Chapter 21: Unexpected Visitors
BBY 14, year 5 of Imperial rule, one day after chapter 20
Devin never thought he could feel jealous of an agricultural protocol droid, but he did. It was early spring, a cold but sunny day, and he wanted to be out there under the big prairie sky, cruising around the pastures in his speeder to check on the first newborn inu calves of the season. But no. Aggie, not Devin, was out there overseeing calving season, and Devin was standing in the farmhouse kitchen with his hands in a sink full of soapy water, working his way through a mountain of dirty dishes because the dishwasher was out of order, and until his wife Shie got her first paycheque they were too broke to get it fixed.
This was day two of his and Shie's new financial management plan. After it became clear last autumn that farming outside the Imperial Agriculture Program was no way to support a growing family, he and Shie spent the winter having long talks and making some hard decisions. They reluctantly agreed that Shie – who really wanted to stay home with the kids – would take full-time work as an agricultural mechanic. Nechako AgMech, where she'd previously picked up occasional part-time work, was recently acquired by Imperial AgSystems and so Shie, to her chagrin, found herself working for an Imperial crown corporation. Meanwhile, Devin – who felt really good about himself back when he was supporting his family by farming full-time – became part-time hobby farmer and full-time house-husband.
And so Devin stared out the kitchen window at the sunny fields he wanted to be working and rubbed the grubby dishcloth over yet another greasy plate. That he was feeling shaken for other reasons was an unwelcome companion to his discouragement. Just that morning he'd heard something on the radio that set his nerves on knife-edge.
"Daddy, I'm hungry!" Devin's five-year-old son Jonah wailed. He stood at the kitchen door, clutching his stuffed toy Wookie and looking at his dad with some consternation. Dad being in the kitchen happened often enough to be normal for him, but mom being away so much still didn't feel right. Wanting mom to be there made his hunger and his voice bigger.
"Jonah!" Devin whisper-shouted back, "Be quiet or you'll wake the baby!" Nine-month-old Siri was – blissfully, for Devin – asleep in the next room after her last diaper change, and Devin's key goal was to keep her asleep for the afternoon so that he could have some peace and quiet.
"I'm hungry!" Jonah whisper-shouted back.
"You need to say please," he reminded Jonah.
"PLEASE, may I have a snack?" Jonah said in the loudest whisper Devin had ever heard.
"Yes, you may," Devin said, emphasizing good manners. "Please sit down at the table."
Jonah took a seat, sat the Wookie on the chair beside him and waited.
Devin looked at the unfinished dishes and sighed, then wiped his wet hands on a tea-towel. The cupboard was pretty bare. A jar of Imperial Pride Kua-nut Butter and a half-empty box of Galactic Star Wheat Thins were all the snack foods he had to offer. Shie was worried that Jonah might have a nut allergy, so he left the kua-nut butter and grabbed the wheat thins. Protein, Devin thought, he needs protein, not just those empty carbs. He went to the fridge. Just that morning, Devin had started an experiment. Inu were normally raised for meat, not milk, but the cows were lactating now and most were docile enough to let Devin milk them. He figured home-grown milk was at least one thing he could do to help the ailing family budget along, and even felt a little proud of himself when he set a glass of the deep orange milk in front of his son along with the little plastic plate of wheat thins.
"Why is it orange?" Jonah asked when his dad put it on the table. The canned milk they usually got was white.
"In the spring the grass has more carotenoids..." Devin began, then the confused look on Jonah's face reminded him he was talking to a five-year-old. "The grass has orange stuff in it, and the cows put the orange stuff from the grass into their milk to make their calves healthy."
"So why isn't the grass orange?"
"Because the chlorophyll...the green stuff hides the orange stuff."
"But then why isn't the milk green?"
Devin wracked his brain. Why did the carotenoids end up in the milk and not the chlorophyll? For all his education in the Jedi AgriCorps, he couldn't remember. "You'll learn about that when you're older," he said, and Jonah took a sip of his orange milk.
With a sigh, Devin went back to his mountain of dirty dishes. I'll have to get better at explaining stuff to the kids, he thought and stared out the window at the endless grassland and the big prairie sky. Prairie swallows were darting around after flying bugs like fish on a feeding frenzy. Maybe I'll take Jonah to the barn to see the swallow's nest later, he thought and then with a swell of pride he realized how much he could teach them his kids. Even in a place like the Moosachu Plains of Nechako there was so much to explore together. Maybe being a homemaker dad wouldn't be so bad, he thought. He didn't love the housework, and the constant interruptions for snacks and diaper changes took some getting used to, but if he wasn't farming full-time there would be more chance for those special teaching moments, to take them down to the river to see the fish spawning in the fall, or to teach them the names of wildflowers in the spring. I can do this, Devin thought. It will be great. With that thought, he managed to forget, for the moment, the radio broadcast he'd heard earlier, and started to push through that mound of dishes a little more quickly.
Just then a prickle on the back of Devin's neck, maybe the Force-sense of a Jedi or maybe the sixth-sense of a parent, told him to turn around. Jonah, who had evidently been dunking his crackers in his milk behind his dad's back, had dropped one into the glass and was trying to fish it out. That, in Devin's opinion, warranted a minor reprimand, but what made Devin draw in a sharp hiss of breath was that Jonah hadn't actually put his fingers in the milk; he held them a millimetre or so above the surface of the orange liquid, with a look of deep concentration on his face.
"Jonah, don't do that..." Devin said quietly, firmly.
Jonah knew he shouldn't be dunking his crackers in his milk, but he was so close to fishing this one out, so close...
"Jonah, I said NO."
Just then Jonah, seeing the tip of the cracker crest the surface of the milk, grabbed it between thumb and forefinger and then crammed it in his mouth.
Ignoring a direct instruction was one thing, but that was not what made the blood rise in Devin's neck. What set him on edge was the radio broadcast he'd heard that morning. Nechako had only one station, the Imperial-controlled Galactic Agriculture Radio, but if the planets were aligned right and there were no ion storms in the nearby space, he could pick up radio broadcasts from the Big Planet as people on Nechako called their nearest habited neighbour, Lothal. As he flipped the dial hoping to catch an episode of Tumbleweed, his favourite farm sitcom, he came across a station with a man's voice reading off a series of news items, amateur fashion. Uninterested, he was about to flip past it when the words Imperial atrocities caught his ears.
He'd listened wide-eyed to stories that never got air-time on Imperial radio channels: the occupation of Kashyyk and the enslavement of the Wookies, the use of ion disruptors to obliterate the Lassats in a bid to take over their home planet, and last of all before the station went too static to hear any more, a story about how Force-sensitive kids were being abducted by Imperial agents. Devin was not one for conspiracy theories and was inclined to take both pro-government and anti-government news reporting with a grain of salt, but this last story ran too near his fear for him to brush it off. And now that he couldn't deny that at least one of his kids was Force-sensitive, the first part of his fear was coming true: it wasn't just himself he needed to hide anymore.
Fear leads to anger, Master Lu's voice quoted Yoda in his mind, but it was too late. Anger leads to...
Devin slammed his wet hands palms-down on the table. Jonah jumped. "Jonah, I said NO!" Devin heard himself bellow.
First Jonah, then Siri started to wail. "You woke the baby!" Devin snapped at Jonah as tears streamed down the five-year-old's face. He ran and grabbed the bottle of breast-milk that Shie had left in the fridge and went to the next room to calm his screaming daughter. It was only when he felt the weight of her in his arms that he realized he was shaking, aching with tension in every muscle of his body at the shock of the aggression he'd just heard in his own voice.
All these past five years on Nechako, all these five years since Day One of the Empire when the Jedi were destroyed, Devin had been perfectly careful not to let anyone in Moosachu besides Shie know about his Jedi past. He'd lied through his teeth when his neighbours asked friendly questions about his life on Deema, and dodged their pointed inquiries about why he wasn't signing up for the Imperial Agriculture Program. When his neighbour Silas lost half his herd to a nasty strain of antibiotic-resistant bovine mastitis, he stood by and watched it happen even though his Jedi skills could have saved them. Even though that one act of refusing to use his AgriCorps training sucked more than all his own failure to run a farm outside the IAP, he'd done it and would do it again because he had no choice. Staying quiet equalled staying safe, and there was no option but to stay safe now that he had two kids in the picture.
But now all it would take was just one time for Jonah to get into a boasting match with his friends at junior hockey or homeschool support group and go Well guess what? Look what I can do! All it would take would be even once for Jonah to use the Force to get himself out of a sticky situation when he thought no one was looking, and the rumour of it would spread through Moosachu like wildfire. Devin wasn't sure what Imperial agents would pay for information about a Jedi survivor or a Force-sensitive child, but he was pretty sure it was enough to make at least one of Moosachu's hundred or so inhabitants think twice about loyalty to a neighbour.
With Siri still screaming, Devin forced himself to take a deep breath, then another, bouncing her up and down for awhile before holding the baby bottle out to her. Gradually she stopped crying and latched onto the bottle, holding it with both hands and making suckling noises as she looked up at Devin with blinking eyes. He wasn't sure if it was him calming her down or her calming him down, but gradually he could feel his muscles start to relax. Bit by bit his mind cleared, and bit by bit one thing he could see: he'd made a mistake.
In his determination to keep quiet, keep safe, he'd kept quiet even to his own kids. He'd never once mentioned either the Jedi or the Force to Jonah, not because he hadn't dreamed of teaching his kids about the most basic elements of the universe but because the less they knew the less risk there was.
After a few minutes, Siri became suddenly heavier in Devin's arms, and she let the nipple of the bottle slip out of her mouth as her little round head lolled back in Devin's hand. Over the even sound of her breath, Devin could hear Jonah sniffling in the kitchen. He sighed.
What do I do now? Devin asked himself.
Do the right thing, Devin's inner voice said. That's what it always said.
Devin laid Siri gently in her crib, then went back to the kitchen. He stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at Jonah, who was sitting backwards in his seat and clutching the back of the kitchen chair, tears and whatnot dribbling from his eyes and nose.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you," Devin said, not sure where he was going with this.
Jonah wiped his nose on his sleeve. He didn't understand why his dad had yelled at him so hard. He just wanted to fish out his drowned cracker, and he remembered mom telling him off last time he put his fingers in his milk, so he made sure not to touch the milk with his fingers this time, that was all.
"I was scared when I saw you do that because there's some bad people out there who might take you away if they find out you can do that. I don't want that to happen to you, so you need to keep it a secret, OK?" Devin said in his best parent-voice.
Jonah nodded because he was supposed to nod, but he didn't really understand what it was all about.
Devin hated this. He wanted to teach Jonah about the power that was in him and all around him, about the world that could open up to him if he disciplined himself and paid attention. But neither he nor Jonah was really in the place for that talk right now.
"Can I give you a hug?" he said.
Jonah didn't want to hug. He slipped off his chair, pulling the stuffed toy Wookie with him as he crawled under the table.
Devin felt like he'd been kicked in the gut. Part of him wanted to wheedle with Jonah to come out, but another side of him said to wait and try again later. He sighed. He wished he hadn't snapped at Jonah. He wished he could have talked to him about the Force way earlier. He wished it didn't have to be so complicated.
Not knowing what else to do, Devin went back to the kitchen sink. The mountain of dishes hadn't gotten much smaller, but the dishwater was cold and murky now. At the sink, Devin reached his hand down into the unseen ick of granular food debris that floated near the bottom of the basin and pulled the plug. While he listened to the ugly gurgle of water going down the drain, he stared out the window. I need to learn how to talk to Jonah about the Force, and about the Empire, he thought, but this time the empty prairie offered no inspiration.
Just then, the doorbell rang. Nuts, it's probably Silas, Devin thought. Silas was supposed to drop off some old haymaking equipment that he was lending to Devin for the season, but Devin had been hoping that Silas would come by later, when life and the kitchen weren't such a mess.
"Hey Silas," Devin said as he opened the door, then "Oh!"
On the farmhouse doorstep stood a young female human quite unlike anyone Devin had ever seen before. She was small, dark-haired, dark-eyed and wiry. Her battered shoes and her tattered pants and tunic – all too threadbare for the cool spring day – looked like they might have been beige once but were now mottled grey and brown. And though spring had only just emerged from a cold, dark winter, she was as deeply sun-tanned as someone who had just seen a year's worth of summer. The only thing about her that wasn't deeply weathered was the beige cloth bag that she wore slung over one shoulder. She clasped the strap of the bag with both hands, and shivered.
"Hi," Devin said. "How can I help you?"
"Sorry to bother you," she said, "but I was obliged to make an emergency landing in your field. I'm not sure what's wrong with the starship, but could you help me find a mechanic?" There was something in her accent or her manner of speech that Devin found familiar yet hard to place.
"My wife's a mechanic," Devin said. "If you don't mind waiting til she's back, she can probably help you."
"When will she come, do you think?" the girl asked.
"She'll be back tonight."
The girl looked relieved. "Thanks," she said, "that would be great."
There was an awkward pause, and then Devin remembered his hospitality.
"Hey, you must be cold," he said. "You want to come inside while you wait?"
"Thanks," the girl said again, and stepped inside.
"Sorry the place is such a mess," Devin said as he led her into the kitchen. "I'm Devin, by the way, and this is my son Jonah." Jonah, who was looking out from under the table to see who was at the door, hid his face behind his stuffed toy Wookie.
The girl smiled. "Nice to meet you," she said. "My name is Eo."
Devin drew up a chair and gestured for Eo to take a seat at the kitchen table. She sank onto the hard chair with a sign of relief. From the field where CX24 brought the starship in for a not-so-gentle landing, Devin's farmhouse was just a blob in the distance, and Eo's feet and legs ached from the long walk across the prairie.
"Where are you headed?" Devin asked. It seemed as good a question as any to make conversation with a little bush-woman who just showed up out of nowhere. He poured a cup of hot tea for her from a big thermos on the counter and passed it to her across the table.
Eo wrapped her hands around the mug and held it close to her to feel its warmth before taking a sip. "Please don't laugh," she said ruefully, "I'm on my way to Deema, but it seems my nav-droid had other ideas." Deema and Nechako were on more or less opposite ends of the galaxy.
"Oh," Devin said, "my wife's from Deema. You have family there?"
Eo shook her head. "I'm going to the AgriCorps station there," she said.
Devin's eyes flew open, then narrowed. "You mean the IMAg station?"
"IMAg? What's IMAg?"
"Imperial Ministry of Agriculture."
"Imperial...?" Eo tilted her head to one side, confused. Then her confused look turned to horror. "Oh no, did the Separatists win the war?"
"Um, where have you been for the last five years?"
"I was stranded in the Hokto system."
"The Hokto system? That's a no-fly zone."
"I know," Eo said, "we didn't mean to go there. Ava Yen – he was the pilot – he and I were on our way to Deema from the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, but we came out of hyperspace wrong and crash-landed on a little planet there. It was only just recently that Varda and I - Varda's the hermit who took me in there - we managed to fix her ship and find a gap in the debris field so I could leave. But what's happened to the AgriCorps station?"
Devin took a moment to digest what Eo just said. "Just a sec," he said, then bent sideways in his chair to look at Jonah, who was still under the table. Someday he would need to tell Jonah what he was about to tell Eo, but not now. "Jonah," he said, "could you please go and play in your bedroom? I need to have an adult conversation with Eo right now."
"I want to play here," Jonah said flatly.
"If you're good and you go right now, you can watch Space Wookies before dinner."
Jonah wasn't normally allowed to watch HoloNet programs, so he grabbed his Wookie and went. Devin waited until he heard the bedroom door click shut, then sighed. He hated the way he was handling things with Jonah, and promised himself that he would connect with him properly later, but right now he needed to have this conversation with Eo. Where do I even begin? he thought. "You grew up in the Jedi temple?" he asked cautiously.
Eo nodded. "I was there until I was almost thirteen, but I was given early reassignment to the AgriCorps."
Devin weighed Eo in his mind. He wouldn't put it past some ambitions Imperial agent to try a trick like this to get a Jedi survivor out of hiding, but as he tried to tune in to Eo's Force-signature he could sense no guile in her, just a quiet intensity and an innocence that he was reluctant to shatter. After a pause, Devin began, "The Force must be strong with you, Eo. You're very lucky not to have showed up on Deema with a story like that. The former chancellor of the Republic is now the Galactic Emperor, and he had the whole Jedi Order destroyed when he took over."
Eo shook her head in disbelief. "But the Jedi Knights...couldn't they...?"
Devin shook his head. "They were betrayed. The Republic's own clone troopers shot them down. I only hope some escaped, but as far as I can tell they're all gone."
Eo gave Devin a blank look, the kind of blank, stunned look that people get in the moment before they fully register the pain of an unexpected wound. Devin knew the feeling behind that look: the feeling like his head just split in two because what he thought was unshakable wasn't there anymore, the feeling when hundreds of Jedi he knew, loved and respected flashed through his mind and he knew he'd never see them again. But even as Eo felt all this, one person was foremost in her thoughts. "But Varda," she said, "Varda doesn't know then...she might be the only one left. Oh, Varda!" With that Eo burst into tears.
Devin gave her a moment to collect herself, and passed her a handkerchief. He did his best to keep a serious and concerned expression. It definitely hurt to see Eo taking in the news he'd had five years to process, but he couldn't help also feel something more like excitement, elation even. Here in front of him was a fellow survivor! And if he wasn't mistaken, Eo brought news of one other.
"Varda is a Jedi?" he asked cautiously, hoping his hopes wouldn't be dashed. Last he'd heard, Varda was presumed dead after she went missing in action during the first year of the Clone Wars.
Eo nodded, and sniffed, and wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. "She asked me not to tell which planet she's on, but yes, she's a Jedi, and a hermit."
"The same Varda Wahi who used to teach in the Jedi Temple?"
Eo looked up at Devin in surprise. "You knew her?"
"I didn't know her well, but I was a Jedi before I got married, and she was a friend of my mentor, Master Lu."
"Master Lu, the Yemerian Jedi who works with the AgriCorps? Varda said I should talk to him, but he must be gone now too..." Eo started to cry again.
"Look, you must be tired and hungry and this is a lot to take in. Please try to drink something at least."
Eo took another sip of the tea and, finding it cooler now, drank as the rest as if she had been very thirsty.
Devin made a mental note to make sure Eo to ate a solid meal – and got some sleep - once she'd had some more time to collect herself. "It must have been amazing spending all that time with Varda Wahi," Devin said, hoping to direct the conversation in a more positive vein. "Did she work on Jedi training with you?"
Eo shook her head. "I didn't ask her to. I would like to become a Siluan, so she spent a good deal of time teaching me about that."
Devin's eyes were like saucers.
"I was hoping to find a Siluan elder to train me as soon as I finish my duties with the AgriCorps, but there is no AgriCorps now," Eo said, more to herself than to Devin, as if through a fog of surreality. "Maybe I should just go straight to Yemer and ask to join the monastery right away." Even though this was what she'd wanted to do all along, under the circumstances she couldn't feel happy about it yet.
Devin winced. "Eo, I hate to break it to you, but it's not safe for someone like you to go to Yemer right now," he said, but when he saw how crushed Eo looked he decided not to bother trying to explain what he'd heard from the Yemerian refugees who now lived just north of him. "You're welcome to stay here with us as long as you like," he said more brightly, "but I know a man on Iwaki who's a Siluan elder, both him and his wife. He grew up as a Jedi too, so they'd be a good people for you to train with, if you like."
Eo's face lit up. "On Iwaki? Can you introduce me to them?"
"If we can get there. I don't have a starship."
"If you'll take me there, you can have my ship," Eo said, "if it can be fixed, anyways."
"Wow, that's very generous of you," Devin said.
Eo shrugged. "I won't need it anymore anyways."
It occurred to Devin that the trip to Iwaki might do him good. Ava Kirrin, whom he had last seen at his mother's funeral, was among a minority of Siluan elders who were married, and he had children, a boy of twelve and a girl of ten. He was also one of very very few who was formerly a Jedi, though he'd left the Order decades ago in his rebellious teens. I can talk to Ava Kirrin, Devin thought. He might know how to handle things with Jonah.
Devin's face broke into a smile. "It's a deal!" he said. "We'll go as soon as I can get away for a day."
# # #
That night after dinner when she'd finished nursing Siri, Shie gladly took a look at Eo's starship.
"She's lucky it didn't explode on take-off," Shie told Devin. "whoever worked on it last totally overfilled the electrolyte on the anti-gravity module, and the electrolyte's not even the right concentration for this model."
"Can you fix it?" Devin asked. He really wanted the answer to be yes.
"Probably. I think I have enough spare parts to get it going."
"If you can, I want to use it to take her to Iwaki to see Ava Kirrin, and the ship is ours if I do."
Shie looked impressed. "That's very kind of her," she said. "I've been turning down off-planet work 'cause of not having a starship to get there. But I'd like to have a word with the idiot who let that crap nav-droid fly a kid like her through hyperspace."
"Varda's not an idiot," Devin said defensively, "she's a Jedi."
Shie rolled her eyes. "That only makes it worse."
Between work and children, it was three long Moosachu days before Devin could arrange to take Eo to Ava Kirrin's place on Iwaki. During that time, Eo shared in the life of the Baxter family. Shie politely declined her offer to help fix the starship, but was truly grateful to see Jonah sit spellbound while Eo told him stories of tree-frogs in forests the prairie boy had never seen. She even changed her mind about Varda when she heard more from Eo about her life on Hokto. After the kids were in bed at night, Devin told Eo stories of life in the AgriCorps and had Eo wishing she could have spent some time there after all. And Aggie, if droids can be happy, was over Nechako's three moons because Eo listened carefully to every long-winded detail that she could dredge from her memory bank about Siluan gardening techniques, and answered every painstaking question Aggie asked about the means of growing and preserving food that Eo and Varda had employed in the Hokto system. Siri was too young to remember that time, but her family later recounted those days among their favourite memories.
In the afternoon the day before Devin planned to leave for Iwaki, he was just wrapping up some farm chores when a decrepit cargo ship landed beside the house. He went over to see who it was, and to his surprise, his old friend Garth Jetty stepped out.
"Garth!" Devin yelled, and ran over to give him a bear hug and a friendly punch on the shoulder. "Where have you been? And oh...what happened to you?" he added, just noticing that what looked like a bandana was actually a bandage around an ugly welt on his friend's head.
"I thought we were talking about you, not me," Garth said drily. "But hey, I got something big on I want to talk to you about. Do you have anything stiff to drink? I could use one or three right now."
Devin grinned. "So that's why you showed up! C'mon, I've got some of my neighbour's home-brew in the kitchen."
In the kitchen, now in a much cleaner state than it had been when Eo arrived, Garth and Devin stood at the kitchen counter as Devin poured two tall glasses of home-brew from a brown jug.
"Why is it purple?" Garth asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Silas puts some kind of herbs in it, to cut the hangover."
Garth laughed. "Works for me!" he said, and raised his glass. "Here's to busting out of prison."
"Prison? How'd you..." Devin was so surprised that he almost forgot to take a salutary sip of his glass.
Garth wiped his mouth on his sleeve after taking a long draught. "Let's just say I ran into an old friend of yours who's working for the other side now and she didn't like the way I answered her questions about you AgriCorps folks, but I got lucky. A buddy I met in prison's a friend of Saw Gerrera...best guy I ever met, busted the lot of us out of there."
Devin looked at Garth in surprise. "Saw Gerrera, like Saw Gerrera the terrorist?"
"You say terrorist," Garth said, and raised his glass to his new hero, "and I say freedom fighter." He drained his glass and plunked it down on the counter, eyeing the brown jug and then Devin to indicate that he wanted more.
Devin gave Garth a hard look as he poured him a second glass. He noticed a reckless gleam in Garth's eye, and a much rougher manner than he'd seen in him before. Glad as he was to see Garth alive and well, he wasn't sure he liked the change.
Just then, Eo came into the kitchen with Siri in the stroller and Jonah riding piggy-back. She looked surprised to see a stranger there.
"Well now! Who's this lovely young lady?" Garth said in a manly voice.
Devin rolled his eyes. "Shie's out at work right now, but these are our kids, Jonah and Siri, and this is our friend Eo, who's been staying with us for a few days. Eo, this is my friend, Garth Jetty."
"Hi there," Garth said in a deep voice. Devin wasn't sure how Eo managed to keep a straight face and give a polite nod when Garth winked at her.
"This is one lucky kid we've got here," Devin said, pushing aside his chagrin. "She was on her way from the Jedi temple to the old AgriCorps station but got shipwrecked on the way, so she's missed all the crap that's happened. Tomorrow I'm taking her to Ava Kirrin to train as a Siluan."
"A Siluan?" Garth raised an eyebrow at Eo. "Nice idea, but bad timing kid. Really bad timing. The Empire's trying to wipe those guys out like the Ukio Potato Beetle."
Devin winced. "I heard things that made me wonder if that's what's happening, but I was hoping it wasn't true."
"Well it is, and you know who's at the bottom of it? One of your own."
"Ry Kyver?"
"How'd you know?" Garth said, sounding rather annoyed that Devin had stolen his thunder.
"I didn't. I just put two and two together and got four. She's the only Jedi I know of who isn't dead or in hiding, and she must have had some change of sympathies to be head of IMAg."
"A change of sympathies? She's apprentice to a Sith Lord more like it. I got picked up by her crew after I saw you last, and I wouldn't wish that woman on my worst enemy. We've got to take her out, and soon."
Devin shook his head. "If she's practicing the ways of the Sith, destroying her could be very dangerous, even for a Jedi Knight. The dark energy that would be released could..."
"Hey, what's the matter with you, kid?" Garth interrupted. Devin turned and saw Eo staring blankly ahead, a troubled expression on her face.
"Oh, I'm sorry Eo," Devin began.
Eo shook herself. "No, no, it's just...I'd forgotten that things like that happen. I wish...I wish she could turn back."
Garth gave a kind of snort and rolled his eyes. "Sorry to break it to you, kid," he told Eo, "but Darksiders like that don't come back. Jedi kill them or they self-destruct. They don't come back."
Devin winced, both at Garth's rough manners and at Eo's naivety. Then he remembered that he'd rather his kids weren't in the room. "Eo, if you don't mind, could you take Jonah and Siri to play in the basement while I chat with Garth here?"
Eo looked a little hurt and confused, but picked Siri up and took Jonah by the hand. As soon as the door closed behind them, Devin gestured for Garth to sit down at the table, then continued.
"But anyways, you said you had something big on. What's up?"
Garth leaned forward and put his empty glass down on the table with a plunk. "I don't know about you," he said, "but I'm done taking shit from the Empire. It's time to strike back, and the place to do it is right here in your own backyard." He thumped the table for emphasis.
"Like how?"
"You probably heard the Empire's just about to open a hydro-power dam that'll flood out the entire Bulkley Valley?"
Devin rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that'll pretty much kill ninety percent of grain production here on Nechako. The price of feed's going to go through the roof."
Garth's expression made it clear that he didn't give a damn about the price of feed grain. "And you heard they're expropriating the ranchers on Nechako Ridge? With the power from the dam they can open up strip mining for aluminum ore there, just grind up the whole Ridge til it's gone."
Devin leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. "Yeah, I hate to say it, but most people here are pretty keen on the money that'll come out of it. Everybody's saying this planet could do with a new hospital and a couple more schools." He couldn't quite admit it even to himself, but with two kids he too was hard pressed to say no to government-funded education and healthcare, even if that government was the Empire.
Garth snorted. "You're not going to get hospitals or schools. The Empire's going to drain Nechako dry. They're taking all the minerals and profits off-world for some big secret project they got on. Nechako'll be a ghost-planet by the time they're done. But," he thumped his fist on the table, "not if I have anything to do with it. I've got my ship full of explosives, and I'm meeting up with a bunch of the ranchers down in Bulkley tomorrow. We're going start by blowing up the foundation for the Empire's nice little dam. You in?"
"No," Devin shook his head. "No, no, no."
"Oh, come on! Last time I saw you, you were all like, 'we need to fight this.'"
Devin rolled his eyes. Last time I saw you, you were all like 'you need to hide,' he thought but didn't say it. "Garth, there's a ton of things I'd do for you," he said, "but this isn't one of them. I've got kids now, and that changes everything. I can't go taking risks like that."
"You're kidding me."
"No, I'm serious. I don't like the odds that you'll get away with this. The whole Nechako Council is pro-Imperial and I hate to say it, but even if it is all just propaganda, money talks, so you'll have more than half the locals against you plus Imperial forces to boot. I'm on your side, but I just think the Empire's going to hit back harder than you can take."
"So you're not going to help?"
"No."
"Nuts!" Garth said, half under his breath, and went to run his hand through his wild shock of hair, only to come up against the welt under his bandage. He grimaced and swore.
Devin laughed. "Look, I've got to get some dinner on before Shie gets home, but why don't you make yourself comfortable in the living room? You can eat with us and spend the night here before you head down to Bulkley if you want."
Garth looked at Devin sadly, but then squared his shoulders and forced a grin. "Thanks, man," he said. "That'd be great."
# # #
The first light before dawn found Garth and Devin standing beside Garth's cargo ship, both ready to go but neither ready to say goodbye. They both looked down at the cold ground, not sure what to say.
Garth kicked at a clump of grass. "If you change your mind, come find me in Bulkley when you get back," he said gruffly.
Devin gave a sad smile. "If you change your mind, you're welcome to just crash here for a while. Or when you finish up anyways."
"Maybe next time I'll hit you up to help me take out Ry Kyver," Garth said, and winked.
Devin rolled his eyes. "Good luck with that one. Anyways, Eo's already in the ship. I'd better go."
"May the Force be with you," Garth said, sincerely, and grabbed Devin in a bear-hug.
Devin hugged Garth back and felt a lump in his throat. "No one's said that to me in years, not since..."
"Not since five years ago when shit went sideways," Garth said as he let Devin go.
"Yeah," Devin said, and they looked at each other in silence. For a moment, Devin almost wished he was going with Garth, maybe not to blow up that Imperial dam, but to do something, somehow, to fight back. But only for a moment. A wife, two kids, a farm...plus he needed to get Eo to Iwaki quickly and quietly. "I got to go," Devin said. "Take care of yourself, Garth. See you round, eh?"
Garth gave Devin a mock salute, then got into his starship and took off. Devin watched the chunky freighter disappear into the dusky south-east sky before he turned to his own starship, where Eo was waiting.