A New Dawn Read online

  “This chamber leads to one of our mining levels,” the director said, gesturing to the workers hurrying around. “What you’re seeing is a typical day here—”

  “A lie,” Vidian said, continuing to walk. “I’m reading the live feed from your reports as I speak. You’ve doubled your pace, but will return to mediocrity when the Empire turns its eyes away. Be assured: I will see it does not.”

  A rumble came from the group of mining company representatives around them. But there was no point in their arguing. With a vocal command that made no external sound, Vidian cleared the daily production reports from his visual receptors.

  Years earlier, he’d realized how leaders, from floor managers to chief executives, were often blind to the basic circumstances around them. Vidian didn’t want to miss a detail. His optical implants not only gave him exceptional eyesight, but also eliminated the need for vid monitors by projecting external data feeds onto his own retinas. See everything: He who has the data has the upper hand!

  Vidian looked back at the group of worried mining officials. Many were out of breath from trying to keep up with him, including a Besalisk woman. There were several of the multi-armed humanoids working at Calcoraan Depot, his administrative hub: members of a reasonably industrious but otherwise unremarkable species. Before he gave her a second thought, freight elevators opened on either side of the chamber. Stormtroopers rushed from the cars.

  Right on time. Vidian pivoted and pointed to five different corridors leading from the chamber. Without a word in response, the squads split up and headed into the tunnels.

  Director Palfa was startled. “What’s going on?”

  “No more than I said.” Vidian’s tone was as casual as his meaning was ominous. “You are managers. We’re helping you manage.”

  Hera wasn’t about to bring her ship into the Cyndan mining complex for an unauthorized landing. Joining the convoy, however, had gotten her close, and once out of sight of the Star Destroyer, she’d parked in orbit. Her ship’s small excursion vessel had taken her the rest of the way to a little maintenance outbuilding on the surface.

  She’d studied just enough about the mining trade to know what to pretend to be: a maintenance tech for bulk-loader droids. The rest she’d thought up on the spot.

  “This is the wrong entrance,” the guy inside the airlock had said.

  “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. It’s my first day, and I’m late!”

  “And where’s your badge?”

  “I forgot. Can you believe it? My first day!”

  The man had believed it, letting her pass with a smile that said he hoped she’d keep making wrong turns in the future. People of several different species found Hera appealing to look at, and she was happy to put that to use for a good cause.

  But as she walked carefully through the mining complex, she increasingly realized how difficult that cause had become. Gorse and Cynda produced a strategic material for the Empire, yes, but they were well away from the galactic center. And yet Hera spied one surveillance cam after another—including several that the workers clearly weren’t intended to see. If Coruscant-level security had made it out to the Rim worlds, that would make any action against the Empire all the more difficult.

  Another good reason to visit my friend on Gorse after this, she thought, darting lithely beneath the viewing arc of another secret cam. A rendezvous with any mystery informant was dangerous; she’d learned that quickly enough in her short career as an activist. But her contact had proven knowledge of Imperial surveillance capabilities, and she’d need that to get to the important stuff, later on.

  Finding out more about Count Vidian’s methods, though, she’d have to do through old-fashioned skulking. He was on Cynda now, she knew: She’d seen him once already from afar, passing through the caverns with a tour group. It was tough to get closer. The transparent crystal columns were pretty to look at but lousy cover.

  Darting through an isolated side passage, she thought she’d found a shortcut to get ahead of him. Instead, she found something else.

  “Halt!” A stormtrooper appeared at the end of the corridor, his blaster raised.

  Hera stopped in her tracks. “I’m sorry,” she said, putting her hand to her chest and exhaling. “You scared me!”

  “Who are you?”

  “I work here,” she said, approaching as if nothing was wrong. “I may be in the wrong place. It’s my first day.” She smiled.

  “Where’s your badge?”

  “I forgot.” Dark eyes looked down demurely, then back up. “Can you believe it? My first day!”

  The stormtrooper studied her for a moment—and then saw the blaster she was wearing. She moved before he did, delivering a high kick that knocked the blaster from the startled stormtrooper’s hands. Seeing his weapon clatter away, he lunged for it. She easily sidestepped him—and pivoted, leaping onto the armored man’s back. Losing purchase on the crystalline floor, he stumbled, her full weight driving his head into the side wall. His helmet cracked loudly against the surface, and he slumped motionless to the ground.

  “Sorry,” Hera whispered over the fallen trooper’s shoulder. “Charm doesn’t work on everyone.”

  “Hurry up! Hurry up!”

  Skelly looked back in annoyance as Tarlor Choh rushed about the cavern, egging workers on. A tall light-skinned fellow, Tarlor was Dalborg Mining’s imbecile for Zone Thirty-Nine—not to be confused with all the other imbeciles managing their firm’s efforts in this underground pocket. There were official imbeciles in all the other zones, too, Skelly knew—and not one of them had a whit of sense.

  All were currently in a tizzy. For hours, arriving workers had reported the Empire spurring them along, even circulating a tale of the Star Destroyer blowing up a freighter captain for slacking. Now word had come through Tarlor that the Emperor’s top efficiency expert, Count Vidian, would be inspecting.

  Skelly saw it as deliverance. The top government inspector—coming right to him? Well, not to him, of course, but this was close enough. And better still, it was Denetrius Vidian. A business mogul under the Republic, true, but perhaps the only one Skelly respected. Vidian fed on blundering corporations, profiting from fixing their mistakes. Vidian’s famous treatise, Forget the Old Way, was the only business holo Skelly owned.

  If Skelly could get his research to Vidian, the Empire would understand—and it surely had the power to stop what the mining companies were doing.

  Tarlor loomed over him. “Skelly, get those charges set!”

  Skelly simply sighed, then returned his attention to the crystal column he was kneeling beside. Having prepared a suspension of baradium bisulfate in putty, he began caking a ring of the pasty substance all around the stalagmite’s base.

  It was slow, painstaking work—and hard to do neatly when he was irritated at the universe and everyone in it. Kanan, of course: Skelly’s mouth still hurt from the man’s punch. Who did he think he was? Tarlor plagued him, too—along with all his managerial kind, especially since Dalborg had recently busted him down from explosives supervisor to lowly demolitions placement tech.

  And most of all, he hated his right hand, for being useless and forcing him to do the finely detailed work with his left. He could just bear to look at the fake hand now; it had been curled into a claw most of the time since that terrible day back in the Clone Wars.

  The Clone Wars were yet another thing to be upset about. Everything about that conflict had been a lie. The Separatists had been this big enemy, and yet when the Empire was declared they’d melted away as if at the push of a button. The big corporations had staged the whole thing, Skelly was sure. Wars sold more ships, more weapons, and more medical devices. And in the Clone Wars, even the soldiers on both sides were manufactured goods.

  The Republic and the Confederacy had been partners in the same corrupt game. The Empire was probably just another iteration of all that, to Skelly’s thinking; no more or less immoral. To corporate oligarchs, political allegiances were just another cha
nge of clothes. This decade, central rule was in fashion. Something else would come along soon. The beast had to be fed, with lives and limbs on the battlefield and with the sweat and blood of the workers.

  The problem was that blowing things up was the only thing Skelly had ever been taught to do.

  He didn’t fault himself for that. He was the product of a system that built only to destroy, as he saw it. He’d learned from the best—and learned well. Everything always came down to that simple list, taught to him during his first day in military demolitions: Pair your ordnance with your initiator. Ignition leads to reaction leads to detonation. Whether applied to compounds of baradium or its tremendously more powerful isotope, baradium-357, those steps referred to a series of complex reactions that had the same simple result.

  Now forty, Skelly thought that list also applied to life. You started with a festering problem. Someone initiated a change. The system reacted to that pressure. And then, bang, you had your solution. It had always been his method. He’d been the one to initiate changes, whenever possible, starting back on the battlefield. It was why he’d volunteered for everything. Whenever battlements were too dangerous to storm, Skelly risked his life to burrow beneath, planting the explosives that made the decisive opening. He did that and more.

  But then had come the Battle of Slag’s Pit. A foolish charge on behalf of an idiot general, hoping to use demolitions to buy a Separatist fortification cheaply. The ground wasn’t firm, the explosives were the wrong kind—and Skelly had raised hell about it.

  No one had listened. No one ever listened.

  The general had rank. All Skelly could do was enter the breach himself, relying on his innate talent to save the day for his fellow soldiers.

  It hadn’t been good enough.

  The Clone Wars had ended while he was comatose; he’d later learned that none of his companions had been saved. His hand was another crushing blow. The medical droids had assured the platoon they were carrying all the spare parts necessary for proper battlefield surgery. But they’d lied. They only had a Klatooinian prosthetic hand left for Skelly, which had never worked right with his human neurology. Worse, their blundering had damaged his arm to the point where a proper replacement would never work, either. Skelly had just stuck a glove on the stupid thing and tried to go on.

  Poverty had followed. He’d had no choice but to return to demolitions work—and there, he’d only found confirmation for all his beliefs about corporate malfeasance. They were just as careless as the military types.

  It would have been unbearable had his travels not taken him to Cynda.

  As someone who had spent much of his time underground, he’d been astonished by the beauty of the moon’s caverns. Thoughts that moved too quickly through his head seemed to slow down here. He’d imagined his role a responsible one, for a time: If the moon was going to be exploited anyway, he’d make sure it was done in a cautious manner, protective of the world and the people working on it. Cynda had countless caverns; it was unimaginable to think the corporations could ruin them all.

  But now, Skelly could imagine exactly that. Cynda would become one more ripped-up place, to add to the pile of torn-up lives.

  The detonator armed, he replaced the applicator in his toolbox. One more stalagmite, ready to be decapitated. Rote work, and boring—but nicely done. Someone had to care.

  “He’s over there,” Skelly heard the supervisor say. He stood up from his work on the stalagmite and turned around. There, being led by Tarlor, was a group of four Imperial stormtroopers.

  Ah, Skelly thought. It seemed soon for the inspector’s advance team to be here, but that didn’t matter. “Hello!” he shouted. Toolbox still clutched in his good-for-little right hand, he saluted with his left. An impulse act: He wasn’t part of any military organization, but their armor looked much like that of the clone troopers he’d once served with, and he was glad to see them, in any event. “I’m Skelly. I’ve been writing to your oversight offices for months—”

  “What?” Tarlor blurted.

  “—and I’m glad to see someone’s listening.” Skelly looked past the stormtroopers, who continued to march toward him. “Er, is Count Vidian here?”

  The lead trooper stopped and raised his blaster rifle. His companions did the same. “Skelly, you’re under arrest.”

  Skelly laughed nervously. “You’re joking. Why?”

  “You’re charged with speaking to the detriment of the Empire.”

  Skelly’s eyes widened—and his mind raced. “Wait! Did Kanan report me?”

  Tarlor shook his bald head. “He’s all yours. Skelly’s always been trouble—and Dalborg Mining doesn’t want anyone around that’ll upset Count Vidian. Please tell him we cooperated fully.” He looked over at Skelly and spoke acidly: “Looks like I just won the pool. You’re fired!”

  Skelly sputtered. “W-wait. This is a mistake! And Tarlor, you don’t have the authority to—”

  Before he could finish, the stormtroopers began to advance toward him. “Put that toolbox down!” the lead trooper said, just steps away.

  With a blaster pointed at him and coming his way, Skelly made a decision. His left hand in the air, he crouched. “Okay, fine. I’m doing it. Just give me a second here.” He knelt—

  —and grabbed for the remote control he’d left on the ground. He tumbled behind the crystal column he’d been working on and rolled up into a ball, covering his toolbox with his body. Before the stormtroopers could follow, Skelly pressed the button.

  The baradium bisulfate affixed to the column near Skelly detonated—and the massive diamond-hard cylinder fell forward, exactly the way he’d known it would. Away from him—and toward the stormtroopers. One screamed loudly, crushed immediately by the base of the falling column. On striking the surface, the entire structure shattered into daggerlike fragments.

  Skelly didn’t see what happened to the other stormtroopers because he was already up and running. He sprinted into an unlit passage leading from Zone Thirty-Nine into a service shaft. He knew from memory that it led to ventilation tunnels and other routes, pathways that could take him all over Cynda’s underworld.

  Wheezing as he ran in the dark, Skelly tried to comprehend what had just happened. So someone was listening to his words, after all. But they hadn’t gotten his meaning.

  Fine, he thought. He recognized the feeling of the toolbox full of explosives, still clutched in his immobilized right hand, bouncing against his leg as he ran. It gave him comfort, and he smiled.

  There’s more than one way to send a message.

  Vidian had never seen corporate hacks scatter so quickly. Since he’d declared Security Condition One, the surveillance operators on Gorse had provided him with the names of forty-six potential agitators working in the Cyndan mines. Vidian’s news that the stormtroopers were making arrests had sent the executives off to alert their employees of the new scrutiny.

  Other organic beings, for their supposed sentience, were really no better than droids, Vidian thought. They could be made to act according to program.

  With the right encouragement, of course. Flanked by a pair of stormtroopers, the count glared at the guild chief—the only person left on the tour. “Palfa, your members will name a morale officer in each work crew to ensure the Empire is supported in word and deed.”

  The director cast his eyes to the ground. “My lord, I don’t know how such a program will be received. It’s the kind of laborers we attract. Rough characters. It’s hard to control what they think—”

  “When they think at all. Drunks and brawlers don’t concern me. But they aren’t all harmless! Consider this report I’ve just heard.” Vidian paused to tune his earpiece. “An arrest attempt has been made on your Level Thirty-Nine—and the suspect responded by assaulting the troopers!”

  The director shook his large head. “That’s terrible. I’m sure our security personnel have caught him.”

  “They haven’t. But my troops will.” Vidian switched off his audible
communications long enough to give a command. “There,” he said, speaking aloud again. “I’ve sent your office a copy of my remedial political program. Make sure your member firms adopt it immediately.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Then we continue.”

  The dejected director led Vidian into a work zone. Like everywhere else, this space was populated by itinerant laborers, beings only slightly more effective than droids. Some passed through with explosives for other chambers. Others stood hip-deep in mounds of shattered crystal, sweating profusely as they shoveled thorilide-containing chips into bins for shipment. Cynda’s interior was naturally dry; the light haze on the air was entirely organic perspiration. Vidian was glad his sense of smell no longer existed.

  The rabble with the rubble, Vidian thought. Their kind had been present on countless other production worlds he’d been tasked to straighten out, and they were terrible clay to work with. Even with the troublemakers removed, few could be taught anything new—and their lifestyles outside only served to make them less effective on the job.

  But they were boundless in number, and that gave him something he could do. He walked into the workers’ midst and slapped his metal hands on the backs of one laborer after another. “You. You. You. And you.” Each looked up, startled by the cyborg’s touch. Human, nonhuman—their only common trait was their advanced ages. “Too old. Too slow.”

  Ignoring the mix of angry and insulted looks he was getting from the workers, Vidian called back to the guild chief, “Palfa, another directive for your members. New age caps on laborers, effective immediately.”

  Palfa spluttered. “But—but they’re still productive!”

  Vidian turned his soulless eyes toward Palfa. “And you are being unproductive,” he said, stalking toward him. “Your guild is a haven for traitors and loafers!”

  “My lord, perhaps I can suggest some way to—”