Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (13 page)

Roach went on shivering. Her knuckles turned white where she gripped her knees, as if her hands were the only things holding the rest of her body together; as if she was afraid she might dissolve and spill onto the floor if she relaxed. Namir sat listening to the metallic groaning of the ship and the low, static roar of the engines before shifting closer to Roach and reaching an arm around her shoulders. He felt the damp of her shirt, smelled her sweat, heard her breath come rapidly like the respiration of a tiny, trapped animal. He gripped her loosely. Roach stiffened for a few moments before squeezing smaller and pressing into his side.

They sat together in silence through the night.

PLANET CRUCIVAL

Day Four Hundred of the Tripartite Culture Effrontery

Fifteen Years After the Clone Wars

His name was Umu Seven now: Umu after the second son of the Hieroprince, and Seven because six other Umus also served the Opaline Creed. The boy had hoped for a name of his own, but the rules of the Creed were strict and there were worse fates than being Umu Seven forever.

He still wore the brands of old loyalties between his shoulders, buried under a bantha-fur cloak. When the Warlord Malkhan had died, the boy’s oaths of submission had lost their meaning. He’d been lucky to find the Creed as swiftly as he had. Now as he walked briskly through narrow sandstone streets, he saw his brands mirrored on the faces of old men curled in spice-born stupors on the stoops of shops; on the wrists of women eating scraps in the alleys; on all the warriors of Malkhan who now lacked an army to serve, whose triumphs-etched-in-flesh now marked them as pariahs.

Umu kept his hood up, his eyes averted from the lost Malkhanis. He didn’t fear for his safety, but he’d been given a task by the Creed. He could not hesitate or fail.

When he reached the bazaar, he elbowed his way through the crowd to the merchants he’d been told might aid him. Some he said nothing to—he reached out, pressed a handful of gold peggats into their palms to reward their service to the Creed, then drew away. Others he bartered with, and over the course of an hour he filled his sack with offworld batteries, wires, fuses. Devices and pieces of devices.

The Creed was rich in food and water and gold, but not so in technology. If it was to survive its battles against the heretic clans, it needed weapons that rivaled those of its foes. It needed soldiers who knew how to wield blasters and flamers.

Umu Seven had fought for Malkhan and knew how to wield the weapons of offworlders.

When he’d finished his business in the bazaar, Umu looped back into the alleys. He didn’t retrace his path, knowing he might be followed—knowing that the objects he carried could feed and house a family for a year, or sate a spice addict for a month. On the first few occasions he’d run errands for the Creed, he’d been tempted to steal his way to freedom and a new life. He felt only so much loyalty to his masters, despite the communal recitation of oaths at morning and night, the constant readings from the Tome of the Hieroprince; at times he felt a raw, heavy guilt in his stomach over his own faithlessness. Yet as weeks had passed and he’d been entrusted with greater responsibilities, he’d found new reasons to stay true to the Creed.

“Hazram!”

He heard the voice as he felt the grip on his shoulder—a broad hand, a man’s hand, with nails that dug into the fabric of his cloak. He heard the name, too, but it didn’t register as one of his own until he’d thrown back an elbow, felt it connect with meat, felt the hand leave his body. Feet scraped at dust as his assailant stumbled backward, coughing in long, pained rasps.

Umu turned around. Standing in the alley was a tall, broad-shouldered, bald-headed man with a blasted and leathery face. He’d been strong once—that was obvious—but now his skin seemed as if it had been stretched to dry on a rack of bones. His vest and shirt were worn through in places, patched with leather scraps in others. He stared at Umu with wide, anxious eyes.

“You’re alive,” he said. “I knew you were alive.”

“You need to leave,” Umu said, curt and bitter. “The Creed is waiting for me.”

Umu had not seen his father in nearly three years.

The man’s chest heaved as if he’d been running. He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again they seemed clearer, focused but without the mad intensity. “I’ll walk with you,” Umu’s father said with care and contrition, like a captive negotiating for release after a battle. “The Creed’s in Templemarch, yes? I’ll make sure you’re not bothered on the way.”

Umu turned his back on his father and began to walk again. His father followed behind him.

“Were you there?” his father asked, after they’d traveled in silence for some minutes. “When the Malkhanis fell apart?”

“Yes,” Umu hissed.

The warlord’s lieutenants had each staked a claim to Malkhan’s cache of offworld weapons. The bloodletting that had followed had been worse than anything Umu had seen prior.

“I warned you that would happen,” his father said. “It always does.”

Umu said nothing.

“It happened in my war, too. Even after our enemies won, they still turned on one another.”

“Maybe you should have fought harder,” Umu said, his voice cool and level. “Maybe if
your
side had won, you would’ve known what to do.”

Umu increased his walking speed. He heard his father’s labored breath as he tried to keep pace.

Umu expected his father to argue. It had always been
easy
to make him argue about his war. One wrong word would get him started, defending his choices and his cause against—well, Umu had never understood whom his father thought he was arguing
with.
No one on Crucival cared about the Clone Wars.

“You can still come back,” his father said instead, voice rising in pitch. “There’s enough room, and enough food. I can hide you from the Creed—I know I can.”

Umu flinched and planted his feet in the dust. He didn’t turn as he spoke. “The Creed serves us meat and honey and wine every night,” he said. “When I wake up, I smell fruit instead of someone’s waste in the street. I made
oaths
to them. Why would I
ever
go back with you?”

His father didn’t answer. Perhaps he’d walked away.

It was just as well. Everything Umu had said was true, but it wasn’t why he stayed with the Creed. He didn’t want to talk to his father about the Creed. Nor about the Malkhanis, nor about who he’d become since leaving home.

Not Hazram. Not Donin. Umu Seven.

There was a part of him, some vestigial instinct, that wanted to drop his sack and race after his father. To find him and—

But that was as far as the fantasy went. There was no “and.” No joyous childhood to reclaim. There was only the fear of an opportunity lost.

It was dusk when he reached Templemarch and the ancient cloister where the Creed dwelled. He’d missed the evening loyalty pledge, and he’d need to be up at midnight to atone. Yet no one scolded him, and he was met warmly as he walked among his fellows, distributing his acquisitions to the engineers and the weaponsmiths and the trade-masters.

As he rummaged through his sack, he was puzzled to find a small, bruised fruit—a sweet thorn pear, like the ones that stubbornly grew in the alleys. It almost fell from his hand when he realized that his father had somehow slipped it to him; his father had always been nimble, always able to play a trick when he set his mind to it.

Umu didn’t want it. Trembling softly, he placed it in the cloister’s storeroom before making his way to the sleeping court.

There, surrounded by the walls of the cloister, a hundred other followers of the Creed were stretched out on blankets or the yellow grass. Umu had to pick his way by starlight among the sprawled limbs of sleepers to reach his corner. In the shadows, plucking one blade of grass after the next, waited a girl perhaps a year or two older than Umu. She sat up with a tired groan and a smile.

“You’re back,” Pira Ten said.

“I’m back,” Umu said. He squatted on the ground near the girl and grinned. “I saw an alien in the market.”

“Shut up,” Pira said, smiling broadly. “You’re lying.” She was pressing a hunk of bread and cured fish into Umu’s hands. “Dinner.
Are
you lying? What was it?”

Umu laughed, and told Pira about the alien: yellow skin and horns, black eyes, like a demon out of myth. He
was
lying, but Pira liked aliens. Umu had concocted the story the moment he’d been assigned his task, embellished it when he’d left the cloister. He’d been looking forward to the lie most of the day.

He couldn’t tell if Pira believed him. That was okay.

“So no trouble then?” she asked when Umu’s story was done. She picked at the crumbs of Umu’s dinner. Her voice turned more serious. “Keffan got robbed just outside the bazaar last time. Still can’t move his fingers.”

“No trouble,” Umu said. “Mostly kind of boring.”

Pira nodded. “Boring can be good,” she said. “I know you’re itching for a shooting war, but—boring is good. A break can be good.”

“I’m not—” Umu started. Pira was holding back laughter, waiting for him to take the bait. Umu forced himself to bite back a protest, scowled, and began again. “When the shooting
does
start?” he said. “
Someone’s
going to get stabbed in the back.”

Pira cackled—too loud, though she managed to look half chagrined as others in the sleeping court glowered in her direction. Umu settled onto the grass, and the day’s earlier encounters seemed to seep out of him, into the soil and deep into Crucival.

There were worse fates than being Umu Seven. There were worse things than being among the Creed.

He’d found his family, and he was content.

METATESSU SECTOR

Day One Hundred Nine of the Mid Rim Retreat

Seven Years Later

The first attack came at midnight three days after Twilight’s departure from Coyerti. The
Thunderstrike
was floating with its escort at the edge of a lifeless system dominated by a crimson sun, racing to complete a maintenance shift as it plotted a course out of enemy territory.

When an Imperial destroyer jumped out of hyperspace and moved into firing range,
Apailana’s Promise
and its two X-wings responded swiftly enough to prevent any real damage to the
Thunderstrike.
The rebel forces were able to escape the frenetic battle at lightspeed, though one of the X-wings was crippled by a glancing turbolaser blow.

The second attack came thirty hours later. This time, the
Thunderstrike
was ambushed upon arrival in the Enrivi system, where Howl had hoped to put in for additional repairs. The attacking force consisted of a light cruiser and a squadron of TIE fighters. Even with one X-wing offline, Twilight managed to destroy the foe without difficulty.

The shock wave of the cruiser’s death throes—the blossoming detonation of its engines and weaponry—obliterated the ship’s own escape pods. As Howl later put it, the Imperial casualties were “deeply regrettable and unintended.” This didn’t prevent a raucous celebration from erupting afterward, in which Twilight soldiers broke out contraband drinks and toasted their pilots and gunners.

The pilots and gunners didn’t participate. They feared they’d be needed again, and soon.

The third attack came after another nineteen hours, despite two course changes made by the
Thunderstrike
to shake pursuers. In a swift hammer blow delivered in the Chonsetta system, a group of TIE interceptors hidden in a comet trail ravaged the starboard side of the troop transport before Twilight managed to flee.

By this time, even the most skeptical company members were convinced the Empire was tracking them through the endless depths of space. This was a novelty—even ignoring the fact that tracking ships in hyperspace was virtually impossible, Twilight Company had never been considered so strategically significant as to earn the Empire’s particular enmity. With the entire Rebellion on the run, why would anyone go to so much effort—sacrifice resources and lives—to wear down a single infantry unit?