It took most of the next day to finish patching the worst of the physical damage and cross-wiring enough systems for Reiko to pronounce Allegra's Heart ready to make reentry. Lyra felt well enough to take the controls but Tess sat in the copilot's seat just in case. Comms were one of the first systems they'd repaired previous day, and Tess had contacted her parents to let them know they'd survived. She also told them what had become of Tafo and Ruatha aboard the Kantorius.
After a sleepless, anxious night Tess called back down to Rho-277. Jerric's voice sounded strained through the comm speaker. "Things are tense down here, honeygirl. There was a lot of destruction and loved ones got hurt. Some died. I'm afraid you're going to get a pretty cold reception."
"I know, dad. We've got Allegra patched together but I doubt she'd survive a hyperspace jump. Just give us time to get her fixed up then we'll go." Tess looked pretty miserable saying the words.
"Okay, honeygirl. We'll meet you at the hangar."
"Thanks, dad, see you in an hour. Allegra's Heart out."
Lyra plotted a reentry vector and nudged the debilitated freighter deeper into Beta Fonidian II's gravity well. The deflectors weren't operating at anywhere near their normal capacity but they kept Allegra's Heart from burning to a cinder as it plunged through the atmosphere. They passed through a thick cloud layer at 5,000 meters and rain began pelting the viewports while Lyra slowed their descent with the landing thrusters to save as much strain on the repulsors as she could.
Varun looked grim and Taz let out a whistle as the clouds dissipated. He'd been too busy keeping Numarkos alive during their frantic escape and he hadn't seen the destructive toll it had taken on the base. The shield generator still smoldered and he could see where the laser blasts from Lyra's Striker had wrecked the point defense guns and missile battery. Despite that, crews of humans and droids crowded the hillside emplacements, working to repair all of them.
The broad parkway in front of the admin buildings was cratered with divots from laser cannons. Most of the stormtroopers' bodies had been removed but a few remained. The proton bomb had done its work with terrible efficiency. The enormous pit from its explosion was partially filled, but still scarred the base.
Taz felt a pang—not for the stormtroopers—as far as he could tell they'd never been part of the community here. But he could feel the grief of the Rho-277 residents whose families had felt the impact of their breakout and escape. He could feel their anger, too.
Lyra fired the landing thrusters until they were near the ground then dialed up the repulsors again. Allegra's Heart came to rest on the permacrete landing pad near the hangar. The freighter settled on its struts with a hiss of gasses and the creaking of its stressed hull. Lyra started shutting down systems.
"Let's keep her powered up," Sera advised. "Just in case."
"Right, Captain," Lyra acknowledged, stopping what she was doing.
Through the transparisteel they could see Amanda and Jerric standing at the gaping mouth of the hangar, dozens of workers and Imperials crowding behind them. A fair number had heavy tools in their hands. All of the techs and some of the workers had blasters, probably picked up from the fallen troops.
"They don't look happy to see us." Lyra observed.
"I don't blame them," Reiko spoke up. "We made a mess of their home and probably hurt or even killed some of them."
"Looks like mom and dad have them in hand for now."
"We'll go out and talk to them," Numarkos decided. Tess seconded with a resolute nod. Both of them had donned the uniforms of their respective services and belted on sidearms. Rendix emerged from the cargo hold clad in her combat armor.
They filed toward the broad cargo ramp at the back of the ship. Sera went to the ramp controls, her big G9 rifle resting on her shoulder. "Rei and I'll stay here, just in case things get ugly."
"I hope you won't need to use that," Varun nodded toward her rifle, then twisted the annular switch on his comlink. "I'll keep the channel open."
"Good," Sera agreed. "The codeword is 'mynock'. Any of you say that, we start shooting." She palmed the ramp switch.
The heavy ramp hadn't even touched the ground when Tess flew down it at a dead run, ignoring a shout from Varun. She sobbed and leaped into Jerric's waiting arms, father and daughter falling to their knees. Amanda held her husband and daughter as the others descended warily.
Varun waited for the Daros to finish their emotional reunion. "Thanks for letting us land to make repairs. We won't stay any longer than necessary."
"Take as long as you need," Amanda said. "We reviewed the information you sent, Captain Numarkos. I'm ashamed that we were misled for so long." Looking back at the assembled crowd, she raised her voice. "These are not your enemies, they're friends who had to make a terrible choice"
"You're just saying that because she's your kid!" came a ragged shout from the crowd.
Amanda picked him out of the agitated gathering. "Yes, she's my daughter, Dass Griner, the daughter who was taken from me for ten years by an Empire that lied to every one of us! Tess and her friends have been making terrible choices for years, fighting a war that none of us knew about because Director Tafo and Adjutant Ruatha kept it from us! They deceived us into believing we were helping to bring order to the galaxy. That was a lie," she said, looking betrayed and as dejected as she sounded.
"What about all this destruction?" cried the man named Dass. He stepped forward and gestured sharply with a stormtrooper's E-11 to take in the destruction.
"Stop waving that blaster around before you shoot somebody, Griner," ordered Lieutenant Forstner, stepping out of the crowd flanked by two of the base's security troops. Griner flinched at her sharp, commanding tone and returned to the crowd's front rank, red-faced and grumbling.
Varun stepped toward the Imperial officer. She was wearing an SE-14 pistol at her hip. Her arm was in a sling and the side of her face was red and raw. Some of her light brown hair had been singed away, too. "Lieutenant Forstner, I'm Captain Varun Numarkos of the New Republic Fleet Intelligence Service. You're the ranking Imperial officer here?"
Forstner stared hard at him but said nothing. She lifted her blaster by the back of the receiver and handed it to him.
Varun took the pistol from her. "I asked you a question, Lieutenant," he said with the same commanding tone she'd used.
"Yes I am, Captain Numarkos."
He turned the black, weighty gun in his hand, then gave it back to her. Forstner looked surprised. "I'm not here to accept your surrender Lieutenant Forstner, although I expect you to stand down and to cease any military operations at this facility. If you don't it's my duty to warn you that our ship, battered as she is, still possesses enough punch to make life very uncomfortable for you and everyone here." Aboard Allegra, Sera traversed the dorsal turret, though she kept the triple laser barrels pointed well overhead to avoid looking too threatening.
"I don't understand," Forstner admitted, adding confusion to her surprise as she holstered her blaster. "But for now no action will be taken against you, your crew, or ship, provided you tell me what the hell is going on."
"I'll tell you and everyone." He raised his voice to address the others. "I have hard news that many of you will find disturbing but I ask you to hear me out." He turned to Jerric. "Were you able to bring what I asked for?"
Jerric looked over his shoulder at a teenaged girl and boy, both dressed in worn green coveralls. "Mariska and Kel, can you bring that sled over here?"
The adolescents pulled the sled over; Varun recognized it from when they'd had their last meal with the Daros before they'd been captured. On the cart sat a big holoprojector. Numarkos took a code cylinder from his sleeve pocket and plugged it in. He tapped the projector's controls. Kinetic images appeared in the space above the projector fading from one to the next.
A moon-sized battle station fired its devastating compound laser at a watery planet below. The scene shifted to a tsunami, backed by an enormous mushroom cloud that washed in from far out at sea, towering over the person making the recording, engulfing the seaside Imperial base before the recording went dark.
Another scene, a chaotic battle in space; dozens of Alliance vessels interspersed with huge Star Destroyers and one impossibly large ship in black, the size of a city, that dwarfed all of them. In the distance, another Death Star, larger than the first and unfinished, but fully operational, pulverizing every ship its green superlaser touched. The recording played for some minutes as the gigantic Super Star Destroyer was fatally damaged and fell into the station's gravity well until it punctured the second Death Star's surface and was consumed in a monstrous explosion. A few moments later the station itself disintegrated into an expanding cloud of plasma and debris as its reactor detonated.
The picture changed again. Images of battle over a sand-blasted planet, of dagger-hulled Star Destroyers dragged to their doom by potent tractor beams, Alliance and Imperial vessels falling onto the planet, mortally wounded from the exchange of fire. Then a final scene, the blue-skinned, horned Imperial Grand Vizier Mas Amedda signing the Galactic Concordance with Chancellor Mon Mothma. The image froze, then dissolved. A few in the crowd shuffled, but they were silent.
Varun drew a long breath. "Emperor Sheev Palpatine died two years ago when Alliance naval forces destroyed his Death Star battle station in orbit over the forest moon of Endor. The empire he ruled surrendered to the New Republic a few months ago." A rush of noise went through the crowd. There were angry shouts and a vibrant rumble of disbelief. Forstner looked as stunned as the rest of them, but also suspicious. Apparently she'd been kept in the dark as well.
Varun waited for the noise to subside. He looked back and held out his hand to Lyra with an inviting tilt of his head.
Lyra started. What does he want from me? She felt exposed and anxious, especially in the face of the unconvinced mob. She approached him hesitantly.
"You're an Imperial officer," he said in her ear above the noise. "They might listen to you."
She slid her hand behind her back and Taz took it. Gathering courage, she raised her voice. "My name is Ensign Lyra Nimor. I was a pilot for the Customs Office and the Imperial Navy. We—the Empire—surrendered after a decisive battle on Jakku. The images of ships falling from the sky onto a desert world? That was Jakku. I was there. I fought there, and we lost. The war is over." She squeezed Taz's hand and pressed against him.
The buzz from the crowd was full of ugly overtones. Lieutenant Forstner gave Numarkos a hard look through narrowed eyes, then turned around. "Alright," she called in her commanding tone over the noise. "I'm not sure what to make of this either, but for now, let's hear them out." The assembled workers and techs gradually fell silent. Forstner turned back to Varun.
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"Thank you, Lieutenant." He addressed the crowd again. "For most of the Empire the war is indeed over, but there are some who don't accept the concordance that both sides signed on Chandrila to end hostilities. There's a fleet near Eadu right now, commanded by an Imperial holdout named Admiral Geston Jellick. He and his confederates want to use the crystals you've been mining to arm a fleet of warships with superlaser weapons that can wipe a city off the face of a planet from high orbit. They want to start that war up again." He looked into the eyes of the people watching him.
Lyra was solemn. "Those of us who fought, on both sides—" She glanced over her shoulder at Taz— "are tired of the destruction and death. We know you're hurting and you don't owe us anything. But we're asking for your help to make sure war doesn't come again." The crowd began murmuring again but instead of hostility, there was confusion and uncertainty.
"Seems like you were kept out of the loop as well, Lieutenant," Varun guessed. "I have evidence, taken from your own data vault." He pulled the code cylinder from the projector. "I think you and I should have a conversation about it."
"Yes we should," she said, sounding weary and pained.
Taz put a hand on Lyra's arm then walked over to Forstner. "I'm a medtech and a... healer. I can help you if you'll let me."
She looked skeptical, but Varun nodded. "You can trust him, Lieutenant. My word as an officer."
"You lied to me before about who you were and why you came here."
"A necessary deception. I'm sure you'd do the same in my place." Varun opened his shirt, exposing the new scar on his abdomen. "One of Tafo's stormtroopers shot me at point-blank range. I should be dead now but I'm not, because of him. Taz can help you like he helped me."
Suspicion mingled with curiosity on Forstner's face. After a moment, she nodded.
Forstner's security team trained their rifles on Taz. Numarkos started to object but he held up a hand and Varun relented. Taz took Forstner's arm, closed his eyes, and slipped into the Force. She'd fractured it; not badly, but he could sense the hurt and swelling. The burns on her face were worse. Drugs had dulled the pain but couldn't relieve it entirely. He concentrated on her injuries and let the Force flow through his hand, realigning and knitting her bones, regenerating skin, soothing and rebuilding nerves and tissue.
She sighed, visibly relieved, and shivered as a warm, renewing energy permeated her body. She smiled in spite of herself.
Taz opened his eyes, took a long breath, and stepped back. "There, that should do it, Lieutenant."
She flexed her hand and removed it from the sling. Then she touched her face, incredulous that the pain had gone. Her skin felt smooth and new. "How did you—" Behind her, the crowd hummed.
Taz grinned a little. "I can help with your casualties if you'll take me to your infirmary."
She paused to consider his offer. "Alright, this way." She ordered the security team to keep the crowd in line, then led Taz past the hangar toward the administrative section.
Varun turned to the others. "I'm going with them. Jerric, Amanda, I'd like to show you something we found in the director's data. Can I come by later?"
"Of course, Captain," Amanda acceded.
"Varun's fine, Amanda," he smiled and kissed Tess, then ran off to catch up with Taz and Forstner.
Sera and Rei came down the ramp and stood next to Tess. Jerric shook their hands. "We'll help as much as we can with your repairs but as you probably saw on your way in, we've got a fair bit of cleanup to do."
"We can handle most of the work ourselves and we'll stay out of your way," Sera assured him.
"Oh, you left something behind." Over his shoulder, he called, "Archeson, bring that cart."
The wiry-haired woman appeared from the side of the crowd and approached them, pushing a repulsor cart in front of her.
As she got nearer, Reiko's face lit up. "Yuzu!" she cried. The droid lay face down on the cart, painted metal limbs askew.
Archeson wiped her hands on a stained rag and tucked it in her back pocket. "I collected nearly all of the components. It took shots to the power controller, secondary motion processor, and right leg, but the verbobrain's intact."
Reiko looked over the parts with tears in her eyes, then up at the older mechanic. "Thank you!" she uttered and grasped Archeson's hand.
"Come find me if you want help fixing him up." It wasn't quite an apology for the way she'd treated them earlier but it was probably as much as she'd get from the taciturn woman.
Tess took her parent's hands. "Thank you, dad, mom, truly."
Jerric squeezed his daughter's hand. "Let's talk later. Come to the house for dinner, all of you." He turned back to the crowd. "Alright everyone, this place won't fix itself. Let's get to work!"
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The base's small infirmary wasn't intended to treat more than a few people at once. Beds and cots had been squeezed into the too-small space for the wounded, who numbered in the dozens. Most had burns and other traumatic injuries. Many looked like they'd suffered severe radiation burns. Nearly all were in pain; some just groaned and looked uncomfortable, but some writhed and uttered wretched sounds. Varun uttered a surprised gasp when they entered. Taz wore the sober look of a combat veteran who'd seen that kind of suffering for years.
A pair of dilapidated MD-5 medical droids moved from cot to cot, tending the patients as best they could. A middle-aged man wearing the light blue uniform of an Imperial medic stabbed at his datapad in frustration. He glanced up when Taz walked over, looking harried and overwhelmed. "What?" he snapped.
"I'm Taz Oktos. I'm a medic."
"Sure you are, Rebel," the other man sneered.
"War's been over for over a year. I'm not a rebel, and I'm not your enemy."
The man looked back at Forstner, incredulous. "Lieutenant?"
"It's true, apparently," she affirmed. "He's here to help, Gorecke." She waved her healed arm for emphasis. "Let him."
Gorecke sized up Taz, still leery. After a few seconds he tilted his head toward one of the droids. "That one'll fill you in on the casualties."
"Where'd all these patients come from?" Taz could see that many of them were stormtroopers. Many more were Imperial techs who he couldn't remember having seen before.
Gorecke waved vaguely toward the mountains. "The other facility. Their infirmary was treated to a century's worth of gamma rays when their ship chased after you. The lucky ones died instantly from the radiation and ion blast. These are what's left."
"Why haven't they been treated for pain?"
Gorecke issued a harsh grunt. "They were, until the meds ran out." He waved a truculent arm. "This look like a trauma ward to you? We're equipped for industrial accidents, not for saboteurs starting a war."
Taz could understand the man's anger, even if he didn't agree with what lay behind it. Instead of arguing, he said, "Right. I'll just get started, then." He turned to Varun. "Call back to the ship. Tell them I need everything in the medbay that's not bolted down, especially pain and radiation meds. As soon as they can." Then he went to consult with the medical droid.
Varun relayed the instructions to Sera, then returned his comlink to his belt. "I understand your people are going to take some convincing, Forstner."
"Yes they will, Captain." She looked around the medbay. "Let's talk elsewhere."
Varun cast a look at Taz. "Oktos-grasha, are you going to be okay?"
Taz looked up from the datapad the droid had given him. "I'm fine, Varun. Go do whatever it is intelligence officers do."
Despite the grim surroundings, Varun made a snarky grimace. Forstner led the way out.
"I'd like to take a look at Tafo and Ruatha's offices."
"Why should I let you?"
Varun scratched his eyebrow. "I'd really rather have your cooperation, Forstner, but just so we're clear, I'm not asking." He let out a breath. "They deceived you, probably for years, Lieutenant. Don't you want to find out why?"
She looked skeptical and suspicious but after a few steps, she nodded. "Very well." They turned toward the tall administration building, picking their way around rubble and blast craters. Work gangs and maintenance droids busied themselves loading the debris into mining cars.
"Where'd the boys in white come from?"
Forstner looked distinctly uncomfortable. "There's another installation seventy kilometers from here, hidden in the mountains." She frowned. "I didn't know anything about it until the stormtroopers showed up. The backblast from the Kantorius's drives demolished most of it and the radiation made the rest uninhabitable. The survivors were the ones in the mines and factory. They escaped the worst of it."
"Are they all in the infirmary?"
Forstner shook her head. "Most but not all. Half a dozen troops and some engineers. We set up temporary quarters at the manufacturing center for them."
"Troops?" Varun challenged.
"Mine security. They'll stay put until I say otherwise."
Varun pursed his lips and gave her a slow nod. "The Kantorius is the corvette Tafo and Ruatha had?"
Forstner answered with her own nod. "The installation had a big hangar, plus maintenance facilities and garrison quarters."
"Exactly how much did you know about what was going on here?"
They walked through the admin center's doors and down the corridor, avoiding the debris that had fallen when the data vault exploded. They entered the lift and the little car ascended. "I knew the crystals were intended for weapons. That's what we do in the factory; cut the crystals into standard sizes and fit them into alignment frames."
"Nothing else?" Varun asked as the lift stopped at the floor beneath Tafo's office.
"I saw references to a class of Star Destroyer called Onager. It's specialized for planetary sieges and orbital bombardment. I assumed our crystals were being used for that but everything was need-to-know. The director and adjutant kept the specifics to themselves."
"I've never seen an Imperial installation without a comms tower. Any idea why you don't have one here?"
"We were told it was due to operational secrecy. The director said he was receiving regular updates from Imperial High Command. I knew asking how would be useless so I didn't bother."
"It's probably buried in the mountains. What about families? Friends? You've been out here for, what, five years?"
"A few were permitted to bring family members but most of the Imperial staff were selected for their lack of familial ties."
"You included?"
Forstner made no response. They stopped before a solid-looking, windowless black door. It seemed garishly out of place at the end of the stark white corridor. She took a code key from her pocket and gave it to Numarkos.
Varun inserted the key and tried the door. It snapped open with a quick hiss. The room was covered in dust from the cracked permacrete, but otherwas it was as severe and austere as Ruatha herself. Except for the back wall, every surface was covered with displays that showed live images from scores, maybe even hundreds of security cameras. Groups of video panels had feeds from the mines and assembly complex. Others showed the public spaces, paths, and work areas. Half of the right-hand wall was dominated by feeds from the concealed hangar facility, though all that could be seen was blackened, blasted rubble.
Forstner took it in with an officer's calm, evaluative eye. "ISB."
"Almost certainly," Varun seconded. "Nobody else is this paranoid." He noted the heavy safe behind the desk with its biometric lock. There was little hope of him opening it, but he made a note to inquire about getting a plasma cutter. He sat behind her desk and cocked a corner of his mouth. "Glad I got out before they infected me."
Forstner stared at him from across the desk. "You were ISB?"
"Surprised? I graduated from Corulag and got accepted to the ISB academy at Imperial Center. Never made it to Agent status, though I was headed that way."
"What happened?"
"My aunt," he answered. "I didn't know it at the time but she'd been running a Rebel cell for nearly a decade. She convinced me to turn my loyalties back to my home planet instead of serving the Empire."
"So you're a traitor."
Varun shrugged. "From a certain point of view; in the eyes of the Empire, I suppose so." He glanced at her blaster. "Want to shoot me for treason? I'd appreciate it if you didn't, by the way."
Forstner glared at him hard but she didn't move. After a while she let out a breath. "I should but what good would it do, if what you said is true?"
"It is," he assured her and took the code cylinder from his pocket. "I'll show you."
She came around to stand at his shoulder. An array of displays at the desk was dark. Varun tapped a key on the desk's terminal and they flickered to life. Forstner stiffened and made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat.
"What's wrong?"
Red-faced, she pointed to one of the monitors displaying feeds from four cameras. "That's my place." There were views of the bedrooms and bathroom, as well as the living spaces. An elderly man sat in an overstuffed chair, swathed in blankets and watching an old holodrama. A nursing droid was close by.
Forstner seethed. "She was watching. Everything." She worked the controls. Tafo's residence and his office appeared on other monitors. The Daros' house was there, and many others. Forstner's disgusted look turned to fury.
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant but I'm not surprised. An isolated outpost like this would surely drive an ISB agent to these measures. They're trained to see disloyalty everywhere." Varun tapped at the controls. "Looks like all of the feeds were being recorded in the data vault. Since we destroyed it the records have been purged." He entered a command on the surveillance system to disable all of the cameras and recording devices. The Execute button blinked on the console. "Would you like to—?"
The words had barely left his mouth when her finger jabbed the button.
"Feels ugly to know she was watching you, doesn't it, Lieutenant?"
The Imperial officer didn't respond but she looked relieved as she pulled a chair over. "It's Lissora."
"What is?"
"My name. Lissora Forstner." She stuck out her hand.
Varun took it. "It's good to make your acquaintance, Lissora Forstner."
"Likewise," she said, sitting in the chair. "Now show me what you found."