CHAPTER NINE
Darkknell
“You will have to accept help from your enemy.”
Agent Gray’s ominous words continued to ring in Poe’s mind as the old ITT he and the others were in made its way across the deserted plains that separated the various cities and settlements of Darkknell. He had never been a fan of riddles and preferred straight answers over murky responses. However, he doubted Gray would elaborate upon questioning and would simply tell him to wait until they got to their destination, whatever that was.
Of course, that wasn’t going to stop him from trying.
He had given it a good hour or so, once they were far away from Xakrea, that he finally looked over at Gray and fixed him with a quizzical look. “What exactly did you mean back there? About us accepting help from the enemy?”
Gray was silent for a long moment, and Poe was positive that he was going to remain silent for the rest of the trip. Then, to his surprise, the agent spoke.
“Not everyone is supportive of the First Order.”
Poe rolled his eyes. “That goes without saying. Why do you think we’re here?”
“I’m not just talking about the Resistance. There are plenty of Imperials who stand against the First Order.”
Poe gave him a bewildered look. “But… the First Order is the Empire. Isn’t it? I mean, besides the name….”
“I cannot fault you for thinking that,” Gray replied. “But my time behind enemy lines has shed some considerable light on the situation. From my understanding, there has been a secret schism within the First Order’s ranks, and those who oppose Supreme Leader Snoke have gone into hiding in order to evade execution for treason.”
“And they’re here on Darkknell?” Rey asked from behind them, having overheard their conversation.
“Yes.” Gray readjusted the transport’s shift and the vehicle’s speed began to slowly climb down. “And you’re about to meet them.”
Poe tensed in apprehension as he looked back outside. Coming up ahead was a lone settlement out on the desert plains of Darkknell. Consisting of a single street with five buildings on either side, it looked as if it housed no more than a few hundred people in total.
Despite what Gray had said, Poe wasn’t sure how he felt about working about Imperials, even if they had supposedly separated from the First Order. While he had flown alongside Imperial fighters during the Glorian War, those three years were overshadowed by the twenty years of war as well as the betrayal from two years ago. In his mind, if these Imperials had truly deserted, then they wouldn’t have been calling themselves Imperials. They would have done what Finn had done and leave that life behind entirely.
As the ITT drove up to the small town, Poe saw a squad of stormtroopers standing guard at the entrance. Their once-pristine white armor was covered in mud and dirt, and some of them were even missing pieces. One of them, whom Poe took to be a commander judging by the faded yellow stripes on their arms, wasn’t even wearing a helmet, revealing the face of a grizzled bearded man.
The commander walked up to the driver’s side of the transport and Gray rolled down the window to greet him. No words were exchanged between the two men as Gray handed him his identification. The stormtroopers then stepped aside to allow the ITT to roll on into the settlement.
Once the transport had come to a stop, Poe and the others disembarked from the vehicle. As they stepped outside, Poe saw a man in an unbutton Imperial officer’s uniform step out from one of the buildings, flanked by two stormtroopers. The officer eyed Poe and his allies with suspicion but that suspicion turned into concern when he saw Gray.
“Has your position been compromised?”
“Yes.” Gray raised his hands to remove his helmet. He pulled it off and shook free a head full of long sandy hair. A beard of a similar color covered his face. “The First Order has practically taken control of Xakrea and installed their own governor. And they’re using the Tandoon Clan has enforcers.”
“Blast,” the officer muttered. “That means we’re not long for this world. We’ll need to evacuate.”
“We haven’t got the fuel,” said one of his stormtrooper guards. “We won’t be able to get our ships flight ready in time.”
The officer scowled but did not refute the statement. “Then we’ll have to hope we don’t get noticed until they are.” He stopped to look over at Poe and his companions, and a gleam of recognition seemed to enter his eyes. “Wait. It’s Dameron, isn’t it? Commander Dameron?”
Poe blinked in surprise. “Uh, yes. Yes, I am. Have we met?”
The officer smirked. “Not in person, but I believe we have spoken over comms before.” He extended a hand. “Admiral Trebor Horan. Although you might have known me as a captain back then.”
Poe’s eyes went wide and he couldn’t help a smile as he took the other man’s hand in his own and shook it firmly. “Now I know where I’ve heard that voice before. Battle of Ringo Vinda, right? We were fresh off the victory at Rhen Var.”
Horan nodded. “Indeed. I suppose planets with those initials are my charm.”
Poe chuckled before looking around the small settlement. “So, how did you end up here? Gray tells me you deserted—”
“Not deserted,” Horan firmly corrected him. “It is those who stand with the First Order that are the treasonous ones. We represent the true Empire.”
Poe glanced around at the stormtroopers with beat-up, dirty armor. Then he looked back to Horan and arched an eyebrow. “Not exactly the Emperor’s finest, are you?”
Horan sighed heavily, not rising to the barb. “We haven’t had a true Emperor for a long time.” He then gestured for them to follow him. “Come inside. We have a lot of stuff to go over.”
* * *
Once Poe and the others had been seated at the wide, round meeting table, refreshments in hand, Admiral Horan sat across from them along with the grizzled stormtrooper commander from outside and another commander whom, to Poe’s slight surprise, was a female Devaronian rather than a human as he was accustomed to stormtroopers being. Poe now knew the grizzled stormtrooper to be Commander Ronn Jokar of Joker Squad, a stormtrooper unit that had risen to prominence during the Glorian War.
After taking a sip of lukewarm water, Horan set down his flask and began speaking. “We’re not exactly sure where or how the First Order came to be, but we have our theories. Our understanding is that they started out as the remnants of Admiral Rax’s forces left over after the Battle of Jakku.”
Poe nodded. He had only been three years old at the time, but he knew from his parents’ stories that, in the year after Endor, an Imperial named Admiral Gallius Rax had engineered a campaign codenamed Operation: Cinder that had led to the devastation of numerous worlds in the name of the late Emperor. It had all culminated in the Battle of Jakku, which had seen to Rax’s demise and the decimation of his forces, with the survivors retreating for parts unknown. It had long been believed that most of them had been absorbed into the various warlord factions that had risen in Palpatine’s wake, although such theories had never been confirmed.
“The earliest we’ve been able to trace their activities has been to the years following the Imperial Sith War,” Horan went on. “My guess is that, after the Sith were defeated, they decided it was time to put their plans into motion. Or, alternatively, they had always been loyal to the Sith and were now continuing what they had started.”
“The first red flag was the Children of Vader crisis,” said Commander Jokar. “I had only just enlisted when I heard about the attacks on New Alderaan and Hosnian Prime. I was worried that the Empire was already slipping back into its old ways after it had just agreed to peace with the New Republic. But Pellaeon had made it clear that he condemned the actions of the cult, even if he and the Moffs could never fully explain how some cultists got their hands on two Star Destroyers.”
“Two years after that was when the dominoes really started to fall,” Horan said. “General Brendol Hux mysteriously died and was replaced with his son Armitage. Then, Pellaeon quietly retired and was replaced by Rolan Verradun. As far as we can tell, Verradun wasn’t privy to the First Order but several of the Moffs were, including Lecersen, and they manipulated Verradun to do as they pleased.”
“The Glorian War delayed their plans by a few years,” said Jokar. “It caught them off guard as much as it did the rest of us. But after the invaders were dealt with, it was back to business. That was when Lecersen kicked off his plot with the help of the renegade Sith.”
“It always ties back to the Sith,” grumbled the Devaronian commander, taking a swig from a flask of something that probably wasn’t water.
Poe grimaced as he took it all in. “If the Moffs were in on it, then why did the First Order get rid of them?”
“Probably because they would have gotten in the way,” Horan said. “They were willing to stab Pellaeon and Verradun in the back. Snoke would have been no different, and he knew that.”
“And what do you have on Snoke?”
Horan sat back and raised his hands. “No more than you do. He’s covered his tracks extremely well.”
Finn leaned forward in his seat. “So after Snoke took over, you guys separated from the rest?”
“Not all at once,” Jokar said. “My squad and I were the first to leave. It was pretty easy since the Moffs wanted us gone, especially after the Glorian War. They couldn’t sleep with the fact that some bottom-of-the-rung stormtroopers were the ones to get the credit in helping to destroy the Glorians’ Star Forge.”
“My squad left shortly after,” said the Devaronian woman. “We were all non-humans, and with Snoke bringing back the humanocentrism that plagued the Empire, we knew we would be the first on the cutting block.”
Finn looked at her and Poe saw his face light up in recognition. “You’re Commander Tian Davla, aren’t you? Of Devil Squad.”
The Devaronian looked at him in surprise, as did Horan and Jokar. “Have we met?”
Finn shifted awkwardly. “In passing. My operating number was FN-2187.”
Davla’s eyes went wide. “You were one of Phasma’s boys.”
“I was. I deserted a year ago after Kylo Ren massacred a village on Jakku.”
Horan shuddered at the name. “And there’s the reason I left. I heard about the massacre and that was the last straw for me. Took the Harbinger and my crew and cut off all contact with the rest of the fleet. No idea if they’re still tracking us, but from what I’ve gathered they’ve got other things to keep them occupied.”
“So you’ve got a Star Destroyer here on Darkknell?” asked Jessika.
“We’ve got it parked in a cavern about five kilometers from here,” said Jokar. “Not ideal, but it’s the only way we could hide a ship of that size. It’s low on fuel anyway and we haven’t been able to get it back up.”
Poe leaned back in his seat and looked over to Agent Gray. “So how did you come to meet these guys? And why didn’t General Organa tell me about them?”
Gray sighed. “Because I didn’t inform her.”
Poe narrowed his eyes. “Why not?”
“I knew she would order me to cease contact with them and reassign me to another location. And that was not an order I wanted to follow.” Gray leaned over and clasped his hands over the table. “I strongly believe that the Resistance needs to reconsider its strategy on taking down the First Order… and that requires working with someone that already has an idea on how it operates.”
“Then recruit them into the Resistance,” Poe said. He gestured to Finn. “We’ve already got one ex-stormtrooper. What’s a hundred more? Sure, General Helricks might throw a fit about it, but I’m sure General Organa would—”
Gray was already shaking his head. “Doing so would bolster the Resistance’s numbers, yes. But it’s not numbers we need from the Empire—the true Empire. It’s their image.”
Poe frowned. He did not like where this conversation was heading. “What are you talking about?”
“The reason why the Resistance has failed to get any major support or victories is because the galaxy is tired of conflict. Over the course of the last seventeen years, we’ve already been through two separate wars, and that’s not including the horrors that have been inflicted on Ossus and Mandalore. The war we fight now against the First Order is already seen as a repeat of the war against the Galactic Empire from four decades prior. I know this because I’ve heard as much from the people who live in Xakrea. To them, it’s just the Rebellion and the Empire again.”
“Okay? So what? Shouldn’t that mean that they realize the evil the First Order poses and that they should support the Resistance?”
“You would think so,” Gray said. “But unfortunately that is not the case. Again, the people are tired, Commander Dameron. They are fatigued. They want it all to end, even if it means taking the easy route. And that easy route is to surrender.”
Poe struck the table with the palm of his hand. “No! I refuse to believe that. There has to be some fight in these people left!”
“And maybe there is. But the Resistance has failed to light the spark in their hearts.” Gray’s blue eyes gleamed. “But I think I might have.”
“Oh, yeah?” Poe said skeptically. “And how is that?”
Gray gestured over to Horan and his commanders. “We give them a choice. The First Order… or the Empire.”
Poe glanced over at the Imperials before giving Gray an incredulous look. “They’re the same thing.”
“Even after what they’ve told you?”
“I’m sorry, but….” Poe shook his head. “I don’t see how this can work. People know what the Empire is, what they’ve done…. If they were willing to support the Empire, they would already be backing the First Order. The differences are minimal.”
“On the surface, perhaps. But not if you look at the bigger picture.”
Poe shook his head again, running a hand over his face. He then looked at Gray pointedly. “Why are you even advocating this? Whose side are you even on?”
“I am on the galaxy’s side,” Gray said firmly. “I am trying to do what is right for it.”
“And you think by siding with the Empire, you’re doing what’s right?”
Gray sighed and looked away from Poe. “I understand this is difficult for you to fully comprehend. You are biased; your parents were veterans of the First Galactic Civil War and you have been fighting against the Empire until sixteen years ago. Even after the Glorian War, you still don’t fully see them as allies and you continue to think of things as black and white. I say this not as a criticism of you, but as an assessment. Before bringing you here, I knew this was a long shot. But it was one I had to take.”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the table. Everyone averted each other’s gaze, wary of a heated argument breaking out. Forty years worth of tension loomed over them, even if most of them were too young to remember it or even experience it.
To Poe’s surprise, it was Rey who was the first to speak. And the words that came out of her mouth were the last thing he expected her to utter.
“I think it could work.”
Poe’s head snapped to her, incredulity plastered over his face. Finn looked at her in surprise as well, as did Jessika, Beaumont, Rose, Selena, and Shyra. Even the Imperials seemed taken aback. Only Gray remained expressionless, although he seemed to look at Rey with a hint of intrigue.
“Do you?” he asked.
Conscious of the stares aimed in her direction, Rey shrugged sheepishly. “I mean… it’s worth a shot, isn’t it? We shouldn’t throw away an option just because it sounds ridiculous. It could even work.”
Poe leaned forward. “Look, I get it. You grew up with a sheltered life. The only exposure you had to the war were the corpses of Star Destroyers and Mon Cal Cruisers. You don’t know anything about what the Empire was like.”
Rey glared at him. “I know more than you’d think. Plenty of spacers came by to share their stories—”
“Second-hand accounts don’t mean anything. You weren’t there. You didn’t live through any battles or seen any death and destruction first hand.” Poe pointed a thumb at his chest. “I did. My parents did. We know what the Empire is. Sure, there may be a few good souls, but they are outnumbered by filth.”
“And that filth is what makes up the First Order,” Horan said pointedly. “If you take out filth and make something out of the good bits left, however few there are… then don’t you think something good can be built out of it?”
Poe clenched a fist with his under hand under the table. He gritted his teeth as he was about to fire off into another retort. Perhaps mercifully, the room was spared from his mounting frustration when a stormtrooper with missing shoulder pads carefully stepped into the room.
“Sirs,” they addressed Horan and the stormtrooper commanders. “We’re picking up a broadcast from Xakrea.”
“It can wait,” Horan said tiredly.
“I don’t think it can, sir. It’s the new governor and… he’s demonstrating the public execution of two ‘rebel terrorists.’”
Poe shot up to his feet so fast that his chair practically went flying across the room. “Put it on,” he demanded. “Now!”
* * *
Governor Xorn Gavrik paced back and forth on the stage, eying the two apprehended terrorists that each had a noose tied around their neck. The people of Xakrea were gathered below, eagerly calling for their deaths. They would get what they want, but first Gavrik had a show to put on. Holocam droids surrounded the stage, recording everything, and he walked in a pattern to make sure each one got his good side.
“These terrorists,” he began, projecting his voice loud enough that he probably didn’t even need the microphone attached to his jaw, “are just two of the many that struck Xakrea earlier this afternoon. Most of them still remain at large.”
He gestured widely to the large holoscreen behind him, and on cue it displayed the image of a dark-haired woman standing over the body of an Ikkrukkian civilian. This only further provoked the crowds as they cried out in anger.
“Tonight,” he continued, “we make an example of these insurgents. We shall show the world—nigh, the galaxy!—that it is unwise to invoke the anger of Darkknell!”
Cheers rose from the sea of people below. Gavrik couldn’t help a grin from coming to his face as he spread his arms and basked in the glory. He hadn’t been governor for a month and yet he was already enjoying it.
He turned away from them to look at the two prisoners. One of them, a human male, simply glared at him in silence while the other, a Duros, affixed his red eyes on the governor.
“Governor,” the blue-skinned insurgent croaked, his voice strained from the noose tied tightly around his neck. “Please, you must understand. This is all a huge misunderstanding.”
Gavrik smiled wickedly as he moved the mic away from his mouth. He leaned in close to the Duros so that the cameras wouldn’t catch the movement of his lips.
“Oh, I know,” he whispered into the Duros’ ear. “This is all just for show. I know who you really are and why you’re here. This is just to show that no planet is safe for your pithy little resistance.”
The Duros stared at him in shock, his mouth agape as he searched for words that he couldn’t say.
Smirking, Gavrik stepped away from him and moved the mic back into place. “You shouldn’t have come to Darkknell,” he said, and then gave the signal.
The floor beneath the rebels’ feet gave way and the two dropped to their deaths. Cheers erupted behind Gavrik and the governor turned to splay his arms out to the people.
“Justice has been served!” he declared. “And now we shall track down the remaining terrorists and deliver them the same fate!”
His words were drowned out by the incessant cries of the crowd, and all Gavrik could do was bathe in the glory.
* * *
The video cut out as Rey seized the viewscreen with the Force and hurled the entire monitor across the room. Two stormtroopers quickly moved out of the way to avoid being crushed by it.
Before anyone could reprimand her for the violent display, Rey whirled to Poe and looked him straight in the eyes.
“We have to go back,” she said darkly. “Now.”
Poe found it difficult to maintain eye contact, wondering if the woman standing in front of him was really supposed to be a Jedi. “There’s no point,” he said, his mouth dry. “They’re already dead.”
“Then we go back there and bring the governor to justice.”
“There is no justice,” said Commander Davla. “Not on this planet.”
However, Poe knew what it was Rey was referring to as his eyes drifted down to the lightsaber hanging from her belt. He then looked back at her, seeing the fury in her eyes.
“I thought Jedi didn’t do revenge,” he muttered.
“They don’t,” said Gray. He came up to stand besides Rey and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let us not be hasty in our decision. We do have other options.”
“Like what?” asked Horan. “As I’ve said, our ships are grounded. We won’t be leaving any time soon.”
“Snap and the others are still in orbit,” Poe pointed out. “I’ve told them to stand by, but if the governor is serious about his search….”
“He is,” Gray said. “The best thing you can have them do now is to return to base and tell General Organa of what has transpired. I trust that she will know how to address the situation. In the meantime, we will need to return to Xakrea… but not to overthrow the governor.”
“Then for what?” asked Poe.
“From the messages I have intercepted, I have managed to put together an estimation of Governor Gavrik’s current schedule. The next item on his agenda is to deliver a warm welcome to a very important guest.” Gray’s mouth twitched into a smirk. “The Chief of State.”
No comments:
Post a Comment