The Ruins of Dantooine (25 page)

Dusque thought about his words as she verified the charge on her heavy blaster. Now that they were so close to success, she wondered if this was just his safety mechanism. She had missed his cue about the Gray Talon—there was no denying that. But how had he seen them so quickly? She knew how to listen and look for cues in the wilderness, but the Gray Talon leader hadn’t been clear of the waterfall when he’d surprised them with his threat. How had Finn known so quickly who was there?

She shook her head. It didn’t matter how he did it. He was better trained than she was. If he’d stayed alive this long, he must be good at his business. Finn was right when he said there were no second chances. Thinking about it, she realized that it made sense that the last leg of a mission would be the most vulnerable time—simply because one would be elated with victory. Elation led to cockiness, which could lead to mistakes, failure, and death. She decided that was why he was riding her so hard: to make sure she stayed alive.

Once she verified that her blaster had a fresh power pack, she had to conceal it on her person. Both she and Finn had abandoned their cloaks at the waterfall along with the short-circuited scanner. She slipped her blaster into the waistband of her
trousers and pulled her tunic down to cover the telltale bulge. Finn slid his weapons into the upper portion of his boots and untucked his trousers to hide them.

“I’m all set,” she told him. Suddenly she was struck by another realization. Ever since they had recovered the holocron, Finn had slowly resumed the mantle of leadership. And she had acquiesced easily—mostly because he had made a few pointed remarks that had eroded some of her confidence.

He was hurt pretty badly, she reminded herself. Like a wounded animal, he would have been stripped to his basic self in the moment of absolute agony—and the fact that his main concern, even in the midst of his pain, had been her safety and the success of their mission comforted her. She decided she could take the sudden intensity he was projecting, at least until they were safely away. Then, maybe, she would give him an earful.

“Time to go,” he told her, and led the way past the outer walls of the base to enter the compound proper.

Because it was so late, there was only one guard in front of the command building. The dark Imperial flags rippled in the slight breeze. Dusque didn’t see anyone else around.

“Looks all right,” she offered cautiously.

“Looks like it,” Finn agreed, but he didn’t sound convinced.

“Can you see the ship from here?” she asked.

Finn craned his neck. “Hard to say.”

Dusque took a closer look for herself. Even in the low lights of the base, she could see that another ship had arrived. Its markings and wing structure were unmistakable: an Imperial landing craft. She let out a slow, quiet breath.

“They’re here,” she whispered.

“Yes,” Finn answered darkly.

“Maybe they’re just changing troops or something,” she suggested hopefully.

Finn shot her a foul expression, and even she knew her words sounded lame. She was terrified that, inexperienced as she was, she might have made a critical error that had betrayed the Rebel Alliance. Maybe the Empire had gotten around to issuing a warrant for her because of her friendship with Tendau, or maybe something she had said or hadn’t said to Commander Fuce earlier had tipped them off. Whatever the mistake, she didn’t want Finn or the Alliance to have to pay for it. She handed Finn her pack and started to walk toward the craft.

Finn grabbed her by her arm and yanked her back into the shadows. “What are you doing?” He shoved the bag back into her hands.

“I’m doing what I have to so that I can live with myself,” she replied.

“What are you talking about?”

She looked him deeply in the eyes and confessed, “I must have done something, or else it’s simply because of who I am, but they’ve caught up to us. If I turn myself in, that will give you a brief window
when you can escape. I can’t let you or the Rebel Alliance down. Too much depends on this.”

“The only way I’m leaving is with you,” he told her. He unslung his pack and crouched down. He tugged Dusque by the arm until she dropped down, too. He tossed a few sundry items onto the ground before pulling out three round objects. Thermal detonators.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked him.

He flashed her a wicked grin. “A few carefully placed explosions should provide enough cover for both of us to escape,” he told her. “I’ll simply manually reprogram the timer mechanism to give us a few more minutes and alternate them so they go off at staggered times. That’ll keep them running.”

As he quickly adjusted the timers on the switches, Dusque kept an eye out for any activity. The post remained quiet.

“Okay,” he told her. “Take this one and flip the switch when you get near the cantina. I’m going to lay one down by the data terminal near the medcenter, and the last one close to the Imperial craft. Now go!”

Dusque crouched low and scurried over to the cantina. Before releasing the trigger, though, she ducked her head in the door. The cantina was as deserted as the base appeared to be. She tossed the detonator inside and ran back to where she had been standing with Finn. She could see him returning from the Imperial ship, running fast. He crouched down next to her.

“Now we wait for the fireworks,” he said, sounding satisfied.

After a long moment, the detonator in the medcenter went off. An alarm sounded from somewhere, and suddenly troops streamed out of what Dusque had wrongly assumed was an empty building. She noted bleakly that there were far more troopers here now than had been here when they had arrived. Her suspicions were sadly confirmed. They had been found out.

A moment later, the detonator in the cantina exploded, sending debris flying into the air. Finn threw his arms over Dusque to shield her from the initial wreckage that was raining down on them. When he saw that some of the stormtroopers had split up to investigate the new explosion, he jumped to his feet and yanked Dusque up.

“Now’s our chance!” he shouted. She could barely hear him over the sirens and the secondary explosion caused by more of the medical equipment igniting.

Finn gripped a blaster in one hand and held on to her hand with the other. He ran as fast as his injured leg would allow him, tugging on Dusque as he went. She, too, had pulled out her blaster and was looking about wildly, frightened and confused. They were almost to the shuttle when a stormtrooper who was investigating the new explosion near the medcenter saw them.

“They’re over here!” Even Dusque could hear his transmission.

They both opened fire as more stormtroopers started to turn at the sound of the laser blasts. Dusque was grateful for the scope on the blaster that allowed her to aim through the smoke and haze that filled the compound. She fired at anything that moved, even as Finn pulled her behind the Imperial landing craft for cover.

Somehow, in all the smoke and confusion, a stormtrooper slipped along the other side of the craft. Neither Finn nor Dusque saw him. The shuttle had been sealed, and Finn set to work with an electronic lock breaker to open the hatch while Dusque laid down cover fire. The stormtrooper caught her by surprise.

“Drop your weapons!” he shouted.

Whirling around to face him, Dusque could see that he had her in his sights. There was no chance she could swing her arm around fast enough to take him out. But she could block his view of Finn, so that Finn, at least, might get to safety.

“All right,” she shouted, letting the blaster slip from her fingers. She slowly raised her hands, hoping to buy Finn a few more precious seconds.

“Move over here,” the stormtrooper ordered. But just as Dusque was about to comply, two things happened.

Finn shouted, “Got it!” and the detonator under the Imperial ship exploded, knocking Dusque off her feet and incinerating the stormtrooper. Dazed, Dusque felt Finn yank her by her shirt toward the shuttle.

“I got it,” she mumbled. “Just fire this thing up.”

After a brief, questioning look at her, he dashed inside. While the shuttle rumbled to life, Dusque crawled up the hatch stairs and tumbled on board. She staggered to her feet and slammed the door-control panel. The stairs retracted and the hatch sealed up.

“Go, go, go!” she cried to Finn.

He punched the controls and the shuttle took off at a frightening angle. From the viewport, Dusque could see that the small outpost was in flames. The image grew smaller and smaller as they left Dantooine’s atmosphere. Most important, Dusque didn’t see anyone in pursuit. They were safe.

She made her way into the cockpit and slumped down into the free chair. She looked at Finn and almost laughed aloud.

“We did it,” she said. “We really did it.” And she laid her pack, the holocron still nestled inside, on top of the controls for Finn to see.

He turned to her and said, “You’re right. We’re done.”

She wondered why he sounded so sad.

As Finn piloted the ship, Dusque stared into the silence of space. They had managed to escape the planet not only with the holocron, but alive. She let her head drop back against the seat and closed her eyes. A contented smile spread across her face.

“You okay?” Finn asked her.

She turned toward him and opened her eyes. “Yes,” she answered. “Yes, I’m fine.” She tried to include him in her smile, but he remained stoic. She frowned slightly, wondering why he was so serious. Then her gaze trailed down to his wounded leg and she saw that it was bleeding.

“C’mon,” she told him. “Let’s go in back so I can treat that more properly.”

“It’ll be fine,” he said dismissively. “Don’t worry.”

“It’ll be even better after I take care of it. We’re safe in hyperspace. No one’s following.”

Finn looked at her and then, to her relief, relented. “All right. I just have to check one thing. Head aft and I’ll meet you there. Okay?”

“Don’t take too long,” Dusque told him. She wondered why men could sometimes be so difficult and fight the only logical choice in front of them.

She got up and walked back to the main cabin. Only a few items had been knocked loose by their abrupt departure, and none of them was too damaged. She picked up some storage containers and returned them to their original locations. She was looking for the more comprehensive medkit she knew was on board. She found it in a cabinet.

Bringing it over to a small table, she sat on the bench behind it. The seat wrapped around the edge of the ship for about three meters. She didn’t understand why on such a small ship, the designers felt the need to place items like this on board. Perhaps, she thought, they recognized how absolutely unnatural space travel was, and so they added such touches to ground travelers and make things seem more familiar somehow. At any rate, it was coming in handy now.

She opened up the kit and started laying out some of the supplies. She was about to call for Finn when she heard him shuffling through the cabin. By his gait, she could tell that his leg was stiffening up; if they didn’t treat it soon, there would probably be some scarring. She got up to help him the rest of the way, but he waved her back.

“I’m not that bad off,” he told her, a ghost of a grin on his face. “At least,” he paused, looking at the supplies and then at Dusque, “I’m not that bad
yet.
You haven’t started, however.”

Dusque swatted at him playfully, glad that he was becoming more like the man she was getting to know. She was sure that after he was treated properly, his good spirits would return.

“Have a seat,” she said, indicating the bench. He lowered himself down gingerly and extended his injured leg. Dusque pulled over one of the empty containers, set it near him, and, using it as a small stool, cut away his pant leg well above the injury. Finn grimaced.

“Sorry,” she said, as she tossed the piece of cloth off to the side. With the wound more clearly exposed, Dusque could see that the damage was a little worse than she had thought. The bacta patch had probably kept the injury from becoming infected, but it hadn’t done much more than that.

“We shouldn’t have had you walk on it,” she said, after inspecting the wound more closely.

“There wasn’t a choice, was there?”

Shaking her head, she grabbed for a bulb of antiseptic wash. As she irrigated the wound and the surrounding area, Finn winced. He leaned his head back, and in a similar pose to the one Dusque had struck in the cockpit, he closed his eyes. But there was no smile on his tightly clamped mouth.

“That’s what it really comes down to, doesn’t it?” he gritted.

Dusque was so involved in cleaning out his injury that she was only partially listening.

“It’s the choices we make in our lives. And once
we make them, we have to live with the consequences of our decisions,” he continued softly.

Dusque looked up and saw that he was staring at her with his jet-black eyes. She paused, holding up a sterilizer for the burn, and finally let some of his words sink in.

“That’s not always true,” she said. “Sometimes decisions can be modified; the results can be changed when someone else comes into the equation.”

She focused her attention back on his leg. “Like this, for example. You were wounded, but because we have the supplies, we can change the outcome. This wound doesn’t have to leave any marks or lasting damage behind. We can effect a change.”

She applied an antibiotic, but was concerned when the salve didn’t penetrate as deeply as she felt it needed to. She searched through the more extensive medkit, pulled out a small canister, and started to apply the contents to Finn’s wound.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s chromostring,” she explained. “It’ll allow a deeper penetration of some of the medications without nerve damage.”

“You know this stuff pretty well,” he remarked.

She glanced up at him and smiled. “Well, believe it or not, sometimes collecting samples and specimens can get a little dangerous.” She was rewarded by a smile from Finn.

As she rummaged through the kit, she continued with her previous train of thought. “While you’re right that we do make choices and have to live with
them, sometimes we’re presented with the opportunity to make new ones. Like me, for example. I thought I had my life in order—”