All strive for victory. But not all understand what it truly is.
To a soldier or pilot on the line, victory is surviving the current battle. To a politician, victory is an advantage one can bring to a bargaining table. To a warrior, victory is driving an enemy from the field of battle, or bringing him to surrender.
Sometimes the victory is greater than the warrior could ever hope for.
Sometimes it is more than he is able to bear.
—
“You’re kidding,” Arihnda said, eyeing the stack of twenty data cards her mother had handed her. “All of them?”
“All of them,” Elainye said firmly. “And if I find that other box before you drag us out of here, there’ll be ten more.”
“It’s the record of your life, Arihnda,” Talmoor reminded her. “Your dance recitals, your school debates, your first day working the mine. Everything up until you left for Coruscant.”
“Fine,” Arihnda said, managing to check her chrono without spilling the data cards all over the floor. “You’ve got fifteen minutes. And don’t forget to grab some of your own mementos.”
“You’re the most important part of our life together, Arihnda,” Talmoor said quietly.
“Well, get some of your own things anyway. You must have some memories from before I was born. The carrybags are where?”
“Downstairs, in the closet off the kitchen,” Elainye said. “There’s one big one and three smaller ones.”
“Okay,” Arihnda said. “I’ll load these in one of the small ones and bring the big one up. Remember: fifteen minutes.”
She headed downstairs, holding the data cards in a vertical stack pressed between her palms. Fifteen minutes should be enough time to get out of here before Gudry came back.
She was wrong. By exactly fifteen minutes.
“There you are,” Gudry’s voice came from behind her as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
Arihnda jerked, nearly spilling the cards as she spun around. Gudry had emerged from the dining alcove, a suspicious scowl on his face, a line of dried blood tracing out a path from the corner of his chin.
A small blaster gripped in his hand.
“Of course I am,” Arihnda said as calmly as she could. Damn. “Where else would I be?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Gudry said sarcastically. “Maybe at the hospital? Your mother being deathly ill and all.”
“False alarm,” Arihnda said. “We made her some tea, had her put her feet up, and she started feeling better.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Gudry said. “I can hear the party they’ve got going on upstairs. A packing party, sounds like. Where’s the teacup?”
Arihnda felt her stomach tighten. Stupid, she berated herself. She knew better than to tell unnecessary lies, especially ones that could be easily checked. “What exactly are you implying?”
“I’m saying that you deliberately gave me the slip,” he said, taking a step toward her. “I’m saying that you were never going to help me find what we needed in there.”
“You’re the professional. I didn’t think you needed any help.”
“Whereas your parents do need your help to get out before this place goes to hell?” Gudry shook his head. “Sorry, sweetheart. This isn’t a rescue mission. It’s search and destroy.” He held up his comm. “Luckily for the Empire, I didn’t need you. I did the search, and now we’re ready for the destroy.”
Arihnda took a deep breath. Damn him, anyway. How could he have been so fast?
Or maybe how could she have been so slow? “Excellent,” she said. “What have we got?”
“We have an explosives cache and the shield generator.” He grinned slyly. “Oh yeah, I got all the way to the shield generator.”
Arihnda looked at his new blaster. “I assume that’s where you got the weapon?”
“Let’s just say the previous owner won’t need it anymore,” Gudry said. “I tied the triggers into my comm. Signal One is the shield, Signal Two is all the explosives.”
“All the explosives?”
“All of them,” he said. “Hell of a cache—it took four of my caps to cover all the piles. Never mind that. We’re ready, the navy task force and troops are ready, and it’s time to get the hell out of here. So put down those cards and let’s go.”
“We can still take my parents with us,” Arihnda said. “They won’t slow us down.”
“I don’t care if they can turn into Arkanian dragons and fly us out,” Gudry retorted. “A party draws attention we can’t afford. I’m in charge, and they’re not going.”
“I’m a governor,” Arihnda bit out, taking a step toward him.
“I’ve got the blaster.”
There was a sudden gasp from the stairs. Arihnda’s mother had frozen halfway down the steps, gripping a shimmering multicolored crystal, her eyes bulging at the sight of Gudry’s blaster. Arihnda took another quick step toward Gudry as he reflexively spun to face the unexpected noise—
And as he spun back toward Arihnda, she hurled her stack of data cards into his face.
He was quick. But he was also half turned, his balance was off, and his blaster was pointed the wrong way. He ducked his head away from the flying data cards, flinging up his free hand to fend them off, then spun back toward Arihnda.
Too late. She caught his wrist with her right hand, and as he tried to break it free she swung the arm upward, ducked under it, grabbed the blaster with her other hand, and pulled his elbow down sharply across her shoulder. There was a faint sound as the joint snapped, a barely louder grunt as Gudry reacted to the pain. Arihnda twisted the blaster free of his grip and started to dive out of his reach—
And gasped in pain as he slammed the heel of his other hand against the back of her head.
She fell forward and away from him, her head spinning, her knees wobbling. She threw out her free hand blindly, managed to catch the arm of a chair as she fell past it. She pivoted around the arm and slammed onto her back on the floor.
“Cute,” Gudry growled as he strode toward her, clutching his broken elbow with his other hand. “We’ll try that again in the dojo after they put my arm back together. Get up—it’s time to go.”
“With my parents,” Arihnda managed between gasps of air.
“No,” Gudry bit out. “Let ’em die here with all the rest of these Outer Rim freaks.”
Lifting the blaster, Arihnda shot him three times in the chest.
He collapsed in a heap, dead before he even had time to change expression. Holding the back of her head, wincing at the knives of pain shooting through her skull, Arihnda climbed back to her feet.
Her mother was still standing on the stairs, her eyes even wider than before. “See?” Arihnda managed, pointing her blaster at the crystal clutched in Elainye’s hands. “You do have memories of your own.”
“Arihnda,” Elainye breathed. “Oh, Arihnda—”
“I had no choice, Mother,” Arihnda interrupted. “He was going to leave you and Father behind. And he was probably going to kill me once I’d gotten him out of the area.” Which wasn’t true, of course. But if it made her mother feel better, she was more than happy to tell the tale. “Let me get the suitcase—”
“I’ll get the suitcase,” Elainye said, finally coming unglued from the stairs and hurrying toward her daughter. “You just sit down. No—wait—let me get the medpac first.”
“Just get the suitcase,” Arihnda said. “I’ll get the medpac. We haven’t got much time.”
Elainye looked at Gudry, turned quickly away. “We’ll be ready,” she murmured.
With a last look at her daughter, and no look at all at the dead man lying on her floor, she headed toward the closet and the carrybags.
For a long moment Arihnda stared at Gudry, wondering if she should feel something at what she’d done. But there was nothing. No guilt, no sorrow, not even any queasiness. Gudry had threatened her parents. He’d gotten in her way.
He’d paid the cost.
Carefully, mindful of her shaky balance, she walked over to him. He still had all their special gear, after all, including the blasting caps, the comm trigger mechanism he’d set up, and whatever else he’d decided to bring along.
Arihnda might not need anything except the trigger. But then again, she might.