Victory's Price (Star Wars) Read online

  Wyl laughed—a single, swift breath of a sound, less at Nath’s words and more at the precision of them. Nath always pretended he was just talking, but the man knew how to cut to the heart of a matter.

  “It’s not a responsibility I want,” Wyl conceded. “I didn’t leave Home so I could lead people into battle.” He sucked in air—warmer than it should’ve been—and tried to keep his tone light. “But someone has to do it, and I’m the best equipped. I’m fine, Nath.”

  It wasn’t a conversation he wanted. He couldn’t have it without admitting the truth about the comm call.

  “Sure,” Nath said, and shrugged.

  Wyl tried to leave the subject behind. “I take it you ran into one of them? The sabotage droids?”

  “I did. Went by too fast for me to recognize the model. Good news is they’re not immune to blasters.”

  “That’s a comfort.” Wyl dropped his hand to his hip, checking to see if his sidearm was still there. He rubbed his thumb against the textured grip, trying to remember the last time he’d used a pistol. Practice with Riot Squadron, before Endor?

  “I saw Stornvein, by the way,” Nath said, with the matter-of-fact tone Wyl recognized as artificial. He flashed Wyl a grin. “Syndulla’s aide? Almost got split in two.”

  “He made it out okay?”

  “Barely. I had to toss him through a blast door while that machine was closing in. My ribs still ache.” He grinned broadly again. “Figure that wins me first crack at the expensive stuff if we survive to celebrate.”

  “It probably does. You did good.”

  His eyes flickered to Nath, then returned to the corridor. The larger man was watching him, as if waiting for more—some analysis of the situation, some emotional response Wyl hadn’t given.

  Wyl wondered what he was missing. Was Nath looking for approval? For praise?

  “Getting closer,” Nath said, suddenly scowling. “Stay alert for smoke—if a fire starts, it’ll eat whatever air is left. Not much call for conversation after that.”

  II

  The breath mask almost fit, which made the insult worse. The plastoid sealed adequately over her nose and mouth, digging into her skin and fogging with condensation; but the strap had been designed to run to the back of a human skull, and Chass na Chadic had horns where the designers had expected hair and flesh. She was forced to hold the mask in place in return for the privilege of breathing, and while that wasn’t the worst of her problems it was the one that irked her most.

  She could hear the sabotage droids scuttling across metal somewhere nearby—there was just enough air left, she supposed, to carry sound. There was a crackling noise, too, which might have been electrical sparks or might have been a fire. Neither possibility thrilled her.

  She picked her way through the access corridor anyway, ducking beneath unmoving pistons and hopping over dead plasma burners, knowing the worst was still to come. She’d be crawling through a tube meant for mouse droids shortly, trying to reach the hangar before she ran out of air or froze to death or burned alive or—well, there were all sorts of possibilities depending on whether the bridge restored power too fast or too slow.

  You shouldn’t be here, Maya Hallik. You’re not wanted.

  She started to swear, but the seal of the breath mask broke when she moved her lips. She clamped the plastoid harder to her face.

  The Inheritors of the Crystal wanted you. The Unignited wanted you. Maybe—I’ll be generous, I’ll grant the possibility—maybe the Cavern Angels and Riot Squadron and the Rebel Alliance even wanted you. But you’re an inconvenience now. At best, an extra gun. At worst, a freak to be laughed at.

  Let’ij’s voice drowned out the scuttling droids. In a way, company made the journey more bearable.

  The Children of the Empty Sun wanted you, Chass heard, but she wasn’t sure if it was her voice or Let’ij’s.

  III

  “Say again?” Hera Syndulla asked.

  The comlink belched static. Hera stretched out her arm, holding the device away from her ear as she stalked the haunted corridors of the Deliverance. Rows of emergency lights offered enough illumination to see by, but only just.

  “—alerted before our arrival,” the link spat. “We were looking at the logs: an unauthorized transmission, not long before the droids attacked.”

  She repeated the words in her head until she understood. She almost wished the message had stayed garbled. “So they knew we were coming,” she said. “Are we talking about a tracking device? A spy on board?”

  “Who knows? Let’s hope for the former.” Stornvein paused. “You want us to start digging—”

  “Not yet. I want everyone focused on repairing the ship and purging those droids. Are you on the bridge? Who’s in charge up there?”

  She’d tried contacting the bridge once before, but half the comm systems were damaged and interference had flooded every channel. She’d hoped the captain was at his station and simply out of contact; but his executive officer, Nisteen Arvad, was a brilliant woman Hera would’ve gladly offered a command. Either would be capable in an emergency.

  “I, ah—I think I’m in charge,” Stornvein said. “Just got here a few minutes ago. Captain’s hurt at the bottom of a turbolift shaft—we’re not sure how bad. Commander Arvad is missing altogether. The targeting officer is next in line, but—”

  Blast it all, she thought.

  “Understood,” she said. “Do what you can. I’m on my way but I’ve had to double back twice—”

  Stornvein was saying something. Then the static overwhelmed his voice until, with a distinct pop, the comlink went dead. She pocketed it and considered the reality of her circumstances.

  She was alone on a Star Destroyer—a converted Star Destroyer, admittedly—being carved to pieces by droids who would just as happily carve up her. The crew was without a leader, and she…

  …she felt comfortable. Confident. She’d been close to death too many times.

  Careful, Hera. Hubris will kill you faster than the sabotage droids. Don’t assume you’ll see the end of this war.

  That thought felt like a knife in her heart, but it did the trick. She was alert again.

  A dozen paces later she heard a rattling noise from the darkness ahead. Hera adjusted her footfalls, rolling her soles so that her steps were silent. She drew her blaster pistol and held it ready.

  The rattling continued, accompanied by something that might have been the squawking of a malfunctioning vocabulator. She saw a shape in the darkness, maybe twenty meters in front of her; saw the glint of metal in the emergency lighting. She shifted her stance, ready to fire and sidestep any incoming volley, but even as she aimed she knew something was wrong. She couldn’t have said what; only that the threat was ambiguous and she didn’t intend to shoot anything other than a valid target.

  The shape in the darkness blurred. It was turning to face her. As Hera wondered whether she’d made a fatal error, her eyes discerned a face of chitin and a shroud of patchwork garments. A bowcaster dangled from one of the figure’s hands.

  “Kairos!” Hera breathed.

  Kairos cocked her head. Around her feet and piled against the walls were mechanical limbs and serrated blades and the lens of a photoreceptor. Oil stained the deck plating.

  “I am hunting,” Kairos said, in a tone of curious wonder—as if it were the first time she’d done such a thing, and she was pleased with her accomplishments.

  Hera holstered her weapon and suppressed a shudder. The droid appeared to have been shot and vivisected—she wasn’t sure in what order. “I see that. I’m impressed.”

  “This was my third,” Kairos said. “There will be others.”

  So long as she’d been standing still, Kairos had appeared immortal. With her first step toward Hera, the illusion broke. The arm holding he
r bowcaster swung limply, the sleeve soaked with what Hera could only assume was blood. Rags hung from her waist where something had torn through her side. Kairos walked with the stagger of a puppet jerked by unpracticed hands.

  “Kairos,” Hera said again, and lunged to catch the woman.

  Instead of toppling, Kairos recoiled. She raised her uninjured arm, fingers curled like claws, and loosed a shriek. Hera drew up short, glancing behind her in alarm. She saw nothing.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Talk to me.”

  “Away,” Kairos said. She pulled her injured arm toward her chest and adjusted her garments, tugging shreds of cloth over her wounds.

  Hera had never known Kairos well—never known her at all, really—but she recalled the silent woman in a mask who had first joined Alphabet Squadron. Hera recalled, too, the woman’s grievous injuries on Troithe, and how when she’d returned from her healing sleep she’d bared her face for the first time.

  She saw the shame in the woman’s dark eyes, and while she didn’t know its source she could respond with compassion.

  “You don’t want to be touched,” Hera said.

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to be seen.”

  “No.” Kairos paused. “But it is done.”

  Kairos stared past Hera’s shoulder and said nothing. She was trembling, but only faintly; Hera wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been watching closely.

  Kairos didn’t want help. That was plain. But she would bleed to death in the corridor if Hera did nothing.

  “I’d like to get you patched up,” Hera said. “We’re not too far from the medbay—”

  “No.” The word was sharp and sure. “No bacta.”

  “Then we can find something to bind your wounds, stanch the bleeding. I’m not a medic but I’ve done it more than once in the field. Friends have done it for me.”

  This seemed to resonate—she had Kairos’s attention, though the woman still watched suspiciously. “You cannot touch me.”

  “Then—okay. Let me show you what to do,” Hera said. She knew it was insufficient, and she added with all the gravity and sincerity she could muster: “I swear to you, Kairos. I will not touch you.”

  Kairos was motionless awhile. Then her gloved hand went to her bloody side and pressed into her wound; when she raised her hand again she held it outstretched until a drop of ocher fluid fell from her fingertip to the deck.

  “I need your help,” Kairos said, and Hera went to her friend.

  With few words and many telling glances, they worked out a system. Hera found an emergency engineering toolkit and cut strips of clean cloth from her own uniform, spraying them with adhesive that had the odor of rancid cooking oil. Hera held the strips out; Kairos pressed her body against them, allowing Hera to wrap them around the woman’s wounds without contact.

  The thought that Hera was giving more time than she had—that her priority should be the bridge—nagged at her. But there was someone in front of her in need.

  “You understand,” Kairos said as she picked at a shred of her sleeve embedded between the chitin plates of her wounded arm. She pinched the cloth between thumb and forefinger, dislodging it partway forcefully enough to spatter the floor with blood drops.

  Hera felt more fascination than revulsion. She’d seen too many gruesome wounds to be squeamish. She held out another makeshift bandage—the last, ready for application. “I don’t, honestly. I don’t need to in order to respect who you are.”

  Kairos kept pulling at the sleeve. When it began to tear she pinched it closer to the base before resuming. Soon it was removed, and Hera began to silently, delicately, wrap the arm.

  “My people,” Kairos said. Hera almost stopped; fearing that would disrupt the strange, intimate peace, she kept wrapping. “For my people, blood is precious. Blood is self. Healing is rejuvenation, not—not restoration. Healing is rejuvenation is change.”

  She was struggling with the words. Hera saw Kairos’s lips trembling, and nodded reassuringly before finishing with the bandage. The clean cloth had already begun to stain, but the blotches were only small discolorations. “I think that’s the best we’ll do,” Hera said. “I should go, but—”

  She stopped as Kairos bent over and began gathering the scraps cut from her own clothing. The woman began using them to mop up the blood on the deck.

  Hera had to get to the bridge. She knew that.

  “Can I help?” Hera asked.

  Kairos looked up. “Do not touch it,” she said, then nodded.

  The emergency kit had a rag and a compressor bottle of cleanser. Hera joined Kairos, scrubbing away the last stains. The deck panels gleamed when they finished, and Hera wondered how many Imperial officers had spilled blood on the same surface.

  Kairos took the rag and parted her lips again. Hera expected a thank-you or even an abrupt goodbye. “The suit,” Kairos said at last. “You remember? The suit and mask?”

  “Of course,” Hera said. “I’m still getting used to you having a face.”

  “The suit is a chrysalis. A healing cocoon. In Cerberon it was removed.”

  Hera had been aboard the Lodestar, but she’d seen the footage: The U-wing in the wreckage of the Tri-Center Complex, Kairos crumpled in the ruins and Yrica Quell kneeling over her. “It was the only way to save you. The medics—”

  “Caern Adan demanded it,” Kairos said. “I know. He loved me.”

  Hera had never thought of Adan as a man who loved anything, though she nodded.

  “IT-O, the machine, obeyed. It loved me, too. But they cut the suit. They took my mask. It was too soon, and my rejuvenation—my last rejuvenation—was not finished. Now I am—”

  Her lips formed words without sound. Hera watched Kairos until the strange woman began trembling.

  “You’re what?” Hera asked.

  “Incomplete.”

  Hera watched the blood-soaked hunter who had just confessed her secret.

  “Thank you for trusting me,” Hera said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  Kairos bowed her head. When she straightened and raised her bowcaster, the shadows fell across her face like a mask; then she slipped away down the corridor and disappeared into the darkness.

  IV

  The whistles and chimes came faster than Wyl could decipher them. He looked from T5, plugged into the socket beside the blast door, to Nath, who leaned over his astromech as if observing the stream of electricity and data. As T5’s beeping trailed off, Nath’s expression shifted from workmanlike interest to grim acceptance, and he turned to the blast door without a word.

  “What’s back there?” Wyl asked.

  “Breach field override controls, just like we came for,” Nath said. “Ask me what’s not back there.”

  “What’s not back there?”

  “Oxygen. Looks like one of the sabotage droids triggered an escape pod. Must’ve kept the port from sealing after.”

  Wyl touched the metal of the blast door. It was absurd to think the surface felt icy, but he feared his fingertips would stick when he pulled them away. “All right,” he said. “How far inside do we have to go? Any breath masks nearby…?”

  Nath shook his head. “Droid already checked. Nearest supply kit’s nowhere close in this maze.”

  It had taken them the better part of an hour to weave through the ship, avoiding fires and breaches and scuttling sabotage droids. Once, Wyl had heard screams behind a barricade; they hadn’t managed to shift it, and they hadn’t spoken much since then.

  “Control room itself isn’t more than fifteen meters away,” Nath went on, “but we’re going to have a hell of a time getting there.”

  “How long can a human body survive in vacuum?” Wyl asked.

  T5 squawked. Nath muttered, “You’re full o
f useless information,” then shrugged at Wyl. “We open the door, we’ll get a minute or two of airflow before this section is fully vented. That might give a body insulation. It also means fighting a gale while working the machinery. After that…not long.”

  Wyl tried to decipher the crease in Nath’s brow. “All right. Tell me exactly what I need to do—”

  “You’re not going anywhere. You’re in command. Not the one who should risk himself.”

  It took longer than it should have for Wyl to understand.

  “It’s all right,” Wyl said. He was surprised, but he tried not to show it and smiled thinly. “I’m not commanding anyone right now, and I can do it—”

  “Your skinny butt will be blown out of the ship ten seconds in.” Nath shook his head, rapped on the blast door, and then refocused on Wyl. “I’m twice your weight, I’m stronger, and I know the equipment better. It’s an easy call, brother, and you know it.”

  Wyl opened his mouth, wanting to speak but unsure what to say or the cost of delaying further. How many people he knew had already burned to death, or suffocated, or—?

  “We don’t even know if this will work,” he said. “How far to get suits and breath masks? Or maybe—”

  Nath laughed an unkind laugh, the sound laced with bitterness. “Maybe what? One of us has to go through there. You’re not qualified, and T5’s a junk heap. This conversation is just killing time.”

  Wyl had to force himself not to ask: What are you doing, Nath?

  He knew Nath could be brave—he didn’t doubt that—but the ex-pirate had never been a man to endanger himself when there were alternatives. Had Wyl shamed him? Was it a role he was playing, like when he’d received his medal on Troithe and basked in the glory? Was he trying to impress Wyl?

  What are you doing?

  “We can find an alternative,” Wyl said.

  “Find it fast, then,” Nath said. “Hold tight to one of those pipes—one that won’t rip out of the wall. T5 will open the door, then close it once I’m through. That’ll cut down on the wind force, and I’ll have a few seconds to make it to the controls and back.”