“It’s a good combination, I think,” Miara said as she worked. She was oblivious to her sister’s distaste, or else she was willfully ignoring it. “Ashla’s bombs are good for the joints of Imperial walkers or blowing doors open. Hoban’s will clear our path wherever we need to go.”
“What if there are people where you’re clearing?” Kaeden asked. “It’s like turning your thresher loose, only it’s people who get cut up instead of crops.”
For the first time Miara hesitated. Then her expression hardened.
“It’s us or them,” she said. She didn’t sound fourteen anymore. “Kaeden, we don’t have a choice.”
Kaeden didn’t say anything. She’d spent a couple of hours the day before, after their shift was over, trying to talk Miara out of Hoban’s plan, but it hadn’t done any good. Every time she tried, Miara countered with an example of a time someone on Raada had helped them before they were old enough to help themselves. Kaeden felt each one of those debts like a weight around her neck. Before she was old enough to work full shifts, it had been kindness and generosity that kept her and her sister fed and let them keep their family house, the one their parents had built when they’d decided to settle on Raada. It wasn’t much, but Kaeden liked making breakfast on the stove her father had used, and she liked fixing the walls her mother had built, even if she wasn’t her mother’s match when it came to construction. Miara knew how Kaeden felt and for the first time was absolutely merciless in leveraging it against her. By the time she’d given up and gone to bed, Kaeden had almost been the one to change her mind. Then she’d dreamed of Tibbola getting shot; only it was Vartan getting shot in his place, and then Miara, and then Ashla, all while Kaeden had to watch.
In the morning, she’d been shaken and conflicted, and mostly useless. She didn’t tell Ashla what the others were up to, and she didn’t help Miara much, either, despite her sister’s glaring. Instead she mostly stared at the map and hoped that no one asked her any questions she didn’t want to give the answers to.
It had worked pretty well, for the first few hours. She and Ashla couldn’t make any marks on the map, in case it fell into the wrong hands, Ashla said, but they did discuss where the caves Ashla had found were and where they might set up an encampment big enough for all the people Vartan was recruiting under the guise of field meetings. Then all Kaeden had to do was commit it to memory, which was what she was ostensibly doing while Ashla was out on her mysterious errand.
“Where do you think she went?” Miara asked. Kaeden hoped her sister was trying to change the subject and was more than happy to help with that.
“I have no idea,” Kaeden said. She pointed at the map. “This is the main cave system. There are tunnels to others, but most of them are too small to drag gear through. They’re only big enough for a person with a small pack. She might have gone to bring something around from one of those caves to this one. We talked about a door, or more likely a cover for the entryway to conceal it a bit.”
“A door would be a good idea,” Miara said. “I can secure it, if we can get it installed.”
“There’s also her stores,” Kaeden said. “I know she has private ones, because her ship’s still out there somewhere, but she has one for us, too, the one she set up with Selda.”
“I wish she’d tell us where her ship is,” Miara said.
“I wish you’d tell her about the bombs,” Kaeden fired back. “But you won’t, so stop complaining.”
“I just don’t know why she’s so eager to help,” Miara said, echoing Neera from the evening before. “She could leave whenever she wants.”
“Do you want her to go?” Kaeden asked, all but daring her sister to voice the taunt about Kaeden’s feelings for Ashla that had so far been left unspoken. Miara didn’t take the bait.
“Of course not,” Miara said. “She knows more about this sort of thing than anyone else on Raada does. I just want her to tell us how she learned it.”
“Well,” Kaeden said. “Maybe give her some more time. I think whatever happened to her was very bad and she doesn’t want to talk about it yet.”
Miara made a noncommittal sound and went back to the intricacies of her engineering work. Kaeden ran a finger along a line on the map, one that delineated a steep-sloped gully. That was where she’d hide a ship, if she had a ship to hide. She wasn’t about to share that information with Miara, though.
Ashla appeared in the entrance of the cave, startling both girls. She was carrying a pack so massive that Kaeden wasn’t sure how she’d been able to carry it at all. Ashla wasn’t broad-shouldered like Neera or tall like Vartan, and she didn’t have years of experience working in the fields to bolster her strength, but somehow she was clearly very strong though she looked delicate. Maybe it was a Togruta thing. Kaeden didn’t know much about their physiology, but she liked it.
“Here’s all the supplies I had stashed away in the first cave I found.” The pack made a loud clunk when she set it down. “I started to set it up before I knew I was going to be sharing. But it’s probably better to have everything in one place.”
Miara was about to make a biting remark about the ship, but Kaeden cut her off before she could.
“Why did you set up a stash as soon as you got here?” she asked. “There weren’t any Imperials yet.”
“Old habits,” Ashla said. She tried to make it sound like a joke, but there was something deadly serious in her eyes. “I wasn’t sure how safe the house was, but now I know better.”
Kaeden got up to help her unload, and they spent the next couple of hours organizing where the medical supplies should go and trying to activate a power converter that looked like it was older than all three of them combined.
“What’s that?” Miara asked as they settled in with a ration pack each and one canteen of water to pass among them.
Ashla was holding a small cloth bag. Kaeden had seen her pick it out of the larger bundle earlier in the afternoon but hadn’t said anything.
“Oh, just some odds and ends I’ve collected,” Ashla said. She opened the bag so Miara could look inside.
“There’s a lot of junk in here,” Miara said dismissively. “I mean, I can’t use any of it. They don’t even match.”
“It’s just something I do,” Ashla said. There was an odd note in her voice, a mix of defensiveness and longing that Kaeden thought she recognized.
“Our mum was like that,” Kaeden said. “Always had pockets full of scraps she’d found. It drove our father crazy, the things he’d find when he did the washing.”
“They used to fight about it,” Miara said. “But in the good way, you know?”
Kaeden realized it was quite likely that Ashla didn’t know, but it was a question she couldn’t resist asking.
“Did your parents bicker?” she asked. “The adoptive ones, I mean.”
A slow smile broke across Ashla’s face, curling first one side of her mouth and then the other. Whatever she was remembering, Kaeden could tell it was good.
“All the time,” Ashla said, almost as if she were talking to herself.
Miara launched into a story about their parents, a small power coupling, and the horn that sounded to mark shift change. It was a story Kaeden remembered well, so she only half listened as her sister talked. The rest of her attention was concentrated on what she was going to do next: if she would listen to Ashla’s advice or stick with her sister and her crew. She knew she couldn’t abandon Miara, but a lot of what Ashla suggested seemed like a good idea. In the end, she reached a compromise that suited both sides of her warring conscience. She would stay with Miara and listen very carefully to what Hoban planned. If Vartan thought it was a good idea, she’d go along with it, but the second things got out of hand, she’d find Ashla and tell her everything. The solution wasn’t perfect, but she could work with it, and Kaeden was good at working.