The Imperial Academies taught its students that economy was the most important value in a young cadet’s life, economy and efficiency and loyalty to the glorious Empire they served. Kallus had learned those lessons well, but now he knew what really sat at the heart of them. Beneath economy and efficiency was the truth. Economy, efficiency: they were both just fancy words for time. Loyalty, too, was just time sacrificed, given to the person or thing or place or organization to which that loyalty belonged. Everything that mattered—the only thing that mattered—was time.
Time that Alexsandr Kallus no longer had. Time that had never really belonged to him at all.
Ever since he’d traded his rank for a title, he’d lived on stolen, begged, and borrowed moments, each strung together on a rope that stretched across a year of life he didn’t deserve to claim as his own.
“Have you ever read Lixairix’s treatises on the nature of time?” Kallus asked. His bo-rifle sat on his lap, a heavy, damning weight across his thighs. It gleamed, dull and sickly gray, beneath the emergency lights. He didn’t flinch when another salvo struck home, rocking the ground around their heads. Dirt and dust fell from the ceiling; small pebbles tink tink tinked against the floor. Those blasted lights swung from their thin, wire fixtures and flickered ominously. The tunnel would hold until the end of everything, but Kallus placed a bet with himself about just how soon one of those fixtures would fall.
“They let a good little officer-in-training have access to Lixairix?” Garazeb replied, gruff, only half his attention on Kallus’s words. He held his own bo-rifle in his large, purple fists, so tight his knuckles paled, obvious even through the fur that licked across the back of hands that Kallus had occasionally thought would feel good against Kallus’s bare skin in the dark, with cascades of whispered truths shared between them, the purest expression of loyalty well spent, time sacrificed to its truest ends.
There wasn’t a lot in his past that he was proud of, but Kallus grinned in remembrance of this one thing anyway. “I wasn’t always good,” he answered. It was, in a way, what had made him prime ISB material. The truly good officers—good by Imperial standards—went command track early and never looked back, never gave paltry things like morality, value, truth, righteousness, a second thought. It was the devious, the unscrupulously bold, the officers and future officers who saw the galaxy at canted angles, who got sent to the Security Bureau for specialized training. Nobody had ever caught him reading such illicit, illegal materials, but the fact that he had thought to seek it out at all, and knew how to get it, proved that the Security Bureau chose its candidates well.
He’d believed in order maintained through iron fists clad in plastoid armor and slick, luxurious leather and he’d served loyally enough for far longer than he ought to have, but he took comfort believing that a part of him was always the man he’d eventually become, that though the crimes, the blood, the deeds could not be washed away, they could mean something more than what they were. Cold comfort, but comfort all the same.
Though there was no need for comfort now, it warmed him all the same. He only regretted not sharing this with Garazeb sooner. Perhaps he would have enjoyed a full retelling of the adventure behind his acquisition of Lixairix’s works.
He regretted a lot of things now that he thought about it.
“Didn’t know you were a fan.” Garazeb scratched at his ear, narrowed his eyes. “Could probably get you a meeting with the her if you really want it. I don’t know her, but I bet she’d get a kick out of knowing an Imp liked her work.”
Laughter bubbled up in Kallus’s chest, the life choked out of it by reality, by time itself. They both knew the truth. This was all just stoic posturing before the end came. It would be a good end that he hadn’t earned and was probably better than he deserved. “That’s a nice dream. Thank you.”
He crooked a smile back at Kallus. Under normal circumstances, Kallus would have thought nothing of it, let it slide past, unannounced and unremarked upon, another one of Garazeb’s countless, sidewinding smiles, given freely and received with the full expectation that they would always be there for the taking.
What a fool you’ve been, Alexsandr, he thought, refusing to give into the despondency that lapped at the furthest corners of his mind, the thoughts he could not allow himself to acknowledge.
He could only be glad that no one else was around to witness any of this. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to bear it if he had to hold back anymore than he already did. The rest of this particular Rebel stronghold was too busy evacuating, fanning through the tunnel system on different trajectories in an effort to save and scatter what pieces of the Rebellion they could, if they could, for as long as they could. No one was entirely certain a viable escape route existed, none of them expecting this spot to get hit, but if it did, somebody would find it.
Regardless, the famous Garazeb Orrelios and Agent Kallus, they were the perfect distraction.
They could bargain for time with their notoriety, but they would buy it with their own blood.
It was a worthy trade, the only trade worth making when it came down to it. Thrawn might win today, but there’d still be a tomorrow for Thrawn to lose if they did this right. And Kallus intended to do it right.
“Do you wish you’d gone with the Ghost?“ Kallus asked. Somewhere above ground, General Syndulla and the rest of her team were assaulting TIEs and Star Destroyers and whatever else Thrawn threw at them. Kallus placed better than even odds on them surviving the confrontation anyway. Hera Syndulla had that way about her. They all did.
“What? And miss this?” Garazeb grunted and shrugged, but he didn’t meet Kallus’s eyes. “Fat chance.”
“You had the chance to go.” Kallus swallowed. “They needed you, too.” He wasn’t strong enough to lie here and pretend that he hadn’t needed Garazeb just as much. He wouldn’t ever be that good, but… “They’re you’re family.”
“Do you ever stop and listen to the words you’re saying? You really can’t be this—”
“Garazeb,” he said, and nothing had ever sounded as good coming out of his mouth than that. If he could do nothing else for the rest of eternity than say that name, he could die a happy man. But another barrage of mortar fire, of hell itself, struck overhead and drowned out the shape of it. Each strike shook everything, closer now, so close that only a matter of minutes separated them from, well. Eternity was rising to meet them faster than Kallus could rightly fathom. “Garazeb,” he repeated, louder, a talisman against the pain and fear and anger that threatened to consume him. It wasn’t fair. There wasn’t enough time. He’d never said the things he should have. “You should go.”
He rolled his eyes and snarled and growled low in the back of his throat. In a violent burst of speed, he pushed himself to his feet and pulled Kallus along with him by the collar of his shirt. Their rifles clattered to the ground, unheeded and unimportant in that moment. He jammed his finger against Kallus’s sternum. “You can’t hit a target if your life depended on it. I’m not risking this whole op on your terrible aim.”
They both knew that wasn’t true, so Kallus didn’t bother defending himself. He could hold off more than his fair share of whatever dropped through the hastily blocked entrance. But the longer those things could be repelled, the better the chance of success and if Kallus was good, Garazeb was better, and wildness glittered in his eyes that buoyed Kallus’s spirits. That wildness glittered for what was to come, for what Kallus had said, for all of it maybe. It sent singing exhilaration pulsing through Kallus. If Garazeb remained, they would succeed.
Against all the judgment that had served him so poorly until this point, he grabbed hold of Garazeb and pulled him down, his hands fisting in the fur around his neck. He pressed their foreheads together and, breathing deeply, spoke a handful of words in smooth, nearly perfect Lasat. They were words he’d hoarded, saved for the right sort of moment that never came. He’d scrounged and pawed through every record he could find in his search for them and here they would be wasted. Beneath his hands, Garazeb went statue-still regardless.
“Karabast, you have the worst timing,” he said finally, but he tipped Kallus’s head up anyway and kissed him in a way Kallus had never been kissed before and it was almost worth it for the pristine perfection of this bubble, like nothing more than an epoch and nothing less than a nanosecond had passed. Kallus memorized every hitch of his own breath and Garazeb’s, too, the ripple of Garazeb’s muscles beneath his hands, the cruel sting of Garazeb’s fang as it caught against his lip. He lived in this moment for so long, he thought it might never end, that the galaxy might cut him a break just this once and let him make up for all the time they lost.
Metal shrieked overhead. Boots thudded around the entrance. Voices yelled and blaster fire shattered what calm might have existed and everything ended when the white of gleaming armor streaked into view. More and more suits of it, so many they practically flooded the tunnel’s entrance, each of them equipped with rifles.
When the time came, quickly enough to make Kallus’s head spin, they faced it together; at the very last moment, Kallus thought maybe he heard Thrawn’s voice issuing the order personally. There was honor in that possibly, a concession to just how big a threat they were to Thrawn’s precious plans, but Kallus was too busy making a mockery of his enemies to consider that too deeply.
But even at the end, even when there was nothing else and they were overrun, Kallus believed they prevailed.
They would always prevail, even if Kallus wasn’t there to see it.