BY CHUCK WENDIG 10 страница

“Now we pick ourselves up, ” Randd says. “We fight back. ”

Ferric Obdur gestures with his own cutlery as if to make a point. Around a mouthful of food he says, “We show the rest of the galaxy how it’s done and why we are needed. ” With the serrated knife in hand, he points it at Sloane. “Admiral, you have a good story about that. You should all listen, because when Sloane was a girl—well, go on, Admiral, you tell it. ”

Her face burns with the sudden attention of the whole table. The propagandist is both correct and obviously playing an angle here, though she’s not sure what it is. Either way, she does have a story—a bad childhood on a lawless world, and the Empire swooping in to bring order to chaos. She’s about to speak and tell that tale when Hux interrupts:

“These are dark days. Dark days for all of us. ”

Sloane bristles at being interrupted. Hux undercuts her because he thinks she’s not important. It is vital she make a show of countermanding that—honestly, her greatest desire right now is to slam her fork through the back of his hand and chastise him for the intrusion. But that would defy Rax, and she’s aware suddenly of the keen and delicate balance of power.

Instead, she does her own brand of undercutting.

“Brendol, ” she says. “I understand you have a son. Not of your wife—an illegitimate child? Will he be the best the Empire has to offer? ” That is a stab from a double-sided dagger: first the fact that he has an illegitimate son, and second the inference that no matter how good the cadets at his academy became, they still weren’t enough to save the Empire from its fate.

His eyes pinch and blink as if he were just slapped. “I…Armitage is a weak-willed boy. Thin as a slip of paper and just as useless. But I’ll teach him. You’ll…you’ll see. He has potential. ”

Around the table, the others chuckle.

A small victory, she thinks. But precious just the same.

General Borrum dabs at his mouth with a napkin. “From a military perspective, we do have an interesting inversion here, don’t we? We went from being the prominent power in the galaxy to being second—a far second, if the numbers hold. It happened fast, too, proving that the war machine breaks down with too many hits. But I find that many in the Empire still see us as the first and only law in the galaxy, when I wonder if it would be far better to face reality. We have lost that edge. ”

“I agree, ” Sloane says. “It’s high time we regard our place in the galaxy with a full awareness unclouded by prejudice. And then it’s time to act accordingly—we are the underdogs fighting to save the galaxy. ”

“Yes! ” Obdur says, clapping his hands. “That’s exactly it, isn’t it? We are the rebellion. We’re the resistance! ” He laughs somewhat madly. “Think of it this way. Truth is given to us in two stages. All of this, everything anyone ever does, is only as true as the stories we tell about it. The narrative is the thing. We have to control the narrative. We can be the ones to swoop in and save troubled worlds dwelling in the shadow of the New Republic’s ignorance. We put out the message. We control it politically. And then we enforce the narrative militarily, not the reverse. Too often we lead with aggression and then try to tell the story afterward—I say no, I say we get our story straight and then use what’s left of our war machine to hammer that story into the hearts and minds of the galaxy and its people. ”

“And what story will that be? ” Grand Moff Randd asks, his tone crisp, clipped, and sharply uncertain. “What is our…narrative? ”

That showman’s smile from Obdur when he explains: “It is exactly as Sloane said: We are the underdogs. Everyone loves an underdog. So we lean into that, not away from it. We play the wounded animal. The loyal hound who has been kicked out by a brutal, unjust, and altogether unready father. ”

From the back of the room comes a gentle applause—a sound that grows more insistent as it gets closer. And from the dark outside the dining table comes the fleet admiral himself, Gallius Rax.

It surprises her not at all that this is when he chooses to emerge. It’s the most dramatic moment, isn’t it? There sits Ferric, giving his speech about narrative and story, and oh how closely it mirrors Rax’s feelings about artifice and the ephemeral, uncertain nature of truth.

“This, ” Rax begins, “is precisely why I have selected you all. Such good ideas. Such impeccable wisdom. The truth of the matter is, we have lost this war. The Empire as we knew it is gone. Already we were letting it slip when the Rebel Alliance grew in unseen spaces like a cancer. ” Discomfort manifests around the table as those seated shift in their chairs. “For us, this represents an opportunity to reshape ourselves. That is why I have gathered you all here, a veritable brain trust of the first and most vital among us. It is on us to retake and control the narrative. ” In his hand he gestures with what looks to be a small controller. “What will our story be? What—or who—is the Empire? ”

Hux leans in, desperation glinting in his eyes. “And how exactly do we retake our story? Propaganda is all well and good but we still need resources! It’s not the narrative we’re losing. It’s people. And ships. And—” Here he looks to General Borrum. “And vehicles on the ground. ”

A slow, chilling smile settles across Rax’s face.

Then he hits a button.

From a centerpiece in the table—hidden from view—a holo-lens projects images all around them. Above them, behind them, everywhere. What it shows is galactic space: stars and systems, clouds and hyperspace routes. It is not one map, but several slices of the overall galaxy.

“It is time, ” Rax says, “to expose my ruse. ”

He hits a button again. The air shifts and shimmers, and now they’re looking at thick, interstellar clouds: nebulae. Like the one they’re hiding in right now, the Vulpinus. Sloane knows her galactic map well; as a naval officer, it would do her little good to be ignorant of the stars. She spies five known nebulae: the red clouds of the Almagest, the bruise-dark striations of the Recluse’s Nebula, the sapphire orb of the Queluhan, the spiraling Ro-Loo Triangle, and the bleak columnar plumes of the Inamorata.

What ruse will he expose? The truth of it reaches her even before he speaks: Just as they are hiding in one nebula, so, too, are other fleets.

They are not alone out here. They are not the last fleet.

Rax confirms exactly that: “Portions of our naval fleet have been hidden since not long after the destruction of our glorious battle station over the Endor moon. These fleets are not as large as the one we currently control here in the Vulpinus. Yet they are substantive just the same: hundreds of Star Destroyers, thousands of smaller craft. ”

Sloane is left reeling. She feels gutted—like a dolo-fish, its belly slit so that its steaming innards can lie on the dock while it gasps in the open air. Even now her lips work soundlessly in the same way. She tries to find words. Tries to find something. She should be happy, shouldn’t she? That the Empire’s demise is not so plainly written? But all she feels is disappointment. And anger. A red, rising anger.

She’s about to erupt—

And then Rax says: “Admiral Sloane and I felt it was necessary to maintain this ruse. We simply did not know who to trust. ”

A second blow. He included her in the conspiracy—a conspiracy she literally just learned about alongside the rest of the Shadow Council. They’re staring at her. Betrayal in their eyes. But something else, too.

Admiration.

That sickens her the most. They admire the plan he created, and she has been given undue credit for it. Why? Why did he do that to her?

All she can do is grit her teeth and nod. Exposing him now would seem untoward. Worse, it would show him for being someone gracious enough to give credit to an inferior and reveal her as unappreciative of a bone thrown in her direction. But I want more than just a bone, she thinks. I want the whole damn animal. That is the only way the Empire will be kept safe and strong: its leash held firmly in her grip.

Now is not that time.

Instead, she sucks it up and leans into it. She says, summoning a swell of false confidence:

“With Palpatine’s demise, it was clear that some factions within the Empire would attempt to wrest control. Pandion was an excellent example of this—a greedy man using the chaos to extend his reach. Further, we had no way of knowing who would attempt to save their own skins by running to the New Republic. We had to be sure that we revealed this to those vital few we could trust. That’s all of you. ”

Now admiration shines at her from a different set of eyes—from Gallius Rax himself. The corner of his lip is twisted up in a mischievous hook as he regards her. He is pleased with me, she thinks.

It warms her and chills her at the same time. The fox is pleased with the hen. Is she falling for his strange way? Does she admire him, now?

She might. Even as she hates him, she admires him, too.

“We need more than fleets, ” Borrum says. “We need boots on the ground and the armor to go with them. ”

“Good news, then, ” Rax answers. “The factories of Kuat have been bombed into submission, and the shipyards of Xa Fel, Anadeen, and Turco Prime are all either contested or already lost. But the Outer Rim will be our savior—and it will be the strangling cord we tie around the neck of the New Republic. We already have three worlds under our sway there: Zhadalene, Korrus, and Belladoon. The Empire has long—to its detriment—relied on third-party corporations to produce the pieces of our war machine, but that is no longer the case. Production is entirely Imperial. And on these worlds we have already begun to produce our weapons: all-terrain walkers, new TIE starfighters, E-11 rifles, and the other necessities of war. ”

Hux sits stunned. “We still need personnel. We need new academies—”

“In due time, ” Rax says, sharply.

Sloane is so busy watching the reactions of the men at the table to this news, spying the competing emotions of relief and fear and rage on these men’s faces, that she fails to notice someone else come into the room. Someone who steps up behind her and places a gentle hand on her shoulder.

She startles as Adea whispers: “Admiral, we have a situation. ”

A hot flash of anger rises in her, and for a moment she’s about to chastise the poor girl in front of everyone. But that won’t do. It isn’t earned. Sloane is on edge, and if Adea says that a situation demands her attention, then she must trust it to be true.

It takes every ounce of willpower to get up from that table—excluding herself from the meeting, even for one second, will make her feel robbed of information. And in this Empire, information is power.

Out there, the Star Destroyer is in the slow-motion midst of its destruction. The elimination of a capital ship like that is rarely fast—it’s bled like a great beast, like a purrgil punctured over and over by hook-lashes before it can be brought up on deck. Missile streaks and laserfire crisscross the endless dark, and slowly but surely the Destroyer is ripped asunder as the vacuum of space sucks great gulps of fire from fissures in its hull. And then like that—

It’s over. Through the dark cascades a great pulsing flash from engines gone supernova. It burns its image into Norra’s retinas, and now when she blinks she sees the skeletal frame of that ship just before it’s gone.

All that’s left out there now is debris. And though she cannot see them from here, bodies.

“At the Empire’s peak, a Star Destroyer played host to around forty thousand crew, ” Commodore Agate says, walking up behind Norra. “Our best guess was that the ship out there, the Scythe, had far fewer than that on board—closer to fifteen thousand. That’s still a great many lives lost. ”

Agate is tall, rail-thin, with broad shoulders and long legs. Her chin is held high. Her hair is short—a dark curl around each ear is as ostentatious as it gets. The commodore keeps her hands held behind her back—Norra knows the woman has a reputation for her trembling hands. Once it earned her dismissiveness and doubt, but that has changed. Kyrsta Agate has proven her place time and time again. Many admire her earnestness.

Though now, Norra wonders what the woman is getting at.

“I don’t understand, ” Norra says. “We did this. This is war. ”

“That’s exactly right. This is war. It’s easy to get caught up in the swell of it. The medals, the parades, the garlands of lorachid petals on the victors’ brows. But it’s important to remember that war is mostly this: destruction and death. We are killers. ”

Norra fails to suppress a tremor of her own. “I…are you saying we’re in the wrong? With all due respect, Commodore Agate, I can’t believe that. ”

Agate turns. Her smile is sad. “No. We are doing just work. Those on board the Scythe knew who they were and why they were there. And they were not ignorant of the cost of war. I just want my people not to be ignorant of it, either. ”

“You want us to regret what we’ve done? ”

To her surprise, Agate nods. “I do. A little. We should. I don’t want unrepentant killers, Lieutenant Wexley. I want soldiers who hate what they had to do and fear having to ever do it again. ”

“And if that means we lose the war? ”

“Then we lose the war by keeping ourselves. ”

That hits her like a fist. She feels staggered by it—dizzy, almost.

“Thanks, ” Norra says. Though the way she says that word, Norra frames it almost as much a question as a statement of gratitude.

Agate nods. “I spoke to Captain Antilles. He told me why you were out here. ” Norra wonders idly if he told a lie, given that their purview to track the missing Han Solo was not exactly official. But when she hears the tale told true, she knows Wedge may not be capable of such an easy lie: “Han Solo is missing? ”

“He is. And there may be Imperial entanglements. ”

“Let’s hope you find him. ”

“Let’s hope they continue to let us find him. He resigned his military commission. ”

Agate sighs. “That may complicate things. ”

“I’m betting on it. ”

—

In front of the Moth on one of the decks of the Concord, Wedge meets Norra once more. He’s nervous. He looks around at the bright, clean curves of the Starhawk’s interior. “One helluva ship, huh? ”

She agrees, and she tells him so. It’s different to be in a ship that feels so new. It almost feels fake, somehow, or like she doesn’t belong. Even something as simple as a docking bay—above, the ceiling is sculpted in white scalloped edges, and all is lit with a warm glow rather than harsh lighting. The floors are lit, too, from underneath.

“Listen, ” he says, leaning forward on his cane. “I told Agate. ”

He doesn’t have to say about what. “I know. She knows we’re looking for Solo. It’s fine. ”

“Ackbar’s going to want to have a conversation. ”

“I accept that. ”

“You should be steamed. ”

“I’m not. Really. ”

“I just figured if anyone was going to betray Leia, I’d rather it be me and not you. Though that means I had to betray you, somewhat…”

“Wedge, it’s okay. ”

“Promise? ”

“I swear by all the stars in all the skies. ”

He raises an eyebrow. “About that drink—”

Norra kisses him. She does it before she even realizes she’s doing it. Her eyes close. She draws a sharp intake of breath through her nose as they hold the kiss. Her heart feels heavy in her chest as for just a fleeting moment, she thinks of her husband, Brentin…

When she finally pulls away, it feels like forever has eclipsed them, that so much time has passed that the war may be over and all that has come before can be willfully forgotten. An illusion, she knows.

But a comforting one.

She smiles.

He smiles, too.

“About that drink, ” she says, aiming to put some Sinjir swagger in her voice. “I’m sure they have a bar somewhere on this ship. I say we find it. ”

For the first twelve years of Gallius Rax’s life, music was a thing that simply did not exist. Yes, the music of his surroundings played: wind whistling through the stone spires, the jostling of rust-bone chimes made by the anchorites, the melodic hum of a speeder cutting a swath across the hissing sand. But real music, true music orchestrated willfully by the hands and the breath and the sheer bloody desire of sentient beings…

That was unknown to him.

The first piece he ever heard as a boy plays in his chambers now: The Cantata of Cora Vessora, an Old Republic opera of a dark witch on an unnamed world who refused to become Jedi—but neither would she join the Sith. It is a tale of birth, death, and all the glories found between those poles: love, passion, war, and above all else revenge. Revenge against the Sith who took her loved ones. Revenge against the Jedi for standing idly by and refusing to protect her because she would not join their ranks. Revenge against the galaxy for being as imperfect and impure as she had feared.

The tale itself was something he didn’t learn until much later. The story mattered, of course. But as a child taking his first flight off a grim, dust-choked planet that he thought (or feared) was the center of the galaxy, it was the sound of the music that haunted him. Now as much as then.

The light pluck of the moda khur’s strings.

The crash-and-clamor of the denda drum’s glass breaking and remaking and breaking over and over again.

The vibration formed of the choral ululations from the unglanded tucari singers—a vibration that can be felt as an intense buzzing in one’s temples and jaw, a vibration that can make one feel almost drunk on it.

He lets it wash over him, standing in the center of it. Almost as if the music can pick him up and lift him higher.

Rax is aware of someone in the room with him. Likely, it’s Sloane. Here to ask him about the destruction of the Scythe. She won’t accuse him of anything; Sloane is too smart for that. Though he fears that day is coming.

He will not have the Cantata interrupted, though, not for her. Not for anyone. So he stands, swaying gently, and he holds up an insistent finger demanding patience above all else.

It plays out into silence, and only then does he turn.

It is not Sloane standing there. Rather, it is her aide, Adea Rite.

“Miss Rite, ” he says. “I am surprised to see you here and not her. ”

“She chose not to come. ”

He lifts his brows. “She discovered the destruction of the Scythe. ” Adea confirms with a nod. “And she learned that I sent out a transmission. ”

“Both transmissions. ”

It is a shame that Admiral Sloane has not come to talk this through with him. He understands why, of course. She feels lied to because she has absolutely been lied to. And that deception will not end anytime soon. It cannot end because she cannot know everything. Not yet.

If only she would trust him. An ironic statement, he knows, given that all she has on him are mounting reasons not to trust him. But leaders are like this, sometimes. You must place trust in them even when you are uncertain that they are making the right choice.

No. Not trust.

Faith.

“Rae Sloane will come around, ” Rax says, suddenly confident. He reaches out and takes both of Adea’s hands. Her eyes shine with veneration. Though in there he sees something else: a conflict. Adea respects and admires Sloane, too. This is hard for her. Good. It should be. “We do what we must. The sacrifice of the Scythe was a necessary one. Besides, Commander Valent was conspiring with Loring—we cannot stand any more needless fractures in this, and he was too stubborn to be brought into the fold. Not to mention incompetent. ”

“Can I share this information with Admiral Sloane? ”

He pulls her closer, gently easing her so that her chin is on his chest. “Yes. You may. But not yet. ”

“I…should be getting back. ”

He can feel her heart beating against his own. Faster, now. A rabbit’s pace. Rax gently places a finger under her chin and lifts it toward him.

“Will you stay the night again? ” he asks.

“I…”

“You must. I insist. ”

He eases forward to meet her. He presses his lips against hers. Cold against warm. The kiss of fire against a shard of ice.

—

The Scythe is destroyed. Commander Valent and all those on board are dead. And it’s her fault. Or, it was made to seem like her fault.

There, on her comm, a message sent to the Scythe from her station and with her clearance codes—text only, no visuals, no audio. That message asked the Scythe to respond to an alarm signal sent from a Prowler probe droid.

Then someone went ahead and blocked all incoming messages from the Scythe, so that distress signals from the Destroyer failed to arrive.

And finally, the last piece of a troubling puzzle—yet another missive sent out through heavily encrypted channels, onward to the New Republic.

That’s him. That’s her so-called adviser—Fleet Admiral Rax. He’s been stringing along the New Republic as a character he called the Operator now for the better part of three months—but it seems he’s more interested in maneuvering the Empire into cannibalizing itself, giving the fledgling Republic a much-needed edge. He’s handing them the weapons and then shoving Imperials into firing range. Before, she could maybe excuse it—certainly remnants of the Empire truly were out for themselves. May the stars help them all if someone like Pandion were to capture the Imperial throne.

But this? The Scythe? That was an execution. Because surely it was the fleet admiral who summoned the New Republic ships under the guise of the Operator. Him tugging their leash and giving those scum the scent of another good Imperial target. Thousands of soldiers are now dead because of it.

And why? For what purpose? Shaking, Sloane paces her office, trying to figure out exactly that. Valent. He was loyal, was he not? Maybe that’s an overestimation. She sits down at her holoscreen and pulls up all the information she has on the Scythe and Commander Valent. Everything seems standard—but there. Wait. Valent didn’t go to the naval academy first, did he? He went to the officers’ school on Uyter…

…along with Grand General Loring.

So that’s it. Another rivalry extinguished. One more potential dissenter whose throat is metaphorically slit. Instead of trying to bridge the divide and lead from the center, Rax is happy to drift to the edges—and those who don’t follow him will be shot like dogs.

Sloane cries out in rage and sweeps everything off her desk. A tumbler of water spills and rolls away. She is left seething, her chest rising and falling as she envisions marching into Rax’s chambers and putting two blaster shots through his forehead. All for what he’s done.

This is not my Empire, she thinks.

But how to reclaim it? Exposing Rax is an option, but the consequences of that may not play out in her favor. First, she’ll have to openly admit that she does not control this Empire. Second, he’s a war hero, and no matter who you are, as an Imperial, those medals matter. Third, the response might be an overwhelming shrug. So what, they may say, that he’s a manipulator? Palpatine was, too. In its earliest days, the nascent Empire grew strong precisely because he let the Republic and the Jedi destroy each other—and then he simply seized the preexisting war machine for himself, uniting the fissures in the galaxy under the Imperial banner. They might have faith in Gallius Rax’s choices, however grim, however strange. Exposing him exposes her, too. Worse, it potentially pushes the Empire into its own internal civil war.

It’s time to stop dithering. It’s time to head to Quantxi and find the wreckage of the Imperialis. If droids remain, even in scrap, maybe she can find something, anything, that can shed light on who Rax is or what his true intentions may be.

With that, Sloane launches up out of her chair, renewed with vigorous purpose. She strides to the door, opens it with a hiss—

There stands Ferric Obdur. He gives an obsequious smile. “We have another meeting regarding information dissemination. And we should prepare a statement regarding the loss of Arkanis. Oh, and it’s vital we establish some vague sense of the future of the Empire—we can discuss the new breeding initiatives, for instance, and…”

As he goes on and on, she nods gamely. All the while, Sloane feels like her boots are stuck in a mire, and the mud keeps pulling her down, down, down, until her mouth is full of it and her lungs are full, too, and all she can do is drown in the muck as the Empire she loves slips away.

There’s only one rule in Maz Kanata’s castle.

(Well, okay, there are dozens, even hundreds of rules. If you get up on stage, you have to perform; don’t drink what’s in the brown jug; don’t go downstairs; if your animal drops a pile anywhere, you’re out; all deals need the approval of Maz before they’re done, and if you try to go around her back she’ll take what’s yours and what’s his and sell all of it to the highest bidder; and for the love of all that is holy don’t mention Maz’s eyes unless you want to get into a very long conversation. )

But there’s only one spoken rule—written, too, in a hundred languages (many of them long-forgotten) on the wall beyond the bar: ALL ARE WELCOME. (NO FIGHTING. )

That rule is simple on the surface, but not easy in the execution, because Maz Kanata’s castle has been a meeting place since time immemorial—a nexus point drawing together countless lines of allegiance and opposition, a place not only where friend and foe can meet, but where complex conflicts are worn down flat so that all may sit, have a drink and a meal, listen to a song, and broker whatever deals their hearts or politics require. That’s why the flags outside her castle represent hundreds of cities and civilizations and guilds from before forever. The galaxy is not now, nor has it ever been, two polar forces battling for supremacy. It has been thousands of forces: a tug-of-war not with a single rope but a spider’s web of influence, dominance, and desire. Clans and cults, tribes and families, governments and anti-governments. Queens, satraps, warlords! Diplomats, buccaneers, droids! Slicers, spicers, ramblers, and gamblers! To repeat: ALL ARE WELCOME. (NO FIGHTING. )

You fight? You’re done.

How done you are is a permutation left to Kanata herself. Maybe that means you’re out on your can. Maybe it means you end up locked away for however long she chooses. Maybe, just maybe, if she really doesn’t like you, it means she takes you up on one of her many ships—the Tua-Lu, aka the Stranger’s Fortune—and forces you to walk the air lock and meet the stars.

Sitting at the bar presently is an Imperial officer in the ISB. At least, he thinks he’s still with the ISB. Truthfully, Agent Romwell Krass doesn’t even know if the ISB is functioning fully anymore. He had been stationed on the Hyborean Moon at a black-site prison. His family lived there on that moon: his wife Yileen, his son Qarwell, his father Romwell Senior. His friends in the bureau lived there, too—Krass worked very hard behind the scenes to ensure the transfer of those he came up with in the Empire, because the Hyborean Moon was a cushy, easy job. The prison was locked up tight. The work was clean and simple. You got housing by the shore of one of the hot spring lakes. And at the end of it all, a commendation awaited for work performed, for loyalty sustained, for virtue upheld.

And then the rebels came. He won’t deign to call them the Republic new or old—they are anarchist scum undeserving of the dignity. They came in out of hyperspace with a small fleet of ships, and before anyone knew what was happening, hell rained on them from above.