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Crosshair slipped his boots on silently, taking care to avoid making even the slightest noise. Here in the near-total darkness of lights out, he should be safe from his brothers’ prying eyes. While he didn’t have the flawless night vision of some species, the Kaminoans had assured him his vision was far superior to any human’s -- including his fellow defective clones.
He kept a close watch on his brothers’ sleeping forms as he slowly got to his feet. Hunter was the most likely to realize what he was up to, but he seemed fast asleep, lying perfectly still with his face turned to the wall. Crosshair turned around to hide his pillow under his blanket as a decoy, but he hadn’t kept his eyes off the others for more than ten seconds before there was a soft, slightly annoyed voice in his ear.
“You really think you’re going without me?” Hunter whispered. “Not going to happen.”
Crosshair’s hand closed into a fist at his side. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hissed. “I’m just going to the refresher.” He pointed to the small, closet-sized refresher in their barracks.
Hunter clicked on his glowrod, illuminating Crosshair and his bunk. “With your boots on?” Hunter leaned around him, poking the pillow under the covers. “And a decoy? Come on.”
Crosshair sighed, rubbing his face with his hand. He glared at his brother, lowering his gaze slightly. They were all still far shorter than the adult regs, even Wrecker, who was clearly going to be enormous, but Crosshair had recently pulled a few centimeters ahead of Hunter. He used it to his advantage, narrowing his eyes and drawing himself up to his full height. “Fine. I’m going out.”
“You’ll get caught,” said Hunter. “You’re not stealthy enough. Obviously.” He gave Crosshair a gloating grin. “You’ll need me.”
“Oh really ,” said Crosshair. “If I’ll get caught on my own, how are the two of us supposed to help that?”
“Because I can tell you when the patrols are coming,” said Hunter smugly. “I’ll sense them long before you can see them. C’mon.”
“You don’t even know where we’re going,” Crosshair said, though he had to admit Hunter had a point. He’d gotten the jump on him just now, and he did always seem to know when someone was just around the corner. Tech would say it was something to do with vibrations and electromagnetism, but Hunter would just shrug and say it was his gut.
“Yes we do,” said Tech from across the room, and Crosshair groaned.
“We do?” Hunter asked.
“You’re up, too?” Crosshair sighed.
“Well, the glowrod and your voices were getting hard to ignore,” Tech said, sitting up in his bunk and leaning down to reach for his boots. “The weather forecast was for a clear night tonight, the first one in months. You’re going stargazing.”
Crosshair chewed at his fingernail, embarrassed. “How’d you know?”
“I remembered how your curiosity was piqued during one of our astronomy lessons,” Tech said, pulling his boots on and adjusting his goggles. The little red recording light at the edge of his goggles clicked on. “You asked how much you would be able to see compared to a reg, and our instructor didn’t know how to account for your enhanced vision. You wanted to look for yourself, but with Kamino’s typical cloud cover, you’ve never had an opportunity until now.”
Crosshair had been curious. He’d tried peering out the hall windows several times during regular training hours, but the fluorescent lights of the hallways drowned out much of the night skies, which were always cloudy. He’d long decided he would have to sneak out to a platform on a clear night if he ever wanted to know.
Leave it to Tech to have him figured out, as usual.
“We’re goin’ stargazing?” Wrecker asked with a yawn. “Let’s do it! Sneaking out’ll be fun!” He held up Lula. “As long as Lula can come with.”
Crosshair pulled at his fingernail so hard he tasted blood. He held his finger in his mouth for a moment before he buried his face in his hands. “It’s stupid. We should just stay here. It’s not worth the extra cleaning duty.”
“There won’t be extra cleaning duty if we don’t get caught,” Hunter said patiently. “I know a way to the accessory landing pad. Come on, lads. Move out.” He turned off his glowrod and pocketed it.
Wrecker finished getting his boots on and leapt to his feet, Lula in his arms. “Yes sir!” he laughed.
“Keep it down , Wrecker!” Tech said. They fell in line behind Hunter, who paused for a moment at the door, listening hard with his hand on the wall.
“All right, move out,” he whispered. “Hand signals from here on in.”
Crosshair and the others nodded. Wrecker muttered something under his breath. He hated hand signals.
The door slid open and they slipped out into the hall, dimly lit with running lights along the floor and ceiling for nighttime. All was strange and silent, a far cry from the normal hubbub during the day. There were no lanky, wispy Kaminoans ambling through the halls, no older cadets marching in line and coldly ignoring them, no younger cadets making faces at them when their handlers weren’t looking. It was a different world, still and empty, and Crosshair shivered. He didn’t like it.
They followed Hunter carefully. At one point he gestured to hold back as a night patrol made their rounds; they pressed themselves against an alcove opening into a medical ward, holding their breath until the patrol passed. Hunter gestured again with the all-clear after a moment, and they slipped back into the hallway single file, their footsteps as soft as they could make them.
Crosshair was surprised when Hunter led them down a different path than he had anticipated. He had been thinking of going out through one of the main hangars, suspecting no one would notice a single cadet the size of a natborn ten-year-old among all the ships and cargo. But Hunter had a different idea. His hand signals flashed, explaining the hangar was too conspicuous. He led them down a maintenance hall instead, then gestured for Wrecker to join him at the front of the line while Tech and Crosshair kept watch.
Hunter had them stop in front of a barred vent, and Crosshair understood. Wrecker grinned, shoved Lula into Crosshair’s arms, and then shook out his hands.
Wrecker crouched down in front of the vent cover, prised his fingers into its edges, and pulled. For a moment his brow furrowed with concentration and effort, but the cover squeaked, bent, and then lifted up. Wrecker gave one more wrenching pull and nearly lost his balance, but Hunter caught him before he hit the ground.
Crosshair allowed himself a surprised smile. This just might work. He gave Lula a squeeze absently, watching Hunter and Wrecker. Wrecker leaned the vent cover against the wall, then frowned at Hunter as if to say, You want me to fit in there?
Hunter nodded, his hands flashing. You can do it.
Wrecker hung his head, then reached out and took Lula back from Crosshair. Hunter crept into the vent first, easily fitting as the smallest. For Wrecker, it was a tight squeeze, but not impossible. Tech followed next, and Crosshair brought up the rear, pulling the vent cover back into place behind him. It was cramped, but it was workable.
They crawled through the vent for what seemed like ages until they reached another cover. This one was easy for Hunter to kick out on his own, and he led them through the opening one by one until they stood up in a small dim hall ending in a single closed door.
Crosshair pulled at his tunic, which had gotten all dusty and bunched up. He had to wear a tunic far wider than he needed to account for his recent vertical growth spurt, and it hung awkwardly on his thin frame. He stretched it back across his shoulders. There. Better.
This was the farthest away they’d ever been from the main halls and training areas. Crosshair had a funny feeling, like they were doing something much more transgressive than just sneaking out for a few hours. It made the back of his neck prickle. He turned around, looking cautiously, but there was nobody there except his brothers.
Hunter peered at the door, which didn’t seem to want to open. Tech stepped forward and nudged him out of the way, pulling up his datapad. He hunched over it for a few minutes, then inputted a code into the door, which slid open. A breath of cool air and the sound of waves greeted them. “Here we are,” Tech said softly. With the waves splashing beyond them and the evening wind to mask their sounds, Crosshair realized they could speak again.
He and the others followed Tech out onto the platform, and he shivered, realizing it was their first step into a wider world.
For a moment they walked in silence, beneath the lights of the domed cities rising up behind them, above the waves rising and breaking beneath them. They trotted out along the platform to the point where it narrowed to a bridge that could be easily defended in the event of an attack, and they kept going until they reached the point where the bridge opened up again into a very small platform, sized for a single fighter.
Out here the breeze buffeted them, though it was Kamino’s summer and the air was cool instead of cold. Crosshair licked his lips and tasted salt spray. He sank down to a sitting position and leaned forward, blinking rapidly, trying to let his eyes adjust from the indoor lighting of the hall to the darkness of open space.
The others sat down beside him. Tech sat cross-legged, with his datapad in his lap, reviewing Kaminoan constellations with his datapad set on the lowest brightness. Hunter lay down and crossed his arms beneath his head, while Wrecker flopped onto his back beside him with Lula resting on his chest.
Wrecker whistled. Tech let out a curious little hmmmm. Hunter was quiet, deep in thought.
Crosshair hadn’t looked at the sky yet. He stared into the water, waiting for his eyes to fully adjust, knowing there was more that he could see. He waited until he could start to see the patterns of the waves crossing each other in ephemeral diamonds of water, until he could see fish swimming five, ten, twenty meters down, until he could see the vast deep shadows of the platform above curving over the bulk of creatures far, far below. Then he took a deep breath, leaning back, and gazed up at the stars.
He saw everything.
The stars themselves were stunning. White glittery pinpoints twinkled far above them, mixed with golden stellate shimmers, tiny sparks of reddish or bluish lights from far distant worlds. But the stars weren’t the only thing to see, to his surprise. Clouds of rich blue-purple violets, shimmering at the edges with a faint color that forced him to squint and made his head hurt slightly, roiled and flowed in the skies behind the bright points of the stars. Delicate filaments of hazy bluish fog swirled and spiraled amid the deepest black. His mouth fell open.
“Well, Cross?” Wrecker asked.
“What do you think?” said Hunter.
“Is it what you anticipated?”
Crosshair shook his head. “It’s… it’s… wizard. ”
Wrecker laughed. “Never heard you say that before! What all do you see?” he asked curiously.
Crosshair glanced back at his brother, confused for a moment. “You see the nebula up there, right? And all the… twirly parts? It’s… fascinating.”
Wrecker shrugged. “It’s nice -- there sure are a lot of stars, way more than I thought! But I dunno about any nebula. What’s it look like?”
Crosshair frowned. He knew he’d see more than they would, but this much more? He nibbled at his thumbnail, tearing one edge into little shreds. “I don’t know, it’s -- like smoke, but in the stars?”
“Tech?” said Hunter.
“A nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas in space, and it may comprise many colors. There is a large nebula adjacent to the Rishi Maze galaxy that abuts Kamino, but it is not usually detectable to the naked eye,” Tech said, checking his datapad. “I believe only you can see it, Crosshair.”
“Oh,” he said, trying to hide his disappointment. He’d let them all come out here for nothing? He stared up at the sky, the brilliant stars blurring as he blinked back sudden tears. “Sorry,” he said haltingly. “It’s… it’s special.”
“We believe you. It is still a beautiful night, even if we cannot see all of it ourselves,” said Tech. “I for one have enjoyed exploring new parts of the city with you. It’s useful to know there’s an escape route here.”
“Yeah, sneakin’ out’s always fun. And the fresh air’s way better than that smell in the barracks.”
“Just because we can’t see exactly what you see doesn’t mean we didn’t want to come,” Hunter said. “I like this a lot more than just staying in our bunks all night. Besides -- what’s that ?”
A blazing blue-white star streaked across the sky, weaving a long tail of light across the starry landscape. It danced along at incredible speed, growing brighter and brighter.
“Look at it go!” whooped Wrecker.
“It’s a shooting star,” said Tech. “A small meteor falling into Kamino’s atmosphere and burning up. Some sentients believe they are lucky, and wish upon them. I don’t really understand why.”
“Make a wish, Cross!”
Crosshair stared up as the shooting star began to fade, its streaking path glimmering in and out of the dark. He swallowed. A wish?
A dozen wishes flashed through his mind. To be the best soldier in the Grand Army of the Republic. To be the commander of his own squad someday. To win the war, and protect the galaxy. For none of his brothers to ever get hurt.
He closed his eyes.
I wish they could see what I see.
He opened his eyes, and the shooting star was gone. He let out a sigh.
“What’d you wish?”
“He is not supposed to tell, according to the lore,” said Tech. “Otherwise that invalidates the wish.”
“That’s a silly rule.”
“ I didn’t make it.”
“But that shouldn’t matter!”
”Again, I did not write the lore —”
“Oh quit arguing, you two,” said Hunter. “Let’s just enjoy it. It’s a nice night out here. Right, Crosshair?”
Crosshair gazed up at the wheeling stars, slowly exhaling as the night sky glittered and shone and radiated far above him. His brothers looked up at the stars with him, and even if they didn’t see things exactly the same… they were here, and he wouldn’t have made it through the halls without them.
Crosshair smiled. His wish probably wasn’t going to come true, but somehow, he didn’t mind.
“Yeah, it’s all right.”
