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Echo leaned back in the pilot’s chair, enjoying the light show of hyperspace swirling outside the viewport. Secretly, he also delighted in usurping Tech’s coveted seat while his little brother took a long-overdue nap. What Tech didn’t know wouldn’t kill him. (He supposed that was a fairly short list, anyway.)
A few months ago, he would never have taken the late watch with his implant turned off, no matter how badly he felt it in the morning. The silence, the isolation, the emptyness—it was too familiar. He was better now, he reminded himself. As long as he could see the full display of the ship’s controls and computer systems, nothing could surprise him. He was safe.
He swiveled the chair around briefly to peer into the cabin behind the cockpit, where he could just make out his brothers asleep in their berths. He rested his head against the back of the seat. It was a small blessing to sit in the quiet without listening to Wrecker snore, he thought as he spun his chair back to face the controls again.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the curtain that separated the gunner’s mount from the rest of the ship shift and a little girl duck out from under it. She climbed down the ladder and crept past the occupied bunks, her pale hair reflecting almost blue in the low light.
She spotted Echo sitting in the cockpit and tiptoed up to the copilot’s seat. “Hi, Echo,” he saw her say as she hopped up into the chair.
“It’s late, Omega. Why aren’t you in bed?”
Omega winced and shot a glance back at the cabin. Too loud, Echo realised.
“Can’t sleep,” she said. “Can I sit with you?”
“Of course, kid,” he tried at what he thought was a better intensity. For a minute, he sat back in his chair again, eyes closed as the pulsing glow of light speed washed over his face. The peace was broken by Omega tapping his arm.
“What?” Echo asked, and Omega actually pressed a finger to her lips this time, shushing him. She stared at him for a moment, concerned. She tilted her head, eyeing the cybernetics that covered his ears. He didn’t have to be a lip-reading expert to catch what she said next.
“Echo…can you hear me?”
Well. This would take some explaining.
He shook his head, then spun in his chair to grab Tech’s datapad and opened up a blank document on its screen. I’m deaf, he typed. I lost my hearing in the explosion at the Citadel, back when I was an ARC trooper.
He held the datapad out to Omega so she could read. Her gaze traveled over the words and then back up to him. But we talk all the time and you always hear us, she typed beneath his words.
Echo gestured with his scomp to his cranial implants while he typed. I have a cochlear stimulator device in my implant that helps me hear.
Omega looked puzzled. But you’re not using it?
I have to turn it off sometimes for maintenance, or to give my brain a rest. The implant works by sending electrical signals to nerves in my inner ear that mimic soundwaves, but it’s different from actually hearing. It’s been a few months, but my brain still gets tired trying to interpret everything as clear sounds, so I have to take breaks throughout the day. Saves power, too.
But don’t you need to hear all the time?
Honestly, kid, some things aren’t worth listening to. He gestured to the cabin behind them, where he assumed Wrecker was still snoring to wake the dead. The smile that quirked at Omega’s mouth confirmed it. I only turn the implant off when we’re somewhere safe, like the Marauder.
He still recalled those first days out of stasis—first the battles on Skako Minor and Anaxes, when he couldn’t possibly do without his hearing, then afterwards, the time spent on ships and bases when his brothers had assured him that he would be safe, and that it was better for his brain to turn the implant off. But he couldn’t do it, couldn’t make himself let his guard down. So he’d kept it turned on until his mind was so tired he couldn’t see straight and Tech dragged him to a bunk, shot him with a sedative, and powered off his implant before his sluggish brain could protest. In the following weeks, he’d refused to turn the implant off unless he had one of his new squadmates right beside him the whole time.
I’m not very good at reading lips, but I manage. I don’t like to talk without my implant because I get too loud when I can’t hear myself. Mostly, I sign.
Sign?
Talking with hand signals instead of words, like what we use in battle. But lots of people use sign languages, not just soldiers.
He would have said more, but a light on the dash switched on, flashing an urgent orange that caught his eye. It was a silent alarm he’d set for himself. It’s Hunter’s turn to take the watch, he explained after he shut off the blinking button. And that means it’s your turn to be asleep.
Omega smiled and caught him around the torso in an unexpected hug. “Goodnight, Echo,” he saw her say.
Echo laughed. “Hurry back to your room now,” he whispered, careful to keep his voice low this time, “‘Else Hunter’ll scold me for keeping you up all night.”
“He’s not the boss of you.” Her grin was positively impish.
“I like the way you think. We should have a mutiny.” He ruffled her hair with his biological hand, then schooled his face into what he thought was a fairly intimidating ARC glare. “But for now, I’m pulling rank and ordering you to be under the covers by the time I wake up the sergeant.”
She snapped him a sloppy salute and scurried back to the gunner’s mount.
◇◇◇◇◇
Early the next morning, Echo was combing the star charts for the next safe place to stop when Omega plopped down next to him, Wrecker’s Lula doll still tucked in the crook of her arm and half-eaten breakfast rations in hand. “Will you teach me to sign?”
Lessons began that day. Everyone agreed that it would be good for Omega to learn battle signs, both for the ability to communicate with Echo and because, as Tech pointed out, Omega’s streak of involvement in firefights was already impressively high, and she’d only been onboard for a week.
“It wasn’t too hard to communicate without my implant when I joined the squad because everyone already knew Republic military hand signals,” he explained while they sat together on his bunk that afternoon. “Well,” he amended, “Wrecker could learn them better if he’d apply himself.”
“Hey! It’s not my fault they all look the same!” their brother hollered across the ship.
Echo ignored him and continued. “Signing with one hand is harder, but most signs can be adapted. A lot of words only use the non-dominant hand as a base for the dominant hand to sign around. Look. This is the sign for a right flank maneuver; see how I’m just moving my hand behind my scomp? You would sign it with your open palm facing you, since you have two hands.”
Omega nodded and copied him.
“There is one problem with hand signals: they’re efficient for combat, but they don’t cover all the bases in casual conversation, so we use Galactic Basic Sign Language for any words we don’t have.”
Slowly, he demonstrated the GBSL alphabet for Omega, explaining how each handshape and motion corresponded to an Aurebesh letter, and could be used to spell out any word she didn’t know. Omega copied him. They went back and forth for some time, practicing the letters until she could sign each one correctly.
Omega was a fast learner. Only a few times did Echo have to help her with a new sign. “Here, give me your hand. You’ve got the angle wrong.” Gently, he guided her fingers through the motion. “See? The speed of the sign can change the connotation. So can the size of the gesture and the facial cues you give while signing.”
“That’s complicated.”
Echo laughed. “Of course it is. Battle sign is a straightforward code, but GBSL is an actual language, just as nuanced as Basic. I’m still learning, too. If you don’t know a word, you can always fingerspell.”
“It’s so slow,” Omega said with a frustrated huff as her fingers stumbled through m-a-r-a-u-d-e-r. “What if there’s an emergency and I don’t have time to spell your name?”
“You won’t have to. Watch.” He curled his hand into an esk handshape and drew it away from his ear in a bouncing motion. “This is the sign for my name. Echo. ”
Echo, Omega signed back, a small smile on her face. Hi, Echo.
“Lots of people who sign make up special signs for friends and family whose names don’t translate.” He held two fingers for a herf handshape by his forehead and flicked it away sharply. “That’s my sign for Hunter. ” He tapped a trill handshape against the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes. “Tech.”
“Like how he pushes up his goggles!” Omega giggled.
“Yeah. He didn’t think it was as funny as I did.” Echo thumped his fist against his opposite shoulder, more forceful than the other name signs. “This one is Wrecker, for obvious reasons.” Then, he curled his biological hand into a cresh handshape and held it up to his eye like a scope. “And, um, that,” he said after a moment’s hesitation, “is the sign for Crosshair. ”
The mention of their missing brother had a dampering effect. It had been a week since they’d left Kamino without him, but nobody wanted to talk about it.
“Echo?” Omega piped up after a beat of silence.
“Yeah?”
“What’s my sign?”
Echo blinked. “I—I guess you don’t have one.”
“Oh.” Omega’s face fell. “Right. I’m new.” She did not say, I’m not your family yet. But he heard it anyway.
Echo wasn’t sure what to say. He’d felt the very same when he first joined the Batch—he was an outsider who came to them because he no longer belonged anywhere else, but that didn’t mean he fit. Omega was looking for her place, like him, but she wasn’t a highly skilled commando, just a little girl who happened to be a clone. After Saluecami, Hunter had told her that she could stay, but Echo couldn’t help worrying that every day with Omega was just improvisation on the part of soldiers who had no business raising her. They’d barely survived their first week on the run; he couldn’t let himself believe that this would last. So he didn’t, not yet. In signed conversations with Hunter and Tech, she was just the kid.
But she was much more; he saw that now. She was Omega, the girl who sat with him on the late watch and hugged him like he wasn’t half droid and wanted to learn everything in the whole wide galaxy. She was his little sister, and, even if only for now, she belonged in his squad. In his family.
And she was worth a name of her own.
“Tech told me that in some languages, omega means the end, or the last part. But I get the feeling that you’re more of a beginning than an end.” He twisted his forefinger against the tip of his scomp. “This is the sign for begin. ” He then repeated the motion with an osk handshape. “And this is you. Omega. ”
She copied the sign, smiling. “I like that.”
◇◇◇◇◇
Do you have to leave?
It was a useless question to ask as they climbed the hill up to the landing strip where Echo’s ship was waiting, but Omega needed every possible way to slow time. Signing while navigating the steep, rocky path wasn’t working; Echo didn’t so much as falter as he watched her hands. Still, it was nice to speak to him like this.
I have to go where I’m needed, Echo signed back. The Empire is still holding so many of our brothers prisoner. Someone has to give them a way out.
I know. She knew she was being selfish, asking him not to go. Still, after Tantiss, after how hard they’d all fought to be together, she’d hoped it could last, if only for a bit longer.
Their hands swung loosely at their sides as they walked, silent in more ways than one. Omega supposed it would be like this from now on. Signing had become their special language, in a way. The rest of her brothers hadn’t worked to learn much GBSL beyond bare essentials and fingerspelling, except for Tech, who had researched signs with them and archived every new word they came up with. But now Tech was gone, and Echo was leaving again, and it hit her that she would not have anyone to sign with for a very long time.
Omega watched Echo’s scomp swinging with his gait, stubby and stiff compared to his flesh hand. Echo had endured more than any of them, and yet he still fought harder for what was right than anyone else Omega knew. All of her brothers were courageous, she thought, but Echo was the bravest of them all.
Omega would be brave like him.
You can finish the mission. I know you can. But I’ll miss you.
Echo smiled and pressed a two-finger handshape to his chestplate.
I love you.
A warmth pulsed around Omega’s heart like a handprint against her own chest.
The beginning, not the end.