Tales from the New Republic (17 page)

Before Morgan had died, Jai had experienced several incidents in which she had forgotten who she was.

The most prominent of them had happened about eighteen months earlier, when she led a five-man Infiltrator team to Bevell Three on a supposedly well-planned assignment. They were to capture four Imperial agents, but somebody had tipped off the Empire; a squadron of TIE bombers appeared out of nowhere and razed the area. Everybody fell, except for Jai, who walked away without even a bruise. As usual, she got everybody out. But for the first and only time in her SpecForces career, she didn’t get somebody out alive; Leong, the team’s comm specialist, died en route to the medical frigate.

Jai went through the next week completely numb, not responding much to anything or having any sort of recognizable emotion. High Command promoted her to master sergeant and she didn’t object, even though she knew it was a propaganda tool. No Infiltrator assignment should ever have garnered that much attention, but this one had, and on her watch. Still, she accepted the promotion and went on about her routine business.

Then, one day, rummaging through her locker, she found one of Leong’s gloves and her heart shattered into a million pieces.

Now, lying on the floor in the dark, Jai recalled that moment with a great deal of distance. As if it had happened to somebody else. The memory was vivid, and she could access the sounds and smells and visions of the time with clarity. No matter how hard she tried, however, she couldn’t access the emotion.

What would Leong say if he could see that Jai had let the Imperials take her? Surely he’d be disappointed. But after two months of feeling nothing, suddenly there had been an onslaught of pain, rage, fear, shame—every bit of which was preferable to numbness. For a couple of blissful days, her brain had been so ravaged by the interrogation that she had forgotten to be numb. And now she was back in the same old rut, wishing the pain across her back, the dried blood on her face, the memory of the Imperial soldier swinging the butt of his blaster rifle at her face, any of it would jar her back into emotion.

“I’m starting to wonder if we’ve been forgotten. Personally I’m kind of hungry.”

Harkness’s voice, coming out of another world. Jai had to mentally adjust herself. “Huh?”

“I said I’m kind of hungry,” he said.

“Hmm,” she said dully.

“And that maybe they forgot about us.”

That got Jai’s attention. “What—you think they left us to rot?”

Rotting away, that was something that wouldn’t grant any real emotion, either. Her thoughts drifted back to Bevell Three.

Several minutes later, there was a scraping sound next to Jai’s head. Harkness let out a quick, pained gasp.

“What?” asked Jai.

“Sorry. That hurt my eye,” he said.

“I don’t get what you—”

“Didn’t you see the light?”

Jai hadn’t seen anything.

“The hatch by the door, it opened for a second—” said Harkness.

“I’m not facing the door,” Jai told him.

“But you’re near the door?”

“Yeah.”

“I think somebody slid something in here,” he said.

Jai lifted a sore arm and felt around where she thought she had heard the scraping noise. After a moment she touched something soft and wet. Burrowing her finger down into it, she touched metal.

“I think it’s food,” said Jai. “On a tray.”

“Taste it,” said Harkness.

Jai licked her lips; they were metallic and salty with dried blood. “I won’t be able to. Anyway, I bet it’s drugged.”

“You think?”

“You’re the prison veteran here. Maybe they want us doped up for some reason.”

“For what—another interrogation? They don’t need to sneak us drugs for that, not in our condition. They could just come in and—”

Harkness stopped.

“And what?”

“Is it me, or did that food come awfully quickly?”

He was right. It came as if he’d asked for it.

“Oh, great,” said Jai. “We’ve been monitored.”

How could they have overlooked that? She tried to think whether she had told Harkness anything about her past missions, or where she was stationed, or anything at all that could be of use to the Imperials. While she was still racking her brains, she heard the door open, and then footsteps vibrating through the floor, right next to her head. Light flooded into the room, and Jai shut her eyes.

Somebody grabbed her by the hair, hoisted her under her arms to a near-standing position.

“Get up, Rebels,” said a man’s voice.

It was familiar, but Jai couldn’t place it, even as she was dragged from the room, even as Harkness began shouting, and his voice trailed off behind her.

Platt and Tru’eb came straggling across the valley floor sometime close to 0600 Standard, Tru’eb estimated. Somewhere beyond the fog and the overhangs he thought he could see the sky turning pink.

Working their way down the cliff had taken the entire night, although everything had blended together in the end; Tru’eb didn’t really remember what the journey had felt like or even looked like. They had just pressed on and on, barely speaking to each other, and when they thought they just couldn’t take another step, they’d do it anyway. Then one more. And one after that. And another. Most of the night had been eaten up in that fashion, and now that the climb was over, Tru’eb felt dazed and dreamy.

He looked to Platt, clambering unsteadily over the rocky ground in her oversized Imperial army boots; she was covered in dirt and white rock dust, and her face was almost gray with exhaustion. Getting across the valley floor was no less difficult than the trip down, as the ground was covered with small, wet, rocky crags.

Platt caught him looking and gave him a wink. Tru’eb smiled back; Platt’s eyes were tired, but clear. The approach of morning was making both of them feel sharper. Moreover, they were both filled with wonder and a sense of brilliant accomplishment. If they didn’t have a greater mission in mind, they would have considered the climb alone to be story fodder for years to come.

Right, let’s not blow it now
, Tru’eb thought as he heard a loud, raw voice echoing across the valley. He grabbed Platt’s sleeve and pulled her behind a boulder. A few minutes later the yelling got louder; a squadron of drilling Imperial soldiers came crunching by, the sergeant screaming out cadence. His voice rang off the canyon walls and floor and disappeared way, way overhead.

His men marched on, yelling back in unison. They clambered easily over the rocks, past Tru’eb and Platt, across the deep stream where the waterfalls let out, and finally the troops jogged underneath a landing platform and disappeared around a corner. On a distant cliff wall, a massive flatbed lift sat with an AT-AT on top of it. Two army grunts stood off to the side giving hand signals to the pilots. Standing in the base’s weak spotlights, they were a sickly yellow color.

“Small operation,” Tru’eb said.

“Pathetic operation.” Platt indicated the landing platform. “If this is a standard garrison, there should be a droid maintenance hatch near there.”

“Will the droids give us any trouble?”

“No. They’re maintenance droids.”

“And the humans?”

“We shouldn’t have any real trouble finding an unmanned security station. This Sergeant Radlin guy should have enough clearance to at least get a look at a prison roster.”

“And then?”

“No idea.”

Tru’eb sighed.

“Don’t fade out on me now, Tru’eb. You’re the one who made us start down the cliff.”

“I know. Come along.”

They made their way over the rocks and across the stream with considerably less grace than the soldiers had done. But it wasn’t long before the landing platform glowed blue over their heads, and Platt struggled to get a code cylinder out of her jacket sleeve with her numb fingers.

The only light source they had had throughout the journey down the mountain was one glowrod, which had gone out shortly before dawn. With the platform overhead, it was almost pitch-black where they were. Platt felt around the wall for what seemed like an incredibly long time before she found a slot and inserted the code cylinder.

As Tru’eb’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he began to see a weak seam of light where the door was located.

Something suddenly occurred to him. “I say, Platt—”

“Oh, yessss,” Platt said happily, as a swishing noise heralded their way into the garrison. “Let’s hear it for the servants’ entrance.”

“—Don’t you think this door is a bit large for just a—”

Both of them winced as the garrison’s blinding light shot out of the doorway; Tru’eb was just starting to see again when he heard somebody yell, “Hey! Who’s out there?”

Tru’eb’s entire body tightened. There was a long silence as he focused on who was speaking: a man in a green Imperial uniform, like Platt’s. Beyond him, there were two rows of what looked like a patrol, maybe ten or twelve men, standing in a small docking bay. Beyond them were speeder bikes, neatly lined up and resting on maintenance cradles.

“Um… coming through,” Platt said, stepping inside and pushing past the soldier nearest to the door. Tru’eb followed, his head down. He knew that was completely pointless. There was no way they hadn’t been made already, and yet the troopers were shocked into indecision for a moment as Platt made her way past them with stunning audacity.

Finally one of them grabbed her by the arm and said, “I don’t think so.”

“Run!” Tru’eb shouted, charging ahead. The Imperials around him were still confused, but the ones by Platt were already drawing their blasters. Platt jerked free, right out of Radlin’s jacket, and stumbled forward. When she had gotten her bearings enough to run at a decent clip, she started kicking the speeder bikes off their perches.

Tru’eb followed suit. Blasterfire spattered behind them, over their heads, into the speeder bikes. The soldiers who had gathered enough sense to run after Tru’eb and Platt came roaring blindly across the docking bay and tripped over the vehicle in their paths.
This really is a pathetic operation
, Tru’eb thought as he ducked behind a bike and fired a couple of shots.

Still, the Imperials had numbers on their side, and he could see some of them digging comlinks out of their belts. In a few seconds the whole station would know what was going on.

Tru’eb looked over at Platt, who had situated herself at a computer terminal near the turbolift. He squatted down, got one fist around the handlebar controls of the nearest bike and his other hand on the foot pedal. Then he pressed the activation button and set a random automatic course. The bike lifted off of its maintenance cradle, shook for a second, and plowed straight into a pile of its brethren strewn around the floor. There was a loud popping noise as the whole mess burst into flames.

The blasterfire stopped for a moment. Tru’eb ran over to Platt and ducked behind the terminal.

A voice over the comm unit announced to the entire station that there was a fire in Docking Bay Three.

“‘Droid maintenance hatch,’ indeed!” Tru’eb shouted, reaching around and firing at those troopers who weren’t busy running for an extinguisher. “Where did you get that one from, Platt? ‘Palpatine’s Military Guide for the Recently Lobotomized’?”

“All right, so they changed a few things!”

“A few, yes!”

“Calm down!” Platt shouted. “I found out that there’s only one detention level at this place!”

“Where?”

“Level Eight! I already called the turbolift!”

Tru’eb glanced behind them; several meters away the turbolift door was open and waiting. Ahead of them, some of the troops were still trying to return fire and the rest were shouting orders at each other or into their headsets.

“You know it says here that the whole station only outnumbers us a hundred to one? They must have captured Dirk out of sheer paranoia! What do you wanna bet they don’t even have a shield generator?”

“Just keep your head down and think up some other grand plan,” Tru’eb said, and ran into the turbolift.

Behind him, Platt called, “I already thought of one.”

“Fight back! Fight back! Fight back!”

The interrogator’s voice came through between waves of dull pain across Jai’s stomach. Her hands were free, but she didn’t try to stop him.

“In the face of the Empire, you are nothing. The Infiltrators were nothing, and you were a noncommissioned nothing because you didn’t have enough brain power to become an officer of nothing.”

The pain stopped. Jai heard the interrogator step back and then begin pacing by her head. “Well, I guess this is getting us nowhere,” he said loudly to somebody else. Jai lifted her head enough to see the reflections of several gray-suited people across the polished floor. The room wasn’t very big; there was a massive desk against the far wall, and most of the rest of the space was taken up by computer terminals. The lighting was soft, almost relaxing. An atmosphere of both utility and comfort. Somebody’s office.

The interrogator pushed her head back down with his boot and stood there for a moment. “I am taking my blaster out and setting it on ‘kill,’ “ he announced. “Now I am aiming it at your head, Sergeant Raventhorn.”

A moment or two passed.

“I said I’m aiming this blaster set on ‘kill’ at your head.”

Another moment passed.

“Here it goes!”

Pause.

“It’s on ‘kill’!”

“I heard,” Jai said.

He lifted his boot from her head. “Okay, I’ve decided not to kill you,” he said in a tight voice. “But I will when I feel like it.”

Another moment passed.

“Oh, get on with the interrogation,” said another, exasperated voice. A woman’s voice. “I haven’t got my whole life to spend watching you annoy her into submission.”

“This is how you conduct an interrogation, Major. You show them who’s got the power.”

“Currently it doesn’t appear to be you,” the major said. “Interrogation takes control and skill. Which means you’re hopeless for starters.”

“Oh, aren’t you hilarious. Look, I don’t care if this is your garrison—interrogations are
my
forte. Why are we even doing this in here? I say we take her downstairs and do this properly.”

Footsteps across the floor, coming closer to Jai. “This isn’t the same as before,” the major said. “I’ve got a different plan. Did you not read the mind-probe data results?”

“Who needed to? Take one look at her! She doesn’t care about anything!” the interrogator said. “You could set her on fire and she wouldn’t care!”

“Of course she wouldn’t care, idiot. You could set her planet on fire, you could blow up the New Republic and she wouldn’t care.”

Jai was curled up in the fetal position. The voices of the Imperials disappeared into a loud ringing, which Jai thought was in her head; but then there was a deep, tinny voice in the room announcing a fire in one of the docking bays, and she recognized the sound of a fire alarm.

After a few moments, the alarm died down. The major was finishing off a sentence.

“… See what happens when we bring her mercenary friend in.”

Jai focused on the floor again. There were a few drops of blood near her head, a couple more now, a blemish on the spotless Imperial war machine. It made Jai’s head clear out a little bit. In fact, she suddenly felt lucid.

Bring her mercenary friend in
.

Jai looked up, past the face of the interrogator and into the face of the major. Their eyes locked for a second, and Jai saw the major’s face register that a fatal mistake had been made. In that instant, it was no longer a question of whether Jai was going to talk. It was now a question of who was going to reach the major’s blaster first.