Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (30 page)

But while the troops spoke quietly, ate food scrounged from Ankhural cantinas, and cleaned their weapons in the evening glow, it wasn’t a sense of
calm
they gave off. Namir watched them as he strolled down the orderly rows, saw them avert their gazes as he walked by. Shoulders tensed as a distant scream sounded from the city. They weren’t calm. They were dejected, nursing a grief sure to curdle into bitterness.

Namir didn’t blame them for that, either.

“How’re you feeling?”

Roach was picking her way among strewn bedrolls and camp heaters at Namir’s side. She wore a torn strip of cloth around her neck, ready to mask her face if the dust kicked up.

“Better,” he said. “Hydrated. I needed the rest, but Von Geiz cleared me for duty.”

Roach glanced over her shoulder, then back to Namir. “Good,” she murmured. “Sorry we broke the ship.”

Namir barked a laugh. His smile wilted almost immediately.
Sorry I lost the captain
was the only rejoinder that came to mind, and it seemed best left unsaid.

He looked Roach over, tried to guess why she’d come to him. A month earlier, he might have worried she’d be tempted by Ankhural’s vices, or suspected she’d seen or done something traumatic during the attack on the
Thunderstrike.
But at some point, unremarked, Roach had become a Twilight soldier instead of fresh meat. She was part of the unit, as comfortable as anyone, and if she needed moral support she could turn to Gadren or Charmer or a dozen others in the company.

Which meant there was something she needed the first sergeant for.

Roach wiped her hands on her trousers, cast another glance over her shoulder, and said, “Some of the guys are talking about leaving.”

Namir grunted, gave a curt nod. “Who?” he asked.

“Corbo,” Roach said, “and the other Haidoral meat. Plus some of Fektrin’s old squad.” She hesitated again. “They still want to
fight.
Just—”

“They don’t want to sit around waiting to get bombed,” Namir said. “I’ll handle it.”

They continued walking together as Namir made his rounds and watched the tents. Even he wasn’t sure what he was watching for. He knew exactly what the troops were feeling.

He didn’t mind Roach’s company. At least she didn’t blame him for bearing news of Twilight’s doom.

Howl was dead. The secret base of the Rebel Alliance was in ruins. High Command had fled to parts unknown. There were no new orders for Twilight Company, no grand plans to take back the Mid Rim and push onward to victory. All dreams had been crushed beneath the footpads of Imperial walkers.

It wasn’t the news Namir had wanted to bring. Not when he’d left Hoth, and not when he’d found nothing but debris and a hollowed-out freighter drifting through space at the flotilla’s rendezvous point. He hadn’t let himself fear, then—he’d drawn on the numbness he’d felt on Hoth and reminded himself that Twilight Company
always
survived its battles. No matter how dear the losses, no matter how bloody the fight or how bad the defeat, it
survived.

He’d focused on searching for anyone who was left. He owed them that.

He’d remembered the datachip Brand had handed him “in case of emergency” and followed its coordinates to Ankhural, a pirate backwater beyond the edge of Imperial space. He’d allowed a spark of hope to damage his numbness, imagined finding the
Thunderstrike
maimed but Twilight Company intact and determined to move on.

Instead he’d found a unit barely surviving on the dream of its captain’s return.

At a glance, the men and women of Twilight seemed as numerous as ever. By its losses alone, the company had seen worse days; this wasn’t the massacre at Asyrphus or the decimation on Magnus Horn. The casualties taken during the battle at the flotilla had been a blow, but not a crippling one, and the
Thunderstrike
could be repaired. But without Howl or Lieutenant Sairgon, with Commander Paonu and the rest of
Thunderstrike
’s bridge crew dead, the company had been decapitated—not a single ranking officer with command experience was left. The seniormost squad leaders and support staff had taken collective charge in the meantime, but stanching a bleeding neck was little use when the head was gone.

Now Namir had the dubious privilege of meeting with Hober and Von Geiz and his fellow senior officers every morning in the conference room, reading the engineers’ daily updates and Hober’s supply requisitions and pretending they did it all for a reason.

He brought up what Roach had told him about desertions at the next meeting. Only Von Geiz and Carver seemed genuinely surprised, though Mzun—who’d stepped in to lead Fektrin’s squad—let out a series of alien babblings that might have been outrage.

“We’ll split them up, assign them to separate repair crews for a bit. See if that cools things down,” Namir said. “And Corbo owes me a favor, so I can call that in. I just thought everyone should know this is where we stand.”

“I will speak to them,” Gadren said. He wasn’t a squad leader, but he had experience and Von Geiz—who was technically the highest-ranking officer still alive—liked him. No one opposed his presence under the circumstances.

Namir forced a tight smile. “You’re very good at speeches, but you’ll just remind them who you’re not. Unless you can solve that—”

“We can start with a funeral,” Hober said. “It’s past time.”

Von Geiz nodded. Gadren bowed his head. Mzun said something Namir couldn’t understand.

Namir looked impatiently at the others, waiting for someone to translate. No one did.

“We hold a funeral, every work crew we’ve got will want to be there. I’d say hold off until repairs are done,” Namir said. Then he laughed bitterly and leaned back in his seat. “But I’m guessing I’m outvoted.”

When Namir had returned from Hoth to find the flotilla missing, Chalis hadn’t argued with his decision to search for survivors. She hadn’t spoken at all after leaving the ice planet, despite the gradual fading of the bruise on her throat.

Her encounter with Darth Vader had left deeper wounds. Namir had seen troops cope with shell shock and trauma before, yet he had no warmth or patience to spare for the governor. His numbness was too valuable to lose. So he had let her sleep and sit alone. They had split a ration pack once a day from their swiftly dwindling stash. She had stayed out of the way, which was enough for Namir.

On Ankhural, he found her alone in the medbay an hour before Howl’s funeral. Her neck was blotched with green and yellow and her hair looked caked with dust. She was extracting a long feeding tube from her mouth when Namir entered; it seemed rude to observe, as if he were interrupting something deeply private, but she didn’t pause or acknowledge him.

When she’d hung the tube back at its station, Chalis looked at Namir from her seat on an exam table and waited.

“Howl’s funeral is tonight,” Namir said. “I thought you should know.”

Chalis nodded but said nothing.

That rankled Namir, though it took him long moments to reason
why.
Chalis was only alive because Howl had taken her in. Chalis was still with Twilight because she’d tried to rescue Howl on Hoth instead of fleeing.

Namir didn’t know what she really thought of the man. He didn’t particularly care. But she had to be reacting, deep inside her head. She’d bound herself to Howl too tightly to shrug off his passing. And Namir deserved to see her response—he’d saved her life more than once, and he was tired of being ignored.

When it became clear she had no intention of answering, he chose a different tack. “He’s not here to protect you anymore,” he said.

At this, Chalis tilted her head slightly.

“Find a way to contribute,” Namir said. “We need every hand we can get.”

Chalis closed her eyes as if she hadn’t heard and pressed a fingertip to her throat, tracing the bruise. Namir scowled at her and scraped his boot against the sterilized white floor. He was turning away when she finally spoke.

“Prelate Verge,” Chalis said. Her voice was no longer the sickly rasp it had been on Hoth, but she sounded like a dying woman all the same.

Namir turned the name over in his head. Brand had mentioned it—the man who’d led the attack on
Thunderstrike
at the flotilla.

“What about him?”

“He’s a child. A protocol droid fawns less on its master.” Flecks of spittle flew from her lips as she forced the words out. She withdrew a handkerchief from her pocket, wiped the droplets off her knees.

Namir’s irritation receded, replaced by bemusement. “So?” The battle at the flotilla was long since over. The enemy commander was the least of anyone’s concerns.

“Why was a pathetic boy attacking Twilight,” she said, “when Darth Vader was on Hoth?” Her eyes focused on Namir, a stern and deathly stare.

He didn’t have an answer. He didn’t even understand the question. Eventually, Chalis let out a long breath and lay back on the exam table. Namir stalked out of the medbay and decided to grapple with the problem of the governor another time.

“To ‘Howling Mad’ Micha Evon, first and only captain of Twilight Company and the best damn commander in the Alliance. The Empire is a safer place without him.”

It was Charmer’s toast, drawn-out and stilted but without a stutter. Namir raised his mug of steaming crimson fluid alongside Gadren, Brand, Twitch, and Nemenov—one of the X-wing pilots on leave from
Apailana’s Promise
, making a rare appearance among Twilight’s soldiers. Roach had volunteered to stay at the
Thunderstrike
on sentry duty. Another table of company troops sat just across the aisle in the roasting orange light of the Ankhural cantina, shouting their own toasts and stories of past battles.

“We’ll make him proud,” Brand said softly. The group drank together. Namir winced at the too-sweet, chemically fruity taste of the wine.

The funeral had been simple, in the Twilight Company tradition. In an effort to bolster morale, Namir and the other senior officers had agreed to allow squads out afterward on limited leave. It couldn’t make things any worse, Namir supposed, and he had to admit it felt like some normalcy had returned. He was in the Clubhouse again, watching Ajax cheat at cards; he was on Vanzeist, celebrating a win against the Imperials with the locals.

“Came up to me on Bamayar,” Twitch said into her drink. Gadren and Charmer leaned forward to listen. “After we took that stinking port—”

“Chenodra,” Brand said.

Twitch shrugged. “Chenodra. Came up to me during the cleanup. Thought I’d messed up bad, with what Ajax and me had done. Howl started talking about the
buildings
instead—something about the arches and columns. Like I cared? Guy was a freak.”

“There was no subject outside his interests,” Gadren said. “Fektrin believed Howl had been a teacher before the war. It would explain much.”

“Sairgon knew who he used to be,” Brand said. “They were close.”

Namir rotated his mug and smirked bitterly. “But Sairgon’s gone, too, so the mystery remains. Howl dies a legend.”

“We knew his heart,” Gadren said, “and his passions. Was he really so mysterious?”

Namir shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Where I come from,
anyone
with the gall to lead an army dies a legend. It’s the last thing you can give.”

“I don’t follow,” Nemenov said.

The others shifted uncomfortably. It wasn’t the right topic for the night, Namir knew. He blamed the drink for his rudeness and didn’t stop talking. “It’s a lot easier,” he said, “to fight over a legend than it is over politics or religion. You don’t even need to
pretend
to think things through. You die a legend, your followers are set with an excuse to keep warring for generations.”

Gadren’s tone was patient and conciliatory. “Then we must take pains to remember Howl as a man, not a myth, and avoid such a trap.”

The others nodded tensely, all eyes on Namir. He forced himself to smile and conceded the point with a small, dismissive gesture. He hadn’t come to the cantina to argue.

The conversation moved on. Between fresh rounds of drinks and filthy jokes from Twitch and Charmer’s gentle goading of Nemenov, the group told stories of Howl and Twilight Company. Brand reminisced about the open recruit on Demiloch, when Howl had been shot by an Imperial spy pretending to be fresh meat; when he’d woken up two days later, he’d been incensed to learn that Sairgon had called an early end to the recruitment drive. Charmer spoke of the dark days after the company’s losses on Magnus Horn, when the Alliance had tried to reassign the survivors to other infantry units; Howl had fought to keep his troops together and saved the company from obliteration.

Late in the evening, after Namir had bribed the bartender into ignoring the shattered mugs and broken chair at the second Twilight table, the mourners began to drift back to the
Thunderstrike
in twos and threes. Even tipsy, no one was stupid enough to make the trip alone. Eventually, Gadren and Namir were the only ones left.

“I never liked him, you know,” Namir said.

“I know,” Gadren replied. His skin looked like embers in the angry cantina light.

“I still can’t picture a Twilight Company without him.”

Gadren nodded slowly and folded two hands together. A low trilling sound came from his throat, as if he were holding back words that struggled valiantly to escape. “There is truth to what you said about legends,” he finally admitted. “It is easier to fight when a symbol is close at hand.

“We are all dedicated to the struggle against the Empire. I doubt no one’s bravery, nor anyone’s understanding of the profound evil our age confronts. But Howl focused our hopes, and if Twilight is to endure … it needs that focus. A dream. A
goal.
”

“Or something,” Namir said.

“Or something,” Gadren agreed.

“Right now,” Namir said, “we’ve barely got a ship.”

Gadren laughed, as if that concerned him not at all. “The captain,” he said, “never worried about strength of numbers or equipment. He believed so long as he acted according to his tenets, Twilight could not be killed.”

“He was a zealot,” Namir said.