Chapter Text
Flying was easy for Melinda. Even when it was made difficult by circumstance, it was always a singular focus. The feeling of giving her mind over to the forces of physics, momentum, spin, thrust from the engines, drag and lift if they were in atmosphere. Complex, but all pieces of one whole. A chorus of factors coming together in her control of the ship. The unflinching concentration of flight.
She’d take it over dealing with most people any day.
Fortunately, the person hovering in the doorway of the cockpit was Phil, and she had a higher tolerance for him than anyone else had earned. Assuming he had the good sense not to say anything too aggravating.
“I answered some of Daisy’s questions about the Jedi,” he said.
Well then. “And?”
He sighed. “She’s strong in the Force. Very strong, maybe. You felt it?”
They were supposed to be cut off. Neither of them were supposed to feel much of anything. But, against her better judgment, she nodded. Standing on that blasted world, holding the kyber crystal, the girl had been like a lit torch.
One more thing the universe had seen fit to drop on them.
In one day they'd learned one of their childhood friends was alive, and Fallen. A member of their crew had been badly hurt, the kind of hurt she would be changed by. The one place that might be safe to get her help would certainly try and recruit them, maybe forcefully, if they knew about their past. Might have other issues with them, if they knew certain other details about their past. What was one more complication?
“Does she know?” Daisy had found a kyber crystal, after all.
Phil nodded. “She can sense the crystal in the Force, and was quick to put together what that meant.” He paused, and she recognized the hint of sadness in his voice, even as he tried to hide it. “She can sense us in the Force too. The whole crew to a certain extent, I think, but she described us specifically. Said the feeling reminded her of being around her mother.”
Kriff. They’d wandered deeper into this when she hadn't been looking, hadn't they?
Melinda closed her eyes and pressed her back against the headrest of her pilot’s chair, and tried not to feel it all, for just a moment, without much success. The memory of the planet itself pulled at her the hardest. The feeling of the remaining life of that world, stubborn and resilient, still persisting even in a world so deeply wounded.
It had been fear that had driven them away from the Force, but it had also been fear that had kept that separation from being complete. For so many years, she and Phil had only had each other, and a full separation from the Force would also have meant the loss of part of the connection to each other that had carried them through the worst of it. Neither of them had been confident in their ability to weather that. Too scared and weak to commit to hiding themselves the way they’d needed to, even when the Inquisitorious bore down on them.
Daisy deserved better mentors and leaders than that. All their crew did.
Melinda opened her eyes, resigned to finding no solution in her thoughts, to see Phil staring into the swirl of hyperspace.
“If this goes wrong…” he started. Stopped himself, as if considering something. His right arm was wrapped close to his body as the left one lay limp. It was an old habit that reappeared when he was stressed, from the years he’d spent with the left arm as little more than an infected stump. “If this goes wrong, however it could go wrong, we have to protect them.”
There was something in his voice that she'd heard a few times before. For a moment, a tension hung in the air like an electric charge, but dissipated again as his posture slumped, eyes closing and head gently knocking against the copilot's chair.
“What do you think the odds are that Mack doesn't find out?”
Honestly, Melinda thought Mack already had his suspicions about who they were, who they’d been. But suspicions and proof were different beasts.
They hadn’t been known as Jedi to anyone other than each other since the fall of the Republic, two decades ago. They’d grown into adults in the shadow of the people they’d thought they would be, and a secret like that had deep and penetrating roots. After all these years, the fear of not being able to hide was a visceral thing.
The base was on their scanners now. “Last chance to change course.”
Phil didn't respond beyond a hissing sigh. It hadn't been a serious suggestion anyway.
---
As she prepared the Zephyr for docking a few minutes after Phil had left to check on Simmons, Melinda felt the flicker of Daisy’s presence, and kept her expression neutral as the door to the cockpit slid open behind her. Reopening her connection to the Force was like falling back into a pattern of thinking, easier to start than to stop. Without active attention she didn’t feel more than general impressions, but the girl was like a torch in the dark. At this rate, she’d need training if she didn’t want to attract attention.
“Melinda?” Daisy asked, and at that Melinda sent a small glance back to the door, her gaze settling briefly on the now empty copilot’s chair before returning to the panels. Fortunately the girl took the hint, and silently settled down next to her. Melinda finished setting up the final approach, as the Rebel base grew from a dot on their scanners to a point of light visible through the viewport.
“Phil said you spoke to him,” Melinda said, not looking away from the panels.
She saw Daisy glance towards her out of the corner of her eye, as if surprised. “He uh, yeah,” she said. “A bit. About the Force.”
“That’s a big topic.”
Daisy made a noncommittal noise, and cast her a glance that was almost shy. “Growing up we never called it that. Or, at least, not that I knew about. I know my mom talked about feeling the planet itself, the life on it. I guess that was sort of the same thing. But she never talked about a force, or anything like that. It was just, I don’t know, the way she talked about living things.”
A memory crept up from the depths of her past, a pleasant one for once, and Melinda couldn’t contain a small smile. “I think there were Jedi who would have enjoyed talking to your mother.” She felt Daisy’s attention intensify. “There were many different ways of thinking about the Force, and some Jedi were more open to exploring them than others.” Phil had always been one of those who had wanted to study those different beliefs, learn from them, even when they had been young.
Daisy smiled for a moment, as if catching some of the warmth of that memory of the past, before her expression soured. “The Empire hunts people with a connection to the Force, right? Is it because they’re powerful?”
The girl was quick, Melinda would give her that. “That’s safe to assume, I think. Everything the Empire cares about comes back to power, and control.”
“But the Jedi didn’t study the Force just for power?”
Now a memory of the Clone Wars loomed in Melinda’s mind. Lightsabers turning battle droids to slag, the smell of flesh burned with blaster bolts, and sometimes sabers too.
“The Jedi’s stated goal was to protect, and to study and follow the will of the Force.” How well that intention was followed, especially in those last days, was a more complicated discussion. As was the question of whether they’d even had a choice in the end.
They’d never been able to hear the full account of how Chancellor Palpatine had made himself into the Emperor. Plenty of stories, sure, but none that fully held the ring of truth. But Phil had been the one to point out how many of the former Chancellor’s decisions had helped to push the Order to the brink, and how, in hindsight, it didn’t really feel like a coincidence.
Daisy was quiet for a long moment before speaking again. “I’ve been on the run from the Empire since I was a teenager. Since they destroyed my home. But I guess now they might have more reason to look for me.” She hesitated. “I guess you probably know what that's like.”
The weight in Melinda’s stomach had been a permanent resident for years, but it shifted uneasily at Daisy's perceptiveness. There were many responses they were generally able to avoid by hiding their past, and one of them was pity. She changed the subject.
“I can't promise you’ll be safe here-”
Daisy cut her off, turning her attention to the viewport, into space. “What happened to Simmons wasn't your fault, no matter what Bobbi said.” Her voice was just this side of a snap, like it was wrapped around a wound. “You were only on that planet to help me anyway.”
Melinda hesitated, then really looked at the girl. Saw the slumped shoulders, the tension, the bags under her eyes.
“It wasn't your fault either.” Daisy tried to interrupt but Melinda plowed ahead. “Everyone agreed to be there, so unless you swung the blade, you don't get to blame yourself.”
Surprise flickered over her face, and with a twinge of pain, Melinda wondered how long it had been since someone had looked after this girl.
They sat in silence for a while, watching the dot on the sensors grow larger and larger as they approached the base. The stars stayed static. They weren’t going nearly fast enough to see movement in anything far away, and most things were far away from here. The only planet in this system, a hostile gas giant with a few dead rock moons, wouldn’t be more than a bright speck at best.
“Are you worried about the Rebellion finding out who you are?” Daisy asked.
Of course she was. How could she not be? How could they not be?
“They don’t seem like the sort to turn you in, at least,” she continued when Melinda didn’t respond.
“No. Not as far as we know.” True trust was a rare thing in these times. Not trusting had kept her and Phil alive, and it had probably kept Daisy alive too.
“Hmm.” It didn’t sound like Daisy disagreed. “Is that all you’re worried about, or…”
Melinda took a breath. Took another. Felt the movement of her chest, the flow of air through her nose and throat. There was a time when the focus and stillness of that would flow up to her mind like water in a quiet stream, calming its entropy and returning her to herself, returning her to the moment.
Today it was like that stream was filled with rocks, splashing water, whipping currents and swirls around the momentarily calm eddies. There were the practical fears for the safety and wellbeing of the crew. The stability of the crew, and this small semblance of a life they’d painstakingly built. The memory of the roil of chaos they’d climbed their way out of, her and Phil. There were the fears that were muscle memory, fear of discovery, of being manipulated, used for the strength that no one was even supposed to know about. Captured.
But the image that really wouldn’t leave her mind was John Garrett. The willful, cocky but well-meaning kid they’d known at the Temple. Who, until just a few hours ago, she had been sure was dead. Turned out something worse had happened to him.
“Daisy,” she said, and the girl turned to look at her, eyes wide and earnest, and something in Melinda’s chest ached. “The Empire can never find out that you are Force-sensitive.”
Daisy blinked at her. “I don’t intend to ever get caught by them for any reason.” Her tone sobered. “I’ve heard the horror stories. Work camps that take in prisoners and shovel out corpses. Worlds burned to ash once they’re no longer of any use. I know what they are. I just saw my home-” her voice wavered, and she hesitated until it came back, “-blasted to silt. I’m not going to get caught.”
Melinda heard, and understood, the doubt at the idea that the Empire knowing something else about Daisy could make what they could do to her any worse. But the memory of the hollow, haunted look she’d seen in John’s eyes behind the rage gave her pause.
The only time she and Phil had seen an Inquisitor in person had been in the early days. They’d attracted a little suspicion by knocking a failing industrial loader off its path. It had been far too heavy for two normal human teenagers to have moved, but they’d saved the lives of three workers. Someone, they’d never found out who, had called in a payday for their gratitude. The presence of that black-cloaked figure had been strange, familiar and unfamiliar. Like the outline of someone they could have known, but wrapped in a dense, dark storm of pain so strong it nearly choked them just to be near.
They had been able to escape that world. Many of the townsfolk had not been so lucky, when the Inquisitor had to return empty-handed. The memory of their screams in the distance had haunted her dreams ever since. As had the thought of what horror would turn a Jedi into that. The knowledge of that very horror likely being the thing that waited for them, if they were ever caught.
John felt like proof, confirmation that their worst nightmares had been justified. That trying to get more involved may well have only unleashed two more monsters on the galaxy.
“There’s things we can never know for sure,” Melinda said instead. “Things I never want you to have to find out. But the Empire, maybe even the Emperor himself, has always paid special attention to Force-sensitives. Jedi in particular. More than Rebel sympathizers, even.” She looked Daisy right in the eye, and saw the girl react in surprise. “Keep yourself safe, however you need to.”
Daisy blinked at her, frowning. “You guys had a rough time of it, huh?”
Melinda fought the urge to dodge the question. Those early memories, just after the end of the Clone Wars, were a dark pit in her mind, and she didn’t like to think of them more than she had to. “The early Empire was a bad time for many. For your people too. For anyone whose suffering could be made useful.”
Daisy grimaced. “I’m glad you’re here now, though. I’m sorry about, well, everything, but I’m glad I got to meet you both. This crew is the first group of people to really care about me since, well, since my world died.” She paused. “You two made a good thing.”
Melinda thought of Simmons’ lost foot, and wasn’t sure. Maybe it had been foolish, selfish even, to try to build something in this galaxy. Their string of petty theft couldn’t have been truly hurting the Empire in any way that mattered, and now a kid was crippled because she’d thrown in with their little half-assed resistance. Too scared to even join the rebel cell that would have supported them. Too scared to fight back with their actual strength, like Bobbi had said.
Then again, the Mandalorians had fought back, and now their millenia-old culture was on the brink of extinction. But maybe that would have happened anyway.
Force, she wasn’t thinking straight. Melinda rubbed at her forehead and tried to ignore the headache threatening behind her eyes. Staying alive, protecting Phil, that had already been almost too much to bear at times.
“You guys aren’t going to give up on us…” For the first time in their conversation, there was a hint of fear in Daisy’s voice. “Are you?”
Melinda hesitated, and looked up at the girl. Girl. She was older than they’d been, when the Order fell. Much older than they’d been when the Clone Wars started. Though she probably hadn’t been when her world was stripped for parts. Phil was right, what this galaxy did to kids wasn’t fair.
But it wasn’t despair in Daisy’s eyes. Fear, yes, but that wasn’t all.
Melinda was very out of practice in the patterns of thought used to connect to the Force. It may not be the kind of thing you forgot, but it did require a certain amount of concentration and discipline. Starting it again was like trying to remember how to move in zero gravity, years after her muscles had lost the habit.
Still, with a bit of focus, she could turn her attention to the girl in front of her, and felt her power, her warmth, like fire on a cold night.
Kriffing hell. This was the sort of fire the Empire sought to smother. The brightness, hope, and will of everything an individual person could bring to the galaxy that a cold machine could not.
They couldn’t abandon her. They couldn’t abandon any of them.
Tentatively, Melinda extended a hand, and after a moment Daisy took it, holding it loosely in her own.
Then Daisy lunged forward, grabbing Melinda in a quick but fierce hug, and letting go just as quickly.
“Sorry,” she said, settling back into her chair. “Sorry I- sorry.”
She started to leave, and Melinda lightly placed a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said, not even wanting to give a name to the thing she was suggesting. “We were kids ourselves when the Order fell, and everything after… But maybe later, after we get everyone medical attention, after we see how this thing with the Rebellion is going to shake out… maybe we can talk. About whatever makes sense.”
There was a spark in Daisy’s eyes for a moment, of enthusiasm and hope that she quickly dialed down.
“I- thank you. Thank you for… just, thank you.”
And with that Daisy left, a new energy to her step, clear even as she tried to hide it.
Force, what were they going to do?
---
Daisy stayed close to the hover stretcher carrying Simmons through the base. The Chiss was awake for the transportation, and as much as anything looked uneasy at being the center of attention. Phil walked in front of them, speaking to a man she recognized as Trip in a low tone. Melinda was behind them, steady and stoic.
Bobbi and Lance had gone ahead, getting checked out in the infirmary before they got there since Lance could walk. They’d passed the two of them on their way back to the ship. Lance gave Daisy a little wave, leaning a little to see her around the bandages on his head. Bobbi’s expression had been nearly as unreadable as Melinda’s.
Fitz walked next to the stretcher, nearly in the way, not that anyone called him on it. Simmons’ fingers were curled in his.
Everything felt so very fragile to Daisy. Nothing else had happened since the fight on the Zephyr, but she felt like something was looming, like a Star Destroyer over a world, up behind clouds. It was making her restless, and she tried to tell herself it was just in her head.
After they reached the infirmary, she noticed Trip flash her a quick, reassuring smile, as Phil was distracted by watching a pair of medics preparing to transfer Simmons to a bed. Trip moved to get out of the way, stopping next to Daisy, who was standing near the door.
“No shortage of bad luck in this galaxy, huh?”
She just let out a slow breath, unsure of what could even be said.
“Phil was just grilling me about our medical facilities,” he continued, his muted but still good-natured smile nearly audible. “He’s got opinions about prosthetic surgery, wants to make sure she won't have unnecessary pain, no risk of infection, all that stuff. I wouldn't want to be the medic who screwed up with him around, not that ours will.” He glanced at Daisy reassuringly. “Unfortunately, our doctors have plenty of experience with prosthetics, and serious wounds of all sorts.”
She thought of the metal of Phil’s hand that she’d seen for the first time after the fight. There had been moments before where she’d noticed his left arm had seemed to move a little strangely, and she’d wondered if it had been an old injury. Now the way he seemed to favor it in fights made sense. None of that seemed like Trip’s business, however, so she changed the subject. “I thought this was an information gathering station? Do you also send people out to fight?”
“Information gathering isn’t a safe job, you know. But, a lot of folks also wind up here after something's gone wrong, often with friends and loved ones. Good hospitals off the Empire’s scanners can be hard to find.”
Phil was speaking in Huttese to a Rodian doctor now as Melinda listened, and translated their Huttese to Basic for Simmons. Daisy caught bits of both languages, details of the surgery and recovery. The doctor seemed confident that she could safely attach a prosthetic anchor to the bone in Simmons’ leg, but was less confident making estimates on recovery time without better knowledge of Chiss physiology. Simmons had that dull, tired look again, but she was focusing on Melinda regardless, answering questions in Basic that Melinda translated back for the doctor.
After a while, as the conversation narrowed into the specifics, Trip gestured to Daisy for them to give them some space, and she followed him into the hallway. It must have been in the middle of a shift given how quiet it was, only the two of them and an astromech in the hall. She startled after a moment, realizing the astromech was L0-LA, shifting back and forth in a way that almost looked anxious. Daisy reached out a hand, as if to pat the droid on the dome. L0-LA stopped fidgeting, then pulled back like a cautious tooka, and settled half a meter away as if to watch her, and the door.
Daisy would win her over eventually.
Sighing, she sat on a bench opposite Trip, who had been watching her interaction with the droid with some amusement. The good humor slid off his face after a moment, as he glanced back towards the infirmary.
“Damn shame every time someone young gets hurt. Anyone, of course, but too damn many people who aren’t even supposed to be in the line of fire end up changed by this mess.”
Daisy frowned. “The Empire’s never cared about innocents. It's all just meat for the machine to them.”
“Yeah.” There was something in Trip’s tone that Daisy couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t anger or resentment or even resignation. Something about it reminded her of the way an old wound felt. Like the twinge in her knee, from where it had crunched as she’d run from guards after the first crew she’d joined after leaving home had left her for dead.
“Did you find your world?” he asked, pulling her from her thoughts.
“We, uh, yeah. Sort of,” she said. “The planet is still there, but not… not much else. The mining damage was…”
Daisy felt her voice start to catch, and fell silent, refusing to tear up in front of a complete stranger.
“That’s where you guys got attacked?”
Daisy decided to treat the subject change as a mercy. “Yeah, uh. The same guys related to those Wookiees we freed, they think.”
“Strong fighters? Must have been, to get past two Mandos.”
“Yeah, you could say that.” Daisy was still trying to make sense of the way the man named John had moved, fast and strong as something out of a holovid, strangling Phil, lifting him off the ground without touching him. The way Melinda had fought back almost as well.
She considered the question she wanted to ask, weighed the risk, and asked it anyway. “How much do you know about Melinda and Phil?”
Trip's reaction was so controlled, so careful, that with a chill Daisy suddenly saw him for the spy he was. There was a look that might have been calculating, but it was gone too fast for her to be sure, and the casualness returned.
“Mack ran a background check before working with them,” he said. “I'm not in the habit of telling stories that aren't mine to tell, at least not of allies, but if he’d seen something he didn't like, you all wouldn't have been welcomed back.”
She nodded, because she didn't know how else to respond, but Trip was still looking at her, that shadow of intensity still in his eyes.
“Something on your mind?”
No way in hells she'd tell him. “I’d just… never seen them really fight before, you know? I mean, I guess there's been plenty of fights, that's how I met them, but…”
Something else changed in Trip’s expression, moving it back towards friendly. “There's a moment when it becomes real, though, right?”
“Yeah…” That didn’t feel right, but she needed to close this line of conversation before she said something she regretted. Her attention pulled back to the door of the infirmary. “You think Simmons is going to be alright?”
He sighed. “Dr. Yool knows what she’s doing, and we have the resources to give Simmons the care she needs, even if it won’t quite be top of the line. Part of the recovery is going to be up to her though.”
Daisy felt pretty confident now that Simmons was stronger than she looked. No, while of course she was worried about Simmons, that wasn’t actually what was bothering her. It wasn’t really the Jedi thing either, the mysterious pasts Melinda and Phil refused to talk about, the dysfunction in the crew…
So what was it? Something about the Force, maybe. Some nebulous, nonspecific thought that sat like a weight in her gut, like she was dreading something but had forgotten what it was.
She shook herself, and sent Trip a quick smile. “I should probably go back in, at least to check on Fitz. He’s taking it hard.”
Trip nodded, and Daisy stood up, giving a light tap on L0-LA’s dome in the process, and feeling mildly gratified when the droid only pulled back a little.
She’d figure it out. Eventually. Assuming nothing else went horribly wrong.
---
Phil settled into one of the unused exam rooms of the infirmary, in earshot of Simmons’ room in case he was needed, and, with a sigh, started to pull maintenance tools out of the small kit he’d brought with him. He added them to some of the spare disinfectant, and a bit of bacta, and took off his outer shirt so he could access the port of his prosthetic around his shoulder. He’d need to ask Melinda to help him with the hard-to-reach parts, but he was overdue for maintenance, and needed to check things over after that fight anyway.
Kriff, he hated this.
He cleaned the port as well as he could alone with the disinfectant, carefully feeling for any soreness or inflammation around the edges of the metal, and on the anchors around his collarbone and scapula. All seemed good, but it wasn’t something he liked to take chances with, after spending so long with the limb in poor condition before he got this prosthetic. He’d moved on to the mechanical part, pulling off one of the outer panels, checking over the voltages on the electronics to make sure everything was in range, when he heard a light knock on the door.
It was Mack.
Kriff fucking damnit. Just what he needed.
“Mack,” he said, aiming for as polite as he could manage.
Mack had the decency to look a little abashed, but he didn’t leave, and Phil doubted the interruption was unintentional. “I was hoping to speak to you for a moment.”
Phil looked pointedly at the panel from his arm sitting on the exam table. “Can it wait a bit?”
“I don’t mind if you don’t.”
Wasn’t that an assumption. But, Phil was at a disadvantage here. Mack’s people were treating one of his crew, without explicit pay, at least as far as he’d heard. He shrugged with the shoulder that wasn’t currently being worked on.
“Actually,” Mack said, looking thoughtful, “I can help you give the mechanics a look, if you’d like. I actually started as a mechanic. Didn’t specialize in prosthesis, but well, there’s plenty of need for it.”
Kriffing damnit. “If you’d like.”
Mack nodded, sat down next to him, and started looking over Phil’s initial progress.
“I recognize the model,” he said, starting to neatly arrange the wiring in a way Phil rarely had the patience for. “You got this while you were with Saw’s crew?”
That was quick. “One of the reasons we joined, actually,” he said, not seeing a good way around the information while keeping things friendly. “Hard to get good medical attention in the early Empire if you were on the edge of things.”
Mack hummed in acknowledgement. “It’s a sturdy design, relatively easy to maintain for a non-professional. But…” He frowned, looking at the power adapter. “Do you ever get feedback from it?”
Electric shocks in his nerve endings when he strained it too hard. “Sometimes.”
“Yeah. We’ve figured out some workarounds. Hang on a second.”
Mack stepped out of the room for a moment before coming back with what looked like a much more professional maintenance kit. He started digging through the kit, then, apparently finding what he was looking for, removed a new power adapter, a coupler, and a length of wire.
“The adapters in the old ones are reliable, but not really designed for medical applications, and don’t have quite the precision needed in the regulator. We’ve been building these as an improvement.” He held it up for Phil’s inspection, who carefully took it in his right hand, wishing he was better at these things. “I can install it, if you want.” At Phil’s hesitation, he added. “We would likely be giving Simmons a similar design.”
As much as he didn’t like the situation, testing it out to learn any surprises before the girl did was well worth it. “Alright, thank you.”
Mack set to work. Phil felt a prickling in the nerves, followed by the odd weight of the arm powering down, and tried not to show that it bothered him.
“Did you find the mining operation?” Mack asked. “Is that where you got attacked?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it's uh.” Phil felt the emotion welling up again. Daisy, Simmons, another of so many dead worlds, so much pointless suffering. He made himself take a breath, feel for the calm in his mind. Of course, a quieter mind made the deadweight of his arm harder to ignore. Come on, Phil, keep it together. “There wasn’t much left of the world. There had been heavy mining, almost certainly of kyber, combined with some apparently unique weather conditions on the planet that accelerated the destruction.”
“Damn,” Mack muttered, frustration audible. “Any idea how much kyber they took?”
“Unfortunately we weren’t there long, but there was some pretty heavy equipment. No way of knowing that they weren’t also mining something else, but it's probably safe to assume there was a considerable amount.” More than enough to make a dangerous weapon.
“This I will have to report up the chain,” Mack said. “I’ll downplay your crew’s efforts as much as I can, unless you’ve changed your mind. Sorry-” Phil’s arm jerked as Mack removed something.
“Not likely,” Phil said through gritted teeth. “Though we do very much appreciate your people helping Simmons.”
“Of course.” It wasn’t clear to Phil if Mack was downplaying, or really didn’t think the action was significant. Or, not exceptional, at least. Phil really did want to believe that Mack was running the kind of place that would help an injured kid, no questions asked. That Saw’s people hadn’t been wasn’t evidence against him. But the consequences for a lack of caution would be dire.
Mack sighed, and Phil realized he’d been quiet for a long time. “Look,” he said. “I think we’re overdue a conversation.”
Something clanked as Mack pulled out the old power adapter from Phil’s arm, and he felt the jolt up to the shoulder. Meaning Phil was effectively stuck, unless he wanted to storm out with an inoperable arm. Wonderful.
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” Mack kept his eyes on his work. “Because Saw’s crew kept records on most of his people, especially the ones he found interesting, and you two made an impression.”
“You already told us that.”
“I did, and I expect you probably suspected it before. It helped smooth things over when you first made contact. Easier to work with a known quantity.”
Phil remembered that well. They’d stumbled onto a group of refugees, including over twenty children, dangerously low on supplies and well beyond the capacity of the two of them to help. It had taken some debating before they’d agreed to break out one of the old rebel contact codes they’d kept. The most remote base they could find, out of hope that any information about them wouldn’t have made it that far. So much for that.
“And what did you think of what you read in there?”
“Look, I have my own opinions of Saw’s operation. His people were some of the first to hit back, with very little support or infrastructure. It was important, maybe necessary, for a lasting resistance. But that doesn’t mean I approve of every aspect of how he and his people operated. I know you two left.” He paused, a little heavily. “And I think I know why. Saw also had an opinion why, and if he was still alive he might still want to kill you two. But I’d like to hear the story for myself.”
There it was. Karabast.
“You were still willing to work with us, with Saw’s version of the story?” Phil asked, half curious, half stalling. As far as he could tell, Mack was still working steadily on the arm. Once the coupler was back in place, Phil was pretty sure he could finish the repairs himself back in the safety of the Zephyr…
Mack took a breath. “We all talk a lot about what the Empire’s done. We’re fucking drowning in it. Homes, cultures, lives lost. We all know what that does to people, what can happen in a pressure cooker of fear and desperation. How different priorities can clash.”
Mack did pause his work now, and looked Phil right in the eye. Phil felt the sudden urge to run, arm be damned. “I know one of his lieutenants wound up dead after being alone in a room with you, right before the two of you ran. I also know that lieutenant was regarded as a bastard who got rookies killed all the time. I know the rookie crew he’d sent on a suicide mission miraculously bailed at just the right time, and made it back alive. I know those kids were able to join up with a different rebel cell, and that they’re still alive, likely as a result of whatever got them to change course.”
Emotion flared again, too strong for Phil to control, and he felt tears prick at the edges of his eyes. No. Not fucking now.
“So yes,” Mack said, “Saw’s file had a black mark on you two as untrustworthy, violent murderers. You in particular, really, given Melinda’s record of violence was all in the field, and we both know Saw didn’t actually care about that. I do think he cared that you two disobeyed him and ran. As to what happened with you and his lieutenant, I think there might be some nuance there. Nothing I’ve ever seen makes me think you’d have done something like that without reason.”
Mack let those words hang in the air as he went back to his work. The power coupler snapped back into place, loud in the silence, and he made quick work of the wiring. Phil was still having trouble getting words to form in his head over the static, much less come out of his mouth.
The memory was back like being plunged in freezing water. The moment when he’d realized those two brave kids were never supposed to come home. Like Melinda and him hadn't been supposed to come home after the Clone Wars. The coldness in the boss’s voice. The sudden, intense pit of rage.
Consciously, Phil had only been trying to get him away from the comm.
Right?
“I…” he stammered, his voice weak even to his own ears. “I didn’t mean… I wasn’t trying to…”
Then something changed, and it took Phil a moment to understand what he was feeling, then he reached out with rusty senses, feeling for…
Something was wrong.
“Are you almost done?” he asked, his focus back in a rush.
Mack must have seen something in his expression, because the previous scrutiny was gone in a moment. “Yeah. Hold on.”
That Mack seemed to trust his instincts was interesting, and worth later investigation, assuming there was a later for this. Mack had just powered the arm back up and clicked the panel back into place when his comm pinged. Phil took a moment to flex the fingers, and damn if the response didn’t feel better.
Then Mack swore. “We’ll finish this later. Go check on your people.”
“What-” The feeling again, stronger now.
Then an alarm started to sound.