BY CHUCK WENDIG 20 страница

But Jas can’t get up. She has her shot lined up.

All she needs is—

Chewie roars.

The inhibitor frequency is dead.

The chips are off planetwide.

The revolt begins here and now with the pull of her trigger.

Her finger twitches and the slugthrower bucks against her shoulder.

Bang.

Above Camp Sardo, a thunderclap explosion. Fire rains down in streams and bits of the shield generator slam against the ground, crushing troopers underneath. Metal burns. Smoke rises. Around old Awrathakka, the mist pulses with what looks like red lightning.

The shield is down.

All around, Wookiees climb the towers, crawling on top of buildings, swarming over their troopers. A trio of them offer thunderous roars as they wrench a turret out of its mooring. Not far away, two Wookiees grab for one of the forest trooper guards—each takes an end and they twist. The trooper’s spine snaps as his body corkscrews.

They rage. Fur and fangs and swiping limbs. Men screaming. In the distance, something explodes. Fire jets into the air.

The beasts ululate.

—

They are free. Fire blooms like a flower in the mist as the shield generator goes down. Around Jas, the Wookiees roar and raise their arms and weapons in triumph—a small moment of victory before the next phase begins.

Already Han is clipping himself onto one of the cables. He throws an anchor line to Chewie, who loops the cable around him and hooks it into his belt.

“You good? ” Han says to Jas—flinching as a laser bolt cooks the air behind his head. He growls and returns fire. A trooper scream cuts through the mist and she sees a shape fall.

“I’m good. ”

“We’re almost there, ” he says, his hand on her shoulder. “See you on the other side of this, Emari. ”

“Good working with you, Solo. ”

To Chewie, he says: “C’mon, pal. Let’s go steal us an Imperial walker. ” Then he and Chewbacca take a running leap off the platform.

Vzzzzzz!

The two figures disappear over the edge.

And then the other Wookiees join them. One by one they leap bodily off the end of the platform, arms and legs splayed out as they dive through the mist toward the vile Camp Sardo. Cables trailing like umbilical cords.

That leaves her with her command crew: Greybok, Hatchet, and Palabar. Three ex-prisoners from Sevarcos who joined Solo’s mission on a fluke—Hatchet claims he doesn’t want to be here, keeps saying things like, I wanted to get away from prison planets, not take a vacation on one, but then Greybok silences him with violent, one-armed shaking. Palabar mostly just quivers and peeks out from behind his hands.

They’re the dregs of this team. Good thing Jas likes the dregs.

Already, they’re waving her toward the Halo. A pair of forest troopers comes up a long spiraling ramp—one is already on her, so she cracks him hard enough with the butt of her gun that his helmet spins. The other gets a point-blank shot to the chest plate. It splits in half and he goes down, his armor shattered and smoldering as he twitches.

Hatchet waves her onto the Halo.

“This is all going too good, ” he says. “It’s gonna balance out the other way, Zabrak, just you watch. Can’t go nice forever. ”

“Shut up and man the guns, ” she tells him, then hops in the Halo and kicks the thrusters into gear. They thunder to life and the ship lifts into the air. Time to go rescue her friends.

—

Everything is pulsing like a pounding heart. Sinjir gags as the man’s hands wrap around his throat. Tolruck’s attaché glares down with bloodshot eyes, a mad grin spreading across his face like a pool of spilling oil set aflame. Sinjir’s hand swats uselessly at the man, then paws along the ground, feeling for the knife—a knife he knows can’t be too far away.

There. He has it—his fingers tickling the base of the hilt, and as darkness sucks at the edges of his vision he tries to pull it close, closer…

A miscalculation. It spins out of his reach.

Then, a shadow falls over him. Death, he decides. It is the specter of the end coming to claim him.

He has part of it right. It is death, yes.

But it hasn’t come for him.

One of the Wookiees brings the flat end of a circular saw-blade against the side of Odair’s head. Whonnnng. Odair cries out and tumbles to the side. The Wookiee takes one stride, straddling the man.

Then he flings the saw-blade to the side and reaches to grab the man’s arms. The freed slave begins to pull, pull, pull—

Odair screams. Then comes the sound like branches breaking.

It is a sound that fails to disturb him, for he knows its ilk well. The sounds of pain were once his song.

No time to think about that now.

Now: It is time to move.

He scrambles onto his hands and knees, only now regarding the chaos around him: Troopers are storming onto the scene, firing blasters. But the Wookiees, now freed, are not easily cowed by that—they roar and rage and rush Tolruck’s men. A trooper flies through the air over Sinjir’s head, arms pinwheeling as he hits the log walls with a dull crunch.

The knife. Sinjir’s hand finds it, and he finally gets back onto his feet—unsteadily, for his entire body feels like it’s been passed through the gastrointestinal tract of a gundark—and he dives toward Jom’s cage.

He uses the knife to pick the lock.

Jom, for his part, watches silently. Chest heaving.

A moment of sympathy plucks at Sinjir’s strings—the man really is missing an eye. His left. And it was removed without elegance. The socket is just a ragged pucker, a crass asterisk of ill-stitched skin. No signs of infection, at least. That’s something.

The lock springs. The cage pops open.

Barell grunts. “I don’t feel so good. ”

“You don’t look so good, either. If you take my meaning. ” Sinjir winks and points to one of his eyes.

“Are you drunk? ”

“Regrettably, no. ”

It’s like something clicks in Jom’s head. He grabs Sinjir by the arm and pulls him forward. “Come on, Rath Velus. Let’s go find Tolruck and make him eat that knife. ”

“No, ” Sinjir says. “We have to go, Jom. Jas is coming. ” Or she should be. If everything else is going according to plan…

The commando pulls him close even as violence unfolds around them. “That man? He took my eye, Sinjir. Cut it out of my head while he was…high as a wind turbine, drunk on some kind of tree sap. Then? He threw my eye into a campfire. I heard it pop and sizzle. He has to pay for all his crimes. The ones against me. The ones against these Wookiees. ”

“You’re angry. ”

“I have gone beyond the margins of angry. ”

Sinjir looks around. Tolruck is nowhere to be found. The deranged governor has fled the scene. Sinjir knows how this works—Jom will go and do this no matter what he says.

The question now is whether or not Sinjir will join him.

And that, of course, is no question at all. Debts must be paid.

“Tolruck awaits, ” Sinjir says, grimacing. “Shall we? ”

—

It’s like a giant thermal detonator primed and gone pop—

Beneath the Halo, Jas sees that freedom has come to Kashyyyk. Wookiees, immediately free of the inhibitor field that suppressed their minds from the chips embedded in the backs of their heads, are raging. They scale the towers of Camp Sardo. They rip at tents. They swarm over AT-ST chicken walkers, tipping them over so they crash against the ground. The forest troopers flee as Wookiees claim blasters, mount turrets, and begin to overwhelm their captors. They outnumber the Imperials by ten to one, easy.

It won’t be like this everywhere. Not yet. Many of the settlements are still contained by suppression fields—the Wookiees there are still imprisoned. But with their chips cooked, they will be able to push back and claim their prisons for themselves. And not every Wookiee is in a settlement.

The revolt has begun.

Greybok grumbles.

Hatchet leans in toward Jas, his shriveled Weequay face wearing a dubious mask. “He says the planet has had its revolutions before, you know. ”

“This one will stick, ” she says. She hopes.

“It better. ”

Palabar points. There, as she swoops the Halo low over the action, firing at troopers who are mounting guns on turrets, she sees the towering shape of the AT-AT walker ahead. The top of its cockpit is cracked open, and a familiar Wookiee is flinging the driver off into the air.

Chewie waves. Solo gives her a salute from below as he slides into the opening. The refugees—Kirratha and the others—walk on the back of the AT-AT like conquering doom-riders.

The Halo burns sky as it blasts forward.

Soon the settlement of Camp Sardo is aft. Jas weaves the ship through the wroshyr trees—ahead, a pair of LAITs come blasting through the mist, and Hatchet surprises them with a rain of red lasers. One transport’s wing peels away—and it clips the second transport. Both spin down through the mist. The fog pulses with twin explosions.

Ahead, the mist thins. And one of Kashyyyk’s coastlines emerges—a dark sea, the whitecapped tides cutting lines across the water. Beyond that, the Halo’s scopes show a rocky island. That’s Tolruck’s fortress, a massive log-walled monstrosity built on the cusp of a long-dead volcano.

“Shall we soften them up before we set her down? ” Hatchet asks.

She shrugs. “Why not? Light it up. ”

Hatchet grins and fires up the weapons system. He cackles.

—

“It’s over, ” Lozen Tolruck slurs. “The hunt has ended. ”

The warlord sits in his throne, slumping forward. Sap is sticky around his fingers and his lips. Jom has the thorn-knife in his hand, and he has the urging of a storm in him, but Sinjir stays him with a gentle gesture.

“Wait, ” he says.

“Sinjir—”

To the governor, Sinjir says: “You are coming with us. ”

“Sinjir—”

“This is what we do, Jom. We hunt the Imperials. We capture them and take them. He’s taking a ride with us. ” He presses a hand against Jom’s chest. “We’re not killers. ”

How strange that sounds, coming out of his mouth. Hm.

Jom’s one good eye closes. His chest rises and falls—the heaving breath of a man trying to contain his fury. That eye opens again. “Fine. Lozen Tolruck, you’re under arrest by authority of the New Republic. ”

“It doesn’t matter, ” Tolruck says, bubbles fizzing at his lips. His eyes search the space around them, but they don’t seem to focus. “We’re all dead. You and you and all the Wookiees and even me. All. Dead. ”

“What? ” Sinjir asks. “Speak sense, you slobbering blob. ”

“If I can’t have this world, then nobody can. Not the New Republic. Not the Wookiees. Certainly not the Empire. ”

The ground shudders.

“What was that? ” Jom asks.

Another boom.

“Orbital bombardment, ” Tolruck says with a sloppy grin. Those two words, drawn out drunkenly. “Annihilation from the stars. Or rather, from the Star Destroyers. I sent the code. Nothing is to survive. ”

Sinjir whispers to Jom: “We have to move. Now. ”

“But he—”

“Leave him. I know when a man is broken. ”

Jom concedes. The two of them peel away, fleeing Tolruck’s chambers. The man’s gabbling laugh follows them as they go.

—

A triumvirate of Star Destroyers floats in the slate-gray sky—gauzy shapes hanging there above Kashyyyk like executioner blades.

And destruction rains from those ships as they earn their name.

Death comes in streaking flame and shrieking light. It comes from the shuddering batteries of turbolasers. It comes from the bellies of the beasts, dropped as propulsion bombs. It is clumsy and brutal—an act of killing like spraying a hive of wasps with a flamethrower. Imprecise, yes.

But over time, effective.

Jas steps out the side door of the Halo and takes a moment to watch as the ships—far off for now—fire on the planet below with their massive, world-scouring weapons. The ground shakes just slightly even here.

Soon, she knows, the ships will come this way.

Centimeters from her head, a laser bolt thwacks against the side of her ship. She flinches as it brings her back into the moment. They landed the Halo smack dab in the center of the fortress, taking out a couple of bolt-throwers and the troopers operating them as it found its landing zone. Now, as troopers rush to greet them with screaming blasters, all they can do is hold off the swarms of Tolruck’s men, hoping like hell that Sinjir and Jom show.

Hatchet is by her side now, and he’s got Jom’s heavy cannon—a BlasTech DSK loaded with steel-melting dragonsfire cells. The Weequay refugee bellows and hoots, spraying the incoming troopers with green fire.

A shaggy shape darts forward off to the side—it’s Greybok. A blade gleams in his lone hand: She sees the scythe-like swoop of a ryyk blade. He howls some battle cry in the Shyriiwook tongue and begins slicing and dicing troopers like they’re nothing but paper to be cut into dolls. Bits of armor fling and fly. A helmet tumbles to the ground, its head still in it.

“Greybok is having a good time! ” Hatchet yells over the din.

“Just look for the others, ” she answers.

Come on, come on, where are you?

In the distance, the three Star Destroyers begin to drift apart—each likely going on a separate bombardment course. It’ll take a long while to bomb this world into submission with just three of those ships, but in the meantime the death they cause will be unparalleled.

And who, truly, will stop them?

An ill feeling leaches at her guts: Their success in liberating this planet will do them no good if the result is blowing it all to hell.

“There! ” Hatchet growls, and lays down covering fire as Sinjir and Jom come bolting out through a wooden archway—behind them, forest troopers storm after in close pursuit. Jas reaches on her belt, pulls a detonator, primes it, and pitches it.

The orb flies, beeping as it goes.

It lands at the feet of the troopers.

Gotcha, she thinks.

It’s fire and spinning bodies as the detonator goes off—the wave of concussion almost lifting Sinjir and Jom off their feet. But the two stagger and keep hurtling forward. As they reach the Halo, Jas helps them aboard.

“Hello, honey, I’m home, ” Sinjir says, giving her a wink. “I found this poor orphan, and I thought we could adopt him. ”

“Emari, ” Jom says, giving her a nod.

“Your eye, ” she says. It’s…gone. Her hand moves to his cheek, fingers searching out the crude stitching.

“Didn’t think I could get any prettier, did you? Proved you wrong again. ” He leans in, gives her a peck. “Let’s get this bird flying before hell rains down on us from those Star Destroyers, eh? ”

—

Tolruck sits, laughing at nothing. He is barely aware of the shape standing before him. His eyes, blurry, strain to focus.

Ah. A Wookiee.

He knows this one. Subject 6391-A, designation: Cracktooth. She once tried to bite her way through shackles, which broke most of her teeth. She learned the hard way that escape was not an option—and since then, she’s been one of the most docile beasts in all of Tolruck’s fortress. He uses her for more delicate matters—gardening, cleaning, putting up tents. She’s often nearby and she never turns her gaze to him. Cracktooth is very respectful. Very respectful.

She reaches in, her hands closing around his neck.

Grrk!

Cracktooth bares her yellow teeth.

She snaps his neck like a bird bone.

So ends Lozen Tolruck.

“All right, Mister Hetkins, lean forward and step down, ” Doctor Arsad says. “Gently, gently, left leg first, ” she adds.

Dade screws up his face and eases forward off the bed.

He does as she says: left leg first.

As for the second leg, well. That one’s gone. Blown clean off back in the thicket of Endor. He and his team were doing cleanup in the weeks after the Death Star’s destruction, tracking down ragtag Imperial battalions that never made it off the surface of the Sanctuary Moon. All it took was one—one! —scout trooper. A scout trooper with a box of thermal detonators and the willingness to use them. Then—

Boom. A crater in the ground vomited fresh dirt. It rained down around him as he fell, clutching the spot where the right leg below his knee once was. Then darkness took him. Thankfully, triage saved his life.

(If not the leg. )

And now he’s here. At a New Republic vet hospital on Hosnian Prime.

Living the dream, he thinks.

“Go on, ” Arsad says. She’s an older woman, with lines drawn in her skin—deep enough they’re like a knife carving a name into dark wood.

“Yeah, yeah, ” he says, and eases forward.

The prosthetic foot clicks against the ground, and awareness blooms in the sole of the metal foot. It isn’t his flesh and blood; he can feel it connect with the floor. It doesn’t feel the same as the other foot. This is cold and electric.

He hates it.

His new toes drum impatiently, even angrily, on the floor as Arsad asks him to hold still. Nearby, an FX-7 droid’s dozen spindly limbs furiously tap buttons on a diagnostic machine while also measuring and examining a scrolling holographic readout beamed above. The droid whirs and beeps.

She has him stand. Then walk. Then sit again, then stand again. Flex and stretch. Move and pivot. The droid continues to work diagnostics.

“Things look fine here, ” Doctor Arsad says.

“Thanks, Doc. Guess I’m good to go. ” He stretches the leg out, and the crass facsimile of a half leg hangs there like a curse. It shines. Red wires braid up through its pistons and screws. I’m less than who I was before, he thinks—an idle thought that causes anger to surge inside him like an eruption of hot lava. It’s hard to swallow and force a smile, but he manages.

“Not just yet, ” Arsad says. “The leg is fine. But how are you? ”

“Like you said. Leg is fine. So I’m fine. ”

But the way she looks at him is almost like she’s looking through him. Or, rather, seeing through his smokescreen. “Any bad dreams? ”

“Nope, ” he lies. He doesn’t flinch at remembering the one from just last night—trapped in trees falling all around him, hopping around on one bloody leg, the last man alive on a forest moon full of Imperials.

“So you’re sleeping okay? ”

“Like a purring nexu. ” Another lie.

“And no mood problems? ”

I definitely didn’t kick a potted plant to death yesterday with my one good leg. That poor little kaduki plant. All those crushed flowers, all that spilled dirt. “Not that I can see. ”

“Suicidal thoughts? ”

“Zero. ” That, at least, is not a lie. He wants to live. He’s just not particularly happy about it.

The FX-7 warbles and buzzes. Arsad nods.

“The droid suggests you are not being entirely truthful. ”

His eyes pinch shut. Droid traitor! He should’ve known that being hooked up to that thing gave a lot more bio- and psycho-feedback than he figured on. “Listen, Doc, I’m fine. I’m good. Okay? I got my leg, I’ll learn to use it, no problem. As for the rest, I knew what I was signing up for. I didn’t decide to go toe-to-toe with the Empire thinking it would be like riding the grav-rails at Domino Park. I knew what could happen. I’m alive and I’ll take that as a blessing, thank the Force. ”

“And yet, ” Arsad says, leaning in and watching him with those kind eyes. “Republic protocol demands I not let you leave without some help. ”

“Don’t need help. Leaving is help enough. ” Been in this hospital for two months now.

She hits the button and the auto-blinds rise, letting light in from the hospital courtyard. Outside, Alliance vets sit on benches or move about on hoverchairs, many tended to by FX droids. Beyond that are the crystal dunes on the outskirts of the city, on which sit dome-style Hosnian homes. “There we go. Let a little light in. We all need light. ”

“That feels like a precursor to something. ”

“I have two prescriptions for you. First is that you return here every month for group therapy—other combat veterans gather here and talk about what they’ve seen and what they’re feeling. It helps. ”

He laughs, though it isn’t a happy sound. “Doc, I wasn’t planning on sticking around. I was thinking of going back to the NR, doing another tour—maybe something in the Outer Rim, I dunno. ”

Now it’s her turn to laugh. “Oh, Dade. No. Your time at war is done. For you, it’s peacetime. If you let it be. Now, if you want to leave Hosnian Prime, we can set you up with a therapy group on other worlds. Chandrila. Corellia. The light of the Republic reaches new worlds every day now. ”

“I…” He bites his lip. “Okay, fine. I’ll talk to a bunch of scarred-up old battle idiots like me. Are we good? ”

“As I said, there is a second thing. Wait here, please. ” As if he’s going to just get up and run laps.

A mischievous twinkle shines in her eye as she leaves. Dade sits there for a while, tapping his new metal toes on the floor—cl-cl-click, cl-cl-click—when she returns to the room.

A droid follows close behind.

This droid is unlike one he’s ever seen before. It’s got a clunky, squarish head, but it rolls around slowly on a blue-and-gold ball-shaped body. Smaller than your standard astro-droid—this one only sits about knee-high. It warbles and blurps at him, focusing a pair of ocular lenses on him as it juggles its own head, which sits improbably upon its body like a box balanced poorly on a child’s ball. The droid tries to stay balanced as its head dips dangerously to the side.

“What is this? ” he asks.

“It’s a droid, Dade. ”

“Yeah, Doc, I see that, but why is there a droid here? ”

“This is QT-9. He is your droid. ”

Dade arches an eyebrow so high he’s pretty sure it hovers a few centimeters above his head. “I don’t recall owning a droid. ”

“Think of it as renting one, except for free. QT-9 is a prototype therapy droid. ”

“I don’t want a whatever-that-is. ”

Arsad smirks. “I could put you in for a therapy Ewok, instead. Some of the native Endor creatures have agreed to travel offworld to help veterans like you recuperate. As a manner of recompense for saving their home. ”

“Oh, yeah, I don’t want one of those. They smell horrible. ”

“Good news, then. The droid smells clean as new metal. In part because it is new—with the Empire falling, opportunity arises across the galaxy for new technologies. Droids included. This one is designed to be friendly and familiar. Like a pet. ”

The droid rocks back and forth, purring.

He sighs. “I have to take the droid? For real? ”

“And come to meetings. ”

“Doc, you’re killing me. ”

“I think you mean, Doc, you’re saving my life. ”

“If you say so. ”

She holds his hand and clasps it tight. “I do say so, Mister Hetkins, I do. Congratulations on your new foot, your new droid, and your new lease on life. The galaxy is yours to conquer. ”

“Thanks for your help. I guess. ”

Doctor Arsad hugs him, then leaves him alone with the droid. Dade stretches and groans as he stands fully. Again he feels the floor up through his clearly fake foot. Nearby is the silicaform sleeve (aka skin sock) that she told him he could pull over it if he wanted to. But honestly, he’d rather just have a weird metal foot. Why pretend? He leaves it behind.

QT-9 makes a string of trill-beeps at him. He just shakes his head and says, “Come on, you roly-poly pain-in-my-ass. Let’s go home. ”

(Wherever that is. )

The droid squeals with robot delight as it trails behind.

Dreams.

Leia knows she’s just dreaming. She recognizes them for the illusion that they are. But they trouble her just the same, threading in and out of her sleep. Phantasms pursue her. She dreams of Han, dead in the snow. She dreams of poor Chewie in a cage somewhere. She dreams of herself on a table, dying as her child—no, children—are born. Then comes a vision of Luke, lost among the stars, searching for something and failing, never returning. She dreams of being lost in a forest, and then of being lost inside the Death Star—she and Luke and Han are fleeing stormtroopers, trying desperately to get back to the Falcon after Obi-Wan powers down the tractor beam controls, but now she knows the dread truth: He failed, he died, and the ship is still anchored there, and even if they could find their way out of the tangle of passages, they’ll never escape…

Her stomach twists. Not an alarming pain, but a kick from the child inside her. Oof. She has to sit up. Her brow is slick with sweat. The bed beneath her is, too. Her hand moves to her belly and feels the shape there, shifting and stirring. He’s hungry. Which means she’s hungry, too.

But then, a shape in the doorway.

It’s T-2L0, one of her attendant protocol droids.

“Your Highness, ” the droid says. “I know that it’s late—”

“It’s late, Ello. ”

“Yes, Your Highness. I believe I noted that? Well. You have a visitor. ”

“At this hour? ”

The droid nods. “It is a man named Conder Kyl, ” she explains. “He said you would want to—”

The slicer. “Let him in, Ello. I’ll be out in a moment. ”

Leia takes a moment to center herself. She puts on a robe and washes her face, then heads out to meet her guest.

Conder Kyl is scruffy, but in a particularly groomed way—it seems a controlled chaos. His clothing is modern, very modern even by Chandrilan styles—a long dark vest with exposed arms and narrow-leg leather pants. He stands as she enters.

“General Leia, ” he says.

“That word makes you nervous. General. ”

“It’s just—I’m not military. ”

“I know. I hired you, remember? ”

An embarrassed smile as he says, “Yes, of course, Your Highness. ”

It’s funny, meeting like this, late at night. In secret. Reminds her of the rebel days. Except now she’s hiding from her own government.

“You have news? ”

“I do. ” He sets up a small tripod in the center of the table, its metal legs clicking into place. The holoprojector immediately casts an image of the Wookiee planet, Kashyyyk. “The probe droid recorded this. ”

Information on Kashyyyk has been incredibly hard to come by. It is a walled, protected world. The Empire has it in a chokehold. But she hoped a small probe droid could escape their sweeps, and so she hired Conder—a friend, she understands, of Norra—to build a probe designed for stealth and capable of slicing into Imperial frequencies and, further, recording something to give her a sense of what’s going on there. Most of its data has been orbital and atmospheric, though it has a long-range sensor-cam that can take satellite images from above.

She watches the three-dimensional scene unfold. It flickers blue as three Star Destroyers move together, and begin—

“Oh, ” she says, her hand flying to her face. Orbital strikes. They’re going to bomb the planet into submission. But why?

Conder must anticipate that question coming, because he turns off the image, then plays an audio file. “The probe intercepted this burst of comm traffic from the surface. Lozen Tolruck sent it—I don’t know why he failed to encrypt it, but the droid was able to pick it up. ”

The man’s voice appears from the projector, accompanied by a visualization of the spikes and dips of the sound waves—