Trapped (8 page)

Luke was pretty sure he did. And he had to admit, for once, the pilot was probably right. “Things can always get worse.”

X
-7 closed his fingers around the enemy's neck and squeezed. He would throttle the life out of this imposter. Punish him for daring to believe he could fool X-7. That level of idiocy deserved death. Div gasped for air as red bloomed across his cheeks—blood vessels, bursting in the struggle for oxygen.

The enemy jerked his hands up in a reverse Moravian maneuver. X-7 toppled backward, and the enemy was on him in a heartbeat. They rolled across the carpet, knocking over a synthstone table. Dishes and glasses clattered to the ground, shattering on impact. X-7 raised an arm to protect himself against the spray of jagged fragments. But his enemy grabbed a wrist and flipped X-7 onto his back.

As he fell, X-7 hooked his leg behind his foe's and brought him down, too. But the enemy had seen the move coming, and grabbed a fire poker from the fireplace on his way down. He slammed the durasteel rod down at X-7's face.

X-7 rolled out of the way just in time. He drew his blaster. With lightning speed, the enemy knocked it out of his hand. It skidded across the room, disappearing under a couch.

The enemy was a blur with the poker, lashing and lunging like a master swordsman. Driven by instinct, X-7 reached blindly, his hands closing around a curtain rod and ripping it off the wall. Some part of him must have noticed it earlier and filed it away for later use. That was why X-7 was invincible. He fought like a machine. No emotion, no passion. Only speed and observation and power. He moved with grace and without hesitation. He was like a force of nature. He had been bred for battle. He was a deadly weapon.

And yet the enemy matched him. Move for move.

Their makeshift weapons clashed and clanged. X-7 launched an attack, but the enemy countered with a Phr'shan maneuver. A Griggs-Barnay was the next logical move, but instead, X-7 opted for the unexpected, slashing at the enemy with a modified Ptann attack that he had picked up on Tarivo III. The enemy danced backward almost before X-7 had begun to strike, as if he knew what X-7 was going to do even before X-7 himself did.

They were too evenly matched. X-7 needed to regain the advantage. He began consciously to speed up his breathing, as if he were struggling for air. Sweat streamed down his face. “Hold,” he gasped, panting. He let the enemy take the offensive and back him further and further across the room. “We need to talk.”

The enemy lashed out with the poker. X-7 parried the blow but let his arm sag just a bit. He didn't want to look
too
weak. Just weak enough that it would be believable for him to stop the fight.

“You break into
my
home, attack me without cause or warning, and you expect
me
to take pity on you?” the enemy growled. He pounced on X-7, who shifted his weight and leaned into the attack, using the enemy's momentum to throw him halfway across the room.

“Not pity,” X-7 said, dropping into a crouch behind the sofa. His blaster was under there somewhere. If he could just reach it...“But if you're at all curious why I'm here...”

There!
His hand closed around the blaster. He lodged it into his belt, tucking it beneath his shirt. Then he stood again, arms out to his sides. “A temporary ceasefire, that's all I'm suggesting. Time for explanations.”

The enemy took a few cautious steps toward him, the fire poker lowered to his side. He nodded. “Fine. Explanations. You start.”

X-7 could tell when a man's defenses were dropped. It was a predator's instinct, knowing exactly when to strike. “My pleasure,” he said. Then raised the blaster, squeezed the trigger, and—

Somehow, the enemy wasn't there anymore. The blasterfire blew a hole in the wall. A cold blade pressed against X-7's neck. Warm blood trickled down his skin. The enemy was behind him.

The enemy had proven faster than him. Stronger than him. Smarter than him.

There was a chance he could dislodge the knife, knock the enemy off balance, disarm him, all before the knife plunged deeper and sliced an artery.

X-7 closed his eyes, let the blaster drop to the ground, and waited for the end. He had been bested, and it was no less than he deserved.

But the pressure of the knife dropped away. “
Now
perhaps you're ready to explain what you're doing here.”

X-7 whirled around, ready to strike, but the enemy caught his arm before a blow could fall.

“Talk,” Lune Divinian said.

It was his only viable option. He wouldn't risk hand-to-hand combat again, not until he found a way to regain the advantage. “Did you really think I would fall for it?” X-7 snarled. “Believe a man like you could be my
brother
?”

The man visibly recoiled. “My brother is dead.”

“Your adopted brother, you mean,” X-7 said, correcting him.

It was like the man's face turned to durasteel. His expression went completely blank. “What do you know about it?”

There was something strangely familiar about the dull eyes, the toneless voice, but it took X-7 a moment to pin it down. Then he realized that it was the same blank and pitiless gaze he saw in the mirror. This was the only man he'd ever met who was able to shut himself down as completely as X-7.

Just as he was the only man X-7 had ever met who could so evenly match him, strength for strength, move to move.

Is it possible...?

“I know everything about it,” X-7 said, “but that's just what you intended, isn't it? Planted the information for me to find, invented this ridiculous story. You probably didn't even have a brother. This person, this
Trever
—”

Lune Divinian struck him across the face. Hard.

X-7 forced himself not to respond.

“You don't say his name,” Lune said. “Ever.”

It didn't make sense. If this was all a trap and Lune was behind it, then wouldn't he be welcoming X-7 with open arms? Certainly he could be lying, trying to put X-7 off balance, confuse him. But X-7 had never met the man who could successfully lie to him. People were too emotional, too invested in their own words. X-7 was separate from all that, separate from humanity. The distance allowed him to see behind people's masks, into the rotting truth that lay beneath. And he didn't think that Lune was lying.

He
thought
Lune was telling the truth, but didn't
know.
Wasn't
certain.

Before, he would have been. Uncertainty wasn't a part of his programming.

Of course, neither was memory. Or curiosity. Or anger.

But X-7 wasn't the man he had once been.

It was proving to be a problem.

D
iv let X-7 think it took him some convincing. He looked through X-7's evidence, challenging his story at every turn. Refused to accept that Trever might be alive, standing in front of him.

And then, on the third day, he did. And in the process, X-7 accepted it, too.

Now Div couldn't decide where to rest his eyes. Not on the familiar threadbare couch, a hole on its armrest torn long ago by Trever's rambunctious pet bull worrt. Not on the door to the kitchen, where Astri had so often appeared with a pot of some foul-smelling concoction. She had always tried to recreate her father's recipes, but more times than not, her efforts had resulted in an inedible sludge. Clive had eaten it anyway, a smile fixed on his face. (Apparently love wasn't just blind; it was taste bud–deprived.) But at Trever's suggestion, Div had devised a better system: dumping the sludge into their napkins, then using the Force to float it out of sight.

Div couldn't look at the empty desk that had once been covered by Astri's computer clutter, or the shelves that had once been filled with Clive's collection of exotic Merenzane Gold vintages
.
The caretaker who came in once a month had managed to keep the abandoned house from falling in on itself, but she couldn't stop the dust from collecting. She couldn't turn the house back into a home.

She couldn't clear out the ghosts.

It had been a week. And with each passing day, it grew easier to see those ghosts; it became harder to forget. Which was why he almost couldn't bear to look around the house. But anything would be easier than looking at X-7, who was sitting on Trever's couch, wearing Trever's clothes, flipping through Trever's old collection of Grav-ball trading cards.

X-7 tossed them onto a side table. “I don't understand,” he said. “Why would he...I...anyone collect something with no value?”

“For fun,” Div said. “It made you happy.”

X-7 riffled through a stack of holopics sitting on the table. He picked up one of Trever grinning in front of a shiny new Arrow-23 speeder. It had been his fifteenth birthday. “Happy.” X-7 frowned and shook his head. “I can't remember that.”

It wasn't the only thing he and Div had in common.

There were their strength and agility, of course, and their single-minded determination. But it wasn't just that. They were both men without a past. They understood each other.

“Tell me again,” X-7 said. “Tell me how it happened.”

Div sighed. He'd told so many stories of the past, but this was the only one X-7 ever wanted to hear.

“They were betrayed,” Div said. “It was supposed to be a simple raid. The munitions factory should have been an easy target. But one of the Rebels sold them out to the Empire...stormtroopers everywhere. They...they never had a chance.”

“They killed our parents,” X-7 said, brushing his fingers across a holopic of Astri. “Except they weren't really my parents.”

“They were. In every way that counted,” Div said fiercely.

“But Trever—”

“You,” Div said, correcting him. “You managed to sneak into the factory.”

“You were watching from the ridge, with electro-binocs,” X-7 said. “You were too far away. Too young.”

“You saw Astri and Clive go down,” Div said. “You still had the charges, and you were determined to get them inside. You weren't about to let them die in vain. But then...” He shook his head. “I still don't under-stand it.”

“Then the TIE fighters dropped the concussion missiles,” X-7 finished for him. “They destroyed their own factory. With me inside.”

“They killed our people for trying to destroy it—and then they blew it up,” Div said. It was the one thing he'd never been able to understand. It made all the death even more pointless.

“Because you've never worked with the Empire,” X-7 said. “It's obvious: They have something they couldn't risk falling into Rebel hands. Or maybe they were planning on razing it anyway, to build the garrison—so they destroyed it before you could. To make a point.”

“A point that killed hundreds of their own men,” Div said.

“Men are expendable,” X-7 said with chilling calm. Then he gave himself a small shake. “I mean, that's what the Empire believes. That's what the Rebels don't understand.”

Div understood. As soon as he'd seen that laserfire blast Astri to the ground, he'd understood.

“Except, they didn't kill everyone inside the factory,” Div said. “There were survivors. You.”

X-7 became very still. His face was a chalky gray. He looked up from the holopics and, for the first time in a week, met Div's eyes. “I may have made it out of that factory alive. But, Div, we both have to accept it: Your brother did not survive. Whoever I was, it's not...we can't...”

Hesitantly, half afraid he'd end up shot in the head, Div put a hand on X-7's shoulder. “You're here now,” Div said. “So maybe we can.”

“You're late,” Ferus said as Div arrived at the rendezvous point. Div and Trever had discovered the abandoned shack, a few kilometers from the house, many years earlier. They'd once used it as a clubhouse, where Trever pretended to be interested in Div's childish games, because that was what brothers did. Even adopted brothers. As they'd grown older, it had become a useful meeting point for the Belazuran resistance.

“It's not easy,” Div said. “He's watching me all the time.”

“I'm sorry you have to go through this,” Ferus said. “If I could bear it for you—”

Div shook his head. “It's fine. It's actually...”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

But Ferus looked at him with those placid, knowing eyes, and Div couldn't help continuing. “Whoever X-7 was, he was conscripted into Project Omega against his will. We know that. Brainwashed to forget whoever he used to be. He must have had a family, people who missed him—who may think he's dead. So isn't it possible...” Div was too ashamed to say it out loud. As he put the hope into words, even he could see how ludicrous it was.

“Possible that Trever is still alive somewhere?” Ferus said sadly. “Possible, even, that our lie has stumbled upon the truth? That X-7 really is—”

“I never said that,” Div cut in harshly. “I'm no fool.”

“A coincidence like that—”

“Aren't you Jedi always saying there
are
no coincidences?” Div asked.

“I would know if it was Trever,” Ferus said heavily. “I would sense it.”

“But I wouldn't, right?” Div scowled. “Because I've given up on the Force, I can't even be trusted to recognize my own brother. Not like
you
can. Even if you barely knew him. Only cared enough to leave him to die.”

Ferus flinched. Div cursed himself for doing it again: striking Ferus exactly where it was guaranteed to hurt the most.

“Just be careful,” Ferus said without resentment. “Don't let your guard down. Don't think you can trust him.”

“I don't trust anyone,” Div said.

Just another thing he and X-7 had in common.

Before Ferus could reply, Luke, Leia, and Han burst into the shack. “We got them!” Luke said triumphantly, waving a memory chip in the air.

Han arched an eyebrow.
“We?”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Okay.
Han
got the blueprints.”

“And then
we
got Han out before the Imperials turned him into a scorch mark,” Leia put in. “And by the way, you're welcome.”

“And
you're
delusional,” Han said. “If I hadn't been around to save both of your scrawny necks, you'd be dianoga food by now.”

Ferus cleared his throat. At once, they fell silent. Div marveled at the way Ferus somehow commanded their respect despite that no one knew who he really was. Even Leia, who always acted like he was worthless, followed his lead. Not for the first time, Div wondered why Ferus had kept close to her all those years, pretending to be someone he wasn't. Ferus refused to speak of it.

This wasn't unusual. Ferus spoke little and often fell into long, heavy silences, staring into nothingness. He was just as kind and determined as ever, but some piece of him was gone.

“It sounds like X-7 is ready, too,” Ferus said.

Luke shook his head, a fierce scowl crossing his face. “We have the blueprints; we don't need
him.
”

“We can use him,” Div countered.

“How are we supposed to use him when we can't trust him?” Luke asked.

“You have another plan?” Ferus said.

Luke and Han glanced at each other, and Han gave a small nod. “We've been working on something,” Luke said, pulling up the blueprints on his datapad. “If we go in through the south entrance...” He traced his index finger along the route.

There was a hint of movement in the shadows. A rustling, as soft as a whisper. Div looked up, on alert, but saw nothing.

As the others hunched over the datapad, Ferus caught his eye. He gave Div a nearly imperceptible nod.

So Ferus had heard it, too.

Div kept his head down, but his eyes flicked from side to side as he sought out their intruder. There was no further noise or movement, but Div could feel his presence.

How long had he been there?

And how much had he heard?

Div half listened as Luke and Han laid out their plan. His mind raced furiously, searching for a way to spin this to his advantage. And by the time the planning ended and the others slipped out, he was ready.

The last to go, Ferus hesitated on his way out. “Do you need me to—”

“Go,” Div said firmly. Ferus didn't argue. He just tapped his hip, where Div could see the faint outline of a lightsaber hidden beneath his coat. Then he pointed at Div and left without another word. He didn't need words; his meaning was clear.

May the Force be with you.

Div waited in the dark.
May the Force be with me,
he thought wryly.
I'd rather you left me with your lightsaber.

He had his blaster, of course. But he had a feeling that this time the blaster might not be enough.

Long minutes passed. Nothing happened. “You can come out now,” he said loudly. “I'm not leaving until you do.”

X-7 emerged from the shadows. He held his blaster in a trembling hand. “I should have known,” he said.

“You did know,” Div said, forcing himself to remain calm. If X-7 had overheard the conversation with Ferus, then all was lost. But there'd been no sign of his presence then. If all he'd overheard was the Rebels discussing their mission, then things could still be salvaged. Maybe. “That's why you followed me here. You wanted it to be true. You
wanted
me to be working with the Rebels.”

“And you let me listen,” X-7 said. “You wouldn't have done that unless...”

“That's right,” Div said, encouraging him. “Unless I
wanted
you there. This isn't just any Rebel mission; this is the Imperial garrison built on the site of the first Imperial munitions factory. The one that—” He swallowed hard. He wouldn't need to fake the emotion. It flooded back whenever he thought about that day. “I've been waiting a long time for this opportunity, to show the Empire that they can't just destroy my family, my planet, without consequences. This is payback.”

“Revenge,” X-7 said in a dreamy voice.

Div realized that he had finally hit on a human emotion that X-7 understood. “Revenge,” he agreed. “For what the Empire did to Clive and Astri—and to you. I've always known this moment would come. But I thought when it did, I would be alone.”

X-7 lowered the blaster. He crossed the room in three long, swift strides and clasped Div's hand, then squeezed. “You won't,” he said. Abruptly, he dropped his hand, and his tone turned businesslike. “Tell your Rebel friends I have all the Imperial access codes they need. I can obtain the necessary security clearances. Anything you need. We will have our revenge.”

It was all working out better than Div could ever have hoped—assuming X-7 was telling the truth.