Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (29 page)

Hazram pushed the alien’s voice out of his consciousness as the creature emphasized the just cause of the rebels and the terrors of the Galactic Empire. That part of the speech Hazram could deliver himself; all calls to war were the same, and he’d been hearing them his entire life. But the thought of leaving Crucival…

He would never have to go back to the city. Never have to face the emptiness there, or forage in the bloodstained grass outside its walls.

His father had survived among the stars. He was certain he could, too.

And if he could not, he could die a hundred planets away from home.

The alien asked if he was truly willing to fight the Empire’s evil for little in return—if he understood what might be asked of him, and the heartbreaking scale of the enemy’s actions. “A war’s a war,” Hazram said. “You can’t show me anything I haven’t seen.”

That was the wrong answer. The alien’s eyes closed and its head bowed and it let out a warm and pungent breath. Then it squared its shoulders and looked to Hazram again. “We have many hired guns already,” it said. It was a rejection of the most oblique sort, but Hazram recognized it anyway.

Just like the factions of Crucival, the Rebellion wanted minds it might mold to its cause. Young minds. Idealistic minds. Hazram would not find a place there.

Yet the alien kept speaking, struggling for words. “But if we can show you nothing new, perhaps
you
can show
us
something? No man is only a weapon.” The creature sounded almost hopeful. Hazram did not understand why, but it was giving him another chance.

He glanced around the camp, tried to guess at the rebels’ needs. He didn’t understand the workings of their technology—even the glossy sides of their tents seemed magical. Only their most basic weapons were familiar to him. He could sell them Crucival, tell them which factions to obliterate first if they wanted the planet, but the creature had already assured him of their intent.

He looked at the other travelers from the city. They shifted uncomfortably in line or spoke avidly or cockily or begrudgingly with rebel representatives. He saw one of the rebels glance at the alien, nod his head before sending the traveler at his side—a youth with a thick beard and tattered robe—to wait by a tent.

Hazram knew what he had to do.

“He’s going to be a problem,” Hazram said, and jutted a thumb toward the bearded youth.

“Oh?” the creature asked.

“Maybe he said the right things,” Hazram said, “but he’s trying too hard to impress. Show he’s grown, show he’s survived a tough life—maybe he has, for all I know, but I bet he can’t even use a blaster.”

“As I said, we have many hired guns already. Perhaps he has a spark. Dedication.”

“Maybe,” Hazram said, and shrugged. “But he’s never going to
admit
what he doesn’t know if he keeps looking for approval. You don’t break him of the habit, he’ll get someone killed on the battlefield.”

The creature studied Hazram, its bulbous neck expanding and contracting. “How confident are you?”

Hazram shrugged. “Not hugely. Give me twenty minutes with him, I could be pretty sure.”

“Why?” the creature asked.

Hazram smiled wryly. “You sign on to enough armies, you start to recognize the people to stick close to.”

The creature nodded and strode away without a word. One hand beckoned Hazram to follow.

For nearly an hour they walked silently about the camp, drifting within earshot of the recruiters’ conversations. Hazram said nothing unless prompted, but sooner or later the creature asked him his assessment of each of the travelers. Hazram noted a scarred, one-armed veteran who spoke passionately about his desire to serve a just cause, and told the alien that the man would be slow to learn offworld technology but otherwise a potentially excellent asset. He warned the creature about a woman wearing the brands of one of the most brutal successors to Malkhan: She’d be fierce, but she’d learned to fight in a spice-addled haze and she’d be a wreck if she were made to fight lucid.

At the end of the hour, the creature led Hazram back to where they had begun and asked, “What if I were to accept them
all
? If I told you my captain had ordered me to take on anyone who fought for the right reasons?”

“I’d say your captain needs to look out for his people better.”

The creature seemed unruffled. “Could you teach them?” it asked. “Could you make them into soldiers you would fight beside?”

Hazram glanced about the camp again, at the travelers and the rebels.

“I wouldn’t have much choice,” he said. “If they were my comrades … I’d do what I had to in order to make them ready.”

“Then,” the creature said, “perhaps we have a place for you after all.”

Hazram Namir did not fully believe he had left the planet Crucival until Gadren—the creature from the camp—walked him to the viewport of the starship
Thunderstrike.
He’d ridden a drop ship up from the planet’s surface, nearly vomited down his shirt in the back of the windowless box as it rattled and clanged viciously, and he’d swayed unsteadily while descending a ramp into the
Thunderstrike
’s docking bay.

He’d never seen so much metal and plastic in one place before. The Rebel Alliance’s Sixty-First Mobile Infantry didn’t need to
conquer
Crucival. If it wanted the planet, it could
buy
it.

He stood alone at the viewport long after Gadren had moved on. Crucival seemed small and petty amid the stars, a mottled sphere of green and gray and yellow too insignificant to hold a single city, let alone nations.

He thought of what he was leaving behind to fly away in an alien cage. He had not expected to miss the yellow grass or the clouds. They had been fundamental to his existence; now they had been stripped away.

Yet when his mind turned to Pira, to his father, to everyone he had left far below, he felt as weightless and free as the ship.

He was out at last.

PLANET ANKHURAL

Seven Days Before Operation Ringbreaker

Three Years Later

The last time Brand had been on Ankhural, its capital—if a planet with only one city and a handful of unmarked settlements could be said to have a capital—had been enclosed by a ray shield that filtered out the billowing dust of the surrounding silica plains. The streets had never been clean, but they’d had a seedy charm.

Brand no longer found Ankhural charming. She wore her mask as she walked through alleyways tagged by vivisector gangs, but her eyes had felt gritty since she’d woken. White-skinned, six-fingered men holding scalpels peered at her as she moved, fading into the shadows when they saw the rifle on her back and the knife displayed prominently on her hip.

She had already sold her disruptor. She missed it, but nothing on Ankhural fetched a higher price than a lovingly maintained, excruciatingly deadly, and widely banned weapon.

The alleys took her beneath a broad awning and into near-darkness. Her mask enhanced the silhouettes of dozens of veiled men and women who whispered and haggled and grappled and kissed. Free traders from Wild Space met with representatives of the Crymorah syndicate, swapping favors for arms and spice. Umbaran spies bartered their services to survivors of the Death Watch. Any one of the market’s denizens might have fetched a decent bounty; like a stray speck of sand, the thought of abandoning her cause and returning to a simpler life drifted through Brand’s mind.

She shook the thought away and walked on. She reached the side of a shriveled, hobbling Weequay with a face like a desiccated corpse and matched his pace.

“No trouble?” she asked. Her Huttese was clumsy; she could have hired a protocol droid or bought a translation program for her mask, but she hoped the effort would win her some respect.

“No trouble,” the alien said. “No inquiries. The gangs become curious soon, I think.”

Brand reached into her jacket and withdrew a stack of high-value credit chips. She pressed them into the old Weequay’s palm. “Tell the Grandfather of Vice I’m grateful for his help.”

With that, she walked on. She felt a presence at her back until she exited the market, at which point her stalker, whatever it was, abandoned its hunt.

Could have gone worse
, she thought.

By the time she arrived at the podracing track at the city’s edge, the lenses on her mask were clouded with grime. She lowered the mask altogether as she neared the metal doors to the great arena—large enough to admit a hovertank but guarded only by a spidery droid. The droid inserted an appendage into a wall socket to acknowledge her arrival, and the doors slid open less than half a meter; she had to turn her body to squeeze through.

In the vast space beyond the doors, enclosed by the amphitheater but open to the swirling sky, the
Thunderstrike
rested in a bed of dust. Dozens of Twilight soldiers moved about, dwarfed by the ship’s hull: They carted tools and machine parts in from the city or hauled burnt and twisted scrap to junk piles, aided engineers stripping panels or welding scars. Others appeared to have nothing better to do than play dice or wait for trouble.

The
Thunderstrike
wasn’t built to land, but it was capable of planetfall in an emergency. The current situation certainly qualified. The ship had limped away from its battle with Prelate Verge, still only half repaired from its battles in the Mid Rim. To finish the repair job, the engineering crew needed to power whole systems down—and that meant finding a spacedock or a flotilla.

Or an unused racetrack in the middle of nowhere.

If the Empire found Ankhural—if the prelate tracked Twilight Company down, as he had before, or if the gangs became too curious and turned the rebels in—the
Thunderstrike
would be defenseless.
Apailana’s Promise
was conducting its own repairs in orbit, operated by a skeleton crew; there was no one to protect the company anymore.

So they hid and they waited, and Brand tried not to think about what they’d do—what
she
would do—after the
Thunderstrike
was made whole. She tried not to think about how long they could afford to wait.

She had said she would try to look out for these people. She’d meant it, but she wasn’t anyone’s leader.

She nodded to the sentries as she approached the massive ship, watched M2-M5—now acting chief of engineering, wrapped in transparent duraplast to protect his joints from dust—blast snide remarks at the repair crews as he administered mechanical triage. She caught Quartermaster Hober’s eye, shook her head, and hoped it was enough to communicate the gist of her morning’s errands. No emergencies, no progress, and no real change.

Gadren and Roach were seated in the dirt. Two of the Besalisk’s hands were bandaged, singed during his attempts to reach the hijackers on the
Thunderstrike
’s bridge. Roach rose and crossed toward Brand, but Brand didn’t acknowledge her. She didn’t dislike Roach—the girl had done her best on Coyerti, and no worse than anyone during the ship’s infiltration—but Brand didn’t have answers to her inevitable questions.

A shout from the gates saved her. Brand unslung her rifle, pivoted on her heel, and hurried back the way she’d come. The great metal doors were sliding open.

The sentries wouldn’t have called an alarm if anyone from Twilight was still in the city. That meant a stranger was coming to visit.

The sentries formed a broad arc around the gate. Brand held her rifle steady, aimed at the crack through which two figures emerged. Both walked unsteadily, leaning lightly against each other for support. One was a bronze-skinned man, lean and compact. The other was a lighter woman with black hair. Each wore a stained and torn jacket too heavy for Ankhural.

Brand approached the pair and slung her rifle back over her back. The sentries cautiously lowered their weapons. She cracked a smile as Namir and Chalis stopped a few meters away.

“You made it,” Brand said.

PLANET ANKHURAL

Five Days Before Operation Ringbreaker

A few dozen soldiers had erected a tent city around the prow of the
Thunderstrike
, preferring to sleep in the dry and dusty open air over the bustling interior of the vessel. Namir didn’t blame them; the ship echoed day and night with the sounds of sparks and welding torches, and the klaxon blared intermittently for reasons no one could determine. Outside there was at least a semblance of calm.