Battlefront II, page 29
“There’s no rush to leave now,” she said. Her voice sounded flat to her own ears, as if she were speaking in a room that muffled sound. “We’ll bury them.”
“The Dreamers just left Seyn to be taken by—”
“We’re not the Dreamers, Hask!” she snapped. “We’re supposed to be better than they are, remember? Or have you gotten so caught up in Staven’s bloodlust that you’ve forgotten you’re an Imperial officer?”
Hask drew breath to speak, but Del interrupted him. “Captain, Lieutenant…we’ve got company.”
Iden followed Del’s wide-eyed gaze and gasped.
Moving toward them were huge, lumbering forms, humanoid except for perfect round heads out of which stared two spots of dark, luminescent purple.
The sound of blasterfire rent the air, and one of the forms shattered like a clay pot. The pieces fell to the ground, revealing more crystals contained within. Del reached over to Hask and grabbed the blaster, preventing him from shooting a second time.
“I don’t think they’re going to hurt us,” Del said, “but let’s get out of their way.”
The three Imperial agents stepped back, away from the bodies, and watched with a combination of astonishment and trepidation.
There were four now, moving toward the shuttle and the figures sprawled on the dirt. More movement farther off revealed that a fifth was approaching to join them.
“These are your statues,” Iden said. She was whispering; she didn’t know why.
“Yes,” Del said, also softly. “They’ve been reactivated, somehow. But there are only four—wait, five of them.”
“They don’t seem hostile,” Iden said.
“But they’re coming,” Hask said.
“There are a lot of them in that cavern,” Del warned him. “They’d just keep coming. We’d run out of blaster power before half of them got here.” He watched, almost reverently, as the clay creations continued their steady stride. “Something…woke them. And I have to know what.”
They stood and watched. Closer the huge constructs came, calmly, with no hostile or rapid moves, until each of the five stood beside a fallen Dreamer. Then, in perfect synchronization, they bent and gently, oh so gently, took the limp forms in their arms. Iden watched in wonder, her heart suddenly, strangely, full, as the statues seemed to cradle the bodies, like a parent gathering up a slumbering child and bearing it to bed.
Then whatever had sent them here caused them to turn around, and as slowly and solemnly as they had arrived, they retreated the way they had come.
“I was wrong,” Del breathed. “I thought they operated on telepathy. They do respond to sentient brain activity—but only when it stops.”
So this was why there were no relics of the ancient civilization. They had created guardians who tended to them when life was extinguished, bearing their bodies away out of sight, bearing away perhaps all remnants of their existence.
“Was this all they were meant to do?” Hask asked. Even he pitched his voice low as they watched the retreating guardians, carrying their precious burdens, disappear into the distance.
“It could be,” Del said. “But what better way to address the end of a civilization?”
“This was what happened to the stormtrooper—to Azen and Seyn,” Iden said. “It’s why we didn’t find their bodies. These…guardians sensed the end of sentient life, and took care of them.” She paused. “I’m glad.”
“Me, too,” Del said.
Hask said nothing, but he looked more serious and thoughtful than Iden had ever seen him.
Her anger with him fell away, as if the guardians had borne that away with them as well, and she was glad of that, too.
“Let’s go home,” said Captain Iden Versio.
—
The debriefing was as rocky as Iden had expected it to be.
They were grilled, separately, by an Admiral Versio who made little effort to hide his disappointment that they had lost one of their members. Iden remembered sitting in her father’s office with Del, Hask, and Seyn, her stomach in knots, burning with the desire to be the one to lead the team. The best of the best.
Now she folded her hands and regarded him as he fired question after question: When did she know that the mysterious, nameless Mentor was the informant? How did they spot Azen? What did Seyn do to reveal herself? Why did Iden not notice that Seyn was in distress?
He kept hammering at her as if she were a rebel ship and he were a TIE fighter, using words instead of a laser cannon. She took a breath before answering each question, calmly and completely. Finally, he asked the one she knew was coming.
“Whose fault is it that Lieutenant Marana died?”
“It was my fault, and mine alone,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows at that. “You don’t think she brought it on herself? That it was her own carelessness that caused her death?”
“No, sir. She was my crewmember. She was my responsibility.” And then, the words. “I failed her and my team.” She might not have Seyn’s eidetic memory, but Iden knew that she would never forget the look on Seyn’s face, the silent yes. “Lieutenant Marana wasn’t just my squad member. She was my friend. I can only hope that I can be as courageous and selfless as she was when one day it’s my turn to face death. I myself am prepared to accept any discipline you suggest.”
Her father leaned back in his chair, scrutinizing her. “You yourself? What about your crew? From the sound of things, they, too, failed Lieutenant Marana.”
“I would argue against discipline for them. I will point out that in a single mission, we stopped a potentially disastrous leak before its final target was attacked and turned the Dreamers against one another—sooner rather than later, they’d have been fighting themselves, not us. Hask’s activity was significant in dividing the Dreamer membership, and Meeko’s technological mastery enabled us to communicate and interfere with the Dreamers on a regular basis.”
“So you are saying the agents obeyed your orders to the letter?”
“Negative, sir, but no harm was done.” The Dreamers had been living on borrowed time. If Iden was brutally honest with herself, she had to admit that death by blaster bolt was preferable to other ways they might have met their ends—particularly if the Empire had come to do so. “Lieutenant Hask eliminated the Dreamers of his own volition. It is my opinion he believed he was adhering to the larger scope of the mission, which had as part of its goal the eventual elimination of the entire partisan resistance movement.”
“We could have gotten information out of them first,” Versio said. “I’ve included that in my report on Lieutenant Hask.”
Iden suddenly realized how very much she would not have wished that on Dahna or Piikow…or even on the Kages or Staven. She made no reply.
“Debriefing of Captain Iden Versio concluded,” her father said into the holorecorder. “Recommend no further investigation into the death of Lieutenant Seyn Marana. Recommendation for Posthumous Black Laurel for Service to the Empire issued. Commendations are also recommended for Commander Del Meeko and Lieutenant Gideon Hask, and also for Captain Iden Versio.” He turned off the holorecorder.
Iden was surprised. “Thank you, sir,” she said, rising. “Permission to speak freely?”
“Granted.”
“When can I talk to Mama? I assume she’s been told about—”
“Iden.”
The usage of her first name stopped Iden cold. Words suddenly lodged in her throat. Something had happened. Something bad. She couldn’t even find the words to form a question, simply looked up at him mutely, silently begging that whatever he had to say would not be the thing she imagined, the thing she feared.
“Why don’t you sit back down,” he began.
The words escaped. “No,” she said. “I’ll stand.”
He searched her eyes, then nodded. “It’s as you wish. I wanted to tell you this earlier, but we had no way to easily and safely communicate with Inferno Squad until your mission was completed,” Versio said, his voice quiet. “We couldn’t risk jeopardizing the mission. And I didn’t…” He paused and cleared his throat. “I wanted to tell you in person.”
No.
No…
Voiceless, helpless, her ramrod-straight posture all that was left to her, Iden waited.
“Her illness was more advanced than either of us knew. Three weeks after you left, it claimed her life.”
Iden continued to stare at him, her fists clenching, still unable to speak.
“Zeehay never much cared for Vardos, so we had her interred on Svaaha, where she had her last assignment. There’s footage of the ceremony, if you’d like to see it. And I can arrange for you to visit her grave if you wish to do so.”
Iden wanted to rage. Scream. Claw his face. Claw her own. Zeehay’s bright smile, her warm eyes, her joyfully unselfconscious belly laugh, those long fingers covered with old-fashioned paint—gone, all gone.
“She died thinking her daughter was a traitor.” Her voice was a whisper, a breath.
Her father said nothing for a moment. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, “No. She didn’t.”
Iden gasped softly, her eyes burning with tears. She stared at her father as if at a stranger, trying to reconcile all she had known her entire life with those three simple words. The mission was top secret, and he had violated all manner of military regulations to do what he had done. Her heart was full, so beautifully full, and yet it was broken, because this moment meant everything, and changed nothing.
“Thank you,” was all she said. He nodded.
They stood for a moment.
“You’re a strong soldier, Captain Versio,” he said at last.
“Thank you, sir,” she replied.
He squared his shoulders, and the moment slipped into memory. “Rest up. I’ve arranged for all of you to have private lodgings for tonight. Thought you might appreciate some solitude after living with those…” Versio couldn’t even come up with a word vile enough to describe what he felt about the Dreamers. “Them,” he finished. “You and the rest of your team will report here at oh nine hundred for your next assignment. I know it’s soon, but it’s always best to get right back into the thick of things. Not to dwell on them. And the Empire needs your help.”
“I serve at the pleasure of the Empire, sir.”
“I know you do. You’re a Versio. It’s how I raised you.” He paused. “Good night, Captain. Dismissed.”
—
She was still at the Diplomat, but this time she had her own room, on one of the regular floors. There was no guard at the door, for which Iden was unspeakably grateful. She entered the code for the door, stepped inside, and let it close behind her. As it did so, the room lit up automatically.
Iden’s bag fell from nerveless fingers to the carpeted floor. She took a forced breath and muttered, “Off.” She couldn’t bear the light, too bright, showing things too clearly. She needed darkness, quiet, anything that wasn’t harsh or cruel. Even her skin felt hypersensitized, as raw against the brush of her gaberwool uniform as if the first few layers had been removed.
Outside, myriad colors flashed, bright splotches in the never-quite-dark night. Iden turned around, staring out the window, then made her way, stiff-legged, to the bed. She felt a thousand years old as she sat down, staring at nothing but seeing everything.
She smelled her mother’s scent, light and sporty and clean, felt those strong, comforting arms slip around her small child’s body before Zeehay, with a reassuring smile, went into the shuttle.
She saw Seyn in her crisp white NavInt outfit, her impossibly young face a carefully controlled blank. She saw the scars marring that face, and then the expression of calm resignation in the young woman’s eyes even as she snarled in false rage.
She saw Seyn fall.
Iden closed her eyes and shoved the heels of her palms into them, but closed eyes did nothing to halt the parade of images. She thought of Piikow’s bright eyes, of how beautifully Dahna moved when she danced, just for herself. Of Sadori’s shy smile when he looked at Seyn, as if she were all that was wonderful and beautiful in the galaxy encapsulated in the slender form of a petite young woman. Of how, sometimes, Iden had seen that same expression in Staven’s eyes when he looked at Nadrine.
She saw again Azen’s torture, the limp bodies that Hask had offered as a “surprise,” and the enormous and silent guardians who so tenderly gathered them and bore them to rest. She saw Lux Bonteri, the senator from Onderon, giving a speech to a single audience member, in a natural amphitheater light-years away, his voice still strong, still filled with hope and determination despite all that he had seen. She saw Tarvyn Lareka looking at her with concern in his eyes as they walked the floor of a Star Destroyer.
It’s best for all of us that she’s gone. She’s a Versio in name only. We—you and I—are true Versios, and Versios don’t cry, do they?
No, sir, her five-year-old self had replied in a voice thick with unuttered shrieks of grief. Versios don’t cry.
But the tears did not care that she was a Versio. They came at last, racking her body, scalding her eyes and face, hoarsening her throat, an outpouring of grief not just for Zeehay Versio, who was the last soft thing Iden ever remembered, but for everything that had ever been hurt, or destroyed, or ruined. Everything she had lost, from the woman who bore her to the childhood she’d never really had.
And when at last her sobs were spent and the tears had dried, their salty crust on her face evidence of grief made manifest, the world was the same as it was before. The lights still dipped and dodged in the window. The bed was still soft, the sheets still crisp, although her pillow was damp.
Iden’s breathing slowed. It was the first time she had wept since the night her mother had left Vardos, when a little girl had curled up and, muffling her sobs in the pillow, wept for the mother who had never really returned, and now never would. But she had passed peacefully, and somehow, Iden knew that everything would be all right.
Despite her aching certainty that she would never, ever sleep again, sleep stole over her.
In her dreams, the shin’yah trees wept over water, and their leaves bled crimson until it was washed away.
EPILOGUE
Inferno Squad’s next mission was a simple one. A moff on a distant world was being blackmailed. The team was to locate and neutralize the blackmailers and recover all evidence of the moff’s indiscretions. NavInt had a dossier they could peruse while they were in transit.
Straightforward, clear. Iden was glad of it.
She’d arrived early, and now climbed aboard the Corvus with a half smile on her face. She examined it from bow to stern, with renewed appreciation for its sleek, efficient lines after so long spent with junkers.
She went to their quarters and removed a bottle from her bag. It was expensive, but she didn’t begrudge a credit. She placed it on Seyn’s bunk. You’ll always be with us, she thought. You’ll always be a member of Inferno Squad.
“Oh, sorry, Captain. Didn’t realize you were aboard.”
“At ease, Agent,” Iden said. “Come on in, Del.”
“It’s good to be back.” He sighed, looking at the ship as if it were an old friend. For him, she supposed it was. For all of them, honestly. His eyes fell on the bottle—and on the bunk on which Iden had placed it.
“It still hurts,” he said, quietly.
“It probably always will,” Iden replied.
He sat down on his own bunk, elbows on his knees. He looked down for a minute, then up at her. “May I ask you a question? Unofficially? You don’t have to answer.”
Iden stiffened instinctively, then forced herself to relax. This was Del. Her friend. Her teammate. Who had never let her down, and was always kind. “Go ahead,” she replied.
He scratched his nose. “It’s more of a statement, actually—”
“Del.”
He turned his warm brown eyes back to her. “When you came back…that night when we left. I saw your blaster as you went up the ramp.” He paused. “It was on stun.”
Iden said nothing.
“You didn’t kill the Mentor, did you?”
She didn’t reply. He waited for a moment, then nodded, brushing it off. “I did say you didn’t have to answer, didn’t I?”
“I think you know,” Iden said.
He nodded again. “I…a few days before we left…” He lifted his gaze to hers, completely serious. “I was trying to think of a way we could get Piikow treatment.”
Iden felt something inside her soften. She gave Del a smile, then lifted her finger to her lips. Shhhh.
“Permission to come aboard, Captain!” Hask’s voice was strong and cheerful.
“Permission granted, Lieutenant!” she called back. He strode in briskly but, like Del, paused at the sight of Seyn’s bunk.
While Hask sank down in his own bunk, Iden uncorked the Tevraki whiskey and poured shots for each of them. As she handed them out, she said, “I know we all remember that night in the suite where we had our first toast. We didn’t know what lay in store for us. We didn’t know what and, more important, who we would lose. But we finished our mission. The Dreamers are no more. Seyn Marana gave her life to make sure that happened. And we honored her sacrifice by seeing to it that it did.”
There was a pause, and then Del cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. From his mouth came a cacophony of ugly sounds—gibberish, and yet somehow familiar. They looked at him, quizzically, and he smiled, a little embarrassed.
“That was Seyn’s toast,” he said. “About rending the flesh of our enemies. The one she made that night. I asked her to teach it to me. Boy, she was right—it is difficult to pronounce Ahak Maharr if you don’t have tusks.”
They laughed, and it felt good. Seyn would have approved. The three knocked back their shots, and Iden refilled them and lifted hers.
“To the best team the Empire has ever assembled,” she said, certain of the truth of her words.
“To Inferno Squad!”
This book is dedicated to the “real” Inferno Squad:
T. J. Ramini, “Del Meeko,” Paul Blackthorne, “Gideon Hask,” and especially Janina Gavankar, “Iden Versio,” who reached out to me with such enthusiasm to learn more about this book and about Iden Versio, a character we both have come to love and admire.
