Tales from the New Republic (14 page)

“Mara?”

Blowing a drop of sweat off the end of her nose, Mara keyed off the combat practice remote and shut down her lightsaber. “Come in,” she called.

“Thought I’d find you here,” Karrde said, glancing around the
Wild Karrde
’s exercise room as he walked in. “H’sishi said you’d been spending a lot of time alone in here. Making angry sounds was how she put it.”

“I’ve been working out a few frustrations,” Mara conceded, snagging a towel and wiping the moisture off her face. “How’s she doing?”

“Mostly healed,” Karrde said, crossing to one of the resistance benches and sitting down. “It was her very first time in a bacta tank, as it happens. She’s rather impressed.”

“We need to do more for her than just get her back to health,” Mara said. “She really put her neck on the block when she brought my lightsaber into Praysh’s palace.”

“I agree,” Karrde said. “Though oddly enough, she doesn’t see it that way at all. She told me that once she found your lightsaber and realized you were a Jedi, she had no doubt at all that you could handle Praysh’s legions with ease.”

Mara grimaced. Jedi… “I trust you disabused her of that notion?”

“Not really. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a Jedi in everything but name.”

It wasn’t that simple, Mara knew. Not nearly that simple. But it also wasn’t a subject she wanted to get into right now. “Were you able to dig anything out of her as to what sort of reward she might like?” she asked instead. “I couldn’t make any headway at all on that subject on our way off Torpris.”

“According to her, all she’s ever wanted was to get out of that demeaning scavenger life she’d been forced into,” Karrde said. “It doesn’t sound like she has much in the way of marketable skills, though, so I was thinking of offering her a course of study in starship operations at our training center on Quyste.”

“I think she’d like that,” Mara nodded. “She seemed fascinated with everything about the
Winning Gamble
during the flight.”

“Good,” Karrde said. “If she proves competent enough after her training, I thought I’d also see if she’d be interested in joining the organization.” He smiled. “Though whether that would qualify as a reward or a punishment is probably debatable in some circles.”

The smile faded. “Actually, I was wondering if you were finding yourself in one of those particular circles at the moment.”

Mara felt her lip twist. “You do find convoluted ways to bring up these subjects, don’t you?”

“It adds variety to conversation,” he said. “Particularly when the other party to the discussion seems inclined to avoid the issue.”

Mara sighed. “I don’t know, Karrde. I’ve been feeling—I don’t know. Squeezed, I suppose. The responsibilities have been weighing more and more on me lately, and this thing with Bardrin seems to have brought it all to a head. I don’t like the fact that he picked on us in the first place because we were smugglers and couldn’t go to the authorities over the kidnapping of the
Wild Karrde
’s crew. And I really don’t like the fact he was able to manipulate me so easily by threatening them that way.”

She waved the lightsaber. “I feel like I need to get out somewhere. Anywhere. At least for a while.”

“I understand,” Karrde said quietly. “It is a crushing responsibility sometimes.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Fortunately, like all good employers, I’ve come up with a possible solution. How would you like to go into business for yourself?”

Mara frowned. “Are you throwing me out?”

“Oh no,” Karrde assured her. “Certainly not unless you yourself want to leave. I was talking about setting you up with a small trading company of your own for a while. A totally legitimate one, of course, which should help keep opportunists like Ja Bardrin off your back. You’d get a chance to relax away from the perennial intrigues and back-blading of the fringe, get some experience with small-business management, and possibly even gain a little more respect among the high-noses on Coruscant.”

“That last one’s pretty low on my list,” Mara said, glowering down at her lightsaber. “What do you get out of it?”

Karrde waved a hand casually. “Oh, just the satisfaction of helping out a loyal and trusted colleague. And, of course, getting back a more experienced and relaxed lieutenant when you return to the organization.”

“And if I decide not to come back?”

A muscle in Karrde’s cheek twitched. “I would hate to lose you, Mara,” he said quietly. “But I would also never try to hold on to you if you truly didn’t want to stay. That’s not how I do things.”

Mara fingered her lightsaber. Freedom. Real, genuine freedom… “I suppose I could try it for a while,” she said at last. “Where would we pull the start-up money and resources from?”

“From Sansia Bardrin, of course,” Karrde said. “She still owes me, after all. And now that she has an effective veto over the family’s business decisions, her father can hardly do anything to block it.”

Mara shook her head in disbelief. “I really would have expected her to do a lot more to him than just appropriate some of his stock,” she said. “Certainly given the way she was looking at him when we left.”

“They’re business people,” Karrde pointed out. “That’s what warfare looks like in those circles. And of course, you already have a ship. The
Winning Gamble.
”

Mara blinked. “I thought that was the organization’s.”

“Sansia gave it to you, not the organization,” Karrde reminded her. “And you’re certainly not going to make a case that you didn’t earn it.”

“No,” Mara murmured, an odd feeling trickling through her. She’d never owned her own ship before. Never. Even when she was the Emperor’s Hand, all the ships and equipment she used were Imperial issue and property. Her own ship…

“Anyway, start thinking about what exactly you’ll want and we can work out the details later,” Karrde said, standing up. “I’ll let you get back to your exercises now.” He headed for the door—

“Karrde?” Dankin’s voice came over the exercise room intercom. “You there?”

“Yes,” Karrde called toward the speaker. “What is it?”

“We’ve got an incoming transmission from Luke Skywalker,” Dankin said. “He reports the New Republic raid on Praysh’s fortress is over and all the slaves have been rescued unharmed. He wants to thank you for sending him the defense array data, and to discuss your fee for it.”

“Thank you,” Karrde said. “Congratulate him, and tell him I’ll be right there.”

The intercom clicked off. “You sent
Luke
the data?” Mara asked. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing a Jedi Master would get personally involved in.

“I thought he’d be able to move on it faster than if I tried going through the New Republic command structure,” Karrde said. “Apparently, I was right.”

“It must be terrible to be right so often,” Mara murmured.

“It is a heavy burden,” Karrde agreed with a smile. “One just has to learn to live with it. I’ll see you later.”

He left. Wiping her face again, Mara tossed the towel aside and ignited her lightsaber. A new job—even if it was only temporary—and her own ship. Her very own ship.

Though of course she would have to change its name.
Winning Gamble
sounded more like something Solo or Calrissian would use. No, she needed something more personal, something that would hearken back to what she’d gone through to earn it. The
Jade’s Whip
, perhaps, or the
Jade’s
Sting
.

No. She smiled. The
Jade’s Fire
.

Keying on the practice remote, feeling more relaxed than she had in weeks, she settled into combat stance and lifted her lightsaber. Yes, this was going to be interesting. Very interesting, indeed.

For the first time in years, Harkness couldn’t stand the silence.

He had two options: he could lie with his good eye open and think, or he could lie with his good eye shut and think. It didn’t matter either way, because the cell was pitch black and the only indication that he wasn’t having a strange dream was the smell of something dead or dying in the same room.

Maybe it was him. All during the interrogation, Harkness had kept his focus away from the pain and the questions, and where he had put his focus he could not remember, but he wasn’t required to do it anymore. It hurt to breathe; it hurt to be wearing clothes; it hurt to swallow. The nicest thing the Imperials had done for him was not to put his boots back on his stinging feet.

Moreover, there was a humming sound in his head. It could have been something to do with where he had placed his focus, or it could have been an aftereffect of the drugs. Which brought to mind the image of the round, black interrogator droid that had administered them. Which, in turn, had left him with a vision of sickly colors, distorted sounds, and a sensation similar to that of having needles in his brain and his eyes and the whole inside of his head. That thought, coupled with the humming sound, sent him into a near panic, and he decided to drown both elements out entirely.

“Hey!” he said. His voice was hoarse and thick, but it echoed and that made him feel better. At least he wasn’t floating in some infinite vacuum. “Hey, yeah. This is great. Way to be, Harkness.”

He thought about all the stories he had heard about prisoners who had been locked up alone for decades and gone insane. He had expected that any time in solitary confinement would be paradise, but now he could see himself in two years, drooling, talking to himself all the time. People would look at him funny and whisper about him. On the other hand, wasn’t that their normal practice anyway? Harkness decided he would probably be fine as long as he never answered himself.

“Well,” he said. “Maybe it could be worse.”

“I doubt it.”

Harkness froze. He had been answered by a female voice a short distance away.

“Hello?” he said tentatively.

“Yeah?” said the woman. Her voice was raw, and its thick, nasal quality suggested that she had a broken nose, but her tone was steady. The sound of a person in the comfortable situation of things not being able to become worse.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

She slurred her words together, and it took a moment for Harkness to extrapolate what she had actually said: “Master Sergeant Jai Raventhorn, Alliance Infiltrators.”

Harkness absorbed that. “I thought High Command dissolved the Infiltrators,” he said.

“Rub it in, why don’t you,” said the woman.

“Hah!” said Harkness. It wasn’t a real laugh, but it was the only positive response he could come up with. Raventhorn’s voice carried the depth of the numbness, the pain, the humiliation, and the relief that was in Harkness right then, and he dismissed the automatic assumption that she was some COMPNOR agent planted in the cell to get him to talk casually.

It also sounded as though she were shivering, as Harkness was. Most likely she had been done exactly the same way he had, and that made him furious. But he didn’t want to tell her that because she might think he was being patronizing.

“So what do you do now instead, Sergeant Raventhorn?” he asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“Harkness.”

“Harkness what?”

It suddenly occurred to him that he couldn’t recall his fìrst name. If he had one at all.

“Harkness what?” Jai asked again.

“I… think it’s just Harkness,” he said. More enthusiastically, he added, “I’m a mercenary.”

“A merc. Really. I don’t think that’s what I am.”

“Try to remember. We’re just experiencing the aftereffects of the mind-probe.”

This was just a guess on Harkness’s part. But it made him feel better, and Jai evidently believed it because she took a few moments to think. Finally she said, “Oh, wait—I work in Intel now.”

“Intel? Were you with Red Team Five?”

“I think so. Yeah, I was,” she said, and there was no trace of pride in her voice on admitting that. But then came a sudden spark of interest. “Are you one of the mercs who tipped us off about this place?”

“No, but guess what?”

“What?”

“I think there might be an Imperial garrison here on Zelos.”

She gave a half-amused snort. “You think?”

“Is the rest of your team around here?”

“They’re dead,” said Jai.

“Oh,” Harkness said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” She gave a heavy sigh. “I don’t suppose you told them anything.”

“Who?” asked Harkness. He was feeling confused. His lips had started to feel numb.

“The Imperials.”

“No,” said Harkness, and then he was struck anew. “Hey—”

“What?”

“I didn’t tell them anything!” He had completely shut it out of his mind, but his interrogators had realized that mind-probing him was useless and therefore the interrogation was a failure, and they had tortured him just to make themselves feel better. Suddenly Harkness felt positively warm inside. It was the ultimate test and he had passed it. He could actually feel himself grinning. There was not a lower place that could possibly exist, and his situation could only improve if they had him killed now. He didn’t remember ever feeling so secure in his life.

“Yeah,” said Raventhorn, “I heard you the first time.”

“How about you?” he asked. “You tell them anything?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Good for you.”

“Yeah, good for me,” she said unenthusiastically.

“Doesn’t that make you feel great?”

“Not especially.”

“You know how many people can’t make it through interrogations like that? If they don’t talk, they usually just die from the physical punishment.”

“I know.”

“My point is, the Imperials could have done worse things. They could have run a catheter straight up your nasal cavity into your brain. If you didn’t die you’d be jelly.”

“You’re a lot of fun to have around,” said Jai.

“I’m serious!” Harkness said, although he didn’t know what exactly he was feeling. It was almost giddiness. “Listen, you can go back home and tell everyone you didn’t crack, and they’ll give you a medal or something.”

“Yeah, they
would
,” Jai said in complete disgust. “That’s what’s wrong with the New Republic.”

“What is?”

“Medals. Glory. You know. These days they give stuff out if you remember not to wipe your nose on your sleeve in front of General Madine.”

Jai’s voice was fading and Harkness’s vision seemed to narrow to a pinhole. There was a sensation of a cool, gray fog beginning to permeate his body from underneath him.

“I can’t feel my hands,” said Jai.

“Me neither,” said Harkness. He didn’t want to talk anymore, but he knew the silence would seep into the fog, into his body. And the humming! Why wouldn’t it stop? “Do you know him?” Harkness asked.

“Who?”

“General Madine?”

“Do I?” asked Jai.

“I don’t know,” said Harkness.

It got quiet again. Harkness was finding himself less panic-stricken about it. He was cold all over, but he was getting comfortable. He knew he should have tried to stay awake, but he hadn’t been so relaxed in a very, very long time. He felt free. He wanted to savor it, even if it meant dying. Especially if it meant dying.

In fact, he would have let himself drift off entirely, except that Jai said, “I wish they would have.”

Her voice seemed to ring, not off the walls but all through Harkness’s head. “Would… what?” he asked.

“I wish they would have turned my brain to jelly.”

Silence. Harkness’s mind immediately cleared itself out.

“Wait a second. What’s that mean?” he asked.

“I just have this feeling,” Jai said.

“Like what?”

“Like there’s nobody waiting for me to come back.”