Chapter Text
Gazing at the mesmerizing azure lines of hyperspace through the viewport, Omega leaned against the side of the pilot seat as Tech double-checked the helm controls. “I’ve never been to Yavin IV,” she murmured, her eyes glowing softly.
“Nor have I, but I am looking forward to adding notations of their atmospheric composition, as well as the indigenous sentient and non-sentient life to the ship’s database. Apparently, very little has been documented about this remote planet, an oversight that I plan to correct,” Tech asserted, his attention on the navigational displays.
Hunter lounged in one of the secondary chairs in the cockpit, sighting down the length of the vibroblade in his hands. “I’m not wild about coming all this way with just a name,” he growled. “No references, no job description, just landing coordinates; who is this Declan, anyway?” He slid the blade home in its forearm sheath and pushed himself off the chair, nearly bumping into the looming Wrecker.
“Not sure, but it must have come through one of my contacts with Rex and the resistance network he’s organizing; it was directly to our personal frequency,” Echo replied, swiveling his body in the copilot’s seat to face Hunter as best he could.
“So they’re part of the rebellion against the Empire?”
“Well, no…at least I don’t think they are,” admitted Echo. “Anything this far out, without a name for themselves…” He shrugged. “If there is a rebel cell out here in the middle of nowhere, it can’t be very organized.”
“But whoever it is also sent a transfer of 500 credits just to show up! That means they’re serious, right?” Omega’s diminutive figure looked even smaller as she spun around to look up at Hunter and Wrecker, her earnest face puckered with her inquiry.
“Right!” Wrecker’s voice thundered in vigorous agreement.
“No, that means they have 500 credits,” Tech retorted, flipping switches above his head. He paused, then continued, “Well—now they have less that, actually.”
Wrecker was silent for a long moment, then another. When his eyes lit up, he gave Tech’s chair a hearty thump. “Hah, that’s funny, they do!”
“People often pay money for many things: bounties, cargo runs, information…” Her slender fingers fanned out slowly as Omega ticked them off.
“Right!” Wrecker was nothing if not consistent.
“There are some that would also pay for turning over deserters to the Empire. And for you,” Hunter finished, crouching so he could stare Omega level in the eyes. At his words, her gaze faltered and dipped to the floor, slightly chastened. “Don’t forget, we’re also supposed to be laying low. So, I guess Yavin IV is as good as any place. It’s isolated enough.”
Wrecker’s shoulders slumped as he peered down at Omega, a massive finger pointed at Hunter. “He’s right.” Omega giggled, her smile returning. Hunter laid a hand fondly on her thin shoulder.
“Yeah,” Hunter rasped, standing up to stare out the viewport as the Marauder exited hyperspace to hang suspended over the verdant planet, “for what we need, middle of nowhere sounds perfect.”
* * *
Disembarking from the Marauder and descending the gangway was almost like stepping directly into the heart of the jungle. Carved straight into the rainforest, the crumbling tiers rose to a point above the canopy, but barely held the dense vegetation at bay. Overhead, the tropical sun baked down on their shoulders in this small clearing, one of many that pockmarked the encroaching wilderness that threatened to engulf the final stones of the ziggurat. Dozens of humans milled between freighters scuffed by solar winds and a few battered pre-Empire fighters. Some of their glances were curious, but no one appeared to be expecting them.
“Which one of them is Declan, do you suppose,” Echo muttered to Hunter as they wove their way through the trickle of bodies that had beaten a faint line through the stubborn moss to the dark earth beneath.
A couple of inquiries led them further down to where a middle-aged man in a blue tunic stood, supervising the offloading of several speeder bikes. “We’re looking for Declan,” Hunter said as they approached. “Is that you?”
“Depends. If you’re the owner of that blue freighter, you’ll get the rest of your payment when we get the rest of your cargo, not before.” Turning, the man raked his pale blue eyes rapidly across the group, his deeply lined face creasing in mild confusion. “Oh, obviously not. Well, let’s see your manifest, then,” and he held his weathered hand out expectantly.
“We don’t have a manifest, we’re here because you told us to be here!” Hunter replied indignantly.
“If that were true,” Declan rumbled, “then you’d have a manifest. How did you get the coordinates to this landing pad, anyway? It’s not even registered.”
Tech glanced up from his datapad. “Landing pads are level. These clearings are…anything but.”
“Well then, who hired us?” Wrecker grumbled, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
Looking baffled, Declan rubbed the back of his head. Suddenly, his eyes widened, then narrowed angrily. “Oh, she better not have...”
“She?”
“Call it a hunch, but I’m betting that one of my assistants has been taking liberties with my authorization codes. Did she send anything else besides my name?”
Hunter shook his head. “No, just the coordinates.”
Covering his eyes as if to ward them from the light and heat, Declan sighed. “Synnovea...tends to do things her own way. I'm so sorry for the misunderstanding...if you would just let me try to get her on comms...She’d better answer,” he muttered.
“This is becoming a rather expensive detour,” Echo observed.
* * *
“Come on, Tech, you’re taking forever. It isn’t every day that we get to explore an ancient temple!” Omega argued, running one hand along the rough wall as she raced down the narrow corridor that led down into the temple.
“Hunter refused to let you go exploring on your own, and with good reason. I only agreed because I wanted to take some readings inside the temple, which I now see is something of a wasted effort. It appears that time has scoured away most of the inscriptions these walls might have contained.”
“Do you hear that? It sounds like fighting.”
“Most likely we’re nearing where the recruits practice combat training.”
It turned out to be true. Opening into a larger room, missing bricks formed natural skylights that dropped pools of sunlight between pairs of men and women in various stages of training: aiming blasters at targets, hand-to-hand, and a few perusing the finer points of bladework. The shouts and blaster fire echoed less with the ankle-deep sand that filled the training area. Over the sounds of the recruits came the crackle of an angry voice through a nearby commlink.
“I think that’s Declan’s voice, but it’s faint,” Omega murmured, casting about for the source.
“It’s coming from over there,” and Tech pointed across the grounds to a human woman in faded brown leathers crossing the sand, the recruits parting around her as if made of water. Twirling a thick wooden staff, she appeared to be yelling back at a voice on the inside of her wrist.
“Damnit, Declan, we’ve been over this before. I don’t have time to saw through your bureaucratic red tape—” She slammed the butt of the staff into the sand, her thick black braid twitching on her shoulder.
“This is more than that, you insane little stintaril, now you’re giving out my private landing code? You’re hiring personnel without my permission?” Declan’s voice sounded tinny but clear, more than clear enough to convey his irritation.
“Private what?” She knelt quickly and, grabbing a handful of sand, sifted it through her fingers as she spoke choppily. “I can’t—if there’s any—try to find another—”
There was a long silence at the other end. “Synnovea, I can tell the difference between static interference and you dribbling sand over your commlink. You weren’t even around to greet these guys that you want here so badly—”
“We’re shorthanded in training. Either stop accepting new bodies or find me more defectors that learned a few things before coming here. Then I’ll throw necklaces of flowers over anyone you want,” Synnovea contended, tearing her eyes away from the recruits and looking up, slowing to a stop as she passed the newcomers. “Hang on,” she drawled, lazily bracing the staff across her shoulders with her hands. “Sorry kid,” she announced, not unkindly. “Adults only for afternoon training.”
Wordlessly, Omega pulled her bow from her back and took aim at one of the targets across the sand. Two salmon-tinted bolts of energy hissed through the air, singing neat holes in the scarred paint of the bullseye’s edge. She lowered her bow with a smug grin and turned to the woman.
Synnovea narrowed her eyes shrewdly. “All right, all right, you’re not just a kid, I hear you,” she asserted. She looked them both over a second time. “I thought there’d be more of you…”
“There are. I mean, there is.” Omega took a breath and tried again, inexplicably nervous beneath the regard of those gray eyes. “I mean, there are five of us.” She felt a bit more confident and ventured boldly, “You’re the one who sent for us, aren’t you?”
Peering down at her, Synnovea’s expression dissolved into amusement. “Yeah, I suppose I’ll be getting in trouble for that,” she admitted with a crooked smile. “But where are our manners?” Rolling the wooden pole off her shoulders, she caught it with a flick of her wrist and tapped her commlink. “Declan, our guests have come such a long way, surely the least we can do is buy them a drink before we get down to business. I found two of them; we can all meet in the bar off the main dining hall.” Leaning her staff against one of the empty racks lining the wall, she passed them both, crooking her finger at them as she entered the dusty corridor. “Stay close. Wouldn’t want you to get lost. Or worse—run into something dangerous.”
“What do you mean?” Omega asked as she fell in behind Synnovea.
“Well, you know that this is an ancient temple, right?” Synnovea’s voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “It’s supposed to be haunted, or something.”
“Obviously, these are apparitions caused by hallucination, either from stress-induced insomnia or imbibing too much alcohol,” Tech muttered, ducking below a thick root that had broken its way through the brickwork.
“Let me know if you still believe that next week,” was all Synnovea said. A branching hall took them up one level and led them past a honeycomb of smaller rooms until the corridor opened up. Someone or something had sheared away the outer wall, revealing a cluster of battered tables and a long counter that served as the local watering hole. Dozens of men and women seeking refuge from the afternoon heat found themselves here, listening to the seven tracks the broken jukebox could still play.
Threading her way through the crowd, Synnovea headed for one of the larger tables in the back, where Declan and the rest of the squad had already congregated on mismatched seating. Throwing a leg over the bench that ran the length of the table, she sat down facing the older man.
He eyed her balefully. “There’s no point in reprimanding you for this, is there?”
She softly held his gaze as her head swung left and right.
“Well, then I hope you’ve planned a pitch for them, because you were the only one who knew they were coming.” He turned to the middle of the table. “This impertinent womp rat is Synnovea Beryl, one of my advisors…when she remembers.”
Synnovea looked down at the tabletop, tapping the surface restlessly with her fingertips. “Well, I think I can make it simple.” A service droid came to the table with cups and pitchers, and she snagged one, taking a long pull before setting it down, jabbing a finger west. “Half a continent away is an Imperial expedition force. I want them off my planet. That’s where you guys come in.”
“Correction: that’s where we’re out.” Hunter shoved away from the table and stood.
Omega snatched his hand. “Hunter!”
“Looks like five hundred credits didn’t buy me much.” Synnovea swirled the contents of her cup around before drinking again. “I would have thought you’d have a bit more fight in you, from all that I’ve heard.”
Hunter planted the heel of his hand on the table. “This is the Empire we’re talking about,” he gritted. “You don’t fight the Empire, you run.”
“Run,” breathed Synnovea, staring blankly at the table with wide eyes. “Wow, why didn’t we think of that…”
Hunter rolled his eyes and stepped back. “Look, you could’ve saved us both a lot of time if you had just told us up front what you were looking for. But unless you have a real army hidden away here somewhere, you don’t have close to the manpower needed to repel an Imperial invasion. As for us, we have our own reasons for wanting to stay off the Empire’s radar. If you’re smart, you’ll get out of their way.”
“If only that were an option. But with the exception of the die-hards you see around here, the rest of the farmers and settlers are scattered across all four continents. We’d never get them all rounded up and off-world in time. And then what? Run to the next planet, until they start mucking about with that one? Run up the white flag? Look around you.” She threw up her hands, the gesture encompassing the spartan surroundings and its fatigued occupants. “We’re barely even a militia, but you and I both know that the Empire won’t take us on as slaves. We turn them back before they find this place, or we’re dead. There’s no running for us.”
“With no central government or population densities, it’s possible that the Empire believes this to be an uninhabited moon, like so many other planets in this sector. Most likely they will divide their company into platoons that will penetrate the jungle more easily than a larger force.” Tech tapped the display of his datapad with the back of his hand for emphasis.
“Okay, so the Empire is trying to determine what’s worth claiming on Yavin IV.” Hunter relented, easing himself back onto the stool. “Why haven’t the rebels stepped in?”
Sitting sideways on the bench across the way, Synnovea leaned in confidentially. “Most of the standing army got slaughtered by the Separatists. Then the Trandoshans trickled in when they left. Keeping the oversized lizards from picking off the farmers is about all the reduced forces can handle. Besides, this doesn’t call for dozens of troops. This calls for a handful of people who know exactly what they’re doing.” Her fingers flitted back and forth across the surface of the table. “In, then out again before they even know we were there. We scramble any data or samples they send back to the fleet; we drag their supplies out into the jungle and let the local wildlife tear it up; anything we can do to surreptitiously undermine their expedition.” Quirking her mouth to the side, she waggled her palm. “Failing all that, we blow the whole lot of them into orbit and invite everyone to play.”
“Wait, are you seriously suggesting that the five—sorry, six—of us take on an Imperial expedition force?” Hunter choked down the volume when he noticed the attention of nearby tables.
“I believe that is exactly what she is suggesting,” Tech offered helpfully. “Or complete and utter chaos if her first idea does not succeed.”
Echo glanced all around the table. “All right, so you need our help. What’s in it for us?”
“Right,” Omega interjected, nearly forgotten by everyone. Her face was unusually stern. “If we're going to stick our necks out, we'd need compensation. It'd cost you...double. And-and we’d need to, uh, talk about it,” she finished unsteadily as Hunter’s brow lowered.
Declan pointed at Omega. “She’s your negotiator?”
“Double is acceptable,” Synnovea remarked, crossing her arms over her chest, her expression as serious as Omega’s.
“Wait a minute,” Hunter grated, his hand making a sweeping motion over the table.
“We came to this place because it was so far off the beaten path. Taking on the Empire, even a small force like this, that isn’t laying low, that’s waving a big ‘come get me’ sign!”
“We can’t just stand by and do nothing,” Echo replied doggedly. “These people need our help!”
Hunter whipped around to face Echo. “When every one of us is on a bounty puck somewhere? This is not the time to be an idealist. I—”
“Triple,” Synnovea snapped, observing the heated debate between the two. Her eyes bored into Hunter’s.
Declan sputtered. “We can’t possibly—”
“We can,” Synnovea disagreed, interrupting him. Rising from the table, she opened a wall locker in the alcove and dragged out a small gray case, laying it on the many-times scrubbed ferrocrete surface as she sat back down. Pressing two buttons, the case popped open, and she spun it to face Hunter. “Triple. Unmarked credits. Half up front. If not, you keep the five hundred I already sent, no harm, no foul.”
Grimacing at the neat golden rows, Hunter’s gaze rose to hers. “Deal.”
“Synnovea,” Declan’s craggy face darkened. “Give me one good reason wh—"
“I’ll give you three,” Synnovea countered, swiveling abruptly to face Declan, who reflexively jerked back in surprise. “One, I don’t exactly see any other teams crazy enough to help us queueing up outside. Two, credit doesn’t spend if we’re all dead or worse, captured. Three, you can get more money, more supplies, but the one thing you can’t get more of is time.” Her stern expression softened slightly, and she laid a gentle hand on Declan’s forearm. “Lately your son has been asking me if you’re going to come home. Not when, if. I told him not to worry. Don’t make a liar of me, Declan.”
At that, Declan deflated. “I had no idea Sorj was worried like that. Well, all right. We’ll try it your way. You’re going to do it whether I agree or not, so—" He shrugged.
“Can they have the fourteenth barracks? It’s empty; they’d have it all to themselves.”
Declan waved a hand. “That’s fine. You’ll see to it? Thank you, Beryl.” He heaved himself to his feet as though exhausted. “That reminds me, I saw that green bucket your Rodian pal calls a ship circling the pads before I came in. He better have the cannisters of rhydonium I asked for.” Glancing at the open wall, he shook his head. “I still can’t believe you convinced them to just chop part of this wall away.”
“Whatever these temples were used for, it wasn’t for housing a few hundred resistance fighters and their families,” argued Synnovea, warming to an old debate. “Putting in lifts would give us more access to the lower levels without having to navigate those ridiculous corridors. Also, the increased orders and traffic are going to require us to hack out more landing zones soon.”
Declan rubbed his temples. “You know those damnable plants wear out the charge on a vibroblade in less than two hours. Our workers can barely keep up with the landing zones we currently have.”
“I know, only look—” Synnovea dug a holo-projector from her belt and placed it on the table, activating it as she spoke to show a topographical hologram of the area. “If we doubled the landing zones we could allocate half of them solely to export—"
“Actually, you would be better off creating one large clearing between these two structures,” Tech interrupted, indicating the temples. “Comparatively, the aggregate space would be increased by approximately fifty-three percent, while negating restriction to most vessel sizes. In addition, maintenance of the perimeter would be less than it is now if you utilized the base of the pyramids to help delineate the clearing.”
Synnovea immediately leaned over the hologram, followed closely by Declan. After a moment of tense silence, Declan said, “He’s right.”
“We do need a proper outdoor staging area,” Synnovea acknowledged. She glanced at Tech appraisingly. “How much ‘crete would we need to cover the surface of something this big? The base wall could be opened for a hangar—”
“You realize that this is an ancient temple, thousands of years old?” Declan interrupted. “That means it used to be sacred to someone, like the Jedi temples…”
“Of course. And now, this temple can do something that no Jedi temple has done before: change with the times.” Synnovea lifted her cup to him in a mocking toast.
Declan muttered his goodbyes before pushing his way through the crowded room to the corridors beyond. Synnovea reached for one of the pitchers and tipped it over her cup.
“So, what are we supposed to call you?” Omega asked tentatively.
“How about my name? Really, I just oversee the handful of scouts we have and perform the occasional solitary jaunt. I see myself more as a singular instigator of chaotic events that inevitably wind up in my favor.”
Hunter snorted. “Sounds dicey. What kind of chaos did you cause to get all the way out here?”
For a brief instant, the gray eyes clouded over before clearing. Her look was candid. “Nothing that I wouldn’t do again if I had to.”
“Fair enough.”
“Some other time, perhaps, we can swap stories,” Synnovea offered, pushing herself up from the table. “I imagine that by the time you leave Yavin IV, you’ll have new tales to tell.”