17: Second Thoughts
Chiyo sat alone in the Katana's observation deck. She looked even more like a ghost now, pale, wrapped in bandages and draped over with a white blanket, her eyes vacant and reflecting the stars rushing by. Her pigtails were undone, which, coupled with her expression, made her look about four years older.
Had it all really happened? She had a hard time believing it. The last four hours (especially the two-and-a-half spent unconscious) were a colorless smear in her memory.
Something prodded at her attention. "Hey," Mike greeted, too casually. She glanced over to the older pilot, who leaned on his crutch in the entryway. "The others wanted me to give you this."
He held out a small golden figurine of what looked like a mechanic raising a wrench on high with a bellow of righteous fury. She accepted it gravely with both hands, silently giving him a questioning look.
"For returning in the single worst condition we have ever seen in a working starfighter or living pilot," he orated, "The pilots of the Katana award you with this: the Mechanic's Nightmare."
The girl smiled wanly. "Thank you. I… wish I could think of a more entertaining acceptance speech…"
"I'll make something up for you," Mike said. "You look like you need to be alone for a while…?"
"Thanks."
"No. Thank you. We'd've been screwed without you, Chiyo-chan." He hobbled away, leaving her to her contemplation. Her fingers closed around the ridiculous figurine. There was physical proof, now… as if the tingly burns all down the left side of her body weren't proof enough.
The world became a blast of terrible green light and twisted around her. She bounced painfully across the deck, suddenly, incomprehensibly surrounded by a shrieking, blurring metallic cage-- THUD! She came to rest, her vision a solid sheet of purple, feeling the Katana shudder through the cold flooring pressed against her cheek.
"Chiyo-chan!" Mike called weakly.
She regained her feet uncertainly, eyes clearing slowly, gagging on a sour miasma like blaster-smoke but much, much stronger. "Mike!" she yelled back, scrubbing a forearm across her eyes. "What—what happened?"
"Damn… my leg…" she found him pinned under a fallen scaffold; the quick-launch rack had been blasted out of its moorings and wrenched apart. It was a solid structure, but the designers hadn't counted on a near-direct hit from a turbolaser.
"Chiyo-chan, I can't... dammit!" he tugged futilely at his leg. "Get—take my fighter!"
"What?"
"My Seraph! It's the one on the end. Take it!"
"But—"
"Get going! And… and the Force be with you."
"I guess it was," Chiyo said with a tiny laugh, rubbing the statuette with her bandaged thumb. If this was how things went with the Force, she didn't want to see the alternative. It was just striking her now how remarkably stupid taking the fighter had been; very little training, no experience, and she hadn't even had a flight suit.
Could it be her fate, then, to be some kind of warrior? Everything that had happened to bring her to this point seemed incredibly unlikely. Still, the notion of this being her fate didn't appeal to her much.
Don't think. Don't think. Don't think.
The Seraph wound and whirled through a maze of bolts, never a pause or misstep. Chiyo's small hands clutched the yoke grimly, moving with a surety that was an absolute lie. Her mind was in chaos, tethered only loosely to anything remotely approaching reason.
Had anyone else flown into a dogfight in her panicked state, they would be vapor in an instant. The rules are a little different for Force-attuned prodigies, though. Gray Valkyries fell under her guns again and again, vanishing in orange clouds fueled by the lives of their pi—
Don't think!
A soft curtain of menace surrounded her, and where she felt it harden was where the bolts or torpedoes were streaking in, where she felt it abate were the backs of unsuspecting Imperial fighters. The Force was with her. The Force was guiding her in her grim task.
Another and another—
Chiyo sighed. Her hands were still shaking, adrenaline dancing a nauseous jig in her chest. I'm not built for this, she thought disconsolately. Is anyone? She thought of the Super Seraph in the bay below her, and the techs busily painting seven Valkyries under the canopy.
Seven! Seven lives! And that was leaving aside the Star Destroyer.
"Listen! Seraph pilots!" Kaori's voice piped in her ear suddenly. "We can't break the Star Destroyer's shields! You have to use the Giant Killers!"
"The what?" Chiyo yelped, evading a torpedo and blasting it as it passed.
"Metanuclear device," a tech explained on her frequency. "Won't do jack to their shields, but if you can open a little hole and drop it through, it'll ruin their day. When you're ready, it's the yellow button."
"The one with the smiley face on it?"
"Smiley…? Hold on-- Mike? … Yeah, the idiot put a smiley face on it."
A smiley face. What kind of a madman…? Chiyo glanced at the Mechanic's Nightmare and sighed inwardly. Oh. That kind.
Purple lightning leapt from behind them and crawled over Porkins's fighter, engines bursting and armor crumpling in an instant. Flickering between the remaining Seraphs and looping back was a strange dark fighter they'd never seen before.
"Nochichi-!" Chiyo realized with a surge of panic. The Force threatened to flee her as they closed on the Star Destroyer. "Ignore him!" Wedge barked, "Go! Fire!"
Both poured laser fire and torpedoes into the patch of shield before them, but the barrier wasn't giving. At the last instant before they pulled up, Wedge loosed his Giant Killer, engulfing both of them in its terrific but futile blast. "Damn!" he gritted, "We had the gap! Impacted off the side…"
Lightning streaked past Chiyo as she twisted back towards the thinning explosion. Nochichi shot past her again, spraying purple death onto a rebel Valkyrie on his way. "He has me!" she realized.
Impossibly maneuverable, the alien fighter whirled and spewed another crackling bolt that missed Chiyo by meters and spidered over the Star Destroyer's shields. The next bolt would catch her… but it never came.
Was she listening to the Force, or just a reckless lunatic? Her fighter plunged through the gap left by Nochichi's attack, the closing shields clipping its tail off. The Seraph's targeting countermeasures released a greenish, glittery cloud to billow within the bubble of the Implacable's shields.
Gunners frantically brought their weapons to bear in the sudden sensor-dark, but it was too late.
Before Chiyo realized she had fired, golden fire was clawing the mighty vessel's hull apart, ballooning hungrily out into the void. She stared in numb shock as the molten flames crashed against the inside of the shield above like waves on a breakwater and came rolling back towards her.
"Oh, son of—"
Chiyo winced from the memory. If she'd pulled that stunt even in her father's time, the radiation burns would have killed her. If her shields had been any lower, she'd have been vaporized. As it was, her injuries would only be a discomfort for a few more days.
"So," she heard Tomo's voice near the entrance, "We get a reward for rescuing you, right?"
"More than your wildest dreams," Kaori replied dismissively, closer.
"I don't know, I've had some pretty wild dreams," Tomo said, passing the door, "There's this one where I'm dressed up like Bruce Lee and—"
"We can work it out later. I'll be seeing you."
"Yeah, see ya."
Kaori entered silently and sat next to the wraithlike girl, holding the Professor's orders in one hand. She was dressed in black, mourning for both her world and Sakaki. Some people were worse off than Chiyo. "Hey," she said.
"Princess," Chiyo acknowledged flatly.
"So, you were… you were Sakaki's apprentice," Kaori ventured. She'd left her regal bearing somewhere, apparently. Chiyo looked towards her, eyes focusing and softening. "Did you know her well?"
"Not too… she was very quiet. Kind, though. And strong."
"Just how I remember her." In spite of years of experience as a diplomat, Kaori didn't know how to proceed, exactly. "Did you see her… read a letter while you were together?"
"A letter? I, I think so…" Chiyo thought back. It was so long ago already!
"How did she react? If you don't mind my asking…"
Ah. She remembered, now, the flicker of sadness that had crossed Sakaki's features. "I couldn't tell," the girl lied, smiling slightly, "You know how stone-faced she was."
The Princess chuckled. "Yeah." They sat in silence for a few minutes before she spoke again. "I had orders to bring her to see the Professor on Coruscant, but… well. You're her only student; would you like to come instead?"
"Yes," Chiyo nodded slowly. "I'd like that very much."
"The Professor won't know what to expect. I think you'll make quite an impression on her."
"Her?"
"I can't imagine a guy using this bunny rabbit stamp."
"It looks familiar…" Chiyo couldn't place it, though. On Tatooine?
"Why are you up here? You should be celebrating with the other pilots."
The girl shrugged and turned her gaze back out to the viewports. "Don't feel much like celebrating..."
"That won't do. You've saved everyone on this ship, Chiyo-chan. I hereby order you to at least visit the party before they're all too drunk to stand."
"Isn't that nice." Yomi commented as she shut down their room's messenger.
"Eh?" Tomo looked up from her magazine. She'd been surprisingly quiet ever since SRS-174; it was starting to get on the First Mate's nerves in fact. In large part, she was probably just sulking because Yomi wouldn't let her hit the Rebel's victory party and its free-flowing spring of alcohol. "What's up?"
"There's a Valerian contingent on the Quicksilver. They just invited me to their victory dinner," the room's light glinted off of her glasses menacingly, "And I'll not be out-eaten this time!"
"Oh, cool! I get to watch you totally pig out and make yourself sick again!" Tomo cried, leaping to her feet. "Can I come?" (Was that sarcasm? It was hard to tell with her sometimes.)
"Tomo, we Valerians take victory dinners very seriously. It's in bad form to show up if you don't think you can win."
"Win?" A light went on in Tomo's eyes.
"Of course! It's a competition. The one who eats the most…" Yomi trailed off as she realized she had just ensured the Honorable Captain's attendance. "Crap. Well, the invitation said I could take two guests…"
"I know just the person!"
Matsuyama stomped into the Intelligence Office, cursing the fact that he couldn't slam the automatic door behind him. The four analysts under his command were lounging about the office; they hadn't had much to do lately.
"How'd your meeting with Madame Director go?" Kenichi, one of his subordinates, asked.
"About as goddamn well as you think!" Matsuyama snarled, stalking past him and slapping a hand against the viewport that dominated one wall. "That Iceheart is such a psychotic bitch! It's no wonder she and the Empress get along so well!" He could get away with saying things like that-- who would rat on him? Imperial Intelligence? "And she's so cocky! It's like she has a Super Star Destroyer buried somewhere!"
"Sorry, boss."
"Yeah," he sneered, slowly returning to calm, "Well, so am I! Sometimes I think all the higher ups are evil bastards and all the lowlies are morons!"
"What about us?" the analyst asked. Matsuyama stared at him for a long moment.
"I got a report from the 'spin-meisters,'" Shiro, another analyst, said, hoping to break the tension, "They have our official line for the press on Alderaan."
"This, I gotta see," Matsuyama growled, snatching the hard-copy up. "I don't know how they're gonna make us look good on this one. We blew up a bloody harmless planet and killed millions of innocent people!" As he flipped through it, though, his eyes strayed out towards the ruins of Alderaan and a strange tone crept into his voice. "How can they possibly justify that?"
Sitting quietly at her desk, unnoticed as usual, Chihiro watched him sharply.
"It's on!" Tomo gritted.
"Oh, you know it!" Kagura shot back.
They faced each other over a table that was about a foot too high for them, standing tensed as if they meant to physically attack the other. Their bowls were absolutely loaded by their usual standards, but the Valerian that dished them out had done so with a condescending smile that neither could stand.
Yomi hadn't been kidding; the twenty or so Valerians that gathered about the table were grimly determined to be the Victory Dinner's victor. Yomi glowered at her bowl, twice the size of Tomo or Kagura's, with an intensity she rarely wore. "I will not be out-eaten," she growled. "All the limiters are off!"
Her prospects didn't look too good, however. The average Valerian was about six-and-a-half feet tall, four-hundred pounds of whalebone and sinew, and yet still able to eat as much as a creature twice their size. Yomi's partner had been right to call her a scrawny midget.
(How a ship could stock for these events is unclear, but they always managed, no matter how many battles they went through. Some said it was the Force, others said it was the work of the Spacefarer's God Klono, still others said that it was because Valerians will eat anything.)
Even the hypercompetitive, never-say-die Tomo knew that she didn't stand a chance against these goliaths, instead setting her sights on the more manageable goal of defeating Kagura. "Say your prayers!" she warned the soldier, grinning.
By coincidence, that was just when Commander van Buskirk stood at the head of the table and said Valerian grace. "Thanks. Eat."
And so they did. Prodigiously.
Kagura and Tomo locked eyes and laid into their stew with all of their might! They worked at a rate that they wouldn't have even considered if not surrounded by gorging Valerians. One bowl, two bowls, three…
Three-and-a-half…
Three-and-three-quarters…
Ugh.
Tomo sagged back in her chair and glanced over to her First Mate, who was still going strong (though with much better table manners than her countrymen.) "Wow…" she murmured, feeling new respect for her partner.
"Should we call it a draw?" Kagura asked, poking at her stew without enthusiasm.
"Aah, I wasted you and you know it."
"We came up even."
"You wish, you rebel scum!" Tomo didn't expect any kind of reaction; she'd said it relatively quietly. It was a few seconds before she noticed with a creeping sensation that every Valerian up and down the table had stopped and was staring at her, except for one guy on the end that was almost as small as Yomi. (He needed the time to catch up anyway.) It then occurred to her that 'rebel scum' wasn't the best insult to use when surrounded by 500-pound Rebels.
"She- she didn't mean it that way!" Yomi said quickly.
"How did she mean it, then?" one of the Valerians asked dangerously.
"Um… she meant it whatever way won't get her dismembered."
"Oh, good save," Tomo said sarcastically.
"Hey, shut up, you idiot! I'm doing this for you!" The Valerians stared balefully for a few seconds until van Buskirk stepped in and saved the day. "Hey, guys, your stew is getting cold!" And so the race was on again.
"God, you moron," Kagura said, shaking her head.
"Hey, I'm Yomi and I're the smartest people on this whole ship!" Tomo said. "You don't see us fighting the most powerful force in the galaxy for no reason!" Even Tomo couldn't tell if she really meant what she was saying or if she was just trying to piss the other off.
"No reason?" Kagura was so surprised that she forgot to be angry.
"Seriously! What do you guys hope to do? Your whole—"
"Don't!" Kagura's first syllable slashed through clamor of the Victory Dinner and actually caused a momentary lull. "…think that we're anything like you… you grin-and-bear-its!"
"Grin and…?" Tomo stared in bafflement.
"You think that just because you're doing fine things don't have to change! Worthless cattle like you let the Empire trample all over people, just grinning and bearing it!" She sat glaring for a few seconds, but just when Tomo was about to speak she exploded again. "Alderaan! Should those people grin and bear being reduced vapor? God, Takino, you make me sick!" Kagura stood, bowed curtly to van Buskirk and left in a huff.
"I, uh, I think it might be the stew…" Tomo said weakly after her. As she watched the soldier go, she felt troubled in a way she never really had before. "Hey…" she asked softly, "Yomi?" Her partner didn't respond, so absorbed in the contest was she.
Tomo leaned back and closed her eyes.
Darth Nochichi touched down on the dark floor of his chamber. A panel beneath him clunked into place and lit up, signifying contact. The Dark Lord of the Sith steeled himself; there were things in this galaxy even he feared.
A towering hologram bloomed before him, filling the room with eerie blue light.
"What is thy bidding, my master?" Nochichi asked.
"First, that you wish me a Happy Birthday," Empress Yukari replied.
There was an appreciable pause. "Happy… Birthday," Nochichi said dutifully.
"I can't believe it! No one around here remembers my Birthday! I'm the friggin' Empress, for crying out loud! And that lousy Nyamo is still showered with presents every year… I don't know why I stuck my neck out and made her Headmistress of that stupid Academy, anyway!"
Darth Nochichi waited for her to wind down. After about four more minutes, he announced, "I have found the daughter of Mihama."
"What?"
"Yasuhiro Mihama's daughter."
"She's the… the…?"
"Yes."
"Well, fine then. Kill her," the Empress commanded airily, waving a hand in the air. "She can only get in the way."
"She could be a powerful ally…"
"But Mihama was such an annoying adversary. She probably takes after him."
"She's every bit as much mine as she is his."
"You're not going soft on me, are you, Nochichi?" the Empress asked slyly.
"Mihama will join us or die," Nochichi vowed. The Empress crossed her arms, unconvinced. "If she so much as raises a hand against me…" the Sith Lord glowed violently red. "I'll cut the damn thing off!"
(A/N: Foreshadowing? Me? Never!
Thanks to Mr. Zaitcev for faithful and reliable beta-reading, as well as averting the disaster of chapter seven.
Thanks to Section Eight for helpful suggestions, constant amusement and general inspiration. Incidentally, he figured out who Ayumu was fourteen chapters ago; c'mon guys, she always has her head in the clouds? Er-hem?)
