Chapter Text
dar’tome (Mando’a) – apart, separated
Nina hated shoot-outs. The rapid fire of blaster bolts was not a pretty sound, not like the thrum of lightsabers, and at least in a ‘saber duel, you could see your opponent. This was just messy.
She was crouched behind a pile of crates, waiting for her chance. Nina focused on the large E-Web cannon two of the Razorgulls were hauling into the open space of the hangar, their bodies straining with its heavy weight. She didn’t know exactly what it could shoot, but it didn’t matter. She breathed deep, feeling the fabric of the world, the eddies and currents of the Force around her, and swung the cannon into the abdomen of the one on the right. He collapsed to the ground, unconscious but not dead, his companion screaming as xe was forced to drop the weapon on xyr own foot. They didn’t notice the figure in the background taking aim; two bolts struck their heads simultaneously. Only Jesper was that accurate.
Nina felt the life force of the last few remaining Razorgulls in the area fade like knots ripped from the fabric, leaving only Twirr, their Rodian lieutenant, standing in the center of the crates in front of the gang’s eponymous flagship. He looked around wildly, then he too dropped to his knees as a bolt hit his shoulder. Kaz strode from the hangar exit to meet him, aiming a blaster at the man’s head.
“Brekker,” Twirr spat. “You killed my crew.”
“You're carrying three crates of spice that should have been routed to us,” Kaz said. “And your crew would’ve dropped it at the first sign of the Republic navy.” He rapped his cane on the duracrete. “You also bombed our berth in lowtown Formos two standard weeks ago. Consider it payback.”
Twirr’s hand was moving behind his back, slowly enough that it wouldn’t draw the attention of the other members of Kaz’s crew. Nina kept her focus on it even as her eyes stayed on the end of Kaz’s blaster. Then she saw it from the corner of her eye—a thermal detonator. She reached out a hand, grabbing the lieutenant’s hand with invisible strength and stopping its movement.
“How unfortunate a choice you’ve made, Twirr,” Kaz said.
A click, a shot. Twirr slumped backward, the bolt hole in his forehead smoking faintly. Nina looked away.
In the Jedi Temple classrooms, the Masters had lectured about right and wrong, what it meant to wield the Force and the responsibilities that came with it. Nina had left those teachings behind in the ice caves of Hoth with her silka beads. The only law of smugglers was this: stay alive.
“Dirix, Keeg, clean up the bodies. I don’t want any helpful passersby to report this to the authorities, local or otherwise. Jesper, search Twirr for anything useful. You can keep half the credits you find.”
Nina straightened her tunic, then wove her way around the crates to where the rest of the Dregs were milling about. Dirix chanced a look in her direction; she ignored it. Men looked at her all night every night, and Dirix’s thing for stripes was hardly the most harrowing thing about her life.
“This guy has no fashion sense,” Jesper mumbled, his arm halfway into Twirr’s coat pocket. “No fashion sense and three credits,” he amended sadly, holding up the chips.
“His items of value aren’t credits, they’re keys to the warehouse on Nar Kreeta,” a voice said from behind them.
Jesper jumped, hand on his blaster before he stood. “Holy Shiraya, Inej, did you know people usually make a sound when they walk?”
The ghost of a smile crossed Inej’s face. “Usually.”
Jesper rummaged around in the Rodian’s other pockets and retrieved several candy sticks, a blaster pack, and a keychain. “Found the keys!” He dangled the ring from one long finger. “There’d better be a giant pile of credits in those warehouses, Kaz.”
It had taken too long to catch up with Twirr. Despite what he’d said, Nina knew Kaz cared less about stealing his cargo than he did about punishing Twirr for the bombing of their berth on Formos. Smugglers had little territory, if any, but they held tightly to what they had—Kaz more than most. Formos was a safe place to land, recuperate, and take on some lower-stakes jobs, rather than their usual spaceflights, shootouts, and thefts. But more than that, it was home for the Dregs. They didn’t like to be gone for long, especially not aboard the two light freighters they’d used, the Ketterdam and the Ferolind. Nina was out two weeks of work at the White Rose for this, and the other Dregs were antsy about when they’d be able to relax away from rival gangs and Republic law.
“There is a great deal of value,” Kaz replied.
Anika twirled her blaster. “Let’s go to Nar Kreeta then.”
“Let’s go back to Formos first. I want some decent food for a change,” Nina said.
“I’m with Nina,” Rotty added.
“Nar Kreeta isn’t far from Formos,” Kaz said. “We’ll strip the Razorgull for anything of value. Then grab the spice crates, and we should be in hyperspace by first light.” The assembled crew stared at him, exhausted. “Get to it.” He limped past them, back toward the Ketterdam.
Inej kept pace with him on his right and Nina fell in on her other side. “The loot on the Razorgull isn’t going to be enough to satisfy everyone, Kaz,” Inej said, her voice low.
“It’ll have to be. But you could run recon on the mood right now.” He nodded in the direction the rest of the Dregs had gone. “Maybe you’ll find a nice vibroblade in Twirr’s quarters.”
Inej looked up at him. “I doubt it. I have high standards,” she said, then dashed off into the belly of the Razorgull.
Nina followed Kaz up the gangway to the Ketterdam and into the ship’s common room. The remains of Jesper and Pim’s Pazaak game were strewn across the table; Kaz sat down, brushed the cards aside, and raised his right leg onto the settee beside the couch.
Nina folded her arms. “Are you going to tell us what’s in the warehouse on Nar Kreeta, or are you just going to keep us all guessing as usual?”
Kaz picked up the blue double card, weaving it between his gloved fingers in an easy dance. “I’m taking a minimal crew. This isn’t the kind of stuff I want spread across the Outer Rim by loose tongues.”
“My secret-keeping abilities are legendary, I'll have you know. But right now, I’ll accept your maddening evasion if I can get back to Formos immediately and have a big plate of waffles drenched in muja syrup.”
“Eager to get back to the White Rose so people can pay to suck your lekku?” He leaned back against the couch and raised his eyebrows, the picture of easy control.
Nina’s nostrils flared, and her hand all but itched to slap him. He’d deserve it, but he’d find a way to make her pay for it. Kaz knew Nina’s work at the House didn’t include anyone touching her anywhere, but he was also constitutionally incapable of keeping a civil tongue.
Zoya wouldn’t have had to slap him, Nina thought, regret and nostalgia rising in her chest. She missed her Master’s imperious gaze. She missed Zoya’s righteousness. Force, she missed Zoya .
“I could break your other leg,” she said sweetly instead, pushing back the memories of her Master. “Maybe an arm.”
“We’ll be back on Formos in less than two standard days. Rest up. You’re on the crew to Nar Kreeta.”
She frowned. She didn’t usually take back-to-back space missions; neither she nor Kaz wanted everyone to know he had a former Jedi on his payroll. “I’ll think about it,” she said.
Kaz swept up the Pazaak cards into an even deck and shuffled them, unconcerned with her hesitance. “Game of Pazaak?”
“As if. You’d cheat me out of my lightsaber.”
“Winner buys the loser waffles,” he suggested.
Nina huffed, then swept out of the room towards her quarters without deigning to respond.
Upon their return to Formos, Kaz set the Dregs free to cavort in casinos and bars, spending their new credits to their hearts’ content. She was packing up her things from the crates beneath her bed when a knock sounded on the door. “Nina,” came Kaz’s rasp. “I suggest you take the next day to retrieve your belongings from the White Rose.”
Nina closed and locked the crate. Then she threw the door open with the Force.
Kaz blinked, hand still raised, before continuing as if nothing had happened. “I have a job for five of us, including you. I expect it will take at least a month. Felix will fill your room, though he agreed to keep your employment contract on file, should you wish to return.”
“Excuse me? You’re making plans about my life, Brekker, which, though this might come as a surprise to you, you don’t control. I told you I’d think about it, and I’m still thinking about whether I actually want to come on your harebrained scheme for Force-knows-what.”
“I was under the impression that working at the White Rose was hardly your life’s calling.”
Nina spread her hands wide in exasperation. “It doesn’t matter! Force, you have no concept of the word ‘respect’.”
Kaz tapped his cane against the door frame. “Respect doesn’t make me credits.”
“I’ve seen you run a con, Brekker.”
He inclined his head, the corners of his lips quirking up. “Then you admit I understand the concept of respect. When it’s convenient to me.”
“Just so you know, this is not making me want to help you with this… whatever job.”
“I don’t expect you to help me out of the goodness of your heart. I expect you to participate in this job because it will yield rewards far greater than the pile of beskar’gam you have in that bag,” he said, pointing to her packing.
Nina froze. Her bag was zipped, the shape irregular enough to be clothes to the untrained eye. He hadn’t seen her before she’d opened the door, and even Kaz couldn’t unlock the crates. There was no key; she opened them with the Force. Had Inej–? No. Nina was certain of very little these days, but Inej didn’t know about the armor, and Nina trusted that she wouldn’t tell Kaz even if she had discovered it.
“How?” Nina managed.
Kaz shrugged. “Every lock can be picked if you have enough time.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “What do you have that’s worth more than this?”
“Information about their owner,” he said. “Come with me to the warehouse on Nar Kreeta and we’ll get it.”
Matthias. Had Kaz found where he was imprisoned? Maybe the warehouse on Nar Kreeta contained blueprints for the prison that they could use to mount an escape.
Or maybe Kaz was lying, trying to con her into agreeing.
“Are you telling the truth?” She felt for the edges of Kaz in the Force, feeling for any changes in his usual presence.
Kaz arched an eyebrow. “Yes,” he said. “Nar Kreeta will lead us to information about Matthias Helvar.”
The Force was still and calm. He wasn’t lying.
Nina blew out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Over a year of thinking about Matthias with no knowledge of where he was or how he was doing, and now she finally had the first steps of a path toward him. She’d spent her nights with only the tenuous belief that he was still alive, a belief that faded with each day she remained on Formos. She had known him for just over a month. Would the Force even tell her if he was dead?
She had to have faith. The Jedi were more than warriors; they were a religious order, too—to be a Jedi was to follow a way of life. She had to have faith.
“I’ll see this through until I find him, Kaz,” she told him. “I won’t stop.”
His face was inscrutable. “I would expect nothing else.”
At dusk the next day they were back on the Ketterdam, Nina’s backpack stuffed with all the clothes she owned plus a tin of sweet-sand cookies from the White Rose and a bag of Tepasi taffy to share with Jesper. The sharpshooter, Kaz, Inej, and the Mirialan boy with the colorful explosives, Wylan, were gathered in the freighter’s cockpit. Jesper waved at her from the co-pilot’s seat.
“It’s two and a half hours to Nar Kreeta,” Kaz began. “We’ll spend the night outside orbit and take the Barrel to the surface tomorrow morning. Nina will accompany me to the warehouse. Jesper and Inej will secure the location from a different angle. Wylan will stay in the shuttle,” here he turned to the Mirialan, “and if for some reason someone starts shooting at you, you shoot back.”
Wylan swallowed. Nina had never seen him use a blaster, much less a turbo cannon.
“Point and pew-pew,” Jesper said helpfully, holding his fingers like guns. Wylan sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Are we expecting to be shot at?” Nina asked Kaz.
“Of course not. You and I are entering legally, with the key.”
“‘Legal’ in Hutt Space doesn’t preclude getting shot at,” she pointed out.
“We can’t all be Core Worlds under the benevolent law of the Republic.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.
They could run this argument in circles and never get anywhere. But Nina was in Kaz’s territory here in the dubious law of the Outer Rim. Even if she chose to argue, he would win. Kaz was a born smuggler; Nina was a girl from the Coruscant Temple, far from home. “Good night, Brekker,” she said in dismissal, sashaying out of the cockpit. “I have a beauty routine to conduct.”
A few hours later, Jesper’s head poked around the door to the quarters she shared with Inej, his fingers tapping on the frame. Nina looked up from the levitation meditation she’d been trying—and failing—to complete. She settled the three mugs on the floor beside the fourth she hadn’t managed to add. “Ready for tomorrow?” Jesper asked.
“I’m always ready.” She frowned at him. “Is this some sort of new thing you’re trying, checking in on everyone before the big job?”
He waved away her concern and grinned. “Nah. This is special treatment, just for you.” Jesper winked.
Nina raised her chin. “I do deserve it.”
Jesper winked again, then spun on his heel and strode back down the corridor the way he’d come. Something nudged the edge of Nina’s consciousness, a warning from the Force that set her at unease.
Nina couldn’t figure out Jesper. She couldn’t figure out Kaz, either, but she frankly didn’t want to know what dark corner of the galaxy had begotten Kaz Brekker. He claimed he’d been born aboard his ship, Ketterdam, but he also claimed he had no parents and several smuggler legends said he’d spawned from a black hole, so Nina took everything she heard about Kaz with several grains of salt.
By contrast, Nina wanted to know what brought Jesper to the smuggler’s life. Nubian smugglers and crime lords were uncommon; their home planet was bountiful and equitable, its royalty and senators committed to the betterment of their people. When Jesper got drunk—it wasn’t hard, a glass of Sullustan gin or Corellian red was usually all it took—his baritone rounded with a Nubian lilt and he’d talk about blue skies and natural land. But he never mentioned family or where on Naboo he was from, and most of the time he acted like he’d been born in an off-chart hyperspace lane.
But she couldn’t begrudge him his secrets, not really. Even Kaz didn’t know that Nina had been the apprentice of the famed General Nazyalensky. She supposed secrets had their place in the Outer Rim.
“Credit for your thoughts?” Inej’s soft voice drew her from her reverie.
Nina twisted on her bed and regarded her friend. “Why’s Kaz making us wait another day? He’s not usually this… patient.”
The corner of Inej’s mouth tugged up. “He’s usually more patient than this, to be honest.” She frowned. “And he’s not being nice about it. He won’t even give me details.”
As far as Nina could tell, Inej knew everything. That made Kaz’s reticence all the more concerning. “Someone ought to throw him out an airlock,” she grumbled.
“If you haven’t done that by now, I’m confident you won’t.”
Nina threw herself back on the bed, one arm slung over her face. “I’m going to have sweet dreams about it.”
Inej climbed the ladder to her own bunk and leaned over the side, lekku dropping over her head. “Sleep tight, Nina.”
“Good night, Inej.” Nina closed her eyes. The Force rippled around her, motions like whispers she couldn’t make sense of. She tried to pull at the threads, to still the ripples and peer into the pond, but foresight had never been her specialty. Something was going to happen, and Nina wasn’t ready.
The planet of Nar Kreeta was painted in swirls of green, white, and sandy brown.
“We better not be landing in one of those deserts,” Jesper said, pointing out the window of the transport shuttle. “I hate desert planets. No offense, Inej.”
The Twi’lek smiled faintly.
“Mirial is a desert planet too,” said Wylan sulkily.
“I forgot you were here,” Jesper replied, waving his hand airily. It was a far cry from “I’m glad the kid can make so many different bombs,” which Jesper had said to Nina not twenty minutes ago as they boarded Kaz’s smaller transport shuttle, the Barrel, from the Ketterdam. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was going on between them; half the time they were inseparable and half the time they ignored each other, frustrated for some inarticulate reason.
“Focus on the task at hand, Jesper, before we crash into one of those deserts,” said Kaz, guiding the ship toward the planet. “The rest of you, go stand somewhere else unless you’re replacing Jesper as my co-pilot.”
Nina caught Jesper’s affronted expression before she followed Inej and Wylan out of the cockpit. In the hall, she turned to Inej. “Do you have an overview of what we’re getting into beyond Kaz’s usual nonsense?”
Inej’s dark eyes were shadowed, her lips pursed into a line. So she had learned something since their conversation last night. “It’s the first step of something bigger,” she said evasively.
“So is a fuse, but I still know when the bomb’s going to explode,” Wylan put in. He looked thoughtful, then added, “Most of the time.”
The Barrel landed softly, emitting a low hiss as the ship depressurized. Inej secured the large wrappings around her head and pulled on her goggles. It wasn’t safe to be a Twi’lek in Hutt Space; she would remain in the ship with Jesper until… whatever role they were playing in this job. Nina would stand out, but that was the idea—better for the denizens of Nar Kreeta to focus on the Togruta than on Kaz entering a warehouse he had no right to. It took a lot of work to capture a Togruta, but that did little to help the nerves in Nina’s chest. Formos wasn’t nice, but Nina was safe there. Here, she was a commodity.
Nina walked behind Kaz through the central streets. Immediately to the east of the city, large mountains rose high into the blue sky. It could be a pretty planet, Nina thought, with its diversity of terrain and its beautiful landscape. A lot of places could be pretty. They were too often rotten on the inside.
“I need to access my warehouse,” Kaz said in Huttese when they reached a rectangular stone structure built into the foot of the mountains. Nina could speak Huttese, but Kaz’s accent was flawless.
“Name and keys?” The Weequay in the booth looked and sounded like he would rather be doing anything else. Probably drinking and smoking with everyone else in the city proper, Nina thought. Good. Distracted guards made her job easier.
Kaz slid over the key they’d taken from Twirr. “Cabara Twirr. Don’t laugh at the name, my ma used the name of her Rodian boyfriend. They broke up when I was a kid, of course, so now I get to explain to everyone why I’m a Human with a Rodian name.”
Nina suppressed a giggle. She often wanted to bash Kaz with his own cane, but watching Kaz slip into personas like gloves was worth her restraint. He could’ve had a promising career as a HoloNet actor. So could she—maybe they would’ve met on set, playing main roles opposite each other.
The Weequay waved them in and Nina silently thanked the Force that he hadn’t accompanied them. “Am I your girlfriend while we’re here?” she asked in a high falsetto, leaning toward Kaz, though careful not to touch him. Kaz stepped easily to the left and ignored her.
The warehouses beneath the mountains were well lit as they walked past door after door, each labeled with a number in bright white paint. They walked in silence for over twenty minutes until Nina stopped abruptly before a corner. “Kaz,” she whispered, then jerked her head to the left. Guard, she mouthed. He nodded and held up his hands, fingers splayed.
Ten? Nina mouthed.
Kaz shrugged. Ten guards near their door, or ten guards in this whole sprawling complex? She did her best to convey her question with her face and hands and thanked the Force that she had facial markings above her eyes to mimic Human brows. Kaz grimaced, pointing a little to the right, and flashed ten again. Nina sighed. She closed her eyes and reached into the Force, seeking the individual lights that represented the guards. What did people keep on Nar Kreeta that required this kind of security?
She met Kaz’s gaze and he nodded. She seized the two guards in the closest hall and threw them against the wall with a dull thud. Kaz limped hurriedly over to their slumped forms to retrieve their weapons, stuffing blaster pistols and vibroblades into his own coat and slinging the rifle over his shoulder. They moved to the next corridor; Nina choked the next two guards into unconsciousness. These Kaz left with their blasters—Nina supposed he was running out of pocket space.
By careful planning or some miracle, they reached door 2015 without encountering the remaining six guards and without alerting them to their unconscious colleagues. Kaz inserted the key into the door and slipped through, blending into the dark room as Nina followed him inside. “Light, Zenik,” he said in a low voice when she had closed the door behind her.
“You didn’t bring a flashlight?” she asked in a tone laced with sarcasm.
“If an ultraviolet power cell is activated here, it will show up on the security scanners.”
“How does anyone see their stuff?”
“With the door open. The rooms further back have to be accessed while accompanied by a guard.”
“Why? ”
“So they know you’re not blowing up the mountain with your atmospheric phase-change detonators.”
Nina’s mouth dropped open. “Is that what’s in here?”
“Somewhere in the warehouse, yes, but not this room. Which means it’s safe for you to turn on your lightsaber. Preferably in the next two minutes before our luck runs out.”
The three pieces of her ‘saber came together smoothly, as they always did, eager to be reunited. The crystal hummed as the room was cast into a soft green light. Twirr, it seemed, had been organized—stacks of crates stood in neat columns along the walls, allowing for pathways to walk around. They were labeled in Rodian: radiation grenades, glitteryll, buzz droid parts. All illegal, all worth a pretty penny on the black market. Kaz opened the glitteryll box and began stuffing small bags of the powder into his pockets.
Nina shook her head. Smugglers and drugs.
“You have pockets too,” Kaz told her. She rolled her eyes but obliged.
When Nina had a dozen bags of glitteryll stuffed down her cleavage, Kaz reached into his coat and retrieved a small seismic charge.
“What happened to don’t blow up the mountain?” Nina hissed.
“Rest easy, Nina dear. This is a controlled explosion.” He set it on the floor and stepped back, maneuvering both of them against the entry door.
“‘Rest easy,’ my ass,” she grumbled. The room shook, but the vibration was almost too low for anyone but a Togruta to hear. “Ow! Kaz, my montrals could’ve used some warning.”
Kaz limped over to the dust cloud on the ground where he’d set the bomb and slammed the head of his cane down. The warehouse floor crumbled in a cascade of thudding rocks and another cloud of particles that made Kaz sneeze. Nina raised her lightsaber, squinting at the hole.
“Down we go,” Kaz said, circling the opening and uncoiling a length of rope from a belt pouch. He tied it around a box labeled proximity mines, gave it a few experimental tugs to ensure its stability, and jumped down. Nina watched him inch hand over hand down the rope, lightly bouncing off the wall with his good leg until he reached the floor about twelve feet down. Nina untied the rope and landed effortlessly without it, her ‘saber held above her head. The perks of being a Jedi.
Before them stretched a dark tunnel that had to lead deep into the mountain. “What is this?”
Kaz gestured for her to go first. “Our path. These tunnels were built before that warehouse—before the city. Several millennia ago, there was a Twi’lek colony on the other side of the mountain, but they were pressed into service by the Hutts and forced to mine the mountain. They slowly blasted a tunnel across it until they found the other side.”
Nina felt along the cold stone walls, unevenly carved by explosives into rough textures. “How did you learn about this?”
“I know many things about many places.” Kaz’s voice echoed through the dark. “Very few people alive know these exist. Secrets like this are quite the currency.”
It was almost an hour later when they reached a dead end.
Nina groaned. “Someone at the warehouse will have noticed the unconscious guards, Kaz. We can’t go back.”
“Why would we do that?” he replied, displaying another seismic charge in his hand with a sly grin. He affixed it to the wall and let go.
It dropped to the floor.
Kaz sighed. “Wylan, your adhesive needs work.” He attempted to stick the bomb to the wall again, and this time he caught it in his other hand. “Nina, hold this to the wall.”
“Ask nicely.”
“Oh great Jedi Master Zenik, please stick the bomb to the wall before I lose my patience and blow us both up.”
She lowered her ‘saber and extended her other hand, reaching for the bomb with the Force. “Turn it on, Kaz.”
Ten seconds later, the rock around them shook again. Kaz hit it with his cane, rubble collapsing into a pile at the base. She could see holes in the wall, none larger than an arcade token, with nothing but darkness beyond. Kaz jabbed at the wall again and a few more pieces of rock loosened, but the wall did not crumble.
Nina raised her lightsaber. “How do you feel about some good old-fashioned cutting through walls?”
The remaining wall was thankfully thin; solid stone was surprisingly difficult to carve even with a lightsaber. The resulting hole was a circle almost six feet in height, less than half a foot off the ground and easy enough for Kaz to step through.
Something was creeping at the edges of her senses, a quiet whisper that felt faintly familiar. “Before we go,” she began, blocking the entrance with her considerable size, “what are we going to find on the other side of this mountain?”
Kaz’s eyes were dark caves against the green shadow her ‘saber cast over his pale face. “I don’t think you need me to tell you that.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, then stepped through the carved hole. It was more tunnel, but the walls were angular rather than haphazard. This place was used. She could feel the presence of dozens of sentients and through it all, the low thrum of that familiar whisper.
This was a prison. They passed unused cells furnished with nothing but a bed of rock carved out of the walls, then occupied ones, the inmates lying still and staring at the ceiling. As they advanced, two familiar beings brightened in her senses—Jesper’s far away, another almost close enough to touch. Nina whirled on Kaz, pinning him to the wall with the Force.
“Brekker, you little shit,” she hissed. “You knew where he was the whole time, you knew how to get here, and you didn’t tell me?”
Kaz grunted, his eyes narrowed to slits. “The trick isn’t getting in, it’s getting out. I couldn’t risk it for something of such low value.”
“Low value? Matthias–”
“Let me go, Zenik, or we’ll all end up imprisoned here.”
She glared at him for a long second before releasing him. “You’d deserve it.”
He brushed his trousers. “I deserve lots of things I’m not going to get. That’s how the galaxy works.” Two lockpicks appeared in his hands, the chips on the tips blinking slowly in the dark hallway. He inserted them into the padlock on the door and began fiddling, feeling for something she couldn’t see. Sometimes Kaz’s sense for locks reminded her of her own Force-sense—invisible to those who didn’t have it, as easy as breathing to those who did.
Kaz turned to face her. “We get in, we get out, Nina. Inej and Jesper should have our exit secured. You do what you have to to get us all out. If he resists–”
“He won’t resist a jailbreak.”
The look Kaz leveled might have been pity on anyone else. “If he resists, bring him anyway. However you have to.” He pushed open the cell door.
Matthias had been laying on the rock bed, but he sat up when the door opened, hands in a defensive position. His golden hair was tangled and mussed, longer than Nina had ever seen it. He’d been proud of it when they’d met, even after weeks huddled in an escape pod on Hoth. She’d combed it for him. He’d been paler then, so often covered by his armor; clearly this prison had its inmates spend spent considerable time outside. Tears gathered behind her eyes at the sight of him after so many months alone.
“We’re breaking you out,” Kaz said. “Get up and come on.”
“Excuse me?” Matthias’s voice was rough.
Nina ran past Kaz into the cell and dropped to her knees beside Matthias. “Matthias, love, we’re here to get you out.”
“Nina?” he asked, staring at her with confusion.
“Yes, Matthias,” she whispered, reaching out to cup his unshaven face. Her voice was thick; a tear traced down her cheek.
He tackled her.
“Matthias,” she gasped as her rear lek hit the hard ground, sending sparks across her vision. “Matthias, what–”
“Gar aru’e,” he growled. You are the enemy.
A blue light flashed in the cell and Matthias’s considerable weight collapsed on top of her. Kaz switched his blaster from stun to kill and stowed it in his holster. “I told you to do what you had to. Pick him up and let’s run.”
In unconsciousness, Matthias’s expression was peaceful, his blond hair splayed across her chest like a living thing. “Nina,” Kaz repeated. She gently pushed Matthias off, stood, and lifted him over her shoulder like a sack, his arms hanging limply down her back.
Kaz limped quickly out of the cell, Nina on his heels. A dozen turns and quick ducks into corners later, they nearly ran into a uniformed guard carrying a massive electrostaff.
“Break ou–” the guard managed to yell before Kaz slammed the weighted head of his cane into her face.
Nina and Kaz ran. She called her ‘saber to her hand and lit it, deflecting blaster shots away as they raced through the prison halls. “Door!” Kaz shouted as they rounded a corner. The door opened and immediately a screaming alarm began to sound. Jesper, wearing a guard’s uniform, joined their running just ahead of Kaz and Nina, firing bolt after bolt at the guards emerging from doors and halls.
“Didn’t want to be rescued?” he asked. Neither Nina nor Kaz had the breath to respond. They raced through another door that opened without touch; Jesper shot barely an inch beyond Nina’s shoulder to destroy the lock behind them, stopping the guards.
Ahead, Nina could see bright midday light. She adjusted Matthias’s body on her shoulders, grimacing at his weight. The door clicked as it unlocked, revealing a small figure standing at the ready, wearing a massive sandscarf and goggles that obscured their face. Inej, Nina recognized. The girl threw a vibroblade into the neck of one of their pursuers.
It wasn’t enough. The quarry on this side of the mountain was a labor camp, and at the sight of five people engaging in a prison break, the guards scrabbled for heavy cannons and mining explosives nearby. Whatever excuse Jesper had given for the landing of the Barrel was overrun by the blaring alarm coming from the prison complex. The shuttle was too many yards away. Inej and Jesper might make it, but Nina and Kaz were lagging.
Nina would not let those be Matthias’s last words to her. Something sharp built in her chest, wanting to be released.
The Barrel’s gangway lowered.
A bright light flashed, and the world went white.