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Unconsciousness gives Fox back pieces of himself.
Not enough.
Never enough.
Kamino flickers around him in broken fragments. White walls. Rain striking transparisteel. Bare feet racing through a corridor while someone laughs beside him.
Fox turns toward the sound.
A black shape fills the space where eyes, nose, and mouth should be.
The memory jumps.
Small hands pass him a ration sweet beneath a table. Someone whispers that Priest will never find them there. Fox knows the voice should mean something.
The speaker has no face.
Another jump.
Training mats. Bruised knuckles. Cody shouting encouragement. Wolffe tackling someone twice his size. Bly laughing so hard he falls over.
Their faces are blacked out too.
Fox reaches for them.
The memories shatter.
For one terrible moment, he thinks he's lost them again.
Then new light spills through the cracks.
Arla crouches in front of him, calling him stubborn while treating a split lip.
Thorn crashes into his office with six emergencies and no useful information.
Stone smuggles soup into a briefing.
Thire silently replaces the caf Fox forgot to drink.
Hound sleeps beneath his desk with Grizzer across his boots.
Ghost stands beside him in the War Room, wordless and reliable.
His brothers and sisters crowd Headquarters until the walls feel alive.
Then Riyo is there.
Riyo laughing in their kitchen.
Riyo adjusting his command ropes.
Riyo asleep against his chest.
Riyo beneath the silver light of the Moon Goddess’s temple, gold arches fresh across her face as she takes his hands.
The memory steadies.
Her face remains clear.
Fox tries to hold onto it as everything else begins fading.
Her voice follows him into the dark.
“Before the Lady of the Moon, I take you as my husband and bind my life to yours. In joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, I will keep faith with you. No fear, no suffering, and no hand raised against us will make me turn from your side. Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an.”
The last light disappears.
Black.
Fox comes back because pain finds him.
It starts somewhere far away. A hot pulse behind a wall. Then the wall breaks, the pain gets in, and suddenly every part of his face is on fucking fire.
No.
Fire would be better.
Fire burns one place at a time. This is inside his skin, beneath his bones, shoved through his skull and left there to chew. His right eye won’t open. He tries anyway and gets a flash of white so sharp it turns his stomach. The left one works, technically, but everything looks too small and too far away, like he’s watching the gala through the wrong end of a scope.
Fox breathes.
That hurts too.
Good.
Breathing means alive.
He lies still and waits for his thoughts to become thoughts again. They don’t. They’re loose pieces sliding around inside his head.
Floor.
Smoke.
Screaming.
Riyo.
Where’s Riyo?
Fox tries to lift his head.
The whole room rolls sideways.
Bad idea.
His cheek is against the floor. Something wet is beneath it. Blood, probably. His. Someone else’s. Doesn’t matter. The right side of his body tingles from his scalp to his boots, except tingling is too gentle a word. It feels like millions of hot needles being driven into every nerve at once.
His fingers move.
Left hand first.
Right hand after a delay.
Useful.
Not good, but useful.
The gala has mostly emptied. Chairs lie on their sides. Broken glass covers the floor. One of the blue-and-white banners has caught fire near the central platform, and the smoke turns everyone beyond it into shifting shadows.
Too many Jedi aren’t moving.
One lies facedown near a shattered table. Another is crumpled against the wall with a lightsaber still burning beside his hand. Fox can’t tell whether either is breathing.
That seems bad.
Very advanced tactical conclusion.
Fox closes his eye for half a second.
Riyo’s voice comes back to him from somewhere warm and dark.
"No hand raised against us will make me turn from your side."
He opens his eye again.
He shoved her away.
Thorn was near the west corridor. Thorn would take her. Thorn knew the evacuation plan. Thorn had orders.
Good.
Riyo is out.
Probably.
Fox doesn’t have enough brain left to examine the word probably.
A red blade flashes through the smoke.
Palpatine is still fighting.
Of course he is.
The old bastard has spent years pretending to need a cane and now he’s jumping over tables like gravity personally offended him.
Two Jedi press him from either side. Their blades move in tight, fast strikes, forcing him back toward the ruined platform. Windu is still upright somewhere beyond them, though one arm hangs wrong. Kenobi is on one knee. Yoda is moving, which feels important.
Fox watches Palpatine throw one Jedi through a pillar.
The other gets lightning in the chest.
Fox’s face answers with a fresh wave of pain.
He almost blacks out again.
No.
Not yet.
Palpatine hasn’t looked at him.
That’s strange.
Fox should be dead. The lightning hit his face. He remembers light, Riyo falling out of the way, and then nothing.
Palpatine didn’t double tap.
Sloppy.
Or busy.
Fox can work with busy.
He puts his left palm against the floor.
Push.
His shoulder shakes but holds.
His right arm doesn’t want to help. It hangs there, buzzing and stupid, so Fox ignores it. He’s ambidextrous. Mostly. Enough.
He gets onto one elbow.
The gala moves again. Ceiling becomes wall. Wall becomes floor. Fox waits until everything returns to the proper location.
Nobody notices him.
Good.
He thinks he is being stealthy.
He may actually be making enough noise to wake the dead. His hearing is wrong. Everything is muffled and stretched, except for the high tone screaming inside his right ear. He can’t hear his own breath. He can barely hear the lightsabers.
Maybe his face took his hearing with it.
Rude.
Fox drags one knee forward.
His dress uniform catches on broken glass. Three Guard-red ropes trail through blood and dust. One medal has been torn from his chest. The Silver Star is still there because apparently the medal is better built than he is.
He moves again.
Left hand.
Knee.
Pull.
Stop before vomiting.
Repeat.
He should stay down.
Scalper would tell him to stay down. Riyo would order him to stay down, which is worse because she’d use the voice that makes senators apologize for things they haven’t done yet.
Fox has never been good at staying down.
Palpatine turns his back.
Not fully. Just enough.
Fox reaches beneath his jacket.
His fingers find the grip of his DC-17.
Still there.
Wonderful.
Best thing that has happened all evening.
Drawing it is harder than it should be. The holster strap feels like a puzzle designed by someone who hates him personally. His fingers slip once. Twice.
Fox bites down.
That is another bad idea.
Pain bursts through the right side of his face, hot and white and so huge that for a moment he forgets what a blaster is.
Then the weapon comes free.
He almost drops it.
The grip is slick.
Blood again.
His, probably.
Fox braces his left wrist against the floor. He can’t stand. He doesn’t need to. He's made worse shots from worse positions.
Maybe.
He can’t remember.
Palpatine drives Kenobi backward with a burst of lightning. Windu comes in from the side. Yoda moves low beneath the red blade. The remaining Jedi circle, trying to close the gap without giving the Sith another clear line of attack.
Fox raises the blaster.
The weapon weighs too much.
His arm shakes.
Palpatine’s head doubles in Fox’s vision.
Then triples.
Fox blinks.
One Sith Lord is already excessive. Three is insulting.
He tries to line up the center one.
The targeting display is useless. His eye can’t focus on it. Fine. He learned to shoot before HUD overlays became part of his armor.
Point.
Breathe.
Don’t pass out.
The shot has to be clean.
No senator behind the target. No Jedi crossing the line. No chance of striking Windu or Yoda.
Fox waits.
His arm burns.
The right side of his body goes from needles to cold, which seems like a problem for someone else to solve later.
Palpatine spins, catches a Jedi’s blade, and kicks him backward. The movement opens the line.
Back of the head.
Clear.
Fox’s finger tightens.
For one stupid instant, he thinks about paperwork.
There will be so much paperwork.
Assassination of a Chancellor. Killing a Sith Lord. Use of a military weapon at a Senate gala.
Riyo will handle the legal argument.
Assuming she doesn’t kill him for making her watch this.
Fox almost smiles.
It hurts too much.
Palpatine raises both hands toward Windu.
Lightning gathers between his fingers.
Fox fires.
The blue bolt crosses the ruined gala and strikes Palpatine in the back of the head.
Then Fox’s arm drops, the floor rushes up to meet him, and everything goes black again.