Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (52 page)

“I thought I owed it to you to say so in person.” Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “Or as close as I can get, under the circumstances. Where I’m going next shouldn’t and won’t concern you. It’s best that our paths don’t cross again.”

For several seconds, the message continued in silence. Chalis’s eyes flickered to one side, then back to the recorder. When she spoke again, her matter-of-fact tone was replaced by something colder.

“Since I left Haidoral Prime to join your company, I’ve been humbled,” she said. “I’ve been humiliated. It’s not the first time, and I accept that as the price of survival.

“But
you
, Hazram Namir? I thought we recognized something in each other. I thought we had a kinship. Instead, you judged me the same way the Empire did: You thought my talent was for making promises instead of keeping them.”

She seemed to tremble for a moment. Then she stilled herself and went on.

“I could have won at Kuat,” she said. “I could have hurt the Empire. But you didn’t trust me.”

Then the hologram flashed into nonexistence and Namir was left alone.

NUMESIRA SECTOR

Five Days After the Siege of Inyusu Tor

For the first time in as long as she could remember, Everi Chalis—former governor of Haidoral Prime and emissary to the Imperial Ruling Council—was free to do as she pleased.

The hardest part about escaping Sullust had been swaying Captain Seitaron. The man had been surprisingly slow to permit Everi to take the blame for Prelate Verge’s murder; even slower to accept that Everi’s disappearance—not her death, which would leave contravening evidence—was the best means to erase all doubt as to her responsibility. Surely no one would be surprised by her traitorous flight from the scene of her ghastly crime.

The old man loathed her. He doubtless still wanted her dead. But his priorities were his crew and his desire to return to the comforts of his Academy; perhaps not in that order. And the more incompetent Verge appeared, the more attention would be diverted from Seitaron and the
Herald
to Everi herself. She had won the blind eye she needed to seize a fresh shuttle and depart, all using an argument barely plausible enough to pass muster.

Here’s to the malleable brains of guilt-ridden old men
, she thought, and raised her canteen to the million stars beyond the cockpit of her ship.

She thought of her last drink—her last
real
drink—back in Captain Evon’s quarters after the campaign on Mardona III. She thought of the company she’d kept and her mood curdled.

She could have told Namir in her message that she’d saved him and his whole company by forcing the
Herald
out of Sullust’s atmosphere. But what difference would it make? Let him think of her as he would. She owed him a farewell and nothing else.

No, she was done with Twilight Company. She was done
thinking
about Twilight Company. She’d invested too much effort and emotion into those people and received only pain in return.

She felt a tingling in her throat, the familiar start of a coughing fit. She made her body rigid, hissed a breath through her teeth, and forced it down.

The rebels were no longer looking over her shoulder, terrified she might betray them. The Empire was no longer sending spies and political officers to keep her prisoner in her own home. Since leaving Sullust, she’d spent the last handful of days ensuring her security and anonymity: trading the
Herald
’s shuttle for a civilian starcutter, draining the offworld financial accounts she’d set up years before … doing everything she should have done months earlier on Haidoral Prime before being forced to turn to the Rebellion for aid.

She had neither authority nor wealth, but she was free. She had all the tools she needed to build a new life.

She just needed to decide where to go next.

She had told Namir once that all she really wanted was time to sculpt, reasonable comforts, and a measure of respect. Maybe that was still true. She could find herself a forgotten little world at the edge of known space—something like her own homeworld—where she could afford a patch of land and provincial luxuries. She could pay children with treats to fetch her clay and spend her days relearning her craft. She had been a
good
artist once, before Count Vidian had taken her from the Colonial Academy and redirected her talent for visualization. She could be a good artist again, hidden on a planet beneath anyone’s notice while the rest of the galaxy fought and burned and fell into chaos.

What was the name of Namir’s homeworld? She could sell a few technological trinkets there and be set for decades.

Crucival.

Everi tapped at the ship’s console and began searching the navicomputer for coordinates.

As she did, she sipped her water again, imagined dampening a lump of clay and shaping it beneath her fingers. With enough time, she could fill her own gallery.

A gallery no one would ever bother to come see.

There were many reasons people might seek her out—her schematic of the Empire’s logistics, the secrets of Alliance High Command—but a viewing of her artwork was not among them. She smiled bitterly at the irony: She possessed information men would sacrifice armies to obtain, yet she was choosing to retire to a galactic backwater.

There
were
other options open to her. She could find buyers for her secrets despite the risk. She could play all sides in the civil war: not just the Rebel Alliance and the Empire, but the Crymorah, unaligned worlds. She could become a power broker, operating in the shadows but grudgingly respected by those who knew her name.

Respected by the self-declared rulers of the galaxy at last.

It was tempting. Of course it was tempting. It was past time her detractors understood what she was capable of.

She drummed her fingers on the console, drew in a long breath, and winced as the air touched the scars inside her throat.

She had decisions to make. A new life to build.

But there was no rush.

PLANET SULLUST

Five Days After the Siege of Inyusu Tor

Much to his surprise, Namir felt an emptiness after viewing Chalis’s final message. It was the same sort of emptiness he had felt years before after learning of his father’s death. He was mourning, to be certain, but he wasn’t sure
what
, precisely, he mourned.

Chalis had accused him of failing to put his trust in her. There might have been some truth to that—but true or not, the outcome would have been the same. He was responsible now for Twilight Company—not just its people or their goals, but the ideals Howl had set forth. The ideals that meant victory in sacrifice if the fight was worth fighting.

The worthy fight had been on Sullust, not Kuat. Choosing one over the other hadn’t been a betrayal of Chalis. If she wouldn’t see that, the fault was hers.

Still, there was no one in the company who would understand why he would miss her. He kept the message to himself.

That afternoon, he walked among the wounded in the medbay; among the salvage crews still picking at the wreckage of the
Thunderstrike;
among the mountain patrols lugging Plexes in case an Imperial airspeeder dared to approach. He tried to take in the mood, interpret his soldiers’ complex mix of pride and uncertainty and frustration and sorrow. He felt no regret over his most recent choices, and he sensed no anger directed toward him. That was something, at least.

He allowed himself to think about the dead only briefly. He’d asked Hober to prepare a funeral for that night—something using the resources on hand. The Pinyumb interim leadership had offered the assistance of Sullustan crypt masters and formal burial space in the caverns, but Namir had declined the offer; Twilight took care of its own, even after death.

As it turned out, the service took place in Pinyumb anyway, broadcast to the processing facility for those unable to attend. Instead of a vehicle charging station, Hober drained the last sparks of exhausted blaster packs into an array of emergency generators he’d somehow acquired from the Sullustans. “We’ll have a new ship sooner or later,” he told Namir. “It’ll need emergency power, and I’ll make damn sure these get used.”

The funeral went on almost four hours. Somehow, Hober and Von Geiz had found a speaker for every dead soldier, no matter if all his teammates had fallen. Namir stepped up three times for recruits he’d trained over the years. Gadren delivered four eulogies, including Roach’s: “Child of an age of Empire and war. Never broken and fiercer than us all.” Even Brand spoke out for an engineer and one of the ensigns from the
Thunderstrike
’s bridge crew.

The droids, too, received send-offs, as if they had been as alive as the rest of the company. Namir didn’t entirely understand, but it seemed to comfort the others. Even the
Thunderstrike
received a moment of honor as Hober drained one of its laser cannon plasma cells. “Ugly girl and meaner than sin!” Commander Tohna called, and the assembled soldiers cheered.

Afterward, a few dozen attendees filtered into a Pinyumb cantina that had volunteered to host a reception. Gadren, Brand, Twitch, and Tohna quickly located a deck of cards and began a game. Namir sat nearby, observing the hands and calling out corrections over his shoulder as Carver sat at the bar recounting the battle on Phorsa Gedd.

“The cards are lucky tonight!” Tohna declared after a competitive round. “You should join us, Captain.”

“I’m busy,” Namir said, and jutted a thumb back at Carver. Carver shouted something obscene. “Don’t let me slow you down.”

“You’ll never get him to join,” Brand said with a smirk. She’d been drinking just enough to loosen her lips.

Twitch snickered. Tohna looked to Gadren, who shrugged gently. “He thinks we do not know,” Gadren said.

“Know what?” Tohna asked.

Gadren glanced sidelong at Namir, who scowled at him. “I have spoken out of turn,” Gadren said, placating. “The captain’s choices are his own.”

Brand jumped in. “No sabacc games where he grew up,” she said. “He can’t admit he doesn’t know how to play.”

“I know how to play,” Namir snapped.

Twitch burst out laughing. Gadren looked contrite. Brand just leaned back in her chair and played a hand that won her the pot.

It wasn’t a bad night.

When most of the others had returned to the processing facility or to lodgings offered by the Sullustans, Namir walked with Gadren through the quiet streets of Pinyumb. “I want to hold an open recruit,” Namir said. “Noon tomorrow, if the Pinyumb council approves.”

Gadren nodded slowly. “You mean to continue Howl’s tradition?” he asked. “You have had concerns in the past.”

“Still do,” Namir said. “But Howl knew what he was doing. If this is how we fight, then that’s how we endure.”

He spoke with certainty. He’d already chosen the path; this was only the next step.

The citizens of Pinyumb trickled slowly into the market after the announcement went out. Some only came to question the Twilight recruiters before walking away. Others watched fearfully from a distance. But soon the line grew long, filled with a motley assortment of young and old, pampered and desperate. Namir recognized a few of the locals from his rounds with Nien Nunb on the night before the battle. He saw a withered Sullustan offer his expertise as a mechanic; an eager human youth who’d never fired a blaster volunteer to take up the fight against the Empire.

The open recruit continued into the evening and night. What the coming weeks would bring—for Sullust and for Twilight—remained in doubt, and the end of the war was no longer even the distant dream it had been on Hoth. Yet one thing was absolutely certain:

Twilight Company lived on.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.