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 wascomputer 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," was 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. his... 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.
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
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 - comand 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 Zeios."
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-was
"Which chamber? Where?" Tru'eb asked, grabbing him around the waist and
pulling him to his feet. Hark ness 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, H
arkness 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 other 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, Zeios II belongs to the New Republic. Isn't that right,
Major?"
The major took a deep, raiding 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 diink 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.. disj 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