A New Dawn Read online

  Another freighter moved alongside. He didn’t recognize this one. Almost shaped like a gem, with a bubble-like cockpit forward and another for a gunner seated just above. It was a nice ride compared with anything else in the sky. Kanan goosed the throttle, trying to pull alongside and get a glimpse at her driver. The freighter responded by zipping ahead with surprising speed, claiming his vector and causing him to lay off the acceleration. He gawked as the other pilot hit the afterburners, soaring far ahead.

  It was the one time he’d touched the brakes all trip, and it was instantly noticed. His comm system chirped, followed by a female voice, sounding none too happy. “You there! What’s your identifier?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “This is Captain Sloane, of the Star Destroyer Ultimatum!”

  “I’m impressed,” Kanan said, smoothing the black hairs on his pointed chin. “What are you wearing?”

  “What?”

  “Just trying to get a picture. Hard to meet people out here.”

  “I repeat, what’s your—”

  “This is Expedient, flying for Moonglow Polychemical, out of Gorse City.” He rarely bothered to activate his ID transponder; no one ever managed space traffic here anyway.

  “Speed up. Or else!”

  Kanan sat lazily back in his pilot’s seat and rolled his eyes. “You can shoot me if you want,” he said in a slow almost-drawl, “but you need to know I’m hauling a load of explosive-grade baradium bisulfate for the mines on Cynda. It’s testy stuff. Now, you might be safe from the debris in your big ship over there, but I can’t speak for the rest of the convoy. And some of these folks are hauling the same thing I am. So I’m not sure how smart that’d be.” He chuckled lightly. “Be something to watch, though.”

  Silence.

  Then, after a moment: “Move along.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, you could probably record it and sell—”

  “Don’t push it, grubber,” came the icy response. “And try to go faster.”

  He straightened one of his fingerless gloves and smiled. “Nice talking with you, too.”

  “Ultimatum out!”

  Kanan switched off the receiver. He knew there wasn’t any chance of his being targeted once anyone with a brain understood what he was carrying. For their own protection, miners only used “Baby”—the sardonic nickname for baradium bisulfate—by the gram down in the mines on Cynda. Any Imperial would think twice before targeting a Baby Carrier too close by—and the Star Destroyer captain in particular would be less apt to call on him again about anything after that conversation.

  That was also according to plan. He’d rather avoid that meeting, no matter what she might look like.

  He mouthed Sloane’s words mockingly. “Go faster!” He was already flying the freighter at close to top speed. When fully loaded, Expedient wasn’t going to give him even that much. The sarcastic name was his idea. The freighter was Moonglow’s, one of dozens of identical vessels the company operated; the ships met with disastrous ends often enough the firm didn’t bother naming them. “Suicide fliers” didn’t stay in the game long, either, provided they survived, so Kanan had no idea how many people had flown his ship before him. Giving the Baby Carrier a name was just his attempt to give it even a single amenity.

  It’d be nice, he thought, if on one of the planets he visited he could fly something with some class—like that ship that had just raced past him. But then, whoever owned it probably wouldn’t let him take the liberties he did with Expedient. Like now: Seeing two mining haulers heading right for him, he banked the ship, corkscrewing between them. They slowed down: He kept on going. Let them watch out for me.

  His carefully secured payload didn’t react to the sudden motion, but the maneuver did produce a dull thump from back in the cargo area. He turned his head, his short clump of tied-back hair brushing against the headrest. Through the corner of his eye, Kanan saw an old man on the deck, half swimming against the floor as he tried to get his bearings.

  “Morning, Okadiah.”

  The man coughed. Like Kanan, Okadiah had a beard but no mustache—but his hair was completely white. He’d been sleeping back with the baradium bisulfate containers, on the one empty shelf. Okadiah preferred that to the acceleration couch in the main cabin: It was quieter. Figuring out which way was forward, the old man started to crawl. He addressed the air as he reached the copilot’s seat. “I have determined I will not pay your fare, and you shall have no tip.”

  “Best tip I ever got was to pick another line of work,” Kanan said.

  “Hmph.”

  Actually, Okadiah Garson had several lines of work, all of which made him the perfect friend to have, in Kanan’s eyes. Okadiah was foreman for one of the mining teams on Cynda, a thirty-year veteran who knew his way around. And down on Gorse, he ran The Asteroid Belt, a cantina favored by many of his own mining employees. Kanan had met Okadiah months earlier when he’d broken up a brawl at his bar; it was through Okadiah that Kanan had gotten the freighter-pilot job with Moonglow. Even now, Kanan lived in the flophouse next door to the cantina. A landlord with a liquor supply was a good deal indeed.

  Okadiah claimed he only partook of his own ferments when someone got hurt in the mines. That was a handy conviction to have, considering it happened nearly every day. Yesterday’s cave-in had been so bad it kept the party going all night long, causing Okadiah to miss his shift’s personnel shuttle. Baby Carriers didn’t get many passengers who had any other options for getting to work, and Kanan didn’t take riders. But for Okadiah, he made an exception.

  “I dreamed I heard a woman’s voice,” the old man said, rubbing his eyes. “Stern, regal, commanding.”

  “Starship captain.”

  “I like it,” Okadiah said. “She’s no good for you, of course, but I’m a man of means. When do I meet this angel?”

  Kanan simply jabbed a thumb out the window to his left. There, the old man beheld Ultimatum, looming behind the frenetic rush of space traffic. Okadiah’s bloodshot eyes widened and then narrowed, as he tried to determine exactly what it was he was looking at.

  “Hmm,” he finally said. “That wasn’t there yesterday.”

  “It’s a Star Destroyer.”

  “Oh, dear. Are we to be destroyed?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Kanan said, grinning. He didn’t know how an old miner on an armpit like Gorse had come by his genteel manner of speech, but it always amused him. “Somebody got on the wrong side of her. Know anyone on Cynda Dreaming?”

  Okadiah scratched his chin. “Part of the Calladan crew. Tall fellow, skinny Hammerhead. He’s run up quite a tab at The Asteroid Belt.”

  “Well, you can forget about collecting.”

  “Oh,” Okadiah said, looking again out the window. There was still a bit of debris from the unlucky freighter about. “Kanan, lad, you do have a way of sobering a person up.”

  “Good. We’re almost there.”

  Expedient rolled and angled downward toward the white surface of airless Cynda. An artificial crater had been hollowed out as a landing approach zone; half a dozen red-lit landing bays had been gouged into its sides, connecting with the mining areas farther below. Bringing Expedient to hover over the crater, Kanan turned the ship toward his appointed entrance.

  Okadiah turned his head forward and squinted. “There’s my transport now!”

  “Told you we’d catch up.”

  They had caught up, but it wasn’t purely from Kanan’s efforts. The Empire’s unreasonable directive had played a role. The personnel transport Okadiah was supposed to have been on had attempted to enter the bay too quickly and had clipped the side of the doorway. Now it sat blocking the entrance, disabled and partially hanging over the edge. It was in no danger of falling, but the magnetic shield that would seal the cavern against the void could not be activated. Space-suited workers were visible in the bay, staring haplessly at the wreck.

  “Move it,” Kanan said over the comm.

  “Stay put, Moonglo
w-Seventy-Two,” crackled the response from the control tower at the center of the crater. “We’ll get you in after we get the workers suited and off-loaded.”

  “I’m on a schedule,” Kanan said, shifting Expedient out of hover mode and moving toward the entrance.

  Objections came loudly over the communicator, getting Okadiah’s attention. He glanced at Kanan. “You are aware we’re carrying high explosives?”

  “I don’t care,” Kanan said. “Do you?”

  “Not at all. Sorry to disturb. Carry on.”

  Kanan did, expertly bringing Expedient’s stubby nose toward the exposed side of the personnel carrier. He could see the miners inside its windows, clamoring futilely at him as his ship made contact with a clang.

  Expedient’s engines straining, Kanan gunned the ship forward, dislodging the personnel transport from the edge. The noisy scrape reverberated through both vessels, and Okadiah glimpsed nervously back into the cargo section. But in moments both ships were inside the landing area. The magnetic shield sealed the landing bay, and Kanan deactivated his engines.

  Okadiah whistled. He regarded Kanan with mild wonderment for a moment and then placed his hands on the dashboard before him. “Well, that’s that.” He paused, seemingly confused. “We drink after work, is that correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Entirely the wrong order,” the old man said, wobbling slightly as he rose. “Let’s get to it, then.”

  The horn-headed Devaronian miner charged from the disabled personnel transport across the pressurized cavern’s floor.

  “You punk kid!” he yelled as Kanan exited Expedient. “What were you trying to prove back there?”

  Kanan was still in his early twenties, but he hadn’t answered to “kid” ever. And certainly not when the name came from a dunderhead like Yelkin, whose job it was to drill holes for explosives. Kanan turned and walked alongside his ship, opening up cargo hatches as he went.

  The muscular miner stomped after him and grabbed at his shoulder. “I’m talking to you!”

  With quick reflexes, Kanan grabbed Yelkin’s hand and spun around, twisting the other man’s arm. Yelkin winced in pain and fell to his knees. Kanan didn’t let go. He spoke in low, calm tones into his captive’s pointed ear. “Your ship was in the way, pal. I have a deadline.”

  “We all do,” Yelkin said, struggling. “You saw them shoot that freighter. The Empire’s come to check up—”

  “Then go faster. But don’t go stupid.” Kanan released his hold, and Yelkin fell to the ground, gasping. Kanan brushed off his long-sleeved green tunic and turned back to Expedient.

  Several miners arrived at Yelkin’s side. “Blasted suicide flier!” one said. “They’re all cracked!”

  “Someone needs to show you some manners,” another said to Kanan.

  “So I’ve heard.” Unworried, Kanan looked around the landing bay. The loader droids that normally helped hadn’t arrived, evidently unable to make sense out of the impromptu parking situation on the loading floor. It looked like it was going to be another one of those days when he had to do everything.

  Kanan unloaded a hovercart and parked it in front of the ship. Then he began the laborious process of hefting down metal crates. Cynda’s lesser gravity made the cases somewhat lighter than they had been on Gorse but no less bulky—or hazardous—to carry. Heaving the first crate, he carried it toward the milling miners.

  “You’re in the way,” he said. “For the moment.”

  Okadiah appeared on the far side of the spacecraft. “Gentlemen, I think a maxim is in order: Do not aggravate the man who carries high explosives.”

  The miners parted, glowering at Kanan as he passed. Rubbing his arm, Yelkin snarled at Okadiah. “You take in some real pieces of work, boss.”

  “Like I did all of you, one time or another,” the old man said. He pointed toward the south, and a bank of elevators. “Let’s get the shift started. If the Empire’s inspecting today, Boss Lal will be here, too. At least pretend to work.” He smiled toothily. “And let me add—in honor of that poor sap outside who got himself blown to smithereens—it’ll be happy hour all night tonight at The Asteroid Belt. We’ll even pick you up and drive you home.”

  Momentarily assuaged, the miners turned and made for the elevators. Okadiah watched Kanan set a case down on the hovercart. “Still winning friends and influence?”

  “Don’t know why I’d do that,” Kanan said.

  “Ah, yes. You’re not staying. Like you told me: You never stay.”

  “Clothes on my back,” Kanan said as he turned to grab another crate. “Travel light, and death will never find you.”

  “I said that, didn’t I?” Okadiah nodded. “You’ll work the bar tonight?”

  “If you can afford it.”

  Okadiah winked and ambled off after his co-workers. Kanan did keep the bar on occasion, but on some nights he was his own best customer. He’d also tried his hand as bouncer, although again, he’d wound up starting as many fights as he’d stopped. Still, this system had been closer to a home than any he’d known in years of wandering. It would be a hard place to leave.

  But he would. The day job was wearing on him. Giving up on the loader droids ever arriving to help, Kanan finished filling the first hovercart and pushed it into the freight elevator.

  As the doors closed behind him, he thought on it. He might miss Okadiah’s place, yes, and he’d certainly miss Cynda. In all his travels he’d never encountered a place quite like it. The landing bay didn’t look like much, but he knew to watch for the big show as soon as the elevator doors opened.

  They did, a thousand meters below—and Kanan was bombarded with a coruscating display of lights and colors. He was in one of the countless great caverns beneath the surface. Crystal stalagmites climbed and stalactites hung all around. Each one acted as a prism, refracting the lights of the work crew; to move was to see kaleidoscopic change. Better still, the crystals gave off warmth, making Cynda’s many oxygenated caverns as bright and pleasant as parent-planet Gorse was dark and sticky.

  Back before the Empire, the place had been a natural preserve. Cynda had been the literal bright spot in the lives of Gorse’s residents; tourism had been the moon’s—and Gorse’s—number one draw. And while Republic scientists had learned early on that Cynda’s interior contained massive amounts of thorilide, no one had wanted to mine for it while the workable nightside of Gorse still held any of the substance at all. As far as Kanan knew, no one even bothered looking for thorilide on Gorse’s dayside, where the heat was enough to melt any droid in manufacture.

  But then, almost exactly on the day that Chancellor Palpatine proclaimed the first Galactic Empire, a report had revealed that Gorse’s mines were exhausted. The refineries went idle. The Empire wouldn’t stand for it—and didn’t need to. Cynda was right there, readily available to exploit.

  Kanan saw the results now as he pushed the hovercart from the intact antechamber into the main work area. Pebble-sized crystal fragments littered the floor, and his boots crunched as he walked. Only the big industrial lights illuminated the cavity; the ceiling couldn’t be seen at all in the smoky haze above. A sickly burnt stench hung on the air.

  The Empire had defiled the place, but it could hardly resist. Useful as thorilide was in its processed form, in nature it had a fragile molecular structure. Efforts to free the substance from comets, already an insanely difficult process, often resulted in the collapse of the compound into its component elements. But Cynda was the mother lode in more ways than one, for its tough crystal columns managed to preserve thorilide inside them, even when blasted from their bases. Given how the prismatic structures reacted to laser torches, blasting was the only way.

  The need for explosives had given Kanan a job, but it had also given Gorsians cause to object. Some were more vocal than others. And a few were downright loud about it.

  Like that guy, Kanan thought, recognizing a voice coming from the far end of the work zone. Oh, brother. Skel
ly.

  “You’re not listening,” the redheaded man declared, gray dust puffing from his protective vest as he waved his arms. “You’re not listening!”

  In the perfect echo chamber the cavern provided, no one could help but hear Skelly, and if there were any stalactites left intact, Kanan half expected Skelly’s voice to bring them down.

  But Kanan saw that the target of Skelly’s harassment wasn’t paying much mind, and he couldn’t blame her. A four-armed, green-skinned member of Gorse’s Besalisk subcommunity, Lal Grallik was the enterprising chief of Moonglow Polychemical. Running it kept “Boss Lal” jumping from planet to moon and back. Skelly was just one more nuisance to deal with. “I am listening, Skelly,” she said. “I could probably hear you down on Gorse.”

  I’m sure she wishes she were there now, Kanan thought. Short and compactly built, Skelly had one mode: intense. Kanan was vaguely aware of the fortyish man’s war record as a tunneler; the scars and pockmarks on his face read like a walk through recent military history. But while Kanan felt for anyone who’d gone through all that, he had little patience for the way Skelly always talked as if he were trying to yell over a barrage. The man could out-shout a jet turbine.

  “I’m trying to save people’s lives here,” Skelly said, busy auburn eyebrows lowered in all seriousness. “Your company, too.” Seeing Lal return her attention to the electronic manifest in her four-fingered hands, Skelly turned around and shrugged. “No one listens.”

  Kanan knew Skelly worked as a demolitions expert for Dalborg, one of the other mining concerns. Okadiah had explained that Skelly had been fired by every major firm in the last five years. The only one Skelly hadn’t yet landed with was Kanan’s employer. It wasn’t too small a firm, Okadiah had said: just lucky. Kanan agreed. Skelly knew what he was doing with a demolition charge, but a variety of neuroses came with the package. And he always looked as if he’d slept on the floor. Even when Kanan did that for real, he made sure he looked presentable.