Alderaan's Ashes

[Ben Merasska]

He leaned back from the controls of the ship, and heaved out a breath. His hands were shaking, but he ignored it. Captain Henning noticed them clearly, but thankfully said nothing about it.

"I think I have her under control," he said easily. "There's someone in the galley that's needs talking to."

Ben nodded shakily, and left the cockpit for the galley. It was the longest five seconds he'd ever walked.

She sat at the galley table, looking down at its surface. She looked up at him when he entered, but didn't say anything as he sat across from her and promptly drew a blank as to what to say. His eyes wandered, and caught sight of Chaz, who was hanging back in a cabin. She shook her head and glanced meaningfully at the little girl, and closed the door.

Ben drummed his fingers on the table and finally took a deep breath.

"So," he began awkwardly. "You're the niece I never knew I had."

She nodded, not saying a word. Her uncle ran a hand through his red hair and blew out a sigh.

"Do you know my name?" he asked. She nodded, but stayed silent.

"Well, that's good," he lied. Telling her his name would have given him a chance to ramble and ease his nerves.

A few more moments of silence.

"Listen," he said. "I know it'll be hard, but I don't have anywhere to live except this ship. As you're now... you know, mine I guess, you have to stay here too."

"You live here?"

"Yeah," he answered. "It's not much, but she's home."

Esther looked around the noticeably aged and used galley of the freighter.

"I haven't had a home in a while," she said. Ben smiled and laughed a little bit.

"You know what? Neither have I, kid."

[Esther Hadrana]

“They found them, dead, at the base of a hill with flowers growing everywhere around it. He – they – had been executed, along with four or five others, their bodies dumped into a pit and covered. It was just the sort of place where in any other circumstance he would have liked to die.”

-- Esther Hadrana, “The Festival Revolt”


“I’ll likely have to bring you along on the next trip, Esther. This one, though, is too dangerous.”

Those were the last words her grandfather spoke to her. She didn’t think of them often, but sometimes it was too difficult to keep them from bouncing around inside of her head, like the last few dried beans in a baby’s rattle.

Even years later, flying to see her father’s brother – the last of them left that she knew in the whole of the galaxy – who had not yet found a place he loved more than the pilot’s chair of a starship, she didn’t like to dwell on the words.

She dwelt, often, on everything else. Uncle Ben had been good at teaching introspection and how to avoid it by example. The doctor was sitting next her, looking just as ill as ever at being in the cockpit of a starship.

With nothing requiring her active focus now, she let her attention wander again. She tried to go back to her emotional and visual memories of her grandfather’s form as he knelt down to hug her right after he’d said those final, fatal words, but the closest she got was the first time she saw Ishak, almost four months later.

She’d seen him first, as he walked down the lane to Moranin’s home on the outskirts of town. She could still remember how the sunlight was filtered through the ancient glass of the viewports, some spotted a faded green in places, others a faded yellow. She liked to imagine that the green rooms had absorbed spring’s light, while the yellow ones had absorbed fall’s light.

“That’s him all right,” old Moranin said when he saw where she was looking. “He’s earlier than I expected.”

He was so young looking, even unshaven. The older she got, the more she realized how young he’d been; he became both more and less gigantic in her memories. Night was falling, and Moranin was squinting to see his nephew approach in the twilight. Both could make out the white of the young man’s tunic as he approached, his coat slung over his shoulder, and a small canvas bag hanging about his right hip.

“Nothing else, Ishak?” Moranin asked. Ishak shook his head.

“Had to sell everything else,” the young man said. The elder of them nodded, and embraced his nephew. They held it for a moment, and then disengaged.

“This here is Esther Hadrana. She’s staying here while her grandfather’s out digging up history.”

“Hello,” Ishak said with a small smile. In the deepening dark, Esther was struck by a small twinkle in his eyes. She nodded quietly.

“Hello,” she replied. His smile widened.

She walked ahead of them on the way back to the house, listening to their conversation about famine, poverty, and rumours of a revolt. It was all very boring to her, as she heard about it all the time.

But Ishak was interesting, because he was new.

[Esther Hadrana]

She slept in, and awoke, to her dismay, to find the sun streaming in through the viewport, a faded green tint to the light as it stabbed into the room.

Esther loved mornings at Moranin's old cottage. She tried to wake up just at dawn, so she could open the viewport and look outside. It was like the nursery tales come to life that she watched on the holo and read on his many many datapads, filled with legends and history, both entwined to the point of blurring. Esther believed in magic because of those stories.

The mist that clung to the grass in the hours before sunrise was magical. Sometimes a wind would quickly skitter across, and she could swear she'd seen fairies.

But when she opened the viewport this morning, as she suspected, the mist had gone, and all she could see past the few muja fruit bushes in the small lawn was a vast expanse of tall green cruinnaht, just about ready to be harvested.

The sound of voices coming through the door to her room brought her attention back, and she dressed quickly. Opening the door brought the smell of cruinnaht bread and what were becoming the distinctive tones of Ishak to her nose and ears, both emanating from the kitchen.

"It's our mediocrity that's been keeping things peaceful, though," Ishak was saying with a spoonful of stew in one hand. "If we start producing more, the less we'll get of it, and we'll get more Imperial oversight."

Moranin seemed ready to say something, but stopped as both he and Ishak noticed her enter and smiled.

"Well, morning to you," Moranin said with a smile, pulling out a seat at the table and ladling a bowl of thick stew for her, along with a couple slices of bread. "It's unusual to see you up so late, but I suppose once in a while's not so bad."

Esther grinned and nodded, but didn't speak.

"Make sure to eat plenty of food now. We're going to town with Ishak today," he said. "I've got some deliveries to make, and Ishak here will be looking for a job."

"He can always work on the fields," Esther supplied. Moranin laughed.

"Besides that, darlin'," he said. She nodded, not completely understanding, but unwilling to put forth the effort to get to that point; her food was getting cold, and the prospect of going to town always excited her.