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Guarding the new acquisition wasn’t a job for an officer, so it was a good thing Phil had been demoted. Too many promotions were a fool’s game, anyway. They put a target on your back, both from ambitious underlings and commanders looking for someone to blame. Phil had lost count of the admirals he’d seen uplifted and then choked over a holocall after one mistake, crumbled to the floor with veins burst in their eyes.
The admiral who’d taken command of the battle on the planet surface would meet the same fate as soon as Phil pulled this off, but he didn’t give a shit about that. If the Empire wasn’t about to care for its soldiers’ lives, Phil wouldn’t either.
An officer strolled past, accompanied by a pair of troopers. Phil kept his eyes forward as he saluted, relief and irritation rising up intermingled when the man ignored him— he wanted the man to ignore him— and slipped into the cell as soon as the man went around the corner, confident in the half-hour gap between patrols at this time of the night cycle. There wouldn’t be any interruptions before he was done.
The new acquisition brightened at the sight of him. “Oh, yo, it’s you two again. Can I interest you in the benefits to be found in extreme revolutionary violence?”
“One person,” Phil corrected him. “It’s just me, mate.” The prisoner huffed in disbelief, lounged back in his restraints like he was sitting on a throne. He never seemed discomfited by the Force-suppressant cuffs, or by Phil’s visits; he’d asked him to braid his hair back to keep it out of his face, not caring at all how close that brought an enemy’s hands to his neck. “How’d the last interrogation go? That was Commander Whatsisname, right, the one from Coruscant?
It’s Commander Cyberknife, Phil, don’t be silly, something chided. Phil was imagining it, so he didn’t honor the correction with a response.
“Exactly the guy,” the prisoner said. “You know he told me with a straight face that colonization improves planetary prospects?”
“He’s an ambitious man,” Phil said lightly. “Lots of contacts on Coruscant.”
“He’d enter the underlevels and get jumped in a microsecond,” the prisoner snorted, and then: “Okay, well that’s just mean.”
“What’s mean?”
“Eh, just something your friend said,” he told Phil, and Phil’s reluctant smile fell at once. The prisoner was a Jedi, he knew that much, but more than that he was a Jedi from a thousand years ago, dug up from some obscure temple on the edge of space where he’d been held in stasis. It made sense he’d be a bit weird, just— Phil wished he wouldn’t be weird exactly like he was.
Some ancient holocron had told the Inquisitors where to find the temple. Phil had been sent with some Stormtroopers to recover the artifacts within. It had been an unimportant mission, a sop to an officer facing demotion: he’d been an ace pilot, on the way to becoming a commander, but his last mission had given him brain damage bacta couldn’t heal. The odds of a seizure mid-flight or mid-battle were too serious to let him back in his TIE fighter, even for orbital patrols, which had left him with the options of retirement or a station posting.
Anyone reasonable would have taken the pension, but Phil hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of peace, not after the battle that had taken him out of commission. He’d volunteered for the retrieval. Not to die— too much survival instinct for that— but to find something, maybe. Some little artifact to pocket for later, or just to find the trust of the higher-ups, make himself seem useful without being a threat. Retirement planetside wouldn’t have served him.
The temple had been guarded by booby traps and monstrous Force-strong creatures, a pack of lothwolves left to breed wild; half the troopers sent to recover the contraband had been eaten or crushed to death by them.
The traps had let Phil right through. The lothwolves had bowed at the sight of him. Phil had frozen when they did, struck by a spasm of memory— a little boy coaxing a feral massiff closer, humming a snatch of song to draw it in— and they had turned away. All that fighting, all that blood, and the guardians of the temple had met him as tamely as fucking tookas.
The prisoner had barely looked alarmed when he rose out of stasis and saw Phil standing there, a man in an unfamiliar uniform surrounded by armed, faceless soldiers. He’d greeted him like a friend. Worse, he’d greeted someone behind Phil, like there had been another person with them, standing in the entrance to the chamber with a shocked grin on his face.
Phil had imagined he heard a voice: Technoblade?! I thought you were a figment of my fucking imagination, man, and here you’ve been all along—
But Phil had been running on caf and insomnia, on cold searing grief. Of course he would’ve imagined the Empire’s new acquisition had a name he recognized, the name of his son’s imaginary friend— the one Wilbur said spoke to him in visions. Phil had still been reeling from the loss .
“About that revolution, though,” Technoblade said hopefully, once it was clear that Phil wasn’t going to keep talking. “Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider? Rebellion can be fun, Phil, take it from me. Tearing down oppressive regimes, blowing stuff up, making speeches at people with flowery language…”
“It’s not more fun than it is risky,” Phil said.
“But is it riskier than working for an empire that kills people for basic mistakes?” Technoblade pressed. “The turnaround here’s insane, I’ve been interrogated by three admirals this month alone.”
“Turnaround’s worse for the rebels,” Phil bit out. “That kind of talk gets kids killed . Revolution eats its fucking young, mate, it chews them up like scrap metal. Everyone talks about freedom of the soul until they’ve been tortured out of their mental faculties or blown to bits.”
“Working for the side that does it isn’t any better,” the prisoner said evenly, and Phil glared, stepped sharply forward. The Jedi didn’t flinch.
If you’re gonna do it, you’d better do it now, some nothingness sing-songed from behind him. Whatever the fuck’s going on in the atmosphere just took half the fighters out of the hangar, and the halls are empty. I personally think you should seize the moment.
The prisoner said nonchalantly , “By the way, just thought I should mention that last guy told me I’m being transferred tomorrow. If you, uh, happened to be convinced by any of my arguments, now might be the time to act.”
“Fuck off,” Phil sighed, and glanced back at the cell door, resolutely ignoring anything else he saw there. “Don’t ask me what happened to your lightsaber, either, I have no fucking clue where they put it.”
The code for the cuffs came to the tip of his tongue like it had been whispered in his ear. The prisoner tugged them off as soon as they loosened and relaxed immediately, tension Phil hadn’t really noticed vanishing like mist.
The Jedi’s attention was a spotlight, deadpan and clever with curiosity cutting through like gold thread, humor woven underneath. Phil felt the wild urge to flee like a coward.
“I thought you said you weren’t Force-sensitive,” the prisoner said incredulously, staring at him. “You’re like a beacon, what is this? I’m being outclassed here, this is terrible, I’m gonna have to tryhard just to scrape by—“
“I’m not a fucking Jedi,” Phil said, exasperated. “You and Wilbur, I swear to fucking god—“ He cut off, throat tight. The prisoner had the decency to wince. “Never mind. We have to go, there’s just a small window left.”
The halls were basically empty. Phil had known they would be, had been privy to enough station gossip to hear how badly the battle was going for the Empire, but it was another thing seeing the desperation in person. The commanders had pulled base guards. They’d left a skeleton crew behind, apparently trusting in the few brig guards to keep the prisoner contained, and those fuckers were easy to kill. Phil slit one throat and shot the other within minutes, the prisoner taking out the other security station, and not one person had time to raise an alarm.
“Let me get this straight. You hate revolution but you’re letting me go?”
“I was arguing that being a revolutionary makes you lose everything,” Phil corrected him, reaching into a tangle of wires to disconnect the communications from that level to the ones below. Chaos was the key. Add to the disorganization of a battle, the thousand moving parts, until there was space to maneuver—“I’ve got nothing left to fucking lose.”
“No family?” the prisoner asked, though from his tone he already knew. “I mean, I don’t have anything against orphans, or alternatively against murdering them if they’re evil, but a lot of people have someone they care about.”
“I killed the person I care about,” Phil said. “On the wrong side of a battlefield he shouldn’t have fucking been on, because he joined the Rebellion for the sake of his ideals .”
“See, there’s your blunder, you should’ve just not done that,” the prisoner said, and Phil choked, made a noise he realized too late was a laugh.
“Holy shit, dude,” he wheezed. “I thought Jedi were supposed to be fucking comforting.”
“There’s a reason I spent most of my time in the Outer Rim,” the prisoner said ruefully. “You tell one senator that the galaxy would be better if he got overthrown in a storm of blood and senseless violence for the sake of the people, and all of a sudden you’re not invited to Sabacc Night anymore and also being sent off-planet. I didn’t make a habit of telling kids to throw away their lives, though, if that’s— I mean, if you happened to be wondering. It’s pretty obvious that you shouldn’t send a pacifist onto a battlefield.”
It’s true, said the nothingness. Do you remember that time with the rain? I held out my hands and it went pzzt, it sizzled and he told me to stop just like you did, Phil, even though it was really quite entertaining. Then again, it was acid rain. I can appreciate your advice in retrospect.
“Did I say anything about pacifists?” Phil asked, not really expecting an answer. He put the panel back onto the wall and frowned. “Shit, I should’ve found some explosives. We could’ve blown this place to smithereens.”
“It’s not too late, we have options,” the prisoner said lightly. “TIE fighters have guns, right?”
“Not ones big enough to take out a starbase,” Phil said, rueful. “Come on, we’ve fucked up enough communications— if we leave now, the odds are high no one’ll notice till too late. You’ll have to be the one flying, though. I’ll be telling you how.”
“Uh,” the prisoner said, “not that I doubt that plan, but—“
“Brain damage,” Phil told him. “I’m not a reliable pilot anymore.”
By the time they reached the hangar, they’d killed five more soldiers between them and blown out two communication arrays, breaking the connection between the base and the planet's surface completely. The launch pad made Phil ache for his uniform like a phantom limb, the open space beyond it dizzyingly full of stars: the planet curved below them like the sliced-out eyeball of some enormous creature.
TIE fighters spun and darted in the distance, specks against its red-umber surface. As they watched, a rebel X-Wing vanished in a plume of fire.
I don’t want them to lose, the nothingness said mournfully. Dad, Philza Minecraft, do they have to lose?
Phil’s arms prickled with goosebumps. The prisoner had gone still, staring down at the planet; he felt like energy focused to a single point, sunlight magnified into a beam that burned. The real fight was on the surface. If the tides were going to turn, they would turn there.
The plan had been to use the battle as a distraction and go somewhere else to regroup, or else to leave the Jedi wherever was convenient and start some scheme to hit the Empire harder, but plans could change. Important things were happening here, too, and all Phil wanted was a way to make up for shooting his own son out of the sky, back when he hadn’t known Wilbur was lying about going to university.
Back when he’d thought the idealism was just talk— that Wilbur’s Force sensitivity had abated so he could live in peace. The Jedi weren’t around anymore, after all. There hadn’t been any options but ignoring it, hoping against hope that it would go away like Phil’s had.
Then again, Phil’s had never really gone away, had it. As soon as he’d dug up the Jedi, the man had looked at him like a welcome, familiar light— like a comrade, one bright point in a world gone Dark and empty, where the other Jedi had been slaughtered before Phil was born.
“We could go down there,” the prisoner said. “You have codes for some of the stuff up here? Knowledge of Imperial strategies? We could psych out some troopers, take a city back between us.”
“We’ll get killed. It’s a fool’s errand.”
“You shot a guy behind you without looking like eight minutes ago,” the prisoner said. “You threw a knife and it curved in midair, I can crush droids with my mind— I think we could be a good team, Phil.”
Three hundred minds left on the station, another hundred pilots on both sides, endless specks of life on the planet below. Phil felt them like candle flames flickering out of sight. There was a flame without a wick standing at his other side, in the shadow of the scorched fighter that used to be his.
“It just occurred to me,” Phil said. “You know my name, but I’ve never learned yours.”
“Pretty sure you do,” the prisoner said, shrugging, “but if you want me to tell you directly, it’s Technoblade. And I’m not gonna lie, that battle’s looking like it’ll go kinda bad if someone doesn’t step in. You wanna be that someone?”
The nothingness was poking at the cockpit, a glowing form in a long coat that couldn’t be there because he’d died half a galaxy away. It was wriggling with impatience like a child, watching the battle raptly, as bright and powerful as a reactor core—
“I’m not fucking Force sensitive,” Phil said, “and ghosts don’t fucking exist. I bet if we hit a comms station on the surface we could split the continental army in three, though, so we should probably start there. Rebels aren’t gonna know where any of those stations are.”
“Pog,” Technoblade said in deep appreciation, clambering into the cockpit. Phil swallowed his grief and followed him, keeping his son who wasn’t there firmly out of his sight.