Inej loped into the bunkroom she shared with Nina and promptly collapsed facedown onto her bunk. She half expected to feel tears leak out of her eyes, staining the pillow with salt, but no; the Rebellion had wrung her dry. Her eyes remained tearless and clear.
She closed them, taking a deep breath. I failed.
Bo Yul-Bayur is dead, his son mourning him. Alderaan is gone, along with all of its inhabitants. The Death Star fired on Eadu and killed everyone else there.
I could've stopped it.
I failed.
She heard the door creak open behind her, and she voiced her thoughts without really thinking - she rarely kept secrets from Nina anyway. "It's pointless," she said, her voice muffled by the pillow. "If I couldn't stop Bo Yul-Bayur from getting killed, how am I supposed to stop that thing from firing on another planet? What sort of intelligence officer am I if I can't even find out that a fragging planet has been obliterated?"
"Never known you to lose hope, Inej," said a gravelly voice that was most definitely not Nina. "Never known to you swear much, either."
Inej didn't bother extricating her face from the pillow, but she huffed a laugh. "Kaz."
"Indeed."
"I thought you were Nina."
"Well, I figured you didn't know it was me. I doubt I'd be your first choice of person to have a heart to heart with."
Inej sighed. "What do you want?" She wasn't in the mood for all this posturing.
The silence stretched into infinity. Kaz never answered the question.
Instead, he said, "Why are you so dejected? You're the most hopeful person I know." Not that I know very many, went unspoken.
Inej closed her eyes again. Tears did leak out this time - they dampened her face, hot and uncomfortable. "Hope led me to the Rebellion, and all of my victims - not to mention our friendship - paid for that. Now my hope has led the Empire to Eadu." Her voice broke as she said, "I don't think the galaxy can survive much more hope from me."
"It wasn't your fault, Inej." The words - which should've been robotic, monotone, required - were genuine. As genuine as she knew Kaz could get. "You can't blame yourself."
"Would the Death Star have fired on Eadu, wiping out all those innocent people, if I hadn't led this very attack force there?"
"Yes," Kaz said. His vehemence surprised her. "Because that was a show of power to all of their benefactors. That was them gathering everyone who knew about the project into the same place. That was them silencing anyone who could possibly live to tell the tale about their newest weapon." His hand came to rest on her back. It felt foreign, there, but oddly comforting. "But they failed. We lived to tell the tale. We can warn the Rebels about what's coming."
Inej rolled over and sat up at that. Her eyes were red, puffy, sore, but they caught Kaz's and she refused to looked away. "We can?"
The expression on his face shut off. "You can."
The breath left her body, her chest caving in around her heart. She looked away and didn't watch him as he turned to stride out.
He paused at the door. "Get a bacta patch on your shoulder, Inej. It's bleeding everywhere."
She unconsciously touched her fingers to the wound; they came away red.
"And you?" she asked before he could escape. At his inquiring look, she elaborated, "Your limp. Have you healed that blaster wound yet?" A beat passed, then, "How did you even get distracted enough to get yourself shot in the first place?"
Kaz slipped out of the door without answering.
After the heartfelt discussion between Nina and Kuwei, Jesper found himself retreating to the relative safety of the cockpit. He could hide in the bunkroom he shared with Kaz, he supposed, but his partner had marched in a few minutes before with an uncharacteristically pensive look on his face, which Jesper had taken as his cue to skedaddle.
At least the cockpit was his territory, and his alone. Well, he guessed that anyone else could walk right into it no problem, but it wasn't like they were going to. The only other person who flew the damn ship was Inej, and she'd seemed pretty pensive herself when she'd fled to the safety of her own cabin.
So Jesper counted himself as alone as he sat in the cockpit, staring at the swirling mass of hyperspace. For a long time he was.
But then he wasn't.
Somehow, he knew it was Nina even before he heard the door swing inward and recognised the rhythm of her footsteps. She slumped into the pilot's seat to his left, and neither said anything for several minutes.
Jesper broke the silence with, "What are kyber crystals?" The thought had been haunting him since Kuwei had brought it up.
Nina didn't turn away from studying the starscape beyond the viewport, nor did she answer his question. Rather, she asked a question of her own. "Why are you wearing one around your neck?"
Jesper's hand tensed as it crept up to his throat and pulled out his necklace. A cloudy, translucent crystal about the size and shape of his little finger hung from the cord, tied in a complicated-looking knot at the top. It seemed to thrum in time with the pulse he could feel pounding through his fingertips.
Nina turned to look at him, then. The lines around her mouth hardened when she looked upon the crystal.
"It was my mother's," Jesper explained, tucking it away again behind his short collar, safe against his heartbeat.
"She was a Jedi," Nina said softly, her eyes narrowed in thought.
Jesper gave a sharp nod. "Aditi Hilli - she was one of the Lost Twenty, who chose to leave the Order-"
"I'm well aware who the Lost Twenty are."
"-and have a proper life," Jesper finished regardless. "She wasn't allowed to keep her lightsaber, but she wanted some sort of keepsake to remember her days as a Jedi with. So she took this crystal with her. What is it?"
Instead of answering immediately, Nina reached down to unclip her own lightsaber from her waist, and cradled it in her hands. With a feather-light touch of the activation button, it sprang to life. Jesper leaned in the study it, curious, even as he watched Nina pointedly angle it away from anyone's limbs or any important controls.
The saber cast a bright, whitish light, but the blade itself was pink - different shades from different angles, albeit, but definitely pink. Jesper wondered how many Jedi lightsabers had been this colour; as he understood it, the generic ones were green and blue.
"A kyber crystal powers a Jedi's lightsaber," Nina explained, her hand caressing the hilt. "It's where the energy beam comes from. It's also," she added bitterly, "where the Death Star's turbolaser comes from, if my thoughts on the matter are correct."
Though the mention of the battle station made Jesper shudder, his attention was still fixed on the weapon in Nina's hand. There was something fascinating about it. His hand crept up to his pendant again. "Are pink lightsabers common?"
Nina shook her head. "No. As far as I know, mine is the only one."
"What colour would my mother's have been?"
She glanced up at him, surprised, before she shook her head. "I don't know. There's no way of knowing, unless there was anyone who knew her, and the Lost Twenty are rarely spoken about anyway. Unless. . ." She studied the bulge under his shirt where the crystal lay. "Unless you built a lightsaber out of it. If she imprinted on it all those years ago, it will still sustain the colour it chose for her. Although, if you've imprinted on it," she moved her gaze up to his face, "it would show the colour it's chosen for you."
Jesper shook his head, slowly, then more violently. "No. I'm not building a lightsaber. Not ever."
Nina raised an eyebrow. "But you are Force-sensitive, aren't you? I felt it when you were flying us over that Star Destroyer. You rely on the Force, tap into it, use it to guide your movements in times of stress. It's what makes you such a good pilot."
Jesper didn't say anything. Nina took it as a cue to continue.
"I could train you too, you know. You and Kuwei. We can-"
"No," Jesper forced out, finding his voice again. He gripped the console tightly and closed his eyes. "No."
Nina drew back, her brow creasing. She looked almost hurt. "Why not?"
"Because," he said, opening his eyes again and staring straight down, "my mother died. The Empire hunted her down and murdered her. Just for being Force-sensitive. They ransacked our farm on Lah'mu, murdered her, forced me and my father to run to Corellia. She only had time to give me this necklace." He closed his eyes again. "I was six."
Nina sounded uncomfortable as she said, "I'm sorry-"
"Me too." His tone was decidedly bitter.
"-but I don't understand," Nina finished, grasping at his wrist. "You have an ability that can help people. That you can use to protect yourself and your loved ones - to stop anything like that from ever happening again. You have a gift. Why not use it?"
Jesper stood from the pilot's seat and wrenched his hand out of her grasp. "It's not a gift," he said, just before he stormed out of the cockpit. He didn't finish the sentence until he was out, away from Nina and her promises, away from the future that felt too much like the past.
He'd started with a shout, but ended with a whisper.
"It's a curse."
They arrived at the Rebel base - which Inej still refused to tell Jesper the location of - a day later. After a tense few hours shuffling round the Barrel, avoiding Kaz's strangely sullen mood and Nina's narrowed eyes, the Corellian was just glad to have the excuse to be in the cockpit again and get away from all the. . . unrest. . . festering among the team.
Next to him, Inej was currently arguing with the Rebel on lookout duty via comlink. Jesper glanced over just as she said, "Transmitting clearance codes now," firmly and decisively, daring the person on the other end to argue.
The voice that replied was faintly bitter, but they was the touch of a smile to it. "Codes confirmed. Stick to your approved flight path." There was a pause, then, "And Wraith? I've got quite a few questions for you and that ship for when you touch down."
"Flight path locked." A smile tugged at the corner of Inej's mouth. "And agreed. See you there, Anika."
The comlink clicked off and Inej gripped the controls as they landed in the middle of a field. Jesper flicked a few switches overhead mainly to avoid the knowing gaze she shot his way.
Inej unstrapped the crash webbing and leapt to her feet, unslinging her jacket off the back of the seat and shrugging it on. "I need to go make my report now," she informed him, "and I'm fairly sure that you'll all need to cover what happened in my absence. So, are you coming?"
Jesper frowned. "Who's coming?"
"Everyone except Kaz. He doesn't have anything to report in great detail, and knowing him, he'll stick around the ship just to make sure no Rebel scum steal it from him." A sneer formed on her face at the last few words; Jesper was taken aback. Inej was usually so amicable.
But if the other option was to stay on the ship with Kaz. . . He figured he wouldn't want to do that. Not in the mood he was in currently.
"I'll come," he said. "And even if you won't tell me what planet we're on, I'd like to get a look at it. See how a Rebel base works."
Inej raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment. Jesper was glad for that at least.
"Captain Ghafa and Lieutenant Zenik to see you, sir," Senator Lantsov's aide called out, ushering the five compatriots into the Senator's office.
He looked up from his desk immediately, where he appeared to be frowning at a form crammed with numbers. "Captain Ghafa," he greeted jovially, "Lieutenant Zenik, Van Eck and company." Matthias scowled; Lantsov ignored him. He turned his gaze on Jesper instead. "I don't think I know you."
"This is Jesper Fahey," Inej explained, stepped forward. "He's a smuggler we hired to help us get to Eadu, past Imperial security. And we have a report to make about what happened on Eadu."
The Senator nodded. If the news surprised him, he didn't show it. "Then let's gather in the meeting room, and I'll call in the other members of High Command."
Inej nodded. "Of course, Senator."
"It's not 'Senator' anymore."
She froze, and glanced back up at him. "What?"
He gave a noncommittal shrug, a rueful smile tugging at his lips, but there was a tension to his shoulders and a hardness to his voice as he said, "The Emperor dissolved the Imperial Senate. He decided that with the imminent unveiling of his new battle station, he didn't need the bureaucracy to keep star systems in line. The regional governors are in charge, now."
"Ah." Inej didn't have anything else to say.
They entered one of the meeting rooms via the door in the side of Lantsov's offices and stood there, waiting, for the other Alliance leaders to arrive.
While Nikolai Lantsov was the face of the Alliance - the most vocal and open of the members of High Command - Inej still recognised a few of the faces that filed in and occupied the seats around the circular table. Generals Tamar Kir-Bataar and Tolya Kul-Bataar were known to her, respectively; she'd served under the former at one point, and the generals' status as twins meant she'd interacted with the latter quite frequently. A couple of others she knew in passing, and the rest she didn't recognise.
She took in a deep breath to steel herself.
"Comrades," Lantsov began, gesturing at the five of them. Inej stood in the front; she got the peculiar feeling the men of their merry band were all trying to hide behind her. Which might have been possible for Wylan to do, but judging by the smirk Nina shot her, it was somewhat comical to see a man of Matthias's stature trying to surreptitiously hunker behind a woman as small as she was. "This is the team I dispatched to investigate the situation on Eadu, and they are now here to report."
Inej felt the precise moment that the laser focus of Rebel Command turned on her. She willed herself not to shrink from it; she'd never liked being the centre of attention - there was a reason she was best at working solo, rather than leading a team - but General Kul-Bataar gave her an encouraging smile and his twin gave her a thumbs up, so she made herself begin talking. The words flowed after that, one after the other, with her companions chiming in when necessary.
Lantsov in particular listened intently, the cheery look on his face faltering when Inej had to take a deep breath before describing the Death Star, what it had done to Eadu - what it had done to Alderaan.
When it was mentioned, Kir-Bataar's golden gaze flicked to Lantsov's. Her bronze skin had taken on a greenish tinge. "If the power of this weapon is true-"
"Then we will discuss it once the Captain has finished her report," Lantsov said pleasantly, with a pointed look at his friend. Inej remembered something, distantly: supposedly Lantsov had begun his early career in his homeworld's army, and met Tamar and Tolya there. . .
General Kir-Bataar gave her an apologetic smile, and waved a slim hand in a gesture to continue.
Inej smiled. No one else spoke until she'd finished her report. Silence hung in the air, a delicate balance, for several moments after she did.
General Kul-Bataar was staring stoically at the table. A man of few words, he provided no verbal response to the information, but Inej could tell he was rattled. They all were.
Another person, one that Inej didn't recognise, spoke up from around the table. "And can Yul-Bayur's son tell us anything about this weapon?"
Inej opened her mouth, but it was Nina who replied, "We're not certain yet. We'll be sure to ask him for all he does know in the near future."
The speaker, a humanoid woman with pale green skin, narrowed her eyes. "You haven't begun questioning him already, during the trip here?"
"He was grieving," Inej explained quickly, before the thunder on Nina's face twisted itself into words. "We were all trying to come to terms with what had happened. It didn't seem humane to ask him then. Not when his father had just died."
The woman opened her mouth again, but Lantsov steepled his fingers and said, "Acknowledged. Is there anything else to report?"
Inej shook her head. "No-"
"Yes."
Every eye on the room turned towards Nina Zenik.
Inej's friend lifted her chin and gritted her teeth. "Yes," she repeated. She took a breath, then: "During my. . . encounter. . . with Koroleva, her helmet came off briefly." She was silent for a moment to let that sink in. "I saw her face."
She took several deep breaths. Her lips moved to shape words, but no sound came out. She took another breath and tried again.
Fortunately, Nikolai Lantsov came to her rescue. "Did you recognise her, Lieutenant? Do you know who she is?"
"Yes." The word was an exhale of breath, even as all other occupants of the room inhaled. And held that breath, until one could hear a penny drop in the complete and total silence that followed Nina's utterance of the name, "Alina Starkiller."
Inej's eyes widened as she stared at Nina.
Oh.
The thought was weak, thin.
Quiet.
The sound that broke the silence was the faint rush of breath, like a starbird's wings, and whisper it carried: Nikolai Lantsov's, "Impossible."
Improbable, a distant part of Inej's brain noted. Never impossible.
She shook herself. It wasn't important.
It wasn't important because Lantsov's mouth was shaping words, but no sound was coming out, and Inej was so preoccupied with waiting for him to say something else that she started at Tamar's shout of, "No."
Inej snapped her head round to look at her old commander. The woman was on her feet, hands planted on the table. She and her brother glared at Nina, eyes burning like the twin suns of Tatooine. Nina took a half step back at that glare.
"Alina," Tolya, still seated, said with a sort of inarguable finality, "is dead."
"And even if she wasn't," his sister cut in, her dagger glare turning on Inej, on Nikolai, on everyone in the room, "she would never do this things that Koroleva has done. Never."
Nina lifted her chin. "I never knew Alina Starkiller," she said clearly. "I was too young to remember her. But I've seen holos. I saw holos every day for a decade, because Master Zoya could never follow her own advice about how a Jedi lets go of attachments, and never stopped mourning her lost student. Lost student," she said, half to herself. "That was what she always said. Not dead student. Lost."
"You're wrong," Tamar seethed. "You have to be wrong-"
"I know what I saw." Nina's voice was deadly soft. "It was unmistakeable."
"Then what happened?" Tamar demanded, thumping a fist down on the table so hard Inej was surprised she didn't hurt herself. "Why would- why would Alina-"
"Tamar," Nikolai said gently.
The General's expression was still fierce, still fighting, but. . . Tears shone in her eyes.
"Koroleva was the one who killed Nadia." Her voice was soft. She sat down, and when she looked up at Nikolai, her face was soft, too. "Alina killed Nadia. Why?" It was more to herself than anyone else. "Why would she do that?"
"I don't know," Nikolai replied, voice equally soft.
The humanoid woman from earlier cleared her throat then. "I apologise for being insensitive," she said, sounding genuinely sorry, "but is there anything else about the superweapon to report?"
In unison, Inej's team shook their heads.
"Good." The woman pursed her lips. "You are dismissed. And I suppose we'd better leave too," she added to her fellow members of High Command, "to give the Senator and the Generals some privacy to discuss what is obviously a deeply personal matter." She caught Inej's eye, and gave her a hard look. Inej wondered if she was genuinely affronted, or was just trying to re-establish some semblance of authority in the wake of such a revelation. "You. Are. Dismissed."
Inej could respect her attempt at professionalism. She bowed her head, and led the way out.
