Chapter 39
After the blow-up with Amara, Kell sat in the lower observation deck bar and stayed there for hours. His only company is a pair of stormtroopers who drank themselves to oblivion around 0700. Must be their day off. They slump over their table, helmets and weapons scattered at their feet.
Throughout the morning, Kell has been attempting to look directly at Nixus. He watches that monstrosity guzzle down the flotsam of space. Giant asteroids move across his field of vision, then blip out as they cross the periphery into forever night.
Several hours now, and he hasn't managed more than a glance. The thought of actually dying out there, his body getting sucked into the hole like all those rocks, fills him with crippling dread. Who knows what that thing can show him if it has an eternity to do it: His own cowardice, his weakness, a million deaths, each one more torturous than the one that precedes it.
He drifts back to how Nixus had him in its grip on the mining platform. He had no control of his body or his mind. While specifics of what happened are lost to him, he recalls clearly the profound terror of having something so malevolent and alien take full possession of him.
Then in Tav's office. To be in its grip again—every memory came flooding back of what Nixus could do. Kell hasn't been able to shake the terror of it.
So, this morning's goal is exposure. Kell believes that if he can force himself to look at it, he'll be less afraid. And then he'll be able to help Amara. But all he's managed to stare at is a cup of kaf gone frigid. The idea of even standing up, where he could accidentally look at Nixus in passing, it's too much. Kell feels himself teetering on the precipice of sanity. How many more glances up and out the window will turn him into a drooling, babbling idiot?
He just wants to go home.
He could apprentice for a pipefitter or a droid master. That sounds safe and good to him. Boring, sure. But he likes the idea of living a full life and dying long before this monster grows large enough to invade his galaxy, devouring everything he cares about.
He regrets what he said to Amara. But he lashes out when he's scared. Fear makes him say horrible things to people he cares about. It always has.
The shame of it reminds him of how he stranded his mother on Dantooine. He took their savings to buy tuition to the Academy. She was suffering as much as him, never quite getting over the loss of his father. And Kell just left her penniless and drunk at the kitchen table.
Nixus knows what he did. And it will remind him of it for centuries.
If he gets back to the galaxy, he's going to make it right. He's getting out of the Empire, he's joining the Rebellion, he's taking care of his mom. He doesn't care what it will cost him.
Kell hears the scream of Interceptor engines leave the hangar. Carefully, he closes his eyes and turns his head, so that when he opens them, he can look out the portside hangar without a glimpse at Nixus.
From underneath the ship, he sees the onyx and crimson livery of Amara's interceptor. He watches as she handles the grav lurch from the black hole flawlessly. Suddenly, boost fires from its thruster and makes a beeline for one of the TIEs on patrol. Four perfect shots, and the fighter bursts into flames that are quickly snuffed out by vacuum.
Kell watches it get pulled into the core of Nixus and vanish. He keeps his eyes on it the whole way.
"Holy shit," Kell whispers, breaking into a giggle. Alarm klaxons blare all over the ship. The first officer shrieks an update that Virta's dead and that the indentures are revolting. Security protocol A, whatever that means. Kell remembers mindlessly clicking through a training protocol on it, but fuck if he knows what it said. He just signed the compliance attestation and got back into a sim.
He checks the two troopers who stumble away from their table, grabbing their helmets and carbines and running. They must have taken the training more seriously than he did. But drunk people are gonna do drunk shit: the troopers left behind a utility belt with three thermal detonators on it.
Kell looks back out the window, no hesitation this time. Slake engages another Interceptor at a distance, and that's gotta be Price. Tav can't fly. Dude is three-quarters dead.
He watches as Price executes one of the best cuts he's ever seen to get behind Amara, and his heart lurches toward Slake. "Watch you're fuckin six!" he hisses in the bar. He wants to be out there with her, protecting her.
Price has her killshot, but chokes and misses wide right. Slake starts juking and heading for an asteroid, and Kell's seen enough footage of Slake to know that Price is a goner. Sure enough, Amara baits Price into following her, and then uses the grav of the asteroid to whip around it and turn the tables on Price.
It's game over. Price is dust.
Kell smiles to himself. What a legend.
Looking to Ex-Factor, Kell sees the six remaining fighters of Obsidian launch. Slake can get three, maybe four of them. But no way she can win six on one. Especially when he considers the heat-seeking missiles and armor those TIE-bombers carry. Then throw in the extra plating that daddy bought Credenzo, and Slake will have to be absolutely perfect to win against the brute force they can throw against her.
Slake fires off, boosting hard toward the mining platform.
Kell tracks her for a full kilometer.
Then he pulls his sidearm from its holster, checks its clip.
He deactivates the safety.
Before he fully realizes what he's doing, Kell Roderick picks up the belt of thermal detonators and slings it over his shoulder. He sprints down a corridor of the Profundity, pistol in hand, heading for the hangar.
Yeah, he's scared shitless. A voice inside his head screams at him to stop, horrified by what he's doing.
But fuck it. Amara needs help. So Kell Roderick runs toward his death anyway.