Chapter Text
The star destroyer was still impressive, even stripped of her engines and suspended between the huge cranes on the scrapping docks. Black carbon scarred her durasteel belly plates, and the wound that had ended her gaped just behind her prow. Standing in the shadow of her massive belly, Cal Kestis wondered if he had known her when she was still in service. Her name and numbers were gone, sandblasted from her hull. Whatever she had been called no longer mattered, since the Bracca shipbreaking yards were the last stop for forgotten junk.
“Ready kid?” Prauf asked, interrupting Cal’s thoughts. The big Abednedo was dripping wet and he carried a stasis crate full of tools and harnesses.
“Yeah,” replied Cal. “Gonna be a long day.”
“Why did we agree to do this again?”
Cal shrugged. “You don’t see many of these old Venator class ships anymore.” Prauf looked at him suspiciously.
“I think you have a death wish. I used to work on these things when I was still an engineer. The ordnance gets more unstable as it ages. That’s why they pay triple time to scrap it. It’s more likely to blow up in your face than go quietly into the sunset.”
Cal grinned at Prauf. “I’ll make sure you’re standing in front of me then.”
Prauf laughed. “Kid, if this thing goes, it won’t matter what’s in front of you.”
Cal and Prauf ascended the gangway that had been built to access the old ship’s hangar, the easiest point of entry. The ship had already been stripped back to the wiring, and electricians worked to pull the thousands of kilometers of wiring from inside bulkheads, to be melted down and remade into components for the new Imperial ships. None of them looked at Cal or Prauf as they passed through.
They walked deeper into the ship, following the hand-lettered signs to the munitions pits. Other scrappers had left notes warning of hazards. One door was hastily welded shut and bore a skull and crossbones in dripping red paint.
“What do you think happened there?” Cal asked Prauf. Prauf glanced at the door.
“That’s a reactor hall. Whatever it was, someone probably had a bad day. This way.”
Prauf turned off down a narrow gangway marked by an array of brightly colored warning notices. The passage ended abruptly at a sealed blast door. Cal keyed the comm to summon the job foreman. Brisk footsteps clanked on the decking, and a guild droid with a discus shaped head appeared.
“Names and numbers?” it asked briskly. Cal and Prauf presented their identification cards, and the droid scanned them into its datapad. When their IDs were accepted, the droid handed Cal the datapad, which had the standard contract already open on the screen.
“Sign here,” the droid said. Cal skimmed the disclaimer and signed his name at the bottom. Prauf signed next to him.
The document was accepted and the screen read out the schematics for the ordnance he and Prauf would be salvaging. Cal scrolled through, even though he had spent the past several days reviewing the ship’s particular configuration.
“All fusion materials have been removed,” the foreman said. “You will have to take the torpedo cores out in a stasis crate. The ordnance pit was badly damaged during this ship’s last action. There is a temporary access hole to the proton torpedo bays.” It turned stiffly and cocked its head at Prauf. “The human will fit. You will not.”
Cal exchanged a glance with Prauf.
“I understand,” Prauf said. He clapped Cal on the shoulder. “I think I have some engine grease in the toolkit. We can grease Kestis up and get him through that hatch, and all I have to do is haul the crate out. Easy enough.”
“I do not understand,” the droid replied, cranking its dented head to look at Prauf, then Cal.
“Right, he’s joking about the grease,” Cal said. “He means we can take care of it.”
“Understood,” the droid replied in its flat, metallic voice. “Good luck, and ensure that you comply with all safety standards and regulations.”
Cal tapped his ID to the lock on the blast door. It ground open with a shriek and closed with a shudder and rain of sparks, leaving them alone in the munitions bays.
“You were joking about the grease, right?” he asked Prauf. Prauf looked thoughtful.
“Maybe. Depends on the size of that access hatch.”
Cal and Prauf stepped through the door and out onto the gantry above the munitions pits. The damage here was as bad as the foreman had told them. The pit access stairs had been sheared away, and without them Cal would have to have Prauf lower him down with a rope and harness through a ragged hatch sliced in the deck. Broken computer screens glinted darkly along the bulkheads. Absently, Cal brushed his fingers over one of the consoles.
The monitors suddenly glowed with readouts, and he stood next to a young woman with tightly braided hair and a smart uniform as she completed her morning checklist. She was drinking coffee, and Cal could smell it when she sat her mug on the console. He felt the heat of the mug on his hand.
He yanked his hand away, frantically slamming shut the barriers in his mind that had protected him for the past four years. Cal thought of the crew of the Albedo Brave, the Venator- class ship where he had trained with Master Tapal. He had often gone to watch them work, and he still remembered all of their names. He pushed the memory away. The past would easily overwhelm him, if he let it.
“Cal? You okay?” Prauf’s voice drew him back to the present and his friend gave him a look of concern. Cal grinned at him and hoped it hid his sudden shakiness.
“Just getting a feel for the place,” he said.
“What it lacks in comfort, it makes up for in triple wages,” Prauf said.
“That’s about all it has going for it.”
Prauf looked around, the greenish worklights casting ghostly shadows across his long face.
“She was a beauty once,” he said softly. “Something we could have been proud of, you know?” Cal patted him on the shoulder.
“I know. Doesn’t seem right scrap her for the Empire,” he said. It bothered him sometimes, knowing that his work on Bracca helped build the war machine that had forced him into hiding. Cal quickly shut down that line of thought. It only led him to the dark tangle of grief and guilt that he had worked so hard to lock away, when he asked himself if his life had been worth Jaro Tapal’s. He knew the answer.
“Can’t do much about it. Let’s get to work. Maybe we can get out of here in time to enjoy spending some of those credits.” Prauf’s voice broke into his thoughts and Cal was grateful for the interruption.
“Foreman wasn’t joking about the access hatch,” Prauf said as he and Cal looked down into the bomb bay. Cal’s entry point was little more than a hole in the deck with a short ladder hanging down into the torpedo bay. When the ship was still in service, this would have been an alternate escape hatch, not an entry to the munitions hall. The passage was too narrow for Prauf. Cal wasn’t claustrophobic, but the tight squeeze did give him pause.
“If something happens, you’ll have to haul me out,” Cal said. Prauf nodded.
“Yeah. You know I've got you,” he said. Cal had worked with Prauf for a long time, and Prauf was the only person he trusted on the other end of his safety line.
Cal unclipped the flashlight from its place on his harness and shined its bright light down into the torpedo bay. The massive proton torpedoes sat quietly in their racks, and Cal’s light reflected off of their slick black casings.
“What do you think?” Prauf asked him. Cal thought of his nearly-empty cupboard, and the three freeze-dried meals that he had to portion out until payday. He also thought of the promotions that came for riggers who took on particularly dangerous jobs. He grinned at Prauf.
“I got this,” he said, clapping Prauf’s shoulder. “Rig me up?”
Prauf unloaded the stasis crate, carefully laying out the harnesses and ropes used to keep the riggers as safe as possible as they climbed around the massive ships. Cal didn’t mind climbing without a harness, and sometimes it was necessary, but he knew that Prauf felt better when he used the safety ropes.
He stepped into his harness and cinched it snug around his hips and thighs. Prauf had already looped two lines around a broken stanchion and tied them off. He clipped both to Cal’s harness and Cal double-checked the carabiners, lightly touching each one to ensure they were locked. It was an old habit, even though he trusted Prauf entirely.
Cal thumbed the switch on the comm on his wrist. He could shout to Prauf if he needed to, but it was easier to hear over the comm.
“Comm check,” he called to Prauf.
“Roger that,” Prauf replied. “I hear you loud and clear.”
Cal stood at the edge of the access hatch.
“Ready,” he told Prauf. He lowered himself into the access hatch and tested the first rung on the temporary ladder. It felt solid under his boot. Prauf looked down at him.
“See you soon,” Cal said, and let go of the ladder so that he swung free over the pit. Prauf slowly paid out the line, smoothly lowering him to the deck. When his boots touched the deck, Cal stood under the hatch and shined his flashlight up at Prauf.
“You good?” Prauf’s voice crackled in his ear.
“Yeah. You can send that stasis crate down,” Cal said. He unclipped himself from the lines so that Prauf could send him the crate. It would be slow work, disarming and removing torpedoes a crateful at a time. Prauf reeled the line back up, and Cal explored the munitions hold while he waited for his supplies to come down.
There was not much left to remove, since most of the torpedoes had been used in the ship’s final action. Of her original complement of sixteen torpedoes, less than half remained. They were stowed neatly in their racks, kept secure by durasteel mesh cages. Debris scattered the deck, and Cal’s boots stirred blown-out insulation and wiring as he explored the pit.
He located the breaker panel and popped it open. He knew the connections would have been checked at each point in the scrapping process, but he always liked to confirm that the power was dead before he started a job. Some foremen weren’t above a bribe to overlook safety measures, if doing so helped the job go faster.
The small light on his current tester turned red as he touched each connection.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
“All clear,” he murmured to himself. Still, something bothered him, a feeling that wouldn’t be pushed away. He tested the breakers once more, unable to shake the uneasiness. Cal knew that feeling well, and it frightened him. He hadn’t intentionally reached out for the Force in nearly four years. Once it had felt warm and bright, but after Master Tapal’s death, Cal had been too afraid to reach out, because it felt more like falling fast into a deep, bottomless well.
“Stasis crate coming down.” Prauf’s voice crackled a little over the comm, startling him.
“Roger that,” Cal answered absently.
“Still good?” Prauf asked.
“All good.”
The stasis crate thumped gently on the deck, and Cal unclipped it from the lines. He guessed it would hold about one disassembled torpedo. He unlocked the torpedo cage and slid it back on its runners, surprised that it still ran smooth.
He cracked open the casing on the first torpedo, revealing wires looped around a central detonator. Cal tested each connection, then carefully tugged the detonator loose. Without the detonator, the torpedo was made inert, and couldn’t be triggered except by a fault in the wiring. Cal snipped the detonator free and separated it from the rest of the torpedo.
With his small plasma cutter, he sliced the long tube into sections. When the whole torpedo was disassembled, he dumped the scrap into the stasis crate. He closed the crate and activated the stasis field, an extra safety measure that would ensure the weapons remained inert while Prauf transported them to the reclamation barge.
“Hey Prauf, I’m sealing the crate and sending it up,” he called over the comm. He was immediately drowned out by the near-deafening boom of one of Bracca’s massive thunderstorms. His comm crackled with interference. “Hey Prauf, are you there?” Cal tried again.
“I’m here. That’s a huge storm.” Prauf’s voice sounded faint on the comm.
“Yeah. Good thing we’re inside,” Cal said. “Crate’s ready.”
The stasis crate seemed to lift itself as Prauf hauled it out of the hold. Cal unracked the next torpedo and opened it. As he pulled the detonator, a stream of water ran past his boot, racing along the canted floor. Another drip slid down the back of his neck and he wiped it away. He keyed his comm.
“Hey Prauf, did you say you worked on these ships when you were an engineer? Because this one’s leaking like a sieve,” Cal teased him.
“Leaking? Well of course she’s leaking, did you see that hole in her hull? Everything on this planet leaks, it's not a reflection on the quality of our work,” Prauf said with mock indignation.
“Of course not," Cal said. "The thunderstorm must have shorted out the exclusion field." A distant cousin to the energy shields used in battle, exclusion fields served the more mundane function of keeping precipitation and falling debris off of active work sites. The exclusion fields were unreliable at best, and most scrappers were used to working without them.
“Well if you’re worried about it, I can find you an umbrella,” Prauf replied. “Stasis crate coming down.” The crate thumped down gently on the deck and Cal tossed another detonator into it.
“Only if you’re going to come down here and hold it for me,” Cal replied. He snipped another detonator free and turned to place it in the crate. His flashlight caught the reflection of more rivulets, all streaming down the bulkheads and across the deck. Curious, Cal followed the water back farther into the munitions bay, ducking under a twisted i-beam that had once spanned the deck above him.
The feeling of wrongness came back, so powerful that Cal reached instinctively for the lightsaber that was not clipped to his hip. He clenched his fist on air, and unclipped his flashlight instead. The back of the munitions bay was a wreck, but Cal could hear running water. His boots splashed as he walked, and when Cal looked down, dark rainwater ran freely over the deck.
“Hey Prauf, there’s a lot of water down here,” Cal said.
“Sounds like a bad leak somewhere,” Prauf said.
“Yeah, maybe,” Cal answered absently. Cold water splashed his face, and when he angled his flashlight up a narrow bulkhead, he could see the rainwater pouring in through a gaping hole in the hull. The thunder rolled constantly outside. The storm must have been right over them. He backtracked to the torpedo racks, overcome by a new sense of urgency. Even though the ship was powerless, Cal did not like the idea of working in a pit that was slowly filling with rainwater.
“How’s it coming down there?” Prauf asked him.
“Almost done.” Cal reached for the last torpedo, but halfway through the motion he felt as though someone had put their hand on his arm. Listen, he heard Jaro Tapal say clearly, as though his Master stood beside him.
Cal stood frozen, Master Tapal’s voice ringing in his ears. He closed his eyes and stretched out his senses.
Listen...
The electrical hum was so quiet that Cal could barely hear it over the creak of the ship in her moorings and the noises of the shipbreaking yard. At first Cal thought he was wrong and that he was hearing things, but he felt it in his chest, running up from the floor through his boots.
Where? He looked around the torpedo bay, searching for any live connection he might have missed. He had tested all the breakers, he knew that no power ran through them. And yet, he heard and felt electricity. He ran a hand through his hair, smearing it with soot and grease as he tried to think.
“Prauf, what do you know about the torpedo bays on this ship?” he called over his comm.
“Not much. I wasn’t a weapons engineer. I did work on on the backup deployment systems.”
“What does that mean?”
“A failsafe to make sure the torpedoes could be used in case of a massive power loss. Basically it’s a big battery under the deck,” Prauf said. “It should have been one of the first things to go. They’re worth a fortune in heavy metals. Why?”
“Something’s wrong. The power’s still on down here somewhere,” Cal said. He watched the rain water running over the smooth, polished steel deck plating. Deck plating that looked untouched by plasma torches, and that had been soaking in water since the exclusion field had failed.
“Where?” asked Prauf.
“I don’t know. The floor’s clean, they haven’t cut it open. I think the backup’s still here, Prauf.” Cal heard his panic bleeding into his voice.
“Can you see an access hatch?” Prauf asked him. Cal shined his light on the floor, but the water only reflected the light back at him.
“No, nothing.” Cal slapped the button to seal the stasis crate, water sloshing around his boots. He felt panic tighten in his chest, and suddenly the bulkheads around him shifted from stripped out panels to clean, shining durasteel. He froze, staring at the torpedo rack in front of him that was once again whole.
He saw the weapons engineers in Republic uniforms standing beside him: one leaned casually on the torpedo cage, the other knelt by an open panel in the floor with a diagnostic unit in her hand. A strip of tiny lights glowed in the floor by the engineer’s knee as she tested the system. They blinked to life as she checked the power: red, yellow, green.
Cal’s heart was racing and he looked down at the wet floor. He knew the access panel was there, disguised in the deck, but he couldn't see it. He knew water had been pouring into it all this time, and he knew he had no way to cut off the power. He knew that the only way out was back up through the access hatch. He knew he was trapped.
A tiny red dot winked sluggishly to life at the corner of the torpedo rack, just where he had seen the engineer taking her readings. Cal felt his stomach turn to ice as the rest of the series slowly illuminated.
Red
Yellow
Green
Cal took one step toward the access hatch before the panel blew. A ball of blue flame engulfed the bulkhead and torpedo rack, expanding outward and upward with blinding heat. Cal flung his right arm up to protect his face and, without thinking, threw out his his left hand and reached for the Force to protect himself from the blast. The shield held for a few moments, half-formed, but something hot struck his right arm hard. He felt a sickening pop in his wrist and sharp pain shot all the way to his elbow. It shattered his focus, and the Force-shield failed. Cal’s feet left the floor, and he was flung hard against a ruined bulkhead. His head smacked a beam, and everything went black.