The Ruins of Dantooine (26 page)

“And I ripped you out of it,” Finn finished for her.

“And you gave me a set of new choices,” she corrected.

“Did I?” he asked. Dusque could swear she heard bitterness in his voice.

But her search in the medkit was distracting her. “Blast,” she swore softly.

“What is it?” Finn asked.

“There’s no tissue regenerator in here,” she said disgustedly. “I’ll have to make do with a couple of larger bacta patches. When we get back to Corellia, we’re going to have to get this treated immediately.” She rummaged through the kit once more, in case she had missed it.

“I thought for certain there would be one in here,” she complained. She finished placing the last of the patches on his leg. “All done. Not quite good as new yet, but it will be.” She smiled at him.

He reached over and caught her chin with his hand. “Sometimes it’s just not possible to foresee everything,” he said in an almost-whisper.

Although the cabin was temperature controlled, Dusque shivered. She placed both of her slim hands on his face. She could feel the rough texture of his skin, a new growth of beard starting to form. She delicately brushed away a lock of his unruly hair so that she could see his eyes more clearly. She realized that with such dark irises, there was no way to see
his pupils; it made his eyes seem bottomless. She had never met a man like him before, she thought.

Lost in the depths of his eyes, Dusque wasn’t sure who kissed whom.

After what seemed an eternity, Finn broke away from her.

“Finn—” Dusque began.

A ringing tone from the cockpit interrupted her, and Finn looked relieved. “I—uh—it’s time to drop out of hyperspace,” he stammered.

Bewildered, Dusque didn’t know what to say. “I think I’ll stay back here for a bit. Call me if you need me.”

“All right,” he said with a sad smile.

For a long time Dusque sat alone, wondering what had just happened between them. Thinking about what Finn had said about choices and consequences, she realized he was right. That was what it came down to: deciding who and what you were going to be, and being able to live with those decisions.

She thought back on the last few days and realized that her life had been transformed. She had thought she’d left behind so much, but in retrospect the only thing she had abandoned was an empty shell. Not a real life, but the shadow of one. As she sat and swiveled from side to side in the chair, she realized that she didn’t even feel tired anymore. She felt invigorated and pleased with herself. The only concern she had was Finn.

She had always been so good at keeping people at
a distance, from her family to the colleagues in her sterile work environment. The only one who had found a crack in her armor had been Tendau. With his death, that crack seemed to have become a split that Finn had slipped into. She couldn’t deny that she had strong feelings for him. That was something she had never expected.

She had to talk to him—that was all there was to it. When she felt the ship drop out of hyperspace, she figured that now seemed as good a time as any for that conversation. She got up and went forward to the cockpit.

What she saw made her stop dead in her tracks.

“Finn?” she whispered.

He was huddled over the control console, his back toward her. Then, as she moved closer, she saw the holocron. It was sitting in a receptacle on the panel, and a readout nearby showed a bar scale. Horrified, she realized that he was downloading the data from the holocron and transmitting it.

“What are you doing?” she shouted, running the rest of the way to him. Before he could say or do anything, she knocked the holocron out of the computer port. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him hit a switch—and with a dark certainty she knew what he had done. She slammed her fist down on the control panel, uncertain if she had stopped the entire transmission.

“What were you thinking?” she yelled at him. “Don’t you remember what Leia said? Under no circumstances were we to try to transmit any data
from the holocron. If we thought we were in trouble, we were to destroy it!”

He looked at her with an unreadable expression. She ran over to the holocron and scooped it up. Looking about, she located the tiny chamber in the sidewall of the cockpit, tossed the holocron into it, and slammed the door shut. Before Finn could raise a hand to stop her, she jettisoned the holocron into space. Then she placed both her hands against the hull, swallowed hard, and tried to regain her composure.

“Why would you risk it?” She moved closer to him and touched his arm. “Why, Finn?”

A flash caught her eye and she noticed a blip on the radar. “Those are probably Imperials following us. They could have intercepted the transmission! We might have done all this for nothing!”

He shook his head. “It’s not Imperials.”

“It’s right there on the radar,” she argued. “And we don’t have time for this, if an Imperial agent is on our tail.”

Finn held his ground. “There’s no way that can be an Imperial agent.”

Dusque was startled by his flat monotone. “How do you know?” she whispered.

“I know there are no agents of the Empire following us because—” He paused and drew in a deep breath. “I am the Imperial agent.”

For a moment, Dusque felt as she had on the stone bridge inside the cave. She didn’t know which way was up or down, and everything seemed slightly
unreal. She swallowed again, suddenly feeling hot and claustrophobic.

“What?” she whispered and her voice sounded like it was light-years away.

He turned and faced her fully. “I’m the agent,” he repeated.

“That can’t be,” Dusque cried. “It can’t be. You saved me when Tendau was executed, when the Imperials shot us down—”

“Stop and think for a moment,” he snapped at her. “You’re a scientist—use that analytical brain of yours.”

Dusque actually flinched at the tone of his voice.

“Don’t you think it was just a little too coincidental that after our first meeting, when you said you didn’t want to lose anything more to the Empire and you turned me down, the Hammerhead was so conveniently arrested? And who just happened to be there to drag you away after you saw him murdered?”

Dusque blinked rapidly as her eyes filled with unshed tears. “You killed him?” she whispered.

“I arranged it,” he admitted coldly.

“But I did see him talking with some Bothans in Moenia, and when I asked him about it, he denied it,” she said.

“Did it happen before or after I put the thought into your head that he might be a spy? My guess,” he added, “is that it happened after.”

And Dusque realized she had been more suspicious of everything after her first meeting with Finn.
She had jumped to conclusions about Tendau and now knew he had died for nothing; the whole thing had been no more than a ruse to draw her out. She stared at Finn, unable to accept what she was hearing and even more horrified that he looked so angry.
She
was the only one who had a right to be angry, she thought.

“And now you’re furious that I didn’t somehow figure this all out? Didn’t somehow guess that the man I was falling in love with was a mask? That he didn’t exist at all? Congratulate yourself,” she told him bitterly, “because you are very good at your job.”

His shoulders sagged a little under the weight of her accusing stare.

“Don’t you see?” he entreated her, and he looked again like the man she thought she knew. “Why do you think I asked you about your loyalty? When I asked you where your loyalties were, I had hoped that you were going to turn out to have only been searching for revenge. I had hoped your loyalty to the Empire ran as deeply as mine. After some of what you told me, I thought it did.”

“Don’t mistake fear for loyalty,” she said through gritted teeth. “And don’t try to fool yourself that you’re loyal to them; you’re afraid as much as I was.”

She stood staring at him and she still could not believe what she was hearing. But, unbidden, some of the things he had said and done came back to haunt her.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she said, shaking her head. “If what you say is true and you are loyal to the Empire, why were we attacked on the way to Corellia? That was a little too close to have been planned.”

“It
was
close,” he admitted. “If I had been piloting the ship alone, I would’ve had a chance to signal where I was and the location of the Rebel base. But I didn’t get to in time.”

Dusque thought back to when the Mon Calamari’s ship had started to plummet and she had heard an explosion. It had come from inside the cockpit; from a weapon that Finn had explained to her wasn’t able to pierce a ship’s hull.

“You killed the pilot,” she whispered, dumbstruck.

Finn nodded. “I was able to get them to break off the attack, but we crashed before I could do more.”

“And once we got to the base,” she finished slowly, “you never had a moment alone.”

“I just figured I would wait until we had retrieved the holocron. Then I could turn everything over to the Empire.”

“So you just used me,” she said bitterly, “to get everything that you wanted. The only thing I don’t understand is why you didn’t just turn me in back at the base. Why create all that damage when your superiors were probably there? I don’t understand.”

Finn was silent.

“Why?” she demanded. “You were, after all, done with me.”

His face abruptly twisted in anguish. “I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” she asked him quietly.

“Because it was you,” he shouted. “There you were,” he admitted more calmly, “ready to march toward your death all to save me and the Rebels, and I just couldn’t let you go. I couldn’t let them have you.”

Dusque could see that he was trembling slightly. There was no reason for him to lie to her now; there was no point.

“It’s not too late,” he told her. “We can both return to the Emperor. I can tell them some of the other Rebels arrived as backup and they were the ones responsible for the chaos at the base. If we return together with the information in this computer”—he tapped the console—“we’ll both be safe. And we can be together,” he pleaded. “Please.”

Dusque was in turmoil. And she was so torn, because she knew exactly how he felt. She knew what it was like to live in the shadow of the Empire. But the man in front of her had helped her step out of that shadow. And if he could do that for her, she thought that maybe, just maybe, she could do the same for him.

“I can’t go back,” she told him and stepped closer. “Not ever. But you don’t have to, either. Remember what you said about choices and consequences? Right here and now, you can choose to change your life. I know the Rebel Alliance—Leia and the others—will forgive you and take you in. It is that ability to forgive, that soul, that separates the
Rebels from the Empire.” She moved closer still as she saw he was chewing his lip.

“And I haven’t forgotten how you told me to go on without you at the waterfall, or how you shielded me from the blasts at the outpost. You can tell yourself whatever you like,” she said, moving to stand directly in front of him, “but that was your true self. I know that in here—” She laid her hand on his chest. “—you are a good man. It will be all right. Trust me.” He had never looked more vulnerable to her than he did in that moment.

He pulled her into his arms and embraced her fiercely. She stroked the back of his head and said again, “It will be all right.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m so sorry.”

She pulled slightly away from him, wanting to see his face. When her gray eyes locked with his, she heard a strange sound and felt something odd. Still looking perplexed, Dusque took a step back and felt Finn’s arms drop away. He turned from her, and she lowered her gaze to his right hand. There, covered in blood, was the hunting knife he kept sheathed in his sleeve. She had forgotten about it.

Stunned, she reached for him. “Finn, what have you done?”

At that moment, her legs buckled out from under her. She crashed onto her knees and dumbly looked down at the crimson flower blooming across her shirtfront. She touched it and pulled her hand away
to see that it was covered in blood. She looked at Finn in bewilderment. She fell backward into the side of the hull and tried to focus on Finn.

“Why?” Her voice sounded weak and distant.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say. “I told you that sooner or later everyone betrays those they love to the Empire. It’s inevitable.”

He dropped to her side. Hazily, Dusque wondered if he was going to finish her off, although she believed she was dead already.

“I can’t be with you,” he confessed. “I fear the Empire too much.”

His words echoed strangely in her ears, so similar to the ones she had said to him when they first met. It was as though they were completing a strange dance that had finally come full circle. Only this time, she was the one without fear.

Finn swallowed hard as he looked at her. He reached down, and Dusque couldn’t tell if he still held the knife or not. Before he could touch her, the shuttle jostled ominously.

“We’re being boarded,” Dusque heard him say. She could only lie there and watch as he rose and ran to the rear of the vessel. She heard a hatch open and seal, and then the ship rocked again.

She felt her lids grow heavy. She tried once to stand, and a detached part of her mind was genuinely amazed that she couldn’t even lift her hand any longer. She lay there in a heap.

The shuttle was jostled again, and the movement
caused Dusque to open her eyes just a crack. Although her vision was blurring, she could see several figures enter the cabin. None, she noticed, wore Imperial garb. One of them, a blond human male, looked familiar to Dusque, although she couldn’t get her mind to focus on any one topic enough to try to figure out who he was.

He dropped to her side as his two companions went to the back of the ship. He stared at her, a worried look in his sky-blue eyes.

“I know you, don’t I?” Dusque asked weakly.

“My name is Luke Skywalker. You saw me on Corellia.” His voice was young and gentle. While he spoke to her, he pulled out a device and tried to treat the wound in Dusque’s chest.