Chapter Text
10 ABY
“Kleya, you’ll wreck the floors,” Vel Sartha warns, as if the prospect of wrecking anything has ever stopped this woman.
For a moment, Kleya stops, her hands still on the fractal radio unit, old and broken, that she was pushing in the direction of the storage closet.
“Why don’t we just leave it where it was?” Vel asks.
The second she says it, Kleya’s lips turn into a thin line.
“Because it won’t be where it was. Might as well stay in the storage closet.”
Kleya’s irritation, as Vel has noticed not once in the ten years they have been together, is always almost physically palpable.
Vel sighs. She looks around the place that was once called “Galactic Antiquities and Objects of Interest,” which then spent a decade nameless, ransacked by the ISB and sealed — the place that is supposed to be the new home of the Senate Committee for the Veterans of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. Some things have remained the same: the marble ceiling beams, the beige carved panels on the walls, even the hexagonal display stands Luthen would put his items on. The place itself is not what used to be, though.
The stands are now empty, covered in dust. One of the windows is cracked in several places, as if it survived a hail of blasterfire; Vel wouldn’t be too surprised if that really was the case. A lot has happened on Coruscant since she last had the time to take a proper look at anything but Mon’s old mansion and the Senate building.
Her gaze falls on the containers by the entrance, large and white, all covered in stickers with just one word: “CONFISCATED.” A gift from the Judicial Department's Committee for the Investigation of the Crimes of the Galactic Empire.
“There’s more to come,” Kleya warns, like she is talking about some sort of a cataclysm — Yavinian doodars wandering into the camp by accident or a stonebat infestation.
Vel forces a laugh.
“Well, they have to clear that ISB vault somehow, don’t they?”
She touches Kleya’s hand, gently; Kleya gives a reluctant nod. Stars, it appears some things will never change. This woman will swallow a thermal detonator before she actually admits she could use some help.
“All right,” Vel says. “Let’s get this thing to the storage closet, shall we?”
They have other things to take care of anyway. Sooner or later, they’ll get to it and figure it out — find a museum they could donate the radio to, provided they can prove its “significance”, that is. Museums these days are notoriously picky when it comes to rebel items.
Sooner or later.
After all, it’s not the first time Vel Sartha’s life feels like this one big transitional stage. It’s been this way for a few years now. Like they’ve just left one place — and never actually arrived anywhere else.
Fact number one: birthday parties are never about fun. In Miri Jung’s experience, your birthday isn’t really about you. It’s an event that exists with the sole purpose of gathering together all your family — and everyone your family considers family, because family, in the case of the Jungs, is a rather convoluted notion.
Fact number two: Captain Lagret has completed the Amnesty program, so he is not supposed to be a fascist anymore.
Fact number three: right now, Captain Lagret is proposing a toast to the “fallen heroes” — “you know who I mean.” When he says this, Miri can already tell the fallen heroes in question aren’t going to be the Red Squadron pilots. Or the people of Ghorman. Or even Saw Gerrera’s partisans.
And no one at the Pinnacle seems to pay any attention. Well, Miri catches a couple of curious glances from a group of Pantoran aristocrats seated at the nearby table, but that’s about it. Miri assumes they might be more curious about Madam Partagaz’s choice of jewelry than Lagret’s toast. The combination of five strings of yellow Naboo pearls — and a tower-like bun that probably required so much hairspray you could poison a small Outer Rim world — looks more like something that belongs to a High Republic holomovie.
“To our fallen heroes,” says Madam Partagaz, who now officially goes by her maiden name Sul Vertha — because it’s much more convenient to be Chandrilan “in this new, grim reality.” “Sagrona Teema.”
“Um.” Miri folds the napkin into a neat quarter as she tries to pick her words carefully. “I think you might be…misusing that expression?”
Madam Partagaz produces a smile that is equal parts motherly and condescending.
“Darling, in Hanna City, we’d always say this.”
Mom shoots Miri a look that counts as her version of a death glare. A muted, polite death glare. Accompanied with a smile that doesn’t extend to Mom’s eyes. LO-LA70, also known as just Lola, chirps quietly, as if trying to comfort Miri, and climbs up her shoulder.
“Um.” Miri taps her fingers on the table.
“Darling,” says Madam Partagaz. “Stop fidgeting, if you please. Manners, remember? And would you mind putting that thing in your bag? A restaurant is no place for such droids.”
Lola gives a quiet chirp of protest.
Then Miri says, “All I’m saying is, you cannot wish health and prosperity to people who are already dead.”
The table falls silent. Captain Lagret gestures for the waiter droid to pour him more wine. Supervisor Grandi pretends to be very busy with her nuna fillet. Jarro, Dad’s former attendant, just sits motionless with a smile plastered over his face.
Grandpa clears his throat.
“Actually, I believe it’s time for the cake. Right, Miri?”
She sighs.
“Um. No. No. I…”
Miri pauses, trying to think of the polite way to put this, like a well-mannered young lady that she is supposed to be — at least according to her mother, her grandfather, Madam Partagaz, the principal, and all of the teachers of the Galactic District High.
Lola buzzes, as though sensing what she is about to do. This particular buzz is meant to say, “Don’t. Just don’t.”
“I’m a little bit uncomfortable with this,” Miri says, slowly. “Could we please not toast to the ISB on my birthday? It’s a little bit…strange. Thank you.”
Great. Now the Pantorans from the nearby table are looking at her and not at Madam Partagaz’s ridiculous pearls.
Captain Lagret lowers his voice.
“Your father would have begged to differ.”
“I don’t want to talk about my father, Captain,” she says. “Not today.”
“You should have sent her to Chandrila,” whispers Madam Partagaz to Mom. “I’m afraid to think what she’s learning at this Coruscanti school. All those alien teacherrs— There is a marvelous place in Hanna—”
“But it’s his birthday too,” says Lagret. His expression doesn’t change for a second. “Need I remind you that your father died protecting this galaxy—”
Oh, please. Miri’s heard this crap too many times already.
“Just like Supervisor Heert, right?” she asks.
It’s weird how bits of stories that were never really hers, or Mom’s, or Dad’s, or Grandpa’s, stories that none of them ever witnessed, have a way of weaving themselves into the family history as if they’ve always been there. The Jung family is not unlike a bad hoarding case: if something isn’t in the “might come in handy” category, then it surely has some obscure “sentimental value.”
The remaining two of Supervisor Heert’s five tookas, as well as their grandchildren, still live at Mom’s and Miri’s apartment.
The story of Supervisor Heert’s death used to be Miri’s childhood nightmare, because some adults didn’t care what details you can and can’t share with a five-year-old. The school psychologist seemed very perplexed by the case.
Mom’s eyes narrow.
“Don’t you dare to talk about Jasper like that, young lady!”
Lola nudges Miri with a tiny paw.
“Like what?” Miri clarifies. “I didn’t say anything. I’m just not sure what was so heroic about becoming a droid shield.”
Grandpa’s face goes rigid. Jarro chokes on his wine. Lagret goes a shade paler, which is not something Miri had believed to be possible, given that his complexion is best described as “Maldo Kreis ice spider.”
And suddenly, Miri catches herself thinking that she rather enjoys this sight.
“I’m also not sure how exactly Dad helped save the galaxy,” she adds.
Let it all burn.
It’s less of a thought and more of a feeling, a sharp and clear and just a little bit frightening one. It’s a bit similar to those moments when Miri has fights with Mom — they all tend to get carried away — but at the same time, it’s nothing like that.
As it turns out, there are some things that you just can’t voice politely.
“He has all the names.”
Kleya frowns as she skims over the document Vel has just forwarded to her. It takes her a second to determine that the list is incomplete.
“Not all of them. He doesn’t have Meero. And…what does he want, exactly?”
It’s fascinating how a good half of all the veteran cases they are handling do not, in fact, require any help the Senate supposed she and Vel could provide. Just tracking down a dozen people and putting blaster bolts in their heads would have more than sufficed. Yet, sadly, it is neither Kleya’s nor Vel’s…zone of responsibility.
Not anymore, at least.
She has to quash the cold, familiar anger rising in her chest.
Different times, different methods.
(Why didn’t anyone warn her she would hate this so much?)
“He wants us to get him an appointment at the Judicial Department,” Vel says. “I imagine.”
Kleya sighs.
“I see,” she says. “So. Is it going to be me or you?”
The second she says this, she regrets asking.
She is not good at…those kinds of conversations. Never has been. Conversations that require too much empathy — or admitting that there is nothing, nothing that she can do, that it is not up to her anymore, that she is, by and large, useless, because the New Republic Tribunal has too much work already, and they will only accept cases with a clear, neat paper trail.
Making people take responsibility for their actions, it would appear, is a rather time-, energy- and money-consuming endeavor — and there are too many fascists, former fascists, and fascist sympathizers in this galaxy.
(You can’t make everyone pay, can you?)
(Sometimes you dream of everything you will do to Dedra Meero when you meet her. Everything you are not legally allowed to do to people anymore.)
“I’ll talk to Rylanz,” Vel says. “I think it’ll help if one of us accompanies him.”
“Fine,” Kleya says. “I will go with him. We have to try.”
She knows, though, that it will not help. These are the days when determination can only get you so far. A suspicion that a task force captain by the name of Linus Kaido was sent by the Empire to Ghorman a day before the massacre is not enough. You have to collect and verify several testimonies, track the man down, then request funding for an arrest mission—
(How can a place that used to be your safe house, a place where you and Luthen spent years building the Rebellion, be turned into an office for a kriffing Senate committee that helps people with kriffing housing benefits?)
(How can this place feel so much like a prison?)
“Kleya?”
Vel’s voice snaps her back to the reality.
“What?”
Vel’s voice holds gentle concern.
“You’re staring at the wall, that’s what.”
“Oh,” Kleya says, somewhat absent-mindly. “That.”
After a moment of hesitation, she adds, “The panel on the right. It’s cracked. We’ll have to replace it.”
Must have happened during the raid, she thinks. Some half-qualified ISB investigator who was looking for a secret wall stash, like they would have been so stupid as to make a wall stash right near the shop’s window.
“They don’t make these anymore,” Vel points out. “This looks Alderaanian.”
She reaches to place a kiss on Kleya’s forehead; inadvertently, Kleya feels her shoulders and neck relax.
“I love you.”
Kleya nods.
“I love you too.”
It’s a phrase she has had to teach herself to say. The words still feel strange on her tongue, like she voices something she is not supposed to, something that is not meant for her, something she doesn’t deserve. This woman. This feeling.
“And by the way,” Vel says, “I would have much preferred just to gun them all down without all the paperwork, too, Kleya.”
Mom doesn’t say a word to Miri on the way back home.
As the speeder approaches their building, Miri catches herself thinking that this is how the entire birthday incident will likely end up: them not talking to each other for several weeks. Which is, in her opinion, not the worst-case scenario. It’s more of a regular-case scenario, and for a good reason. Maybe it’s just easier for them…not to talk.
At least, the less time they spend in the same room, as Miri has noticed, the better their respective moods are.
Mom opens the door, silently. Kicks off her thousand-credit high-heeled shoes — then pauses for a second, picks them up carefully, removes a speck of Coruscant dust from the black patent leather with the soft brush she always keeps by the door, and hands them over to the household droid.
In the Jung family, they do things the “proper” way.
Miri lets LO-LA70 out of the bag and throws her coat on the small white sofa Mom placed in the hallway last month, in yet another feat of “bringing order” to this place. Mishuu, the eldest of the remaining tookas, jumps on it immediately with a predatory hiss.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Mom asks, then.
Miri licks her lips.
There are some things that are never easy to admit.
Like the fact that her supply of courage for today is over already. It’s one thing to piss everyone off in a situation that doesn’t leave many opportunities for Serious Conversations. It’s another thing to return home and have to deal with the Consequences.
Then she braces herself and steadies her voice.
“What do you mean?”
Mom fixes her with a strange look. For a moment, Miri wonders if she is about to be grounded the classic way — no datapad, no pocket money, no hanging out with Seti Septrulla at Sakko’s Caf House after school, or shipped off to an all-girls boarding school on Chandrila. The kind that looks more like a prison facility where you still have to do your hair every morning.
“These people raised you,” Mom says. “Captain Lagret. Madam Partagaz. How dare you?”
“I never asked for that.” After a moment of hesitation, Miri adds, “I don’t want them in my life.”
Mom sighs.
It is only now that Miri notices the dark circles around her eyes, visible even from under a layer of that super sticky “second-skin” cream.
“Just because they what, have different views? Why can’t you all just be nice to each other, like normal people?”
“You know why,” Miri says.
“I don’t,” Mom answers, strangely insistent.
This makes Miri laugh. She just can’t with this. It’s too stupid. Every damn time, she has to explain the same things to Mom, over and over, things that have long been proven.
“You seriously don’t understand that they’ve done terrible things?”
“Listen,” Mom says. “Governments change. I’ve lived through that twice. And every time, each new government says that the previous one was the worst, and everyone believes it.”
“Mom, Dad killed people.”
“How can you be so sure? You don’t know what he did.”
“Mom. What do you think he did? He was ISB, for Stars’s sake!”
Connecting the dots here is not the hardest task in this galaxy. In Miri’s case, it happened more or less…on its own? Her history teacher, a tall, sad man in his sixties, is from Ghorman. Her best friend Seti is from Ryloth. She has known what an ISB arrest looks like since she was six.
Mishuu the tooka meows at the word “ISB,” a word he has heard too many times and apparently now mistakes for something like “good kitty” or “it’s lunchtime.” Lola pats Miri with her tiny metallic paw.
Mom stares at Miri with an expression that Miri can’t decipher.
“He loved you more than you possibly imagine.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Miri says.
“Go to your room,” Mom answers. “And stop making things up.”
“I’m not making anything up.”
“Then I’m looking forward to the case you will present to the New Republic Tribunal, Supervisor Jung.”
Mom’s voice sounds exhausted — but it’s different from a difficult day at Jung & Vereesa Shipments or one of those days when Madam Partagaz calls her to solve some extremely urgent and pressing problem. Such as dealing with an “alien” plumber who doesn’t speak Galactic Basic, because someone couldn’t be bothered to load more languages into her butler droid’s memory.
It’s weird that they still call people supervisors, Miri thinks as she scoops Lola up. That word shouldn’t exist anymore.
“What do you mean, ‘no spots until next year’?” Vel asks. “Erskin. That man was the head of the Ghorman front. He lost his daughter in the massacre. He lost everything.”
“And that’s exactly why I’m being honest with you,” says Erskin Semaj’s hologram. “I don’t want to waste his time or give him false hopes. The Judicial department is drowning. The last thing any investigator wants to take on is another Ghorman case that will remain unsolved for an eternity.”
On the other end of the room, Kleya scoffs quietly.
“Do you want me to call Mon?” Vel asks.
“You can always call Mon. But Mon will call me, and then she will ask me to put the case on the priority list, and the priority list already has two hundred names.”
“I’ll tell her you’re not being helpful.”
“Which will hardly be the worst fight I’ve ever had with Mon. Vel, I’m serious. We can’t take on any new Tribunal cases unless we are absolutely certain. It’s better to do ten things well than to fail a hundred.”
“A thousand, in your case,” Kleya comments.
On the hologram, Erskin squints.
“Is she there?”
“Yes,” Vel says. “And I’ll send her to your department if you won’t help us with Rylanz. There will be blood, you know.”
Erskin sighs like a man who has accepted his destiny — but still doesn’t like it.
“So now I have all the interns to vet, all the crazy people to deal with, and a Ghorman front leader to disappoint. Great. My late mother would have been so proud. I’m truly serving the Ghor people.”
Vel notices how Kleya’s expression grows unexpectedly focused.
“What kind of crazy people?” she asks.
“Ex-Imperials who want to sue the Empire for moral compensation for wrongly accusing them of being rebels. It’s become a trend lately.”
“Send them to us,” says Kleya. “If we can prove that someone was a rebel, then we can prove that someone wasn’t. Then you can help Rylanz and be a good Ghor like your mother would have wanted.”
“I don’t think she would,” Erskin answers. “It’s a bit of a personal identity crisis.”
Vel recognizes the expression on Kleya’s face all too well.
“I don’t care,” says Kleya Marki, like she always does when she sets out to do something. “Give me the Imperials. And find an appointment for Rylanz for the next month.”
“A week, then,” says Seti Septrulla on the comm.
“A week.” Miri plops down on her bed; Lola follows her. “And I’m feeding the ISB tookas.”
“So it’s a bit of a labor camp situation.”
“Time is on my side. One day, we’ll run out of them.”
“Of?.."
“Of the tookas, Seti.”
Last time, Mishuu tried to bite off Mom’s hand. They used to delegate the task of feeding the Imperial Tooka Bureau to the household droid, but the droid never seems to get the amount of food right, which either results in Mishuu gaining weight or in Mishuu acting out. That’s how the Jung family ended up making a tooka feeding rota.
And now, all the feeding is Miri’s responsibility. She is quite sure that there are sarlaccs friendlier than the late Jasper Heert’s pets — but hey, it’s not the worst punishment she can think of.
“And I’ll have to call Lagret and apologize,” she says.
Then there is a pause.
“Will you do it?” Seti asks, quietly.
Miri considers her answer.
She could have said no. It’s abundantly clear. If she doesn’t apologize to Lagret, one week without pocket money and Sakko’s Caf House and hanging out with friends turns into two, but it’s not a big problem. For Miri, it means two additional weeks to focus on Galactic District High’s Anti-Speciesism Society. And she’ll get more time to do not only her but also Seti’s homework because Seti’s grades have worsened lately.
She can do whatever she wants within the confines of her home. It’s not like Mom has a lot of free time to check it. She tends to get carried away by all the problems she has to solve. Hers and Grandpa’s, Lagret’s, Madam Partagaz’s.
Yet Miri has a feeling that if she does it once again, it’ll all be like it always was.
Which reminds her of one of those motivation posters with quotes from historic personalities Mister Arlanz put up in his class.
“The road to change is paved with hard decisions.” Bail Organa.
“I have a plan,” Miri says.
“What plan?” Seti asks.
When Miri tells her, Seti spends a good minute not saying anything at all. Briefly, Miri wonders if something has happened to the comm connection — but then Seti speaks up, at last.
“That’s crazy. Do you really think they’ll accept you?”
“Your cousin lied about his age when he joined the Alliance,” Miri reminds. “Worked for him.”
“But he was, like, killed a month later. Because they made him fly an X-wing, and he had no idea what he was doing.”
“I know what I’m doing, Seti,” Miri says.
She doesn’t, if she is honest — but there’s a quote from one of those old holobooks on business and success from Mom’s shelf, “Always walk into a room as if you belong there.” Not that it helped the man who wrote it — when Miri looked him up, it turned out that he was a famous Chandrilan banker who ended his days on Narkina-Seven, charged with embezzlement and tax evasion.
Still, she finds the advice applicable in her situation.
Lola chirps angrily and slides her paw as if pretending to cut her head off.
Miri gulps.
A familiar cold spreads inside her chest.
You will fail, a quiet voice in her head tells her. And then you will just create more problems for your mother, like you’ve already done, and it’s not like you’ll ever prove anything to anyone. It’d be best if those people never saw your internship application. You should hope they won’t.
Whatever. Miri tells the voice to shut up.
“The road to change is paved with hard decisions,” she repeats.
At least she can try. For once.
The girl before Erskin squares her shoulders.
Pale, anxious face. A dark blue shift dress that is supposed to make her look slightly older. Red hair, a short, wavy bob now known as The Mothma — a style that must be quite challenging to maintain if you don’t have Mon’s personal hairdresser.
Erskin knows the type. In two years at the New Republic’s Judicial Deparment, he has come to the conclusion that all the potential interns can de divided into several types, and a straight-A student keen to achieve change, however annoying they can be, is hardly the worst option to hire.
“Please, take a seat,” he says, gesturing at the visitor’s chair. “Your name?”
“Miri Jung, sir,” the girl says.
That rings a bell, Erskin thinks. Then he realizes. One of the few personal statements that actually made it clear why the applicant wants the internship.
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Jung,” he says, with a smile. “I’m Erskin Semaj. I oversee the new recruits program at the Judicial department. Before that, I used to be Supreme Chancellor Mothma’s attache, but… different times call for different work to be done, right? Now tell me about yourself — what brings you here?”
This is an easy question. If Miri Jung is here, being interviewed for the position, she has already stated her purpose clearly enough.
“I…” She fidgets in her chair, as though taken aback by the question. Then come the polite head girl voice and the rehearsed speech. “I’ve always wanted to serve the New Republic, Mister Semaj. I grew up here on Coruscant, so I saw with my own eyes what can happen when we look away from the injustice and forget about, um, basic sentient being rights, sir. I see this internship as an opportunity to learn more about the important work that the Judicial Department does and use my analytical, organizational and language skills to contribute—”
“Good. Organizational skills, you say. Could you name a couple of examples?”
“In high school, I founded the Anti-Speciesism Society. It’s still working. We ran a successful campaign to add Wookiee food to the school canteen menu, sir. And we hosted a speciesism awareness day. Nonhuman literature book club, informing about the Empire’s crimes against different worlds—”
“Good. What languages do you speak?”
“Fluent Sy Bisti, intermediate Huttese, um, conversational Rodian and Rhyl, and I’ve taken up Ghor recently—”
“Good.”
So an educated Coruscanti with some knowledge of Outer Rim and Mid Rim languages, including popular trade ones.
Speaking of which.
Erskin lowers his eyes to the file on his datapad and squints.
“I believe it’s a technical error, Miss Jung,” he says, “but I can’t see full info about your education on this CV. Could you, perhaps…”
He trails off and watches Miri Jung’s face flush red.
For a moment, there is silence, complete and utter.
Then the girl says, “Mister Semaj, there might be, um, a bit of a—”
She inhales sharply, as though admitting her defeat.
“I’m still in high school, sir.”
Fact number one: lying on your resume only seems easy. If you absolutely must do it, make sure you come up with an elaborate back story.
Fact number two: in his book “What They Don’t Teach You at the Chandrilan Academy of Finance and Trade,” Davo Sculdun wrote that persistence is key to success.
Fact number three: Mon Mothma became a senator at sixteen.
“Mon Mothma was a senator at my age, sir,” Miri says when Mister Semaj starts explaining her once again that the New Republic Judicial Committee isn’t allowed to hire anyone under the age of eighteen.
“I doubt it’s an experience she looks back on fondly,” Mister Semaj counters. Then he adds, in a softer voice, “Miss Jung, we will be delighted to accept you for this program in two years, once you graduate.”
“I can work after school, sir,” Miri says. “It’s not problematic at all. I will do anything you say, even if it’s, um, the kind of work no one wants to do, and—”
Semaj gives her a tired look.
“It’s not about what you can and what you can’t. It would have been strange for a department that oversees justice in the New Republic to break its own rules, don’t you think?”
“If it were the Rebel Alliance, you wouldn’t have cared about my age,” Miri blurts.
She regrets her words right away.
“Thank the Stars we don’t live in these times anymore,” only says Mister Semaj. “I’ll see you in two years, Miss Jung. Good day.”
“Good day, sir.” Miri gets up from her chair.
The thing she says next, she says not because she wants to persuade Semaj — he’s made himself quite clear, and that part of her that hated the idea was right. It’s just that sometimes Miri says things out of some strange desire to feel like in the end, she is the one who is right.
“And by the way,” she adds, “my father was an ISB supervisor. So what I said that I saw it all, I meant it.”
It’s not what she says.
The Judicial Department, according to Erskin’s observations, has perhaps the highest number of Imperial kids with a guilt complex, and everyone thinks they are unique in their suffering. Navy brats. Children of various Imperial bureaucrats. Those with an alcoholic ex-stormtrooper father they have been estranged from for years. Honestly, an ISB supervisor parent isn’t remotely the worst situation Erskin has seen.
Grand Admiral Savit’s niece has recently been promoted to the senior investigator position. There is an Outer Rim moff’s son in the vetting department. There’s a death trooper commander’s daughter who was very determined to handle her father’s case; Erskin had to remind her what conflict of interest meant, no matter how earnest her motivation to send the man to the Karthon Chop Fields for a couple of decades of correctional labor seemed.
(Mon once said that it was a “rather convenient way to despise one’s parents.” To that seemingly off-handed remark, Senator Organa — the new Senator Organa, the daughter — answered that the New Republic was lucky enough people had the good sense to despise their parents. It was as if she had more to say on the subject but chose to restrain herself.)
So no, it’s not Miri Jung’s words that make Erskin say what he says. It’s a glimpse of sheer intensity that he spots underneath all the awkwardness and all the attempts to appear grown-up and serious. The kind of intensity that doesn’t befit a sixteen-year-old.
He’s seen it before.
He lowers his voice.
“Come to think of it, there’s an organization that might not care about your age. Just bring them a letter of permission with your parents' signature.”
He doesn’t even think Kleya would look at that, but these days, it’s best to follow at least some procedures.
Vel is no expert on forging documents — that was Luthen and Kleya’s domain, her specialty was everything that involved a bit more action — but she can tell a forged holosignature when she sees one.
“You’re the new intern, I take it.”
The girl, Miri is her name — “the new intern” is not the most precise formulation here, she is the first intern they have ever had — licks her lips nervously and looks around the office. Her gaze stops on the cracked wall panel, then on the cracks in the windows that nobody has had the time to fix.
Vel rereads Erskin’s message.
“Mister Simaj wrote you a letter of recommendation.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Vel contemplates asking the girl about the forged signature — but before she has time to do it, Kleya takes the datapad from her hands and skims over the message. The she seems to open one of the attachments Erskin has forwarded: either a personal statement or a resume. Vel can see her brows furrow in concentration.
It takes Kleya a second or two to say, “You’re in.”
Then she hands the girl named Miri a datapad with a file Vel recognizes all too well.
“Here’s your first assignment.”
Fact number one: Freedom Towers, a lower levels residential complex for the veterans of the Rebel Alliance, used to house stormtroopers before the fall of the Empire.
Fact number two: a building proudly named Freedom Towers has a severe mold problem. Whether it started in the age of the Empire or later remains unclear.
Fact number three: Executive Director Sartha didn’t seem very happy with Operations Director Marki’s decision to trust Miri with the task.
Director Marki places a long, battered-looking metallic thing on the desk; it takes Miri a moment to realize that this is an actual blaster. She hasn’t seen those since— Well, she’s only seen them from a distance, when she was in the fifth grade.
(At first, there were all those transmissions about Palpatine’s death that no one believed. When people started shooting, on all levels, not only on the lower ones, Miri stayed in, so it’s not like she had time to study stuff like that in great detail. All she remembers can be boiled down to three things: the school was closed, Mom hid her blaster in the desk drawer, and Jarro came to “protect” them, which looked more like he was hiding with them. He dragged in a decommissioned KX-unit, but no one had any idea how to repair it, so eventually, when things calmed down, Mom threw it away.)
Miri doesn’t remember if Dad had a blaster. He probably did. They were supposed to carry it around all the time, as far as she knows. Maybe the one in Mom’s desk was Dad’s originally, but whatever.
She waits for Director Marki to say anything.
Director Marki, in turn, looks at her like she’s an idiot.
“Take it.”
“Um,” Miri says. “I, um— I can’t shoot, ma’am.”
If anything, this is not how she had expected her internship to go. She was rather hoping she’d get access to the archives — any archives that might have anything related to the ISB. The Judicial Department’s archives seemed perfect, but hey, she didn’t mind settling for a Senate-funded committee archives, and—
Here she is. No archives. And a blaster on the table.
“It’s broken,” Director Marki says. “Put it in your pocket. It’s best to pretend that you have a gun on you. And change into something more practical.”
Something more practical with pockets big enough to fit a blaster, Miri adds in her mind.
The look Director Sartha throws at Marki doesn’t escape Miri’s attention. It’s the kind of look that could burn holes in durasteel. Yet, for some reason, Director Sartha doesn’t debate Director Marki’s idea.
“Put my comm code on speed dial,” she only says. “If you see anyone following you, comm me immediately, stay calm, find the nearest crowded place, and send me the coordinates.”
“She’ll be fine.”
Miri wouldn’t have minded half the trust in her abilities that Director Marki has.
“Can I, um, go home to change?” she asks.
“We have clothes,” says Marki, like they have a secret spy disguise wardrobe or something at this place.
A minute later, Miri learns that they, in fact, do.
“Are you crazy?” Vel hisses at Kleya. “She’s a child!”
On some level, she can understand why Kleya keeps doing it — but kriffing hell, not everyone had to become a revolutionary at twelve.
If Vel herself were tasked to do anything like that at sixteen, as a Chandrilan girl who had just moved to Coruscant and changed one all-girls boarding school to another, she would have ran away before even reaching Level 4300. No matter how brave she thought she was.
It’s a different time now, it’s a different situation, and sending interns to the lower levels clearly doesn’t help anyone build a safe, just, and democratic republic.
“Trust me,” Kleya says.
Then she gestures at the narrow, half-lit hallway leading to what used to be the shop’s backroom and says, “Move.”
“...yes, Seti, and now I have to go down there and knock on doors and talk to people. Also take pictures of mold, but that’s okay. Probably.”
At least Miri’s seen mold before.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says as she heads to one of those turbolifts that look like nobody’s used them since the Old Republic. Or even the High Republic.
“Dude.” Miri can almost hear how Seti rolls her eyes. It’s the Eye Roll Voice. “Couldn’t you have told me that, like, earlier? It’s not like I can just tell Dad I’m not helping him at the shop today because I’ve gotta help you again!”
“Again”? It’s not like corroborating the version from the fake note that Miri wrote herself, signed with Mom’s holostamp, and sent to the head teacher was as hard as bringing the Death Star plans. All Seti had to do was to nod and say that Miri was indeed very, very sick.
“I’m not asking you to come here with me.” Actually, Miri was about to ask exactly that, even though she felt terrible about asking for it — but now the wounded pride part somehow feels more important. “I just need some advice. Please.”
“I’ve never been below 4600!”
“Seti.”
Eye Roll Voice, again.
“Just be normal about it? No idea. And, um, call me? If there’s connection there?”
All right, Miri thinks.
It would appear she is completely on her own.
“How is the new intern?” Mon asks when she calls from Chandrila. “Erskin is keeping me updated on all the big developments.”
When you are approaching your fifties, the thought that you can still be the little cousin who has just hired her first intern for her little committee doesn’t feel so objectionable anymore.
Vel smiles.
Mon always calls at odd times — it’s as if she tries to use up whatever morsels of free time that she claws out of her schedule, in between meetings, formal and informal, official visits, budget hearings, and debates. This time, it’s before lunchtime, right in the middle of the work day on Coruscant — which must be night on Chandrila.
“Let’s hope she survives,” Vel says as she stretches in her chair and opens her Kapaio shrimp sandwich from the nearest Chandrilan deli. “She has that hairstyle, by the way. The Mothma. I think half the people on Coruscant do these days.”
On the comm, she hears Mon’s quiet, soft laugh.
“Please ask her to reconsider. She has many years ahead of her to ruin her hair.”
“The advice our Supreme Chancellor wishes to give to the younger generation. Should’ve been on those motivational posters they sell at Galaxy Holobooks.”
“They sell motivational posters now?” Mon asks, in mock-horror. “How ghastly. And here I hoped they’d limit themselves to dartboards with my portrait on them.”
After that, she falls into silence. Vel weighs all the arguments against asking the question that has been on her mind since the start of the call asks it anyway.
“How’s Leida?”
“Like Leida,” Mon says. “Thriving, in her own way.”
This must mean that Leida is close to finalizing her divorce. Judging by Mon’s evasiveness, it’s best not to press on.
“How’s Kleya?” Mon asks.
“Also thriving.” Vel takes a big hearty bite of the sandwich without getting up from her desk. Where did her manners go, she wonders briefly, but the answer is obvious: Yavin. “Was supposed to go get caf. Disappeared.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“I have some idea where she went,” Vel says, taking another bite.
There are several facts Miri learns from her lower-levels trip — this has been quite an…enlightening experience, if she can put it that way — but there are two things that matter the most.
Number one. When you knock on random people’s doors in the middle of the day, people likely will not be thrilled to see you. It does get easier after the first hundred, though, so it would seem Davo Sculdun was right about something when he wrote about persistence. The task of knocking on people’s doors also gets easier when there’s cake. Miri thought it could work, even though a bakery bag didn’t seem like the safest thing to carry around on the lower levels at first.
Number two. Cake or no cake, the main thing is, basically, to shut up and listen. Maybe that’s what Seti meant by “just being normal about it.”
“Here’s Mold Stain Number Seventy-Seven,” Miri says as she turns on the small office holoprojector that Director Marki gives her. “I’ve numbered them all, and I’ve color-coded them because there’s black mold, and green mold, and…”
On holograms, the mold stains look a bit more disgusting than they were in real life.
In real life, it all didn’t disgust her as much as it made her angry. The idea that someone can live like that, and no one cares. Miri is not sure if her anger is relevant in this situation, so she chooses to school her voice and focus on the color-coding part.
She sees a thin smile on Director Marki’s face.
“Good work, Miri. You can file a report and send it to me. You spent three hours on the hundredth floor, though. Care to provide more details?”
Lonni’s girl gulps, takes her eyes away, and then does her best to make her face unreadable. It's fascinating how she has managed to inherit all of his mannerisms and microexpressions, Kleya thinks, even though she doesn’t seem to remember him.
“Um.” She taps her fingers against the desk; this seems to be a self-soothing gesture. Her face flushes red. “It wasn’t strictly about the project, ma’am.”
“What was it about, then?” Kleya asks.
“There was a Rodian woman, ma’am. She said she was a pilot. She can’t go outside much.”
“Why can’t she, Miri?”
“I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you that, ma’am. It’s personal.”
“Well, maybe this committee can help. That’s what it is for.”
Miri appears to consider this.
“She looks like she has some sort of a scale infection. She caught a virus on Yavin. She says it’s not dangerous to humans, but that’s why it’s not considered dangerous enough in general, not officially, at least, which makes at it harder for her to use the veteran medical insurance—”
This, too, is very Lonni: the habit of giving all the important facts and trying to explain everything at once, the strain in her voice. The quiet, suppressed anger too.
Lonni was that way. Luthen had to train him. Then he grew a much thicker skin, but Kleya doesn’t think that what was underneath ever changed.
“Noted,” she says. “Share her details with me.”
“Can I go visit her again, ma’am?” Miri asks. “I think she needs someone to talk to?”
“You’ll come with me. We need to assess the situation anyway.”
Miri just nods at that. For a moment, she looks as though she is grappling with an emotion that Kleya doesn’t understand but can imagine. Could be the side effect of seeing too much life that was too different from hers, at once.
“By the way.” Kleya takes a twenty-credit chip out of her purse. “The cake was a good choice, but you should’ve saved the receipt. We’ll give you allowance next time.”
Miri blinks, like she has forgotten what New Republic credits look like.
“Were you following me?”
“I had to make sure you were safe,” Kleya says.
“I never noticed you!”
“Years of experience.”
Miri tilts her head; when she does it, she reminds Kleya of one of those orange and white birds on Yavin with a perpetually curious look in their eyes. Whisper birds, that’s how they were called. It was back when Vel made her “look around.” Every day, Kleya was supposed to write down five things she had learned on that planet that had nothing to do with warfare. It was hard at first. It kept her sane, though, even though she’d never admit it at the time.
“Were you in the Rebel Alliance?” Miri asks.
What do you think, Kleya wants to ask her. We made it all happen. The Rebellion. There would have been no Yavin, there would have been nothing—
Instead, she just says, “I was. ‘Till Primeday, Miri Jung.”