Star Wars: On the Job

Chapter 9: Voice of the Past

The fresher door hushed closed and for a moment Hera was entombed in darkness. Then the bare emergency light in the corner gave a snap and exhaled a wane yellow. The air was cold and too-still. A thin scent of kelp lingered from the galley. As she moved mechanically through routine gestures, the close walls echoed hollowly.

Hera threw the last bit of paper into the toilet and hit the button, sending it into the septic receptacle. Once they returned to realspace it would be purged into the thrusters during their descent. Another non-essential system placed on hold. She washed her hands and wiped them dry on the towel turned sickly yellow by the light. Her hip hitched up uncomfortably, shifting against the cold spot in her underwear.

Heavily, reluctantly, she set her hands on the edges of the sink and forced herself to look in the mirror. Her face was sallow and her lekku drooped. Her eyes were featureless circles punctuated with black points. Overly flushed lips turned down in a line over her narrow chin. The fresher was chilly, like the rest of the ship, and now that her body temperature had dropped, the sweat gathered in her clothes made Hera shiver. She ripped off her goggles and cap, peeling them down her lekku. They were tender to the touch, growing cold at the ends. When she looked in the mirror again her breath caught in her throat. For the span of a heartbeat her mother had been staring back at her.

The mirror was as smooth as ice under Hera's fingertips. She didn't think about her mother every day anymore. Not even every month. She had lived to see the end of the Clone Wars, but not the liberation of Ryloth. When the Separatist droids had morphed into Imperial stormtroopers she had continued the fight for freedom. But one well-placed blaster bolt had...

Hera's fists tightened around the polished plasteel. She had been too young to grasp the complexity of the political and military situations back then, but there was one thing from that time she had understood with searing clarity: that she was in pain to the core of her gut and to the marrow of her bones. She would hug herself against the desert heat like she was stranded in a blizzard, and the pain tore at her heart like sand in a storm. In the days that followed, her father had become a fleeting shadow glimpsed between the maelstrom of freedom fighters. Occasionally the roughened warriors would spare her sidelong glances, the dirty girl with the hydro-spanner and the broken-down droid. Syndulla's daughter. Poor thing. Once, Hera had snuck to her father's rooms in the middle of the night hoping to feel the ghost of her mother though his arms. But when she pushed open his door all she had found was an empty room under a thin layer of dust. He'd been gone for days and she hadn't even known. Whatever hole the loss of his wife had left in his life, Cham Syndulla had filled it with Free Ryloth.

As it always did, Hera's lip and lekku curled at the thought of her father. She searched the mirror for her mother again. People said that they looked alike, both green-skinned with fine brows and delicate chins. But in the line of her mouth, in the sharpness of her eyes lurked Cham Syndulla.

Was it worth it, she wondered. Did forgetting her make him a better fighter? A better leader? Was Ryolth closer to freedom because he'd chosen the cause over his own family? And once Ryloth was free what would be left for him? What good was victory when it meant losing the things you were supposed to love the most?

Suddenly, Hera's mind was filled with the image of her father, his sharpened teeth flashing as his fist pounded the dust from his desk. "Sacrifices are a part of war, Hera. Not all of the casualties are counted with the bodies!" Behind him, a blaster-scorched mosaic of their family faded a bit further into the wall.

Hera shook her head to escape image, but a new one immediately rushed in to take its place: Ryloth under siege. The capital's towers and villas smoldering as merciless winds syphoned black smoke into a blood-red sunset. She saw the planet ripped apart to its core and its precious ryll warped into mind-killing spice and set into the needles of interrogation droids. And across the galaxy the endless colors of her people scattered to the stars, struggling under the weight of chains. The image shifted and widened and she saw that Ryloth was only one of a thousand systems crying out for mercy. The beings of the galaxy reached out to her with grasping hands and wide eyes. Each one rasped for breath as the Empire's gloved hand slowly closed around their throats. Among the cacophony of voices she could make out the far echo of her mother's last scream.

Hera's lekku twitched. She tightened her grip on the cold sink and studied the taught tendons on the backs of her hands. As much as she hated to admit it, this was perhaps the one thing that she and her father agreed on. The fight for freedom required– no, deserved– every bit of her being and every microgram of her commitment. The only difference was that she wasn't abandoning anyone to do it. No one was going to be left cold and alone because of her choice to fight for the freedom of the galaxy.

A chill ran through her body, making her lekku tremble. She shook it off, rubbing her forehead, and gathered up her cap and goggles. She knew what she needed to do.

As her fist closed around the door handle, she glanced in the mirror once more before the yellow light went out, unsure of who was looking back at her with those sad eyes.