Chapter 4

  Jest felt like he was back on guard duty. It was dead quiet, and he was just waiting, watching and listening. He wanted to crack a joke at Reese’s expense to pass the time, but his mind could only grasp in vain at the empty space that his friend’s presence once filled. Reese was gone… Or was he?

  He braced himself against the crates; they did not budge, which was a relief. Whatever was inside weighed a lot more than he did. He watched the stairs. If he threw up his arms and gave up—if she slashed open his neck and his life poured out, could he un-spill the milk and go back? if he did, could he change anything? Probably not. Had he stayed behind, that would be two dead stormtroopers, and Captain Darada would be no wiser of the Jedi’s presence.

  He pictured Reese’s body, the cauterized flesh still smoking but the rest of his body cold to touch; his lifeless eyes were wide with a mixture of awe and terror. He died alone, miles beneath the surface of a nameless planet in a backwater star-system. It was 50-50 whether his body would be collected. His family would not receive notice of his ‘heroic death’ until months after the fact—such was the backlog of imperial deaths that still needed to be reported.

  He was not sorry, and he did not feel like lying to himself. Stormtroopers were not owed ‘heroic’ deaths. Most just died, pointlessly, like dogs. The heroic ‘boys in white’, dauntless protectors of the Empire, was a fabrication—propaganda concocted by men and women in clean, ironed uniforms from the safety of Coruscant. Reese? The next of kin would be the end of it, and his parents would live and die without knowing just how their little boy was ground up in the gears of the imperial war machine.

  Too much thinking. He was feeling bloodthirsty. He wanted her to shed scalding tears and her flesh to fall away in charred tufts. He wished for her to appear now so he could grill her like a slab of nerf over an open pit.

  Jest was an ordinary human and a stormtrooper. The Bluebird incident aside, he was hardly a creature favored by whatever cosmic will held the galaxy in its thrall. How nice it was that today at least, the universe saw fit to fulfill his wish. He heard footsteps. Faint ones that grew louder as the seconds ticked by. She must have been vaulting down the stairs at a rate of five or six per stride. With that kind of dexterity, it was a wonder she had not arrived at the basin before he did… What kept her?

  He peeked in Captain Darada’s direction, and he saw what he believed to be the grizzled captain nod back… Maybe not, it was dark, after all. He chose to believe it was a nod as it was just the spark he needed right now. It was the spark that would light the fire that would burn down the Jedi—if he could help it.

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  The Jedi’s figure cleared the bend of the stairs. His heart lurched into a full-on sprint. He could see her. She was in front of him. She was basically dead, basically ashes. Just… a few more meters. All the clocks in the galaxy ticked forward.

  “Huup!” She leaped, clearing the last flight of stairs entirely.

  She knows. Instinct at the wheel and impulse on the throttle, Jest grit his and teeth lunged out from behind the stack of crates. His body fought to keep the weighty fuel tanks from knocking him off balance. The heat-treated durasteel of his flamethrower’s nozzle heated up as a cocktail of fuel and propellent flooded the ignition chamber.

  A blinding flash of white and blue flew over his head, missing him by about half a foot. The airborne blade of light embedded itself in the side of one of the reinforced crates behind him. She was fast, but he expected that much. He led her falling body with the nozzle and held down the trigger. FWOOOOSHHH. A gout of flaming mortar spewed across the ornate flooring, creating a fiery landing for the Jedi. He was torching a museum-grade fresco, but he did not care. This whole planet could burn.

  “Gah!” She cried out, less in pain and more in surprise. The hem of her robe caught sparks as she contorted her body mid-air to avoid landing in the inferno. By the time her feet touched the ground, her outer robe was ablaze, and she was left with no choice but to shed it.

  Hot. Hot! HOT! Even with his body-glove and gauntlets, holding the flamethrower was like grasping the sides of a cast-iron pot filled to the brim with boiling water. He ground his teeth. It took every drop of will he could squeeze out just to keep the weapon level and his finger pressed down on the trigger. How did he end up with the buck, fighting a Jedi?! He was just a rank-and-file stormtrooper; one of billions.

  Another gout of fiery death howled towards the Jedi. Darada had joined him in the fray. It was anyone’s guess how he was operating the flamethrower in his officer’s uniform—special gloves, or something. Together, they attempted to barbeque the slippery eel. He swore she was slowing down, clearly tired from the constant acrobatics that kept her out of the flame’s path. Jedi were hardly indefatigable. Hadn’t the fall of their order proven that a thousand times over?

  She shrieked. That was odd: He got her. I actually got her. Jest watched in awe as the fair skin covering her left hand was coated in a glaze of mortar and erupted into flames. He seized the opportunity to press the attack, a fit of delirious laughter seizing him as he washed the world around him in flames. The power to pull such a lofty figure down to his own level was intoxicating. Even as his skin burned through contact with his superheated weapon, his lips twisted; it was nothing. It was all nothing compared to the pure joy he felt.

  Behind him, the lightsaber embedded in the crate twitched.

  He wished dearly that he could pull off his helmet so she could see his toothy sneer, but he was not taking any chances—no matter how satisfying. He took a step forward, forcing the Jedi back a step. Oh, how the Jedi was glaring at him, now. Where was the apathy? The indifference? Where—

  “—Huh…?” That was odd, when did she get her lightsaber back? Wasn’t it stuck in the—

  His body folded over in two. By the time he hit the ground, he could not feel… anything below his waist. Where his hips and legs once were, there was now just a feeling of airiness.

  He screamed all the way into the void.