Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (51 page)

Her uncle watched her closely, though he tried not to show it. She could have sabotaged his operation, but what was the point?

She felt the eyes of the cantina regulars on her as she carried a tray to a table occupied by mineral processing workers. The facility wouldn’t be back online for a week or more, so the old men had time to spare.

“I know who you are,” one of the workers said.

She recognized the speaker—a withered Sullustan with drooping ears and jowls. He’d been the first to speak openly against the Emperor in her presence, months earlier. The others had been terrified. She hadn’t reported him.

He reached out with a wrinkled hand and gripped her wrist gently. She wanted to slap him away, but she made herself smile. She couldn’t afford to make trouble. “I’m not trying to hide it,” she said, low and sharp.

The old Sullustan patted her wrist twice and let go. “We all pick sides,” he said. “No shame in picking the wrong one.”

Thara stared at the Sullustan in surprise. Then she left the tray on the table and walked away.

Not everyone was pleased that Pinyumb had joined the Rebellion. She knew how to interpret disquieted murmurs, weary asides that held a subtext of displeasure.
Instability
was the watchword among Sullustans who feared what the Rebellion might do to their home.

They didn’t dare speak their defiance openly. Neither did she. But she wanted to turn back to the old man and ask for all of them:
Who says I picked the wrong side?

She loved her uncle and she loved Pinyumb, but her colleagues were dead. She wore a bandage over her stomach and couldn’t move faster than a hobble anymore. If the Empire came back, she had every intention of rejoining the stormtrooper legions.

And yet …

… the very thought of taking up a rifle against the people in her cantina made her tremble. Drops of water and tea and ale spilled down the sides of the glasses she carried to and from the bar.

She hoped the peace lasted a little while.

PLANET SULLUST

Three Days After the Siege of Inyusu Tor

Over a third of the company was dead. Another hundred Twilight members, give or take, were hurt badly enough to be off the active duty roster. Namir was certain some would never return to Twilight. Others would retire from combat roles and join the decimated support staff; there had been no noncombatants in the siege, and Twilight Company was now as short on medics and engineers as it was on soldiers. Even the loss of domestic labor droids aboard the
Thunderstrike
left the company wanting chefs and translators and mechanics.

Gadren was among the wounded. He’d lost an arm to a grenade during the final hours of the conflict. “We’re built sturdier than humans, with limbs to spare!” he declared more than once in the days after, in the same tone every time—as if it was a mantra instead of a joke. Despite the injury, despite Von Geiz’s disapproval, he spent his mornings with the
Thunderstrike
’s salvage crew, searching the wreckage for supplies and equipment and the personal effects of friends.

Roach was among the dead. Gadren had told Namir the story of her heroic final charge. “She dived into the flood of combatants, red hair flying like a banner, silent and determined. A speeder bike laden with explosives raced toward us without a pilot. She vaulted over stormtroopers, stung by bolt after bolt but never hit full force, until she had a clear shot at the speeder. Then everything flashed in fire and she died our savior.”

“Is any of that true?” Namir had asked.

“There are no certainties in battle,” Gadren had said, his voice low and haunted.

No one else Namir spoke to had seen Roach fall. He let Gadren tell the story the way he wanted. He didn’t think Roach would mind.

He did wonder why she’d chosen that name.

He wished he’d known her better.

He said as much to Brand as they picked their way along the upper slope of the mountain. Officially, they were checking for anything dangerous that might impact workers traveling from Pinyumb to the processing facility—unexploded ordnance or dormant mines—though neither was especially suited to the job.

“Not much to do about it now,” Brand said. Namir started to snap at her, but she kept talking. “Roach was okay. Didn’t need you. You did your part.”

Namir nodded and knelt to the rocks, picked up a dagger of slate and tossed it down the slope. “I get that. But the only reason I’m still here—”

I don’t want to fight alongside strangers
, he thought. What was the point of being worthy of his friends if they all slipped away? But he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

Brand didn’t seem to hear him anyway. They continued their descent, occasionally passing a mortar-pounded crater or the body of a soldier that had been picked apart by ash angels.

“I miss them, too,” Brand said after a while. It sounded like a denunciation, as if she expected better of herself. She stopped walking, and Namir drew close to her side. They stood in silence until Brand spoke again.

“Why do I always survive?”

He studied her, found that her mask was no more revealing than her face. “I don’t know. Some of us just do, I guess.” It was an unsatisfying answer. All he could do was commiserate. “
I
survive.”

“You’re still young. Practically Roach’s age.”

“I’ve been doing this—”

“—longer than most of us. I know. But it’s not the same.”

She started to walk again, but her strides were slow and measured.

“I need you, you know,” Namir called. “We’re still here because of you.” Because of things she’d said. He indicated the mountain with a gesture of his chin. His tone was somber. It was a statement, not a question or a plea.

“Not me. Because of Howl,” Brand said. Then she turned to him, locked eyes as well as she could with her mask on.

“We did
good
,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Pinyumb was free and its Imperial masters had fled, surrendered, or defected. The city’s not-insubstantial defenses were under civilian control, guaranteeing at least a brief stay of execution. Pirate broadcasts and intercepted Imperial signals indicated that other insurrections had begun across the planet; those, too, would delay the Empire’s inevitable counterattack.

Namir knew all this because Nien Nunb’s rebel cell had harangued him into joining daily meetings of the city’s interim government. The meetings were torment, full of debate about who was to administer what water treatment system and whether the cavern’s artificial night should be shortened during reconstruction. Namir’s only role was to speak up when military concerns arose and to occasionally volunteer his troops for menial tasks.

Namir was relieved, at least, that neither he nor the other Twilight soldiers who spent time in Pinyumb were celebrated as heroes—the Sullustans were too busy and too pragmatic for that, and had suffered enough of their own losses. Yet now and then a Sullustan would approach and murmur quiet thanks, or an old human woman would press a gift of flowers or fruit or etched metal into his hands.

“Sullust will change,” Nien Nunb told him at the end of each meeting. Corjentain translated it the first time. The others Namir figured out for himself.

After the meetings, Namir would walk through the streets of Pinyumb—streets that had been empty only a few days before and were now packed with people—and absorb the sights of the weird and wondrous cavern. He strolled along the banks of the turquoise streams and ran his fingers through the yellow dust that coated the rocks. Without his people around, he had no need to feel embarrassed.

Yet there was no escaping his responsibilities. Along with the meetings in Pinyumb, Namir faced the burden of predawn conferences with the remnants of Twilight Company’s leadership. “The interim government wants us around for two more weeks, at least,” he told them on the fourth day after the siege. “Once they feel secure, we’ll get out of the way; ease the threat, make the Empire a little less eager to reduce this area to slag. Not a lot of time, I know, but it should be enough to either get the
Thunderstrike
working or find alternative transport.”

“Let’s stick with the second option,” Vifra muttered. Namir winced. The dig teams’ efforts to unleash the mountain’s lava had left her with only a handful of engineers.

“What about after?” Carver asked.

“You mean what about Kuat?” Namir replied, as casually as he could.

Carver nodded. Hober averted his eyes. Von Geiz stared intently at Namir. The others watched and waited.

“Not an option anymore,” Namir said, “for all the obvious reasons.”

“Then what—” Carver began.

Namir interrupted him. “We’ve got plenty of time. Start thinking. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get new orders. If not, we’ll find something that works.”

There would be grumbling, among both the senior staff and the rank and file. That didn’t concern Namir—there was always grumbling, and he’d done his share when Howl had been in charge. But taking into account everything lost in the prior months, Twilight had become a shadow of its former self. So many dead, so many wounded, so much equipment destroyed and resources expended … optimistically, the company was at one-third strength. For the moment, its ambitions needed tempering.

Namir listened to updates on salvage operations, on the recuperation of the wounded, and on the repairs of the
Apailana’s Promise
—the gunship had escaped its battle with the
Herald
with its laser batteries drained and its deflectors overheated but its hull, stunningly, intact. As the meeting drew to a close and the attendees filed out of the facility conference room, Namir caught Gadren by the shoulder and drew him aside.

“You going back to the
Thunderstrike
?” Namir asked.

“That was my intent,” Gadren said. “It seems where I can be the most use.”

He might as well have said
My squad is gone.
Except Brand, but Brand didn’t take orders.

“
I’ve
got another use for you,” Namir said. “You’re good with civilians. Want to be my liaison to Pinyumb?”

Gadren smiled slowly, sadly, as he looked down on Namir. “That is not necessary,” he said.

“It is for my sanity,” Namir said. “I’m doing twice the work I was before and I have no one to gripe to. You know this company as well as anyone.” All of which was true. His desire to share the burden was genuine; as was his desire to keep Gadren close, for both their sakes.

Gadren closed his eyes and flexed three sets of meaty fingers. A low hum came from his throat, deep enough that Namir seemed to feel it in his bones. “Very well,” he said. “For now. But I cannot be your lieutenant, or …
her.
”

Namir smirked and shook his head. “Fine. But you couldn’t do a worse job than she did.” He said it because he hoped to win over Gadren and because
she
was an easy target.

It was, however, a lie.

For all Chalis’s faults, she had done well by Twilight Company. The mistakes had been Namir’s.

Namir had not heard any news of the governor since Brand had reported her flight down the mountain. He suspected she was alive, though it was only a hunch; her body might have been incinerated by the lava or lost to scavenging ash angels. Either way, she was no longer his responsibility. Even Howl, he suspected, would have conceded that point.

For reasons he couldn’t explain, however, Namir found himself often looking to the bronze bust in his office, studying the stern face and wondering about the hands that shaped it. He was eyeing the statue five days after the siege when a voice announced through his comm, “Captain? There’s a recorded message coming in for you. Source unknown, rebel encryption codes.”

Namir frowned. “Specifically for me?”

“Yes, sir. By name.”

That seemed unusual for a message from Alliance High Command—had anyone even told the rebel leaders Howl was dead?—but it was a mystery easily solved. “Send it over,” Namir said.

The holodisplay on his terminal flickered to life. Azure static coalesced into a once-youthful face invaded by the gentle lines of age. The woman lacked the darkness under her eyes Namir had grown familiar with, though her hair seemed grayer than ever and long, half-healed scratches marked her cheeks and chin.

“Sergeant,” the recording of Everi Chalis said. “I hear you won on Sullust, so I’m assuming you’re still alive. Congratulations.”

Namir realized his shoulders had tensed and forced them to relax. Chalis’s voice was rusty, but it wasn’t only the usual hoarseness he heard—her accent had changed, and for the third time since they’d met it was neither entirely foreign nor entirely familiar. Namir had come to think of it as her natural inflection, native to whatever world, like Crucival, she’d once come from.

But she spoke with the casual haughtiness that was her manner around men and women she disdained.

“As for me,” she said, “I’m very far from Sullust and I won’t be returning to Twilight Company or the Rebellion. We never really were a good match, even when our goals looked similar. You made that clear to me in the end.