CHAPTER FOUR
❪ THE CACOPHONY OF SILENCE ❫
And now...farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude.
I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good;
may the God of vengeance now yield me
His place to punish the wicked.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo.
THE HOLOGRAM was burned into her head, expanding. Leia hoped it wouldn't turn into another memento of destruction and death. Of another mistake that could have been prevented if people would have listened and not turn their eyes away in fear of seeing the ugly truth speaking right towards them. The resemblance had been too strong and the first intels Captain Kun had been able to send them indicated enough that in the Unknown Regions, the First Order had created something so similar to the Death Star that it could only be a weapon with a related purpose. Maybe even the same. She couldn't let this happen again. Alderaan... Gone, in front of her eyes. A planet of innocent people, who had paid a price they never agreed on. Days, nights, months, years, no matter how much time left, Leia had wished she could have done something. Something more.
Han, Luke, Mara, Amilyn... they all had explained and tried in their own way that her homeworld's destruction had never been her fault. Alderaan's fate had been sealed the moment the Death Star had been finished, but if she hadn't let herself get caught that day... Leia had never sulked in scenarios or world's of what-could-have-beens. They were of no use and no one could change the past. But those possibilities often had a way to sneak up on her in the distracting silence of the night, until the moment Han would pull her into his arms and mute her thoughts.
The light in her office was dimmed, enough to highlight the hologram building itself until she saw the face of her old friend — and someone who looked as tired as she felt.
"Leia. It's good to see you."
Alondra Dione smiled at her. A rare view in those times, as Leia knew. Since Alondra had been elected as Chancellor, the Queen of Odessen had not seen many friendly faces. Formal smiles and etiquettes were nothing new to either of them, but both women understood how one false decision, how one small stone could break the surface of peace to the wild ocean of fighting and war. Politics were no different from battlefields, only the weapons were words and often proved to be deadlier and more dangerous than blasters or lightsabers.
"I wish it would be under better circumstances," Leia answered, returning the smile, but it didn't hide the clear apprehension in her voice.
"What happened?"
"We just received an intel about the First Order. The first scans show it is a weapon of a magnitude no one could have foreseen."
"Leia," Alondra sighed. Her eyes shooting to someone at her side before looking back at the Resistance leader. "This is a bad time. In less than an hour the Senate will meet."
"They have to listen now. They can no longer deny what is right in front of them."
"As long as Orum will have most of the Senate on his side, nothing will change. They still don't believe the First Order is a real threat and they haven't done anything to give them proof to think otherwise," the Odessian explained, calm and collected, but Leia heard her sympathy. At any other time, she would have welcomed it with another smile, but she had seen this before. The galactic Senate had once before underestimated the power and strength of a man in the shadows, always there to pull the strings, but never to show himself, if not necessary.
Supreme Leader Sumanus played Orum and the Senate like an instrument. Keeping away from Republic space, declaring they weren't interested in war, but just wished for their independence from the Republic and to live peacefully in the Unknown Regions.
A place they could build their army in the darkness and make use of the blindness of the Republic.
"Orum isn't Chancellor."
"Perhaps, but he will be if I give him more ammunition to start a revote."
"You cannot be serious." The pure thought was even more worrisome than Leia could have anticipated. Alondra had only been in the office for half of a galactic standard year, having done more to establish a safer Republic than anyone before her with the little power the Chancellor now possessed nowadays.
"There is something else," Alondra continued, lowering her tone before taking another glance at something in the background.
"Leia, you have to be careful. The feud between the Resistance and the First Order has caused some disturbances and Orum's clear resentment towards your cause..." A pause expanded and the General knew what she was about to tell her was anything but allowed to leave her tongue. "Orum has convinced enough people that a real threat doesn't pose the First Order, but the Resistance. They noticed how more and more people from the Republic Navy are joining you.
"Today they will discuss about declare the Resistance as a criminal and seperatist organization."
"We are not the enemy! I am here to warn you. The First Order will attack once this weapon is finished." Frustration bled from her stern voice, not believing how it all could repeat. Orum, Alondra, half of the Senate had been there when the Galactic Senate had lost all rights under the Empire's grip, when Palpatine himself had declared the Senate as void.
"And I will do what I can to make them see it, but Leia we both know that once I will show them any evidence of this weapon they will ask where it came from and when they find out it's from the Resistance—"
"Show them. Tell them," Leia replied and the tiredness over this situation was turning into endless sighs of her behalf. "We cannot do more. If they still refuse to see the truth—" Leia looked up, her eyes locking with her old friend. "Alondra, promise me to be careful."
"I think you sometimes forget that I was in the Rebellion, too." The smile on the Queen's face was almost mischievous, yet it helped to ease Leia's nerves. She shook her head. No, she would never forget it. Alondra has fought for this freedom just as much as anyone in the Rebellion, has battled unknown enemies, has helped build a better future for the generation to come and all their victories and even lost battles... They were so close to turning into ashes. Everyone who had died for this would have died in vain.
"Is Luke with you?"
Leia raised her head. Her eyes narrowed briefly before she gently shook her head again. "No. He is... occupied at the moment." The General wished she could tell Alondra more. She trusted no one outside of the Resistance as much as her, but if the possible vote about the official declaration of the Resistance wouldn't fall to their favor, any possible hold back information about them, could cost Alondra dearly. She wouldn't put her friend into this position.
"There are some rumors. I was only informed because Orum seemed to have some interest in them," Alondra explained and the tone in her voice took Leia back to the time where they both had smiled and shook hands with other imperial sympathizers, while gaining information for the Rebellion. Times where one slip of information could have meant execution for betraying the Empire, but Alondra had always been more of a smooth-talker. One to deescalate a situation with only her charming smile and tender voice and hollow words of elegance that seemed to weigh as much as gold. No surprise she had found an equal in Aeryn, when they had met. The Voice of the Emperor against the Voice of Odessen.
"There were sightings of Meirina. She was seen with some Mandalorians from what I've heard."
Leia nodded, acknowledging the information, but the gesture told Alondra already that those weren't new to her.
"I presume Orum still tries to get a hold on her?" The question was more a statement. Leia didn't need an answer to know it already.
"She is still a Person of Interest despite her acquittal. It's what Orum likes to point out every then and now. I know you and Luke want her back, but the girl did the right thing when she disappeared. Orum would have tried to find something else to lock her up."
"Orum should concentrate on keeping the spirit of the Republic alive and not lock innocent girls away." His name felt almost like acid on her tongue, anger boiling underneath the surface for the Senator who was so power-driven that he ignored anything that could prevent him from one day claiming the title of Chancellor, but his methods in gaining favors and allies were efficient. He was clever, in his own insufferable stupidity and blindness from seeing the truth, twisting it to fit his own view of the galaxy.
He had always been a strong voice against the Jedi Order her brother so hard tried to build again, who had declared the keepers of peace and guardians of the Republic, as long as they would prioritize the wellbeing of every citizen within their border and offer anyone who needed help exactly this. Luke hadn't wanted to make the same mistakes the old order had done, the reason they had almost been wiped out completely, but the small independance they had gained had been a thorn in Orum's side — and Orum had found many people who thought similar to them.
It had been the Jedi who'd been guilty for the rise of the Empire. It had been the Jedi who had helped in creating those dark times, and not many were ready to give them a chance again. Luke had fought so hard for this right, to give everyone who wanted to learn the ways of the Jedi to become one only for his work to be destroyed and his own daughter to be declared a traitor, along with her cousin. The thought of her son... it still hurt Leia, just as the day she had seen her niece be carried out of the Falcon by her father and Han. Without Mara.
"I never thought Meirina would become a bounty hunter, but she did make herself a name as Echoy'la Shonar in the Outer Rims." Alondra couldn't hide the little amusement from her lips. For her it must have been a transition she wouldn't have thought of in a million years and Leia would have thought similar, if she hadn't known with whom her niece had been living with the last years. Yet, her name—
"Echoy'la Shonar?" Leia asked and the hunch grew inside her whenever the name ran through her mind.
"It's the name I have heard. Why?"
"I only wanted to make sure," Leia answered. She would have to look back into the report, to make sure she was right, but she had read about the name before — in a report of Commander Dameron. If she was right, he had met Meirina without his knowledge.
"Leia, those rumors came from planets close to the First Order Territories. If we heard them—"
"They have too, I know." And she hadn't known if she was about to tell Luke. There was no way now. He was in the Unknown Regions, a mission of which a positive outcome could give them an advantage against the First Order, if they were right. He had waited so long to hear something about Meirina. Had hoped that despite Aeryn's clear message that Meirina was safe with them, but would need time to herself and go her own way, she would send them a message, even if it was just to show them herself that she was alive and well.
Her brother had perfected the calm expression almost as well as she had, but she would always feel his weariness, his fear for his girl. It had been no easy discussion between him and Poe, as the Resistance had officially declared they would stop searching for her.
No one could make decisions for Meirina. No one had the right to and Luke knew it. He understood it. He respected it. Even if it had cursed him with guilt for the rest of his life.
THE CACOPHONY OF SILENCE was harder to drain out than the howling rhythm of the storm, hitting the grain of sand against the little hut. The lack of sun and the cold of the nightwind had slowly gotten to her bones, but there was a presumption that the cooled down arid world wasn't the only reason why her body wouldn't stop shivering. Her cheeks still contained dried salty tears. Her eyes hurt and as tight as she wrapped the arms around her strongly, laying on a hard mattress with a blanket full of holes, the warmth did not want to return to her.
The storm had arrived two hours ago and it did not seem to leave, but Meirina found little care for it.
She had no wish to return yet. From what she felt and knew what would soon come at her, everything seemed more welcome to her than to step out of the hut, go back to the Outpost and find a way to repair Ronon's ship before leaving this force-forsaken planet once and for all. Part of her hoped that the storm would swallow her whole, make her one of the burned corpses outside and this place her eternal rest. The blonde knew those thoughts weren't her, only born from suffering and the fear of how she would walk in shame the next morning. Of what will awake along the sun, when all what has happened here would truly haunt her and become a demon.
But how often can someone go through suffering, and loss, and pain before they break? How often could she let herself get beaten up, tell Tor or Ronon to not hold themselves back when they train together, just so the ache of a punch would overshadow the deep seeded tragedy she somehow always finds herself in. When would she stop envying the dead for their peace, as it was so fragile and hard for herself to find.
True serenity. Meirina questioned if she had ever known it. There had been phases of equilibrium, of composure. Things needed to calm her mind and not let the weight of the past and dread for the future wear her down, but since her Verd'goten and the day she had become a Mandalorian, she had learned to survive each day. Survive. Living was another task.
She hadn't needed it. As a clear state of mind had been all she had been wishing for, for a long time. If you go through so much panic and despair, you are grateful for any second you feel nothing. For when your inner has finally reached the eye of the hurricane, praying it would stay like this, but one day the storm would venture further and so would the eye.
Then you only have two remaining options: Keep fighting, keep wandering until you have found your way out of the tempest or you give up and let it take you.
She had reasons. Good ones, to leave this storm too, but with all this dust around you, blinding and taking away all the light, it was difficult to even believe in it. And for her, the world had just turned darker, crueler and so much less worth of living in it.
Meirina felt the pinch around her ribs. The product of her strong grip and the aftermath of mourning. She hoped it would make her believe what had happened here, to get through this faster and leave it behind, but just as you love differently, so do you mourn and now she had to try and keep it from crushing her.
She wouldn't even open her eyes and look at the ring she had placed beside her. The sparse light of the lamp in the corner of the room would only give her a poor possibility of a view, but she feared if she'd look at it, the sword above her would finally come down and make it clear this wasn't just a nightmare she'd wake up from. There had been nightmares before in which she'd been trapped. Where she herself had told her it was too gruesome for it to be true. Where she had told, ordered, herself to wake up and leave it, but nothing had changed. She had stayed in this darkness and had cried before a shock through her body had woken her up, only to find Saeed next to her with his arm squeezed behind his back and her hand the reason for it.
It had been for sure the last time he had woken her up from a nightmare when they'd been together on a supply run. One of the reasons she disliked sleeping close to someone. It was horrible to jump awake from nightly terrors, but worse to hurt someone else when your instincts were faster in protecting you, than you mind clearing.
But she prefered those dreams above the ones who so cruelly put her into an illusion of something she knew it was too late to have. Of people who were lost forever, who wouldn't return no matter how loud you'd scream at the sky. She felt a deep hatred for them, only because she fell in love with every single one of them — and then lost them, anyway.
The beginning of a sheer endless fight endured the entire night. A night that has only ended, as the battle against new tears had taken her strength. Thankfully it had also taken strength from her mind, as it hasn't conjured any apparitions for her to turn away from. Just as on Mandalore, the cold of the night quickly faded, but the scent of sweetened spice was missing, clearing her fogged consciousness and reminding her again where she was.
Meirina felt it. Grief and guilt were often predators. Silent and slowly, so they don't startle you before plunging their teeth inside you, but she wouldn't let them. Not today, not tomorrow. She couldn't go through all this again. The tightness, creeping up from her guts, slithering like a snake and stealing solid breaths from her — she closed her eyes and her lips opened to take in the air. It would be foolish to think that those feelings disappear by just a deep breath and the effort of pushing them away. She would laugh at anyone who'd give her such useless advice, but she had no punching bag, no parkour to run up and down, no engine here that needed repair until she was so exhausted that there was no time to let grief overtake her. There was nothing to take off her mind, so deep breaths and the monotone process of putting her armor and above the linen on, were all that was left for her to do.
Until she heard the sound of speeders coming closer.
Meirina opened the hut's door enough for her eyes to catch the newcomers, but careful to not cause attention. She couldn't imagine anyone coming to a destroyed village at such an early hour. Only scavengers or grave diggers would have any interest in finding something here to sell, as no one on Jakku would come here only to bury the burned corpses.
The engine sound had fallen silent and her head peeked through the little creak. She had to be careful not to twitch back too quickly, as she finally caught sight of the strangers — and not to let her anger lead her outside to shoot them down. Her fingers were jolting to her blaster.
"I don't get why they send us out here again. They're all dead. Why should that droid come back here?" One of the stormtroopers asked. His voice high and annoyed, and something she could only identify as boredom. Meirina dared a closer look, now almost giving them both the chance to catch a sight on her, but the chaos in the village seemed to occupy them enough. Both white-armored men searched around, kicking open some doors that were barely kept in the frame, letting out some inner frustration.
"I don't know, but we have orders. Perhaps that kriffing pilot is hiding around here," his partner replied. Meirina frowned, narrowing her eyes as she kept watching the stormtroopers half-heartedly searching for something — or someone.
"Really? You think he's that stupid?"
"Rebel scum. They're all stupid." They came closer. Steps followed by kicks to get debris out of their way, slowly coming closer. They looked into every hut that wasn't destroyed and hers was only one of the few worth taking a second guess, if they were searching for someone.
"He was smart enough to escape." The stormtrooper's voice was close. Only a few steps.
"We won't find anything here."
"Kriff, stop whining. Do you want to tell Captain Phasma you disobeyed orders?"
"Yeah, yeah, shut up." He was right behind the door.
The hit came without hesitation. Quick and fast, the door slammed against the stormtrooper, knocking him off his feet into the hot sand, as she kicked it open. Blaster in her hand, his partner turned around, his raised as well and even with his helmet on, could she see the benefit of the surprise. She shot faster.
The stormtroopers shot missed her by inches, his balance already off as her first shot hit him in the shoulder before the second in his chest threw him to the ground. The other stormtrooper just regained some clearance of the situation, his eyes flying to the other soldier as he grabbed his blaster.
She kicked at him and his rifle flew out of his hand before another shot of her went straight into his leg. The trooper screamed in pain, reaching for his sidearm, but her foot hit hard into his face, knocking his helmet off and revealing his face. His cruel eyes stared at her, narrowed by pain and deep wishes to kill her, but her blaster pointed at him stopped him from trying anything foolish.
"What are you searching for here?" Meirina demanded, voice cold and calm.
"Go to hell." Wrong answer.
She lowered her hand quickly and the shot pierced his other leg. Another cry erupted from the stormtrooper, giving her a sense of satisfaction.
"Again. What are you searching for here?"
The man groaned, hard breaths pressed through nose and lips, as his stoney eyes kept cursing her.
"You really want me to ask again?" She asked, as she took her right foot and stepped onto his open wound, making him wince in the sand like a dying worm.
"You bitch!"
"True," Meirina replied, unimpressed by his choice of words. "But still not the answer I'm waiting for."
The glance he gave her made his decision clear. Determined, he wouldn't say anything and she wasn't sure if her little treatment would loosen his tongue up. The sand was slowly colored in red. His blood seeped into the ground, and from experience she knew it would be his end if he wouldn't let it be treated soon.
"You know I have some bacta spray in my bag over there," Meirina pointed out carefully, almost sweet in her hint as she nodded to the bag next to the doorframe. For the first time, the trooper's expression relaxed, eyes falling onto her bag. "And you should really do something about these wounds." The tip of her shoe pressed harder onto his wound, making him squeam.
"Weweresearchingfora DROID! Kriffing-"
"You said something about a rebel pilot."
"Yes, yes." He dared a breath, collecting strength for her little torture. "He was here when we destroyed the village."
"Did you kill him?" She didn't hold back with her weight and for a moment she feared he'd pass out, but he only leaned back to stare at her, hate and agony in his eyes.
"No, kriffing sake, we didn't! Ren wanted him alive."
Meirina stepped back. The trooper lost himself in another wave of curses and coughs, falling back into the sand as he became a puddle of painful groans and breaths. He had been here. Ren. He captured Poe, which only meant he was of use to him.
"What happened to the pilot? Did he escape?"
The trooper nodded. "He and a traitor stole a TIE-fighter. They crashed here on Jakku again."
"Why do you think he's alive?"
"The last scan showed the fighter was still intact when colliding with the ground, before disappearing a few minutes later."
"What do you mean by disappearing?" This entire talk was becoming tedious to her. She should have shot this guy instead.
"Kriff, woman, I don't know! It disappeared from our radar!"
"And what about this droid?"
"I don't know," he coughed, avoiding her eyes. Lips pressed together, she raised her gun again, which got him out of his little lung problems.
"Wait, wait, wait! It has a map."
"Do I have to punch everything out of you?" She was losing any bit of patience she had left inside her.
"A map the Resistance wants! Don't know what it is! I only know the Supreme Leader doesn't want Luke Skywalker to have it."
Just a glimpse of a second, Meirina thought about the possibility that she was in fact dreaming. Perhaps her mind hadn't been so exhausted, giving her a dream one of a kind, a wish and a nightmare all at once, but not even her dreams could paint such a scenario.
"The droid. What does it look like?"
"An astromech. BB-Unit. Orange and white. Happy now?"
Her hands fell to her side, not listening to any sharp comment the trooper kept throwing at her, as she rushed into the hut, pulling out her speeder and bag at her side.
"HEY! What about the bacta?"
The speeder's engine roared loudly. The sound echoing through the destroyed village. In the corner of her eye, she saw the stormtrooper trying to crawl to her, but the sand underneath him made it hard to move forward, keeping him far enough from her.
"I never said I'd give it to you." Her turquoise eyes had lost all warmth, only the hint of cold amusement, unforgiving.
"You...you—" He screamed at her, gaze wild and furious without any control.
"You shouldn't have made it personal," she replied and climbed onto the speeder's seat, before it shot forward, taking her onto the path back to Niima Outpost and the screaming stormtrooper left for dead.
AUTHOR'S NOTE!
okay people, this will be the last chapter of my indirect info-dumping, because after that the events will happen a bit faster :D
Originally, I planned for the chapter to end with what happens in the next chapter, which would have been about 8k words probably, but I think a lot happens in this chapter even without a lot of action. Be excited for the next chapter because we will finally leave Jakku!