May. 16th, 2019 09:57 pm
All The Stars Are Closer
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skitzofreakAn alternate timeline, where Steela Gerrera is the one to survive the Clone Wars, lead the Partisans, and raise Jyn Erso on the front lines of a rebellion.
(15 BBY / Lothal Year 3261)
You could be doing so much more, the dull white words read, and Steela glared at the datapad in her hand as the ship shuddered and rattled around her. The hard edge of the bunk under Steela’s legs pressed into the backs of her thighs like dull knives with each unsettling jolt, but she ignored it, ignored the alarming creaking of the ancient bulkheads around her, the overt vibrations running through the deck plating. The Partisans were not the poorest equipped rebel operation in the galaxy these days, but they still had to scrounge for gear around the Empire’s ever-tightening grip on the markets. So this old freighter was the best she had available for this little…side trip.
On the cracked screen of the console in the corner of her tiny personal cabin (being the commander had it’s perks), the frozen image of an old friend still crackled. Lyra Erso had scrambled the comm line between her little farm and the emergency channel Steela had set up for her, but Steela had left her end open. In the small part of her mind not occupied with the datapad in her hand, Steela was trying hard (and failing) to avoid calculating out the odds that Lyra was already dead. Almost two days since her transmission, two full days since her image had burst over Steela’s console screen in a screech of static – Steela, they found us! – then frozen as Lyra immediately initiated a full wipe of all her console drives. Which was good, Steela reminded herself. That was what she was supposed to do. It was what they had rehearsed. Also as they had rehearsed, Steela had immediately ordered the freighter to turn and full burn for Lah’mu. Her inspection of the Partisan cell on Kothlis could wait, Lyra could not. Not if the Empire had found her.
No, Steela reminded herself absently, prodding at the offensive sentence on the datapad screen, she supposed the Empire had found Galen. Any record marking Lyra as a person of interest to the Empire had long been destroyed, and if anyone in the grey uniform knew who Jyn Erso was, Steela would eat her own damn boot. The Empire had spent years hunting Galen Erso and his brilliant mind, that poncy administrator in his fancy cape more than happy to rip through any obstacle in his way regardless of the collateral damage. That was all Lyra and her small child were. That was all anyone they didn't plan to use were to the Empire. Collateral damage.
But this was defeatist thinking. Lyra was still alive, Steela reminded herself. Huddled in a cold, dark bunker in the hills behind her farm, trying to keep her little girl’s hungry protests quiet, trying to keep her withdrawn, self-absorbed husband occupied. (Force help her, Steela had never and probably would never understand what Lyra saw in Galen Erso. A smart man, a decent man, sure – but a man, in Steela’s opinion, with his gaze fixed firmly on his own navel and no intention of lifting his head if he could help it.)
Not that Steela didn’t sometimes see the appeal of that. The freighter jolted again, so hard this time her teeth rattled, and she had to drop one hand from the datapad to the bunk to steady herself. Under Lyra’s frozen image in the corner, the messages light blinked on Steela’s console – a few dozen urgent messages from Partisan cells all over the galaxy, looking for orders from their commander, looking for more supplies, more information, more reassurance, more hope. And all looking to Steela Gerrera to provide it.
And yet, on the datapad before her – you could be doing so much more. Steela wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes, bared her teeth at the datapad, made her face into a rictus of fierce rage. A Warrior’s Mask, Saw used to call it, when he showed her images of their Onderonian ancestors pulling similar snarling expressions. A Human face made strange and frightening, to weaken the enemy’s resolve and strengthen the warrior’s spirit. Not that Steela saw many holos of Onderonian ancestors these days – not after the Empire had begun to ‘relocate’ museum pieces to various Core worlds, and ‘clean up’ the historical sources available to locals on her home planet.
Steela widened her terrible grin and stuck out her tongue, raising her eyebrows as high as she could and watching her dim reflection on the datapad screen grimace back at her. It was almost soothing, letting her anger twist and pull at her features, but then her cheeks began to hurt, and she let her face relax. Under her thumb, the almost accusing words still glowed. You could be doing so much more. As if Ahsoka didn’t think Steela was stretched thin enough over the three dozen systems her Partisans fought in.
The hell of it was, she was not entirely wrong.
This war will not be won with blasters or bombs, Ahsoka’s message said, a little further up the screen. The rebellion will not rise above the Emperor’s evil with gunships and destroyers. It will not even survive the next few years unless we find new ways to fight back. I have a network in place, small yet effective. But I need your help.
Steela was less a creature of words than she was a creature of deeds, but she could read between the lines of that piece of the message easily enough. A war fought with spies and politicians, that’s what it meant. Force, Saw would have hated that. Steela pursed her lips and closed her eyes, let herself ride the brief flash of grief that always accompanied thoughts of her long-dead brother. It passed, as it always did (faster and faster as the years went by, except for the times when it hit her like a crowbar to the heart and haunted her for days), and then looked once more to the datapad. Idly, she scrolled the letter from Ahsoka a little further down, keeping the screen’s automatic shut-off from engaging. Work with me, Steela, the letter said (requested, cajoled, because Ahsoka never said things anymore unless she needed something, unless she had some goal for the saying). You are one of the most connected people we have in the Inner Rim. I need the intel the Partisans could provide. You need better access to Alliance Command’s resources. Neither of us can carry the burden of this war alone, my friend.
(It’s a weapon, Lyra bites her lip and stares at her hands, clenching and unclenching pale fingers on the diner bartop. Steela nurses her beer and watches Lyra’s knuckles whiten more than usual, notes the usual bits of earth under Lyra’s nails flaking and dropping to the smooth surface as her friend works through the hard truth. He’s building a weapon, and he doesn’t even know it. He’s being used, Steela, but he won’t listen to me because ‘Orsen’s my friend, love, and I know you don’t like him but –‘
She stops, her hands clenched so hard they are trembling, and all Steela can do is sigh and set down her glass. So then, she says at length under the gentle noise of the diner, what shall you do? What would you have me do?)
Out loud in her cabin, Steela lifted her head and snapped, “What would you have me do, Tano? You’re not even supposed to be alive.”
The cabin rattled in response; a short-tang vibroblade fell through a hole in the safety netting to clatter on the deck. The torn bit of netting swung gently over it, frayed ends swaying in time to the old ship’s excessive movement. She glared at the net, then the loose blade. Debated simply leaving it to rattle and bounce around the floor. Why should she have to clean up everything around here? She had at least a dozen other Partisans on this ship, her own personal cadre. She had a medical droid and a cleaning droid, old and in need of repairs as they were. She had…she had…
Steela sighed, set the datapad down on the bunk, and went to fetch the blade. Good blades were hard to find these days (people who knew how to use them where even harder). No sense letting this one get chipped or lost because she was in a snit. No sense letting her personal standards drop because she was worried about her friend. Steela didn’t have enough friends left that she could afford to lose another.
Not that she had lost Lyra yet, even if the Empire had descended on her isolated hiding place.
Not that she would lose Ahsoka, even if she refused the other woman’s offer.
I count you as one of the Alliance’s greatest assets, Ahsoka told her, and even through the impersonal flat words of the datapad screen, Steela could hear the conviction and warmth of the Jedi’s voice. Ahsoka Tano had many gifts, but her strongest, in Steela’s experience, was her fierce, uncompromising sincerity. Well, that, and her ability to fall completely and utterly off the galactic radar when she so chose. An enviable skill, Steela thought as she glanced at her blinking console, noting the parade of unread messages from the many, many people who needed something from Steela Gerrera. People who by necessity knew who she was and how to contact her at any time. Sooner or later, one of them would sell her to Empire. It hurt to think so, but Steela had been fighting for too many years already, had lost too much. Seen too many people gunned down by their allies not to assume it would be her own fate one way or another. Ahsoka’s ability to vanish from the world would come in handy then, for sure.
It might have come in handy four years ago, too, though Steela was working hard not to think about that. (If it were just me, Lyra whispers, tucking her shaking hands under her arms and staring with empty, unseeing eyes at the plate of uneaten food in front of her. If it were just me, I’d let him make his choices. I’d stay with him, and face whatever fate came to us. But…
But Jyn, Steela finishes the sentence as Lyra trails off.
But Jyn, Lyra agrees, and for the first time since she walked into the diner to meet Steela, her face loses the unfocused, lost quality that had made her seem small and uncertain. Steela watches Lyra’s eyes turn sharp and her jaw turn hard. Jyn Erso is four years old, has spent at least three of those years living with ‘Uncle Orsen’ half-camped in her home while her parents’ smiles grow more and more brittle. Steela suspects that Krennic showers toys and presents on the child as half bribe, half warning, and wonders how much of it Jyn understands.
Krennic doesn’t get Jyn, Lyra says after a long silence, and her voice is flat, final. And he doesn’t get Galen.
Steela pushes her half-finished beer away, and turns to look her friend in the eye. What would you have me do?)
Help me, my friend, Ahsoka’s letter begged (bargained, commanded). Together we will keep the rebellion alive. You have done much for the free peoples of the galaxy, I know this. You could be doing so much more.
(Galen Erso looks around the small homestead, the overgrown fields and the worn prefab house built into the dirt to keep it warm in the winters. Are we safe here?
Beside him, Lyra sighs and sets their four year old child into his arms, where the girl squirms like a puppy, chattering away about the adventures she and her dolls will surely have in these rolling black hills as her parents stand silent and uncertain. As safe as we can be, Lyra tells her spouse, and turns back to Steela. As safe as anyone could possibly make us, she adds firmly, because of course she can see the doubt in Steela’s eyes. She has always been able to see what is in Steela’s eyes.
As safe as I can make anything, Steela agrees, and wishes she had more to give. Overhead, the grey Lah’mu sky rumbles, and a chill mist rolls in from the hills almost faster than the eye can follow. A prelude to heavier storms, Steela thinks. A poor omen for a new home.
Mama! Jyn Erso exclaims over her father’s shoulder, tiny fist clutching the ill-fitting, second-hand shirt that Steela had procured for him. Mama, look! Rain! Her high-pitched giggle rings out through the muffling mists, and Steela turns in time to see Lyra’s hard expression soften around the edges. Jyn reaches up with her free hand and tugs a strand of her own messy brown hair forward, watching as the silver mist collects on the line and then drips softly to her father’s shirt. I’m raining, Papa, look!
Yes, Stardust, Galen replies, his voice softer and sweeter than Steela has yet heard. Rain.)
The intercom crackled over her head, just barely loud enough over the rattling, banging, slamming rhythm of the old ship shaking itself apart. “We’re about to drop out of hyperspace, Commander. Five minutes until landfall. Unless a Star Destroyer’s sitting over the house,” her pilot adds dryly. “In which case, I guess we’re about five minutes from being space dust. Either way, buckle up!”
“Thank you, Pel,” she replied briskly, shaking her head to banish silvery rain and a child’s delighted laughter. “All fighters to battle stations. Tell the gunners they are clear to fire on sight of any Imperial vessel.”
“Copy, guns hot and free,” Pel crackled back cheerfully, and the intercom went silent again.
On the console, Lyra’s frozen, slightly blurry image was turned away from Steela, only part of her cheek and jaw visible, dark hair fluttering around in an unkempt halo as she turned to look behind her. Lyra had stopped wearing the elaborate braids of her homeworld years ago, but Steela still sometimes found herself startled at the change.
In the background of the image, a small form was just barely visible. Despite herself, Steela leaned forward and peered at the image. The figure clutched something fuzzy and white, a doll of some kind, the too-large straps of some oversized pack hanging loosely over her bony shoulders. Possibly everything she owned was in that sack. Or at least, everything she would own in about five minutes, when Steela swooped from the sky and plucked her family off the only homeworld the child probably remembered. Steela squinted a little more at the image, trying to pick out more details. Eight year old Jyn was still small, chubby cheeked and wide eyed, but her messy brown hair was now in two tight, intricate braids.
Steela wondered what it meant, that Lyra wore her hair in a tired, sloppy bun, but took the obvious time and care to see her child’s hair woven in the correct style for a pre-pubescent child of the upper middle class in Aria Prime’s capital city.
(Steela, they found us!)
The ship jolted once again, harder than before, and Steela slammed her palm against the bulkhead to keep herself from pitching forward to the deck. She held her breath, but a moment later the intercom crackled again.
“No enemy contacts on scope,” Pel informed her, and Steela allowed herself to breathe out. “Cleared to land, entering atmo in thirty seconds. Looks like luck is on our side, Skipper.”
“We shall see,” Steela murmured.
But luck, she discovered as the freighter settled with a roar next to the husk of a burned-out prefab, had not sided with Steela after all. The ever-present rains of Lah’mu had suppressed any flame or smoke, but the prefab had burned long enough for the rounded roof to cave in, for the walls to crumble and splinter into blackened shards stabbing into the grey sky at odd angles. It was a testament to the Empire’s thorough cruelty; even the nearby workshop had been torched into a pile of charcoaled wreckage, a few shattered bits of an old SE droid piled carelessly nearby.
Steela barely looked at any of it, her focus drawn to the only thing in the immediate vicinity that did not appear to have been touched by fire.
“May the Force shelter and warm her,” Idryssa murmured, sweeping her hands through the sodden air with an artful gesture of sorrow. Then, when no one responded, she sighed and touched Steela’s shoulder. “Bury her, or burn her, Commander? What were her traditions?”
A tomb in the great Temple on Coruscant, the thought swum up through Steela’s mind like a leviathan rising from some deep, dark ocean, slow and cold and distant. But that was before, when Jedi were real. She stepped slowly towards the pile of cold meat and muddy rags shaped like her friend, knelt into the mud, pulled away her heavy gauntlet and shivered as the chill air curled around her exposed skin.
Or perhaps there had been something on Aria Prime that Lyra would have preferred, except Lyra had left Aria Prime, Lyra no longer wore her hair in the braids of a scholar and explorer, Lyra no longer –
Steela’s fingers found the place on the chilled neck where a heartbeat should have been.
(As safe as I can make you.)
It hadn’t been enough.
“Spread out,” Idryssa said to the rest of the crew from somewhere right behind Steela’s shoulder and far, far away. “Search for any signs of life. She was not here alone, was she, Commander?”
(Steela, they found us!)
“Spouse,” Steela managed, and scrubbed at her wet face with wet hands, tugged at her wet scarf over wet hair because everything here was wet, everything here was damp and covered in black mud. Cold. Filthy.
Dead.
They left her to rot in the mud. Steela’s jaw clenched and her heart ached and ached. If Saw could see this, he would rage for hours, he would fly out and find the beast who left a good woman piled like so much refuse in a field -
Idryssa’s voice, calm and practical as ever, took on a commanding edge. “The spouse, look for the spouse! Any bodies in the – ah, I mean, is anybody in the house?”
(He’s building a weapon, and he doesn’t even know it. He’s being used, Steela, and he won’t listen - )
(You could be doing so much more.)
“Empty!” Pel stuck her head out of the burned ruins, pink lekku almost obnoxiously bright and cheerful against the grey and black devastation around her. “Not even much stuff here to burn, looks like. No datapads or drives, either, although I’ll do a double sweep on that if you want, Skipper. Oh, but,” she stuck one pink arm up into the air and waved something small and white at them. “I did find this. Stormtrooper doll. Your friend a, um, collector or something?”
(Look, Mama! Rain!)
Shit!
“They have a child!” Steela exclaimed, memory and terror and hope surging up inside and driving her to her feet, “A child! Find her!”
The crew paused, startled by her sudden burst of energy, by her announcement. Then Idryssa’s composed face paled, Pel squeaked in horror as she clutched the stormtrooper doll to her chest, and even Benthic’s dark eyes narrowed in surprise and concern. The cadre turned to regard the ruined farm in earnest now, J-zzar dropping to their knees to take a deep whiff of the earth, Hozem riffling through his pack for some tracking gizmo or other. Steela left them to it, in case they found something. In case Lyra’s spouse and child had run no farther than Lyra had before the soldiers in white armor turned their rifles on her back and –
“Bury the body,” Steela pointed to Hozem, who bowed as she marched away from the wreckage. She gestured sharply to Idryssa over her shoulder. “With me.”
“Yes, Commander,” Idryssa yanked her serrated dagger from her belt and fell into step with Steela.
“I’m low,” Steela told her as she pulled her rifle from her back and began to snap the elongated barrel and power-concentrator mod to the body of it. It was still possible that the armored dogs of the Empire might yet wander these hills, and Steela had no intention of meeting them unprepared.
“That scuffle in Mygeeto ran us all low,” Idryssa sighed, and handed Steela one of her own backup blaster ammo packs. Steela clipped it to her configured rifle, completing the transformation from semi-auto short-range configuration to sniper configuration.
“We’ll resupply in D’Qar,” Steela dropped her voice low and softened her step, moving as swiftly as she dared and as quietly as she could over the rough terrain of the hills.
“Alliance always wants too much for supplies,” Idryssa’s voice took on a harsher note than usual, a tang of bitterness around the edges.
Not this time, Steela thought but kept to herself. Not after I call Tano.
She was tired of not doing enough.
But first –
The cave was empty when Steela swept her scope across it from the nearest hilltop. No signs of life. No white armor. Not even any footprints in the soft mud, any evidence of passage swept away by rain. Steela waited a solid ten minutes anyway, lying in the muck on her belly as she peered through the scope. She flipped between infrared and electromagnetic, checking for both organic and synthetic life forms. The days of the droid armies had passed, but some lessons were learned hard, and not soon forgotten.
Idryssa wore fewer layers than Steela and no armor to speak of, but she stayed just as still and watchful beside her commander. She also scanned the area with her macrobinoculars, and a faint beeping sound told Steela that she was skipped through local frequencies in her earpiece as well, checking for Stormtrooper comms in the area.
At last, Steela decided that if there was some kind of ambush or trap down there, she would just have to deal with it up close.
The hatch was exactly where she remembered it, but when she tugged at the disguised lid, she discovered it was only half-latched. Someone had not entirely engaged the seal on the inside. Or, perhaps, been unable to fully rotate the heavy, slightly rusted lock-wheel. As she entered the code only she and three other people in the galaxy could possibly have known (two, now, and perhaps less), she found herself –
Not praying. No, the last time Steela Gerrera had prayed had been almost eight years ago, dangling over a cliff edge on Onderon with her brother’s hand painfully tight around her own. If there was anything in the galaxy that listened to prayers, it hadn’t helped Saw then, and it wouldn’t help Steela now. So she did not, as she hooked her still-bare fingers under the gritty edge of the hatch and shoved upwards, pray.
But she did, for a brief moment, hope. She hoped that when she opened this hatch, the soft warm light of the emergency lamps she had stocked in the hide-out glowed beneath her. She hoped that a man holding his probably frightened but healthy child would call out her name, grieving but safe from the Empire. Safe from his own genius. She lifted and she hoped -
Light spilled over her shoulder and down into a completely black hole beneath her. No lamps. No man. No movement.
“Sorry, Commander,” Idryssa said softly. “It seems they did not make it this far after – “ She stopped abruptly as Steela’s fist flashed into a ‘hold’ gesture, Idryssa’s blade glinting at the ready in a moment. For the second time that day, Steela dropped to her knees in the cold mud of Lah’mu and stared down into nothing.
She had not imagined it. She could not have imagined –
Movement. A tiny scuffling sound, a whispered gasp.
“Come, child,” Steela called into the darkness. “It is time to come out.”
Another moment, and then a small form pulled herself into the dim light of the open hatch. Jyn Erso looked up at her, squinting into the light with red-rimmed eyes dulled from hunger and exhaustion. The girl’s clothes were stained with dried mud and grass, her braids tangled and frayed around her dirty face. One small hand was wrapped uselessly around a broken emergency lamp, the other clutched at something near her throat.
Idryssa gasped softly, and fumbled at her belt until she found her own torch. The beam of light flashed down the old ladder and made the girl flinch.
Steela’s rage at the Empire burst over her like a tidal wave, but now was not the time. Now was not the place. So she waited a moment for it to recede to manageable levels, and then leaned forward and stretched out her hand. “Come, Jyn.” Steela forced her voice to be light and calm. “We have a long way to go,” she said, and knew in a moment of pure understanding that it was more true than she had even meant. Whatever path Steela walked now, wherever she led the Partisans or this little girl peering up at her, whatever fate waited for them all at the end, it would be…a long way to go.
But this was not the time, and the child had no need of predictions or premonitions. She needed food, warmth, a place to rest. So Steela put it aside, put it all aside, and held out her hand into the dark.
“M- Mama,” Jyn began, then fell silent, her voice scratchy from disuse and tears and probably dehydration. “She’s gone,” the child said at last, and Steela felt the rage rise within her once more, another terrible wave crashing through her heart. She took a deep breath, let it break over her, let it recede.
“I know.” Steela glanced up at Idryssa, her eyebrows raised, and nodded to the entrance of the cave. The other woman climbed to her feet and hurried out, already calling up Pel on the comm, ordering them to bring the ship to her location. No need to take the child back to the burned out house. No need for her to see –
“Papa,” Jyn swallowed, or tried to, her dry lips so chapped they had cracked and bled at some point in the last two days.
“Later,” Steela tried to stop her, but too late, the girl’s eyes narrowed, her chin lifted, and though her voice wobbled and cracked, there was a current flowing underneath it when she spoke, a current that Steela recognized all too well.
“He left,” she said. “He - he left.”
(The injustices done to our people cannot go unchallenged, sister, Saw growls, his eyes narrow, his chin raised high, the rage flowing beneath his words like the deceptively swift currents of a calm river. What our so called king did was cruel, and he will answer for it.
He will, Steela promises, but not today, brother. Not yet. Wait for the right moment. Gather our forces. Wait.)
(Steela takes her own advice. Saw does not.)
“Yes, he left. And so must we, for now,” she said at last. “We have a long way to go,” she repeated, feeling the truth of it stretch out before her feet. “And much to do.”
It took the child a long, awkward moment to scramble up the rusty ladder, but eventually she was close enough for Steela to grab her by the shirt and pull her the rest of the way. “What do we – “ she paused, coughed a little. Behind her, Steela could hear the rattle of the old freighter engine drawing closer. In front of her, Jyn Erso lifted her smudged chin, defiance and fear mixed in equal measure throughout her tiny frame. “What are we going to do?”
(He’s building a weapon.)
Whatever Ahsoka asks of me, Steela thought to herself, so long as she helps me find what I must now seek.
“More,” she told the girl, and stood with her hand still outstretched.
Jyn took it, her tiny fingers tinged blue around the nails as she shivered in the cold, wet wind of Lah’mu. Clothes, Steela added to her mental list of necessary supplies. And boots - those soft rag-shoes would fall off Jyn’s feet in a week on Onderon.
(You will help me find Galen Erso, she will tell Ahsoka’s blurry holographic face, hours later when she finally gets a secure line to the Alliance’s spymaster.
And help you keep your little secret safe, Ahsoka will add thoughtfully, peering through the hololens at the huddled form sleeping in Steela’s lap.
As safe as we can make her, Steela will reply slowly, but with iron in her voice.
Not an easy task, my friend.
If the Alliance cannot protect one child, what good is it?
And Ahsoka will laugh, and nod, which will not surprise Steela at all. Whatever her failures, however hard she tries to hide behind her symbols and her hooded avatars and her austere personas, Steela has always known Ahsoka Tano to be a good person. Welcome to Fulcrum, Steela, she will say. Let’s get to work.)
“I want to go home,” Jyn said from her side, watching the old freighter settle into the mud before them, the ramp extending with a metallic groan. The words were so soft that Steela nearly missed them over the clatter and roar of the ship, but they caught her ear just under the cacophony and struck true to her heart.
(Krennic doesn’t get Jyn.)
“Perhaps someday you shall,” Steela answered as Idryssa walked up the ramp and turned to wait for them. Benthic appeared a moment later, his repeater cannon in his hands, his dark eyes scanning the horizon for Imperial patrols. Jyn peered up at the Partisans, shivered and pressed closer to Steela’s side.
Steela rubbed her bare thumb as soothingly as she could over the girl’s small hand, and stepped forward, tugging the child gently along with her. “But first, we have a long way to go.”
.
(15 BBY / Lothal Year 3261)
You could be doing so much more, the dull white words read, and Steela glared at the datapad in her hand as the ship shuddered and rattled around her. The hard edge of the bunk under Steela’s legs pressed into the backs of her thighs like dull knives with each unsettling jolt, but she ignored it, ignored the alarming creaking of the ancient bulkheads around her, the overt vibrations running through the deck plating. The Partisans were not the poorest equipped rebel operation in the galaxy these days, but they still had to scrounge for gear around the Empire’s ever-tightening grip on the markets. So this old freighter was the best she had available for this little…side trip.
On the cracked screen of the console in the corner of her tiny personal cabin (being the commander had it’s perks), the frozen image of an old friend still crackled. Lyra Erso had scrambled the comm line between her little farm and the emergency channel Steela had set up for her, but Steela had left her end open. In the small part of her mind not occupied with the datapad in her hand, Steela was trying hard (and failing) to avoid calculating out the odds that Lyra was already dead. Almost two days since her transmission, two full days since her image had burst over Steela’s console screen in a screech of static – Steela, they found us! – then frozen as Lyra immediately initiated a full wipe of all her console drives. Which was good, Steela reminded herself. That was what she was supposed to do. It was what they had rehearsed. Also as they had rehearsed, Steela had immediately ordered the freighter to turn and full burn for Lah’mu. Her inspection of the Partisan cell on Kothlis could wait, Lyra could not. Not if the Empire had found her.
No, Steela reminded herself absently, prodding at the offensive sentence on the datapad screen, she supposed the Empire had found Galen. Any record marking Lyra as a person of interest to the Empire had long been destroyed, and if anyone in the grey uniform knew who Jyn Erso was, Steela would eat her own damn boot. The Empire had spent years hunting Galen Erso and his brilliant mind, that poncy administrator in his fancy cape more than happy to rip through any obstacle in his way regardless of the collateral damage. That was all Lyra and her small child were. That was all anyone they didn't plan to use were to the Empire. Collateral damage.
But this was defeatist thinking. Lyra was still alive, Steela reminded herself. Huddled in a cold, dark bunker in the hills behind her farm, trying to keep her little girl’s hungry protests quiet, trying to keep her withdrawn, self-absorbed husband occupied. (Force help her, Steela had never and probably would never understand what Lyra saw in Galen Erso. A smart man, a decent man, sure – but a man, in Steela’s opinion, with his gaze fixed firmly on his own navel and no intention of lifting his head if he could help it.)
Not that Steela didn’t sometimes see the appeal of that. The freighter jolted again, so hard this time her teeth rattled, and she had to drop one hand from the datapad to the bunk to steady herself. Under Lyra’s frozen image in the corner, the messages light blinked on Steela’s console – a few dozen urgent messages from Partisan cells all over the galaxy, looking for orders from their commander, looking for more supplies, more information, more reassurance, more hope. And all looking to Steela Gerrera to provide it.
And yet, on the datapad before her – you could be doing so much more. Steela wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes, bared her teeth at the datapad, made her face into a rictus of fierce rage. A Warrior’s Mask, Saw used to call it, when he showed her images of their Onderonian ancestors pulling similar snarling expressions. A Human face made strange and frightening, to weaken the enemy’s resolve and strengthen the warrior’s spirit. Not that Steela saw many holos of Onderonian ancestors these days – not after the Empire had begun to ‘relocate’ museum pieces to various Core worlds, and ‘clean up’ the historical sources available to locals on her home planet.
Steela widened her terrible grin and stuck out her tongue, raising her eyebrows as high as she could and watching her dim reflection on the datapad screen grimace back at her. It was almost soothing, letting her anger twist and pull at her features, but then her cheeks began to hurt, and she let her face relax. Under her thumb, the almost accusing words still glowed. You could be doing so much more. As if Ahsoka didn’t think Steela was stretched thin enough over the three dozen systems her Partisans fought in.
The hell of it was, she was not entirely wrong.
This war will not be won with blasters or bombs, Ahsoka’s message said, a little further up the screen. The rebellion will not rise above the Emperor’s evil with gunships and destroyers. It will not even survive the next few years unless we find new ways to fight back. I have a network in place, small yet effective. But I need your help.
Steela was less a creature of words than she was a creature of deeds, but she could read between the lines of that piece of the message easily enough. A war fought with spies and politicians, that’s what it meant. Force, Saw would have hated that. Steela pursed her lips and closed her eyes, let herself ride the brief flash of grief that always accompanied thoughts of her long-dead brother. It passed, as it always did (faster and faster as the years went by, except for the times when it hit her like a crowbar to the heart and haunted her for days), and then looked once more to the datapad. Idly, she scrolled the letter from Ahsoka a little further down, keeping the screen’s automatic shut-off from engaging. Work with me, Steela, the letter said (requested, cajoled, because Ahsoka never said things anymore unless she needed something, unless she had some goal for the saying). You are one of the most connected people we have in the Inner Rim. I need the intel the Partisans could provide. You need better access to Alliance Command’s resources. Neither of us can carry the burden of this war alone, my friend.
(It’s a weapon, Lyra bites her lip and stares at her hands, clenching and unclenching pale fingers on the diner bartop. Steela nurses her beer and watches Lyra’s knuckles whiten more than usual, notes the usual bits of earth under Lyra’s nails flaking and dropping to the smooth surface as her friend works through the hard truth. He’s building a weapon, and he doesn’t even know it. He’s being used, Steela, but he won’t listen to me because ‘Orsen’s my friend, love, and I know you don’t like him but –‘
She stops, her hands clenched so hard they are trembling, and all Steela can do is sigh and set down her glass. So then, she says at length under the gentle noise of the diner, what shall you do? What would you have me do?)
Out loud in her cabin, Steela lifted her head and snapped, “What would you have me do, Tano? You’re not even supposed to be alive.”
The cabin rattled in response; a short-tang vibroblade fell through a hole in the safety netting to clatter on the deck. The torn bit of netting swung gently over it, frayed ends swaying in time to the old ship’s excessive movement. She glared at the net, then the loose blade. Debated simply leaving it to rattle and bounce around the floor. Why should she have to clean up everything around here? She had at least a dozen other Partisans on this ship, her own personal cadre. She had a medical droid and a cleaning droid, old and in need of repairs as they were. She had…she had…
Steela sighed, set the datapad down on the bunk, and went to fetch the blade. Good blades were hard to find these days (people who knew how to use them where even harder). No sense letting this one get chipped or lost because she was in a snit. No sense letting her personal standards drop because she was worried about her friend. Steela didn’t have enough friends left that she could afford to lose another.
Not that she had lost Lyra yet, even if the Empire had descended on her isolated hiding place.
Not that she would lose Ahsoka, even if she refused the other woman’s offer.
I count you as one of the Alliance’s greatest assets, Ahsoka told her, and even through the impersonal flat words of the datapad screen, Steela could hear the conviction and warmth of the Jedi’s voice. Ahsoka Tano had many gifts, but her strongest, in Steela’s experience, was her fierce, uncompromising sincerity. Well, that, and her ability to fall completely and utterly off the galactic radar when she so chose. An enviable skill, Steela thought as she glanced at her blinking console, noting the parade of unread messages from the many, many people who needed something from Steela Gerrera. People who by necessity knew who she was and how to contact her at any time. Sooner or later, one of them would sell her to Empire. It hurt to think so, but Steela had been fighting for too many years already, had lost too much. Seen too many people gunned down by their allies not to assume it would be her own fate one way or another. Ahsoka’s ability to vanish from the world would come in handy then, for sure.
It might have come in handy four years ago, too, though Steela was working hard not to think about that. (If it were just me, Lyra whispers, tucking her shaking hands under her arms and staring with empty, unseeing eyes at the plate of uneaten food in front of her. If it were just me, I’d let him make his choices. I’d stay with him, and face whatever fate came to us. But…
But Jyn, Steela finishes the sentence as Lyra trails off.
But Jyn, Lyra agrees, and for the first time since she walked into the diner to meet Steela, her face loses the unfocused, lost quality that had made her seem small and uncertain. Steela watches Lyra’s eyes turn sharp and her jaw turn hard. Jyn Erso is four years old, has spent at least three of those years living with ‘Uncle Orsen’ half-camped in her home while her parents’ smiles grow more and more brittle. Steela suspects that Krennic showers toys and presents on the child as half bribe, half warning, and wonders how much of it Jyn understands.
Krennic doesn’t get Jyn, Lyra says after a long silence, and her voice is flat, final. And he doesn’t get Galen.
Steela pushes her half-finished beer away, and turns to look her friend in the eye. What would you have me do?)
Help me, my friend, Ahsoka’s letter begged (bargained, commanded). Together we will keep the rebellion alive. You have done much for the free peoples of the galaxy, I know this. You could be doing so much more.
(Galen Erso looks around the small homestead, the overgrown fields and the worn prefab house built into the dirt to keep it warm in the winters. Are we safe here?
Beside him, Lyra sighs and sets their four year old child into his arms, where the girl squirms like a puppy, chattering away about the adventures she and her dolls will surely have in these rolling black hills as her parents stand silent and uncertain. As safe as we can be, Lyra tells her spouse, and turns back to Steela. As safe as anyone could possibly make us, she adds firmly, because of course she can see the doubt in Steela’s eyes. She has always been able to see what is in Steela’s eyes.
As safe as I can make anything, Steela agrees, and wishes she had more to give. Overhead, the grey Lah’mu sky rumbles, and a chill mist rolls in from the hills almost faster than the eye can follow. A prelude to heavier storms, Steela thinks. A poor omen for a new home.
Mama! Jyn Erso exclaims over her father’s shoulder, tiny fist clutching the ill-fitting, second-hand shirt that Steela had procured for him. Mama, look! Rain! Her high-pitched giggle rings out through the muffling mists, and Steela turns in time to see Lyra’s hard expression soften around the edges. Jyn reaches up with her free hand and tugs a strand of her own messy brown hair forward, watching as the silver mist collects on the line and then drips softly to her father’s shirt. I’m raining, Papa, look!
Yes, Stardust, Galen replies, his voice softer and sweeter than Steela has yet heard. Rain.)
The intercom crackled over her head, just barely loud enough over the rattling, banging, slamming rhythm of the old ship shaking itself apart. “We’re about to drop out of hyperspace, Commander. Five minutes until landfall. Unless a Star Destroyer’s sitting over the house,” her pilot adds dryly. “In which case, I guess we’re about five minutes from being space dust. Either way, buckle up!”
“Thank you, Pel,” she replied briskly, shaking her head to banish silvery rain and a child’s delighted laughter. “All fighters to battle stations. Tell the gunners they are clear to fire on sight of any Imperial vessel.”
“Copy, guns hot and free,” Pel crackled back cheerfully, and the intercom went silent again.
On the console, Lyra’s frozen, slightly blurry image was turned away from Steela, only part of her cheek and jaw visible, dark hair fluttering around in an unkempt halo as she turned to look behind her. Lyra had stopped wearing the elaborate braids of her homeworld years ago, but Steela still sometimes found herself startled at the change.
In the background of the image, a small form was just barely visible. Despite herself, Steela leaned forward and peered at the image. The figure clutched something fuzzy and white, a doll of some kind, the too-large straps of some oversized pack hanging loosely over her bony shoulders. Possibly everything she owned was in that sack. Or at least, everything she would own in about five minutes, when Steela swooped from the sky and plucked her family off the only homeworld the child probably remembered. Steela squinted a little more at the image, trying to pick out more details. Eight year old Jyn was still small, chubby cheeked and wide eyed, but her messy brown hair was now in two tight, intricate braids.
Steela wondered what it meant, that Lyra wore her hair in a tired, sloppy bun, but took the obvious time and care to see her child’s hair woven in the correct style for a pre-pubescent child of the upper middle class in Aria Prime’s capital city.
(Steela, they found us!)
The ship jolted once again, harder than before, and Steela slammed her palm against the bulkhead to keep herself from pitching forward to the deck. She held her breath, but a moment later the intercom crackled again.
“No enemy contacts on scope,” Pel informed her, and Steela allowed herself to breathe out. “Cleared to land, entering atmo in thirty seconds. Looks like luck is on our side, Skipper.”
“We shall see,” Steela murmured.
But luck, she discovered as the freighter settled with a roar next to the husk of a burned-out prefab, had not sided with Steela after all. The ever-present rains of Lah’mu had suppressed any flame or smoke, but the prefab had burned long enough for the rounded roof to cave in, for the walls to crumble and splinter into blackened shards stabbing into the grey sky at odd angles. It was a testament to the Empire’s thorough cruelty; even the nearby workshop had been torched into a pile of charcoaled wreckage, a few shattered bits of an old SE droid piled carelessly nearby.
Steela barely looked at any of it, her focus drawn to the only thing in the immediate vicinity that did not appear to have been touched by fire.
“May the Force shelter and warm her,” Idryssa murmured, sweeping her hands through the sodden air with an artful gesture of sorrow. Then, when no one responded, she sighed and touched Steela’s shoulder. “Bury her, or burn her, Commander? What were her traditions?”
A tomb in the great Temple on Coruscant, the thought swum up through Steela’s mind like a leviathan rising from some deep, dark ocean, slow and cold and distant. But that was before, when Jedi were real. She stepped slowly towards the pile of cold meat and muddy rags shaped like her friend, knelt into the mud, pulled away her heavy gauntlet and shivered as the chill air curled around her exposed skin.
Or perhaps there had been something on Aria Prime that Lyra would have preferred, except Lyra had left Aria Prime, Lyra no longer wore her hair in the braids of a scholar and explorer, Lyra no longer –
Steela’s fingers found the place on the chilled neck where a heartbeat should have been.
(As safe as I can make you.)
It hadn’t been enough.
“Spread out,” Idryssa said to the rest of the crew from somewhere right behind Steela’s shoulder and far, far away. “Search for any signs of life. She was not here alone, was she, Commander?”
(Steela, they found us!)
“Spouse,” Steela managed, and scrubbed at her wet face with wet hands, tugged at her wet scarf over wet hair because everything here was wet, everything here was damp and covered in black mud. Cold. Filthy.
Dead.
They left her to rot in the mud. Steela’s jaw clenched and her heart ached and ached. If Saw could see this, he would rage for hours, he would fly out and find the beast who left a good woman piled like so much refuse in a field -
Idryssa’s voice, calm and practical as ever, took on a commanding edge. “The spouse, look for the spouse! Any bodies in the – ah, I mean, is anybody in the house?”
(He’s building a weapon, and he doesn’t even know it. He’s being used, Steela, and he won’t listen - )
(You could be doing so much more.)
“Empty!” Pel stuck her head out of the burned ruins, pink lekku almost obnoxiously bright and cheerful against the grey and black devastation around her. “Not even much stuff here to burn, looks like. No datapads or drives, either, although I’ll do a double sweep on that if you want, Skipper. Oh, but,” she stuck one pink arm up into the air and waved something small and white at them. “I did find this. Stormtrooper doll. Your friend a, um, collector or something?”
(Look, Mama! Rain!)
Shit!
“They have a child!” Steela exclaimed, memory and terror and hope surging up inside and driving her to her feet, “A child! Find her!”
The crew paused, startled by her sudden burst of energy, by her announcement. Then Idryssa’s composed face paled, Pel squeaked in horror as she clutched the stormtrooper doll to her chest, and even Benthic’s dark eyes narrowed in surprise and concern. The cadre turned to regard the ruined farm in earnest now, J-zzar dropping to their knees to take a deep whiff of the earth, Hozem riffling through his pack for some tracking gizmo or other. Steela left them to it, in case they found something. In case Lyra’s spouse and child had run no farther than Lyra had before the soldiers in white armor turned their rifles on her back and –
“Bury the body,” Steela pointed to Hozem, who bowed as she marched away from the wreckage. She gestured sharply to Idryssa over her shoulder. “With me.”
“Yes, Commander,” Idryssa yanked her serrated dagger from her belt and fell into step with Steela.
“I’m low,” Steela told her as she pulled her rifle from her back and began to snap the elongated barrel and power-concentrator mod to the body of it. It was still possible that the armored dogs of the Empire might yet wander these hills, and Steela had no intention of meeting them unprepared.
“That scuffle in Mygeeto ran us all low,” Idryssa sighed, and handed Steela one of her own backup blaster ammo packs. Steela clipped it to her configured rifle, completing the transformation from semi-auto short-range configuration to sniper configuration.
“We’ll resupply in D’Qar,” Steela dropped her voice low and softened her step, moving as swiftly as she dared and as quietly as she could over the rough terrain of the hills.
“Alliance always wants too much for supplies,” Idryssa’s voice took on a harsher note than usual, a tang of bitterness around the edges.
Not this time, Steela thought but kept to herself. Not after I call Tano.
She was tired of not doing enough.
But first –
The cave was empty when Steela swept her scope across it from the nearest hilltop. No signs of life. No white armor. Not even any footprints in the soft mud, any evidence of passage swept away by rain. Steela waited a solid ten minutes anyway, lying in the muck on her belly as she peered through the scope. She flipped between infrared and electromagnetic, checking for both organic and synthetic life forms. The days of the droid armies had passed, but some lessons were learned hard, and not soon forgotten.
Idryssa wore fewer layers than Steela and no armor to speak of, but she stayed just as still and watchful beside her commander. She also scanned the area with her macrobinoculars, and a faint beeping sound told Steela that she was skipped through local frequencies in her earpiece as well, checking for Stormtrooper comms in the area.
At last, Steela decided that if there was some kind of ambush or trap down there, she would just have to deal with it up close.
The hatch was exactly where she remembered it, but when she tugged at the disguised lid, she discovered it was only half-latched. Someone had not entirely engaged the seal on the inside. Or, perhaps, been unable to fully rotate the heavy, slightly rusted lock-wheel. As she entered the code only she and three other people in the galaxy could possibly have known (two, now, and perhaps less), she found herself –
Not praying. No, the last time Steela Gerrera had prayed had been almost eight years ago, dangling over a cliff edge on Onderon with her brother’s hand painfully tight around her own. If there was anything in the galaxy that listened to prayers, it hadn’t helped Saw then, and it wouldn’t help Steela now. So she did not, as she hooked her still-bare fingers under the gritty edge of the hatch and shoved upwards, pray.
But she did, for a brief moment, hope. She hoped that when she opened this hatch, the soft warm light of the emergency lamps she had stocked in the hide-out glowed beneath her. She hoped that a man holding his probably frightened but healthy child would call out her name, grieving but safe from the Empire. Safe from his own genius. She lifted and she hoped -
Light spilled over her shoulder and down into a completely black hole beneath her. No lamps. No man. No movement.
“Sorry, Commander,” Idryssa said softly. “It seems they did not make it this far after – “ She stopped abruptly as Steela’s fist flashed into a ‘hold’ gesture, Idryssa’s blade glinting at the ready in a moment. For the second time that day, Steela dropped to her knees in the cold mud of Lah’mu and stared down into nothing.
She had not imagined it. She could not have imagined –
Movement. A tiny scuffling sound, a whispered gasp.
“Come, child,” Steela called into the darkness. “It is time to come out.”
Another moment, and then a small form pulled herself into the dim light of the open hatch. Jyn Erso looked up at her, squinting into the light with red-rimmed eyes dulled from hunger and exhaustion. The girl’s clothes were stained with dried mud and grass, her braids tangled and frayed around her dirty face. One small hand was wrapped uselessly around a broken emergency lamp, the other clutched at something near her throat.
Idryssa gasped softly, and fumbled at her belt until she found her own torch. The beam of light flashed down the old ladder and made the girl flinch.
Steela’s rage at the Empire burst over her like a tidal wave, but now was not the time. Now was not the place. So she waited a moment for it to recede to manageable levels, and then leaned forward and stretched out her hand. “Come, Jyn.” Steela forced her voice to be light and calm. “We have a long way to go,” she said, and knew in a moment of pure understanding that it was more true than she had even meant. Whatever path Steela walked now, wherever she led the Partisans or this little girl peering up at her, whatever fate waited for them all at the end, it would be…a long way to go.
But this was not the time, and the child had no need of predictions or premonitions. She needed food, warmth, a place to rest. So Steela put it aside, put it all aside, and held out her hand into the dark.
“M- Mama,” Jyn began, then fell silent, her voice scratchy from disuse and tears and probably dehydration. “She’s gone,” the child said at last, and Steela felt the rage rise within her once more, another terrible wave crashing through her heart. She took a deep breath, let it break over her, let it recede.
“I know.” Steela glanced up at Idryssa, her eyebrows raised, and nodded to the entrance of the cave. The other woman climbed to her feet and hurried out, already calling up Pel on the comm, ordering them to bring the ship to her location. No need to take the child back to the burned out house. No need for her to see –
“Papa,” Jyn swallowed, or tried to, her dry lips so chapped they had cracked and bled at some point in the last two days.
“Later,” Steela tried to stop her, but too late, the girl’s eyes narrowed, her chin lifted, and though her voice wobbled and cracked, there was a current flowing underneath it when she spoke, a current that Steela recognized all too well.
“He left,” she said. “He - he left.”
(The injustices done to our people cannot go unchallenged, sister, Saw growls, his eyes narrow, his chin raised high, the rage flowing beneath his words like the deceptively swift currents of a calm river. What our so called king did was cruel, and he will answer for it.
He will, Steela promises, but not today, brother. Not yet. Wait for the right moment. Gather our forces. Wait.)
(Steela takes her own advice. Saw does not.)
“Yes, he left. And so must we, for now,” she said at last. “We have a long way to go,” she repeated, feeling the truth of it stretch out before her feet. “And much to do.”
It took the child a long, awkward moment to scramble up the rusty ladder, but eventually she was close enough for Steela to grab her by the shirt and pull her the rest of the way. “What do we – “ she paused, coughed a little. Behind her, Steela could hear the rattle of the old freighter engine drawing closer. In front of her, Jyn Erso lifted her smudged chin, defiance and fear mixed in equal measure throughout her tiny frame. “What are we going to do?”
(He’s building a weapon.)
Whatever Ahsoka asks of me, Steela thought to herself, so long as she helps me find what I must now seek.
“More,” she told the girl, and stood with her hand still outstretched.
Jyn took it, her tiny fingers tinged blue around the nails as she shivered in the cold, wet wind of Lah’mu. Clothes, Steela added to her mental list of necessary supplies. And boots - those soft rag-shoes would fall off Jyn’s feet in a week on Onderon.
(You will help me find Galen Erso, she will tell Ahsoka’s blurry holographic face, hours later when she finally gets a secure line to the Alliance’s spymaster.
And help you keep your little secret safe, Ahsoka will add thoughtfully, peering through the hololens at the huddled form sleeping in Steela’s lap.
As safe as we can make her, Steela will reply slowly, but with iron in her voice.
Not an easy task, my friend.
If the Alliance cannot protect one child, what good is it?
And Ahsoka will laugh, and nod, which will not surprise Steela at all. Whatever her failures, however hard she tries to hide behind her symbols and her hooded avatars and her austere personas, Steela has always known Ahsoka Tano to be a good person. Welcome to Fulcrum, Steela, she will say. Let’s get to work.)
“I want to go home,” Jyn said from her side, watching the old freighter settle into the mud before them, the ramp extending with a metallic groan. The words were so soft that Steela nearly missed them over the clatter and roar of the ship, but they caught her ear just under the cacophony and struck true to her heart.
(Krennic doesn’t get Jyn.)
“Perhaps someday you shall,” Steela answered as Idryssa walked up the ramp and turned to wait for them. Benthic appeared a moment later, his repeater cannon in his hands, his dark eyes scanning the horizon for Imperial patrols. Jyn peered up at the Partisans, shivered and pressed closer to Steela’s side.
Steela rubbed her bare thumb as soothingly as she could over the girl’s small hand, and stepped forward, tugging the child gently along with her. “But first, we have a long way to go.”
.
