[Last Of The Jedi] - 07(3)

Already a small group sat waiting. Strapped to their backs or their belts were a variety of weapons. Before the Empire invaded, Rosha had been a peaceful planet, but citizens now had scavenged arms from wherever they could find them. Their clothes were stained with smoke and dirt. Some had bandages wrapped around an arm or forehead.

Here were the beginnings of the Roshan resistance.

Flame motioned for Trever to sit next to her in the tight circle.

“No names,” a tail Roshan said. His four delicate antennae were tightly curled, a signal of anxiety for a Roshan. “We’re going to set up a code name system after this meeting. We’re all here for the same reason.” He indicated Flame. “Our visitor has assured us that we can count on help from her organization.”

“You need to set up an account that I can transfer credits to,” Flame said.

“We need weapons and a secure comm system,” another Roshan said.

“And vehicles,” someone else chimed in.

“The most important thing you need is information,” Flame told them. “You have to find the right insiders to bribe. If you know what the Empire is going to do before it does it, you can plan strikes and escape routes.”

Trever found his mind drifting. He knew the basics now. He’d learned plenty about how to set up a resistance. He admired how Flame sat back and didn’t dominate. She waited until one of the Roshans asked a question, and she asked plenty of questions on her own.

Trever’s mind drifted to Ferus again. Instead of traveling with Ferus, he was here with someone he hardly knew, seeding resistance groups from planet to planet.

Maybe it made more sense than he’d thought. Saving Jedi wasn’t his fight. But setting up resistance groups throughout the galaxy was more his speed. Maybe fate had stepped in and given him a push in the right direction.

Suddenly his father appeared in his mind. He tried not to think about his parents. Trever had attacked his grief long ago. He had spent months in a haze of agony and anger until he realized he just couldn’t function if he continued to remember things. He had turned his face away from memory. He’d left his life behind and become a street thief.

Until he’d stowed aboard Ferus’s starship and found himself reborn yet again.

What was he now? Trever, resistance fighter? Trever, Jedi saver? Neither of those fit.

Old friends in your heart, new friends by your shoulder. Was that it? Whatever the saying had been, his father had always pointed out that he should honor his commitments. Trever had to admit to himself now that he wished he’d been a bit more attentive to those life lessons. Well, sure, at the time he’d thought it was a whole lot of blah-blab, but now his conscience pricked him whenever he thought of stealing the ship from the secret base. Ferus had been furious.

The tall Roshan suddenly tensed. He held up a hand for silence.

“I think I hear –“

The rest of his sentence was blotted out when an explosion ripped off the entire back wall of the building.

Trever felt the explosion through a shudder of air that hit him like a fist, lifting him through the heavy air and slamming him down on the hard ground. A piece of rock pierced his shoulder. He tucked himself into a ball while debris rained down.

Before he could even form a coherent thought, he felt Flame’s hand on his arm, already beginning to lead him. The air was full of dust and particles that choked him, and he could barely see, but she pulled him forward, both of them on their bellies, making progress on their knees and elbows while they coughed and swore, tears streaming down their faces from the smoke.

The exits he had so carefully noted were gone now, blasted into great, smoking holes in the structure. Then, when he thought things couldn’t possibly get worse, stormtroopers poured through the openings.

Blasterfire streaked through the space. He heard someone shouting. He couldn’t see anything. He didn’t know how the others had fared. He only heard Flame panting “hurry” in his ear.

She wrenched the sleeves of her tunic over her hands – why? A moment later he got his answer.

The vent in the floor was hot, but she slid her hands underneath the smoking durasteel. As soon as he realized what she was doing, he wrapped his cloak around his fingers to help her. They heaved the heavy vent off, dropping it with a thud that was covered by the sound of cries and blasterfire.

The vent system was below, under the floor. He had looked for every exit but this one. But Flame had looked. Flame had mapped it out.

She shoved him inside, then climbed in after him. She reached out and with a tremendous heave slid the vent back into place.

There was nowhere to go. The pipe they had crawled into narrowed as it snaked underneath the floor. They crammed themselves into the tiny space and huddled together. Flame reached into her tunic and withdrew two portable breathers. She handed him one. It would help them not to cough from the smoke and give themselves away.