Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars (35 page)

“You realize we can’t ever meet again,” Ciena had said as Thane held her close. He’d already started his ridgecrawler, the motor’s hum almost lost in the fierce
winds.

“We said
that last time.”

“It’s different now. You shouldn’t have come back this time, and I—I don’t know if I’ll ever return again.”

“We keep telling each other good-bye,” Thane had whispered into her ear. “When am I finally going to believe it?”

She didn’t answer, because she couldn’t. Even if she and Thane never saw each other again, she knew that in some ways their bond would endure. He
was too much a part of her to be
completely lost, not as long as she lived.

It was some consolation, but not much.

The magistrate didn’t even look up from his screens as he pronounced judgment. “Guilty of embezzlement and fraud against representatives of the Emperor. Sentenced to six years’
labor in the mines.”

Ciena felt the verdict like poison injected into her veins—agonizing
down to the bone.
Hard labor?
Jelucan had banned that as a punishment nearly a century ago, and even then had
limited it to those accused of violent crimes. Her mother was a middle-aged woman, never particularly tall or strong; how was she supposed to endure long days of hauling heavy ore? With modern
mine-droids, there was no need for anyone to do that kind of backbreaking work. The sentence
was both primitive and punitive…and had been levied against a woman the judge
had
to know
was innocent.

Verine Ree didn’t even glance at her husband and daughter as she was led away; Ciena realized they wouldn’t be given a chance to say good-bye.

“This is impossible,” she whispered as everyone else filed out of the courtroom, leaving only Ciena and her father behind. “A mockery of justice—”

“Say nothing more.”

“Of course.” There were probably recording devices somewhere in the room. “We can’t have more trouble.”

“No, Ciena. You should not speak against your government, ever, under any circumstances.”

“Pappa—how can you say that
today
?”

Paron Ree folded his hands together as solemnly as a village elder. “Because we gave our loyalty to the Empire on the day Jelucan
was annexed. Because we do not betray our word, even when
we are betrayed in return. Otherwise we are no better than they are.” His eyes blazed, but his voice remained low and calm. “This life has never been one made for fairness or justice.
We endure, and we prevail not as crude matter but in the realm of the spirit.”

She had grown up believing that so devoutly, and now the words sounded
hollow. Ciena could not take comfort in anger or in faith. All she could do was put her arms around her father and hope his
beliefs sustained him more than they did her.

“And was justice done on Jelucan, Lieutenant Commander Ree?”

“Sir. Yes, sir.”

Ciena stood at attention in ISB officer Ronnadam’s office, staring past him at the small circle of starfield revealed through his one
window. Her hands were clasped tightly behind her
back, palms sweaty.

Captain Ronnadam studied her for what seemed to be too long a time. His thin mustache twitched once, but she could not tell whether he felt amusement or irritation. “Your mother was
guilty, then.”

“The evidence presented was very clear, sir.”

“You surprise me, Ree.” His tone made it impossible to know whether
that was a good thing, and his eyes were narrow. He held her in contempt for doing the very thing he had forced
her to do. Did he recognize his own hypocrisy? Probably not. “Very well. You have used two weeks’ leave, but otherwise your record remains unblemished. I believe we can expect a
promotion in your near future.”

Ronnadam honestly thought she would betray her own mother just for
the sake of advancement. Ciena dug her fingernails into her palms, using the pain to steady herself. “Thank you,
sir.”

Do your duty. Keep the course. There is good here in so many of the people who serve. I owe it to them to fulfill my oath and learn how I can help save the Empire from its own
corruption.

They were noble sentiments, and she meant them. Yet in her mind she imagined
saying all this to Thane, and he only shook his head.

T
HANE MADE IT back to the
Liberty
just in time. Corona Squadron was already preparing to move—not in the frenzy that followed any
threat of imminent attack
but quickly enough that he would have missed them if he’d returned a few hours later.

“Mr. Kyrell. How kind of you to join us,” said the Contessa as she walked through the hangar, where pilots busily loaded astromech droids and checked ration packs. He nodded at her
but didn’t slow his steps until he’d walked straight to General Rieekan.

“Kyrell.” Rieekan hardly looked away from his
tablet. He stood in the center of the activity; a firework spray of blue-white sparks rose from a nearby welding torch. The air smelled
of rubber and fuel. “Excellent. You’ve got two hours until takeoff.”

Thane stood at attention with his chin slightly lifted, the way he’d learned at the academy. The old training had kicked in the first moment he’d acknowledged he might have screwed
up.
“Sir. I need to report my movements during my absence.”

“This is a volunteer army, remember? You’re free to come and go as you please, as long as you observe all security protocols.”

“I returned to my homeworld of Jelucan to—assist a friend in trouble,” Thane said. Rieekan didn’t glance up until Thane added, “My friend is an officer in the
Imperial Starfleet.”

That did it. Rieekan
stared, and all around him the buzz of work began falling silent. Thane could almost feel the eyes on him, as hot as searchlights.

General Rieekan’s decibel level rose markedly. “You made contact with an enemy officer.”

“Yes, sir.” Thane offered nothing more. He knew he had to report it, but he’d be damned if he’d apologize for seeing Ciena.

“That’s highly irregular, Kyrell,” Rieekan
said. “But you concealed your activities with the Rebel Alliance from this officer?”

“…Lieutenant Commander Ree was already aware I had joined the Rebellion. Sir.”

Murmurs rose around him; by then, he’d drawn a crowd. From the corner of his eye, Thane could see shocked expressions on the faces of Yendor, Smikes, and Kendy. However, he never turned
away from Rieekan.

“How the hell
did she know that?” Rieekan’s alarm was very real. “Do we have a double agent feeding them intel?”

“No, sir. Not regarding this. She—she had identified me based on Imperial battle footage.” Nobody would believe it if he confessed that Ciena had known him only by the way he
flew. They were the only two people who could ever understand that.

Rieekan accepted this explanation, which was
a relief, but Thane wasn’t out of trouble yet. “Are you absolutely sure this officer lacked any opportunity to place a tracking device on
your vehicle or your person?”

“It didn’t happen, sir.” He wasn’t going to get into the many things Ciena had had an opportunity to do to his person. “I guarantee that. At no point did I share
any information about Rebellion members, bases, or activities.
Nor did she ask. This was a personal matter.”

“Personal.” Rieekan shook his head. “We’ll scan you and your ship. If those scans check out, we’ll let this drop.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And we can take it as a given that you’re not going to make contact with any Imperial officer ever again?”

Thane remembered their final moments together in front of her house, the way her fingers had
tightened around the collar of his jacket as if she could hold him there by will alone. “Yes,
sir.”

“Very well. Just for the record, Kyrell? The galaxy is full of women who
don’t
fight for the enemy.”

With that, Rieekan walked off. A couple of the droids zoomed in on Thane’s X-wing to search it. That left him to finally face the rest of Corona Squadron. The other pilots had already
gathered around, their expressions displaying everything from disbelief to outrage. Smikes spoke first. “You abandoned your post to
bang your ex
? The
lieutenant commander in the
Imperial Starfleet
ex?”

Thane refused to be cowed. “They’re about to promote her to commander.”

People groaned. Obviously, he was going to be the least popular member of Corona Squadron for some time to come—a
loose cannon, someone who would take risks for no reason. Fine by him. As
long as they didn’t doubt his allegiance, Thane didn’t give a damn what they thought of his choices.

“We all have to put our pasts behind us.
All of us
. That includes even the people on our side, much less Imperial loyalists.” The Contessa had never showed anger before, but
she did now.

“That doesn’t mean we’re
never supposed to acknowledge the people we love ever again,” he retorted.

“Oh, great,” Smikes moaned. “He’s talking about
love.
This is going nowhere fast.”

Yendor, more calmly than the others, leaned against the strut of the nearest starfighter and said, “You realize this Imperial woman of yours would kill us all, right?”

That did it. Thane got in Yendor’s face. “You don’t know Ciena.
I do. I made a choice based on that knowledge. None of you were endangered, or even
affected
, so
it’s none of your damned business.”

In the silence that followed, he backed away from Yendor, whose hands were raised in the gesture that meant, on every planet,
Hey, man, simmer down
. Thane figured the only productive
thing he could do right then was report to 2-1B for the scans. But as he
turned to go, Kendy spoke almost under her breath: “You’re going to tear yourself apart.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Thane said only, “She’s still Ciena,” and walked off.

Kendy would understand that, probably. Nobody else would. He didn’t care. It was his own business if he crossed the galaxy, or broke his heart, or steered his X-wing straight into the core
of a star.

The rebel fleet’s
new base was on an uninhabited planet so small and obscure it had no name, only the numerical designation 5251977. This world’s rotation moved
slowly, meaning days and nights each lasted the equivalent of several weeks on most planets; for now, the Rebellion hid in the enduring darkness.

Thane’s first thought as he took his X-wing in to land was that they’d built a much larger hangar than
usual this time. The scale of the structure reminded him more of Imperial
facilities than the hasty makeshift setups the Rebel Alliance had to rely on. When he came in through the shield doors, however, he realized why the building was so enormous—it had to be. In
the previous two months, the size of the rebel armada seemed to have doubled.

“What happened?” Thane asked, flight helmet under
one arm, as Corona Squadron went to report in. He wondered if the Empire had destroyed another world or committed another atrocity
so horrific that a huge swath of the galaxy had finally had enough.

Most of the others ignored him, but Yendor replied, “Usually they don’t bring the whole fleet together like this. A couple divisions stay separate, just in case, you know? Not
anymore. Rumor
has it something big is planned.”

“We have new recruits, as well,” the Contessa said, pointing to several nonregulation ships that stood around them. While these kinds of ships had always been a part of the fleet,
there were definitely more than usual and more people milling around who had no uniforms, only Rebellion patches hastily applied to their coveralls. Even as the war grew more pitched
and more
deadly, recruits continued to flock to the rebel cause. If that kept up, Thane thought, they might actually have a shot. He could see several individual starfighters, a few Dornean gunships, and
one freighter that seemed to have been put together out of the parts of at least a dozen other ships—

A broad smile spread across Thane’s face as he yelled, “The
Mighty Oak Apocalypse
!”

The rest of Corona Squadron turned to him with expressions suggesting that he had well and truly lost his mind. He didn’t care, because now people were spilling out of the ship to run
toward him—Brill grinning through her pink fur, JJH2 rolling toward him and whistling, Methwat wearing his version of a smile, and behind the rest, roaring her welcome, Lohgarra.

“About time you guys showed
up!” Thane said, laughing, as he submitted to a wooly Wookiee hug. Lohgarra growled plaintively, and Thane somehow resisted rolling his eyes. “I am
not
too thin.”

“We refitted the whole ship,” Brill said with pride. “New shields, new dampeners. She’s toting guns from more kinds of fighters than you can count on both hands. Or
claws. Tentacles. Whatever you have.”

“Ready for action,
huh?” Now that he’d had a moment to think about it, he wasn’t surprised Lohgarra and the
Moa
had joined the Rebellion at last. Still, there was
something great about knowing that so many of the people he cared about now stood by his side. It took him back to the moment he’d chosen to join the Rebellion in the first place, and
reminded him why when he needed that memory the most.