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The fourth moon of Yavin couldn’t have been any more different from Coruscant. It was hot, humid, and constantly dripping with rain. Where Coruscant was all glass and durasteel, this moon was mud and plantlife. Doubtless that dense foliage hid beasts large and viscous enough to eat a Wookiee in one bite. Still, throngs of rebels ran to-and-fro, training and hauling and prepping and going about all the actions expected of an army. Only a small handful of people stood still; technicians focused on their careful work, officers monitoring training circuits, and a dirty woman just now waking up from sleeping in someone else’s bed.
Kleya Marki stood with her eyes tracking the ebb and flow of the rebels around her and her mind thousands of lightyears away. She had lost so much, burned so much goodwill, just to offer maybes and possibilities to the piecemeal Alliance on a humid little moon on the edge of oblivion. Now she was alone, covered in mud and blood, her body still shaken by the events of the last few days.
A second sleep-deprived form shambled into place beside her. Vel Sartha, her rival, her one-that-never-was, the closest thing she had let herself have to a friend besides Luthen, the person whose bed she’d taken for the night. And how sad was that? She was alone in the Galaxy, fighting for a peace Luthen had known he would never see but that she knew he’d hoped would be hers. A peace she knew she couldn’t have either, not haunted by ghosts as she was.
“Cassian’s just left,” Vel sighed. She handed a steaming mug of the bilge water the Rebellion passed off as caf to Kleya, and she felt just weak and desperate enough to choke it down. “A few hours, days at most, and we’ll have more information on this superweapon.”
“A lifetime of work for a single tip,” Kleya mused between sips, a bitterness from something other than the caf catching in her throat. “It seems the rest of you had the right of it in the end.”
Vel rested her hand on Kleya’s, and Kleya was uncertain whether her hands were truly so cold or Vel’s so warm. She tried to think back to any time they’d touched before, but her brain couldn’t get past Vel offering her a jacket, a bed, comfort, when she had done nothing to earn it.
“If you were anyone else, I would say something about you offering hope that the rebellion needed.” She took a long drink of her own muddy-water caf before continuing. “But you’re you, so I’ll be frank: you’re right. It was just a tip that led to another tip that might, in the end, lead to something. There are no guarantees here. We just have to keep trying. Worrying too much about whether our results are worth our sacrifices will only stop us from doing anything at all.”
A small platoon of rebel foot soldiers ran by on another lap of the base. The human man at the head of the group matched one of the thousands of files Luthen had handed off to Kleya. Ruescott Melshi, one of the prisoners from Narkina 5 who had escaped with Cassian Andor. One of only sixteen known to have made it off the prison world alive. She and Luthen had argued for days whether or not he knew enough for them to send someone after him. They never made a final decision as everything changed after Ferrix.
“You said last night that I’m among friends here,” Kleya started as she turned to face Vel. “But as far as I can see I’m surrounded by people I’ve used, people I’ve almost killed, people like you for whom I’ve never had a kind word.”
Vel shrugged. “We’re not enemies, definitely more than acquaintances or collaborators. That doesn’t leave many other options.”
Kleya sighed. “Then I’ve been a shit friend. I don’t think I ever even gave my condolences for Cinta.”
Vel’s eyes went distant and unfocused the moment her deceased lover’s name was said. It wasn’t the distant emptiness of an immediate shock, Kleya would have recognized that a parsec away. Nor was it Vel losing herself reliving some terrible trauma; Kleya knew that look all too well. No, it was something more wistful, more purposeful. Grounding herself in a memory.
“You still haven’t, if we’re being honest.”
“I suppose that’s right,” Kleya winced. “I am sorry about that. She was…”
“She was everything a Rebel could be,” Vel finished. “She was a miracle. The Galaxy is a dimmer place without her.”
Kleya had no words that she could add. She knew how important Cinta had been to Vel, of course, but to her the woman had never been more than a particularly effective soldier. As for losing someone who made the Galaxy seem like it was brighter and more hopeful than in their absence, that she understood.
Vel let out a slow breath. “I can’t talk more about her right now. Cassian tried last night. It’s not the time for it.”
The two stood in silence for some time after that, returning to just watching the base. The heartbeat of the base around them didn’t pause for an instant. Kleya thought about how much of the materiel on the base had been procured by her and Luthen, how many shipments they’d redirected and how many records they’d covered up. Something alive had come out of all that work. Something that could grow, change, be more than the sum of its parts.
But there was still so much to do.
In spite of the heat of the day and the still-hot caf in her hands, Kleya shivered. “I feel like I should be doing something. Like I should be out there too.”
“The Rebellion doesn’t need us today, Kleya. We’ve done enough for now,” Vel whispered, her fingers curling around Kleya’s cold hand. “You have done enough for now. Take the day for yourself, I know I would have wanted to after—”
Kleya felt warmth and life pulsing in Vel’s fingers. She hadn’t let herself even consider it an option in years, but she cut Vel’s words off by pressing her lips to Vel’s. It had happened once or twice before, before Cinta, in the early days when alcohol was for something other than sterilizing wounds and when bad decisions didn’t feel so life-or-death. It felt better now, earned rather than stolen. Kleya didn’t even mind that the kiss itself lasted only a moment before Vel broke the contact.
“I… I can’t, Kleya. Not right now. I’ll be here for you, I’ll help you however I can. But I’m not ready to risk another heartbreak.”
“I know.” Perhaps a more whole person would have been broken by that, but Kleya saw in the words a glimmer of a future. The rebellion would still come first but maybe there could still be a sunrise on the other side. As for now, Vel’s hand still tangled with hers, and the rebellion still thrummed along outside.