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Sorgan was almost like some of the more temperate areas of Peridea with its coniferous forests and swamps, Hecate thought. Though unlike Peridea, there was the reassurance of a flickery holonet connection, reliable transport off-world, and no—that they were aware of—former Imperials, other Rebels, or—less likely—Chiss.
“Anything else of note that I should know before we land?” Hecate asked, spotting the village ahead of them that had been on their scanners.
Pippa, staring out of the viewport, lost in thought, made an uneasy sound in the back of her throat and reached for her datapad.
“The database hasn’t been updated in a few months, but I plan to ask our new neighbours if there’s anything we should be worried about,” Pippa answered as Hecate began the landing sequence.
“Ask if there are bandits,” she requested, lining their ship up with a reasonably stable looking clearing. “I’m not overly fond of them.”
“I was just thinking that.” she tapped a few more things on her datapad. “There’s likely to be quite the competition for resources given the lack of starports and industrial facilities,” Pippa mused, putting her datapad back into the bag near her feet.
Hecate, who usually wouldn’t be opposed to competition so long as it was over quickly and she was victorious, hummed and braced herself slightly as they touched down with a greater jolt than she had been aiming for. Competition was not exactly what she needed at the moment.
“Well done, darling,” Pippa said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear for her.
She nodded, shivering slightly at the sensation of another’s hand near her face and earning a fond chuckle from Pippa. They both released their restraints and stood—Hecate slower, careful of her knee—from their seats, Pippa exiting the cockpit first.
“Are you sure we do not need weapons?” she asked, pausing to remove her helmet from the armour stand in an alcove of their small common area just beyond the cockpit.
She knew the question was irrational; knew that they could both handle themselves and did not need weapons to get themselves out of a scuffle. However, after the last five years and her current injuries—a torn anterior cruciate ligament obtained during a last run in with bandits allying with a stray Chimaera group on Peridea—she had greater faith in Pippa’s abilities than in her own. Hecate was still limited in the movements that she could perform three months after the injury without extending her recovery period by the three months she would have lost by pushing herself. She checked the brace beneath her poleyn—of which was sitting rather awkwardly atop her kneecap over the brace—bending down to ensure it was secure.
“They’re farmers, Hiccup. We’ll be alright,” Pippa said gently, waiting for her to straighten up and lower her helmet over her head, careful of the bacta patch at her temple.
Wisely, Pippa did not recommend once more that she should remove the poleyn entirely. Hecate did not feel like explaining something that she could not exactly explain in a way that Pippa would be able to understand; removing the poleyn would unbalance her—despite already being unbalanced due to the weight of the rather mechanical-looking knee brace combined with her other poleyn—and it would reveal her weakness. She could not have that.
Hecate adjusted her poncho, smoothing unwanted wrinkles out of the black armour weave fabric and ensuring that it sat properly over her beskar’gam. The holsters at her quadriceps were empty, her WESTAR-35s safely in the weapons draw in another alcove across from her armour stand.
“I still have my vibroblades,” she muttered, briefly and gently tapping her uninjured leg with the foot of her injured one to check that at least one of her blades was still safely in her boot.
“You won’t need them,” Pippa assured, offering her an arm.
“Bandits,” Hecate reminded, taking her arm.
“We don’t know if there are yet,” Pippa returned lightly.
~<>~
The villagers were wary of them; specifically her. More specifically, her helmet and the scuffed beskar greaves she wore over a pair of borrowed, well-worn Imperial boots.
After a few minutes of weaving their way through narrow paths running between ponds being worked by krill farmers—most of whom ignored or gave them wary looks—they came to what looked to be their main base of operation. Pippa’s body language shifted as she turned on her charm and smiled widely at a wizened old woman sunning herself outside of a sturdy hut with panels of bamboo protecting the equipment stored within it on three sides; the roof, back wall, and side walls. Like a sky-bus stop on more developed worlds.
“Hello, Madame. My partner and I were wondering if there might be a plot of land available for sale. We’re looking to settle down somewhere quiet,” Pippa greeted.
The woman squinted up at them, searching, judging. Her eyes fell on Hecate’s boots, then flicked back up to her helmet.
“You Mandalorian or Imperial?” she asked, accent harsh compared to the well-practiced—often faked—Core accents Hecate had been surrounded by for the last few years.
“Mandalorian. The friendly kind…unless circumstances change,” Hecate answered shortly, tilting her helmet in challenge.
“And you?” the woman asked Pippa.
Pippa hesitated, then shifted her own grey poncho to the side to reveal the lightsaber at her hip. Hecate tutted, much to Pippa’s embarrassment. Her cheeks turned as pink as her tunic.
No weapons needed indeed.
“Jedi,” Pippa answered.
The woman stared at her a little longer, then looked back to Hecate, blue eyes sizing her up again.
“Rebels?” she asked, foregoing the usual enquiries about Mandalorians working with Jedi.
“Yes,” Hecate said before Pippa had opened her mouth, somewhat irritated by all of the questions even though she knew she would have done the same.
Pippa reached beneath her poncho and removed the pauldron with the fiery orange starbird painted upon it. The woman’s faint eyebrows rose as she accepted it for a closer look.
“All this could be fake,” she said eventually, handing the pauldron back to Pippa.
“Would you like us to prove ourselves?” Hecate suggested.
The woman’s beady eyes fixed on her. Tense silence reigned between them. Hecate felt the wary eyes of a few nosy farmers still watching them.
“No.”
“No?” Pippa echoed, slightly confused as she reattached her pauldron.
Hecate suspected that she had been ready to do whatever had been necessary to earn the woman’s trust. She herself had been ready to leave the village and find another that might have been more open to strangers and asked less questions. Though given how wary the villagers here were, she did not think it likely that anyone else would be more open. For all they knew, these people suspected they were there to investigate the area, then send word to whatever threat was present there that everything was ripe for the taking.
“No,” the woman repeated somewhat gruffly as she leaned back in her seat. “Nobody here cares what you are or what you do as long as you don’t bring your business or trouble to us. We’ve got enough of it.”
“Bandits?” Hecate asked, pleased that there seemed to be a lack of trouble in getting a plot of land based on who they were.
The woman grunted an affirmative.
“We’re not fighters and you shouldn’t try to fight them either. Keep your valuables where they won’t find them. Lay low until they leave.”
“Do they kill?” she asked seriously.
“We’ve been lucky,” the woman answered. “Other villages have had casualties.”
Hecate shifted more of her weight off of her bad leg and leaned a little heavier on Pippa. They both waited for the woman to speak once more as she appeared to wish to do. Though she seemed to be taking her time with choosing her words carefully.
“There’s a woman on the southern outskirts. She’s Imperial...a former fleet admiral.” the woman laced her hands together over her stomach. “She might be willing to have you as neighbours.”
Keeping strangers separate from locals…well, it was an interesting choice to her, especially after she and Pippa had introduced themselves as Rebels and that their soon-to-be neighbour was Imperial.
“Thank you…” Pippa said, trailing off expectantly in a way that Hecate now realised was an invitation for the woman to introduce herself, and not her partner being unsure of her next words.
“Head down the main street and turn right at the end of the road if you’re planning to walk there. She’s got a fence,” the woman said, ignoring the unspoken request.
“Very well,” Hecate nodded.
The fleet admiral should be easy to find. Not many other huts here had fences; in fact, the only fences there were could usually be found around crops and some of the krill fields.
She patted Pippa’s upper arm when she opened her mouth again to speak and gently turned them both toward the way they’d come from. Her knee was throbbing painfully, and the “street“ that the old woman had said to take was highly likely to be as uneven and rough as the pathways that they had taken to get to the hut in the first place. She could only walk so far on uneven ground—or even on flat ground—before the pain became nearly unbearable.
“I thought you were going to stand menacingly, not do most of the talking,” Pippa said quietly, moving to her right side and slinging Hecate’s arm over her shoulder when it became clear to her—through the Force, no doubt—that she was struggling.
Hecate accepted the help without a fuss. With luck, if the woman saw her injury, she would be inclined to believe that they had every intention of laying low whenever the bandits next visited.
“Well, I thought you said we would not need weapons,” Hecate answered dryly.
~<>~
“This should be it,” Hecate said, gesturing to the hut surrounded by a wooden fence—a broken fence, at that, and likely damaged during the last raid—from the exit ramp of their ship.
Pippa squinted out at it, hand up to shield her eyes from the sun even though she still had not left the ship’s shade.
“I think I know who it is,” she said, offering to help her walk once more.
Hecate leaned on her, knee throbbing in earnest by that point as they slowly descended the ramp.
“Well, let us hope that she decides that a conversation is better than shooting us on sight.”
Further inspection of the hut’s exterior revealed its construction to be sturdier than the dwellings they had flown over on the way there. Architecturally, it appeared to be inspired by the log cabins favoured on other planets and in snowy climates, or in biomes where such materials were plentiful. However, it was only the house’s frame that was comprised of logs. The walls and roof still maintained similar elements that the villagers’ huts had, such as bamboo panelling held together with sturdy rope. Next to it was a wood shed of similar style that doubled as a shelter for tools and equipment much like the hut near the krill fields had.
They entered through the front gate—what was left of it—and made their way to the house. The door opened before they could knock, and a woman aimed a blaster at them both, hazel eyes determined.
Those eyes widened in recognition at the same time that Pippa shrieked, “Faro!”
Karyn Faro. Former commodore of the ISD Chimaera. Subject of many bridge crew members’ wishes—mainly Hammerly and Pyrondi; Thrawn occasionally—for certain people to be there on Peridea with them, or to be alive to see what was happening.
Faro did not lower her blaster. Pippa tensed beside her.
“What are you two doing here?” she demanded, eyes flicking to her, a brow raising.
“Hoping to settle down,” Hecate answered, straightening to her full height and wincing as she gently pushed herself away from Pippa to stand on her own.
“Hiding, too,” Pippa admitted, casually placing her hands on her hips.
Hecate frowned, puzzled, but did not relax.
Faro studied them a moment more.
Then, tentative but still confident; still maintaining that same sense of command to her tone, “What of the Chimaera? Last I heard, you were on it when it went missing, Hardbroom.”
“Long stories are best shared over lunch, Admiral,” Pippa said, hope edging into her tone, mouth stretching into a bright smile.
Faro did not return the smile, merely thinned her lips and titled her chin up as she looked at Hecate. Her eyes said what her mouth would not.
“He survived,” Hecate said, knowing that the other woman wouldn’t budge until she had the information that mattered most to her on this subject. “Hammerly and Pyrondi, too. I will tell you everything soon, but Pippa is right. It is a long story best told over a meal.”
Faro lowered her blaster and, jerking her head behind her, said, “Right. Get in then.”
~<>~
Hecate spared Faro the unimportant details in her loose recount of the five years the Chimaera had been stranded on Peridea before the Chiss Ascendancy had found them. A few of them would be good for later conversations. But right now, all that mattered to Faro was the state of her beloved ISD, who of her colleagues were dead, who wasn’t, what had happened on the bridge when the purgill had seized it, and how badly injured, Thrawn—who would have been dead if she and Mildred had not intervened—had been.
When she had finished, Faro chewed on her sandwich, deep in thought as she mulled everything over.
“Well,” she said, looking weary, “I’m glad you found and told me, even if finding me was an accident.”
“We’re glad to have found you. The woman at the krill fields wasn’t much help,” Pippa said, tone darkening toward the end.
Pippa brushed the breadcrumbs from her sandwich off of her hands over her plate, content once more.
“Drina never is much help to strangers, but you can’t blame her after the last few months of raids.” Faro answered.
“She didn’t even tell us her name!” Pippa exclaimed. “Thanks for that.”
Hecate did not remind her that they had not introduced themselves either. She would remember, eventually, and Hecate would hear about it at three in the morning.
“She’s probably hoping I’ll drive you off. You said you introduced yourselves as Rebels, didn’t you?” Faro asked.
“Little does she know,” Pippa said, leaning closer and whispering conspiratorially, “we are actually secret best friends.”
Faro snorted and Pippa gave Hecate a cheeky smile.
“I would say we are allies more than best friends,” Hecate scoffed.
“Joking, darling,” Pippa murmured gently. Then, louder, “I don’t see anything stopping us now, though. You’re alright Faro.”
“I’m horrible, actually,” Faro countered lightly, though Hecate could hear the underlying belief in that statement. “I wouldn’t be hiding here if I wasn’t. The amnesty program they were talking about setting up sounds worse than going to prison.”
Hecate frowned at that. Pippa was yet to fill her in on some of the rising New Republic’s programs.
“You woke up in time,” Pippa said gently, placing a hand on Faro’s shoulder and squeezing comfortingly. “They’ll see your service records and the things you’ve spoken out against in the last few years. I’m sure they’ll go easy.”
Faro shook her head. “They won’t.” she fixed a stray bit of her hair, tucking it back into the bun at the nape of her neck. “I should have retired after the Battle of Lothal when I hadn’t followed the orders that came after I took the Eleventh Fleet. I knew it was all going to shit when Thrawn first took command of the Chimaera. Not enough of them were like him and I still stayed anyway with the stupid belief that I might be able to help change the system from within even after he was gone.”
“If you hadn’t stayed as long as you did, then Inferno Squadron wouldn’t have made it to the Alliance and we wouldn’t have gained the Charybdis,” Pippa said, sitting back and focusing on her sandwich.
Hecate frowned, tilting her helmet in question.
“Operation: Cinder,” Faro answered, as if that explained everything.
But now was not the time to ask, and so Hecate supposed that those two words would have to explain everything until she got Pippa to tell her what had happened in her absence.
~<>~
By the time dusk was approaching and all of Faro’s household jobs had been completed, the three of them had moved outside to enjoy the breeze. Hecate removed her helmet and poncho in the hopes that she might cool down at least a little bit; her beskar'gam's homeostatic controls long dead (though not unfixable). She did not miss the curious glances that Faro snuck her way over her cards when she thought she was not looking. It was amusing; she had seen her face plenty of times on the Chimaera when they had briefly worked together. Though at the time, she remembered, Faro had not known it was her.
At least she didn't think she had known. Faro feigned ignorance well on certain topics. Though Hecate did not think she had in the last five years; not toward the end of the Empire.
“Hecate, do you need more ice?” Pippa asked, leaning around the table to check on her leg, which was propped up with ice packs and a pillow—from their ship—and another crate that Faro had found in the wood shed.
“It is fine for now,” she answered. “Faro, do you have a seven?”
“Go fish,” Faro said, biting the inside of her cheek.
Hecate picked up another card from the deck, then made another pair—two eights—and laid it down in front of her.
“Pippa, do you have a six?” Faro asked.
Pippa sighed and handed her card over. Faro took it, pleased, and set it down with the rest of her pairs.
“Hecate?” Pippa asked, eyes pleading. “Could I have your seven?”
Hecate nodded and threw the card her way, smiling slightly when Pippa effortlessly caught it mid-air with the Force. Faro’s brows lifted briefly, but she said nothing.
“So,” Faro began, “is Sorgan everything you hoped for?”
“It looked alright in the pictures,” Pippa said.
Hecate knew she had hoped for a bit more. Though given the planet’s holonet description, she wondered why she ever had to begin with. They were in the backwaters of the Outer Rim.
“Always does,” Faro agreed. “Your thoughts, Hardbroom?”
“Better than Peridea,” she declared, placing her cards face down on the rickety table and leaning to adjust her ice pack where it had slipped. “Still has bandits, though,” she said sourly.
“They won’t bother us,” Faro said, reaching for the water jug.
“They will,” she countered, straightening.
Faro shrugged.
“I’m sure they won’t be a problem with you two around.”
“Drina said no trouble,” Pippa reminded her.
“Drina’s never seen a Jedi or a Mandalorian in action,” Faro returned smugly.
“I’ve wrecked my ACL,” Hecate reminded flatly.
“Pippa hasn’t,” Faro said, looking over to her expectantly.
Hecate grimaced. If she and Pippa—Pippa for now until her knee had healed—joined with Faro in protecting their land, the rest of the village might not like that they had been left out.
“We’d have to help the whole village,” Pippa said. “We can’t really do that right now.”
“Then in future?” Faro suggested.
“Oh, definitely,” Pippa agreed, nodding.
“Is there anything you’ve noticed about their raid tactics?” Hecate asked, tilting her head.
The edges of Faro’s mouth quirked upward.
“I’ve got a report on a datacard somewhere on the fruit bowl in the kitchen if you’d like to read it.”
Hecate cocked a brow, intrigued.
At least they weren’t somewhere mind-numbingly boring.