Victory's Price (Star Wars) Read online

  II

  Nath Tensent bunched a beefy fist around wine-red cloth and yanked the curtain aside, only to find himself staring down the protruding nose of an H’nemthe. The reptilian humanoid emitted something between a hiss and a yelp, then slipped with surprising agility under the crook of Nath’s arm, past Chass na Chadic, and into the crowd packing the shellmongers’ tent of the Circus of Mortal Appetites.

  “You making friends there?” Chass asked.

  Nath didn’t let go of the curtain as he glanced toward the Theelin woman. An oversized brown jacket buried her compact, muscular body, leaving her green crest of hair to sprout like a seedling. “It’s what I do,” he replied, and moved into the dark stairwell.

  Chass grunted as she took the curtain and followed. Nath inhaled as he ascended, refamiliarizing himself with long-forgotten scents—Tionese cooking oils, whirlbat viscera, the waxy odor of Critokian silk. A memory of Piter, half-naked and spun into a cocoon, flashed through his mind.

  The old crew had some fun here back in the day, he thought, and grinned as they pushed into another pavilion. The crowd was thinner and more subdued, lingering around the edges of a space full of yellow smoke. Low altars were piled with datachips and candles and rotting fruit, while the few merchants swapped cheap necklaces for credits. Nath barely paused to orient himself before heading for a gap in the curtains at the far side, but he slowed as he noticed Chass eyeing the hawkers and the altars.

  “You didn’t say this was a religious thing,” she muttered.

  Nath shrugged. “Way of dressing up the business. Oracle’s got a style, but past that she’s just another info broker.”

  Chass took a meandering route past an altar, then back to Nath’s side. “It’s all good. Let me know when I should start shooting.”

  “If,” Nath corrected, though he couldn’t suppress a smile. “If you should start shooting.”

  “Whatever.”

  Nath laughed, but he watched Chass out of the corner of his eye as they pressed into the gap. Something was wrong with the girl—something new, different from the rat’s nest of unconfessed self-loathing, bitter fury, and suicidal impulses she’d lived in when they’d first met. It had been wrong since Cerberon, and if he’d been closer to her he might’ve known whether it would be a problem. As things were—well, Chass was at the bottom of his list of troubled wingmates.

  “Captain Tensent,” a desiccated voice said as they emerged into a hollow. Circular screens hung on leather cords, framing the meter-high neck of the woman who sat in the room’s center. Amber eyes stared out of a chalky head drifting from side to side, as if the weight of her skull might cause her neck to collapse at any moment. “How long has it been since your last confession? Three years? Four?”

  “You’re a few years short, though I can’t say I blame you,” Nath said. “Days go by fast, then they crawl. You get my message?”

  “I did. You have more patrol routes, perhaps?”

  Nath climbed over a low bench and lowered his bulk to the seat. He kept his expression game and tried not to show his surprise. “Haven’t been with the Empire a long time,” he said, and resisted the urge to add: You must be the last one to hear. Not reassuring for an oracle. “What do you say about some New Republic secrets instead?”

  “Easier to find. Not worth as much. What do you have to offer?”

  His instinct was to check Chass’s reaction before moving on. He forced himself to meet the oracle’s gaze and lowered his voice. “Troop movements through Hutt space. Could be handy for anyone doing business in those parts.”

  The oracle adjusted one of her hanging screens. “I think not,” she said.

  That’s more like it. Still knows how to bargain.

  He leaned forward. “Intelligence decryption codes for priority three transmissions. Good for a week—a lot a person could learn in that time.”

  “Better, but insufficient,” the oracle said. The thin neck drifted backward and amber eyes rolled. Then the stalk snapped straight and eyes focused on Nath again. “You have connections within New Republic Intelligence?”

  “Something like that,” Nath said.

  I am New Republic Intelligence.

  Nasha Gravas, the late Caern Adan’s protégée, had come to him after Cerberon and asked him to liaise between Intelligence and Syndulla’s battle group. Nath had agreed, and now he had a medal, authority, and access to a treasure trove of classified intel. Turned out almost dying to save a planet of billions came with a few rewards.

  “Well?” the oracle asked.

  “Ten names,” Nath said. “Undercover operatives of my choosing. No guarantee any of them will be useful, but that’s the fun of it.”

  He watched the oracle as he listened to Chass’s grunt. If she doubted he was authorized to make the trade, she was right. He was confident she wouldn’t do anything about it.

  The oracle’s eyes closed and she swiped the back of her hand across the hanging screens. They clacked against one another, swinging from side to side and gaining unnatural velocity. It appeared inevitable that one would strike the oracle—but none ever did, and soon they lost momentum again. The oracle opened her eyes and waited for them to still completely before speaking.

  “The Ink-Spotted Lord, Keeper of Secrets, will accept your sacrifice,” she said.

  “The Ink-Spotted Lord is generous, as always,” Nath returned. The oracle handed him a datapad, and he entered a series of names and coordinates; after he was done, the oracle slid the pad into the folds of the enclosure’s curtains. “Now,” Nath said, “about the blessing we came for?”

  “The Croynar sector,” the oracle said.

  Nath waited.

  The oracle said nothing.

  Chass cleared her throat. Nath raised a hand and said, “Narrow it down to one system for us?”

  “Situations change rapidly. The sector will be enough for your needs,” the oracle said.

  “Now do we start shooting?” Chass asked.

  Nath stood, feeling his knees creak, and waved Chass off. “If the Ink-Spotted Lord says the sector is enough, then the sector is enough. You’ve always dealt fair with me, Madame Oracle, haven’t you?”

  “I act in accordance with my master’s wishes,” the oracle said. “Be on your way, Captain Tensent, Hero of Troithe.”

  Guess you heard the news after all, he thought.

  He wrapped an arm around Chass’s shoulders, escorting her from the scene as firmly as he could without inviting a fight. “It’s how business is done here,” he murmured.

  She shrugged away his arm and they returned to the stairs. “So why are we the ones out here, if we’re just reading a script and taking whatever we get? Doesn’t Intelligence have agents for this?”

  “You’d hope so, but they’re stretched thin. Besides, they trust me to find Shadow Wing.”

  Chass almost choked on a laugh. “They trust you, do they?”

  “Close enough,” he said, and led them through the labyrinth of tents and stairways and rope ladders. The Circus of Mortal Appetites was busy as Nath had ever seen it, and louder—no one feared Imperial patrols or snitches anymore, and the New Republic didn’t engender the same concerns. He was nearly to the landing pads, strolling beneath the dim blue lamps of the Chamber of Lusty Holos, when he nearly crashed into a human broad as a wall and dressed in a coat resembling an inside-out bantha—all intestinal tubing and patches of fur.

  “Captain Tensent,” the coat’s owner said. Beady eyes stared at Nath. “ ‘Like a leaf adrift, he falls to ground; rots in autumn and ’neath winter rime; until decay becomes life anew, and he is home among the branches once more.’ ”

  The face was distantly familiar. The poetry more so, but Nath struggled to attach a name to the half-remembered giant and settled for declaring, “Been a whil
e, brother.”

  He saw the curl in the man’s lip and the tremor in his hand as it hovered at his hip. Might be spoiling for a fight, Nath thought, but he knows he’s likely to lose. Or he’s waiting for backup. Neither notion pleased Nath.

  “Hargus!” The name hit Nath and he grinned, recalling a dozen conversations from his days running protection rackets as a TIE pilot. Hargus had always paid promptly, kept his head down, and caused little trouble; but that had been long ago, and if people didn’t change, circumstances certainly did. “Hargus, you’ve gotten old. You and the crew still working the butt-end of the Corellian Run?”

  “With a few changes. Nice not to pay for the privilege.” Hargus’s eyes peered over Nath’s shoulder. “Hear you’re a big shot now. Big-time hero.”

  “Word really does get around. Lady at the docks gave us an entry discount.”

  Chass had shifted her stance, ready to run or to pounce. “Now?” she asked.

  “Looks like,” Nath agreed.

  He couldn’t locate Hargus’s backup while focusing on Hargus himself. He hoped Chass understood her role as he brought his fist into the giant’s chin, feeling his own knuckles bruise as his foe’s head snapped back and Hargus’s hand fell away from the blaster on his hip. The crowd jostled and yelled, and Nath hadn’t reclaimed his balance by the time he felt Chass’s palm between his shoulders, pushing him down and forward as she cried “Go!”

  He heard the sizzle of blaster bolts overhead and felt heat. He went. Chass was on his heels, close enough that he caught a whiff of her sweat. “Three of them back there,” she said. “Two meat, one droid. Nasty little hunter probe.”

  They plowed through another set of curtains. They could’ve split up to hide in the throng, but Nath figured they weren’t more than a minute (three, tops) from the landing pad—better to run. Racing through the food pavilion, he shouldered aside a merchant laden with trays of fried beetles and spared a glance behind him; he glimpsed rough movement, crowds shuffling away, the glint of metal, but nothing his brain could render in detail. At least they’re not shooting anymore, he thought. Mob’s giving us cover.

  He grabbed his comlink mid-stride. “Get ready for takeoff,” he growled. “Coming in hot!” He didn’t wait for a reply before swapping the link for the grip of his blaster.

  Thirty seconds later they were outside the pavilions, clear of the crowds, and dashing over the slick marble bridge extending from the cliff face to the landing pad. A barrage of particle bolts chased them as Nath prayed for traction. His eyes were on his boots, but he smiled as he felt a wash of heat from the pad ahead. When he looked up, the U-wing transport was a meter off the ground, its loading door open.

  Chass was in first. She spun and hauled Nath after her, groaning with effort, while blaster bolts splashed against the doorframe and splattered sparks down Nath’s neck. “Return fire!” he howled toward the cockpit.

  The deck trembled and the door slid shut. The enemy barrage increased in intensity. The U-wing turned and tugged against the planet’s gravity. Nath pushed past Chass and, in one motion, swung into the cockpit and dropped into the copilot’s chair. Through the hazy viewport Nath could see Hargus and his associates at the far end of the bridge, one of them—a hairy brute bigger than Hargus—hoisting something onto his shoulder.

  Is that a blasted rotary cannon?

  If it was, it had enough firepower to shatter the U-wing’s viewport and skewer Nath on the fragments.

  He fumbled at the controls and turned to the woman seated beside him. She was dressed in a cloak and loose gray cloth that might have been sewn from stained sheets, and her face was a patchwork of chitinous plates—some a deep violet, others a lighter mauve marbled with white veins; some chipped and discolored, others polished and bright. Deep-set eyes peered out from that map of a splintered world, gazing into the bedlam ahead.

  “There a reason we’re not shooting back?” he asked.

  “Not of the Empire,” Kairos said in her guttural whisper.

  Nath swore and charged the guns. “Not friendly, either.” He adjusted the power and switched to manual targeting. From thirty meters away he could turn Hargus and his goons into ash.

  And then what? They knew you were a New Republic hero. You want to stain that pretty reputation? You think your bosses will be happy with that diplomatic outreach?

  He could handle the damage control.

  Not to mention, Hargus has a legitimate grievance. He deserves to die for it?

  It didn’t sound like the Nath he knew.

  He could hear Chass securing something in the main cabin. Hargus’s rotary cannon was pointed at the U-wing. Nath swore, aimed the U-wing’s weapons, and pulled the trigger.

  The U-wing’s cannons flashed and the marble bridge shattered, replaced by plumes of dust as shards fell into the abyss. He couldn’t hear the reaction of Hargus and the goons, could barely make out their silhouettes at the span’s far end, but their next volley missed the U-wing by ten meters. The ship rose and Nath returned his eyes to the console, checking the scanner—no approaching vessels, no energy pulses or missile locks.

  You’re going soft, he thought. No doubt Hargus was thinking the same. Maybe Chass, too.

  “Next time,” he said to Kairos, “you shoot back if someone’s shooting at us.”

  The woman said nothing, adjusting the U-wing’s power distribution as if she hadn’t heard.

  That didn’t surprise Nath—she’d barely said a word since emerging from her healing slumber in Cerberon. He hadn’t a clue what to make of her—whether she’d really changed from the masked predator she’d been or if putting a face and a voice to her actions simply gave the old killer a fresh look.

  Sooner or later someone would have to ask her what the hell was going on. Someone who could wrest an answer from her.

  “Quite a team we’ve got,” he muttered, and grabbed the headset off the console. He had a message from the oracle for the Deliverance, and a long journey ahead to see what it might mean.

  III

  Hyperspace roiled around the A-wing interceptor, cosmic energies licking its viewport like sea-foam. Wyl Lark felt the vessel’s engines pulse in time with his breath; his worn seat creak and flex with his every motion. Once, he’d found lightspeed travel wondrous and terrifying. Now it was almost meditative—a tranquil moment before a thunderclap.

  How many more times would he travel this way? How many more jumps before he’d fulfilled his promises to Home and the New Republic?

  An alarm chimed rapidly and he was rid of the thoughts, instinctively stroking the console before deactivating the signal. A countdown indicated his return to realspace in less than a minute. “All ships,” he called, thumbing the comm, “prepare for arrival in Midgor.”

  There were only three star systems in the desolate Croynar sector with any possible strategic value—any known structures, extractable resources, or life-forms. That meant that if the intelligence Nath had transmitted to the Deliverance was correct, there was a one-in-three chance Wyl would find Shadow Wing waiting in the pale-green light of Midgor’s sun. The star system had little to recommend it, but an old electromagnetic siphon could’ve been a target if Shadow Wing was desperate for technology or scrap metal.

  Voices replied: “Hail Squadron ready.” “Flare Squadron ready.” “Wild Squadron ready.”

  More than thirty fighters ready to engage, but no Alphabet Squadron—not with Nath and the others still en route. The Deliverance itself was holding back in case of a trap. The mission was, as General Syndulla had put it, “heavy reconnaissance.”

  He drew a breath and spoke again. “Stay in contact, charge your weapons, but don’t engage without instructions.” He heard his own nervousness but didn’t try to suppress it. It wasn’t his duty to be fearless, only to inspire the best in the pilots. “If they’re out
there, they’re just as on-edge as we are. They’re very good fliers, but they’re flesh and blood, not legends.”

  “Human blood, too,” the trilling soprano of Essovin—Flare Leader—came through. “The thin stuff—no offense, Commander.”

  There was a scattering of awkward laughs, mostly from Flare. “None taken,” Wyl said.

  Flare Squadron’s X-wing pilots hadn’t met Shadow Wing yet—they were newcomers, summoned by General Syndulla to support the mission in place of Vanguard. Wyl couldn’t blame Essovin for misjudging the emotional tenor of the moment. But Hail Squadron had lost many of its Y-wing bombers at Cerberon. Wild Squadron, too, had seen colleagues killed by Shadow Wing—formed from the remnants of Wyl’s hodgepodge assault force of skimmers and cloud cars on Troithe, the squadron had been rebuilt from decimation and become a place for misfit pilots and misfit starfighters. Hail and Wild both viscerally understood Shadow Wing’s threat—like Alphabet, they’d suffered slow attrition and swift, brutal massacres, and they needed more than cocky humor. They needed their traumas acknowledged.

  “We’ve been training for this,” he said. “They have no idea what we’ve become.”

  Wyl prayed he wasn’t leading them all to their deaths. He felt a shameful relief that Nath and Chass and Kairos weren’t present, as if their lives were more valuable than those of pilots he knew less intimately. (Even if he hadn’t seen much of them lately; even if things with Nath had been difficult since Cerberon.)

  The glow of hyperspace faded as the jolt of deceleration hit. Wyl’s harness dug into his chest as stars fell into place and the jade light of Midgor winked from the darkness. His head swam and he looked to the console, trying to parse the readings as his instruments recalibrated themselves.

  “Picking something up!” Wyl heard Vitale, curt and professional—the woman he’d flirted with, almost befriended, before he’d become her commanding officer on Troithe. “Three, maybe four ships.”

  “I hear you, Wild Two,” he said. Wyl adjusted his sensors, felt the reassuring click of toggles through his gloves, and confirmed Vitale’s assessment. His comm scanner flickered, suggesting encrypted Imperial chatter in the system.