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Time was running out to make the call.
The deadline had been looming from the moment Vel inserted her team, a man shorter than they’d hoped. Five months to work the problem, to vet other options, all of them come to naught, and now they found themselves in the waning hours, the sands almost run out, and Luthen…
He wanted it. And wanting was a dangerous thing.
Wanting led to rationalizations, justifications, wishful thinking – the enemies of pragmatism. The Rebellion needed it, would suffer for its failure, which made for simple calculus: already astronomical odds, against the failure to shore the team up as necessary, made it a plan that ought have been scrapped weeks ago.
Kleya would have called it a long time ago, he suspected.
He wondered how close she’d let it come, before the tight pull of her eyes, the questioning look she gave him at the start and close of every day in the gallery, yielded to questions or lectures or demands.
Sometimes, he wondered if she grasped how deeply ran his bloodlust. How dearly he wanted this, not for the Rebellion, but for his own satisfaction. To hit them hard, humiliate them, sit back and watch them descend into paranoia and contend with the dilemma of how to staunch the wound after so long believing themselves infallible, untouchable, invincible.
He wanted, and what should have been a pragmatic decision made weeks ago was instead drowned in bitterness. How many untold months more scrounging for every last credit? How long before they could even begin to cobble together another plan with a fraction of the potential payoff as Aldhani might have offered?
But pride did not win wars. Ego could not lead. And however dearly he wanted it, however dearly untold billions in the galaxy needed a win, needed the money and momentum and the glimmer of hope success would yield… six people on Aldhani needed him to step up and acknowledge that success, in their present circumstances, would be nothing more than a stroke of luck.
There was too much at stake, to pin their hopes on luck.
He finished with the last customers of the day, wiped down the jewelry they’d prodded at, and went to find Kleya in the back, head bowed low over a set of coins they’d just got in, examining them through the scope. She hummed a vague acknowledgement of his presence, attention fixed on the task at hand.
Luthen let out a weary breath. “We’re going to have to call it off.”
“Yes.”
There was kindness, he supposed, in letting him work his own way around the realization, the inevitable, the admission. Sometimes though, he wished she’d snap her fingers in his face and tell him in no uncertain terms when he was letting futile hope stand in the way of what needed doing.
“Do you think Vel will argue?”
Kleya went still for a moment, thoughtful. And then she traded out the coin under the scope for another and murmured, “I think she’ll be relieved someone else has taken the decision out of her hands.” And then she looked up, half-smile pulling up one side of her mouth, and conceded, “Yes, she will argue. Bravado comes easy, once the danger’s passed.”
“At least someone’s pride might be spared.” Kleya let out a soft huff of laughter and started carefully laying the coins back in the case; a job to finish another day. Luthen watched her for a minute, weary and heavy with the weight of the disappointment. Of failure.
But a quiet failure, a lesson learned, rather than total calamity. And that had to count for something.
He started shrugging out of the heavier outer jacket, ready to begin the night’s work, the real work. Kleya opened the cabinet with the radio. “Make the call,” he told her quietly. “Set the meet. Two days.” Kleya already had the earpiece up, listening in on an incoming transmission. Brow furrowed, like she couldn’t quite make out the shape of the message. “What? What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure.” Another few seconds and: “It’s the shop owner on Ferrix.”
Caleen was usually good for a decent take. He could pass through Ferrix after his rendezvous on Aldhani. “What’s she offering?”
But Kleya’s confusion did not abate. “Nothing, she – her man wants to meet – and wants to sell a…” her frown deepened, like she wasn’t certain she was decoding it properly – “A Starpath?” Luthen cocked a curious brow. Kleya lowered the earpiece and shook her head. “I don’t like it. We should – ”
“Wait.” Possibilities started coalescing in his mind, audacious ideas and daring hypotheticals, never mind the spectacular pressure on the timing. “Ask her to clarify – Andor. Does she mean Andor?”
“Who is -?”
“Quickly, Kleya, while she’s still on the other end.”
He paced around the back room while Kleya painstakingly tapped out her reply, and tried to convince himself that the nerves prompting new anxieties, racing thoughts, were nothing so tritely banal as hope.
After a long minute: “Yes, it’s Andor. But he wants to meet immediately – tomorrow – and – ”
“Set it up; and set the meet with Vel.”
“There’s no time.”
But he was already moving about the room, running a quick list of things that needed doing before he took off in the Fondor, what could be put off, a quick glance at their appointment calendar to see if anyone needed rescheduling with deepest apologies.
“Luthen.” He bit back a sigh and forced himself to still, to turn and face her. “Who is Andor?”
He shoved back the insistent tickle of hope trying to climb its way up into his chest. “At the moment? He’s somebody with a Starpath to sell and a short timetable to sell it on.”
Her frustration was starting to give way to skepticism. “And Vel?”
“Two days; I’ll be there.”
“And what will you tell her?”
“I’ll know that by the time I land.”
Kleya glanced away, shaking her head in incredulity and fighting back a reluctant smile. “Are you about to do something extremely reckless?”
Reckless, desperate, and it would probably come to naught, but there was a piece of Luthen, a piece buried deep but that kept a symbol of hope hanging around his neck day after day even still – that couldn’t help but search for meaning in the chaos, that didn’t want to ascribe the timing of Caleen’s message to mere coincidence.
But hope was a seductive and dangerous thing. “I’ll make the necessary call.”
“I know you will.”
They needed this; he wanted it, like he hadn’t dared desire anything that actually mattered in years, his life reduced to a constant calculation of risk and reward and sacrifice.
He wondered which of those Andor would ultimately prove.