanned for the Eggshell and kept an eye on her sensor screens, waiting for red dots to mingle
with the blue and purple around the station. Her and Cargill’s Y-wings had been
fitted with false transponder codes for the mission, so they would not betray
themselves with bright green dots on an Imperial screens. Until anyone found
and attacked the Eggshell, they could make themselves
virtually invisible up here among all the other ships. Samica, who had fought
here before, only on different sides, knew that the pirates were unlikely to
aid them against the Imps if push came to shove. Pirates and smugglers tended
to mind their own business and usually avoided getting caught up in another
faction’s trouble.
She
picked up the Sunbeam soon enough; the ancient
freighter was headed straight for the docking platform where the medium
transport waited, and Samica kept scanning.
‘Sithspit,’
she finally said between her teeth when she picked up six red dots heading
towards the pirates’ outpost. Her visual display confirmed they were TIE
fighters. Judging by the slightly more colourful curse from Cargill’s cockpit,
the Corellian had seen them, too.
‘Eggshell, Seven. Six eyeballs, three
point four klicks.’ She kept the transmission as short as possible, to avoid
giving the Imps any reason to link the Sunbeam or the Eggshell to the two Y-wings. There was no
response from the freighter; this, too, had been coordinated before. Qelmam
trusted them to read the situation without his input and react to it.
Her
astromech reported that the six TIEs were on a direct course for the Sunbeam, so there was no thinking about
waiting any more. Samica brought her Y-wing around on an intercept course, and
Cargill followed in her wake. It took the TIE pilots several seconds to realise
that there were more enemy ships than just an aging Sunbeam, but by that time, Cargill had vaped one of the fighters, and Samica
had disabled another one.
A
nagging thought kept hovering at the back of her mind, keeping her imagining
acquaintances or even friends in those cockpits. She pushed it away. Few
fighter pilots stayed on Garon II for longer than a year, and even if there was
someone she knew, that was beside the point now. She’d deserted, and whatever
had been she was a Rebel now, and her task was to protect the Sunbeam’s and the Eggshell’s crews and passengers. And
protecting those crews was a much more personal objective than wondering about
anything else.
The
four remaining TIEs had split into two wingpairs, one coming towards the
Y-wings, one continuing after the Sunbeam.
‘I’ll
keep them off the freighter,’ Samica told Cargill over comm. ‘You worry about
the other two.’
‘Copy,
Nine,’ Cargill answered and broke off sharply, drawing one of the TIEs behind
him. The Imperial pilot’s wingman seemed to have to think about this for a
moment before he, too, followed the Y-wing.
Before
Samica could fire at the two TIEs before her, they broke off pursuit of the
freighter to worry about her first. She reduced speed to stay behind the pair,
ending up almost next to the lead man’s wing, who’d had the same idea. She
ignored Imp’s frightened bleeps and swerved to port, out of the wingman’s path,
kicking in thrusters again to remain behind the lead.
The
lead TIE veered off towards a group of bulk freighters that were trying to
scramble away from the dogfight, and Samica grimaced. She couldn’t say she was
surprised—she’d done the same thing time and time again when she’d been
stationed here, trying to shake off pursuit dodging in and out of spaces
between ships, trusting her
wingman to pick enemy fighters off her. This time, it was her in the TIE
sandwich.
She
refused to take the bait the TIE before her presented, but broke out to lure
them further away from the Sunbeam.
Before her, the shape of a bulk freighter materialised, and she tore her stick
to the left to evade it. Both TIEs managed to copy her manoeuvre, one slightly
closer than the other, spinning slightly before the pilot regained control.
More ships had begun to clear the area to leave the combatants to settle the
matter among themselves.
Samica
cast a glance at her tactical, where the Sunbeam had now disappeared from view, but the red dots had been far enough
away from it to be certain the ship had only landed, not been destroyed. She
brought her fighter around to pick off the lead man, whose wingman was still
further back, coming towards him in a head-on turn.
She
ground her teeth as green light splashed past and across her viewport,
returning fire, one of her laser bolts hitting the enemy ship, sending him
spinning off into space. She contented herself with that, seeing his wingman
had by now come into a good firing position, and veered around once more.
‘Seven,
what’s your status?’ she asked.
‘Hit,
but operational,’ Cargill’s reply came over comm. ‘You don’t look very healthy
yourself.’
Samica
saw that Imp was busy rebuilding her shields, which the TIE’s fire had reduced
to thirty percent, but otherwise, she was unharmed. Apart from that sublight
engine, which was beginning to buck more and more often under the battle
strain. Samica had always heard that five minutes of dogfighting in space
swallowed up as much fuel as a two hours’ sublight flight, and it was obvious
that it was equally rough on the hardware.
‘The
TIEs?’ she wanted to know.
‘One’s
vaped, the other’s got disabled lasers, so I need to pick him off before he can
decide to do something stupid.’
‘One
here is still operational,’ she replied. ‘Keep an eye on the Eggshell.’
‘Will
do,’ he answered, and she concentrated fully on the TIE fighter before her. He
was trying to outrun her with his superior speed, jinking all the while, and
she tried to get a laser lock on him, but his jinking as much as her
erratically bucking fighter made it a lot more difficult than she would have
liked. What was more, she realised he was flying a wide arc to come in
Cargill’s range again.
‘Watch
it, Seven,’ she warned him. ‘He’s coming your way.’
More
transports hurried to make way for them when the TIE Samica was after came
closer to the station once again, the Y-wing trailing in a distance. She hadn’t
managed to lock him down efficiently, and she hadn’t dared use proton torpedoes
where so many other ships were in the line of fire.
Her
scopes now showed Eggshell
lifting off from the station, and she decided it would be best to seemingly
ignore the ship for now. Better to keep the TIE occupied than have the pilot
realise what they were protecting—
Samica
gasped in horror as a TIE came towards her in a kamikaze run, obviously the one
Cargill had reportedly disabled earlier, shooting forth out of a cluster of
more bulk freighters, gasped again as the Y-wing reacted to her evasive
manoeuvre too sluggishly. There was no laser fire, only the fighter’s mass as
the ship impacted against hers with shattering force.
Samica
half waited for Imp to wail damage reports, but there was not a sound out of
the R2 unit, the only sound being a sizzling from her tactical and a blaring of
several different alarms. The tactical was black, as were her front and rear
sensor screens. The only lights in the cockpit were ready lights glowing red if
they glowed at all. Of the TIE, there was nothing left apart from a few pieces
of debris floating in vacuum.
‘Sithspit,’
Samica whispered as she tried to make out Cargill or the other TIE outside.
With Imp disabled—she desperately hoped he was only disabled—there wasn’t even
any hope of repair in the immediate future. She still had drives, and her comm,
but no weapons and no shields. And she was as blind as a space slug.
‘Seven?’
she said. ‘Do you read? My sensors’re out, astromech, too. Do you copy?’
‘Copy,
Nine,’ Cargill grunted. His voice came over a crackle of static that made it
very hard to understand him. ‘I have a problem here. We’re right above you, but
don’t worry, I’ve got him occupied.’
Samica
stared out of her viewport, but it was virtually impossible to make out a ship
some klicks away against the blackness of space without the aid of sensors.
Unless it fired.
She
saw a trail of green streaking out across the blackness then, although she had
to twist around to see it, realising Cargill must have been more heavily
damaged than she had thought at first, saw the trail flash, continue, then
connect.
‘Seven?’
she inquired.
But
when her comm cracked to life, it was Qelmam’s voice she heard, not Cargill’s.
The Mon Cal was breaking the comm silence, and she bit her lip as she realised
it probably didn’t matter anymore.
‘Seven’s
gone, Captain. Get clear of the area here and jump to the rendezvous point;
we’ll pick you up there.’
‘I
can’t jump out,’ Samica replied. ‘My astromech’s out. Weapons, too.’
Another
voice cut in. ‘This is Dyson. Can you still manoeuvre?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s
coming around for you, but he hasn’t realised we’re here yet. We can pluck him
off you.’
Samica
exhaled explosively. ‘Hurry up,’ she said between her teeth.
She
had no way of knowing where exactly her opponent was, but she heard Qelmam
notifying her of his position and distance ever few seconds. She wasn’t sure
she liked the numbers. He was gaining far more quickly than he should have,
considering she was flying full throttle (without shields or lasers, there was
little else she could channel the energy into), and she couldn’t see her own
speed on her display either. She had begun to rely on her faithful astromech to
notify of everything that was going on around her, and without any way to see
her surroundings, she felt more helpless than she ever had in a fighter that
was still flying. And all she could do was fly, praying that Dyson would hit at
the first attempt. He wouldn’t have much more than that, because the TIE would
then go after the more dangerous prey first—which, in this case, was the Eggshell. And if that happened, there was
only one way she could at least try to stop the TIE, which was the same way
this one’s wingman had surprised her earlier. And she’d survive it as little as
he.
A
green laser beam flashed past her, and she instinctively broke out into the
opposite direction, initiating a series of turns and breaks to shake her
attacker. Turning and breaking was difficult with a sublight engine that threatened
to give out under the strain at any moment, but she had no other choice.
Another green blast streaked by, followed by a red one, and then she groaned
with relief when she heard Qelmam, ‘He’s broken off pursuit of you, Nine.’
She
twisted in her restraints to see what was going on behind her, watching a
series of reddish-orange laser fire from the Eggshell streaming out, and the continuity told her Dyson’s first shot must
already have hit the TIE, or it would have outrun the medium transport as
easily as he had her. Then the fire from the transport ceased.
‘We’ll
take you aboard now, Nine,’ Qelmam’s voice came in again. ‘Follow my
instructions; we don’t want you to collide with us.’
Samica
allowed herself to close her eyes briefly before she answered, forcing herself
not to dwell on what had happened to her wingman . . . again. ‘Thanks, Eggshell,’ she said. ‘Good at least that
the rescue mission was a success, Cap. Rhun, are you there?’
There
was a slight pause from the transport that made Samica’s stomach knot, then
Dyson answered. ‘Rhun can’t hear you right now, Sam,’ he said softly. ‘But I
suggest you come aboard before we tell you the rest.’
Dyson sat in the transport’s sizeable
sickbay, next to the antigrav bed Rhun lay on. He was lying on his back, clad
only in shorts, floating on an antigrav cushion to ease the strain on his back
and help him breathe. He was breathing on his own again, and his pulse was
slow, but steady. It wasn’t much, but it was an improvement over those agonised
hours during the real-space flight from Gerion to the smugglers’ moon. Per
hadn’t left the boy’s side, as little as Dyson had, and he hadn’t really dared
hope Rhun would live.
He
looked at the young man’s face, which looked ashen in the pristine white of the
sickbay, and he found himself wondering why sickbays weren’t ever painted a
healthier colour, yellow maybe or at least beige. It was rather warm, because
Rhun was not covered, and the smuggler had taken off his jacket and hung it
over the back of his chair. He didn’t know what exactly Per had done, but he
did know that, without him, Rhun would have died in the speeder. He’d suffered
severe injuries to his lungs and spine, and Dyson had seen other people die of
wounds like those within minutes.
The
boy hadn’t regained consciousness during the trip, but maybe it was better that
way. They had been in hyperspace for twelve hours, en route to a world called
Venithon, which boasted a hospital that would also treat civilian patients. At
least that was the version Dyson had told Rhun’s mother and Sam. They did treat
civilian patients, but for a price, and Dyson did not intend to tell them this.
He’d dealt with Venithon Medical before, and he saw it as a way to repay what
Rhun and Firia had risked to get him out again.
Dyson
rested his face in his hands and snorted. Not that he wouldn’t have done it
otherwise. The smuggler had always been very careful not to appear sentimental,
and he kept coming up with explanations like this one again and again, even for
himself, so nobody would think him soft, but he liked the boy a great deal more
than he’d ever admit. It had been odd to meet his mother, an actual relative of
Rhun’s, who obviously cared as well, and Dyson had actually detected some
jealousy within himself. He’d always wanted children when he’d been younger,
and he’d looked at Rhun as the son he’d never had. There were distinct
advantages to picking a son when he was sixteen, no changing nappies, no
putting up with adolescent quirks. Very few of those, anyway. It was only when he
met the boy’s mother that he realised Rhun had had a life before he’d met Dyson.
She’d
been with him for the first ten hours, until Dyson had come to take his turn
three hours ago, but they hadn’t talked a lot. He hadn’t known what to talk
about with her, and she had just been sitting by his side, on the chair he’d
since taken, watching her son.
Dyson
leaned forward again to take the boy’s hand in his. It felt cold, despite the
warmth in the room, and he stared at the vital signs monitor above Rhun’s head
as if he could make it improve his condition.
The
hatch that led onto the corridor slid open, and Samica entered. She’d changed
out of her flight suit, but she didn’t look as if she’d slept a lot. Rhun moved
slightly, drawing a laboured breath and letting it out in a moan.
‘How
is he?’ she asked quietly.
‘The
same as before . . . which is probably good.’ Dyson chafed the boy’s hand and
cleared his throat, then got up from the chair. ‘Sit down if you like,
Captain.’
‘You
called me Sam yesterday,’ she said.
Dyson
shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t have.’
‘I
don’t mind.’
‘Okay,
then, Sam. You look as if you could use a chair.’
She
nodded her thanks and sat, carefully taking Rhun’s hand. ‘How long until we
reach Venithon?’ she asked.
‘A
couple of hours. Don’t worry about him.’
‘You’re
not going to tell me he’s survived worse, are you?’
Dyson
shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. But he’s going to make it.’
Samica
nodded and stroked Rhun’s forehead. The smuggler watched her profile and
guessed that there was more on her mind than Rhun.
‘Sam,’
he said firmly, ‘stop feeling responsible for Cargill.’
She
looked up sharply enough to tell him he’d been right in his assumption. Then
she ducked her head. ‘I know,’ she said weakly. ‘I know I couldn’t have saved
him, but he’s the fourth wingman I’ve lost in less than half a year. And before
that, Pops was forced to retreat from a fight after he’d been hit. I’ve flown
six missions for the Rebel Alliance and I’ve come back without my wingman from
half of them. And the ones from which I did come back with my wing were the ones where
hardly a shot was fired.’
‘You
can’t count Yavin,’ Dyson said.
‘Can’t
I? What I’ve been thinking for the last few hours—’ she broke of and inhaled
sharply. ‘I’ve been wondering if I’m worth all those people dying for me.’
‘Would
you have done the same for them?’
‘I
don’t think I can say either yes or no,’ Samica said almost desperately. ‘I’d
like to think I would, but how can I know when I’ve never really been faced
with a choice like that? I don’t think Gawky would have said he’d die for me
before it happened, or Kaya or Nous or Cargill.’ She broke off again, and Dyson
could hear her suppressing a sob. He stood behind her and gingerly put a hand
on her shoulder, squeezing gently. She certainly didn’t act like it most of the
time, but now, he was reminded again of how young she was, propelled into a
position she shouldn’t have attained until she was more experienced. He wasn’t
thinking she wasn’t up to the job, but he wasn’t sure whether she was up to the
consequences.
‘I
think I know how you feel,’ he finally told her. ‘But I can’t imagine it’s
wrong that you ask yourself these questions. An officer who sends her people to
their deaths without worrying about them certainly wouldn’t. I know this sounds
like grandpa advice, but you’ve still got a lot to learn. They can’t expect you
to be perfect, and I don’t think they do.’
Samica
raised her head again. ‘You sound like Dutch,’ she said.
He
shrugged. ‘You’re upset, and you’ve had as tough a week as any of us. Let it
lie for the time being. High Command hasn’t made you a captain just because
you’ve been lucky once, and I can’t imagine they’ve regretted their decision to
promote you so quickly. Unless I’m totally wrong, they won’t.’ He patted her
shoulder and looked at Rhun once more. ‘And again, don’t worry about him. He’s going to make it.’
Samica
bit her lip and nodded, and Dyson leaned against the wall to keep watch again.
The
more he told himself Rhun was going to survive, the more he began to believe
it.
9
It was hard to surface again.
For
a long time, all Rhun had known was pain, alternating with blackness. At first,
there had been long intervals of darkness interrupted by shorter periods of
pain, but the balance had begun to shift gradually. To his relief, the pain had
eased a bit at times, and he’d become dimly aware of other people around him,
mostly speaking in hushed tones, and he thought he ought to have said something
to reassure them, but he felt too weak to move. And he hurt. Voices and movement
around him seemed to get to him from very far away, somewhere he couldn’t
reach. There were times he longed to let go, just give in to it, but something
always made him hang on.
Then
the sensations changed; he felt as if he was floating upright, not altogether
unpleasant if it hadn’t been for the taste in his mouth. At first, he didn’t
mind too much. He felt the pain subside gradually, not quite going a