Chapter Thirty-Two The First Order
Chapter THIRTY-TWO
The First Order
I screamed.
Vee’s hand went limp, and then she dropped like dead weight to the ground.
He’d shot her. He’d actually killed her.
I fell to my knees, but there was nothing to be done.
One entire side of her processor was blasted through, sparks hissing out in angry static gasps.
I hadn’t thought I had any more tears left, that I could ever cry when I felt so frightened, but they came out in hot, choking gasps anyway.
Val found his footing again, rubbing his throat, which was now red, and turned his blaster on me. He said hoarsely, “I’m sorry, Arie. It was her fault.”
I caught a sob in my throat, pushed it back down. Her fault? “B-but you are the o-one with the weapon,” I stuttered, gulping down another sob, refusing to give him the sight of me coming unraveled. “You shot her.”
He motioned to his men to take the other droid up. Entoo was screaming, ramming into every shin they could, but the men managed to immobilize them. “See if that droid knows anything about the criminal. He has something the First Order wants—”
“A lightsaber,” I interrupted, and I relished his look of surprise. I curled my fingers into fists. I wasn’t useless. I wasn’t just a bird trapped in a cage. “Do you really think I don’t know what comes on and off that ship? You keep underestimating me.”
That must have done it, whittled so far down it cracked his composure. He snapped, “We will get that weapon—with or without you alive. Unlike your droid, I’ll let you choose.”
The words that left his mouth seemed to surprise him, too. Veebee’s powder had worked. And this was how he really felt. It was sobering and solidified something that had been soft in me. Her last words were fresh in my memory—
Your brother will never destroy me.
He also would never threaten me. He would never point a blaster at me.
He loved me. But while his face was familiar, a foreign malice had settled in his cold gaze.
It was something I hadn’t been able to put a name to until just now.
Hatred. The brother who had left three years ago was gone, buried somewhere deep beneath that cruel-cut uniform.
I wondered if, this past week, I’d seen the real him at all.
I wondered if that brother of mine was even still alive.
“You won’t find it,” I finally told him, which was the truth.
He gritted his teeth. “That’s not what I want to hear. He’s going to be angry. He’s going to kill you, Ardent.”
I inclined my head. “Who is?”
Suddenly, there was a flash of silver above us as another ship came out of hyperspace, and in the night sky a ship of darkness and dread appeared, all angles and corners. It wasn’t a ship I’d ever seen before, and I had seen so many in spaceports across the galaxy.
Not a single one of them had made me feel as terrified as I did then.
“Him,” Val whispered.
Above us, a terrible capital ship loomed.
One of the soldiers—Spectacles; I was so disappointed in him—said, “General Hux has arrived, sir.”
Val’s face pinched. He massaged the bridge of his nose, and I noticed that the palm of his hand where he had touched me glittered like fine sand. “I tried to protect you. It’s all my fault what happens next. I mean—it’s n—not….” He touched his mouth with his fingers.
Confusion flickered across his brow.
I smirked. “You’re truthful for once.”
He shot an imploring look down at me, but I just said, “Maybe your conscience is catching up to you.”
His eyes widened.
From the imposing ship came a command shuttle, and it shot straight toward us, kicking up wind and leaves and dust as it descended. My throat stung. The dirt in the air made my eyes water as the command shuttle landed a hundred meters away.
Over the roar of its engines, Val snarled at his men, “Bring out the captain and crew!”
His men jumped at the chance to do just that—gleefully, in fact. I wondered, at first, how five men could have commandeered an entire ship from under my father, but it turned out to have been rather easy in the end.
All Val had to do was threaten my life, and the entire crew folded like a bad sabacc hand.
The men brought my family out and lined them up like prisoners in front of a firing squad.
They stood, handcuffed together, looking worse than I’d ever seen them.
Kotti and the seasonal crew members were dragged out in their pajamas.
Daaric was missing his eye patch, Maeve was missing her front right tooth, and Telly was missing altogether.
My heart began to squeeze with panic, and then I saw my dad.
He went slowly, clutching a wound on his side.
A scream tore out of my throat. I lurched toward him, but Val grabbed me by my jacket and pulled me back. He shoved his blaster into my side.
“He’s fine,” Val snapped. “He got into a bit of trouble when trying to warn you.”
When I had called the Starfarer near Geonosis, when Dad had told me to run. My knees felt weak with the horror of it. Val would do this? Val?
Dad lifted his head to me. Dried blood coated his pristine blue uniform where he clutched his side. His eyes flicked to the corpse of VB-35 at my feet, and anguish crinkled his brow. He mouthed, Love you.
I wanted to cry, but I bit the inside of my cheek to steel myself. I wasn’t going to give Val the satisfaction. I’d already let my emotions get the better of me.
Someone I loved had already died.
From the shuttle came half a dozen stormtroopers, blasters at the ready.
At the center of them was a tall figure clad in black, a nightmarish mask concealing his face.
A chill shivered down my spine at the sight of him.
Beside him walked a redheaded officer in a military uniform, with a jacket and cap, all as black as night.
He pulled at his cuffs in a fussy sort of way, clearly knowing how important he looked flanked by men in armor.
“What backwater planet did you bring us to, Officer Quay?” the redhead asked in an unmistakable and insufferably snide voice. It was the same voice I’d heard outside Val’s room that night on the Starfarer. I guessed this was his commanding officer. “I hope, for your sake, you have what we need?”
“General Hux.” Val greeted him with a salute, fist to his chest—the salute of the Empire. “This girl knows where it is. We’ll tear apart the whole ship if we must.”
This girl—he hadn’t even called me his sister. Maybe that was for the best.
Daaric, from his spot in the lineup, barked a laugh.
“And you know what you’ll find? Suitcases, scared guests, and commemorative Pieces of Alderaan, but you folks refuse to learn from history, don’t you?
” Just as he finished the question, one of Val’s men slammed the butt of his blaster against Daaric’s mouth and told him to shut up.
I gave a start. “Stop! Don’t hurt them!”
The redheaded general—Hux, was it?—bristled. “And who are you to order us?”
Beside him, the tall figure held up a hand in silence, then turned his abysmal gaze on me. “Let the girl speak.”
The voice was deep and terrifying, not quite organic, not quite mechanical, either.
I wondered what was beneath that mask—a droid?
Some sort of sentient monster? The coldness, the flatness of his tone, made me want to run—as far and as fast as I could—but I was frozen to the spot in petrifying fear.
“I warned you,” Val hissed.
Daaric silently implored me not to, while Kotti and Maeve ducked their heads, afraid to watch.
They all saw VB-35 at my feet. They all knew the danger was very, very real.
Dad kept his silence, his stony face all I needed to see.
He knew stories like I knew stories, and despite telling Sian that I looked for the good in everything, I knew that not every story ended well.
Not every one of them could.
But just as I was about to tell Dad how sorry I was, a glint in the distance caught my eye.
Metal? But metals corroded and turned to dust from this planet’s pollen, so it couldn’t be part of a ruin.
And the only other metal objects here were the droids, the Starfarer, the Upsilon-class command shuttle, and—
Starstall.
I faced the warlord and raised my chin high.
I was my father’s child, after all: rebel scum.