Life Debt Read online

  Is that what she wanted for him?

  He’s young. He’s only fifteen. (Though she’s reminded: His birthday is coming up soon. Time moves fast, and it only gets faster when you have children.) He just took out two TIE fighters. No—he killed two pilots. Two lives, snuffed out. The problem isn’t whether they deserved their fates; those pilots signed up for war and knew what came with it. The problem is what that makes Temmin. It haunts her, suddenly. Will it haunt him? Is he too young to even understand what’s happening? Will one day he awaken to ghosts in his head, or will he toughen to it too quickly—will it kill the kindness inside him and make him mean like Jom Barell?

  These thoughts tear her apart inside even as she does her duty: Norra operates the guns and fires. Even as Temmin brings the ship alongside the feeding room entrance, even as she lays down suppressing fire and cuts apart the masked guards who rush up to defend Canker’s empire.

  “There,” Jom says, placing a hand on her forearm. His voice seems distant. Everything seems distant. Her pulse kicks in her chest, in her neck, in her wrists. Adrenaline eats her up the way those rail-throwers gnawed apart the palace tower. She blinks and pushes past all that—

  In the feeding room, two guards rush up to the edge, but before they can do anything both of them shudder and pitch face-forward into the fog. Bodies plunging. Coming up behind them are Jas and Sinjir. The former has a blaster out and is using her free hand to help support the latter—Sinjir hobbles along, his arm hanging limp at his side.

  One of the TIEs swoops in from above, and Norra quickly turns the rail-throwers toward it as Temmin slides the Halo up to the entryway. A quick burst sends the TIE pivoting back into the sky, momentarily dissuaded.

  With Jas and Sinjir back on board, Jom says to the boy:

  “Punch it.”

  And Norra’s blood goes from her brain to her feet as the Halo accelerates fast through the atmosphere above Vorlag, the TIE fighter hopping on their trail and following close behind.

  Sloane stands in the center of a glowing blue circle and speaks to the galaxy.

  “This is Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, commander of the Imperial Navy and de facto leader of the Galactic Empire. The Empire remains vigilant in combating the anarchist criminal government calling itself the New Republic. The dream of a safe, sane, and unified galaxy did not die with the glorious Emperor Palpatine. The Galactic Empire continues to march forward, tirelessly diligent in its quest to return order and stability where none before existed. Meanwhile, the New Republic continues its own mission to destroy what we have built together. Crime has returned to the galaxy tenfold as the underworld dynasties have regained dominance over worlds once kept free of their toxic influences by the Empire. Supply lines have been cut, and many worlds are now starving without adequate food. The corrosive influence of the New Republic has caused a seemingly insurmountable loss of jobs, income, and even lives.”

  This is the moment, she thinks. Sloane puts steel in her spine and—what was it her new “adviser” said to her? Bronze in your voice.

  She continues:

  “But fear not. The Empire remains, as sure as a mountain, as certain as the stars across all the systems. We will defeat the insurgency. We will make this false government pay for its crimes against you. Even now we are building new ships, new bases, and founding new technologies to keep you safe. The Empire is coming. We will deliver you from harm. And we will strike back against our enemies. Remain calm. Remain loyal. With true hearts, victory for us—and for the whole galaxy—will soon be at hand.”

  She gives a curt nod, and the blue glow around her dissipates. The circle goes dark and for a moment, she’s left alone in the lightless room, listening to the murmuring sounds and shuffling feet. It is a moment of peace, rare and precious, and she clings to it like a child holding a doll.

  Then the lights come back on and once again, her new life resumes.

  This room is the Office of Imperial Promotion, Galactic Truth, and Fact Correction. Most just call it the OIP. It grew out of the ashes of COMPNOR to countermand the influence of the New Republic across systems and sectors.

  Sloane is here a lot, much to her chagrin.

  Over walks Ferric Obdur with his assistant—a pretty thing with skin so pale Sloane can see the dark veins beneath her skin—and they help Sloane down off the projection platform. Obdur is older than she is, an irascible cad with sharp tufts of silver hair coming off his cheeks, jowls, and chin. He’s something of a relic of the old days: Obdur was a young man in the army during the tumultuous shift from the Republic to the Empire. He helped design the informational assault that soothed the galaxy in its transition. Which is why Ferric Obdur is now the chief informational officer—a role Sloane assigned to him, but not by her own choice. Rather, it was assigned through her.

  Obdur is smiling, always smiling. A glint in his eyes like he thinks he knows more than everyone else in the room. “Grand Admiral Sloane, a fine job. If a bit…stiff.”

  “I was told to put steel in my spine, so I did.”

  “Of course, of course. You did fine, just fine. Here, over this way, I have some images I need you to look at.” He directs her to a long metal table against the far wall—a table inlaid with lights that he flicks on. He opens a folder and lets a series of translucent pages slide out; the light beneath them makes their colors and inks pop. “These are posters, as you can see. We’ll hang them on worlds both safe and contested.”

  One poster depicts two stormtroopers handing out a basket of fruits to a human family in need. Another shows a small battalion of New Republic troops—portrayed as dirty, unshaven slobs in ill-fitting helmets—pointing flamethrower streams at the front gates of an Imperial academy. In that image, children are seen at the windows, screaming against the glass. A third image shows another series of scowling Republic soldiers, these with the shadow of a Hutt slug behind them.

  Obdur pulls that one toward him. “I don’t much care for this. Too subtle. The goal is, of course, to infer the connection between the rebels and criminal organizations. But we need to do more than infer. We need that connection to be clear, concise: a hard slap to the face. Dose of reality.”

  Reality, Sloane thinks. What grave irony. None of this is real. And she says as much: “Why are we resorting to these…exaggerations when truth will out? We have facts on our side. The Empire is stability. The galaxy is too big to be left to its own devices, and the New Republic would let them govern themselves, which sounds fine in theory—”

  “Your weapons in this war are ships, and blasters, and armor. My weapon in this war is words. And even more important than words are images. Pictures depicting an artistic representation of reality. Facts are flexible, and these graphics point to the truth of which you speak even if they do not precisely portray them.” Obdur lays a steadying hand on her forearm. He may mean it to comfort, but it does no such thing. She wrenches her arm away, and then catches his wrist and gives it a hard twist.

  “I am Grand Admiral Sloane. I am not some girlish assistant for you to paw or comfort or cajole. Touch me again, and I will have the offending limb removed, and all the nerves of the stump obliterated so that no robotic hand will ever respond to your commands.”

  His face goes ashen, though to his credit his smile never fades. Instead, Obdur offers a few gruff chuckles: “An error on my part, Admiral. You are right. A thousand apologies.” He licks his lips. “Do we have your approval of these images? Or do we need to revise?”

  Sloane hesitates. Acid backs up in her throat like venom. It kills her, but finally she concedes: “Let them go as-is. You have approval.”

  It hits her, then—clear as a blaster bolt to the center of her forehead.

  I’m no longer an admiral.

  I’m a politician.

  The chill that grapples up her spine will not be suppressed. The only rescue she has from this is her own assistant, Adea Rite. A bright young woman. Strong and determined. Not to mention provably loyal. Sloane thought the girl wa
s lost to her, but the reach of the Fleet Admiral Gallius Rax is quite far, indeed. He has people on the inside of the New Republic, and getting her away from Chandrila—before she was ever put in a prison cell—was a favor he paid to Sloane. One for which she is truly thankful, because the Empire needs more Adea Rites and fewer Ferric Obdurs.

  “Admiral,” Adea says.

  “You should be the one doing this,” Sloane says under her breath. “It should be you in charge of our propaganda efforts.”

  “I’m sure they’re doing their best, and I do my best at your side.”

  At that, Sloane finds a rare smile. “What’s next in my day?”

  “A new entry in your schedule.”

  “Oh?”

  “He requests your presence.”

  “Oh.” Him. Gallius Rax. Her “adviser.” “When?”

  “Now, Admiral.”

  With steel in her spine and bronze in her voice, she says: “Shall we?”

  —

  What Rae Sloane knows about Fleet Admiral Gallius Rax amounts to very little. What she does know is this:

  He appears in the naval roster two decades ago. Rax’s debut at the age of twenty was at an abnormally high ranking for someone with little to no history: He joined up and immediately was assigned to the NIA—the Naval Intelligence Agency—and given the rank of commander. His reports bypassed his superiors, skipping even the offices of Vice Admirals Rancit and Screed. Instead his reports were eyes only for Wullf Yularen, who perished on the first Death Star during the strike force assault by rebel terrorists.

  Once Yularen perished, Rax’s reports went right to the top: to Emperor Palpatine himself.

  Worst of all, most of those reports remain 90 percent redacted. And that means they remain almost entirely incomprehensible. She has the dates of his service in the NIA under Yularen and then under Palpatine, and that is all the usable information Adea was able to pilfer from the records.

  Examining the nonredacted portions of his reports did little to complete the picture. From it she surmised that most of his operations were kept to the Outer Rim—but she was out there, too, and had never even heard of him until the last few years.

  After that? The information about him is distressingly thin. He is considered a Hero of the Galactic Empire, and has collected a host of medals: the Nova Star, the Medal of Service, the Galactic War on Insurgency medal, the Gilded Sun, and the vaunted (if ambiguous) Emperor’s Will medal. And yet, information on how he gained these or when he was even awarded them remains unlisted.

  Rax is a specter—once just a name, but suddenly summoned and made manifest. That is how she feels whenever she meets him, as if she is meeting the hologram of a dead man made to pass as real.

  That feeling is no different even now.

  She steps into his chamber. He has taken to meeting her here, in his quarters, rather than on the bridge. (“That is your territory,” he told her. “I do not control this fleet. You do.” She filled in the rest of his statement inside her own head: But I control you, “Grand Admiral” Sloane.)

  His chamber is far less austere than the expected Imperial aesthetic. He has punctuated the grays and blacks with punches of color: a strange red tapestry on the wall whose labyrinthine intricacy is maddening if you stare at it too long; a cylindrical tank of diaphanous water creatures flitting about, their organs glowing different colors; a golden chain connecting two sickle-shaped vibroblades, the weapon hanging in its own blast-glass case with a light on it to reveal the ornate scrollwork etched into it.

  At present, a new color fills the room: the blue glow of a galactic map. Sloane can see the territorial divisions, and it makes it easy to identify as the present state of political unrest. The galaxy has been butchered and stitched back together into an ugly quilt. Some systems have gone over to the New Republic, with just as many separating into their own fiefdoms. The portions of the galaxy that the Empire controls dwindle. The New Republic has had a deleterious effect; their assault has been ceaseless and effective. Even just looking at this map suddenly overwhelms her. Anxiety crawls inside her.

  But Rax seems unfazed by that anxiety, which she believes should be comforting but instead only serves to make her feel all the more alone.

  There he stands, no longer garbed in an admiral’s uniform but rather in a floor-length robe. Red as blood, that robe. When he meets with others, he tends to wear the raiment of a fleet admiral—his formal role while serving as her so-called adviser—but here, in his chambers, he is often garbed more comfortably. He turns toward her with that confident, feral sneer fixed to his face. One eyebrow arches and he spreads his arms. “Admiral Sloane. Thank you for coming.”

  As if I had any choice. When the puppeteer works the strings…

  “Of course” is all she says in response.

  “How is our Empire doing?” That, said with no small irony. The sarcasm there is applied with such a thin layer, it would be undetectable to most. But Rae hears it. She recalls his words one night, months ago: That is no longer our galaxy. He explained to her then that they had lost. That the Empire she served was—what were his words? Inelegant. Crude.

  Steel in my spine. Bronze in my voice.

  “We are focusing overmuch on the battles of propaganda—hearts and minds will be swayed by military victories over the New Republic, not posters shellacking cantina walls.”

  He hmms, then walks through the floating ghosts of the galactic map with a dramatic step and a showy gesticulation of his hand. “You raise a good point. Military action is not yet in our stars, but tell Obdur to find some footage of us routing the Republic traitors. Battle footage. Violent, but not too violent. We must look like the hero-conquerors, not thugs. Would that assuage your worries, Admiral Sloane?”

  No, she thinks. But instead she nods, stiffly. “It’s a start. But I am uncomfortable, increasingly uncomfortable, with all this artifice—”

  He stops her there. “Rae, do you know much about opera?”

  “What?”

  “Opera. The Nonagon Cycle? The Esdrit and the Tholothian? The Masterwork of Illure Beelthrak? Even the Hutts had their own opera: a rather…disgusting narrative of betrayal and breeding. The Lah’chispa Kah Soh-na.” He makes a sour face. “The galaxy should be spared singing from such worms.”

  “I know opera, though I am not an enthusiast.”

  He clasps his hands together. “Become one. It will make our partnership more rewarding for you. Opera moves me. And yet none of it is real. Therein lies the crux of what you need to understand: Something does not need to be real for it to have an effect. The instruments and song, the drama and melodrama, the pathos and tragedy. It’s a lie. A fiction. And yet what happens on the stage speaks a kind of truth just the same. Facts and truth are separate things. I am more interested in truth than I am fact. I am comfortable with artifice when it suits our needs. And here, it does.”

  “But—”

  He seems suddenly impatient. His nostrils flare and his hands tighten into fists. “We agree that the New Republic is dangerous, do we not?”

  “We do. Of course.”

  “We can see that because we are elevated minds. But most? They’re fools. I know you agree with me on that. And so, as long as you and I know the reality, I see nothing wrong with pushing weak minds to a conclusion we have already reached. They need that kind of drama and melodrama to get them to an understanding that was easy for you and me. We came to it naturally. Others must be nudged, even pushed. Is that more clear?”

  Sloane swallows hard. Though his voice is calm and measured, the anger is plain on his face. He crackles with a kind of quiet intensity. Once, a lifetime ago, she was refueling her battleship—the Dreadstar—at a floating depot on the Sea of Carawak on the ninth moon of Tilth. A storm was incoming and the sea took on this look. The waves turned gunmetal gray, and though those waves stayed low, they churned and frothed. When the storm finally hit—the sea became like a monster.

  Rax reminds her of that.


  When will the sea become a storm? Will he become a monster?

  Perhaps she is too paranoid.

  “It is clear,” she says, finally. “What is less clear is our goal.”

  He grins. “Our goal is the resurgence of the Empire. A stronger, leaner Empire.”

  “Yes, but how? We have made no overtures to Mas Amedda, who remains entrenched on Coruscant. Will we elect another Emperor? Though our meeting on Akiva was…” A dangerous and callow deception, she thinks but does not say. “…a necessary ruse, it does not eliminate the need for unity. We have moffs rebelling and claiming Palpatine is alive, we have Grand General Loring dug in on Malastare, we have—”

  “Have faith in me, Rae. Faith will light our path. Let me worry about all these problems. Those are future concerns. In the present, I have tasks for you. One for the moment, but more to come after.”

  Tasks. Like she’s an errand girl tackling a to-do list. That feeling is an odd one for her. Is it because she controls the Empire in name, but not in reality? Is it because she has no idea who Rax really is, or if he is deserving of the honor required to command her?

  Is it because she simply doesn’t trust him?

  He begins to pace around the room, his hands clasped stiffly behind his back. “I need you to fetch someone for me.”

  Fetch. Another demeaning term. As if she is just a pet chasing after a flung stick or kicked ball. “Who is it?”

  “Brendol Hux.”

  That name—she knows it, doesn’t she? Hux, Hux, Hux…

  “Commandant Hux?” she asks, suddenly. “At the Arkanis Academy.” Again, a strange and unnamable fear ripples through her. Hux trains children. The best and brightest the Empire has to offer.

  “The very same.”

  “Arkanis is under siege by New Republic forces as we speak.” We are, in fact, losing that system.