Tales from the New Republic (18 page)

At that moment, Dirk’s world was the mezzanine across from him and the ground floor eight stories below him, the view divided by vertical black metal bars. One of the Imperials was trying to bang Dirk’s head on the rails in a vain attempt to get him to keep still. Apparently Jai’s indifference had led the guards to believe that her cellmate would be just as easy to drag to the interrogation chamber; as a result, several blasters lay scattered across the corridor, two officers lay unconscious by the cellblock door, and somebody was screaming for reinforcements over his comlink. Harkness wasn’t sure how many there had been to start with or how many were left. He just knew that he couldn’t manage to get hold of anybody’s blaster, not with his burning, slippery feet sliding out from underneath him anytime he tried to stand on his own, and not with a terrified, unarmed guard shaking him by the collar. Harkness wasn’t sure he could prevent his head from being shoved right through the bars. But then it got worse: the guard gave up on the bars and started ramming Harkness’s head against the floor. There was a resounding pain through Harkness’s skull, a blinding ache that shot through his temples, his teeth, his neck.

Then there was the sound of a blaster being fired—no, several blasters—and some shouts. The guard hesitated. That was all Harkness needed. He reached back, got his fingers underneath the guard’s helmet, and yanked the guard’s helmet clean off.

Now Harkness had something better than a blaster. The guard turned out to be a stocky, blond kid, whose face took on an expression of unadulterated panic as Harkness got up on his knees and started bashing away with the helmet.

“Stop, he’s out already, take it easy!”

Someone grabbed Harkness by the shoulder. He looked up, blurry-eyed, at someone wearing white and green, and an unmistakable Imperial cap.

“Back off!” he shouted, swinging the helmet at the person’s knees. Whoever-it-was managed to dodge out of the way, and said, “Hey, whoa! It’s me! Take it easy!”

Harkness stopped himself. His vision cleared; the Imperial was a platinum-haired woman wearing a fancy white smuggler’s shirt and half a trooper uniform. He looked wildly into her eyes, which shifted nervously back and forth as she took him in. “Remember? We’re your partners… We brought you to Zelos.”

Someone else appeared behind her, a Twi’lek wearing dark glasses and gray robes caked in dirt. Harkness wasn’t sure what their names were, but their manner was familiar; he felt his whole body relax.

“You…” he said after a moment. “We went to the—didn’t you help me nail down a shipment of Imperial blasters? You’re Tru’eb… and Platt.”

“Actually, we’re Platt and Tru’eb,” Platt said.

“You came all this way to get me?”

“We’re funny that way. Do you think you can stand? We’re going to get you out of here, okay?”

Harkness jerked away, as if he suddenly remembered to be crazed. “No! They took her down the hall!”

“Who?”

“Jai! One of the New Republic agents—they were taking both of us down to the chamber, but she wouldn’t even fight—”

“Which chamber? Where?” Tru’eb asked, grabbing him around the waist and pulling him to his feet. Harkness leaned on Tru’eb’s shoulder with most of his weight; Tru’eb didn’t seem to strain at all.

Which door? Harkness looked down the corridor at the row of black doors to his right; the guards had taken Jai through the one with the large white Imperial seal painted on it, although Harkness could have sworn he remembered being shoved through two red-stamped doors before his own interrogation. Moreover, this white-stamped door turned out to be labeled “Command Center.”

As Platt worked at getting a code cylinder into the slot, Harkness found himself looking at his reflection in the metal doorframe. In fact, several seconds passed before he realized that the reflection was actually his; it blinked when he blinked and moved its head when he moved his. But its face was pale, with a mangy light brown beard sprouting around the hollow cheeks, and the white eye patch was now a filthy gray.

Platt turned around, scowling. “I lost the other code cylinders with the jacket. Anyway, there’s no way Radlin had this much clearance.”

“But you did say you had thought of a plan?” Tru’eb said.

“Yeah, but it had a hitch in it,” Platt said.

“Who cares?” said Harkness. “Tell us!”

“Okay—first, I pretend I’m a prison guard and I tell everyone I’m bringing Tru’eb in as a prisoner. Then we get into a heated fight in front of the Imperials, so that they’re totally confused for half a second, which is all the time we need to stun everyone, get into the cell block, and free Dirk from his cell.”

Dirk and Tru’eb looked at each other, and then back at her.

“Of course that’s somewhat irrelevant now,” Tru’eb said tersely.

“Yeah, see, that’s the hitch.”

Harkness leaned his head against the door. He couldn’t hear anything going on inside, which made him feel worse. He should have known something like this would happen. It wasn’t like it was with Golthan’s people: pick a prisoner, teach him respect, and then forget about him. That was why Harkness’s eye couldn’t be replaced—the subsequent infection had destroyed the nerves. It wasn’t the pain of the torture that hurt the most to remember; it was the sense of being nothing, a brief amusement to be thrown into a cell like a heap of garbage and then forgotten for three months. Certainly he hadn’t been left in solitary, but his cellmates that time were Alliance intentions wimps, and not part of his team. They wouldn’t even help him make any escape attempts.

The sound of Tru’eb’s voice brought him back to the present.

“Oh no. They’re here.”

The four turbolifts on the opposite side of the mezzanine arrived almost simultaneously. One after the other, the doors opened, and Imperial troops and officers came pouring out, all of them armed, all of them running, all of them shouting. Within seconds, Dirk, Platt, and Tru’eb were surrounded.

“Drop your weapons! Now!”

They obliged.

Harkness’s head started throbbing. This is not happening, not after all this, not after I made up my mind…

“Stand down!” somebody shouted.

A new voice. Everyone froze. Two figures were standing in the doorway to the command center.

Harkness blinked a couple of times. He saw a female Imperial major with a red-spattered uniform; her face had flashed into his mind several times since his interrogation, but he hadn’t recognized it until now. Then he saw her.

Jai was as bloody a mess as Harkness. Her eyes squinted in the combination of bright lights and, probably, a splitting post-interrogation headache. There was a thick, red seam across the bridge of her still-bleeding nose; an arm locked around the head of the barely conscious major; and a heavy, Imperial-issue blaster aimed at the major’s right temple.

“Stand down,” Jai said again. “I have a proposition.”

A young, skinny lieutenant spoke. “Let her go, Rebel,” he said. “Drop your blaster, put your hands on your head.”

“You can’t afford to waste time taking us back into custody,” Jai told him.

“And why not?”

“Because the Major and I made a little call to the planetary government.”

The lieutenant blanched. A faint murmur started up amidst the troops.

Jai went on, “Apparently they aren’t amused to find out what’s been lurking here in the Valley of Umbra. I think you’d best evacuate your troops before Governor Nul sends a full-blown air strike.”

“Don’t you think that would be a little paranoid, Rebel?”

Now Platt spoke. “Don’t you think the entire population on this planet is a little paranoid, buddy?”

“Aside from all that, I’m giving you an order,” Jai said. “Because as of three minutes ago, Zelos II belongs to the New Republic. Isn’t that right, Major?”

The major took a deep, rattling breath and nodded faintly.

The lieutenant stared at Jai for a minute, his eyes darting from her to Harkness to the major. It was obvious the boy had never made an executive decision in his life.

“Cut your losses, son,” Harkness told him. “Do what the nice lady says.”

The lieutenant looked at the floor.

Then he turned around and signaled the troops. “Initiate evacuation procedure. Come on, do it now! Let’s go!”

Nobody seemed to object. Some of the grunts closer to the turbolifts had already put their blasters away when Jai had said “air strike.” Within seconds the troops had begun to disperse, some of them swearing, most of them trying to shove through the crowd.

“What about the major?” the lieutenant asked Jai.

“I think she’ll be coming back to my base with me. I also think she’ll be loaning us her shuttle to get out of the valley. You don’t object, do you, Lieutenant? Unless you’d like to come along?”

“It doesn’t appear as though your troops are interested in stopping us,” Tru’eb said.

The boy licked his lips and mumbled something about Docking Bay One, and clearance; then he turned and walked away.

Harkness untangled himself from Tru’eb’s shoulder, leaned against the wall, and took a few excruciating steps toward Jai, who was visibly struggling to keep her adrenaline going in order to hang on to the major. Aside from Jai’s injuries, nothing about her appearance surprised Harkness at all. She matched her voice exactly. And she did look like her sister, a taller, blond version, with the same ice-blue eyes. The only difference was what seemed to be behind the eyes; Morgan’s had been clear and knowledgeable, a window to the brilliance beyond the absentmindedness. Jai’s were bright and painful and hard to look into. Across her left cheek was a long, pink scar, testimony to a wound that had never seen a bacta tank; but in a strange way, it didn’t seem ugly or out of place.

Something inside of him felt oddly settled, seeing her for real.

And in those troubled eyes, he saw a glint of recognition as she finally took a second to focus on his face.

“Harkness.”

“Sarge.”

“You’re… just as I pictured you.”

“You mean happy and handsome?”

“Here, I’ll take Major Psycho,” Platt said. “You guys lean on Tru’eb. Just concentrate on staying conscious until we get inside the shuttle.”

Jai seemed to noticed Platt and Tru’eb for the first time. “Who are you people?”

“Your ticket off the planet,” Platt said, taking Jai’s hand and shaking it.

At first, Harkness had resisted the idea of being injected with a heavy sedative. He needed to remind himself that he was on board Platt’s ship, the
Last Chance
, already light years away from the garrison, and that the major was imprisoned in the hold. At least that was what Platt had told him. He didn’t remember anything beyond hobbling into the major’s
Lambda
-class shuttle and sinking down into a shiny black passenger seat.

Beyond the concept of taking the sedative, however, he just didn’t want to sleep. In his experience, sleeping drugs tended to pull you down into heavy fever dreams you had a hard time waking up from. And he knew what kind of dreams he was going to have.

“Sorry I don’t have a bacta tank on board,” Platt said, rummaging through the cabinet next to Harkness’s medical bunk. “But it’s only a couple days to Wroona from here. Jai, I’ve got a couple of Rebel friends out there. They can help you contact your base.”

“Thanks,” Jai said. She was lying in the bunk across the room, on her stomach.

Tru’eb came in. “No medpacs in the forward berthing compartment,” he said.

“You’re kidding. I thought we just stocked up on… oh, here we go.” Platt tossed one to Tru’eb.

“I don’t want to sleep,” Jai said.

“This really isn’t a strong mixture,” Tru’eb told her, sitting on the edge of her bunk. “It’s actually designed to kill the pain while improving the quality of your sleep. That way your injuries don’t interfere with your normal sleep pattern. Which means you are less likely to have vivid dreams.”

“Oh. Okay”

“And listen,” Platt said, “it’s not a big ship. If you need anything at all, press the green button on the side of the bed. Yeah, that one.

“Okay, Tru’eb and I are going to get a little shut-eye—is there anything else you two need?”

“Leave the lights on,” Jai said.

After Tru’eb and Platt had gone, Harkness said, “What will you do when you get back?”

“Are you kidding? I just inducted an entire planet into the New Republic. I’ve got lots of desk work to do.”

“Eh. Bag it. Make somebody else fill out the forms.”

“Yeah.” Jai was quiet for a moment; then her voice seemed to slur. “Maybe when I get back I’ll tell General Madine what he can do with this Intel assignment.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Maybe.”

Harkness felt the sedative seep into his limbs, warm and heavy. The room seemed to mist over, in the same blue-gray fog as the one that hung over the Valley of Umbra.

“Sarge?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever think about becoming a mercenary?”

“Sometimes,” she said. Then her voice seemed to gather a little strength. “Yeah, I think that would be pretty nice.”

“You said you don’t care much about fighting for the New Republic.”

“Why? You proposing something?”

“Maybe.”

She seemed to drift off after that. Harkness felt the silence tugging at him, but it seemed to be easing him into a warm darkness, not a bottomless well.

Then the humming noise came back.

Harkness started; he felt a surge of dismay. But then he settled back and closed his eyes. It hadn’t been a song, or anything to do with Chessa. The humming was the sound of the engines on Platt’s ship.

Fenig Nabon searched the skies for the ship she knew was on its final approach. But, from her vantage at a grimy window, all she saw was Ryloth’s tortured landscape, empty and desolate, stretching into darkness.

She shifted from one foot to the other. The movement betrayed her uneasiness and stirred choking dust in the stifling heat of the port control room. As the veteran of seedy spaceports too numerous to be counted, the Corellian smuggler knew she should be entirely in her element. Instead, the whole deal about to go down left Fen with a queasy stomach and three not so minor questions. Why was she here when she could have been making a simple raava run between Socorro and Coruscant? Why was her beloved ship, the
Star Lady
, docked systems away on Nal Hutta? And when, in over twenty years of traversing the stars, had she irrevocably and irretrievably lost her mind?

There was one answer to all these questions—Ghitsa Dogder, her current partner of circumstance. Feeling another bead of moisture weave its tortuous way between her well-worn flight suit and her sweat-soaked back, she wished for the millionth time that she had followed her first instinct two years ago and just blasted the little con artist right out of her wildly impractical high-heeled shoes. It would have truly been an act of galactic altruism on par with the destruction of both Death Stars.

Squinting, Fen finally spied a speck of fast-moving light. It materialized into the midsized, heavily armed freighter she and Ghitsa had hired for passage to Nal Hutta. The ship arrowed up and disappeared overhead to cruise above the cliffs housing the Twi’lek clan warrens of Leb’Reen.

Always the victims of pirates and plunderers, the reclusive Twi’leks never made even the legitimate landings easy. For the Leb’Reen approach, a pilot had to fly down a narrow rift carved into the plateau to emerge into the landing cavern five hundred meters below. Harsh gouges made by disrespectful pilots marred the unforgiving rock walls. Fen doubted the Mistryl piloting the inbound ship would make the same mistakes.

Mistryl. These enigmatic women warriors would do desperate things for their impoverished people. And in a universe of uncertainty, getting on the wrong side of a Mistryl was a sure way to meet a really certain, and completely lethal, end.

“It would be a pity if they damaged the ship,” said a cultured Coruscantan voice.

Fen didn’t bother to look down at her diminutive partner. “They won’t. Shada D’ukal’s a good pilot.”

“High praise from you, Fen.”

“Simple fact. I didn’t say she was a great pilot.”

“Or as good as you think you are?” Ghitsa taunted softly.

Fen was too tense to argue with her. “I told you before, conning a Hutt is a bad idea; using Mistryl to do it is a really bad idea.”

“Such uncharacteristic understatement for a Corellian.” Ghitsa sighed, smoothing back a tendril of spiky blond hair that dared to be out of place. “We have been over this. Mistryl possess a peculiar, tarnished nobility. And…” she screwed her perfectly applied face in concentration, “they are likely to identify with the seeming predicament of our cargo. We could not count on anyone else to be as predictable.”

“They also carry heavy weapons, know how to use them, and don’t need a blaster to do permanent damage to a body.”

“A Hutt is a big mark in a blaster sight, and a very small one in a con,” Ghitsa replied evenly.

They turned from the window as the hum of repulsorlifts echoed in the landing cavern behind them. With a
whoosh
, the ship burst through the gaping hole in the roof of the Leb’Reen landing bay. Fen studied its descent intently with a professional’s eye.
Watch out for wind shear
, she cautioned the pilot mentally, as the ship bounced to a final, unsteady stop.

Her partner’s crisp words interrupted Fen’s musing. “I will finish the details with the Shak Clan.” Straightening the shoulder pads of her tailored ensemble, Ghitsa took in Fen’s own tattered flight suit and ragged, nut-brown hair pulled into a sloppy braid. “Must you always look as if a rancor dressed you?”

Fen slapped her head in mock horror. “And I ever so wanted to squeeze in an appointment with your designer.”

Ghitsa rolled her eyes with amused disgust and, as always, got in the last pointed barb. “You are as hopeless as a Mistryl’s cause.” Pivoting on a sharp, stylish heel, she walked away.