Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company by Alex Freed

supply inventories that boiled down to “not enough weapons,” while Gadren, Ajax, Brand, and Twitch played cards. Roach sat near the card players—in Charmer’s favorite spot, though Charmer was still in the medbay—observing. Namir didn’t know how Roach had found her way to the Clubhouse; it usually took recruits months to get an invite, and he certainly hadn’t invited her.
    “She’s got the captain’s ear,” Twitch muttered. “Don’t seem powerless to me.”
    Ajax ignored Twitch, eyeing Gadren. “That mean you wouldn’t take a swing at our prisoner if the chance came?”
    “I shot her once already,” Gadren said.
    Brand glowered until each of them drew from the deck. Roach had stopped watching the cards, instead staring down at her hands as she wove her fingers together and pulled them apart with quick, awkward motions.
    Ajax glanced at Roach and grinned wickedly. “Maybe fresh meat here thinks
she
should get a chance. The prisoner ran her planet, after all.”
    Ajax had joined Twilight after the obliteration of the Rebellion’s Thirty-Second Infantry. He’d been one of five survivors among four hundred dead, and he still proudly wore the Thirty-Second’s “Bleeding Roughnecks” badge. He was a jerk and a grenadier with better aim than most snipers. Namir found him tolerable in small doses.
    Roach kept looking at her fingers. Gadren spoke to Ajax but watched the girl. “The fresh meat knows she is not alone. We
all
have scars, and we endure them together.”
    Roach squeezed her hands together until pink skin turned white. Finally she met Gadren’s gaze. “You got scars?” she asked.
    Twitch played a card that made the rest of the table wince. Gadren kept speaking as he reshuffled the deck. His voice was calm, easy, as if he’d answered the question a thousand times before. “The Empire took my kin,” he said, “and sold them as slaves to a Hutt clan.”
    Roach cursed softly. Brand looked down at her cards, as if avoiding intruding on a private moment.
    “If I had not found Twilight Company,” Gadren said, and shrugged, “I would have died long ago. Sharing grief and grievances does us good when we face an enemy of such ebon depths. The Empire is a force unprecedented in any age, poised to end history itself. No one should confront it alone.”
    Ajax glanced at the pot, tossed in a credit chip, and smirked. “Shortest story I’ve ever heard a Besalisk tell. Good on you, Gadren.”
    Namir’s instinct was to toss his datapad at Ajax, but he was only halfway through the inventory. Instead, he called, without looking up, “First: Don’t be obnoxious. Second: He’s Corellian, not Besalisk. Insult him right.”
    Ajax cackled. Namir didn’t understand why until he saw Gadren smiling, too. Even Roach and Brand seemed to be holding back snickers. Twitch didn’t look away from her cards.
    “Corellia is a human world,” Gadren said patiently, “and I lived there a long time. I consider it my home. But my species is Besalisk.”
    Ajax slapped his right hand on top of Roach’s left. “The sergeant there?” he said to Roach in a mock-whisper. “He ain’t
cultured
and
educated
like us.”
    Namir swore at Ajax in a cool, stilted tone. The others laughed, and Namir tried to let the moment of humiliation glide over him. Dwelling on it would only make it worse.
    The card players picked up the game again. Twitch won the next round, to no one’s surprise. Roach seemed to be struggling with something, looking between Gadren and the others, parting her lips now and then as if she wanted to speak. Of the players, only Brand seemed to notice, but she kept her usual silence.
    “Six months,” Roach finally said, “in an Imp detention center.”
    The others looked at her, perplexed. She hunched her shoulders and shrugged. “My grudge,” she explained.
    Gadren gruffly clapped Roach on the back. Twitch raised an eyebrow inquisitively, but didn’t press Roach for the details.
    Ajax grinned.