Chapter V

Shades of Life

"Cordon off the area. No foot traffic in or out, am I clear?"

"Right away, sir."

Thire tightened his coat as his men patroled the old guard tower. Fog lights were placed around the structure to better illuminate it, much to the chagrin of locals who just wanted to get some sleep. The sniper hadn't attacked a civilian, so as far as they were concerned, it wasn't their problem.

Johan slid down the ladder from the top. "Sir, I'm afraid we haven't been able to ID the assassin."

"No leads at all?" Thire asked. His breath condensed in the air, each particle distinct under the bright fog lights.

"Nothing concrete. He is a Lethan, though. Not many of those in Nar Skocha. If he has relatives, they'll be easy to find."

"As good a lead as any, I guess."

"Should I put out a notice for Lethans?" Johan suggested.

Thire hesitated. "We need to be careful. We don't know why this man lashed out the way he did. Tell Cherek Squad to ask around, but don't put out a broad notice."

"Sir, if I may…"

"Go ahead, Corporal."

"Between this, and the man that attacked Spinner last night, this could be part of a larger rebellion. We need to get ahead of it, before it's too late."

Behind them, two troopers took a fusion torch to the tower's ladder. It's easier to simply remove access to the tower than to tear the whole thing down. Safer, too.

Thire considered the Corporal's words. A rebellion on Ilum would be nothing new. The 212th fought rebels on this world, but their efforts only seemed to worsen the problem. Had Coruscant not intervened when they did, the entire world may have erupted in insurrection. "The Emperor sent us here to use a lighter touch. We're not a front line unit, Corporal."

"I know that, sir, but…"

"Both figuratively and literally, the 9th is here to build bridges. Win hearts and minds."

"And… you have a plan for that?" Johan asked. "...Sir." His sabaac face betrayed no insubordinate intent. He wasn't 'questioning' a superior officer, just 'getting clarification.'

Thire nonetheless rose to the challenge. "I do," he intoned, directly. "And when I am ready to reveal it, you will know at the same time as everyone else."

A speeder parked at the edge of the perimeter. SoroSuub, latest model year. Recently waxed, too. A trooper approached the driver's side window as it rolled down.

Johan broke eye contact with Thire, peeking at the speeder behind him.

"Am I clear, Corporal?" Thire asked.

The trooper attending to the speeder spoke up, "Colonel, it's the Administrator. He'd like a word…"

Thire waved him off, keeping his gaze on Johan. "I said 'am I clear, Corporal?'"

Johan nodded. "Crystal, boss." He turned and walked back to the perimeter, his doubts not at all assuaged.

Thire turned back in the direction of the speeder. Administrator Ullen approached him, escorted by two troopers. "Administrator," Thire greeted, with feigned appreciation, "What a pleasant surprise."

Ullen's gray, wrinkled face grinned. "Walk with me, Colonel. We have much to discuss." His stride continued, unbroken.

Thire hesitantly followed beside him, as they toured the perimeter, still flanked by two soldiers.

"These cold nights wreak havoc on my old bones," Ullen said as they passed under a fog light. "A brisk walk, now and again, is essential at my age."

"If you say so, Administrator."

Ullen took a deep breath of the frigid air, exhaling it slowly as they passed the old tower. "Did they tell you who the target was?"

"Some Rodians in a speeder," Thire recalled. "Likely racially motivated."

Two engineers successfully removed the tower's ladder. "Careful, careful…" One said, as it wobbled in their hands.

Thire continued, "I've begun an inquiry into the shooter, and we should-"

"It was my son, Colonel," Ullen calmly interrupted.

Thire was caught by surprise. "Your… excuse me?"

"In spite of my best efforts, Yaad continues to run with a…" He searched for the right word. "Less-than-savory crowd. They're harmless, but everyone has enemies. They were on one of their… romps… last night, when the sniper took a shot at Yaad. He barely escaped with his life."

"And the Rodian that died…"

"Was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. One of his 'friends' from our time in the mid rim." The group continued their walk. Ullen turned up the heating on his coat. "Now that you know this, I suspect retaliation will be swift."

"With all due respect, Administrator, there's nothing to retaliate against. The sniper's dead."

"But he was a Twi'lek, no?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Ullen faced forward. "I sympathize with their race, but on this world, they have a certain history. They respect no authority. Not the Republic that liberated them, nor the Empire that feeds them. A stern hand for a disobedient child."

"Imagine that," Thire said under his breath.

Ullen pretended not to hear him. "A quick show of force is all that is needed."

"That won't be necessary, I'm afraid. Collective punishment isn't how we do things."

"I'm taken aback, Colonel." His wrinkled grin returned. "Your predecessor was not so reluctant to see justice done."

"How'd that work out for him?"

"I see." Ullen finally stopped walking, and turned to face the Colonel. "You wish to chart a new course, then? Away from the Butcher's legacy?" He resumed walking in the other direction, back toward his speeder.

Thire followed close. "I've drafted a plan for reparation and reconciliation. I intend to put it in action, come sunrise."

"And the Twi'lek that just attacked Spooner? Your soldier?"

"His name is Spinner."

"Of course. My point stands."

"A random act of violence. The plan goes forward."

Ullen scoffed. "You're naive, Colonel. And I respect that. Too many military men come here grizzled and jaded. It's almost refreshing to see a perspective so dense."

Thire bit his tongue. One word, and he could have had the guards strip the Neimoidian naked and bury his wrinkled cloaca in the snow.

"Nevertheless, I at least ask you take precautions, if nothing else."

"What sort of 'precautions,' Administrator?"

He stopped a few feet from the speeder. "My son needs a security detail. A proper, Imperial detail, not those turfjumpers he runs with."

Thire watched as a guard opened the door of the speeder. "I'll think about it," he replied, hesitantly.

Ullen slid into the passenger's side. "Think hard, Colonel. I would hate to mention any of this to Governor Tarkin." The door shut between them, as the speeder took off into the night, blowing snow on a passing trooper caught in its wake.

At last, the speederbike's fog lights met the edge of the motorpool. Gomen reached his hand back to check his passenger's pulse. Fading…

The blast may not have outright killed Rori, but it fried his suit's internal heater. He'd been facing the cold for the past 3 hours, and had severe hypothermia.

"You just hang in there, kid. We'll get you someplace warm… get that chest looked at…" He lost feeling in his leg, and tried patting it with his arm to wake it back up. "You'll pull through, kid. You'll be fine." The bike finally came to a stop in the motorpool. Gomen immediately jumped off and pulled Rori off the back, draping the other's arm around his shoulder. "MEDIC!" He shouted at the top of his lungs, limping toward the door with his comrade in tow. "MEDIC! PLEASE!"

Two troopers ran in. Not medics. "Shit," one of them said frantically, "Able, Get on comms with Brynn. We have wounded."

"Right away, sir." The second trooper ran off to find his commlink.

The first trooper ran to help, grabbing Rori's other arm and helping to drag him to the door. "What the hell happened out there?"

"Ambush…" Gomen limped through the pain. His leg felt as though a vibroknife was slowly slicing it from ankle to knee. He hadn't checked it for blood in the last 2 hours. "Some asshole waiting for us… No blasters…"

"Ambush? Where? What are you…"

Gomen's knee finally gave out. He collapsed without warning, grabbing onto a chest-high toolbox to support himself. "Damn it… shit…" He barely managed to speak through his heavy breaths. The other quickly grabbed Rori to keep him from falling as well. Blood dripped from the fabric between his armor plates, quickly pooling on the floor. "Shit… shit… shit."

"We need to get you in surgery fast if we're gonna save that leg." The other trooper stated, frantically. "ABLE, WHERE'S THAT GODDAMN MEDIC?" Thinking fast, he rested Rori on a speeder and knelt down to examine the injured leg. Grabbing a set of durasteel sheers from the toolbox, he unclipped the bracer and cut away the fabric between the plates. Underneath, he was greeted only by more blood and displaced meat. The blast had hit him just above the foot, between two pieces of armor. He suffered third degree burns on impact, and the bone split in two at a later point in the fight, puncturing through the tissue. The wound had been untreated and exposed to the elements for 4 hours, with the armor around the leg acting as the bone he had been limping on.

"Don't worry about me." Gomen kept a brave face, biting through the pain, half-delirious. "The boy needs help. Please, for the love of God, help him!" Shapes started to blur, and his peripheral vision darkened. Sound faded amidst an ethereal tone, before returning as the strained musical note he had heard before he left. Rori was still slumped across a speeder opposite him, his heart fading. "Please… please… please… please…"

Daylight.

The grinding of servos and low hum of machinery serenaded him back to the land of the living. It took every bit of his strength to force his eyes open, as though he were pushing a boulder uphill. A blinding white light burned his retina through the thick, blue bacta. For the time being, his world ended at the glass edge of this cylindrical prison. Before him, the warped form of a 2-1B medical droid.

"I am sorry," the droid intoned. Its voice had been engineered to mimic human emotion. "We could not save your partner." It pressed a button on the control panel, delivering a hit of Ixetol to the patient. "Corporal Gomen had lost too much blood."

Rori turned his head as far as his stiff joints would allow. Atop the first in a row of cots, Gomen's remaining leg stuck out from under a thin, white sheet, a data chit tied around the big toe. The Ixetol hit Rori's bloodstream, jerking his head forward once more as sensation faded in and out. Pain left his body, bit by bit. Each wave of feeling hurt less, until all that remained was the smooth massage of bubbling, viscous bacta flowing over his form. A strained musical note entered the edge of his hearing, as the drug lulled him back to sleep.

The morning sun peeked over the horizon, bathing the frozen city in its warmth. Winter solstice was only a few weeks away, at which point, the night could last up to 53 hours. Two Star Destroyers jumped into orbit, close enough to the atmosphere that the sonic booms could be felt from the surface. From their hangers, each one dispatched several Sentinel-class troop transports, destined for the spaceport.

On the surface, engineers and construction staff returned to work on the command center. The damage from the overnight storm was not as bad as they'd feared, and the building would be operational in as little as 10 hours.

Thire awoke to the beeping of his handheld holoprojector. The high-pitched tone scrambled his brain like a scyk egg. He had tried to sleep at least four times last night, each time either being woken up by a crisis, or simply waking up to find the night was not yet over. Adjusting his sleep schedule to a 66-hour rotation was going to be painful. At least he'd worn a coat.

He sat up on the edge of the mattress, finally answering the holo call.

"Colonel Thire, sir." The little, blue man on the other end saluted him. "This is Major Kelleon of the ISD Yularen. Your reinforcements have arrived."

Thire saluted him back, suppressing the pain in his skull.

"Have I caught you too early in the morning, sir? We departed from…"

"No, no. It's not that, Major. It's just… I never ordered reinforcements."

"My orders come from Governor Tarkin, sir. The 212th is undergoing reorganization. Aurek Company is being folded into the 9th Engineering Battalion, while the rest is being sent back to Kashyyyk. The rest of your reinforcements come from the 105th, after we received reports of rebel activity on Ilum."

"Right…" Last night's memories came back like a bad penny. His friend of ten years, sprawled out on an operating table, bone fragments poking out of his mangled leg, screaming in agony. "Rebel activity."

"We heard you lost two men."

"Damn near four."

"I see. From experience, sir, it…"

"Only gets worse. I know." Thire interrupted him, as he pulled himself out of bed. The prior night, he found himself drifting from bed to bed, without a permanent command post. He wasn't sure where this one was.

"I'll be on the ground with the first wave, alongside General Lottlief."

"I beg your pardon, Major?"

"The situation has escalated, Colonel. The General wishes to push the attack personally. You will be briefed when we land."

Thire exhaled. "Roger that, Major. Ilum out."

Kelleon saluted once more, as the holoprojector shut down with a click.

Thire took stock of his surroundings. Dressers, shelves, and mirrors dotted about pointed to a civilian abode. The curtain on the doorway likely meant lower class. Either this building wasn't a prefab, or it was, and the door simply broke, with no way to repair it. The walls had been papered over and painted, so if they're durasteel, he couldn't tell without being a very ungracious guest.

And the smell coming from the next room…

Breakfast.

He pulled back the curtain, to see a family of five Twi'leks sat around the dinner table. A father, a mother cooking some sort of vegetables on the nearby stove, and three children: two school-aged boys, and a baby girl in a high chair. The father looked up from his datapad, and calmly said something in Huttese.

The boy on the left translated. "Dad thought you might have died last night. You sure were out of it, Mister."

His mother admonished him in the alien language.

"Sorry," he corrected, "You sure were out of it, sir."

The baby started giggling and pounding her tray. "Yocolana d'emperiolo!"

The father hid his face in embarrassment.

"It means 'honored guest,'" the boy 'translated,' suppressing a chuckle. "Will you be staying for breakfast, sir?"

Thire grinned, then pulled up an empty chair.

The first four shuttles touched down at the spaceport, each one carrying about three dozen troopers. A waft of hot air flew out of each shuttle as their doors opened. The men inside immediately started complaining about the cold, before falling out in a semi-orderly line, as moisture condensed on their helmets. Major Kelleon was the first out, expecting to be greeted by Colonel Thire. Instead, he found Johan waiting for him.

"I'm afraid the Colonel had other matters to attend to," the Corporal explained.

"It would appear so," the Major frustratedly answered.

The shuttles finished unloading, as ground crews quickly attached refueling hoses to get them ready for their next trip. It would take at least 17 trips, and 8 more shuttles, to finish the job.

The Major glanced around the spaceport. "I will say, it's impressive how quickly you've restored order. This place was in shambles when the 212th was pulled away."

"I'll make sure the Colonel hears, Major…"

Before he could finish, a trooper approached them suddenly. "Excuse me," she interrupted, "I was told my brother is here. Does anyone know where he is?" She sounded frantic, and out of breath.

Johan stammered for a second. "Uh, your brother, Ma'am?"

"Private Rori Versio. He was W.I.A. I need to see him."

Johan paused in thought.

Kelleon responded. "If I may, Sergeant Versio, he's likely at the clinic. Two blocks north from here."

"Thank you," she said, before charging off to the north, her bootsteps pounding against the frozen, metallic landing pad.

Johan waited until she was out of earshot. "Women, right?"

"That woman outranks you, Corporal. Best remember that."

"Your body temperature has risen to 98.4253 degrees. Vitals have normalized, and the bacta seems to have reversed all damage caused by frostbite. You appear to be physically healthy. How do you feel?"

Rori was just glad to be out of the bacta tank, and in a normal bed. He still had a bacta IV sticking out of his arm, and a machine attached to his leg to monitor his vitals. "There's still some pain, doc." He had an abnormal, traveling pain. It would start in his head, and slowly move down to his gut. Right now, it was somewhere in his chest.

The medical droid checked its databanks, before administering treatment. "Administering 2 CCs of Ixetol."

The drug automatically entered his system through the IV. The pain, as well as all sensation in his body, faded for a spell, only to return seconds later. Every touch, every smell, every sight and sound, returned stronger than ever, minus the pain. Minute details around the room that he never noticed before, now seemed as obvious as a cloud in the sky. A tiny insect crawling on the prefabricated ceiling, no larger than a child's toenail, danced about like a trained vornskr as it battled a simple light fixture encased in glass. A scene barely perceptible to the naked eye, yet he could make out every tiny hair on the bug's carapace; every speck of dust and tiny scratch on the glass.

The door slid open automatically. In ran a woman in full Imperial armor. She walked from bed to bed, checking each one for her brother. Most contained civilians that had gotten caught in last night's blizzard. Twi'leks and Rodians alike, recuperating in neighboring beds, separated by a sheet of linen no thicker than an eyelash. One in particular, a Twi'lek, had been robbed at gunpoint. She suffered cranial trauma when her assailant pistol-whipped her and left her for dead. She refused to identify her attacker.

The last bed on the left contained a frostbitten stormtrooper, still hooked up to bacta, recovering slowly. Her brother.

She swallowed a breath, then slowly approached. His eyes were wide open, although he didn't respond when he saw her face. He was breathing heavy, yet steady breaths, mainly through his mouth. Cautiously, she patted his arm. "Rori? You awake?" A tear welled up in her eye. "It's me, Iden."

Rori did not respond.

Iden bit the cloth fingertip of her glove, then pulled her hand out to check his temperature. His forehead felt like a stone left in the sun, although the cold may be distorting her perception somewhat.

A medical droid entered from the next room. She flagged it down. "Doctor!"

The droid turned to look at her.

"I need you to check this man's temperature. I think there's something wrong."

The droid walked over with a mechanical whir, readying its instruments. It interfaced with the IV machine, gathering data on the patient. "97.3," it finally intoned. "Patient has lost some body temperature since last checkup, although not a dangerous amount."

Iden raised an eyebrow. "He lost body temp?"

"Ma'am, may I ask your relation to the patient?"

"He's m…" She stopped in her tracks, remembering all the times her brother dropped her father's (or her own) name at the academy. All the times she had to answer difficult questions because he'd ditched a test. All the times he'd borrowed money, and never returned it. He can stand on his own two feet, for once. "He's a good soldier, like the rest of us."

The droid's servos whirred, as its arms moved emotively. "I understand that, ma'am. However, I have many patients that are in far worse condition. I must attend to them; and I ask that you not bother them."

Iden stood up, and slipped her glove back on. "I understand." She walked toward the exit as the droid ignored her.

Her father's words echoed in the back of her head. "I thought this was what you wanted. Rori needs to learn some responsibility."

The slow beeping of the machines faded as she walked out into the ice cold streets.