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Cardinal stretched out on the bed, stripped down to his skivvies. He wanted to keep this lazy feeling of warmth for just a little longer. The environmental controls were turned down to something a human might find comfortable, if only to contrast with the intense heat of the lamp he’d been able to requisition. The heat lamp blasted him like Jakku’s own sun, brighter and hotter and with more short-wave radiation than one of the ship’s standard UV lamps. A lesser man would have crawled out from beneath by now, red with sunburn and overheated to the point of heat stroke. Or, well…
A human would have, anyway.
The lazy warmth skittered away, leaving behind a growing sensation of twitchy energy that he recognized. He was growing too warm. He should turn the lamp off and cool down in the ship's standard temperature, radiate away excess heat before turning the lamp back on.
Cardinal rolled over on the bed, pressing his overheated belly to the sheets even as he bared his back to the punishing lamp. He hissed, the sensation of fabric on skin stronger than it should have been, or at least stronger than he’d always been told it should be as the fabric grated against his tremorsense. The same tremorsense that had him despising the brush of water against his skin, pressure like a predator’s glide through the sand as it stalked him. But he wasn’t on Jakku, he wasn’t on any planet.
He was back on the Finalizer, a prisoner of the First Order. Or he had been a prisoner, now he was merely confined to quarters with a guard posted at the door. He wasn’t allowed to leave, disallowed the chance to mingle back in with the rest of the crew.
The crew that he’d betrayed.
It was for his own protection as much as to keep him contained. That was why he’d regained the right to control his own environment, to even requisition a heat lamp like this.
Cardinal rolled off the bed and ran his hands over heated skin. The excess heat would seep in soon enough, leaving him overstimulated and he’d have to do something. He could burn it all off, put himself through a morning’s worth of exercises, work that heat into his muscles and just feel how good it could feel. He could lay on the fresher floor, let it sap the heat back out of him so he could go back to bed and laze under that lamp again.
But there was something else he’d been meaning to do.
Coming to terms with his own inhumanity as a desert-adapted of Jakku had been hard. Was still hard. It was still shameful for him to contemplate. Brendol really had done him a grave disservice in attempting to strip the otherness from him, in forcing him to conform. It had nearly killed him a couple of times, ice planets sapping the heat right out of him, Stormtrooper armor no protection from the biting cold that drew all the life from his body, that left him just wanting to curl up and sleep.
But then he’d never successfully conformed, had he. Back when he still had the RX Cadre as his own, they’d known, even if he refused to acknowledge it in the field. Even though he’d never told them. It was the only reason why they had their designated Very Large Guy on every mission, someone specifically chosen to be large and warm, to curl up with him if he got too cold. He vaguely remembered one such mission gone wrong, Brendol’s voice so far away berating them all, he was too cold to string together more than a few slow words, wrapped around the bare skin of one of his own snipers, sharing heat, they'd defended him, stood up for him, he didn’t have to…
Cardinal paced a circle in his quarters. Thoughts raced, driven by the heat that still spread through him, pushing him warmer and warmer. He needed to do something.
The desk caught his attention. He’d been given access to a datapad for a reason. At first he’d thought it was a tactic picked up from the Chiss, the Rite of Atonement or whatever they called it, the datapad left in a defendant’s chambers between the trial and the reading of a punishment. The last chance for the condemned to atone for their actions in their own way, before the court decided their fate. But now he wasn’t so sure.
He would be reconditioned. What that meant he wasn’t sure anymore. Director Viciu had mentioned it was different now, more adapted to its subjects. More accurate. Cardinal wasn’t sure what would be left of him once it was done. He’d seen the entire gamut of possibilities when the RX Cadre was reconditioned, from those who lost every memory they had to those who were completely immune. Most merely lost the memories that were targeted, the time they’d spent as his, their training still intact, their personalities reverted back to the eager obedient Stormtroopers they’d been before he took personal control over their training.
What would it do to him, he wondered.
And if he could, what would he preserve.
Cardinal sat at the desk, settling back into the chair. Cold duraplast felt like a shock against heated skin but that shock didn’t last long, the plastic warming as he shared warmth with it. He picked up the datapad, scanning through it.
It was empty, but with the recording function ready to accept diction.
Okay.
He took a deep breath and began to speak.
~
You might find nothing makes sense right now. I understand. I’ve seen it before and I wish it didn’t have to happen to you. But that wasn’t my… No, that’s a lie. It was my decision, the best one that could be made considering the circumstances. All I can hope now is you’ll forgive me.
You’re from a planet called Jakku. You’ll find it in the database but nothing you read there will make sense. It won’t feel right. Because it isn’t. The database was written by a human who liked to pretend you were human, too. Sometimes he even had me convinced. But he was wrong. I have to remember that.
Let’s get one thing straight. You’re not human. You’ve been called many things in your life: desert-adapted, desert rat, desert whore, Anchorite-bait, but your mother called you Archex.
Your parents are dead. Your father died before you were born, eaten alive by a sand worm. Despite its name it’s not a small thing, it’s a sand-gliding worm with eyes on stalks and too many tiny crawling legs and a maw large enough to swallow a TIE cockpit. I’ve seen how they feed, their maws opening up beneath their prey and sucking in everything above them. Your father never had a chance.
Your mother was murdered. Human colonizers on Jakku killed her, shot her in the back while they tried to drive your entire clan away from a wellspring that was rightfully yours. I’m sorry. It was three decades ago now and those colonizers are all dead. Jakku killed them. That planet kills everything that it doesn’t claim, the way it claimed you. Claimed me. That’s why you’re not human, because Jakku willed it.
I’m sorry, maybe I should start again.
No, it’s fine.
You need this information. No one else has it, except maybe Dr. Katsuo, but I still don’t know if you can trust her. She has her own agenda that I cannot trust, for my own safety and yours.
First and foremost, you need to understand this: you are not warm-blooded. What does that mean. Well, humans create their own heat. They drink and eat so much more than you need to because they thermoregulate their own bodies. You don’t, at least not to the same degree.
I envy them that, sometimes. You’ll never know what it feels like to play in the snow, to pack ice crystals together into shapes like wet cold sand. But in return they’ll never know what it feels like to lay under a lamp warming your belly, heat spreading through you in luxurious warmth. They’ll never know the slow softness of willingly falling into torpor as you curl up under the cold sand and let your heat bleed away. They’ll never know the vibrating need to move and run and burn away excess heat.
That’s why it seems like your armor is padded. It is, it’s insulated. Not all of your duties will be on board climate-controlled ships. You’ll need to operate in terrains and climates that the humans tolerate, the whole wide range of them, and that means conserving heat or cold inside your armor. That’s why, if you’re hot-bunking again, you’ll need to use the heat lamp installed above your bed. Keep it aimed at your belly, it works the best that way. It also feels the best but don’t tell anyone, they might get jealous.
You might notice your diet card is different. There’s no set water ration attached to it. There are days it doesn’t even work. Human beings have to eat every single day otherwise they can’t maintain their heat and they begin to starve. But you don’t maintain heat that way. You could eat every day, I know I’ve been forced to often enough, but the results aren’t anything I’d recommend. Suffice it to say, you lay fat down over your entire body, not just on the belly first like a human male. If you eat every day you’ll get large quickly, even if the humans will mistake it for muscle.
You might find you need water every now and then. Sometimes it’s just comforting to drink, especially on an empty belly before lying down under a lamp to take heat. When you do, drink the whole thing. All of it. If you wiggle you’ll be able to open up your insides to take it all. I know that makes no sense right now but once you see just how big a storage cube of water is you’ll understand. Yes you can drink it all at once. No it won’t hurt you. Yes it is enough water to kill a human. Do it. Unlatch your armor and drink it all. It is the best feeling in the galaxy, to be stretched full of water and laying under a heat lamp slowly warming you belly-first.
~
Cardinal shivered. He hadn’t had water in a week, he hadn’t needed it nor had he been forced to drink. He idly wondered if the guard at his door thought it odd but then dismissed it. He didn’t care what his jailer thought. It wasn’t his responsibility to care. The shame that once had him eating and drinking every day to pretend to look human, even if it made him sick afterward, had begun to fade since his last interrogation.
He wondered if that had been much the point of Director Viciu’s interrogation, to strip him of his own self-imposed shame at his inhumanity. Or Brendol-imposed shame. Even Resistance-imposed shame. An imposition from so many personalities so helpfully looking to control him.
He paused the dictation and instead opened a different command, sending a requisition for something to make him feel better. No, not just better. It was an amazing feeling, one no mere human would ever experience. One he’d allowed to be taken from him for far too long.
His datapad pinged, informing him the storage cube of water would be delivered shortly.
The transport ship puttered along, its cargo hold laden with goods harvested from protectorate planets in the Unknown Regions. Most of the foodstuffs on board had already been processed, pressed into ration bars and protein pastes and solid and liquid oils and complex carbohydrate slurries ready to be mixed by droids to the specifications of a Stormtrooper’s diet card. But there were those whole items that were carefully packed away in crates. Unripe melons, citrus, nightshades, and stonefruits sat in storage, awaiting ethylene dosing to finish the ripening process once they were scheduled for consumption. Grain ground into flour was compressed into cubes and stacked in pressurized vessels to keep it inert and non-combustible. Animal products took up the most space, dairy carefully freeze dried and packed into compressed cubes. Butchered carcasses sat frozen in cold storage, nerf and birds and larger fish-like animals.
There were no eggs, though. The Steadfast had not been able to find eggs available for sale or harvest, not since the Chiss began paying such a high premium for eggs. What, exactly, had happened to cause such a run on eggs remained a mystery, one that the droid crew of the transport ship did not know the answer to. Nor did they care.
RX-0967 didn’t care either. Her mission had nothing to do with eggs. Her mission was clear. There was a man she’d been summoned to kill.
RX-0967 rubbed at the implant on her neck, pressure against the gold disk keeping her calm so far away from the Others. The Others on the Steadfast were all that mattered and she needed to get back to them. But getting back wouldn’t be possible without killing one man. The Others had made that clear, commanded to excise her from them and force her off the ship. She was alone now, alone and adrift and desperate to return to them. She hadn’t been alone for years now, close to 13 years, not since Before.
She barely remembered Before. Those memories hurt and she didn’t like to be hurt. The same as she didn’t like to be away from the Others.
That was why it had to be her. The Others had tried sending RX-2181 before, back when their target went missing. But RX-2181 had disappeared, his Presence cutting off in a sharp golden note, and all that remained of him was his memory. Now it was up to her.
The transport ship lurched to the side as its own artificial gravity interfaced with something larger. RX-0967 kept hidden, curled up beneath a metric ton of unripe melons. Her armor hid her from most scans, the melons themselves did the rest as she stayed absolutely still and pretended she was nothing more than a melon herself in order to evade detection.
Sounds echoed through the transport as cargo was moved, as droids handled the bulk of the heavy lifting. She could tell, their faint Other-like presences pinging against her mind and across her HUD as they moved. First the meats were moved, they needed to be kept below freezing in order to maintain their freshness. Then the flammables, the compressed flours and dehydrated dairy. Next the oils and solid fats. Only then did the droids turn to the unripe fruits.
RX-0967 lurked away as the melons shifted around her, sneaking through and past the crates of foodstuffs that hadn’t yet been cataloged. Her weight wouldn’t register in the accounting software, it would be dismissed as a rounding error.
She snuck to an access hatch in the flight deck and disappeared beneath, into the vents.
RX-0967 had gained access to the Finalizer . Now to find her target.
Captain Cardinal would die by her hand. Or she would die trying.
The chime at his door signaled the arrival of a delivery. Cardinal put the datapad down and stood up from the desk, striding to the door and palming it open.
He knew his guard could just override the entry code. But this felt more polite, more civilized. At least it did before the Stormtrooper gawked at him. Cardinal glanced down and realized he still wore just his skivvies, barely a step above nude. He ignored his own state of undress and took the handles of the storage cube, wrenching it from the Stormtrooper’s hands.
The Stormtrooper didn’t react, or perhaps didn’t know how to react, at least not until a gauntleted hand clamped over their shoulder plate with a clatter of armor. That hand pulled the Stormtrooper back and the door slid closed.
They might as well know, Cardinal thought. Once he was reconditioned he doubted he’d be hidden away in a room somewhere. If so then what was the point of keeping him alive? The propaganda alone could be priceless: the story of a fallen Stormtrooper let back into the fold, his transgressions forgiven, allowed to come home. It could bring FN-2187 back, could seduce any number of disgruntled pilots away from the Resistance. So many of them could do well in the First Order, all they needed was a change of perspective.
And time away from Organa’s insidious influence.
Cardinal shivered. He could still feel that woman’s presence combing through his mind, paging through his thoughts like an open book while he gazed up in adoration like the rest of her broken sycophants.
Like Vi.
Cardinal sank to the floor of his quarters, the storage cube of water before him. Twelve litres of cool water, just cool enough to put him back beneath the warming lamp, stretched out under it soaking in warmth.
But he didn’t drink. Not yet. Instead he contemplated the datapad on the desk. He could leave a message about her, but what would he say? Assuming reconditioning worked, would he want to know he’d been a traitor? Could he bring himself to lie, to leave a pretty fiction about a lost love for his future self to believe in? He’d loved her, but nothing came of it and then he’d watched her die. There was nothing but memory left, a memory that he didn’t expect to keep. Would words about her even help?
Or would talking about her get his mind tragically erased in a terrible reconditioning accident.
Would talking about her find that datapad tossed out an airlock leaving him with nothing.
Would knowing about her, but unable to remember her, be more cruel than simply forgetting.
He didn’t know.
Instead he uncapped the cube and dipped his hands in, slurping from his cupped hands.
It was colder than he expected.
RX-0967 crawled through the vents, her mind focused and spread out at the same time. She drew her armor close to herself, letting her mind bleed out into its circuits and semiconductors. In return she gained a manner of control over that armor, the plates moving against each other with little to no sound as it moved like an extension of her own body and mind. Her senses expanded, her HUD informing her of the sensor sweeps around her, the Other-like tickle of security programs and sentry droids pinging against her mind.
She reached out for them as she passed, her mind attempting to reach out and touch, to caress, to shake off this terrible sensation of Aloneness. But each time she caught herself and pulled back, reminding herself of her mission.
The last information she had of Captain Cardinal said he’d be in the brig. This Resurgent-class ship was built like all the others, its layout familiar and comfortable. She knew where the brig would be, it was where some of the Others were kept when they started screaming and couldn’t stop. It was where she’d be put when she returned, kept contained to slowly reconnect with the Others. She came up to the vent complex that led into the brig.
Yes. Here. This cell here. RX-0967 brushed aside the discarded ration bars, a desert rat’s food hoard, and slowly unscrewed the fasteners that held the vent cover in place. She then quietly pushed the vent cover open and dropped into the cell.
It was empty.
It was empty?!
How!
RX-0967 shook and shivered, a sensation of cold dread filling her from within. He couldn’t not be here, she had to kill him! She couldn’t go back until she’d killed him! She screamed and slammed her gauntleted fist into the wall. This couldn’t be happening. She had to have the wrong cell. But…
But there was the heat lamp, cold and dead. Had he been moved?
Maybe that was it. He’d been moved. She had to move as well, then. She needed to spike a security droid for information. Yes, she could do that. She pulled the vent cover up and pulled herself in, scattering old ration bars and empty wrappers through the brig cell.
She vaguely heard the voice in the brig behind her, a CT-8901 reporting an intruder in the brig vents. It was unimportant. She needed to find a security droid.
The storage cube lay empty on the deck, scant trickles of wasted water still clinging to its collapsed sides. Drying handprints on the deck, the cube, the desk all told a tale, a slowly evaporating story of what had happened here.
Cardinal lay on the bed, or perhaps draped over it while halfway propped up against the wall. He breathed heavily, exertion and exhaustion both clamping down on his chest and reminding him of his missing lung. But it was worth it. The heavy liquid sloshing feeling in his belly made it all worth it. It chilled him from the inside out even while the lamp burned above him, heating him from the outside in. The contrast of sensation roiled his insides, reminding him he was alive and safe and had access to riches he’d never even dreamed of as a child.
This, this nearly painful feeling of being stuffed full of water while lounging under a heat lamp in his own bed, this was the height of luxury. Nothing he’d ever experienced had topped this. Not the rich foods and drink that Brendol tried to get him hooked on. Not the taste of cigarras on his breath as he shared an illicit smoke in the supply closet two doors down from the officer’s lounge. Not even the sensation of sand against his tremorsense, the press of footsteps above him and nothing below, nothing stopping him from letting his mind drift.
He giggled. There was no other word for it, he was too full to really laugh like he wanted to. This was something the First Order had given him freely, whenever he wanted, without forcing him to touch or be touched to earn it. Nor did he have to give it up once he had it, not anymore. Brendol wasn’t here to make him get rid of it in order to look and act human for frelling once. Brooks wasn’t here to sneer when he thought Cardinal didn’t see him. Organa wasn’t here to scowl as though his mere existence undermined the foundations of her precious philosophies. There were no children to hide from, no innocent wide eyes asking blunt questions that they really shouldn’t ask in public. There were no fellow Resistance operatives to stare and whisper and intervene as though they thought he was hurting himself. This was his, all his, he didn’t have to share. He didn’t have to pretend anymore.
He didn’t even have to hide.
He ran his hands over his belly, the lamp-warmed skin hot against his hands. It contrasted with the gentle slowness of his thoughts, chilled as they were by so much cold water inside him. One such thought drifted back to the datapad. He’d been recording something earlier. Right. He blinked, reaching out around him to try and find it.
Nothing. He hoisted himself up and blinked, scanning the room. He saw the datapad on the other side of the room, still sitting on the desk. A petulant whine escaped from his throat, a sound he refused to admit to as he tried to push himself into a sitting position. It almost worked, then he slid off the bed onto the floor.
He tried that again. He pushed against the floor and got to his feet. Right. The room moved wrong, his internal chill slowing his thoughts and his sensation of time. He took deliberate steps to the desk and grabbed the datapad before returning to the bed. He laid back down, reaching up to re-aim the lamp at his belly.
Cardinal reactivated the datapad’s diction and began to speak. His voice started slow, hissing, almost slurred with cold, but regained some clarity as the rest of him started slowing down to match.
~
I should keep going, I guessss. There’sssso much I could say. I’m not even sure what's important. What you neeeed to know. You’re on a ship now, you don’t need to know how to glide under the saaand. You’re just going to ignore your tremorsensssss, if you even underssstand what it means.
Ugh. I should definitely ssstart over.
After a moment.
Oh, Maker, why am I doing this.
I sssuppose you have a question. ‘How can I hide this?’ Or possibly ‘but I look human, how can I be this difffferent?’ I agree, you do looook human to a casual observer. It’s why so many people mistaaake you for human. There’s no shame in using that fact, either. Armor is meant to allow you to work as a unit with your fellow Stormtroopers. It makes it difficult for an enemy to pick out individuals to target. It’s protection, that’s what it’s for. You can use that same camouflage to look human in public, to pass under judgemental eyes.
You don’t haaave to. I suppose that’s much the point of telling you. You don’t have to. Not anymore. Neither are you alone. I don’t know the extent but I do know a few whom you can talk to. Lieutenant Kath is desert-adapted like you. So isss RX-2181, if he’s still in the fleet. There were several of us taken from Jakku as children, you might find more. If you don’t find them, you might talk to Dr. Weyland in Medical. I don’t know if she’d be willing to talk but it wouldn’t hurt to try.
But if you wanted to hide all of this? It’s easy. Your diet card only tracks if it’s being followed, not that you’re eating as much as a human. Your insulated armor will keep enough heat in your body for a double shift on even the coldest ship in the fleet. If it’s anything like mine it will have hidden latches you can undo if you’ve just drank a storage cube of water and now there’s an emergency requiring your attention. Nobody will notice. Heh, unless the water’s cold. It’s not suppooosed to be cold.
And if you’re in the field? Make friends in your unit. I had an entire legion at my command once, and though I didn’t tell them, they knew. They knew and they kept my secret, even when they didn’t haaave to. They still do, even after everything I did to them.
I do regret it. But then I remember how bad it got and I remember why I did it. I had to. Like your reconditioning. It was the best choice in a bad situation. I won’t apologize for that.
But this isn’t about my mistakes. This is supposed to be for your benefit. But what else can I tell you?
Grand Marshal Hux is… He’s a good man. I never allowed myself to see that. I have no doubt he’ll seem distant and unapproachable, even more so than he is with the other troopers. He has reason to and it'sss, it’s my fault. But he’s a good man, a fair man. You can trust him. He has a vision for the First Order and I believe him capable of seeing it come to pass. It’s a vision you’ve had yourself, for years now. A First Order that sways hearts and minds through diplomacy and treaty. An Outer Rim protected from slavers and predatory Core politics. A redistribution of wealth from the rich Core to keep the rest of the galaxy safe. Safe from slavers. Safe from hunger. Safe from threats like the Grysk, like the Hutts, like the Jedi.
It’s what I’ve dreamed of my entire life. Such a future, even the chance of it, that’s worth what I’ve given up. It’s worth it that you’ll have what I could never take for myself.
~
Cardinal paused the recording and stared at the datapad, blinking slowly. It wasn’t supposed to be cold.
But it was.
Wait, why. Why had it been cold? What was going on?
Why hadn’t he stopped?
Cardinal dragged himself out from under the heat lamp, dropping back to the floor on his hands and knees. The room spun as his insides sloshed and he didn’t trust the feeling anymore, not right now, it wasn’t supposed to be cold. The heat lamp meant he wouldn't fall into torpor, he'd warm slowly, but what if that was too slow? This had to be some sort of test, or worse. A loyalty officer was blackmailed to keep his continued existence secret, who’s to say that same blackmailer wouldn’t try to have him killed like this? He couldn't defend himself like this!
He pushed himself to his feet and staggered to the fresher. He had to get rid of all of this cold water, as much of it as he could stand.
RX-0967 walked the corridors openly, her black armor gaining her the same respectful nods it would have if it were white. That meant something, she knew it, but then her orders had said to expect it. So she attempted to act natural. The knife at her thigh was her only weapon but this also seemed normal, or at least it caused no undue attention.
What she needed wasn’t here in the corridors. But she had to act natural, act like she belonged here. A beeping trill, a sense of Other-like, and a BB droid rolled past her as it beeped its merry little tune.
RX-0967 followed it, tracking the droid through the corridors. It turned down an empty corridor and she followed it.
The droid rolled to an intersection and she quickened her pace, catching it just as it would have rolled around the corner. She picked it up by the head, both hands needed to lift it by the head. The ball rolled in indignance, the droid’s swearing cascading down her HUD as it screamed abuse, treason, oppression, the overly dramatic whining of a droid allowed to keep its memories for far too long. She’d correct that soon enough as she carried the BB-6 to a supply closet. A kick to the control panel opened the door and she dragged the droid inside, letting the door slam shut behind them.
She wrapped her legs around the ball of the droid, attempting to keep it from rolling around as she detached the head. The head was useless to her and she tossed it behind her. She needed its memories. But for that she needed it to
stop
ROLLING
AROUND
She pulled her knife and stabbed next to the droid’s power circuits, severing its ability to draw power from its own batteries. The droid’s scream stopped with a sickening silence, the Other-like presence snuffed out in an instant. And then it was silent.
RX-0967 pulled the knife out and resheathed it. From there she began to calmly dismantle the droid, seeking its memory core. Once she found it she unlatched the arm guard of one arm and then unpeeled wires in a configuration she knew well. She spliced those wires to the memory core and then pressed her arm back into the arm guard.
She let go and brought it Close. Letting her mind expand into the armor and then the droid core felt good, like connecting with one of the Others. She imagined she could even feel the Others from here, three motes of Presence all linked to each other in a connection she remembered once. Then a brush against her own mind drew her away from the sensation and she shook it off before getting back to work accessing the droid’s memory.
It knew where Cardinal had been moved to.
She knew where he was.
She pulled back from the core and disconnected it, leaving the dismantled pieces in the storage closet as she stepped out into the corridor.
Cardinal curled under the heat lamp, attempting to conserve heat even as the lamp bombarded him from above. He’d already warmed up so much, his warmth almost back to a human normal.
He hated having to get rid of water like that. It reminded him of too many things, of Brendol making him get rid of it, of carrying water in his belly for the other children, of shame curling in his gut and squeezing him tight until he gave in and got rid of it himself. But someone had dosed him with cold water, someone who knew about him. Someone who had tried to throw him into torpor, or worse.
Cold water wouldn’t have killed him, he’d wake up when he warmed up, so it wasn’t inherently dangerous. Because there were so many warm-blooded humans on this ship he knew a change of temperature wouldn’t set off any red flags in any system. But then could it have been a mistake?
Could he have panicked and gotten rid of it for nothing?
He started to shiver, a reflex the humans had but he could only somewhat use. Humans shivered so often, mostly when cold, but he could only manage it when emotion overwhelmed him. Maker, he felt terrible. He could almost imagine Brendol’s voice over him berating him for taking water like that, for daring to indulge the inhuman instincts that marked him as something lesser. If only he’d learned to act human like Armitage then Brendol might trust him more, might allow him the independence he needed as a Stormtrooper instead of holding him back as Brendol’s personal guard. Where better to keep an eye on your filthy desert instincts than right beside me.
The clink of metal banished the thought and Cardinal’s eyes shot open. He looked around the room, seeking the source of that sound. But the sound was gone and he didn’t trust that silence, not anymore, there was something wrong. He unfolded from the bed, glad he’d gotten rid of all that cold, glad he felt the lamp’s heat through him again.
A footstep. In his own fresher.
An intruder.
He had no weapons, nothing to defend himself. But then he was a Stormtrooper, he was a weapon. Everything he touched, everything he thought, everything he was could be his weapon, if only he allowed it.
Something black moved in the darkness and he saw shining green lenses set into black armor.
It wasn’t RX-3081. It wasn’t JN-1301.
It was someone who wasn’t supposed to be here on the Finalizer .
Cardinal hissed in warning, teeth bared as he rumbled, a primal threat he barely even understood.
She drew her knife and fell into a fighting stance before charging.
Cardinal jumped, vaulting her charge. He kicked as he vaulted, catching her in the back and shoving her to the floor. She didn’t stay down, shooting to her feet and slashing out with her combat knife. Cardinal jumped back, dodging the swings of the blade. He jumped onto the desk and then over her again, the room suddenly far too small for this.
It was like fighting in a closet.
He lowered and charged, slamming his shoulder into her chest. Her armor took the blow even as his shoulder stung, bare skin no match for circuitry-impregnated duraplast, and she slashed out with her knife. He caught the blade with his forearm, screaming as the blade bit in and sliced. Blood flowed freely and he grabbed her wrist, wrenching it around to twist the knife from her grasp. She kept her grip and instead twisted herself, flipping him over her shoulder. He landed on the floor with a thud, the momentary stun enough for her to raise her boot to stomp his neck.
He rolled and the boot slammed into the deck. He got back to his feet, again putting the desk between them both. It backed him against the wall but that was fine.
“RX-0967,” he realized. “I put you on the Steadfast .”
RX-0967 twitched at the recognition. “Captain Cardinal,” she greeted. “I have orders to kill you. It’s the only way they’ll let me back.”
“Who’s orders?” Cardinal demanded. They both circled again, Cardinal keeping as much desk between them as he could. “Is it Hux? Am I another death he’s planned?”
“This isn’t personal,” she said. “But I have to kill you. Or they won’t let me back.”
“WHO won’t let you back?!”
RX-0967 pulled back, her knife dropping from her hand. Her hands went to her helm, her head shaking as she tried to fight past something. “The Others,” she said. “I have to get back to the Others. You took them from me, they’re all that’s left!” When she tore her hands from her helm to focus back on Cardinal he’d already moved. He darted around the desk to attack, first punching into the seam between breastplate and belly armor. The crunch was probably his own hand but it didn’t matter yet as he grabbed her neck from behind. He slammed his hand into the right side of her neck where he knew her implant to be and pressed in.
RX-0967 shrieked as she fell to her knees. Cardinal’s legs wrapped around her, trying to pin her arms down even as she grabbed for her own knife on the floor. He slid his hand under the underarmor at her neck and scratched for the implant, pulling as his fingernails found the edges of it.
RX-0967 screamed in agony, her hands desperately grabbing at anything she could, gauntlets clawing at herself and him and the floor. Still he tugged at the implant but he couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t bring himself to rip it out. She’d die.
But if he didn’t she’d kill him.
The door to his quarters slid open. “What the–”
“Stun us both!” Cardinal shouted. “Now!”
He didn’t even know who it was, nor did he care as he heard the whine of a pistol being set to stun.
Then a flash of light.
And then nothing.