Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (18 page)

Namir felt the desperation under the questions. These were soldiers who’d just seen their friends die, who’d spent the last months losing every piece of territory they’d gained. Of course they wanted hope. Of course they saw Alliance Command as inspiration.

Namir couldn’t share that hope, and he couldn’t bring himself to darken the mood of his comrades further—not when every other conversation in the room revolved around Fektrin or Ajax or Cappandar, people who’d sacrificed themselves to get Twilight to safety. Yet he was being separated from Twilight when the company needed him. At the rebel base, there would be a place for Howl, a place for Chalis—maybe even one for Roja and Beak—but not for Namir.

Maediyu passed Namir a bottle of something strong—she’d been unusually solicitous toward him ever since he’d saved her from burning to death outside Chalis’s air lock—and that helped him endure the evening. Well past midnight, the tone of the gathering began to shift as the old grudges among the dead were recounted. When Twitch stumbled in and someone blamed Ajax for Fektrin’s death, she threw the first punch of the day.

Seeing Twitch start a fight didn’t surprise Namir. Seeing Roach, of all people, hold Twitch back and calm her
did
surprise him, but perhaps it shouldn’t have. Roach was a scrapper.

After the fight, after the Clubhouse had nearly emptied, Namir found himself seated in a corner with Brand. He didn’t remember when she’d joined him there, but she looked at him sternly and said, “Behave yourself when you’re out there. Don’t be stupid.”

“You don’t think much of me, do you?” Namir asked, his voice husky with exhaustion.

“Never did,” Brand said.

“Is that why we get along?”

“That’s me being tolerant, you not asking stupid questions. Usually.”

For once, he caught her smiling. Or something close enough to it.

“I need you to look out for these people,” Namir said. “When I’m gone. You have
sense
they don’t.”

“Can’t promise that.”

“You can,” Namir said, quiet and intense.

“Not the way you want,” Brand said. She didn’t look at him as she spoke, measured and calm. “I turned my back on
sense
when I met Howl. There are things more important than surviving.”

She hesitated. Namir searched for an argument before she interrupted with, “I will try. You know that.”

He nodded. “Look out for them,” he murmured again.

Brand reached into her pocket and held out a slender metal rectangle in the dim Clubhouse light. A datachip. She passed it to Namir, who looked at it curiously.

“In case of emergency,” she said.

Without another word, she was gone from Namir’s side.

Namir slept an hour that night before waking and packing his gear in the dark of the barracks. Even as a child, he’d learned how to sleep no matter his location or state of mind—though sleep never guaranteed
rest.

The morning shift hadn’t yet come on duty and the corridors of the
Thunderstrike
were nearly empty as Namir groggily marched to the mess hall. Eating was something else he’d learned to do no matter the circumstances, and supplies would be limited on the shuttle to the rebel base. When he stepped inside the mess, he wasn’t shocked to see another human face, but he hadn’t expected to see Governor Chalis so early in the day. She sat at a table sipping from a steaming metal bowl, not looking at Namir as he entered.

That was fine with Namir. He wasn’t looking for conversation.

When he’d filled a tray with what scraps the galley droid could provide—the fresh meat and vegetables they’d stolen from Haidoral Prime were long gone, leaving Namir with a breakfast of mashed grains swimming in artificial spices and a formulated nutrient drink with the texture and taste of gravel—he sat at the table adjacent to Chalis’s and began to eat. He hadn’t managed a spoonful before he heard her say, “You shouldn’t have listened.”

He exhaled between his teeth and stiffened on the table bench. “Listened to what?” he asked.

Chalis took another long sip from her bowl, then gestured around its rim. “The droid,” she said. “That paste you’re eating is a disaster. Better to take the kernels, soak them in hot water until they swell. The soup’s an acquired taste, but it’s better than what you’ve got.” She glanced in the direction of the galley. “It also stretches out the supply longer, since that seems to be an issue for you.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be under guard?” Namir asked.

Chalis shrugged. “We leave for the base in three hours,” she said. “In the words of Captain Evon:
How much harm can she do?
”

Namir grunted and swallowed a spoonful of the mash. It was, as promised, awful. “Where would you be without his support?” he asked.

“Where indeed?” Chalis replied.

They ate in silence awhile before Chalis spoke again. “It wasn’t my idea, you know—bringing you on this trip. It doesn’t benefit me. But I didn’t tell your captain you abandoned me on the freighter, either.”

“Should I be grateful?”

“No. But you also shouldn’t hold a grudge.”

Namir half laughed, half coughed around his mash. “Once you’re safely away from Twilight? I don’t plan to think about you one way or another. You’ve done your damage.”

Chalis looked down into her dish and smiled. The silence stretched longer this time.

“
I
think,” she said, “your captain believes you could
learn
something from this trip. He wants you to see the Rebellion at its best. Maybe come away inspired.”

That thought hadn’t occurred to Namir. The mash felt heavy in his stomach. He kept eating.

Chalis stood from her table and carried her bowl to the washstand. Namir kept his eyes on his food but couldn’t help tracking her in his peripheral vision. She walked back toward him, seated herself at the opposite corner of his table. “I’m going to give you some advice, Sergeant, because you’ve been useful to me and I think you need it. You can listen or not.”

This time, it wasn’t the words that caught Namir’s attention. Her voice shifted as she spoke, rising in pitch and losing that odd, artificial enunciation. It took on a new accent—not entirely foreign and not entirely familiar—that brought back memories of a world Namir hadn’t seen in years.

Chalis shrugged, and when she spoke again, the accent was gone. “You’re from Khuteb? Promencius Four? One of those Old Tionese colonial backwaters, I imagine, though I can’t place the dialect.”

“One of those,” Namir said, almost too soft to hear.

“Fine,” Chalis said. “So you’ve barely seen a working sanitation station by the time you’re ten years old. The Rebellion comes and uplifts you, gives you food”—there was some scorn to the word, accentuated by a flap of her hand toward Namir’s tray—“and shelter. Not much, but it’s an improvement. Naturally, you pledge your allegiance to your saviors. Am I close so far?”

“By what definition is this
advice
?”

Chalis laughed. “Give me some credit, Sergeant. We’re getting there.”

Namir waited.

Chalis continued, “My point is, you survived and climbed out of a scum pit most people never escape. That’s all well and good, but you’re so grateful for the scraps you’ve got now that you’ve quit striving for anything better.”

“
Better
like being governor? Or
better
like living in an air lock?” Chalis shrugged again, unperturbed. “I’m not going to say this has been a banner year for me. Even Haidoral was a punishment, but it wasn’t so bad—I had respect, I had comfort, I had time to sculpt. That’s all I ever really wanted. If Vader hadn’t been waiting for an excuse to execute me …”

As Namir listened, he noticed her accent shifting again—not to mimic anything he recognized, but in a subtle drawl, in stretched vowels. Her posture shifted as well, her square shoulders easing into an arc, her head and hands moving more casually.

For the first time, he felt the governor wasn’t attempting to manipulate him.

“You know the rest,” she said. “I’m here now, and if I need to overthrow the Empire to get my life back, so be it.”

“Is that what you plan to tell Alliance High Command?”

Chalis wrinkled her nose. “Please—there are things they need me to say about ‘Imperial oppression,’ and I’ll say them. That’s called
diplomacy.
” She paused. “The irony is, I don’t think they’re altogether wrong.” She leaned forward, one elbow casually placed on the tabletop. “They believe the Empire is squeezing more of its citizens every year for the benefit of a shrinking elite—taking away
liberty
and
comfort
from the masses to feed the insatiable appetite of the Emperor and the Ruling Council.

“That much is true, and I have the numbers to prove it. Where the Rebellion deludes itself is in thinking the trend won’t ever slow or stop. That the inevitable end is—” Here, her voice took a tone of mock-solemnity. “—utter desolation and hopelessness for every living being … save the Emperor himself.”

She was enjoying herself now, energized. “They’re so convinced of their
righteousness
that they don’t see how infeasible their nightmare scenario really is,” she said. “The Ruling Council doesn’t need stormtroopers overseeing every moisture farm, or every habitable planet converted to a factory world. At a certain point, even Palpatine has to look at the Empire and say,
Good enough.
”

Chalis shook her head and sighed, an exasperated smile on her face. Watching her, Namir realized she wasn’t simply
not manipulating
him—it was the first conversation he’d had in as long as he could remember with someone who didn’t see the galaxy as an ideological battleground. That didn’t make the governor any less appalling, but next to Howl’s meandering philosophy and Gadren’s zealous dedication, it seemed comfortably honest.

Or perhaps not. Pieces of a puzzle locked together in his mind and he laughed again. “You’re lying,” he said.

Chalis didn’t look offended. “What about?”

“Overthrowing the Empire,” Namir said. “You
needed
Twilight to escape Haidoral. You’ve been stuck with the Rebellion ever since, but you’ll abandon it the first opportunity that comes along.”

“Possibly,” Chalis said. “But in the meantime, I belong to the Alliance.” She stood from the bench and rapped her knuckles on the table before pivoting toward the mess hall door. “And at least I have a
goal.
Something to consider.”

Then she was gone, and Namir was alone in the mess. The sense of comfort dissipated. He pushed the conversation from his mind, tried to forget the good-byes he’d said to his colleagues in the Clubhouse. He’d make his rounds and check over his troops once more before he left the
Thunderstrike.

Don’t think about the rebel base
, he told himself.
You’ll be back in no time at all.

METATESSU SECTOR

Thirteen Days Before Plan Kay One Zero

Captain Tabor Seitaron had spent the better part of a month aboard the
Herald
, observing the Star Destroyer’s crew members as they hunted Governor Chalis under the leadership of Prelate Verge. His first impressions, he now realized, had been unkind.

In a young crew less than half a year out of spacedock, the diseases of fatigue and shell shock were ordinarily best treated through structure and discipline. For troops struggling to embrace their responsibilities, shorter, more frequent duty shifts encouraged greater concentration, and strict adherence to regulations gave incentive to those who chose
not
to concentrate.

But Tabor had hesitated to implement changes aboard the
Herald.
He’d seen too many commanders disrupt the functioning of their crews for little gain. Instead, he walked the kilometer-long span of the vessel from bow to stern over the course of days, making the acquaintance of ranking bridge officers and engineering specialists alike. He made a point to query them about their duties while making his rounds. Once a week, he even joined them in the mess and discussed trivialities—their families, their homeworlds. He read their personnel files in the evenings and annotated those for later review. He neither ignored nor blindly trusted the prelate’s own assessments of his troops—assessments that tended toward the glowing or the despairing, with little middle ground.

What he found, in the end, was a dutiful crew that had lost its way. They were good men and women, loyal and able, but they no longer knew what to believe.
That
would destroy any soldier, but there was little Tabor could do.

For the blame, he determined, fell squarely on Prelate Verge.

Verge, too, Tabor had misjudged. The boy was a slavish idolater of the Emperor, to be sure, and he lacked military experience—but he was brilliant and fiercely charismatic in his way. When he asked after the child of Lieutenant Kourterel, promised the man that a detail of stormtroopers would see to his family’s protection from rebels on Vanzeist, his sincerity was clear. When he stood before the display in the tactical center, plotting a dozen courses that Chalis’s rebels might take from Haidoral Prime, he analyzed and dismissed scenarios so quickly that Tabor could only nod and pretend to follow the logic.