Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (20 page)

“Probably a third of the personnel here were Imperial cadets before defecting,” a young man—Namir thought he’d introduced himself as Kryndal, though he hadn’t been paying close attention—explained.

They sat together in the toolshed, warming power converters with welding torches. The converters had already failed due to internal icing, but if they could be revived they’d be returned to service in the base. It was grunt work, more suited to a droid than a human—but the job needed to be done, and Namir lacked the technical specializations Roja and Beak had.

Kryndal kept talking. “Maybe another third of us—some of the cadets, too—went through Alliance Special Forces training. Four months of misery, but they were the most important ones of my life. You want to learn how to use an antique slugthrower, disarm a proximity mine, or rappel off a ray shield, I recommend it.”

Namir flipped a switch on his converter. No lights, no sound. Back to heating. “I’ve used a slugthrower,” he said. “Other two never came up.”

Kryndal shrugged. “Something to think about. High bar to qualify, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t be here if your captain—”

“Not looking to retrain,” Namir said, and Kryndal let the subject drop.

Two ships arrived at Echo Base on Namir’s third day. The passengers’ identities were classified—rumors among the rank and file claimed a highly placed Bothan spy was involved—but no one doubted the visitors were coming for the strategy conference.

That conference was, day by day, becoming the dominant topic throughout the base. When Namir hiked to the perimeter outposts through windstorms that tossed ice shards like shrapnel, he heard the comm chatter of sentries discussing attendees: General Rieekan, Commander Chiffonage, Princess Leia Organa. When Namir was in the mess, pilots asked him what he knew about Governor Chalis, told stories about her mentor Count Vidian. Roja, who’d bonded with the Echo snowspeeder technicians with shocking speed, came to Namir more than once to pass along the latest wild speculation: Chalis was the last piece of a puzzle the Alliance had been working on for months, and now there was a five-year strategy, or a four-year strategy, or a
one-year
strategy that would win the war at last.

It was wishful thinking. Even the troops speculating knew as much. But they hoped there was truth buried in the dream.

Namir understood. He’d thought similar things once, in other wars. He didn’t have the patience for dreams anymore.

He didn’t speak to Chalis again until the end of their first week on Hoth. He was leaving the command center after delivering a tactical assessment of Outpost Delta—busywork, perhaps, but he’d been told fresh eyes would be “valuable”—and spotted her in the frozen corridor.

Their direction and pace matched. Chalis was unescorted and un-cuffed. Namir gestured at her wrists. “Winning new friends?”

“It took a day or two,” she replied, without turning to look at Namir, “but we all came to an understanding. I receive a pardon from the Alliance for past deeds, and in return I agree not to seek official power in any postwar government.”

“They don’t want you around, either?” he said.

“You sound as surprised as I was.”

Namir barked a laugh. They reached an intersection in the tunnels, and they both hesitated for a fraction of a second as they turned in separate directions. “If it keeps you out of Twilight,” Namir said, “you’ve got my full support.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Chalis was walking away before she finished the words.

On the
Thunderstrike
, the mess served mainly storage-friendly staples in semi-edible combinations, broken up with occasional fresh vegetables, fruit, or meat procured during a raid. Ration packs were stockpiled for activity planetside: Their utility made them—militarily speaking—a luxury, and Twilight Company had no reliable means of acquiring more.

But nothing worth farming grew on Hoth’s frozen and meteorite-cratered surface, and the Alliance’s domesticated tauntauns—horned, stinking, ill-tempered “snow lizards”—were more valuable as mounts than as meat. That left military rations, delivered in massive crates and procured by means Namir couldn’t guess, as the mainstay of every meal.

At a table with Kryndal and a handful of other Echo personnel, Namir enjoyed the dubious pleasures of an envelope of protein cubes suspended in thick orange goo: bland enough to be inoffensive, gelatinous enough to linger on the palate. He preferred to eat alone or with Roja and Beak despite their tiring praise of the base’s virtues—Roja’s bond with the technicians had grown almost familial, while Beak had declared his intention to join the Alliance Special Forces—but Namir’s colleagues were nowhere to be found. There had been no empty tables.

Kryndal was tracing rings on the tabletop, naming planets and concocting a scenario in which, one by one, the Core Worlds miraculously began falling to the Rebellion. A blond woman and a snout-nosed alien were enthusiastically debating him, offering alternative plans—the assassination of the Emperor, or the liberation of slave worlds to bolster rebel troop numbers.

“Maybe I’m crazy,” Kryndal was saying, “but it feels we’re on the verge of something real. We can make it to Coruscant. The Empire wouldn’t be fighting so hard if it weren’t afraid.”

Namir knew he’d be wise to stay out of the conversation. But it was the end of a long, tedious day of walking trenches and shutting out conversations too similar to the one he was hearing now. And Kryndal was just so
smug.

“What happens at Coruscant?” Namir asked.

“What do you mean?” Kryndal responded. The others turned to Namir as well, waiting.

“For starters,” Namir said, “you’ve got a capital planet full of what—ten billion people? More?”

The woman smiled, amused but not mocking. “Considerably more.”

“Fine. Out of that
considerably more
, how many do you think want the Empire overthrown?”

Kryndal’s tone was steady but insistent. “You don’t live on Corus-cant long without realizing—”

Namir interrupted. “I’m not finished. My guess is it’s not as many as you think. In fact, I
know
it can’t be that many, because if it were, you’d have a civil war on Coruscant
right now
instead of a bunch of rebel cells in hiding.”

“It’s not that simple,” the woman said.

Namir was talking over her. “But suppose most of the population doesn’t feel strongly enough to resist either way. They’re not up for a fight. Fine. You’ve still got a hardcore element that’s going to turn against the Rebellion the second you start bombing. One percent of Coruscant’s population is an awful lot of people, and I guarantee we’re talking about more than that. Imperial loyalists, sure, but also anyone who doesn’t trust the Alliance to run the place.

“You going to send fire teams into the streets to deal with them? Start cutting down civilians? One way or another, it’s going to get bloody, and it’s not going to stop for a
very
long time.”

Kryndal’s voice was still even, but his face was locked in a grimace. “The Alliance has a transition plan. Democratic elections—”

“—aren’t going to convince anyone,” Namir snapped. “And this is all your
best
-case scenario. Maybe the Alliance decides not to invade Coruscant at all. Too much trouble. It’s way easier to contain the Empire’s strongholds than to achieve total victory. But you know what I really think is going to happen?”

The alien said something, tugged at Kryndal’s arm. Namir couldn’t make out the exact words through the creature’s accent, but the meaning was clear. Kryndal wasn’t moving, however, and Namir rose out of his seat, leaning across the table to stare down at the man.

“I think,” Namir said, “that as soon as any real victory is in sight, the
Alliance
will fall apart. You think there’s anyone in that strategy conference who’s not looking to come out on top? You think the instant their common enemy is weakened, you won’t see half a dozen different rebel factions turn on one another?

“How do you think you ended up in this mess in the first place? After you won the Clone Wars, the Emperor snatched up power, other leaders missed their chance and started a rebellion. Victory always brings infighting.”

“That’s not how it happened.” The woman was speaking again. “You’ve never met the princess or worked with General Rieekan. They’re not just looking to seize power.”

Kryndal was scowling in silence. Namir watched him, saw his hands flex against the tabletop. It wouldn’t take much more. Namir knew he could still walk away, but he
needed
this.

“If you really think those people are heroes”—Namir was answering the woman, but his eyes were on Kryndal—“you’re deluding yourself. Darth Vader’s own stormtroopers are praising him the same way.”

Kryndal threw the first punch. It wasn’t meant to be a debilitating blow—Namir was exposed, and Kryndal could easily have aimed for his eyes or the point of his jaw. Instead, Kryndal struck Namir hard in the chest, shoving him backward and forcing the air from Namir’s lungs.

Namir grasped Kryndal’s hand before the man could pull away. He didn’t bother to catch himself as he stumbled, instead dragging Kryndal forward onto the table and using him as a counterweight to stay upright. Kryndal sprawled for only a moment before getting his legs back under him and leaping at Namir.

As he grappled with Kryndal, Namir felt someone approach behind him. He threw back an elbow, felt it sink into the layers of a thermal jacket. He drove a knee forward into Kryndal’s stomach, saw the world go dark for an instant when a gloved hand struck his face.

Voices were shouting. More bodies in jackets and goggles joined the fray. As he fought, knowing he had no chance of victory, Namir laughed.

The worst of the damage was a broken nose: Now donning the rebels’ polarized goggles left Namir nauseated from the pressure on his nasal bridge. His right hip had turned deep purple overnight after being slammed hard against one of the mess hall benches. The knuckles of his left hand ached, too, though that, at least, was a mark of pride.

He didn’t remember the details of the fight aside from how it had begun. It hadn’t lasted more than a minute or two—just long enough for someone to separate him from the other combatants and drag him to the medical center under guard. He’d spent the night there and been greeted in the morning by General Bygar, who’d used the word
disappointing
more than once.

Howl, Bygar had explained, was needed at the strategy conference and so hadn’t yet been informed of Namir’s behavior. Namir was grateful for that much.

So with the approval of the medical staff, Namir had been given the most demeaning assignment Bygar could find as punishment. He’d spent the morning lugging shipping crates—sometimes with the assistance of a grav-loader, often not—from the hangar bays to the Echo Base interior, taking tiny, childlike steps all the way to avoid slipping on patches of ice. The droids in the hangar directed him where he needed to go, and he rarely had to speak to another living being.

It didn’t bother Namir. He’d done far worse jobs.

One of the rebel ship captains eyed Namir as he hefted a canister of bacta over his shoulder and marched beneath the undercarriage of a light freighter. It was a territorial look: the suspicion of a man unhappy admitting a stranger into his domain.

“What happened to you?” the man asked as he tugged burnt and melted wiring free from one of the freighter’s ramp conduits. There was no concern in his tone. The bridge of Namir’s nose seemed to throb, as if a glance were enough to irritate it.

Namir looked at him. Brown hair, light skin, perhaps a decade older than Namir. He wore no rank insignia, but that was more common among the ship crews than the permanent base personnel.

“You know those Special Forces goons?” Namir asked, deadpan. “Turns out they take this Rebellion
seriously.
”

The captain cracked a smile, shook his head, and went back to his repairs.

By late afternoon, Namir had taken to swearing at the droids in response to their every demand. The droids complained but had no recourse but to absorb the verbal assaults; Namir found the experience oddly satisfying. By evening, after he’d managed to unload most of the day’s cargo, the droids began sending Namir back inside the base to tote shipbound supplies and maintenance equipment out to the hangar. He wasn’t sure if it was an act of revenge or a part of the general’s intended punishment.

The additional work didn’t bother him. He didn’t have anywhere better to be, and he wasn’t looking forward to returning to the mess or sleeping among the base personnel in the barracks. He considered bunking in Twilight’s shuttle—but that seemed cowardly, the action of someone ashamed of his deeds.

Namir encountered the freighter captain a second time while carrying a bin of mechanical parts earmarked for the freighter. He couldn’t guess at the components’ function, but when he boarded the ship, the captain—who was busy dismantling a ceiling panel—grunted and gestured at the floor.

Namir set the bin down. The captain crouched, sorted through the assortment of wires and rods and cylinders, and pulled out a small golden disk. “Hold this, will you?” he said, and pointed Namir to a secondary panel within the ceiling compartment.

Namir had to stand on his toes to do so. The captain began screwing the disk into a socket, ignoring the sizzling sound from the panel. The heat felt good on Namir’s frost-numbed hands.

“Who’d you get into it with?” the man asked without looking away from his work.

“Kryndal,” Namir said. “Didn’t catch his last name. Or maybe his first.”

“He deserve it?”

Namir shrugged in return. “I like to think we both did.”

Namir didn’t question the rebel captain when the repair job stretched out to ten, twenty, thirty minutes. When Namir asked about his crew, the man only shook his head. “They’re out on other business,” he said. “Don’t ask.”

When the task was finally done—or maybe when the captain had given up—the man produced a bottle of Corellian whiskey and dropped himself on the boarding ramp. Namir took that as a tacit invitation, and from there their conversation followed a meandering path lubricated by drink. The captain grumbled about his ship and told an unlikely, obscenity-laden story about how it had been damaged. Namir detailed exactly how he’d ended up on cargo duty for the day.