Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (8 page)

He slid his hands under the woman’s arms and half lifted her from the floor. He wanted to scream at the abrasions on his burnt hands. Instead, he gritted his teeth and managed to ask, “You really think suffocation was your worst problem?”

Chalis smiled and stalked forward, then stopped with a wince as she felt the heat of the corridor. Namir felt grim satisfaction at the sight of the governor taken aback.

“Air circulation isn’t functioning,” Chalis said, “so yes, that was my priority. Until you opened the door, I was
safe
from the fire.”

Namir grunted and dragged the guard into the air lock while Chalis eyed the doorway. “Can we run for it?” she asked. Her voice had dropped an octave, all mockery gone.

“
I
could, maybe.” Namir lowered the guard to the floor. He tried to catch his breath while ignoring the pain clinging to his skin like mud. “But I’m dressed for it. You’d roast alive.”

Chalis closed her eyes and lowered her head. Then her neck snapped back up and she looked at Namir. “So we open the air lock’s outer door. We create a vacuum. We cling to the walls for dear life. And when the oxygen has rushed out and the fires in this section have been extinguished, we close the door and get to safety.”

It took Namir a moment to process the suggestion. Then he laughed hoarsely as he stepped back into the doorframe. “You’ve got it all figured.” He edged far enough into the corridor to hit the control panel again, then ducked back into the air lock.

The interior door began to hum shut. Chalis stared and her tone became harsh. “What are you doing?”

Namir gestured at the guard with the toe of his boot as the door sealed with a metallic clang. “We open this section up to space, she’s not in any shape to hold on.”

Chalis’s expression seemed to contort. Namir was sure she was going to shout, to rage. He wondered if he’d need to fight her off.

Instead, she simply said in a voice of dull resignation, “So you’re locking us in.”

“I’m locking us in,” Namir agreed, “and hoping for the best.”

Namir had trouble tracking time inside the air lock. The oxygen felt abrasive against his burnt skin. His head was throbbing, echoing every beat of his heart inside his skull. He tried counting the number of hits the
Thunderstrike
took in battle, but even that became difficult when he could no longer differentiate a new strike from the aftershocks of an old one.

Chalis sat across from him. “This is the second time you’ve come to rescue me, you know,” she said.

“Be grateful,” Namir said, “and shut up.”

“You haven’t earned any favors,” Chalis countered evenly. “The first time, you thought I was someone else; then you shot me. This time, I’m no better off than I was before you showed. I’m worse off, in fact, since all three of us are using what’s left of the air.” She didn’t give the unconscious guard so much as a glance.

Namir exhaled in a hiss. The air
was
getting thinner, and it smelled of smoke. He was prepared to stare down Chalis if he had to, though—to ignore his cloudy vision and try to put her in her place by force of will.

As he squared his shoulders she smiled sourly, like a woman taken with her own dark humor. Not a woman worth saving. Yet not a woman who appeared to fear death, either.

Namir watched the guard’s chest slowly rise and fall. “You may not be better off. She is,” he said.

The governor shrugged, as if she didn’t see the statement’s relevance.

Namir closed his eyes and leaned against the bulkhead. “Any idea who attacked us? You’re the expert …”

A distant rumble from below accompanied a jolt through the deck. Namir bounced an arm’s width off the floor and couldn’t quite stifle a gasp when he landed hard on his tailbone. Chalis didn’t cry out, and Namir didn’t bother opening his eyes to check on her.

She waited until the ship settled before answering. “At a guess,” she said, a hint of strain in her voice, “I’d say my former colleagues are coming after me. Can’t have Imperial secrets falling into rebel hands. Can’t have another Tseebo, or a Death Star
incident …

“By now, Darth Vader himself should be in pursuit. Whether that’s his flagship out there, I can’t be sure; if not, we may be spared so he can kill me personally.”

Namir snorted. “What is it with you people and Vader?” he asked. “It can’t be the helmet that scares people. Stormtroopers have helmets.”

When Chalis replied, her voice held a note of curiosity. “Most rebels blanch when they hear the name,” she said. “He may be mythologized, but he’s earned his reputation. I could tell tales of how he slaughtered children, the Dhen-Moh genocides—”

“Spare me,” Namir said. “That’s my dying wish. Spare me the stories of the great
Lord Vader’s
terrifying triumphs over the
Rebellion.
”

After he spoke, he wished he hadn’t added such a sneer to the word
Rebellion.
He cracked his eyes open enough to confirm that the guard was still unconscious. Chalis was watching him closely. “You don’t think of yourself as one of them, do you?” she asked.

Namir closed his eyes again and made an obscene gesture in Chalis’s direction. He’d learned it from Twilight’s dead comm tech long ago, and he wasn’t sure how commonplace it was. From Chalis’s laughter, however, she seemed to get the point.

Neither spoke for a while, and eventually Namir realized that the shuddering of the deck had ceased. The battle, apparently, was over. Even better, the pain of Namir’s burns had decreased to a steady but subtle throbbing. It probably meant he’d gone into shock, but he wasn’t in any shape to worry.

Namir knew he was drifting in and out of consciousness, and he ceased to fight the pull of darkness when he heard the hiss of air vents coming back to life. His last thought was about the guard, the new recruit from Thession.

Her name was Maediyu. She never listened during training.

Namir hoped she would survive.

During his tour with Twilight Company, Namir had spent more than a few days in
Thunderstrike
’s infirmary. He’d broken bones, taken blaster shots, and seen shrapnel lodged in his flesh. In his experience, Twilight’s medics offered two types of recuperation:

The first involved a blissful state of oblivion and submersion in a tank of liquid bacta. The tank was a sanctuary from pain and need, a welcoming home for as many hours or days as the medics deemed necessary—or, in less ideal circumstances, until bacta supplies ran low. The patient floated in pure, viscous
health
, emerging from unconsciousness gradually until full awareness was restored. The aches that came in the days following always felt worse for the loss of the bacta’s pleasures, but they passed soon enough.

The second type of recuperation involved lying on a hard bunk stinking of cleaning fluid and shivering in too-cold air while slipping in and out of sleep. During moments of near-lucidity, the patient was afflicted with visions of blood-soaked medstaff making their rounds, alternating stinging shots with numbing balms. During sleep, the patient suffered confused fever dreams without narrative or logic: endless strings of images, of faces strange and familiar, along with inexplicable feelings of terror and alienation—as if the dreamer were alone in a world where every once-familiar object hid horrors.

Namir’s recuperation from his burns took the second form. Hours after he’d been rushed to the medbay, during one miserable moment of clarity, he saw that Maediyu had been placed in a bacta tank.
Lucky girl
, he thought.

He was back on his feet within two days, his arms scarred and tender but his body largely restored. Von Geiz warned him not to return to full duty for another few shifts—a suggestion Namir was willing enough to take, given that Twilight’s next combat assignment was nowhere in sight.

The attack on the
Thunderstrike
had apparently been a fluke—a chance run-in with an Imperial reconnaissance squadron—resulting in the deaths of three crew members aboard
Apailana’s Promise
, half a dozen injuries aboard
Thunderstrike
, and minor systems damage to both ships. There was no evidence that the Imperials had been hunting Governor Chalis, who had been found unscathed in the air lock with Namir and Maediyu. The woman led a charmed life.

A day after Namir’s release from the infirmary, after he’d read the latest reports and screwed up his courage, he arranged a meeting with Howl. He found the captain in the workroom off the operations center, pacing between upright displays and a holotable that projected topographic images of a world dense with waterways and jungles. Howl was speaking softly to himself, one hand tapping at the air as if beating out a rhythm to his words.

Captain Micha Evon was a tall man, with dark-brown skin and graying hair that seemed to tangle in his thick beard. Namir knew little of his past and had trouble imagining him existing prior to Twilight; he had founded the company (so Namir had been told) and it seemed impossible that he would ever leave. He rarely emerged from his lair, going unseen by the rank and file for days at a time while his senior staff passed down orders.

Namir believed with utter certainty that “Howling Mad” Evon was the greatest mind he’d ever fought with. He also believed Howl was responsible for the deaths of dozens of his friends—deaths that might have been avoided—and that the captain would sacrifice Namir in an eyeblink to win some esoteric victory for the Rebel Alliance.

Howl laughed at something while Namir stood inside the doorway, waiting to be recognized. When the captain finally waved him closer, he looked Namir up and down with an almost fierce intensity. “Sergeant,” he said. “What have you heard about Mount Arakeirkos?”

“I’m not familiar with it,” Namir said as Howl gestured distractedly at a chair. Namir walked to it but didn’t seat himself.

“Neither am I,” Howl said. “But at the top, there’s a great clock set in stone, built by the Arakein Monks almost two thousand standard years ago. According to legend, whoever watches each swing of its pendulum for a day will have the life span of the universe revealed before his eyes.” He resumed his pacing as he spoke, punctuating his words with small gestures and finally looking back to Namir.

Namir shook his head. “I’ll take your word for it. Religious orders aren’t my thing.”

Private conversations with Howl were like exhuming a corpse. You had to dig and dig before you found what you were looking for, and even then it wouldn’t be pretty. But Namir had learned that there was no rushing the captain when he had his own topic in mind.

“Time isn’t just the provenance of philosophers,” Howl said, as if correcting a child’s mistake. “We live on a ship powered by energies that sunder cause and effect, beginning and end … hyperspace is a mystery more profound than gods and demons.”

Howl dropped into a chair across from Namir, spread his hands, and bowed his head. “Yet we use it to make war,” he said, “and here we are. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Governor Chalis,” Namir said. “Were we attacked because of her?”

The last of Howl’s effervescence vanished, as if incinerated in a flash fire. “We don’t know.
Chalis
certainly thinks so, but she’s not an unbiased source.”

“The more she convinces us the Imperials value her, the more she can demand for her help. I get that,” Namir said. “But you’ve talked to her. Do
you
think she’s for real?”

“She could be.”

“Because if she is—” Namir pressed on. He was sure he was overstepping; he was first sergeant, not the captain’s strategist or second in command. He was in Twilight to execute orders, not question them. “—Twilight has a target on its back. A lot worse could come.”

“Vader,” Howl said. “Chalis said it to me, too.”

Namir shrugged. “Vader or Captain Dirtfarm—doesn’t matter
who
comes if they’re backed by an armada. The best thing for us is to get rid of her.”

Howl shook his head and tapped a long, slow rhythm onto the holotable. “I can’t,” he said. “We found her, and she’s our responsibility.”

“Turn her over to another company. Someone in the Rebellion must be equipped for this.”

“Equipped for what?” Howl asked, without a trace of impatience. “We don’t even know what we have, and we’re still ten thousand light-years deep in Imperial territory and struggling to get to safety. No one nearby can watch her or protect her any better than we can, and I’m not prepared to take more dramatic action.”

Namir watched his captain. He didn’t doubt Howl was capable of lying to him; good commanders often lied to their troops. Yet his arguments had the ring of truth.

They simply weren’t complete.

“You think it’s a trap,” Namir said. It was a guess. “She’s a double agent, or she’s being manipulated.”

“It’s a possibility,” Howl said.

“You think you have a way to find out,” Namir said.

Howl smiled, but he didn’t answer. He stood and paced a few steps, stared at the door to the workroom, then held up a hand as if calling for silence.

“The Rebel Alliance,” he said, “is falling apart. Things are as bad as they’ve been since—well, since long before you came aboard—and if the Empire wins, it wins completely. We need an edge, and we might have found one.

“I’m going to test that edge. If it cuts, I’m going to hone it. We’re already taking the first steps.

“Chalis promised to assemble a schematic—a holographic map of the Empire’s entire logistical network, showing its strengths and vulnerabilities. If she can do that, it
will
change the war. But we need to see if we can rely on her first.”

Namir nodded slowly. “So what’s our next mission?” he asked.
What did she tell you when you first met?

Howl didn’t reply. He merely opened the workroom door to the corridor and smiled again, sadly, at Namir.

Their meeting was over.