Star Wars: Victory’s Price by Alexander Freed

Author:Alexander Freed [Freed, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473590212
Google: 0oX3DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2021-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

II

Yrica Quell listened to the click of the air circulation switching on and felt the resulting breeze on her bruised skin. The hair follicles on her forearms rippled like blown grass and tugged at dried blood. She smelled grease and fried circuits, and tried to appreciate the peace of it all as she leaned into the cushions of the U-wing’s crew seat.

Then Chass na Chadic screamed at an access panel and slammed a hydrospanner against the bulkhead. The brief peace was vanquished.

“You won’t get in there without a torch,” Quell murmured. “Not if the releases are fused.”

“I know that,” Chadic growled.

Quell shrugged and looked from the Theelin to Kairos, who stood in the cockpit doorway. Her body faced the cabin but her head craned to peer out the cockpit viewport. It was an awkward pose, unlike anything Quell normally associated with the woman—she’d always lurked like a statue in shadow, immobile and foreboding. Now she seemed distracted by the stars.

Chadic, too, seemed different. Not just physically, though the crest of her hair was centimeters shorter and flatter than Quell remembered, as if she’d sliced it with a hand plane; but where she’d always been volatile, now she seemed to oscillate between furious and withdrawn, with nothing in between. She was less than the person Quell remembered.

Chadic stared at the bulkhead awhile. Quell waited for her to do the sensible thing, then said it herself: “If we’re going to escape you need to stabilize the power flow. You don’t have the equipment to overhaul the hyperdrive or the navicomputer, so you’re going to have to run a diagnostic to be sure—”

“Don’t patronize me!” Chadic said, and threw the hydrospanner toward Quell. It smacked into the seat centimeters from Quell’s shoulder and fell to the floor. “You want to be in charge, you should’ve stayed with Shadow Wing.”

Quell stretched her foot to kick the hydrospanner across the deck toward Chadic. I wasn’t in charge, she thought. Not by the end, when they planned to kill me. Saying so would’ve only baited Chadic, so she stayed silent.

“Did I know any of them?” Chadic asked. “Your pals down there?”

“Know them?”

“Yeah. Was one of them Char, or Blink, or something?”

“No,” Quell said. “You didn’t know them.”

“Kind of a bunch of morons anyway. Couldn’t shoot straight, couldn’t fight. Couldn’t protect you.”

Quell knew better than to reply. She answered anyway. “Not every pilot knows how to use a blaster. Some of them weren’t even—”

“—teenagers? I noticed. One of them looked younger than Wyl and twice as skinny—”

“—some of them weren’t pilots,” she finished, sucking breath between her teeth. “They were engineers. What—did you see what happened to the kid?”

To Rikton.

Chadic showed her teeth in a sneer. “Don’t know. You should’ve kept a better watch.”

Quell squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think of them. She couldn’t talk to Chadic about it—couldn’t afford to ask whether Rikton and Mirro and Brebtin and Raida were alive or dead. Couldn’t think about whether anyone had rescued Kandende,

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