KENDAL

Charles Yu

Ozzel had a few regrets. Not only because he was, at that moment, getting Force-choked by the big guy himself. Although that was certainly part of it.

No doubt Veers, the weasel, was enjoying this. And the rest of them, sniveling yes-men, were all doing their best to hide their obvious relief at not being the target of Lord Vader’s wrath. Ozzel didn’t blame them. It wasn’t long ago when it was Tagge being held up, dangled like a rag doll for everyone to see. Ozzel remembered the secret thrill he felt watching it. The admixture of feelings, the unsettling combination of at least it’s not me and at least it’s over for that guy.

Because if he was finally going to be honest with himself (and there’s nothing like being seconds from death for some real introspection), Ozzel had to admit that although excruciating, being in Vader’s grip was in some ways preferable to a regular day on the bridge. The constant tension. The helmet breathing. The awkward silence. What does he want me to say? What did I do wrong this time? Always second-guessing yourself. Always on pins and needles. The dread of knowing it was just a matter of time before the next eruption. Not if but when. For the choking to finally be here was, in a way, cathartic even if blindingly painful.

Granted, what he did wrong this time had been pretty bad. So the rebels had been on Hoth. Honest mistake. That was the nature of war. Making decisions with incomplete information. Even if it wasn’t the right call, at least he had made the call. He hadn’t risen all the way to admiral by being a sycophant. The boss had enough flunkies and, despite Vader’s not-so-great track record as a manager of people, the Sith Lord did depend on (if not respect) the acumen of his senior advisers. How else would he, a kid from Carida, have made it this far? Atop the Imperial Navy. Commanding officer of an Executor-class Dreadnought.

So yeah, he’d screwed up. On top of that, coming out of lightspeed right above the planet was not great. Big oops, actually. Although was it really grounds for death? No. No way. Even Vader had more heart than that. No, this was humiliation. All the more so because it was being done telekinetically. To be Force-choked in person is at least somewhat honorable. Doing it by holoconference was just sad. This had to be Lord Vader’s way of teaching Ozzel a lesson. And Ozzel was okay with that. Appreciative, even. This was his wake-up call. Surely any moment now the grip would loosen and he’d slip to the floor, bruised and chastened.

Except it didn’t. Get looser. It got tighter. This wasn’t the moment where his life turned around. This was the moment it ended.

He struggled at first. By instinct. The lower brain kicking into gear. Live. Survive. Endure. No matter who it is doing this. You want to live. His heart still beating. Getting weaker. Blood flow decreasing now. Each beat of his heart pumping less oxygen to his brain.

There was a boy.

On Carida.

What was his name?

A boy from the same small mountain city. Barely a city. A village.

They were the same age.

The memory escaping him. Vader fading, Veers fading, Hoth fading. The battle might be lost, the war might still be won, but all of it fading.

It felt almost silly now, to think of how much he’d cared about military strategy. About pleasing his superiors. About his reputation, or lack of it. They’d mocked him, even as he surpassed them all. Even as he ascended to his current rank, the whispers never stopped. Was it some kind of joke? Vader wanting someone weak and non-threatening? Or even: Was Ozzel a rebel sympathizer, and Vader playing mind games with the resistance, promoting Ozzel, manipulating the flow of information? Just moments ago, he had been thinking of how this would go down in the history data banks. How Admiral Ozzel lost the Battle of Hoth for the Empire by making a key tactical mistake. How Piett would capitalize on it for his own career advancement.

Those thoughts slipped from him. Turned liquid and dripped away now. Colors, light, blurring together.

His hearing went.

A silent movie played out. The other officers scurrying about, trying to avoid Ozzel’s fate. The buzz of activity. On the surface of the planet below, a battle. In front of him, the blackness of space. The stars. Around one of them, his homeworld. Memories flooded, all picture and no sound.

He and the boy, running up the mountain. The rocky, blasted landscape of Carida a comfort to him. He remembered racing up the hillside, sure-footed, running toward his mother.

What had happened to that boy? What was his name?

Ozzel remembered he had once been young, idealistic. There had been a choice. His fiancée. They were to be married on Carida, in front of his family and friends. A good, simple life. They could have had it.

But then, under cover of darkness, she whispered something to him. She kissed him, tender. He remembered the smell of her hair. She whispered and the first time he pretended not to hear it, did not want to acknowledge what she’d said. Wanted to imagine he had misheard it, to imagine she might just let it go if he ignored it. Knowing that it would change everything. It had already changed. History was here. Already, on their small planet. Had found them, as it would find every distant part of the galaxy. History was sweeping both of them up. Join the rebel forces. She said it again, and this time there was no denying. He did not say no. But he didn’t need to. She knew what his answer was. Ozzel remembered how they had cried the whole night together. Holding each other. And then in the morning, they said goodbye forever. Ozzel had chosen his course: the Empire. That was years ago, or moments. Color and light had turned liquid, and now time had as well.

His decades-long career. Decorated, promoted, derided. How had he missed it? How had he not seen until it was too late whom he had pledged his allegiance to? He was not alone in his complicity, but that did not excuse it, either. He was not the first nor would he be the last to go down this particular slippery slope. Authoritarians do not announce themselves and knock down your door. They are invited in. This one promised order. This one promised stability. Ozzel had the fleeting regret now: If only he had been a spy, as some had suspected. If only he had done one thing. One single solitary thing to resist.

And then his sight went.

He was blind and deaf now. The pain had surpassed all thresholds and was all-encompassing and in that he no longer felt it. The only sense he had left was smell.

There was a kind of euphoria, now. From the lack of oxygen. These were his final moments. Watching Darth Vader on a screen, reaching across space and time to touch him. His last contact with another human.

He smelled his dinner.

He and the boy running up the hill in tandem, matching strides. This mysterious boy. His oldest memory. They couldn’t have been more than six. Maybe younger. Was the boy his brother? How could he have forgotten that. It would have been in the records. No, the boy must have been his friend. His closest childhood friend. If he could just remember that boy’s name, hold it in his head. That would be the way to go. Not an act of resistance. It was too late for that. He had lived his life in the service of the dark side. Killed innocents. Given the commands to destroy peoples, families, cultures. Worst of all, he had been a tool, an instrument. Admiral Ozzel. The vanity of it. The high rank nothing now. He was a foot soldier, a body, just another stormtrooper marching in lockstep. Marching for the Empire. Decades from now, when the war had been fought and the histories had been written about it, no one would remember Ozzel. They would only remember the fruits of his work, the contributions he had made to consolidating Vader’s power and control. So much of the vast galactic story written across the sky, chronicled and told and retold, hardening into myth. And hidden in this grand narrative of good and evil, millions, billions of lost histories, personal histories, details that would rot away leaving only the shell.

They had taken everything from him: his youth, his middle age, his fiancée. All the possible lives he could have led. He had not been to his home in how long. They took his whole life. He gave it; they took it.

But there was one thing they couldn’t take. This memory of the boy. Dinner, the rich perfume of stew, of meat and vegetables, eaten in the thin, cold air on the side of a mountain, looking at the double twilight of the twin stars of Carida. Two suns setting, he and the boy running together.

Spooning the last bits of their meal, savoring it. Sharing a cup of warm water, later. Under cover of darkness, something whispered.

He remembered the smell of her hair.

Whose hair? The boy’s hair?

Join the rebel forces.

The time line confused now. Just moments, scattered everywhere. His fiancée, the boy. His mother’s stew.

Again: the whisper. The choice. His silence. History sweeping up Ozzel, carrying him along. History already here, in this moment, always there.

He remembered the whispers. Remembered crying the whole night together. Holding each other. Him and his fiancée. No. Him and the boy. No. His mother, holding him. No.

All of it. The boy, what was his name? Running stride for stride up the hill, his name. Before Vader finished his work, before he thought his last thought, if Ozzel could remember the name of the boy.

Kendal.

His name.

There was no boy. No twin. No brother. No friend. No choice.

There was just Kendal Ozzel, six or maybe seven, running up a mountain on Carida. The smell of his mother’s stew. The smell of her hair as she held him to sleep. The boy he was before he put on the uniform. Before he joined the Empire. Before the stormtroopers and the Star Destroyers and Veers and Piett and rebel forces. Before he ever knew who Darth Vader was, ever feared him. Before he did any of this, he was that boy.