On the Bridge of the Lycurgus
He stood at the largest of his windows, cigarra smoldering in the center of his mouth, admiring, through his dim reflection in the glass, the violence of the storm.
Violet arcs of lightning crawled the vast grey hull of the destroyer as she rose with gathering speed through the dark Anaxian clouds. Ice twisted in spectral shapes across the bridge's observation bay, a curving row of dagger-shaped windows that always reminded the Colonel of teeth, like he was looking out on the galaxy from within the mouth of some great fanged predator.
"Colonel," said the Captain, approaching Pale with a data-slate, "Word from our scouts in the debris cluster."
"What do they say?" asked Pale without turning around.
"Energy signatures indicate the
Keep has made the jump to hyperspace," replied the Captain. He was a sallow man, too thin for his uniform, and bald save for a few clinging wisps of hair, "We were unable to track their destination coordinates."
"Course not, the old reptile's too clever for that."
"Ximen, maybe, but not all rebels are so cautious, sir," said Captain Vorik, "Before the
Keep fled the system, it received resupply. We were able to track one light shuttle's jump destination. Odds are low that it is going to same system as the
Keep, but...."
Pale turned, "Well, that
is something. Send the coordinates to Agent Zorn. Ask that she scout the location, and be prepared to jump to her location, Vorik, if she requests us."
"Yessir," said the Captain, saluting and striding away. The Colonel turned back to the observation bay. The
Lycurgus was just clearing the storm banks, dark vapor streaming from its hull like water pouring from a breaching whale.
The ship gathered speed as it prepared to tear itself from Anaxes' atmosphere. Metal creaked as the superstructure compensated for the opposed forces of the engines and planetary gravity, and the Colonel felt a mild vibration in the deck of the bridge.
As the ship entered low orbit, he looked down over the dark cityscape spread out beneath him.
Anaxes, one of the jewels of the galaxy- of the Empire- with its orderly rows of hab-spires and factories, its neat grid of vehicles speeding in all directions.
Billions of people living out their lives, raising their children, grieving and celebrating life's sorrows and joys, praying to whatever gods they held dear, each pursuing his own ambitions in peace and plenty. None of them, or few enough at least, preoccupied with the Empire or the war or rogue frigates or violence in the frozen voids between worlds.
Held in the stern embrace of the New Order, few needed fear for their lives, or their future peace.
Just, in the Colonel's opinion, as it should be.
Nazik hummed to herself and unwrapped one of the ration packs she’d picked up from the
Keep. Every ship seemed to have their own collection of meal packs and foodstuffs, and so far, every one of them had been only nominally better than starving to death. Still, at least they had all be terrible in different and exciting ways. She held out hope that some day she’d come across a ration worth eating - maybe these would be the ones. With great ceremony, while hyperspace whirled around her, Nazik brought one of the mud-colored wafers to her lips, felt her teeth meet a brief, crisp resistance, then a papery feel across her tongue.
All things considered, whatever they were serving on the
Keep was, without a doubt, absolutely the worst thing she had ever put in her mouth. She flopped back in her chair and sighed, tossing the half-wrapped ration onto her console, where it sprayed an unpleasant number of crumbs. Nazik tilted her head back and chewed, her expression thoughtful, and at length swallowed, No wonder the Alliance people had all been thinner and hotter than the people she’d usually seen at the bar, none of them could stand to eat more than they had to. She sighed, sat back up and brushed the crumbs off her console, the imminent arrival alert chiming with a soft sound.
A moment later, the shuttle shunted back out of hyperspace, points of light all around resolving from the strange, streaked universe Nazik spent almost all her time in. An asteroid belt, of course, in a system populated with dead rocks and ice giants. Just once, she wished the Alliance would give her orders in a system with some nightlife. Or any life. She tapped the console, and found a signal buoy exactly where she expected, in a crevice on a nickel-iron asteroid a few hundred kilometers from the hyperspace rendezvous point. The code book was already on her console from her experience of nearly getting blown out of space by the
Keep, so she didn’t need to look far to find it.
The buoys were keyed to code phases, otherwise inert until they heard the appropriate words, and only from very nearby indeed. Nazik turned on her data slate and paged though the screen for a few moments before clicking the comm on.
“When darkness swarms
And autumn comes
I stand alone on withered heath
And stand I tall ‘gainst winters chill
For in my breath and on my tongue
Are words of spring and light.”
She wondered where the fragments of poetry, stories, and songs came from - in all her travels, across all the worlds of what had been the Republic, she had never come across the whole of them. For a moment, Nazik wondered if her latest fare, the Miraluka woman, might have known, her being sort of a librarian after all. She watched the data stream from the awakened comm buoy scroll across her screen, and wondered if she’d meet that woman again. Maybe if she caught a break, she’d see if she could find the
Keep, and maybe keep an eye out for a blind woman with a minstrel’s laugh, and maybe…
Alarms shot to life while the buoy’s data feed continued to feed into the shuttle’s record systems, and Nazik was shaken out of her reverie. She shot straight in her seat, almost fell out, and she didn’t need the shuttle’s sensors to know what had just happened. The ship outside was everywhere, to every side, blocking out the system’s sun, and it was almost close enough to touch.
“What the f-“
"The pilot?" he asked, his single eye roaming the cramped cabin in which they stood.
"Female twi'lek. Rebel runner, by all appearances. Some fight in her- troopers who took her from the vessel are reporting broken arms, legs, and one skull fracture."
"Good," said Colonel Pale, "I wouldn't be happy if you dragged us all the way out here to catch some amateur, Kae."
Agent Zorn did not reply, just clasped her hands behind her back and squared her shoulders. The Colonel, his single eye glittering in the dim light of the captured shuttle, smiled faintly.
"I'll interview this one myself," said Pale, "but first, let's take the measure of our new friend."
He pulled open a few drawers in the vessel's cramped kitchenette, pulling out half-nibbled rations and discarded nutri-packs. A thermos of expired soylent oozed something black and viscous when he set it on the counter.
"Not so appetizing," he said, as Agent Zorn riffled though the cabin's single cot, pulling a long strand of dark hair from the sheets.
"Can't be the pilot's," she said, producing a micro-scanner from her tunic and flashing the hair with it.
She frowned as she read the runes along the scanner's screen. "Miraluka," she said.
The Colonel raised his eyebrow, then pulled a small tin out from the back of a drawer and snapped it cautiously open.
"What is it?" asked Zorn.
"Tea," said Pale. He snapped the tin shut, tapping the runes on the cover. A university logo.
