Eighthmonth 1102
Over a year went by like this. Little had changed on the wide scene of the war or the small scene of Swift and her crew. We were on another trip to Serpial, with a cargo of medical supplies this time. I spent the hyperspace trip exercising in the hold, as had become my habit. Physical activity kept off the boredom of hyperspace, and I slept better for it, without dreams. Besides, it was as well to keep in good shape-we never knew when we would have to run. The support struts and beams of Swift's hold provided me with a makeshift gymnasium. I was swinging off a beam by my knees when Ari came down to me.
"We're coming into realspace soon," he reminded me. "You had better be ready."
I flipped down onto my bare feet and looked around for my jacket.
"On that crate," Ari pointed out.
"Thanks." I smiled up at him. "You read my mind!"
"I know it well enough by now," Ari said. For some reason this pleased me, and I walked up to the cockpit with him in a happy daze. It lasted until I realised he was talking about Suki Zerah, a girl who worked at the Supply base.
"She's really kind, really friendly," he enthused. "She makes you feel like you're doing her a favour by talking to her."
"Oh," I said gloomily. "How lovely."
"She's dead gorgeous too-"
I snorted. I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice as I exclaimed, "Is that all you think about? Typical male!"
"Anyone would think you were jealous," Ari said lightly. I adjusted the viewscreen in front of me, my face hot. Ari was gazing at me, and the more he looked, the more I blushed.
"Keit," he said doubtfully, "you aren't-you don't-"
I could bear it no longer. I snapped "Shut up!" at him and swung out of my seat, tears of mortification stinging my eyes. I bolted for the head, thumping the door control hard.
"Keitin," Ari's voice, through the door, sounded muffled and concerned, "Keiti, I'm sorry-I didn't, I didn't know-"
"Obviously!" I yelled, and choked back an angry sob.
"Keitin, please come out! We'll be landing soon-"
"Do it yourself, why don't you-you don't need me!"
After Ari had made the landing, I washed my face and emerged reluctantly.
"Keitin," Ari began uncertainly. I smiled tightly.
"Can we not talk about it, Ari? Please?"
"'Kay," he said, and tweaked the end of my plait. I had never felt so humiliated in all my life.
-~-~-~-~-
It was worse, after that. There were nights when I cried, not for my lost home and family, but for Ari and his non-existent love for me. "Ari, why can't you love me?" I would whisper to the walls of my cabin. I would lie awake for hours, fighting the pain of my rebel heart. I lost weight-not that I could spare any, after Alderaan. I missed Shamma dreadfully. I was sure that she would have had some comfort or advice to give me. I knew so little about men-odd, considering my cousins had all been boys. But I had never learned the rules of the dance that we humans call love. I was inept-the only way I would ever manage to be happy was if I fell for someone who was already in love with me, I thought bitterly-and what were the chances of that?
Never, I swore to myself, never will I love anyone like this again. It hurts too much.
Firstmonth 1103
Relations between us were strained and awkward after that, and when 'Grandfather' assigned us a rookie to break in, I jumped at the chance of a third party in Swift. There would be fewer strained silences then.
Our new recruit was a tow-headed boy named Rix Ha'Alori, with the clear amber eyes and tan skin of the planet Thura. Ari and I were young, but Rix seemed ridiculously so.
"How old are you? Fifteen standard?" Ari asked him when we met.
"I'll be seventeen soon," he said sullenly. Ari rolled his eyes, but I remembered I had been sixteen when I started running supplies, and shrugged.
Predictably, Rix was bored silly in hyperspace, so Ari challenged him to sabacc, and fleeced him. I watched, trying to maintain my dignity as Swift's captain and not burst into laughter. Rix was so innocent, and Ari kept sending me conspiratorial glances.
It must have been our second or third trip with Rix when we went to Ulasas. I let him pilot us in-"It's not everybody gets their hands on her precious ship," Ari teased. Despite my misgivings, Rix managed not to prang us on the spaceport's control tower, and we made an orthodox, if not entirely smooth landing.
"Ari and I are going to pick up the goods," I told Rix. "Stay with the ship."
I strapped on my blaster in its tie-down holster, snapped the elastic bracelet with my comlink onto my wrist.
"Got your ID, Ari?"
"Yes. I'm ready to go, are you?"
I scooped up my own ID and tucked it into my belt pouch.
"Don't go anywhere now," I admonished Rix, and we left. Ari and I walked through an open marketplace on the way to our contact. We were meant to be picking up a large order of welders, at cutprice rates, at a warehouse on the other side of the town. All spaceports are much the same, no matter where in the galaxy they may be. The same seedy cantinas, tapcafes and diners, the same exotic mix of species, the same tarts, the same smell of ionised gases and engine fuel.
The ramshackle warehouses on the other side of town were pretty standard too. Our contact was a stout old lady with a small red-headed granddaughter. Ari greeted her and gave the codeword. She spat out the countersign, and waddled back into the dark coolness of the warehouse. I followed her.
"Get that special loaded!" she yelled at her droid workforce, then turned to me. "I want to see the colour of your credits before this gets loaded."
"Surely," I said wearily, holding out a handful of credit chips. "I'll give them to you back at our ship. Docking bay forty-two."
"Transport'll cost you extra!" she warned. I shook my head in exasperation, and stalked back to Ari, who was making conversation with Fire-top, seated cross-legged on the burning earth.
"We're being charged for transport, as if we had credits to fling around," I told him. He gave me a wry look, twisting his eyebrows up at me.
"Nana! That man was back again!" the child called to her grandmother.
"Was he? I'll tell him to be off if I catch him," she growled, adding to us, "Some stinking tramp. And the Imps have set up a new outpost, other side of the port. Got a Star destroyer in orbit around Prime, so they say. Never bothered us much on Three, up till now. Still, you have no call to go out that side of the port."
"Not so good," I said to Ari as we walked away. "I have a bad feeling about this."
"Like she said, we need not go out there. It'll be okay," Ari reassured me.
Walking back through the market, Ari was distracted by a stall selling some sort of native insect.
"You like? You buy?" the vendor asked.
"What do you use them for?" Ari asked. A long and involved explanation followed, interspersed with local dialect. My attention wandered.
Black and white armour. On the far side of the marketplace, but approaching fast.
"Oh, no," I said. Ari looked at me, and I signalled with my eyes at the approaching stormtroopers.
"Stang!" he breathed. "We won't buy anything. Too expensive," he told the stall owner. We started moving towards the docks, the poor man's expostulations trailing us. Ari took my hand.
"Act casual," he muttered in my ear.
"Keep walking, Ari!"
The troopers were demanding ID, pretty well cutting off our escape route.
"Me first," I told Ari, tugging my hand free. I had a reason for this; everyone expects a woman to lag in a marketplace. When the troopers had passed my ID, I paused at a stall selling jewellery, positioned myself so that I could see the Imperials in the square of mirror provided for customers, and waited.
Now here Ari came to the troopers, flashed his ID-and was pushed back by a rifle butt.
My breath stopped in my throat. Ari was arguing with the troopers, but now they had hold of his arms. I tensed, adrenaline pulsing through my veins. I put down the necklace I was holding with a regretful shake of the head, and loosened my blaster in its holster. I pushed my way back towards the Imperials, then yelled, "Stop, thief!!", plunging past shoppers, pointing at some hapless teenager. The troopers were staring round, confused, as other pedestrians took up my cry. I was almost at point-blank range now. I got one of them at the first shot, and winged another. Ari reacted instantly to my rescue attempt, hooking the legs from below his captor. The young cadet who was in charge of the checkpoint spun round, fumbling for his blaster, but I was onto him in one bound. I rammed the muzzle beneath his ear and fired. His eyes, dark and terrified, turned on me for a moment before he died. It was a nasty mess. I had exchanged shots with TIE fighters before, but I had never killed at close range. I stood sickened for a moment before Ari's voice roused me.
"C'mon!"
The panic had become a stampede. Ari and I, grasping each other's wrists, dived through bewildered shoppers, cannoning into people heedlessly as we ran for the ship.
"Old sow must have informed on us!" I panted.
"Nah-it was-the guy-the kid saw-didn't look like a crazy to me."
I flipped on my comlink. However the thing had happened, we had to get out, and fast.
"Rix, do you copy? Rix, get her warm. Trouble. Yeah. Bad-very bad."
"The kid'll be wetting his pants," Ari said, grinning. We sprinted down the dusty road, the buildings ahead of us shimmering in the heat-haze.
"Nearly there," Ari panted encouragingly. We skidded down to our docking bay, seeing the safe refuge of Swift ahead of us.
"Shields up!" I yelled at Rix as we hurtled up the ramp. I jabbed the door control-just in time, for a laser blast jolted the ship as I pelted for the cockpit. Ari swore, and Rix shrieked. I flung myself into my seat, checked the shields and started Swift rising on her repulsorlifts.
"There are dozens of stormtroopers coming," Ari said tonelessly.
"Get on the bow gun," I ordered. Another shot jarred the ship violently, and I heard Ari yelp. My hands trembled on the controls, waves of alternate heat and cold washing over me. This isn't true, it can't be happening, I thought. Rix whimpered.
"Better strap down, this could get a little bumpy," I ordered, wriggling into my own straps. The comm squawked.
"Unidentified ship, please transmit your traffic clearance."
"Stang," I said, and kicked in the sublight drive.
"Unidentified ship, do you have a-you can't use your drive so close to the space port!"
I ignored the comm, and headed Swift towards open space. The port authorities sounded almost as panicky as Rix, who was muttering, "We're dead...we're dead," his eyes wide. Suddenly, a new voice came over the comm, a clipped, authoritative voice.
"Unidentified ship, turn around and land, by order of the Imperium."
I snapped the comm off, and turned to Rix. "Now we're dead. Stand by for trouble, Ari!"
Swift was already pushing her utmost, Ulasas receding swiftly. I glanced at the gravity indicators. Nowhere near far enough out yet. I slid to the navicomputer and input a set of coordinates.
"TIEs," Ari's voiced came tightly. I swung back to the viewscreen. The fighters were coming in fast, their trails of infra-red radiation leaving crimson streaks along the sensor screen. Bored troops stationed on a backwater planet, with we Rebels falling fortuitously into their grasp. I sacrificed a shade of precious speed to throw more power to the shields, and tilted Swift so that she was edge-on to the fighters. Ari fired enthusiastically if ineffectually at the fighters as they approached. They swerved a bit, fanning out to pinion Swift back against the planet. Green fire splattered against the shields, jostling me in my chair. Rix hid his eyes. Our bow gun spoke again, winging one this time. It went spinning off out of my view, and Ari whooped. I chewed at my left thumbnail, feeding the coordinates from the navicomputer to the hyperdrive, wondering suddenly what I was fighting so hard for, and what it would be like to die. We would suffocate if the hull breached; it would be quick. Easy.
I cut Swift to a new vector, angling away from the fighters, and swore in Corellian. The gravity well indicator turned green at last, and I made the jump. Outside, the starlines collapsed into the familiar white noise of hyperspace. I sank down in the seat, stetching my cramped fingers. Rix scrambled out of the cockpit, face greenish. Ari passed him in the other direction and sank down onto the co-pilot's seat.
"That," he said fervently, "was too close."
"Damn right," I said vaguely, wrapping my arms round my waist to stop their trembling. My eyes unfocused, the chaos outside the cockpit blurring. They said a man could go blind or mad from staring at it too long. Swift hummed soothingly around us.
"Ari, you're bleeding," I observed, and reached for the medkit. He had a nasty cut on the side of his forehead, and didn't know where it had come from.
"There's one good thing about all this," he said as I dressed the cut.
"What?"
"We never paid the old woman."
I started laughing, a gasping sort of laughter that was half sobbing. The fresher door slammed, and Rix reemerged, his face merely white instead of green-grey.
"Feeling better?" Ari asked, a trace of his usual grin tugging his mouth. Rix scowled.
"Where are we going now?" he asked me, ignoring Ari. I stopped laughing, with an effort.
"Good question," I said, leaning over the navicomputer. If I had typed in bad coordinates in my haste...I gave a grim smile at what the computer flashed up on my screen.
"We're going to a graveyard."
Rix gave me a bewildered stare, but Ari frowned.
"Oh, no, Keitin-"
"It's as good as anywhere."
"Where?" Rix asked. Ari glared.
"She automatically input Alderaan's coordinates when we were under fire. I suppose they're the ones she knows best."
"But Alderaan's-"
"Don't say it, we know," Ari snapped. I got up and made for the fresher, tuning the boys out. Ari's blood was on my hands, the water swirling brownish down the drain. I leaned against the wall, feeling sick and shaky. I peeled off my shirt and trousers and got in the shower, allowing myself the luxury of a water shower for once. As I dried off in my cabin, the hyperspace indicator chimed. I pulled on a dress as the proximity alarm added its tone to the clamour.
"Keitin, asteroids! Oh, stang...!"
I had never been back. People did, I knew. Those suffering morbid curiosity, survivors saying farewell to their loved ones. Suicides. But this was the first time I had revisited the shards of Alderaan. Rix and Ari stood silently in the cockpit, looking out at the asteroid field. A very ordinary asteroid field, with nothing to show it had once been a world; a world with sunsets and mountains and wide green plains, children going to school and playing at being pilots, young mothers, flowers, families, pet aldri, love and life.
"The Graveyard of Alderaan," Ari said, very quietly.
"I didn't realise properly, before," Rix said. "They just blew it all to bits, didn't they?"
"Yes," I said. "Sixty million people and a planet turned to so much drifting space dust. Well, back to the Coop, I suppose."
I turned to the navicomputer.
"The asteroid's a bit too close," Ari said. I looked.
"I wonder which bit it was-perhaps the Glasbens, or the Nangal Mountain."
Something in me seemed to snap, and when we were in hyperspace I went out into the corridor and cried, sobbed and wailed, calling for my grandmother and my dead family. I wound up face down on the Swift's cold planking, my damp hair falling about me, screaming against the galaxy and the Empire and the cruelty of life. I cried and cried till I was drained and empty, and fell asleep on the hard floor.
-~-~-~-
I sat in the entry to the airlock, hugging my knees, the gentle vibration of Swift's hyperdrive lulling me. Ari had been standing behind me, watching me, for at least ten minutes. I jerked my head at him, impatiently.
"Sit down, if you're going to, and stop hovering like that."
"Thinking of jumping out?" he said, sitting.
"No-every living Alderaani is a poke in the eye for the Empire."
"Oh, Keitin. Is that it?"
"What else is there? Everybody I love is dead."
"Apart from me."
"Oh, bother you. Half time you only make me miserable."
He looked hurt, so I said, "Sorry, Ari. I didn't mean it like that. I'm just so tired, and I think I'm starting a head cold."
"Poor you."
We sat in silence for a few minutes. I watched his profile out of the tail of my vision; his familiar face and anxious blue eyes beneath the untidy dark hair. I was very conscious of loving him. A great weariness with myself came over me; I was tired of this unnecessary sorrow, tired of the round of emotions I trod daily. The reaction to our narrow escape had set in, and I felt dreadful.
"I suppose I saved your life back there," I remarked. I would have expected to feel gratified at that, but I did not.
"I wish you hadn't had to," Ari said.
"Why?"
"I don't like being in your debt-not with the way you feel about me."
I stared. "Ari, what the hell-" I was too tired and bewildered to be angry, though I felt as if I should be, and might be, later. Ari rubbed his hands over his eyes.
"I dunno, Keitin. There's nothing I can ever do to pay you back, y'know? Not even make you happy."
"I've forgotten what 'happy' feels like. Ironic, isn't it? The Empire and home and everything, and here we sit, screwing things up for ourselves. How did we manage it?"
Ari considered, sucking at his teeth.
"I think a man and a woman, you know, there are two different directions they can take from friendship-loving, or brotherhood."
"And we took different directions, is that what you're trying to say?"
"I suppose so. I'm sorry, Keitin."
"So am I."
And we fell back into uneasy silence as Swift drove us onward.