'Calling all New Republic forces,' said Luna into the comm, her voice hoarse, 'is anybody out there? Please respond.'
Face walked into the cockpit and leaned over her chair to check the sensor readouts. 'Anything yet?' he asked. He looked haggard, his eyes red. Luna thought she probably looked much the same.
Luna shook her head sadly. She had been trying for hours, on every commonly used wave band, until her throat was raw from overuse.
Face's nodded as if he expected that answer and moved, almost in a daze, to slump into the chair beside her. He stared without looking out the window. Luna couldn't bear to look outside for one more second. She had had her fill of looking at the face of a war crime for a life time. 'Sir,' she said tentatively. 'Face. What do we do?'
For a while Face did nothing, then he fished out a datapad from his inside jacket pocket and placed it in his lap. She noticed that he was wearing an orange New Republic Navy jacket, instead of his grey pirate's vest. She couldn't recall when he'd changed, but she figured he needed something to comfort him. She wished she had something to comfort her, but Cora wasn't here. As quickly as the thought came to her, she buried it deep down. As raw as she felt, emotionally, not just physically, she didn't feel that she had the capacity to deal with that. As a distraction, she reached over and picked the datapad up - or tried to. As soon as she touched it, Face slammed a hand down onto it, reclaiming it. 'Don't,' he said, looking her hard in the eye.
'What is it?' she asked, confused by his hostile behaviour.
'It's nothing,' Face said too quickly. He seemed to think over his response, then said, 'it's the info we got from the First Order station.'
'Can I have a look?' she asked. For an answer, Face tightened his grip on the datapad. She couldn't help but feel a little upset, like she had been rejected. 'I'm not a spy, you know,' she said flatly.
Face tensed, then relaxed. 'It's not that,' he said, returning his attention to the rubble-filled space. 'I'm just,' he paused, 'not ready to share what it says.'
Luna nodded, then turned back to the comm. 'Any New Republic forces,' she said, 'anyone out there? Please.'
'You go get some rest,' said Face, shimmying to sit upright. 'I'll take over. I need time to think anyway.'
'About what to do next?' asked Luna, standing slowly, stretching her aching body.
'That too.'
At the door, Luna turned back to face him. Face was back to staring out into space, the datapad resting on the controls in front of him. Her gaze drifted up, as much as she didn't want it to, to look outwards, and she felt despair grow inside her again. It's all gone, she thought. How are we supposed to fight back when our entire navy is destroyed?
Luna wandered aimlessly through the ship, letting her feet take her wherever. All was quiet. She supposed the others must be around somewhere, but she couldn't find them, not that she was properly looking, and if she had happened to find someone, she would have turned away. She didn't feel up to being around anyone else right now. She guessed the others felt the same.
At some point she realised that her feet had taken her up to the crew quarters, and she made her way to her room, but instead of turning to her door, her body chose to turn to the door opposite - the door to Cora's room. She really didn't want to think about that woman anymore. Wanted nothing to do with her, wanted her out of her head, and she wanted nothing more than to lie on her own bed, to bury her head under her pillow and not come out until the nightmare was over. She unlocked Cora's door and stepped inside.
It was, as best as she could tell, untouched from when she was in there last, just a few hours prior, when she learned the truth. Had it really been just a few hours? she thought. It felt longer. Like there was an after Hosnian Prime, and before, and the before might as well be an entire century ago.
Cora's things littered the floor like a bomb had gone off - a literal one, not the emotional one that truly had. She picked her way through the things, making her way over to the bed, where she sat on the edge. Her eyes drifted around the room, finally settling on the supply crate beside the bed. The memory of Cora searching through it, looking for something, flittered through her mind, and her eyes turned to the shattered shards on the floor by the wall to her left, at the feet of the terminal. I made this for you. Luna's heart ached at recollection of the words. She wished she could turn back time, tell her to not be so stuffy about cleaning up, to just live in the moment, to accept the gift, to be comforted by the feeling of being loved, of loving someone wholeheartedly. Such a delicate, beautiful thing. She must have spent hours making it for her. All that time, just making a trinket for her. Luna felt tears threatening again, but she was all cried out. She had no more left to shed. She wondered how Cora had even known about holocrons in the first place, before her brain supplied the answer, and she looked away in disgust. That woman had probably told her about them.
Her eyes returned to the crate by the bed, and she knelt down in front of it and started riffling through it, needing the distraction. She found the usual items that were to be expected on board a ship: clothes, some datapads containing novels, flight and technical manuals, a few travel games, a deck of cards, lots of snacks, various interesting but otherwise useless trinkets of the kind that pilots everywhere seem to pick up, if only to mark moments or memories. She had just finished looking through and replacing them in the crate before a thought struck her, and she threw out all the things she'd just put back, until the box was empty. This was a pirate ship, after all, and pirates tended to hide things in secret compartments. One of the storage boxes in her own room had one, containing an old holovid. She'd watched it once. It was of a very dangerous looking woman, who she supposed was the previous occupant of her bunk, surrounded by young children. Children, she supposed with understanding, that had been taken by the First Order - the reason why there were no young people at that pirate outpost. The hollowness inside her grew. After this, when she'd go back to her own room, she take it back out and place it on her desk. She owed it to the woman not to forget.
Luna shook her head, returned her attention to the crate. She prodded the bottom, expecting a secret button, a hollow sound, or simply for it to give way to her touch, but it remained solidly solid, unyielding. A tiny part of her was relieved. Maybe, just maybe, she had been wrong after all. Maybe Cora wasn't the spy after all. As Luna reached for the upturned lid to the crate, she noticed there was a small bump, almost imperceptible. Probably just a mistake in the manufacture. They were pirates, after all, she doubted they could afford well made things. Her finger brushed the bump, pressed down, almost daring it to be a figment of her imagination.
The lid broke in two. The top stayed in her hand, the underside slid down. Inside, a small holdout blaster and a commlink. With her free hand, she picked up the communicator, squeazed it in her hand until she shook, gritting her teeth in a silent scream, trying to break it, but it was like her body hadn't the strength for anything any more, and she bowed her head to rest on the side of the bed, willing the galaxy to swallow her whole.
Overhead, the proximity alarm sounded, and she bolted upright, breathing shallowly, her nerves on edge.
'First Order incoming,' said Face over the intercomm. 'Anyone fancy getting some payback?'
Luna shot to her feet and raced out the door, down to the cargo bay. She would pay them back all right.
