Halfway to Martyrdom

Chapter Six

Hammerly stopped by Woldar's quarters first thing in the morning. She had two cups of caf in her hands and, for the first time since the battle, a well rested smile on her face. "Good morning, Woldar."

"Morning, Hammerly," Woldar grunted, still not fully awake. He sat up in his bed, using his arms to lift his body into an upright position. His room was littered with objects he'd dropped on the floor. "You don't have to check on me every morning, you know. The medic said I'm healing fine."

Hammerly set Woldar's cup of caf on his bedside table, then sat down in a nearby chair. When she popped in yesterday, the chair had been by his desk. "I don't visit you out of duty. I miss having breakfast in the mess with you." And Faro. And Carvia. And... Pyrondi. Hammerly shook the thought away before it could weigh her down. "If you want me to leave, I'll go."

Woldar reached for his cup of caf, careful to maintain his balance. "No, it's fine. At least you're here to actually see me."

"What does that mean?"

"Thrawn stopped by last night. It was my first time speaking to him since the day we got here."

Thrawn had come here? Hammerly pursed her lips, chewing on the implications. Thrawn inquired into Woldar's condition on occasion. He knew Hammerly was keeping him company. While she was confident the grand admiral did care about the health of his officers, the question always struck her as Thrawn's equivalent of small talk. Something he brought up before asking what he really wanted to know. "What did you two discuss?"

"Just about everything. He asked me how well I was navigating the ship with crutches, if the asteroid strikes made things harder for me, if I was still able to do my job… he offered to assign an ensign to me so I would worry about falling less." Woldar bristled at the implication that he might require a caretaker. "He even asked if I'd stopped drinking and went all quiet when I said no."

Hammerly almost laughed. Once a medic had finally been summoned to patch Woldar up properly, they told him bacta resources were limited and his bones would have to heal the old fashioned way. The second Woldar felt comfortable walking with crutches, he'd hobbled to the cantina at remarkable speed.

Something still confused her, though. "It sounds like Thrawn was here to see you. Why do you say he wasn't?"

"The second he got a call from a trooper, he ran out." Woldar frowned, then took a swig of caf. "He had a trooper team setting a trap in his quarters and needed to be away while they were there. Thrawn only came to me because my 'location was convenient.'"

"A trap? For what?"

"Bridger, I guess. Who else would the trap be for?"

"He trapped Bridger in his own quarters?!" Bridger had infiltrated Thrawn's private rooms? Why? Had he tried to kill Thrawn? Had he succeeded? "Do you know what happened next?"

Woldar set his empty cup back on the table, trying and failing to look nonchalant. "No, but I figured we would have heard if Thrawn was dead by now. I hope he caught that rebel scum once and for all. My part in the mission was a success, at least."

"I hope they caught Bridger too." Going back to why Woldar was annoyed… Hammerly could see how he might feel used. She tried to comfort him. "Even if your room was a convenient place for Thrawn to stop, he still chose to visit you. He trusted you to take part in an important operation. Thrawn has more than one reason for acting sometimes, but that doesn't make any of his motivations false." She met Woldar's gaze and held it. "He wants you well, Woldar. We all do."

"You sound like Faro." Woldar turned his gaze down, fixing it on his wounded leg. "I know. We're all valuable resources to the Empire. Our ship can't afford to lose more soldiers. There's no one coming to rescue or reinforce us. We have to do it ourselves."

"Exactly. We all need to work together to get back into the war. The rebellion hasn't seen the last of us yet. You still have a lot to offer this ship while you're healing." Hammerly finished off her own caf, then collected Woldar's empty cup for him. "I'll let you get ready. See you on shift."

"Bye, Hammerly." Woldar waved with one hand while rotating his body with the other. He hoisted himself upright on crutches in one swift motion. Hammerly had offered to help him in the past, but he would be offended if she did so now. "See you in a few minutes."

Hammerly deliberately passed Thrawn's quarters on her way back to the mess. She didn't hear any rebel screams, but there was a broken wall across the hall from the entrance. More importantly, there were no signs of troopers guarding the area. Had the plan to capture Bridger failed, then?

Aside from the broken wall, the corridor looked the cleanest it had in over a week. Any personnel that lacked medical experience, repair experience, or Bridger duty had been hard at work cleaning debris in the inhabited areas of the Chimaera. Even in places where the ceiling had cracked or support beams had failed, rubble no longer remained a tripping hazard. Every day, the ship inched closer to regaining its former majesty.

After returning the cups to their rightful place, Hammerly tracked Thrawn down to his office. Despite being in the middle of a meeting with Sergeant Jeffries, Thrawn allowed Hammerly to enter. He gestured for her to take a seat at the sergeant's left. "Commodore. You spoke to Commander Woldar this morning?"

"As I do every morning, yes." If Thrawn wasn't going to beat around the bush, neither was Hammerly. "He told me what he knew about your trap for Bridger. What happened?"

Thrawn summarized the previous evening for his first officer. When he got to the part about how Bridger had fled the scene, Sergeant Jeffries hung his head. "I apologize on behalf of my men for our failure, sir. We are ashamed to have let Bridger slip through our fingers."

"It is not necessary for you to apologize, Sergeant. Thanks to the stealth and cleverness of your men, we now have…" Thrawn trailed off. He walked up to the vent covers in his office, examining each one for signs of an unwelcome presence. When he continued, his voice was but a whisper. "We now have a way for your men to track Bridger's movements on the Chimaera. A method far more reliable than his prior scent."

Hammerly kept her expression still for the revelation. "Please explain, sir."

"In preparation for Bridger's visit, I swapped out the standard soap used on the Chimaera for a bar partially composed of uthoriung, an element once famous for its scent elimination qualities before its composition in soap was revealed to generate harmful radiation. An individual subject to repeated usage can suffer any number of unpleasant diseases, hence why the soap containing it suffered bans in most markets." Thrawn's eyes glowed brighter as he explained. "One use, however, is unlikely to make Bridger ill. His person can simply be tracked on our scanners now."

Impressive. Hammerly wasn't even going to ask why Thrawn had radioactive soap on his ship in the first place. "That should help your troopers, Sergeant. How long does it last, sir?"

"The radiation fades gradually over the course of weeks. Even if our resident rebel attempts to cleanse himself another way, his skin should hold traces for a good while." Thrawn focused his comments on Jeffries. "I intend to use our newfound ability to prevent future sabotage. Whenever Bridger moves in on a recently repaired system or maintenance hatch, I want it guarded before he arrives. No longer shall he be able to delay our repairs from the shadows."

"My men can do more than prevention, sir. Give the order, and we will eliminate the problem entirely."

"Not yet, Sergeant. While your men are running interference, I shall assign others to monitor the patterns in his movements. Should Bridger have a regular sleeping place, we shall use that knowledge against him. If we are to neutralize the threat to our ship, we will need a trap less... fallible than our prior attempt."

Jeffries nodded, visibly frustrated by the order. "I understand, sir. I will ensure my men understand they are to watch and deter, not engage."

Hammerly pursed her lips into a frown. She thought she saw a problem in Thrawn's plan, but he had previously asked her not to get involved in matters pertaining to Bridger. She worried it was not her place to mention what was bothering her. "Thank you for updating me as well, sir. I shall cooperate with the sergeant's team in whatever capacity they require."

"Speak openly, Commodore. What perceived flaw occupies your mind at this time?"

"It's just…" Hammerly paused, wanting to make sure she voiced her concern in a clear manner. "Bridger snuck into your private quarters last night, sir. Yes, he waited for you to leave, but you did not wander far. The way you spoke of your confrontation implies a growing boldness on the rebel's part. If he is determined to undermine our recovery efforts, I'm not sure the mere presence of troopers will dissuade him for much longer. I worry he will give up tacitly aiding our cause in favor of direct action against it. When he does, his presence on our ship will stay hidden no longer. He will harm crew members when they are least expecting him. Our men will not appreciate his concealment on our parts, sir."

Thrawn nodded. "Your concerns are legitimate, Commodore. Being trapped and alone has given Bridger an uncharacteristic aversion to open conflict. I too wondered if our confrontation last night might return him to his prior, reckless self. Unfortunately for our studies, we can only collect more data from when he acts. In the meantime, we speculate. I do not want our speculation to be driven entirely by fear. A preemptive strike on our enemy would be ideal were it not for our need to limit casualties. If I can return this ship to Imperial service, the problem of Bridger would be far simpler to resolve.

"At this time, Bridger's death is not worth our crew's lives. I will not commit the same error as our late ally."

When Thrawn mentioned a 'late ally,' Hammerly knew he was referring to Governor Pryce. The idiotic woman had destroyed Lothal's fuel depot in her haste to kill a single rebel. Even for a Jedi, the price was too high to pay. Considering the chain reaction that kill had caused, Hammerly now considered it to be the beginning of the end for Imperial rule on Lothal.

Now, Pryce's mistake hindered the Chimaera's work. Even somewhere as distant as this asteroid field, the legacy of her rash nature remained. "Does the rebel Jedi still look to his late master for guidance?"

"He does," Thrawn confirmed. "Bridger does not care if he kills himself out here. If it means he can end the remainder of our crew, he will martyr himself with ease… or so he claims."

"You doubt what he says, sir?" Sergeant Jeffries asked. "My men found his speech convincing."

Thrawn checked a second time to make sure they weren't being eavesdropped upon. "In all our prior dealings, Bridger has possessed a flair for the dramatic. From his impassioned denouncement of my methods to the arrival of his purrgil friends, everything Bridger did above Lothal was worthy of a show.

"Yet when we arrived at our current location, Bridger lost his bravado. He has not recovered it since. Even in our encounter last night, he did not stick around to fight. He gave a half-hearted attempt to neutralize me and fled. I find the possibility that he sticks to our shadows distinct."

"Is the profile of our enemy wrong then, sir?" Jeffries frowned. "Our… red robed friends didn't accomplish their goal during the battle. Someone has to be pretty confident for them to work alongside us, right?"

Hammerly raised an eyebrow. "Red robed friends?" What was this trooper talking about?

"You should not discuss that with others, Sergeant. Not when you were never meant to know in the first place. Your friend made a poor decision in breaking his vow of secrecy," Thrawn warned Jeffries before dismissing him. "Brief your men of their new orders. I want them in action right away."

Jeffries lifted his helmet from Thrawn's desk, then saluted him. "Yessir. On my way."

Hammerly waited for Jeffries to leave before asking again. "Who are our red friends?"

"In the Battle of Lothal, I was confident I had the rebel Bridger figured out. His tactics, his network of allies, his… motivations at the core. I was not the only person who was confident in such knowledge." Thrawn did not meet her eyes as he answered. "There was more than one architect of our battle plan for Lothal. Surely you noticed, Commodore."

Hammerly was afraid to admit what she said next, but she knew Thrawn rewarded boldness in the right circumstances. It was time she proved herself worthy as his new first officer. "I… did find the orbital bombardment harsh by your regular standards, sir. Even with the precautions you took, it was…" A flash of realization hit her. "A show. Bridger was not the only one putting on a show for Lothal."

"Bridger's show was for Lothal's citizens. Our show had someone else in its audience. Though it would be incorrect to call this individual a mere spectator, I am afraid."

Tarkin? No, it couldn't be him. Tarkin didn't inspire this kind of behavior in Thrawn. It had to be someone else. Someone more powerful, if that was an… Oh stars.

Hammerly thought she knew what Thrawn was getting at, but she had exhausted her boldness for the morning. She didn't have enough left to name the second architect. All her boldness was spent on what she said next. "And both of you were wrong. About Bridger, I mean."

"Yes. I would like to know why." Thrawn sat back down in his chair, a faraway cast to his eyes. "Until I know my error, I cannot fully prevent it from defeating us again. I have led too many to their end as it stands."

"Your remaining crew is loyal, sir. We will repair our ship, end the threat Bridger poses to our order, and serve you for many years to come."

Thrawn exhaled. "Your optimism is touching, Commodore. In one sense, it does not matter what comes next for me. My tenure of command has reached its final days. Yet I would rather terminate my career without taking my crew's lives along. The rest of you still have more to offer the Empire."

"You say that, sir. It's a long way back to the Empire. Who knows how we'll be received on return?" Hammerly smiled. It came across as pinched. "I will treasure my time as your officer no matter how many days it has left."

Thrawn kept his eyes downcast. He did not appreciate her flattery. "Dismissed, Commodore."

Had she said too much? Hammerly chewed on the inside of her cheek as she stood and saluted. "Yessir."

Without missing a beat, Hammerly turned on her heel and left the office. Well, her body did. Her mind chewed on what Thrawn and Jeffries had said long after her morning duties began. Only a dispute between Xoxtin and Fennix was enough to lapse Hammerly out of her partial reverie.

"My hangar is structurally unsound! If we don't get the durasteel parts we need, people are going to die in the next major asteroid collision. Do you want Imperial deaths on your hands?"

"If I could give you those parts directly, I would." Fennix spoke through gritted teeth. Xoxtin's shrill voice looked like it was tearing on his last nerve. "Condor assigns repair crews based on need. His repair crews have priority on the parts you want. If the hangar is doing so terribly, you should tell the engineers. Not me."

"I have told him! He stole half of my crew for who knows what and left me to pound sand!"

Hammerly hated getting between Xoxtin and… well, anything. As much as she kept the hangar running smoothly, Xoxtin's peculiar and precise way of doing things put her at odds with the rest of the Chimaera crew. Back in Known Space, Xoxtin's illustrious family ties were enough to keep anyone but Thrawn and Faro from standing up to her.

But here, where everyone was cut off from the rest of the Empire, her bullying tactics were losing their effectiveness. Worse, Xoxtin seemed to realize that. Instead of doing the sane thing and changing her attitude, however, Xoxtin seemed to think she would succeed if she doubled down on her demands. With the volume to match.

Hammerly just wanted the yelling to stop. "Officers, please. We don't need to shout at each other in open hallways. What will everyone else think if they see two top officers at each other's throats?"

"They would think Chief Fennix here is hoarding the supplies our ship needs to fix itself." Xoxtin's words remained hostile, but her volume dropped significantly. She tucked a sleek black hair back under her cap, straightening to her full height as she did so.

"Why don't we sort this out in my office?" Hammerly suggested, already dreading their answer.

Xoxtin snorted, derisive. "Which one? Your old one or Faro's?"

"My office as first officer of the Chimaera." Hammerly focused everything she had on keeping redness out of her face. Show the smallest bit of weakness, and an ego like Xoxtin's would pounce on it. No more playing nice. "Come. Both of you."

Fennix nodded, doing his part to ingratiate himself to Hammerly. "Yes, Commodore. My apologies for the scene we caused."

Hammerly didn't want apologies. She wanted the ship's officers to work together. As she led the pair to Faro's (no, her) office, she did her best to make it look normal to onlookers. She didn't want the lower ranks to think their commanders were anything less than united.

It took a few tries to get a coherent narrative out of the two of them, but once Hammerly did, the problem was simple enough. Xoxtin felt "her" hangar's damage was being ignored by the repair crews and thought she could thwart the procedure and have her remaining personnel fix it themselves. To Xoxtin's credit, the damage she described did sound like it posed an actual danger to human lives.

Fennix, for his part, was just doing what he'd been told to do: give supplies out to repair crewmen when they asked for it and hold certain items for their use only. If every officer tried what Xoxtin was attempting now, repairs would happen for whoever had the pushiest surviving crew, not who needed the most fixing.

"I will relay your concerns to Chief Condor myself, Lieutenant. In the meantime, you will refrain from publicly demanding your peers disobey a direct order. We need a united front while the ship gets back on its feet. Morale is suffering as it is." You're not the only one with broken toys, is what Hammerly wanted to say. Unfortunately, she was too diplomatic for that.

Xoxtin huffed. The light hit her face in a way that exaggerated its sharp bone structure. Meanwhile, her slanted eyes refused to focus on Hammerly, gazing instead at the far wall. "I will voice my concerns to you directly next time… Commodore."

"Thank you, Commodore. If I may return to the supply room now?" Chief Fennix offered her a sympathetic smile.

Hammerly nodded, not returning the grin. "Dismissed, both of you." She didn't watch as the officers left her office, but Xoxtin exited first. That much was clear from the sound alone.

She made her call to Condor as promised. Turns out, Xoxtin hadn't told the chief engineer about her problem. Typical.

Not too long after, she heard the telltale sound of crutches swinging through the halls. They stopped in front of her door, and on the other side stood Commander Woldar. "Morning again, Hammerly."

"What do you need, Commander?" Hammerly asked, her tone flat. When Woldar asked her what was wrong, she told him about the fight she'd broken up between Xoxtin and Fennix. She kept the bit about Thrawn to herself.

Woldar snorted, trying to ease her pain. "Kriffing Xoxtin, am I right? She's always been terrible. Don't let her get you down. You're in charge of her, remember?"

"I know." Hammerly smiled for her friend's benefit. "I took the first officer position, and everything on this ship falls to pieces. Literally."

"That has nothing to do with you. If anything, you're the one keeping our frail remains together. Whatever the grand admiral's been doing, it's definitely not overseeing ship repair." Woldar cut Hammerly off before she could tell him what Thrawn had going on. "Maybe he's trying to get the nav system to work. I heard that it's been down the whole time, but none of the repair crews seem to be messing with it. A nav computer's pretty important if we're going to hyperspace jump out of here, right?"

Come to think of it, she had seen Thrawn fiddling with the nav system a while back. Woldar could be right, at least in part. "Maybe. It will have to come back on before we leave. I don't know how else we can leave this place."

"Where do you think we are, anyway? Do you think this asteroid field is part of the Empire?"

Hammerly hesitated. "For some reason… no. I bet we're at the furthest edge of the galaxy. Somewhere no one we know has been to before."

Woldar smiled, his expression grim. He pulled his cap down back over his face, turning his forehead to shadow. "Imagine that. A place no human or Chiss has seen before."

Thrawn could not escape the feeling that he'd seen their current location before. He may never have been in this exact part of space, but something about it called to him. Called his memories back to another time. Another mission, one from two decades past. One that, in a sad twist of fate, had also featured a ship with a broken hyperdrive and a dead crew. Their one outsider had been a user of the Force aligned with the ship's enemies. Different cultures. Different contexts. The same devastating result.

...No. Not if Thrawn could prevent it. The whims of fate had toyed with him enough. The creature of Atollon had seen to that.

It was the stars. From what Thrawn could glean from the struggling nav computer, the Chimaera was stuck in a system with two sets of twin stars, all orbiting each other from vast distances apart. A four star system. The nav system, while not broken in the truest sense of the word, could not match their present system with any in the Imperial domain. As such, it returned error message after error message when Thrawn attempted to use it.

Given how rare four star systems were in the universe and how overwhelmingly impossible it was for such systems' planets to sustain life, Thrawn had only visited one in his entire life. Back then, asteroid fields had been one of the last things on his mind.

Now, he needed to corner Bridger again. He needed to know why the Jedi rebel had brought them to such a desolate place. If he knew the extent of despair that existed here and had invoked it intentionally, then he was crueler than Thrawn had anticipated.

To defeat an enemy you must know them. Not simply their battle tactics, but their history, philosophy... art. Thrawn had spent hours with Sabine Wren's pieces. He had pored over the tragedy of Bridger's lost parents and life on the street several times. It was his philosophy that Thrawn did not yet grasp.

Bridger claimed the mantle of a Jedi, but he did not behave as the Jedi Order once had. Neither had the late Kanan Jarrus, though his methods bore a closer resemblance.

Thrawn indulged himself in a frown. He glanced into the office vent as though it contained the answers to all his questions. In a way, it did, but the dark web of passages were no help to him now.

No matter what a strange religion said, life in the galaxy was not governed by a singular destiny. It was governed by the choices of many, plus a healthy dose of circumstance.

Thrawn need not fight fate if there was no fate to fight against.

A/N's: I hope this chapter isn't too boring. I moved its action scene to Chapter 8 because I realized it was too soon after Chapter 5's. Most of this chapter is focused on characters and foreshadowing, which can be harder to keep people engaged for.

Still, I had fun putting it together. I was inspired to update this fic back to back, which is something. Usually I update other fics before cycling back around. My main focus was on better defining Hammerly's character and keeping her distinct from Faro, whom I have written a lot about. With both in the fic, I want to make sure their differences shine through just as well as their similarities.

Thanks for all the support I've received on this fic thus far! It really does help me.